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Hap and Leonard

Hap and Leonard

“If you don’t want him, you can’t have me, it’s a package deal”

Hap and Leonard, originally aired in 2016 on Sundance TV, as a thriller, drama and crime series and revolves around the lives of the two men mentioned in title, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.  The first time I watched this show several months ago, the violence, the dangerous and treasonous search for stolen bank money to the sum of over one-million dollars takes center stage in the mess that is Hap Collins and Leonard Pines lives.

 The show opens to two men speeding away from an assembly of police cars chasing them down an empty road. The license plate on the car reads “Texas” and the two men, both masked, are yelling at each other as loose dollar bills fly out the window. The man in the back seat has a stomach injury, which can be assumed to be a gunshot wound, while the other tells him to hang on. They soon see an opening and drive into a wooded area but lose sight of the road and drive straight into a river, assumingly drowning the robber in the back seat.

 The next scene, for the first time, we watch as Hap and Leonard are slaving in a rose field under the hot sun of Texas in the 1980’s. The wages are hardly enough to pay the bills, which are piling up for the conscientious objector and the grizzled Vietnam War veteran.  

 Over the journey of getting to know and love the duo, we start off knowing very little about the two besides the fact that they seem to be good friends and the glaring obvious, in one of the most racist times in the American south, Hap is white, and Leonard is not.  

 Back at Haps house, a woman is seen driving into the house and they recognize her as Trudy.  She is hap’s ex-wife, Leonard gives up the first indication of the type of women Trudy is. “oh boy, here comes trouble”.

 After seducing Hap that night, we get a look around Hap’s home and overdue bills are piling up on table while a bird cage with a toy bird is perched inside. When the two wake up Trudy gives Hap an offer to help her and a group of anarchists to find lost money that had been stolen by the two men at the opening of the show.

 The next day Hap informs Leonard of the opportunity and Leonard reluctantly agrees. Later Hap tells Trudy they agree to help. Trudy, upset, tells Hap that she offered him the chance, not both of them and Hap responds, “if you don’t want him, you can’t have me, it’s a package deal”.

 In that moment a cop car pulls up with Leonard’s uncle, Chester Pine in that back seat telling the three that he had been picked up after causing a scene in a store and that he needed a ride home.

 In the truck ride home, for the first time, the viewer can see the distain Chester has for his nephew. When Leonard tells his uncle, he shouldn’t act the way he did Chester responds by tell him “you save that smart mouth for your boyfriend. I used to wipe your black ass boy”, and then “get your faggot hands off me” after Leonard tries to help him with his jacket.

 After they get back to Chester’s house Hap keeps Chester in the truck after Leonard exits and tells him “Listen to me Mr. Pine, your nephew is my friend. Now I don’t like dick any more than you do, but he does, but that his business. He don’t need you riding him on it. So, you do that in front of me again, I’m gonna take that cane, shove it up your ass, and break it clean off. Understood?”. Proving Hap is willing to stick up for his lifelong friend.

 Even while Chester is Leonard’s true family, he still doesn’t respect the fact that Leonard is gay and that because he is, there is something wrong with him, almost referring to the idea that him being gay is a sickness and can be transferred through touch. Hap, while not being related see’s Leonard as more family than his own Uncle does even though they could not be more different.

 Later in the episode, Trudy brings the two men to the hideout where the rest of the group is waiting for them, whereupon they meet Chub at the gate. Chub is an extremely overweight white man who upon his first conversation comes across as ignorant and naive. Chub introduces himself and immediately faces Leonard and says “Didn’t know Trudy had any African American friends’ ‘She don’t’ ‘I’m an admirer of Martin Luther King’ ‘Never met him, Ghandi either”

 One of the more direct themes comes when Howard, Trudy’s ex-husband and the group are sitting at the table after dinner discussing why they have to find the money and Howard states “We’ve become a nation that values nothing, except greed, consumption, turning our backs on those who need us most”. This a statement full of irony as even Howard doesn’t understand that he is part of that nation and the only two in the show who seemingly aren’t in it for themselves are Hap and Leonard.

 The next day Leonard, Hap, Chub and Paco, another anarchist who associates with the man Trudy is married to go out and look for the stolen money. The four separate and Chub ends up with Leonard. Chub being the person he is quizzically says to Leonard, “So, Trudy said you’re a gay, what’s that like? You don’t act like any homosexuals that I know of. I’m just saying it’s rare to meet someone who’s so comfortable in their own skin. I mean you’re, like, the first gay black man I’ve ever met” This shows that Leonard is not what seems to be a typical gay black man.

Howard and his group of anarchists soon find what they are looking for. With the help of Hap, after locating the iron bridge they go on to double cross the friends and tie them up. They explain that in order for them to make any real difference in the world they have to first change the plans, plans that now include becoming drug dealers so they can make enough money to make a difference. Hap explains to Trudy that by doing this she is going against everything she stands for and if they sell drugs, it won’t end up in the nose of the rich but rather in the hands of the poor and young.

