by David Rabe
The fire has died down and the campsite is quiet. A couple of men stand talking. They look like officers, but he can’t really tell. He turns once more toward the hills that seem empty now, silent and dark. In the daylight a village is often discernible in that area, tin roofs and a church steeple shimmering in the sun like scattered toy blocks. But there’s just the darkness. Full of secrets. Two flares climb from the black, and then tracer rounds float up from one point and sink in another. The first of the flares sputters and goes out, while the other, with a slight lateral drift, descends. But up leaps a new one to make a pair, then a third and a fourth climb to form a cone of leaden whiteness. A nearer noise whirls him around, beginning to aim the rifle. A figure is crossing the field toward him. Reese. It’s midnight—past midnight, actually. Reese is late. Whitaker’s shift is over.
And the way he feels, it’s like someone out there beneath those failing flares is dying now. He has heard nothing, seen nothing, but someone is dead, having put up light to find the enemy all around him. Alert to the silence in which there is only the scrape and grind of Reese approaching, his mind has eyes to see into that blackness and then even further, into another day when someone on one of those hills will look over the miles from there to here—to this place where Whitaker will be standing, having desperately sent up flares in a call for help as the enemy closes in on him. Poor fucking Mr. Prendergast, he thinks. He can hear the steps of Reese behind him getting nearer. One afternoon as Mr. Prendergast entered, the entire class bellowed in unison, Good morning, Mr. Hoosier! He glanced at them, only the briefest alarm in his eyes as he sat down behind his desk. They called, How are you this morning, Mr. Hoosier? I’m not Mr. Hoosier, he said. Yes, you are. I’m Mr. Prendergast. No, Mr. Hoosier, don’t you know your name? I’m Mr. Prendergast! No! We’re tired of calling you Prendergast. Prendergast is stupid.
Reese arrives and Whitaker hands over the forty rounds of ammunition that they are not to put into their rifles unless they mean to kill somebody. Reese says he would like to get a shot at a VC as long he was old and coming in backwards.
“Did you see the snake?”
“No. I was tryin’ to sleep, man. You can guess how screwed up that was. The place was a loony bin. Did you see it?”
Whitaker shakes his head, and hands over the lieutenant’s map and Reese stares at it. “What the fuck is this?”
“It’s the route we’re supposed to walk.”
“Who says?”
“The lieutenant drew it up.”
“You’re puttin’ me on.”
“No.”
“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
“No.” The flares have vanished. The sky and landscape look peaceful. The heart attack that felled Whitaker’s father landed with the force of a truck. He yelped and shoved out with his fist, as if to fend off a thing he could see, all the while going down like a man bowing, only he didn’t stop. Whitaker had been about to walk from the kitchen and he turned back at the yell, and before he knew to kneel down, before he knew to telephone for help, he stood there, frozen.
Reese points at the diagram and says, “What’s this?”
Whitaker looks. “The bunker.”
“No kidding.”
He leaves Reese muttering and turning the map upside down and around, every which way. “This is fucked up, man,” he says. Whitaker staggers a little, actually stepping sideways to catch his balance. Soon he will sleep. A little further along in the night, he will be awakened to walk some more. At six AM, he will go to work. And like a filament in his mind, without which he could not see anything at all, there begin to hover and glow the tiny dark-haired bodies of the girls in the countryside and villages who everyone says are riddled with sickness beneath their loveliness. But he doesn’t care. What can he care? In the afternoon he will go and move within and against them. Find a part no one has taken time to find. Make her breathe. See the changes in her eyes. Hear her.
21
Whitaker stands with the Lambretta driver watching the black soldier punch the girl. What was her name? Lan. The blow comes straight out from the shoulder. The heel of the hand, fingers raised, palm forward, splats against her cheek, and she shrieks, sobbing, but unable to flee because his other hand clenches her arm. She wears dark blue slacks, a lighter blue blouse. Her shirttail has come loose and it shivers over her hips as he hits her again. His voice is shrill with fury. Whitaker can’t understand a word he’s saying, and she’s squealing in Vietnamese. Her pawing hands work the air, as if to find a way to escape. Her voice and manner are stricken and innocent; he has no right to hit her.
