The Ghosts of My Lai

by JC Braswell

  “Yeah, he was dying, but there was a type of lucidity in his words. It was one of the clearest things he ever said to me. He warned me.”

  “What’d he say?” Simmons asked.

  “That we’re being judged.” The pieces came together like the solution of a jigsaw puzzle. “McEvoy’s death, Garcia’s death, Anuska and Jones being tied up in front of our camp, the cards, no dog tags. None of those mongrels could do that to us, or even think of playing those mind games. Hell, did you really think for one second that they were capable of dragging their bodies through the jungle? We were fooling ourselves. Damn it, even that VC, he said something about spirits. You’re right, Simmons. This jungle is haunted. We’re its ghosts.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me. Now we’re really thinking it’s spirits? I was just messing,” Simmons said.

  “Then why are you shaking? Why do you keep looking over your shoulder? You should be used to late-night ambushes by now. It’s because you realize something. Over there, beyond that thicket of trees, it’s waiting for us.”

  “Then why even try?” Donovan said. “If that’s what you think, then why are you even trying?”

  “Because.” Williams paused. He studied their small fire. The flames whipped around as if it followed the veracity of their words. “Only way to atone for your sins is to confess. Ain’t that right?”

  “I just can’t believe. I can’t believe that,” Harris repeated himself.

  A flash of light lit up their surroundings, making the men look more dead than alive. The first few droplets of water plucked the ground. Their fire hissed with every drop.

  “Get me out of here, Harris,” Simmons demanded. “I ain’t gonna be hogtied while you guys wait to get shot up. Spirits and ghosts and shit. VC are playing tricks on us. That’s all it is.”

  Lightning flashed again. The iridescent blue tones faded. The cold. The darkness. It was coming.

  “Simmons and I will go. We’ll leave you three to your own doing.” Harris paced faster.

  “Don’t do it, Harris.” Williams ordered, but Harris didn’t care. He trudged over to Simmons.

  “At least he knows.” Harris wouldn’t relent. “I’m too young. I want to live. Simmons can make that happen.”

  The fire burst back to life, casting the light of its flames back around the area.

  “What the hell?” Harris jumped back.

  A guttural snarl erupted from nowhere. The familiar golden eyes flashed in the midnight cloak before Williams could react. In a streak of orange and black, the beast struck before any of them could react, sinking its alabaster teeth deep into Harris’s neck, puncturing skin and soft tissue. Blood came quick.

  Harris tried to scream, but the beast silenced him. It pulled Harris to the ground, his body flailing like a ragdoll as the tiger clamped down its jaws tighter.

  “Holy shit,” Donovan screamed.

  “You’ve got to be—” Simmons’s draw dropped as he pushed his heels into the dirt, scooting back a few feet.

  More crimson liquid spurted from Harris’s throat, sprinkling Donovan’s face as the tiger wrapped its arm around Harris, its claws slicing through his fatigues. The kid tried to speak, his lips moving, but no words came as deep crimson gurgled up.

  “Hold on, Harris.” Williams went for his gun.

  The tiger swiped again, its claws opening Harris’s chest cavity, leaving a trail of three slash marks that exposed translucent lung and the bloody mass of Harris’s heart. As Williams aimed, the beast yanked Harris backwards, leaving only the kid’s legs jutting from the foliage. Harris’s right boot quivered. With one final tug, the tiger pulled Harris’s corpse back into the jungle.

  “This can’t be…this can’t be.” Jackson’s eyes lit up against his dark skin. Taken by fear, he toppled backwards on his elbows. “It wasn’t real. That ain’t real. It looked at us.”

  “Tell me that just didn’t happen,” Donovan cried, Harris’s blood covering his face like Indian war paint. Unlike Jackson, he remained paralyzed, his head shaking, his jaw open so wide it could fit an apple.

  “That did just happen,” Simmons said. “You guys got to untie me. You got to do it now. Tiger, Cong, whatever. You can’t do this to me.”

  Williams said nothing, resting the gun on his thigh. All that remained of Harris was a pool of blood and a few boot prints dug into the mud. The kid was gone.

