Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  In the sliver of light showing on the horizon the choppers look like grasshoppers squatting with folded wings. A sentry walks past. His silhouette shimmers. Very impressionistic through the bug screen. Make that pointillistic. Seurat, I believe. Or was it Renault? My memory’s gone to rot like the rest of my body. Someday it will be over and I can retire to that great outhouse in the sky where the fixtures are solid gold, the flushers never rust, the paper is dry and the stool’s always solid.

  Till then, remember, lad, you’re part of adventure. That’s a man’s lot. But in this case not sought. More like sot. Ha ha. Thank God for a fleeting moment of enlightenment. But then I always feel a bit religious after a good crap. The door creaks open and slams shut. One of the tent-mates. He scratches the welts on his arm, lowers his pants and sits.

  “Turn that arm into a mosquito feedbag didya?” I mutter.

  “I let it dangle out the netting. The itching woke me up. I moved and so did my innards. How much time we got?”

  “None.”

  “Blah.”

  He leans over and concentrates. His face contorts. Gives his teen-looking countenance an aged strain. When the Air Force jet ferrying us to Vietnam crossed the International Date Line, Lieutenant Ben Benson slapped a flaming orange HMM-188 Hammering Eights baseball cap on his head and settled back to enjoy the flight now that he was officially in the Orient, never telling a soul how he found time to have the lower edge of the ball cap embroidered with Chinese characters and the words Japan, Okinawa, China and Vietnam; and centered between the words, a large-lettered, single block name: BEN-SAN.

  He’s been called Ben-San ever since. A short, merry fella with litup eyes, a turned-up nose and a light brown crew cut, he treats everyone like an intimate member of his family. Wide open, he seeks immediate rapport, maybe a result of his parents’ divorce when he was a year old and he and his two sisters had to move in with Grandma and Grandpa in the back of his mom’s beauty parlor two blocks off the main street of Cornhill, Nebraska.

  “What do you think of a girl that goes down on you?” Ben-San asks out of the blue.

  Jesus. There’s a subject for early-morning heavy-head talk. Not enough I gotta submit to emboweled indecency, I have to participate in sex-act dialogue, too?

  Ben-San’s just come off a week of R and R in Japan where he fell in love with a girl named Yoshika. A bar girl but she has designs on working some day in a beauty parlor. He ought to know something about the beauty parlor thing.

  “This got something to do with your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I don’t know what to think. It’s ‘cause she was having her period.”

  I tune out. Let the rain hitting the roof console me. His words fade in and out.

  “… all over me like a monkey on a banana … so hot I let her go … didn’t think about afterwards.”

  Yas, me boy, real life doesn’t provide a handy movie fade at the end of the scene.

  “A good stiff drink helps take the edge off those sticklish situations,” I mutter.

  Ben-San moans. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “Say what? Ninety-nine guys out of a hundred would be overjoyed.”

  “It’s worse than you think. I made the mistake of telling my mom about Yoshika in a letter.”

  “You told your mom? Good God, Ben-San. I know you get purty openly disgustingly personal in your conversations but isn’t that a bit over the line?”

  “If I had known the stink Mom would raise I’d never have mentioned Yoshika. Say, you don’t think I told her about … ?”

  “What else you talking about?”

  “Christ love me for an idiot, I’m not completely off my rocker. It’s because Yoshika is from Japan is what’s got my mother upset.”

  “What the hell she think, you’re going to get married?”

  “I don’t see how we can now.”

  “Now? You mean never. You can’t even consider it.”

  “Not you too, Huck. You’re not prejudiced like that, are you?”

  “Prejudice, smejudice. No one in this godforsaken hellhole can think of getting married.”

  “I suppose you’re right, I just wish I could get her off my mind. Can’t sleep. I’m shot.” He pulls up his drawers. “One of these mornings I’m going to ground myself so I can sleep in.”

  “Wouldn’t do any good. They’d make you the duty officer and you’d have to spend the day in the ready room tent.”

  “Blah.” He slaps his cap in his hand, puts it on and goes out the door. “See you at the briefing.”

