A year my senior, he and I were
members of a small group of cohorts in my high school who preferred laughing to
fighting, thinking to grunting, and conversation over perspiration. Fledgling
philosophers we were, flexing our green intellects at every opportunity,
arguing just for fun, assuming opposing positions for laughs, and seldom taking
ourselves, or anyone else for that matter, seriously. John was the unofficial
leader of the group, the son of two college professors and a brother to
Maryanne, a lovely young woman prone to breaking hearts and promises with a
delightful smile that dissipated anger like fog in the wind. John was a
brilliant student who sailed through high school with straight A’s and little
effort, who could easily have gone on scholarship to nearly any college he
chose. He was well liked by many of us but, because of his mind, his grades,
and his honesty, not overly popular among the herd. Admired by teachers and
many parents for his mind, appreciated by many young lovelies for his looks and
personality, John remained his own man and went his own way, two reasons we
were surprised when joined the military. He announced one day that he was
leaving. The next day he was gone. I didn’t see him again for over two years.
One autumn evening, while attempting
to study in my college dorm room (a skill I never did master) a call from the
desk informed me that a visitor awaited. It was a rare occurrence, and I
hustled downstairs to find a grinning John Giese waiting for me, dressed in
full uniform wearing a green beret. After a disgusting display of male bonding,
we went out for a beer. Sitting in a small campus tavern some time later, John
attracted the attention of a table of sailors who had drifted in the joint, the
largest of whom had little good to relate about any branch of the military
except the Navy. As time went on and he drank more beer, he began to aim his
insults at John and, more specifically, John’s green beret. John smiled and
ignored him. He had always been a rather mild mannered person, anything but
confrontational, a thinker, not a fighter. As the insults became more personal,
he suggested that we leave before things got out of hand. I agreed and, as we
stood to go, the sailor, forty pounds heavier and six inches taller than John,
moved to block our path and offered my friend serious insult directly in his
face. John’s only reply was, “outside, Swabbie.”
As the sailor turned to lead the way
out of the tavern, John picked up a nearby barstool and slammed it across the
man’s upper back, knocking the sailor face down on the dirty barroom floor. He
flipped the dazed man over on his back, lifted him up a foot or so by the front
of his uniform, and struck him a hammer blow across the bridge of his nose that
sent blood spatters flying in all directions. Then John walked through the
stunned crowd and out the door with me on his heels. At the time, it was the
single most graphic display of controlled violence I had ever witnessed, and it
shook me deeply. John grunted, “Gotta go. Call ya in a couple days,” and walked
off down the street to his car.
I went home for the weekend and told
my grandfather of the incident, and how easily John had done what he did. “War
changes a man, boy,” he said. “Can’t help it. Fellers that been through it
ain’t never really the same no more.” That’s all he would say on the subject
and I let it drop, but it worried me. Later that day I received a call from
John who suggested we go pheasant hunting the next morning. I agreed. I called
one of my grandfather’s cronies, a man named Arberry Yont for permission to
hunt his land and to request that he chain up his massive, ill-tempered yard
monster, a canine composed of equal parts of Newfoundland, chainsaw, and T-Rex.
Arberry agreed, and the next morning John and I arrived at his empty home to
hear the dog in question raging at us from his position of restraint in the
back yard. We were preparing our various hunting accoutrement when the dog, now
dragging a length of heavy chain, erupted from behind the house and headed
straight for me. A hundred and thirty pounds of mottled brown attitude,
complete with yellow ivories and excessive saliva, bore down on me like a
freight train with fur. My gun was unloaded, and I simply could not move. John
came over the hood of the car as the calamity was about to close with me, hit
the dog with a body block, struggled briefly on the ground with the animal, and
broke the dog’s neck. It took only seconds and the canine lay quivering on the
cold earth. John, after calmly watching the dog die, turned to me. He had tears
running down his face and was beginning to tremble. “Take me home,” he said. I
did. That was the last time I ever saw my friend. A few days later I
encountered his father who told me John had gone to Paris Island. That’s all I
ever heard about him. His name is not on the wall, and now, nearly fifty years
later I have no idea what ever became of him except the world lost John Geise,
as it lost thousands upon thousands of other young men and their futures, some
in the grave, some ruined in one way or another, and some still in-country, no
matter where they are. Once in a while I still feel a twinge of guilt because I
did not go to Vietnam. More often, I feel regret and anger because any of us
did.
