Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  The evening shower curtains down another Vietnamese sunset with its full Roy G Biv spectrum beaming through moisturized prisms. The wind whips the rain water under the tent flaps and skims a muddy sheen over the floor.

  I feel better having talked to you. We will chat again. You are so many and we are so few. Who are the fortunate ones? I desire answers. Adiós, hasta luego.

  11. Soc Trang Short Timers

  It’s not just my shoulder, Doc … there’s other parts broke down, too … synapses misfire from my head to my toe all the way down to the very sole … slap me silly, Doc … Daddy would slap me with a roll of pennies … knock some sense into my head … where’s the backbone? … who’s got the glue? … can I ever be the man they’d like me to be? … dapper, suave, air of total confidence … I lean against a tent pole inside the ready room … cup of coffee balanced in my hand … raindrops fall on the canvas roof … at the front of the tent, Captain Beamus lectures on radio frequencies … what more could a man ask out of life? … the leaking roof, Beamus lecturing, muddy coffee, pilots stinking and unshaven in rotten flight suits and sweaty flak gear … till the emergency comes … warning light’s on, Doc … BINGO FUEL … throttle back, set her on max cruise rpm … there’s nothing but jungle down there … put her in a slow climb, get as much altitude as you can … if that engine quits, it’s autorotation city, Doc … just hope we don’t have to go into those trees … turn this chopper belly side up and give it a good shaking, Doc … scramble the codes … reprogram the helix … everything’s out of order … the walls are crashing down … a bang-up job …

  “Come on, Rob, you robust Panda Bear. Everybody’s been back for an hour. Get into your civvies and grab some chow, this place is about to explode.”

  “Fuck you, Cochran. If you had to go through the shit I just did, you wouldn’t be giving me a load of your odious ragass.”

  “Well, aren’t your skivvies in a wad. Odious? How do you spell that? I thought you’d be hot to trot what with a blowout party on the line.”

  Rob Jacobs peels off his flight suit, baring his flaccid pale body. “Maybe, if I hadn’t banged up the bird.” An attention-grabber that brings the tentmates close. Rob rummages through his clothes. “I was flying Yankee Victor 84, that bullet scarred beast, it’s got a jinx on it, I swear. No sooner had I lifted off a canal dike with twenty ARVNs aboard than the bitch lost her turns and I started settling into the ditch. I twisted the shit out of the throttle and got just enough manifold pressure to crawl up on the bank of the canal, but I scraped the rear end and ripped the tail wheel off.”

  He eyeballs us, glum look on his shiny face.

  “I held the chopper on the main gear with the tail off the ground, kicked the passengers out and came on home. You’d have thought the bird was falling to pieces there were so many gawkers watching. I guess it must have looked hairy with the tail wheel gone and chunks of skin hanging off.”

  He slips into a clean pair of shorts and goes out on the porch, the rest of us trailing behind. He pours water from a jerry can into a steel pot.

  “They’d set some sandbags in a pile and motioned me to hover with the tail over the sandbags. Circling around in front of me were two shirtless Marines playing harmonicas. Distracted me enough I got off center and there’s the Rajah, waving the musicians away and guiding me to the left, then, easing me down, using his arms like he’s the paddles on an aircraft carrier, bringing in a jet across the ramp.”

  Rob Jacobs scoops water, sopping and soaping.

  “So I set her down easy, the Rajah gives me the cut sign and I bottom the collective. I don’t tip over so I figure everything’s okay and shut down the engine, leave the ass end of the chopper sitting on the sand- bags.”

  He dries off and troops inside the tent, leading a parade. “And who should come up and shake my hand and congratulate me?” He pauses a dramatic beat. “None other than the Hammer himself, telling me I did a fine job, excellent flying, a reassurance I can take to the bank—probably means the sand bank, coming from him—and I’m not to worry about the tail wheel, only a minor thing, then he has to get back to his report writing, adding new names to the qualified section leader list, now do you think I’m on that list?”

  He looks us over. A fake laugh from Ben-San: harfershugering fucking up.

  “Yeah, I’m with you on that,” Rob Jacobs says. Pulls on his pants and shirt. “What’s for chow?”

  “You’ve caught the final skoshi minute,” I tell him. “Barbecued steak.”

