by Tim O'Brien
Paul Berlin sighed. For a time he gazed out the window. Then he got up, stretched, and wandered back to where the lieutenant was sleeping. The old man’s face had the color of bruises. He slept belly-up on the seat, legs bent. Paul Berlin reached down and covered him with a poncho liner.
The lieutenant blinked.
“Sorry, sir. Go back to sleep.”
The lieutenant nodded. “Dreaming,” he whispered. “Where … where we at?”
“Almost to Chittagong.”
“Dreaming,” Lieutenant Corson said. He didn’t move. For several moments he was gone. Then again he blinked. “Chittagong?”
“A town, sir. A city. About an hour out.”
“Chittagong,” The old man sighed. “What’s a Chittagong? What’s … I keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all be over. You know? Poof, a bad dream. I remember once in Seoul. Time I first got busted. There was this Seabee, a great big mother named Jack Daniels. Arms like … Jack Daniels, that was his real name. ‘Who?’ I say, and this big mother says, ‘Jack Daniels,’ real serious-like, so I ask him to prove it, and, sure enough, the dude pulls out dog tags and an ID and a flask with his name on it. Jack Daniels. A sorry bastard. But anyhow, I remember he takes me to this—you know—to this B joint. Half hour later I’m ripped, drunk like a skunk. And so’s Jack Daniels. What happens? He starts this brawl, clubs and chairs, the whole thing. Thinks it’s fuckin Hollywood or something. Then the MPs show up an’ there I am, passed out, don’t throw a single punch. Next morning I’m busted. ‘What for?’ I says. ‘I didn’t do nothin’, I was sleeping like a baby.’ But so what? I’m busted, right? Innocent, but I’m busted anyhow, and that’s what started it. And … and, Jesus, that’s how I feel right now. Weird. That’s exactly how I feel.”
“Sure.”
“Jack Daniels! I ever see that mother again, I’ll—”
“Easy, sir. Lie back now.”
Clucking softly, Paul Berlin pulled the poncho liner up to the lieutenant’s chin. The train made its endless rumbling sound.
“You’re a good lad, aren’t you?”
“I’m terrific.”
“No, you are. You’re a fine lad. Better than a whole pallet of Jack Daniel’s. Never drink that shit no more. And if I ever get hold of that … But you’re a straight-shooter, you are.” Pushing himself up, the old man glanced behind him and let his voice drop to a confidential whisper. “Look, if I give you some inside poop, you think you can keep it quiet?”
“I think you should sleep, sir. Tell me in the morning.”
“Bull. I trust you, kid. The others—screw ’em. You I trust.” Again he looked behind him. Then he licked his lips. “We been kidnapped.”
“Sir?”
“Kidnapped,” the lieutenant said hoarsely. “Snatched. Bagged and nabbed, every one of us.”
“I see.”
“No shit, you see! It’s the straight dope. We been kidnapped.”
Paul Berlin couldn’t help smiling.
“Any suspects, sir?”
“Not yet. Just stay alert.”
“You think Cacciato—?”
“Shit.” The lieutenant wagged his head scornfully. “You’re dreamin’ again. When you gonna stop dreamin’? Cacciato? Hell, he’s small potatoes. There’s bigger fish behind this thing.”
For a time the old man lay quietly, rocking with the motions of the train.
“Chittagong!” He giggled and made fists. “I been a lot of places but I never been to Chittagong. Weird, isn’t it? I mean, I been to Benning and Polk and Seoul and Hong Kong. I seen it all but never … You ever seen Road to Hong Kong?”
“Bob Hope.”
“Lordy, they made movies then. Real movies.” The lieutenant lay back. He laughed and then sighed. “But Chittagong? Who the hell’d ever pay to see Road to Chittagong? Know what I mean? Times change, I guess. Lord, how times keep changing. Just change and change, don’t they? Things never stop changing.”
“I guess so.”
“Chittagong!”
“Sleep tight, sir.”
Corson shrugged. “Sure, kiddo, I’ll play possum. But don’t forget: Keep your eyes peeled an’ when the chance comes, split. Me, too. I see a way out of this mess, pow, I’m gone. Gone.”
In thirty seconds the old man’s breathing softened and he slept peacefully.
