Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  A tingle of pride ran up his spine. Jud had to push it aside, not think about the 130 moves left in the beginner’s form of wing chun. Anyone can begin.

  His hands shot down in a cross block. Punches, circle blocks, palm strikes, finger jabs. In a martial pantomine on the night floor of the desert, Jud fought an opponent who wasn’t there, who was everywhere; who had no face, who was everyone.

  The moves of wing chun blurred into blocks and strikes from other systems—and rage. Punch. Block. Grab and trap. Punch. Jud’s chest heaved, his skin grew sticky and his arms ached and still he fought. Faster. Harder. Faster. Stylistic orthodoxy was forgotten, but the rage, the rage woke.

  And then a hook punch threw him off-balance as surely as if a real opponent had grabbed his arm. He stumbled, staggered across the sand. Felt like a fool, a drunken old man. A clown.

  A rosy shimmer outlined the flat horizon behind Nora’s house. A lamp’s yellow glow silhouetted her in the open doorway.

  How long she’d stood there, Jud didn’t know. She turned her smile up to the sky; stretched and breathed deeply, sighed.

  “Got another one,” he heard her tell heaven.

  Nora closed her house door and walked to him.

  “Do you know what I smell?” she asked, smiling.

  Jud shook his head, conscious of his sweaty body.

  “I don’t smell whiskey in you anymore,” she said. “That smells good.”

  “Better than cheap cologne,” said Jud.

  “Nothing’s cheap.” Her brow wrinkled. “You like that tough-guy stuff you were doing?”

  “Legend says a woman developed that style.”

  “Then it ought to work. But if you got tough-guy trouble, you’d be better off practicing running.”

  “I can do that, too.”

  She eyed his belly. “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m not bullshitting you!” he insisted. “I can run.”

  “Good.” She walked to the café. “Coffee when you want.”

  The café’s back screen door banged, and she was gone.

  “I can run,” he said, but no one was there to hear.

  Two gas pumps stood sentry in front of the café. A phone booth sat between Nora’s house and the road. Jud stepped onto the black-snake highway. Nothing moved from horizon to horizon.

  The asphalt was cool. Lights came on in the café. He sighed, pumped his lungs full of cool air …

  And ran down the highway. Ten steps and he was panting, thinking about quitting, so he chanted:

  “Airborne, Airborne, have you heard?

  We’re gonna jump from the big-assed bird.”

  And they had. Into Laos.

  Falling, floating, silent stones in the November night of 1969, timeless, brutal cold, Jud and Curtain steering their human daisy chains toward the intermittent blink of an orange light below.

  They’d popped the Nungs six hundred feet above the jungle canopy, hit their own silk, crashed into the trees. Monkeys screamed. Bats took wing. They cut themselves free and climbed down, rendezvoused with the ground asset on a midnight patch of earth.

  One of the Nungs had lost his mind.

  Somehow he’d climbed down the tree. But he wouldn’t let go: his arms and legs were locked around the tree trunk. His haunches tried to root in the jungle floor. The man sobbed.

  “He’s done!” Curtain whispered to Jud as the other three Nungs tried to pry the madman loose. “Punch his ticket.”

  “He’s on the team,” said Jud.

  The haggard Vietnamese ground asset was fifty-seven, looked seventy. His eyes glistened as he watched the two Americans argue.

  “He’s dead weight!” insisted Curtain. “He flips out, we’re nailed! What will you do with him?”

  “What I want, when I want, where I want!” snapped Jud.

  Curtain barked an order at the sane Nungs. They looked to Jud—he nodded. They left their mad comrade clinging to the tree.

  The team stripped out of their jump gear, dressed in black pajamas unpacked from the canvas bags. Radios, ammunition, food, and medicine were in rucksacks. Jud used his thumbs on nerves in the man’s collarbone: he spasmed and fell away from the tree. One Nung helped Jud strip the jump gear off the mental case: he’d fouled himself. The stench made Jud reel. Jud pulled black pajamas over the man’s soiled long underwear. As the Nungs buried the jump gear, Jud put the madman on his feet and strapped his rucksack on him. He slung a rifle on the pack, cut off the man’s black pajama sleeve, tied it as a gag in his mouth. Jud tied a rope around the man’s waist, handed it to a Nung.

