Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

  “Yes, and about time,” cry the malcontents, the prudes, the disapproving members who have been quietly watching the unbridled revelry. “We are still officers and Marines. We still carry the sword and the banner, ride the ball and eagle into backward illiterate nations. It’s up to us to maintain tradition, provide protocol, uphold impeccability. We demand shirts and ties. Class Alpha uniforms, rules for behavior, an opening and closing time. Plus, of course,” said demurely, “proper respect for age, infirmity, deformity and rank.”

  “Rank on this, you fuckheads,” a member of the loosey goosey contingent fires back. “Take your namby pamby to the library. Here’s where we let down our hair. Burrheads we may be but we sport handlebar mustaches waxed to sharp points. Stick ourselves in the bloodshot eyes. Down with your set of rules.”

  “Cop some couth,” a rulemaker retorts. “Pay attention to what Miss Manners has to say.”

  “Señorita Manners can chupa mí verga, Jose; this is bandit country and that’s cop my dick to you ignoramuses.”

  “Lay it on them, Tomas,” Cochran says.

  I bow, appreciatively. The opposition flashes lightning, roars thunder. Tigers and VC hide in their caves, wondering if a rabid herd of animals is running loose in Da Nang.

  When the wrangling lulls, a general rule evolves: To each shall be left the discretion to dress properly and behave in a manner commensurate with the company and the crowd. A mission statement for the ages to include the aged. An opening and closing time is decided upon, and the meeting breaks up, the loosey-goosey core group assuaged, having salvaged a semblance of freedom. No ties required. Drinks all around.

  The champagne taste of victory is soon barfed up in the form of sour bile. The Commanding General of the First Marine Aircraft Wing flies in from Japan for an official visit, and a party is held in his honor. We got a club, we got couth, and this time, instead of a knock-down, table-breaking, liquor-spilling, no-holds-barred brawl like we threw in Soc Trang, the Hammer orders up a classy cocktail party, starting at five in the O Club and ending at six thirty, after which the Heavies will attend a gala dinner, and when dessert is done, they will retire to their rooms with full stomachs and healthy belches, war and death having taken a backseat to the amenities of social decorum and witty repartee.

  In order for everything to go smoothly, a notice is nailed to the O Club door. Shirts and ties are required for the cocktail party. This goes against our by-laws that require any changes to be okayed by a vote of all the members, but no one is there to cast a vote. The junior officers spend the day in the blue, turning the screw, and don’t get back until after dark.

  We jump off the bus and, still wearing our grubby flight suits, flock to the club. Notice on the door? What notice? Inside, the place is empty, the heavies having already departed for dinner. We belly up to the bar and call for drinks. Mai Duc, the Vietnamese bartender refuses to acknowledge our orders, falling back on the inscrutable Oriental bit, can’t understand a word we say. He points to the door. “Hui là.” Read the notice, numbnuts. So much for a drink. Too much trouble to change into the proper attire.

  We drag over to the mess hall to eat and find it secured. The junior officers ate at five-thirty and now the dining hall is reserved for the General’s party. The mess sergeant throws a case of C-rations out the door and we take it back to the Frog House and eat cold turkey in our rooms.

  The next morning at the all-pilots meeting, Grits Emmett, our elected president, announces that from now on T-shirts will not be allowed in the club. We must either wear civilian shirts with collars or else our dungaree jackets.

  T-shirted and unheeding I call out, “When did we vote on that?”

  “We didn’t …”

  I start to shout, “Then who says so?” when I feel two laser beams of shut-your-mouth rays boring a hole in my forehead. Our father who art in command glares, a deep down meltdown that clams me totally.

  It’s the same old simple story. A fight for love that turns gory. Build a club the Hammer says. Finance it. Run it. Be the manager, secretary, treasurer and purchasing agent. Let’s see some management ability out of you junior officers. Keep having your meetings and continue voting on your policies. For you are the ones in charge. Tiny tinkles of laughter.

  I decide to boycott the club and drink in our room in the Frog House. Cochran is there haranguing our Vietnamese maid. No one can pronounce her name, so we call her Gladys. Cochran has on a pair of black Vietnamese pajamas with the legs way too short and a cooking pot lid on his head that’s supposed to look like a coolie hat.

