“Do you know where she was going? Where was she headed? When did she leave?” I asked him, voice shaking.

He looked at me sort of strangely and said, “Calm down son…… she left around 5:00 this morning, right after I interviewed her. She said she would be in touch as soon as she was located somewhere far away from here. Can’t say I blame her after what happened. She said that she had insurance on the tavern and wanted to get that settled, and would be in touch. She then said something about going to India? Where’s that? Why are you so interested?”

“We were just good friends,” was all I said and felt my heart drop into an empty abyss.

He then asked me about my beating and if I knew who attacked me. I responded by saying that I did not see any faces, but I had a good idea. Billy said he thought he recognized Johnny Cray and saw two others who he figured were two of his cronies. It was dark and he couldn’t be sure.

“Did I want to press charges?” he asked.

“So what good would that do?”

“It might put Johnny behind bars for a while. If it came to trial, you would likely have to testify.”

“But, I couldn’t testify because I didn’t see who it was. You are the one who saw him, not me. So I can’t really testify about anything other than I got beat up.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But think about it and let me know. I would love to arrest that asshole. I can’t prove it, but I would bet a month’s pay that Cray set the fire at Marie’s, especially when I heard about what happened earlier last night and about his threats when he left Marie’s,” said Billy.

I wanted to tell him about Marie and myself but thought better of it. Figured he already knew anyway. I thanked him and said I would let him know about pressing charges and left.

I met my dad and my brother at the restaurant about an hour later. Dad went back home and Donnie (my brother) and I went down to the job site in my car and I found my boss and told him what happened and that the doctor said I was to take it easy on my ribs for at least two months…… absolutely no bouncing around on my scraper. So, I was done for the season as there were less than two months left of decent weather before fall rains and winter would set in. My boss told me that I would have a job for sure next spring and he would get my last check sent to my parent’s place. We exchanged so-longs, handshakes and such and Donnie and I headed home to the farm.

I spent the next few weeks moping around, wondering what happened with my life. I felt empty, sad, hurt……a much deeper hurt than my beating injuries. I didn’t care to eat or talk. I was barely functional. My parents were concerned about my behavior, but I put it all off onto my beating. They did not know about Marie and I left it that way.

I could not comprehend what had happened to that idyllic time last summer. Could my happiness with Marie be all over just like that? I had no idea where she was and my repeated calls to Billy Carpenter yielded nothing as he had not heard anything from her. He did say that the insurance company had contacted him, but would offer no information about her or her whereabouts.

I never pressed charges against Johnny Cray. I just wanted to forget.

Early that October, I heard that my cousin, Joe Strang, and a good friend Ronnie Baker got their draft notices. They were only three and five months older than me. I knew that my number was probably next up. Knowing that I did not in any way, shape, or form want to be a grunt in the Viet Nam rice paddies, I went in to see the Navy recruiter in Dubuque figuring that this war would be better served on a ship than the jungle. The recruiter asked what I liked to do….. and I said I ran heavy road equipment. He told me of program in the  Naval Construction Battalions (aka, the Seabees) where I could enlist for four years and likely get an immediate petty officer rank of E4 or maybe E5, because of my heavy equipment experience. I signed up on the spot.

I wanted to get away as soon as I could thinking that might help me to forget Marie and last summer. I left for Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp two weeks later. After my time there, I received orders to report to the Naval Construction Base in Gulfport, Mississippi for further training in naval construction methods.

Three months later I was assigned to a Seabee Battalion which was a complete construction company, carpenters, electricians, heavy equipment operators, steel workers, mechanics, engineers and all support. We left for Viet Nam two months later.

Viet Nam: hot, humid, crazy, dangerous.

______________________

I served two tours “In Country” in the next two and a half years. At the end of my second deployment, I had earned a promotion to Petty Officer 1st Class, received orders to be an instructor at Gulfport. That turned out to be pretty boring duty. I missed the adrenaline rush of the war. The war had become my normal life. After only six months of being an instructor, I requested reassignment for another tour in Nam, after which I would have my four-year enlistment done. So I was back at war six weeks later.

