Fields of Fire (28 page)

Ogre and Baby Cakes paraded the perimeter's fighting holes, seeking familiar faces. They found few. They were stripped to tiger shorts, and Ogre wore a wide-brimmed bush hat, pulled low over his ears in a carefully coaxed, bush-Marine style. The rear pogues wore them curled up, like cowboy hats worn sideways.

Both were pale after months away from the scorching sun that fired the bush. They proudly, consciously modeled deep scars from their earlier wounds: Baby Cakes the long pink gash, like a strip of cord laid from his midback to his neck, Ogre the deep crisscrossings in his calves and thighs that disappeared under his tiger shorts.

A large peace symbol hung from Ogre's neck on his dogtag chain. Ogre had made it out of C-ration wire, carefully shaping the design with powerful, stubby fingers, making the more difficult bends in the strong wire by pushing it through the flash-suppressor opening at the end of his M-16 barrel. Such skills came naturally to Ogre. He had once made similar items for a living. Under a massive thatch of scraggly, unwashed hair, wrapped inside a stained, musty Indian blanket, Ogre had sold wire trinkets in the parks of San Francisco. Until one day, totally stoned, Ogre got curious, and the next thing he claimed to remember clearly was getting off the bus at boot camp. Now he called himself the Hippy CIA. Just peeping out the other side, grinned Ogre.

Cannonball looked up from a back-alley game and smiled at the passing figures. “Man, that was some kind o’ shit.” He surveyed the scars, then nodded to Wild Man. “You ain’ never seen shit like that night, Wild Man. Dudes droppin’ everywhere, gooks in between us, Ogre runnin’ through 'em, Baby Cakes runnin’ back out. Shee-it.”

Bagger tossed a card onto the poncho liner that was their table. He was not yet comfortable with Cannonball again, after the incident in front of the Black Shack, and had rarely conversed with him since. But now he agreed. “There it is. I was out there on that LP, thinking I was gonna die, radio all blown to shit, stuck in that old fighting hole we found when the shit blew up. I never seen the platoon as fucked up as that night. Nobody knew where anybody else was. We had rounds going out just over our heads, rounds going in just over our heads, grenades going off all over the place. Then here comes Baby Cakes. He picks up Vitelli and turns around and asks us if we want to come back with him, like we were out there sunbathing on a beach or something. That dude has balls. I wasn't gonna leave that hole for nothing. He just shrugs and says, ‘Well, fuck ya then,’ and takes off. What a dude. Just to save Vitelli.”

Wild Man watched the sauntering, scarred figures, in awe of Baby Cakes. “I never knew Vitelli.”

“He was already dead. Don't ever tell Baby Cakes.”

Phony leaned forward and took the cards on the poncho liner, shuffling them. “Yeah. Baby Cakes is gonna get a medal for that. He rates it, too.”

Cannonball nodded. “No lie. Ain’ it good to see him, now?” He stretched like a wary cat, smiling over to Bagger, hoping to regain a portion of their damaged friendship by speaking to him around persons Bagger was comfortable with. “Hey, Bag-man. You never did tell us about your R & R. You make another baby?”

Bagger put a meaty hand on his forehead, groaning. Then the confused flat face broke into a grin. “Don't even think that, man. I must of changed a hundred diapers. She said it would be good for the kid. You know, to get to know his day-uddy and all.”

Wild Man laughed. “Sounds like she foxed the hell outa you, Bagger.”

“Ah, so what if she did. I thought about that, too.” Bagger shuffled cards. “You know, I gotta admit something. I hate the bush. I hate this bullshit. But all the time I was with her, all the time I was walking that phony beach where all the Beautiful People were laying out getting their just-right tans, all the time I was stuffing myself with food I couldn't afford, I kept thinking about the bush. Like I belong here, and all the other stuff is only important because I earned it here, because it's a part of being here. Like I been here all my life, and the people in the bush are real, are my people. Like nobody in the world except for us understands this, or gives one flying fuck about it, but that's all right, because it matters to us.”

Cannonball eyed him narrowly, smirking. “So as soon as you got back to An Hoa you extended.”

“Jesus Christ, don't even say that, Cannonball.” Bagger laughed back.

Phony leaned over, his innocent face nodding in agreement. “Well, I know what you mean, Bagger. I never had a home in my life till I came out here.” Nowhere to go back to. Stay forever.

Wild Man grinned ironically to Phony, then called over to Goodrich, who was sitting several yards away, under a poncho-liner hootch, reading. “Yeah. This shit's just like college. Right, Senator? Sit around the frat house with all the brothers, planning parties, having fun. Ain't that right, Senator?”