  We head over to the mess hall. Outside, along one of the walls, steaks are sizzing on the tops of fifty-five gallon drums cut in half. The smoke and smell of burnt Yankee meat rises in the evening air.

  Out on the flight line the mechs have swung the tail end of Yankee Victor 84 onto the back of a jeep and are maneuvering the chopper toward the hangar. Rob Jacobs watches mournfully, waves goodbye to the mangled bird with a thick T-bone, black and charred on the outside, dripping red in the middle, reminds me of a Texas steak, so hot that when you wipe your mouth it burns a hole in your sleeve. He tears off a big bite and a gob of juice runs down his chin. He raises his sleeve to wipe, his last clean shirt before laundry day.

  “No! Not tonight,” I yell. I hold out my hand. “A cloth if you please.”

  The cook promptly whips a rag out of his pocket. “Here you go, sir, allow me.” The rasty cook daintily pats Rob’s mouth. Rob Jacobs slugs a large swig of beer and rips off another bite, cook at the ready with his rag.

  We’re Soc Trang short-timers. The camp has been rebuilt to Army specifications, the new brick barracks are finished and the exchange of bases that once seemed like a long ways off is suddenly here. Tonight we’re all spiffed and cleaned, putting on the dog, a Soc Trang farewell party is in the works.

  A wet wind wafts a dank primeval smell off the paddies. The tide is out and the water is low. A flock of herons flies by in perfect parade formation, heavy left, and the pilots bang their gnawed steak bones against the garbage cans, mutual admiration of a skill we share. On the horizon a fiery sunset blazes across the top of a towering thunderhead.

  Inside the mess hall, the tables and benches are shoved against the wall. Doc Hollenden has liberated the medicinal alcohol from the dispensary and mixes a potent punch of Kickapoo Jungle Juice, half grain alcohol and half grape juice with chunks of pineapple floating on top. A high-topped chef’s hat sits on his head and he has a white surgeons’s gown wrapped around his body.

  “Fill ’em up, lads,” he calls out, pushing his glasses securely on his nose. Cups formerly containing chow-hall koolade now brim with jungle juice. The ice machine is cranked to the max, ensuring there will be cold drinks all night long.

  The noise level in the mess hall rises as the evening darkens. Bawdy songs vie with tales of impossible flight. Down with the punch. Up with the party. After the tail-wheel debacle, Rob Jacobs is ready to cut loose and take on the world, but the world is too wrapped up in its own revelry to bother with him. By ten o’clock everyone is snockered. The crash of the door banging open startles the party into silence. The Hammer strides into the room, and before anyone can make the appropriate scream of hierarchical obeisance, he shouts out a pronouncement:

  “Gentlemen. I give you … the general!”

  General MacLeod, top ranking Marine in Saigon, marches in behind the Hammer. Five-feet, six-inches tall, he’s dressed in starched utilities, silver stars gleam on his collars, thick-lensed glasses fog his eyes. Before the General can say anything, a voice from the back screams a greeting.

  “A hymn, men. A hymn for the General. Give him a hymn.” Bolstered by drink, strengthened with love, bouyant in praise, we burst forth in off-key unison, “Hymn … hymn … fu-uck hymn …”

  The General falls back as if hit with a magnum. Nervous laughter fills the chow hall. General MacLeod juts out his jaw, bristles his mustache and with his body crouched, his legs crooked and his fist clenched, he stands poised like a cocky bantamweight. He shoots ope
n his fist and extends his middle finger. Fuck you!

  The tension holding the room like a steel band is broken. Everyone cheers and raises their cups in salute. General MacLeod grabs a cup out of Doc Hollenden’s hand.

  “This,” he yells, a Scot’s burr to his words, “is the real Marine Corps. Not those stiff-necked pussy-whipped blabbermouths in Saigon.”

  Captain Beamus forces his way into the General’s space, eyeball to eyeball. “Yes sir, General. I agree. One hundred percent.”

  The Rajah is face to face with a prime example of what a short snappy squared-away officer can accomplish—ascendence to the very top—and he’s not going to let this opportunity go to waste. Before the Rajah can say a word, the General speers him with a glare and orders, “Straighten that gig line mister.”

  “What?” Captain Beamus is totally bumblefucked. He looks down at his shirt front. The military requirement of a perfectly straight line of buttons, from neck to belt, the so-called gig line, is askew. The Rajah tugs the buttons into a straight line and raises his head. The General is gone.

