by Robert Roth
Childs rarely smoked, but he suddenly had an urge for a cigarette. He reached across and got a pack out of Forsythe’s pocket, then handed a cigarette to Forsythe. Soon their corner of the chapel was enveloped in a light haze.
Someone turned towards them and said gruffly, “Hey, you ain’t allowed to smoke in the chapel.”
Forsythe shifted his eyes nervously around the room before saying, “I don’t see no sign.”
Chalice had seemed oblivious to the entire scene, but he now started to shake his head while repeating, “Smoking is hazardous to your health.” Suddenly, he began to laugh, and all the men near him turned to see what was happening.
Making no attempt to muffle his voice, Forsythe said, “Quit tickling the Professor, Childs.”
“I ain’t tickling him.”
“Well quit goosing him then.”
A tough-looking Marine sitting in front of them turned around and said gruffly, “Shut the fuck up!” Chalice stopped laughing, but he continued to grin at the Marine.
Somebody whispered, “That’s the Sandman.”
The Marine glanced angrily at this man and said, “I don’t care who the hell he is.” He then turned back to Chalice. “You better wipe that fucking smile off your face.”
Chalice didn’t. The Marine seemed ready to jump him when Hamilton said with a grin, “Uh uh. I’ll fuck you up.”
Now two of the Marine’s friends also turned around and began staring at Hamilton. Forsythe couldn’t resist getting involved. “You shouldn’t talk to the Professor like that. This man’s got a college degree.”
Childs wasn’t too anxious to get into a fight. He noticed Sugar Bear sitting directly in front of the three Marines and taking up more room than all of them combined. “Forsythe’s right. Ain’t he, Sugar Bear?”
Sugar Bear nodded his head while answering with a grin, “There it is.” When the Marines saw him, they turned their attention to Chaplain Hindman.
Chalice walked back to the company area alone. Confused images and phrases drove all consciousness of the present from his mind. There was no sense of surprise when he found himself standing in front of the platoon tent even before he realized he had left the chapel. It was as if he had accepted the illusion of being transported from one point to another without the necessity of moving the distance between them. He had no desire to enter the platoon tent, or to go anywhere. Something told him that he couldn’t, wouldn’t be allowed to remain standing there; and he accepted this as true and started walking again. Only the barbwire fence prevented him from leaving the perimeter. He could go no farther, nor did he want to turn around. Chalice suddenly realized he was standing alone and motionless. People would think this strange. They would ask him why, and he wouldn’t be able to tell them. His actions were more wary than nervous as he turned his head to see if anyone was looking at him. No one was, but he knew that if he continued to stand there someone would spot him. He noticed a U-shaped stack of ammo boxes. No one would be able to see him from there. Chalice walked slowly towards them and sat down inside the base of the U. The thought ‘Smoking is hazardous to your health’ began repeating itself in his mind, and a smile came to his face. Soon he was laughing.
Only when this laughter stopped did he realize how strange he’d been acting — not for the past week, he had always been conscious of this, but merely for the last few hours when he’d been acting even stranger. He remembered how Pablo had looked at him while passing out the malaria tabs. At first Chalice thought about this as if he were pondering the actions of another person — “he” instead of “I” — but then he realized that this was strange in itself. “I’m fucked up!” he said aloud, and then more softly, “My mind’s fucked up.” He somehow sensed that this admission was necessary before he could untwist his thoughts. The mere act of saying it brought him completely back to the present — at first nervous, but then gaining control over himself and becoming calmer. His former behavior now seemed even stranger, but also somewhat amusing. He wondered why he had wanted to be alone, then told himself it was for this very purpose, to gain control over his thoughts. Feeling odd sitting between the ammo boxes, he was still confident that he could think things out. Suddenly, the surreal image that had been haunting him flashed through his mind in a tableau — the figure of a man standing before him with an expression of insane surprise, the only movement in the scene being a pattern of blood expanding on his shoulder. ‘Not yet!’ Chalice told himself, and by a conscious effort he was able to erase this image from his mind. Surprised that he had been able to control his thoughts, Chalice began purposefully to think, trying to arrange his thoughts logically. Intuition told him to start with something simple — the reason he was alone. It now seemed obvious. He had tried to justify the state of mental isolation by the physical state. Convinced of this idea, he sought the cause of his mental isolation. Vague reasons came to him, but they were swept away by the realization that the very method of his thinking was artificial, too structured. But he had no alternative. Besides, it seemed to be working, helping him to control himself. “They’re not like me,” he whispered, but then added, “They don’t act like me either. . . . They must think I can’t take it, that I’m crazy.” His voice had gradually become louder, and the idea that he was talking to himself scared him. He continued anyway, only in a softer tone. “I’m more intelligent. . . . They don’t realize. They don’t understand.” Again a disturbed smile appeared on his face as he thought, ‘Or wander around talking to themselves.’ “I am so much smarter . . . guiltier.” Then a far more disturbing thought came to him — that it wasn’t what had happened, but how he’d reacted or didn’t react — that he was forcing himself to react and feeling guilty about having to do so.
