Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  “I can’t promise you anything past that,” he said.

  “Promises are bullshit! I told you, I know I’ll probably never see you again after you leave. I can live with that. That’s why I said no strings attached. I won’t ask you to write, unless you want to. I won’t be looking for vows of undying love, and promises to come back to me once this thing is over. It won’t ever be over for you, will it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Ever ask yourself why?”

  “More times than you can count. Doc Cable and I had a long discussion on the same subject.”

  “I know. I listened.” She laughed. “It wasn’t hard. By the time you two had killed that bottle you were so loud the whole ward could have heard.”

  “You little shit,” he joined in her laughter. “And here I thought we were being so cool. What did you learn?”

  “That you really have no idea what motivates you.”

  “True enough. I’ve had some time to think about it since then, though. All the reasons I gave the Doc, they’re only part of it. There’s another reason, one that I’m not sure is entirely rational. But it’s there. There’s a feeling you get when you’re living on the edge, a feeling like no other in the world. Combat High, some people call it. Hard to describe to someone who has never felt it. It’s something you don’t have to describe to someone who has. You get shot at, the first time, you’re terrified. Your diaphragm contracts, tries to pull everything in your chest up into your neck. Heartbeat shoots up, you can hear your pulse inside your head. Feel like you can’t move, try to talk and all that comes out is a squeak. Then the adrenaline rush hits you, can’t take more than a fraction of a second. It floods you, gives you tremendous energy. You’re still scared, but euphoric. Seems like everything becomes sharper, you hear better, see better. Reactions get speeded up. Feel twenty feet tall, all you’ve got to do is suppress your desire to get the hell away from there and let your reactions take over.

  “When it’s over there’s the letdown. Like coming down off morphine. So you want that high again. You get addicted to it, bad as any junkie sticking a needle in his arm. And the next time you get shot at there’s not quite as much fear and not quite as much of a high. But then something else will happen, something more dangerous, like a grenade coming in, or a mortar barrage, or an ambush, and, bingo, there it is again.

  “Some people, they never get over the fear, continue to find it hard to suppress the urge to flee. A perfectly healthy reaction, but one that doesn’t get them too far as soldiers. So they do only one tour, drop out, get as far away from the military as they can. Count themselves lucky they survived, have no desire to go back to it.

  “Others, they’re like me. Continue to go from one bad situation to a worse one. Get pissed if they get assigned to a company that isn’t seeing much action. Volunteer for the Mobile Strike Forces; what we call the Mike Force. Units that are sent where it’s hot. Or for the Delta Project, or SOG. Casualties get pretty high. Lots of my friends are dead. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t been wounded at least once. Sounds stupid, when I talk about it. Not much survival value in it. Nobody I know really expects to live through it.”

  He took her by the hand and looked into her eyes. “So do you still want me to stay with you, realizing that I’m a weirdo?”

  “More than ever,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I’ve known other men, civilians mostly. Boring. They don’t know how to live. They’re tied up with petty shit; how much money they’re going to make, what kind of car to drive, how they look. And the dropouts, the hippies, are no better. They’re worse conformists than the straights. You look at them, it’s almost like a uniform. Long hair, beads, scruffiness; it’s like someone decreed that, if you’re going to be a hippie, this is what you wear. And not an original idea among them. Knee-jerk reactions to the straight life, to the war, to the so-called establishment. Phony, most of it. Once they grow out of it they’ll be more straight than the ones they’re supposedly rebelling against. Most of them come from middle- to upper-class backgrounds, poor little rich kids, and that’s what will tell in the end. Not hypocritical ideas of brotherhood and peace and loving your fellow man. The only men I’ve known who know how to cut through the bullshit are like yourself. People who have been there, who have nothing to prove to anyone. Who live for today, because they know damned well there is no tomorrow.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Once upon a time I knew a guy very much like you. He was a sergeant in Special Forces. I met him at Fort Sam Houston when I was going through training. He was wonderful, funny, tender, and strong. Sometimes all at once. I loved him a lot.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He was killed in the Ashau Valley. On his second trip.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He wasn’t. I can’t be. I had him for a little while, and that little while was more than most people have in their lives. And don’t worry, I’m not looking for someone to take his place. No strings, remember? When you get ready to leave you just walk out. Unless I kick you out first!”

  “Fair enough. You said it would be a couple of weeks before they spring me? Where did you get that info?”

  “I asked the good doctor. He tells me just about anything I ask.”

  “Then let’s celebrate. Waitress!”

  His voice drew the attention of the next table. Four men sat there. All wore hair that was long and greasy, had muscles showing plainly under dirty T-shirts. They stared at him. He stared back, causing them to shift their eyes. They muttered among themselves. He turned back to Lisa.

  At the feel of a hand on his shoulder he tried to turn, hit his bum leg on the table support, blanched with pain.

  “Hey, man, easy,” said the owner of the hand. “Didn’t mean to spook yuh. You hurt yourself?”

