Sand in the Wind

by Robert Roth

  For some reason his men scattered when Roads walked towards the body, one of them mumbling, “I guess that’s it for the Sandman.”

  Chalice lay face down, legs apart and arms folded awkwardly beneath him. It was Roads who took off his pack and carried him into the building — leaving behind a crude death mask in the mud.

  A small arc of the sun had already inched above the horizon. Though it was still dark within the building, Roads could see a dull gray light filtering through the rain. He was tired, the only man awake because he had last watch. In a few minutes he’d have to rouse his men, knowing they hadn’t gotten much sleep either. He’d heard their whispers all night, along with constant scurrying sounds. Roads was glad to know he wasn’t the only man in Vietnam who hadn’t got used to the rats.

  Alpha Squad had spent the night inside a heavily damaged building. The walls were thick; and if Roads had been able to read the Vietnamese words above what was left of the door, he would have known the building had formerly been a bank. What remained was too small to protect half a platoon from the rain, so Ramirez and the rest of the men had spent the night in a small building behind the bank. It was Ramirez that now walked towards him, ordering the men to put on their packs. Roads watched them sit up, their drowsy expressions turning to surly scowls. Most of them began fumbling with their packs only to delay having to put them on. Realizing he’d have to put on his own pack first, Roads did so and staggered to his feet.

  “C’mon, get ready to move-out.”

  The men gathered at the door, already hunching their shoulders and complaining about their pack straps digging into them. They stared out at the cold rain, chilled by the thought of spending another day in it. Ramirez shouted the order, and with gasps and curses the men began dashing into the street.

  Roads was at first relieved by the cold sensation of the rain. It woke his senses, made him feel like running. This feeling lasted only a few seconds, long enough for his mind to admit that he was not running to avoid the rain, but only through it. The men in front of him were not moving as fast as usual. Knowing that the tactic they were using made resting a matter of distance not time, Roads felt frustrated by the slower pace. He ordered it speeded up, but without effect. Roads was no more nervous than anyone else, but the first advance of the day was always the worst, there being too much time between it and the previous dusk to sit and worry. Once the first mad dash was finished, the rest no longer took courage. The fear was still there, but repetition gave each man the illusion of proving it could be done, at least by him.

  But it wasn’t being done. The pace became even slower, begging the Viet Cong to spring an ambush. Now Ramirez also shouted for the pace to be increased. This order wasn’t even relayed up to Roads. He himself had to yell it to the point man. Roads could see that they were approaching the intended cover. Now fairly sure they would make it, he relaxed slightly. By the time they did reach their cover, the column was practically at a walk. His men immediately dropped down behind pieces of rubble, and Roads himself desired to do the same thing. Instead, he ran forward, eyes searching furiously for Rabbit, his point man.

  Roads was somewhat calmed by the sight of Rabbit’s heaving chest as he tried to catch his breath. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, boy? We were just asking for it.”

  Rabbit continued to breath heavily for a few seconds before gasping nothing more than the word, “Tired.”

  Roads couldn’t understand it. Rabbit was his best man. A quick glance told him that the rest of his men were in the same condition. He’d seen men exhausted before, enough times to make it seem like a natural state. But this was something different. These men were beaten, a condition he was seeing for the first time since arriving in Vietnam. If it were just one or two men, that would be explainable, but not an entire squad.

  “Roads!” Ramirez gasped and shouted at the same time. He staggered through the rubble, his eyes shifting nervously. “Roads!” he repeated as he dropped to his knees. “What are you trying to do, get us all killed?” Relieved to see that someone else was just as baffled as himself, Roads remained silent until Ramirez asked, “Who’s your point man?”

  “Rabbit. Figure that out.”

  Though Rabbit was only a few feet away, his chest still heaving, Ramirez shouted, “You want to get us all killed, everybody? Pull that again and I’ll blow you away myself.”

