Free Love
Jean started dating again! I sang a song that made us both laugh… “Jeanie. Jeanie. Sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”
I didn’t get to spend as much time with Jean now that she was in love again. And that was okay, I was so happy for her. Besides, I had lots of friends at the diner. The families would fill the booths and the truck drivers filled the seats at the counter. Many of the truckers were loud, boisterous, and crude with their language. But I got used to it and often found myself loudly and proudly joining in with them. Over time, the damn crude language became contagious as I found myself talking “shit” with the best of them. Janice and Dean, my two hippie friends were always hanging around the diner now too. They were in and out. Out to their car for a while and then back in. She was always laughing and giggling when they came back in and ordered milkshakes. Business was very good. Frankie would smile at me, because as Billy Joel sang; “It was me the customers were coming to see.”
Since Jean was preoccupied, I started hanging out with Jan and Dean more. They always seemed to be very happy and were always really nice to me. I’d say they were both in their early thirties. Jan always wore long flowing flowery low-cut dresses and sandals. It seemed that she didn’t mind flaunting. She was always adorned with lots of beads and jewelry that she said she made herself. Dean wore mostly weird suede or leather vests. He was a jeans and tee-shirt kind of guy who always wore sandals, and he always wore a hat with a red, white, and blue peace sign on it. He was loaded with tattoos all up and down his arms. And he had this crazy twitch. Every once in a while, one of his tattooed arms would suddenly twitch for no reason. Damn, they were a weird couple! I asked Dean where the hell he got all of those tattoos. “In the Navy” he replied. And that’s about as much talk as you would ever get out of Dean. Just short brief answers to direct questions, if you ask them. Jan did most of the talking. She explained that Dean was a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam. Other than the tattoos, He sure didn’t look like a vet though, with all of that long hair and beard. I asked Dean, “What was the Navy doing over there? Vietnam doesn’t have an ocean, does it?” He shook his head and said, “Nope, just a Sea.” Normally his answer would have been just “Nope.” He was a lot like Jean’s brother Kob. He never spoke much at all after he came back from Vietnam either. I guess that place really messed them up in the head. Jan went on to explain that Dean served on what’s called a “swift boat.” They patrolled up and down Vietnam’s inland rivers. They were small but fast boats with big machine guns. Dean was a machine gunner and a highly decorated sailor who was wounded in battle, a head wound that left him with that twitch. When I looked at Dean, I couldn’t picture him as a Navy man, let alone a hero. I was skeptical of that story. He would sit there with a contented peaceful demeanor about him except for the freaking twitching. I figured those two were a perfect couple. A couple of damn freaking freaks. But I liked them.
Jan and Dean kind of, sort of, acted like a boyfriend/girlfriend couple but they never showed any public affection. I never saw them hug or kiss. There was nothing romantic or sexual about them. It was almost as if they were married. Except for all of the talk of peace and free love and hippie bullshit. I never knew of them having a job, but they always had spending cash, and a lot of it too. I always suspected that when they went out to their car, they were smoking grass because they smelled like it when they came back into the diner and ordered double chocolate milkshakes. But I never knew why Jan went out to the parking lot alone sometimes. I began to worry that they were selling dope. And if so, something like that would be bad for the diner if they got caught. I had to confront them. I simply and directly blurted out one day “Are you dope dealers? Is that where you get all of your money from?” Jan looked hurt. Dean looked blank as usual.
Jan replied, ”NO! We do not sell drugs!” Dean, as a disabled Vet, gets a nice big monthly check from the VA. He also drives a taxi part-time. Only late at night though because he doesn’t have a driver’s license. And I sell my own brand of homemade jewelry to the truckers. “Sure!” I thought. Okay, I get the VA disability part, but selling jewelry to truckers? I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought to myself, “Come on man… Selling jewelry to truckers? Really?”
I was joking around with the dumb ass truckers, teasing them about buying cheap jewelry in a parking lot. They each held up a piece of jewelry to prove that it was true and laughed heartily. I was dumbfounded. They really did buy her jewelry! “Beatrice, don’t be so naïve. We get more than a piece of her jewelry for $100.”
“What?” I asked.
“A piece of that “free love” comes with it too!” a trucker laughingly replied.
I nearly passed out. I had to tell Frankie about what the guys told me. He was pissed off and immediately had two thugs walk Jan and Dean out to the parking lot and told them not to come back to the diner. FREE LOVE MY ASS!!!!
My illusions were shattered… It wasn’t just me they were coming to see. It was Jan they were coming to see.
A week or so later, I started feeling sorry for Dean. The poor guy seemed harmless and innocent to me. I wondered if he knew about Jan’s prostitution scam. I also wondered if he was in on it. I doubted that he was in on it and didn’t believe that he even knew about it, but I guessed I would never know. A few months later, one of the truck drivers told me that he heard Jan was thinking about moving to San Francisco. I replied, “Yeah, with flowers in her hair too I bet!”
He said “Yeah and with a cash register strapped to her ass! Ha!!”
RUCKSACK GRUNT - A Vietnam Veteran's Memoir 