The Face Collector

by Dr. Mitch Abblett

The therapist at my Vietnam veterans’ therapy group said if I were really an “animal” like I used to say, then I wouldn't have carried so much pain around for the past thirty years. “Animals” don't have a conscience. They don't hurt at the recollection of past wrongs. I told myself at the time -- ten years ago -- that she never stepped foot inside Vietnam, so she didn’t know what she was talking about. All her psycho-babble would never stop that girl's face from rising up from the murderous muck of my nightmares. Her soft, empathic shrink's voice could never sponge away that look from my mind.

A silent face with large, wet unblinking eyes on the verge of tears, but watching me. The crying on hold. She's waiting. She's alone, standing on the edge of a rice paddy. Her clothes are tattered and the wind creates whipped chaos with her hair. She stands there staring at me with dewy eyes. For years, I called them “ “girl-gook eyes.” Now, they look different even though I don't see her much anymore in my dreams. Things changed after I became a face collector.

I drifted from job to job and marriage to marriage after my tour was up in Vietnam. After I was “recycled” back into society. Like a crushed can of soda, I was deposited back home in hopes I might still be of some use. But just like an empty can, once you've been crushed, obliterated -- you can no longer do what you were originally intended for. You're just a piece of trash to be kicked around, for people to cut themselves on. You're in for a good long rusting.

And then I happened upon a decent camera at a flea market. I grabbed it up and started snapping shots in my free time. And since I couldn't hold a job, and kept alienating my family and friends with all my boozing and bar fighting, I had quite a bit of time to myself. My therapist, and the other guys from my group prodded me on, told me I had an “eye” for photography. I laughed them off in public, but kept it up in private. Got myself a better camera. Took pictures like a madman.

I found myself drawn to taking face shots of people. Catching them at the split second their emotions drew them down a new path. The freshness of the moment fluttering across their expressions like breeze across a bed of flowers. These are the faces I collect. Moments I try to render through the contours of shadow, light and hue. And my restlessness keeps me on the move, always searching for more. Never tiring of it, because I'm always learning from these faces. I'm an emotional archeologist, unearthing peoples' pasts and giving evidence of their pain, sorrow, jubilation and joy in the present. In the angle of their lips, position of their bodies, the way their eyes hold or retreat from the light.

And now I get paid for these pictures. Not a lot, but enough to travel the world to collect faces. And the people I meet have their likenesses displayed in magazines across the world. A couple even landed on the cover of National Geographic. Haunting shots of children's eyes. Their innocence lost in the wake of war, famine or disease. Faces finding their own soundless, motionless language. Pain captured and imprisoned behind the hard line of their lips.

I'm also a teacher of sorts. When I'm in the States for any length of time, I'm usually busy traveling around the country speaking to auditoriums full of junior high and high school kids. Sometimes, I even speak in places of higher learning. Places where you'd think my basic message would be well-engrained in students by that point.

It’s not.

They bill me as a warrior. A “hero” who has come to talk to kids about how service and sacrifice for God and country has shaped me into the man I am today. And the kids show up excited over the possibility of hearing stories of real-life combat. Like something daring and dangerous they have come to expect after a lifetime of gorging on a Hollywood diet.

Kids are usually excited to see me. They have shining, smile-filled looks as they watch me from their seats. Like I’m an astronaut or a Super-Bowl-winning quarterback. It helps that I always show up in my old Marine dress uniform. I’ve had to log a lot of miles jogging to fit into it, but it seems to add something to my message. I walk up to the podium with my white cap tucked neatly under my left arm. My pressed dark blue gabardine coat with its gleaming gold buttons commanding their attention. My ribbons, sergeant's stripes and medals soliciting their admiration. Except for the graying hair, it’s like I stepped off the recruitment poster.

It's the same uniform I wore just prior to hopping the transport to Vietnam. Only now, it feels different, heavier. More than medals, it has thousands of echoes pinned to it. Though it’s spotless and crisp, there are stains and tattering in the material. In the process of its donning before one of my talks to kids, it serves as my reminder. The dark coat as my own portable marble war memorial, with dozens of dead names invisibly etched there.

And today is no different from any of the hundreds of talks I’ve given. I’m standing at a podium on a high school stage. I’m jet-lagged from my flight in from Hong Kong, so I’m a bit foggy on the details. I know I’m in Washington, outside Seattle. I couldn’t tell you the specific name of the place. The school’s mascot is the Grizzly bear. And I only know this because I’m staring up at a huge banner emblazoned with one of these clawed beasts, on the back wall of the auditorium.

I’m betting these kids are taught just like I was at their age. That winning is crucial and losing is unacceptable. That with enough determined effort, victory will be at hand. Somehow these values didn’t carry the day in Vietnam. But I don’t get into these issues during my talks, not even if I’m asked. The teachers sometimes try to draw me into political debates about the war. That’s not my point. “Others have much more to say about the big, political picture regarding Vietnam,” I say to them. “It's impossible to focus on the forest when you spent your time in Vietnam lost in among the trees.”