  Roads sat calmly as he watched Ramirez scramble back down the column. The excitement Ramirez had shown made everything seem more real. Again Roads looked over his men, thinking to himself, ‘Not like before. These new cocksuckers are worthless. . . . Get me killed with them.’

  “Move-out!” Ramirez ordered as soon as he saw that Kramer’s men were set-in.

  Roads jumped to his feet, then watched his men stagger awkwardly to theirs. While looking at Rabbit, he warned them all, “Motherfuckers, you better haul ass.”

  Rabbit began running down the street. Soon the entire column was rushing after him. The pace was faster than before, but still dangerously slow. Roads was just about to order it quickened when a burst of rifle fire sent the men sprawling behind any piece of rubble large enough to cast a shadow.

  “I’m hit. I’m hit,” Rabbit moaned.

  “Corpsman, up! Corpsman, up!” was shouted down the column.

  Bullets still flying, Roads dashed forward. Seeing Rabbit out in the open trying to crawl behind some debris, Roads rushed over and dragged him to safety.

  “My leg. My leg.”

  “No shit,” Roads said calmly.

  “Is it bad?” The flesh of Rabbit’s shin was split open, and he was losing a lot of blood.

  “Relax. Not bad unless you think a ticket home is bad.”

  Rabbit struggled to sit up and see, but Roads held him down. “Will they have to cut it off?” he moaned.

  “Hell no! Relax so I can get this bandage on.”

  The Viet Cong snipers saw Kramer’s men trying to circle behind them, and they trained their guns in that direction. Within minutes the corpsman had finished bandaging Rabbit’s leg. Roads sat patiently behind the largest piece of rubble he could find, knowing that Rabbit couldn’t be evacuated until Kramer’s men had taken care of the snipers.

  Kramer’s men finally reached the Viet Cong position only to find it abandoned. Kramer radioed Ramirez, telling him to move back a hundred yards so Rabbit could be evacuated safely. Alpha remained set-in while Ramirez and the rest of the men followed Kramer’s order. Now that Roads was lying motionless, the rain seemed colder and he began to shiver. Eyeing a small building twenty yards ahead, he decided to move his men into it.

  Roads noticed Rabbit’s pack just as the squad began to move out. Reaching down for it without stopping, he was almost yanked to the ground before he let go of the strap. His men rushed by him as he kneeled down to see what the pack was caught on. To his amazement, it wasn’t caught on anything. He finally jerked it off the ground and staggered after his men. The pack felt as if it were filled with rocks. Astounded at its weight, Roads was able to make himself believe that it wasn’t really that heavy — this being impossible.

  Roads finally staggered into the building and dropped to his knees. When he looked up, the eyes of his men were focused upon him. No one was talking. Exhausted as he was, Roads became excited with the feeling that in a few seconds everything was going to make sense. He hurriedly threw off his own pack and grabbed Rabbit’s. It was that heavy. In seconds he had the pack open, seeing what he knew he couldn’t be seeing. Too astounded to be enraged, Roads staggered to his feet, a glistening ingot of solid gold in his hands. His men cowered before him as he spun around glaring at them.

  “You fucking idiots!” he screamed. “You risked your lives for this?”

  His own fury surprised him. “Fools! You’d let them kill you for this?” He struggled under the weight of the ingot, but refused to let it drop. It was solid, smooth. He began to enjoy holding it, never before having felt anything so substantial to his senses. Roads glanced
down at his own reflection within the brilliant shine of the metal. “Idiots,” he repeated, this time more softly.

  Roads ordered his men to empty their packs. He became increasingly angrier as he watched each man carry his ingot to the center of the room and lay it down. Glancing at their faces, he thought, Bet it was the niggers. Always hustling. Fools! Must have been the niggers!

  By the time all the ingots were lying in the center of the floor, Roads had finally calmed down. What had happened was too unbelievable to be really irritating. His men remained silent, almost mournful. Roads dropped to his knees. He began stacking the ingots in a neat pyramid, at first doing so to taunt his men, but soon enjoying it as a game — feeling the weight of the ingots and watching his hands and face reflected in them. The men remained silent.