Goodrich had despaired of meaningful communication with the others. He had written home, and his parents had sent him several paperback volumes of philosophy. He was afraid his mind would deteriorate if he did not exercise it with strenuous reading.

“I didn't hear you.” He had been reading Schopenhauer on genius, from Wisdom of Life. As a rule, wrote Schopenhauer, a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar. Goodrich liked that.

“Out in the bush it's just like college, I said. Sitting around jiving with all the brothers, planning parties, all that shit.”

“We went to different schools, Wild Man.”

“Hey. That's right. I forget, you know. You looked so familiar.”

Well, I won't be an ass, thought Goodrich. “If you want to know, I get the feeling this is kind of like Russian roulette, myself. Just as senseless. And the players aren't excused until the gun goes off in their face, so you get new players but the old ones can't leave until they lose. So the more times you put the gun to your head, the cumulative chances of its going off are—” He shrugged helplessly. “Well, how many people do you know who rotated without getting hit?”

Cannonball scowled quizzically at Goodrich. “Say what?”

Bagger peered at Wild Man. “What's he talking about?”

Phony answered. “School.”

22
BAGGER

The team. Everything's the team. You work hard with them, early in the morning when everybody else is still asleep. You work hard with them in the afternoon when everybody else has gone home. You take showers together and on the field it's like a battle. You do all these things for each other and with each other. Not for yourself. For the team.

When you play tackle, your glory is in yards gained through your hole. You don't score points. Somebody else scores points through your hole. You don't win games. The team wins games.

You stay together in school. Eat lunch with each other. Walk around with your letter sweaters in groups. Everybody stares. There goes the team. Not Jerry Dean Dolan. There goes our left tackle. Good luck, guys. You all stomp 'em Friday night. You hear? Yeah.

You party together. Screw around on the bus going to the away games. Cut farts and light 'em. That's cool. Sing songs. After the games with the girls. Cheerleaders are the best. They like the team and that's what you are. Part of the team.

So what can you say when the team decides to enlist? Four years together like that, and nobody's going to college. Not Jerry Dean Left-Tackle Dolan. For sure for sure. Had enough of that.

•     •     •

THEY drove to Athens in two cars. Eight of them. They found the Marine recruiting office and startled the recruiter with the ease of it. No sales pitch, man. Sign us the hell up. You just got the Bowman Rebels football team. The whole first team of graduating seniors. Can you handle it?

Can I handle it? The recruiter was in euphoria. Somebody lock that door before these gents change their minds!

Later that day. He slammed the car door, furious and afraid at what he had done. The penful of beagles out back bayed mournfully, announcing his arrival. He walked up the cinder-block path to the trailer, feeling blocks wiggle under him, and stared up at the door. She was standing just inside the screen, the screen filtering her, softening her features, giving her a picture-book attractiveness that did not filter out the animal in her. The animal exuded, embraced him as he climbed the steps. Cheerleader. Uh huh.

She smiled, the eyes dancing happily, mischievously, invitingly. Beads of water ran down sandy strands of hair and plopped on the top of a generous breast, then trickled through the warm, entrancing abyss, finally melting into the terry-cloth fabric of her loose-wrapped robe.

“Caught me in the shower, Jerry Dean. I bet you planned it that way.” Hair clung wetly to her cheeks and down her neck, drops of shower water resting in the hollows of her face. She cocked her head, leaning on the door. He looked fully at her through the screen door, exploring all her secret parts with his eyes. She smiled back, still inviting him, enjoying his visual embrace. Got herself a left tackle. Uh huh.

“Did you all really go to Athens?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And enlist?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, you all are crazy!”

“Don't I know it. Hey. It's hot out here.”

“Well,” She pushed the screen door open and turned. “C'mon in.”

He followed her into the living room, eyes fixed on the sturdy, well-shaped hips that clung tightly to the terry cloth each time she strode. She stopped and turned, looking him full in the eyes, smiling bold and mischievous. He walked up. She didn't budge. Met his movement, pushed into him with that meaty firmness.

“Where's your mother?”

Open smile, widened to a knowing grin. “At work. You know that.”

“Where's your sister?” She pulled on the robe's terry-cloth belt. Rich flesh exploded from the middle of her. Still the devil smile.

“She won't be back.” She took his hands and put them on her breasts. “You gonna be a big bad Marine, Jerry Dean? You'll miss me, you know that.”

That did it. In the pen the dogs were restless but had ceased their baying. Inside the trailer it was quiet with rhapsodic, animal enjoyment.

