by Marco Etheridge

Sonny don’t see much these days, leastwise not looking forward. Tomorrow just blank space, like staring into an empty mirror. Backward, now that’s a different story. Too many yesterdays crowding Sonny’s head like to bust his skull wide open. Ten thousand memories screaming, clawing for revenge, or scalding him with hellfire. Yeah, the past is a full-blown bitch.

Seventy-seven years on this earth and Sonny ain’t more than a mile from where he started out. Born in North Central Philly and gonna die here too, unless someone carts him away. He cribs up on the bottom floor of a row house. Gave the upper floors over to the rats and pigeons. Can’t get up them stairs no more. Used to own the place but the bank stole it from him, or maybe it was the city. Sonsabitches stuck a paper on the door. Don’t matter much. Nobody gives a shit about one more empty row house. Same goes for old veterans.

Sonny hunches on a cot in the living room, gnarled hands wrapped around a forty-ounce. Dark outside and inside too. Bastards shut off the ’lectric last year. Still got the gas, so he uses the kitchen oven for heat when the cold creeps into his bones. Takes a pull off the malt and remembers being hot. Hotter than hell in Nam, every damn day. Sweat runs down his spine as memory sweeps him away.

*  *  *

Up until 1967, young Sonny Thomas hadn’t been first in line for anything except the back of Pop’s hand. Sonny was a nineteen-year-old black man with no wife and no kids, which put him at the head of the queue for a swift draft ticket to Vietnam. Pop had served as a Marine in Korea, and the Corps had sharper uniforms, so Sonny dodged the draft by joining the Marines.

The Corps shipped him to South Carolina. Before that, he’d never been farther south than Atlantic City. He endured twelve weeks of basic training at Parris Island like everyone else. Sonny didn’t suffer as much as some of the raw recruits. Growing up in North Philly made him tough. Basic training just made him tougher.

Three months later, Sonny was on board a Navy transport headed for Vietnam. By May of ’67, he was in country, assigned to the 1st Marine Regiment near Huế. The DMZ lay just fifty kilometers to the north. Huế was hotter than the hubs of hell. Eight months later, it would get a whole lot worse than hot.

*  *  *

Sonny leans forward, puts the forty on the floor between his feet. Leaves his head hanging down, hoping the dizziness will go away. Not right, sweating this hard in a room this cold. Smells the sour fear sweat weeping out of his jacket. That ain’t right neither.

Probably should go to the VA hospital, but it’s way down south across the Schuylkill River. Man got to take two trains just to get there, then those doctors treat you like a child. The nurses not too bad, but them young doctors a bunch of peckerwoods.

Two hours on the metro is hell. All them kids blasting their music and smoking dope right on the platform. Hard to imagine that shit back in the day. Used to be smoking dope out in the open like that get a black man landed in Eastern State Penitentiary faster than you could say hands up. Can’t even make sense of the world no more.

Sonny raised his head, shook it good, then raised up that forty. The last of the malt liquor sloshes in and the bad times roll out.

*  *  *

Huế exploded into chaos on January 31, 1968. Thousands of North Vietnamese troops appeared out of nowhere, Việt Cộng and the People’s Army alike. The South Vietnamese were busy celebrating the Tết Lunar New Year. Most of the city fell in a few days. Long after the battles were over, historians named it the Tết Offensive. As they fought their way into Huế, Lance Corporal Sonny Thomas and the rest of the marines just called it hell.

Sonny’s world became a storm of thunder and dust and smoke, not the kind of noise you hear with your ears, but the roar of battle that comes up through your boots and fills your skull.

Explosions kicked up clouds of heavy dust. The Marines were sweating like pigs. Ten minutes into the fighting, you couldn’t tell a black man from a white man. Every marine looked like a gray ghost.

Rockets knocked out any vehicles attempting to move down the roads. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, all of them getting shot to pieces. The North Vietnamese were behind every wall, every window, covering the streets with crossfire.

The marines got hit with mortars, machine guns, recoilless rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. Forced off the roadways, the Marines fought from one building to the next. Once inside the buildings, they fought room to room.

*  *  *

Sonny gasping for breath, dust in his throat, ears hammering, Marines shouting over the roar. Rodriguez waving him forward—Get him, Sonny, get him!—M14 banging against Sonny’s shoulder. Hears Rodriguez shouting while knowing the man been dead fifty years and more. Dead before that goddamn day got done. Decades ago, and we still playing that day out again and again. Never will get it right.

Had to learn that shit as we went. Squad leader said we was going to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Supply team brought up new gear: bazookas, C-4 explosives, and flamethrowers. Sergeant said to blow a hole in the wall, flame them bastards, toss in two grenades, then shoot anyone still standing. Secure the room, then do it again.

Then that last room. One more time—Boom!—blast the wall, flamethrower forward, a stream of hellfire, then Rodriquez and Sonny, backs against the wall, either side of the hole. Grenades in hand, eye contact, nod, pull the pins, count off two seconds so can’t no one throw them back, then toss them bad boys.

Spin away from the hole, hard into the wall for cover. Double M26 grenades—Thump Thump—kicking up another billow of dust. Rodriguez goes in low, M14 spitting rounds, Sonny coming in from the other side. No way anyone’s still alive in there, no fucking way.

Something goes wrong. In a split-second, a heartbeat, time slows to a crawl. Rodriguez goes down like he’s slipped on something. Sonny wants to laugh at the fool. Rodriguez, man, always clowning. Then he sees muzzle flashes from the corner of the room. A low wall of sandbags. Eyes behind an AK47.

