After a long and well-spent day, we walked up the street to a local Irish pub, The Harp. Harpo, the tavern operator/Irish history professor with a gray handle bar mustache, checked our IDs at the door, asking each of us for backup. It was ‘Over 40 Dance Night’ for the beginning of the evening and middle aged couples boogied out on the floor in corduroys and sweaters, one gentleman even rocked a pair of high socks and knickers.
We sat down at a table with Harpo, who introduced us to Loren, a drummer turned music producer, who was home from Seattle. Loren was built like a lumberjack, endowed with enterprising LA energy and good heart besides. We told him about BioTour. He was thrilled by what we were doing and bought us some pitchers of beer. Afterward, he gave a passionate retelling of his own story over a few pints: A drummer for hire who once was part of the corrupt music producing industry (think boy bands), Loren had broken free to start a conscientious alternative for musicians. His company, Protectomatic Music and Entertainment, empowers artists with ownership over their music and gives back to society by forming partnerships with non-profits. We in turn bought another round for a man fearlessly remolding the music industry.
A college rock band replaced the DJ for the over 40 dance night. Nodding to Red Hot Chili Pepper’s covers, I followed E and Burkie out onto the deck.
The two soldiers who Ethan had befriended at UMass happened to be at the Harp that night. I met Jon who, with wide eyes and a buzz cut, joined the Army at 18 looking for some direction. At 19 he was in Iraq. He told us about the boredom and the languor of waiting around in tents in the desert for weeks at a time.
“These private contractors are doing most of our work, the construction work, basically replacing us so we’ve got nothing to do,” said Jon.
“You and your buddies are sleeping in bunk beds and tents while Halliburton employees you protect are living in air conditioned hotels they built for themselves in the desert. And they’re getting’ paid, what? Like how many times a soldier’s salary? And with taxpayer’s money…it’s such bullshit…” Ethan started down the list of absurdities about this war and stopped just shaking his head.
Jon was knocked unconscious on three occasions while in the Middle East, and upon returning home suffered a stroke that temporarily paralyzed the left side of his body. Several civilian doctors have said that redeployment would likely kill him, but military doctors, who have not even met Jon in person, have cleared him to redeploy.
Nearly two years ago, Ethan encouraged Jon to speak at a UMass anti-war event. Jon told his story to a crowd of activists and press and the military backed off, striking a deal with him that allowed him to remain in country to finish his service. Recently the military has resumed their efforts to redeploy him to Iraq, despite the risks to his health.
“It’s tough. I don’t want my soldiers to think I am abandoning them, but this is my health. I would do anything for them, but if I go back I’ll probably end up dead, and it won’t be from a bullet or a bomb.”
Amid so much rhetoric about ‘supporting the troops’ Jon is one of the few people who sincerely works to do just that. Despite a military budget of over $400 billion and the additional hundreds of billions spent on the so-called “War on Terror, Jon has seen his brothers in arms return from combat and left broken, confused, and even impoverished, with no one to help them secure the education and benefits they were promised. One of Jon’s friends survives on five-pound bags of rice while he struggles to feed his children, and many others just don’t sleep at night. Jon took over the UMass Veterans and Service Members Association to support the soldiers as they return home, helping them get their GI Bill benefits when no one else will, teaching them how to balance a check book when no one else has, understanding their struggle to readjust when no once else can or cares to.
Although Jon questions the validity of the mission in Iraq, he would still support his fellow soldiers on the ground if his body could take it, but it cannot. Jon is working in Amherst to help the soldiers become functioning citizens rather than broken parts, but still the military is trying to send him back to be a body on the ground in a foreign land.
The back deck of the bar provided a respite from the college band, sweating and pumping out Jimi Hendrix covers. I met Hunter while he was working security, keeping underage kids from jumping over the rail, or guys from pissing off the deck. He had gathered himself after finishing a case race earlier in the day, and convinced Harpo that he was good to work. Hunter wore a black safari hat over round black-rimmed eye-glasses, and a thin black beard.He carried his tall frame with disarming nonchalance. A year ago he was stationed with the Marines between Fallujah and Tikrit.
Another friend of Ethan’s asked Hunter for a war story. He thought for a moment then launched into an adrenalized tale about the siege of Fallujah, gripping a cigarette with his lips. He punctuated his sentences by chopping the air with his hands and gazed ahead with wild intensity.
