Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  Copyright

  This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2011 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact sales@overlookny.com

  Copyright © 2011 Ken Babbs

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-59020-888-5

  For the men and their families of HMM-163

  (Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron-163)

  The Ridgerunners

  1961–1963

  “So let us not talk falsely now.

  The hour is getting late.”

  —Bob Dylan

  Contents

  Copyright

  I. The States

  1. Sparks Flying

  2. What’s In A Name

  3. Reaches of Freedom’s Frontier

  II. Vietnam

  4. Keeps the Manly Juices Flowing

  5. Lost A Bird Gained A Bird

  6. Prepare for the Retreat

  7. Escaped By The Four Skins

  8. Loss of Concern

  9. Gesture of Good Will

  10. The Silence of the Tropics

  11. Soc Trang Short Timers

  III. Vietnam

  12. What Lies Ahead

  13. The Native Seers

  14. The Old Pissing Contest

  15. Sixes Sir

  16. Grog All Around

  17. Peer Out the Window

  18. Neatness Matters Most

  19. Time is a Tightrope

  20. Paper Scrawl Torture

  21. Spirit of Reconciliation

  22. Axes of Responsibility

  23. Topping It The Max

  24. Surprise is the Key

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  I

  THE STATES

  1960-1961

  Getting Ready

  “He crowned thy good

  —He told me He would—

  with brotherhood …”

  —Brother Ray

  1. Sparks Flying

  I’m all shot up, Doc … it was a trap … no one expected a heavy machine gun … we headed for it like filings to a magnet … I came into the zone hard, dropped the chopper to let the ARVNs out and everything went to shit … the windshield blew apart … my shoulder was all torn up, a real mess, Doc … there’s a curse on that shoulder … the same exact one I fucked up in flight school … there I was, tooling along on my Lambretta motor scooter cheerfully whistling the Marine Corps Hymn, headed for my early-morning celestial navigation class … learn to steer by the stars … at the time I was steering one handed and swerved to avoid a child and fell out of bed, ha ha, except it wasn’t a child, Doc, it was a little fucking perro Chihuahua come yapping out from behind a car and sunk its teeth in the front tire … sent the evil creature flapping around the fender and catapaulted me off the scooter onto the rough asphalt, peeling the skin off my shoulder, shirt, skin, and all, peeled me right down to the very cherry red meat … but be dogged if I was going to let that dog and scooter act throw me off schedule like it was the end of daylight savings time … fall behind, get it, Doc? … I wasn’t going to fall behind in my flight school classes … I had to keep up with Cochran … no way was he going to leave me behind … I drove that scooter on a flat tire to the BOQ and borrowed a fresh shirt, cleaned myself up, and made it to class on time, giving Cochran a nod as I slipped into my seat … so you see right there it all comes back to Cochran, Doc … he’s the reason, the genesis and the comeuppance, this is all his fault, that damned Cochran …

  He’s a big bruiser of a guy, muscular back straining against his Marine Corps shirt. He’s got a motor scooter by the seat and handle bars and, letting loose a deep grunt, hefts the stubby Lambretta into the guts of a dumpster.

  I’m standing on the sidewalk outside the Admin Building of the Pensacola Naval Air Station where I’ve just checked in for flight school. My mouth is twisted between shock and mirth. The big bruiser turns, sees the what the fuck look on my face, scowls, and says, “I’ve had it with that son of a bitch. Fooled me for the last time.”

  He steps forward and looks me over. I’m five nine and wiry. He’s six two and solid. Tufts of hair stick out of his sleeves and peek from beneath his shirt collar. Black bristles cover the backs of his hands.

  “Fooled you how?” I say, standing tall as I can.

  “It starts right up on the first try, runs like a top, then double crosses you when you least expect it. Then it won’t start at all, no matter how many times you try.” He smiles meanly. “Not any more.” He wipes his hands back and forth and, with a look of disgust, flings his hands apart. “I’m shunt of it.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t mind if I took it off your hands?”

