Matterhorn (79 page)

“The fucking Navy has the goddamned thing.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I’m not paying for the fucking thing. If you ever want to go home you better have all your fucking
bills paid. They ain’t paid, we don’t endorse your orders. I don’t care if you stay here the rest of your life.”

Mellas paid $127.

He left with his new rifle and trudged over to another supply tent to rummage around for his seabag. When he found it he went
through the contents, looking for items he’d want to take to the bush. He smiled as he held up several of the green T-shirts
and boxer shorts his mother had dyed, remembering how he had asked Goodwin about whether or not to wear underwear in the bush.
He threw the underwear into a trash can and headed for the staff club to forget where he would be in twenty-four hours.

The staff club had improved since he and Goodwin had last been there, drowning their fears. A fancy Akai tape deck was now
sitting on the bar. The bar itself had some nice new inlay work, and several new beer signs rolled, sparkled, and advertised
sky-blue waters from out of the gloom. Newly installed, high on the wall behind the bar, was Vancouver’s sawed-off machine
gun. It was flanked by two captured Russian machine guns.

Staff Sergeant Cassidy sat alone at a table, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label in front of him. No one else was in the
club. Gunny Klump, the manager, had gone out to do errands, leaving Cassidy to mind the store. Mellas said he could use a
beer, and Cassidy disappeared behind the bar. He emerged with an armload of cold wet cans, which he set ceremoniously on the
table in front of Mellas. “No sense in getting up and down except to piss,” he said. He was already well along on his own
mystery tour.

Mellas reached for one of the cans, punched two holes in it, and chugged the beer down. Then he opened another can and leaned
back in the chair. He noticed an air conditioner half installed in the plywood wall. “Air-conditioning,” he mused. “Not bad.”

“Yeah,” Cassidy muttered. “Klump figured he’ll get people in from the other battalions once the spring heat hits. It’ll help
the profits.”

“Here’s to fucking profits,” Mellas said, lifting his can. He chugged it, thinking of both Hamilton and the $127.

“I guess you heard about the skipper,” Cassidy said.

“I’m sure it all looked nice and voluntary.”

“You can’t fool the fucking troops,” Cassidy muttered. He took another drink of whiskey, and his grip tightened on his shot
glass until his knuckles showed white through his jungle-rot scars. “I should have been up there with you. It was when you
needed me worst.”

Mellas was tempted to tell Cassidy who had gotten him transferred, so that he wouldn’t feel so bad. He saw that Cassidy was
looking up at Vancouver’s machine gun, polished and oily, displayed beneath a large fleur-de-lis imposed on crossed rifles,
the emblem of the Twenty-Fourth Marines:
Les Braves des Bois Belleau
.

“I’ve had to do a lot of shitty jobs since I’ve been in the Corps, sir,” Cassidy said. He brought his gaze back to Mellas.
“But the worst thing I ever had to do was go from man to man and collect their rifles. Twenty years ago anybody try and take
a Marine’s rifle he’d been fucking plugged. Shit, five years ago.”

“Times change,” Mellas muttered. He thought about the girl in the girdle and brassiere advertisement.

“I had to go from man to man. Some of them I’d been with on Wind River and Co Roc and the DMZ op. And I had to search them
like
fucking prisoners.” Cassidy turned his watery blue eyes on Mellas. “Well, I did it, because it was my job. But I didn’t like
it, Lieutenant. I could feel them hating me.” He stopped, noticed that he was clenching his fists, and slowly straightened
his fingers. “I guess that’s why I had to get the fuck away from there.”

Mellas and Cassidy got drunk.

It was just after noon when Mellas left Cassidy passed out at the table and dragged himself back to the company office. He
pulled himself wearily up the back stairs to where two cots were separated from the rest of the office by a hanging wool blanket.
He knew he would have a pounding headache as the day wore on—unless he could keep drinking. Could he keep drinking forever?
He threw himself onto a cot. The wool blanket felt hot and scratchy beneath his sweaty cheek. His mind, and the floor beneath
him, whirled. He again felt as if he were on a conveyer belt heading for a cliff. Every minute brought him one minute closer
to tomorrow, and tomorrow he’d be back in the bush. His mind, unwilling to face the thought, closed down.

At VCB the newbies’ tension about the coming operation was already palpable. The old hands, like China and Mole, talked quietly
to each other or simply cleaned their rifles and machine guns over and over—they had learned how to keep disturbing feelings
at bay. They ate. They drank beer. They elaborately concocted cups of coffee. They tried to get on KP duty. They smoked marijuana.
They joked. They thought of girls back home. They masturbated.

