Night Train

by Thom Jones

  As he waited for the judges to compile their scores, Kid Dynamite chided himself for not pushing it harder when in fact he had given his all. The referee announced a split decision in Kid Dynamite’s favor. Juan barely had time to pick him up and swing him around before the ring doctor jumped into Kid Dynamite’s corner and pressed a gauze bandage under his eye. In the excitement of the fight, Kid Dynamite hadn’t felt the cut, hadn’t been bothered by it after the first round. But now the doctor shook his head, and said, “You won the fight but your tournament is over. That’s a seven-stitch cut.” Louis Reine came over and slapped Kid Dynamite’s glove. “Good fight. I’ll see you next year.”

  Kid Dynamite felt an overwhelming affection for Reine. “Thanks,” he said. Reine, who had turned away, looked back and said, “Next time I’ll get you.”

  The only other fighter from the Steelworkers’ Hall to win that night was Eloise Greene, the club’s middleweight. Greene, the cigarette smoker, caught fire and waltzed through the finals, winning the open title. For this he received a trophy, a powder blue silk jacket, and his own headline on the Beacon’s sports page.

  Kid Dynamite did not go in with the other fighters to watch the subsequent bouts. He did not even go back to the Steelworkers’ Hall to clean out his gym locker. Boxing was finally over and the real world, which had seemed so very far away all these years, was upon him.

  The Roadrunner

  THE EAGLE WOULD​ fly on Friday and except for the assorted shitbirds, and certain vital N.C.O.s, Captain Barnes issued First Recon ninety-six hours of liberty. Until that it had been nothing but humping the boonies. All we knew was the field. Six months of that shit, and nerves were strung tight. Now we were awaiting orders to ship out for Da Nang. Since Captain Barnes didn’t want us to start a brawl in Oceanside, he gave us ninety-six hours and told us to take all that tension south of the border. “Go fuck your brains out in T-Town, that is an order!”

  No sooner than we collected our pay we were packed into L.D. Pfieffer’s ’51 Chevy, a car that needed three quarts of oil at every fill-up. We chain-smoked Camels and split a quart of gin on the trip down Highway 101.

  We crossed the border and hit a strip club on Tijuana’s main drag. A stripper with a gold tooth had just whipped off her G-string and shimmied her cooch into a sailor’s face. Half the crowd was cheering this swabbie on, like, “Go for it—eat her out.” Others “pretended” they would never do such a thing but it was like, “So go to a Rotary Club Meeting, and get lost, motherfuckers!” First Recon wanted nothing short of Mexican Caligula.

  Gerber sidled right up to the bar and said, “She’s got a snatch on her like Bert Parks’s toupee.”

  Sergeant Ondine said, “Either the bitch likes it or that sailor boy has got massive salivary glands.”

  L.D. Pfieffer, our machine-gunner, said, “Man, I’d like to stick my whole head up her pussy.”

  Felix Toliver, a radioman from Connecticut, eyeballed Pfieffer and said, “With a pinhead like yours it would fit like a glove.” Toliver was 6′5″ tall and accordingly thought of himself as a badass, and well before the fun started these two marines locked eyeballs. Sergeant Ondine stepped in and told them to knock it off, but Toliver had this nasal Connecticut accent and said, “Stay out of this, Clarence.”

  There were two things you didn’t do in First Recon—you didn’t get on the wrong side of L.D. and you didn’t call Ondine “Clarence.” I figured Toliver must have a death wish, but just then a big whore came along, took L.D. by the hand, and turned him around. Pretty soon she’s running her fingers up and down his thigh, squeezing his meat. Gerber handed me a beer and guided me to the back of the club where some of the classier whores sat. He was saying, “I’m in love, Hollywood. You should see this babe.” But when we got to the back, Gerber’s prostitute was nowhere to be seen. I suddenly found the love of my own life, negotiated a price, and went upstairs. A half hour later I was back. The stage show was over and it was all jukebox. The Mar-Kees were cranking out “Last Night.”