Kidnapped? For a moment Paul Berlin considered confessing. How it started as one thing, a happy thing, and how now it was becoming something else. No harm intended. But it was out of control. Events taking their own track.
He went up to the forward WC and locked himself in. Unbuttoning, he eased himself down onto the stool and used one hand to brace himself against the train’s jerks and sways. The smell was incredible. He breathed through his mouth.
Kidnapped—the old man wasn’t far wrong. Oh, he could confess, all right, but what would it bring him? Disgrace, the loss of his war buddies, the end of a budding romance, the end of everything.
He got up, buttoned his trousers, firmly pressed the toilet handle. There was a soft waterless swish.
The old man was right about Cacciato, too. A wild goose, the wrong donkey for the pinning of final responsibility. Responsibility. That was what was needed—somebody to take it as a solemn vow.
“Responsibility,” he said.
He straightened his shoulders and looked into the mirror. The effect was unconvincing. “Responsibility,” he said. He tried to make his voice firm. He slit his eyes, forced his lips into a straight line. “Responsibility,” he said.
Then he saw it.
What else had he missed along the way? What other uncaught clues?
But this one, by chance, he did catch. It was there on the mirror, printed in pink lipstick so bright he blinked.
Roses are red
Vilits are blue
Delhi is next
Then Timbucktwo
The feeling was all present tense.
Stink practiced Quick Kill in the aisle. He slammed the rifle butt to his shoulder, forced the muzzle low, fired. “Pow!” he yelped. “P-p-pow!”
Doc Peret prepared his medic’s pouch.
Eddie Lazzutti fidgeted, touching himself, licking his teeth.
Oscar Johnson worked up the battle plan. Cool and calm, Oscar had power. He had class. He had killed people. He had preserved the rules. Now he worked swiftly, drawing tactics onto a piece of yellow paper. When it was done he stood up and called for quiet and explained how it would be carried out.
“Standard search an’ flush job,” he said. “No frills, we do it by the numbers, understand?”
Eddie and Doc nodded. It was understood.
“Okay, then,” Oscar murmured. He held up a diagram of the train. “Eddie an’ me’ll take the front part, Doc and Berlin take the rear. Stink stays here with the LT. That way—”
Stink wailed angrily.
“That way,” Oscar finished softly, “we drive him right into Stinko’s waitin’ arms. Just like beatin’ the bush for gobblers.”
“A turkey shoot!”
“That’s the plan. The trick’s to do it systematic. No screwups, don’ miss nothin’. If it moves, search it. If it’s got a door, open it. Wiggles, pinch it. All SOP, by the numbers. Don’ miss nothin’.”
Then they moved out.
Through the cramped second-class coaches: kids staring with hollow eyes, babies bawling, dogs and chickens, women crouched before small fires in the aisles.
“Here it comes,” Doc said. “One last time.”
Paul Berlin remembered. It was the only truly shameful memory.
He avoided their eyes. They were dolls. Mechanically, he pressed through the crowded coach, checking IDs, testing for false beards and puttied noses and enemy infrastructure. Probing, sifting. Prying open baggage and kicking over jugs of rice. Frisk ’em, said Lieutenant Sidney Martin, and so he frisked them. Along the muddy Song Tra Bong. First the kids. Small ankles to bony shins to knees like bolts, thighs up to buttocks, avoiding the d
ark little eyes, along the waist and frisking upward to the shoulders and hair, then to the next kid, and then to three old men squatting patiently beside the village well. Sorry papa-san—and he meant it truly, deeply, though he hadn’t quite spoken it. But he meant it. Yes, he did. And he smiled at the first old man, showing how very much he meant it, then began the awkward frisking. Just a scrawny old man dressed in white shorts, nothing else, wisps of thin hair on his chin like Ho Chi Minh. Sorry papa-san. A caved-in chest, sores on his mouth. And hadn’t the old guy smiled in return? Hadn’t there been an understanding? I don’t like it either, nobody likes it, but we do what we do. Hadn’t that been the understanding? Hadn’t the poor old goat smiled to fix it and seal it? So along the Song Tra Bong in August, a gorgeous day, he frisked the old man, helping him drop the white shorts for close inspection, a shriveled old guy without modesty. Frisk him close, Martin said. And the old coot clutched his arms as the frisking went private. Oh, yes, and then the women. Frisk ’em all, said Lieutenant Sidney Martin. Make ’em smile. So, sure, he frisked them all: one by one in a row, patting along the thighs and rumps and breasts without daring to look, not feeling but not unfeeling, no touch in his fingers. Then the babies, frisked them in their sleep, spilling out cradles at gunpoint. Cats and dogs, all frisked. The whole village was frisked. A technique called flame frisking, and then two hours later Buff floated with life after death in his big helmet.
