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by Connie Kinsey
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Damn. I like men. I have always liked men. I am a certified daddy’s girl. My daddy is the best man of all, he is pretty tickled with me, and I just assume that most men are more likely than not to be like him.
My mama tells a story about the time I was three years old and hospitalized for bronchitis. I can’t remember, but to hear her tell it I couldn’t wait for visiting hours to be over because that’s when the corpsmen would sit inside my oxygen tent and play Pocahontas Indian Princess with me. In those days, even parents had to observe visiting hours. Mama shakes her head now when she remembers how it never ever entered her head to fuss about that.
So anyway, I like men a lot. That whole Indian princess thing must have stuck with me even if the memory of the hospital didn’t. Now, I’m not any more Indian than I am anything else, but I look more Indian than I do anything else. Everybody thinks my green eyes come from my mama’s Irish people, but the only kin I have with green eyes come from my daddy’s side – the same side that produced the genuine, 100-proof, Cherokee grandma. Of course, nobody talked about Mawmaw being Cherokee until Indians got to be cool sometime in the late sixties.
A couple of years later, I was fourteen looking twenty, and living in a town with forty thousand Marines—most of them still teenagers and either fretting about going to Vietnam or about what happened there.
Skating at the rink was all the rage. I was on the speed skating team and taking all sorts of lessons. For dance, I was partnered up with somebody the right size, finally, to get on with learning to do lifts. It was 1972 and a lot of those guys had seen some horrible things. Some of them drank, and a lot of them took up karate to feel like they had some control, but almost all of them smoked weed.
A lot of the kids in my junior high smoked pot. I stuck to cigarettes. I was an officer’s daughter and the teacher’s pet. I was supposed to be too smart to fry my egghead, but I liked the kick of a nicotine rush. Both of my parents come from mostly poor white trash, but the Corps made my dad an “officer and a gentleman.” He said that a lot.
I was just me. I wasn’t all that different from the other girls in that time and place even if I was an Indian princess who skated with the Macs.
It was the summer my dad quit smoking. That was quite the summer, but I remember this night best. A lot of stuff when I was young—well, I don’t have complete memories of it. I haven’t blocked it out or anything, but most things I remember in snippets—freeze frames—not video. Except for this—I remember this night.
The song “Indian Nation” as popular, and I was pretty impressed with my newfound Indian blood. Between the leather headband and the turquoise jewelry, the Macs took to calling me Pocahontas which was just fine with me.
The night was hot.
Hurricane season had just set in, and breathing was like trying to grow gills. There were these huge hangar fans that just roared. The Jackson Five were “Rockin’ Robin” at a volume guaranteed to blow eardrums when I decided I needed fresh air and a cigarette.
Back then that wasn’t a contradiction.
Between the heat, the noise, and my sunburn, I was ready to jump out of my skin.
Of course, we weren’t supposed to go outside with our skates on, but mine weren’t rentals.
I skated over to the door, toed to a coast, and rolled into the dark. Walked on my toe stops to the guard rail and sat down. There was a guy about six feet away down in the shadows.
About all I could see was the glow of his cigarette. I could hear him banging his skates against the edge of the sidewalk. It set my teeth on edge.
The cigarette glow reminded me of my dad. I fished around in my bag for cigarettes but didn’t find any. I was already irritated. I clomped over and sat down next to him.
“If Tim catches you banging those skates, he’ll have a fit. He’ll have to repack your bearings and he hates repacking. Besides, you’re not supposed to be out here with rentals. Can I bum a cigarette?”
He quit clanging his skates.
“I’m not afraid of Tim. You old enough to smoke?”
“Of course.”
He dragged a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. In the flash of his Zippo, I saw his face for the first time.
He was simply beautiful.
I was astonished. Even though a fan of men, I had never regarded one as beautiful. I hadn’t even considered that men could be beautiful. Handsome, rugged, cute, smart, tall, short, old, young—all of those I knew. But beautiful. I was already having trouble breathing when I realized he was Indian. I’d never seen him around before.
And I knew all the guys at least by sight.
“What nation?” I said. It was a line I’d heard in a movie. I thought it sounded cool and knowing and older—Indian. Like I really was one.
He looked at me.
My eyes were adjusting so I could see pretty well by then.
He was still beautiful, but details were coming into focus. His skin was perfect. He could have been the Cherokee Nation Noxzema poster child.
I had never seen a man with skin like that. Like marble, there were no pores and not even a trace of razor stubble. I’ve seen baby butts less delicate than his skin.
Of course, he was dark. The North Carolina sun turns even the very fair dark.
Years later, I saw Michelangelo’s David and commented that ol’ Mick got it wrong. The image of that man that night burned into my brain with the flash of a Zippo.
“I’m Lakota, white girl.”
“Don’t call me white girl. What’s your name?”
“Fruitcake.”
“Fruitcake?”
“Yeah. My buddies call me Fruitcake.”
“And you let them?”
“I kind of like it.”
I couldn’t think of a response.
Fruitcake? I was already hopelessly in love with this guy and trying to turn the name Fruitcake into something cool.
Stalling for time, I took a long drag on the cigarette and about fell off the guard rail I got so dizzy.
