Two Souls Indivisible Page 11

  Halyburton did anything he could to keep Cherry awake and talking, the latter to ensure that he was breathing fresh air into his body. Halyburton recounted novels, movies, and his own life history and asked Cherry about his own family. Cherry knew he was giving Halyburton familiar answers, but he understood his purpose—to keep him alert, conscious. The mind games were appreciated, but of all the things Halyburton did, his insistence on dragging Fred's limp body around the room made the most indelible impression. "He was trying to keep me alive," Cherry later explained.

  Halyburton's respect for Cherry was such that he did not see his help as a sacrifice. "It was a privilege," he said.

  If Cherry believed that Halyburton was different, he was not alone. Porter was different, though those who knew him in his youth often use another word to describe him and his family: exotic.

  His grandfather had a lot to do with the family's unconventional image. Born on an Iowa farm in 1874, he was sent by the Presbyterian Church to India, where he taught college science for six years. At home in Davidson, he displayed rare Indian artifacts, like a small ivory elephant nestled inside a bean and a sword stained with human blood. He imported ginkgo trees from China, erected a bamboo grove in the backyard, raised rabbits in a hutch, and maintained feeders for birds.

  Porter's mother, Katharine, was even more atypical, a single mother with a career in a town where most mothers were married and did not work outside the house. She wrote for the Society pages of the Charlotte Observer and was named women's editor in 1952. Her important position fit her striking image. She had brown-reddish hair, a coy smile, and, in the words of one admirer, a "slinky walk." She gestured elegantly with her hands and enjoyed sunbathing, her olive skin tanning well. In a community of staid fashions, she wore bangle bracelets, costume jewelry, and bright scarves, belts, and hats; nail polish, powders, and perfume were all applied generously.

  She was fascinated by the occult and considered herself a mystic, claiming to have had an accurate "vision" of a former boyfriend dying in battle in World War II. She enjoyed ballroom dancing and bridge, and when she played the piano, the rings on her fingers would glint in the light as they raced across the keyboard. When she returned to Davidson to spend more time with her aging parents, she worked in the college's alumni and public affairs office, filing photographs, press releases, and other materials in such a way that no one else could find them.

  When she and her husband were divorced a few years after Porter was born, Katharine made one demand: he could not see or talk to Porter again.* Katharine protected her son fiercely and taught him skills that most boys did not have—how to play bridge, dance, cook, and sew. When Porter dated a girl from the "wrong" side of the railroad tracks, where working-class whites and blacks lived, Katharine demanded that Porter end the relationship. In high school, when Porter rebelled and became a self-described hell-raiser, Katharine sent him to Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee, where he had to make his bed tight as a drum, fold his shirts ten inches wide, and march each Sunday in a gray wool uniform and shiny black shoes. The school was expensive, but Katharine would have paid any price to ensure that her son received proper discipline and training. Porter was grateful for her sacrifice.

  Porter was like his mother in some ways. He shared her passion for writing, the arts, and bold fashions. Inspired as a teenager by Elvis Presley, he wore a slick pompadour, a long-sleeve gold and black shirt, and tan slacks with narrow cuffs, star-shaped pockets, and belt loops with pearl snaps. Lanky and handsome, he played sports, fished, hunted, carved wood, and made friends easily. His world had a veneer of structure and order, his comic books neatly stacked in his bedroom, his clothes washed and ironed by a maid, and his grandfather dressed in a tie at dinner.

  But Porter deeply felt the absence of his father. When other fathers took their sons to cub scouts or boy scouts, he went alone. Though he rarely discussed his family, his friends could tell that something was amiss. Porter could also be aloof, moody, or melancholy, at times given to fits of rage or depression. "He was a nice guy and he was more in touch with his emotions," recalled one friend, Marie Fisher Bjorneboe. "But there was a sadness to Porter."

