Perfume River Nights

by Michael P. Maurer

  “It ain’t my blood. You two okay?”

  “Mostly,” Singer said.

  “We got to get Sergeant Edwards to a medevac,” Sergeant Royce said.

  “He can wait,” Bear said. “There ain’t no hurry anymore. We’re pushing out to clear the front.”

  Bear stepped closer, peering into the hole for the first time. The cords in his neck went taut. “Fuck. Rhymes, too.”

  “I couldn’t help him,” Singer said. “Doc never came. I don’t know where the fuck he is. He promised—”

  “Doc’s dead. Captain Powers and the whole CP. Top’s running the company,” Bear said.

  A chopper settled on the road and Bear turned his head toward it. Singer watched Sergeant Royce pull Sergeant Edwards’s head up on his knees then bend down beside the dead acting platoon leader’s ear.

  “Fuck! Get your ass up here, man,” Bear said, looking at Ghost, who was glancing between the helicopters and Bear.

  Ghost crossed himself and began to creep forward as though he were walking through a mine field.

  “If you don’t hurry up I’m going to fucking shoot you,” Bear said. Singer didn’t doubt he was serious, for it was the first move Bear made with his weapon.

  “Let’s finish this,” Bear said when Ghost was close.

  “I got to stay with Sergeant Edwards,” Sergeant Royce said.

  “Yeah, you stay with him. We got this,” Bear said, bringing his rifle up to the ready.

  The three of them, Singer, Bear, and Ghost, pushed forward, walking abreast in a loose line. Sometimes Singer lost sight of Bear, but then he’d hear him fire or yell at Ghost to catch up and he’d adjust his step or shift over. Even as he left it behind, the crater followed him, events playing across his mind.

  He fired to rid himself of all of it and to kill any lingering NVA. Bear fired less often, Ghost not all. At least, Singer never heard any fire he took for Ghost’s. The last grenade he’d taken from Red and Sergeant Edwards didn’t explode. It just rattled through the brush and fell, as ineffective as a rock.

  The absence of NVA bodies was disturbing. He was watching, expecting to count them in the tens, but he’d yet to discover one. He wasn’t sure what Bear was seeing, or if Ghost even had his eyes open and was seeing anything beyond his own fear.

  The brush was thick so it would be tough to see them and Bear was moving too fast to do any kind of search. He should have taken the side where he knew the first one was. But he was sure he’d killed more. Though he hadn’t found a body, he’d discovered drag trails and scattered evidence of the carnage: bloody clothes, gauzes, and stains on the ground where men had lain and bled.

  The leaf of a low shrub held a splat of blood that smeared when Singer touched it. Looking at the most likely path, he saw another splat a few meters away, slightly smaller than the first. With his rifle ready he scanned the ground ahead for anything that didn’t fit. He was sure he could track the man and make the kill, as he had trailed and killed his first buck in a willow swamp when he was only thirteen. While he’d dreamed of that first buck long before he shot it, he wanted this kill more. The blood trail went west, away from Bear and Ghost. To follow it would mean leaving them and heading off on his own. Just then, Bear fired and the decision was made. He hurried to catch up, vowing to come back and make a proper search.

  Another jet rocketed overhead. The air shuddered and for a few seconds he was deaf to everything but the plane. It was a long minute before the explosions drifted back to him from the northwest. The pilots were chasing the retreating force. Singer formed a new love for fighter jets and gunships.

  The narrow river corridor brought an abrupt break in the jungle vegetation, sharply illuminated by the harsh midday sun. Singer stopped in the shadows, as he was sure Bear would, too. He heard his breath, but the stream was silent. Behind him and far to the east came sporadic gunfire and occasional explosions.

  The stream, he was certain, ran east. Some ways on it would join the Perfume River, flowing on to Hue, through the city, and would pass by the island where he watched the darkness just a few months ago when Rhymes, Doc, Stick, Red, and Sergeant Edwards were still alive and Sergeant Royce was still strong and in charge of the squad and he had still believed. Now Hue seemed unreachable.