Fruitcake laughed for real.
“Fruitcake, white girl. When I rotated stateside, I took to drinking rum. My wisdom teeth were bothering me, and Grandmother told me to chew on cloves. My buddies said I smelled like fruitcake.”
“So. How are your teeth, now?” How are your teeth? I could have died. I took another drag on the cigarette.
“The base dentist took them out. Now, I’m just another dumb Mac.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb.” Good grief, Charlie Brown.
He laughed again. We both took drags on our cigarettes.
“Stateside, huh? Just back from ‘Nam?”
“Couple months. I finished thirty days with the family and shipped here a month ago.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen you here before.”
“It’s my first time on skates.”
It was my turn to laugh.
“Is that why you’re out here? I could show you how, you know.”
“Naw. It doesn’t seem that difficult. All that noise gets to me after a while.”
I scrubbed my cigarette out. My breathing was starting to get somewhere near normal.
“Well, I’d like to skate with you sometime.”
“We’ll see, white girl.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“OK. So, what’s your name?”
Oh, God. No.
“The guys here call me Pocahontas.”
He about fell off the rail laughing.
Big, hearty, deep belly laughs.
“I haven’t laughed like that since R&R in Tokyo. We were all down at the . . .”
“How come everybody that’s been to ‘Nam doesn’t talk about anything but R&R?”
“Maybe because nobody asks.”
“Nuts. I didn’t ask you about R&R in Tokyo either.”
He licked his index finger, made a sizzling sound, and drew a line in the air.
“One for you, little sister.”
“So. What’s it like in Vietnam?”
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
I could hear David Cassidy singing “I Think I Love You.”
I reached over and fished another cigarette out of his pocket.
This time, I got close enough to smell him.
I used to think Corps regulations required English Leather aftershave. It’s the only thing my father ever wore and still wears. Fruitcake, though, smelled of Ivory soap and cloves. I couldn’t detect any rum.
While trying to grip a filter, I felt the beat of his heart. He leaned sideways, bumped into my shoulder, and stretched to drag the Zippo out of his Levi’s. My heart pounded and my hands got sweaty.
Lighting my cigarette, he said, “What’s it like? Well, your feet and back are always wet. It’s hot. And it smells. Latrines, body odor, bodies. It smells.”
It was that moment when he was talking about the smell of Vietnam that it dawned on me. My father, who always smelled so good, had been there too. Three times as a matter of fact. Three times. I had never considered, or maybe I had never let myself consider, what he did while he was there. Did I think his officer status protected him? Lifted him out of the fray? I don’t know. I think the truth is that I just didn’t let myself think. But my father, the man I adored above all, had been to war three times. Was trained for war. Was…
Before I could say anything, Fruitcake jumped up all of a sudden—forgetting he’s on skates.
Arms windmilling, he finally gets control.
It takes me way too long to realize my dad is standing there. I toss the cigarette behind me hoping he didn’t see it but knowing he did.
“Captain! Sir!”
“At ease, Marine. We’re not in uniform.”
“Sir! Yessir! Sir! I mean . . . Thank you, Sir.”
“Hi, Daddy.” Jeez.
And the guys wonder why I don’t tell them my real name. It was the first time my dad had ever picked me up from the rink. Usually, my mom did it.
“She’s fourteen.”
“Sir!”
“She’s too young.”
I could have just died. “I’ll go get my shoes.”
“See you at the car, Punkin.”
Punkin! Good grief.
I turned to look at Fruitcake, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I heard my dad say, “Marine, you are dismissed.” With that, he skated back into the rink, holding on to the guardrail to keep from falling. He looked, then, like a boy and not the man I had seen him for previously.
I clomped back inside and started pawing through shoes looking for mine. By the time I got to the car, I was furious. “Daddy!”
We drove in silence for a while.
There’s this desolate stretch of scrub pine between the skating rink and where we live. It feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere – No Man’s Land – North Carolina’s very own DMZ.
Here’s where my memory starts freeze-framing. I can’t remember what provoked me or if I just got lost in thought or what, but I heard myself say, “Daddy, can I have a cigarette?”
“No. You’re too young to smoke.”
“How old do you have to be?” My heart was thundering.
“A lot older than you are now.”
“Daddy, did you kill people in Vietnam?”
The car slowed and pulled to a stop on the shoulder.
He lit a cigarette and started to hand it to me. Then he pulled it back and took a drag off it. I don’t think he noticed the kick. He threw it out the window. And then he threw the pack of Marlboros after it.
“Yes.”
We drove the rest of the way home in silence.
Of course, he told Mama. She grounded me for four weeks.
There was a constant rotation of men at the skating rink. I always kept an eye out for Fruitcake, but I never saw him again.
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Connie Kinsey is a former military brat who has put down deep roots in a converted barn on a dirt road at the top of a hill in West Virginia. She lives with two dogs and a cat and is pursuing happiness, one cup of coffee at a time. Her award-winning writing has been published online and in print. She is also a spoken word artist and the Writer-in-Residence for the Museum of the American Military Family. Connie has blogged at https://wvfurandroot.com since 2008 and is wild about comments.
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