The Sad Young Sergeant (a short story, concerning Agent Orange)

The Sad Young Sergeant

((… Agent Orange) (1977, Fort Rucker, Alabama))

His dull face showed a shade of vengeance by some inward self-satisfaction needed, a smugness almost that appeared to offend him, yet gave him content, if not joy—it wasn’t in his nature, but it was there nonetheless, that he found something out of nothing, and now could utter what it was, he had learned the name for it, ‘Agent Orange.’

       “They fired bombs and guns I thought,” he told Staff Sergeant Chick Evens, adding, “I never expected to live through the war, only to come home and die at the hands of some mysterious, infectious chemical agent called ‘Agent Orange.”

       His back against the wall, chair up on its two hind legs, Staff Sergeant Joe Montgomery, from Fayetteville, North Carolina was dying slowly.

       It was the summer of 1977

       “It has a delayed reaction, they now tell me, nine-years later, then buff, all of a sudden is called Agent Orange. The government say’s they’ll pay, but you know Evens, that’ll be twenty-five years from now.”

      And how true that would be, Evens would get an $11,000-check in the mail, 35-years later for his dose of Agent Orange that came out of the Vietnam War, a heart problem to boot, and some other neurological issues.

       “It was to me Evens, the final boom! And now it is the last part of the war for me, which I thought was over for me, nine-years ago, evidently I was wrong. Yes indeed, a lost war, that I forgot was still embedded in me, to my death do I part with it.”  Furthermore, added Joe (in a voice of discontent, faint and failing), “…they all fell dead around us, when we went to pick them up, to check out their pockets for papers, and so forth, they were silent, discolored; the dead are smelly, and ugly, and discolored, and bloated, and just awful.”  Joe was now mentally being taken back to war, and Evens listened intently, as they both sat eating in the Army mess hall.

       Then Joe’s hand started to shake, than it shook more rapidly his system was on automatic, like someone under electric shock, his left arm dancing in the air, as he looked at it Evens trying to hold it down.

       “You see, I have no control over it,” said Joe the Evens, his face started to pulsate, and his legs seemed to tap, and his back arched. He had to let go of his coffee cup, then his spoon, he had to wait for his system to cool down, to readjust. He no longer was in control.

       After a moment’s agony, he smiled again, “Everyday now, it gets worse,” he explains to Evens, Evens unknowing at the time he too, had a touch of Agent Orange, it was simply dormant for the moment.

       “No kidding aside, I’ll be dead in two months, so the doctor tells me, and my lawyers say, this substance was used by the army for experimental purposes in several areas in Vietnam, during the time I was there, and I was in one of those several areas, and they are unsure of the effects, but here they are, in full motion, it’s all under investigation, and you know what that means in the Army. Listen up, you need to check out and see if you were in any of these areas, I mean it lays latent for years, and then like an eruption from a volcano, it explodes one day.”

       “How long you been in the Army?” asked Sergeant Evens.

       “Going on fifteen-years, I won’t live to get my pension; perhaps now you understand Staff Sergeant Evens (right then the spoon fell out from under his fingers a second time).”

       Under the stringent circumstances, Staff Sergeant Joe Montgomery, still had remarkable agility, and his large black frame bruised here and there, kept a smile on his face, knowing somehow there was no escape from his fate, yet, with the brief time he had left he was not going to ask for pity, or any such thing, and let it imprison him, he committed no crime, he was the victim, and said, sadly, “Too bad I love the Army so, and it would have been great to get to know you better Evens,” and then Evens noticed across his arm he had a tattoo of the American Flag, underneath it, it read, “The American Flag, with all its Glory!”

1-4-2008 (Written in Lima, Peru) Reedited: 9-2016