Perfume River Nights

by Michael P. Maurer

  Someone should ask the guy where the hell he was yesterday. Singer waited for the explosion from the road or the jungle, gritting his teeth, hoping for release. Stopped again after moving just a short distance, Singer stood coiled, ready to charge the treeline, knowing it was coming. Already feeling the rush. He rocked back and forth, shifting his weight from his front leg to the rear in a steady motion.

  A ways behind him the New Lieutenant stood casually consulting a map, looking conspicuous in his shiny fatigues and new helmet. His RTO, who looked nothing like Stick, but still reminded Singer of him, stood next to him similarly attired, inviting disaster. They would be the first to die.

  Singer took two steps forward, increasing the distance between them.

  Ahead of him, Trip held his M60 on his hip, turning his head slightly back and forth as if testing the air. The New Guy stood in front of Trip, his head bowed, scratching at the ground with his right foot. A small man anyway, he looked smaller in the wake of Trip’s threat.

  Instinctively, Singer began to search for Rhymes before catching himself. He tried to spit the bitterness from his mouth without success. Hold on. I’m coming, he thought to say, the words floating in his mind. Instead he cursed and rocked forward on the balls of his feet.

  Top marched up and down the company, a shorter distance than in previous days, looking at each man as if checking who survived and sizing up the replacements. Then he repeated it. If Top was worried about Lieutenant Creely today it didn’t show, except in the distance he kept from him. Singer watched Top pause occasionally, saying something. Without Top yesterday, more of them would have died. Maybe the whole company would have been lost. Top didn’t stop beside Singer, but he slowed and they exchanged a glance. The corners of Top’s mouth lifted slightly, and he nodded.

  Their snail-like progress had Singer ready to run screaming down the road firing his weapon. He needed to race ahead. Rhymes, Stick, and Sergeant Edwards were lying there waiting for him.

  Things that started yesterday were still unfinished. More would die today. He could feel it in his bones, in the hardness of the weapon in his hands. He could see it in the approaching clouds, which had grown darker and foreboding. Today there would be retribution.

  His pack grew heavier through every klick. Each stretch of jungle looked more menacing. He sucked in air, unable to get his breath. Even knowing where they were, he felt disoriented. Maybe it wasn’t the landscape but himself he was no longer familiar with.

  He tried to steady himself, watching Trip’s back as he had Rhymes’s, promising a better outcome. He moved when Trip moved and stopped when he stopped, watching the jungle and squeezing his M16 so tight his hands hurt.

  A lifetime of reflection and suffering passed before Singer finally saw the place where yesterday morning he came out from the jungle with fourth platoon, leading the company on what had looked to be an easy mission.

  The stretch of road that held the ambush they walked through and then ran back to lay before him looking as innocent as it had at first yesterday. But today he wasn’t fooled. The screams rose from the jungle and rattled in his mind. He heard the roar of gunfire and felt the concussions of explosions, but ahead of him Trip never went down or even flinched. Singer’s heart accelerated. A wave of death rolled over him and only his anger kept him afloat. His survival burned like a raw wound.

  His stomach knotted and he squeezed his weapon even tighter. He saw the stretch of jungle where the crater was. His feet grew light. When Rhymes yelled for him again, the world shifted and he lost his equilibrium.

  He broke ranks and raced toward the crater. The screams for help changed tone. The voice sounded like his own. He could still save them. Rhymes, Stick, Red, Sergeant Edwards. All the answers were at the crater. His rifle swinging with each stride and his ruck bouncing on his back, he drove his legs, chewing up the ground.

  “Goddamn it, stop that man!” Lieutenant Creely screamed. “Get that man back in formation!”

  The CO’s voice was a rifle volley in the morning heat.

  Still Singer didn’t waver. The crater loomed. The men beside it screamed louder. Legs pumping, he drove forward on his mission.

  Then his rucksack was caught from behind and he spun halfway around and fell, his legs collapsing under him. Lifting his head, he pushed back his helmet and tried to see the crater, but the jungle was still so far away, farther than when he started. He lifted himself on to his elbows and drew his right leg forward, looking ready to take off.

