Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  The muscles in the gook's neck bulge as he screams, baring his teeth and exhaling a salivary spray.

  And the MPs jaw their gum, sleepy-eyed. The taller of the two proposes he buy them beers. His mustachioed buddy shrugs and concedes a half-hearted “sure.” The tall one swings his cheery fist—a shadowboxer's uppercut—and saunters across the street, into a tavern.

  He pushes wide the door, casting sunglow on the nearest round table, and two of its occupants look up with disdain: a native girl in a white jumpsuit—sleek and fashionable—and her partner, an infantryman, sporting a blonde Van Dyke goatee and dark aviator sunglasses—looking much the swashbuckler—for whom she's gussied-up and swooning. Her legs crossed and hair voluminous. Her skin unblemished; his, rough. Both smile as one of her svelte hands finds his lap.

  The table adjacent hosts a native girl—with devastating emphasis on the latter descriptor—wearing a white blouse and dark pants—her shirt collar unbuttoned twice; her hair draped upon her shoulders; her face, simple—and, beside her, a dirty-blonde infantryman smirking smug; his cocky brow cocked; his hands to his hips, arrogant and proud about his temporary prize.

  Another native girl, dressed in white, lays back in her booth, overpowered and aggressively kissed by a slick-haired native man—an older ARVN officer, clad in his formal attire. Were he to pull his head from her bosom, he’d find he’s the only native male in the vicinity that isn’t waitstaff; the majority of patrons are servicemen—corporals, sergeants, and privates, with buzzcuts or overgrowth; lip bristles or baby-smooth faces; dark sunglasses or traumatized eyes; pressed tan uniforms or tattered green fatigues—all cozied-up to young Vietnamese girls with clean hair and pristine white dresses, unsoiled by dirt, grease, blood, mud, war, cum, etcetera—and every man is stiff, either decompressing from a jaunt in the jungle or subsidizing an overt awareness to the temporary, circumstantial terms of their relationship with Bich, Cam, Linh, Tuy, Thi, and Tam—these Vietnamese women, whether of day or night, who predominantly endure their man if only for money or thrill, as opposed to the passion and compassion that each soldier seeks—consciously or otherwise.

  One booth nurtures two men of the contrary—rough and shark-eyed bullies. One, thick-faced with narrow shoulders; his arm wrapped around his pug-faced short-haired sexobject, holding firm her shoulders; her neck in the crook of his elbow, like a dog on a four-inch leash. The other soldier, a scrawny Italiano; his hair finger-curled like Frankie Avalon; his carnivorous sneer as everlasting as his heritage, commanded by sunken unblinking eyes and a sharp nose; his collar unbuttoned; a cigarette tucked behind his ear; his hands clasped like talons to the shoulders of his sexobject, a cold-faced older woman—her arms crossed and her eyes dour, mourning. Her drink goes untouched while the men each relieve a fourth bottle of ‘33’ EXPORT beer.

  The tall MP sidles-up to the bar, where an infantryman—draped in a bandolier; his helmet at his feet—shares pleasantries with a woman of anglophonic bohemia—flowers in her hair; feathers interwoven with beads around her necklace; white canvas dress hugging her body, with floral embroidery along the seams and a low diamond-cut chestline embellishing the weight of her breasts. At her feet is a cardboard sign, leaning against the bar, that reads “Bombing For Peace Is Like Fucking For Virginity.”

  She speaks—her elbow rested on the counter—with a collegiate vocabulary, politely informing the infantryman of her distaste for his aspirations. He asks how she found her way to the heart of Vietnam. She says she came on a mission for peace, and God has led her through untouched. The infantryman smiles, looks her up and down, “Huh,” he says, “same here. Only difference is, you wear flowers, I wear seven-point-six-two.” He jangles the bandolier on his shoulder; his fingernails plucking the tips of his bullets.

  The MP chuckles to himself, turning from their conversation to face the breeze of an electric fan; opening his ears to the tavern of babel. Some-dozen soldiers chatter, gibe, and preach across a score of round tables…

  “My dear ol’ Uncle Sam gave me a pack of C-4 for my birthday.” “Oh, wowie wow-wow.” “Anything else?” “Just a letter from home.” “Good or bad?” “Girlfriend dump ya?” “Pete, your mom dumped you? I’m so sorry!”

