The Portal

Dan and I were out for our last night of shore leave. He was driving since I didn’t own a car. We decided to stop off for a beer at a local bar to celebrate the occasion. Our conversations generally turned to women and the navy, anything to keep our minds from recalling Vietnam, and it seemed like military men always got the girls. That was never a problem for us.

After Vietnam ended and we became everyday citizens again, the joy we had hoped for never came. I can’t explain the feeling the service brought to my life or how I felt part of something that was bigger than just myself. I was somebody. I was much more than the mundane existence I led in the outside world. But after the war and two failed relationships, Dan began to entertain thoughts of re-enlisting. As luck would have it, I had been thinking the same thing for different reasons.

It all came down to the Navy. This was a chance for us to see more than just jungles, although the likelihood of us ever going back to Vietnam was small. That war was over and we had lost. It was something neither one of us was proud of but we had done our duty to the best of our ability.

Semper Fi and all that other bullshit. But it was that bullshit we craved, the things we missed day in and day out. These are things we wanted to experience and enjoy, especially me. But my story is different than Dan’s.

After three beers it was time to leave. Dan was in the middle of some story he had heard from his commander when the bartender gave last call. I set a few dollars down on the table and we headed for the car. After I got in the seat and he started the engine, I heard him pick up the story again. I tuned him out when I noticed his words were starting to slur a little.

A full moon stared at me over the highway, an imagined frown spread across it’s bright surface. I felt the sharp sting of tears bite my eyes as we cruised down the road. I couldn’t understand why I would be crying; I just was. I quickly found my composure over the next mile.

I reached into my uniform pocket and pulled out a joint, something I had purchased from one of the Mexicans on base. They always seemed to have an endless supply of pot and there always seemed to be an endless demand for it. It helped me relax when I was under pressure and also helped me sleep untroubled since nightmares have plagued me recently. Cupping my hand over the joint, I lit the end and inhaled deeply. A calm came over me.

“Hey,” Dan said. “Five more months and we’re out.” I realized he must have finished his story. I wasn’t sorry to miss it since I would in all likelihood hear it again before too long.

“Yeah. Five more months,” I replied evenly. “Any thoughts on the future?”

“Don’t know yet. I’d really like to find a girl and get married in the biggest damn church I can find. If I can, I want to leave that pissant town I grew up in. Ain’t much there for me if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. I wish you all the best, man. I hope it works out for you,” I said, pleased with his intentions. I knew he would find what he wanted. I offered Dan the joint. He took two hits then handed it back to me. I waited a few moments but never saw any smoke leave his mouth. Finally, he exhaled and the breeze took it out the open window.

“That’s some pretty good shit you got there. Christ, did that feel good! Who’d you get it from? Rodriguez? Felipe?” Dan looked my way but I kept quiet. “I know it wasn’t Skipper who gave it to you. He wouldn’t know the difference if you gave him cowshit.”

“You got that right,” I said with a laugh. “This is good.” We shared it until there was only a fraction left and then I tossed it from the car.

“So, five more months,” he said slowly. “Should be easy sailing from here on out. Just count down the days.”

“Yep. Just count ‘em down.”

Our stint in the Navy was a four year deal which seemed to be an insurmountable number of days when you figure it out. In the beginning, each day never really brought you anywhere close the end, but at this point in time we had a finite number of days we could see off in the distance. We could manage.

I stretched my legs in the footwell of the car, hoping to ease the cramp that was starting in my thigh. I thought the weed would have relaxed my body enough to keep this from happening, but as we passed another mile marker the pain intensified and even began spreading to my other leg. I grimaced in agony and began rubbing the muscles in my thighs, wishing the suddenness of the attack would just as quickly go away. I screamed.

“Hey, man. Are you alright?” Dan asked with a small quiver in his voice. I didn’t need to see his face to know that genuine worry was there. He was probably close to sober, too.

It’s just a cramp, I wanted to tell him, but couldn’t. I was in too much pain. At that moment I felt a change; some small and imperceptible movement coming from within my body. One that was totally foreign to me yet one that was always there. That’s where my story begins.

“Pull over,” I hurriedly told him. “I need to get out for a minute.” My cheeks started to burn and sweat began to bead on my forehead.

Dan pulled onto a street named Cherry Blossom Road and parked the car near a wooded area.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

I looked straight ahead without answering, unable to shake the feeling running through me. I opened the car door and hesitantly set my feet on the ground. The severity of the pain had numbed my legs to a degree. I wasn’t sure if I could stand on them. Still looking ahead, I got out of the car and fell. Within seconds, I heard a car door close loudly and felt Dan trying to lift me from the ground. I regained my footing long enough to lean against the car. I noticed the pain had lessened and all that remained was a dull ache.

“Thanks,” I told him.

“Are you gonna be okay?” he asked a third time. “You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“I’m fine,” I said weakly. “Probably just drinking on an empty stomach. I feel better now.” I wiped the sweat from my brow onto a handkerchief I carried in my back pocket.