He remembered it. It was a law of nature. A principle of human conduct.
Up the crowded aisles he went, Doc covering while he opened boxes and purses, checked beneath seats, ransacked the luggage car, searched the caboose.
Then back again, systematically, back through the third-class coaches, where whole families bawled in confusion, where chickens were loose, where women clutched infants like shields, where the trainmaster waved a huge wrench and screamed, “Shame!”
But they pressed forward, flushing their quarry.
“Shame!” the trainmaster thundered. Bearded, head wrapped in an oily linen turban, the man’s face shined like varnish. “Evil! Wicked!”
Back through the second-class coaches, where the passengers cowered in their seats, where the smell of fear baked at high; then into the mail car, ripping open sealed bags, plugging bayonets into canvas sorting bins, jabbing at piled packages and cartons.
“Illegal!” the trainmaster screamed. He was dancing now, beside himself, waving his wrench like a sword. Doc wrestled it away from him, but the man kept screaming. “Dishonor! Disgrace! Shame!”
The passengers in the next coach seemed to sense his horror. In a wave that started at the front of the car and rolled toward the back, the women began to wail and moan, babies bawled, dogs barked, men shouted and began advancing.
Doc leveled his weapon and fired a burst into the ceiling, but the mob kept coming. He fired again, a longer burst that smashed windows and sent hot wind whipping through the coach, but still the mob advanced, led by the fierce trainmaster.
Paul Berlin countered with sympathy. He smiled. He composed himself, fixed a smile of understanding, neighborly goodwill. I’m with you, he was saying. I don’t like this either. I hate it. We do what we do. But the crowd kept coming.
“Exit,” Doc said. He grabbed Paul Berlin’s arm.
And an instant before the final rush, they stepped into the next compartment, threw the door shut, locked it, and hurried back to first class.
Paul Berlin was shivering. “Savages,” he whispered.
“Easy, man.”
“World’s crawling with madmen.”
Later Oscar and Eddie came in. They looked unhappy.
“Goose eggs,” Oscar said.
“Nothing?”
Oscar shrugged. “Just this.” He held up a black vinyl valise with white stitching. It was Cacciato’s AWOL bag. The bag was empty.
Twenty-two
Who They Were, or Claimed to Be
Eddie Lazzutti loved to sing. He sang marching songs and nursery ballads. Sometimes he sang folk songs, though he was not a radical and despised music created for a cause. Mama Cass was his favorite. “Man alive,” he would say, “if I could ever sing like that … A new town every night, pussy on my tail and bucks in my pocket.” The men in the Third Squad liked his melancholy songs best. Songs about going home, and families, and girlfriends. He sang these songs with his heart. He pretended to hate classical music, but at six o’clock on Saturday evening—which was how they knew Saturdays were Saturdays—he never missed a radio program called The Master’s Masters, broadcast from Danang and narrated by Master Sergeant Jake Eames. When the program ended Eddie would be quiet for a time, looking out over the sweeps of land, and then he would begin to hum, and then he would sing, and the nights could sometimes be fine.