  He was no choirboy. He smoked and drank at thirteen and even learned how to make home brew. His rebel image was enhanced by his dexterity with a bull whip: he could snap a cigarette out of someone's hand at fifteen feet. He harassed neighbors with crank phone calls, shot out streetlights with a BB gun, and lit fireworks on the Fourth of July—the police arrested him for disturbing the peace. His Elvis impersonation, as well as his continual flirtations with girls, was considered scandalous.

  He found more constructive outlets through reading and writing. Among his favorite books were those by Richard Halliburton, who in the 1920s and '30s wrote about climbing the Pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, floating on the Great Salt Lake, and excavating ancient Pompeii. The tales excited Porter, all the more so because his mother told him that Halliburton was a relative, though his name was spelled differently. Porter took the books to school and told his friends that Halliburton was his uncle.

  Porter was a determined writer. He spent one summer in high school sitting on his porch, trying to write a novel on his Royal typewriter. It was called "Magyar Mansion," not because he liked Hungary—he didn't even know what "Magyar" meant; he just liked the exotic sound of the word. He wrote his first poem in eleventh grade, after the death of Dylan Thomas. Another poem, to a girlfriend, read in part:

  Who comes back to haunt my dreams,

  Who comes back to stir

  A thousand little memories flying back to her,

  Not but one could do so much,

  And wet my eyes with tears.

  Looking back to happy times,

  Back across the years.

  In 1959 Halyburton entered Davidson College, the prestigious male sanctum that exalted the Christian ideals of faith, honor, and service. The students were required to take courses in both the Old and New Testaments, to attend chapel service three times a week, and to be present at vespers on Sunday evening.

  The college had about 850 students, and in the early 1960s they would stroll across campus carrying their books in suitcases and wearing khakis, Madras shirts, and loafers without socks. Most came from the South and were ambitious to excel in business, law, government, or medicine—young men with a sense of their own destiny. The campus itself emphasized order and unity through its neoclassical architecture and design.

  Its traditions assumed that the students were men of honor. The library, for example, did not mandate that books be checked out but trusted they would be returned. Expectations were specified by the school's sacred Honor Code, which every student learned during a lecture on his first day of school. There was a loose, unwritten code to haze freshmen. A first-year student had to say hello to anyone he saw on campus, was forbidden to walk on the grass, and had to wear a beanie. Failure to comply might require him to scrub the dormitory floors. But violations of the written code were punished severely, with several students usually expelled each year. The expulsions themselves were public events. The announcement was made at chapel, though no name was mentioned, causing the students to swing their heads around and search for faces to determine who was missing. The fallen student was soon identified, and the message was clear: if you trespass, your disgrace will be recognized by all your peers.

  The most serious offenses were plagiarism, cheating, and stealing, so on every term paper or assignment, a student had to pledge in writing that the work was his own. If he broke that pledge, his fate was decided by a student Honor Court.

  For all the import it gave to matters of honor, Davidson was hardly devoid of fun. Halyburton bypassed an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy for the more open life at Davidson. For three years he was the social chairman of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, organizing beach parties, reaching out to women's colleges, and generally ensuring that the boys had plenty to eat and drink at any social event.

  But
his college years were about more than carousing. The school, with its liberal arts curriculum, nurtured his philosophical bent. While he was not partial to all the religious services, the discussions of beliefs, spirituality, and higher truths appealed to his own search for understanding, and Davidson's ethos of discipline and piety—the idea that life was a series of moral choices that determined one's destiny—gave him lasting guidance.

  Caring for Cherry wasn't Halyburton's only job. Prisoners were often assigned work outside their cells, such as sweeping sidewalks or roads, chopping wood, even making coal balls. During much of his time with Cherry, Halyburton washed dishes, which he enjoyed. It got him outside and allowed him to do something useful.

  The bedridden Cherry relied on Halyburton to be his eyes to the compound, and Halyburton, who could see through the slats in the window, sometimes turned his reports into a game. There was the interrogator who supervised the camp's reading materials and always carried a book. While the other prisoners called him Dum Dum or Colt 45 (for the revolver he also carried), Cherry and Halyburton called him Shakespeare.

