Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

“I ain’t getting no haircuts.”

  “What the fuck did you say?” Bass stood up, jaw thrust out, the tin can of hot water in his hand. “You’re talking to the lieutenant, Parker.” To Mellas, it hardly seemed the time to enforce military etiquette, but he let Bass go on.

  “Sir, I don’t need no haircuts and I want to see the skipper for mast, sir,” Parker repeated.

  Bass sat down. Requesting mast with the skipper was every Marine’s privilege. Mellas looked at Parker’s hair. It was curly, nearly an Afro. There was very little doubt that the battalion CP would find it too long, not just because of the Marine Corps’ preference for extremely short hair, but also because of the political implications. “OK, Janc,” he said, “I’ll take it from here. Thanks.”

  Jancowitz nodded and headed back down the hill, where Hippy, clippers in hand, was sizing up another customer who was sitting on his gun emplacement with a towel around his neck. Mellas motioned toward a piece of broken ammunition pallet. “Sit down, Parker. Let me finish dinner.” Parker sat down, somewhat hesitantly, looking at Bass. Almost everyone was afraid of Bass because of his unpredictable temper. Bass finished his coffee and moved off toward his hooch without saying anything.

  “You know, Parker, that the skipper will have to tell you to get your hair cut.”

  “Why’s that?” he said, looking at the thick mud on his boots.

  “Because it’s too long, Parker. We got the battalion coming in tomorrow and that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “I requested mast, and I got my right to see the skipper, and you can’t stop me.”

  “Jesus Christ, Parker. I’m not trying to stop you from seeing the skipper. I’m just trying to save you a walk up the hill.”

  “I request mast.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Mellas threw the remaining glob of food into an empty cardboard box whose sides were collapsing from constant exposure to the rain. He turned to Parker for one last try. “Parker, the skipper works under the same rules as everyone else. It’s going to have to get cut.”

  Parker took off his bush cover and grabbed at a few strands of his hair. “It ain’t no longer than Bass’s. He just greases the shit down. His motherfucking hillbilly hair could be five feet long and no one say shit about that.” Something told Mellas that if he were a good officer he’d never let Parker get away with talking that way to him. Still, Parker’s argument was valid, even though a losing one.

  “Let’s go see the skipper,” Mellas said tautly. He turned and continued up the hill, slipping in the mud, aware of Parker watching his clumsy progress.

  Fitch, Hawke, and the two radio operators, Pallack and Relsnik, were jammed together under the ponchos playing jungle bridge. It was their forty-fifth game in a series of 300, officers versus enlisted men. Sergeant Cassidy sat nearby on an ammo box. He was just outside the opening of the hooch carving on the stave Fisher had brought back, indifferent to the rain.

  “What’s the trouble, Lieutenant?” Cassidy asked.

  Fitch looked out of the opening and started to rise.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Skipper,” Pallack said, turning to Parker. “Hey, Parker, you got to hold on. D’ enlisted are about to take another game off d’ officers.” He turned back to the game and slapped down a card, hard. “You fucking dummies. Hee, hee. Look at dat queen.” Parker’s jaws were working beneath his dark cheeks. Fitch grimaced and threw down a card.

  Parker spoke up. “Sir, I got the right for mast.”

  “You got the privilege, Parker,” Cassidy growled. “You don’t just walk in on the company commander and tell him you want mast.”

  Parker stood his ground. “I got the right for mast.” Cassidy stood up. Hawke quickly threw a card and Pallack swooped up the little pile and then slapped down another, laughing. Hawke looked at Fitch and shrugged. Fitch threw in the rest of his cards, and Pallack and Relsnik shook hands and pulled out their pens and notebooks, both recording the score so there was no chance of error, making cracks about how anyone could be so dumb at playing cards and still manage to become an officer. The card game had eased the tension between Cassidy and Parker by giving Cassidy a chance to look away, which he took.

  Fitch crawled out of the hooch and stood. “OK, Parker. Let’s go inside Hawke’s hooch and talk things out.” Fitch’s manner was easy and direct, and Parker seemed to relax a little. They crawled into Hawke’s hooch.

  Mellas walked back to his own hooch. People were out by the wire setting in trip flares for the night. A late cooking fire was visible down at Conman’s squad, and Mellas shouted for it to be put out. It disappeared. The lines were quiet.

