“Fuck people.” Barnett’s words carried a force that precluded the need for an exclamation mark.
David sat quietly in the dark on the bunker with Barnett; neither of them spoke for a long while. Woods wasn’t taken in by Barnett’s exterior hatred; he had seen too many acts of kindness from the man that had always been covered over by gruff talk and hostile acts. He remembered one time in basic when they were on their qualifying twenty-mile hike and one of their classmates twisted his ankle and couldn’t carry his pack and march at the same time. Barnett took the man’s pack and carried it the remainder of the hike, but only after he called the man a wimp and a pussy. The point was, though, that he had carried the other man’s heavy pack in addition to his own when no one else would.
“You rich?” Barnett spit out the word.
“No, we’re sort of middle-class. My dad’s an insurance broker and my mother works…”
“Where?”
“She’s a secretary at the post office.” David’s voice mellowed, and good thoughts of home filled his mind. “She decided to work so that she could pay for my brother and me to go to college on a first-class ticket. My brother’s in med school now.”
“Why didn’t you go to college?”
“I went for part of my freshman year, but…” Woods adjusted himself on the sandbags that still retained most of the heat from the day. “I don’t know… there was a big antiwar movement at Lincoln Community College, and I didn’t think that it was right…”
“What was right?”
“For me to be protected because we had enough money to send me to college, and guys whose parents weren’t rich enough to hide their kids in colleges had to watch them go to war and at the same time put up with all of the protesting from the college kids who were protected from serving. It just didn’t seem right.”
“So you decided on doing your part… a middle-class hero!” Barnett tried chuckling but failed. It took a lot of guts for Woods to drop out of college to serve in the Army and take all of the harassment from his friends and family.
“And you? Why did you join the United States Army Infantry, asshole?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. Fucking jail or the Army. The judge gave me those two options.” Barnett chuckled. “He even told me that I would have a chance to kill people if I hurried up and joined before the war was over!”
“It sounds like the judge you had was a nice guy!”
“Fuck them! They were all nice guys.” Barnett talked as he made himself a sandbag backrest like David’s. “I spent most of my life in foster homes and the juvenile center. Have you ever been to a juve in South Carolina?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“They’re ninety-nine percent niggers!” Barnett spit out a stream of tobacco. “I was a little shit then, and they kicked my ass every fucking day… but I fought back! Them fuckers would pound my ass until I couldn’t stand up, and I’d reach out and trip one of them when they were leaving! I fought back!”
Woods was beginning to understand what motivated Barnett to fight blacks.
“Niggers yell prejudice, especially niggers from the North, but you ain’t seen prejudice until you’ve been the only white kid in a juve filled with blacks! I hate them motherfuckers!”
“Didn’t the staff stop them from beating up on you?” Woods lit up a Salem.
“The fucking staff was mostly niggers. You know, equal-opportunity shit!”
“Well, if most of the kids in the juve were black, it would make sense that the staff should be black.”
Woods couldn’t see the glare coming from Barnett in the dark. “Then they should have a juve for whites only!”
“That’s segregation, Spencer.”
“So fucking what!”
Woods realized that he wasn’t going to make any progress with Barnett on the topic of race and changed the subject slightly. “What about your foster home?”
“What about it?”
“Didn’t you like it there?”
A long pause filled the next ten minutes before Barnett answered. “Yeah, I liked it there… I loved it there.”
“So why did you leave?”
“The social worker thought that I was becoming too close to my foster family, and she was supposed to work things out so that I would go back to my mother and step-asshole!” Barnett lit up a cigarette along with his chew. “She had me pulled from the foster home. It was a farm… I loved it there, man! I was free and could fish. We would go hunting for rabbits and coon. My dad—you know, my foster dad—and his son and I… I loved it there so damn much! That fucking bitch!”
A hand flare popped above the distant bunker line, and Woods could see the tears running down Barnett’s cheeks.
“I ain’t never going to let people hurt me like that again…never!” Barnett took a long pull from his cigarette. “I showed her ass a thing or two! I fucked her up, and two of her wimpy-assed queer social-worker friends!”
“You fucked her up?”
“When they took me from my foster home and were holding me at the social services center until I could be taken to the new foster home, I punched the bitch in the mouth! Two of her coworkers tried holding me down on the floor, and I kneed one of them in the nuts and bit the other cocksucker on his chest. I mean, I bit that dicksucker and spit out the piece of skin on the floor!”
David swallowed so that he wouldn’t throw up. “How old were you then?”
“Twelve.” Barnett’s voice had lowered considerably. “That’s when they decided to throw my ass in the juve.”
“Hey, you guys mind if we join you up there?” The voice came from the bottom of the bunker.
“Sure, we don’t give a fuck… it’s government property.” Barnett wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“Thanks.” Three new replacements climbed up to the top of the bunker. The same one spoke again. “We couldn’t sleep. I guess it’s the time change.”
One of the quiet ones rolled and lit up a joint. “Want some blow?”
“Naw, I don’t do that shit!” Barnett answered for himself and Woods.
