Escapist

ESCAPIST
Tim Schlee

The guns roar through the green trees and humid air, and I struggle for breath. The automatic feels nice in my hand, like I haven’t held it in twenty years. The leaves, heavy with rain, slap my face as I run. Somehow it’s refreshing.

“Charlie,” Powell whispers in my ear and then he’s gone. Dusk is almost over. I can’t see where he went.

The gooks took us off guard. Damn guerillas. But pretty soon I’ll be headed home. Just fifty more days, yes, sir. That is, if I survive. And when I get home, I’ll finally get to see lovely Sarah Baker again. We’ve been talking through post cards ever since I was drafted and I’m pretty sure she’s the one. I’m pretty sure she’s pretty sure too.

A bullet chips bark off a near by tree. I crouch down, half-hidden behind a bush, and search out my target. It could’ve been a stray bullet. Must have been, because I can’t see anyone, not even an American.

I hear rustling but there’s no one there. I can’t see a damn thing. The trees block out what little light is left. I want to throw a grenade, just in case I might find someone sneaking up on me. But that would give away my position.

I wave some bugs away from my face. The sweat on the back of my neck is cool. Almost ominous.

I hear more rustling. Whoever is out there is getting closer. And me, I’m just stuck here all alone. I’m wondering if maybe my squad didn’t just leave me for dead. Maybe they think I’m a nuisance.

But this is all just what Charlie wants. We’re split up now. We’re all on our own, every man for himself. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

I can make out a dim shape, what might be a person, not too far from the tree that was shot. I raise my gun and try not to make any noise as I aim.

Before I can shoot, a flair goes off overhead. As I stare at the fading sparks of light I think to myself, I’m dead. I looked away, I broke my concentration. I signed my death warrant.

But when I look back down, the gook isn’t any closer. In fact, he’s running away. Coward.

I pull the trigger and my M-16 fires off shot after shot. The figure falls to the ground.

When I reach the downed man, my gun butt raised, ready to bash his skull in, I find Powell laying there on the ground. Not a gook.

“Shit, Mathison,” he struggles to say. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I thought you were a gook,” I admit. “Did I hit you?”

“In the leg. A few times.”

“I’m sorry.” He stares me in the face. I can’t tell if he’s mad or not because his eyes are starting to glaze over. “I really am,” I say, and start out making a tourniquet.



I’m sitting in a puddle of sweat when Ian’s knock on the door jars me back to reality. It isn’t Vietnam. It’s Kansas City, Missouri, almost twenty years after the war. I’m safe.

And Powell didn’t die. Yet.

I let Ian in.

“You okay, Dad?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say as my heart rate slows to normal. “Perfectly fine.”

“You look a little sick.”

As it turns out, I didn’t marry lovely Sarah Baker. I never even saw her after the war. We stopped writing so much as time drew on. Pretty soon we stopped all together. When I got back to the World I met Kelly Braun, who I immediately fell in love with.
And now, eighteen years later, it’s our son that is sitting in the passenger seat of our beat up, old Chevy.

“So how was practice?” I say. Ian plays football for his high school.

“Fine.”

“Do you know what position you’re playing yet?”

“Nope.”

Everything’s quiet as we drive home. The mystical shroud of divorce clouding everyone’s real emotions and showing only superficial overtones. My son doesn’t love me. He pretends he does, to seem normal. And I’m having second thoughts whether my wife ever really loved me either. She divorced me awful quick after I tried to kill her with a steak knife. And after saying she’d die for me.

We get to my apartment – she kept the house, of course – and Ian makes sure to stay behind or to the side of me. He hasn’t let me see his backside since before the divorce. This is my proof that he doesn’t love me, and probably never will. He doesn’t even trust me, and that’s only the first step. After I sit down at the television hoping to enjoy a nice Friday afternoon watching Star Trek with my one and only son – a dream I’ve had since he was born, but died with the divorce – but he heads straight for his room, as usual. He turns his music up unnecessarily loud, his own little Do Not Disturb sign. The only time we talk is at the dinner table, and even then he avoids conversation.

