An Ode to Candy Jack


I suppose that pain ought to be treated like an old and ugly family heirloom. You can hide it away but it should be hauled out every so often for a sad polishing.

Three young men entered the military in early 1967; just after that year's Summer of Love and before 1968’s Tet Offensive.

White Horse Base Camp was a clearing in the jungle about the size of three football fields with sidelines marked by concertina wire. In the southeast quadrant was a canvas hootch with three cots where Crash, Candy Jack and Doc hid between security sweeps of the surrounding perimeter.

The camp was about a mile south of a tiny village called Phu Lai where Candy Jack didn’t think anybody’s God liked the children very much.

Each morning Crash would blow the crud out of three Thai cups with blue dragons on the side and fill them with four fingers of Jack Daniels while Candy Jack rolled a communal joint the size of a banker’s cigar.

Doc would cue his boombox to play their doxology hymn. If anyone ever asks you, three young men can drink four fingers of Jack Daniels and smoke a killer joint in the same time it takes to play and rewind Lady Madonna twice.

That ritual became their confirmation, their celebration, their affirmation, of life.

White-Horse-Base Camp
was just a mile from Phu Lai.
Doc and Crash and Candy Jack,
are never gonna die.


One morning, after their ceremony, the three decided to walk across the grinder to the mess tent. They didn’t want to. It was about 75 yards—with no cover. Donning their aviator’s glasses they moved out. They would have preferred moving through the jungle to walking openly across the grinder. Doc didn’t look up as he walked. He studied the ground moving under their feet.

White-Horse-Base Camp
was just a mile from Phu Lai.
Doc and Crash and Candy Jack,
were never gonna die.


Doc mumbled he’d forgotten something back at the hootch. He turned and ran the last few steps because he didn’t want to break down where anyone could hear him. Crash’s rack was the closest to the door and Doc dropped onto it. He buried his face in the pillow and cried like a little girl.

He wasn’t crying because he was on the other side of the globe or because people around him were getting killed. He wasn’t crying for any of the reasons he should.

He was crying because of a spot on the ground that he’d come to on the way to mess. It was a dark spot no more than eight or ten feet in diameter. It was where some of the grunts had drained crankcase oil from the few vehicles that served inside of White Horse.

He had started crying because it hit him suddenly that nothing was ever going to grow on that spot again.
Nothing.
Ever.
He felt stupid crying over a spot on the ground.
But he couldn’t stop.

White-Horse-Base Camp
was just a mile from Phu Lai.
Doc and Crash and Candy Jack,
were not supposed to die.


Doc finally pulled himself together and joined his buddies. He kept his shades on. Nobody spoke much.

Doc and Crash finished their tours in the next few weeks. It would be a few months before the three met again. But they did meet one last time.

Candy Jack’s funeral was a formal military affair. He’d been killed on the third day of the Tet offensive. He’d gotten separated from his outfit and was hit by small arms fire. He almost died alone. Nobody’s God watched.

Doc and Crash stood together in formal dress uniforms. Candy would have laughed at the ceremonial ropes on their shoulders and white gloves on their hands.

There was a colonel there who never knew Candy Jack but he stood behind Candy’s mom and laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. She just stared into the side of the casket trying to hold on to her mind.

The honor guard folded the flag and put it in her lap. The Colonel bent forward and whispered something in her ear. Doc wondered what soothing words the Colonel used for mothers. He hoped they were really good ones.

She winced when the squad fired their blanks into the air, realizing that was probably the last sound Jack heard. She didn’t know to call him Candy. She just knew him as Jack, her son.

Doc looked down at his white gloves and was glad nobody’s God gave him mother thoughts.

Thirty years later a kid saw Doc marching in a parade. He yelled and asked Doc how it felt to lose a war.

Doc smiled at the boy and said, “It feels real bad son. But I don't imagine it feels much better to win one.”

White-Horse-Base Camp
was just a mile from Phu Lai.
Doc...and Crash...and Candy Jack...