Dreaming the Enemy

by David Metzenthen

  ‘Target, target,’ he intoned, scanning the jolting, flaring, dying darkness. ‘Target.’ He saw men running like birds flying. VC. In they swooped.

  He gave them everything.

  Johnny imagined the enemy sappers about to attack. Khan could see them, crouched shoulder to shoulder, ready to run. There were seven, bare-chested, carrying satchel bombs, homemade Bangalore torpedos, cutting tools, short-handled entrenching tools, and grenades. Four had AKs slung across their backs. Khan knew Trung was among them, away from him now, beyond his meagre abilities to help and protect.

  Since nightfall the three battalions had prepared to attack in waves and from multiple directions. Khan and Thang were to go over after the initial rocket and mortar barrage, behind the sappers. Along with hundreds of others, they were to pour through the cut wire and into the base. Once inside it was kill, destroy, and capture weapons. He put a hand on Thang’s shoulder. They looked at each other, gripped hands.

  ‘Together, brother,’ Thang whispered. ‘Together.’

  As Khan nodded the bush erupted. Rockets, machineguns, and mortars smashed into the base. The air leapt into life, convulsing with explosions, light, and shockwaves. And into this the sappers disappeared. To Khan it felt as if Trung was lost in a raging sea – except this was no sea but a designated killing field. There would be no rescue.

  Flares lit the open ground. Main Force fighters ran firing and falling, some getting up to go again. Khan and Thang had left the trees, to find themselves in the false and deadly white dawn as they pounded across the cleared ground. Every square inch of air, it seemed, was whipped by flying metal.

  Khan sprinted, following Trung’s sappers. Still he held on to the idea of finding his friend inside the wire. More soldiers appeared. These were the youngsters from other battalions, boys and girls, their faces set with the sole intention to attack or die. Khan had never seen anything like it. It was as if the earth was tilted sharply towards the holes in the wire. Everyone was being funnelled into a furnace that glowed incandescent, heating up until perhaps the whole place might go up in one massive fireball.

  The attacking force reached the wire. Where a section had been blown they crossed easily, Khan praying no mines had been placed. It would have made simple sense to sow the ground here like a vegetable garden and turn it into a slaughterhouse. But the fighters swept on, their objective a mortar crew to be destroyed.

  Khan could see the mortars. They appeared well defended by riflemen and an M60. Suddenly he was clear-headed. There was no choice. Forget the odds. Forget the defenders. Forget the future and the past. Forget everyone and forget everything, just run and fire.

  With Thang, and many others, he did.

  I saw you coming, Johnny thought. And if it wasn’t you, Khan, it was someone like you, which was good enough – because we were sent to this place to kill people like each other, and that’s exactly what we did.

  Thirty-five

  The driveway of the Graingers’ orchard was two hundred yards, long and ruler-straight. Shoey drove up it under an overcast sky, seeing faded green blinds hanging over the farmhouse windows like old eye patches. A red Monaro sat under a tree and washing hung on a line propped by a stick like a bone. Shoey parked in front of a shed as a black labrador trotted over, tail wagging, eyes shining. It was Barry’s dog, Champ; he recognised it from a photo that had dropped out of Barry’s gear as it was being sorted.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Johnny muttered, the dog trampling happily on his feet as he got out. ‘Good boy. Siddown, bud.’ He headed for the back door, which opened before he arrived.

  A short, square-shouldered man with grey hair, wearing a grey shirt and grey trousers, appeared. A thin woman followed in his wake. She was looking worriedly at Shoey as if he might be bringing bad news. Well, Johnny thought, it sure as hell ain’t good news – even if it was news as old as the hills.

  ‘G’day.’ Shoey felt like he was turning up for a funeral. The silence was tangible and so was the sorrow. He recognised its dark filament as being permanent, personalised, and immoveable. Death never ended for the living. ‘I’m Johnny Shoebridge.’ He stopped. ‘I was with Barry. Over there.’

  Barry’s father took two steps forward and shook Johnny’s hand with strength.

  ‘I’m Ron Grainger.’ The fruit grower’s face was worn, tough, and sun-beaten. It was a face Johnny had seen on every country street just about every day of his life. ‘And this is Estelle. Barry’s mum. We’re real pleased to see ya, John.’

