13th Valley (76 page)

The column followed Egan, each man taking mental notes. Pop Randalph at column drag couldn't believe his eyes. In his three Vietnam tours he had never seen such an elaborate and extensive enemy area. Fishing grounds, game snares, cultivated fields, roads, bunkers connected by trenches and commo-wire, tunnels, most everything dug in and underground. “This aint no place fer yall ta be,” he repeated again and again.

Cherry had fallen in behind Egan and now walked slack. His vision tunnelled, he lost all peripheral perception, he focused on Egan. I thought we weren't goina march in and knock on Charlie's back door, his mind chattered. That's what the L-T said.

Hide, Brooks thought. Hide where they won't look. Hide between them, amongst them. Use their bunkers. They build them everywhere to use in emergencies but they don't occupy even a fraction of them. Hide. If they can't see you, they can't hit you.

At point Egan came upon a road as wide as the road beneath the north ridge. Across the road was a bamboo thicket looking like an impenetrable wall. Egan looked up and down the road. No movement. He sniffed. No smell. He listened. No sound. The road showed fresh tracks. Egan motioned for Cherry to cover him and to sit. He shed his ruck, crossed the road to the thicket, crawled into a hole in the wall and disappeared. A minute later he reappeared and came back to Cherry. He radioed Brooks. Alpha rose and followed.

The vegetation was very thick and it was difficult to see. Egan was at point, on hands and knees, crawling inward, penetrating the thicket. Cherry crawled behind Egan. One by one the boonierats scampered from the brush on one side of the road to the hole in the bamboo wall on the other. They crawled after the point. They cussed and bitched silently, afraid to make a sound. Dumb! Fucken Dumb! L-T's gone mad. Green-Man's behind this. No boonierat'd ever choose this way. They cussed themselves for snapping bamboo stalks and making noise. The bamboo made a tunnel about them. There was no place to look, no cautious observation, just follow the tunnel and the heels of the boonierat in front. At point Egan found the brush to be thickening. He crawled, then rested, looking, listening, then crawled again. The vegetation caught on his ruck and he had to strain to break through. The entire company crawled behind him. At drag Pop and Doc Hayes attempted to obliterate the signs of seventy-six pairs of GI jungle boots crossing the road. Then they attempted to seal the bamboo tunnel.

After 200 meters the thicket gave way to brush and elephant grass. Alpha crawled to the edge, circled to form a perimeter and stopped. Everyone was exhausted, filthy, yet purged of the ghosts from the bunkers.

At what time he had fallen into lonely sleepless dreaming Brooks did not know. He was not sure when the valley had socked in beneath the fogmist and darkness, nor when the dreaming stopped and his consciousness controlled his thoughts. He was only aware of a sickening taste in his mouth and the cold drizzle.

For two days he and Lila acted the parts of a soldier and his lover. They did the tourist things, they ate at another luau, they drank heavily, they pawed each other. Yet they spoke little. Nam was constantly on his mind yet he had agreed not to talk about the war. The hardships the war had caused her were on Lila's mind but she dared not talk of that. She never told anyone she was married to a soldier. How could she tell him that? In her stateside life she denied him in a hundred silent ways. It almost seemed the patriotic thing to do. How was she to now be the army wife? They had toured Oahu in the morning then gone sail-surfing then returned to the hotel. Just how or why it had happened he did not know. It confused him and it tormented him to this night. The image of him and Lila washed over him like a cold wave.

“I'm not going to end up like her,” Lila said defensively while removing her bathing suit. He watched longingly and she pretended she didn't see him watching. “I'm not going to let you do that to me.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Rufus said turning his back to her.

“My mother was a smart woman,” Lila said. “She had it all together.” Rufus turned back and looked at her. He was confused and did not know what to do. This is something she's been thinking about for a long time, he told himself. Lila was slightly drunk and she slurred her words, but as Rufus suspected, the thoughts were not new thoughts. “After she do all the stuff, washing, cooking, like that, for the family, she don't have no time for her own thing. The old man come home criticizing, tearing her down. Little things.”

“Are you telling me I do that to you?”

“Old man say he don't like the way she dressed, or the food aint right, aint done enough. Like that. Always tearing her down.”

There was an aggression and hate in Lila's manner Rufus had not seen since their first fights. Rufus tried to soothe and pass over the rough edge. “Hey, come here, now,” he said pulling her to him, toward the bed. They were both now naked.

“That's not happening to me,” Lila said allowing herself to be wrapped in his arms. “You all the time expecting me to be just what you expect me to be. No way.”

