Matterhorn

by Karl Marlantes

  Arran touched fists with China and Mole. Pat sat down, still in heel position.

  “I thought you was out in the fuckin’ Au Shau or some badass place like that,” China said.

  Arran grinned. “All over. Coming back to you guys. I hear we’re skying out tomorrow.”

  The two gunners nodded but said nothing.

  Pat started whining, wanting to break heel. He had tuned in on a figure coming up the road. It was Hawke. Pat whined again. Arran laughed and released him. Pat bounded down the road to greet Hawke. Soon the two of them were roughhousing together, Hawke hugging the dog’s strong neck, cradling it in his arms and moving Pat’s head back and forth, while Pat kept trying to nuzzle into Hawke’s crotch and at the same time rub his own sides, catlike, against Hawke’s thighs.

  Hawke, still laughing at Pat’s antics, reached the three Marines. He motioned for China and Mole to remain seated.

  “Enough, OK,” Arran said to the dog. “Show the skipper some respect.” His tone then altered just slightly. “Sit.” Pat immediately was on his haunches, panting happily. “He sure as hell likes you, Skipper,” Arran said. “Not everyone gets a greeting like that.”

  Hawke was rubbing Pat’s head and ears. He looked up at the three Marines. “Yeah. I’m real glad to see you two back,” Hawke said. “Feel blind out there without you.” Then he put a hand on Mole’s shoulder and sidled between Mole and China, poking his head into the interior of the tent without saying anything to them. He pulled his head back and turned to the two gunners. “I got word you chased some chucks out of the tent.”

  “I’m out of here,” Arran said, grinning. He snapped his fingers softly and Pat stood.

  “Oh-four-thirty in the supply tent,” Hawke said.

  “Aye, sir. Nice to be back.” Arran left, Pat padding along at his left side as usual.

  The three watched for a moment as the dog and handler walked away.

  “Well?” Hawke asked.

  “Nobody chased no one, Skipper,” China said.

  Hawke looked at him for a while. “Uh-huh.”

  “No, honest Injun, sir. They just left on they own.”

  Hawke thought about it for a while. “You know, China, I don’t give a fuck about congregating. Never did. Everyone’s going to turn green when we board those choppers tomorrow.” He unconsciously looked skyward. “You guys ready?”

  They both cocked their heads to the side, and Mole shrugged his shoulders.

  “I need you to keep the newbies steady. OK?”

  “We can do that, sir,” China said.

  Hawke looked at them, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Good. Thanks.”

  The two gunners watched him walk away down the road. “He’s decent,” Mole said.

  “Yeah,” said China. “He is. We got lucky for once.”

  “China, you think we should tell him?” Mole said in a low murmur.

  China shone the beam of his smile on his friend. “Say what? Tell him what?”

  “Get real, China. About Henry offing Cassidy.”

  “That be old shit. They ain’t doin’ nothin’.”

  “I don’t know,” said Mole.

  “Hey, man. No way, brother. I been talkin’ to those guys, and they see what I mean ’bout the Panther brotherhood. We startin’ here in the Nam and we bringin’ the true grit back home. We be tested in the fire, and tested under fire—”

  Mole cut him short. “Just you stop, China. Just for once dispense with the revolutionary country preacher bullshit. Henry don’t give a shit ’bout you Black Panther mumbo jumbo. He just need the brothers to be retailing while he wholesaling. If he have to kill Cassidy to stay in charge, he gonna do it.”

  China looked down on the parts spread out on Mole’s poncho. “He just don’t get it,” he said softly.

  “You just don’t get it.”

  Mellas was awakened by the slight scraping of a boot on the plywood floor. His heart started pounding. He was covered in sweat and his head ached. Fitch, who was looking down at Mellas, sadness on his face, had deliberately scraped the boot so he wouldn’t put Mellas into combat overdrive by waking him too abruptly.

  “Hi, Jim,” Mellas said.

  Fitch sat down on the opposite cot. “You fucked up, Mellas?”

  “Naw. Just had a few beers with Cassidy is all. What time is it?”

  Fitch looked at his watch. “One o’clock.”

  “You’re already on civilian time.”

  “Never left it,” Fitch said.