  “Leave my stuff alone,” Cochran says. “I don’t need anyone making my bed, putting my clothes away. I can’t find a damned thing.”

  Gladys, upset by his rant, covers her face. Pete Alexander, the camp interpreter, pulls her hands away and tells her Cochran isn’t depriving her of a job, he is simply cuckoo and wants to make do for himself. Pete makes the circling squirrelly finger motion next to his temple, but she doesn’t get it. She leaves to take care of another foursome down the hall. They will laugh and tease and make her job more enjoyable.

  Out in the hall there is a crash and tinkling of broken glass. The light goes out. There’s cursing, followed by laughter. The frisbee game that runs the length of the hall breaks up, an automatic forfeit when someone smashes one of the neon lights hanging from the ceiling. Pete Alexander goes out to see about cleaning up the mess.

  Emmett comes in. He holds up a bottle of whiskey and tells us this stuff is so expensive you can’t drink it, you can only suck on the cork. Cochran takes the cork and smells it. Emmett tells him to wipe the cracker crumbs off his mouth before he sucks the cork. Cochran stares at Emmett for a second and throws the cork out the window.

  “What—” Emmett starts to say but Cochran interrupts, “That’s a damned lie that I have cracker crumbs in my mouth and they’re gonna contaminate your cork. Cork this, Grits.” He gives him the finger.

  “Don’t call me Grits, you gorilla.”

  “Okay,” Cochran says. “We both know gorillas cook their grits before they eat them.”

  Cochran holds out his hand. The cork is lying on his open palm.

  “Here you go. The one I threw out the window I found on the floor. Suck on that.”

  “Suck this, asshole.” Emmett grabs the cork and stomps out the door. Cochran turns to me.

  “You can be a martyr to the cause,” he says, “and sit in the room and drink, but I’m going over to the Club.”

  He spins his coolie hat on the floor with a clank, pulls a pair of pants over the pajamas, slips on a shirt and leaves me sitting in the chair I traded off an Army sergeant for a K-bar knife he could give to his C.O. who was was being sent back to the states.

  One time I came in the room after a long day of flying to find Rob Jacobs sprawled in the chair, his leg hanging over a chair arm, head lolling on the back cushion. He laughed when I told him to get up. I grabbed his leg and spun him out of the chair. Before he could go on the attack I was sprawled in his place.

  “You can sit in it when I’m not here,” I told him, “but when I want the chair, it’s mine.”

  He didn’t like it but he let it go and I’m thankful we didn’t have any more problems about the chair. I can laugh about it now.

  Outside, the sergeant of the guard chews out the sentry for lingering too long in the shadows of the building. On the other side of the concertina wire, the shrill voice of Hoang Dong, the famous Vietnamese singer, serenades the ARVN barracks. On our side of the wire, music booming out of the EM housing provides a rhythm and blues counterpoint. I stare at two drinks, a major decision facing me. With a Bloody Mary, various hot licks, with a double scotch, a cool elevated headcloud. I’m going for the heat.

  I take a slug of Bloody Mary, turn on the tape recorder and add my musical offering to the mix. Fight with the captain and I land in jail; ain’t nobody around for to go my bail …

  In response, the enlisted men on the other side of the compound
pump up the volume: You got me working, boss man. You won’t let me stop. You big boss man … you ain’t so big. You tall, that’s all …

  I scrunch my shoulders and swig down the scotch. I’ll ignore the ramped-up music. Those bastards will never jump a man who doesn’t give them cause. Is ignoring them a cause? Shit, I better let them know I know they’re out there. I crank the volume to eleven, stare at the broken knob in my hand: Well lawdy, lawdy, Miss Clawdy. Girl you sure look good to me. You like to ball every morning. Don’t come home till late at night.

  OH, HOT DOG! I’m riding a blind hot streak of luck. Turned it around, drowning out those patatas calor, and I burst into song. “The Hawks and the Doves.” To shoot or not to shoot. Some say yea and some say nay. When the moment comes you have to pick your way. And yes, oh Sweet Jesus, thank the Lord, they dig it … or do they? What’s the vision? How does it look through the third eye… ?

