Sand in the Wind (83 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long have you been in-country, Chalice?”

“Six months.”

“If you wanted to, I might be able to get you into a CAP unit. If you’d been to language school, it wouldn’t be any problem.”

“I have, sir,” Chalice answered, not very enthusiastically.

“Well, then I know I can get you assigned to one within a month. You’d be working with the villagers — helping them build hootches and with their crops. It’s a lot hairier than being with a rifle company — you and five other men alone in a ville — but maybe you’d be able to feel you were doing some good. You’d be surprised how many villes request CAP units, more than we can afford to supply. And you’d be surprised how many Marines owe their lives to the peasants around here, even a few in the Arizona. They might be able to tell you some stories you’d find interesting— about the times the VC have come in and started chopping heads off.
  
.
 
.
 
. You don’t have to decide now.
  
.
 
.
 
. How long have
you
been in-country, Ramirez?”

“I got less than seven weeks left, sir.”

“Less than
seven
weeks and you decided you wanted a court-martial? I sure hope I’ve convinced you.
  
.
 
.
 
. That’ll be all. You two can leave now.” Kramer realized that Nash wanted him to stay. As soon as Chalice and Ramirez left, Nash asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me one of them had only seven weeks left?”

“I guess I should have, sir.”

“If he doesn’t change his mind, tell him to wait while you see about getting him a job in the rear. I’ll arrange something.”

“What about Chalice?”

“I can get him in a CAP unit within a month if he wants. Just keep him away from me until we can work something out. I might have gotten through to them.”

“I think you did, sir. What you said made sense.”

"Nothing
makes sense.”

“Well, it was a good speech.”

“It wasn’t a speech. I believed every word of it.”

“I mean I was really surprised by the way you handled it, sir. I never expected to see that.”

“In the Marine Corps, you mean, and by a lifer.” Kramer didn’t have to answer for Nash to know that this was exactly what he had meant. “I’m one of the few,” Nash said in a less serious tone, “and I haven’t seen any of the others in a long time.”

“Well I’m glad you talked to them, sir. I guess it would have been easier to just send them to the brig.”

“I assure you it wouldn’t have been.
  
.
 
.
 
. What worries me about things like this is that they don’t happen more often. I wonder how many of my men keep everything inside them without ever thinking it out. Sometimes I think there’s only two kinds of people in the world — those that blame everything on themselves and those that blame everything on others. Ever since they were little kids, these men have been taught that the United States has always been right. We make idealists out of them, and when they find out that most of the idealism belonged to the dreamers — or liars — who wrote the history books, they can’t cope with it.
  
.
 
.
 
. Sometimes I think they’ll either change things or destroy themselves trying
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
then I take another look around and decide they’ll probably do a little of both, very little.”

Chalice walked back to the company area by himself. He tried to belittle Nash by picturing him reciting the Pledge to the Flag in a Boy Scout uniform, doing so in exasperation, knowing that what Nash had said made sense. Chalice as much as admitted this by saying to himself, ‘He could make shooting your grandmother seem like a patriotic duty.’ Too conscious of his own attempt to avoid the logic of Nash’s argument, Chalice finally forced himself to accept some of it.

