Big Jim and Little Joe

Big Jim and Little Joe

A locked gate and fence at my back and twenty very dirty, very rough looking Viet Cong wearing only black baggy shorts at my front. They spread out and blocked my way toward the center of the dirt prison yard. Not a word spoken as they came closer. Suddenly, I heard an American voice yelling from the opposite corner of the prison yard.
“Hey! Over here!”
It was a deep, trying to be excited but couldn’t type of voice. A welcomed voice, to be sure. I side stepped to my left toward the voice, my back still against the fence in a casual manner at first until my groupies picked up their pace toward me. I broke into a dead run toward an open cell door at the end of a row of iron doors. It was also the direction of the voice. The cells were a hundred yards away; a hundred yards of hard dirt and dodging White-boy hunters. I couldn't believe that a fifty dollar bribe and a hundred yards across a dirt field now determined if I was to live or die in Viet Nam. I was met halfway across the open yard by two white men. They had come from inside the open door waving shiny spoons at the approaching crowd that were now in a full run and closing up fast behind us.
“Come on man, come on!”
The two white guys closed ranks behind me and all three of us ran for the last door in the long row of drab rusty metal doors. I was first in, the shorter one followed and the one that had hollered came in backwards. As he did, he threw a great right punch that flattened the first unlucky pursuer to reach the door. I found myself standing in the farthest corner away from the door inside the cell. The tall one of the two was locking the door with a long bar that was bolted on one side to the wall.
“What the hell was that all about?” I asked as I huffed and gasped trying to catch my breath.
“S---, I think they liked him!” The shorter one said.
I was in a daze. The lack of oxygen and a smell that was so pungent it had me ready to collapse or puke. That smell was stronger than anything I have smelled to this day. If I opened my mouth for air, surely I would gag on the thick gas. If I kept it closed, the hair in my nose would burn. It took more than five minutes before I could speak without gasping or choking. The smaller of the two continued,
“If they’d caught you, you would ‘a been tied to the fence and punched out long before we could ‘a got to you. The last white guy to come through that gate didn’t make it as far as you did. He was here, beat to a pulp, and toted away all within fifteen minutes. We had our doubts about coming out at all, but you looked like you might need some help the way they were on you. And besides, we weren’t gonna let it happen again. You’re way to clean cut. What’d you do? I used to be like that…”
The shorter man paused for a second and looked at the ground before finishing his welcome speech, “before this place.”
“That’s ‘nough!” The other man said as he checked the door, cutting the shorter of the two off from any more chit-chat.
“You come for us or you screw up somewhere? You CIA or Spec-Op’s?” He looked at me as though he even doubted my existence. In his deep voice I could tell he didn’t trust me as he spoke.
“Man, I had no idea you guys were here. S---, I didn’t even know there was a prison in Baria. I’m just a civilian working for Vinnell over at the airfield in Vung Tau.” I told them this as I sat down in the corner of the room on the dirt floor while I tried to catch my breath.
“What the hell is that smell? Man, that’s strong enough to kill rats.”
I covered my mouth by bringing my shirt up to my nose. The tall one pointed toward the corner where some slimy green water and human waste lay in a small hole leading out and under the back wall of the 10 by 10 prison cell.
“Hope you packed a lunch, this ain’t no prison, it’s a Viet Cong detention camp. Whenever they need a ‘Gook’ for something they come in here and grab one. That’s the last you see of ‘em. Word has it that they push ‘em out of helicopters for the press. Hey man, I’m Big Jim Nelson an’ that fella there is Little Joe Wakinski.”
As quick as our entrance through the door had been, Big Jim Nelson seemed to accept my presence in his world. I sat there trying to come up with my first question, I had so many, but I was having trouble trying to figure out how to place them in an understandable order.
“John, everyone calls me Hammer,” I reached up to shake Big Jim’s hand. “I ain’t figured out what I’ve done yet, but I know I’m not Viet Cong. Thanks for the help out there. I thought I was just waiting for the judge. What the hell you guys doin’ here? Why were those guys chasing me? I sure don’t like the way they treat visitors!”
