well i don't know about all that. but i do know 3 vietnam vets, and ain't one of them right in the head, so whatever they saw or did over there must've been really bad because these men were born and bred for the hard unpleasant work.
rueben got dropped out on discipline charges but he tells the story different. he has no sense of propriety, none, not how he looks or how he acts or what he says. the whole town still lines the main street on veteran's day and salutes them all and puts on a big dinner just the same. sometimes we just go for drives.
tom he can't hardly talk, he stutters, he is smart though, but he got slowed down somehow. i gave him a rifle that was too big for my kid at the time we didn't need it and he had a raccoon problem. well i didn't give it to him we arranged a price but he has not yet paid, neither of us talk about that. i also sold him an old pickup when his was messed up and we will settle up on that later too sometime. he runs the landfill and folks mostly leave him alone. but they look down on him, i don't.
pat. pat is a different story. we go hunting once in a while. he is a crazy mofo. he can shoot a mile. maybe not a mile but a long fuckin ways. he has a hair trigger. he has a sixth sense, he hears things but when you poke your head up over the draw it is just like he said and then he knocks it down. if he gets mad he wants to kill you and eat you. he was a tunnel man, he crawled into some awful places and it was dirty work as i hear it. when pat is in the house i always know where i am in relation to the two doors and my weapons and his mood. we have not had a problem yet. pat is cool and we get along because he only drinks rainier beer. when i worked in alaska we used to buy rainier by the pallet load and stuff it in the hold whenever we were in seattle. it is hard to find rainier beer on the north plains. i always bring rainier for pat, old boys in an old pickup down an old road with old beer. so we drink rainier and drive.
these are my dad's friends, i have known two of them for almost two decades now. but i never let my guard down. pat told me something one time that stuck. i had just moved to town and was in love with the local cute blonde hottie. we had a good time for a while and then it all went to hell. i had no idea this sweet as honey waitress was the town pump, for years, i thought we had something good. but then she went on about her ways and i was devastated. anyways pat and i are sitting around drinking beer and talking and he says she always did like to "*screw* like a gorilla" and i asked well why didn't nobody tell me? and you know what pat said? "somebody's got to take point". simple as that. somebody has to take point.
he is a pretty smart guy, they all are.
