A good letter, Singer already realized, could keep a man going for days, give him something to fight for, and increase his resolve to make it home—as if that needed any help. Now, sitting on the ledge with twilight not far away, Singer removed the envelope from its safe position inside his helmet. He held the powder-blue paper to his nose. The perfume had faded, and the letter now smelled only of sweat. Some of the ink had faded, but it was still mostly readable—at least the important parts where Susan said she was waiting and what they would do when he got back. He held the letter in his lap, looking at the sinking sun and deepening shadows, reluctant to put it away.
“You reading that again?” Bear asked. “You going to wear that letter out.”
Singer just smiled, not ready to speak, feeling the heat of the letter.
“That the girl you sending your paychecks to?”
“What need is there for money here?”
“I don’t know if I’d ever trust any woman with my money except my mama.”
“We’re saving for our future.”
“Man, that girl’s got you by the balls. There’s no helping you.”
“She’s just a friend.”
“Fuck just a friend. That kind of perfume, you been giving her something for sure. Don’t be carrying that with you, Charlie will follow that smell right to you, kill both our asses.”
“I’ll tell her to be careful with the smell, that she’s making you crazy.”
“You be careful with your thing, too.” Bear gave a soft chuckle.
After carefully refolding the letter, Singer put it back in the top of his helmet liner. Bear was drinking his instant coffee, for which he begged three extra sugars and two powdered creams. Each time Bear brought the C-rat can to his lips, his bicep bulged above a thick forearm.
“You never talk about a girl,” Singer said.
“I’m between girls. Easier right now,” Bear said, grinning as if he had a secret.
“You miss that?”
“What? Sweet letters? I smell enough perfume from yours. There’ll be plenty girls wanting to see me when I’m back on the block. I might even go see your girl, tell her you miss her since you won’t be seeing her any time soon. Thirty-two and a wake-up and I’ll be on the street.”
“Fuck you,” Singer said without anger.
“What are friends for?” Bear asked, spilling his coffee as he laughed. “Thirty-two and a wake-up, then you’ll have to do it without Bear.”
This was closer to the Bear that Singer had come to know from those first days back at Fort Bragg. The stern, sullen Bear of the first patrol near Chu Lai that had disturbed, if not frightened him, was gone, at least tonight. Maybe Bear was over the shock of being back in Nam or, having survived those first patrols, saw himself surviving and was now counting the days and thinking of being back on the block. In thirty-three days, Bear was going home. Singer wondered sometimes what things would be like and what he would do after all the guys left. So many had little more than a month remaining.
For a while they sat quietly, shadows expanding in the valley far below and the sun settling toward the peaks in Laos. Singer put his shirt back on and then his helmet. Soon it would be time to be serious again. He pulled his M16 across his lap
“Think we’ll find them?” Singer asked.
“The NVA?”
“Yeah. Think we’ll find them?”
“Fuck. Hope we don’t. I seen enough of them. If you want to make it back to that girl, you’ll hope so, too.”
“It’s been quiet. I mean, it just seems like we’re doing nothing, you know?”
“Shit, we’re burnin’ days! Good days. Each day’s another day closer to going home. Alive.”
“But . . .” Singer hesitated, uncertain if he should say it. “We . . . ah . . . I came to fight. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Christ, Singer, you’re fucking hopeless,” Bear said, shaking his head. “Where’d you get them dumb white-ass ideas? This ain’t your war. It sure the fuck ain’t my war. We should all be home smoking, drinking, and chasing pussy. Instead we’re on some fucking godforsaken mountaintop that we fought through jungle to get to and that we’ll leave tomorrow.”
Bear leaned toward Singer, his eyes drawing tighter and darkening.
“It don’t mean a fucking thing to anyone but our mamas and our girlfriends whether we get killed. You think the army gives a shit about you? After enough of us die, some politicians will shake hands and that’ll be the end and our deaths won’t mean a goddamn thing.”
Bear put on his shirt and took up his rifle.