  Ondine and Pfieffer were at the bar slamming down overpriced shots of tequila. Sergeant Ondine was a lifer. The Marine Corps was his career, but he was an all-right guy. With Vietnam on his mind, he was deep into his rap where the essential secret to being a good soldier was first of all to concede your own death. “If you do that, you can do anything. No one can outsoldier you. No one can take a run at you and live to tell about it. No one can take you out. You can do seven-mile forced marches in full field gear with a poncho over your head and call yourself a tough guy, but if you aren’t ready to give it up, you’re nothing.”

  I had heard all this before and didn’t take it too seriously. I didn’t want to concede my own death. I wanted to be a hedonist—drink, screw girls, and experience vast earthly pleasures. I didn’t even want to talk about death; it was something that just wasn’t going to happen for a very very long time. I ordered a beer and noticed that Pfieffer was really lit. He was a heavyset guy and heavy on his feet. Not coordinated. The bartender kept setting out shot glasses of tequila for him and he would migrate from the dance floor back to the bar, where he would down another shot and then go back to the dance floor, doing some kind of dipshit hula dance. He looked like a big, stupid, happy fat guy, but if anyone laughed or got into a critique about the finer points of dance, Pfieffer would flash them his goofy grin and then biff them on the nose with the meat of his fist. I watched him lay a few on a mouthy sailor. The man’s head jerked back like he didn’t know what to do. Tears were running down the guy’s face and L.D. stood in front of him with his goofus smile. The sailor got uppity and Pfieffer let him have another one, drawing blood this time. “There he goes again,” Ondine said. Very soon a wild and woolly brawl rolled through the crowded joint in waves. I hadn’t put a single beer in me before a bottle came sailing across the bar and struck me under the eye. The fight spread out into the street while the Mexican police forced their way into the front door.

  All of First Recon managed to get out without getting arrested. We packed into the Chevy and spent the next hour trying to locate a whorehouse that Ondine favored. We ended up lost and stopped at a depressing little cantina to fuel up, drinking 150-proof rum. The bartender’s “wife” and “sister” came downstairs and in no time we reconvened to the living quarters in the back of the building. One of the women filled a plastic bread bag with ice cubes for my swollen eye.

  Waiting for your buddies to get laid is right up there with hanging out in a dentist’s office. After Pfieffer got laid, I saw one of the prostitutes hanging back in the bedroom as she took a swath at her crotch with a sex towel. Then she dipped her fingers into a large tub of Vaseline containing pubic hairs of various colors and texture. This Vaseline jar brought home the true meaning of the term “sloppy seconds.” But Felix didn’t give a shit and he joined her in the room and soon a lot of bedboard-thumping sex was going on.

  I said, “L.D., man, did you get a load of that Vaseline jar?” He was already three sheets to the wind and waved me off and said, “I’m so horny I could fuck a rattlesnake.”

  “You just did,” Ondine said.

  Pfieffer made like he was going to biff Ondine on the nose, but the Sergeant had his hands up and the two started grab-assing until the bartender came around back and threatened to throw us all out if we didn’t promise to calm down. In the meantime, the bedbumping and loud groans in Felix’s room were like the high drama of a full-fledged exorcism. Gerber was performing oral sex on the other prostitute on a cramped love seat in the little room without having “officially” negotiated a price. In addition to the black eye, I had that burning prostate sensation that sometimes accompanies an orgasm that is followed by heavy alcohol consumption. Every three minutes I felt compelled to go to the bathroom, even though I wasn’t putting out more than a few drops of urine per visit. It felt like blue flames were coming out my dick. Then I would walk back into a room that smelled so badly of funky pussy I could have done a backflip.

  The r
um after gin had hit me pretty hard, and although the night was fairly young, I was already seeing double. Afraid that I was going to puke, I went outside. I saw some lights about a half mile down the road and started off in that direction. A bunch of Mexicans were sitting along a curve in the road, and just before I reached them, I fell fully into a six-foot hole in the ground. The fall almost knocked me cold. I heard the Mexicans roar with laughter and I was so pissed I wanted to kill every one of them, but by the time I had managed to crawl out of the hole, I was muddy and covered with sweat. When I got over to the tree where they sat, one of them passed me a bottle of wine and another passed a joint. I could see that I wasn’t the only victim. Two of the men were grunts from the Seventh Marines and they had taken the fall together. “Some kind of road construction, man, and no warning signs either!”

