by David Rabe
16
The small boy has taken Whitaker’s hand to guide him through the frantic traffic and across the street to a café where the food is fit to eat. Whitaker has been warned about getting dysentery from the Vietnamese food and cooking. At camp he’d been given the name of a couple of places rumored to be halfway safe, but he couldn’t find them. The boy’s funny little nose is narrow at the bridge and wide at the nostrils, and his black hair, dirty and unhealthy looking, dangles in bangs above his large, serious eyes. Led docilely along by this child’s tugging fingers locked around his thumb, Whitaker feels foolish. Upon their meeting, the boy said, “You boucoup GI,” meaning he thought Whitaker very large. The boy is frail; Whitaker will feed him. Because there is no sidewalk, they must step over and around holes, pockets of garbage pink with rot and sprinkled with colored paper, knots of cloth stained with paint or blood. A broken branch catches his foot, and Whitaker stumbles slightly. The street is crowded, a multitude of people walking up and down it and both ways across it while trucks, uncountable scooters—Vespas, Hondas—and a kind of couch on wheels propelled from behind by a man on a bicycle are all squalling and honking in every direction. Battling the din as if desperate to be heard, music blasts from bars along the street. The gaudy glare of their interiors, like the rambunctious rock and roll, squeezes into the oncoming dusk.
The boy says to Whitaker, “Every person dinky dow.”
“Creezy,” says Whitaker.
An alleyway leads to a wet and glittering dimness, a hive of shanties. From out of this gloom come three laughing GIs in jungle fatigues marked with the winged blue patches of the 173rd Airborne. They were in the shit recently, a big, bloody battle everybody heard about. As Whitaker looks after them, the boy jerks on his hand, turning him sharply to rattle through a curtain of beads on strings covering a doorway in a faded red wall beyond which light increases and many colorful tables stand amid loud music—Martha and the Vandellas. “Okay, GI, can do chop-chop numba one,” says the boy.
“No get sick.”
A slim young waiter wearing black trousers and a white dress shirt approaches, talking excitedly, his eyes on the boy who clings more tightly to Whitaker’s hand and spits out a string of loud Vietnamese words. When the waiter’s eyes leap from the boy to the door, Whitaker understands. “Oh, no,” he says. “No, no; he stays.”
“Wait, GI. You no ’stand.” The waiter is grinning. “Wait. Okay.”
“I ’stand.”
“No babysan can come. Numba ten. Beg money. Not nice. Other GI no like boucoup babysan talk GI—him eating—’Gimme money, gimme money.’ Numba ten.”
“No sweat.”
“Maybe steal.”
“No. Babysan come me, sit me, no beg money; I go, he go. No sweat.”
“Cannot do. No babysan.”
“Shit, too,” Whitaker says.
A second Vietnamese, slightly older than the first, steps from behind the bar, wiping his hands on a towel, brushing his fingers through his hair. A sentence of Vietnamese spurts from his lips along with a buzzing little laugh, and the first young man pivots to leave while the new arrival, the older man, remains, nodding to Whitaker. “You want buy food for babysan?”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Okay. You sit down, okay?”
“Fine.”
“You watch babysan, he don’t steal, okay?”
As they are guided to a table against the wall, the boy says something to the man that sounds friendly and receives a seemingly friendly reply. When the man is gone, Whitaker says, “Nobody like babysan.”
“No sweat.”
“Babysan steal.”
“I no steal.”
“You lie.”
“No. No sau. Xom numba one.”
“I steal,” Whitaker says.
“What?”
“Sure.”
“Eeeeaaaaa?” Amazement lights the whole of his face. “GI? Steal?” And he rocks back, giggling, cocking the chair up on its legs.
“For sure.”
“You sau. Boucoup sau.”
“No.”
“Troi oi,” he sings. “Troi duc oi.”