  Estelle Grainger’s face was like her husband’s, worn by work, except her eyes were lost on some boundless continent of sadness. She nodded, tried out a fluttery smile. Ron Grainger put a heavy hand on Shoey’s shoulder.

  ‘Thanks for comin’, mate. You’re real welcome. Come inside.’

  ‘This is Barry’s dog.’ Estelle Grainger spoke suddenly, as if to get it over and done with. ‘Champ. We got him when Barry was thirteen. For his birthday.’

  All Johnny could do was nod. He had the feeling he was caught in a terrible, terrible slow-motion landslide.

  ‘He’s a good dog.’ He looked into the dog’s shining black eyes. ‘A ripper.’

  Barry’s mum nodded, as if Johnny had said something important.

  ‘He is. We love him.’ She turned away, as if she had already said too much.

  Ron Grainger indicated Johnny should go inside. He appeared to brush away his wife’s words but Johnny guessed he hadn’t at all. At the door, Johnny toed off his Volleys, glad he’d managed to put on clean black socks.

  ‘Barry wasn’t much for writing.’ Ron Grainger’s forehead was lined with furrows like a potato field. ‘He was probably pretty quiet over there, I expect.’

  Johnny stood in a sparse kitchen. He could smell meat cooking. Two old tin saucepans sat on a gas stove and he was cheered a bit by a calendar on a hook featuring poplar trees like golden flames. The dog’s claws clicked merrily on the lino as it headed to a worn green mat and threw itself down. Johnny turned to Ron and Estelle Grainger and took a breath. On your blocks. Get set. Go.

  ‘Barry,’ he said, ‘and Lex, our other mate, were the best and bravest blokes I ever met. By far and bar none.’

  This brought a sudden silence. Estelle Grainger freed a small white handkerchief from a sleeve and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. She turned to a bench and put an electric kettle on. It was a Burko, Shoey saw, the same one his mum had.

  ‘He was a quiet boy but a good boy.’ Estelle Grainger took down two mugs and a patterned china cup. ‘No trouble at all. I’m sure Lex was lovely, too. Barry sent us a photo. Of you three.’

  ‘Barry looked after his mates.’ Johnny sat at the table when Ron Grainger sat. ‘He looked after everybody. All the time. He was solid as a rock.’ He saw Barry’s old man nodding, processing the words. ‘I can’t tell yers how good he was. Real good. Fuc-bloody brave.’

  ‘He was good,’ Estelle Grainger added. ‘Some people didn’t see it. But he was. He always made sure the animals were fed and did his jobs.’

  Barry’s father looked at the hand that he’d rested on the table. Shoey saw it was gnarled and lined, recording the passing of every hard winter and hot summer, every good and bad month, week, year, and decade.

  ‘He was suited for the army,’ Ron said. ‘Some blokes just are. Did you join or were you called up, John?’

  ‘Conscripted.’ Johnny answered as if the word could be shrugged off but it charged him down like a wounded buffalo. There was nothing he could add.

  ‘What did your mum and dad think?’ Estelle Grainger brought over tea, fruitcake, and milk and sugar on a tray. ‘I think it’s a terrible thing to do to our young boys. In this country. Of all places. Silly.’

  Shoey could only nod. He felt like a dog with a bee in its ear.

  ‘My mum wasn’t happy. And my old man’s passed away. But he would’ve said go, I guess.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much it means to see you.’ Barry’s mother spoke quickly. ‘Da
n McCrae came, too.’ She sat. ‘The captain. He was lovely. Drove all the way down from Sydney. He said lovely things about Barry. He seemed to like him a lot.’

  Shoey found himself smiling. He didn’t know why exactly. Or where it came from; still, it felt like he was crying. And that he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, just managing to hold on. Well, the bloody good old skipper, he thought. Put him up another three notches on the league ladder.

  ‘Yeah, Macca’s a top bloke.’ Shoey looked at Barry’s mother. ‘Barry was funny. He was tough and funny. But boy, he had guts.’ He saw that Estelle Grainger nodded, looking sadder by the second, as if she knew having too much courage might only make it more difficult for a soldier to get home. ‘The boys liked him. A lot. We needed him.’ It was more than that but Johnny couldn’t say it.

