“Listen to the Warm” Rod McKuen
Chapter 13 - Decompression
I spent the first several days at Danny’s just sleeping and hanging
around. I particularly savored the simple pleasure of staying warm. It felt
good to do nothing in a stress-free environment. During the day, I read and
listened to music, and enjoyed the concept of not having to log four or five
hundred miles on the bike while driving down a barren stretch of cold winter
highway alone.
Danny had a new girlfriend, a pretty and intelligent woman named Jenny, and
she was charming and fun to be around. They seemed quite happy together, and
I felt glad that Danny had an important new facet in his life. .
Eventually, I ventured outside and reacquainted myself with the once
familiar world of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg. On a warm and pleasant day, I
changed the oil on the bike and gave it a quick tune-up, and then drove
through Fort Bragg to visit some old Army friends who still lived in a
trailer outside the post in the town of Spring Lake. They had let others
know I was back in town, and we had a good crowd in the trailer as I related
the story of Dave, Gerry and me as we drove out West, and related some of
our adventures from our Hollywood days. It was good to see them all again,
and it was good to be out of the Army. Several friends were closing in on
their final day of service, and the mood was upbeat and loud. Later that
night, when I left, I knew that I would never see most of
them again.
I fired up the Honda and headed back to Fayetteville and Danny’s place. I
kept it at the speed limit going through the post, and then stepped it up as
I reached the town. It was dark and cold now and I was anxious to be home. I
followed the fork that led toward Danny’s house and was soon cruising at
sixty down the dark and empty road. Then I saw the unlit construction sign;
with a hard jolt, the bike leaped skyward and I found myself looking down
from above on the tank and instruments. I had hit a five-inch high berm of
dirt that extended across the tarmac! Somehow, I had held on. The momentum
carried the bike and me straight down the road and, after several bounces on
the landing, I gained control and kept moving toward Danny’s house. My heart
was pounding and adrenalin was coursing through my veins. Wow! I knew that I
was lucky, it had been a close one, and that I had narrowly escaped a
serious and intimate encounter with the hard and unforgiving blacktop.
Several weekends after arriving back in North Carolina, Danny had a small
gathering at his house. People chatted over glasses of wine and hors dourves,
and I had the chance to make some new friends. In an Army environment, new
faces were constantly coming and going, and now Jenny’s friends were part of
the mix. I met a girl that evening, a stranger to the area who was staying
with friends in Fayetteville before embarking on a trip overseas. The next
day I went to meet her for coffee, and later in the afternoon, we returned
to the house where she stayed in Fayetteville. Soon, I followed her up the
stairs to her bedroom, where we took off our clothes and lay down together
in the dimming light of a winter afternoon. Once again, I felt the joy and
freedom of living, and the wonderful promise and possibility of the life
that lay before me, and all the goodness that was a part of it.
A couple nights a week, we went to the local bowling alley where the great
jazz trumpeter, Ray Codrington, played in the lounge with his quartet. These
were special and relaxing evenings, where we enjoyed a cocktail and listened
to some special sounds. On nights such as these, Fayetteville and the Army
seemed a million miles away.
One night, a group of us took a ride up to Chapel Hill in the Raleigh-Durham
area of the state. There we saw the great Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko,
perform a reading at a local university, A friend of his from the local
academic community would first read the poem in English, and then
Yevtushenko would perform the work in Russian. I remember the fury with
which he performed one of his classic works, Babi Yar, a poem about a World
War II massacre where the German SS and Russian collaborators murdered tens
of thousands of Jews at a ravine near Kiev. Although Yevtushenko has his
critics, there were not many poets in Russia with a following as large as
his that spoke out against the Russian tolerance of anti-Semitism. It was a
memorable and moving night, to see the power that words and poetry had over
strangers, and how those words mold the artist from within.
Fayetteville remained as depressing as ever. Immediately outside the post,
there was a line of stores, mostly pawnshops and military surplus outlets.
Downtown was the site of the old slave market, where slaves from Africa were
once sold as a commodity. Everywhere you looked there was a tough bar or
nightclub filled with hard women and frequented by members of the 82nd
Airborne. Hard drugs such as heroin and meth were becoming more commonplace.
If you wanted some action or trouble, you did not have to go far or look too
hard in this town.
As the end of March approached, I began to think about heading north and
seeing my family in Connecticut. The life I was living in North Carolina
would not go on forever; Danny was getting close to the end of his tour, he
would be leaving the Army in July, and then he and Jenny would be leaving
Fayetteville to start life anew in a different locale. It was time for me to
decide what the next chapter or direction of my life would be.
On the first weekend after the winter solstice, I packed a knapsack with
most of my clothes. My plan was to see my family up north and decide what I
was going to do next. Whatever that might be, I planned to come back to
Danny’s in May to visit and retrieve my bike. After a final breakfast, I had
Danny drop me off near the highway in Fayetteville, and began the long
hitchhike north to my parent’s home in Manchester, Connecticut.