Seeds Of Fear

by Gelb, Jeff

  Gil felt his backbone mold itself to the smooth marble sheeting.

  "Shit, man," the hooker hissed at him, "you from outta town or sumthin'? You wanna blow job or not?"

  He couldn't tell her age—somewhere between twenty and death was as close as he could come—but the streets had already done a number on her. Gil could almost smell the coppery sweet stench of decay rising from beneath the short skirt.

  Could almost hear the skin on his balls go snap crackle pop as they shriveled at the thought of her tongue and teeth closing over his—

  "I'll do it for twenty-five," she said, taking a step closer, running knobby-fingered hands down the front of her thighs. "What'dya say?"

  Gil shifted his weight, feeling the solid wall of protection at his back give way to a sweating chill as he focused on the bright

  sun-faded palms already dripping onto the tin-roofed plywood stalls where bird-legged children ran between the coils of barbed wire and a heart-shape-faced whore in a blue dress walked past a stinking, dilapidated bar called the

  San Francisco skyline towering overhead . . .

  ... as he tried not to breathe in air that suddenly seemed thick, heavy with the stench of urine and burning shit and fish drifting in from the Bay . . .

  ... as he rushed down the polished marble stair, ducking at the last moment to avoid the outstretched claws. As he listened to another voice whispering seduc-tively in his ear.

  you—wan—me—sue—kee—you—good— G—I became Gil's marching cadence as he crossed against the light and turned in to the deeper canyons of the Financial District.

  He didn't even stop at the opposite side of the street to hail a cab—something he never would have done (considering the five-block technical climb back to his apartment) if it hadn't been for the booze . . . and the reopened wounds his "buddies" of the 182nd Point 5 had picked at all night.

  "You remember those friggin' 'bars' down on Plantation Road?"

  "Man, oh man . . . my wiener never ate so good."

  "Shit, yeah—them B-girls were the best, man. You remember, Gil?"

  I remember.

  "You remember, Gil?"

  "I remember."

  "But ya gotta be careful, pal. . . 'cause you never know which one could be workin' for ol' Charlie. Right. . . gotta watch their eyes, man."

  "Right. Gotta watch their eyes," he whispered, and caught the reflection of his own eyes in the subdued, night-lit windows of the district's "trendier" boutiques and storefront offices.

  eyes watching

  God, he was getting old.

  Getting? Fuck, he was old. Despite the hand-tailored suits ("customized" to hang loose around the softness at his belt line and wide over his stooped shoulders) and weekly salon trims, Gil could see his father and grandfather where there had once been a hard-muscled, hard-assed boy who always thought he'd be that way.

  Back when "getting old" meant surviving your tour of duty.

  The good ol' days.

  Gil made a sound in the back of his throat that might have been a laugh if it had been any other night and he hadn't downed quite so many waterlogged whiskeys and smiled. Flipped his reflection the single-digit salute.

  And momentarily forgot how to breathe.

  you wan me suckee you good, GI?

  The large poster dominated the travel agent's window, its young Vietnamese model—complete with straw "Ah so" hat and white silk ao dai pajamas— holding a bouquet of jungle orchids: half-turned toward the camera. A shy smile on her lips. The pale green cast of her eyes a silent indictment to her racial impurity. Either Amerasian or Eurasian.

  Gil was surprised the gooks had let her live, let alone become their country's poster child.

  She looked about the right age, probably no more than

  eighteen, GI. . . and she no do this much like other girls . . . I keep her special for you, GI. . . just eighteen

  GI

  twenty, and twenty years ago there was more than enough American DNA swimming in the ol' gene pool to produce a whole generation with shit-green eyes.

  Gil let his own eyes drop to the caption just below the half-caste's tiny breasts: Come Back to VIETNAM.

  Come back.

  Come back.

  Come back, GI... I no bite

  She was standing next to him in the glass, wearing the same bright blue ao dai she'd been wearing the day Gil killed her.

  Watching him.

  You wan me suckee you good, GI? she asked, her voice a whisper as she slowly lifted her hand to his shoulder. I be your numbah one girlfriend Vietnam.

  Gil was shivering even before he felt the coldness of her hand through the thick layers of tailored wool. She was just as lovely as the last time he'd seen her.

  And just as dead.

  You wan me suck—

  "—ee you good, GI?"

  Gil tightened his grip on the limp rice-paper bag he was carrying and rolled his shoulders beneath the sweat-soaked uniform tee. Ignored the sweet-soft voice as he forced himself to take another step through the morning's almost liquid heat.

  When he got to the next stall—a seller of plaster Buffies and other objets d'art—Gil wiped the dripping skin below his boonie hat and cursed softly to himself. Seven-fucking-A.M. and he already felt like a used rubber . . . wrinkling into himself and leaking juice like a sieve.

