Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes

  “Good,” McCarthy said. “You sit in the back and catch up with us. I’ll fucking drive.”

  Soon all five of them were sitting around a table at the crude regimental O-club, a hasty barricade against reality. A small generator hummed steadily, providing flickering light. The bare plywood walls still had the grade stamps showing. Exposed studs oozed pitch. A battered dartboard was nailed to one of the walls.

  They stuck candles directly onto the table by melting puddles of wax. Then they ordered five drinks apiece, the only way to avoid squabbling over who would get the honor of buying the last round. McCarthy and Murphy stood at the bar while the bartender measured out twenty-five shot glasses of whiskey and placed them on two large trays. Holding the trays out in front of them, McCarthy and Murphy made their way between tables. McCarthy had a package of Ritz crackers in his teeth. Hawke took the crackers and opened one end while the shot glasses were placed on the table. McCarthy went back for two pitchers of water and five larger glasses that he set on the table in front of Hawke.

  Hawke had been counting the number of crackers in the package. “Here,” he said. “Seven each. Except I get eight because I’m the company commander.” He passed the package over to Mellas, who took his seven and passed it on to Goodwin. Hawke picked up a pitcher and started to silently question them in turn about their preferences for how much water they wanted in their whiskey, holding up one, two, or three fingers. When everyone had been served, he raised his glass and said, “Semper Fi, motherfuckers,” and threw down the first drink.

  Soon Mellas was deliciously high, so that the bourbon tasted smooth and cool while simultaneously warming his belly. It was a magical contrast. He was well aware of the moment, in spite of the bourbon. He knew that the five of them had shared experiences no one else had shared or would share. He also knew it was unlikely that all of them would live to share such a moment again. Indeed, he could be the one missing. All the gaiety in the world—all the shouting, all the pain-numbing drunkenness— would not conceal that lurking thought. But the lurking thought was what made him aware that this moment was precious.

  “Hey, Mel,” Hawke said, “when we get back to the world we ought to go into business or something. Shit, all five us. Wouldn’t that be a gas?”

  “With what we know, all we could do is compete with the Mafia,” Murphy said.

  “The only business you could ever run is a fucking bar,” McCarthy said. “But I’d run one with you.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Hawke said, lifting his glass. “That’s it. A fucking bar.” He hiccupped. “A special fucking bar.” He giggled. “We’ll call it the Bunker.”

  “Naw,” Mellas said. “Not sophisticated enough. Call it Ellsworth.”

  “Fuck you and your sophistication, Jack,” Goodwin said. “We want a fucking bar, not some fairy discotheque.”

  “That’s right,” McCarthy said, “and to get a drink there you have to park your car four hundred meters away and cut through solid bamboo and elephant grass with a machete to find it.”

  Mellas thought for a moment. “Only you don’t give the customers any fucking maps,” he said. “No maps!” He started to slap his palm on the table with each word. “No fucking maps!”

  “But you could have one smoke grenade,” Hawke said. “That way if you give up, a chopper can take you back to the parking lot free of charge.”

  “Charge the fucking bastards, Jayhawk,” McCarthy said. “Jesus. I don’t know about you and business. You can’t make money if you’re going to be a softy.”

  The banter about the Bunker got louder and more outrageous. Make the customers throw bits of food to the rats and pop leeches on the tables. Make them fill a hundred sandbags as a cover charge. Make them squat on their haunches or sit on a wet floor. Make them get their water by licking the overhead pipes. Make them piss in the corners. Make them walk back to the parking lot only to find their cars stolen. Soon all five were standing, stamping their feet, and chanting, over and over, “No resupply! No medevacs! No maps!”

  Finally Hawke sat down. The rest followed. “It’d never work,” Hawke said, taking a drink.

  “Why not, Jack?” Goodwin asked.

  “The government would never give us a license to blow up half the customers.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Murphy raised his glass. “Here’s to the Bunker,” he said. His head jerked up toward the raised glass.