  Roads looked up and saw a boy, no more than ten years old, standing on the other side of the pyramid. He hadn’t noticed anybody else in the room, but now he also saw the boy’s parents huddled in a corner. The boy stared at the gold not Roads, and his eyes were more round than slanted. Roads lifted the top ingot off the pyramid, holding it out to the boy. Hesitant at first, the boy suddenly reached for the ingot and wrapped both his hands around its center. Roads lowered his own hands slightly. When the boy felt the weight of the ingot, he released it and backed away.

  Soon there were footsteps in the street. Ramirez yelled from outside, “Roads, c’mon, we gotta move up.”

  The men inside scrambled to their feet, but stopped in a line just short of the door. Seeing their wistful glances directed at the gold, Roads also looked back at it.

  “C’mon, haul ass!” Ramirez yelled. The men rushed out the door.

  Roads again glanced back. Pointing to himself, the gold, and then the boy, he said, “Me, souvenir, you. Buy yourself a candy bar.” He turned and ran out the door. His men had gotten way ahead of him, the lighter packs helping their running. Exerting himself to catch up, Roads began to laugh, admitting more than thinking, ‘That took balls. It had to be the niggers.’

  It was early afternoon, and the battalion was within two hundred yards of the River of Perfumes. The knowledge of this evoked in Kramer’s mind no more than the image of a quiet river flowing between piles of rubble. Though the river itself was still hidden, he stared at the Citadel on its opposite bank. High above its massive wall, Kramer could barely make out what he knew to be a Viet Cong flag hanging limply in the rain. He watched as the Skyraiders bombed the citadel. Clouds of dust rose from within even before he’d heard the rending screeches of the diving planes.

  The Marines were to set-in by the river and wait for the Arvins to take the citadel. Because they were now within the range of some Viet Cong mortars, Kramer and his men were anxious to reach the river and dig in. Hearing little sniper fire as they advanced, the men hoped that the Viet Cong had already withdrawn across the river. The sounds of exploding mortars on both sides of their platoon told them that they were lucky they weren’t drawing any fire, but also that their luck might change.

  The sight of the river caused them to run faster, glad that Kramer was giving them little time to rest along the way. A mere fifty yards remained to be crossed when the mortars began to home in on them. Three rounds exploded in the street, leaving large craters between the two halves of the platoon. Skyraiders continued to bomb the citadel without being able to silence the mortars. The men began to run faster, knowing that when they reached the bank they could bury themselves beneath the rubble.

  As Kramer ran, he watched the point man head for the remains of a house twenty yards from the bank. He’d already decided that his platoon would dig in behind what was left of its walls. When he saw the men at the front of the column reach it and dive to the ground, safety seemed close and real. Then a series of mortars shook the ground he was running on. A man fell, and another. Kramer jerked one of them to his feet and dragged him forward, knowing he was carrying a dead man. Another series of mortars sent him diving to the ground, feeling as if the earth were cracking around him. His men rushed by, one of them helping him raise the body. A mortar exploded to his side, knocking him ten yards into the street. Stumbling forward, he was too close to stop. A terrorizing burst of machine gun fire seemed to define his silhouette, seemed to prove that he was dead. Kramer continued to run, amazed that his legs were actually carrying him the last few yards.

  It was only after he dropped to the ground next to Ramirez that his dazed mind allowed him to feel the pain that he should have been aware of all the while. The flesh of his forearm was shredded by shrapnel. Ramirez bandaged his arm while Kramer called out to his squad leaders for casualty reports. Only three men had been wounded, but all of them were dead. The news left Kramer somewhat sickened, but he had heard the same thing too many times before. Remembering the mortar that had exploded only a few yards away from him, he was reminded that he too should be dead; and the fact that he wasn’t still amazed him. With his uninjured hand he fumbled to get a cigarette from the pack to his lips. A few rolled down his chest before he was able to do so. He fended off the rain with his head and quickly lit the cigarette — inhaling deeply. A smile came to his face as he looked down at his chest to check for leaks. Finally exhaling, he felt as if he were floating within a dream. The smoke disappeared quickly into the rain, proving that he wasn’t dead. His lips moved silently: “The motherfuckers tried to kill me, but they missed again.”