 The group soon becomes betrayed by Paco, when they meet the drug dealers who go by Soldier and Angel. A gun fight ensues where everyone is killed but Hap and Leonard. After being shot numerous times Leonard is hospitalized for over three months while Hap looks for the remaining money that Trudy hid. Hap finds it in Leonard’s dog’s food and gives some to Leonard but also gives the majority of it to the charity that Trudy was going to help.

 When Chester dies, Hap and Leonard attend the funeral where we see a flash back to how the two met and see that they met after their fathers were killed in a car accident after Haps father stopped to help Leonard’s father change a tire on a rainy night. So their lives were tied together by a random tragic accident.

 After the flashback, at the funeral, Leonard says just one sentence that sums up their entire relationship. “You’re the only family I got now, Hap.”  Thus proving that even after everything Hap put him through, even with all the major differences between them, Leonard still sees Hap as family.

 Hap and Leonard are two men, polar opposites, who have no business even knowing each other. Through pure chance they became best friends and despite not sharing blood, they still see each other as family. Sometimes people become friends even though the world thinks they shouldn’t be. Through sexuality, race and even love, Hap and Leonard’s relationship transcend the world around them.    

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Life in Afghanistan 

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Memoir

The flight was long. Fifteen hours. I was asleep for most it. Two layovers. First in Maine and the second at some air field in Germany. I banged my shin against the thing lying at my feet. “Alright boys, let’s move. You got time to stretch your legs and use the bathroom. Leave those on the plane, nobody is going to take those here.” I remember the irony; toe nail clippers were banned on flight, but a fully automatic SAW M249 capable of a cyclic rate of fire of over eight-hundred rounds per minute? Nah, you’re good. We were there only to refuel and then continue our journey. A couple guys got caught buying German beers. Here I would have been old enough to drink, but rules are rules.

           The next flight was short. Germany to Kazakhstan. You ever hear of Kazakhstan? No? Me neither. When you travel half way across the world in a day, the body’s internal clock becomes broken. Day becomes night and night becomes day. For 10 days breakfast became dinner and dinner became breakfast and everyone is asleep for lunch. The only people on that base were those starting their deployment, those ending it and a group of “soldiers” who wore a different uniform, got to drink two beers a day and had ice cream for dinner. Jealousy was hardly the correct word. The ten days came and went like a flash and before we know it we’re on C17 ready for our last flight in.

           When we landed it became immediately apparent we were somewhere else. This was it. Afghanistan. The place where our country had been fighting its war on terror for more than a decade. The air was thick. The smell filled my nose and I got my first whiff of this strange new land. Little cars and scooters rushed by with a purpose. A small bus was waiting for us nearby that we all crammed into like a pack of sardines that brought us to our tent. Kandahar Air Force base was huge. Pick a NATO force and they were there; eating and working out. I saw no fighting here. It was nice. Almost peaceful. Every so often we’d see an Afghani, here and there they walked around about their business doing odd jobs for the base. “Enjoy the showers, you won’t see them for a while”.

Three days and we were out. Our transport this time was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. About two hours in the back of a Chinook to the base our Battalion was now in control of. Less than a day later we yet again were ready to move. Our company was on a small hill about forty-five minutes away. Our platoon packed up into a convoy of MRAPS and we were on our way. For the first time in my entire life I grasped the entirety of our situation sitting in the back of that MRAP. They warned us that at this moment, it got real.  

Any minute. Any second. Poof. That’s it.

           The drive was both terrifying and eye opening. In order to get from point A to point B almost every patrol taken had to be on Highway One, one of the only major roads in Afghanistan. A trip we would soon be making up to two to three times a day. The trip was fascinating, five-person cars carried ten, sheep and goats lined the sides of the roads. You know what crop grows in southern Afghanistan? Poppy. Miles upon miles upon miles of poppy. Afghanistan is the world’s leader in the exportation of black tar heroin. If the people had any care for wealth most of the farmers would have accrued millions of dollars. Instead, in the south they lived in mud huts without running water. Amazingly, heroin there is totally legal, along with marijuana.    

           Our base was on the top of a fairly large hill. “Ah great”. The hill had two different flat ranges on the front and the rear side was almost a sheer cliff.  The lower area was ours while the second, higher area belonged to the group of soldiers from the Afghan National Army. They looked a lot like us. Most of them were younger, only doing this for the money. This was their home. After a year they couldn’t return home like us, away from the killing and the drugs and the disease. They died more often than we did. Lacking the training and the supplies and weaponry. Oh, how they are more like us then we care to admit. We would often catch them high off their asses lounging around smoking and sleeping.

