Sand in the Wind (29 page)

“Let go!” Chalice said half asleep.

“Get up.”

“Cut it out.”

“C’mon, we’ve got a patrol.”

Chalice sat up and saw Tony 5 pulling on his ankle. “Okay.
  
.
 
.
 
.
Wait a minute!
We had the ambush last night. Bravo’s got the patrol today.”

“We’ve got one too,” Tony said.

“What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

“How come we got a patrol?”

“We’ve got to go up and blow that two hundred pounder.”

“We’ve got to go back up
there?
”

“You wouldn’t want Charlie to find it, would you? He could make bucoo booby traps out of that baby.”

Chalice stood up. Finding himself completely naked, he took his shirt from the top of the hootch. ‘At least it’s dry.
  
.
 
.
 
. Where the fuck are my pants?’ They were lying in the mud beside his hootch. He picked them up with two fingers. ‘Nothing like putting on a slimy pair of pants.’ Buttoning them, he noticed a spot of pus on his forearm.

Forsythe came strolling over with a big grin on his face. “
Good
morning.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Forsythe took a step backwards. “Sorry, sir. What’s your problem?”

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand to see when I get up in the morning, it’s a smiling face.”

“Oh, excuse me. Next time you get up I’ll kick you in the balls first thing.”

“Thanks. Anything’ll be an improvement.” Chalice held out his forearm. “What do you think this is?”

“Looks like the forearm of a hairy fourteen-year-old girl to me.”

“The pus, stupid.”

Forsythe grabbed Chalice’s forearm and studied it intently. “Very interesting.” Letting go, he said, “It’s nothing, just a Gook sore.”

“It’ll go way in a few days?”

“No, usually takes a month or two.”

“Are you serious, a little thing like that?”

“It won’t be so little in a few weeks. You’ll get enough pus out of that to fill your helmet.”

“Why would I want a helmet full of pus?”

“Why are you in Nam? Why’d you join the Marine Corps?”

“Only my psychiatrist knows for sure. You
do
guarantee it’ll disappear in a few short months? I’d sure hate to have my arm fall off.”

“It will, everything but the scar.”

“The scar!”

“Yeah, look at these.” Forsythe showed Chalice a small purple scar on his wrist. He then rolled up his pants legs, exposing two large purple blotches on his knees. “This country’s got everything — eight out of ten of the original Plagues.”

“Isn’t there any way I can keep it from scarring?”

“Sure; bathe three times a day, eat a balanced diet, and get plenty of sleep.”

“Oh, is that all.”

“Don’t sweat it. Everybody gets them. You’ll get plenty more before you leave here.”

“That’s great.”

Harmon walked by, turning his head to say, “Hurry up and get your gear on so we can get this over with.”

Once outside the perimeter, the men forgot their irritation at having to go on the patrol. The sky was overcast and the pace slow. They followed the tree line that ran parallel to the road. It was a little less than two kilometers long and ended in a circle of high ground containing a small ville. By following the trails leading away from the ville, they could reach the foothills without crossing more than a kilometer of rice paddies. As they approached the village, Childs talked Harmon into holding up the column so he could get some grapefruit off a tree. The Vietnamese usually picked the fruit as soon as it was ripe, and finding any ready to eat was a rare occurrence. This time they were lucky. Childs threw down eight. Only three were ripe, and these were passed around and quickly devoured. The men moved out with buoyed spirits and a sense of accomplishment. The incident, though seemingly insignificant, endowed the rest of the patrol with a mood of cheerfulness. This mood prevailed even after the mad rush back down the slope after setting a new charge that also failed to explode. Harmon surmised that a batch of defective blasting caps was the problem, so he headed the squad back to the perimeter instead of returning to the bomb. The men knew they would have to come back the next day, but it would be their turn for a patrol anyway. On the way back to the perimeter, even the tedious, often-performed ritual of picking the leeches off their legs was given lighthearted significance by a pool of one dollar per man to be divided between the two men with the most and largest leeches. Ski won half of it with eight, and Payne won the other with a five-inch specimen.

The next day a small convoy brought supplies and mail. On one of the envelopes, Kramer recognized the nearly illegible handwriting of his brother. The original address was wrong, and the correct one was written over the mark of a large, red stamp. He hurriedly ripped it open and started reading.