  Mellas swung his feet to the floor. His head was hot and pounding. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling sweat in it. He wiped them on his new stiff trousers. “I did manage to save my fucking boots,” he said, looking at their familiar whiteness.

  There was an awkward silence. “I guess then you heard I was leaving,” Fitch finally said.

  “Yeah.” Mellas didn’t know how to go on talking about it. He saw Fitch flush slightly, probably taking the silence as condemnation, so he said, “I’m real glad you’re getting out.”

  “Me, too.” Fitch forced a half smile and there was another awkward silence.

  “When you leaving?” Mellas asked.

  “Six o’clock. Getting the big bird out of Dong Ha. I ought to be in Oky by day after tomorrow.”

  “Laundry officer, huh?” Mellas smiled.

  “Socks and T-shirts division.”

  “You could have gone to Mulvaney about this. It’s a bum deal.”

  “I’d have to go through Simpson.”

  “Shit, Skipper. Back channel. You must know that’s how it works.”

  Fitch looked away, toward the plywood wall, assuming the familiar thousand-yard stare. Mellas supposed that an entire movie was unreeling inside Fitch’s mind. Fitch finally turned and looked into Mellas’s good eye. “I don’t want to go back to the bush. I’ll do anything to stay alive.”

  He started stuffing gear into an already bulging seabag. He combed his hair, bending slightly to look into a steel mirror nailed to a two-by-four. Then he carefully put on a neatly starched stateside utility cover. His single silver lieutenant’s bar gleamed, newly polished.

  “Still dapper Dan,” Mellas said.

  “There’s a place in Da Nang called the White Elephant,” Fitch said, taking the cover off and smoothing his dark hair, “and it’s got round-eyed pussy in it. Red Cross girls, stewardesses. Air-conditioned. There’s even a goddamned German girl who sells Mercedes to AID fat cats. And in about three hours I’m going to be there getting fucked up, and I’m going to forget I ever saw this place.”

  He hoisted the seabag onto his shoulder. Mellas stood up, shakily. There was a sudden clutch in his throat. He could see Fitch’s lips quiver, then go into the tight, pursed expression that Fitch used to hide his feelings from the rest of the company.

  “You take care of yourself, Mellas,” Fitch said. “I’ll write and let you guys know what happened to me.”

  “We’d like that.”

  “You tell everyone to look me up when they get back to the world. You know it doesn’t matter if they’re snuffs.”

  “They know it.”

  They stood there looking at each other. Mellas was incredibly happy that Fitch had made it out alive.

  Just before dark Mellas bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from Gunnery Sergeant Klump and hitched a ride over to MAG-39, where he caught one of the last birds heading out to VCB. The empty, darkening land rolled beneath him. He thought of Cassidy, scared, getting drunk in the dim staff club. If it had gotten that bad, he’d better talk with the Jayhawk about it. Then he thought of Fitch in the brightly lit nightclub called the White Elephant, where American girls carried on with overweight AID and CORDS personnel. Then he thought of himself, heading for the dark jungle-covered mountains. Ten more months to go, he mused. Five more Trail of Tears ops. Five more Matterhorns. Mellas now knew that there was nothing special about Matterhorn and the Trail of Tears op. Both were just ordinary war.

  Ten minutes later the chopper had reached the mountains and the jungle sea rolled in ever larger swells over the first of the foothills. Mellas pulled out his map—this was now a compulsive habit—a
nd got his bearings as a prominent peak flashed beneath him, a river winding in a tight S-curve around it. Then they were over the next upthrust of hills, now higher and more rugged.

  Mellas untied Vancouver’s sword from the side of his pack and crawled over to an open porthole, squeezing past the door gunner, who was watching him while at the same time idly moving his eyes back and forth across the ground below. When Mellas reached the porthole, the blast of the air threatened to pull the patch off his eye. He tugged it back into place and then knelt, leaning into the rushing air, holding the sword out in front of him. Mellas looked at it for about half a minute, remembering. Then he threw the sword into the twilight.

  He watched it falling behind them, twisting, catching a glint of the dying light before it merged into the vast unbroken gray-green below. Mellas then unfolded his map and carefully marked the spot where it had fallen with a cross, printing “VS,” Vancouver’s sword, next to it.