  “Fuck, don’t make me run again,” Trip gasped. “If you get crazy you’ll get us both killed.” His chest heaving and his mouth agape, he lay there keeping a hand on Singer’s ruck. “Fuck, next time maybe I’ll just shoot you. Be a lot easier.”

  Singer looked up at Trip’s face, his flush cheeks and the beads of sweat that ran down his sharp nose and dripped in rapid succession. There was no hint of a smile, and he knew Trip was only half kidding. Singer pushed himself up, struggling against the weight of his ruck that worked to keep him on the ground. From the road bewildered faces stared at him, some men shuffling their feet. Singer looked back toward the crater. The voices had gone silent. Had Trip or anyone else heard them?

  “Goddamn it. I won’t have this happen in my company,” Lieutenant Creely yelled, but it was unclear who the CO was speaking to. Sergeant Milner moved among fourth platoon, saying something to each man.

  “Singer. What the hell are you doing?” Top stepped up and studied Singer closely, ignoring Trip.

  Singer ran his hand across his face rearranging the sweat. “It’s just the guys, Top.” He glanced at where he knew the crater was.

  “I know. You’ll get your chance. Now get back in formation. We’ve got work to do.” Top placed his hand briefly on Singer’s shoulder. “You’re okay, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay, Top.”

  He bit his lip against asking what Top meant by “you’ll get your chance.”What did Top know? Did Top hear the cries for help, too?

  The three of them walked back to the company where men looked away, the Cherries looking confused. Singer didn’t look away but held the gaze of any man that looked at him. Fuck them. So many damn Cherries. How had he become one of the few old guys in just one day?

  He and Trip rejoined fourth platoon. Top continued back toward the CO, where Top leaned in and said something to Lieutenant Creely, who turned away red-faced and silent.

  “You okay now?” Trip asked, stepping closer, still looking flush. Singer could see the questions in Trip’s face. Maybe even fear. Then the muscles in Trip’s face tightened and his eyes narrowed and whatever he’d seen was gone.

  “Let’s fucking do this,” Singer said.

  “Stay cool. You got a lot of days to do.”

  The company broke up and deployed from where they stopped to watch Singer’s lone charge. Lieutenant Creely and the other three platoons headed south, leaving fourth platoon standing on the road alone, Singer with thoughts of the similarities to the day before. Maybe the CO was hoping to replay things, too.

  Singer watched them trail off, disappearing into the jungle. It was good to be free of the CO. Still, Singer would have been happier had he left another platoon and Top with them. He imagined Trip was glad to see the CO head off, as well.

  Barely two squads, they stood in the sunlight and the heat too long while the New Lieutenant and Sergeant Milner conferred, neither looking sure what to do. Alone on the road, surrounded by jungle and mountains, it was hard not to feel insignificant. Singer thought of drifting on a featureless sea.

  “We’re better off alone,” Singer said.

  Trip didn’t answer and just kept watching the road ahead as if he imagined it leading home.

  Sergeant Milner continued his conference with the new platoon leader, who kept looking at his map, then pointing north, as though confirming some location.

  “God save us,” Singer whispered.

  He thought of Sergeant Edwards as Sergeant Milner walked toward hi
m, and how nothing would ever be the same.

  “Trip, take Singer and the New Guy and sweep west through yesterday’s positions there.” Sergeant Milner gestured loosely toward the center of the ambush site. His squeaky voice irritated Singer as much as the fact that he wasn’t Sergeant Edwards. Sergeant Milner offered no explanation as to why he was sending only three of them, or what the few other men who made up the platoon would do. Singer didn’t care. He tightened his face to hold back his smile. It was what he wanted. A chance to go back to the crater. Without Sergeant Milner or the New Lieutenant looking over his shoulder, he could do what he wanted. Maybe there was hope.

  “I got the point,” Singer said. “What do we do with him?”

  “Don’t run off,” Trip said to Singer, then looked over at the New Guy, who was turning slow circles in the center of the road, blinking too fast. “Well, he ain’t no good on point and I sure don’t want him behind us.”