  “No, why would I mind?” He smiles broadly, showing gleaming white pearlies.

  “You gonna give me a hand getting it out of the dumpster?”

  “You shitting me? You want it, you rescue it.”

  I climb into the dumpster, hoist one end of the scooter up on the edge and push it over. I climb out, set the scooter on its stand, turn the key, give it some gas and tromp down on the starter. The motor coughs, catches and winds up to a high-pitched whine.

  I look at the previous owner and give him a grin. He whips off his fore-and-aft cap, makes to throw it on the ground, thinks better of it, comes over and hops on the back. The scooter sinks to the gound.

  “You’ll see, she’ll break your heart, too. Onward.”

  “Where to?”

  “The O Club, where else. The sun is over the yardarm someplace in the world. Time for a drink.”

  I gun the motor, pop the clutch and we lumber off like a waddling duck, tail dragging, sparks flying.

  The officers club is a regal affair, brick wings on either side of a white colonnaded portico that leads into a large foyer with paintings of naval aircraft on the walls. A door on the left opens into the big dining room, the door on the right into the O club.

  We’re wearing our winter uniforms, long-sleeve shirts and tie, gold 2nd Lieutenant bars on the collars, fore-and-aft caps in our hands. You wear your hat in the bar and the bartender bangs a big bell and the offender buys drinks for all. It’s February and there’s a whiff of spring in the Florida Panhandle. President Kennedy’s been in office for a month and the country’s bubbling on a wave of enthusiasm.

  We click glasses. “Well this is a fortuitous meeting, for me anyways,” I tell Cochran, thinking of the scooter. “How’d you get in this man’s outfit, anyway?”

  He swirls his glass on the bar top, making wet circular patterns. He was, he says, an obstreperous child in a Youngstown, Ohio family firmly ensconced in the movie-theater business, actually a front for nefarious gangster activities. Pinball machines with cash payoffs, slot machines in back rooms, card games, small-time action with big-time mannerisms of gangster fascinations as they divvied up the spoils. Meanwhile at home all was light and cheer, his tall Irish mother a willowy, graceful contrast to her dark stocky Greek husband—the two boys a curious almagam: Cochran, the elder, tall and massive with all the hair, the same upbeat, outgoing personality as his mother; his younger brother, a shorter glowering replica of their papi.

  “Ma
kes my cow-raising ranch life in Locos, Texas sound pretty ordinary in comparison,” I tell him, but I enliven my telling with accounts of Mexican adventures at my grandmother’s house across the border and high spirited barbecues at our ranch this side of the border; vaqueros busting broncs in the corral, long rides through chapparal rounding up the herd, hot branding irons and the smell of burnt hair and flesh, the hissing and smoking of coffee dregs thrown in the fire. My mother was a lovely, high-born, University of Texas belle who couldn’t abide the isolation of the ranch. My rough-hewn Texan father, full of cowboy wisdom and laconic frontier bluster, wasn’t exactly a social live wire.

  “When Daddy enlisted in the Army in World War Two, Mother took advantage of his being gone and went back to her family in Austin where she got a divorce. With my mother gone, mi abuela and I wandered back and forth across the Rio Grande, and I spent almost as much time at her old home in Mexico as I did on the ranch. When I was high-school age Daddy sent me to the Texas Military Academy. After that I attended college at Texas Military Institute.”

  “Yeah, good old college,” Cochran says. “It kept me from working in the movie theater, and Air Force ROTC kept me out of the draft. Unfortunately, I got caught with my hand in the department files the night before the ROTC final. They booted me out of ROTC and college both. I signed up for Marine Officer Candidate School and completed the program before my folks got wind of what went down.”

  “I got my commision when I finished TMI. I was lined up to go in the Army. Four generations of soldiers on my father’s side of the family and I had to go against the grain and choose the Marine Corps. Daddy didn’t know about it until he saw me in my Marine Corps uniform. Talk about your busted pride. I thought he’d choke, but he swallowed the bitter pill.”

