Black Buddha

by Richard Waters

  I rubbed my eyes, threw on a t-shirt and knocked on his door, feeling the locked shape of the padlock in the dark. He hadn’t come back. Brilliant, our first night in Bangkok and he’d been tempted away by a lap dancer. I stood there looking very English in my y-fronts, thinking it through carefully - we’d left the bar around 9:30pm and it was gone midnight now. And Skip was a little green when it came to travelling, he’d said as much. In the distance I could hear a police siren. Something stewed in my guts, atavistic hairs on my neck uprising.

  I decided to go and sit in the lobby, chat to the simian-faced girl if she was awake and smoke a cigarette, but when I got there the lobby was empty. My irritation was segueing to panic. In the unlikely event he’d wanted to go to a strip bar he would have forced me to go with him or abandoned the idea.

  The buildings were wobbling I was so tired. I walked toward the sirens at the end of Khao San. To my relief, there was a fire raging beside a mosque; that must be what all the noise was about. I knew he’d be fine but you can’t help but worry on the other side of the world when your body is screaming for sleep. Besides, Skip had been locked in the concrete jungle of London for the past five years without respite, maybe he went to let his hair down and just didn’t want to wake me. Perhaps it was fair enough and I should relax a bit and stop seeing bogeymen around every corner. He knew what my answer would be if he’d asked me to come again and he’d considerately let me sleep. That was it.

  People were running from the mosque desperately waving arms and crying into saris; Muslims praying on their knees that perhaps the wind would spare their sacred temple and blow the fire in the direction of the Buddhists. I watched the orange flames clamber from one timbered house to the next, the people who lived there waiting till the last moment before they ran from the entrance with their shrines and possessions. I searched for him among the faces of gathered farangs - a final yarn for those on their homeward route to tell - but Skip was nowhere to be seen.

  I wandered blindly after that, like a teenager on a bad pill, knowing only that I had to find him. The streets grew darker as I drew away from Khao San… no more candy lights, just the humidity and sickly smell of urban refuse. Already I was feeling guilty for lending him the money for the flight, as if it was somehow my fault. Stop thinking bad things, I told myself, but I couldn’t help it, my imagination was in freefall. And hadn’t I been warned by my own instinct at the airport, that being here would be a bad thing? In situations like this when our thoughts turn black I wonder how much we negatively influence events before they’ve happened, and were we to psychically surround ourselves in white light, everything might turn out peachy? Somehow I doubt it.

  I walked past a park, nearly got run over by a tuk-tuk then found myself by the river. An old woman pointed me back in the direction of Khao San Rd as I narrowly missed wandering into an elephant and his mahout. The birds were singing in the narrow streets of Banglamphu when I got close, it had gone four thirty in the morning and I could walk no further.

  As I sloped back to Luckies I kept close to the side of the street, hugging the buildings and scanning the doorways for the form of my friend. Scuttling whores balanced their drunken Western marks on tiny shoulders, the fronts of guest-houses were locked and I noticed in a shop window a row of skinned and caramelized ducks hung from their necks on steel hooks. Jesus, I’m a long way from home.

  I was sure I’d find his door unlocked this time, Skip asleep in his jeans and t-shirt. Tomorrow we’d go to the islands in the south, kick back, drink ‘special’ shakes just once, get a tan, swim, lose a few pounds, swim some more and start to plan what the hell we were going to do with the next stage of our lives. It would all be good; it’s amazing how a few weeks in the sun can clear your head. Skip would get his break, and perhaps I would become a decent writer again, get my mojo back.

  As I entered Luckies I was met in the lobby by a policeman in a peaked hat and a man in civilian clothes, they both stepped out of the darkness. ‘Alain Deschamps?’

  My hands were shaking, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please come to Police station, sah.’ Said the man in the slacks, tie and jacket.

  ‘Is there some kind of problem?’

  The girl behind the desk couldn’t look me in the eyes, staring at her desk as if she were trying not to blink. ‘Sah, come with me Police station. No trouble now.’ As he snatched my passport from her and spoke in short machine-gun bursts, my heart started hammering rapidly.