  Halyburton saw John Frederick, a brawny Marine warrant officer whose hands had been burned badly during his shootdown and who had been blindfolded and in leg irons for a month. He described Frederick's limping around the compound by himself, his fingers appearing "as if they've grown together." Word had spread about his mistreatment, and Cherry thought about the pain he had endured, perhaps like his own—except he had a roommate. Frederick later died in captivity from typhoid.

  As the days passed, Halyburton tried to relieve the discomfort of Cherry's cast by gripping it along the edges and lifting it—in effect, allowing Cherry to breathe—for an hour a day. He also brought back from the washroom bowls of water and, using the small towels used for washing dishes, gave Cherry a sponge bath, cleaning his face, arm, and legs.

  These efforts gave Cherry some temporary relief, but Halyburton knew that he was growing worse. One day, while he was lifting Cherry over the wastebucket, he tried to pull down his shorts, but they were stuck against the backside. He tried again, but they still wouldn't move. Then he saw a dark spot at the site of his tailbone and realized that a bedsore had bled through and fused the shorts against his body.

  "Oh, God, Fred, you've got a big hole over your tailbone from lying on that bed."

  "Yeah, I could feel that hurting," Cherry said. "It's uncomfortable." To Halyburton's amazement, he had never said anything about it.

  Halyburton placed Cherry's blankets beneath him so his tailbone wouldn't rub against the bed. He also demanded to see the medic— "Boxi! Boxi!" The one who appeared didn't speak English, so Halyburton used hand gestures to explain Cherry's injury. The medic, scowling, said no, and left.

  Cherry discovered his next problem himself. Just as the bunk wore away his skin, his cast was having the same effect on his wrist. Halyburton again demanded to see the medic, who saw the problem and this time returned with surgical scissors. He gave them to Halyburton, who cut back the flimsy plaster. But the abrasion was only a hint of what was really happening. One day when Halyburton was lifting the cast, he heard a slurping sound. Fluid had gathered beneath the plaster. Halyburton assumed, correctly, that pus was flowing from the incisions, which had become infected.

  Halyburton knew that the cast was killing Cherry, and he demanded to see not the hapless medic but an interrogator— "Bow cow! Bow cow!" —who spoke English. Halyburton told him that the cast was hurting Cherry and his body had become infected.

  "He'll die if you don't help him," he said.

  The interrogator returned with the medic, who again brought his scissors and told Halyburton to cut the cast at the elbow. When he did, a pint of thick, malodorous, green-yellow pus flowed out. The stench was so bad that the medic, interrogator, and guard turned around and left the cell. The medic came back with a bucket of water and rags and told Halyburton, "You clean up." As he opened the door to leave, Halyburton stepped toward him.

  "No, no! Cherry will die if you don't help him and do something about this cast!"

  The medic looked at him, walked out, and shut the door.

  For Halyburton, Cherry's death seemed like a real possibility. Before, Cherry could shuffle around the room by leaning on Halyburton, but he couldn't even do that now. He simply lay on his back, a complete invalid. To ease the pressure on his tailbone, Halyburton used his own clothes as a doughnut for Cherry to sleep on. Pus soaked the material, but Halyburton could scrub it out with soap and water each day when he washed the dishes. The room stunk, and there was nothing to do about it.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, Cherry felt himself leaving his body and doing what he loved to do most—flying. He didn't fly just any plane. He piloted a B-58, a light, high-altitude jet that held many world speed records but was limited in range and bombing capability. It had not been used in Vietnam and Cherry had never flown it—until his hallucination. "We have B-58s in the war now," he whispered to Halyburton. He described how he had sneaked out of the prison on a secret mission and bombed roads in North Vietnam. "They gave me an air medal, but I told them to give it to jerry Hooper, another guy in the squadron," Cherry said. "I told 'em I have enough."

  Halyburton played along. "Is that right?" he said.

  "Yes. The war will be over soon."