“And afterwards, what do we go home to? I can serve here, but try to find a job or even buy a car with money in my hand and some white guy don’t want to let me in the door. Now they shot our man in Memphis. Don’t you get it? We’re fighting in the wrong place. Where you from, anyway?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck, you’re a pawn as much as me.”
“But you still do it.”
“Yeah . . . I still do it.”
Bear picked up the C-rat cans he’d used for a cup and a stove and put them back in his ruck, then stood up and walked to the ledge beside Singer, his rifle pointed at the treetops.
“Just stop wishing for it,” Bear said. “It’s fucking bad luck. Ain’t enough men died? Wish for good days, man, at least ’til I’m gone. Thirty-two and a wake-up. Then you can have this fucking white-ass war and all the fighting you want.”
The lump in Singer’s throat cut off anything he might say. He still believed they were here to do something good. To stop a bad system and save another. He needed to believe that. He was committed to it and all it meant. He was ready. Maybe there were just too many differences in experiences and backgrounds. Things he couldn’t understand. Yet Bear was here beside him and Rhymes and Sergeant Edwards. It couldn’t all be bad, like Bear said. Was he wrong to want to do what they came here for?
“Get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch,” Bear said
Singer curled up under a poncho liner away from the ledge, behind the shallow fighting hole. It was barely dark and he hardly felt like sleep now. In addition to Rhymes, he saw Bear as a friend and someone to rely on if things got rough. He still did, but he needed to think about what Bear said. Why did he still fight if he believed that? When had things changed, if he hadn’t always thought that way? He finally fell asleep, wondering if Bear believed in it the first time he came here and what had happened to change that.
5
April 17, 1968
Vietnam
It was just another formless mountaintop that would be this night’s NDP, an easy climb from a narrow, stream-cut valley they had worked for a few klicks without incident. To Singer, it seemed they were miles from any NVA and had been looking in the wrong place for weeks already. He had just started digging in with little enthusiasm when Sergeant Royce, holding a string of canteens, came up to Trip, who had just gotten out his entrenching tool. Singer stopped digging to listen.
“Send a couple Cherries,” Trip said.
“I’m sending you,” Sergeant Royce said, his voice rising until it cracked.
“What about the hole?”
“You can dig in when you get back. Right now, you and Singer go fill canteens.”
“Fucking army.” Trip threw down his entrenching tool. “In the Cav choppers brought our waters and Cherries pulled the details.”
Singer stepped from the beginning of the hole and came and took the string of empty canteens.
“No sweat, we got it,” Singer said, looking at Trip.
With his M16 in his right hand and canteens in his left, he started back toward the stream they’d crossed a short distance back. In truth, he was nearly as irritated as Trip at being sent out after just starting to dig in. There was no trail, just the occasional bootprint or bent twig from their earlier climb. The descent was easy on the gradual slope and Singer focused all his attention on where he stepped and keeping
a straight line, confident Trip wasn’t far behind him. He wanted to do this fast and get back before it got dark. He would find the stream, fill the canteens, then reverse directions and take a direct course back to the perimeter. It grew darker as he descended. The sun was low behind him and the hill cast a long shadow over the canopy, increasing the dimness in the shallow valley. Fronds bent down toward him, like giant hands threatening to grab him. The canteens jangled softly against each other with each step, despite his efforts to keep them still.
Singer drew up sharply, halted by the sense that something was wrong. The canteens were quiet. The leaves gave no indication of even the slightest breath of air. The sounds of digging that he’d heard behind him as he first started out were swallowed by the distance and the vegetation. Ahead was the whisper of flowing water. Still, something wasn’t right. He turned his head to check with Trip, but there were only the trees, a weave of limbs and branches amidst the shadows. His gaze raced up the slope, searching for Trip’s form beside a tree trunk, a silhouette camouflaged by brush. Nothing. No human form. Not even the soft pad of steps of Trip catching up. He was utterly alone. A lightness fluttered in his chest and the vertical lines that held the canopy shifted back and forth, threatening to spin. He blinked and felt the sting of sweat. With care not to lose his orientation of the stream and the direction back to the platoon, he turned in a circle, trying to conjure up Trip. There were only shadows and his craving for company.