  ‘Just tell me - is it something to do with my friend, Skip Martin? He’s English.’ He spoke to the girl. She nodded urgently.

  ‘Look, can I at least speak with him, he’s my best friend?’

  He waved me on impatiently. The other cop’s hand was on his baton and loosening it from his belt. ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Why “not possible”? I want to know, is he alright!’ My voice was raised, people had gathered on the stairway to witness my eruption, a bunch of rubber necking farangs.

  ‘Your friend is dead Mistah Deschamps.’

  - 5 -

  That night as the sunset turned the colour of blood, they loaded their canteens, packed as much ammunition as they could carry and checked their rifle chambers and pins on their light ordnance.

  Carabas addressed the grunts. ‘Each one of you returns here with blood of on your hands, I want scalps in my report tomorrow, understand?’ He eyeballed a lanky youth, ‘I said, you dig nigger?’ The colonel’s eyes burned, the rest of his face fell away in their ferocity.

  They marched over to the Hueys sat like dragonflies. The phosphorous lights of Da Nang port disappeared below as the helicopters banked left and flew northwest toward the darkness of the jungle. Jacques thought nothing of Penelope as he looked at the younger soldiers around him, nor of his slightly trembling hands or of the mother who waited on his calls in her flat in the north of Paris. And if he did, he convinced himself otherwise in a weak attempt to summon his old spirit.

  The tops of trees folded down in the downdraught of the birds. A soldier dogtrotted over waiting for them to disembark. ‘What’s the contact so far soldier?’ asked Carabas.

  So far no real contact, sir. Two guys on point found a hooch. Looks like Charlie cleared out before we got near. But not all bad sir... one of my boys found a tunnel which lead to a foxhole with some ammo. We got us some intelligence of guns at the nearby ville, you want to take a look at it now?’

  Behind them the soldiers were lighting cigarettes, their expressions disconsolate as the tailgate of the bird lifted and diminished in the Vietnamese evening. They were on their own now, the comfort of Da Nang a long way away. Jacques scanned the tree line; triple canopy, foliage so thick you couldn’t shine a torch more than ten yards. Any number of VC could be watching them through the bamboo thickets.

  Above, the sky took on the same velvet darkness as the jungle, a pale wind blew and Jacques could see the first stars peeking through the Oriental curtain.

  By 10pm the men had dug sandbagged bunkers. Two sentries took watch, one on each side of the impromptu camp. All lights were extinguished, save the orange eyes of cigarettes smoked nervously within foxholes. Short-timers were the worst, the most nervous; those with less than two months to go. In the Legion a soldier served a minimum five-year sentence, often he’d stay on and make it his life. Here, there were just boys who wanted to go home, counted the days down and prayed to some forgotten god that fate would spare them; that the next grunt would trip the mine and the bouncing betty would impale another in its tendrils of light and shrapnel.

  Jacques volunteered for watch, time to shake away the cobwebs.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ said Carabas, ‘One of the kids can do it. Anyway, I’ve got some other ideas.’ He chambered a round in his M16; it looked like a child’s toy in his hands. ‘I thought you and I might scout the interior.’

  Carabas listened to a boy cr
ouched over a radio. ‘We’ve picked up one of the LURPS in the jungle sir, says he’s seen something fugazi near the ville.’ The marine had a little down of beard about his chin, his teeth pale and ceramic in the moonlight.

  ‘What do you mean “fugazi”? You get a hold of him, get me some co-ordinates and we’ll take a look.’

  The voice crackled back over the line, the corporal fiddled with the tuning knob to get a better reception, but the communication had died.

  ‘His name’s Jonti, Colonel. People around him get fragged left, right and centre but not Jonti sir, he’s like Jesus. He said he seen a Loupgarou glowing in the trees.’

  The Colonel’s neck bulged with irritation, the central vein in his forehead rising. Jacques watched the overbite in his jaw distend and push out. ‘What do you mean, a loupgarou?’

  ‘It’s Cajun for werewolf.’

  ‘I know perfectly well what it is.’

  In the distance they heard the breaking of branches as if somebody was crashing through the trees. The Colonel’s eyes narrowed, he looked at Corporal Cutter then back to Jacques covering his cigarette in the palm of his hand,

  ‘You got a stick, Private?’