  “I’m not sure whether it hurts more to live or to die.” “All I know is it hurts less to die in your uniform than it does to die in a hospital gown.” “How’d you find that out? Personal experience?” “So if I’m ever looking grim… you know, gimme the ol’ racehorse treatment.” “Shit. If some of y’all don’t go home, I dunno if I can either—on principle; you know, esoterically.” “I’m not fixing to die, I’m just sick of it all.” “They say Happiness is a belt-fed weapon. I know a doctor who can prescribe you one if you’d like.”

  “I wasn’t covering you, you were covering me!” “My point stands.” “Doesn’t matter how much you’re covered; the bullet always finds a way.” “Oh, Hank, so kind of you to lift everyone’s spirits—Hank!” “My pleasure.” “I’m allergic to lead, so the bullets just whiz past me; repel ‘em like a sad magnet.” “I’d like to see that in action.” “I’d just like to go home with enough of my original parts that my mom’ll still recognize me.”

  “Of course it’s not a fair fight. We’re fighting two different wars. They’re an insurgency; a guerilla war; a civil war. We came prepared for a Napoleonesque western war—two platoons of white men lined-up and volleying until one throws in the towel. Perfect example was with our parents: half went off to fight a respectable, rule-based war in Europe. The other half island-hopped the Pacific—arid and wet; crags and jungles—fighting slant-eyed animals who fought with no code yet just as fierce an armory. In an unfair fight, like ours, there’s no half-measure; no compromise. Either you win or you lose—and the winner calls the terms.”

  “Beer, pussy, ammo, and Pall Mall.” “You can’t have a food pyramid with only four things on it.” “Yeah—and Lucky Strikes are superior to Pall Mall anyways.” “Add powdered eggs. That’s your fifth.” “You still need more than five things to make a proper pyramid!” “Yo, dingle-dick, according to the USDA there are only four groups.” “I trust the bureau’s word over yours, sorry.” “I thought there were seven?” “Seven? Yeah—that was before we had television, numb-nuts.”

  “When do you think the fat fucks in the rear echelon are going to realize we don’t have any food on the line?” “I dunno… When they start going hungry?” “We could ask upline for more resources.” “As if we hadn’t been doing that already.” “We could try prayer?” “Psh—prayer!” “Hey, it might not help, but it can’t hurt.”

  “There are two ways of going stateside early: one, if we can’t find your pulse, or two, if some part of you gets turned inside-out.” “I’ve had a series of long conversations with Our Lord and he’s assured me I’m not going home early.” “Oh, you haven’t heard? God’s on vacation. He went up north, somewhere cooler and less fucking retarded.” “Hardy-har-har.” “You can survive your tour and still go home more-or-less a dead man walking… A war like this levees a heavy toll.” “Fortunately, I have exact change!” “Oh, ha-ha.” “Cool your horses, Yogi Berra.”

  “Nearly every man I know has earned over a dozen medals for courage beyond the call of duty. I think maybe two of them have even been awarded.” “The medals don’t make the man.” “Sure, but they help you feel like you ain’t doin’ this for nothing.” “And if you die, God-forbid, McNamara can send a little something-something back to mom an’ pop so they don’t think you died in vain.” “Nothing’s gonna stop that, anyhow. The enemy may take your breath away but your breath is gonna stop someday anyway. The newsmen, colleges, and Madison Avenue spin this narrative that our fight is pointless. Sure, we know that, but they’re poisoning each of our reputations as individuals and men; staining our legacies and killing any chance we have at an honorable journey home.” “Hm—sad.” “Fuck you, ‘sad.’ You’re goddamn-right it’s sad!” “You’re sad!” “I know I’m sad!”

 
; A muffled explosion rocks the earth; rattles the windows; shakes a picture frame loose from its nail, to shatter on the floor. The tall MP looks up and away, as does every patron, but he is the rare body without beverage, and so he alone runs outside to investigate.

  He spies his mustachioed buddy dragging a wooden door from the rubble of an adjacent building. Lying atop the door is a woman clad in tattered fieldworker's garb—paper-thin white-striped pajamas, dyed red with blood. He settles the door on the curb outside the bar, wherefrom the tall MP surveys his surroundings.

  Outside the crippled building, a wagon broke—its wheels snapped-off their axle; its basin spilled of toted wares—and its long-haired steward lies beside, unmoving. Two of the nearby ARVN officers extract this limp woman from the scene, grabbing her firmly by her wrists and dragging her—dragging her—down the dirt road, unconcerned for what injuries she may have within.