  He remembered the first time he’d seen Harris—a graduate right out of boot camp. The former track star wore his helmet wrong and struggled with holding his rifle. He talked about going back home and using the GI money to go to college. He wanted to be a police officer because of the trust that people place with officers of the law. But soon Vietnam poisoned him just like so many others. It made villains out of heroes.

  The humble kid had turned darker after a few months, bragging about harassing kids and women in the villages. His youth allowed him to be influenced. The dark side of war was too big a temptation to resist. With Simmons in his ear, it was only a matter of time until the kid fell off the cliff.

  Now there were four. The air grew silent for a minute as the survivors stared in awe. Then Williams heard it. The dull tones of chanting, a chanting he recalled from their broken radio, surrounded them. They were being hunted.

  “We need to move,” Williams broke his silence. “We need to move now.”

  “I’m all for that,” Jackson said.

  Williams grabbed his right ankle; bacterial juices and pus flowed from underneath his bandage as he pulled back, bending his knee.

  “How the hell we gonna see? We might be running right into it,” Donovan said as he scurried to his feet. More rain hit the ground.

  “We need to try,” Williams ordered.

  The rain picked up into a steady drizzle as the chanting grew louder and cut through the storm.

  “We follow you, but what direction?” Jackson, despite wanting to see the man dead, lifted Simmons to his feet.

  Lightning spread out like spider webs in the gathering clouds above, casting the area in blue-white light, the rain frozen in time with each flash.

  “Your call, LT,” Donovan yelled through the rain’s fury. His bandage soaked up the water and drooped down his face, exposing the purple eye socket underneath, the wound wicked and angry. “What are we going to do?”

  The rain assaulted the fire until it sizzled to a pillar of smoke rising up like a ghost to the heavens. Blue-white light flashed again and highlighted the path. The river waters churned and nipped at his feet as the rain drained into the basin.

  Another surge of lightning. This time the bolt struck behind the tree line, loud enough to make Williams’s ears pop and shake the ground with its power, but it also revealed the makings of a path, one Williams hadn’t seen before.

  “What’s wrong? Why’d you stop?” Jackson said.

  “The clearing should be up ahead. Think I saw a path to it.” Williams yelled through the torrential downpour. He wished it were their baptism.

  Lighting illuminated the path once more as if God meant to show them their destination.

  “Right there. Go. Go. Go.” He shoved Donovan forward, abandoning his crutch. “Go.”

  Jackson sprinted for the path. Simmons followed, leaving what little supplies they had behind.

  Williams ran as fast as his one leg would take him. Donovan, Jackson, and Simmons disappeared under the wooded canopy. The raging storm cast down another bolt, this one striking a tree to their right. Sparks flew in a fiery glow as the electricity surged into its trunk, splitting it in half.

  Williams tripped. His bad leg screamed with agony as he landed face-first in the mud. The soft soil burrowed into his mouth and nostrils as he pushed himself up. His arms sank into the ground, elbow-deep.

  He needed to focus. He needed to keep going.

  Then he saw them. Seven feet to his right the tiger’s eyes pierced the monsoon. The tiger’s foreboding growl signaled its intentions, its massive paws shifting the earth
underneath.

  “Williams, come on,” Donovan called from the shadows.

  Williams stumbled, ignoring the unrepentant pain as he ran as fast as the soft mud and his poisoned leg would allow him. It was behind him, breathing, watching, and preparing to strike. He squeezed Garcia’s dog tags tight.

  Donovan snatched Williams’s arm, pulling him into the cover.

  “Let’s go,” Jackson yelled.

  Williams turned around, fully expecting to see the beast upon them. The ghost had vanished.

  Intertwined branches above muffled the rain. As the three navigated their way through the blackness of night, the occasional spark of lighting guided their way. They kept going. They would not look behind.

  The rain soon dissipated to a drizzle.

  “Jackson. Hold up.” Donovan took a few deep breaths about thirty minutes removed from their camp. “Gotta question for you.” He fell to one knee, bending over, spitting up dirt and bile.

  “What’s that?” Jackson backed into a tree.