  “And all the customers,” Hawke said.

  There was another silence while they toyed with their glasses. “Ah, fuck you guys,” Murphy said. “You don’t know a good time when you have one.”

  “Typical fucking lifer, Murphy,” Mellas said. “Every shitty thing’s a good time for you guys. That’s why the government will always get you to do its shitty jobs for it.” Mellas tossed back the rest of his drink and put the glass on the table. “You’re fucking fools.”

  Everyone was quiet. McCarthy was clearly suppressing a smile. He caught Hawke’s eye and then looked toward Murphy. Mellas didn’t pick up on the fact that he was sailing in treacherous waters.

  “Someone’s got to do the shitty jobs, Mel,” Murphy said, wrapping his hands around his empty glass.

  “Well, I’ve done all the shitty jobs they’ll ever get me doing. I’m getting the fuck out. Fuck you and your government, if you’re dumb enough to stay in.”

  “How in the hell do you expect the fucking Marine Corps to ever get its shit together if you chickenshit assholes fuck off and leave it because you figure you can make more money someplace else?”

  “Suck out, Murph. All the fucking money in the world wouldn’t keep my ass in the Crotch.”

  “So why are you leaving?”

  “I fucking hate it, that’s why,” Mellas said. “I’m sick of the fucking lies and covering the lies with blood.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” McCarthy said, and belched.

  “That’s no fucking answer,” Murphy said. His beefy arms rested in pools of spilt bourbon. The others were sitting back in their chairs, silly grins on their faces, watching Mellas and Murphy pair off, the hare and the bear. “You guys take off and leave it to the liars and the asslickers and the troops get fucked over worse. You’re just chickenshit to stand up in public with a goddamned short haircut because you’re afraid you’ll never get laid.”

  Instead of accepting that the gibe hurt because it was true, Mellas lost his temper. “You stand the fuck up,” he said, rising from his chair. His fists were clenched.

  McCarthy pulled him down by the back of his utility jacket. “Jesus, Mellas, Murphy will kill you. Just because he hit a fucking sore spot doesn’t mean you have to become a human sacrifice over it.”

  “Murphy’s right,” Hawke said. “Since you been in the Corps, Mellas, how many women you dated that have gone to college and aren’t southern?”

  “Fuck all, that’s how many,” McCarthy answered for him.

  “Right,” Hawke said. “You go up to D.C. and there’s all sorts of college girls working for all sorts of government offices, but you’re there in your short fucking haircut and you’re a nigger in Georgetown if ever there was one.”

  “Thank you, Theodore J. Hawke,” Mellas said. “Another pea-green philosopher.” He thought of Karen Elsked and felt empty.

  Hawke leaned back in his chair. “You think I’m lying? In six months, you two”—he was pointing at Mellas and McCarthy—“six months after you’re out of the Corps, if you get out of this place alive, you’ll be goddamned long-haired commie intellectuals telling everybody how fucked up the war is and how you knew all along. And you know what? You’ll be lying. Lying so you can get ahead in their world. You’ll be wearing your hair down to your ass, smoking dope, and marching and protesting and wearing fucking beads and sandals just like the rest of them. And you’ll be doing it for no other reason than to make the girls like you.”

  “Fuck off, Hawke,” McCarthy said.

  “I won’t fuck off.” Hawke leaned back into the table. “You’ll both be afraid to go back to the world and tell all those assholes that you were good fucking Marines. Oh, you weren’t Marine legends. You weren’t even the bes
t. But you were good. And you’ll try to tell everyone how bad you were and how sorry you are so you won’t have to explain how it really is. How good it can feel to do something so bad.”

  “You’re fucking drunk,” McCarthy said, “but I’ll drink to that.” He did, draining his glass and then smacking it down on the table. “I fucking volunteered.”

