Lex looked away, not to break contact with Johnny but perhaps to align himself truly, make the change, accept finally Johnny’s pact then lock it in.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said finally, staring into space where the unfathomable lurked. ‘I know.’
‘We do.’ Johnny held up two fingers to the barman, handed over a fiver, nodded his thanks. ‘We look after each other, mate. We get home.’ He tapped Lex’s glass with his own, felt as if he was shoring up a framework, hammering props in to support the ceiling of a dark and dangerous mine. ‘We do what it takes.’
Lex hunched his shoulders, shivered, picked up his beer, and raised it.
‘And if that includes giving them money or drugs to fuck off, so be it.’
Johnny laughed. They were on their way. Already gone. Never to return to this place and even if they did, nothing would ever be the same.
Seven
For a while Johnny and Carly sat in silence on the steps of Malcolm’s hut. There was a feeling to the place like the minutes before sleep, a feeling that took Johnny to a phantom village in the Red River Delta, a part of Vietnam, way up north, where he’d never been.
This dreamed-up village was home to the three fighters who had tracked him for a year and tracked him now. He could see skinny Khan and the two others, one hardly more than a kid, the other hard-muscled and square-faced as the trio walked in the cool evening by a wide river, passing through sighing stands of bamboo.
‘We will go,’ said Khan. ‘We will fight. We will win. And we will come home.’
Shoey could see that the boys stood secure in the loop of Khan’s words. He also knew the enemy fighters felt the power and pull of the land because it was theirs – and Johnny had never felt it over there, because it wasn’t his. And that made a whole world of difference.
Tomorrow, the northern troops would begin the long march down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to join the war. They would trek onwards until the distance travelled, and time passed, would probably be too great for news of them to ever return. And then they truly would have united with their comrades in the south – because that was how, Johnny knew, the North Vietnamese thought, fought, and won.
The single bright birdcall from across the inlet dragged him back to the present. Carly was looking at him. He shrugged, letting out a breath that felt like an admission of guilt.
‘I drift off.’ This was no great explanation. ‘I see things.’ He managed a laugh. ‘War movies. Long ones. Bad ones. Shockers. They just roll on and on.’ He lit a cigarette, all he could think to do. ‘My head’s stuffed. Fair dinkum. I thought doing the shit was difficult. Well, forgettin’ it’s twice as hard.’
Carly sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. She looked across the water, where shadows darkened below a wall of sheer rock.
‘Yeah, you think stuff ’s gone just because it’s over.’ She said each word carefully. ‘Then you find out it’s not over at all. It stays with yer. For a long time and in a lotta ways. I don’t know much but I do know that.’
Johnny knew when someone was talking from experience.
‘Hit the nail on the head there, boss,’ he said. ‘Things happen. You do ’em or they happen to yer. Or yer just there. And boy, they stick like glue.’
‘It’s always people.’ Carly looked over the water. ‘Always people.’
Johnny Shoebridge could not argue with that.
Eight
Johnny was at a loss for what to do next, so he stayed on the step drinking beers. He’d watched Carly leave, then he’d watched another Vietnamese village rise from the still, black surface of the inlet. This village, sited deep among palm trees and spiked bamboo fences, exuded the silent menace of a set trap. And the harder he searched the place the less he could see; every space and surface created a mosaic of foreignness that deflected his senses until all he saw was a blur of leafy colours in a haze of humidity.
What Johnny could picture, though, were the muzzles of weapons and black eyes searching for white foreheads to put bullets into. He clearly sensed the enemy and the electrifying hatred that short-circuited into a blinding flash of recognition that he was also the enemy – which is why those invisible men wanted to kill him, and that was the truth. Anger struck, like the concussion of the bombs that soon after had blown that distant village to bits.
I was sent there!
It was not my idea to kill those people or change their lives.
With that thought, Johnny managed to punch a way through to clear air. Thank God he was here in a place of gumtrees, clean sand, and open country where a stranger was allowed to pass. Here there was no enemy. Here there was no razor-edged monster grass, no strangler vine, no silky bamboo that looked so beautiful but was only ever useful, in one hundred ways, to the Viet Cong.