  Jim identified the man as one of those who had been sitting at the table. “No harm done,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “You just back from the Nam, man?”

  “Yeah, I’m just back from Viet nam,” Jim said, stressing the first syllable. In his experience only those who had never been there called it “the Nam.”

  “What’s it like over there? I mean, I wanted to go but my old man insisted I go to school or he was gonna cut my money off, and nobody wants that, huh?” He gave Jim’s shoulder what was meant to be a playful nudge. “How’d they catch you, party too hard and lose your deferment?” He laughed at his own joke.

  “Something like that,” Jim said thinly.

  “Yeah, well, that happens. You got a good-lookin’ lady here, anyhow. Mind if I join you?”

  “Yeah we mind, shithead,” said Lisa. “Now why don’t you take your filthy ass back over to your own table and have a little circle jerk with your buddies before I kick your nuts up into your throat, you dumb fuck.”

  “Hey lady, don’t get so upset,” the man said, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “I was just tryin’ to be friendly.” To Jim he said in a lower voice, “Tough bitch, man.” He flashed a V…“Peace, brother.”

  “Pees on you too,” Jim replied pleasantly. The man left.

  Lisa smiled innocently at him, her big dark eyes sparkling.

  “Christ,” he said, “Where did you learn to cuss like that?”

  “I told you I went out with an SF sergeant. And one thing I forgot to mention, my dad was in the Marine Corps.”

  “I might have known,” he groaned. “A military brat.”

  “Best kind of brat. Besides, that asshole would have had all his buddies over here and they would have been trying to put the make on me, and I just wasn’t up for that shit tonight. Now, where were we?”

  They talked, laughed, and drank until it finally occurred to Jim to check his watch. “Holy shit,” he said, “it’s twelve-thirty. I’ve got to get back or Doc Cable’s going to turn me into a pumpkin.” He retrieved his crutches from beneath the table. Getting up was painful. His leg had stiffened from sit
ting so long in one place.

  “Tell you what,” Lisa said as they got to the entrance, “I’ll go get the car and come back for you. That way you won’t have to walk all the way across the parking lot.”

  He did not object. The distance to the car seemed impossibly long. Besides, the night air was pleasant after the smoky heat of the bar. He closed his eyes and let the breeze waft over his face.

  “What happened, man, your watchdog leave?” He looked over his shoulder, saw the man from the bar flanked by his three buddies.

  “This is the big bad-ass soldier boy who was hiding behind that little cunt,” the man sneered. “Don’t look so big and bad-ass to me, does he to you?”

  Jim shifted his grip slightly on the crutch, placing most of his weight on his good leg.

  “I think we ought to take his sticks away from him, see if he’ll crawl around like a worm,” said one of the others.

  “What about it, maggot, you want to squirm around a little bit?” asked the first, moving toward him.

  The crutch described a short upper arc, acting as an extension of his stiffened arm. Its tip caught the man in the crotch. A howl of anguish escaped his lips as he folded to the pavement. As he was dropping, Jim let go of that crutch, caught the other by its lower end and swung it with both hands. When it impacted on the second man’s head it splintered. He dropped beside his companion and didn’t move. The other two moved toward him, cursing. He held them at bay with the jagged ends of the crutch, thrusting at them when they got too close; backing awkwardly away. Okay, Jim, he thought to himself, any more bright ideas? This is going to hurt. A lot.

  Bright lights flashed, along with a screeching of brakes and blowing of horn. A battered VW was barreling directly toward the two men. They barely escaped its path, throwing themselves out of the way. As they were getting up it came round again, scattering them. Twice more it came back, chasing one behind a group of cars and the other back into the building. It was like a bullfight, except that this bull looked like an enraged rat.

  The VW screeched to a halt beside him. “Will you get your ass in here instead of standing there and laughing like an idiot,” Lisa shouted. “The cops will be here before long.”

  “Who cares,” he said as he folded himself painfully into the seat. “We weren’t causing any trouble, they were.”

  “This is San Francisco and you and I are GIs,” she said, speeding out of the parking lot. “Welcome to the world, love.”

  At the entrance to the hospital he finally got up enough nerve to ask a question that had been tormenting him.

  “Did you, one night a few weeks ago, by any chance, come back to the ward after hours?”

  “Now, that would be against regulations, wouldn’t it?” She was half turned to face him, her eyes glistening with, what was it, amusement? “And you know that good little soldiers don’t break regulations, do they? Regulations like those against fraternization between officers and enlisted people?” She pulled his head down to hers.

  Too soon she broke the kiss. “Now, Captain, the way I see it is you’ve got about five minutes before bed check, no crutches, and a long limping walk back to the ward. Goodnight.”

  He ate up several of his precious moments by staring after her departing car. I’m gonna enjoy the next two weeks, he thought.

  The next day he waited for her to show up for work. By the time she was two hours late he remembered that she had weekends off. When he had been sick she had been there almost every day, and he had gotten used to it.

