Operation Punctum

The television in The Deer Hunter is in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Everything is still at

Welsh’s Lounge: the clouds, the sky, the unlit neon sign outside the window. All is

calm, all is bright. I sing in English while my father is in Vietnam. American wives

are in immeasurable pain and so is my mother. American soldiers are pushing a hel-

icopter to the right side of the TV screen. Behind the soldiers is number 19. It stands

for USS Hancock: its nickname, Fighting Hannah. Helicopter whirring. It sounds like

Godzilla crying. My father is nowhere to be seen because he’s behind the camera,

behind the lens. His eye’s filled with the green ocean. It zooms in on the soldiers,

some in uniform, some shirtless, on the decks with number 19 behind them. They’re

calm and bright, looking down at the flight platform below. Nobody is crying. Num-

ber 19 goes beyond Yi Sang’s number 13. History is hysterical. The-13th-child-also-

says-it’s-terrifying. 13+3+3. 19=13. A modest, shared hallucination. I’m still the 13th

child. And Godzilla is still crying. Hannah ditches the helicopter in the sea. Now

everything is happening on the left side of the screen. Nobody’s in the cockpit of

the helicopter. The chopper blades tilt, making a diagonal line across the entire

screen. That strange cry. It wants to go home—O like me, like my father. Now the

helicopter and its blades are perfectly vertical to the South China Sea. The chopper

is now engulfed by the sea, white with foam. Sayonara, Saigon! THIS SEEMS TO

BE THE LAST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN VIET-

NAM. Now everything appears in the center of the screen. Helicopter is everything.

Hannah is everything. My father’s framing never sways even when flowers call to

him. He edits as he films, he often told me. He’s still nowhere to be seen. Missing

in action somewhere in Cambodia, filming carpet bombing, my mother said. O the

chopper’s belly convulses. O it’s in immeasurable pain. The chopper’s door open

and the pilot and men in white shirts and dark pants spill out. IT’S ALSO BEEN THE

LARGEST SINGLE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA IT-

SELF. The chopper’s blades are swirling in every frenzied direction. O suicidal lines.

Sayonara, Saigon! HILARY BROWN, ABC NEWS ABOARD THE ATTACK AIRCRAFT

CARRIER USS HANCOCK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA. White with foam. Now I see

buttons on History's blouse.

Source: Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016)