There was a cool breeze dancing through the forest of trees to my right. They stood tall and brooding against the nighttime sky. Gnarled branches waved in the wind and the rustling of leaves lent a soft note to the cacophony of music from the insect life below. It all made my head swim so I stayed against the car until my focus was back.

“Please tell me you’re not going to be sick.”

I looked at him with glassy eyes, shuddering from the thoughts racing through my head. I’m sure Dan was wondering it the pot was affecting me in some way, but it wasn‘t. I almost wished it was the source. A tremor started in my fingers and I immediately put my hands in my pants pocket.

Leaning against the car, events were unfolding around me in a surreal way. I could feel the subtle shifting of the earth beneath me and the gradual silencing of noises in the woods. The wind lulled for a brief moment.

“Here, let me get you home.” He reached for my arm while holding the car door.

“No,” I told him in a voice barely above a whisper. I felt lost; alone in the world. “I am home.” I could hear the forest was calling me as I stood there, a gentle beckoning swirling in the air currents.

“See what alcohol and drugs do?” he said. “They make you stupid.” I wanted to laugh at his joke but the lack of emotion I was experiencing never brought it forth. He tried again to get me in the car. Instead, I shook off his grip and started walking across the field to the trees. I had to get away.

“Hey, man. Where are you going?” Dan called.

What could I tell him? What could I say that would make him believe me? There were lots of things I wanted him to know. Still I took another forward step away from him. And then another.

“Come on, let’s get back in the car.” Dan slowed his pace as he caught up to me. “I think you’ve had too much to drink for one day.”

I laughed at that and he smiled.

“Do you remember Khe Sanh?” I asked him seriously as we stood in the middle of the field. A pained look crossed his face with the memory. I knew what his answer would be. Some things were hard to forget.

“Sure. Why?”

Vietnam was a hell hole in most ways. The North Vietnamese were trying to dig the hole a little deeper for us when they attacked the military airstrip at Khe Sanh at the beginning of 1968. Dan and I were both new recruits with the 3rd Marines, having only been in country for six months but we fought back, tooth and nail, to keep the enemy from overwhelming us during the siege.

“I was there for you.”

“I know all that,” he said. “You saved my ass more than once. Can we talk about this in the car…?”

“You were supposed to die there.”

“And I would have if you hadn’t been covering my back. We’ve talked about all this before. Now come on, let’s go.” Dan headed back to the car. I watched him walk back a few steps.

The moon was hanging a handspan above the horizon and, by its reflected light, I saw a slight shimmer in the sky. The earth shook.

“Dan,” I called out. He stopped and turned around. I think he felt the ground move, too. “I can’t go back.”

Silence as we stared at each other.

“Sure you can. You walk your ass back to my car and I drive you home. Tomorrow morning I pick you up and we go back to the base like we always do when we’re on leave. As a matter of fact, we should head straight there since morning isn’t that far off.”

It felt like I was being lectured by a parent. From the tone of his voice, I knew his patience was wearing thin.

“Five more months, man. Just five more. You can’t bail on me now.”

“I’m not,” I lied. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

“Then what’s wrong?”

I didn’t know where to start. Everything was wrong and no matter what I said, I didn’t believe I could adequately convey that to him. Dan was my friend, someone I could always count on, but my personal concerns went far beyond our friendship.

“I can’t leave here,” I told him. “This is the end of the road for me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I caught my breath, ready to explain. “I live…I live somewhere else. I know that doesn’t make sense but hear me out,” I quickly added. I paused to collect my rampant thoughts. “I come from a distant time in the future. A time when people have learned to travel through portals.”

Dan didn’t want to listen to my nonsense. He started to walk away, turned, pointed a finger at me and said, “This is all bullshit, man! You’re talking bullshit! Now you either get in the car or I’ll leave without you ‘cause I’m not going to stand out here all night.”

I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was either crazy or tripping. But it didn’t matter. I had to tell him, for better or worse.

“Let me tell you about your brother Sam,” I started. “He lives in Dayton, Ohio with his wife and four kids. Right?”

“Yeah, but I already told you about him. Damn it, you‘ve even met him!”

“He runs the shop in town with your dad. Good family man. Makes ends meet. Provides for his family…”

“So?”

“Sam died in 1975.” The words rendered him momentarily speechless.

“What the hell are you talking about? Sam’s not dead. You know that as well as I do.” Dan’s breathing was becoming shallow.

“I know. But in my time, Sam died last August.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. Sam’s not dead!” he said with a shake of his head.

When he calmed down, I continued. “He left a note in the garage. He wanted Connie to know how sorry he was.” It hurt me to speak to Dan like this. Now that it was out in the open, I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or not. There are some things that are better left unspoken and even some things that the truth can’t set free.

“What do you mean, he left a note in the garage?” A shake was evident in his speech and his shoulders were slumped.

“He left a letter to Connie explaining how he couldn’t go on any more. He said his grief was such a burden that he couldn’t see the past it and he didn’t know how to move on with his life.”

My fingers started to tremble again. The pain in my legs was flaring up, but not as bad as it had been. It felt like my body was falling apart with all the aches and pains it was suffering.

“So he killed himself?” he asked. “But he’s not dead! I know that! You know that! So what the hell are you talking about?”