  From the shadows, Singer squinted against the blinding brightness that was almost painful. About thirty feet wide, prominent rocks guarded stagnant pools. Upstream, a leaf lay on the surface, barely moving. Darkness again reclaimed the far bank and vegetation formed a living wall. When the fall rains came, the flow would bury the stones and sweep away any evidence that today had ever existed.

  Just downstream, near the edge of the opposite bank, two NVA lay in full sunlight. They were sprawled facedown in a shallow pool, their arms entangled, hands touching. There were no weapons that he could see. Tufts of black hair floated, shiny in the light. One soldier’s arm was extended beyond his head, his hand on a rock at the river’s edge as though he was trying to pull the two of them into the cover of the jungle. They almost made it.

  He fired into the men’s backs, watching the dark holes explode and water spray. The bodies rocked slightly and the gentle ripple spread across the stagnant pool and became still again. Something rippled through his body even as his rifle grew quiet and settled there, leaving him feeling heavy and tired. No response came from the jungle that sat like a door to a dark room beyond the river. He knew he had already crossed the river and entered the room.

  “Jesus, Singer, they’re dead already.”

  It wasn’t until then that he noticed Bear watching him from downstream, standing motionless in the shadows. How could such a big man be so quiet and so hard to see? He was certain, though, that Bear nodded in agreement or acknowledgement of what they both knew before signaling to head back. They turned and worked back over the same ground toward the road. Despite looking hard, Singer found no more NVA to kill.

  The light was more diffused at the cut beside the road, less blinding than it had been at the narrower river corridor. Breaking out of the jungle edge, Singer watched the dust kick up from the road in a billowing cloud as another Huey settled in and men came toward it carrying a poncho with one boot sticking out the end and the middle sagging low. Another group stood waiting with a second poncho, less heavily laden. When they moved, it was with downcast faces and plodding steps. The wounded were all gone, as was any urgency.

  A couple of piles of gear sat near the road; rucksacks and weapons from dead and wounded along with a smaller pile of captured NVA gear. A soldier walked up and dumped two M16s and a handful of magazines on a pile. Two Cobras circled menacingly, but neither fired.

  To Singer’s left he saw the crater looking bare and abandoned, no longer valued by either side. The bodies were gone and there was little to indicate what had happened there. He stared at it for a moment, wanted to go to it, but was held back by some internal force he could not name.

  Ahead, Bear waited for him, his helmet pushed back on his head, his rifle again one-handed at his side. Together, with Ghost trailing, they walked slowly toward the road, Singer uncertain of what came next.

  There was no sign of Sergeant Royce, who he guessed had followed Sergeant Edwards. He doubted he would see him again.

  Shooter’s body was gone from the roadside where Bear said Ghost saw Rhymes lay him. Perhaps Shooter and Rhymes rode the same bird together back to graves registration, united in a way neither had envisioned. The sprint down the road seemed a lifetime ago.

  Loose groups of men milled near the road looking aimless. There didn’t seem to be a perimeter anymore, though a few men still worked along the jungle edge as if looking for something they’d lost. Some men already had their rucks on and seemed anxious to leave. Singer looked west up the road to where he’d left his ruck, to where it had all started, when it had still been an exciting game. But the road was empty, all their rucks gone. If Bear noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  They headed toward where the remnants of
fourth platoon were assembling on the west end of the road. So few of them were left. Sergeant Milner had survived and was pacing slowly back and forth, pointing a bouncing finger, counting and recounting the platoon’s survivors, looking confused, as though he couldn’t understand where everyone was. Or perhaps without Sergeant Edwards’s leadership, he was lost as others likely were. Certainly Singer missed him, but there were others he missed more. He saw Trip standing alone, still lugging the M60 he took from Shooter. His relief was swallowed by his emptiness. They caught each other’s eyes, but there was no reaction. In Trip’s eyes he saw only weariness.

  He stood near Bear, neither speaking, and watched men load the last bodies and then the equipment until only those standing and able to walk were left. Ghost had disappeared. Once Ghost talked of lying down among the dead in a plan to be evacuated, and Singer wondered if he had done it.

