Raze scythes a swath of semifluid fire across the forest’s face, splitting bark and igniting palms; lashing at the gook line with handheld whips of arcane flame. Boy Cumulus funnels the highland’s humidity through a singular dark cloud, poised above the enemy’s redoubt; pouring forth a flood of clear waters, washing-out support structures and artillery emplacements. The battered Pvt. Goggia and a dozen others—all that stand between the diplegic Watchdog and a gook onslaught—apply copper-plated pressure to the washed-out jungle line.
Full-bodied Hueys lift-off from the long grasses, making headway for the ridge. The man in black pajamas darts through a thicket kept sundered from the line by an unkempt blaze. Watchdog, preoccupied, does not notice.
The defilade persists upon Miss Bliss—automatic gunfire and RPGs—and she brings her portals both before her, overlapping and wide. The last of the medevac fleet lifts-off, roaring as it climbs into the air. Then, from an untended thicket, a thunderbolt erupts and cuts through the helo, sending it rocking, tipping, groaning; upturned and headed down, whirring blades first, toward the assembly of the Marvelous Six.
Watchdog curses as the cacophony of steel wind bears down on him, stifling all other sounds and senses. Miss Bliss looks skyward, as do her hands, instinctively respawning one shimmering disc beneath the rogue helo—its chopping blades closing a mere yards’ span—while pushing the other portal out to the treeline… and, in this thin moment, the void swallows steel, redirecting the flying beast into the jungle. Its blades cleave and crack upon the sodden palms, and the felled beast comes to rest.
The Marvelous Six lingers dumbstruck for a long second—subjective caesura—allowing time to reconvene with reality. Boy Cumulus and Raze look to Miss Bliss, and she smirks with a proud cock of her brow.
Lurking in the underbrush, the man in black pajamas squints his third eye, spinning a thunderbolt out the thicket and, in an instant, crackling through the abdomen of the shimmering Miss Bliss.
Her smirk fades to oblivion, leaving her mouth agape. Heartbeat slowed, and time ever-slower, she falls to her knees, void of all energies. Her stiffened cold hand reaches low for what’s not there—the phantom cavity, a dysmorphic delusion; the mind-wrenching incompatibility of an absolute truth and an inescapable reality.
She removes her hand from a blood-spattered abyss and presents it, hopelessly, to her comrades. Boy Cumulus takes to his knees and catches her in his arms. Watchdog collapses, overcome with grief and unable to manage himself. Raze breathes stiff, staccato; hyperventilating and furious—exhaling infernal flame and raging, tormenting with raking claws that lash and burn; persecuting and punishing the treeline with helices of hearthfire. Tears stream down her face—nostrils flaring, snorting; hellfire pouring out of her, scorching the earth abhorrent.
Oblivion claims Miss Bliss and saps her warmth, leaving her in a ghastly pallor—the candlelight of her eyes snuffed, and her vibrant skin chilled a dusky pale, inelastic. Her head droops, slack upon her supple shoulders; cradled against the rigid bosom of the weather wunderkind.
Pharos expends his breakneck sprint, sliding to his knees, and scooping his beloved from the arms of Boy Cumulus, who turns away to hide his face. Raze burns on, and the gooks retreat. No sign of the man in black.
Pharos rolls his shoulders, readjusting his hold of Miss Bliss as she hangs heavy in his hands. He utters his denial, ad nauseum, while turning her face over; shaking her; studying her for an inkling of response—but she remains a centerfold effigy.
His voice falters under shallow, panting breath, and unsought sobs spill stuttered from his throat. He holds her close.
The last of the medevacs arrive, preferring the haste of hovering to the security of settlement. Raze guides Watchdog to a waiting Huey, where Pvt. Goggia boosts them both aboard. Pharos carries Miss Bliss cradled in his arms. He won't look away from her face.
Goggia ascends to the cabin and extends his hand to Pharos, who shoves Goggia away—at first—but ultimately accepts his aid.
They get her body aboard, and Pharos climbs on without a word.
The helo flock flees for the horizon. Boy Cumulus waits with the last of the infantry, radiating lightning into the canopy; electrifying cagey vines and searing bark totems.
Slant-eyed slopes rush out the jungle, closing on the LZ. The last of the seven Americans stand encircled; their backs to one another. Bullets spray in all directions, commanded by sleet and fog.