  Better pull myself together. Scram out of here before the morning crowd rushes in. Where’s that TP? Soggy as a wet sponge. Ya don’t wipe here, bro, ya wash. Legs, do yer stuff. Back to the tent. Rain’s slacked off. We’ll fly today. Lucky us. There’s a light in Doc Eversham’s. No need to knock.

  “Hey, Doc, you up?”

  “Good morning, Huckelbee. God, you look like a hog that’s been wallowing in the mire.”

  “Took a header on the way to the head. Say, you got any powerful stomach medicine? I can’t keep anything in me.”

  Doc Eversham smiles behind his pipe. Sharp Ivy Leaguer, he’s amused by the constant variety of interesting ailments that crop up in these awkward field conditions. He brushes his unmilitarily long hair across the top of his head. His white smock is spotless and wrinkle free. He motions me into his office, a screened-off portion of his tent.

  “Let’s see, you had the Kaopectate and the half-strength codeine. What about these?” He holds up a bottle of green pills.

  “No good, Doc. I took the whole bottle and it hasn’t helped. I’m desperate. Give me your strongest medicine.”

  “Hmm, from the looks of you, maybe I’d better. But this is a one-shot binder. I don’t want you to mention it to anyone else. These are for the extreme cases.”

  “My lips are sealed. I’m counting on you to help on the other end.”

  He pulls aside a little curtain. A fat safe sits on the floor. He twiddles the dial and swings the door open. I peek inside. The safe is loaded with jars of clear liquid. Grain alcohol, one-hundred-percent pure. A box full of pill bottles sits on the jars. Doc Eversham takes out one of the pill bottles and closes the safe. He shakes out a pill. It’s tiny and yellow, with a shiny brittle covering.

  “Take it now,” Doc says. “If this doesn’t work nothing will.”

  I put it on my tongue. Bitter. Swallow it with a cup of water the Doc hands me. “God, what is it?”

  “Opium.”

  No wonder he wants it kept quiet. And in pill form, too. I always thought you shoved a plug of it up your ass.

  “Mum’s the word, Doc. Say, hadn’t I better ground myself?”

  “You’ll be a little woozy for an hour, but then it’ll go away. You’ll be able to fly.”

  “Okey-dokey. Thanks a million.”

  I head out of his tent, and when I glance back, the Doc’s looking at the little bottle. I slither down the path. A cup bangs against a metal mess gear plate, the first indication of the rush to chow. I slip through the back of our tent, drop my muddy skivvies and go out on the porch to wash up. Brush the dead bugs out of the aluminum washing pan. Shake the five-gallon water cans. Wouldn’t ya know it? All empty. Up to me to replenish the water from the camp’s water system.

  Some water system. The same pipe that runs the showers ends at a spigot next to the mess hall. There’s always a crowd around the spigot. Our tent is situated in a prime location. We have a water buffalo parked at the end of our tent row. The water buffalo is a 500-gallon tanker trailer, filled and towed to the end of our tent row every couple of days. For the senior officers only, but we sneak our water from the water buffalo, too; not strictly kosher but beats waiting in line at the mess hall spigot.

  Whoever in our tent empties the last can has to fill them all. When the cans get low everyone uses the water sparingly until the last container is emptied. Looks like it’s my turn. The water buffalo’s parked
between the ready room tent and the skipper’s tent. He rates a personal shower. Two fifty-five gallon drums atop a wooden roof. Filled by enlisted men. Bucket by bucket from the water buffalo. Heated by the sun. Pull the chain, the water gushes out. Lap of luxury. I’m tempted to step in and use the old man’s shower. Naw. No sense tormenting him. Don’t bug the heavies. Not unless I’d like a hammer to the head. Fill your five gallon cans from the water buffalo and be happy you got that, boy. Trudge through the sludge. Back to the tent porch for a whore bath. Two spits and a square of toilet paper. I squint into the mirror. A round ugly face stares back. Nose flared and flattened against a fat upper lip. Bristly stubble covers my chin. A few blond hairs patter like dew on my cheeks.

  Where’s that steel helmet? They are issued to everyone. A John Wayne wash basin. Over at the mess hall kerosene water heaters are stuck in garbage cans. Wash your mess gear in them. First can soapy, next two clear, good source of hot water for shaving. I fill my helment. Slip slap razor up and down my cheeks, looks like a curved pagoda roof the way the razor swirls through the lather.