The new black kids were especially drawn to the two black machine gunners, taciturn gods of the bush who wore dark green hangman’s
nooses around their necks. China would hold court, engage them, talk a little politics, laugh off any fears they expressed.
Mole spoke only to China and the other old hands. The items on his personal agenda did not include making new friends.

China and Mole were cleaning their machine guns near the opening of a large ten-man tent with a packed mud floor, which they
shared with eighteen other black Marines. In the front of the tent, when the
flaps were pulled fully back onto the roof, they could get enough light to see what they were doing and still be out of the
rain. But the rain had become less constant. The Vietnamese spring was coming, and it would be followed by the relentless
dry season.

They had their guns completely broken down and were meticulously cleaning each component. The air smelled of Hoppe’s No. 9
powder solvent, sent from home in response to many anxious requests, the combination of burning diesel fuel and shit from
the latrines and mothballs from the tent canvas. Mole looked up from his gun and chuckled softly. “I’ll be goddamned, China.
Looky what we got coming up the road.”

China looked and smiled, seeing Arran and Pat. Pat was at a loose heel, padding along silently, as always, tongue out just
slightly, looking as if he were on a Sunday stroll. His red ears flicked forward when he heard Mole’s voice. Arran, noticing
the ear flick but unable to hear anything, followed the direction of the ears. He saw Mole and China and raised his shotgun
high in the air with one hand, grinning.

Arran touched fists with China and Mole. Pat sat down, still in heel position.

“I thought you was out in the fuckin’ Au Shau or some badass place like that,” China said.

Arran grinned. “All over. Coming back to you guys. I hear we’re skying out tomorrow.”

The two gunners nodded but said nothing.

Pat started whining, wanting to break heel. He had tuned in on a figure coming up the road. It was Hawke. Pat whined again.
Arran laughed and released him. Pat bounded down the road to greet Hawke. Soon the two of them were roughhousing together,
Hawke hugging the dog’s strong neck, cradling it in his arms and moving Pat’s head back and forth, while Pat kept trying to
nuzzle into Hawke’s crotch and at the same time rub his own sides, catlike, against Hawke’s thighs.

Hawke, still laughing at Pat’s antics, reached the three Marines. He motioned for China and Mole to remain seated.

“Enough, OK,” Arran said to the dog. “Show the skipper some respect.” His tone then altered just slightly. “Sit.” Pat immediately
was
on his haunches, panting happily. “He sure as hell likes you, Skipper,” Arran said. “Not everyone gets a greeting like that.”

Hawke was rubbing Pat’s head and ears. He looked up at the three Marines. “Yeah. I’m real glad to see you two back,” Hawke
said. “Feel blind out there without you.” Then he put a hand on Mole’s shoulder and sidled between Mole and China, poking
his head into the interior of the tent without saying anything to them. He pulled his head back and turned to the two gunners.
“I got word you chased some chucks out of the tent.”

“I’m out of here,” Arran said, grinning. He snapped his fingers softly and Pat stood.

“Oh-four-thirty in the supply tent,” Hawke said.

“Aye, sir. Nice to be back.” Arran left, Pat padding along at his left side as usual.

The three watched for a moment as the dog and handler walked away.

“Well?” Hawke asked.

“Nobody chased no one, Skipper,” China said.

Hawke looked at him for a while. “Uh-huh.”

“No, honest Injun, sir. They just left on they own.”

Hawke thought about it for a while. “You know, China, I don’t give a fuck about
congregating
. Never did. Everyone’s going to turn green when we board those choppers tomorrow.” He unconsciously looked skyward. “You
guys ready?”

They both cocked their heads to the side, and Mole shrugged his shoulders.

“I need you to keep the newbies steady. OK?”

“We can do that, sir,” China said.

Hawke looked at them, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Good. Thanks.”

The two gunners watched him walk away down the road. “He’s decent,” Mole said.

“Yeah,” said China. “He is. We got lucky for once.”

“China, you think we should tell him?” Mole said in a low murmur.

China shone the beam of his smile on his friend. “Say what? Tell him what?”

“Get real, China. About Henry offing Cassidy.”

“That be old shit. They ain’t doin’ nothin’.”

“I don’t know,” said Mole.