The waitress, as tiny as a child and too shy to look directly at them, arrives to take their order of two steaks with french fries, one Bommniba Beer 33, one orange soda. A second waitress sits at the bar. The sleek black of her hair is pulled into a ponytail, and her exact, lovely body is garbed in a blouse and black slacks that taper to the pink of her ankles. She sits at the bar studying a glass of Coke that stands before her. Two waiters occupy a table at the rear. There is an odor of cooking and a deeper, more pervasive stench of backed-up sewage. Whitaker whistles, looking at the girl. Off duty since noon because he pulled guard duty the preceding night, he was laid in the middle of the afternoon, but she was old, wrinkled, and skinny. He would like a young one. A real pretty young one.
The beer and soda arrive along with a pair of green-tinted glasses filled with ice like chunks of crystal containing delicate, explosionlike designs. Drinking beer that leaves an aftertaste and bits of grain on his tongue, Whitaker says, “You live Bien Hoa?”
“For sure. Xom. Me, Xom. Me.”
“Xom?”
“Name-me.”
“Xom? Name you Xom? Creezy.”
“No.”
“For sure. Creezy. Xom-Xom,” Whitaker says. “Creezy. Xom-Xom.”
“You gimme cigarette, okay?”
“For sure.” He taps one loose and the kid plucks it out. Whitaker takes one for himself and they light up. He drinks deeply to finish this fourth or fifth bottle of beer for the day—or is it the seventh or ninth? He doesn’t know, yelling for more, and when the steaks arrive, they are of a medium thickness, cooked to a deep charcoal darkness. The fibers of the muscle show as wrinkles in its surface. A slice of tomato lies at the edge of the plate. The potatoes, burned and crisp at the tips, are soft at their centers. Xom goes cutting and hacking away, greedy with his knife, while Whitaker, watching, is pleased. He is warmed by the impression that he is a great, bright gift sent into the boy’s desolation. The fork hauling meat toward Xom’s open mouth stops; his dark eyes glint with a fearful look aimed past Whitaker and toward something behind him. A hand falls on Whitaker’s shoulder, brown, the knuckles deeply wrinkled. He sees the fingers lying there, the pink skin near the nails, and up he looks into the bloodshot eyes of Rasputin.
“You ugly,” Rasputin says.
“Goddamn,” Whitaker says. “Goddamn.” Elation is large in his throat.
“Friend you, huh?” Xom asks.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Numba one,” says the boy and the worry leaves his face as he goes back to eating.
“C’mon, sit down,” says Whitaker. “Lemme buy you a beer.”
“No friend to me,” Rasputin says, looking at Xom. “Don’t have no friend in the world.” Taking a chair from an adjacent table, he eases down, melting into the shape of it. “I ain’t got much time to spend with you, Whitaker. I got too many moves to make. My, my, look at that boy chow down. He’s a hungry boy, Whitaker. You got you a starving child.”
“Xom,” says Whitaker.
And the boy looks up, alert to detect the nature of the thing expected of him.
“Say hello to my friend.”
“Okay. For sure. Hello, GI.”
“Hello, funny face.”
“Eat,” says Whitaker.
“Numba one,” says Xom.
“Where you at?” Whitaker says to Rasputin. “Where’d they put you?”
“I’m at the air base, man. I’m some goddamn colonel’s driver. How you like that shit? I drive that motherin’ jeep all up and down the streets. We important, him and me.”
“What about the other guys? They there, too? You ever see any a the other guys?”
“Everybody all over hell, Whitaker. Whole unit broke up. Got picked to pieces hangin’ around that 90th Replacement. Ain’t no such unit no more like we come over here with. Bunch a replaceme
nt parts now. Not that we was much of a unit. Gone. Shipped all over everywhere. They in Saigon. Couple poor bastards in Di An. Kramer, for one. They in Cu Chi. Where you?”
“Long Binh. Me and Rowe out there.”
“Rowe. That crazy nigger out there?”
“Sure. We left together, me and Rowe. First of everybody.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You and Rowe to blame, then.”
“I guess.”
“I like this war, you know that, Whitaker? This is nice motherin’ war, I got me old friends I can bump into and reminisce with, I ain’t been in it all that long at all. How you like the war, Whitaker?”
“Fine.”
“Sure. It’s a real good war, makin’ you and me friends. You know what, when you finished, Whitaker, I got an errand, you wanna come with me? Back in the alleys. Huh? You been back there yet, back in them alleys?”