“You guys are going to have it tough over here if you don’t do dope. They say the time goes by faster if you use blow.” The same skinny soldier spoke to Barnett.
“I came over here to kill fucking gooks. If I wanted to smoke that shit, I would have gone to California!” Barnett’s tone of voice was enough warning to the trio, and they quietly moved over to the far side of the bunker to smoke.
“Well I don’t give a fuck what they say about you, Barnett… I like your raunchy Southern ass.” Woods pulled his blanket tightly around his shoulders and scooted down so that he could use his backrest as a pillow. “I think I’ll spend the rest of the night out here.”
Barnett didn’t answer Woods but rolled over onto his side and feigned sleep. He hated making friends because he feared being hurt again, and that was something he had sworn would never happen again. He had loved his foster family unconditionally, and they hadn’t even tried seeing him in the five years he had spent in the South Carolina juvenile system. What Spencer Barnett didn’t know was that his foster father had spent thirty days in jail for contempt of court when he swore at the female social worker in front of the judge and her two male coworkers. Spencer Barnett had been put on the social welfare system’s most-hated list by the three representatives of the State of South Carolina, and for five years they had plotted behind the boy’s back, even to the extent of insuring that when the judge allowed for his release at seventeen years old to join the Army, he was shipped out so that his foster father was prevented from knowing what had happened to the teenager.
The replacement-center barracks sergeant took roll call again to make sure that the five missing men hadn’t joined the predawn formation while he had been talking to the company commander. The same five names brought no response from the formation.
“Where in the hell could they have gone?” The senior company sergeant rubb
ed his chin. It was the first time since he had been assigned to the replacement depot that soldiers had gone AWOL.
“Are you asking me?” The barracks sergeant tapped his clipboard with his pen. “How the fuck would I know?”
“Sergeant?” One of the replacements stepped forward from his position in the first rank. “I remember seeing three guys heading back to the perimeter bunkers right after we ate. It was just getting dark out.”
“Back toward the perimeter?” The whole statement was a question. “What in the fuck were they going back there for?”
The soldier shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t know the answer; helping find missing guys was one thing, but ratting on people would get his ass kicked. “You got me, Sergeant.”
“Go back there and check the personnel bunkers for them.” The senior sergeant nodded at his NCO.
The barracks sergeant cursed under his breath and left the formation. Streaks of light were breaking over the top of the buildings to the east, giving off enough light to see by and making the flashlight he carried ineffective.
Woods heard the sergeant approaching the bunker and raised his head off the sandbag pillow. Barnett was also awake and sat up.
“Well! So you fucking heads decided on having a first-night party!” The sergeant slapped his clipboard against the side of the sandbag bunker and reached up with his free hand to remove the hash pipe from where the three replacements had left it. “God damn you! Now get your asses moving!”
“He thinks we did dope,” David whispered to Barnett.
“Shut up.” Barnett hopped down from the bunker. “Sorry about being late, Sergeant. We didn’t know the formation would be so early.”
“We’ll see how you motherfuckers like smelling shit!” The sergeant shook one of the soldiers who was still sleeping. “You like smoking this shit, huh, boy?” The man woke up in a haze.
“Yes, Sergeant!” He hadn’t realized what he was saying.
“Oh, you’re a smartass too!” The sergeant pulled him off the bunker. Woods noticed that two of the men who had joined them the night before were black, and the third man, the one the sergeant pulled off the bunker, was white. “Well, I’ll let you all smell what burning shit is really like! All of you are on the shit-burning detail this morning!”
Barnett shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know what the sergeant was talking about, and neither did the rest of the replacements.
The barracks sergeant had marched the five of them to the mess hall for breakfast and then back to the barracks, where he showed them the seven latrines. Sewage pipes didn’t exist in the large American bases, and the engineers had designed latrines like the old outhouses from the American past, with a few modernizations. The old-fashioned pit or hole under the outhouse seat had been replaced by half of a fifty-five-gallon drum with large steel handles welded on it. The barracks latrines had eight seats with two-foot-high partitions nailed between each seat so that a soldier could wipe his ass with a little privacy. Those were the better-built ones; the latrines for enlisted men usually didn’t have the seat dividers. The idea behind the fifty-five-gallon drums to collect the feces and urine was to be able to burn the feces rather than having to dig new holes and move the latrines. The idea was a good one and reduced the chance of flies feeding on the latrine by-products for lunch and then having their supper in the mess halls.
“I can’t believe this shit!” The white soldier from the trio of heads held the long steel rod with the hooked end in his hands. The back flap of the latrine was up, and eight full tubs of feces waited to be pulled out in the clearing and set on fire with diesel fuel. “That fucking sergeant wants me to drag that shit out here?”
“Move your ass, motherfucker! You’re the fucking reason Woods and I are out here!” Barnett said, ready to fight.
David looked over at the two blacks who were already setting the first four half-barrels on fire. They glanced up at Barnett but didn’t interfere; they knew he was right and was being punished for something he hadn’t done.