“You ain’t no visitor. Tell him Joe.”
“I appropriated a Jeep from an ARVN Major,” Little Joe told me. “I don’t think he much cared for walking. D--- Jeep was made in America anyway. S---, I thought it was mine more than his. Anyway here I am, no court date yet and I been here six months.”
“Me neither,” Big Jim Nelson said as he sat down on the dirt floor in the middle of the room next to a straw mat.
“Been here a year an’ half. Been to court one time ‘bout a year ago and they still ain’t charged me with nothin’. The suckers got me in here when I was drunk and passed out at my ol’ ladies house. Next thing I knew I was face down on the dirt in this joint. From what I gathered at that Mickey Mouse trial they give me, I guess my ol’ lady turned me in for screwing with her younger sister. D--- women weren’t worth s--- anyway. All she wanted was my money.”
Big Jim was a little slow and sounded like he was from the south, but he must be one tough cookie to have survived this place for that long. All of a sudden, a loud bang echoed at the metal door. Big Jim and Little Joe didn’t even turn their heads. They just clamed up and sat there.
“What was that?” I asked.
“That’s just yard time. The guards let ever’ one out in the yard for an hour ever’ day. Those s---heads want our a-- and they bang the door once in a while just to check and see if we locked it. You showed up at the right time. Kinda like feeding the wolves with white meat, aye Joe?”
Big Jim talked with a broken laugh that was mixed with a deep cough that made his eyes water. Little Joe just sat there. I could tell he wasn’t quite as tough as Big Jim, but by helping me out in the prison yard, I knew he was just as brave. The seconds of silence between the words and the quiet facial emotions that rolled out of these two seemed like hours of muteness. I was hanging on every word spoken and not spoken. I had no idea that Americans could or would be treated so badly in a country that we gave up our peaceful lives back in our world for. My new world had become venomous and surrealistic with the sudden change.
We talked the rest of the day on and off, sometimes to ourselves, sometimes to each other. I was trying to figure a way out. I needed hope, any hope. I kept telling myself, "any minute now, any minute Hai will be here.” Big Jim and Little Joe had been dealing with the concept of not having any hope for much longer than I had. I thought out “what if’s” before I left my house and Hai that morning. There were other ways that I could have handled the subpoena, but I considered myself innocent. There was no reason to worry. To the ones that put me in here I was innocent all right, innocent to the point of naiveté. I knew that crap of waiting for the judge that morning was just a way to get me into the prison. They probably still wanted their fifty-dollar extortion money and I’m sure the short man that got his a-- chewed by my buddy the Captain wanted some revenge for making him lose face. After listening to Big Jim and Joe, I pictured myself in with these two for a long time.
Just before the sun went down a guard brought out dinner. Dinner was one cone shaped paper cup full of brown water that he handed through the hole in the door. He put three sugar buns and a small handful of cooked rice through the hole in the door, but once through the hole he turned his hand upside down and dropped them onto the dirt floor. While we were picking the rice off the ground I looked around for something to put it on. There was only one four-foot straw mat in the cell.
“Why only one mat in here?”
The question was more for conversation than to really know the answer.
“You’ll see tonight” said Joe.
Most of the night, just outside our door, I heard thin voices. Behind the voices was a scraping noise that sounded like someone was digging the concrete away from the dungeon type hinges. Seems they get out for yard time on their own every night. Their pastime was to get at the Americans inside. That’s why only one mat, one slept while one stood guard just in case they were successful some night at getting in.
The three of us sat and talked all night. They were glad to have company, and I was thanking my lucky stars they were there for me. They didn’t have anyone that even knew where they were. Big Jim was a civilian, ex-military like me. His girlfriend probably sold all his stuff and moved onto a new meal ticket. Little Joe’s regular Army and his unit more than likely listed him as AWOL, missing after leaving a bar. I had Hai and I put all my faith in her. Hai was good at negotiating when the need arose. I just hoped that when I didn’t come home last night she didn’t think I was out on the town chasing women and getting drunk. She did make me panic just a bit when she hadn’t shown up by noon of the second day.