           My toes were frozen, numb from the cold. Guard that first morning was horrible.  Late February even in part of the hottest place on the planet is still cold at two a.m. The time dragged on. Nine more months. Four hours alone in the dark and cold where you’re told that anyone could want to kill you is the greatest mindset for a nineteen-year-old. Too bad I go back now and tell myself, yes, even the Taliban like to sleep at night when it’s thirty degrees.

           I was woken up not four hours later. “You got guard”. “But Sarge” “That’s what happens, now go”.  

At least it was light, and warmer. Chris was already down at the gate waiting. One of the marksmen in our squad. Big fellow, only a few years older but I outranked him. As if Private first class to Private means anything. We were both the two lowest ranked members on our squad. This common ground meant we would soon become best friends over the coming months. Not two hours in and we get the radio call, we’re leaving. A squad in our platoon had taken over a little base a few miles away to aid the Afghani police.

It was small. The tent was even smaller. Twenty-four soldiers in thirty by twenty space. Four small guard stations lined the corners of the base. The “bathrooms” were placed at the far side, as far away from us as possible, still probably only about fifty feet.

The police station was directly across the road, where two of the guard towers had in their field of view. Manned by about ten men they weren’t too different from the soldiers. Mostly young, some facial hair, with un-matching uniforms. They liked to joke. Make fun of some of us, while we laughed in agreement. It was easy to pick out certain things about people you had never seen before. Sexuality is different there. They had what they called a “chai-boy”. Something I won’t get into here, but if you ever get the chance, look it up.

           My first patrol real patrol was from this tiny little base here in southern Afghanistan. The police had warned us that the area was littered with old soviet mines and new IED’s, or Improvised Explosive Device. The idea is the same as a mine. You step on the plate buried an inch or two underground, pressure activates the fuse denotating anywhere from two to two-hundred pounds of explosives.

Every patrol we took we had a mine sweeper. Ours was ‘Lobos’. To this day that man had the biggest cojones of any one I had ever met. Every step he took, we took. Every foot print followed. If you had come after the thirty of us you would have thought there was one-person walking.

Every single beep we stopped.

Every bump in the ground we marked.

No risks.

No one gets hurt.

This was one of the first times I had ever seen a live mine. There it was, laying in the middle of the road like rock. Its shape was undeniable. Green with small crusted brown dirt lining ridges on the outside. The police didn’t know how long it had been there or who placed it. I found it incredible that no one managed to detonate it.

We finally got to see the people of this country. All but the women. The men were dressed in clothes with as much beard as they could grow. Children played in the streets almost unaware of the danger surrounding them. The kids would run up to us and try to get us to give them things while our leaders talked to the elders. Each village the same. Families out and about just trying to keep their families heathy and happy. Adult women were forbidden from seeing men so they were forced to hide in some tucked away room unless we brought women with us.

A week passed, second squad was tasked with another patrol. This time we stayed back and a few from our squad pulled over watch as well as guard duty.

First half hour, nothing. That’s when we heard it. Gunshots. First ‘tic’.

These people may be living in extreme poverty but they know warfare. The Taliban have been fighting for centuries. The people fought the British and won. The mujahedeen fought the Russians and won (with America’s help). They know how to fight. Second squad did as they should. Returned fire and advanced. But the advance led them to a choke point. The smoke shot up into the air like a cannon. The blast was deafening even from three meters away. Something was wrong. Nothing does that. Except, except an explosive. Smith was down.

           It’s times like this when you understand that you’re alone. Alone in a country where people want to kill you and they will die trying.

Smith later recovered. As any man like him would.

           Three weeks passed and we left. A few days later we received word the police who had helped us were dead. A typical practice for them.

           A month passed. And another. And another. The daily firefights continued but everyone stayed healthy and completely intact, for the time.  Mid May rolls around and we are informed that all activity increases during the summer. “Increases, yeah, from what? Being shot at every day?” But it did.  Daily soldiers died. Step on a mine here, a soldier takes a bullet there. We had six men shot. All but one lived. John. He was only 22 back then. A wife and a whole life ahead of him all gone due to a bullet to his chest.  Just prior our squad leader Eric, stepped on a ten-pound explosive, taking both his legs away from him.

           Four of us helped carry the stretcher to the medivac Chopper.

           The way to win the hearts and minds of a people who don’t necessarily want you there is to help them. Bring them water, food, clothes, build the kids a soccer field. You go and talk to the village elders to see what we can do for them while they tell you about Taliban activity. These moments in time when there is no shooting, no blood, no dying, this is when you understand these people enjoy their lives and all they want is peace.

Peace from the fighting.

Peace from the Taliban. and

And most importantly peace from us.

A group a people who live in complete poverty, in mud huts with no running water and all they wanted was peace. Peaceful farmers. Farming poppy.