The final Huey swoops-in and hovers well above the earth. A rope ladder unfurls down to the men, and one-by-one they climb; clinging as the Huey lifts off, and firing blindly below. The foliated crags of the Central Highlands sweep past beneath their dangling feet.
In time, the soldiers are seated and the ladder is shelved. Boy Cumulus sits slumped on the floor, his face buried in his hands. The other men—grizzled and weary—survey his composure; his deflated energy; his yellow suit, sullied brown with mud and viscera.
A roar, slow and incoming; the soldiers shift their eyes to the cabin door, to the bombers swift and gliding through vacant skies—gliding the wrong way, toward the battleground and not away—led by jet fighters with missiles laden; contrail streaming off of wingtips; oblong canisters affixed beneath, of napalm, cluster bombs, and other party-dampeners.
The men gaze below at a vast, unyielding jungle. Their pilot, statuesque—poised in ennui—waxes laconic into his headset. Sunlight filters through the cockpit glass, bathing him in a sickly green glow. The return to civilization is wordless; soundless, save for the muffled drone of turbines—churning, buffeting the humid air.
A hilltop approaches, dirty brown—grass dead and dredged, supplanted by tawny dirt and leveled, desecrated by American industry: the flat bastion of the 1st Cavalry Division. Two basic rows of uninspired oak-plank buildings, and a half-moon hangar of corrugated metal. Four marginally tall watchtowers—pylons supporting a tawdry wood box and tin roof. Draped down hillside’s steepest slope is a massive grey banner—its size so ostentatious it could only be a product of a hubristic government—tattered by the elements and time, though still legible: a gold-colored Norman shield depicting a black horse's head, couped in sinister chief, and a black bend charged with fustian pride.
“What base is this?” a soldier asks,
but no man volunteers to say.
The airfield gives our raptor berth—
two hundred birds in calm array.
Six men debark their iron flight,
to shield their eyes from setting sun.
The vantage hosts a gleaming scape
of pylons, craft, and ack-ack guns.
And all along the watchtowers,
the stewards keep their lofty gaze.
The women trod and tramp the earth—
their bare feet caked from endless days.
Away I walk, the weather boy—
a gearing-up battalion passed.
A rowdy fleet, their engines quake—
the dice of intervention cast.
Three dozen tight-bodied, dual-bladed, single-engine attack helicopters idle on the tawny lawn. A pilot strides to his—the Bell AH-1 Cobra; its cockpit hatch ajar—with a bandolier of pistol ammo around his waist. Slung across his shoulders like a limp yoke are two fifty-round belts of 40mm grenades—in the guise of oversized bullets—to feed the auto-launcher in his craft’s nose turret: the Cobra’s spitting venom.
Crewmen at the neighboring craft tighten the last bolts on a retrofit: the M61 Vulcan, a rotary six-barrel, Gatling-style autocannon—air-cooled and pneumatically-spun—recently stripped from a derelict Lockheed AC-130 Spectre gunship. The motor revs, spinning the autocannon dry at 3,000 rpm, and the crewmen cheer as their fastidious fastenings fail to falter.
The raptors rise in unison,
and soar aloft—a flock of crows.
The warrant signed and authorized;
thine fate is sealed, and so it goes.
For God hath shown His ivory light,
by sacrifice of a
ltar horns.
Bestow no shelter! Swarm like bees,
and quench the fire of their thorns!
Befoul their tongues and curb those leagues
of ragtag Giáps and Uncle Hồs.
With arrows slung, command the skies!
The troubled sea we shall oppose!
Now hasten—vet the son of pearl!
Perchance to dream in final sleep
And meet my God in coma freeze—
bestill my veins, o’ primal reap.
A crusted, buffeted Huey stands in a stagnant pond nearby. Four bare-chested soldiers and a native boy wash it by hand: two crouch atop, hunkered under its idle blades, while the others dip their rags in knee-high waters and sponge the sides. Meters away, in a grassy clearing, a Chinook settles as carefully as an eagle makes roost.
From the belly of the winged beast disembark a platoon of fresh faces. They carry belongings brought from home—posters, family photos, guitar, trumpet, typewriter, briefcase—and the surplus of their enlistment kit—rucksack, rifle, plastic glasses, dungarees, acne, anxiety—etcetera, etcetera.
