The Vietnam Reader (33 page)

Had it ended there on Cacciato’s grassy hill, flares coloring the morning sky? Had it ended in tragedy? Had it ended with a jerking, shaking feeling—noise and confusion? Or had it ended farther along the trail west? Had it ever ended? What, in fact, had become of Cacciato? More precisely—as Doc Peret would insist it be phrased —more precisely, what part was fact and what part was the extension of fact? And how were facts separated from possibilities? What had really happened and what merely might have happened? How did it end?

The trick, of course, was to think through it carefully. That was Doc’s advice—look for motives, search out the place where fact ended and imagination took over. Ask the important questions. Why had Cacciato left the war? Was it courage or ignorance, or both? Was it even possible to combine courage and ignorance? How much of what happened, or might have happened, was Cacciato’s doing and how much was the product of the biles?

That was Doc’s theory.

“You got an excess of fear biles,” Doc had said one afternoon beneath the tower. “We’ve all got these biles—Stink, Oscar, everybody—but you’ve got yourself a whole bellyful of the stuff. You’re oversaturated. And my theory is this: Somehow these biles are warping your sense of reality. Follow me? Somehow they’re screwing up your
basic perspective, and the upshot is you sometimes get a little mixed up. That’s all.”

Doc had gone on to explain that the biles are a kind of glandular substance released during emotional stress. A perfectly normal thing. Like adrenaline, Doc had said. Only instead of producing quick energy, the biles act as a soothing influence, quieting the brain, numbing, counteracting the fear. Doc had listed the physical symptoms: numbness of the extremities in times of extremity; a cloudiness of vision; paralysis of the mental processes that separate what is truly happening from what only might have happened; floatingness; removal; a releasing feeling in the belly; a sense of drifting; a lightness of head.

“Normally,” Doc had said, “those are healthy things. But in your case, these biles are … well, they’re overabundant. They’re leaking out, infecting the brain. This Cacciato business—it’s the work of the biles. They’re flooding your whole system, going to the head and fucking up reality, frying in all the goofy, weird stuff.”

So Doc’s advice had been to concentrate. When he felt the symptoms, the solution was to concentrate. Concentrate, Doc had said, until you see it’s just the biles fogging things over, just a trick of the glands.

Now, facing the night from high in his tower by the sea, Paul Berlin concentrated.

The night did not move. On the beach below, the barbed wire sparkled in moonlight, and the sea made its gentle sounds behind him. The men slept peacefully. Now and then one of them would stir, turning in the dark, but they slept without stop. Oscar slept in his mesh hammock. Eddie and Doc and Harold Murphy slept on the tower floor. Stink Harris and the lieutenant slept side by side, their backs touching. They could sleep and sleep.

Paul Berlin kept the guard. For a long time he looked blankly into the night, inland, concentrating hard on the physical things.

True, he was afraid. Doc was right about that. Even now, with the night calm and unmoving, the fear was there like a kind of background sound that was heard only if listened for. True. But even so, Doc was wrong when he called it dreaming. Biles or no biles, it wasn’t
dreaming—it wasn’t even pretending, not in the strict sense. It was an idea. It was a working out of the possibilities. It wasn’t dreaming and it wasn’t pretending. It wasn’t crazy. Blisters on their feet, streams to be forded and swamps to be circled, dead ends to be opened into passages west. No, it wasn’t dreaming. It was a way of asking questions. What became of Cacciato? Where did he go, and why? What were his motives, or did he have motives, and did motives matter? What tricks had he used to keep going? How had he eluded them? How did he slip away into the deep jungle, and how, through the jungle, had they continued the chase? What happened, and what might have happened?

THE OBSERVATION POST

The issue, of course, was courage. How to behave. Whether to flee or fight or seek an accommodation. The issue was not fearlessness. The issue was how to act wisely in spite of fear. Spiting the deep-running biles: that was true courage. He believed this. And he believed the obvious corollary: the greater a man’s fear, the greater his potential courage.

Below, the tower’s moon shadow stretched far to the south.

Nearly two fifteen now, but he was not tired. Lightheaded, he faced inland and listened. He could recite the separate sounds—a rolling breeze off the sea, the incoming tide, the hum of the radio. The others slept. Stink Harris slept defensively, knees tucked up and arms curled about his head like a beaten boxer. Oscar slept gracefully, spread out, and Eddie Lazzutti slept fitfully, turning and sometimes muttering. Their sleeping was part of the night.

He bent down and did PT by the numbers, counting softly, loosening up around his arms and neck and legs, then he walked twice around the tower’s small platform. He was not tired, and not afraid, and the night was not moving.

Leaning against the wall of sandbags, he lit another of Doc’s cigarettes. After the war he would stop smoking. Quit, just like that.