I hadn’t heard anything from Amisha (aka, Marie) in over three years and those memories of the summer of 1967 had eased and were fading, as was the pain. I still thought about her. I still missed her. But the war adventure took me far beyond Tristan and Johnny Cray.

Speaking of Johnny, a letter from my folks last year mentioned an article in the local newspaper that he was a gunner’s mate on a river patrol boat up on the Mekong River and apparently he and his crew were all killed in an attack. A fitting way for that mean sonofabitch to go, but I actually felt sorry for him and, especially, his family. No matter who or what he was, it was a crappy way to die.

“Take that asshole. How does that feel you smart ass fucker? You’re gonna fucking die along with that fucking bitch,” I heard a familiar voice scream.

Then I heard someone shout, “Hey, what’s going on there? “ And one final blow to my head was the last thing I remembered.

I awoke in a strange bed in a strange room with a strange smell of antiseptic. I called out, “Where am I? What happened?” I hurt everywhere and could only open one eye and when I tried to move, I couldn’t. Every part of my body hurt like hell.

“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice, getting out of a chair. “I am Doctor Crandall and you are in my clinic. Billy Carpenter (the local cop) brought you in. You were completely unconscious and have been out now for about three hours. Nasty blow to your head. You’re lucky Billy came by when he did and scared off those guys that were beating on you. They scattered and got away. You are really lucky. They might have killed you according to how Billy said they were going at you. One apparently had a baseball bat. There were three of them and they managed to do some nasty damage to your body, lots of bruises, but nothing broken that I can find, anyway.”

He asked how I felt and where I hurt the worst. I replied that I really hurt everywhere, but it really hurts when I breath. And I have a terrible headache.

“I am guessing you might have a cracked rib or two. You have some severe bruising on your left side . . . is that where it hurts?” responded Doctor Crandall.

“Uh huh,” I grunted.

He then looked into my eyes with a light, having to open my swollen shut left one with his fingers. Then he asked me to focus on his finger as he moved it side to side. “Good,” he said, “Your vision seems to be okay, probably no concussion, and that swelling over your left eye will go down quickly. We’ll keep ice on it”

He gave me an ice pack for my eye and one for where my side hurt. Also gave me two painkillers.

“I want to take some x-rays, especially your head to make sure there isn’t a concussion and I will do your chest then as well. I would like to keep you until tomorrow to observe your progress. I doubt you will have to go to a hospital, but I will know more after I can get those x-rays. It would be good to have someone look after you for a few days until you are up and going. Can you call your someone to come and get you?” added the good doctor.

“I can call my folks and have them come and get me tomorrow. They live only 35 miles from here,” I said. “Can I use your phone in the morning?”

“Of course. You should be able to get out of here tomorrow afternoon,” he said. And then he added, “Never much excitement around here, but it has been quite a night, first you getting beat up, and then Marie’s tavern went up in flames and burned to the ground. Beer bottles were exploding like a fireworks show. Everybody in town was there. It was an old building and burned up pretty fast. The fire department is just now finishing up. Billy Carpenter was here checking on you and told me that apparently the woman’s dog woke her up. She was able to grab a few things and get out okay. I heard she is down at the police station being interviewed now.”

I sat bolt upright at that, regretting it immediately as pain shot through every inch of my body, ice packs falling to the floor. I felt an immediate fear for Marie. I needed to see her.

“Can I leave now, Doctor?” I asked. “I need to get down to the police station.”

“I really advise against it until you have a chance to rest and I can get those r-rays. You can make a statement later. Billy said he would be by to talk to you in the morning. I really want you to get some rest and keep you here under observation for now.”

As much as I wanted to see her and see if she was all right, I hurt so bad, I knew that the doctor was right, I couldn’t even sit up, let alone make it the four blocks down to the station. I gently laid myself back down, feeling dread and a huge lump in my throat and fell into fitful sleep with dreams of fire, Marie, Hindu gods, and evil spirits

I woke up around 9:00 that morning. Doc’s nurse brought me some breakfast which I ravaged. My appetite had returned. I was starved. Coffee also helped. But I still hurt like hell.