“Hey, man. No way, brother. I been talkin’ to those guys, and they see what I mean ’bout the Panther brotherhood. We startin’
here in the Nam and we bringin’ the true grit back home. We be tested in the fire, and tested under fire—”

Mole cut him short. “Just you stop, China. Just for once dispense with the revolutionary country preacher bullshit. Henry
don’t give a shit ’bout you Black Panther mumbo jumbo. He just need the brothers to be retailing while he wholesaling. If
he have to kill Cassidy to stay in charge, he gonna do it.”

China looked down on the parts spread out on Mole’s poncho. “He just don’t get it,” he said softly.

“
You
just don’t get it.”

Mellas was awakened by the slight scraping of a boot on the plywood floor. His heart started pounding. He was covered in sweat
and his head ached. Fitch, who was looking down at Mellas, sadness on his face, had deliberately scraped the boot so he wouldn’t
put Mellas into combat overdrive by waking him too abruptly.

“Hi, Jim,” Mellas said.

Fitch sat down on the opposite cot. “You fucked up, Mellas?”

“Naw. Just had a few beers with Cassidy is all. What time is it?”

Fitch looked at his watch. “One o’clock.”

“You’re already on civilian time.”

“Never left it,” Fitch said.

Mellas swung his feet to the floor. His head was hot and pounding. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling sweat in it.
He wiped them on his new stiff trousers. “I did manage to save my fucking boots,” he said, looking at their familiar whiteness.

There was an awkward silence. “I guess then you heard I was leaving,” Fitch finally said.

“Yeah.” Mellas didn’t know how to go on talking about it. He saw Fitch flush slightly, probably taking the silence as condemnation,
so he said, “I’m real glad you’re getting out.”

“Me, too.” Fitch forced a half smile and there was another awkward silence.

“When you leaving?” Mellas asked.

“Six o’clock. Getting the big bird out of Dong Ha. I ought to be in Oky by day after tomorrow.”

“Laundry officer, huh?” Mellas smiled.

“Socks and T-shirts division.”

“You could have gone to Mulvaney about this. It’s a bum deal.”

“I’d have to go through Simpson.”

“Shit, Skipper. Back channel. You must know that’s how it works.”

Fitch looked away, toward the plywood wall, assuming the familiar thousand-yard stare. Mellas supposed that an entire movie
was unreeling inside Fitch’s mind. Fitch finally turned and looked into Mellas’s good eye. “I don’t want to go back to the
bush. I’ll do anything to stay alive.”

He started stuffing gear into an already bulging seabag. He combed his hair, bending slightly to look into a steel mirror
nailed to a two-by-four. Then he carefully put on a neatly starched stateside utility cover. His single silver lieutenant’s
bar gleamed, newly polished.

“Still dapper Dan,” Mellas said.

“There’s a place in Da Nang called the White Elephant,” Fitch said, taking the cover off and smoothing his dark hair, “and
it’s got round-eyed pussy in it. Red Cross girls, stewardesses. Air-conditioned. There’s even a goddamned German girl who
sells Mercedes to AID fat cats. And in about three hours I’m going to be there getting fucked up, and I’m going to forget
I ever saw this place.”

He hoisted the seabag onto his shoulder. Mellas stood up, shakily. There was a sudden clutch in his throat. He could see Fitch’s
lips quiver, then go into the tight, pursed expression that Fitch used to hide his feelings from the rest of the company.

“You take care of yourself, Mellas,” Fitch said. “I’ll write and let you guys know what happened to me.”

“We’d like that.”

“You tell everyone to look me up when they get back to the world. You know it doesn’t matter if they’re snuffs.”

“They know it.”

They stood there looking at each other. Mellas was incredibly happy that Fitch had made it out alive.

Just before dark Mellas bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from Gunnery Sergeant Klump and hitched a ride over to MAG-39, where
he caught one of the last birds heading out to VCB. The empty, darkening land rolled beneath him. He thought of Cassidy, scared,
getting drunk in the dim staff club. If it had gotten that bad, he’d better talk with the Jayhawk about it. Then he thought
of Fitch in the brightly lit nightclub called the White Elephant, where American girls carried on with overweight AID and
CORDS personnel. Then he thought of himself, heading for the dark jungle-covered mountains. Ten more months to go, he mused.
Five more Trail of Tears ops. Five more Matterhorns. Mellas now knew that there was nothing special about Matterhorn and the
Trail of Tears op. Both were just ordinary war.