‘You’re safe, buddy-boy.’ Johnny was getting used to talking to himself. ‘As houses.’ He blew out a breath, lit a smoke and tried to think of Jilly, but she was too far away in too many ways to help.
So Johnny thought of Carly, a girl with cheap clothes, lank hair, and a punched-out tooth. A girl with something terrible locked down inside that allowed her to see there was something terrible locked down in him. Yes, the wounded understood each other. Yes, sorrow did take comfort in company. No, he didn’t think either of them had quite given up, and that was what counted. Johnny realised he was thankful he had met her.
It was that uninvited skinny Viet Cong bastard, Khan, who insisted Johnny take up his story. Was it guilt, Johnny wondered? Was it punishment? Was it a soldier’s unfinished business that never could be finished? Was it a death sentence commuted to life imprisonment? Or was it a way out? That perhaps he and Khan might somehow fight, or find their way, to an end of things? Because at the moment Johnny Shoebridge was ten thousand light years away from such a point, if it existed.
Johnny felt strongly that this soldier from North Vietnam had survived the war. So he let Khan go home, and become a fisherman, because that’s what a lot of North Vietnamese did. And now he could see him fishing in a pond with three slender bamboo rods angled against a blue sky. Johnny also saw that the young man now had only one arm, which didn’t make the fishing any easier. But he seemed to be getting along with it okay, so Johnny let the feller he called Khan fish on.
‘Maybe I don’t wish you luck, sport,’ Johnny murmured, looking at the inlet, seeing the water was still, the tide not yet turned. ‘But I would if you’d give me some peace and bloody quiet.’
In a bucket beside Khan, Johnny saw a few slender fish faced in the same direction, like desperate soldiers under attack. So where, he wondered, were Khan’s two mates? The young one, whom he’d decided to call Trung, and the tough, square-headed one he’d named Thang?
Johnny figured they were dead. Perhaps they’d copped it in an ambush, or when Shoey’s boys had taken on D555 in the big night battles for an Australian fire base out in the boonies, where the slaughter was a horror show of two parts that left no one unharmed.
He saw his old enemy Khan wore a faded green bush fighting hat as he fished. Perhaps he treasured it like Johnny treasured his army shirts? Maybe Khan felt this hat was symbolic of his time on the Trail, a reminder of the lives of his best friends, and their year of fighting from the Long Hai Hills with D555. But now you’re a fisherman, Johnny decided, which is a pretty sweet occupation for a killer.
Perhaps I won’t go down that road, he thought, being a killer myself. Perhaps we’ll look in another direction for the moment. So he let Khan’s attention wander to a path where a young woman, dressed in black, walked so lightly that she did not raise even the smallest puffs of dust. Elegantly she passed although she carried a full basket of vegetables and a hoe.
The girl’s face was hidden under a traditional woven reed hat but Shoey knew she would be graceful and lovely. Khan waved but the girl did not wave back. Stick to the fishing, Johnny advised his old enemy. You’re not doing so good with the ladies, sport – or anything or anyone else, for that matter.
‘And neither am I.’ Johnny opened another can, sipped cold Carlton. ‘It seems.’ Maybe, he figured, if he simply allowed the war to wind and unwind in his head, it would eventually reach its own conclusion because as surely as things started they had to end. Surely. ‘So,’ he said, looking into the starred blackness. ‘Let the dogs out.’
Nine
Balloons floated on the wake of the ship like red bubbles on the bright blue sea. A regular soldier whose name was Barry Grainger picked up an M60 machinegun from the steel deck. A long, fully-loaded ammunition belt hung from the black weapon, each brass bullet as long as a cigarette.
‘He’s strong, that guy.’ Lex stood with a boot up on the rail, watching the shooting drill as if he was waiting his turn to throw the javelin at after-school athletics. ‘Like a bloody Mack truck. Says about as much. Look at him. Got a tatt for every day of the year. Plays the violin though, John. And sings very nicely, too, I believe. Welsh coal-mining songs. Lovely.’
‘He’s funny,’ Johnny said. ‘He cracks me up.’
‘Really?’ Lex lowered his eyebrows. ‘That bastard? How can you tell?’
Johnny laughed. ‘Just is, mate. Check him out. Man of steel.’
