Aaron was good at shooting and blowing stuff up but I was better at strategy. We’d been playing war games on Aaron’s computer and TV for a few hours: Men of War and Battlefield. Then Aaron told me about something else he’d found on the Internet: How to make Molotov cocktails.
“Is that some kind of drink?” I asked.
“No, you dumb ass, look at this. Petrol bombs.”
“Cool. We could do that.”
So we filled two bottles with petrol from the can for the lawnmower and stuffed a rag in each and biked to the bridge with our Molotov cocktails, the bridge with the big concrete wall underneath it. Like a pair of guerrilla fighters, we sized up our targets and lit the petrol soaked rags. I shouted, “Attack!” and hurled my bomb at the wall and the bottle shattered and exploded with a massive whoomf into a fireball. “Awesome!”
Aaron threw his bottle at a steel girder and it burst into a spray of fire under the bridge and over the ledge above the wall. A voice from under the bridge shouted, “Incoming! Take cover!”
“What the…?” A figure leapt through the flames and knocked Aaron down the bank into some bushes and I scrambled down after him to avoid the attack. Our war game had suddenly become terrifyingly real. A wild-eyed, grey-bearded old man loomed over us and said, “What the hell are you little buggers playing at? You’d be killed for that, in Nam.”
“Sorry Mister,” I said, “we didn’t know you were in there.”
“Sorry doesn’t cover it. I’ve got a bag of clothes and other stuff all burnt because of your little stunt.”
“We’ll get you some new clothes,” I said. “What are you doing in there anyway? Do you sleep in there? Do you live in there?”
“Temporarily. None of your business anyway.” The old guy stood by our bikes and said, “Bugger off and get me some clothes then and a blanket and some sheets of cardboard. I’ll find you if you don’t come back. I never forget a face.”
We crawled cautiously back up the bank and got on our bikes. “Bloody hell,” said Aaron, when we were a safe distance away, I’m not coming back here again. That crazy old bastard’s not gonna find us. That’s just bullshit. How would he find us?”
“No, ‘course he wouldn’t,” I said, “but don’t be a pussy, just because he whacked you. I’m gonna bring him some clothes and stuff, just like I said. My dad’s got old clothes he never wears. He won’t miss them. He’s just a homeless guy and maybe an old soldier. Did you hear what he said when your bomb exploded? Incoming! Take cover! Like he was in a war. And he said, You would’ve been killed for that in Nam.”
“Where’s Nam?”
“I don’t know. I’ll Google it.”
The next day I went back to the bridge and called out, “Hey Mister, you still in there? It’s me, Rory, the fire bomber.”
“If you’re going to call me out, my name is Duane,” said the voice under the bridge. “I didn’t expect to see you again,” said Duane, emerging from the gloom. “Where’s your mate?”
“He didn’t want to come.”
“Why did you come back?”
“I said I’d bring you this stuff.”
“Well, you might be a young idiot but you’re a man of your word. I can use the jacket.”
“I brought you this too. I thought you might be hungry.” I watched as he devoured the filled roll. “Were you in the war in Vietnam?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“Yeah, some. I saw a lot of killing. I saw people blown to bits, people burnt to death with petrol bombs and flame throwers, turned into crispy critters.”
“Yeah, sorry about the Molotov cocktails.”
“You ever hear of napalm?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a petrol bomb. Jellied petrol. It sticks like shit and burns like forty bastards. I suppose you think war is exciting. War is not some game. It’s a sickness. It’s cruel. It’s all the worst things. You can’t imagine. I’ve seen some horrible things I can never unsee. I get flashbacks. I’m tormented by memories and thoughts I can’t control. You ever seen a dead body?”
“No.”
“Ever seen a person without a head?”
“Well, that would be a dead body, so no”.
“I see you have keen powers of deduction,” Duane remarked.
“So why did you go to fight in Vietnam? You didn’t have to, not like American conscripts.”
“You been talking to Professor Google?”
“I did some research,” I said.
“Well’ it’s a long story and I don’t feel like telling it.”
“Why don’t you live in a house?”
“I can’t live in a house like normal people. I can’t sleep in a small room. I get twitchy. I can’t stay where people can find me. Did you tell anyone about me?”
“No.”
“What about your mate?”
“Aaron? He might’ve told some kids at school.”
“Then it’s time for me to move out of here.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’ve got other places. You ask a lot of questions. Don’t tell anyone else. Don’t tell Aaron. I’ll go to the museum. There’s a sheltered entrance and it’s all gravel at the front. I can hear anyone driving up or walking up and there’s bush at the back, down to the river.”
I wanted to get to know more about the old soldier and went to visit him at the museum in the evening. I crunched my way up the gravel drive at the front of the building and called out. No reply, so I went through the bush and found him sitting on the river bank. I gave him the leftovers I’d brought from home and said, “Where do usually get food?”