“Not around here.”
“Shit, it nice back there. You been laid?”
“Sure.”
And Xom makes a happy sound, a burp of pleasure not quite laughter, his eyes glittering at them over the glass of bright orange drink. “You want fuck-fuck, GI?”
“Little, bitty pimpy man,” says Rasputin.
“I had this old goddamn grandmother, I think, man,” says Whitaker. “I was lookin’ for witches, you know, maybe she was one, all the while I was humpin’.”
“Ain’t you somethin’,” Rasputin says. “Maybe we got some time you best go check out the Rin-Tin-Tin bar. Do you some good.”
Xom, who has been listening closely, nods knowingly at the name of the bar. “I know numba one. Reen-Teen-Teen bar. Same-same dog can kill you.”
“C’mon,” Rasputin says, “pay what you owe, we’ll go on my little errand.” Dragging his leg as he rises, his chair rocks and nearly goes clattering to the tile floor but Whitaker lunges, catching it. A waiter scurries over to be paid. When they exit, Whitaker and Xom find Rasputin standing at the edge of the street, both hands hanging limply from the rims of his pockets as he wobbles a little, his head tilted to let him look skyward. The sight of him compels both Xom and Whitaker to trace the line of his gaze with their own.
“I got to get my smokes,” Rasputin says.
Whitaker sees nothing of interest in the smudged and stagnant blankness overhead.
“Let’s go get my smokes, Whitaker.”
“Can cigarette him, okay,” Xom is saying, pointing across the street to a man behind a stall built on two wagon wheels with stacks of cigarette cartons on display. The boy waggles his fingers to make his idea clear.
“I want go alley, man,” says Rasputin.
“Oh.”
“You ’stand. Back alley.”
“Marri-you-anna. Sure. I know.” And his serious, old man’s head bows.
“Is that what you want?” Whitaker says.
“Deed I do.” His eyes are bloodshot; stains show on the inner edge of his lower lip. “You gettin’ into it, my man?” he says to Whitaker. “You like your pot, Whitaker?”
“Sure.”
“You ever had it?”
“Couple times.”
They are strolling now, the boy between them. Whitaker lights up and hands another Pall Mall to Xom.
“I like a good reefer, man,” Rasputin is saying. “Back home I’d come in from work, just put on this whole stack a records, climb inta bed smokin’. Be floatin’. Trouble with broads that way sometimes. One day I want pussy, next day I don’t. Broad don’t understand that always. Yeah. Lord, I hate to be bothered. It always happenin’. Hassle. Hassle. Last night I’m with this ho. Late in the day. In come these ARVNs. This ho sittin’ on my lap, we talkin’, you know, both silly, these ARVNs start talkin’ gook talk to her, she kinda shittin’ all over ’em the way she lookin’ at ’em. They kinda stompin’ around, their skinny asses all bent outta shape. I don’t like the feelin’ I’m gettin’. Only thing clear is how she thinks they are shit. Then this other GI come up to me sayin’, ‘Better let her go, man. You don’t want her gettin’ hurt.’ I don’t know what he’s sayin’. I ain’t even stoppin’ her. I ain’t stoppin’ nobody. I don’t care what she does. How come they all gotta hassle me? Don’t she know the situation? Fuckin’ gooks, crazy, man. ‘Go on with ’em,’ I tell her, so she goes vicious on my ass, yelling at me, and yellin’ at them, too. They’re drunk. She fuckin’ hates them little men. We in a war, man, all on the same side. Let ’em fuck her, I say. You see what I’m sayin’?”
Entering the narrow alley, they are immediately in mud and a further diminishment of light. The water that fills the imprints left by their footsteps stinks of waste and rot. On either side are houses built of dark, decaying wood, hunks and slabs of tin, occasional stone walls and tile roofs. Some appear to have been set on bases of concrete.