Confused about what to do, Whitaker grimaces at the wide-eyed, grinning Lambretta driver beside him. “What does she say?”
“Eeuuhhhh!” the man laughs, his flashing eyes aflutter. “Talk numba ten. Ohhh.” He shakes his head, claps his hands while Whitaker looks back and is taken by the urge to dash up and throw this asshole off her. Still, he squelches the impulse, wary of his own hair-trigger temper, his sides and chest wet with sweat. A fight could mean trouble, the stockade, or worse, because this guy’s in civvies and sunglasses, so there’s no way to be sure he isn’t 1st Division or 173rd or the 25th, some crazed grunt in from the field where he’d spent last week in the shit in some paddy killing people. Awareness of how little he knows about the girl’s life is a hole into which his desire to move keeps falling, as she stomps her feet and pulls free somehow of the black soldier’s grip. Would she even remember Whitaker? Isn’t it only his grandly babbling self-conceit that believes she might? Before him, the two of them glare out of feelings and histories he knows nothing about, and little in their behavior reveals anything but anger. This guy could be her boyfriend. The fury between them could come from months or more of bed and screwing, gifts, all kinds of shit. Or if they’re strangers, she could have robbed him, cheated somehow. What does Whitaker know other than how he is here, looking at them? His ignorance is too much, a burden he cannot budge, though it hurts a little to witness her pain. Then the black guy, eyes still raving, is leaving, knocking aside a parked bicycle, and Whitaker, watching, a little drunk and sad, suddenly panics that Lan will see him standing there, having done nothing. Should he do something? What? In this confusion, the alternatives of going forward to her, or just staying where he is, appear equally impossible, so he turns sideways and goes jogging off, head bowed over the worn, dusty pathway, the feeble grass. Along this road are many bars where there will be booze and some other girl to screw. Upon him descends, as he runs, a ghost of the scorn that could have befallen him, and deservedly, too, if he’d actually gotten into a fight over some gook whore he scarcely knows. He feels relief at having escaped such a mistake, and can’t understand why he came so close. Maybe he would have been better off staying at the compound and sleeping instead of rushing into town. Finished with guard he could have fallen into bed rather than wandering over to help Rowe put up framing for the officer’s billet, a choice that entitled him to be off duty at lunchtime. He grabbed a quick meal washed down with a ton of coffee, finally managed his long-delayed shower, and after throwing on civilian clothes, di di-the-fuck-maued out of there, arriving in Tan Mai across the street from the car wash just in time to see her get punched in the face.
The sun is burning, boiling waves; it hammers at him; it cooks stiffness into the back of his neck, and he slows down, trudging along, peeping into this bar and that one. He sees dirt floors and tile floors. Over and over there are shelves of booze behind wooden bar-tops or tinted bar-tops edged in aluminum strips, a jumble of lovelorn music and tiresome GIs, until finally, he parts a beaded curtain and pushes from the heat into dimness, a blue wicker chair and table, where he flops down, for whatever reason done for the day. The music in this lurid place is tinny and cheery and of all things—Lollipop—that stupid song from high school. Lollipop, lollipop. Catchy as hell, but he doesn’t care. It hurts so bad, he’s feeling so sad. The girl who brings his beer is thin and long legged. His dissatisfaction, he be
lieves, comes from nothing. It’s just the way it is. Just who he is. That’s all. A reasonless, sourceless case of being Whitaker in a foul mood. The plain wood floor is covered here and there by rugs, and the mamasan, who comes up and smiles and says, “You want nice girl?” is creepy. Younger than most, she has flat, killer eyes. Probably a whore who worked her way up, salvaging nickels and dimes, until she got to be boss. Now the money runs to her from the others. He imagines the funnel-like process of her business: her hands wait at her girl’s asses for the money they shit, coming in their snatches.
Tall brown bottles of Bommniba Beer 33 drained empty except for plumes of shadow collect on the table before him. When he goes into the backyard to pee, the long-legged girl follows, so he gets a good look at her. She eyes him and goes back inside. A bunch of kids are squatted nearby gambling. Dice and money fly about a large sheet of paper spread over a flat rock and covered with drawings of a deer, a fish, a chicken, and maybe a crab. All boys, a shambles of scrawny legs sticking out of tattered shorts, they yammer and babble as more money gets scattered. Then some kid throws the dice, and they all scream and shout and poke each other.