Sonny pivots, steps across, gets a hand on Rodriguez’s collar. Heaves against the weight of his partner, dragging him toward the ragged hole, back to the squad, back to cover. Almost there, man, sees hands reaching out. TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. Sonny’s leg is gone and he’s falling into a black hole, spinning end over end into a bottomless pit. Goddamn pit goes all the way to hell, falling and falling, and the whole time he’s screaming for Rodriguez. Never gets no answer.

*  *  *

Lance Corporal Sonny Thomas came home to Philadelphia with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a ruined leg. Marine PFC Julio Rodriguez was shipped back to Texas in an olive-drab metal casket.

By 1970, Sonny’s leg had healed as well as it ever would. The VA hospital wished him luck. Sonny walked with the aid of a cane. He got along as best he could. A few years slipped past, and the Vietnam War ended. Some people began to forget, but not Sonny. The cane and his limp served as constant reminders.

Jobs did not come easily for Sonny. Keeping them proved even harder. After ten years of living on the edge, he met Rosa. Life took a turn for the better. Rosa and Sonny were married at Tenth Memorial Baptist Church. Sonny struggled to be a good husband, and then a good father. Little Della became the sunshine of his world. Sonny managed in the daytime, but the long nights haunted him. Not even the sunshine of little Della kept the nightmares away.

Sonny’s nightmares planted the seeds of anger. He raged against his lame leg, the stick he used to walk, the ghost of Rodriguez, and himself for letting his partner die on a bloody concrete floor in some forgotten Vietnamese building.

His anger came at a high price. Bosses didn’t take well to being cussed. Sonny lost one job after another. Money got tight and times were hard. Rosa tried to stick it out, tried to get Sonny back to the VA, but her husband was a stubborn man. Stubborn and angry. Anger that deep can become contagious.

Their marriage ended just after Della turned two. Rosa moved in with her parents and cut off all contact with her ex-husband. Sonny began drinking hard. He worked when he could find work, but never enough to keep up with the child-support payments.

After Rosa left, Sonny kept to himself. He shut out everything as best he could, shrinking his world down to one row house on Nicholas Street. Somehow, he ended up adopting a dog, a white stray that turned up at his door. Sonny named the mutt Roddy.

*  *  *

Sonny shifts his feet, knocking over the empty forty. The bottle rolls across the uneven floor. Better find it before Miz Idara come over. Nicest woman in the world, Miz Idara. Come all the way from Nigeria. Brings him hot meals sometimes, but she don’t approve of his drinking. Gots to clean the place up. Maybe tomorrow. Too damn dark now.

Least Miz Idara bring some kindness. Della don’t bring nothing but shouting. Drives all the way over here just to scream at him, tell him what a worthless father he is. Like Sonny don’t already know. Stands at the top of the stoop, yelling in the door. Her husband standing out by his fancy ride, and a little face peering out the back window. Sonny’s grandson. Never even met the boy.

A wave of empty sucks him down. Wonders if he’s got another forty-ounce. Naw, ain’t nothing left to drink and he’s too weak to limp to the mini-mart. Sags back onto the cot, one foot still on the floor. Cold in here. Ain’t right, sleeping in the cold.

Stares at the water stains on the ceiling. Eyelids fluttering. Might as well sleep some. Come morning, Miz Idara might bring him some breakfast. Closes his eyes and sinks into blackness.

Deep down in the dark, something brushes against Sonny’s hand. Small mercy, he’s sleeping quiet for once, shed of those goddamn nightmares. His eyes blink open. Sonny can’t make sense of what he’s seeing. His old dog Roddy sitting beside the cot nuzzling his hand. Can’t be. Dog’s been dead and gone thirty years. But there he is, glowing silver in the dark.

Sonny tries to talk but his mouth don’t work. Hears the words in his head. Good boy, Roddy. Yessir, you’re a good dog. Roddy looks toward the door, then back at Sonny. Barks once, that old happy bark. Tongue hanging out the side of his muzzle.

Without moving a muscle, Sonny’s on his feet. Feels light as a feather. Roddy rubs up against his bad leg. Don’t feel bad no more. He looks down at the cane hooked over the edge of the cot. Don’t need that. Sees the old body sprawled on the cot. Nods his head. Don’t need that no more neither.

The dog’s claws click across the floor and Sonny is right behind him. Roddy pauses at the door, looks up at Sonny, then steps clean through it. Sonny follows the dog, stepping out into the night.

*  *  *

Miss Idara Bassey worried about her neighbor. She hadn’t seen the old man in almost a week. She’d knocked on his door several times, but Mister Sonny didn’t answer. That mean daughter of his showed up in her fancy SUV. The woman stood on the stoop yelling at the top of her lungs. Such a strange country, this America. Back home in Nigeria, no one would disrespect an elder in such a manner.

On the seventh day, not knowing what else to do, Miss Idara called the police. The officer she spoke with explained that they could do a welfare check. Miss Idara hesitated, not wanting to intrude, but in the end, she agreed. She hung up the phone with a heavy heart.

Philadelphia police officers found the body of Mister Sonny Thomas on the first floor of an abandoned row house on Nicholas Street. The coroner estimated that the deceased man had died approximately six days prior.

Sonny Thomas was buried on a cold morning in March. The Veteran’s Administration paid for his funeral. A Baptist minister intoned the bible reading over a flag-draped casket. The honor guard outnumbered the mourners. A National Guardsman folded the flag into a tight triangle. He then presented the flag to Miss Idara Bassey in lieu of family members. A bugler sounded taps as the casket was lowered into the ground.