What bothered him most was the way in which Nash characterized the war protesters. Chalice tried to brush this aside by comparing what they were doing to what Nash was doing; but he finally had to admit that one thing had nothing to do with the other. Bombarded by memories of events associated with the protest movement, Chalice could no longer rationalize them as mere mistakes, or excuse those responsible as ignorant of the results of their actions. Only a fool could have deluded himself into believing that some of these actions wouldn’t have exactly the opposite effects as those intended, only a fool like himself. ‘It was
them!
They fucked it up,’ Chalice told himself, realizing that he too was one of “them.” Acts that had once seemed noble, now took on an absurd and even hypocritical taint. He remembered how impossible it had seemed that those who knew the facts, who would listen long enough, could possibly fail to see the truth. It was right before them! But they had, couldn’t have helped but listen. Chalice admitted this now. How absurd it was to attack everything they valued, more than absurd, hypocritical and childish, to shove things down their ignorant throats, that wasn’t enough, not even trying to make these ideas, facts palatable — the hair, the clothes, the violence — not trying to convince people, but instead to show them how ignorant they were, humiliate them. He remembered himself as so caught up in ideas, the movement, that methods seemed irrelevant. Everything made sense now, but he realized that it had made sense then, and only self-deceit had prevented him from admitting it. Stopping the war hadn’t been a cause, but rather a self-indulgent excuse to show everyone that he was above them, a just person. If the war had been the real issue, no methods could have proved worse than those used against it; and the root of these methods was more than childish stubbornness, it was a hypocritical lack of sincerity combined with pure, selfish arrogance. As he looked back, it seemed that only the methods had been great enough to defeat the cause. So now it was he that was having things stuffed down his throat.

Disturbing as these thoughts were, they did afford Chalice some relief. At least things were starting to make sense. Suddenly his reasoning led him further, to an excuse, a logical defense of his actions; but he found this even harder to accept than self-accusation. It involved so much more than just himself. The truth had always seemed so powerful. All that had ever been necessary to change things was to show people that they were wrong.

How absurd! Wanting to write a book, to put the truth before them, without the hysteria, written down, in a way impossible to deny — how absurd this now seemed — the belief that people actually wanted the truth, that they would defend and act upon it. He wondered exactly how much of his own thinking had been self-deceit, how much more important was his desire to create something indestructible, permanent — a book.

“Professor,” someone called, and Chalice was glad to be taken from his thoughts. Roads walked towards him. “C’mon, we’ve got to help the rest of the squad unload some trucks.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Chalice answered in a depressed tone.

“I don’t feel like it either. C’mon, let’s go.”

“I’m not going,” Chalice answered gruffly, thinking how much better it had been when Roads never talked to anyone, before he took over as squad leader.

“Both of us are going.”

“Chow starts in an hour. What difference does it make?”

“If we don’t help them, they’ll be eating C-rations tonight. Those trucks have to be unloaded. C’mon.”

“I said I wasn’t going,” Chalice answered testily.

Still calm, Roads said, “Oh you’re going all right.”

Chalice looked up at Roads, sneering childishly, on the verge of saying something. When Roads saw this, he merely smiled, disparagingly, a sense of accomplishment in his look, knowing exactly what Chalice wanted to say. Roads slowly turned and began walking. Chalice followed behind him, still thinking, ‘Nigger!’

The men were gathered in the platoon tent, preparing to go on watch. Chalice was sitting on his cot when Hamilton walked over and sat down across from him. For the last few days they hadn’t been avoiding each other, but neither had they sought each other out. “Cut the shit, Professor. You’re depressing me. All I’ve got is a wake-up and I’ll be on my way back to the world.”

“I wish I was going with you,” Chalice replied somberly.

“Sorry I can’t wait, but I got here a little earlier than you did.
  
.
 
.
 
. It goes by fast. You’ll see.”

“It’s like I’m the last one here. Everyone else is either dead or home.
  
.
 
.
 
. I don’t even know the names of half these boots.”

“You better learn them
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
just like Kovacs and Tony 5 learned your name. Besides man, the boots already know who the Professor is.”

Chalice broke into a faint smile as he said, “I met some decent motherfuckers in this shit hole. If they were still here, it’d be different.
  
.
 
.
 
. I’ll make it though.”

“You better. As soon as somebody frags Roads, you’ll be squad leader.”

“Roads doesn’t fuck with anybody. He’s all —”

“That’s the trouble. He’s too good to fuck with anybody.”

“He’s all right.
  
.
 
.
 
. Seriously man, I’m gonna miss you — the last of the wild bunch.”

“Uh-uh, you’re the last.
  
.
 
.
 