I don’t know why I even bother. It would save me time and money just to have him not come over. I could get a smaller apartment and sell all the crap that’s flooding his room. But then he wouldn’t be “normal.”

It’s always the weekends when I regret growing old. Every other night of the week I’m happy to just sip a few beers, with friends or alone, watching a good wrestling match, or playing poker. But with my son home it’s different. I can’t go out and leave him alone but if I stay here I can’t see my friends. I can’t ask him to not come over but I can’t stand him when he is. He makes me wish I was twenty again, no marriage, no kid, no divorce. Just party.

But if anyone had their way in this world no one else would have theirs.

It’s about when John Travolta and Uma Thurman are dancing at the 50s diner when I nod off watching Pulp Fiction.



After about an eternity or two sitting in the waiting room, a secretary finally calls my name to see Dr. Wilson.

Stepping into his room I hear him click on the timer. I hate shrinks.

“Good morning, Mr. Mathison,” he says.

“Good morning,” I say.

“How are things?”

“Fine.”

“Anything interesting happen lately?”

“Nope.”

“Did you have fun with your son last weekend?”

I don’t answer.

“I said did you –”

“I heard you.” I really don’t want to be here. I come here every week, telling him he’s just my doctor, and every week he tries to pry into my personal life. I hate people that do nothing but push your buttons. And being a psychiatrist he is very good at that.

“Well, did you –”

“I don’t feel like talking about that.” His cheeks turn a slight red the second time I interrupt him. Me and the doc have a mutually contemptuous relationship, which, I admit, is my fault. It started off with a few smart-mouth comments. I didn’t want to be here because he’s a psychiatrist and psychiatrists are for crazy people. And who wants the think they’re crazy? But it’s turned into so much more. All my frustration with Ian and Kelly, all the animosity towards the world, all of my self-loathing, it’s all built up inside of me. This is where I purge. This is my release.

“Well, I think it would do a lot of good if you expressed how you feel about your son."

“I think it would do a lot of good if you did your goddamn job and didn’t boss me around all the time.”

“I was only –”

“I’m here for the flashbacks. Nothing more.”

Finally he gives up. “How many this week?”

“Three.”

“Wow. They are really starting to increase, aren’t they?”

“They’re so frequent. Sometimes I think they’ll keep getting more and more frequent until I’m there all the time.” Wow, I think to myself. That just might be the most honest thing I’ve ever told him. “Back in Nam,” I add.

“Really, now?”

“Well, you know. Just a little paranoia…I guess.”

“Hmmm.” He pauses to scratch his scruffy, red beard. Tapping his pen against his clipboard, he says, “I am thinking about increasing your medication.”

The one I’m not taking?

“How does that sound?”

“How much?” I ask.

“About fifty milligrams.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Now, now. It’s not that much. I think it will do fine. Remind me to write you up a new prescription before you leave.”

I don’t answer. There’s a long, uncomfortable pause and I’m wasting money as my time keeps ticking away. Sounds a lot like my life.

“Anyway, where were we?”

“Nam,” I say.

With a grunt, he says, “Are these flashbacks getting more vivid?”

“First off, they’re not exactly flashbacks. I mean, yeah, I’m back in Vietnam and everything, but I don’t remember any of this stuff happening before. And second, they are already as real as this reality, as real as my life, as real as this room, as real as you. They can’t get any more vivid.”

“Okay.” He seems disgruntled. Just the way I like him. “What did you experience during your last flashback?”

And so I talk.



Back at camp, I’m playing chess with Harriet. He’s a big man, six foot four, probably near three hundred pounds. I’m deliberately doing poor, because Harriet is a sore loser.

Powell is fine. He’s in the infirmary, stitched up and making his way to recovery. He ought to thank me really. I got him out of combat for at least a week. And as soon as I finish up this game of chess I’ll go visit him. That is, if tubby here ever makes a decent move.

This really irks me. Harriet is, out of every man in my squad, the worst chess player. He’s horrible. Me, I’m not the best, but I’m up there. And forcing myself to lose to Harriet because I’m scared he’ll break my nose if I win, well, that just sucks. I’ve seen check mate so many times, but I pass it by, waiting for him to make the finishing move. The way things are going, I’ll win whether I want to or not.