A throated, laughing voice. “You just a big old teddy bear, J.D.”

“Uh huh. Your teddy bear got one of these?”

GRADUATION. Left tackle marries pregnant cheerleader. The team departs for war. The calamities of adulthood have overwhelmed Bagger.

23

“Cat Man's got something in the trees.”

Snake gestured with his head toward a mat of overgrown foliage just off the trail. Sweat flew off his face when he moved it. He was bare-chested underneath his flak jacket, and rivulets of perspiration poured down his trunk, gathering in his soaked trousers. “Over there, he says.”

The platoon knelt or sat on the trail. Several men guzzled from canteens. Hodges peered across the field and saw an old abandoned hootch and a clump of banana trees. He shrugged, and queried Cat Man. “What?”

Cat Man's roving eyes met Hodges’ for one brief, stolid flash and then returned to the field. Beyond it was the Thu Bon River, down a steep bank. “The banana trees.”

Hodges looked at Stork, his radioman, who shrugged confusedly. He turned to Snake. “What?”

Cat Man pointed cautiously. “Stalks are gone.” The old hootch was an empty, broken skeleton. The banana trees next to it were lush green, like an oasis in the brown field. Cat Man was right. Several stalks were gone. Beware banana trees, remembered Hodges. NVA seek their shade, lay on their broad, cool leaves, sometimes eat the younger stalks like celery.

“All right. Let's check it out.”

Phony shook his head disgustedly, his face deep red from the heat. The platoon had been on patrol for several hours. “Ah, Lieutenant. Peep this out. Peep that out. We could find old Ho Chi Minh hisself back there and it wouldn't make no never-mind.”

Hodges lit a cigarette, and raised his eyebrows to Phony, a rebuke. “You can stay back here on the trail if you want.”

Phony put his helmet back on his head. “Yeah. Old Luke the Gook would love that. Christ. Cat Man and his damn bent grassblades.”

They moved toward the old hootch, the whole platoon on line. It was a bored, perfunctory sweep. They fought the high weeds, weapons carried loosely in one hand, more worried about the high grass than the object of the sweep.

BBBBBRRRROOWWWW Two bursts of automatic rifle fire, unaimed, a wide spray that encompassed the whole platoon. The banana clump was only fifty yards away, but no one was hit. The front men of the sweep returned fire quickly and Hodges knelt, lost in the high grass. He looked cautiously around him. He knew that all portions of the old villages such as this one were latticed by deep, grass-hidden trenches, that the platoon could be completely surrounded and not even become aware of it until the enemy began firing. For a moment, he considered retreating back to the trail, but he realized that there would be no protection on it, no guarantee that it also was not covered. On its other side, there was more village, more matted fields, other trenches.

He grimaced. We are the bait, dangling. “Assault to the riverbank!”

They moved immediately forward, firing from the hip. It amazed him every time. They were so young in so many ways, so vulnerable, and yet an order filled with that kind of unknown was always obeyed almost before it was uttered. They did this part so goddamn well.

No other fire from the banana clump. The front of the sweep reached the riverbank and automatically set in, watching their front.

Big Mac passed the banana clump. He stopped, and peered down at a Marine ammunition box, half-buried in the dirt. He called to his team leader. “Hey, Cat Man! How'd you miss this!”

Big Mac reached over and lifted the ammo box, to show it to Cat Man. He straightened, the lid of the ammo box in hand, and—disappeared. At one moment he was stooping, grinning caustically to Cat Man, and in the next there was a violent rending of the earth, a belch of smoke and dust that sprayed half the platoon, the equivalent of a large artillery round impacting underneath him as the pressure-release detonator set off the booby trap. He did a full flip in the air. His rifle spun into the distance, a black baton. He landed where he had stood grinning to them only a half-second before, but now he was a scorched, decapitated ash heap that reminded them all of how very close they stayed to death, even on a boring day.

Pieces of Big Mac pattered on the leaves and grass for several seconds, like gentle rain. They had not noticed Phony staggering nearby without direction. Finally he screamed, high-pitched and confused. “DOC! Doc! They got my arm, Doc! They got my arm!” There was nothing underneath his right shoulder but a ragged tear of red that pulsed jets of blood with the rapid beating of his heart. His arm lay near him, in perfect shape, and as Phony staggered it seemed he did a voodoo dance over his severed limb.

“Doc! Snake!” Snake reached Phony and made him lie down. “They got my arm, Snake.”