At 10:00, Doc Crandall took x-rays which showed two cracked ribs on my left side, but no concussion or anything else broken.

“Can I use your phone to call the police station?” I asked with a shaking voice.

The nurse got the phone for me, dialed the number and handed it to me. Billy answered sleepily. I asked if I could speak with Marie. Billy responded that she had already left and was headed out of town. He added that she would be in touch and cut off with no more details. I felt a huge vacuum form in my chest where my heart usually was.

I proceeded to call my Dad, told him what happened and that I would be okay. He said that he and my brother would come down to get me and my car in the afternoon. I handed to phone back to the nurse. I turned away and told her that I would like to rest until I was allowed to leave. I heard the door close and I broke into sobs, the first time since I was 10 years old.

Around 12:30, the doctor gave me a prescription for some pain meds….. said I was good to go. I got dressed and limped to the police station, hurting and gasping all the way.

Billy Carpenter was in and I immediately asked about Marie. He said that she told him about what happened last night, had given what other little information she had and left town.

“Shhhhh,” and without another word, she undressed me and herself. I had never seen a naked woman before, and there she was, just standing there, so beautiful, and I was lost. My heart was pounding. I was becoming dizzy. I was embarrassed. I thought I was going to pass out.

We went to her bed. Without going into great detail, clumsy as I was, the night was the most wonderful, amazing night of my life . . . and with very little sleep.

In the morning, she made us a light breakfast with tea (I never had tea before). I left about 11:00 and drove to the farm. My head was spinning, my heart so light I thought it might float away. Memories of the last night flooded my brain and all I wanted to do was be with her every day and night forever.

This was only the first of many nights I spent with her. She taught me many things about women and sex, tantra, her culture, Hinduism, meditation, yoga. I guess I was a good learner, because, after two weeks, she asked me to move out of the dumpy hotel and into her apartment and her life. That was in early July. It was all like a magical dream.

It was only a short time later when someone figured out that I was staying with her and the gossip started. Gossip permeated the town like the plague and leaked its ugliness into the bar with increasing vileness towards her, especially from Johnny Cray.

I felt responsible for all the crap being given to Marie, but she just shrugged it off. I was also worried for her and for her safety, but she said that she had Ganseha and would be fine. Not to worry.

I had also became the brunt of harassment everywhere except at work where nobody cared, all was normal. It was always peaceful when I was on my 20 ton scraper where I could be alone, focused and in control while my the rest of my life seemed to be spiraling into some sort of craziness.

However, my life with Marie was glorious and all that really mattered.

One night in early September, Johnny Cray was in the tavern on a Wednesday night, drunker and more obnoxious than usual. After some particularly vile remarks to her and to me, he got off of his stool and dropped his pants exposing his semi erect cock and said, ”Come here you black little bitch and suck this like you do with asshole over there. I want some of that sweet ass right here and now.”

I was just starting to get off my stool to intervene with this jerk when I heard a loud pop, like a car backfire; she had her .38 out and had a put a bullet between Cray’s legs, right through his new Levi jeans. She started screaming. “The next one will be higher, Cray, and you will be squatting to piss the rest of your sorry ass life, you piece of dog shit. I am sick of you and this town and everyone in it. Now get out and stay out!”

She was shaking. I couldn’t believe this gentle woman was capable of such rage. I never heard her even raise her voice, much less talk like that before.

The guys in the bar went from heading for cover to an uproar of laughter and jeers directed towards Johnny. Red-faced and angry, he pulled up his drawers, glared at Marie and then me with such a hatred, I had never seen before. He headed to the door with a raised middle finger and a “Fuck all you assholes….. this is not the end of this bullshit. Nobody fucks with me…..nobody ever fucks with Johnny CrayEver! ”

The rest of the patrons then turned to her. Still holding her gun like she might be tempted to use it again, she glared at them and screamed, ”Out…..Out…….Get Out…….Get Out! I am closed!”

