Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005200250
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT I. ALOTTA
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"The Second War," "a novel of the Vietnam War," as the dust jacket tells us, appears to be a thinly veiled autobiography of a Marine fighter pilot who was shot down on his 219th mission.
Horace "Truck" Hardy was a preacher's son from North Carolina when he entered the Marines. A few shots of Jack Daniels before a flight gave him the edge he needed. Then, on that fateful mission, he finds himself alone and vulnerable in the North Vietnamese jungle. Air Rescue tells him they have a lock on his position, but he can't be sure. His radio, part of his survival gear, has dead batteries.
For four months he struggles through the bush, killing Viet Cong along the way to get a handful of rice or the super "brown powder" that gives him the strength to continue, and experiencing bizarre encounters. When he finally gets back, he finds that no one looked for him.
"I wasn't missing," he tells them, "I knew where I was."
His commanding officer has some problems with Truck. When the young flyer goes through his physical, the doctors determine that he is in better shape than one would expect after all those months of exposure. Besides, he has a recent case of venereal disease.
When Truck returns to the United States, he finds a different world, a world where his service in Vietnam doesn't mean anything. He buys land - "The Haunted Place" - builds a house and marries a girl he knew before the war. Truck doesn't work, except when he needs cash. Instead he drives around the county in his beloved '55 Chevy, "James Louis," and delivers marijuana for a local entrepreneur.
After his wife leaves him - and one wonders why - Truck sits on his porch in his underwear or drives through the meadows of his property. He is a lost soul. He regains himself, perhaps, when he picks up a hitchhiker, another Vietnam vet.
The vet is insane, insane with jealousy over his wife's infidelity. Brandishing a pistol, he orders Truck to drive him to Philadelphia. The story that he tells Truck is a duplicate of Truck's own experiences - and that lifts the shroud.
"The Second War" is confession without penance. Hendricks seems to have used the novel form to clear his mind and his soul of the Vietnam War, but he leaves the reader wasted - there was no absolution.
by CNB