Charley
Somebody said the superintendent's house was on fire, so the five of us
walked down the hill from school to watch it burn.
Four of us were seniors that spring of 1964 - Larry, James, Jimmy and
me. Charley was the fifth member of our group. He was a junior, and we
let him run around with us as long as he didn't do any-thing stupid.
The day was chilly. Larry, James, Jimmy and I had on coats; Charley wore
a short-sleeved shirt. If Charley owned a coat, it was a secret kept
from everybody who knew him. Charley's father was a pulp wood cutter.
None of us had ever seen him, except when he drove his loaded log truck
to the railroad where the cars that carried pulp were parked. Charley's
family lived back in the woods, the deep woods, down a dirt road
somewhere. His family didn't have much. None of us did, but Charley's
family had even less than the rest of us.
Charley was a bright kid, quick and intelligent. Everybody has known a
kid like Charley, known that somewhere behind those quick remarks and
comic attitude lay an ability to do more than he did. Charley could have
made excellent grades, but he chose not to. Teachers wouldn't have known
what to do with him if he had. Besides, in Charley's life there was
reality, then everything else. And the real-ity was that Charley was the
son of a pulp wood cutter. Barring some great miracle, Charley would
always be the son of a pulp wood cutter.
The superintendent's house was really burning by the time we got to the
bottom of the hill. The fire had burned through the roof. The five of us
just stood around for a minute or so, watching the house burn. Then
Charley said, "I bet we can save some of their stuff", and before we
could stop him, Charley opened a window and crawled inside the burning
house. We four seniors stood outside the window, taking whatever Charley
handed out. Pretty soon we had a pile of chairs, small tables and books
stacked beside a pecan tree.
Charley had just started on a closet when the fireman arrived. The
school was between two towns, each four miles away, and it took the
volunteer fireman a little while to get there. Charley was handing out a
pile of clothes when one of the fire-men ran up to us yelling. "What do
you boys think your doing? You're giving the fire more oxygen! Shut that
window!" Grownups knew more than us kids, so we got Charley out of the
house, shut the win-dow and watched the fireman spray water on the
house.
After the fire was out, we went inside the house. Everything was burned;
nothing usable was left. We went back outside.
The basketball coach came up and said, "I hear you boys saved a lot of
stuff from the house." One of us said, "Yes sir, but it was Charley's
idea. He went inside. All we did was take what he handed out the
window."
The coach turned to Charley, who stood there with his hands in his
pockets. The day had turned colder. The coach said, "You look cold.
Where's your coat?" Charley replied, "I don't have it with
me."
The coach just nodded. He said, "You did a good job. I think you've
done enough for today. Why don't I drive you home." Charley said,
"It's only one o'clock." The coach laughed. "I know. But I
don't think the superintendent will mind."
We four seniors graduated that year. Larry went to work for a telephone
company. In September, James and Jimmy went off to college. I joined the
Army.
In August of 1967 I met up with Larry at Bear Cat, base camp of the 9th
Infantry Division. Larry had been drafted in 1966. We sat around in his
hooch for a while, drank beer, talked about people back home.
After I got back home, I learned that James had graduated from college
and had a job with NASA in Houston. I ran into Jimmy at a high school
football game in 1969. He had put on a few pounds, didn't look like the
all-district tackle from high school. Jimmy was married, had a kid,
taught at a junior high. He said we were doing the right thing in
Vietnam. "We had to stop those Communists somewhere. But
I've got a wife and kid, Bob. I can't become involved in a war thousands
of miles from home."
That takes care of everybody but Charley. See, the thing is, Charley
didn't have to go in that burning house. He
could have been just like the rest of us, stayed outside and watched it
burn. But Charley wasn't like that. Peoples' things would be lost if
somebody didn't do something. And al-though Charley had absolutely
nothing in common with the superintendent, he went inside the burning
house. Charley knew what had to be done, what he had to do.
In 1965, Charley enlisted in the Army, went to Vietnam and died there.
In April 1988, I was in Dallas on Army business. I went to Fair Park.
There's a monument there, lists the names of Texans who died in
Vietnam. There were a few names I wanted to see; one in particular. I
found him.
COLLIER, CHARLEY HOLTON
9 MARCH 1947 - 15 NOVEMBER 1965
Mount Pleasant, Texas
I never knew Charley's middle name.
The author, Robert Merriman served with Air Cav Troop,
11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Vietnam '66- '67 This true story appeared
in Thunder Run Quarterly, a publication of the
11th Armored Cavalry's Veterans of Vietnam & Cambodia. * Permission to
reprint from the editor of Thunder Run is granted.