  Say, that pill does have a bit of a wiggle to it. I grab my utility cap, and step off the porch, ready to test my stomach with some food. Lt. Col. Arthur Rappler, the Hammer, trudges through the gloomy morning. His black leather pistol belt engraved with cattle brands and crossed pistols rides over his butt and under his gut like a rain-slicked highway curving around aging hills. He glares coldly.

  “Good morning, sir,” I stammer, throwing a salute.

  He returns it and walks past. What’s the matter with him? Got the RA? Red ass? Good thing I didn’t use his shower. Better dawdle a while till he’s out of sight. Across the path the Vietnamese laborers are already on the job. They squat and pass around a big bamboo pipe in front of a half-finished brick building. A new BOQ, part of a permanent camp being constructed for an Army chopper squadron. The Army operates in the mountainous northern half of SVN while we’re restricted to the lowland south. Soon, we‘ll exchange camps, but before rushing into any hornswoggled horse trade, the Army sent a Major to Soc Trang on an inspection trip and sure enough, after checking out our tent city, it’s no deal. We’re not up to their snuff. They’ve got a permanent camp on the coast at Da Nang. The officers live four to a room in buildings, not tents. Overhead fans keep the air circulating. If they’re still too hot they can go to the beach and cool off. The town next to the base is open and well explored by the soldiers. Think they’ll trade all that for a compound of tents, mud, binjo ditches, field showers and a hot, fly-ridden mess hall?

  No way, Jose. The facilities are being constructed to make the Army’s stay here more like their northern home. Soon as the work is done we’ll exchange places. There’ll be a change in the weather. A change in me. I can smell that sweet sea breeze now. No, it’s Old Spice. Wafting ahead of its bearer.

  Major Bert “Pappy” Lurnt, the squadron Exec. He must have doused himself good. Raindrops roll off him like he was oiled. A florid scarred face provides a cobblestone foundation for his mottled nose. Born and reared in the Arkansas Ozarks, he’s a canny dirt sage, full of the wisdom of the cracker barrel store, and he never lets anyone forget it with his corncob pipe, slow drawl, saggy drawers and whiskey thirst.

  He’s put enough years in the Corps, he could retire any time he wants. A fifty-four-year-old Major, he knows he’ll never go any higher, but to hear him talk he’s got nothing to lose. Every year from here on is gravy. Sounds as if worry couldn’t penetrate his smiling shield or disrupt his farm-boy aplomb, but appearances are deceiving. He doesn’t like tilted wheels. The minute a stressful situation comes up he shakes, chain smokes and looks around for help. He finds absolutely no comfort from the Hammer. The C.O. plays on his taut nerve strings like a jazz bass player orchestrating a rhythmic hell. I’ve got a feeling this is one of those moments. He’s having a tough time lighting his cigarette.

  He looks me up and down. Shuffles his feet and coughs nervously. Throws the matches in the mud.

  “Goddamnit, Huckelbee. Everyone else is going along with the program. Why can’t you?”

  “How’s that, sir?” I sift through the old bean, attempt to pin down a fuckup I can’t recall.

  “I just saw the Skipper and the first thing he said was, ‘That damn Huckelbee. He’ll do anything to aggravate me.’ Why do you want to rile him up? Just makes it hard on me.”

  “What did I—?”

  “Don’t interrupt. Back in Arkansas, the hogs roll in the mud and then it bakes on them in the hot sun and gets so heavy they can’t hardly move so they rub themselves raw getting it all off, except for a big ball on their tails they can’t get at, and you got to break up those balls with a hammer. Now, why don’t you save us both a lot of trouble and put a bar on your cap? You don’t want a hammer breaking your balls do you?”

  Unlike the Major’s, my utility cap has no rank insignia pinned to the front. Our normal working non-flying uniform is T-shirts and utility trousers. With no one wearing utility jackets the only way the men can identify the officers is by the rank insignia on our hats. After being together a year and a half you’d think everyone would know one another and their rank, but even here in this stinking Delta, where we work fourteen hours a day and fall into exhausted sleep at night, we must observe the uniform regs.

