Perfume River Nights

by Michael P. Maurer

  Alone, Singer ambled back toward his bunker on the southeast side of the firebase. He stopped when he saw him. He’d thought he was dead, but there was no mistaking the pudgy figure coming toward him. So many good men were already gone. There was no justice in death’s selections. He tried to remember when he’d last seen him. It was the day in the A Shau when the man had sent him back down the same trail after Trip was hit and he and California narrowly escaped. He had told the man it was a bad idea and argued for an alternative plan. But the man had said that the CO wanted to see bodies and he had been insistent that Singer go down the same trail again, ignoring the folly of it or the likely outcome. He’d hoped he would never see the man again. He knew what Trip would do if he were still here.

  “Singer.”

  The voice tore into him as much as the memory and he tightened his grip on the sling of his M16 that hung from his shoulder as Sergeant Milner approached in cleaned fatigues, the trousers with a pressed crease.

  “Make sure you shave,” Sergeant Milner said.

  “I been a little busy lately, Sarge.”

  “You’re not busy now. The men in fourth platoon will look like soldiers.”

  “Where you been, Sarge? We could have used your help today picking up the CO’s body, what was left of it.”

  “Get a haircut, too, and clean that rifle.”

  “Use the same trail, Sarge?”

  “Get one today or you’re on report,” Sergeant Milner said, stepping past.

  “Right away, Sarge, I damn sure don’t want to die with long hair,” Singer said. “Fucking pogue.” He didn’t care if Sergeant Milner heard him. Fuck the man.

  Singer crossed the firebase, past bunkers with the antenna array, the sandbagged tents and the smell of burned coffee, past the massive eight-inch guns, to the bunker line below. He ignored the men he passed. At the bunker California was sprawled shirtless on the bunker top, his hands clasped behind his head resting on his helmet. His arms were brown, but his chest was starkly white and his ribs had started to show. He never moved as Singer approached.

  “Think you’re at the fucking beach?” Singer asked.

  “It’s the best I can do until I get back to the real thing.”

  “Don’t be fucking off, you’ll get us both killed.”

  “If we aren’t dead after that, nothing can kill us.”

  “Sit up and watch the goddamn perimeter.”

  California turned toward Singer and pushed himself up slowly. “What’s got you so pissed?”

  “Fucking Sergeant Milner.”

  “Just avoid the man, his time will come.”

  “He told me to get a fucking haircut. We were picking up body parts this morning and the man is worried about a haircut. I never even saw that fucker after he sent us in and Lieutenant Creely got killed.”

  “I heard he preempted a R and R and got out of there.”

  “That sounds like the man, but I can’t believe they let him go.”

  “Everyone knows the man is dangerous. Hell, I could see that the first week I was here.”

  “Yeah, the man’s a clerk, probably cut his own orders,” Singer said, setting his helmet on top of the bunker and running his hand through his hair.

  “Maybe Top decided to get rid of the man,” California said.

  “Maybe. Too bad he came back.”

  “Just stay out of his way or he’ll have you burning shit and on ambush every day.” California lay back down and stared at the sky.

  Singer climbed up onto the bunker top. He repositioned his helmet and rested his rifle on it before sitting down cross-legged with the letter in his lap. The sandbag bunker top was uneven and rock hard and Singer shifted, trying to get comfortable. The firebase cast a long shadow across the road and toward the surrounding low hills and he could feel the approach of night. He held the letter to his nose once more, but still could find no trace of perfume that always marked her letters and carried memories of some of their best times together. He looked over self-consciously, but California was gazing at the sky, perhaps trying to imagine the sea.

  “Sorry, no mail,” Singer said.

  “Didn’t expect any,” California said. “You get a care package?”

  “No, just a letter.”

  “Tough times all around.”

  Singer worked the envelope open and pulled out the sheet of paper, then looked inside the envelope for more.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “What?” California asked, turning away from his imagined sea.

  “One goddamn page? That’s not a letter.”

  “It’s a page more than I got.”

  Singer held the page away from his face. Something was wrong. It was the same blue paper, the same flowing script of lines and loops, but the shortage of words and the lack of a lipstick kiss at the bottom of the page that ended all her letters were bad signs. He flipped the page over to find just an expanse of empty blue. No words. No kiss. Nothing.

  Before he read the first line, he knew what was coming. Still he plowed through the words. She told him she was so sorry, especially to tell him while he was there, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. She hadn’t meant for it to happen. A classmate of his—she gave his name as though it would comfort him—had offered to take her out just as friends so she wouldn’t have to spend so much time alone, because he knew how difficult that must be. He must know it was hard waiting, being alone. Neither of them meant to fall in love, but they had. She was so sorry. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she wanted to be honest with him and tell him. She couldn’t write him anymore. It was just too hard for her. She hadn’t intended it to happen. She hoped he would be okay.

  Fuck. She hoped he would be okay. He flipped the page over again, not believing there wasn’t more. Wasn’t it enough? Fuck. How could such beautiful script hold such ugly words?

  “Well?” California asked, sitting up and drawing his rifle nearer.