“Lila, come on,” he said sitting, rubbing his, hands on her body, pulling her down to the bed. Her body relaxed but her head raced on. “Sweet, sweet Lila,” he said nuzzling her in a practiced way.

“Another thing,” Lila said. “Your old man. I can't believe him. He living back in the '20s or someplace.” Rufus removed his hands from Lila. He was excited yet anxious. “You know what he said to me before I left?” Rufus bent back and hugged Lila. He flicked his tongue across her nipples, alternating from breast to breast. His hand slipped between her thighs and she squirmed. “He said, ‘We are not Blacks. We are not Negroes.' He said, ‘We are of color.' He's crazy. What the hell are you doing?” Lila pushed him away and sat up. She rose from the bed, turned on the radio, took her time finding a station and returned to the bed. During the physical break, perhaps because of a flash radio news item as Lila turned-the dial, Rufus' concentration leaped back to Nam. He saw a scene of six dead enemy soldiers and one wounded American. Firing smashed into the trees. Someone screamed. Rufus wilted, lowered his body gently to the bed as if hiding from possible enemies in the walls.

Lila returned to the bed and, acting bored, as if she had nothing better to do, she stroked-squeezed Rufus' flaccid manhood. It stayed limp. She smothered a laugh. “That the best you can do, Stud?” Lila rolled over and lay facing away from him.

Rufus looked at Lila's ass and then at his penis. His penis drooped across his muscular thigh. He could not feel it. He sat up, rolled to his knees and on hands and knees hovered over her, kissing her body up and down, aware always that his penis was still limp and hanging dead between his legs. Rufus caressed, massaged, titillated Lila and she purred softly, her eyes closed, thinking about someone else, he thought, she lying on her belly now, breathing a little quicker, a little harder, undulating her pelvis slowly with the caress of Rufus' large hand, the stimulation of his thick finger. Rufus lay forward and pressed his chest to Lila's back, supporting his body with his knees and chest, fingering Lila with one hand and squeezing his limp penis with the other. It stiffened slightly. He thought of her warmth and it stiffened more. He moved behind her and his penis touched her and shrank. Fear, embarrassment, overcame him. Come on, he coaxed himself. Come on. Rufus continued caressing Lila. She reached down and adjusted his hand to give herself more pleasure. He pulled harder on himself hoping she would not roll over. “Oh, Rufus,” Lila moaned. “You should do this all the time. You always want to get in me so fast. I feel so hot and juicy. Don't stop.” Rufus inserted his finger deeper, he let himself lie on her and he curled his other arm about her and stroked her forehead. He kissed her back. Lila grabbed his hand from her head and brought it to her mouth. She kissed his fingers. Then she began sucking his middle finger rhythmically, undulating her groin in time. “Come in me,” she cried. “Oh, I'm ready,” she gurgled, she rolled under him. Rufus continued stimulating her vagina with his hand. He closed his eyes and pretended—pretended another man was with them—was behind Lila—was behind him. His penis became rigid. He slid atop Lila, between her thighs, he opened his eyes and wilted. “Fuck me,” she cried. “Fuck me. Give it to me … give … what's the matter with you?”

After they got up she repeated it, nastily, trying to hurt him, repeated it again and again. “What's the matter with you?”

“Look, ah, I just flashed on, ah, something. That's all.”

“Oh good. You get me all jacked up then go thinking about your boys again.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“Here he is, Mr. Fagman. You can have him. Mr. Stud. A one-ton bomb with a half-inch wick. But don't worry. He's not dangerous.”

“Wait a minute, Bitch. All you gotta do is spread them thighs. It's me that's gotta do the work.”

“The WORK!? Is that what you call it?”

It did not get better between them. She was hurt and she wanted to hurt him. They drank more heavily. “You think it easy for me?” she asked the next day. “You know how many nights I spend alone? I'm out singing, working with all these really right dudes, out in really fine company, and I go home alone. I may not always do that, Stud.”

Rufus, the ex-athlete, felt as if his body had betrayed him. The fifth night of R&R they tried again to make love and again he could not keep hard. They sat, not looking at each other, not speaking, each wondering how to get through the time remaining until they would return to their own worlds, each disgusted with the other, hurt by the other, disappointed with the other and with their own selves.

On the sixth and last night of R&R Rufus said to Lila, “I don't know what it is, or why. I thought we could make it. I don't know or maybe I do. I think maybe I really do. You think because I've told you I love you, you've unlocked all the mystery of me and there isn't anything left to find. You think there's no room to look at me anymore and it's time to move on. Lady, I don't think you've even scratched the surface.”