  Cherry wasn't eating but burned his own fat for energy. He felt as if his body were eating itself. He developed a fever, and as his temperature rose, his delirium became more prolonged and his dream sequences more bizarre. In one, he sat in a greasy-spoon restaurant in South Vietnam, hungry, and a woman was frying pork chops. The steam was rising from the grill and it was getting warmer, and the steam kept rising. Then a small man approached Cherry and said that he could take care of air conditioning. Cherry said he was a prisoner in the North and that he'd been having problems with his air conditioning. The man said he would see if he could help.

  Cherry then opened his eyes. He was awake but still addled and feverish. He tried to focus his eyes, and he saw two little men, about a foot high, standing on his chest. They were dark, with oversized eyes and heads, and they were working on the lower half of his body ... turning screws ... pressing buttons—they were working on his air conditioning! "Please, hurry," he told them. He just wanted to cool down before his fever killed him. Sometimes they seemed to make progress and his temperature would drop, but the work was slow. He looked up at Halyburton.

  "Have you seen them?" Cherry asked.

  "Seen who?" Halyburton said.

  "The little men."

  "What little men?"

  "The little air-conditioning men. They keep me cool inside."

  Halyburton tried to lift his cast up.

  "Maybe they went for more fuel," Cherry said.

  "Fuel?"

  "They keep me cool. I hope the guards don't catch them."

  "How do these men get in here?"

  "They come in under the door. They work on my air-conditioning unit."

  "You're right then," Halyburton said. "They probably went for more fuel."

  His words of comfort would stay with Cherry for years to come. Halyburton could have said there were no little men—or told him that he was crazy—but he didn't. When Cherry was on the brink, his roommate gave him hope that his air conditioning might be fixed.

  It was clear that surviving Vietnamese medical care might be as challenging as surviving the torture. Once, a doctor came to the cell to give Cherry a shot, bringing along a burner so he could sterilize the needle in boiling water. He pulled it out with forceps, dropped it on the ground—then attached it to the syringe.

  "You need to put the needle back in the water!" Halyburton yelled.

  "No, no, no," said the doctor, waving him off.

  Halyburton kept demanding to see the medic, warning the guards that Cherry was going to die. He got no response. Then, on March 12, more than a month after the cast had been put on, the guards moved Halyburton and Cherry to another section of the Zo
o, a building called the Garage. There was no explanation for the move. The new cell was larger but darker, mustier, and less comfortable. Their bed boards were on sawhorses.

  Cherry, semiconscious, knew he was near death, but when he was lucid he always had the same thought: I will not die in this prison, I will not die in this prison. He had fought too hard all his life to die in this prison. He also realized how much he depended on Halyburton, how he couldn't survive without him. He never wanted to leave him.

  On March 18, the medic came to the cell and had Cherry taken out on a stretcher; his belongings remained. He and Halyburton believed he'd be coming back, but when the other prisoners saw him leave, word spread through the camp: Cherry had been taken away to die. Actually, he was returned to the hospital, once again for a short visit. As the cast was removed with a scissors and a saw, Cherry saw his decaying flesh fall off. His thighs looked the same width as his arms. He figured he weighed about eighty pounds, skin wrapped in bone. He also had lagoons of pus on his body and at least a half-dozen bedsores. Then someone picked up a green beer bottle and poured it over his torso. The bottle contained not beer but gasoline, which burned like fire over his gaping wounds. The fumes overwhelmed him.

  The gas was not for torture—it wasn't the "season" for torture, according to Cherry, and the authorities had more devious instruments at hand. It was considered a healing agent, but its vapor was so strong that it knocked him out. He awoke to the doctor slapping his wrists, leading him to believe that his pulse had stopped. He was then given a blood transfusion and fed intravenously.

  Returning to his cell in bandages, Cherry was carried in on a stretcher, which was placed on his bed board. An intravenous tube went into his arm, its bag of fluid held by a stand. His bad shoulder was back in a sling, his fractured wrist still not healed. Halyburton draped the mosquito net over him, exposing only his arm with the IV. Cherry had been gone only a few days, but Halyburton was stunned by his physical deterioration. Asleep, he looked more dead than alive.