  “What?” Singer asked.

  “What’s the girl say?”

  “It’s a fucking ‘Dear John’ letter.”

  “No shit? Welcome back from the A Shau. You’re joking, right?”

  “Here.” Singer extended the letter to California.

  “Fuck. Guess I was lucky not to get a letter,” California said after reading the letter and handing it back. “That the girl you sending your paychecks to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re fucked, man.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Singer said. “What would I do with it here?”

  “What about after? You’ll never see that again.”

  “She can keep it. Don’t mean shit.”

  “Just like a bitch to fuck you over like that.”

  “It’s the asshole dating her that pisses me off. Can you believe it’s some fucker who knows I’m here? A guy I went to school with, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You know the dude?”

  “I know the name. Saw him around, but I never hung out with him. Fuck. I could deal with some anonymous asshole, but somebody who knows I’m here? That’s the worst of it. Fucking low-life bastard.”

  “A guy like that is lower than whale shit.”

  “He’s probably hanging around on some chickenshit deferment.”

  “Fuck, isn’t everybody except us? We should take care of that guy.”

  “He’s a dead man. Fucker won’t know what hit him.”

  “Shit, I’d help you with that if you buy the beer.”

  “More beer than you can drink. We’ll do it together, then. ”

  “Fuck him,” California said, picking up his M16 and firing into the wire.

  “Jesus, are you fucking nuts?”

  California just grinned.

  Then Singer started laughing and they were both laughing and the sun hung in the sky and the shadow of the hill reached east toward the river. No one came to investigate, as though occasional fire on the perimeter was a normal thing.

  “You are nuts,” Singer said,
holding the letter to his lighter’s flame.

  “This place is an asylum,” California said. “And we’re the fucking inmates.”

  The letter flamed and Singer turned it in his hand, watching the flame climb up the blue paper, a black curl chasing the flame. He dropped it on to the sandbags and the last of it turned black and fell apart as the flame went out. The ash lay there in the stillness of the evening air and Singer looked at it, thinking how little it meant to him. What did it matter? The letter? The money? None of it mattered anymore.

  When had he stopped loving her, stopped caring? Her letters were a comfort and he loved the brownies she sent, though never as much as Rhymes. But if he was honest about it, she was from a different world, one he barely remembered and one he wasn’t sure he could ever return to.

  He stopped loving her a long time ago. Maybe after May fifth, when he had stopped loving himself.

  There was so little left to love anymore. He had loved some of the guys around him, but they were gone now. He loved his rifle. Beyond that, there was no love. Maybe he had to let go of love to do these things. He picked up the ash, crumbled it in his hand, and threw it to the wind.

  The night settled slowly and quietly over them. The landscape became dark and featureless, merging with the sky so that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. It was a different darkness than the jungle. Less smothering. Less frightening. Below to the south was the road that lead out from Hue and the sea, passed Firebase Boyd and then Birmingham, passed the ambush site of weeks ago on to the A Shau. A dirt ribbon offering illusions of civilization and security. Singer sat adrift, somewhere along the road between where he’d come from and where he’d been. He had begun to believe that once you follow the road west you could never go back. Above, the sky was clear and unobstructed and Singer leaned his head back in disbelief that he wasn’t still entombed by a jungle canopy. He had forgotten what it was like to see a star-filled sky, the wonder of it, and he imagined what Rhymes might have said or how Trip would have ridiculed them both.

  California put a cigarette in his mouth and covered his head with his shirt to light it, then cast the shirt aside and cupped the cigarette in both hands. Singer pulled his web gear next to him and stared out at the darkness.

  “I’d kill for a beer,” California said.

  “Make it a case if you’re going to do it.”

  Far off to the south there were soundless flashes and a stream of red tracers colliding with emerald ones from the opposite direction. A battle of lights with no sounds. Flares burst above the fighting and drifted down on unseen parachutes. Distant, short-lived stars. Singer thought of the A Shau and the floating lights on the hillside and the daily assaults against the base camp. But tomorrow the sun would rise and travel across an unobstructed sky and he would mark another day. California sat beside him, transfixed by the light show or lost in his own thoughts of survival and escape. The lines of scarlet and jade streaked across each other in a flurry of dueling lights. Death made silent and remote.

  A new, broken line of crimson poured from above out of the darkness, as if originating from nothing, and streamed into the vague dark shapes that marked the ground and the source of the green tracer rounds. Singer watched the lines of light flashing near the horizon. There was a beauty in it. For a moment he imagined the men locked in a frightening nighttime battle and the life-and-death dramas behind the streams of red and green tracers. Nameless, faceless men like most of those around him now. He was thankful it wasn’t him. He felt almost euphoric for the safety of a firebase and at having survived the A Shau. Tonight there was a beauty in the lights.

  Long after the last flare had gone out and the source of the tracers was extinguished or departed, he sat holding his rifle, marking the passing of the night, occasionally looking up and being surprised to find the stars still there. When California’s turn for watch came, Singer lay down on the bunker top, preferring the open air to the small, hot space inside a bunker. Better to take his chances in the open where he could move and maneuver. Bunkers were too much like graves. Boxes with just one way out, which the enemy could easily target.

