Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  The pizza never got ordered.

  “Think you’ll be able to live for a whole week without me?” she teased him as they dressed.

  “In great agony,” he replied. “I’m going to want you all the time. Christ, I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”

  “Horny little devil, aren’t you? You’ll just have to suffer. They catch us doing anything at the hospital and I’ll get an Article 15, probably get restricted to barracks, and then where will you be?”

  “Up shit creek without the proverbial paddle, I guess. Okay, you convinced me. But every time you see me, just know that I’ll be thinking about next Friday. And what we’ll do then. And you’ll think about it too.”

  “You are a bastard. Thank heavens I won’t be seeing you all that much during the week.”

  “How come?”

  “I have a job, remember? There are other patients, and you’re almost well. I don’t think the ward nurse is going to put up with me spending as much time with you as I have over the last couple of months. Too bad. It was nice taking care of you. Made me feel needed.”

  “You’re still needed,” he told her seriously. “If not to take care of me at least to be there. And not just sexually, either. I like you a lot, Lisa Brown.”

  “Yeah, well, before we start blubbering, let’s get you back to the ward. Having trouble walking?” she asked, grinning wickedly. “I know I am.”

  “Those guys were right, you know.”

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows arched.

  “Yeah. You are one tough little bitch. And,” he said, blocking the blow she threw at his stomach, “I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  The next week was, as he had known it would be, difficult. Each time he saw her she gave him a knowing little smile and he was instantly aroused. He had to force himself to stay in his room, buried in a book, watching but not watching the inane TV programming, just to keep from following her around.

  From the news he saw that opposition to the war was growing. Just across the bay at Berkeley the students seemed to spend more time marching and protesting than they did in class. He wondered when they studied. Probably didn’t. Must be nice, he thought. Wish I had the money to do that.

  Boris and Natasha continued to torture him, but were privately amazed at his progress. Something, they didn’t know what, caused him to push himself to the limit. He could have told them what it was, but didn’t.

  The fruit of his labor came on Friday when Doctor Cable told him he could have the entire weekend off, Friday afternoon to Sunday midnight. “I guess you can find a place to stay all that time,” he said, a broad smile splitting his face. “Must be a nice girl. You were in a hell of a lot better mood last week. I don’t know her, do I?”

  “I doubt it, Doc,” he lied. “Just somebody who takes pity on a poor soldier boy.”

  “Sure. Well, don’t let her break anything. If you continue to progress, you can be sprung from this place in another week. Then it’s back to Fort Bragg for you?”

  “Don’t think so. I might take a little time off. Maybe see this part of the States. Haven’t really spent a lot of time on the West Coast.”

  “Yeah. I understand. By the way, this doesn’t have any relation to the fact that Specialist Brown just put in for a thirty-day leave, does it? No? I thought it was just a coincidence. That’s what I told the charge nurse, anyway. Have a good weekend.”

  “The Doc is onto us,” he told her that night in the lull after the whirlwind of their first lovemaking.

  She snuggled closer, threw a leg over his. “I know,” she said. “He told me to be careful. I think he feels like he’s my dad. He sat me down for a long father-daughter talk today. Warned me not to get too attached to you.” She giggled. “I’m afraid I shocked him. Told him all I was after was a good fuck.”

  “And am I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yeah,” she said again, enjoying the expression on his face. He looked so forlorn! She relented.

  “You’re more than that and you know it. Maybe that’s what I thought it would be at first. And I did need it. You’re my first man in a long time. I told myself you’d be safe, that you and I could spend some time together and enjoy ourselves and then you would go away and forget about me. And I could forget about you. And maybe that’s what will still happen. But to paraphrase something I heard last weekend, I’ve grown to like you an awful lot, Captain James No-Middle-Initial Carmichael. Why don’t you have a middle name, by the way?”

  “We were too poor. Couldn’t afford it. I got the first name, my brother got the middle. Wasn’t too bad a deal for me. His name is Ferdinand.”

  “You’re such a liar!”

  “Yeah. And you are a sexy little wench. And if you don’t stop what you’re doing we’re not going to get any pizza tonight either.”

  He slept lightly, as usual. The slightest noise, or even an absence of noise, would bring him instantly alert. He was surprised at how comforting it was to have her beside him on the bed. Her soft breathing was soothing to his soul, her warmth a balm. It had been a very long time since he had slept with anyone, hadn’t realized how much he missed it. Why did he feel so safe with her? He found it much easier to drop back off to sleep after one of his alerts. And his dreams were far less threatening. At times they were almost pleasant.

  The weekend ended all too quickly. Every moment had been filled with joy. He found her wickedly funny, ever ready to point out the foibles of the human race, including herself. They talked of nothing serious; the war didn’t exist, there were no political problems in the world, the United States was not tearing itself apart like some giant beast caught in a trap from which it could not be extricated. Nothing existed outside the little bubble they made for themselves. They pointedly refused to discuss the future. Perhaps it was because they realized that the future would go on in its inexorable way, ignoring puny man’s efforts to influence it.