  The Rajah looks around the room and focuses in on me. He heads my way and by the way he bears down, I can see I’m the one in for a good old-fashioned talking-to.

  “Hucklerbee,” he says, stentorian voice rising an octave from its normal sober low rasp. “I’ve had my eye on you. For some time now. For some time.”

  “Como tan, Capitán?”

  “You’ve become most unmilitary, most unmilitary. Nothing definite, nothing I can put my finger on, but it’s there.”

  Captain Beamus leans back and lays his finger against his nose, looks me up and down in a search for the clue lying somewhere behind the translucent curtain obscuring his vision.

  “Not contempt. More a sign of disrespect. No, not disrespect either, not quite. You’re getting more and more like that other Lieutenant, that … but never mind him. It’s you. Questioning everything. Your back constantly up against the wall. No need to shake your head. You know I’m right.”

  Right about what, I’d like to know, but I keep my mouth shut. No sense in arguing with a career officer, not when it’s ten to one. I’ll be getting out as soon as this stint is over. So lay off the bullshit and leave me free to take this war one day at a time without getting hurt or killed or going bonkers like some shoot-’em-up cowboy riding the blood lust high.

  He leans in closer.

  “You may think I don’t have the backing to keep you junior officers in line, but mark my words, before this tour is over, you’ll have cause to respect me.”

  Captain Beamus teeters and nods knowingly.

  “I’ve got good reason to say you’ll be treating me with much greater respect.”

  He waits for me to take the bait, but I do the slow wait, wondering where his jungle juice loosened mind will lead him.

  “Think on this for a moment,” he says. “Colonel Rappler, the Hammer, as you call him, is sure to be relieved of his command some hungry day when a ribbon-starved officer will arrange to have him transferred. And who does that leave in charge? Major Lurnt. Can you imagine what that would be like? I’d give him two months before he went to the hospital with a nervous breakdown. Then it would be up to one person to carry the torch.”

  Captain Beamus pauses for me to identify the apparent successor. He nods at the dubious look on my face.

  “Figure it out for yourself. I’ll have my Major’s leaves in a couple of months, just in time to take command. Then you’ll see how a true commanding officer will handle you and your friend.”

  Captain Beamus smirks and throws down his drink, a triumphant gesture at the thought of running the show, no one to undermine his plans and ideas. He staggers over to the plank table for a refill. Doc Hollenden, having sampled his product often enough to ensure its delectability, sloshes the punch into Captain Beamus’s cup and across the front of his khakis.

  To hell with Beamus and his high and mighties, I say to myself. Fill ’em up and swill ’em down. The songs come faster and words shriek shriller. Smoke pollutes the rafters. Drinks puddle the floor. Feet slip in the goo.

  Rob Jacobs, the pudgy Panda Bear, staggers toward General MacLeod. Rob Jacobs, the lieutenant normally the most pleasant, normally the most quiet, is a belligerent drunken lout. He gets in the General’s face and sticks out his finger, his mouth distended, tongue wagging.

  “Listen here, General,” Rob Jacobs shouts, his finger pointing at the General’s face. “I don’t give a shit if you are a General. I don’t care what rank you are. I still have a right to my say and what I say is …”

  The Arkansas Razorback, Executive Officer Major Pappy Lurnt, catches sight of the finger pointing and the voice shouting, and he sallies forth, plowing through the crowd, knocking aside drinks.

  “Goddamnit, General, even a Lieutenant with a slight tail wheel blemish on his record has a right to be section leader …”

  The Arkansas Razorback smothers the Panda Bear with a neck-squeezing headlock. A ruffled sound from Panda Bear’s mashed mouth blurts out from under the Razorback’s armpit. “What the hell … ?”

  “Listen, Jacobs. You can’t go poking your finger at a General and talk to him like that. It just isn’t done.”

  Major Lurnt wheels his bundle into the drunken melee, away from the General, then figuring it’s safe to let him loose, releases Rob Jacobs, who, before this, merely trying to be helpful, merely wanting to set the General straight, is now pissed.

  Ben-San raises a tenor air, “In china they ne-ever eat chile.”

  Rob Jacobs overshouts the song, “I don’t care if you are a Major, you can’t do that to me.”