  “Thank God for these gold bars on the collars,” Cochran says. “The fact I was an officer in the Marines is what kept my father, brother, and the Youngstown gangsters from pulverising me for spoiling the family name by getting kicked out of college. If they had their way they’d have turned me into a punchy popcorn vendor in one of Youngstown’s skidrow movie theaters.”

  “We’ve settled our respective family hashes and now, here we are.” Me, Tom Huckelbee.

  “Yes, here we are.” Him, Mike Cochran.

  We click glasses and stare morosely into the mirror behind the bar.

  “I’ve led quite a peripatetic existence,” I say, talking to the mirror.

  “You have?” Cochran turns and looks me over. “How cosmopolitan. First time I’ve ever heard anyone use that word outside of a book. How do you spell that? And don’t say T-H-A-T.”

  “C-O-S-M-O” I begin.

  “No, you ninny,” Cochran interrupts. “Peripatetic.”

  I know what he means. Avoidance syndrome. Spelling’s never been my fuerte de align, not my strong suit. I picture the word in my mind.

  “P-E-R-A-P-A-T-E-T-I-C,” I spell.

  “That’s P-E-R-E,” Cochran says. “You’re perepathetic.”

  “Oh yeah? I got a ten-spot says I’m right and you’re wrong.”

  The bartender settles the beef with a dictionary. Words over easy. On the rocks. We’re both wrong. I gallantly acknowledge my error, but I don’t have to pay up, for his spelling goof has nullified the bet.

  “I’ll get this round,” Cochran says, the soul of generosity. “Aside from your illiteracy,” he continues, “how do you like living on base in the BOQ?”

  “If you’re implying I’m illiterate, I’ve got another ten-spot that says both my parents were married. I hate the BOQ. Why?”

  “No bet. You’ve probably got the papers to prove it. Whaddaya say we get a pad off-base?”

  “Sounds good to me, where?”

  Cochran pulls a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “Charming two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow on the beach two miles from base,” he reads.

  “Let’s do it.”

  We drink up and go outside. Cochran watches as I hop on the scooter and slam my foot on the kick starter. Nothing. I try again. Not even a whimper. Again, then more kicks, faster and faster, until finally, thoroughly fed up, I get off and kick the scooter and knock it on its side.

  “No good sagebrush-eating bitch,” I yell at the inert machine.

  “Can I give it a try?” Cochran asks.

  “Be my guest.” I fold my arms and step aside.

  “If I start it can I keep it?”

  I narrow my eyes. Does he know something I don’t? I shrug. Why not.

  He sets the Lambretta upright, balances on the seat, takes a deep breath, slams his foot on the kick starter, nurses the gas and the no-good piece of shit coughs to life.

  He turns to me with a big grin. “All in the way you breathe,” he says. “Calm, collected.”

  “Breathe this,” I say, blowing acrid gin and tonic in his face. I climb on the back and we putter off the base toward the beach, tail scraping, sparks flying.

  The pad is a small house overlooking Pensacola Bay. Our landlord, retired Admiral Hiram B. Jenkins III, and his Southern, high-bred, white-haired wife, Matilde, live in a sprawling house with a screened-in porch. The house sits atop a stone foundation lapped by the waves.

  They invite Cochran and me to dinner. Dress whites with swords. The Admiral’s uniform drips with epaulets, horn piping and medals. His wife is adorned in a white lace evening dress. Her powdered bosom heaves and she rolls her eyes languidly.

  “So nice you all could come. We don’t have many guests since the children are grown.” She pats her eye with a hanky.

  The Admiral slaps his knee. “Oh for Christ’s sake, Matilde. Don’t bore the men with family matters. Come along, officers, onto the bridge.” He swings open the floor-to-ceiling glass-paned doors. We step onto the screened-in porch.

  “Bit of a wind,” the Admiral declares.

  The Bay is whipped into froth. Spray splatters our uniforms.

  “Ah, bracing.” He twirls a knob on his shortwave radio.

  “Sqrzzd … storm warnings along the Gulf Coast … possibility of Hurricane Ed turning west … bawkzzg …”

  “Reminds me of the typhoons we faced in the Sea of Japan.”