He inhaled deeply and held it and enjoyed the puffy tremor it set off in his head.

Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn’t help it. Noise scared him, dark scared him. Tunnels scared him: the time he almost won the Silver Star for valor. But the real issue was courage. It had nothing to do with the Silver Star … Oh, he would’ve liked winning it, true, but that wasn’t the issue. He would’ve liked showing the medal to his father, the heavy feel of it, looking his father in the eye to show he had been brave, but even that wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was the power of will to defeat fear. A matter of figuring a way to do it. Somehow working his way into that secret chamber of the human heart, where, in tangles, lay the circuitry for all that was possible, the full range of what a man might be. He believed, like Doc Peret, that somewhere inside each man is a biological center for the exercise of courage, a piece of tissue that might be touched and sparked and made to respond, a chemical maybe, or a lone chromosome that when made to fire would produce chain reactions of valor that even the biles could not drown. A filament, a fuse, that if ignited would release the full energy of what might be. There was a Silver Star twinkling somewhere inside him.

UPON ALMOST WINNING THE SILVER STAR

They heard the shot that got Frenchie Tucker, just as Bernie Lynn, a minute later, heard the shot that got himself.

“Somebody’s got to go down,” said First Lieutenant Sidney Martin, nearly as new to the war as Paul Berlin.

But that was later, too. First they waited. They waited on the chance that Frenchie might come out. Stink and Oscar and Pederson and Vaught and Cacciato waited at the mouth of the tunnel. The others moved off to form a perimeter.

“This here’s what happens,” Oscar muttered. “When you search the fuckers ’stead of just blowing them and moving on, this here’s the final result.”

“It’s a war,” said Sidney Martin.

“Is it really?”

“It is. Shut up and listen.”

“A war!” Oscar Johnson said. “The man says we’re in a war. You believe that?”

“That’s what I tell my folks in letters,” Eddie said. “A war!”

They’d all heard the shot. They’d watched Frenchie go down, a big hairy guy who was scheduled to take the next chopper to the rear to
have his blood pressure checked, a big guy who liked talking politics; a great big guy, so he’d been forced to go slowly, wiggling in bit by bit.

“Not me,” he’d said. “No way you get me down there. Not Frenchie Tucker.”

“You,” said Sidney Martin.

“Bullshit,” Frenchie said. “I’ll get stuck.”

“Stuck like a pig,” said Stink Harris, and some of the men murmured.

Oscar looked at Sidney Martin. “You want it done,” he said, “then do it yourself. Think how good you’ll feel afterward. Self-improvement an’ all that. A swell fuckin feeling.”

But the young lieutenant shook his head. He gazed at Frenchie Tucker and told him it was a matter of going down or getting himself court-martialed. One or the other. So Frenchie swore and took off his pack and boots and socks and helmet, stacked them neatly on a boulder, cussing, taking time, complaining how this would screw up his blood pressure.

They watched him go down. A big cussing guy who had to wiggle his way in. Then they heard the shot.

They waited a long while. Sidney Martin found a flashlight and leaned down into the hole and looked.

And then he said, “Somebody’s got to go down.”

The men filed away. Bernie Lynn, who stood near the lip of the tunnel, looked aside and mumbled to himself.

“Somebody,” the new lieutenant said. “Right now.”

Stink Harris shrugged. “Maybe Frenchie’s okay. Give him time, you never can tell.”

Pederson and Vaught agreed. The feeling of hope caught on, and they told one another it would be all right, Frenchie could take care of himself. Stink said it didn’t sound like an AK, anyway. “No crack,” he said. “That wasn’t an AK.”

“Somebody,” the lieutenant said. “Somebody’s got to.”

No one moved.

“Now. Right now.”

Stink turned and walked quickly to the perimeter and took off his helmet, threw it down hard and sat on it. He lit a cigarette. Eddie and
Vaught joined him. They all lit cigarettes. Doc Peret opened his medic’s pouch and began examining the contents, as if doing inventory, and Pederson and Buff and Rudy Chassler slipped off into the hedges.

“Look,” Sidney Martin said. He was tall. Acne scars covered his chin. “I didn’t invent this sorry business. But we got a man down there and somebody’s got to fetch him. Now.”

Stink made a long hooting noise. “Send down the gremlin.”

“Who?”

“The gremlin. Send Cacciato down.”

Oscar looked at Cacciato, who smiled broadly and began removing his pack.

“Not him,” Oscar said. “Somebody. Make up your mind.”

Paul Berlin stood alone. He felt the walls tight against him. He was careful not to look at anyone.

Bernie Lynn swore violently. He dropped his gear where he stood, just let it fall, and he entered the tunnel headfirst. “Fuck it,” he kept saying, “fuck it.” Bernie had once poured insecticide into Frenchie’s canteen. “Fuck it,” he kept saying, going down.