  “Where’s Simmons?”

  TWENTY NINE

  The rising sun burned off the last of the storm clouds, summoning a sauna-like atmosphere. The humid air was a breeding ground for the jungle insects that dogged the three bewildered American soldiers, waiting for the walking dead to fall as they trudged along the riverbank, moving at a snail’s pace before taking a breather.

  Williams rested against an outcropping of rocks with both legs stretched out in front of him. His arms weighed like anchors, pulling him further into the ground. He raked his fingertips over a fresh set of mosquito bites that likely carried some sort of wild disease that accentuated his fever. He welcomed the little relief it provided.

  Jackson and Donovan stared back at him with blank expressions, lost in their own world, maybe making peace with their fate.

  Williams imagined Donovan thought back to the cinderblock walls of his dorm room and his soft mattress, the smell of perfume on his pillow with Al Greene playing in the background. A slender girl danced in front of him. Her pink-and-white polka-dot panties hugged her unblemished teenage hips, begging him to jump on top of her. He could not help but smile.

  Jackson probably yearned to be back home with his grandmother. The smell of apples and cinnamon wafted over him as she baked him a fresh apple pie. His three brothers and two sisters gathered around on their hardwood floor, playing jacks and carrying on with each other. He wanted his family.

  They were far from soldiers, just men looking to survive.

  Williams gripped Garcia’s dog tags in his left hand, the sharp ridges digging into his palm. He held the wet remnants of Anuska’s crumpled picture in his right pocket. All that lay in front of him were the dips and bows of Vietnam’s hilly terrain, replete with a smattering of trees and brush. If he lived to a hundred, he could do without seeing another shade of green.

  He looked through the lingering haze to the flickering bulb of sun hiding behind the leaves. With the rest of their equipment either abandoned or taken by whatever force stalked them, they stood little chance of making it through the day.

  Williams cringed at the thought of what awaited them. Their trek through the jungle would burn through their bodily fluids; the rapid onset of dehydration would follow. He had seen it before, soldiers stumbling out of the jungles, their lips dry and cracked, their pupils huge with confusion, mumbling incoherent words. One of them would crack. They would swallow mouthfuls of the river. An hour later they would literally shit themselves to death because of the putrid water.

  But they still needed to move.

  “I know none of us want to hear this, but we’ve got to go. Can’t just sit around here waiting for someone to save us,” Williams said, nearly choking on his swollen tongue as he spoke.

  “Save us. That’s a good one.” Donovan smiled. His skin looked like leather, his cheeks curling to deep brown ridges more akin to an emaciated native. “No rescue helicopters. No signs of life. Why doesn’t it just pick us off already?”

  “Momma always told me to look at the bright side. At least Simmons ain’t here anymore.” Jackson coughed up a laugh. “I bet that honky got himself ate right up. I guarantee he gave that tiger some lip before he died.”

  Even Williams couldn’t help but find morbid humor at the thought of Simmons’s fate.

  “The look in Harris’s eyes. Bastard lit up just like a Christmas decoration when that tiger got his ass. Never seen nothing like it,” Jackson said.

  “Hell, Harris ain’t been abused like that since he tipped that hooker one dollar,” Donovan said. “Kid didn’t know what to expect when he got here.”

  “A tiger. Who would’ve thought.” A tear gathered and slid down Jackson’s cheek as he chuckled.

  “Damn cat made him into Sloppy Joe. I don’t think I ever saw anything like that.” Donovan’s face turned red as his chest heaved with laughter.

  Every man has his breaking point. Last night, Jackson and Donovan had found theirs as they watched a tiger maul their youngest squad mate. The morbid banter mixed with laughter became accepted among those who found death too often in Vietnam. It also served as a precursor to a much more dangerous mindset—the type of mindset Jackson and Donovan needed to embrace to make it out of their prison. Williams did not know if he was thankful about it or not.

  “I gotta question for you anyway, Cap.” Jackson coughed. “Damn, that was some funny shit.”

  “Enough of the captain. No need for formality anymore. How about just calling me Chris?”