  Mellas started to write a letter in the remaining twilight but was interrupted by Skosh, who’d packed the radio over with him. “It’s the Six,” he said. He squatted down and casually began reading Mellas’s letter, which Mellas snatched away from him.

  Fitch’s voice crackled over the net. “Your character Pappa who was just up here has twenty minutes to get his fucking hair cut. Then I want to see him. You copy?”

  “I copy.” Mellas sighed and handed Skosh the hook. “Why do I have to fart around with goddamned haircuts in the middle of the jungle because some colonel is going to show up?”

  Skosh shrugged his shoulders. “Just another inch of green dildo, sir.”

  Mellas walked down to Jancowitz’s area. Parker was talking with Mole who, like many of the brothers in the battalion, wore a noose of heavy khaki nylon rope around his neck. Mellas guessed that it had something to do with lynching but was afraid to ask. The rest of the blacks from Third Squad stood around them. They fell silent when they saw Mellas approaching.

  Everyone’s hair had been cut except Parker’s. Jackson spoke up, his broad face relaxed, his eyes calmly engaging with Mellas’s. “Sir, I think they’re fucking with the brothers over these haircuts.” It was stated with no apparent anger.

  Mellas tried hard for the same tone. “Jackson, no one has any choice in the matter. Curly hair doesn’t look regulation and we’ve got the Big Six coming in tomorrow and Lieutenant Fitch is on the spot. I really don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jackson said, turning away.

  Mellas looked at Parker. “You know you’ve got about fifteen minutes, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Parker mumbled.

  “OK. Get it done and get up to the skipper and we’ll forget the whole goddamn silly thing.”

  It was almost dark when PFC Tyrell Broyer saw Gunny Cassidy and Sergeant Ridlow from Lieutenant Goodwin’s platoon coming down the hill. Cassidy was holding a pair of hair clippers. Broyer nervously adjusted his glasses even though they didn’t need adjusting. He glanced at Parker, who shared their two-man fighting hole. Cassidy and Ridlow disappeared into Bass’s hooch and Broyer heard them laughing.

  Parker, his hair still uncut, leaned against the rear of the fighting hole, staring into the jungle. His rifle rested on a plastic sandbag and his arms were crossed in front of him.

  “Hey, brother,” Broyer said quietly, “I think we got trouble coming down the hill about your hair.”

  Parker grunted and spat. “God and country bigot motherfuckers.”

  Broyer looked back at the hooch above him. Sergeant Bass was crawling out, his beefy arms showing below his neatly rolled-up sleeves. Cassidy emerged behind Bass, his face set hard. Next came Ridlow. Parker gave a quick sideways glance over his shoulder and immediately turned away, stone-faced. Broyer wanted to run for help but didn’t know where to go. He excused his inaction by recalling that he couldn’t leave his hole during the evening 100 percent alert. He shifted his feet nervously.

  The group of sergeants gathered silently around them.

  “It’s time, Parker,” Cassidy said. “I see you decided you’d rather have it done by a pro.”

  Parker clenched his teeth.

  “You fucking answer, turd, when you’re spoken to,” Bass said.

  Bass had moved in front of the fighting hole and was glaring directly into Parker’s face. Ridlow stood to his right, his boots next to Parker’s face. Cassidy was to Bass’s left. Bass motioned fo
r Broyer to get out of the hole and Broyer scrambled out, still not knowing where to go. He saw the rest of the squad watching in silence.

  “Did you fucking hear me, you puke?” Cassidy asked.

  “Yes sir,” Parker mumbled.

  “I didn’t hear you, Parker,” Bass said, smiling.

  “Yes, sir,” Parker spat out.

  “How would you like it, Parker?” Cassidy asked. “Parted on the left? What do you think, Sergeant Bass? What would Sassoon do?”

  “Maybe on the left,” Bass said. “No, make it down the center. A reverse Mohawk.”

  “I think we ought to take his fucking head off,” Ridlow growled.

  Cassidy squatted down and leaned forward to whisper in Parker’s ear. “Parker, you fucking turd, so help me God if you make one fucking wrong move I’m gonna screw your head off and shit in it. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with these fucking officers in this company to take the crap that pukes like you hand out all the time, but if I had my way I’d have your ass strung up to the nearest fucking tree. You don’t request mast about a fucking haircut. You request mast when something is really wrong. And you don’t disobey orders. Now you sit up real nice on the edge of this hole and get your hair cut like a man, or so help me God I’ll personally beat holy fuck out of you and leave you for the fucking maggots where you belong. You understand?”