His feet were still showing when he was shot. The feet thrashed like a swimmer’s feet. Doc and Oscar grabbed hold and yanked him out. The feet were still clean, it happened that fast. He swore and went down headfirst and then was shot a half inch below the throat; they pulled him out by the feet. Not even time to sweat. The dirt fell dry off his arms. His eyes were open. “Holy Moses,” he said.

THE THINGS THEY DIDN’T KNOW

“Lui lai, Lui lai!”
Stink would scream, pushing them back.
“Lui lai,
you dummies … Back up, move!” Teasing ribs with his rifle muzzle, he would force them back against a hootch wall or fence. “
Coi chung!”
he’d holler. Blinking, face white and teeth clicking, he would kick the stragglers, pivot, shove, thumb flicking the rifle’s safety catch. “Move!
Lui lai
… Move it, go, go!” Herding them together, he would watch to be sure their hands were kept in the open, empty. Then he would open his dictionary. He would read slowly, retracing the words several times, then finally look up.
“Nam xuong dat,”
he’d say. Separating each word, trying for good diction, he would say it in a loud, level voice. “Everybody …
nam xuong dat.
” The kids would just stare. The women might rock and moan, or begin chattering among themselves like caged squirrels, glancing up at Stink with frazzled eyes. “Now!” he’d shout.
“Nam xuong dat
… Do it!” Sometimes he would fire off a single shot, but this only made the villagers fidget and squirm. Puzzled, some of them would start to giggle. Others would cover their ears and yap with the stiff, short barking sounds of small dogs. It drove Stink wild.
“Nam xuong
the fuck down!” he’d snarl, his thin lips curling in a manner he practiced while shaving. “Lie down!
Man len,
mama-san! Now, goddamn it!” His eyes would bounce from his rifle to the dictionary to the cringing villagers. Behind him, Doc Peret and Oscar Johnson and Buff would be grinning
at the show. They’d given the English-Vietnamese dictionary to Stink as a birthday present, and they loved watching him use it, the way he mixed languages in a kind of stew, ignoring pronunciation and grammar, turning angry when words failed to produce results.
“Nam thi xuong dat!”
he’d bellow, sweating now, his tongue sputtering over the impossible middle syllables.
“Man len,
pronto, you sons of bitches! Haul ass!” But the villagers would only shake their heads and cackle and mill uncertainly. This was too much for Stink Harris. Enraged, he’d throw away the dictionary and rattle off a whole magazine of ammunition. The women would moan. Kids would clutch their mothers, dogs would howl, chickens would scramble in their coops.
“Dong
fuckin’
lat thit!”
Stink would be screaming, his eyes dusty and slit like a snake’s.
“Nam xuong dat!
Do it, you ignorant bastards!” Reloading, he would keep firing and screaming, and the villagers would sprawl in the dust, arms wrapped helplessly around their heads. And when they were all down, Stink would stop firing. He would smile. He would glance at Doc Peret and nod. “See there? They understand me fine.
Nam xuong dat
… Lie down. I’m gettin’ the hang of it. You just got to punctuate your sentences.”

Not knowing the language, they did not know the people. They did not know what the people loved or respected or feared or hated. They did not recognize hostility unless it was patent, unless it came in a form other than language; the complexities of tone and tongue were beyond them. Dinkese, Stink Harris called it: monkey chatter, bird talk. Not knowing the language, the men did not know whom to trust. Trust was lethal. They did not know false smiles from true smiles, or if in Quang Ngai a smile had the same meaning it had in the States. “Maybe the dinks got things mixed up,” Eddie once said, after the time a friendly-looking farmer bowed and smiled and pointed them into a minefield. “Know what I mean? Maybe … well, maybe the gooks cry when they’re happy and smile when they’re sad. Who the hell knows? Maybe when you smile over here it means you’re ready to cut the other guy’s throat. I mean, hey … didn’t they tell us way back in AIT that this here’s a different culture?” Not knowing the people, they did not know friends from enemies. They did not know if
it was a popular war, or, if popular, in what sense. They did not know if the people of Quang Ngai viewed the war stoically, as it sometimes seemed, or with grief, as it seemed other times, or with bewilderment or greed or partisan fury. It was impossible to know. They did not know religions or philosophies or theories of justice. More than that, they did not know how emotions worked in Quang Ngai. Twenty years of war had rotted away the ordinary reactions to death and disfigurement. Astonishment, the first response, was never there in the faces of Quang Ngai. Disguised, maybe. But who knew? Who ever knew? Emotions and beliefs and attitudes, motives and aims, hopes—these were unknown to the men in Alpha Company, and Quang Ngai told nothing. “Fuckin beasties,” Stink would croak, mimicking the frenzied village speech. “No shit, I seen hamsters with more feelings.”