I've seen thousands of kid faces during my talks. The mass of their eyes and lips is too much for me to capture. I have a pre-talk ritual where I pick out one or two faces to focus on. To serve as representatives for the rest. Someone to judge my progress by. A young Asian girl seizes my attention. Pretty, with long, dark hair. She's in the second row. A faint, nervous smile quickly emerges and retreats across her face in mouse-like fashion as my gaze meets hers.

I close my eyes for a moment and flash to her face. The face I conjured that should be forty years old by now. But it’s not. It’s young, a baby-san’s face, about to be streaked with crying. For years I would tell myself that the slanting of her gook-eyes made it harder for the tears to break loose and fall. That it was her fault, her race’s fault, she couldn’t get on with the crying. That, while I may have killed her, I had nothing to do with anything else the war had done to her or her family. I wasn't to blame for the sorrow she always shoves at me in my dreams.

I open my eyes and face the students. “My name is John. I'm 55 years old, and I am a veteran of the Vietnam War.”

The kids don't care what my name is, how old I am, or that I was in Vietnam. They see my uniform and the medals, and they follow the word “war” with applause. They offer it up to me freely. And it's this part that is always the hardest. Having to stand and listen to them cheering for someone about whom they know nothing real. I'm merely a clothes hanger on which they drape their stereotyped dreams and ideals. And that's why I’m here. To teach them to really see people. That just as easily as they assumed to know and love me with their applause, they can come to hate and destroy others. They have to learn to spend the time looking beneath the surface. Collecting details and hints of others’ depth of being. Like how I do so by collecting faces.

“I was awarded a Purple Heart and a Congressional Medal of Honor for my actions on one particular day during my tour of duty in Vietnam. May 25th, 1969.” I’m pointing to the medals on my chest. The kids settle into a respectful calm. They are waiting for the story.

“I was 20 years old, and a marine sergeant. I had been in Vietnam for 8 months, and saw enough violence and death to last the rest of my life.” I tell them about seeing buddies killed and mutilated by the enemy. Vietnamese villagers whose skin had been charred and peeled away by napalm. How I had trained my rifle on a Viet-Cong soldier running across a field in the distance, lead him a bit with my aim, fired and watched him crumple forward in a heap as if tackled from behind by some invisible lineman during a football game. I tell them about the thunderous noise of helicopters and artillery. The silence of a terrified night of waiting for the enemy's arrival. The unearthly smells. The heat, the damp, the blisters, the crying during unrelenting downpours so no one noticed.

“That was the typical Vietnam,” I say to my quiet, staring audience. “The typical war experience. Nothing really unique about it.”

It’s at this point that the kids are always silent. They are receptive because I've stepped outside the pep rally mentality that usually kicks off my presentations. They’re waiting for me to clean things up. To pull them up from the raw description of war I’ve just delivered. To lift them up with a story of bravery and happy endings. Something appropriately followed by a commercial for sugary breakfast cereal.

“I want to tell you about what happened on the day I earned these medals,” I say, the spotlight they have trained on me, temporarily blinding me from my focus on the young Asian student's face. “But first, I want to show some of my work. I'm a photographer now, and I want to share some of my pictures with you before I continue the story.”

I cue the teacher who is manning the slide projector, and he flashes the first of my snapshots on the large screen over my head. It's one of my favorites. A three-year-old boy from Colombia. He’s holding a piece of bread to his lips with pudgy, mud-caked fingers. Recent teary riverbeds are clearly visible, streaked through the dirt on his cheeks. “This is my collection. The faces I've found from all over the world.” I nod toward the light of the projector, and the parade of pictures begins. A new face every few seconds. And, as is my habit, I just stand and watch my audience as they scan these foreign faces. I do not give any description. No instructions for the viewing. The clicking of the slide projector breaks the silence, which continues for several minutes until the slides end and the screen is left awash in white light.

“What do you make of these? All these faces?” I ask. “Anyone have a comment?” This talk is like most. No hands. No comments. The kids don’t know what I’m looking for. They don’t see the point. “It's alright,” I say. “I’ll come back to these in a moment.”

I find the Asian student's face, watching me intently, ignoring the whispering of the restless friend sitting next to her, and I continue. “May 25th, 1969.” I tell them I was driving a large truck that day, heavily loaded with artillery munitions. My unit’s 2nd Lieutenant was riding shotgun. We were under orders to deliver our load to a forward artillery emplacement for an attack scheduled that evening. Intelligence had forecast a significant surge of North Vietnamese army activity in our area, so a swift response was necessary in order to prevent the decimation of our hard-won positions. “Get these munitions there on time, or else many of our boys are going to die,” the Major had said.

I hesitate for a moment. I hold onto the Asian student's eyes. Closing mine, I focus on that familiar, young, war-swept girl’s face.

“For you,” I whisper to myself, and I watch her tears break free. Falling forward like two miniature translucent boulders.

I look out at my audience and point to my Purple Heart pinned to my uniform. “We came under heavy sniper fire as we neared our destination. I got this for the shrapnel I took in my arm, leg and abdomen.” I point out the locations of my old wounds and then I point to the Medal of Honor. “I got this because I kept the truck moving despite the barrage of enemy fire. I almost passed out a couple of times, but I kept my foot on the gas, and we got there. The artillery attack commenced as scheduled.”

