13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “I think he’s got his head up his ass,” Egan said. “What’s he seein, anyway? Fifty years ago? Thirty years ago? This is 1970. Nobody in their right mind comparing America today with even twenty years ago can say that there hasn’t been beaucoup progress.”

  “You are such a … a white man,” Doc said slowly, pathetically. “You a good man, Eg, but you so white you blind, Mista. You come live in my neighborhood fo a year en open your eyes.”

  “It is to me,” Minh’s high distinct voice entered the night conversation, “a paradox that you fight for a land so soon after your own people have won liberation. You are just now removed from slavedom and you become imperialist warriors.”

  “Say again. Over,” Cahalan said.

  “I do not know why you, any of you, fight for my country,” Minh said. “You suffer, you die and there is nothing in it for you to gain.”

  “Aint dat da truth,” Jones said.

  “What do you think, Pop?” the L-T asked.

  “I don’t know, Sir. I just do what I’m tol ta do. We … most of us are like that, I think, Sir, most of us. I don’t know why. I don’t know if I care why either. I don’t care what you do to a American fightin man. All you got ta do is show’m a woman now en again, give him a beer and pay him on time—he’ll function, Sir. Now these gooks, they’re different. They only fight when they feelin good.”

  “We are very much like you were two hundred years ago,” Minh said. He had a smile on his face but in the dark it could not be seen. “In your revolution your Continental Army was constructed of militiamen enlisted for the summer fighting season. When their terms expired they would not re-enlist and they went to their farms for harvest time and for planting. They did not believe so strongly in your Union as did General Washington. They said it was up to him and your Congress to find replacements. We are the same. Perhaps we do not believe so strongly as President Thieu.”

  “You dudes note that,” El Paso said. “That’s true. Es verdad. Minh, you always amaze me.”

  “I’m goina say somethin in here about blacks,” Egan said, “but I don’t want it misunderstood. There is one reason and only one reason why the black man in America has not advanced at the same pace as all the other ethnic groups who came here, there, I mean, and it’s not cause of the color of his skin. It’s because every group that came to America except the blacks brought with them the attitude that with education and hard work they could advance to the top.”

  “Shee-it,” Jax sounded.

  “That true,” Doc agreed. “Almost true anyway. You got only one thing wrong Mista Mick. Black people came here even in their bondage with the same attitude like everybody else but they was slaves. If they tried ta learn they was punished. They was kept ignorant on purpose, Mista Mick, first as slaves then through all kinds a discrimination. That what Jax sayin. We had our chain a knowledge broken on us, over our heads. We just now weldin it back up again.”

  “I think we oughta go crash, okay?” Garbageman said. He, like Pop, seldom stayed for the informal discussions. He felt uncomfortable speaking about or listening to racial problems in the presence of black troops.

  “Okay,” Brooks said. “Go. I think we’ve covered some things tonight that we can think about and talk about again later. Let me just say that conflict, whether between a man and his wife or between races or nations, follows a pattern of growth. Think about it for me, okay? We’re here together. Us. All of us. Let’s be tolerant of the other man’s point of view. We’ve always helped each other. We’ve always pulled together. We’re an unbeatable team. Perhaps someday we’ll all pull together back in the World and create an unbeatable team back there. See you at 0430. I’m walking point.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Cherry was scared shitless. No more bewilderment. No more exhilaration. Just simple fear. Artillery rounds continued to pass overhead, sounding in the stillness of the night like freight trains rushing past. Cherry had smoothed the dirt he and Egan had pulled from the foxhole into a two-man sleeping area. He had spread his poncho out over the dirt and put his and Egan’s rucks into the vegetation at the uphill end. Egan had gone to the CP meeting and left him alone. Occasionally, in the first hour after Egan left, runners from the squads came to report the LPs were out or the claymores deployed but mostly Cherry had been alone.

  He surveyed his body. His arms were bruised and burned. He knew that. That had happened on the CA. But now his shins and his ass were bruised too. There were scratches on his face and the backs of his hands. Just when they occurred Cherry was not certain. Probably during the mortars, he thought. Or possibly when the jets dropped their bombs. Cherry’s shoulders and back and legs were sore too. How could anyone carry a 100-pound ruck all day, climb down a mountainside with it and not be sore? The bruises added to his fear.