  The door gunner shook his head. “You fucking grunts, man,” he shouted at him. “Crazy motherfuckers.”

  Coming up on VCB in the early evening, Mellas felt the nostalgia that many people feel on coming home, no matter how squalid the setting. Below him a few lights, careless of NVA rockets, blinked out from behind the blackout curtains.

  When he got out of the chopper a small group of field-grade officers from division staff were there, waiting to be picked up, with briefcases in hand and .45s in shiny black holsters. Mellas walked silently on the dark road toward the battalion area, passing the tents where he’d awaited the launching of the Bald Eagle. A company from Nineteenth Marines was there; the Marines were whittling, writing letters, cleaning rifles, and playing cards to counteract boredom and fear. The air was noticeably warmer than it had been the last time he’d been at VCB.

  He reached Bravo Company’s supply tent. Someone had made an attempt to straighten its sagging exterior. The interior was in good order, with seabags stacked neatly in the back on wooden pallets to keep them off the mud. The old writing table was there, with two candles burning on it. Three strangers sat inside.

  “Can we help you, Marine?” one of them asked sharply. He was beefed up and obviously had just arrived from the world. He had a knife stuck in his boot. Mellas wanted to groan.

  “Fuck,” Mellas said. “Is this Bravo Company or what? I’m Lieutenant Mellas. Where’s Hawke and Scar?”

  The three strangers stood up.

  Mellas sloughed off his pack, undid his belt-suspenders, and let everything fall with a thud to the metal runway matting beneath his feet.

  “Welcome back, sir,” the man said. “We’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Staff Sergeant Irvine and this is Staff Sergeant Bentham, and this is Lieutenant LaValley, sir.” He hesitated a moment. “We heard that you lost the eye.”

  “So did everyone else,” Mellas said.

  Mellas shook hands with each of them, playing the role of silent wounded hero. He could see that the new lieutenant was in awe of him, just as he himself would have been in awe of a veteran a couple of months ago. Their reaction meant nothing to him now, other than informing him that tales of Matterhorn had probably been exaggerated far beyond anything he could have concocted, and that the new kids would be jittery as hell.

  Mellas dug into his pack and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “Any word on what’s happening?”

  The new lieutenant told him that they were going to Eiger and would spend about a week there guarding the artillery battery. Charlie Company would be dropped into the river valley north of Eiger at the same time and would move north. After a week the two companies would flip-flop. Alpha was already on Sky Cap with Delta Company sweeping the Suoi Tien Hien River valley just to its immediate east.

  “When we leaving?” Mellas asked.

  “Oh-six-hundred tomorrow.”

  Mellas grunted. “Then I guess I got time tonight to get fucked up.” He held the bottle up to the new lieutenant and the two new staff sergeants. “Anybody want some? It’s your last chance.”

  They each took a small shot in a coffee mug or canteen cup to show Mellas that they were friendly.

  “You think the zone’ll be hot when Charlie hits it?” the lieutenant asked, holding his mug between his knees and leaning forward.

  “Do I look like a fucking gypsy?” Mellas wisecracked. “Naw. I don’t think so.” He looked at the amber liquid, reflecting the candlelight. “How’re the troops?”

  “We got a lot of boots, Lieutenant.” It was the other staff sergeant, Bentham, who’d spoken up. Mellas looked at him, surprised. He talked as if he’d been in combat before. Mellas was thankful for that. He’d probably made sergeant on his last tour, then had gotten promoted to staff back in the world, and had been shipped out here as soon as his two years of grace were over.

  “Which platoon you got?”

  “I got Third Platoon. I have that until we get one more lieutenant.”

  “And you two?” Mellas asked the others.

  “I’ll be honchoing Second Platoon with Lieutenant Goodwin,” the staff sergeant with the knife in his boot answered.

  “And I’ve got your old platoon,” LaValley said, smiling.

  “They ain’t mine,” Mellas said, laughing. “You can blame all your troubles on a guy named Fracasso. Of course I’ll take credit for anything they do that’s good.”

  “From what I hear they never really had much time to feel like they were Lieutenant Fracasso’s bunch,” LaValley said.