  Cutter nodded nervously.

  ‘I thought so - you’re coming with us, short-timer. We’re going on a...’ The sound in the trees stopped him mid-sentence. Cutter began to tremble, pulled a twig from his pocket, carefully notched like Robinson Crusoe’s tree.

  Someone in a bunker yelled, ‘What the hell was that!’

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Carabas.

  ‘Sir, please don’t make me go in, look - I only got another sixteen days here, I know them boonies is loaded… I got a really bad feeling about it tonight.’

  Carabas grabbed him by the scruff, his dog tag necklace snapping and falling to the floor. ‘Put on your flak jacket and wipe some greasepaint on your face… we’re moving out. And when I stick that fucking twig up your butt you’ll appreciate what a bad feeling is, now do it.’

  The three men spread out in arrow formation, Cutter at point, stumbling over banyan and strangler fig tree roots. They couldn’t use flashlights, instead they had to feel their way toward the noise. The crashing in the trees was drawing closer. It couldn’t be VC, they were too silent, Jacques wondered if it was perhaps a marine who’d lost his mind, a lone straggler presumed dead from another unit; it happened all the time.

  Something moved at 12 ‘o clock. Jacques’ hand tightened on his rifle and slid the switch to ‘automatic’. He hit the floor and looked through his starlight; all was still in the artificial green light. He waited for a shape in the cross hairs, but nothing moved. They pushed on in a dogtrot, Cutter still blubbering. Jacques pictured their faces, eyes thin as cats, bony hands around Russian rifles. They’d wait until the last moment, till the marines’ breathing was beside them and then strike with economic shots.

  Then Jacques felt the ground swell, smelt the rot of unearthed soil and saw an incendiary flash of white, all of this backdropped by a huge bang. A figure was thrown into the air; Cutter had no time to scream as the shock stole the breath from his lungs. He lay in separate pieces on the ground, a leg missing, another grotesquely spun about itself like a discarded rag doll. He was screaming, Jacques covered his mouth and fished for a morphine tablet with his other hand, his heart beating with the expectation of ground-fire, his abdomen convulsing. Fear never left him, but now it was worse, he was soft around the edges; like his old boxing days when he was stale to the ring. They’d come too far to retreat back to camp, whatever came at them they’d have no choice but to meet it head on.

  The whiff of cordite mixed with the dying soldier’s bowels. Cutter was shaking violently, fighting for breath and biting the Frenchman’s fingers. He’d lost half his face in the landmine, his mouth casting an involuntary leer where the jawbone and skull shone through.

  ‘Just try and breathe. I’ll give you something to help the pain.’ said Jacques. He felt viscera on his hands as he scrabbled for the capsule in his pocket. Then the small man fainted. Jacques checked his pulse noting Cutter’s short-timer stick by his side. ‘He’s not going to make it.’ The earth smelt damp and putrid, in the distance Jacques saw phosphorescence rising from a tree like a pale phantom,

  ‘Claymore.’ said Carabas flatly, ‘He’s finished.’

  ‘There’s your Loupgarou.’ Said Jacques. He remembered the phenomenon of rotting wood in damp earth, gases released from the rot that reacted with the oxygen and produced the glow. But Carabas wasn’t listening, ‘VC’ll be moving in, leave him.’

  ‘Where I come from a soldier never leaves his dying.’ Said Jacques coldly. The Colonel removed a 9” Bowie knife from its holster and placed it above Cutter’s heart. ‘Where I come from a soldier always retrieves his dead. We’ll send someone back to get him.’ He replied.

  ‘But he’s not-’

  Private Cutter wriggled a moment then was still. ‘Can’t have him give our position away.’ The Colonel removed his knife from the other’s throat, wiped it on his fatigues and crept over to the glowing tree. He plunged his hands in the luminous paste and smeared it across his face, his hulking frame lit like a ghoul.

  They sat on a ridge veering sharply into a valley of mahogany, strangler figs ‘What time you got?’

  ‘Midnight.’ Said the Frenchman quietly.