They march on toward the martial village of oak-wood and corrugated metal. Nearing the gates, they ogle and grin, bewildered by the sight of pop-up dentistry…
Two men in sleeveless shirts stand beside a reclined barber’s chair, host to a sweating soldier and his open mouth. The doc’s bare and dirty hands pull the soldier’s lip. His eyes scan the darkened gum line. A small spotlight, on loan from a photographer, shines bright upon his yellowed teeth. The doc then prods the soldier’s gums with pointed metal instruments, chosen from an array of pliers and pokers on a small wooden table. The doc’s assistant stands apart, with the hose of a sucking machine in hand. He yawns.
The heroine Raze walks the enfeebled Watchdog toward the medical bay. He staggers, wincing; his morphine losing its potency.
Stone-faced Pharos carries his beloved—cradled, flaccid and cold—into the heart of the basecamp. He perspires; she does not.
Boy Cumulus walks on. Men rush past him, in their olive-green fatigues, toward a commotive throng of their kin. Standing atop an inches-high wooden platform, in the center of this pack, a buxom actress—or singer of some sort—scribes sumptuous signatures on sateen kepi caps. The crowd around her grows as guys peer anxiously around each other to catch a glimpse of her—the rare woman; the vixen. Her hair voluminous, dark, long, and bouncy. Aquiline nose; full lips on an innocent smile; manicured brows and bedroom eyes, outlined in black like Cleopatra’s. Her sleek jaw and taut neck; smooth skin, contrary to the boys’ around her, with their ragged jowls and dirty faces. Her svelte buxom form, accentuated by hip-hugging white pants, a Texan belt buckle, and purple silk blouse—tucked-in—with more buttons undone than done, revealing the subtle contours of her pillowy breasts and the lace of her black bra. Her deep eyes fixate and permeate every man in the crowd, communicating to each a wordless, touchless intimacy that sends their hearts aflutter.
One fella in the crowd says she was in that movie with the dinosaur fights. Another counters, “No, she was in all those male-fantasy movies, and that musical about the draft. How’d they do those dinosaur fights, anyhow?” “With pictures.” “Shit, guy, I know they’re all pictures; it’s the movies, for chrissakes.” “No, fuckhead, they take still photos of miniatures, move the models a bit, take another photo, move ‘em, take another—and they stitch ‘em all together like a flipbook.” “Then why didn’t you say flipbook?” “Why don’t you pull your head outta your ass and-” Another guy leans into a cement barrier, resting his arms crossed atop it; his head nestled in his folded hands as he looks only at her—lost in her, with his eyes dreaming and his smile unforgettable.
An Army-embedded news correspondent stands erect, with waggled brow and depraved, silent smile. His corpulent body expands in his fatigues, by way of fitness long-disregarded. His thick face, prurient; his cheeks marbled with rosacea. Three steel-bodied Nikon F cameras hang around his neck. He raises one to his eye and asks the actress to show a little humor. Her skin tightens across her cheekbones as she swallows and remembers to smile. Her eyes refill with warmth, and she begins to dance a Parisian shuffle, asking with beckoning fingers for two men to join her—and two men eagerly do.
The journalist takes his photos. Boy Cumulus walks on.
This dust! This foul, accursed, earthen dust!
I breathe—but, lo, I cannot breathe this air.
This humid stench and silted land of rust.
Too harsh a realm for civilized affairs.
Oasis! Steal me from this old despair!
For sanctum sought, lest I forever be
So caught in sodden weald and silent prayer.
What apologia couldst thee conceive
For thine futile war but decadent tyranny?
A black soldier sits, at rest, atop a rock along the tawny roadside. His rifle lays across his lap. He tips his helmet back and wipes his weary face with a damp rag. He then takes a long swig of water from his battered canteen and he stares into the sun. Laying beside him is his rucksack, shot-through thrice, with a short shovel snapped into its canvas holster. The rucksack leans against a wooden post that holds a cardboard sign: “BAKERSFiELd CALiF. 11,000 mi”
A tank stands in the mud—the idle plaything of war—and a soldier lays atop it, snoring, with his face buried in the crook of his elbow. The shield on the gunner’s turret displays, in white paint, a stark message: “GOD FORGIVES - I DON’T!” The turret gun lies dormant, pointed toward the ground; sad like an impotent member.