The line between fantasy and reality is sometimes drawn thin. Even with all the finesse in the world, there are those who still slip and never get back up. I realized after watching the alarm and anger in Dan that one of us was walking a fine line.

“I don’t know,” I answered softly.

“No, you said he killed himself. Why would he do that? Huh? You said it was grief, but Sam’s the happiest guy I know. Not a care in the world! He wouldn’t do something like that!”

I had failed to see how this conversation would play out. In all the years I knew Dan, I never guessed we could open a gap between us so wide that we couldn’t cross it, yet here I was with my feet dangling over the abyss.

“You,” I said. “He was grieving for you.”

A silence as still as a tomb settled in the space next to us.

I didn’t know what I saw in his face: anger, fear, disbelief. It might have been a combination of things or nothing at all. I couldn’t tell. Dan’s face had gone neutral.

“Sam couldn’t get over losing you. That’s why he left the note.” The long, ensuing quiet was almost more than I could bear. I expected an outburst to follow my statement but it never came. So I waited.

“Why are you saying this?”

I thought I saw tears in his eyes but there wasn’t enough light for me to be sure. They were forming in mine though. I was tearing our relationship apart, piece by piece, and that hurt more than the physical pain I was experiencing.

“For me, these events are history,” I said. “I don’t know how to explain it to you so you’ll understand, but everything I know has already happened. What I told you about Sam was true.”

“No, it’s not! Sam’s still alive and he never left any note. He can’t be grieving for me because I’m alive, too! Flesh and bones! How do you explain that?”

He had taken a defensive posture. I knew it was easier to defend yourself against lies than it was the truth. I was hurting him and he wanted to do the same. Sometimes the truth hurts more than the lies.

“Khe Sanh.” Two words from recent history.

“What about it?”

So I told him.

On April 2, 1968, Daniel Wayne Grayson was killed in action. His body was flown home and given a proper military funeral. He was laid to rest at Dayton National Cemetery where other servicemen who fought and died for their country were interred. The news of his death was carried in the local Ohio newspapers for days. Another hometown hero lost. The family was in mourning: father, mother, two brothers and a sister. Dan’s older brother, Sam, took the news the hardest, and seven years later, ended his own life.

“Do you remember April 2nd?” I asked him.

“Not really. But this doesn’t make any sense! There was a lot going on and you want to know if I remember one particular day?”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Dan’s patience was gone. He looked at me sadly. “I’m going back to the car. You can either come with me or stay. I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m not going to stand here and listen to your campfire stories, man. What’s your problem anyway?” True to his word, he started his walk back to the car parked on Cherry Blossom Road.

“I saved you.” The words sounded as if they came from someone else. I couldn’t believe I had said them.

“What?”

“You were supposed to die that day but I saved you.”

“Happens all the time in war,” he said sarcastically. “Buddies saving buddies, friends getting killed saving someone else. In case I haven’t told you a hundred times already, thanks. Thanks for saving my ass when you did! I don’t know how I could have managed without you!” he spat back at me. Even in the darkness I could see that his face was red. “Is that what this is all about? Gratitude? You want me to tell you how thankful I am for what you’ve done?”

His words hurt more than he would ever know. The pain went straight to my heart.

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Sam.” As if to punctuate my response, the ground shuddered violently.

“Holy shit!” Dan screamed.

We both fell to the grass. After the tremor stopped we rose cautiously, uncertain if an aftershock would set us down again. I looked at the forest behind me and saw a brief light flicker in the trees. Time was running short and I still wanted to explain things to Dan. Something I knew he wouldn’t want to hear.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

“Yeah, man, I’m fine.” He exhaled loudly as if to shake off the fright he had had. “I don’t want to go through that again.”

“I know.”

As if he had just understood what I had said before the quake, he looked at me strangely.

“What did you do for Sam?”

“Kept you alive. I made sure you got through the war.” The look on Dan’s face had not changed, only his eyebrows arched a little higher.

“Why?” he asked. “Why would you do something like that for someone you didn’t even know?”

Now that I was being asked to explain, words wanted to fail me. I knew the reasons for my actions. Expressing them was almost impossible.

“One hundred and eighteen years from now, Sam’s great great granddaughter Marie, will give birth to my grandfather. That’s the future I come from. All of this, the here and now, is yellowed paper and faded photographs in my time. Old records kept in libraries and national archives, old letters, family bibles, birth and death certificates. That’s all the past was to us. But there’s opportunity for more, a chance to experience that history.

“This is my family tree.”

“You’re…” The rest of the sentence was cut short as plates on the earth’s surface shifted from their precarious position. It felt like we were standing at the epicenter of the earthquake and shockwaves were blasting away from us. Off in the woods, the light I has seen earlier blazed with white energy.

A rip in the fabric of time had opened.

“Dan,” I said as he fell to his hands and knees. “I have to go.” If I expected a response from him, I was disappointed. “But know one thing…what I did, I did for my family.”

The forest light called me and I answered.

Fifty yards. The distance to the portal. It was the longest and hardest walk of my life.

I had one chance to look back before I stepped over.

Dan was watching.

My story was over.