He was drifting in space, untethered to anything. His mouth was just opening when he caught himself, closing it forcefully, biting down so he wouldn’t call out. He saw himself tearing uphill with all his energy until he was in the comfort of the company of the others, but his legs wouldn’t move. Beyond the pounding of his heart was the gurgle of water moving over rocks. He was nearly there. If he went back now he would only have to return again through even darker shadows. He had his rifle and could do this if he could just control his fear.
The water was a welcome sight, swirling about rocks, small patches of white foam bubbling up and quickly being carried away. The bottom was a mosaic of stones, tans and browns set in red clay. It would take just a few minutes to fill the canteens and then a few minutes more to return to the guys. He slipped up to the stream edge, nearly distracted by the magic of moving water, but then Singer saw him.
The canteens clunked and rattled when he dropped them on the rocks. He fumbled to bring up his gun.
A few meters down the stream, the man looked up, still holding his hand and something in the water. He lifted his hand to show a canteen encased in dark canvas. Water spilled off the canteen, darkening his sleeve and dribbling back into the stream. He rose slowly from his crouch. His black hair was matted against his head and his face glistened with water as if he’d just washed it. He wore a dark green uniform of a North Vietnamese soldier and had an olive-colored bandolier hung across his chest. He continued to hold the canteen out, as if to offer a drink. His other hand hung loose and empty at his side.
Singer brought his rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.
A gold tooth sat dully in the man’s weak smile. His eyes were dark and soft, like his skin, and grew wider with a silent pleading that Singer clearly heard. Still, he lined the muzzle on the man’s chest and felt the smoothness of the trigger on his finger. It would only take a touch. His first kill.
The corners of the man’s smile sagged and he took a step back, as though that might make a difference. His head bowed, a greeting or surrender to his fate.
* * * * *
“I’m coming in, I’m coming in,” Singer said, hoping none of the new guys would shoot him.
Inside the perimeter he rushed at Trip and threw the canteens at his feet, then shoved him with his free hand.
“Where the hell were you? You’re supposed to have my back.”
“Why didn’t you wait?”
“You prick, you let me go alone.”
“When I looked, you were gone. It was more dangerous for both of us to go look for you. You’re all right, aren’t you?”
“No thanks to you.”
“Stop the yelling before you get us all killed,” Sergeant Royce said from somewhere in the twilight behind them.
“There’s the fucking canteens. I’m not doing that again,” Singer said. He kicked the canteens and walked away.
He knew he should warn them, but couldn’t. How could he tell them he saw an NVA soldier without having to explain why he never fired? No one would understand, least of all Sergeant Royce or all the other second-tour vets. Rhymes might, but even with him, Singer wasn’t sure. None of them would forgive him. They’d all seen too much and become hardened by it all.
He was unsure now what was his bigger crime: not killing the man or not telling anyone.
He just couldn’t shoot the guy. Even though the man was an enemy soldier, he was unarmed. At least, there’d been no weapon Singer could see. Who could shoot an unarmed man? It was different than with a deer or duck, where he’d never had a problem. He saw the man’s extended arm of offering and the pleading in his eyes. He sighted down the barrel and saw himself. Next time he’d do better. Next time he would shoot.
6
May 4, 1968
Vietnam
Red fox six. This is red fox four. Over.” Singer checked the frequency. He had been carrying the radio for almost two weeks now as Sergeant Edwards’s RTO, but he still wasn’t comfortable with it. He held the handset to his ear and called again, “Red fox six. This is red fox four. Over.”
“Red fox six. Over,” the company commander’s RTO answered.
“Red fox four. Com check. Over.”
“Red fox six. Lima Charlie. Over.”