  A corpsman ran over and began unwrapping Kramer’s bandage. “You’re gonna have a nice scar, Lieutenant.”

  “Thanks,” Kramer replied, making no effort to hide his irritation.

  The corpsman remained silent until he had finished rebandaging the wound. “I guess you better get to the rear and have a doctor look at it, sir.”

  The idea of leaving his men behind bothered Kramer. “I’ll wait till morning.”

  “I don’t think you ought to, Lieutenant.”

  “I haven’t got much choice.”

  “Maybe you should go now,” Ramirez suggested. He then added almost apologetically, “I can handle this platoon as good as you can, Lieutenant.”

  “I guess you can,” Kramer answered as he looked up at Ramirez. “Make sure the men are all dug in. I’ll check myself in a few minutes.”

  Kramer called battalion to find out where he could locate a doctor. They gave him the coordinates of a supply point, and told him to wait a half hour to be sure he didn’t meet any advancing Marines. Kramer checked his map and determined that the supply point was over a mile to the rear. He handed the map to Ramirez without insulting him with directions about how the platoon should be run. After checking to see that his men were all dug in, he started for the supply point.

  The rain had been constant and heavy since the battalion had arrived at Hue, but it had never come down harder than now. Kramer stared at the sky, feeling as if he were gazing up at a clear day from the bottom of the ocean. He could see no farther than twenty yards, and guided himself by walking along the edge of the street. It was covered by six inches of rushing water, and only the relative absence of rubble made him sure that he was following it. The street to the supply point was two blocks to his left. He turned towards it long before he had to. Finally seeing two Marines carrying a stretcher, he knew he was going in the right direction. It was then that he realized this wound was his third, and that he would be sent back to the States immediately. The idea shocked him. He had never wanted or been able to picture himself going home. Even thoughts about what he had been through, the knowledge that nothing had changed and it had all been for nothing, even these thoughts left him less disappointed than he thought they should. His inability to get himself killed seemed ironically amusing, but he was also conscious of a pathetic degree of ineptitude in even this failure.

  Kramer suddenly realized that since the second time he’d been with Tuyen, he hadn’t even thought about killing himself. Watching his boots plow through the water, all he really saw was a proud, sad face. No longer did his thoughts amuse him. His surv
ival had been his failure. He tried to convince himself that she was to blame, but finally had to admit that she was an excuse not a reason. He again thought about how he had deluded himself into believing that he would somehow find her; now with bitterness instead of disbelief. No longer was his wound something that had prevented his own suicide, but rather something that would irrevocably separate him from her. Whatever thoughts were in his mind, her sad, beautiful face remained before him and he didn’t have to force himself to admit that he was still in love with her. Going home was no longer an ironic, amusing joke. It was something both final and tragic.

  Despite the rain, he could see other Marines making their way to the supply point, a place he now dreaded to reach. His steps slowed and men began to pass him. Wounded helped wounded, longing to reach this place where they would be able to rest and find help. Kramer wanted to stop walking, thinking that the only dream that had ever really meant anything to him had become and would always be nothing more than a cruel joke. But it seemed only right that this should happen — no other ending being possible.

  The rain beat harshly against his face. He was oblivious to it. Rain — something that had once been able to torture him, had once been an added and final torture — now had no effect on him. Then suddenly, for the first time in weeks, he became aware of it — not through his senses, but through his thoughts. He couldn’t see very far. It was raining. He should be cold. He was cold. He should feel it against his face. He did. The rain was mocking him. His body, yes. Yet at the same time it was something comforting to his mind — proof of his own, of man’s impotence, an argument for the meaninglessness of each step he took, an abnegation of all guilt that proved his own pathetic innocence.