  “Didn’t we all?” Mellas said. He stood and raised his glass, nearly falling in the process. “Here’s to the fucking volunteers.” Everyone solemnly stood. Hawke was weaving uncertainly. Murphy and Goodwin were leaning against each other. They touched glasses and drank. Then Mellas turned and looked directly at Hawke. He held his empty glass in front of his face and, looking over it at Hawke with his good eye, quietly said, “Bravo has died. Bravo is risen. Bravo will fight again.” Then he raised the glass above his head. “Mea culpa,” he added.

  Hawke’s eyes focused for a moment and he solemnly made the sign of the cross. “Absolution,” he said, somewhat slurred. His eyes became unfocused again. Mellas smiled his thanks, and he and Hawke clinked glasses. Mellas looked for a moment at his empty glass and then let it drop to the floor. It broke. He took a full glass and held it above his head while he made a complete turn. Then he dipped his thumb and two fingers into the whiskey and began to anoint those around him with solemn ceremonial movements of his wrist, chanting, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mor-r-i. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mor-r-i.”

  Hawke knelt down and stuck his tongue out. McCarthy solemnly placed a piece of cracker on it. He picked up a whiskey glass with both hands and began to pour the contents slowly on Hawke’s head. The whiskey dripped down Hawke’s face. Then McCarthy made the sign of the cross over Hawke’s head and chanted, “In the name of the colonel and the Three and a do-nothing Con-n-gress.”

  Hawke knelt there with his tongue out, catching the amber liquid as it dribbled down his face. McCarthy then held up his fingers in a V—the peace sign—and turned slowly around, his arm raised high over his head. He intoned to the now silent crowd, “Peace. My peace I give you.” Then, with his thumb and two adjoining fingers together, high above his head, he turned a complete circle, saying, “Deliver us from every evil and grant us peace in our day.” After that he took the empty glass, looked at it for a moment, and shattered it against the wall. Hawke threw himself over backward and lay on the floor, spread-eagled, staring drunkenly at the ceiling.

  “Hey, Jack,” Goodwin said, “this party’s getting too fucking religious.”

  In Cassidy’s room they passed around some beers. They felt the closeness that arises from sharing, as in passing a peace pipe. Hawke talked about his number-one squaw. She’d written him a letter saying that she had a new boyfriend and that she couldn’t go on writing to him, because she was opposed to what he was doing. The five of them drank to her continued good health and moral fiber. Mellas could tell that Hawke was hurt badly, but Hawke didn’t let on and drank with everyone else, mocking the end of the relationship.

  Eventually the beers were finished and Goodwin, Murphy, and McCarthy wandered out to get two hours of sleep before pushing off on the operation. Hawke and Mellas were left alone. Mellas was bone-weary and his head was spinning. He wanted to sleep but knew this was their last night together before their new formal relationship added a layer of complication. Tomorrow Hawke would be the skipper and Mellas the executive officer.

  They fiddled with the empty beer cans in an embarrassed silence. Finally Mellas gently tossed his empty beer can at Hawke and said, “You scared about going back to the bush?”

  “Why you think I’m fucking drunk?”

  They were silent a moment.

  “I’m glad you got the company, Ted. It would have been a disaster if I’d have gotten it.”

  Hawke smiled and shook his head. “Mellas, you dumb shit, you didn’t have a chance of getting it. You’re still a boot motherfucker.”

  Mellas smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, but it still would have been a disaster.”

  “Fuck, Mellas. You’ll make first lieutenant in another month or so, then a few months after that you’ll be short and all you’ll want to do is go home. So that’s when they’ll offer it to you, when you won’t want it any more. But there won’t be any better alternative, so you’ll take it on. And you’ll be the best alternative.”

  Mellas laughed, pleased and embarrassed at the praise. “Anyway, it’ll be a pleasure to work with you. In fact, I’d seriously think about opening up that fucking bar with you if we make it back to the world.” He laughed briefly through his nose. “The Bunker. I’d let all the vets watch the customers through one-way mirrors.”