  It looks like a tiny postage stamp of an outpost sitting on a cliff edge I’m bearing down with a full load in the belly my right hand a grip of death on the stick my left hand a full throttle power drive to the deck and hit the ground with a thud kick the gear out Emmett peels my fingers off the stick says you punched out the ASE punched it out on purpose says I who needs Automatic Stabilization when he’s got the bird under total control I’ll fly it home says Emmett you get an up on your flight check by the way and what a relief that is but it sounds like they’re not happy with my choice of music over in the EM quarters big brawl man, can’t you hear me when I whack you with a wooden cot stake that starts a big fight with not much damage inflicted but every jarred head that comes out shaved from the barber shop will be covered with battle dressings maybe I’ll shave my head in solidarity to show them one officer’s copacetic, but does anybody care?

  Better drink on it. I pour another combination, scotch murky in one glass, Mary bloody in another, her head stuck on a celery stalk. The walls are peeling, globs of effluvium slide to the floor … red like ketchup, red like tomato juice, red like a Bloody Mary … I belch out of the room, stagger down the hall … call for help, “EARL, EARL” … plunge my head in the toilet … “Earl” … spray the name into the bowl … Yes-a, I, oh I’m gonna love you … Come on let me hold you darlin’. ‘Cause I’m the Duke of Earl. Flame out. Crash and burn.

  A banging on the door pounds on my hungover head. Light streams through the window. I put the pillow over my head.

  “Go away.”

  Captain Beamus stomps into the room. “What are you doing in bed? Don’t you know you’re the duty officer?”

  Hangnailed feet dangling from the bed, sheet pulled under my chin, I push the pillow aside and give him a bleery look. Captain Beamus is disgusted. Forced to deal with the duty officer flat on his back at ten thirty in the morning. “Get your ass out of the sack and get outside and get those ball games stopped before church services go down at eleven hundred. Wing Headquarters flew in a preacher from Japan. We will not have games competing with God.”

  “Yes, sir,” I mumble. “You’re right. It’s the proper thing to do.”

  “Get them stopped, Fuckelbee. That’s all I want from you. Nothing else. Just get them stopped.”

  I get up, dress, brush my teeth, borrow a whistle from Ben-San’s dresser, and at two minutes to eleven, dressed in inspection starched utilities, pistol strapped to my waist, sunglasses dimming the molten sun, I march outside the Frog House, stomp to the basketball court and blow the whistle. Once. Twice. Then to prove I’m not fooling, one last long lingering blast.

  The men stop, wondering what the fuck this lunatic wants. I’m out of wind from whistling and can’t speak. My first thought is that I’ve lost my initial advantage, but the wait turns out to be as effective as a dramatic pause on the speaking platform.

  “All right, you people. Break it up. The C.O. desires you to haul ass off the courts and into the church before eleven o’clock. I’m here to see that his wishes are followed.”

  I pull out the railroad pocket watch Daddy passed down to me. It’s attached to my belt loop with a braided human hair chain I traded away from a Montagnard tribesman for a C-ration can opener.

  “You’ve got exactly one minute and fifteen seconds to make it.”

  They stand unmoving, sullen.

  “On the double. GET moving!”

  There is a slow moseying to the mess hall where the religious services are being held. PFC Alvin Sneedly stops on the edge of the concrete court to pick up his shirt. He’s pushed aside and knocked down the steps.

  I help him to his feet, brush off the dirt.

  “You all right?”

  “Sixes sir.”

  “It’s after eleven o’clock,” I tell him. “Get cleaned up and turn yourself into the First Sergeant. Tell him you were late for church.”

  “Yes, sir,” he says. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Not at all. Not at all.” Sarcasm does not affect a man fucked up from a night of drink.

  I look out across the deserted basketball courts, the bare backstops, the jagged metal backboard poles. I slap the whistle against my thigh, relishing the slap and the sting against my leg. Takes my mind off the jackhammer in my head.

  Coffee, aspirin. Sergeant Soonto moves out of my way as I turn to go back to the Frog House. He shakes his head. “Lieutenant,” he says sadly, his brown eyes morose. The cur snarls at me from between his legs. I walk away, chastened.