  Admiral Jenkins adroitly lights a cigar in the howling wind. He offers us the humidor. I go through a pack of matches. Cochran fares no better.

  “Yas, bows to the sea. Take them head on.”

  A breaker explodes against the foundation. Salt water smacks the screen.

  “Come take a look at my battle paintings.”

  He splashes through a puddle and leads us inside. His wife is polishing the crystal with a linen napkin.

  “Ah deahly love to bring out the china and crystal and silver for this splendid occasion. We entertain so rarely these days.”

  The dishes and goblets and ranks of silverware on the huge table gleam as brightly as her smile. Place settings are laid out on a lace tablecloth, qué elegante. Out of the wind, I light my cigar.

  “I say, Mistah Cochran,” Matilde coaxes. “Will you all come assist a helpless female?” Cochran glances at the Admiral.

  “Go ahead, lad. Mister Huckelbee can join me in the main cabin.”

  The Admiral escorts me to his bedroom. Mrs. Jenkins and Cochran go in the other room. The Admiral closes the door.

  “Now you mustn’t breathe a word of this to the Missus. She’s not allowed any alcohol. The doctor made her swear off when he realized she was rapidly becoming totally dependent.”

  “You have my confidence, sir.”

  He opens a sideboard. The shelves are loaded with booze. Glasses and ice on the counter. We mix big drinks and gulp them down. His battle paintings hang on the walls. Cruisers belch fire. Japanese ships turn stern up. Sailors swim through burning oil. Planes drop torpedoes. Transports blow in half. My head’s a swirl of choppy seas and stiff drinks. We stagger back to the wardroom.

  Cochran and Mrs. Jenkins waltz out of her cabin. Cochran’s eyes are big. I blink mine, fuzzily. We head again for the flying bridge, out
on the porch.

  “Sqrzak … Hurricane Ed nears Pensacola coast … immediate evacuation recommended all dwellings near shore …”

  “Evacuate hell,” the Admiral roars. “We didn’t evacuate for the typhoons and we won’t evacuate now. Mister Cochran, front and center.”

  He leads Mike toward his bedroom-cabin. Mrs. Jenkins looks up from her polishing.

  “Oh, Mistah Huckelbee, will you all be a dear and help me for just a tiny second?”

  “Why surely, ma’am.”

  She closes her bedroom door and puts a shushing finger to her lips. She takes my hand. I lean forward. Every Southern gentleman knows age is no obstacle to love. She brushes me off with a wink and a laugh.

  “Silly thing. At my age I’d need a purse string before I could give a man any satisfaction.”

  She opens her closet. Peeks around her shoulder. “You mustn’t breathe a word of this to the Admiral. The doctor has put him on a strict, no-drink diet. His liver is practically holes.”

  The wall of her closet is lined with bottles. She pulls out a little tray of glasses and ice. We mix two stiff ones and belt them down. She hands me a stack of napkins. Her eyes are cocked but she doesn’t forget to close the closet.

  Cochran and the Admiral come out of the main cabin. Cochran’s face is skewered.

  “Fantastic collection, sir.”

  “Too stuffy!” the Admiral roars. “We need air.” He throws open the veranda doors. Wind lifts the table cloth.

  “Oh my precious crystal!” Mrs. Jenkins shrieks. She spreads her arms across the table like a hen covering her chicks. A cloud of powder rises fron her chest.

  “Getting some real weather now,” Admiral Jenkins bellows. His medals flap. A huge wave smacks the screen. Water runs into the house.

  “Frzzdllk … forced evacuation of all houses on Pensacola Bay … Awcczk …”

  Red flashing lights appear in the drive. A sheriff’s deputy raps on the door. Water pours off his slicker.

  “Better move out, sir. Hurricane’s expected to hit right along here.”

  “Nonsense. I’ve stood on the bridge through typhoons that would make this dinky storm look as piddling as an April shower. I didn’t abandon ship then and I won’t now.”