  He couldn’t tell anyone what it was like when the bodies wrapped in ponchos were lifted into a Huey. Then the Huey went and the dead boys were gone.

  ‘We’ll go and see Luke.’ Ron Grainger put down his mug and stood. ‘Barry’s little brother. If that’s okay with you, John. He’s on the tractor out in the fruit.’ He put a hand on his wife’s narrow back. ‘Then we’ll come back, love, for a beer and somethin’ to eat. I think we need it.’

  Johnny went outside. Ron waited while he pulled on his Volleys as Champ happily headbutted his knees.

  ‘You know, John,’ Barry’s old man said as they walked across the grey yard, ‘the hardest thing about this whole bloody mess is that I get the feelin’ it was all for nothin’. That it was just a fuckin’ joke put together by a bunch of clowns to prove a point. I’ll never forgive the bastards. And I fought in the second one. So. Well. That’s me.’

  To Johnny it was as if he was staring down from a chopper hurtling over a landscape of deep uncertainty. Vietnam was a strange country that would always be strange. Its history was so tangled only the Viets could understand it. The Aussie politicians didn’t have a hope – not that that stopped them from taking a wild guess.

  ‘I just pray somethin’ good comes out of it.’ Ron gazed into the upraised limbs of fruit trees. Somewhere a tractor growled. ‘For someone, somewhere. I just don’t know what it could be.’

  Johnny hadn’t taken three steps when he realised that finding something good for Barry’s father was one of the most important things he’d ever do.

  ‘Well, one good thing, Ron,’ he said, ‘is that I met Barry. He showed what the best blokes do. What they are. I’ll never forget him.’ He reached for his smokes. ‘He was a ripper. I can’t tell you how brave he was. He saved blokes. He saved our bloody lives. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. That’s the truth, Ron. Him and Lex were the best blokes in the world.’

  Ron Grainger nodded, as if Shoey was still talking, and he was still listening.

  ‘If you could just tell young Luke that,’ he said, looking for the hidden tractor growling away in the orchard, or perhaps just looking away, ‘I’ll owe you for the rest of my life.’

  To Johnny, answering Ron Grainger felt as if he was answering Danny McRae, or any one of the boys asking a favour.

  ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘Not a problem.’

  The roaring of the red tractor died in the rows of fruit trees. Luke, a wiry kid in a dark blue work shirt, climbed down onto hard grey ground, pulling at the tail of a plaited bush belt. He looked at Johnny.

  ‘How ya goin’?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Yeah, good, mate. How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  The kid didn’t look much like Barry, but there was something about him that suggested a shy rural toughness. Ron Grainger did the introductions then walked away. Johnny took out his smokes, offered one to Luke that was knocked back then lit his own.

  ‘You gotta know, Luke—’ Johnny sucked in smoke, ‘and you probably already do, that Barry was a ripping bloke.’

  Luke nodded, his choppy blond hair the brightest thing in the orchard as the sun sank towards a flat horizon. The place didn’t exactly make Johnny feel great: it had the feel of places he’d been before, where the geometry of evenly spaced trees and shadows didn’t suggest regulation and order but gunfire and carnage.

  ‘I can’t tell you everything we did exactly, over there—’ Johnny could see Luke understood this, ‘but when we needed Baz most, when things were at their bloody worst, he didn’t flinch.’ Johnny took a steadying drag. ‘He went at it, Luke, hard. He had an M60 machinegun. That was his weapon. You can see what I mean, can’t yer? That we were in some pretty big blues. Barry saved a lot of blokes. It was life and death and I am not jokin’. I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for him.’

  Luke crossed his arms and studied the few flat limp weeds that dotted the place. Johnny toed one up out of the ground. Capeweed.

  ‘He was a good feller,’ Luke said quietly. ‘He looked after me. You know. At school. Playin’ footy. In town. Wherever.’

  ‘He looked after everyone.’ Johnny felt the truth of what he was saying heavy in his blood. ‘Before he looked after himself.’ He put a hand on Luke’s shoulder, felt springy young bones. ‘I hope I’ll catch up with him one day.’ Johnny looked at the tractor, its belly crusted with clay and dirty oil, a hard-working beast that would just keep on going. ‘Anyway, mate, I’ll see yer before I take off.’ Johnny nodded and Luke dipped his head in return. ‘Finish ya work, Luke. Good on ya.’ Johnny, feeling like a teacher or a coach, someone old, anyway, watched Barry’s little brother walk away before heading back through the trees.