  Mellas swirled the whiskey. “Naw. He was one hell of a good guy. They were his platoon all right.” He looked at LaValley, feeling a wave of sadness. Then he tossed down his whiskey and grinned, despite the empty hole in him that the whiskey couldn’t fill. “Don’t you worry about it. They’ll be yours in no time. After you’ve been here awhile you can tell a winner from a loser in one second flat. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Mellas tried to include everyone as he spoke, and he was sure everyone felt included. But he knew that the Jayhawk could also tell a winner from a loser. The guy with the fucking knife in his boot was going with Scar so that Scar could keep him from doing too much damage.

  “As for me,” Mellas added, “I’m going to go find a couple friends of mine and get knee-walking, commode-hugging drunk. And if I’m at all successful you might just have to take the company tomorrow while the skipper and executive officer try to regain consciousness.”

  He left them laughing and walked outside to look for Hawke and Goodwin. He saw a lone Marine walking up the road, with a towel around his neck and a soap container in one hand. Probably on his way to a final shower before the op.

  “Lieutenant Mellas,” the kid shouted, “we heard you was back.”

  It was Fisher.

  “Jesus Christ, Fisher. I thought you were back in the world. What do we have to do to get out of this fucking place?”

  “Beats me, sir. I think we have to get killed.”

  They both stopped short at the words; then they both laughed.

  They shook hands, grinning hugely.

  “You OK? I mean, down there.” Mellas nodded toward Fisher’s crotch.

  Fisher brought him up to speed on his operation and recovery from the leech.

  “You mean everything works?” Mellas asked.

  “I ain’t shittin’ you, Lieutenant,” said Fisher. “At least everything works in Japan. Goddamn but I’m in love with Japanese women. They treat you real decent, sir.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Mellas replied. “I’m glad you’re OK. I mean it, Fisher. I’m really glad.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, sir,” Fisher said. Then his expression changed. “I heard about you guys getting in the deep shit.”

  Mellas didn’t want to talk about Matterhorn. “You got your old squad back?” he asked.

  Fisher understood. “What’s left of them,” he said. “It’s still Second Squad, I guess.” He kicked at a mud clot. “Shit. Sixty-seven days to go. I’m a double-digit midget.” He grinned at Mellas. “I’m so short I can swing my legs sitting on my flak jacket. In fact I’m so short, when I wear it, it drags on the ground. How many y
ou got, Lieutenant?”

  “Three-hundred-three and a wake-up.” He pointed his finger at Fisher’s face. “And don’t give me any shit.”

  “Shit, Lieutenant, you still ought to count in months.”

  Mellas laughed, genuinely glad Fisher was getting short. He thrust the boxes of cigars at Fisher for him to hand out to the company and contined up the road. When he got to the BOQ tent he found McCarthy, Murphy, Goodwin, and Hawke laughing around a footlocker with three bottles opened on it.

  “Roll up for the magical mystery tour!” he sang. “I’m coming to take you a-way-y.”

  Two officers he didn’t know groaned. One of them was trying to sleep. “Holy Christ. Another one.”

  “Hey!” McCarthy shouted. “It’s Mellas. With a fucking patch!” Murphy hugged Mellas and lifted him off the floor while Mellas held the bottle of whiskey above his head. Murphy set Mellas down and McCarthy grabbed the bottle from him. “Blessed be God, forever,” McCarthy said, holding it up to the light. “For our good and the good of the Corps.” Mellas flipped him the bird.

  “Scar and Patch,” Hawke said. “I don’t have a company. I’ve got a fucking animal act.”

  “Well, take your fucking act someplace else,” the disgruntled would-be sleeper said. “I got a watch to stand in three hours.”

  “No fucking stamina,” Hawke shot back. He stood and carefully put his stateside utility cover on his head, adjusting it in a steel mirror that hung on one of the tent poles. “Come on,” he said. “Cassidy’s in Quang Tri. Let’s go over to his place and let these fine staff officers sleep.”

  Cassidy slept in a neat little room with its own exterior entry in the back of the S-4 tent. It was dark. Hawke eventually found a candle and lit it. He sat down on Cassidy’s cot.

  “By the way, Hawke,” Mellas said, “congratulations on getting the company.” He held out his hand. “It’s number fucking one as far as I’m concerned.”