  Tears rolled down the gagged man’s face—but he followed when his compatriot jerked the rope.

  As Jud strapped on his pistols and grenades, checked his AK-47, Curtain told him, “You’re as nuts as he is.”

  “Believe it.”

  Curtain shook his head, spit. “I got point.”

  He slid into the jungle night. The Vietnamese asset followed Curtain. The Nungs came next, a single file of three men leading a human mule.

  Jud held the rear, his eyes and Russian assault rifle sweeping the bush. He followed the Nung ten steps in front of him as much by internal radar as by sight. Leaves rustled. Night birds exchanged secrets. He heard his own tense breathing and that of the man moving through the brush ahead of him. Something slithered over Jud’s boot; something scurried through the tangled roots to his left. An insect buzzed his face. Lit. Stung. His lips burned from his salty sweat; his dry mouth tasted of gun oil.

  The jungle at night magnifies the senses. For Jud, each member of the team had his own scent: one Nung smelled like pine, another like lemons, a third bamboo. The madman reeked of shit. The Vietnamese spy who’d guided them in smelled like Saigon: charcoal and barbecued fish. Curtain smelled like warm milk.

  What’s my smell? wondered Jud.

  They marched for an hour in dense jungle, twisting and turning, slapping branches out of the way, climbing over felled trees, slogging through mud. Their path sloped uphill, into thinner air. Jud’s clothes were soaked, each breath was a rasping effort.

  Without warning, the jungle opened up into a clearing sixty feet wide, a cluttered circle of twisted logs and churned earth. The smell of rotting wood hung in the clearing beneath the first stars Jud had seen since they’d landed. An American blockbuster bomb had blasted that hole in the jungle.

  Jud took the gag out of the madman’s mouth, held the canteen while the Nung drank. No life showed in his eyes. No words came from his lips. Jud replaced the gag.

  “Let me keep point,” said Curtain. “I been in these boonies before.”

  “That’s right,” said Jud, “you have.”

  “How about you?”

  “No,” lied Jud.

  “Watch the Nungs,” said Curtain. “Can’t ever tell.”

  “No,” said Jud as the Nungs fell in line, “you can’t.”

  On they marched, climbed. Their rucksacks pressed into their backs. Jud’s boots trembled, trees swayed: from far off came the rumble of B-52s unloading on Laos. Two million tons of American bombs rained on Laos between 1965 and 1973—more bomb tonnage than the U.S. used against both Germany and Japan in World War II, dropped on a country smaller than Oregon.

  But no air strikes near here tonight, Jud told himself. The bomber crews in Thailand, Okinawa, South Vietnam, floating on carriers in the China Sea, didn’t have this path of real estate on their mission lists.

  Even by SOG standards, Jud’s mission was secret. The B-52 crew that dropped them had been briefed on the runway. The sergeant major who was the team’s handler was under quarantine in Okinawa: he thought Jud’s team was dropping into North Vietnam, as Jud had before. Their ground asset had been activated at the last moment. Jud and Curtain were briefed together eleven days before the mission so they had time to plan, memorize topographical maps, satellite photos.

  And plan on coming back, thought Jud.

  The valley jungle thinned as they climbed along a ridgeline. Jud’s compas
s agreed with Curtain’s route. With luck, they’d get through the hills and reach the Plain of Jars by full light. Then the op plan called for them to wait for darkness.

  Like a mist, night faded to gray light floating in the trees.

  The birds stopped singing.

  What’s that smell? thought Jud.

  The brush to Jud’s left exploded. A rifle barrel whacked his shins. He fell forward, hands grabbing his arms, bodies crashing on top of him. A machine gun burst cut the night. His face slammed into the mud. A dozen Asian voices shouted. Rifle butts thudded into his back, his shoulders, his legs. They twisted his arms behind him as his pack and weapons were pulled away. They jerked him to his feet.

  In front of Jud stood an Asian in a long-sleeved, drab-green shirt, matching pants. He wore a billed cloth cap. A jagged scar ran down his cheek. Scarface speared the barrel of his Czech AK-47 into Jud’s stomach. Jud wretched, doubled over despite the three men holding his bound arms. The wooden butt of Scarface’s machine gun smashed into Jud’s cheek.

  A whirlpool sucked Jud into black nowhere.