I smell the dirty diaper smell of pot and feel a hand, rough and unforgiving, clasp my shoulder. I turn around to see Erwin and Riggs standing over me. They’re eyes are glazed and bloodshot, and I can’t tell if they’re looking at me or just staring off into space.

“Yes?” I ask.

“We heard what happened to Powell,” says Erwin, his callused hand still on my shoulder.

“He’s in the infirmary if you want to see him.”

“We just saw him,” answers Erwin. “He says he don’t appreciate getting shot in the leg. Especially by a goddamned Irishman.”

“He did not.”

“Well, he would never tell you that. Just in case you might take it upon yourself to go shoot him again.” Riggs laughs. Look at them, I tell myself. Like two bullies from a goddamn elementary school. One does the talking, making stupid jokes that aren’t funny, and the other guffaws his head off.

“If you have a problem just say it,” I say, standing up.

“You want to know what my problem is? We got a yellow-bellied coward in our squad who’s so scared that he mistook one of his own for a gook. What if that had been me out there? I could have been shot! Anyone of us could have,” he cried, raising his voice for everyone to hear. “And this yellow-bellied potato sucker here –”

“Shut up!” I scream, misting his face with saliva. I almost wince, expecting the punch.

“You boys knock it off now, ya here?”

“Yes, Sergeant Briggs. I was just having a little friendly chat here with Mathison.” He pulls me into a headlock and gives me a noogie, as if that proves we’re the best of friends. Exactly like a kindergarten bully.

Erwin and Briggs leave and I sit back down at my table. Harriet is still waiting for my move. I see checkmate and, without thinking, move my knight to win.

“Checkmate.”

“You bastard,” cries Harriet and before I know it I’m in the infirmary right next to Powell, whose bitter ramblings drive me nuts for the next week.



Although my cheeks are drenched with tears and the wet spot on my shirt even touches my belly button, I’ve stopped crying. Whatever I saw that was so sad I bawled like a baby happened while I was asleep. Although I have a good idea what it was.

I’m in a movie theater. I’m almost completely alone; there are only five or six other people in all of the two hundred some odd seats. The movie I’m watching is a kids’ movie about a dog couple that falls in love and it’s been out for a few months.

I used to see these kinds of movies with Ian when he was little. And he always waited a month or two so it wouldn’t be so crowded.

This particular scene unfolds the events that lead to the first kiss between the male and female dogs. The female is, as always, the pet of a wealthy family who, on this particular night, are having a party for the husband’s raise. The male is a stray who has to sneak his way in. The two dogs manage to kiss before the male is shooed away by the wife with a broom.

At this particular point in the movie (because kids movies are just retellings of the same story with different animals in different places) Ian, as he grew older, would sit and just stare at the screen with a blank face. I assume he was wondering about what his first kiss might be like, or if anything like that would happen to him. Whatever he was thinking, the look on his face was so pure, just so real and uncontrived, I knew he was my son, and he always would be. At this point in the movie, I slipped my arm discreetly around his shoulder and hugged him tight, usually to his indifference.

And when the kiss finally comes I look over, as I have so many times before, and I see Ian with that blank face of wonder, just staring at the screen. In this solitary moment, my little Ian is back. All glowing, happy, optimistic, acne-free seven years of him. And out of all the times I’ve seen Ian for the past few years, this one is the best. This Ian is my Ian, the Ian I want to remember. This Ian is perfect.

And I reach out, furtively and behind his back, to rest my arm on his shoulder. But, as soon as my skin touches his he’s gone. He’s nothing but a memory of a memory. A fleeting reminder of how quickly time passes and how fast things can change.

This is when the tears come. But all that pain and heartbreak of knowing that that Ian, the one who’s only seven and still innocent of the cruelties of the world, is really gone and never coming back, well, it’s worth that one little glimpse. That one little speck of time where he’s really there, sitting in front of me. It’s perfection, and perfection only lasts a moment.

