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Red, White, and Black
What does it look like to love God and country? Wear red, white and blue along with
a cross? Go to church on Sunday while judging everyone who doesn’t? Sport tattoos
and bumper stickers of the American flag? Boast love of country while hating a large
portion of “we the people?” Boast love of God while hating “the least of these?”
What does it look like to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love
our neighbor as ourselves? I have a feeling that we know it when we see it. We need
only open our eyes and look.
“Put your head on a 360-degree swivel and never stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
If you don’t stay frosty, you’ll have a life expectancy of about 3 minutes.” Walker was
76 years old when he shared these words with me. He explained that these were the
words that his commanding officer spoke to him when he was deployed on an aircraft carrier at the height of the Vietnam war.
Walker described how his job was on that part of the ship where the planes initially
touch down and are caught by cables that bring them to a stop to keep them from
crashing into the ocean. He shared that as a young man he was not going down the
best road, and since he didn’t have anyone to catch him and stop him from making
a mess of his life, he felt he needed to enter military service for the structure and
discipline that being in the service could provide to him.
“I had some close calls with some difficult landings while I was on that ship,” Walker
said. “And at times I had to run for my life, but at least I lived to tell.”
Walker’s eyes began to fill with tears. “I need to tell you something I’ve never shared
with anyone,” he whispered.
I had known Walker for several years at the time, walked with him through the tragic
death of his nephew, through the heart-breaking death of his wife, as well as through
the many challenges of raising his granddaughter on his own. I thought I knew where
most of the bodies were buried. This was something new about something old.
“When I finished my tour of duty in 1968 and was sent home,” Walker said, “I landed
at Camp Lejeune and was looking forward to being back home with my wife. I was told
that to get home faster, I could hitchhike to the bus station about 30 miles from the base.
Eager to get home, that is what I did. I gathered my bags, went out on the road and put
my thumb in the air, hoping to arrive home safely to surprise my wife. Before long,
someone stopped to pick me up. I threw my bags in his car, and we were off.
What I didn’t realize until we were speeding down the road is that the driver had been
drinking, which became evident by the smell of alcohol in his car and the erratic way he
was driving. That would have been a fine time for some cables to snag his car and bring
it to a stop so I could get out, but the road he was taking me down was no aircraft carrier.”
Walker paused for a moment as if to gather the courage to continue telling his story, and
it was then that I began to sense that Walker was about to tell me something that impacted
his life more deeply and profoundly than anything he had experienced at war.
“That drunk driver had driven out into the middle of nowhere,” Walker said. “And since I
didn’t feel safe in the car, when he stopped at an intersection, I got out and suddenly found myself in the middle of nowhere. He drove away, and I was there all alone, with no idea
where I was or how I was going to get to the bus station.”
Walker began to wipe tears from his eyes, and as he continued to speak, his voice began
to crack. “I was in a heightened state of alert,” Walker insisted, “and my head was still
on a 360-degree swivel. I can’t explain this, but out in the middle of nowhere, there was suddenly a tall man standing behind me in a white shirt with blood all over it. I had no
idea where he came from. All the sudden, he was just there.”
Walker explained that this was happening at the height of the Vietnam war when soldiers
returning home were often met with hostility. It was 1968, at the height of the civil rights
movement in the United States, the year that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated,
by a white man. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, racial tensions only increased,
within the military and society at large, and many black Americans came to believe that
the Vietnam war itself was a form of racism. It isn’t hard to understand why. Young black
men were being disproportionately drafted and sent to the front lines; young black men
were having to do a disproportionate amount of the dying. It didn’t help matters for black soldiers to hear white soldiers spew racial slurs against the Vietnamese, all of which echoed
the sound of the n-word.
“Did I mention that the man who suddenly appeared out of nowhere was black?” Walker asked. “I was standing there all alone, a white boy, and was startled to find a tall black man standing directly behind me covered in blood. I was stunned, speechless, frozen. For all I knew, my life expectancy had fallen to less than 3 minutes. I must have looked lost and scared.”
Walker appeared to feel lost and scared as he continued to tell his story, as if he was in
uncharted territory even to be telling it, uncertain as to whether he would sound credible, whether he would be believed. For a moment, Walker looked like a little boy walking up
to an intersection, looking both ways before crossing the street.
Walker continued. ‘“What are you doing here all alone?” the man asked me. “Where are
you trying to go?”’
“I told the man that I was trying to make it to the bus station, and just as suddenly as
he had appeared, along came a car with three other black men. They exchanged a
few words which I can’t remember, and I found myself on autopilot getting into the car
with the three men.”
“I don’t recall where the first man had gone, only that he was no longer there. I didn’t know
what was going to happen to me after getting into that car. Maybe my 3 minutes was up.
I only remember them asking me where I wanted to go. I told them.”
Now he struggled to get his words out, “They drove me to the bus station and dropped me off.” Walker cried. Some silences seem to last forever. This one certainly seemed to.
“I have carried this memory for nearly 50 years,” he confessed. “I never told anyone,
and now I’m telling you. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, or why this memory has
come to mean so much to me. All I know is that through the years, it’s like I have been
able to look back with more clarity in my mind’s eye, that tall black man’s white shirt
has become whiter, and the blood on it has become redder.”
Walker looked at me as if he felt somehow forgiven, as if the negative stereotypes through
which he had previously viewed people who didn’t look like him had dropped like scales
from his eyes, as if the shame and regret he felt for keeping this beautiful life-changing experience a secret for so long melted away into relief. It was as if Walker’s conscience finally had its way with him, and at 76 years of age, he was brand new.
“I have the feeling that someone was looking out for me,” Walker said. “I don’t know if I
was visited by an angel. All I know is that as the years have passed, in my mind’s eye,
I see a black angel dressed in white, bleeding the same red blood as my own.”
What does it look like for us love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength
and love our neighbor as ourselves? We know it when we do it. We need only open
our hearts and love.
___________________________
Todd Matson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in North Carolina, United States.
His poetry has been published in The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Soul-Lit:
A Journal of Spiritual Poetry, The Clayjar Review, Agape Review, and Mindfull Magazine, and his short stories have been published in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal,
Faith, Hope and Fiction, Agape Review, Literary Yard, Vital Christianity, CafeLit, and Children, Churches & Daddies. He has also written lyrics for songs recorded by several contemporary Christian music artists, including Brent Lamb, Connie Scott, and The Gaither Vocal Band.
July 2024 issue
Challenging, important. Todd Matson relays a story, "something new about something old."