  "You wan me suckee you good, GI?"

  Jesus, didn't whores take ANY time off?

  Gil quarter-turned again and thumped his boot-heels hard against Duong Cong-Ly's rutted, monsoon-pitted asphalt; ignoring the muffled squawks of a half dozen dusty chickens the same way he'd ignored the whore's "come-on" line.

  The first time.

  Halfway around the plywood and hammered-tin stalls that made up Centertown's "business district" and Gil could still feel the silent, angry stares collecting along his backbone like starving leeches.

  Had been collecting there from the first moment he stepped foot in country.

  He knew no amount of shoulder rolling would detach them.

  That no amount of bug juice would keep them off him.

  For long.

  Gil didn't like being stared at. Never had. But now it was worse. Now his life might be threatened by one of those stares.

  Because you never knew.

  Never knew when Charlie might be the one staring.

  never knew

  He'd even heard about whores with glass up their snatches just waiting for horny GIs.

  They were still watching. He could feel them.

  Didn't they know he was one of the GOOD GUYS? Didn't they know he was there to try and save their fucking country for them? Why the fuck did they have to WATCH him all the time?

  To keep himself from drawing the service "piece" on his hip and taking out a few of the WATCHERS (because you never knew when Charlie might be one of them), Gil ran a greasy hand over the back of his neck and took a deep breath . .. almost gagging on the combined stench of his fear sweat and Vietnam's pungent ambience.

  Something had died nearby. Either that, or the wind had shifted and was blowing from the direction of the nuc mam seller. A thin-legged boy pulled down his shorts and added to the overall olfactory effect.

  Watching him. Watching Gil with hate-filled eyes.

  The gun would have felt so good in his hand.

  Rolling his shoulders, turning away from the (eyes) child, Gil opened the soggy bag and looked inside— reassuring himself that it was still there.

  It was.

  Although the humidity had already gotten to the plastic (unbroken) shrink-wrap covering the jacket, fogging over the full color photo, Gil could still make out some of the lettering: Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

  Featuring their hit single: "Devil with a Blue Dress."

  Gil sighed and nodded, carefully folded the bag closed and tucked it under his arm. Felt better knowing it was still there, even though it was the reason he was out wandering the marketplace; collecting hard-edged stares the way a tur
d collects flies.

  But that was okay, he reminded himself, because he had the record.

  The night before he and seven of his barracks-mates had each pitched in twenty-five cents for the weekly "record run," then drew straws to see who the runner would be.

  Gil made sure he lost.

  Almost ten months in country and he hadn't realized how much "Devil with a Blue Dress" had meant to him . . . back in the "World". . . when he still had a future that wasn't measured in firefights and hostile stares.

  The rest of the "record runners" would probably be pissed when he got back with the classic, but fuck 'em, he sure as hell wasn't going to tell them the reason behind it. Couldn't tell them that it was the song blaring on the radio of his dad's Chevy the first and last time he'd had sex.

  Made love.

  Screwed.

  Fucked.

  Gil hugged the record to his chest and found himself stopped in front of a fruit stall, staring at flat-topped green coconuts.

  They were the only things in the display he could recognize.

  Something familiar .. . like the constant bulge straining against the front of his fatigue pants.

  Both his family doctor and the 90th Repo'-Depot's medic had warned him about "sticking his pecker where it don't belong."

  Gil shook his head when the fruit seller lifted one of the nuts and heard his dog tags jingle—in three-part harmony. Two STANDARDS, dull tin gray, and one NONSTANDARD. Blood red.

  If, however, he did "stick his pecker where it didn't belong" and caught something "more aggressive than crotch rot," the NONSTANDARD tag would tell the medic in charge to avoid the rush and just hand him a body bag. Because he was gonna die.

  Allergies to penicillin and most sulfa drugs did not a "happy soldier" make.

  Especially when pussy came cheaper than a crew-cut coconut.

  Especially when his "buddies" back at Tan Son Nhut would be keeping time to the Wheels' driving beat between the legs of some hooch maid while he, Corporal Gil "Can't Get No Satisfaction" Thornton, humped the barracks' communal stereo system.

  And watched.

  "Fuckin' shit!" Gil snarled, waving aside the seller's jabbering makee deal makee deal, and spun on the balls of his feet. The lug soles of his boots made soft crushing sounds as he turned.

  She was standing directly behind him; black-almond eyes smiling up at him.

  watching him

  "You wan me suckee you good, GI?"

  Gil felt the front of his pants shrink another size.

  She was young and beautiful. Her black hair gleaming under the relentless sun. Her eyes clear and bright.

  And watching him.

  Gil's fingers dug into the bag, striking plastic wrap.

  "You wan me suckee you good, GI?" she asked again as if he hadn't heard.