Chalice touched his shirt pocket, then hesitated before taking out his ‘notebook.’ Write it down. Write it all down. Something permanent. He fumbled with his ball-point pen while trying to get it to write, pressing it to the notebook harder and harder until the pressure from it ripped out the page. He tried again, only more slowly, this time moving the pen in a circle. When it finally began to work, he wrote, “Madelyn Murray — atheist In God we trust.” He skipped a line and wrote, “Smoking hazardous to health.” He began to laugh, but calmly and while thinking, ‘Who’d believe it? Who’d fucking believe it?’ This thought bothered him, but he still found it amusing. He looked at the number atop the previous page. ‘Fifty-six . . . it’s all here. . . . Who’d believe it?’
Suddenly he was startled by Forsythe’s voice. “What the hell you doing?”
Hamilton, Childs, and Forsythe stood looking down at him. As soon as he was able to put away his notebook, Chalice felt more comfortable. Now glad to see them, he answered, “Not much, just taking it easy.”
“How come you wandered off after church?”
“I had to take care of some shit, do some things.” He held his arms out as he said, “Join me in my humble abode.” They sat down, and Chalice asked them, “What are you doing walking around here?”
Childs took out a pack of joints and held them up to him. “We got the time, and we’re looking for the place.”
“This looks like it,” Hamilton suggested.
Chalice watched as Childs took out some matches. At first pleased with the thought of getting stoned, he suddenly remembered how removed from reality he had just been and was afraid to let go of it again. “Don’t you guys know smoking is hazardous to your health?”
Childs had begun to inhale, but immediately burst into a fit of coughing. Finally able to catch his breath, he said while shaking his head, “Did you fucking believe that sermon?”
“It made more sense than most of them,” Forsythe said in mock seriousness.
Chalice waved the joint by. “That isn’t saying much.”
When Childs finally exhaled, he asked Chalice, “Aren’t you gonna join us?”
“Yeah, in a minute. I don’t wanna get too stoned.”
As Forsythe inhaled, the look on his face told t
hose around him that he had just thought of something to say. In his impatience, he exhaled before he needed to. “That’s what they ought to do — legalize it with ‘Smoking is hazardous to your health’ printed on the box.”
“But it ain’t,” Hamilton objected.
“Whatever it does to your health, it’s plenty good for your mind,” Childs pointed out.
“I know that,” Forsythe admitted, “but we’ll compromise.”
“Yeah. That’s the way we’ll have to do it,” Chalice agreed, “just like they do in Washington.”
“Do you think old LBJ will go for it?”
“Why not?” Chalice replied. “He’s an honorable man. They’re all honorable men.”
“What are they doing in politics then?” Childs asked.
“Honorable men have to eat too,” Forsythe pointed out.
Chalice took a long drag from the joint, then waited patiently to exhale before saying, “They do everything for our own good. Why should they legalize something if there’s any chance it’s as dangerous as booze, driving a car, or football? . . . They do everything they can to keep us alive. Look at the fine rifles they give us. They never jam unless you try to shoot them.”
“Yeah. If it’s Mattel, it's swell,” Forsythe commented.
“I only wish they’d spend a little more and buy us AK-47’s,” Childs added.
The marijuana wasn’t as strong as usual, but it began to slowly take effect. The men leaned back against the ammo boxes, remaining silent except for occasional, lethargic comments. Forsythe remembered he had a radio in his pocket, and he took it out. To their displeasure, Armed Forces Radio, the only American station, was playing its weekly two hours of polka music.
“Ain’t the Marine Corps great?” Childs commented. “Music for everybody. They aren’t satisfied dividing it up between Country and Western, Soul, and Rock. They try to keep the Polacks happy, too. I —”
“Even Ski couldn’t stand that polka music,” Hamilton interrupted. “He says his old man used to turn it up real loud before he’d beat his old lady.” Hamilton had intended his remark to be humorous, but as soon as he said Ski’s name he realized it wouldn’t be.
A few minutes passed without a word, then Childs lit another joint. The aroma of it immediately relaxed everybody. Chalice was trying to get a long drag out of it when he suddenly heard some footsteps. His cheeks were puffed out and he didn’t even have time to take the joint from his lips before he saw Kramer staring down at him. Chalice was still trying to decide what to do when he noticed the surprised look on Kramer’s face as his lips mouthed, “Oh my God.” Kramer turned and walked away.
Chalice immediately exhaled and asked, “What do you think he’ll do?”
Those around him seemed less concerned, and Childs said, “What can he do, send us to Nam?”
“He might do something,” Hamilton said with more concern.
“It’s too late to worry about it now,” Forsythe pointed out. “He ain’t a bad dude — not like Lieutenant S, but he don’t fuck with us.”
Hamilton was almost as worried as Chalice. “Let’s split.”
While Chalice snuffed out the joint, Childs stood up and began walking along the edge of the perimeter. Wanting to avoid getting caught for a working party, the others followed. They wandered relaxed and aimless until it began to drizzle and they took cover in a bunker. A plank hung suspended a few inches above the dirt floor, and all except Chalice sat down upon it. He leaned across the bunker’s shooting support, looking out across the quiet, green valley. The roughness of the shooting support against his forearms caused him to glance down. The once smooth wood was now carved and inked with names, initials, hometowns, and a few dates. Chalice read them to himself, trying to picture the men who had written them, wondering each time if this or that man was now dead, if nothing more than these scratches were left of him. He noticed a question mark, and tried to make out the almost obscured words before it, finally reading aloud, “ ‘What’s the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?’ ”
“I haven’t found any,” Childs answered.