  He lay with his eyes shut. His brain could not control his thoughts. His mind projected fractured concepts onto its inner screen and the projector was speeding out of control. He tried to slow his breathing, to relax his body, to ease the tension. His legs would not cooperate. His stomach felt as if it were full of uncured cement. His chest was taut. Rushing gulps of blood spasmodically jolted his body on the still earth. His ears were tight too, trying to listen yet not listening. The muscles and skin of his neck and scalp were taut, stretched like a drum head. He was awake yet not alert, not sensing anything beyond his own body. I am going to die, he cried inside. They are going to kill me.

  “Hey, Cherry, you asleep?” It was Silvers. “Hey Cherry,” Silvers nudged his shoulder, “I wanted to come over and apologize.”

  “What?” Cherry asked dully.

  “I’m sorry if I gave you a bad time today. I just came over to say that, that’s all.”

  “Thanks. I mean …”

  “Tomorrow, if we get a chance, maybe I can show you how to adjust that ruck so it rides a bit higher. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” Cherry said sitting up. He looked at where Silvers’ voice had come from. There was nothing there. Cherry leaned forward and laid the side of his head upon his knees. He shut his eyes. How could things be so screwed up? He felt on the ground next to him for his rifle. At least that was there. He ran his fingers over the trigger housing assembly. It felt very cool. He lay back down keeping his hand on the M-16.

  A moment later Egan materialized beneath the poncho liner next to him. Cherry didn’t hear or see or feel him until Egan was already in bed with him. Egan was true infantry, true boonierat. The jungle was his home. It was no concern to him that the ground was hard or wet or cold. It only had to be defensible. Egan told Cherry that they would alternate radio watch in one-and-a-half-hour shifts. Then he was still, motionless, soundless. Cherry could not even hear him breathe. If it had not been for Egan’s body warmth Cherry would have found himself doubting whether Egan was really there.

  “I’m scared,” Cherry said. His face was less than a foot from Egan’s ear.

  “That’s natural,” Egan said.

  Cherry heard Egan’s voice then nothing. On the ground everything was black. He listened very hard. His wristwatch was ticking. Air was passing in and out of his lungs. His elbows creaked. No sounds came from Egan. “I mean really,” Cherry said.

  “You’re such a dumb fucking innocent cherry, I can’t hardly believe it. You aint got no war brains at all. None. Zero.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cherry apologized sincerely. “I really thought I’d be okay at this. I didn’t think I’d be so scared.”

  “I don’t know if you know this,” Egan whispered, “but this is one good fuckin company. Dinks seldom hit good companies. They like to pick on the noisy ones where the guys aren’t tryin ta stay alive. Understand? That’s why you shut-up. Dinks are like wolves circlin a herd a deer. They pick off the weak and the wounded. Or the lazy. You get some of these jokers too lazy to walk around a valley ta get to the other side. Charlie stays in the valleys. We stay up on the ridges. That’s our agreement. If you don’t have ta go down there,
don’t. We don’t see them. They don’t see us. We’re happy. They’re happy.”

  “What about today?” Cherry asked sheepishly.

  “You can’t just walk in on em and expect to be invited ta dinner,” Egan whispered. “We’re right at their back door.” Cherry groaned. Egan continued. His voice was very low and it came with so little force it barely reached Cherry’s ears. “Higher-higher sent us to one bad ass AO. Fuck it. Don’t mean nothin. You could get wasted steppin off a curb back in the World.”

  They were silent for several minutes then Egan said absent-mindedly, “I wrote a letter to Stephanie this morning. I didn’t get a chance to give it to anybody. Remind me at resupply to give it to the doorgunner. I feel like he’s goina have one for me.”

  Artillery flares began popping across the valley above the north ridge. The white phosphorus lights made a dull thud as they ignited and the parachutes were ejected. The lights drifted slowly with the wind, descending, sputtering and wheezing then burning out. Several flares popped above Alpha. They cast a strange flat illumination on the LZ where Mc-Queen and Nahele lay behind an M-60 but only a glint of light penetrated the triple canopy to the ground where the enemy might be approaching, where Egan and Cherry were.

  “You sack,” Egan said to Cherry. “I’ll take first radio.” Egan called in the first situation report of the night to El Paso. “Sit-rep negative,” was all he whispered.