Barnett looked at the skinny white soldier with disgust, walked over to the back of the latrine, and pulled the barrel out with his bare hand. He removed the remaining three barrels, and Woods poured diesel fuel over the piles of feces before igniting them.
“Man! Shit even stinks when it burns!” Barnett put his hands on his hips and watched the thick black pillars of smoke rise straight up in the breezeless sky.
Woods stood next to Barnett and watched, smelling the odor that would never leave his senses as long as he lived.
“Come on, we’ve got a bunch more to do!” Barnett had become the natural leader of the shit-burning detail.
The sun was hot when they reached the last latrine, and all of them were in a hurry to get finished and back to their barracks. The unit assignments were due to be posted on the company bulletin board.
“Look at this motherfuckin’ shit!” Kirkpatrick, one of the blacks who had been smoking hash the night before, spoke for the first time to the group. One of the latrine seats was missing a tub, and a large pile of feces and toilet paper was under the wooden hole.
“Now I know why the sergeant gave us the shovel.” Woods had been carrying the long-handled shovel from latrine to latrine.
“You guys pull out the tubs, and Woods can spread that shit out in each of them that aren’t too full.” Barnett braced the wooden flap up, and the remainder of the detail started pulling out the half-barrels.
“Hot motherfucker!” Kirkpatrick’s buddy spoke to the group for the first time. Brown’s high-pitched voice operated that high for a reason. A seven-foot-long snake slithered out from between two of the barrels and stopped when its stomach touched the hot sand. “What kind of mother-fucking snake is that?”
Woods swung the shovel in an arch, cutting the snake’s head off five inches below the hood. “Cobra. A king cobra if I’m not mistaken….”
“In a shitter!” The skinny white soldier reached for his balls; he was thinking about the shit he had taken during the night in the latrine near the bunker.
“Probably was looking for rats.” Woods struck again with the shovel at the twisting mass of black coils.
“What have you guys found?” The barracks sergeant had joined the detail during the execution of the cobra.
“Snake.” Barnett spoke the word like the reptile had been one of his friends.
“What kind?”
“Cobra.”
“Bullshit! Man, there aren’t any cobras around here!” The sergeant stepped toward the chopped-up snake.
“Pick up its head and see,” Barnett said, challenging the NCO.
“Fuck me! It is a cobra!” The sergeant took a step backward. “Where was it hiding?”
“In the shitter,” Woods enjoyed telling the sergeant. He could imagine the NCO inspecting the shitter every time he went to the john.
“I’d better let the first sergeant know about this.” He turned to Woods with the shovel. “Bring the snake with you over to the orderly room.”
“What do you want us to do?” Barnett said to the NCO.
“Go wash up and report to the supply sergeant. Woods will join you after he shows the first sergeant that damn snake!”
Barnett sat on a pile of dirty blankets and clothes in the supply tent. He had already counted the items and listed them on the forms. Woods had gone to check the company bulletin board for their assignments. The barracks sergeant had taken the five-man detail over to the finance office and had the detail cut ahead of the line to exchange their American money for military payment certificates. Barnett was looking at the small paper bills that represented coins in the United States. It seemed funny having paper represent a quarter.
“Get used to that shit! You won’t see real money for a year unless you go on R and R.” One of the supply sergeants spoke to Barnett.
“Do the Vietnamese downtown take this stuff?”
“You had better bet your ass they do!” The young sergeant laughed. “Th
e whores know when they’re going to change MPC before we do!”
“What do you mean?” Barnett folded his money and shoved it back in his pocket.
“Every six months or so we have to turn in all of our MPC money, and they issue us new stuff. The idea is to stop us from screwing up the local economy and to stop black marketing.” The sergeant shook his head. “It only ends up hassling the fucking field troops, who usually are the ones who get fucked.”
“I don’t plan on having enough cash to get fucked!” Barnett had set up an allotment so that most of his money went into a military savings program that yielded ten percent interest.
“You do want to keep enough to get fucked… downtown, that is.” The sergeant looked up at Woods entering through the tent door. “Good, you’re back. Let’s load this stuff up and haul it downtown to the civilian laundry.”
Barnett looked at Woods, who shook his head; their assignments hadn’t been posted yet. “Some of the guys have already left, but we’re not under shipping orders.”
“Don’t rush it, guys!” The sergeant was serious. “Every day you spend here is being counted as one day in Vietnam. Don’t rush it!”
Woods and Barnett sat at the tailgate of the truck, and the three heads sat up near the cab of the truck where the wind wasn’t so bad and they could share a pipe. The young supply sergeant was the one who had provided the blow.
Woods was engrossed in the people lining the streets of the large Vietnamese capital city. The cao-dai dresses the women wore were interesting, but every time Woods saw a man wearing a pair of black pants and shirt, he thought of the Vietcong. They still hadn’t been issued weapons, and Woods felt nervous riding in the back of an open truck.
Barnett thought out loud. “I want a fucking gun!” He had been thinking along the same lines as Woods.
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