Adjacent stands a jeep, decorated in more brown mud than green paint. The driver seems Midwestern, with shaggy hair, a bushy mustache, and aviator sunglasses. His gunner stands on the back bed, with his elbow propped against the mounted .50 cal M2 machine gun, wearing a pilot’s helmet and eyeballing all passers-by. A presumed co-rider leans against the hood of the car, long-faced, playing solitaire with a mostly-full deck of weathered cards, depicting Civil War generals as the royal court. “THE UNDERTAKER” is printed in white jester's font below the jeep's windshield, with hatchets drawn on either side.
The driver eyes a scrawny kid strolling past, carrying a crate of 40mm grenade rounds. The driver asks what for and the kid replies, “Nunya.” He swaggers on—fresh blonde buzzcut; thick, black, Buddy Holly glasses—to a standing M113 APC, the most overused of America's fully-tracked armored personnel carriers. Its treads are submerged three inches into the mud, giving it an aura of abandonment.
Six men—equal of ebony and ivory—lounge in the open-top cab of the M113, reclined, talking, laughing. Buddy Holly slows his stride and pulls a silver cylinder from the grenade crate. He tosses it into the APC, into the hands of his startled comrade, who then grins—astonished and elated. Buddy Holly tosses each of his jubilant brothers a silver can of their own, and every vessel erupts with a summery hiss, spilling sweet amber foam. That refreshing hoppy tang, reminiscent of the porch, the farm, the stoop, and the street corner.
A bulldozer plowing the dirt road flat comes to rest—its pneumatic brakes groaning—as the driver stares with heartbroken, lusting eyes at the amber ale of Americana that drizzles down the chin of somebody other than he. What God would torture him so cruelly, the plowman wonders. “If the Almighty could only turn sweat into ale, this hovel would become Eden.” But, alas, the water remains water, and it is the sons of senators and businessmen who drink the wine.
Under a fenceless gazebo, two native ARVN officers and two American peers gather around a plywood table. They sit upon a hammered wooden bench and two plastic lawn chairs. The two American officers—one Hispanic, the other far-from—find no solace in the shade; their bulletproof ensembles deny them its relief. Between the Americans and the natives lay two bulky iron radios, two large laminated maps, and a holstered pistol, unloved. A short, slant-eyed woman delivers a jug of ice water to the table.
The dirt road tapers under a broad, splintered sign—faded gold decree on weathered re
d—that straddles the span between storefronts, seeming to suggest Boy Cumulus has strode upon the town of An Khê.
This tattered visage not of war’s design
But degradation over idle break.
The kind unseen since Reckoning of Time,
When saints had years to waste—O’ how I ache
From pilgrimage in hot Ostara's wake.
Poor confidence in kings—but c'est la vie,
For Việt Nam, what treasured dreams may make
A Sodom here of mead and coterie!
A siren calls for me—forsooth and verily!
Along the curbs mill the crudest and saltiest of Vietnam’s businesspersons: the courtesan. She’s a venomous entrepreneur and relentless negotiator, outbidding the competition with promises of good tidings, detailing all that she can, would, and will do to her propositioned yankee so long as he agrees to her terms and conditions. The clapboard stores and corrugated stone houses along this road all function doubly as brothel pads.
Two young Vietnamese girls—certainly too young to drink—coo and curl their fingers at Boy Cumulus. They wear only bras, high heels, and pleated white pants. One refers to him as “strong man.” She bends slightly—her hands on her knees; her small rump prominent and swaying.
Her gambit hooks him, and he lingers, ogling. She dances salacious and stiff, as would any girl so naïve and nubile, attempting to duplicate all that she’d seen older women do but has never before tried herself.
Boy Cumulus looks behind him, and skyward, with anxious eyes. She calls him “strong man” again, with her inflection rising like birdsong. He sweats, hesitates, and—with that birdsong again—he caves. She smirks like a child, takes his hand, and leads him into her tenement.
Three women lean against a door jamb and smoke cigarettes. The tallest, with bushy pigtails and a tie-dye shirt, is all smiles. Her sister wears a leather mini-skirt and corduroy halter top, with her smooth hair framing her stoic face, caked in cosmetics. The third woman, in a striped polyester shirt and nothing beneath, lowers to a squat—her weight on the balls of her feet; her arms propped on her knees—and she looks off into the distance, tired but not fatigued; tired of this routine, this hustle, this horror, this fear, this war, this occupation…
Supers Box Set Page 20