“Lieutenant!” Someone on the riverbank. “Jesus Christ, there's gooks everywhere!” The front of the sweep opened fire toward the river. Cannonball's blooper thunked and boomed flatly down the bank.

From below a wail of fire, aimed at the banana clump, where several Marines had gathered to help Phony. Phony still screamed. Hodges called for Stork, and bolted toward the riverbank, where the platoon was firing madly.

He burst through an old hedgerow, half-jogging, and it erupted just behind him. He felt himself sail forward from the blast, so totally shocked by its unexpected force that he did not register what was happening for several seconds. AK-47 rounds passed over him with their stacatto pops and he heard the platoon firing back and when he looked up Rabbit was near him, yanking out a dozen battle dressings, trying to choose between him and Phony and Stork and apparently a few others.

Then he noticed the ooze that covered his arms. He felt it in his hair and along his neck and on the back of his legs and at the base of his back. He tried to sit and gushed blood from the seat of his trousers, then rolled over on his stomach as Rabbit finished Phony, whose screaming had given way to an incoherent babble.

Phony pointed toward Rabbit's morphine sticks. “Gimme another one, Rabbit. Ha hahh. Ha Hahhh. It don't matter, man. They got my fucking arm.”

Somebody said that Stork was dead. Hodges didn't look for the tall, gawky radioman. Cat Man crept over and helped Rabbit dress his wounds, his normally emotionless face angry and confused. Rabbit dripped sweat in his face.

Snake was directing the fire of the platoon. He crept stealthily to Hodges. “They got a goddamn hospital or something on a little island out there, Lieutenant. They're making their didi over into the Arizona. They can wade it. I think they're just fucking with us till they get out of there.”

Compos and Wolf Man worked the machine gun methodically. Hodges tried to lift his head. “Getting any?”

Snake shrugged. “A few.”

“Put some artillery on the far bank. Blow 'em away.”

“Ah. It's too late.” Three minutes more, and the firing ceased. “We gotta get your ass out of here, Lieutenant.”

The morphine was hitting Hodges. He felt good, warm and weak. The shrapnel holes had felt like bee stings, down deep inside, but they didn't hurt anymore. He listened as Snake called in the medevac request. Two emergencies, two priorities, two routines. Two dead men.

“Who's hit?”

“You are. Sir.” Snake lit a cigarette. “And Phony. And Stork. And Big Mac. Two others. Big Mac is all fucked up. Hey, Lieutenant—” Snake grimaced pensively—“this really sucks.”

Cat Man called to them from where Stork lay. He seemed apologetic, uncertain. He held the radio handset. “Lieutenant? Snake? They want the Actual.”

Hodges was floating on the morphine. Snake dragged on his cigarette, and nodded to Cat Man.

“Who?”

“It's the Six. They want a Mine and Booby Trap Report.” Phony was still babbling. Cat Man spoke haltingly. “They told me all the things. Ah, hell, man, I can't remember. Who am I? They want to know what kind of round went off, was there a trip wire, how far we were dispersed—”

“Oh, Christ.”

“They want to know how it was camouflaged—”

“Tell 'em if we knew all those things we would have found it, instead of tripping the motherfucker. Tell 'em to come out here and kiss my ass!”

Hodges laughed softly, eyeing Snake. “Uh huh. You thought there was nothing to being a platoon commander, didn't you, you little shit? You didn't know about the paperwork.”

“Now, Lieutenant, how the hell can we answer any of those questions? And what the hell difference does it make, once it goes off?”

“Make something up. That's what I do. Ever want to get back at a lifer? Make a story up that'll blow his goddamn mind. Tell 'em to come out here and see for their goddamn selves. Tell 'em that. What the fuck do they know.”

Snake nodded to Cat Man. “Tell 'em we ain't got any report.”

Cat Man walked away, avoiding both of them. “You tell 'em. Who am I? I don't even talk right, man.”

SNAKE watched the medevac helicopter ascend. It was a high and distant deus ex machina that now left them again abandoned in the wilderness. Baby Cakes sat down next to him. They sat quietly, drawing on cigarettes, the rest of the platoon in a hasty perimeter that had secured the landing zone.

Baby Cakes broke the silence. “So what do we do now, Platoon Commander For A Day?”

Snake watched the helicopter. It had become a speck in the distance. “Burn down Vietnam.” Phony's arm lay nearby, reaching for him.

“Hodges'll be back.”

“Think so?”

“Sure. They'll send him back. He's hit about like Ogre was that night. He'll be back, Snake.”

“He's got four months in the bush. They won't send him back to us.”