  Bass had also squatted down to look directly at him. Parker glanced around. The others in the squad were peering at him from their holes. They had all gotten their hair cut. Broyer heard the sound of Cassidy squeezing the hair clippers. He looked at Bass’s heavy forearms. His knees were shaking and there was a racing feeling inside him.

  “I just want to say my hair ain’t no longer than some chuck that grease it down. That’s all I want to say.”

  “Good. Now you’ve said it,” Cassidy said. “And I want to say I don’t want a puke like you in my Marine Corps. I just want to say that. You aren’t worthy of the name. Now, I’ll give you three counts to sit your ass on the edge of this fighting hole. One . . .”

  Parker moved.

  Broyer, still standing next to the fighting hole, took a breath. He looked around. He saw the lieutenant standing by Bass’s hooch. Like everyone else, he was watching Cassidy clip Parker bald.

  As soon as they stood down from the evening alert Broyer took off for Second Platoon to find China. It was the first time he’d been in another platoon’s area, and he was a little surprised to see trash lying around the fighting holes. Walking by a hooch he heard a loud guffaw and then a hearty laugh. Lieutenant Goodwin’s blond head stuck out of the hooch. Broyer scurried by, feeling out of place and hoping to avoid a confrontation. He walked up to a brother he didn’t know, pushed his glasses back up on his nose, walked up to the man, and went through the now familiar handshake. He asked where China hung out. The brother pointed toward a small hooch, half hidden beneath a huge felled tree, barely two feet from a machine-gun position. He went over and saw China and two brothers leaning against the trunk of the tree on the side away from the hooch. They were eating supper. Their voices reminded him of summer nights in Baltimore.

  China greeted him, going through the handshake. “Hey, brother, glad you could come by. Meet my friends.”

  One of them offered Broyer a C-ration can filled with hot coffee. He took it and sat down, gingerly holding the folded-down lid so the heat wouldn’t burn his fingers. When he started to tell them about the haircut, he was surprised at the anger that spilled out. “And then the chickenshit motherfuckers shaved him bald. They shaved him fucking bald. And we just stood there and watched those motherfuckers.”

  When Broyer finished, China sprang to his feet. “You tell Parker get his ass over here soon as he can. And don’t worry, we won’t be standin’ ’round much longer no more. We got the power.” He was pounding his fist on the log. “We got the power. We gonna do some fuckin’ over our own pretty soon.”

  Broyer hurried away, feeling understood, feeling China’s will and strength.

  China sat down against the log and sighed. He reached out to heat up another cup of coffee. The two others, knowing that China would speak when he had something to say, began to talk to each other, extinguishing the fire when darkness finally fell.

  Broyer relayed China’s message to Parker, and when Parker got off watch that night he made his way over to Second Platoon’s area. He had to half-crawl, half-crouch up to the top of the LZ and then head back down to Second Platoon to avoid being shot by accident. In the blackness it took him about an hour.

  When he reached China’s hooch, the brother China shared it with was asleep and alone. He angrily told Parker to go down to the hole below them. He did, and after identifying himself, he slipped into China’s two-man fighting hole.

  “Shhh,” China said, pretending to hear something, trying to think. The wind moved up the hill toward them, smelling of wet earth and moss. Brush, unseen, just ten meters in front of them, whispered beneath creaking trees.

  “You said you wanted to see me,” Parker finally whispered.

  “Yeah.” China was still thinking.

  “They fucked with me this afternoon. Fucked with me bad, man.”

  “You stupid shit, shut the fuck up,” China whispered fiercely.

  “Hey, what’s with you, man?”

  “What’s with me?” China whispered. “What’s with you makin’ a jive-assed flaky scene over a fuckin’ haircut?”

  “Hey, you told me, man—”

  “I told you we’d wait to pick our ground and then we’d have a cause. Now I got every brother in the company wonderin’ what the fuck I’m gonna do over a jive-assed fuckin’ haircut. I ought to take you fuckin’ head off. I just get the brothers sendin’ parts to me and you got to blow shit up.”

  “They fucking castrated me right in front of my brothers and you be saying I fucked up?” Parker’s lips curled back; his anger was barely under control. China felt it but knew he could handle Parker.