When a little later he finishes screwing the long-legged girl, she holds up the sagging rubber. “You see, GI,” she says. “Numba one.” It’s proof of the deed, as if he didn’t know.
Early evening has subdued the hot colors of the road and the searing sky seems to have relented, becoming a lesser, cooler blue. A group of galloping boys all but knock over a young girl carrying a laundry bag, a gurgling infant on her hip. The girl yelps and calls after them in a scolding tone. She’s dressed in a white blouse and black pajama bottoms and looks about twelve, red flip-flops on her bare feet. When one of the boys stops to scoop up a stone, which he hurls back at her, she ducks protectively over the baby. Whitaker takes several threatening steps toward the gang, and they flee. The girl doesn’t notice and he watches her drop the laundry bag, flip her conical straw hat forward to take it off and fan the baby and herself. She looks weary and demoralized, and yet as she starts back up, she has a bounce in her step and she’s smiling and talking to the baby. His own mood is curiously soft. He feels beaten, useless and forgotten, just like the lieutenant made sure he felt last night, like the army wants him twenty-four hours a day. He feels like there’s something he should do. If only he could start working in the motor pool like he’s supposed to. He hasn’t slept in hours. Going back to the compound and hitting his rack for some rest would be the smart thing, and he knows it, yet he does nothing to make it happen, doesn’t even look down the road for a Lambretta to transport him. He just keeps walking, wandering to no purpose he understands beyond the inexact urgings, the moods and half moods that stoke the pointless engine of this aimless afternoon. Off to his right, a bridge spans a black slice of water. Widening, the dull surface harbors a row of bamboo shanties that extend out over the gray stillness on stilts.
Two tiger-striped South Vietnamese soldiers, small and wiry, babble to each other beside the gateposts of a house until they turn to him as he passes. “Hey, GI,” says one. “You want girl? Numba one girl. You want numba one girl? I no have. No have numba one.”
“No sweat,” Whitaker says.
“Got numba fuckin’ ten. Got boucoup numba fuckin’ ten girl. You want? Got clap. Got VD. Boucoup. Got boucoup sick girl. You want? Got numba ten. Numba ten thou. GI. Hey, you want talk me you want numba fuckin’ ten thou sick girl?”
The face and voice are laughing in a pointless attempt to mask the ARVN’s pathetic, loopy desperation that makes Whitaker nod a little, chuckle, but otherwise maintain his silence. He has his own troubles. Something in this day has made him begin to worry about the progress of his life. It feels lost. He has no time for these men. His own life is nowhere he can see; it’s absent from this road, absent from the damp, unpleasant odors of rot and fish and manure, the oppressive, never-ending heat. If only they’d let him work where he’s supposed to so he could at least get his hands on a carburetor, a transmission, a drive shaft. All night he walked in circles to protect junk and in the morning there was nowhere to go for a decent breakfast. You can be shot any instant and everybody is crazy. He wants a malted milk, a Dairy Queen with a blond carhop; he wants people making dates and plans for fun and movies. A vision of himself couched in a red Ferrari comes and goes achingly through him; his fingers twitch with his dream of downshifting on spraying gravel, the huge engine popping with deceleration to announce his return to the Dairy Queen.