“Red fox four. Out.” Singer put the handset down on his ruck and turned up the volume just by feel. He didn’t dare flash a light and risk revealing his position despite everyone else being away from the platoon CP set up inside the company perimeter. Sergeant Edwards was still up at the company CP for a briefing with Captain Powers after they had moved into the NDP late, feeling their way through the last hour. Sergeant Milner was checking the platoon’s section of the perimeter and would likely find something he was unhappy with and try to make someone move. There still wasn’t a platoon medic, Doc Randall having left a few weeks before without explanation, some saying to take a unit transfer. Some said he’d had enough and was just gone, though they offered no speculation as to where he went. Shooter said Doc had likely finagled some beach assignment at Nha Trang or Cam Ranh Bay doing health checks on whorehouse girls to keep the rear cadre safe. When Singer first heard this he wondered if there really were such places or if it was just Shooter telling wild tales. It was Rhymes’s explanation that Doc’s brother, a Marine, had been killed up near the DMZ and Doc left to escort his brother’s body home that seemed the most believable.
With Doc gone they were mostly on their own in the event of a medical emergency, which would likely be a bullet or frag wound. Until they got a new platoon medic, the company medic, Doc Odum, was filling in. He was a loose-limbed black guy with an elastic face and demeanor better suited to a comic than a combat medic. Maybe that was why Singer liked him.
Despite staring toward the perimeter, Singer couldn’t make out any familiar shape and had to guess at where Rhymes, Trip, Bear, Red, Ghost, and Sergeant Royce were. It had only been nine days, but he hadn’t stopped regretting the assignment or wishing he were back in his squad.
“You do a coms check yet?”
Sergeant Milner was more grating in proximity. Another drawback of being the platoon RTO.
“Just did one, Sarge,” Singer said.
“Do another and stay near your handset.”
“Right, Sarge.”
He picked up the handset and held it to his ear, putting it down as soon as Sergeant Milner walked away. Had Sergeant Edwards been there, Sergeant Milner wouldn’t have said a thing, but in his absence Sergeant Milner was always trying to exercise authority he wo
uld never have, no matter what rank he carried. It came off as the efforts of an insecure man trying too hard. Yet the man seemed oblivious to the men’s contempt.
Singer focused on where he imagined the guys were dug in, setting up their guard rotations after already putting out claymores. Rhymes was probably brushing his teeth for the second time, meticulous in their care. Trip probably had his calendar out, marking off a day. Bear was probably complaining to someone about the fucking “white-ass war.” Singer shook his head recalling Bear’s many tirades, wishing he could listen to one now. Bear complained about the war but he was steady, dependable. You could count on Bear. Red was probably boring someone with a recitation of Pete Rose’s statistics for the past two years. Once, after one of Red’s passionate orations, Singer had told Red, “You should be Rose’s PR man,” to which Red beamed as though Singer had paid him some great compliment.
What would happen to them if he wasn’t there? What would happen to him without them beside him? He wanted to kick the fucking radio and cursed his luck for the assignment.
It all changed nearly two weeks ago, when Borkman was hit and medevac’d. Borkman, a short, quiet white guy from somewhere in the Midwest, had been Sergeant Edwards’s RTO from the beginning. But Singer didn’t know Borkman. He doubted anybody did, since, like Singer now as Sergeant Edwards’s RTO, Borkman had little contact with the other men. Singer would see Borkman on the trail always walking behind Sergeant Edwards or next to him monitoring the platoon communications, but he never had any occasion to talk with him. He would see Borkman hand Sergeant Edwards the handset and stand patiently next to him, seemingly oblivious of the inviting target they offered. Perhaps Borkman had merely found a way to tune it out to allow himself to function, as Singer was learning. Borkman’s short stature emphasized his chunky body and he hardly looked fit enough to be humping jungle trails in the oppressive heat, especially with the added weight of the PRC25. It had to be harder for a fat man, but Singer never heard him protest, even though complaining seemed part of a foot soldier’s obligation.
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