  Behind him the tractor grunted into life, as if the world had started turning again on the power of its old diesel motor. Another box ticked, Johnny thought as he crushed his cigarette, making sure it was dead and buried. How many left to go, he didn’t know.

  The ground on both sides of the river, as Johnny had seen and Khan was seeing now, had been blasted for kilometres. It was a sick-looking wasteland of shredded trees and cratered soil that had crusted in the sun like a flyblown wound. The one-armed fighter could smell foul water and there was a remote, foreign stillness to the place. It was as if the bombing had claimed the ground from Vietnam and now it was just another piece of American war trash.

  ‘I’m glad I wasn’t here that day,’ Khan said.

  The devastation was superhuman. It occurred to Khan that the bombing was done with something worse than hate; it was done with sheer disregard. The enemy never really knew or cared where the bombs would fall because there’d never be any accounting or going back. Khan could feel the staggering impersonality of it. So could Johnny, to an extent.

  ‘I need a smoke, Son,’ Khan said, ‘if you might have one for an old retired fighter. This place makes me sick.’

  Son shipped the oars and came up with a red and white packet from a black bag.

  ‘Marlboro Red, my friend.’ Son flicked his lighter, the flame barely visible in the sun. ‘America’s finest.’

  Khan looked across the wasteland. A line of people dressed in black searched slowly for something. Bamboo shoots to eat, he thought. Or human bones for burial. It was, he decided, either a pitiful sight or a sign of victory. The people had risen from the ashes or had returned to them, proving that explosions and firestorms could only do so much damage for so long. Bamboo should appear on our flag, Khan thought; eventually it overcame all, and everything, to survive and thrive.

  ‘What d’you think those people are looking for, Son?’ he asked.

  ‘What everyone is looking for.’ Son drew on his cigarette then started to gently row. ‘A way forward.’

  Amen to that, sport, Johnny thought. Amen.

  Thirty-six

  Shoey, his head engulfed in the shockwaves of massed weaponry, fired at fighters who ran at the gunpits and machineguns. Tracer fire, in magically coloured streams, sailed into and out of the base as rockets, mortar, and artillery thundered. On both sides men went down and the only meaningful measure of time Johnny had was that he was still alive.

  The air was filled with the st
ink and heat of weapons. The recoil of his rifle punched his shoulder as he aimed and fired endlessly. Over and over he sighted on slews of sprinting people in green and black who appeared and disappeared. Then, horrifically, they swarmed into the mortar pit like crazed spiders. Ten of them threw themselves at the firing weapons, screaming and shooting, two instantly blasted backwards, one cartwheeling sideways, another dropping like a plank, the others firing like madmen.

  Shoey emptied a magazine. He reloaded then fired again. A metre away, Lex’s M16 roared. Barry was standing, unloading a belt into the gun pit as if he was hosing a fire until Johnny saw him fall forward, flat on his face, never letting go of his weapon. Then Lex’s rifle stopped and Johnny knew exactly what that meant.

  He ceased to think and became nothing but killing rage. A young enemy sapper, shirtless, sprinted towards the pit with grenades on a pole. Johnny gave him three rounds, flesh flicking from his chest. Swinging his weapon around, he shot a crawling fighter in the top of the head. Then he cracked off the rest of the magazine at fighters who were backing off, wounding another. Reloading, he felt as if he’d never get enough breath or bullets.

  In a brief lull he jumped into Lex’s shell scrape and picked him up under the arms. It was the heaviest weight he’d ever felt, and when a stream of thick hot blood poured over his hands all he could do was gently lower his friend to the ground, and know that here was something else he would never get over. And now, suddenly, although just a little bit too fucking late in Shoey’s humble opinion, he heard the gunships.

  In they swept, a fleet of flying monsters, mini-guns roaring, rockets piercing the trees. And further away the hallowed, hellish Spooky circled lazily, spewing a bright roaring rain of a hundred thousand rounds on the VC – a sound suddenly insignificant as the worldwide howl of four Phantoms, tailpipes skyrocket red, destroyed the jungle with fifty tons of bombs in fifty seconds. And the battle was over, the VC withdrawing, for now.