“We better get out of here. There was a lot of gooks crossing that river. This ain't any place to get hit.”

Snake stood up, placing his helmet back on his head. He loaded a fresh magazine of ammunition into his rifle. “No, I think you're right, Cakes. He'll be back. He likes it. I mean us. You know, I been in trouble all my life, man, 'cause I never been able to work for anybody. I can work for him. I like the son of a bitch. And I just know he'll come back.”

“Yeah. And Phony'll be all right, man. He's tough.” “Yeah. He's tough. Now. Squad Leader For A Day. Get your ass in gear and let's get the hell back to Henderson Hill.”

THE column stretched wearily back toward the company perimeter, several miles away. Behind it, like random torches, the hootches of the nearest village spent themselves in orange rages. The flames rose anonymously, but it was the platoon's collective act of passion, a substitute for not being able to fight the enemy that had ravaged them. The hootches burned like funeral pyres. That one is for Big Mac. That one is for Stork.

Finally they reached Henderson Hill. It was low and flat, deep-red clay dust marked by huge craters and a steam-shoveled inner perimeter, the vestige of a Great Experiment. Years before, a Vietnamese Popular Forces unit had been ordered into the An Hoa Basin, and had built a compound on the hill. It had seemed an ideal place: less than two miles from Liberty Bridge, easy access to the convoy road's supply train, readily defensible. But the notion of a localized Vietnamese unit operating on a permanent basis had aroused the ire of the local Viet Cong, and the hill had been repeatedly attacked, regularly overrun, until the Popular Forces unit had refused to remain. It was withdrawn, the sandbag bunkers were plowed under, the towers felled and burned, and the wire around the perimeter abandoned to enterprising VC units who pilfered great sections at night.

But the hill itself remained an ideal company position, and it was used for short periods by many Marine companies operating in the Phu Nhuan villages. And the villagers around the base of the hill had remained peacefully ambivalent about the warriors who continued to ravage the Basin. With the exception of the Duc Duc and Mau Chanh villages, which hugged the wire at An Hoa, the Henderson Hill villages housed the most friendly, most cooperative civilians in the Basin.

The children greeted the patrol as it wound along the high, wide paddy dike that joined the village at the northern edge of the hill. Cheerful, doting faces, calling out to favorite Marines in husky, gutter English. “Hey-y-y-, Wattaboo, you need washy-wash, O.K?” “Hey-y-y, Wi’Man, you Numbah One bac-bac VC, huh?” “Hey-y-y, Bac se, you gimme cigret?” The platoon chided the children back, trading friendly insults, clowning with them as they danced along with the movement of the patrol.

Bagger slipped off his flak jacket and dropped it onto the shoulders of a small, thin boy. The jacket reached the boy's ankles. He laughed, calling to the other children, and jogged proudly, keeping pace with Bagger. He growled convincingly. “Ahhh! Me bac-bac VC!”

One small boy in a wide-brim version of a bush hat had alternately stood and walked next to the column, somber eyes squinched, searching. Finally he saw Wild Man. He skipped along next to him, tugging at his flak jacket, and spoke intensely. “Where Phony, ma-a-an?”

Wild Man did not address him. He twirled his finger in a circular motion indicating a helicopter medevac. The boy was genuinely upset: Phony was his “washy-wash” Marine, his personal responsibility when it came to drawing buckets at the well, for which Phony had been lavish with C-rations and cigarettes. He shook a fist. “Aw-w-w-w, ma-a-an. VC bac bac Phony? Numbah fucking One Thousand. Phony come back, he bac-bac booo cooo VC.”

Wild Man waved him away, on the verge of a snarl. “Get the fuck away from me.”

Goodrich watched the parade of children. He liked their friendliness. And the villages around Henderson Hill were almost worth fighting for. Or over. Or about.

Whatever the hell we're doing, he grumbled. Real villages, as he had first imagined Vietnam would be. Cultivated gardens, pecking chickens, and penned hogs that even Captain Crazy did not see fit to slaughter. People who smiled. It was the only area Goodrich had worked in where the Marines dared venture outside their perimeter during the day, to sit under shade trees, run a secret joint, visit with the villagers. Anywhere else, they would be ambushed within fifteen minutes.

The two booby traps had shaken him. The victims were selected so randomly. You could be 100 percent right and still be 100 percent dead, or permanently scarred, like Phony. There's not a goddamn thing you can do about it, either, mused Goodrich. It enforced his sense of the complete randomness of it all. Like existentialism, he thought again, climbing the hill. Suffering without meaning, except in the suffering itself. But no one would understand that if I told them.