These big burly guys almost stampeded through the door, leaving their glasses of beer and money on the bar.

“You too Ray! Get out! Get your stuff and get out! Go away. Get out of here!”

“What? Why? What do you mean? I want to be with you. I don’t understand. What did I do?” I argued. “I want to be here with you, especially if Cray comes back.”

“I am tired, extremely tired, Ray. I am tired of this town, this tavern, my life. I need to be alone right now. I want you gone. We can talk later. I just want to be alone. Now leave, I don’t want you to be any part of this. I care for you too much see you hurt. I am taking Cray’s threat seriously and I don’t believe that he is done with this. I want you out of here. NOW!”

“Let me call the town cop. He can help. Or, let’s just get out of here, go up to Dubuque or Cedar Rapids or anywhere you want. I have money saved. We can leave and keep on going. We can move away and be together.”

“No, Ray. Just please leave. Please leave Now. I just need to be alone.”

And she turned away and started to cry.

I went and tried to put my arms around her and comfort her, but she jerked away from me.

“Please Go Now!”

Stunned and confused, I left without any more argument. It was 9:00. With no place to stay, I  headed towards my car with my stuff, thinking I would drive down to the job site and try to get some sleep when, out of the shadows, I was blindsided by a hard blow to the side of my head and I dropped to my knees, stunned.

Before I could get up, I felt a severe blow to my left side and was down on the ground. Then the kicking and pounding started in earnest. I curled into a ball, covered my head with my arms and prayed to survive.

My Dad was a golden gloves boxer back in his youth and taught my brother and I some good sparring moves. He also told us not to fight, but to not back down either, so, without hesitating, I stepped back and laid a full bore punch on His nose which dropped him like a stone, blood immediately spurting from his (found out later) broken nose. His minions immediately backed away, not seemingly inclined to protect their master. I turned and walked away with a really sore hand hearing Cray’s screaming profanities and threats.

“Dumb,” I thought, “so incredibly dumb and stupid. What a complete asshole.” I would soon find out what a totally complete, obnoxious and dumb asshole Johnny Cray really was.

I frequented Marie’s place about every night, sometimes with a few of the road crew guys, and many times by myself. There wasn’t much nightlife in Tristan other than have a few beers, an occasional game of Euchre, and sleep.

Over a few weeks time, Marie and I became sort of friends. When business was slow, she would come over and talk to me and ask me about myself and she seemed interested in what I had to say about my life, my family, and my work.

She talked very little about herself at first, but eventually started to open up about how she was born into a working family near Pondicherry, India; how the English family where her mother worked as a servant made sure that she had a decent education at an English school; how she became a devotee of a holy man and joined his ashram at 18; how she traveled with this holy man to America where he was to teach and give lectures; how he turned out to not so holy when he began to invite himself into her bed whenever he wanted; how she stole cash from him in Chicago, escaped and ran away ending up in Tristan; how the previous owner of the tavern felt sorry for this sad waif he found sleeping behind the tavern and took her in; how she worked for him for five years (immigration laws were not so strict in the 1960s); how, when his health was failing and he was dying, she cared for him because he had no family; how he gave her the building, the business, and everything else he owned when he died; how much she hated this tavern and wanted to be able to go back to India to see her family; how she wanted to sell it, but there were no buyers; how she only ever had enough money to get by; how much she enjoyed my company because I listened, was interested in her, and treated her with respect. And that her name was really not Marie, but Amisha (which, fittingly, means beautiful) Choudary. That she began calling herself Marie since it sounded more “American” than Amisha.

How I loved to hear her talk in her sort of sing-song melodic accent.