Hi Dave,

You really got yourself into it this time, didn’t you? I hope everything is okay so far. Write and tell me what it’s like.

My grades kind of hurt last semester. In every course that I was on the borderline, I got the lower grade. Maybe I could have done better, but engineering would have been a mistake anyway. It’s definitely out now. My classes are crip this time. I’ve been studying hard since the beginning of the semester (two whole weeks), and if I keep it up I’ll come out all right.

Write Mom and Dad. The last time I was home Mom kept running out to the mail box all morning. It’s a major catastrophe anytime the mailman comes without a letter from you.

I hope you’ll have some good ideas about how to make a lot of money when you get out. I’m not looking forward to working for a living.

I’m rooming with four other guys. We’ve moved into this real cool house. This should be a good semester for girls. The football team is sup
posed to be lousy this year, but I have a feeling they’re going to be all
right.
Send me some cool souvenirs right away; some rings, beads, or any
thing cool.

Don’t do anything stupid. If you’re at some place you can get shot, try and get out of there. Be careful. You know what it would do to Mom and Dad if anything happened to you.

Danny

P.S.
—
Make sure you write Mom and Dad right away. Don’t forget about the souvenirs.

Although the letter was from his brother, Kramer’s thoughts turned to his parents. He withdrew the stationery from the bottom of his pack and set the pad on his lap. Not knowing the date, he looked around for somebody to ask. Nobody was in less than shouting distance, so he guessed at it. After writing “Dear Mom and Dad,” his pen moved down the page, but he couldn’t think of anything to write. He finally decided to look at their letter for ideas. His eyes caught the section about souvenirs he had sent from Okinawa — a woven silk calendar and a tiny bean with an ivory elephant on top and a hundred minute ones inside. Surprised that his mother hadn’t made a fuss over the elephants, he decided to ask about them. He thought of the trees he had planted just before he’d left home, deciding to ask how they were growing. He remembered to tell his parents not to worry about his brother. After thinking for a few minutes, he began to write about Vietnam. He tried to describe the simple beauty of the country, not mentioning the marks now upon it. As he put his thoughts down, his mind reflected upon a troubling question. After a moment’s hesitation, he ended the letter with the words, “Be home soon. Love, David.”

Kramer looked up to see Alpha coming in off its patrol. The men dropped their equipment and immediately headed for the right guide’s hootch where they had seen the new supplies stacked. Preston was waiting for them with their mail in his hand. He tried to get them to divide the supplies first, but Harmon took the mail from him and started calling out the names while flipping each letter in the air without looking up. He then divided up the supplies where they were, and left it to the men to carry them back on their own.

As usually happened when they received mail, each man wandered off alone to read his letter. In a few minutes they would gather into groups, with one member reading parts of his letter to the others. Chalice sat in front of his hootch listening to a small transistor radio when Hamilton called him over, “Here’s some pictures of my girl. I took them just before I left home. Man, I’m so glad they came out. She looks so cool, doesn’t she?”

As Chalice thumbed through them, he noticed Hamilton’s grinning face looking up at him waiting for an answer. He unconsciously hesitated for a few seconds, then glanced at the pictures again. To him, Hamilton’s girl appeared far less than “cool.” Suddenly realizing an honest opinion was not what the situation required, he nodded his head and said, “Yeah, yeah, real nice.” Surprised at how unconvincing his answer had sounded, he handed back the pictures searching Hamilton’s face for any sign of displeasure. Hamilton, still grinning like a little kid, took the photographs and thumbed through them again.

Chalice got up and started walking away when Hamilton called to him as if he’d done something incomprehensible. “
Hey,
where are you going?”

“Back to my hootch.”

Hamilton saw the questioning look on Chalice’s face and said, “Oh.
  
.
 
.
 
. Hey, I gotta show these to Forsythe.” He stood up and brushed past Chalice. Hamilton handed Forsythe the pictures as he and Chalice sat down. “This is my girl. I told you about her. Pretty nice, isn’t she?”

“Definitely all right,” Forsythe answered. He then noticed Chalice watching his face and almost broke into a grin.

‘Handled it better than I did,’ thought Chalice.

Childs approached unnoticed from the rear of the hootch, both arms wrapped around a large, battered pot. He tripped over one of the guy wires and stumbled to his knees in front of them. Chalice turned to inspect the damage. “Nice hootch we used to have here.”