“Maybe,” Lila answered softly, they had ceased shouting that morning, “that's because you won't let me. You've got this coating of words so wrapped around you, you can't even see yourself. How do you expect me to know you?”

On the second night she had said, “Not tonight, Honey.” On the sixth night it became his turn and he did not even try. All my life, he told himself, I've been good at whatever I've attempted. I'm not going to start failing now. He gawked at her. She grinned at him, nastily, crudely, destructively. “I hate you,” Lila said and they passed the night in polite silence.

At noon the next day, Lieutenant Brooks, in uniform, said good-bye to Mrs. Brooks. They spoke formally. Around them other soldiers were politely saying good-bye to their wives also. There was no frantic passion as there had been when that planeload had arrived from Vietnam. There were only a few tears.

“It wasn't supposed to be this way, Rufus,” Lila said softly not looking at him.

“No,” he answered. “It wasn't.”

“Good-bye.” Tears welled then streamed.

“Good-bye,” he said simply, watching her crack. She turned and ran from him, ran from the loading gate, from the terminal, from Hawaii. He turned and walked up the ramp. In his throat he sang the lyrics to the song
Walk Like A Man.
His spine was straight, his lips formed the words,
Walk.…

The Hawaii torment followed him, chased him for months. There was a side of the conflict he never saw, never imagined. Had he seen it he would not have understood it. Lila continued to spend lonely nights and anguished days. When she had left for Hawaii she had wanted something to call her own, a baby, a family, yet the dream had soured. Upon returning she tried to get a steady job. She had to become self-sufficient again and learn not to depend on his allotment. She asked herself a thousand times if she could leave him. She did not want another man. Men became repulsive. Should she divorce him? In March she wrote him a note which said only, “I didn't want to be pregnant and I'm not.” Could she send it? Could she? She did and with it she decided irreversibly to divorce and she set about building her support system which jelled in July. In early August she filed the papers.

In his mind Brooks entered the bedroom of a penthouse bachelor's pad. He crept in slowly, noiselessly, in the best boonierat fashion. She did not know he had returned. It was his first day back. They were giggling on the bed. The lights were low. Lila, her sensuous mocha-colored body naked on the Jody's legs, her mouth on his large penis. The Jody laying back, eyes stoned-closed dreaming. Brooks snapped his right hand toward the bed. The spoon flew from the grenade with a metallic ting. No wait. His mind stopped the scene. The image switched. He and Lila were on the bed making love. He watched her so lovingly lick and suck him. It excited him beyond description. It excited him as he lay on the cold valley floor. With the excitement there nagged a secret thoughtimage which he tried to chase away, which disgusted him. It was a mental picture he watched begin a hundred times since Hawaii yet never allowed it to run on. If Lila could enjoy it so, if she could bring him so much pleasure, if he could love it so, would he be able to bring that pleasure to another man? He wanted to suck a cock. Yes. He wanted to feel the head in his mouth, to lick the ridge. He wanted to suck his own cock but he couldn't. He was in bed with the Jody. The Jody was Egan. Oh, that beautiful cock Egan had plunged into that gypsy bitch in Australia. What would it be like to be eating her pussy and then have Egan step from the shadows and begin to fuck her while he ate her? His mouth on her lips, on her juiciness and on Egan's hot shaft simultaneously. He could feel her back off. It was Lila. Egan had been fucking his wife. Egan was his Jody. Lila kissed Rufus passionately. She stuck her tongue deeply into his mouth, licked her own juices from his chin. Then Egan began rubbing his giant cock against her face. She turned and licked it. She turned back and kissed Rufus deeply pulling him to Egan. Egan's erectness was between them, between their lips as they kissed and licked. Then the cock slid into his mouth. Lila held Rufus' face to it. Egan pumped back and forth. Brooks squirmed on the jungle floor. Stop. Not that. He pushed Egan out of the picture and brought Lila's head down to his groin. Suck me. That's how it should be. His mind shot spiralling into a void. He felt the darkness, the emptiness expanding. He was losing everything. The emptiness grew forcing his entire life away. Everything became a black void, expanding, expanding like a giant bubble of nothingness, like a gigantic balloon with only a speck of dust at center. Expanding—a helium-filled balloon—ever expanding, its walls becoming fainter, more fragile. Emptiness expanding, concentrating tension and pressure at the walls, the outer edge of the void. Pressure more severe than those at the ocean's greatest depths, pressure within and without. The darkness of his closed lids expanding beyond his body, beyond his mind, and the tension and static balanced forces escalating, threatening to collapse, threatening a tremendous implosion destined to destroy the center where his eyes are shut.