  A platoon of ARVN soldiers scramble out the hovel gates and come to kneel outside the crippled building, waiting to go inside; rifles ready, and waiting. Two unconscious men—statuses unknown—lie in the road outside the door, unchecked and ignored. The building—a tenement—creaks with slipping stones and stressed wood. The main entryway, an ornate red door, now stands charred and blackened.

  Three young native girls run down the street; the seams of their summer dresses ripple and furl behind them like flags. They scream, and the tall MP tracks their passage until he can turn his head no more; until the feint of tunnel-vision and tinnitus snap him back to reality.

  He breaks for the crippled tenement, unsheathing his pistol. He kicks-in the charred door, bypassing the gook platoon, and takes cover in the foyer. The walls around him all are blackened; seared and scarred by flashpoint flames. Furniture scorched as black as coal; as black as night.

  Smoke billows up the hall, from the rear of the building, where most of the rubble heaps and their coupled cavities exchange portions of one room for another. The smoke obscures the sun—a deceitful salvation from the heat.

  The tall MP and his mustachioed buddy take the lead, up the stairs—and there, spot the broken ceiling: concrete caving-in around rebar; around a hole forged in a proximal blast. Black, white, green ceramic tiles line the walls—some shattered, some lost—and, above, a pair of legs appear in the ceiling abscess. The steadied descent of denim jeans and a black leather jacket; his arms straddled to lower himself in, alarming the MPs for only as long as it takes them to realize who they’re looking at.

  “Where'd she get after?” Pharos shouts, unslinging his commando rifle from his shoulder.

  The tall MP asks who he's referring to. Pharos scowls and, through flummoxed vitriol, describes an old woman in black robes; last seen lurking on the rooftop of a nearby government building.

  “I didn't think we had any installations within city limits.”

  “A couple structures down; six stories, painted red; billboard of a chinaman on top.”

  “Chinaman?”

  “Toothy gook, yeah. She was up there jimmying some wires together. I tried to flush her out,” he points above. “Missed. Too long a shot.”

  “Wires? I mean, an old woman stringing-up wires; sounds like she was setting a clothesline. The civvies do that all over the rooftops.”

  “No, no—not her, no, she was up to some tricky shit. I think she might've rigged a detonator. Probably finished by now! Probably getting away as we speak!”

  Pharos shoves past the two MPs—leaving them confused in his wake—and he clatters down the stairs, bursting out the blackened door and into the street. He scans his periphery. The MPs fall-in behind him.

  “There!” he shouts, pointing to an old woman carrying a basket. He runs toward her, raising his rifle and ordering, “Hands up! Hands up!”

  The old woman shudders, dropping her wares and waving her hands out before her; lowering to her knees and shielding her face. Pharos storms up beside, lifts her to her feet, and pushes her against a cement wall. He rams his rifle barrel into her gut and screams obscenities in her ear. She starts crying, repeating the same phrase ad nauseum.

  The MPs order Pharos to back down, raising their pistols at him. He turns, grimaces, and steps back.

  “Really?” he stoops. “You're going to point your guns at me? And not the militant gook hag? Not the saboteur?”

  “We don't have a government building in An Khê,” the mustachioed MP says. “That red tower's a tenement. This area is all tenements.”

  “You don't know what I saw,” he says. “You don't know all that I've seen—and I've seen her type before. I've seen them shuffle so innocently, and plead so cherubic, and cry little crocodile tears; ‘No, no, not Viet Cong,’ they say, in their Academy Award-nominated performance, while the ashes cling to their pants; the primer still waxy under their fingernails. I know snakes like her. I hunt snakes like her. That's what I'm in Vietnam for,” he gesticulates, then shouts, “What're you here for?”

  The MPs look to one another, to the old woman, and to Pharos. The mustached MP lowers his pistol, with hesitation; and, though the tall MP keeps his gun sights transfixed on the super, his eyes study the old woman…

  She clasps her hands together and pleads. Her hair unravels from its bun and falls around her shoulders, swishing to rest like stage curtains. There's cement dust on the front of her dress, and on her elbows.

  “I want to believe you,” says the tall MP, “and I think I do, but we have a duty to grant her a proper investigation; to make sure we hold the right person accountable.”

  “The right person?” Pharos spreads his arms, swinging his rifle. “She's right here!”