“I give up. What is the difference?” Forsythe asked.
Chalice read the scrawled answer. “ ‘The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.’ ” Forsythe rose to see what else was written on the shooting counter as Chalice asked, “How come nobody ever collected the bounty on Martin?”
“That was for killing him,” Hamilton answered. “The sonofabitch’d sooner be a vegetable for the rest of his life than let the dude collect.”
“That’s what I call spite,” Childs commented.
Forsythe had found some more graffiti, and he read aloud, “ ‘The Marine Corps is a Communist plot to take over the world,’ not bad. Here’s one for Childs, ‘I love the fucking Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps loves fucking me.’ Oh this one’s beautiful: ‘Lifers are like flies — they eat shit and bother people.’ ”
“Here’s another,” Chalice said, “ ‘Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity.’ . . . ‘God is not dead. He’s just AWOL.’ ”
“Hope they bust the sonofabitch when they find him,” Childs mumbled. He took Chalice’s pen and wrote while saying aloud, “Violence must be eradicated. Kill all the violent people you know.”
Chalice was trying to memorize this graffiti so he could later write it down in his notebook, when he began to wonder how much more permanent that would make it. He looked up and saw Forsythe carving something into the counter with his bayonet. “What are you writing?”
“Just my initials.”
“God, sometimes I think you’re twelve years old,” Childs remarked.
“I wish I was.”
“You could of fooled me.”
“I wish I was,” Forsythe repeated thoughtfully. “When I was doing a lot of acid, most of my trips were back to when I was a little kid . . . nice.”
“Didn’t that remind you of your father?” Chalice asked.
“You gotta expect a bum trip every once in a while. . . . No. Even then it was nice. It’s all a game when you’re a little kid, nothing too important, choosing a red lollipop or a yellow one. Even if you choose wrong, the worst thing that can happen is your old man slapping you around. Then you can start all over again.”
“You used to get slapped around for choosing the wrong lollipop?” Childs asked.
“You know what I mean. . . . One day you realize that it isn’t a game anymore, that it hasn’t been for a long time. Things begin to count. You have to make choices you can’t make twice. You start trying to figure things out so you don’t choose wrong . . . because if you do you gotta live with it. . . . You can’t get punished and start all over again.”
“Like joining the Marine Corps,” Childs commented.
“No . . . yeah, that’s right, for you yes.”
“And not you?” Chalice asked.
“No. I had to. It wasn’t much of a choice.”
“You could have gone to the induction physical on acid or something,” Chalice pointed out.
“No chance. That’s why I had to go into the Marine Corps. . . . At first drugs were nice, but it got so I was eating them like candy, not even knowing what they were, or caring even. It got so drugs were all there was — which ain’t bad when you’re on them. But when you come down, you really come down.
“If it was just me, I never would have realized what was happening. But then I started looking at the friends I’d made. They were so fucked-up I couldn’t even stand them unless I was spaced out too. I almost went bat-shit when I couldn’t get any more dope, but I was glad too. That was the only way I could stop. If —”
“Wait a minute,” Childs cut in. “What’s that got to do with joining the Marine Corps?”
“I had to join because I got arrested for drugs.”
“But you just said you went off drugs.”
“That’s the amazing part. I —”
“Oh great. Let’s hear the amazing part.”
“Se
e I was still hanging around Berkeley, but I’d been off drugs for about two weeks when I got arrested for selling grass. If I had —”
“How’d you get caught?” Chalice asked.
“That’s just it. The whole thing was a frame-up.”
“You got a lawyer, didn’t you?”
“Hell yeah. I got one of those public defenders. He’d just graduated Berkeley — honors and everything. Man, you wouldn’t believe how freaked out this dude was. I think it might have been his first case. He comes up to me all excited like I saved his life or somethin’, telling me not to worry because he had it all figured out. I said, ‘Great,’ and started explaining how the two narcs framed me. He stops me and says: ‘Don’t even worry about that. I’ve got it all figured out.’ And I said, ‘But how you gonna prove it’s a frame job if you don’t know all the facts?’ And he said, ‘We're not!’ And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘You’re gonna plead guilty.’ This really threw me. I got all excited, but he told me not to worry about it, that he had it all figured out. And I told him to figure it out again without me pleading guilty. That’s when he started explaining about how the law was unconstitutional and how he was gonna file all sorts of suits and how someday my case was gonna be just as famous as Marberry vs. Madison and all those other cases in the history books. And I explained to the dude about how I wanted to get out of jail, not make history. But that didn’t phase him. He kept on trying to get me to plead guilty. Just when I thought he was ready to give up, he said okay, I could plead no lo contendre or something. That means no contest, and after five minutes of legal bullshit I realized it meant guilty, only spelled differently. Boy, was —”