  “Who’s Stephanie?” Cherry asked.

  “Just a chick,” Egan said.

  They lay silent for several hours. A large dead tree projected scraggly branches against the sky above. The moon had moved overhead. High tangled branches looked like broken lines in a pen and ink sketch. One high limb still had leaves perhaps from a climbing vine. Egan’s eyes were wide open. His right hand cradled his M-16. In his left hand he held the radio handset. His left arm crossed his chest and the handset was by his right ear. He watched a cloud slip by the moon and she was there. A broken branch spiked the cloud but the lighted edge sailed smoothly, unpenetrated. The jagged branch did not touch it. Nor did it touch the moon.

  Egan closed his eyes and she was there. It made no difference whether his eyes were open or closed. A trembling tightness accentuated the quick heavy pounding in his ears and neck and spread pulsations throughout his body. He could feel her laugh, her lithe body, her small shoulders. Her large bright eyes were closed. He could not see her eyes for it was dark. The cloud continued sliding. A spear-bough drove deeply toward the glowing rim but it did not pierce the cloud’s side.

  Egan heard the poncho crackle. A twig snapped beside him and the jungle resonated, each vine each bamboo fiber prolonging proliferating the sound. Egan stirred imperceptibly and whispered, “What the hell are you doin?”

  “Nothin,” Cherry whispered.

  “Motherfuck. You jerkin yer cock?”

  Cherry did not answer.

  “Scared, huh? Scared but not too fuckin scared ta jerk off. Okay fucker. Okay. Fuck yer hand. But do it quiet. Do it with two fingers and don’t make any noise. Here,” Egan passed Cherry the handset. “Don’t come on it.”

  Slowly Egan pulled his poncho liner up about his face. She was there. Her face was dark. He could only faintly remember what she looked like. With the poncho liner over his face he could no longer see the cloud but off to the side he could see moist palm fronds vaguely glisten against the black jungle and he knew the cloud was still riding the moon’s edge.

  Their first meeting unrolled before him. He and Paul, a friend from college, had arranged to meet in New York City a week after summer vacation began. They planned to catch a freighter to Europe or Africa or South America. By day they would follow their quest to the piers and probe the shipping offices. At night Paul had arranged it so they could stay at Pattie and Stephanie’s apartment.

  Paul and Pattie and Stephanie had graduated from a small township high school in western New York State in 1964. Paul had gone to college. The girls had moved to the city for their education. They had been in the city, struggling, partying, getting by, for almost a year. Paul had gotten their address from an old high school friend a few days before he and Egan met.

  They met at The Battery, drank the afternoon away then headed toward the Village. Outside, Egan could see it clearly now, the soot-blackened moldy red sandstone building rose up before him. The sidewalk was slate. It felt smooth under his feet even in his drunken condition. Decaying steps dropped beneath the building’s main entrance to a basement door on which a neon sign shouted BAR.

  Daniel followed Paul down. The bar opened before him. It was pleasing, quaint, a little decrepit, a sailor’s tavern. The walls were lined with paintings of tall ships. Behind the bar was a model of a four-masted square-rigger. Paul and Daniel were the only customers. Paul admired the model and the tavern owner, a sea captain’s widow, immediately launched into the story of a storm in the Caribbean. She said her name was Maggie.

  Maggie was an old woman whose skin hung loose from jowls and arms. With her was a sailor named Witness, who confirmed and embellished the stories she told. Witness was a large angular man in his midfifties. Daniel was taken with the tales of his wanderings at sea. Witness bought a round. Maggie bought a round. Witness bought another. Paul and Daniel were broke but between them they raised enough for a round. Witness would not allow them to pay. He bought another. He said he was going inland to be married. “Time to plant these feet on soil,” he said. Maggie chided him, cautioned him to be gentle with his new bride then added impishly, “If you ever expect to get some.”

  Daniel and Paul rolled up the stairs, intending to invite Pattie and Stephanie to the bar. Daniel had never met them and Paul had not seen either since graduation. They arrived at the apartment door with their bags over their shoulders, gaily laughing. They were gaily welcomed. The third floor walk-up was small, two rooms and a kitchenette. Daniel looked around drunkenly.

  Pattie said she had a date and left. Stephanie refused to go to a basement bar. The college boys passed out on the floor.