A few kids start clapping. “Way to go,” one of them calls from the back. Applause ripples across the auditorium, but weaker, less intense than upon my introduction. To some of these kids, I’d gone all the way. Scored one for the team. And maybe, as I have told myself thousands of times since that day, I did save some lives.

I cue the projector once again, and the face of the young Colombian boy reemerges. “Can someone tell me about this picture? What do you see here?”

Several seconds of book bag-shuffling and a few dry, bored coughs. “The kid's been starving. He’s probably from one of those poor countries,” some voice calls out.

“You're right,” I say. “But what you don’t see, unless you really look, is how he’s been crying because both of his parents are dead. Murdered by a local drug lord. He ate the piece of bread I gave him, but he never stopped crying while he ate it.”
“ What does this have to do with Vietnam?” another voice calls out after a moment’s pause. A few kids laugh. I nod silently, taking my cue.

“I need to tell you the beginning of the story. About that day in the truck.” I tell them how my Lieutenant and I were speeding down the narrow dirt road with our load of artillery shells. How we came up quickly on a bend in the road. Too quick to do much about the young girl riding her bicycle along the right-hand shoulder. Nowhere for the truck to go. No time to swerve. I saw a white flash -- her shirt -- and heard the impact with the right front of the truck. I caught only a glimpse of her in the rear-view mirror. Just enough to see her bloodied body, limbs twisting at unnatural angles, as she and her bent bike were hurled by the force of contact toward the ditch. No scream. No words. Just the dull thud. Like we’d merely hit a bump in the road. Although all that blood arcing up into the air was all I needed to see to know she was going to die.

“I told the Lieutenant I was going to stop the truck. Go back and see,” I say to the kids. “But the Lieutenant told me to keep it moving. ‘Didi mau,’ I remember him yelling at me. Take off. Scram.”

I remind my audience that I was under orders. There was the risk of G.I.’s killed if we didn’t make our delivery on time. Our soldiers. Real casualties.

“Just a gook kid, anyway, the Lieutenant said to me after her bloodied image had disappeared. And we knew it was a young girl because Vietnamese girls wore white. Older, marriage-age women wore dark colors. I told myself she was probably Charlie -- the enemy -- anyway. Probably one of those kids who'd smile while walking up to you holding a live grenade behind their backs.”

I tell them I didn’t really want to stop the truck. Even though death was not new to me, I didn’t want to see her body.
“ And so, I never saw her face,” I say to these kids. “And then what cinched it for me was that I got medals for getting the truck there on time. When the General pinned them on me, no one knew that I wasn’t speeding toward my fellow marines in need of ammunition for the battle, but away from the murder I’d committed.”

The high school kids are staring at me with empty faces. The ticker-tape parade looks of jubilant adoration are gone. They are finally seeing past my uniform. Into pieces of the real me. Or at least the real man I was.

I tell them that for years after that day in 1969, I convinced myself the young girl wasn’t really a human being. “Just a gook,” like the Lieutenant had said. I told myself she was not a life worth caring about. Like running over a cat or dog, someone would come along sooner or later and lift her up off the road and discard her. Clean things up for me. “So for years, I let alcohol, drugs, sex, and back alley brawling keep things clean.”

“But your mind keeps a record. It reminds you of what’s real. And that girl was real, and I had to go back and find her. But since I never saw her face. Never knew her name, I've had to find her face wherever I can. And so I find her in pictures like these. So now, I’m a face collector. And in these faces, I discover bits and pieces of the people beneath.”

The slide projector advances. With each slide, I tell them a snippet about the person I met. The girl in Kenya who carries water from the river to her village where her grandmother is dying; the grandmother who always sang to her about their ancestors. The boy from China whose mother died the week before of SARS and now is crying because he can’t understand how such a strong woman could die so quickly. The old man from Florida who suffers from Alzheimer’s and, just before snapping the shot, told me, in a rare moment of clarity, that he missed the smell of his long-deceased wife’s hair.

To my surprise, the young Asian student I've been using as my focal point, the fulcrum for my talk, raises her hand. “I don’t understand why you’ve blamed yourself all these years for that girl's death. I mean, it was an accident. You didn't intend to hit her, and you couldn't have prevented it.”

I smile at her, and at the face that has been crying in my mind for decades. “You’re right, but I could have prevented myself from killing her memory all these years. Covering it up and burying myself, my soul, with her in that unmarked grave somewhere in Vietnam.”

I point up to the huge face hovering above us on the screen.

“These are faces worth collecting. They are my human bookmarks. They help me remember that we can only kill and discard someone once we have convinced ourselves they are not worthy of our caring.”

“Find a way to see what's real, deeply human, about everyone around you -- find these things and collect them. We need to hold onto these details so we don't lose contact with one another.”

And with the audience's applause, I close my eyes, and feel the warmth of the spotlight on my sweaty face. The baby-san is wiping at her tears as she watches me. She bows her head slightly, closes her eyes as the wind dies around her.

Copyright © 2004 Mitch Abblett