Blinking up from this image, he sees a dead dog kicked to the side of the road where it lies in the colorful mess of its guts. And was there anything in his life to indicate that he was moving toward the possibility of ever realizing the dream he’d just had? No. There was nothing. And what could he point to in his past that might have started him in the right direction? Same answer. He’s like a dull lead ball in a pinball machine bouncing from flipper to flipper to pillar to pillar to wall to hole, lighting up little, scoring nothing. Zilch. He feels bad. Bad about who he is, where he is, what he’s done. Bad about everything. Is that the reason—his aimlessness? Maybe he doesn’t know the reason, but he knows how he feels. The sudden tugging on his shirt turns out to be a little girl with white scars like worms on both cheeks. She’s tattered from head to toe and clings to his shirttail and holds out her hand, doing her best to say, “Gimme money, GI.” Whitaker hands over a hundred Ps. The kid keeps flapping her fingers at him for more. Maybe now in the desolation of this fucked-up country, amid these poor miserable empty people, he will be able to find himself, he thinks, somehow locating the lost part of himself that he knows is in there, the secret Whitaker who wants to help him fulfill his needs and duties, so that he gets what he wants. He gives another hundred Ps to the girl and fifty more and vows that upon returning to the States, he will make use of his opportunities from now on. He will arrive on time for his job. No hour will be too early, no task will be seen as beneath him. He will whip his lazy brain into shape so it knows about more than engines, V8s or 6s, more than timing, sequence, and firing, but the business end, too, the social skills necessary to run a garage. He will become expert at customer relations. Yes, oh yes, oh boy yes. The way to the speed of that Ferrari and everything else he wants in life is gotten through the drudgery of straightforward labor. He knows about work. He’s not afraid of work. He just has to put his mind to it, apply himself, and he can own his own garage where others perform for him whatever task he tells them to. No need to feel down. He’s nowhere near his last chance to make something of himself. The real possibilities of his life can’t be found here and now in this moment in this place. But he’s not doomed to stay. He won’t be here forever. This isn’t his natural stomping ground. It doesn’t matter what happens here. It’s hardly even real life.
With his feet at intersecting pathways, he sees his dusty civilian shoes, and they seem far from home, and he stares, telling himself this is where he is, right here, right now; and he’s thirsty. He turns sharply in the hope of a beer with which to celebrate his decision to change his life, and in the deepening twilight he encounters Lan, framed in a window, watching him, a strangely lavender silhouette in a lavender dress.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hello, you-you.”
He nearly walks away, instantly embarrassed. He struggles, his mind racing as he searches her expression to determine if she knows he stood by while that black soldier punched her out. The thought, the search, reawakens his guilt. He notes how this house with its faded orange stucco walls is not a part of the car wash, though it’s in the same neighborhood. She looks away from him. Is she pouting? Sadness tinges the air about her and he feels it drag at him, a call for sympathy that makes him resentful. But then her sulky invitation flowers into something hopeful, as he sees her desire for sympathy rather than guilt as proof that she knows nothing about his failure to help her. Though she scarcely lifts her head to look at him, he believes she wants him to stay. She appears pretty again, very pr
etty, much prettier than before. Scents of perfume and powder enhance the air. Makeup highlights her eyes, her funny cheeks. Her dress, lavender, with a pattern of flowers embroidered at the waist and breast, is clean and neatly pressed. He’s glad to see her.
“Hello, hello,” he says.
“For sure.”
“How you-you, Lan?”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
“You dinky dow?”
“Tee-tee,” he says and adds, “Boucoup sleepy,” meaning himself, moving closer, gesturing vaguely.
“No,” she says. “Me numba one. No sleepy.”
“No. Me,” he says, pointing to his chest. “Me sleepy. Me tee-tee dinky dow, boucoup sleepy.”
“You go Bien Hoa,” she says. “Do fuck-fuck bar girl. I know. Numba one.”
“Oh, never happen.”
“Bien Hoa numba one girl.”
“No,” he says. “No.”
“Sou, I know. No sweat.”
“No lie. Do many beer. No girl.”
“Okay. No sweat.”
“No sweat,” he says.
It seems they’ve agreed about something, and he wonders what it is. Her mood continues to affect him, like a circle of warmth into which he has stepped, a kind of spell drawing him closer. As if on her breath, her sadness comes into the air and he takes it in. He leans against the wall, peering in the window. There’s a candle on a little table and a book lies beside it. A small white envelope lies on top of the book. He studies her closely, but sees no evidence of where that jerkoff hit her, though she probably covered it with makeup. Now she is preparing to speak, her eyes seeking to measure if he cares at all. The lids narrow, the head bows to warn him that she expects denial, that she awaits defeat. But there is petition in her upward glance; she flirts. “You buy me orange, Whitaker?”