  Pretty soon we were all laughing when L.D. came strolling down the road. We hushed up and watched as L.D. took a dive. Then we roared. I was probably laughing harder than any of the rest until I could hear him curse me by name. With that I thought it would be a good idea to make myself scarce.

  I teamed up with the two grunts and that was the last thing I remember until I came to in a Pasadena motel room, alone. I did not know how I got to Pasadena from Mexico. A motel manager with beefy forearms and a cigar clenched in his teeth pounded on the door and demanded money for another night. I didn’t have a dime. Not only was I broke, I did not have my wallet nor my military I.D. What I had was a short afternoon to get back to Camp Pendleton. I took a quick shower, then guzzled cold water from the tap, and when I looked up in the mirror I saw a red and blue USMC bulldog tattooed on my left deltoid. Above the bulldog was the name “Shab.” To this day I have no idea what it means. It’s right up there with Stonehenge and Easter Island in the mystery department.

  Acutely sick, I hitchhiked back to Pendleton. Two hours AWOL, I was greeted by a look of all-encompassing, universal disapproval. The First Sergeant could make you feel less popular than a burrito fart. For AWOL, I was put on report, had to undergo a series of punishments that were immediate and highly unpleasant, but in the end I suffered less, overall, than my drinking companions, most of whom acquired a case of the crabs or the clap or both. I had a black eye and the tattoo, but these guys were pulling giant red bugs from their drawers.

  They were right on the cusp between being able to stand it and seeking medical aid. Gerber thought he could make it go away by taking aspirin, but just before we pulled liberty, he put a new combination lock on his footlocker and promptly lost the combination. He tried to pop the lock using an entrenching tool and after a couple of minutes of this everybody was taking turns. The lock was very durable but the footlocker was soon destroyed. Ondine told Gerber to diddybop up to supply to get a new footlocker before the First Sergeant got back. Supply was located on one of the low foothills just across from the company motor pool. When we got there Gerber gave the corporal in charge a fifth of whiskey for a new footlocker. It didn’t take long before the bottle was getting passed around and I felt a wonderful sense of respite. The bunch of us had been counting the minutes until 1600 hours when we could go over to the enlisted men’s club and get some hangover relief. It was a hot day at Pendleton and the sun was like a blast furnace. Felix rousted a roadrunner from a clump of brush and soon we were chasing the bird as it darted from spot to spot, zigzagging, impossible to catch. But Felix kept at it. I had never actually seen a roadrunner; it was a small drab-colored bird, and it didn’t seem to have a great deal of stamina. Felix managed to ding it with a rock. He carried the bird back to the shady side of the supply shack and went to sip whiskey. The bird panted in exhaustion. Somebody said we should get a cup of water for it. The supply clerk filled an old coffee can with water and presented it to the bird, but the roadrunner wanted none of it.

  Felix was itching so badly from the crabs the supply clerk made a joke about him playing with himself. Felix reached in his drawers and pulled out a crab to show to the corporal. It was a fearsome bug, out of all proportion, as terrifying as the roadrunner had been unimpressive. The clerk was a southern boy and said, “You know what you do for crabs, don’cha? Just wait right here,” he said. He took a coffee can and walked over to the motor pool where he had it filled with gasoline. In a moment he was back and handed the gas to Felix. “Here, pour some of this in your drawers. It will kill them right now,” the clerk said. Felix did as he was told and in moments a look of relief washed over his face. About forty seconds later, he busted away from the supply shack like Superman heading for a costume change. Gerber followed him to the head and returned to tell us that Felix was sitting in a wash basin running cold water over his balls.

  Gerber cracked up and did a little war dance, “Aiee aiee chi chi wawa!”