  “Shouldn’t we all stay together?” the New Guy asked, then resumed turning.

  “Great. A fucking Cherry for a slackman,” Singer said. “Just don’t let him shoot me in the back.”

  Singer led off, as he’d done so many times through the months in Nam, forgetting about the Cherry at his back. Today there were more important things. He would be methodical despite his anxiousness. With steady steps he crossed toward the jungle, holding back the urge to charge and fire. Survival, at least in this moment, wasn’t a question. Yet the challenge seemed more daunting.

  The ground with its clumps of grass, clods of dirt, and torn roots offered up no quick answers. Why had so many died? Why was he alive? What price had the enemy paid? The answers were here somewhere. He had to find them.

  It was like passing into another world when he slipped from the stark brightness of the tropical sun to the darkness of the towering layers of jungle vegetation. The scene blurred, trees and leaves losing their shapes and fading into shadows. He was charging into the ambush, then moving under fire to the crater with Sergeant Royce and Red. He pushed a thumb and forefinger against his eyes, then found himself alone just inside the shadows. Behind him the New Guy and Trip were lit in the sunlight, looking anxious.

  The crater was west of him, waiting. But the voices of the dead were silent. If he could feel his rifle firing and listen to the rounds explode, he could keep his balance. It was more than vengeance that he carried.

  Within a few steps he found the first spider hole that he knew would be there. The only surprise was that there were so many. Carefully, his rifle ready, he peered into each hole, thinking of the NVA who rose up after the battle to shoot Bear. The guy had balls or was crazy. Maybe they all would end up that way.

  In today’s stillness, it all seemed so meaningless. But once started, how can you ever stop it? Singer leaned over, pointing his rifle into another hole, then backed away, disappointed. Not a single NVA to die in payment. He kept working west toward the crater, checking every hole. After fifteen he lost count, knowing it didn’t really matter.

  The crater seemed so far today from where they started. Yesterday it was just a few short sprints, distance blurred by gunfire and fear. Had they really been so spread out, stretched so thin that any enemy push would have swallowed them? How had he crossed so much ground under fire unscathed, while Rhymes, Stick, and Sergeant Edwards, with the protection of the crater, died? Nothing made sense.

  Crouching slightly, he slipped under an overhanging branch, careful not to brush against it. He clung to his rifle, knowing it was all that mattered.

  Singer froze in mid-step, aiming his rifle. Barely breathing, he stood motionless, waiting for some movement. A line, broken and obscured by leaves. No real form. Just something that didn’t fit. How many bucks had he discovered that way? The edge of a back. The curve of an ear. The smallest thing out of place. Waiting long enough, the buck would move, revealing itself and offering the shot. Or sometimes studying the vegetation, the broken outline, he could discern the animal and kill it where it stood.

  Seconds passed. His pulse pounded in his ears. A foot shuffled in the litter and a branch scratched against something hard. He cursed the New Guy behind him.

  Nothing moved before him. When he shifted to his left he could make out a sandaled foot and more of the leg he’d first seen. His finger tightened on the trigger. Still he waited, playing a game of stealth. He wanted the man to know it was Rhymes’s friend who killed him.

  When he eased forward he found two of them, but there was no need to fire. He nearly emptied a magazine into them anyway. But the ray of light gave him pause, the suggestion of something nearly divine, though God seemed absent in this place.

  One man lay on his back. Puffy hands, fingers slightly curled at his side. Legs extended in a peaceful pose except for his blood-encrusted shirt. Despite the distortions brought by death the day before, Singer knew the face.

  They’d stared at each other days before across a stream.

  Singer bit down hard, tried to swallow, and vowed the end of mercy.

  A thin beam of sunlight that had somehow filtered through the jungle canopy illuminated the man’s face, reminding Singer of saintly depictions in a grade-school missal. Singer raised his eyes to the small break in leaf cover high above and followed the beam of light back to the man’s face. The man’s boyish face stared into the light with cloudy, sunken eyes, giving no indication of whether he had sought the sunlight or taken any comfort in it. His mouth was open slightly, his lips drawn back in death. A gold tooth glistened in the sunlight.