  Back east on the far end of their position, Top was standing next to a stocky man with the bearing of a senior officer, both men looking back to the southeast. Top was pointing, as though explaining where the battle started. Three RTOs huddled nearby, showing radio antennas that a few hours ago would have guaranteed their deaths.

  Days before he carried a radio, only that morning ridding himself of it. Stick took it and its fate, thanking him. Only Sergeant Edwards heard his reasons. Who could he explain it to? There was no one to tell he was sorry. Stick was gone, but the image of his ghostly countenance, his fingers wrapped around the handset, stayed with him.

  The safety of the firebase was waiting, but he was in no hurry to leave. He looked at where he knew the crater was and then at the ground he had crossed and re-crossed to get there. He thought of Rhymes’s tireless half smile and unfocused eyes that would never read a book again, the NVA who nearly killed him, the other who tried to get away, of the blood trails that he wished he’d followed, and the NVA in the stream. His M16 was light in his hands, the trigger waiting. It wasn’t finished yet.

  Was this what Bear warned him about?

  12

  May 5, 1968

  1621 Hours

  Vietnam

  The sounds of the chopper that took the stocky senior officer away faded, leaving the battlefield eerily quiet. It was a long time since Singer had heard any gunfire. Even the distant bombing had ceased. Most of the men stood in restless, staggered groups along the road. The shrill chirping of a lizard announced its survival and the return of natural sounds.

  “It ain’t nothing like you imagined, is it?” Bear asked.

  “You think I wanted this?”

  “Man, we all want to prove ourselves. It’s what fucks us up.”

  Singer dropped his face and turned away. He felt the big hand on his shoulder.

  “It ain’t your fault, man. We all been there. Except maybe guys like Shooter who found it just like they thought it would be and loved it. Look what it got him.”

  Bear shook his head as if dismissing it all. Singer couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Maybe now you’ll wish for quiet days.” Bear took his hand from Singer’s shoulder.

  That wasn’t what he wanted now, but Singer was afraid to tell him.

  For a while they stood silent.

  Down the road, Singer watched Top move through the company, the RTO nearly running to keep up. Men started forming a staggered double column. Lieutenant Creely, the second platoon leader and ranking officer after the captain, approached Top, and Top waved his hand as if swatting a fly and walked away.

  “Why’s Top running things?” Singer asked.

  When Bear didn’t answer, Singer turned to see Bear staring at the jungle, maybe thinking about their charge across the open ground that made Singer feel so alive or about his mama and the house he said he would buy her when he got home.

  “Bear, why’s Top running the company?”

  “Better Top than one of—”

  Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! An AK-47 on full auto. The sound exploded in the silence that had settled over the battlefield.

  Men fell to the road around him. For a second Singer heard the echoes of Sergeant Edwards’s earlier command: “Charge the tree line!” But everyone else was down and he was aware that he stood alone, offering the most appealing target. Still, he took a step, hesitated, then dove to the ground. With nowhere to go, he threw himself on top of Bear. The road edge depression offered only the illusion of cover.

  “I’m hit,” Bear said in a low, unexcited voice.

  It was silent again after the AK stopped as abruptly as it started. For a moment it seemed as if everyone held their breath, uncertain of what happened and what was next.

  “I can’t believe some motherfucker shot me.” Bear turned his head. “How bad is it?”

  “I saw him. But I can’t find him now,” Singer said.

  In the instant before diving atop Bear, when he looked toward the crater, he saw him—the top half of him, anyway. A lone, helmeted NVA in an olive-colored shirt standing at the jungle edge, firing an AK from his shoulder. But Singer lost sight of him while getting down. Now the NVA had disappeared. So near the crater. Rhymes’s vacant stare petitioned him. He rose on a knee. Bear pulled at his arm.

  “Let someone else. How bad?”

  His ears rang with the muzzle blast of an M60 as it opened up from the slope just above him. He buried his head down on Bear’s back. A line of red tracers streamed overhead, disappearing into the ground near the crater. It had to be Trip.