  ‘Then let’s go to work.’ The Colonel moved down the slope with animal grace. A fire was burning in the centre of the ville, around it a cluster of bamboo stilt houses. They crept closer to a figure tending the flames, an old boy bent over an opium pipe. In an instant it was over as Carabas’ blade ripped across his throat. He gathered the old man’s hair in his hand, deftly removing the scalp from the skull in a singular sweep that he then placed inside his flak jacket.

  Jacques retched and put a hand over his lips to stop the bile. He could hear talking inside one of the huts, it sounded like a woman’s voice. The smoke grenade flew in the open doorway with a hiss. The first figure ran from the hut screaming, Carabas shot in bursts of three. A child fell by the doorway. A woman in a nightgown ran toward her father on the fire, she too was cut down. Jacques moved to the other hut, flung the open the door and tossed a flare into the musty darkness, screaming at the inhabitants in French. They huddled together.

  ‘Ou sont des hommes? Vous VC?’ he asked hoarsely.

  They were too frightened to say anything, an old woman and boy no more than five years old. Carabas appeared behind Jacques, the flames flickering on his skull. ‘Ask them where the men are.’

  Jacques pointed the M16 at the woman. She opened her black mouth, started to whine and collapsed on her knees in a motion of prayer. Carabas placed the tip of his knife next to the child’s temple. Jacques heard the hiss of the kid’s bladder. ‘He’s a child, Lizard, let him go.’ His voice sounded thin and papery.

  ‘We U.S! America good - no VC here!’

  ‘Ah, did-didi mau, think I was born yesterday?’

  ‘No VC - Coca Cola...’ she whined,

  Her head exploded like a watermelon against a bamboo wall, for a moment her body remained upright. The boy ran into the darkness. Carabas raised his rifle and casually nuzzled the butt with his chin,

  ‘Got your starlight, Scarecrow, I can’t see shit?’

  Deschamps didn’t answer. Instead he walked back toward the fire, paused by the smouldering body of the old man and strode back up the ridge the way they’d come.

  To the south the sky flashed with green VC tracers; Carabas was close behind him and they were running back up the ridge toward the clap of mortars. The grunts were under fire. Carabas and Jacques moved from trunk to trunk without speaking until the darkness traced shapes from itself and they could pick out the furtive movements of Charlie.

  Carabas curled his bulk into a hollow tree, Jacques could make out the fad
ing glow of his face as he pulled the pin from a grenade and held up the flat of his palm to signal for him to hold his fire. The grenade fell beside three figures in black, as it exploded they were blown into the air, then Jacques was running toward the fringes of the jungle, Carabas at the fore spraying quick salvos. They fell on the VC from behind, grunts were screaming, trying to fasten flak jackets, cowering under the falling debris of exploded earth, the sandbags around the foxholes displaced. And then like professional ghosts, the VC disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ Carabas walked casually into the melee and looked at the scene. Three men lay in pieces between the jungle and makeshift camp, legs lost, femurs jutting from flesh, smoke and steam rising from fresh exit wounds.

  A few more desultory rounds were fired; a red flare thrown into the jungle perimeter to double check the VC had retreated. A soldier with a gun was screaming, tears down his cheeks as he fired off the remaining bullets in his magazine. The Frenchman took the gun from him. At first he was unable to hear anything, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Let go Curtis… it’s over now.’ Jacques eased the gun from the stunned Lieutenant. The barrel had fired so many rounds its chamber had begun to melt.

  They gathered the VC dead from as the moon slunk behind the approaching thunderheads. The enemy were piled in a heap, little bodies strung with sinew and the black shreds of their pyjama uniform. For some of them it was the first time they’d seen them close up and Jacques could tell they were disappointed; no Grendel’s or Minatours, just teenagers with aged rifles and slippers.

  ‘How many KIAs?’ Said Carabas firing up a cigar,

  ‘Three dead, one missing, Sir.’ Curtis looked into the abyss as he spoke.

  The grunts emerged from their hooches to hear the Colonel speak, some shaking. He scoped every one. ‘We got five confirmed gook kills and we lost three of our own, that puts us ahead on the scoreboard.’