Fallen Angels (29 page)

President Johnson was saying that the United States was willing to stop its bombing if the North Vietnamese were ready to begin serious talks.

We looked for word of our own guys, of the squad, but it was as if we weren’t even there. The papers mentioned something about the Third NVA, a crack Cong regiment, being pushed out of the Nui Loc Son basin, but it was only that, a mention.

A sergeant I got to play chess with told me that the personnel sergeant would look up friends for you if you gave him a few dollars. I found him and gave him ten bucks to look up Judy Duncan. The guy, a tall red-faced spec four with freckles and a shock of red hair, told me he would look her up and that I could leave my name and come by later.

“You a relative, or just a friend?”

“Just a friend,” I said. “But I’m shipping out for the States and…”

He had already turned back to his papers, so I left.

Peewee stayed in his bed for a day and a half. He said he didn’t want anything to happen to the wound.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said, “if I got to put some Scotch tape on this sucker.”

Waiting for word. Monaco was far away now, and so was Johnson. They were already names in my past. I would think of them, worry about them, but for the moment I was just hoping for the Freedom Bird to take me back to the World.

Word came. Me and Peewee had orders to be on the same plane back, but my orders were on a different set of papers than Peewee’s. We read them together. I was on crutches, but the leg was feeling stronger. I felt a sharp pain every now and then. I thought it might have been shrapnel, but I wouldn’t complain. Not now, not until I was back in the World again.

We were lined up, waiting to get on the plane. The line wasn’t that rigid. Half the guys were on crutches or in some kind of bandages. We all talked nervously, not looking at the stack of silver caskets that were being loaded on. They would be going back to the World with us. Me and Peewee kidded a guy from the 159th Transportation Battalion who had lost part of his left hand about how he should have taken one of his boats home when he had the chance.

“Perry?”

The red-haired clerk had a clipboard. It was the guy I had asked about Judy Duncan. The name tag read “Witt.” I tensed as he came near me. The stream flashed in my mind. The sound of the crickets in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“Your friend didn’t make it,” he said.

“Didn’t make it?” I looked at him. “I’m talking about a woman. Her name is Duncan.”

“Yeah, Judy Duncan,” he said. “She got transferred to a field hospital and it got hit. Sorry.”

In the distance there were helicopters headed toward the mountains. Headed toward the hell of an LZ. I turned away.

A plane landed. GIs came tumbling through the doors and out into the hot Vietnamese sun. They lined up and started marching toward us from the other side of the field. A major near us jumped into a jeep and went across the field to meet them. They stopped while the major talked to the officer leading them.

The major returned and sat in his jeep.

Judy Duncan. I forgot what part of Texas she was from. I hadn’t known her, not really. I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry that Texas was so far away and that nobody there would know about her, how this part of her life had been, what she had seen, or how she had felt at the end. They would get a telegram, and a body, but they wouldn’t know.

The caskets were almost completely loaded into the tail end of the C-47. They were there together, but they had died alone. Maybe some of them had been friends. I turned away.

They finished loading the caskets, and the major drove his jeep around the front of the plane and signaled the officer with the new guys.

They marched them by us to the orientation barracks. They were supposed to be looking straight ahead, but they were looking at us. We tried to straighten up the best we could. It wasn’t the wounds that kept us bent, that tugged at our shoulders, so much as it was the fatigue. We were tired of this war.

We got to Osaka and the C-47 picked up some more caskets. The GIs were spread on other planes and me and Peewee talked a lieutenant into putting us both on a flight to Fort Ord, in California. I made him promise he’d take some leave with me in New York. Peewee said he’d go, but he knew Harlem couldn’t touch Chicago.

I was telling him about the wonders of Harlem when I noticed he was shaking. I asked if his stomach was bothering him, and he said no, that he just couldn’t believe he was out of the Nam. The stewardess came over and offered us Cokes. I think she was embarrassed that we were holding hands.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to relax. Peewee fell asleep and turned away from me. The stewardess came by and smiled.

“He looked tired,” she said.

I nodded. She went on.

I took the thin magazine from the pouch in front of me and began to thumb through it. I felt self-conscious, as if I shouldn’t be there. My mind began to wander, as I knew it would, back to the boonies. I was on patrol again. Monaco was on point. Peewee and Walowick followed him. Lobel and Brunner were next, then Johnson, the sixty cradled in his arm as if it were a child. We were walking the boonies, past rice paddies, toward yet another hill. I was in the rear, and for some reason I turned back. Behind me, trailing the platoon, were the others. Brew, Jenkins, Sergeant Dongan, Turner, and Lewis, the new guys, and Lieutenant Carroll.

I knew I was mixing my prayers, but it didn’t matter. I just wanted God to care for them, to keep them whole. I knew they were thinking about me and Peewee.

Peewee stirred in his uneasy sleep. The plane droned on. A fat man complained that they didn’t have the wine he wanted. We were headed back to the World.