Barry, his short thick arms badged with tattoos of a tiger and an eagle, brought the big automatic weapon up, aimed, and fired. The sound punched Shoey’s guts as empty brass cartridges scattered over the deck like golden hail. In fountains of white the balloons disappeared. Barry lowered the gun and the boys clapped as blue smoke cleared. The smell of gunpowder was like a fiery stain in the hot salty air. The shots seemed to echo endlessly over the ocean.
‘Bloody Bazza.’ Lex looked impressed, nodded with deep satisfaction. ‘We definitely need to be mates with him, Shoebridge. You shout the cat a few beers. That’ll work.’
Barry Grainger knelt, cleared the machinegun, and left it resting on its bipod. For a moment he talked to Captain McCrae, an ex-rugby league player from Sydney, before rejoining the boys as they stood holding their weapons.
‘Good job, Baz,’ Lex said. ‘Johnny said he’ll shout you a few beers. We need you and that machinegun in our section, because if the going gets tough, probably be best if you sort it out. And I don’t mean by popping balloons. I mean by assisting the little brown jungle people to piss off as far away from us as possible.’
Barry, expressionless, moved to the rail, leant on his elbows, looked out to sea and spat.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’
Johnny grinned. The bloke was a force of one.
Khan, Trung, and Thang crouched by their tiny fire. A wisp of smoke rose into Johnny’s consciousness, unfurling another primitive scroll for him to interpret. Around the trio other men cooked rice or set about slinging hammocks under plastic. The troops from the north had been on the Trail for two months, marching and training. Khan knew he had never been so fit or so thin. He was always hungry but he was used to that.
Already they had buried seven people, their graves hastily dug and blessed beside the track. The equipment and possessions of the dead comrades were distributed among those who marched on. Khan now had an almost-new AK-47 assault rifle with a rare Russian AKM bayonet. Thang also had an AK but Trung carried an old M1 carbine repaired with nylon cord. Still, Khan thought, it was a good weapon in the hands of a committed fighter. He would not put his nose in front of it!
From aluminium bowls the three young men ate sticky rice, Khan looking across the fire, through the smoke.
‘Enjoy, comrades,’ he said. ‘Each grain of rice equals, as they say, one drop of the enemy’s blood.’
If only the B-52s had got them then, Johnny thought. If only the Yanks had managed to drop a string of thousand-pound bombs on the whole camp, things might be a whole lot different. But the bombs had missed, like they mostly did, and the Main Force men marched on.
Johnny and Barry stood at the rail, shirts off. Around them the wind flowed like warm water. Somehow, even though Johnny was a conscript and Barry had volunteered, they sensed something right and reliable about each other. In training, Shoey had learned about Vietnam, its people, and the enemy they were being sent to fight. He got the feeling that Barry would simply kill anybody he was ordered to.
‘So, Baz, why’d you join up?’ Johnny flicked a cigarette butt over the side, watched it tumble away.
Barry rested easily on the rail. He looked at the sea, as far as Johnny could see, without interest. Maybe, Johnny decided, he didn’t even see it.
‘To get paid,’ he said, ‘to shoot shit.’
Johnny accepted this. ‘Yeah, well, that seems to be the name of the game.’
Barry offered Johnny a Winfield Red. They lit up, turned back to the empty ocean that was a bright azure blue. It looked bottomless, Johnny thought, as unknown as space.
‘You are,’ Barry said, and took a slow drag, ‘on the money.’ He looked at Shoey, and for the first and last time Johnny remembered, he grinned.
Ten
Malcolm’s one-room hut was certainly simple. Its roof was tin, the floor bare boards, the door and walls painted a faded mossy green. Three of the four windows were broken but Johnny didn’t care; there were no corners he couldn’t see into and no entry points he could not cover. It was almost as if he was out in the open.
He could think more clearly here than in a house; was able to exercise all his senses, decipher every noise, reassure himself that he was safe for the moment. This place, the hut and the land around it, suited his animal instincts and gut reactions. Somehow the gumtrees, the water, grass, and sky, comforted him. No threat here. Nothing buried or hidden or hanging overhead. No unknown sounds, movements, or threats. Just the reliable presence of the Australian bush. Even so, if he’d had his rifle with a full twenty-shot magazine slotted home, he would’ve felt a whole lot better. That thing, his SLR, he grieved for like he grieved for the boys.