“Fuck the hootch. Look what I got.” He withdrew some foil packages from the pot.

Forsythe reached for them with a pleased expression on his face. “Gook long-rats. Outa sight.”

“What are long-rats?” Chalice asked.

“Food, man. You just add water and heat them up. They’re better than the crap they feed us. How many did you get?”

“Four meals.”

“Great, that’s enough for all of us.”

“What’d you trade for them?” Hamilton asked.

“Two cans of meat.”

“You got
four
long-rats for two cans of meat?”

“Hell no! That was my share. You guys all owe me two meats each. I told the Gook I’d bring them over later.”

Childs was opening the packages into the pot when Hamilton shoved the pictures in front of him. “Hey man, take a look at these.” Childs gave them a quick glance and dumped them in the pot. He opened another package on top of them as Hamilton fished them out. “Quit fucking around. That’s my girl.”

“What good is a girl if you can’t eat her, I always say.
  
.
 
.
 
. Chalice, give me one of your canteens.”

As Childs poured in the water, Payne said, “Hey, that’s too much.” Still pouring, Childs stared at him a few seconds before saying, “Payne, if you saw me taking a shit, you’d come over and start telling me how to wipe my ass, wouldn’t you?”

By the time Childs finished cooking the long-rations, half the platoon had gathered around with spoons in their hands. There was much more than four people could eat, so the pot eventually got passed around to anybody who wanted it.

As soon as Chalice finished eating, he was overcome by a now familiar need. “Goddamn it. I got the shits again. Food’s been running through me like I was a sewer.”

“You should eat a lot of peanut butter,” Hamilton suggested.

“That doesn’t do me any good. Just changes the color.”

“A little variety never hurt,” Forsythe kidded. “Ask the corpsman to give you some pills.”

“I’ve taken every kind of pills they’ve got: pink ones, white ones, blue ones.”

“Maybe that’s what’s givin’ you the shits.”

“Gee Forsythe, I never thought of that. You’re a real help sometimes.” Chalice picked up an entrenching tool and headed for the edge of the perimeter.

It started to get dark, and on the way back he failed to see a detonating cord running from an automatic tear gas launcher to one of the foxholes. Chalice didn’t realize what had happened until he turned around and saw the sky filling with twenty trails of white smoke from the falling canisters. He stood motionless for a few seconds before dropping the E-tool and tearing across to the opposite side of the perimeter. The ensuing scene resembled something out of an old-time movie — the whole platoon scurrying around looking for their gas masks. Within a minute or two everybody had gathered on the Arvin side of the camp and stood huddled in a large group. Half of the men had on gas masks, and practically anybody that didn’t was arguing with somebody that did about whose mask he had on. But the humor of the situation was evident to them, and they welcomed the incident as a break in the monotony. This was true at least until it became obvious that the wind was carrying the gas straight towards them. Soon those without masks started gagging. Equally irritating was the sound of laughter from inside the masks of the other men. A free-for-all broke out. Those without masks stumbled around trying to rip off the masks of those wearing them. By the time the gas dissipated, everybody was sitting around coughing and laughing at the same time.

The rain started a few minutes before dusk. ‘I should of known it,’ Chalice thought. ‘We’ve got the ambush.’ He crawled inside his hootch to wait for the word to form up. As soon as he lay down, Forsythe came over. “Tony says to bring your rain suit.”

“I thought we couldn’t use them on ambushes because they shine when they’re wet.”

“This isn’t gonna be much of an ambush; we’re sandbagging it. They want us to go on a long one to some low ground and Harmon doesn’t feel like sleeping in two feet of water. C’mon, I see them forming up.” After the entire squad had gathered, Harmon carefully shifted his men around until they were in the order he wanted them. He placed Stoker, the new corpsman, in front of Chalice. Stoker was about five eleven and extremely broad shouldered. Chalice moved to the side to see the other men in front of him. ‘Shit, if it wasn’t for his albino neck, I’d swear I was standing behind a water buffalo.’ Since his arrival, Stoker had been a common topic among the men. His brutelike appearance was incongruously matched with a mousy disposition and a squeaky, high-pitched voice that caused astonishment every time he spoke. Standing next to Stoker made Chalice feel like a battle-hardened veteran.