  “We're talking about justice, not vengeance. Not only do we have to prove something happened, but we have to prove it was her.”

  Pharos sighs in exasperation, fuming; his nostrils flare and his eyes glaze-over with severity; a pale orange sheen glows beneath his furrowed brow.

  “I see everything, motherfucker,” he snarls. “I'm the lighthouse of Alexandria.”

  He raises his rifle to the woman's stomach and pulls the trigger.

  He looks to his feet, jumps, and blasts the road with an ocular bolt—a concussive blast that sends him skyward, bounding over the hovel to a distant rooftop.

  The MPs run to the old woman, who falls to her hands and knees. Her arms shivering and weak, she pries her shirt open, snapping the buttons off and pulling the cloth apart; she looks below, at her bleeding gut. The MPs come to their knees beside her, and she weeps. Her shirttails flutter in the breeze, exposing her scarred chest and the raw wound that bleeds into the dirt, pooling upon the silt and straw like spilled cola.

  Pharos sprints across the tarmac rooftop and leaps at the end, tumbling off in a controlled dive; overclocking his flip to face the ground, and blasting down an ocular bolt, propelling him upright, slowed, to settled on his feet. Portions of the crowd, milling in the market square, stare bewildered at his brazen dismount; his haggard stance; his starved eyes.

  Then, before anyone in the crowd can question, Pharos raises his rifle and unloads—three rounds, shopkeeper; five rounds, young couple; short burst, labor crew; short burst, fishmonger; short burst, mother and child; short burst, two shots, reload.

  The panicked crowd flees in all directions—an uncoordinated, adrenaline-fueled mass-emigration. Boy Cumulus shoves his way through the crowd, against the tide, to the market square; his uniform partially unzipped.

  He rounds the corner to find Pharos treading the cobblestones, firing his rifle with wanton, grim whimsy at those natives who remain in hiding. Boy Cumulus curdles and calls out, “Those are civilians! They’re unarmed!”

  Pharos slows to a stop, and turns, staring blank and ugly in reply.

  Boy Cumulus stutters in his baffled search for words. He shakes his head, mouth agape. “What are you doing!”

  Pharos looks aside, and back. “Killing slants,” he growls. “Are you gonna stop me?”

  Boy Cumulus winces. “Wha- No, I'm not-” he exhale
s, blinking. “What'd they do?”

  “It's what they've all done,” Pharos says, clearing his throat. He lowers his rifle, pointing it at a dead civilian. “See him? What would you wager? Informant? Saboteur?” He prods the corpse’s head with the barrel of his rifle. “Maybe he never raised a gun, but he knew someone who did, and he let it happen.” He grabs the corpse by the scruff of its scalp, lifting its head from the ground.

  He straddles the body and stares at its neck—his eyes glowing a rich orange; sizzling—and his gaze erupts a volcanic heat, focused in a curt beam; swiftly carving across the body, severing the head from the body.

  The corpse thuds the cobblestone and Pharos holds aloft the gook’s severed head.

  “A slant is a slant is a slant, is a slant,” he says, rotating the head to glimpse its sullen eyes. “Hm,” he tosses the head into his other hand, bobbing his arm to estimate its weight. “You ever think about this before?”

  Boy Cumulus stands, arms apart; mouth agape and mind swimming. “Whaddya mean?”

  “It’s like a bowling ball… clammy yet warm, and rubbery…” He strokes the gook head’s hair, and grips it like a dog’s mane, shaking it. “Guy never heard of shampoo, I’d wager. Quite greasy.”

  Pharos transfers the head to his other hand, grabbing it behind the ears, and he wipes his free hand on his pant leg, riffling his fingers to qualify their dryness.

  The sinew and viscera of the gook’s banyan neck tendons and esophagus hang below like a red surprise. The last of his jaw hangs as flesh unattached from the absent lower bone; almost convincing as a festival mask, given how the natural fabric wags stiff.

  He holds the head up and looks beneath it. “How clear it is now; how simple skin is—a thin, lambskin layer of element-resistant leather, wrapped around slimy bone and rubber muscle; teeth ever-chomping; eyes always wide and searching.” He pries apart its eyelid with his thumb and forefinger, showcasing the gook’s round white orb. “Eyelids closed, but eyeballs surely still within.” He presses his middle finger upon the gook’s dark pupil, forcibly reorienting the eye within the socket, “Staring ahead, with eternal intensity.”