  Oh me. Big boss man. I’ve become the same old turd I’m always railing against. Can’t you hear me when I call?

  16. Grog All Around

  Howsabout a taste of the good stuff, Doc … some of that Kaintucky Jack Daniels … like the song: long dong from Kentucky … long dong ain’t he lucky … long dong what I mean … he’s long dong gone from Bowling Green … until his luck runs out … then he’s long gone cong from Mang Buc ducky … long gone cong, he’s unlucky … like a string run out to the end … remember, son, Daddy says, when it comes to Bull Roar a little parody can go a long ways … yes, Daddy, I know … Marion Morrison was either a joke or a hero … big, slow, and, yeah … deliberate, for sure … he’s a Hollywood Marine … his real name is known only to Marines in the know … what the hell, Doc, I’ll share it with you … his name is John Wayne … and he said lots of people say the only reason anyone goes into the Marine Corps is because they can’t make it on the outside … well, that’s their personal bull roar and they’re talking too fast … slow it down, Doc … lay off the hotdogging … give it to me straight …

  “No more hotdogging on the deck trying to flush out the Cong.”

  Colonel Hammer glares us to attention. A few pilots sit up, ready to take notes. The rest of us sprawl across the ready room chairs. We’re grizzled, jaded. Outside, the first hints of rain are building in low hanging clouds. If the clouds stay below the mountaintops we’ll scratch, if they rise, we’ll itch, those who itch to fly.

  “They’re catching onto us,” the Hammer continues. “They’ve learned that one round, in the right place, even from a paddy farmer’s blunderbuss, can bring a chopper down.”

  Then the Hammer lays down the catechism again, holy and infallible: “In the interest of safety and longevity no one will fly below fifteen hundred feet unless absolutely necessary.”

  No shit. Can’t argue with something we’ve already been doing for months.

  “Get in quick and don’t mess around on the ground. Climb out fast and stay out of small-arms range.”

  The C.O. slaps his pointer against the mapboard and paces the front of the ready room, his back stiff, stomach taut. He’s tense. We’re tired.

  “Make sure you know where you are at all times. We don’t need any more border incidents, wandering into Laos.”

  He smacks the map again, slapshot of attention.

  “Knock off the idle chatter on the radio. Keep the channel clear for important messages.”

  I stifle a yawn. Fungus creeps across the walls. The maps and schedule boards are splashed with grease
pencil scrawls: squadron notices in black, artillery ranges crosshatched in red; friendly outposts blue triangles, Viet Cong positions boldly outlined in orange; ribald comments etched in green: Tower monkeys screw ripe mangos and feed the mush to the birds.

  “If the weather stays clear we go. Stand by for launch.”

  The colonel steps down and takes his seat in the first row of chairs.

  I’m flying with Cochran, per usual. We’re on a two-chopper mission, resupplying Mang Buk, an outpost sixty miles west, on our side of the river from Laos. After we drop off our cargo we’re supposed to bring back a load of ARVN soldiers. They get the lackadaisicals when they’re away from home too long, and they have to be rotated out every couple weeks.

  Captain Beamus will lead the flight. He’s as serious a VC hunter ever come six-gunning through this yere neck of the jungle, and once again his copilot is Wee Willie Weems. The perfect assistant, quiet and serious, a good map reader, which is essential on these flights, so that we don’t do anything stupid that might get us a bullet up the ass.

  The clouds rise. The weather clears. It’s a go. We walk out to the line shack where we read the airplane gripes and sign off the birds. The enlisted men watch from behind the counter. A door opens in the back of the room and there’s a flash of black and white. Soonto’s cur. The nearest guy slams the door shut, the other men bustle around, drop clipboards, yell questions at one another, a catastrophe of distractions. Soonto’s walking fast toward the chopper.

  Outside the line shack I tell Cochran what happened.

  He laughs. “They must think we don’t know about the cur.”

  “Yeah. Hiding him. I was glad to see the mutt again.”

  The chopper is loaded with crates of live chickens and pigs, sacks of rice, bundles of clothing, cases of beer and crates of ammunition. Sergeant Soonto gives us the thumbs up. Everything all stowed.