  “Hey, brothers, cool it, huh?” China’s hooch mate was whispering from the open flap. “Ridlow be checking lines anytime and he light big fire to our asses if you don’t cool it.”

  Parker cooled down slightly, and China shifted his feet.

  “Look,” China said, “the racist motherfuckers gonna be taught a lesson, but you gotta do it up right. You hear me? You gotta do it up right. We don’t keep the power unless we keep our brains. You hear me? And the brothers back home need weapons—real weapons.”

  “I hear you,” Parker said sullenly. “I’ll kill the motherfucker myself.”

  “You don’t kill nobody without my say-so.”

  “I’ll kill any fucking pig I want.”

  “You listen a me, Parker. We need you. You know that. Right? You know that. You brothers need you. But we don’t need you doing no killin’ unless it’s a real showdown. We don’t need you doin’ that. You let me and Henry decide that stuff. We get it together next time we in VCB.”

  “Shit. We ain’t seen VCB in two months. What makes you think we see VCB now? Henry rotate home before you see him. Sheeit.”

  “We see him, Parker. You just learn to bide time. We got time. Now you let me think how I’m gonna handle this, OK? And no fuckin’ around with it. You just let me think about this tonight and I’ll start seein’ the brothers in the morning. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “You did fine, brother. It took a lot of guts to stand up like that. I’m sorry I jumped on you. It’s just we playin’ for really big stakes here. You hear me? Big stakes. Can be no mis-takes.” China cackled, leaving Parker nothing to say.

  Parker went to all fours to feel his way back to his own fighting hole, leaving China in total blackness. China spent the rest of his watch and even took his hooch mate’s watch trying to figure out how to handle the situation. He had to move the emphasis from something trivial like haircuts. Cassidy seemed the likely target. Cassidy, not the fucking haircut, was the key to the situation. He’d see the brothers first thing in the morning before patrol.

  China did see the brothers first thing in the morning. Mellas, worried, watched him
talking. When Mellas went down to join First Squad for the patrol, Mole was conspicuously late, still cleaning his machine gun in full view of the assembled squad, picking away at minuscule pieces of lint. The heavy noose hung from his coffee-colored neck.

  Mole, who was six-two and very well built, didn’t look like a mole. He’d received the nickname on the DMZ operation. Connolly’s squad had been pinned down, and Mole had moved so low to the ground behind rocks and bushes to flank the enemy that the rest of the squad swore he’d gone underground. He’d opened up on the NVA, killing two and scattering the rest. The skipper had put him up for a Bronze Star.

  “You going to burp it too, Mole?” Mellas asked, trying to make his voice light.

  Mole continued cleaning the weapon. “Gun’s gotta be babied, sir,” he mumbled, “’specially when we can’t get the fucking parts we order.”

  Mellas squatted down next to him. “You pissed off about something, Mole?”

  “No, sir. Just doing my job.” Mole scrutinized the gun’s heavy receiver.

  Not wanting to confront the haircut issue, Mellas looked at his watch. “Look, Mole, we’re five minutes late already. Try and hurry it up, OK?”

  Mole grunted and clamped the belt-feeder assembly into place.

  Mellas joined Connolly and Vancouver, as well as Daniels, the artillery FO; the German shepherd, Pat; and Corporal Arran, Pat’s handler. They were all checking their weapons, adjusting straps, stuffing favorite C-rations into pockets for lunch, and taking final drinks of water before topping off their canteens—all the nervous rituals one does to keep the ego functioning in the face of imminent death.

  Mellas felt a surge of pride that Vancouver was in his platoon. Although he hadn’t known who Vancouver was at the time, he remembered clearly their first encounter. It had been at VCB while he was waiting for a helicopter to take him and Goodwin out to Matterhorn. It was mostly a time of cold drizzle, boredom, and nervous energy amid rifled boxes of C-rations gone soggy and the smell of JP-4 fuel and urinal pipes stuck in sodden clay, but Mellas could have spent the rest of his days lying there in the mud. That squalid landing zone at VCB was a place where he could stay alive, where the dreaded bush lay in the future, beyond the helicopter’s ramp. At VCB you could watch the helicopters leave without you. There, you never had to step through the dark aluminum-ringed portal to the unknown terror of the bush.