“We’re providin’ support for the siege, sittin’ there waitin’ and waitin’ in the trucks while it gets dark, and we’re hearin’ the mortars and IEDs goin’ off and we’re just waitin’ to move on to the next check point. We move up on Boston road…no! no, it was the Michigan road, and we hear “Boom!” behind us, an’ there’s a smoking crater where we were just standin’ two minutes ago.
“We’re all on edge, sittin’ in the truck and grittin’ our teeth, ya know. So we get to the next check point on the edge of the city. I’m lookin’ down the barrel of the 50 caliber and this guy walks out of his house with his hands up. This guy’s about the age of my father ya know, and he calls out in English ‘My family, we stay? We go?’ And we’re all goin’ nuts there bout ta shoot anything that moves, but we yell ‘Stay! Stay!’ and wave him back. He says thank you and goes back in his house.
“So by the time we’re on the road gittin’ outta there we got one guy dead and a couple more guys hurt from mortars. Then we see our Cobras buzz overhead toward the city, and those things are whippin’ around firin’ crazy and I’m thinkin’, ‘Thank god I’m not the bad guy right now’.
“So I’m still on the gun bouncin’ along in the truck and we see these lights roll toward us out of the desert. Now it’s standard protocol to shoot any vehicle, or any military age male on sight at night in Iraq. They know they got curfew ya know. So I’m sittin’ behind the gun and these lights start comin’ at us, an’ I got my finger on the trigger ready to,-ta-ta…to fuckin’ shoot this thing ya know! But they stop, and I yell to my sergeant, ‘Sarge, Shoot or don’t shoot’. He yells ‘don’t shoot!’ so we wait to see if they come closer. If these guys pull forward I’m gonna fuckin’ fire on em’. But they just sit there, and I’m fuckin’ squeezing the handle of the gun. Then they just back straight up and they’re gone into the desert.”
“Wow man, that’s a crazy situation to be in.” I said, knowing I can’t imagine what it’s like.
“Yeah ya know, I got to know a few of the Iraqis and they’re good people, they care about their families and their homes and just want a regular normal life, but when you’re in the shit you can’t think of them like people, they’re just bad guys or you’ll be the one that ends up dead.”
I had nothing else to say. It was a different world than the back deck of a bar in the middle of Massachusetts.
“HEY! Ya, go around the front door alright,” Hunter called out some dude trying to hop over the rail.
“Yeah I wanna come see the bus after we close. You guys goin’ through Georgia at all?”
Before we could answer he was off riding the memory of another wild adventure.
“I was stationed at a base down there for a while, and one weekend my buddy and I decided that we want to go out to the Okefenokee Swamp and take some mushrooms. So we drive out to the sticks with a canoe strapped to the roof of my station wagon. And people out there are great man. Ya go into a local diner an’ eat grits and chicken and people were offerin’ their lawns for us to camp on. But my buddy and I talked to some people and they told us about a good spot to put the canoe away from the main camp-grounds. So we find the spot, put in, an’ paddle out in this channel for a ways and we’re all walled in by vines and bushes, with Spanish moss hangin’ down from the trees, fuckin’ crazy ya know!”
“So we stop and eat the mushrooms and paddle on again. And we’re goin’ along and I hit this thing in the water with my paddle and it fuckin’ lurches and swims away. So I just start yellin’ and we both start paddlin’ like crazy and my buddy’s yells, ‘Hunter what was that?! Was it an alligator, was it a snapping turtle?!’ And it hits me–we’re out in the middle of a huge swamp in a little canoe, we’ve just eaten a handful of mushrooms. I almost freak out. But then I realize that all I need to do…is to take a piss, smoke a Red, throw in a chew and paddle on down the river and everything’s gonna be good! So I say to my buddy,
‘Hey, all we gotta do is take a piss, smoke a Red, throw in a chew and paddle on down the river and everything’s gonna be good.’“
And he says, ‘Ok Hunter, but I’m gonna puke first.’
And I go ‘No! No! That’s a terrible idea, why would you wanna do that?!’
Then he leans over the side and starts pukin’. And I’m thinkin’ to myself,
‘I may just need to ignore this man for the next four hours’.
But he pukes and he’s good and we keep paddlin’ through black water and we get out fine.”
We went back to the bus and hung out with both Hunter and Loren after the bar closed, playing drums and telling stories, then crawled into our sleeping bags to hibernate for a few hours.