  Hawke leaned back and smiled at the roof of the tent. Then he sat up, suddenly sober. “It’s a fucking fantasy, Mellas. At least for eighteen years.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I went regular.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah,” Hawke said. He tried to sound lighthearted. “Wrapping myself in Marine Corps scarlet and gold.”

  Mellas said nothing.

  Hawke fumbled for the right words, looking at his crumpled beer can rather than at Mellas. “You know. Shit. I don’t know what the fuck I’d do once I got back to the world. You’re different. You’ll go to fucking law school or something and walk right on up to the top. Me? Shit. There’s good people here. Mulvaney. Coates. Cassidy. Even Stevens. He tries.” He looked up at Mellas. “Good guys. Good officers.”

  “If I hadn’t thrown my fucking beer can at you I’d toast you.” Mellas lay back on the rack and stared at the folds of the tent above him, watching the play of shadows from the single candle. “Murphy’s right. The troops get fucked even worse if the good guys don’t stay in.”

  Mellas thought in silence about the old Bravo Company, now gone, scattered to hospitals in Japan or the Philippines, or in rubberized body bags on commercial airliners heading across the Pacific toward home.

  “Tell me something, Hawke,” Mellas said, not looking at him but just watching the shadows on the ceiling. “Before you become Bravo Six”—he couldn’t resist adding a small bite—“and a regular”—Hawke flipped him the bird—“why did the colonel send us up the fucking hill the second time?” Mellas’s voice started to tremble. It caught him by surprise. “The gooks weren’t running. Delta Company could have done it.”

  Hawke took some time before he answered. “Because you volunteered. He’d cut the order for the assault but at the last minute he told Fitch that he’d switch in Delta if Fitch didn’t want to do the job.”

  Mellas sat up. The tears that had started to form when he began talking about the assault were shut off, but his throat constricted. “What?”

  “Simpson told Fitch he had two choices: get the company’s pride back for abandoning Matterhorn, which is why there had to be another assault, or be a yellow-livered dog and let Delta Company clean up Bravo’s mess.” He paused. “And all that entails. You know how small the Marine Corps is.”

  “If I’d known Fitch volunteered, I’d have wanted to kill him, too,” Mellas said quietly, almost musingly.

  “And if you’d been faced with the same choice, you’d have volunteered just like Fitch,” Hawke said.

  “I know it,” Mellas answered.

  “You still feel like killing Simpson?”

  “Naw. You know I went crazy up there. He was just doing his job.” Mellas lay back on the cot. “I just wish he’d do it sober.” He laughed and Hawke joined in. Then they lapsed into silence.

  “The funny thing is,” Mellas said, “I still like Fitch. I’d have gone up the hill with him even if I knew.”

  “Before or after you would have killed him?”

  “Both.”

  The two were again quiet. The alcohol blurred Mellas’s vision and threatened to pull him into sleep. Then he surfaced again. “He still volunteered us, the poor fucking bastard. He’ll carry that a lot longer than a bad fitness report. And here I’ve been feeling bad because I enjoy killing people.”

  Hawke laughed quietly. “At least you’re over the hump on that one. It’s the people who don’t know it who are dangerous. There’s at le
ast two hundred million of them back in the world. Boot camp doesn’t make us killers. It’s just a fucking finishing school.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I remember my ex-fucking squaw telling me it was inconceivable—that was her word, inconceivable—that she could ever go to Vietnam like I did, no matter what the consequences. This was just before she went to Europe for her junior year and met her new boyfriend.”

  With one hand Hawke crushed the beer can he was holding. He began to work the mangled can back and forth, twisting it, bending it. Mellas didn’t say anything. “None of them have ever met the mad monkey inside us,” Hawke added. “But we have.”

  “There it is,” Mellas said.

  Hawke’s voice became softer and softer. “Maybe we could have an amusement park across the street with a ride called the Mad Monkey.” He lay across the cot, feet on the floor, eyes closed.