MINI-STORIES FOR THE YOUNG AND NOT SO YOUNG

3. Remembering Benny Kavlik
Steven Hiller and Anna M. Furdyna

It was Benny Kavlik's wake. By rights it should not have happened so early. By rights he should have lived, like most of his friends, for another quarter century. But then you should consider the totality of Benny Kavlik's life.

Right there, in the cut-rate funeral home you could see that not all had been well with Benny Kavlik. His mother and his sister were there (his old man was long gone) and the friends you could barely count on your fingers--friends who would try to give Benny a helping hand on some occasions, and gave up on him on others, were there to see him, looking serious, almost stern in the casket. They saw him like that and all, without exception, felt grief for him, as one grieves for the birds of the air that live at the mercy of the Providence above.

Benny was born in the late forties. His mother and step-father were both drug addicts and turned him out of the house at age sixteen, just in time for the Viet-Nam War. After sleeping in neighborhood attics and garages , he got himself inducted into the Army. He hung a hand-carved cross made by himself on his neck (Benny was good with his hands) and, buying into the idea that he'd be fighting for freedom, and freedom is worth dying for, he started out, to the consternation of all who stayed behind and liked Benny, for Benny was a very likeable sort.

In Viet Nam he stayed much longer than he should have, having no friends in high places. He came back, not suspecting he had been exposed to Agent Orange, and not understanding his untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He tried to help himself by marrying a buxom girl with long brown hair and merry brown eyes. She left him after eighteen months. Then his Agent Orange syndrome began to assert itself and his traumatic experiences drove him to drink. He took odd jobs where his manual dexterity paid off, but roughly one third of his time was spent in VA hospitals. He was still likeable and gentlemanly and people invited him for the holidays. He was never disorderly when drunk. He did not attempt to find a female companion. His mother took him in for a while but it did not last long. Several of his friends encouraged him to do more wood-carving but his heart somehow wasn't in it. He would drop out of the picture, going back to the VA hospital for increasing lengths of time, and return wizened, paunchy and pale.

His last job, we heard, was working at a restaurant with bar service. One day he didn't come to work. His mother found him lifeless on the floor of his tiny apartment. Apparently it was a stroke.

We realized how much he meant to us all when he was gone. He was our own kind, yet truly a helpless victim of the ravage that is war.

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