Clean and smooth like a tar runway, his forehead sloped sharply down and out. His nose was full but neither flat nor flared. An elevated chin. Ears tight against the skull, and the skull seeming to swell at the crown as if pushed out by excess pressure to form stiff protuberant veins at the temples. His sweat was silver. Black eyes and black skin, black brittle hair molded to emphasize the head’s size and shape. A stiffness of neck. An aristocrat’s way of turning the body to address a person or thing, a bearing signaling immense self-discipline. Sometimes seeming to dog it, but always fluid, always graceful. A faint smile, slit eyes, a vacant and almost inattentive expression in times of danger. Coldness. A distance that, whether natural or imposed, kept men from loving him, kept most from liking him. Hard and tough and cool and together … Oscar Johnson refused to back off from a claim that he was born and raised in center-city Detroit, where, he said, he first learned the principles of human diplomacy. He listed them in precise order—compromise, give-’n’-take, courtesy, magnanimity. “An’ if you still don’ get what you want,” Oscar said, “then crack the sons of bitches with a sledgehammer.” Diplomacy, he was fond of saying, is the art of persuasion; and war—never citing his sources—is simply diplomacy continued through other means … He spoke of Detroit in affectionate generalities: Coonsville, MoTown, Sin City. He spoke with enthusiasm about the Lions and Tigers and Pistons, but, when pressed, he couldn’t name a single modern player. Bobby Layne was still slinging passes. Yale Lary, best punter in the league. Norm Cash, a real badass bum … He talked of Detroit but his mail went to Bangor, Maine. The nigga from Ba-Haba, Vaught used to say. The Down-east Brother, the dude with lobster on his breath. But this left Oscar cold, no smiles and no explanations … True, his speech could be slurred and thick and spiked with all the grammar of modern invention, and it could turn surly with just the right inflection, dropping consonants and studding what was left with mothers and dudes and cools and bads, deep with the ghetto undercurrent of pending violence. All true. But to Paul Berlin it seemed somewhat deliberate. Not an act, but not quite natural. More like a mimic absorbing too much of his own stage style. Still, it was hard to tell. With Oscar Johnson it was always hard to tell, and this gave him power.
“Cong Giao,” Jim Pederson would say whenever he saw one of the villagers wearing a crucifix or carrying rosary beads. He would smile and say, “Cong Giao, Cong Giao,” and bow, and smile some more, and then go through his rucksack to find the pictures of Jesus Christ he carried in a brown manila folder. The pictures were supplied to him by the Church of Christ mission in El Paso, Texas. “Cong Giao,” he would say, finding the pictures, carefully pulling one out and inspecting it for dirt or damage, then handing it across with a deep bow. While he was not a Catholic, he considered it his duty to reinforce Christianity in any of its forms. Jim Pederson, Doc often said, had a Moral Stance. Once he stopped the Third Squad from burning down a village in Pinkville. Once he gave first aid to a dying VC woman. Once, when Billy Boy died of fright he wrote to Billy’s parents to tell them Billy Boy had been a fine man and a good companion and had often witnessed to his belief in Jesus Christ. The letter had never been answered, but this did not bother Jim Pederson.
The lewd flesh. Ring
worm circling through his crew cut. Excitable, stewing with passions and depressions and petty angers, a taker of every small advantage, a believer in striking hard and fast and first. Daring when the odds looked good. Distrustful but still eager to place trust at the drop of a flattering word. Wiry and short and strong, wound up like a cuckoo clock … Stink Harris came from a family of seven. A brother among sisters. A mechanic, a tinker, Stink took immense pains to care for his rifle, oiling it and cleaning it and keeping it dry during the rains, sleeping curled around it like a boy with his teddy bear, always toying with the moving parts. His weapon, he said, was his best friend. So when Bernie Lynn acted kindly toward him during the first weeks of June, Stink Harris took it very seriously, even spoke to Doc about how in war a guy needs buddies, and how Bernie might make a pretty decent buddy. Wary at first, but then melting, he introduced Bernie by letter to his youngest sister, Carla, and took great pride when his new friend and his favorite sister began exchanging a daily correspondence. He viewed it solemnly. His inquiries were always discreet, hopeful. It ended on June 30, when Stink found Carla’s snapshot in Bernie Lynn’s wallet. Undressed, his best-loved sister faced the camera without the least embarrassment, high in a midair jumping jack. Stink Harris was made to be betrayed.
Widowed, Lieutenant Corson still wore his wedding band; twice busted from captain, once unfairly, he still carried the twin bars in his pocket; a lifer, he still loved the United States Army. Like Sidney Martin, he believed in mission. But unlike Sidney Martin, he did not believe in it as an intellectual imperative, or even as a professional standard. Mission, for Lieutenant Corson, was an abstract notion that took meaning in concrete situations, and it was this that most separated him from other officers. Lieutenant Corson did not order his men into the tunnels. He simply ordered the tunnels blown, or blew them himself, and he saw no incompatibility between this and his mission as a soldier. The men loved him.