“Oh, here and there. People I visit. There’s free kai at the church every Tuesday, at the back, by the back of Pan’s shop. Good too. Always soup, plenty bread, sausages, veges. Nice people. They talk to you about Jesus and stuff but they don’t push it. I listen politely and look interested and they’re happy. We all sit at a big picnic table or inside in the kitchen if it’s cold or wet.” He talked as he ate, both at a rapid rate.
“What about toilet, bathroom, showers and that?”
“The whole world’s a toilet, mate. I go to the Sally’s shop for a shower usually every Monday. Yeah I have a shower every week whether I need it or not. Good to have a routine, eh. I help out in the shop a bit, fixing stuff and I can get clothes there too, actually. It’s amazing what people chuck out.”
“What about family?”
“I had a wife but I’m long gone out of her life. I’m long gone out of my own life.”
“What about money? Do you get a veteran’s pension?”
“No mate, I won’t take their blood money. I help out a mate at a garage now and again. I was a mechanic before I joined the army.”
“So you could get a regular job.”
“Don’t need to. Don’t need a lot of money. Don’t want to. I have to be able to get away any time.”
“So why’d you join the army?”
“Family tradition. My father served in World War 2. My grandfather served in World War 1. I’m the only son. I thought it was an honourable thing to do and I thought it would be an interesting job.”
“Did you volunteer to go to Vietnam?”
“Yeah, kind of. It was peer pressure, really. All my mates in the Territorials were going and I would’ve felt like a cop out if I didn’t go. Besides, I believed in all that bullshit about stopping the spread of Communism and all the Southeast Asian countries falling like dominoes all the way down to New Zealand. Why do want to know all this stuff anyway? You must have better things to do than hang out with an old shell shocked bum.”
“I was thinking of joining the army when I leave school.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s better jobs.”
“Like what?”
“Like anything else. Don’t believe all that bullshit about joining the army and having adventures and defending your country. It’s not really about defending your country. It’s about getting sent off to kill poor people in another country. To kill poor people,” he repeated solemnly and trailed off into silence.
The river flowed and lapped at the banks. Duane gazed at the moon on the water and seemed to drift away. Crickets chirped. He looked up and said, “I could’ve been killed myself. Instead I ended up a prisoner of war in a hell hole of a jail. It might have been better if I had been killed. You know how it all ended, don’t you. Those peasants beat us. They kicked us out, the Americans, the Aussies, the Kiwis, everyone. What did we accomplish with all the killing? What thanks did we ever get? Back home there were anti war demonstrations. People called us baby killers and spat on us.”
I went off the idea of joining the army but wanted to keep meeting up with Duane. He must have moved on from the museum though. I couldn’t find him anywhere there, or back at the bridge. He hadn’t been seen at the Salvation Army shop for a while or at the garage. I eventually found out where Duane had gone when I met Martin, another old vagrant who was a regular at the Tuesday kai at the church. Duane had been arrested for urinating in public. The cop was just giving him a summons but Duane panicked and knocked the cop down and ran off. The cop hit his head on the kerb when he fell and when the police caught up with Duane he was arrested on a more serious charge of assault and was being held in custody. He couldn’t get bail because he had no ID and no address so he was still in the police cells.
“Bloody hell, he’ll be going crazy in the cell,” I said. “He’ll be like a caged animal. Can he get bail if someone vouches for him and supplies an address?”
“Well I haven’t got an address,” said Martin. “You wanna take him in?”
“I already know my parents would never have him and Duane wouldn’t stay anyway.”
“He would just have to be there when the police check up,” said Martin. “Probably just a phone call.”
I looked to the church people serving up the food and said, “Any of you fine Christians willing to take Duane in long enough to keep him out of jail?”
No response. No takers. Then one of the young men took me aside and said, “We just feed them. We don’t give them all homes. There’s the Social Welfare for that. Church policy – we don’t take them home.”
“He wouldn’t stay anyway,” I said hopefully.
I was about ready to write off the Christian do-gooders when one of the others, a middle aged woman said, “I’ve got a sleep out at the back of my place. I’ll give the police my address, but we’ll have to keep this quiet.”
The police opposed bail on the grounds that the arresting officer was a victim of a serious assault but the district court judge granted bail when Duane’s identity was confirmed from army records and he’d been given a residential address. Duane was in a bad way when he arrived at the address – very agitated. He came inside for a cup of tea and went to the sleep out but slept outside under a hedge. He was grateful to all concerned but disappeared the following night. The police phoned and visited and when Duane couldn’t be located, a warrant was issued to arrest him for breach of bail conditions. The police usually knew where to find the homeless around town and they soon found him in the grounds of the museum. It was reported that Duane Andrew McNaughton drowned in the river behind the museum while fleeing from police. I hope it was true that Duane drowned accidentally and I like to think he still had the will to survive but I guess I’ll never really know for sure.