After six weeks of getting to know her and hearing her stories, I was, what, one might say, somewhat enamored, smitten, bowled over or whatever, by this beautiful and interesting woman who seemed interested in me. I might be in love….. at least that was what my youthful head thought it was anyway. Love? I didn’t even know what love was. I guess I loved my parents and family and I was supposed to love god. But this was a different feeling that I had no experience with. What I did know was that Amisha had wormed her way into my heart and into my mind. She was there all the time, whether at work on my scraper, or at night when I was alone in my room trying to get some sleep, or when I was driving to work, or in my dreams….or, really all of the time. All the while, deep down, I knew it was crazy insane as I was six years her junior and she was not white, and she was not catholic, and I was confused, and there was no one who I could talk about to about what I was thinking or feeling and she was loving and kind and sweet and smart and beautiful and I knew that I just wanted to be together with her. I was experiencing some unknown, undiscovered territories of emotional landscape and had no idea what to do.

Through my last few years of high school and up until recently, I had dated some local girls. We did the usual things for those times: movies, dinner, dancing, all the things we thought dates should be. But while I found these girls nice, sweet, and charming, I also found them dull and uninspiring to be with not much to talk about except resurrecting old high school stuff (“Oh, do you remember how drunk Bobby Johnson was at the prom” or like “ Did you hear that Jane Anderson got pregnant and just guess who the father is,” sort of stuff.) They were shallow, not by intention or fault, but simply by lack of experience. It was equally my fault since was equally shallow with little world experience of my own to share. This became abundantly clear after my long talks with Marie. I found myself feeling like I knew nothing of the world, but just learning about her life, her experiences, and where she came from made me feel a little more “worldly” I guess. Girls my age were……. just sort of boring. And, right now, I had no time to meet girls anyway, being busy working 10 or 12 hour days six days a week. But Marie was always there every night to talk to.

My life went on like this for a few weeks until one Saturday night after work, I decided to stay in Tristan and go home in the morning. For whatever reason, I was feeling tired and morose that night and drank at Marie’s way more than I should have. Right before 11:00 closing time, Marie brought me a cup of coffee and a sandwich. I ate while she locked up and did the register. She turned off the lights, took my hand and started to lead me upstairs to her apartment over the bar. The coffee and food were starting to do its work and I was becoming a little more clear headed. I ventured to ask where we were going.

Her reply was, simply, “You staying here tonight and are going to bed.”

She took me upstairs to her apartment.

I found her apartment to be as exotic as she was, tapestries of Hindu entities, smells of incense and patchouli, all sent from her family in India. All managing to block out the stale beer and piss smells, the very thought of the tavern. It was her sanctuary.

She proceeded to take me into her bedroom, turned and put her arms around my neck reached up and kissed me on my untrained lips, long and tenderly.

Shocked and feeling very clumsy, I backed away, “Holy crap, what are you doing?”

“Taking you into my bed to make love with you.”

“I have never done this before, never slept with a woman. I have no idea what to do,” I protested, panicking.

It was the ‘summer of love’ somewhere in a place called San Francisco, I heard someone say. It was the summer that I lost my youth in a town called Tristan. It was the summer of 1967.

My name is Ray. I was tall, blond, brown-eyed and broad shouldered and strong from the years of working on my Dad’s farm. I was a quiet, shy fellow who kept mostly to myself and liked it that way. There were some good friends back where I grew up, 35 miles northwest of a dumpy little town where I was living that summer, working to fulfill Eisenhower’s dream of the American autobahn system, this one being Interstate 80 in east central Iowa.

I turned 22 that May and was working my third year on a road crew running a 20-ton yellow colored machine hauling dirt. I was on one of ten of the “scrapers” in our company. My job was to pull in front of the “push cat” (a D9 Caterpillar crawler) that would catch up with me when my scraper would bog down due to lack of power and traction while working to “scrape” up six to eight inches of Iowa dirt in the “cut” where the roadbed grade needed to be lower, then push me through until I had a full load to haul to the “fill” area where we were raising the roadbed to the required grade, spreading my load six to eight inches deep where the dump boss directed me.

I had no contact with anyone throughout the day…….. which I liked. I enjoyed the aloneness of just me and the machine. That was except for our half hour lunch break when the crew ate lunch together. And there was always the metallic contact with the push cat when it connected with my scraper, constantly reminding me that I was never truly ever alone.