  He insists they go outside to rassle this point of honor to its logical conclusion. Major Lurnt argues for a minute, sees it is useless, and agrees. As soon as they clear the door, the Arkansas Razorback once again engages the Panda Bear in a headlock, and the two heavyweights lumber in one direction then another, a slow ponderous dance to the cacaphonic beat of the shrill pitched singing inside the mess hall.

  So sing me another verse worse than the other verse.

  Pappy Lurnt, face puffed and red, mouth close to Rob Jacobs’s ear, drawls, “You know why they call Arkansas the Wonder State? It’s because little shindigs like this are nothing compared to an Arkansas hogdown, where there’s surf-fishing, back-flipping, knocking down mountains, blowing holes out of the ground and tying rivers into knots, the men range on one side of the room and the ladies on the other, the men snort, the women beller, the men leap and tumble, the women rear and kick … ”

  Pappy’s mouth is slippery wet against Rob Jacobs’s ear. “Then the hogdown dancers race around the room in couples until the razorback wrangler throws his hog prod into the middle and that’s when the hogdown gets hot”—around and around, back and forth, Rob Jacobs prying at the soft parts of Major Lurnt’s body; the Major squeezing his head—“chairs and tables get knocked over, lights are blown out, the whole bunch piles up in the middle with men and women tangled together, the whole mess not to get straightened out until morning when bosoms are bared and trousers torn open and there’s a suspicion in the air that babies have been made …”

  “I once knew a gal with a hole nice and tight,” Ben-San leads the chorus.

  Rob Jacobs sticks out his leg to trip Major Lurnt and they teeter, lurch to a recovery, then collapse in a heap with Rob Jacobs’s mouth next to Pappy’s ear. “You’ve been piling it on thick as pig tracks around the corncrib door. The only reason they call Arkansas the Wonder State is because it’s a wonder anyone stayed there. I’m from I-O-Way, where we raise hogs and not hay and Gramps was the king of the whole fray. He was so hard he could knock sparks out of a rock with his bare toes. He could laugh the bark off of a tree. His dog Founder would run down the hogs and hold them by the ear till Gramps came up and skinned the hogs alive, then Gramps would let the hogs loose so they could grow another hide. It worked good in the summer but in the winter they all caught cold and died so he butchered the
m where they lay and stored the meat in the freezer for eating another day …”

  “She packs it with alum at least once a night …”

  A crash against the side of the building startles the General. He spills his drink on the Hammer. Ben-San is left hanging on a high note. The reefer door swings open untended. The tub of punch falls off the table. The party surges outside.

  Rob Jacobs and Major Lurnt lie on the ground, arms and legs interlocked. The Major untangles himself.

  “Come on, Jacobs,” he says. “Now admit you’re drunk and get up. That’s enough for one night.”

  Rob Jacobs motions weakly with his hand. Cochran leans in close.

  “Gramps’s drinking habits is what killed him,” Rob murmurs. “After a while the liquor didn’t have any kick so he added strychnine and when that lost its effect he put fish hooks and barbed wire in his toddy and it rusted his stomach so bad it gave him indigestion …” Rob’s voice grows weak.

  “And then? And then?” Cochran says, nudging Rob with his foot.

  “… oh, he wasted away to iron and skeleton and finally died.”

  “What a load of hog shit,” Pappy Lurnt says. “He doesn’t know a P from a pig’s snout. What’s the matter with him anyway?”

  “At the end of his rope,” Cochran says. “Exertion was too much for him. Good old Panda Bear.”

  A dark pool seeps out from Rob Jacobs’ head. His hand sneaks up and touches the liquid, then rubs it as if he were trying to smudge out a spot, but feeling the spot grow quicker than the rubbing can get rid of it, the hand gingerly slips up under his face, explores for a second, then is hastily withdrawn.

  “Ooooh,” Rob Jacob moans.

  “He’s bleeding,” Ben-San sings.

  Major Lurnt bolts for a drink. Doc Hollenden, after checking out the cut over the Panda Bear’s eye, recruits two officers to carry Rob Jacobs to the dispensary. General MacLeod sounds off in praise of combat Marines whose stalwart contributions to the proud tradition of the service will never go unheeded, but his Scottish burr is so bad no one can understand a word. He gives up and searches for a junior man to fetch him more ice. The Hammer wanders away, finds a cot and collapses on it, mosquito netting draped across his chest, head resting on a sodden pillow.