  It intruded upon him the next week when he received a call from the assignment officer in Infantry Branch back in Washington. “We understand that you’ll be back to full duty before long,” the major said. “Given any thought to where you’d like to be assigned? And before you tell me back to Special Forces, I hope you realize that you’d be doing your career some real harm. You haven’t had an assignment out of Group since you were commissioned. You badly need some regular army time, command time especially.”

  Jim was nice enough not to laugh openly over the phone. Career! What career? It was difficult to think about what would be good for your career when you had serious doubts you would live long enough to have to worry about it.

  The major, mistaking his silence for assent, went on. “Now what I’d recommend is a basic training company commander slot. We have lots of them open; Fort Polk, Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Hood. Where would you like to go?”

  “Major, I can save you a whole lot of trouble, make your assignment job much easier, and get what I want too, if you’ll go along with it. You’re short on captains. A hell of a lot of the shake-n-bake first lieutenants you’re sending to USARV are ending up in O-3 slots, simply because there isn’t anybody else to assign. And they can’t handle it, most of them. Hell, the way you’re promoting them it only takes a year to make first john.”

  “So don’t tell me. Out of the goodness of your heart you want to sacrifice yourself for one of them. Give you one of their slots, let that lieutenant get some more experience here in the States, am I right?”

  “Wouldn’t exactly call it out of the goodness of my heart but, yeah, that’s the scenario.”

  “You going to be in good enough shape to hump the hills?”

  “If I’m not I can always get a staff job until I am. Come on, let’s not dick around with this. We both know I’m going to end up back over there anyway. I just don’t particularly want to sit around in the States waiting to get orders.”

  “Your funeral, Carmichael. What kind of convalescent leave are they giv
ing you?”

  Same thing Lally said, he thought, suppressing a shiver. “Thirty days,” he replied.

  “You have an address where we can send the orders?”

  “Send them here to the hospital admin company. I appreciate this, Major. I’ll return the favor if I ever get the chance.”

  “No sweat. Sort of expected it. Spent some time in Group myself, before they stuck me up here. May end up seeing you back over there. I’m sure the war won’t be over before this assignment is. Take care.”

  One hurdle through. Jim was elated. Now to get discharged from the hospital on time. Boris and Natasha had been horrified to hear that they might lose him so soon. He thought it was because they were having so much fun contorting his leg into positions that were not remotely possible for a human.

  Doc Cable came by to do his final examination on Friday. He was unusually serious. His face was drawn and haggard. He was almost curt to Jim’s repeated attempts at conversation.

  “What happened, Doc?” Jim finally asked. “You look like shit. Anything I can help with?”

  Horrified, he watched tears form in the older man’s eyes.

  Cable wiped them away quickly. “You’re fit,” he said. “As fit as you need to be. You can check out of here this afternoon. I suppose I’ll see you before you leave the country. Check in occasionally. Maybe we can talk.”

  “You’re sure there’s nothing I can do?”

  For a second there was fury in the doctor’s eyes. “Sure,” he said. “How are you at neurosurgery? Can you repair a severed lower spine? No? Well then I don’t guess you can help me very much.” The doctor sat down heavily, covered his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s not your fault.”

  “What happened?” Jim asked, dreading the answer.

  “I guess I’ll get to see my son a little sooner than I expected. He’ll be on a Medevac flight next week. God damn it! What kind of war is it that you get shot by your own troops? He was shot in the back, Jim, by somebody with an M-16.”

  “You sure it wasn’t an accident?” Jim asked. “That can happen in the heat of a firefight. You know that.”

  Cable laughed bitterly. “That’s what I would have liked to have believed. He was afraid something like this would happen. Told me about the discipline problems they were having. Last month somebody threw a grenade in the CO’s hut. They’d threatened him too, but he thought he could stay alert enough. Must have dropped his guard.”

  “Jesus, Doc, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Now I wish I’d never let him join the army, never talked about the ‘good old days.’ This is my fault. How am I ever going to be able to face him?” Cable walked out.

  My God, thought Jim. What kind of an army indeed? He’d heard stories about fraggings, but had never had to deal with it. Such incidents he had dismissed with the thought that they had to be due to bad leadership. But if it was growing this widespread there must be something else seriously wrong. The war was bad enough; no front, no idea from where the enemy might come next. If you couldn’t trust your own troops, who could you trust? And DA wanted him to go to a conventional outfit for his “career.” What kind of career was that when you risked getting killed or maimed by your own troops? No thanks.

  It was in those late-afternoon hours as he was waiting to be discharged that he began to wonder if the war was lost. It did not shake his resolve to go back, but infused him with the sense of melancholy that all supporters of lost causes must have. But a lost cause was better than no cause at all. If there was nothing worth dying for it followed that there was nothing much worth living for either.

  Chapter III

  Cable’s sorrow and his own apprehensions were soon forgotten in the joy of being with Lisa. They made love immediately after arriving at her apartment, going at it as if they were starving. This set a pattern that was followed for the next several days; seldom did they go outside except to get food. They were content with each other’s company, needed nothing from the outside world, tried to keep that world from intruding on them. But intrude it would.

  One day Lisa answered the phone, spoke for a moment, then handed the receiver to him. There was a peculiar look on her face. “It’s for you,” she said. “It’s the first sergeant of Admin Company.”