  By the time Felix came back, the supply clerk was gone, and Felix was not one bit happy. He was a new guy, half bad—no one knew what he would do. Start a fight? Scream? We just didn’t know. People in recon were capable of anything including mayhem and murder. Suddenly he picked up the gasoline and doused the ailing roadrunner. None of us said anything. I think we were too shocked to say anything. The bird hunkered down miserably as its eyes began to blink in rapid fashion. Next Felix pulled out a matchbook and started flicking lit matches at the bird.

  Again, no one made a move to stop him. I’d like to report that we were about to do something, but the bird was pretty much written off as dead by that time. Finally Felix lit half the book and immolated the bird. His accent was pure Connecticut, completely new to me. He thumped his chest and said, “They-ya, you cocksuckah. Bo’ne to kill! Arroo-gah!” The bird hunkered down into the crouch of death. Sickened, Gerber hoisted his new footlocker on his shoulder and started down the hill back to the barracks. One by one, the rest of us followed him, each one of us alone with the guilt of our own complicity. It was exactly one week after that when we shipped out to Vietnam.

  A Run Through the Jungle

  WITH TWO COBRA​ gunships leading the way, Chief Warrant Officer Elroy rendezvoused with Second Recon at LZ Juliet Six. It was the alternative pickup zone and it was getting chewed to shit from NVA mortars until the Cobras began to lay down suppressor fire. Things on the ground had been hairy for the marines for some time. Three days previously they had blown cover and had since been experiencing something like an ongoing Chinese gangfuck thirty klicks into Cambodia. The NVA was on them like stink on shit, and if it hadn’t been for the monsoons, they would have been dead on the first day. Charles had the team surrounded and was sweeping the area with tracking dogs. Fortunately the heavy rains that delayed the rescue effort also washed away the smell of the Americans. When the weather finally broke, Officer Elroy received last-minute orders to abort the mission. Headquarters maintained that radio contact had been lost and the marines were presumed dead. Elroy wasn’t so sure. When the team first called for a dustoff chopper, he had been committed to go in; and no matter what the high command thought, there was no way the Americans could sneak out fast enough for Charles not to know that they had crossed the border in the first place. What pushed the flight commander forward was the fact that he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had left these grunts to hang out to dry. Yet he could only take this line of reasoning so far. I could see by the look on his face that Elroy was thanking his lucky stars that he was not a member of our insert team. We were packed in the back of the overloaded Huey like so many killer sardines with bad attitudes and a whole lot of personal firepower. Felix T., our own radio man and the tallest soldier in-country, pulled out his .45 as the orders to abort came through. Team Break on Through was no more going to allow him to abandon Second Recon than Elroy would have done himself. It was a crass move; Elroy’s courage was well known and Felix had been a cowboy from day one. His mind was locked and loaded in the gung-ho mode; jammed up on amphetamines and pulling out a sidearm was a bad idea, but we all knew what he was thinking. While it was a mind fuck of an order, what we heard over the radio surprised
no one. Unlike the grunts in the army, with superior logistical support and better equipment, marines were marines. We weren’t used to hot meals, adequate gear, or being treated very well in the first place, but we were cranked up and ready to engage.

  As soon as Elroy brought his bird down, Break on Through hit the ground running. It was an exercise known as a “flip-flop.” Charles sure enough knew there was going to be an extraction, but he wasn’t expecting an insertion on the same flight. Ondine and I helped the Second Recon corpsman load two wounded Montagnards onto the Huey while the rest of the Break on Through laid out a quick perimeter. One of the Yards was squirting blood from his femoral artery while the other had a sucking chest wound. Both appeared to be in shock: their dark faces were ashen, and both seemed to be beyond the realm of pain. I knew they would both be dead before they got back to Da Nang and exchanged a look with their babyfaced corpsman, a kid who didn’t look old enough to be in the war. Still, he looked a good deal older than the prisoner the team had grabbed on their “snatch” mission. The young NVA’s hands were secured behind his back with wire, and whenever he looked up, a powerful marine poked him in the mouth with the flash suppressor of his M-16. “Get used to it,” the marine said. “It’s called the Flavor of the Month, motherfucker.”