Soon the credits are rolling and I get up and head for the bathroom. I don’t have to pee or anything but it’s the easiest place to wait while the janitors fix up the theater. In a few minutes the movie is back on again. I sit down and do it all over. All for that one single moment. That moment of complete and utter bliss.


Lying in bed I listen to the rain pounding down around me. The wind howls as I try to find a comfortable way to sleep. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to sleep but not being able to. But it’s not the position I’m in that’s keeping me up. It’s thoughts. Thoughts are good at keeping people up.

I flip onto my back and think, “How many people have I killed?” I used to know. I would carve tally marks on the sides of my boots, but they started to leak so I got a new pair. Even after that I counted along in my head. But when you’re machine-gunning gooks packed into tight groups from a helicopter, it’s hard to get a good guess on how many survived and how many didn’t. Now I’ve lost count.

I curl into a fetal position on my side and wonder, “Am I a murderer?” I mean, I kill people. I’m doing it for a living. But is it really murder? Am I going to hell? When you’re in a war, you get home and everyone cheers you on and calls you a hero. But when you walk in on your cheating wife and in the heat of the moment knock her over the head with a hammer, you go to jail and lose your right to vote. The right I’m supposed to be fighting for. Yet we’re doing the same thing. A gun is a gun. Killing is killing.

Laying on my stomach, I ask myself, “Are we any different?” I’m a twenty year old kid, called on to fight by the government, defending what I’m told is right. What about the gooks and dinks and Charlie? They’re fighting for what they think is right. I try not to but imagine myself anyway kneeling down, dropping my weapon, pleading for my life. I stare into the barrel of the gun and tears run down my face as I weep for mercy from an indifferent and unemotional face. The gook fires the gun anyway, just as I did earlier this week. Just like me.

And I’m still awake. It worries me to think that, if I’m having such horrible nightmares while I am conscious, what horrors must I suffer in my sleep?



The days come faster and faster, and so does Vietnam. It seems like every time I turn around, I stare into a dark rainforest that, under normal circumstances, might be beautiful, but the gunfire and helicopter rotors really ruin it for me. I think, I’ll have to come here again when it’s not so bad. I never do, of course. Who in their right mind would? Why go back to the most miserable place in your life? Why relive your worst memories?

This is what I ask myself everyday. Why bother coming back at all? I’m not any happier here, in this so-called real world, than I am in Vietnam. It’s a lose-lose situation. Vietnam sucks. Kansas City sucks. Being twenty sucks, but so does being forty. I don’t even know which one is real. They both could be. Or neither. Perhaps my Vietnam flashbacks are an escapist fantasy I use to get out of the monotony and humiliation of everyday life. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe I’m a twenty year old soldier who imagines himself twenty years later with a wife and kid. Either way, I need to think of a better fantasy. Maybe every world anyone experiences is in their head. What is real anyway? Just some word in the dictionary. To me, Ian is real, and so is Kelly. Harriet is real, too. Even Powell is real. The question isn’t whether they’re real or not. The question is, how can I make my reality better? Could I just create another world for me to live in? Is that even possible? Am I just crazy?

In all the commotion in my head, I forget I’m in the middle of a war. A bullet hits me smack in the chest. While I’m falling I realize, it doesn’t matter whether I’m happy or not because I’m dead. I shut my eyes and try not to breathe because every time I inhale my heart is torn wider and wider.

But when I open my eyes I see myself staring back. I’m in my bathroom and I’ve written in soap on my mirror the words strawberry fields. I check my heart; it’s fine. Beating a little fast, but otherwise okay.

“Gosh, Dad,” I hear from the hallway. “Are you going to be in there all day?”

“No,” I reply, although I have no idea why Ian’s here. Stepping outside I think, this is not my beautiful home. Ian runs into the bathroom and quickly shuts the door.

“Why’s it say strawberry fields on the mirror?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

I head downstairs. I’m back in my house, the one Kelly stole from me in the divorce. And there she is in the kitchen, cooking some of her great chicken potpie.

“Hey, honey,” she says, turning around. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Good,” is all I can manage. Taking a seat at the table I think, the world is a ball of clay and you are the sculptor. Sometimes though, it just takes a few tries.