  “I’m with you, sir. I’ll put the bar on my cap.”

  “Good.” He sighs. “Now for Chrissake be on time for the briefing. And drag that big galoot Cochran with you.” He slouches off, muttering, “Those shavetails, slippery as an Arkansas sidewinder. I need a prod rod to keep those rapscallions in line.”

  I go in the tent and put on my flight suit. Rank and name are sewn on, now I’m kosher. Trade my utility hat for my Hammering Eights ball cap.

  “Come on Cochran,” I yell. “Rise and shine. Time’s a-wasting.”

  I don’t wait for his answer. I hit the trail to breakfast. Typical. First I was early. Now I’m practically late. Mind a blur. Pill goofy. The officer’s section of the mess hall is almost deserted. Eager beavers have already departed for the ready room tent to copy aircraft assignments and lay out their flight gear and survival equipment.

  Rob Jacobs, a low-slung, lumbering lieutenant is still eating. A good-natured guy from the heartland of the Iowa cornfields, he slurps down his eggs and potatoes as fast as he can shovel them in. What do you do with all that corn in Iowa, Rob? We eat what we can and what we can’t we can. A comical braggart, he never talks about the shooting war going on around us.

  “Well, Rob, packing in the chow I see.”

  “Gotta fill up here, Huck. Once we leave it’s C-rats in the chopper.”

  He pats his hair. The son of a retired Army Colonel, he flunked out of West Point and bounced around three different colleges before applying for and being accepted into the Marine Aviation Cadet flight training program.

  He swipes the last of the egg and pops the toast into his wide mouth. He grins at me.

  “How about this, Huck. Think it will fit?”

  He holds up a big apple. I don’t bother to answer, too busy gulping down my own breakfast.

  “All right. Watch.”

  He sticks the apple between his teeth. Chomps down. Swirls of shiny skin pulsate and glisten, both his and the apple’s.

  “That’s real good, Rob. You better check with the Guinness book of records. You might have a new one.”

  His eyes bug out. The apple is stuck. His jaws are locked and he can’t get the apple in or out. A mess tray bangs on the table like a Chinese gong. Cochran flops down at the table.

  Rob Jacobs is clawing, his fingernails are digging, he’s dislodging chunks of pulp. The cords of his neck bulge. Cochran leans over and stares him in the eye. Rob pleads wordlessly like a begging dog, muffling grunts, waving arms.

  “Don’t fret, son,” Cochran says soothingly.

  He lays a hairybacked hand on top of Rob Jacobs’s head. Then raps him on the jaw. The apple parts neatly. Half vanishes into Ro
b’s mouth. The other half falls to the floor and rocks gently, a half-moon Chinese junk rocking on the wavery floor. An opium pill is the junk of the Chinese.

  “Don’t forget to chew,” Cochran says. “Carefully.” Cochran sits down and begins wolfing his eggs. “You ready for that poker game tonight?”

  Rob Jacobs doesn’t answer. He runs out of the mess hall and we hear him spitting outside.

  “Funny thing about that guy,” Cochran says through a mouthful of food. “He’s going farther and farther out with that big mouth business. This place is getting to him but he won’t admit it.

  Cochran swills his coffee and glances at his watch. “Plenty of time. Funny, I couldn’t sleep this morning. Must have that game on my mind. Tonight I clean up.” He smiles at my seeming indifference.

  Cochran wipes the last of the egg and potatoes out of his mess plate. Glances around the mess hall.

  “There’s another pigeon I’d like to pluck.”

  One side of Cochran’s face twitches. His eye tics. I’d think I was seeing things if I weren’t already used to his tic trick. He developed it during the poker games. Whenever he bluffed, his eye would start ticing and pretty soon everyone knew he was bluffing. He’d been losing steadily—using the tic to set them up—and tonight he is ready to pounce, already practising his tic.

  “Yes,” I say. “The time has come. The clock is ticking.”

  “Ha ha, very funny.”

  His eye twitches toward the other table where Captain Beamus sits drinking his coffee. The Rajah chews his lower lip, his mind cataloging the millions of details the ops officer has to sift and sort before a big operation.