  The day was long and boring. The idea of going out alone had no appeal, so he resigned himself to more boredom that night. He went to the hospital library and searched for something he had not already read. It was a difficult task. He’d always been an avid reader. While he had been confined to bed he’d done little else, going through the little library’s meager offerings quite thoroughly.

  After some persuasion he got the supply sergeant to issue him a cane to replace the two lost crutches. The sergeant assured him there would be a Report of Survey on the crutches, and that he would have to pay for them. Typical, he thought. He disliked supply sergeants in general; they all seemed to think the items under their care were their personal property and hated to release anything. After all, if you gave something out to someone who needed it, you wouldn’t have it anymore. Then what did you do if someone came asking for it? But he thought he might want to be a little more careful about army property from now on. Any more Reports of Survey and his pay slips were going to be in the negative numbers.

  By four o’clock he was going thoroughly crazy and beginning to reconsider his decision not to go out. There was a small Officers’ Club on the grounds of the hospital, and while he didn’t particularly feel like sitting around drinking by himself, he was beginning to think it would be better than dying of boredom.

  A corpsman came to the door. “Hey, Cap’n,” the man said, “you’ve got a phone call down at the nurses’ station.”

  “I figured you might need rest after your big night last night,” came her voice over the receiver. “That’s why I didn’t call sooner. How are you feeling?”

  “Great. No, that’s a lie. Physically great. But I’m bored to tears.”

  She laughed. “We can cure that. Do you want to come over to my place for a while? I’ve spent most of the day cleaning, so it should be fairly presentable. We could drink a little wine, maybe send out for a pizza. I’m no cook, so I won’t subject you to any of my culinary masterpieces. Sound okay?”

  “Sounds wonderful. Can I bring anything?”

  “Yeah, yourself. I’ll pick you up at the same time as last night.”

  Her apartment was only a few blocks from the hospital. Luckily it was on the ground floor; there was no elevator and he didn’t feel up to climbing a lot of stairs.

  The place was tiny, essentially one room with a small bathroom off to the side and a kitchenette. But it was clean and bright and decorated as well as her tiny salary would allow. It reflected her personality, feminine but not excessively so.

  “Sit,” she commanded. She poured him a glass of white wine. “I got you something today. I hope you won’t mind.” She gave him a sack with a department store logo.

  Inside were a pair of jeans, a bright red shirt, and a set of sandals. “I had to guess your size,” she said. “I hope they fit. I thought you might want to get out of your midwestern mufti and join the local population.”

  He laughed. “And avoid any more bar fights?”

  “That too. Don’t know what we’re going to do about the haircut, though. I don’t suppose you’d consider a wig?”

  “Kiss my ass,” he said. “Mind if I try these on?”

  “I wish you would. You look like an IBM repairman. All you need is a plastic pocket protector and a bunch of pens.”

  “Kiss my ass a lot,” he growled, grabbing the sack and going to the bathroom.

  “Promises, promises,” she said as he closed the door.

  The jeans were a tight fit. First he tried to put them on over his boxer shorts, got a lot of material wedged in the crotch for his trouble. He finally decided the shorts had to go. The pants fit much better. The shirt was of a very soft material and was also form-fitting. It clung to him, accentuating his chest and flat stomach. Good God, he thought, looking at himself in the mirror, I’ve lost a lot of weight.

  She looked him up and down as he emerged from the bathroom, smiled in approval. “Nice,” she said. “You’ve got a great ass. Those baggy double-knits didn’t do a thing for it.”

  “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  She shrugged. “I say what I think. And I do what I want. Does that bother you?”

  “No. I’m just not used to it. Most of the American girls I’ve known wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouthful. Of course, I haven’t known any American girls for a long time. This is the first time I’ve been back to the States since 1963.”

  “You didn’t come back here after your first tour?”r />
  “No, I went to First Special Forces Group in Okinawa. Was going to come back to go to Officers Candidate School, but the group commander talked me into applying for a direct commission instead.”

  “I didn’t realize that. So things have changed for you more than I knew.”

  “It’s an entirely different world. The TV shows are different, people are different, obviously the women are different. When I left the biggest worry of the girls I went out with was getting pregnant. Now with the pill I guess that’s gone away. They tell me there’s a sexual revolution going on, and it looks like I’ve been left out.”

  “You haven’t missed much,” she murmured.

  “You speak from experience, I take it? Tell me about it.”

  “Not now. Maybe later. For sure later. There are things you need to know about me, but I’m not sure I trust you enough to tell you right now.”

  “Not trust me enough?” His feelings were hurt. “Why, do you think I’m going to spread it all over the hospital?”

  “Maybe. Men talk, brag. It’s happened to me before.”

  “Then you went out with the wrong men. But I understand. Can’t force you to talk. I guess you’ll do it when and if you get ready.”

  “Don’t sit there so stiff! Christ, your face looks as if it’s made from rock. I’m not saying anything against you personally; please don’t take it so. It just takes a little time, that’s all.” She shifted toward him. Her full breast brushed his arm. “Now, shall I call for the pizza, or are you going to kiss me first?”