Shoey glanced into the hut’s dark interior. There’d be spiders in the rafters and a snake under the floor but they wouldn’t bother him. After the Asian creepy-crawlies he’d lived with – scorpions, leeches, chomper ants, jungle spiders, and tree snakes – Aussie pests, including vandals, seemed downright friendly.
Using three matches, Johnny eventually got the kero lantern lit. Then he swept the joint out properly, finishing at the steps. Glancing up, he saw a shooting star turn into a screaming Phantom jet that hit the enemy’s tree line, leaving his mind as scarred as the smoking earth.
What was it like, Johnny wondered, to be where the Phantoms, the B-52s, the Cobras, and that incredible gunship, Spooky, unleashed? How could anyone survive the storms of bullets, bombs, Splintex, rockets, napalm, and white phosphorous? What did you think as you stumbled away, ears and eyes bleeding? Did you ever return to being the person you were? There was no way.
The bastard Khan would know this because he had been with D555, an enemy battalion hit with everything the Aussies and the Yanks had. Yet they’d emerged from the white boulders of the Long Hai Hills like enraged ants, to keep on coming, and were coming still. It seemed there was no way that Johnny could stop them, or this Khan-feller, in particular. Well, there had to be a way because if there wasn’t, Johnny Shoebridge knew that sooner rather than later he’d hit the wall big-time, and that’d be that.
Johnny could see that Khan listened to the rain, the one-armed man watching it stream from the eaves of his tiny room. In a small fireplace rice and vegetables simmered in a pot. In front of photos of Thang and Trung josh sticks burned. He saw too that Khan had also placed cigarettes and fruit on a plate. What would he be thinking, Johnny wondered, the returned fighter, the crippled old mongrel, Khan?
Johnny knew he would be thinking about the war. Perhaps Khan would be hoping for something that might calm the madly running mind and heal the fractured soul of a returned soldier. Perhaps he might imagine that when darkness fell, it was like the cleanest and softest of bandages being gently draped across the entire country of Vietnam – because Khan was a man b
orn of that place and of those people, the place that had given him life and still did, and that was what he had fought for.
Each night Khan hoped the wounds in the land and people would heal a little more. Each night he hoped the dead would sleep more soundly. And each night he hoped the war would withdraw like a beaten dragon.
Other nights, Khan, like Johnny Shoebridge, was simply overpowered by the war. The dead had lain in their hundreds of thousands on roads, in fields, and in jungles. They had floated down rivers, been buried in bunkers, and blown into trees. There were so many wandering spirits Khan felt the country would be haunted forever.
He looked at Thang and Trung smiling from the past. On a bad night, the shrine seemed empty of spirit, hope, and goodness. Khan wondered if the fighting, although honourable, had been too horrible for the dead or the living to ever recover from. Sometimes he felt he was nothing but an empty shell, perhaps that of a cicada; something that looked ancient and alive but had died long ago. Sometimes, on a similar note, Johnny felt like a scarecrow; frightening to a few, disregarded by most, left stuck in a field by a quiet dirt road, forgotten by just about everyone, even the farmer who’d put it there.
Neither he nor Khan had been able to speak of the two battles for the Australian fire base they’d fought in. It was enough to have lived through them. The experience was far too much to ever be forgotten. If only, Khan thought, he’d lost his memory instead of his right arm. But that would have been worse because he was the keeper of the memories of the boys and all other dead comrades. He was the custodian of their agony, bravery, and service to the country and people.
Same here, mate, Johnny thought, same here; except it didn’t seem his country or his people were grateful at all. Embarrassed and disgusted was more like it. Johnny, looking over Khan’s shoulder, saw his enemy had taken the tiny photo of a girl from a square of silk and studied it intently. Maybe this girl, whoever she was, might somehow offer comfort to the ex-guerrilla? It was not impossible, Johnny decided, if she understood that battles fought never ended, and wounds suffered never completely healed.
Dreaming the Enemy Page 3