  How long he was gone, he couldn’t be sure. He realized he was on his knees, his forehead pressed into the dirt. His face was wet, his jaw throbbed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. Rope cut his wrists, his hands were numb. The pressure of the derringer against his thigh was gone, as was the flash-encode communicator in the pouch strapped under his black pajama top. Asian voices babbled all around him. Sunlight filtered to the jungle floor. Slowly, waiting for the smash of a gun butt, he raised his head.

  Saw a scruffy pair of American jungle boots inches from his eyes.

  We’re in a clearing, thought Jud.

  Beyond the khaki-clad knees in front of him, Jud saw Curtain standing at the treeline, his hands tied at his belt buckle. An Asian in a cloth-capped uniform stood next to Curtain. The Laotian wore wire-rimmed glasses and an officer’s pistol belt. The round-lens glasses gave him owl eyes. Other soldiers were dividing up the American team’s gear.

  The man standing in front of Jud poked him with the barrel of his rifle.

  “Get up,” he said.

  In perfect American.

  Jud struggled to his feet.

  His captor wore a black pajama top with his jungle boots and khakis. A GI web belt hung with grenades, a K-bar combat knife, ammunition pouches for the Czech AK from the arms shipments the Soviet Union started sending to Laos in 1961.

  He had ebony-black skin.

  The tarnished silver jump wings of an American paratrooper were pinned to a red bandanna encircling the black’s forehead. His face was handsome, his teeth white.

  He smelled of fire.

  “Lisson!” Jud spit the words through his bleeding mouth. “Thank God it’s you!”

  “God doesn’t live here!” snapped the black. “This is the People’s Republic of Laos, and you are fucked and refucked!”

  “You’re Mark Lisson,” said Jud. “I was looking for you.”

  The rifle barrel jabbed the side of Jud’s neck.

  “Congratulations, honky!” said the black. “You found me.”

  Owl Eyes yelled something in Lao. The black man glared at him, then told Jud, “Stick around.”

  And his captor laughed. Scarface aimed his assault rifle at Jud. Lisson and Owl Eyes walked to where Jud’s four Nungs knelt in a line, hands tied behind their backs. The Pathet Lao hadn’t removed the madman’s gag. Two guards watched Curtain as he stared dumbfounded at Jud. Jud counted twenty-three Pathet Lao—and the American.

  Owl Eyes drew his Russian pistol, put it behind the head of the first Nung.

  Run! Jud thought as the pistol crack! sliced through the jungle. The first Nung crumpled. Fight! His soul ached as they meekly waited for their bullets: crack! and the man who smelled like lemons pitched forward. Crack! and the pine man flopped on the ground like a fish while crack! the madman slumped on his knees.

  The Vietnamese who’d guided Jud in was blindfolded, his hands bound behind his back. Blood covered his face.

  “You know my name,” said the black, ambling back to Jud while Owl Eyes holstered his pistol.

  “We’re gonna be partners,” whispered Jud.

  Lisson put his rifle bore inches from Jud’s face.

  “You are who I tell you to be, white meat,” said Lisson.

  “Believe me!” said Jud.

  “I always believed you, Mister Charlie. Call the V.C. ‘Charlie,’ right? That’s what my brothers call our white oppressors. The name of the enemy, right? Only one is the enemy, one is not. I learned that from you capitalist pig motherfucker assholes, didn’t I? But you lied about which was which, who was who, I am me, and you, motherfucker, are you.”

  “You only think you know who I am.”

  Across the clearing, Curtain shook his head at Jud.

  “Fuck me, Charlie,” Lisson told Jud. “Fuck me and fuck you and refuck you again!”

  He barked an order. The Pathet Lao shuffled into line. Lisson checked one man’s gun, adjusted another’s pack. A soldier cinched a choke tether around Jud’s neck. Curtain’s guard nudged him into line behind Jud. Scarface walked by. Jud’s holstered derringer dangled from his neck. He spit on Jud.

  The Pathet Lao moved out, leading their POWs away.

  Curtain hissed, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Nice job on point,” said Jud. “The Nungs loved it.”

  “They were always just meat,” said the man behind him. “Why are you dicking the nigger like that?”

  “What did you do, Curtain?”

  “I got bushwhacked, asshole! Same as you!”