. We ain’t done much bullshitting lately. Why don’t we make up for it tonight.”

“Sure. Come around to my position.”

“
Hell
no! I’ve got some herb I wanna burn. That new boot gives you an extra man in the squad. I’ll get Roads to let you off lines. I’m still platoon sergeant, you know.”

“He already said we’re gonna have one five-man watch.”

“It’s my last night — my last chance to get stoned in the bush. I’ll talk to him.” Chalice shrugged his shoulders, and Hamilton walked over to Roads. He came back saying, “It’s okay.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He never says shit. He just looked at me for a few seconds like he hated my guts, then nodded.”

When the rest of the men headed to their positions, Chalice and Hamilton walked behind an ammo bunker and smoked two joints. The marijuana was strong. They sat almost immobilized until an hour after dusk. Hamilton got hungry, and he talked Chalice into stealing some ice cream from the mess hall. It was dark inside, so Chalice stayed close behind as Hamilton searched for the freezers. They finally found a three-gallon container and were on their way out with it when Hamilton heard footsteps coming towards them. He ducked behind a freezer. Chalice followed him. As they squatted in the darkness, Chalice had visions of himself going before Colonel Nash for stealing from the mess hall. The footsteps passed within a few feet of them, and when Hamilton heard a voice whisper “Quiet,” he couldn’t resist standing up and saying harshly, “
Stop or I’ll shoot!
” Complete silence followed, but it was finally broken when Hamilton could no longer control his laughter.

An angry voice asked, “Who are you?”

“Just thieves, like you.”

The voice was still somewhat angry as it said, “You scared the shit out of us.”

“What are you looking for?” Chalice asked.

“Ice cream.”

“We’ve got the last one. Do you want some?”

“Sure. Bring it over to our hootch. We’ve already swiped a big ham and some bread.” On the way to their hootch, the two men told Hamilton they were from another battalion that was being sent to Khe Sanh in the morning. They had just arrived in An Hoa that night, and because they didn’t have to stand lines they were celebrating.

The hootch was dark except for warm spheres of light where candles had been placed upon the floor. There were no cots, and the men sat around the flames smiling like pumpkins with candles inside as light flickered eerily on their faces. This and the constant hum of voices gave the hootch an attractively evil quality. Hamilton and Chalice made their way to one of the candles where a ham was being carved by its light. Chalice watched entranced as two greasy hands worked a bayonet into the meat, its juices beading on and dripping from the blade. Both his and Hamilton’s mouths began to water as the gleaming hands placed the slice between two pieces of bread. Exchanging drugged smiles, they dropped to their knees and waited for a turn with the bayonet. When the other men heard about the ice cream, they began to wander over with spoons to dish it out of the container. Chalice watched with skulking interest as the candlelight flickered upon strange faces gleaming with ham grease and stained with ice cream.

Someone began to strum a guitar. Even before the first word was sung, Chalice staggered to his feet and wandered in the direction of the music. It was the light flickering off the guitar that he saw first. Dropping to his knees, he whispered in a disbelieving tone, “Boyd, Boyd!”

But it was Cowen that recognized him first. “Chalice!”

“Abie!”

“Hey, it’s good to see you guys.”

“I know what you mean. I know what you mean.
  
.
 
.
 
. What happened to you? You look terrible.”

Chalice stumbled over the possible answers for a few seconds, then said, “I’m all right. I just lost some weight. You don’t look so good yourself, Abie.”

“
Hey,
are you going to Khe Sanh with us tomorrow?” Boyd asked.

“No. I wish I was.”

“I wish I wasn’t. Hey, it’s good to see you.”

“We did that already.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Are you stoned too?”

A voice said, “Play the guitar, Boyd.”

“Man, the whole world is stoned.
  
.
 
.
 
. Play the guitar, Boyd — ‘Merry Christmas, Jesus’ or something.”

“Boyd,” a voice said pleadingly, “play the one about the cowboy.”