“People used to throw rocks at me,” says Rasputin. “Used to come from far and near. I was telephone man in the city a Watts, that’s L.A., and them people crazy out there, they got no entertainment. I’d be up there, workin’, doin’ my job, pretty soon I’d hear some somebody callin’—‘Telephone man, Telephone man,’ and then another one, all these yellin’ voices sayin’ it, the word spreadin’. Pretty soon, there be fifteen, twenty, thirty kids, all kinds, and then they start to throwin’ rocks at me and shootin’ rocks out a slingshots, tryin’ to knock me off my ladder just to see me fall.”
Whitaker chuckles a little.
“Ain’t that some shit,” says Rasputin. “How come you got me so talkative, Whitaker—tellin’ stories like I got a TV in my head. What’s happenin’ here?”
Xom yanks on Whitaker’s sleeve and says, “Numba ten.” He looks up at Whitaker. He gestures in the direction they are going and shakes his head. “No, no. GI no, no. Dung Lai.”
“No sweat,” Rasputin tells him.
“What’s he babblin’ about?” Whitaker wants to know.
“Off-limits back here. But we just di di in and di di-the-fuck-mau out.”
They continue in silence for a time down the cluttered lanes of shanties, sheds, and houses until the alley is no more than a pathway. The mud makes wet, sucking sounds with their every stride and the stench is constant. People on porches wear cotton or silk pajamas and stare. A naked infant sits on the edge of a cistern while her mother pulls up buckets and dumps them into a large urn. The child watches the three of them pass, her small hands stuffed into her mouth. The mother, after glancing at the child, squints at Whitaker and Rasputin. She frowns at Xom, then picks up the child and squats with her knees pressed up into her armpits, her buttocks almost against the ground.
“Just around the corner,” says Rasputin. He turns at the edge of a building, and the rutted lane before them shows leaden light on patches of water. He looks up and sees a smoky sky, a gray moon. Conversations within the crammed, almost interconnected houses mingle in the air around them. The thin walls keep little contained. Xom, bowing, grabs a stick that he taps on the ground as they walk.
Materializing from the murk between two shanties, a pair of GIs go by in silence.
“Just be a minute, Whitaker,” says Rasputin, stepping toward a doorway set deep in a rough concrete frame. “I ain’t gonna be no more than a second,” he says, rapping softly on the door.
“Hey, GI,” Xom says, “I go now.”
Rasputin, at the side of Whitaker’s vision, vanishes. “What?” he says to Xom while looking after Rasputin.
“I go now.”
“Go?”
“You gimme money.”
“What?”
“Money, GI. For sure. I go my house, no hab money, Mama-san-me gimme numba ten—numba fuckin’ ten.”
“Give you money?” says Whitaker.
“For sure, for sure. Friend-me.”
“For sure,” says Whitaker, “but no give money.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Buy you food, buy you orange. No give money.”
“C’mon,”
says Xom. “Fuck.”
“Hey.”
“You friend-me, c’mon. Cheap Charlie.”
“Talk numba ten, Xom.”
“You no gimme money, you numba ten. Cheap Charlie.”
“Hey.”
“Fuck you, numba goddamn fuckin’ ten, GI. Gimme money!” Emotion has him rigid, yet the words are delivered in a frightened, shaking voice. “You sau. Boucoup sau!”
“No, sau.”
“Boucoup sau!”
“Xom-Xom,” Whitaker says. “Friend-me. For sure.” He speaks carefully, softly, out of his own dismay.
“Must hab money!” Xom cries in rage and panic. His ragged shirt, Whitaker notices for the first time, is marked with little blue cowboys, red and blue horses. Xom is more bone than body in his cutoff unhemmed shorts; his feet bare, he trembles, and with a sudden cry that Whitaker cannot understand, he flees off down the alley, leaving Whitaker bewildered. Motionless, rocking a little from foot to foot, he stares at the dark, realizing in the passing moods of several cloudy moments that he is very drunk. Xom will reappear, he believes; Xom will apologetically return. He’ll make a joke. Maybe Whitaker will give him some money. Puffing a cigarette he does not remember lighting, he finds Rasputin beside him. Beyond Rasputin, an old woman stands in the open doorway; she has the silhouette of a hawk to the frowning, squinting Whitaker. Coals burn in the black beyond her.
“You get it?” Whitaker says.