  The second soldier, just a few feet from the first, lay on his stomach with his head in the same direction as the first man’s. He was slightly smaller, perhaps younger. His head was turned to the side. Flies buzzed about an ugly wound just above his right eye that had obliterated part of his forehead and the top of the eye socket, exposing a drying mass of goo that had once defined the man. Singer watched the flies buzzing, settling, and crawling on the pulpy mass of mangled tissue before rising and settling again. The man’s arms were drawn up on either side of his head, elbows bent, the right reaching farther out beyond the left. Both hands were closed into tight fists, as though gripping the earth. His right leg was pulled up tightly, bent at the knee, his foot poised to push forward. His left leg was extended but twisted oddly below the mid-calf, where his pant leg was caked with dried blood and his left foot lay turned in an unnatural position. The vegetation was matted and torn behind him, marking the path he had crawled before a headshot had ended his journey.

  When Singer turned he caught the New Guy edging up behind him, his face ashen and sweaty, eyes locked on the scene. The New Guy ran off a few steps. Singer bent back over the bodies, ignoring the sound of vomit splashing on the foliage and the New Guy’s soft gagging.

  “Jesus Christ. Fucking Cherries,” Trip said as he moved up toward Singer. “Watch our backs!”

  Straightening up slowly, the New Guy wiped his mouth on his arm and moved off, looking at their trail back to the road. The New Guy appeared more comfortable watching the jungle than the bodies, but Singer figured that would change soon enough, if he survived.

  “Shit, it’s only a couple of dead gooks,” Trip said, stopping next to Singer and eyeing the bodies, then looking quickly about to the front.

  Trip shifted forward and kicked softly at the first body as though fearing the man might still be alive. Then he poked his foot at the second man’s damaged face, causing the flies to rise and buzz about wildly.

  “This war ain’t worth losing your head over.” A deep rumble came from Trip’s chest and his mouth curved up, not quite a smile.

  Singer wasn’t sure who Trip was talking to and was afraid to ask. Maybe Trip was just trying to remind himself, as Singer had been thinking there was nothing here worth dying for. Nothing except each other. Was that why these men had died? Was anything different for them?

  Singer knelt down next to the first body while Trip crouched beside the second. There were no weapons, web gear, or helme
ts, all apparently taken by the NVA. Aware of the ray of light and the shining tooth, Singer shifted position as he reached across the man so as not to block the light, though he wasn’t sure why that was important. Cautiously, he checked around and under the man, fearful of booby traps, before prying at the man’s shirt pockets, sealed with dried blood, checking for documents, letters, or photos, anything that might be of some military value or that would give the man an identity. He pushed his hand awkwardly into each of the man’s pants pockets, repeatedly glancing at the man’s illuminated face.

  The man took their secret to the grave. No one would know that Singer could have killed him days before. Would it have averted any of this?

  “Nothing,” Trip said, resting next to the second body, waving at the swarming flies. “No souvenirs today.”

  Singer looked over at Trip, glanced at their back trail, and saw the New Guy turn away quickly. The search of the two bodies finished, they stood up almost in unison, Trip looking off toward new ground.

  Singer couldn’t move on so easily. Nameless corpses left behind. The afterbirth of battle. Not a clue as to who they were or what their lives had meant. Nor what their deaths had meant. Both sides abandoning the ground they died for. Who had loved them? Would their loved ones ever know what happened to them, or would they suffer through the years not knowing?

  “Let’s keep moving,” Trip said.

  But Singer stood unresponsive, raising his gaze up into the canopy, once more following the narrow beam of light that shone on the man’s face, causing his gold tooth to shine against the dull pallor of death. What did it mean or say about death? A message lay here, if he could only read it.

  Transfixed by the light, he saw himself lying there, the sun on his face. He gave no thought to the man or what the gold tooth told of his past. He thought only about this time and this event and their meeting here a second time. The secret that died with the man. They both had lost something and it was important to remember this event, if not this man.