  “God, she is beautiful,” Egan remembered thinking then. She had auburn hair that hung to her delicate shoulders. “Fragile,” he had thought. “So fragile and so delicate.” She became his measuring stick for every girl he met thereafter. She became his education. He could see her now that first time. She wore a flowing silk scarf as a choker around her graceful neck, a ballerina’s neck. The ends of the scarf rested lightly on her breasts. “Really,” she was saying so gently the words caressed the air, “I’d prefer not to go there.”

  Egan shifted. He pulled the poncho liner down and stared at the sky. The edge of the cloud was gone. The cloud had engulfed the moon. The jagged branch seemed limp. He felt cool. Where the moon’s light penetrated the cloud, the haze glowed. Small palm spikes pricked the glow from below. She was still there. This image was much later. Maybe years. Stephanie was wearing a plum-colored poorboy sweater. She was braless and her small breasts looked soft and tantalizing. About her hips was a purple knit skirt. It drooped and clung to her slender thighs. Even her feet were pretty. He wanted to touch her feet.

  Egan felt the need to move. He lay still. He had to move. Slowly he rocked forward, slowly, smoothly, so every muscle fiber of his gut pulled individually and he sat up. He drew his legs to his chest without a sound. He pulled the poncho liner around his shoulders and holding a corner in each hand wrapped his arms about his legs. Egan turned his head and lay it upon his legs. Stephanie’s face still hid in the shadows but a slight glimmer lined her lips and her nose and one eye. “Why?” Egan wondered. “Why should I think of you now? Why are you with me tonight?” A heavy force pressured the back of his eyes. His throat felt thick. She did not appear this clearly during the day, during the light, but the jungle was dark and the night moved slowly.

  That first New York week Egan had slept on the floor in the front room of Stephanie’s apartment. He had lain on his back each morning and had watched her apply her make-up. She would rise early and spend a v
ery long time preparing for the photographer for whom she modeled. She would sit on the floor before an aluminum ladder with one leg curled beneath her and the other bent and held just so, so she could steady her arm on her knee. On the ladder’s second step there was a tiny lighted makeup mirror. On the first and third steps were bottles of cosmetics. By her right hip there was an ashtray and by her left a cup of coffee. Stephanie was never without a cigarette.

  Egan could see her move clearly now, could see the room and himself. He was lying there pretending to be asleep. Watching Stephanie. She looks like a child playing, he had thought. She sang in that soft caressing voice and her thoughts seemed to frolic. He could hear her now. She braced her wrist upon her knee to apply mascara. Her hand trembled. They were thin hands with slender fingers and tiny wrists. Later Daniel’s callused hands would hold them, almost engulf them.

  “Take this,” she whispered the fourth morning. “To read while you sit on the piers and rest from walking amongst the longshoremen.” It was a copy of Gibran’s The Prophet. That day he and Paul were rejected by twelve ships and that night they returned late. Pattie was gone for the evening and Stephanie had a friend in the second room. Paul and Daniel met him. He was older, thirty-five perhaps. To Daniel he seemed very dirty, greasy. He introduced himself as Lucifer then led Stephanie back to the second room again. Paul lay back and was snoring lightly within minutes. Daniel lay back. He listened. There are no sounds at first, then some kissing. Very soft music is put on the stereo. The kissing becomes louder. It echoes in Daniel’s ears. He can feel the bastard’s hands on the beautiful Stephanie. It is driving him mad. He wants to kill the greasy slimy shit. But—he cannot even stir. How can the college boy challenge the invited Lucifer? Simply because he is in love …

  Egan raised his head. His teeth were clenched. The mothafucker stayed the night, he thought.

  During the first week Daniel did not touch Stephanie, not even so much as a handshake, not until they said good-bye. Paul got berth on a ship to Amsterdam and Daniel went to work for Kirt Sontag. Sontag ran a small tugboat and commute shuttle from Pier 15 on the East River. He was the “biggest of the little and the littlest of the big” operators from the piers. He paid poorly but he asked little and he offered Daniel a room aboard the John J. Murphy, a small tug that had sunk in Boston harbor in 1960, but had been raised and salvaged by Sontag. By day the John J. Murphy transported painting crews and supplies to the Statue of Liberty. By night the boat became Daniel’s personal refuge.