Page 51 of Good Days Bad Days
She went on to explain that her obsession with that mistake went away when a neighbor’s hunting dog uncovered her mother’s body buried in the woods near the main road.
Her stepfather, Bill, was arrested but, with all the evidence erased by time, he took a plea deal for a lesser charge, leaving Charlotte alone for the next three years.
Stunned and pregnant with their second child, she was easily brainwashed into believing his innocence.
After that, he was in and out of jail for petty crimes, fights, and a few DUIs.
“I’d send Charlotte money when he was incarcerated and stop when he was home.
Every time he got locked away I hoped she’d wise up, but she always let him come back.
Over the years I started to realize my mom wasn’t turning over in her grave thinking about some note I missed in a tenth-grade concert.
She was heartbroken I couldn’t get Charlotte free. ”
It’s a quality that’s always drawn me to Betty, the vulnerable soul underneath the outward beauty, the sister who wants to protect and save by any means necessary, the sad girl who has no one to protect her.
I wish she could see herself the way I do, the way she really is.
I’d give anything to be her safe harbor.
After that letter, I’ve received at least one a week from her.
I write back every time, speaking very little of my daily life, especially not of the dangers I see and experience firsthand. I don’t tell her how we know we’re lied to in the nightly press briefings, how many soldiers don’t want to be here and how clear it’s becoming that this war is unwinnable.
In turn, she never mentions Don or her wedding, even though Mark keeps me apprised through his correspondence.
But when he sent me a copy of her wedding announcement cut out of the newspaper, I hate to admit I burned it.
Now, to maintain the illusion of Betty’s devotion to me, I wait to open his letters until after I read any I’ve received from her.
One letter from Betty started “Dearest Greg, I got my first television today. It’s a ten-inch black and white with bunny ears, but I get all the local stations, which is why I wanted it.
I watch every news broadcast I can get on my little set and wonder if you’re the one behind the camera whenever they report on the war.
It makes me feel closer to you, but some nights, I can’t sleep with worry. I hope you come home soon.”
All her letters start that way, like I’m the only man in her life, like she’s waiting in a little bungalow for me to return to her and fill it with children and a future we’ll build together.
It’s not true, I logically know that, but being so isolated, so surrounded by terror and death, I let myself pretend.
A lot of the guys out here live like this, putting their girl up on a golden pedestal which keeps them motivated to live long enough to get home.
I’ve made it ten months and filmed more tragedy than I knew existed before climbing onto that plane last year. The injuries, the fear and disillusionment—it’s all palpable and nearly as poisonous as the napalm I was warned about.
And the stories, damn. Most of what we film will never be seen, I know that.
No one wants to know about a soldier’s dying words or the heavily racist views of some of the men when it comes not only to the enemy but also to the native population they’re supposed to be protecting.
To say nothing of the nonstop pot use that’s almost as pervasive as smoking cigarettes.
“We gotta do something to keep from remembering what we’ve seen,” one twenty-year-old from Dubuque told O’Neil when asked on camera about the drug use. “I didn’t fucking ask to be here.”
The cursing and unsavory details would prevent that clip from being broadcast, but we didn’t shy away from the truth.
I really respected that about O’Neil. He had integrity.
He wanted to show things the way they were.
And for the first three months, I went where he told me and shot what he wanted.
We made a good team. But then he was hit in the leg in a combat zone and sent home for limb-saving surgery.
I was placed with an older reporter, Dick Zan.
Dick prefers to stay in Saigon for the military briefings, nicknamed the Five O’Clock Follies.
He only goes into the field for a day or two to get some fluff for a feel-good segment every few weeks.
I’ve had the chance to leave twice already and chosen to stay.
Zan is going home for the summer, and the network offered to fly me back at the same time, but I’ve decided to stay a little longer.
The work is hard but rewarding. I’m finally living a life rather than letting it happen all around me.
What’s waiting for me back home, anyway?
I feel closer to my brother here where he took his last breath than I ever did behind a camera on a soundstage in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Betty is more my girl here through her letters than she’d be as Don Hollinger’s wife back home.
I could go back to KSTP and tag along on Martha’s rapidly ascending coattails, but even that connection has waned.
I have four letters in total from Martha, who has moved on not only careerwise but also romantically, her last letter announcing her engagement to a nice banker she met at a disco on ladies’ night.
A pang of jealousy rushed through me reading that letter, I’ll admit it, but it’s not the same as the torturous spasms brought on by Mark’s mentions of Betty.
I care about Martha, like her profoundly, but the surge of emotion I felt came from a place of envy at the forward motion of her life rather than a desire to be with her.
Vietnam is my self-appointed purgatory. I stay here as an act of penance, to redeem the shame I feel for being the only survivor in my family, for somehow escaping the draft, for not going back to stay with my mom after Jim died, for not taking her call that night she chose to join him instead of staying alive for me.
And here in Vietnam I have Betty. I have her picture, the one from her wedding to Don, taped up on my headboard, and I have her letters in my hands that end with the words “Love always.”
“Damn, she’s a real looker,” Leon, the CBS cameraman says, dropping onto his bed next to mine. I look up from the powder-scented letter I just slid out of one of Betty’s signature pink envelopes. “That’s your girl?”
I consider telling the truth or saying something vague or un-incriminating. But I don’t. I tell everyone here the same thing. It’s my favorite lie.
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “That’s my wife. Betty.”