  “My ropes are loose,” whispered Curtain to Jud’s silence. “I get a chance, I’ll go for it. If they separate us, I’ll circle back, spring you. They’ll separate us, but don’t worry.”

  Up ahead, Owl Eyes barked an order. The fourteen-year-old soldier holding Jud’s tether ran him up the file. The jungle thinned to forest. They loped past a dozen Pathet Lao. Half the soldiers were no older than Jud’s keeper. They ran past the blindfolded Vietnamese asset, ran until they reached the head of the column where Owl Eyes walked with Lisson.

  “Figured you’d like it up here, honky,” Lisson said. Owl Eyes let the two Americans walk ahead of him. “Leader of the pack and all, a one-zero like you.”

  “How’d you know I was the one-zero?” said Jud.

  Lisson slapped Jud across the face.

  “You don’t ask questions. You’re a flat zero here.”

  They kept marching.

  “And you’re number one boy in the boonies,” said Jud. “But they keep you in the boonies. With Owl Eyes to watch you.”

  “He’s the political officer.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in officers anymore.”

  “A revolution without discipline revolts itself.”

  “I know you, Lisson. I’m here to help you.”

  “Don’t waste my English on bullshit.”

  “I stole your files,” said Jud. “I know who you are.”

  “Nobody knows who you are.”

  “I do,” said Jud.

  “You do shit!” Lisson thumped Jud with a steel finger. “You’re all shit. Pale, white shit, dropped on the people of the world. Anybody who ain’t white, ain’t right. Con ’em or kill ’em. Selma or Saigon, it’s all the same.”

  “I know who taught you that,” said Jud.

  Lisson roared with laughter.

  They’re not worried about ambush, thought Jud.

  “You guys taught me that!” yelled Lisson.

  “I know,” said Jud. “How many insertion teams did you hunt down before they trusted you?”

  The column paused at the top of a ridgeline. In the distance, Jud saw open grass fields: the Plain of Jars.

  “Trust?” said Lisson. “You CIA Green Beret fuck! You know shit about trust. You’re rats scurrying before the tidal wave of history. Who’s gonna spy to keep the white man on top? Can’t slip in a yellow man, because we c
an’t trust no indig. And we don’t wanna waste one of the white boys. So let’s send in a nigger. We can con the slopes into trusting a black brother. Take a soul man, somebody who …”

  Lisson started to hyperventilate. He gritted his teeth.

  “Two tours in the Nam. Fightin’ soldier from the sky. Dumb fuck out of Chicago, man, California Street where the sun never shines, but hey: the U.S. Army gonna make it right. Green Berets gonna let me prove I’m a man. I bought it all the way.”

  “Yes, you did,” said Jud.

  Lisson led the column down the hill.

  “The worst promises don’t have any words, just that look that holds your prayers.”

  “I know the look,” said Jud.

  “How many guys you sucker with it?”

  Jud didn’t answer. Lisson rambled on:

  “How you gonna get those clever commies to trust an American so he can spy on them? Give ’em a GI they want: a dude who knows tough-guy secret shit to tell them. Some SOG star.”

  “And give the spy a legend the bad guys can believe,” said Lisson. “You guys taught me Elijah and Cleaver, the Panthers. Che and Mao and Marx. Black power so I’d have a rap and a rep. A reason to fuck up America. Perfect cover. Then last year you shot King. Malcolm. Blew up four girls in a church, sweet fools thought some white God would save them. Fire hoses and police dogs. You’re black, stay back, Jack. Oh, you taught me good!

  “But you forgot to unteach. California Street. Rats in baby’s room and whites only on the Gold Coast. The white boy who slapped Gramma in Biloxi. I used to be ashamed for her. Those villes up by Da Nang where we … where I … Nobody can forget that.”

  “I know places like that,” said Jud.

  “Then I should kill you now,” Lisson told him. “Then you’re guiltier than you look. White is the color of guilt. Of greed. Of capitalism that oppresses the masses. You got that guilt, you gotta die to get rid of it. Or get the assholes who shit you where you are.”

  “They caught you like SOG planned. Tortured you—”

  “They taught me. Showed me the way of truth.”

  “You were our double. Became their triple. Gave ’em everything you could. Fight for them, too.”