"You sure she’s a comin’ Hammer? Maybe she had a big enough stash to bug out."
"No way!" I said in protest. "She’ll be here."
Just as the last word left my mouth I saw Hai and my friend the Police Captain walking by the arched brick gate where I had met my stiff walking friend the day before.
"Hammer! Quick, take these and put them in your sock. Let somebody know we’re here! They’ll search you when you go to leave so make sure these are inside your sock on the bottom. They never make anybody take his socks off. Something to do ‘bout Buddha.”
Big Jim handed me two pieces of paper torn from the water cups. I did just what Big Jim asked. Within ten minutes a guard was at the door waving his arm for me to exit the concrete cell with the heavy-duty metal door. It was hard to leave Big Jim Nelson and Joe Wakinski behind, but I had assumed that the paper I was carrying had their names and other information written on it.
Sure enough, I was stripped and searched to make sure I didn’t have anything with me from the bare dirt floor and the concrete walls of the cell. I was stripped of everything, but my socks. Hai grabbed my arm hastily and turned me around toward the front door as soon as I entered the room where her and the Captain stood waiting for me. The Captain stood still with his arms folded across his chest. I looked at him and he winked, that wink signified my freedom from this place, I wanted so bad to get the hell out of there. I raised my eyebrows in a signal of relief and followed Hai out of the door. The Captain stayed. I hoped to chew on my friend the tin-stiff Cahn Sat in the pretty uniform, but I wasn’t staying to find out. Hai and I jumped into the back of a three-wheeled Lambretta waiting at the gate parked next to the Captain’s Jeep. In the back of the Lambretta, I found iced down beer and a Kim sandwich, my favorite. On the way home, Hai told me how she had found the Captain at the market while she was looking for a ride to Baria and he asked how I was. She told him that I hadn’t come home last night after my appointment at the courthouse. Right away, the Captain knew what had happened. He grabbed Hai by the arm and they took off. First to my house to grab a bottle of Bacardi Rum for bargaining, and then to the prison, I mean, courthouse.
When we were about three or four miles down the road I took the pieces of paper cup out of my sock. I was looking at the stained paper with Big Jim and Little Joe’s SSN, their names, and last addresses when a tear dropped down my cheek. The words on the paper became blurry when I tried to read through the water in my eyes. What had happened in the last two days was beginning to sink in and I was visibly shaken. The feeling of getting “me” back was one of the greatest feelings I have ever known. I was hoping I could give that feeling to Big Jim and Joe. After what they have been through the joy of feeling freedom would be a hundred times greater for them than my own.
The next day I was back to work. I had a story to tell and I told everyone I worked with what had happened and about the two I had left behind. I told my boss the story and asked him how he would handle it. He immediately arranged for a company driver and a Jeep to take me to Saigon to see if the American Embassy would help. I was planning to make a phone call to the Embassy, but making a personal appearance in front of the Ambassador himself worked much faster.
Two days later Little Joe Wakinski came by my house. I’d told him where I lived during that long night sitting on the dirt floor of the cell. Joe looked good. His face had brightened quite a bit just from the smile that he had. I could still see the scars the prison had left in his eyes, but I’m sure that would disappear soon enough. He told me how two Americans and two Vietnamese from the Embassy came by just this morning and quietly had Big Jim and himself removed from their cell, placed in a Jeep and driven away. In fact, as I talked to Joe I glanced out the door and saw two men in white shirts and ties waiting in a Jeep that had two flags of the US Embassy mounted on the corners of the front bumper. Big Jim Nelson was slumped over in the back. Little Joe told me Big Jim was sick and they were heading for a hospital, but he had to stop by to tell me they were out and to give me a hug. That he did, it felt so real, so much like the way this story should end. Little Joe walked back out the front door to the Jeep. I stood in the doorway slowly waving at Big Jim, a wave that turned into a salute for both of them as they drove away.

END