  “I always liked Cap.” Jackson smirked. “But we can do that. You know you’re a good man, don’t you?”

  “Am I?” They did not know half the story.

  “Yeah, you know.” Donavan shifted around and groaned, something obviously bothered him by his hip, but he kept focused on the conversation. “How come we don’t know more about you? I mean, you know all about us. You know that Jackson is trying to help his family and all, and that my dumb ass flunked out of college so my parents kicked me out of the house, but we don’t know much about you.”

  “What’s there to know?” Williams looked for a branch to help pull himself up to his feet.

  “You said it yourself last night. We ain’t got a rat’s chance in hell of making it out of here. We could at least know you a little. Maybe deliver some message to your family.”

  “Family?” The word family punched at his gut. “I don’t have much of a family.”

  “No family? Really? No momma and no daddy? You can’t be joking us like that,” Jackson said, cutting right through Williams’s lie.

  “Oh, I have parents, all right, used to at least. Father died from some weird poisoning when he served in the Second World War. At least that’s what they say. My mom? Well, she couldn’t live without my dad. Let’s just leave it at that. Don’t have any siblings. No aunts or uncles. So it’s just me.”

  “Really?” Donovan adjusted his bandage, furrowing his brow. “Were you trying to escape the pain or something? Is that why you joined?”

  “I guess you could say something like that. It’s easier when you have nobody.” Williams gripped the tree. His injured leg stabbed at him as the blood circulated again. “But for now we need to push our lazy asses to our feet. No time to waste on chitchat.” Williams paused to catch his breath and remove the purple sparkles from his vision.

  “I held a girl down once…in college.” Donovan’s broken voice begged for attention. “That’s the real reason why I left. Not because I flunked out or anything. Hell, classes were easy. Math, English, all that came natural. It was all because of a damn girl.”

  “What?” Williams shifted his weight against the rock.

  “Yep. Wouldn’t you know, it was the university president’s daughter. Met her at a fraternity party one night. Was kind of wasted.” His good eye watered with regret. “One thing led to another. Ended up taking her back to my dorm.” With each word, his head hung lower, his voice cracking with embarrassment.

  �
��We drank more cheap beer. Smoked some weed to get rid of the tension, you know when you’re first alone with a girl. Kind of weird. Started making out a little. She sure seemed like it, moaning and all. Real stereotypical for a president’s daughter. I was just too blitzed.” He pounded the ground. His cheeks ran deep with tears, accenting the tanned hide.

  “God. I was too hammered to realize when she stated saying no. Damn it. I didn’t know. I ended up passing out. I woke up to her crying next to me.” He choked up, his pent-up emotions boiled over. “I took her like that. That ain’t me. Hell, girls love me. She told her dad two days later. Boy, was he pissed, but he didn’t want it getting out that she had been to that party. I guess that’s where I got lucky. In exchange for my silence, he didn’t press charges, just expelled me from school. I didn’t want to tell my parents, so I made up this fake grade sheet and showed them that I flunked out. Still remember the look on my dad’s face. Damn, he was mad at me, even gave me a nice shiner for the money he spent. I had no choice but to come over here. I never meant to hurt her.” He buried his head in his hands. “They disowned me, even my sister. So I know how you feel, having nobody and all.”

  “I know what you mean, brother.” Jackson eyed Donovan with a degree of apprehension, but didn’t dismiss his squad mate. “None of us are perfect.”

  “But I did something to her that I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have. I try to forget, cover it up like nothing happened. Every time I see a woman, I see her, but it’s like I can’t stop. I’m all alone, and I just want the comfort of a woman’s touch. I know it sounds so damned sick. Some twisted shit. Guess that’s why I took those pictures back there.” Donovan sniffled and wiped his eyes, looking away from the two.

  “We all forget ourselves sometimes,” Williams said. They all had secrets. “That’s why you joined up for this, isn’t it?” Williams sighed. The picture became clearer. Everyone had a sordid past, save Garcia, who was spared the brutality of the attack.

  “I guess now is a good a time as any for confessions.” Jackson managed a smile. “We’ve all done things we’re all ashamed of.”