  No one else fired, perhaps concerned about hitting the two GIs who materialized at the jungle edge. Singer watched the two Americans working toward the crater. Could he run and safely join them with the M60 firing just above his head?

  “Damn, tell me what it looks like,” Bear said.

  Singer turned away from the line of red tracers and the two GIs. Bear’s back showed no blood. No hole that he could see or feel.

  “My neck,” Bear said.

  Lifting up to see, Singer pulled Bear’s fatigue collar back, expecting the wound to be worse after what he had already seen today. What he saw surprised him.

  “Can you move?”

  Bear cranked his head around, trying to see his wound or to read the expression on Singer’s face.

  “Just tell me. You’re heavier than you look.”

  “Can you move your legs?”

  Singer felt Bear wiggle beneath him.

  “I could walk home if they’d let me.”

  “Shit, you’re a lucky fucker. There’s nothing, Bear. No blood. Nothing. Just a small mark. Shit.” He stared at the small white spot on Bear’s black skin where the bullet had passed through his neck without hitting the spine or any blood vessel. Incredibly, the hard AK bullet had barely torn the flesh. “Damn, you’re lucky.”

  “Guess I’m going home early.”

  “You’ll be back on the street before I’m eating breakfast,”

  “Thanks for covering me.”

  “Hell, you had the best spot. There was nowhere else to go.”

  Beneath him, Bear’s body trembled. At first Singer thought the big man was crying. Then he heard the laugh, even with the noise of machine gun fire.

  The tracers still had the shooter pinned. A few others on the slope behind Singer had joined in with M16s. The two men working the treeline were inching in on the spot. The NVA was trapped. Singer shifted off of Bear. He still wanted in on it.

  Bear large hand settled on his back.

  “Man, ain’t you learned nothing today? They’ll get him.”

  Singer looked at Bear’s face, the streaks on his dusty cheeks, eyes that showed concern.

  “You still think this is your war?”

  “You’re going home.”

  “Be careful. You’ll become another Shooter.”

  Singer turned back to not miss the finale.

  The two men were almost there. Methodically, one fired into the ground just in front of his feet while the other stood ready to take on any NVA who jumped up. The second man cove
red while the first reloaded. Trading off, they eased ahead through thigh-high brush to the shot-up ground. The second man fired into the new ground while the first stood braced. Then they repeated the process, moving ever closer. Second-tour guys. They’d done this before. A line of tracers from Trip’s machine gun pinned down anyone farther ahead, shifting west as the two men advanced.

  Singer raised his head and tightened his grip in expectation.

  Just after he started to fire again, the lead man jumped back, continuing to fire while the second American opened up, as well. Then they stopped and waited, rifles ready, staring at the ground. Trip held up on the machine gun. Singer held his breath.

  Finally one of the men got down on his stomach, his head and arm disappearing in the ground. The other man stepped closer, pointing his M16 to the same spot. The first man pulled back, rising to his knees, and heaved an NVA from the hole. While his partner stood over the unmoving NVA, his rifle pointed at the man’s chest, the first man reached in a second time and hauled out the man’s AK-47. With the AK shouldered, he grabbed the NVA’s foot and dragged him toward the road.

  The NVA’s head and body flopped over the uneven ground. It reminded Singer of dragging a deer in from the woods, pulling the carcass through the brush and over downed timber. A trophy he would hang and display from the large oak tree in the yard, where his friends would come to admire it and congratulate him. But there was some sadness mingled with the sense of triumph.

  The NVA lay motionless and bloody in the dust of the road where the man dumped him. Singer had to stare a long time before he saw the slightest movement in the man’s chest. Though the NVA was still alive, no one moved to help him. The man who dragged him in dug through his pockets while the other still pointed his M16 at the man, as though even near death the NVA might make a break for it and need to be shot again.

  The company slowly regained their feet. Most ignored the dying NVA, though a few men moved closer and stood around the man. Singer could see well enough from where he was, as the NVA was dropped just a few feet away, as though they’d known what he’d been wishing. The man’s shirt was dark with blood and a thin stream of blood ran from his mouth and down his cheek. His eyes were clouded. It was hard to say what he saw.