  “Captain Carmichael? We need you to come in here, sir. There’s a ceremony you need to attend on Friday.”

  “What kind of ceremony?” Jim couldn’t imagine why they had called.

  “I’ll explain that when you get in here. You get fixed up with uniforms yet? No? Then you’ll need to get over to Oakland Army Depot and get a set of Class As. Full awards and decorations and ‘I been there’ badges, sir. The colonel requests it. Come in around fourteen hundred. Be on time, please, sir.” The first sergeant hung up before he could ask any more questions.

  Lisa asked a question with her eyes. He shrugged. “Damned if I know. More army bullshit, I expect. Command Retreat or something. Isn’t Friday the first one in February?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But we’ve never had one before. Which doesn’t mean much. Well, Captain, shall we go out to Oakland tomorrow and get you fixed up in all your finery? You should look real pretty.”

  “Fuck you very much, Lisa. God hates a wiseass, you know. I really do.”

  Oakland was humming with activity. It was the outprocessing center for Vietnam returnees and the intermediate stop for those going the other way. It was easy to tell the difference between the two; the returnees were deeply tanned and, though they were in most cases only a year or two older than their counterparts, looked immeasurably older. They stood around in loose groups, looked at the fresh young faces of the new men with expressions that ranged from pity to contempt.

  The recruits, for their part, regarded the returnees as having somehow failed. The war had been going on for eight years now. For the last four there had been full-scale U.S. involvement. That was as long as World War II, but this one seemed no closer to ending now than it had two or three years ago. Surely part of the blame for that had to lie with those who had been fighting it. Just give us a chance, the recruits said among themselves, we’ll show old Charlie a trick or two.

  Jim just shook his head in sorrow.

  At the Quartermaster Sales store he bought a set of Class A greens, two sets of tropical worsted Class Bs and a couple of sets of fatigues. He added captain’s bars and Infantry crossed rifles. Threw in some ribbons to which he vaguely remembered he was entitled. Upon checking the chart he found that he was authorized three more campaign stars on the Vietnam service ribbon. Be getting a little crowded on it soon, he thought.

  At the PX he bought a set of Corcoran Jump Boots. Though technically he was not now assigned to an airborne unit, he was damned if he was going to go anywhere in straight-leg low-quarters. Neither place had berets, so he supposed he would have to wear his old one, tattered from years of use.

  The next morning, as he was assembling his ribbons and pinning them and his badges on the uniform, the reality of the situation hit him. It had been easy to forget over the last couple of weeks that he was still in the army. Now the smell of the heavy green wool reminded him forcefully that, whatever happiness and joy he was experiencing right now, all of it would soon end. He would be back to doing his job, would be away from Lisa, might never again know the carefree pleasures of this simple interlude. With the thought came more sadness than he would have thought possible. He was a soldier! He couldn’t let things like this bother him. But bother him it did. As he polished the boots he cursed himself for being such an asshole.

  Finally he was ready. He dressed carefully, making sure there were no wrinkles in the trousers, that they bagged properly over the tops of his boots, that the tie was knotted just so, that the green blouse draped correctly, that all his ribbons and badges were straight. Finally he took the old beret, replaced the single bar affixed to the flash with the double tracks of a captain and, placing the flash directly over his left eye, pulled it
down until it achieved just the right degree of go-to-hell rakishness.

  He emerged from the bathroom. Lisa’s eyes widened. “God damn,” she exclaimed. “You look just like a Christmas tree.”

  “And thank you so much for that wonderful reinforcement to my masculine ego. Somewhat of an overstated effect, you think?”

  “I think the people in hospital company are going to be jealous as hell. You look splendid. Come on, let’s go. I can’t wait until they see you.”

  “You’re going to the ceremony?” he asked, surprised.

  “And give up my precious day of leave? Not hardly. But I will be watching from a distance. This will be the first chance I’ve had to see you play soldier. If I was in ranks I might have to giggle. Can’t have that, with you looking so serious and all. But while you’re standing up there in a rigid position of attention I want you to give just one small thought to what I’m going to do to you tonight after I get that war suit off you.”

  “You really are an asshole, you know.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled wickedly. “Don’t you just love it.”

  He entered the orderly room, found the first sergeant, who popped to attention. It took a confusing moment until Jim remembered that the proper command was “As you were.”

  “Formation is in ten minutes, so I guess you won’t have time to get a haircut,” said the first shirt in mock severity. “You trying to look like a hippie, sir?”

  Jim had already seen the Special Forces combat patch on the man’s right shoulder. He relaxed and laughed. “Not quite a hippie,” he said, “but I’ll admit that when I put the beret on and my hair curled up over the sweatband I thought, Don’t I look sweet! How did you get stuck here, Sergeant Saunders? Don’t we know each other from Bragg?”

  “I looked at your records. We were there at the same time, so maybe so.” A look of distaste came over Saunders’s face. “Got stuck here baby-sitting after I came back with a hole in my belly. Had to wear a colostomy bag for a while. Now the bag is gone but they still need a first sergeant. You want a cup of coffee?”