  On Firebase Boyd, a bunker had been hit in a nighttime attack, partially collapsing, burying the men inside. If he needed cover there was the hole he’d dug and put up a few sandbags around, but he wasn’t living like some mole in a fucking death trap. After listening to the story, California shared his aversion to the inside of bunkers, so they spent the night on top, rotating guard and sleep periods every two hours.

  Despite his fatigue, Singer slept fitfully. He dreamed he was trapped by enemy fire and trying to crawling back to the guys, who kept moving farther away. Just when he got close and thought he would make it, an NVA jumped up a few feet away, firing an AK at his face. He startled awake, reaching for his rifle, knowing it was too late, before he felt the bunker below him and saw California sitting there and then the stars and realized it was a dream. Unsettled, he lay back down, giving into his exhaustion only to be startled awake again with his own death fresh in his mind.

  When Singer’s turn for guard finally came again, he sat up, relieved to abandon his efforts to sleep and to escape dreams of his death. The darkness had deepened and the air remained hot and still, oppressive even in the night. The first row of wire was barely visible, and the second and third were lost in the darkness.

  The slow, rhythmic breathing of a man deep in sleep came from the prone form beside him. After waking Singer for his shift, California had lain down and curled up on his poncho liner and hadn’t moved since. How did he do it? The man was crazy, that was for sure. But with Rhymes, Bear, and now Trip gone, California was all he had.

  Singer ran his hand along his rifle and shifted his weight against his fatigue. His eyes were heavy with the effort to see beyond the wire. His mind was weary with the struggle to understand it all. There was no clarity, only the power of his rifle and the proximity of death and his involvement in it all. He didn’t know who he was anymore. Maybe he never had. So much had changed in so short a time. He had survived so much and yet had so far to go. Would he ever make it home? Who would he be if he did? So many guys he cared about were gone. It was up to him to give their deaths meaning. So many things were fucked-up. Little was certain, except more would die. So many had died, and for what? None of it had the clarity offered by state-side vision. So much rested on him now.

  Behind him came a scream and before he could turn there was a flash of fire and a shockwave passed over him. He hugged the bunker top, scanning the area for movement before a voice behind him yelled, “Fire,” and another eight-inch gun boomed and then they were all firing, and he lay there sweating while California slept undisturbed. When the fire mission was over the firebase grew quiet again and he was alone with the night.

  He watched the sunrise as though he’d never seen one before, following it as its brilliance crept above the horizon from out beyond where he knew the sea to be, illuminating a landscape as confusing as his thoughts. Around him were the noises of an awaking firebase: conversations of men in morning rituals, barked orders from an officer, shuffling feet, the clang of metal against metal, the hum of a generator. So different from the quiet tension of mornings in the jungle, where noise invited disaster.

  “You getting up?” Singer asked.

  “Fuck.” California stuck his head out from under his poncho liner and squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand. “I’m on vacation today.” He pulled the poncho liner back over his head.

  “Tell it to the lieutenant. We got a formation in two hours.”

  “Fuck,” California said again, then sat up and uncovered his head. “You can’t get any rest in this fucking place. Somebody’s always wants you to do something.”

  “Shit, you slept all night.”

  “I was dreaming I was at the beach with a blonde with breasts like grapefruits and an ass made for riding.”

  “I thought you were dead. You didn’t even wake up when the big g
uns fired last night.”

  “It’s a harsh motherfucker to wake up and find you’re still in this place. Who wants to?”

  “How’d you ever end up here?”

  “Passive indifference, man. Passive indifference. And you?”

  “I’m not sure anymore.”

  Singer lit a heat tab and ate a can of heated Cs before retrieving a helmet of water and shaving. He stared at his distorted image on the small piece of mirror and ran his hand over his face. Did he really look like that?

  While he waited for formation he sat on the bunker top, his equipment laid out in front of him, and cleaned the rounds in his magazine, methodically emptying and refilling each one. When it was time, a couple of guys came to cover the bunker and he and California strolled slowly to the area near the helicopter pad. Singer was in no hurry to get there.

  “How’d you get the name Singer?”

  “Same as you. One of the old guys gave it to me my first day with the company. Guy named Shooter, killed the day before you showed up.”

  “I’ve never heard you sing.”

  “Nothing to sing about anymore.”

  22

  June 1968

  Firebase Bastogne, Vietnam

  It was a small formation, smaller than before. Each time they held one of these, the number of remaining men was fewer. Singer took his place in line with the survivors of fourth platoon. The faces from the days in Hue were absent. A line of boots stood in front of the company formation. Behind each pair of boots was an M16 stuck vertically in the ground by its bayonet, a helmet set on top of the rifle, casting harsh shadows in the hot, morning sun. A grouping for each man killed in the A Shau. Each setting was identical: pair of boots, rifle, and helmet. There were no names, but Singer knew some of them and the circumstances of their deaths.