The days were long: 10 to 12 hours and six days a week with the occasional rain day off. The pay was good and I was saving a lot of my pay, since, with the long days, I had little time to spend any money other than for my room, eating, and a few nightly beers at a small town farmer tavern. I usually went home Saturday night after work to see my family, wash clothes, and maybe catch up with and hang out with some of my old high school buddies. That was my life, a life that would change dramatically in the next few months.

I had quit working on my family’s farm and was mostly on my own for the last two years, working on the road and living in little towns along the construction route in the summer. Then back at the farm for winter, collecting unemployment checks and doing odd jobs around the farm or in the town close to where I grew up. My younger brother was old enough and took my place working for my dad.…..he was way more interested in farming than I was or ever would be, for that matter. He would eventually take over the farm when Dad decided to semi-retire.

So here I was, staying in the little town of Tristan, 50 miles southwest of Dubuque and five miles north of the job site. I was staying, along with some of the guys, in a little flea bag hotel for five bucks a night and eating out every morning and night in a fairly decent restaurant with good food and nice waitresses who flirted with us, fawned over us, packed us really good lunches, and filled our coffee thermos’s every day.

The woman who owned and ran my favorite small town tavern watering hole was named Marie, aka, Black Marie (probably due to her swarthy skin, waist length raven black hair and  eyes like black tourmaline). Her tavern served the locals, mainly farmers and farm hands in their bib overalls with shit on their shoes: cow shit, horse shit, pig shit, dog shit and most all any other forms of shit one can imagine. They also stank of sour alcohol hard work sweat. A lot of the older guys were veterans of WW II and Korea, many were closet alcoholics trying to drown away all those memories of death and sadness and anger and nightmares.

Verbal abuse towards Marie was not uncommon: name-calling, comments about her skin color, and some very tasteless comments of a sexual nature. However, Marie appeared to have thick skin and would just roll her eyes and turn away. She had a very large german shepherd named Ganesha, who she kept tied behind the bar with a loop of his leash around an empty beer bottle. Rumor had it that if she ever lifted the beer bottle and gave a command, Ganesha would go for the throat of anyone she pointed to. That, alone, kept most true nastiness at bay. And I was to later find out that she kept a .38 snub nose in a holster fastened flat under the bar for easy access. That piece of equipment was leftover from the previous owner, so she once told me. Considering all that, thankfully, there was never any actual physical assault or anything beyond idle blather. S=0p=-o Ganesha stayed tied around his beer bottle and the .38 stayed in the holster under the bar……until one night in late September.

 

The dumpy little town had its local tough guy and his wannabe tough guy minions. One of the guys in our crew pointed him out to me on my first night in town while we were walking to the restaurant for supper. Tough guy, Johnny Cray, looked to be around my age, heavy boned, thick-necked and a little overweight, like he never lost his baby fat. I had a glimpse into his close-set eyes and saw a dark mean dullness there. Sort of like a sad fat ferret. He caught my look and glared back at me with a sneering anger. I sensed right then and there that he probably would never be a friendly drinking buddy. That certainly was never going to be an issue with me. So here was the guy that tended to believe that this was his town. He made sure I knew that little tidbit two nights later.

“Hey, you, asshole, who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing here in my town?” were his first words to me when I met him and his two sidekicks on the street on my way to the restaurant for supper one night

I gave a look at this Johnny Cray guy, shrugged and started to walk around him, wondering what the hell.

“Just get away from this guy,” I thought.

“Hey, asshole, don’t you fucking walk away from me…. I am talking to you.”

So I turned and faced him and his three minions and calmly inquired, “So what is your problem?  I am here working on the road crew for the summer and I really don’t think I need to answer to you. I have no interest in your stupid little town or anything in it, so just leave it alone.”

He was immediately in my face with his nose an inch away, and then he did a dumb thing: he thumbed my nose and said, “I don’t like you, fuck head.”