  While she waited for his answer, she tossed a thick black braid over the shoulder of her blue ao dai. A bright blue ao dai. . . the "Devil with a Blue Dress" brought to life.

  Halfway around the world from where they first met in the backseat of his dad's car. But this time she wasn't blond.

  And this time what was between her legs could kill him as surely as a VC's bullet.

  Not as quickly.

  Not as cleanly.

  But just as dead.

  One more grunt for Charlie's body count.

  One less grunt to watch.

  "You have girlfriend Vietnam?" she asked when it became apparent Gil wasn't going to answer.

  Her skin, without the usual scabbed-over lesions and pustules he'd seen on some of the camp's other "girlfriends," was stretched tightly over her heart-shaped skull; and Gil could see the sharp edge of one collarbone as she fingered the high silken collar.

  In fifteen months he hadn't seen one fat dink whore.

  Hell, he hadn't seen one fat dink anything.

  "I be your girlfriend Vietnam," she said, and gave one case closed, end of discussion nod.

  The Regulation Hustle: as STANDARD as the two tags hanging around his neck; and as obvious as the NONSTANDARD tag.

  Gil shook his head, usually all the discouragement they needed, and checked the Seiko he'd picked up his first week in country. Frowned. The dubbing/screw 'em if you can "party" wouldn't start until the evening's torrential rainstorm, around seven.

  That left him twelve full hours before he had to become Gil the Geek—master deejay and part-time voyeur.

  watching

  Twelve hours to kill.

  Gil could feel her eyes on him. Leeches. But hungrier than the rest.

  "I be your girlfriend Vietnam." Stepping closer, she laced one blue-draped arm though his and began pulling him away from the still-babbling fruit seller. "You buy me tea, then I suckee you good."

  Gil put a stranglehold on the bag containing the imaginary devil while he followed the real one, the one wearing the blue dress, through Centertown's semicircular heart toward the "bars" on Plantation Road.

  And kept following her even as they began passing the plywood-and-pressed-beer-can establishments. When an even thinner whore in a bright red miniskirt and UCLA T-shirt darted out of the San Francisco and made a snatch at Gil's hat, the Blue Devil at his side made her own snatch and came back with a tiny fist full of greasy black hair.

  "I know beddah place," the Blue Devil said, ignoring the screeching, scalped whore behind them. "More beddah this place, for sure. No worry. We go."

  Gil knew the "place" wasn't any "beddah" than any of the other prefab bars they were passing, but he went—following after her like a dog after a bitch, listening to her jabber away in a fast-forward version of pidgin English Vietnamese and trying to negotiate cobblestones thick with liquified human waste.

  "You see," she said, turning to look into his eyes as she stopped and began pulling him through a doorway hung with blue and crystal plastic beads. "Much beddah place. You see."

  you see

  But he hadn't. Didn't see the door until the beads clicker-clacked behind him. And by then he was too late.

  The verbal horseshoe ambush caught him from all sides as floor-to-ceiling curtains were pulled aside, bamboo rings chattering, and the tiny "outer" room was suddenly filled with smiling, ao dai-clad whores.

  But his was the only one wearing blue, Gil noticed. He had the only blue devil.

  Four pair of dark eyes locked onto his as lips smiled and heads nodded. Gil felt his balls pucker up into his belly. Felt their stares latch on to his flesh and start feeding.

  felt Charlie watching

  When the mammasan in black pajamas shuffled out from behind a painted bamboo screen, his little Blue Devil raced forward, arms outstretched, jibbering like a monkey.

  One of the curtains fluttered in her wake, exposing the cramped interior. An American GI, his sweat-slick Afro pressing into the filigreed back of a bamboo papasan chair, eyes rolling white, groaned while a half-naked woman kneeled between his spread legs, her shining black head nodding slowly.

  Gil could still see their images, in reverse color— the man white, the woman's silken pants dull green— superimposed on the curtain as it fell back into place.

  could still see

  It wasn't much different than the (few) parties he had attended his last year in high school. . . back when free love was, and Vietnam was just something you heard your parents talk about in hushed tones and Canada was still just a plane ticket away.

  Back when he thought he'd live forever.

  Gil looked down at the soggy bundle in his hand. One plastic-sheathed corner had worked its way through the rice paper. Beads of condensation, like sweat, gathered and disappeared beneath the matted paper. He could almost feel the LP getting softer in his hands. If he didn't get back to base and start transferring Mitch Ryder to cassette tapes, he might lose the "Devil" for another God-knows-how-long.

  Except that there wasn't any real danger of that happening. Not now. Not really. Not in real time.

  Gil looked up as the living Devil rushed back toward him, t
he ancient mammasan in tow. Smiling, nodding,

  watching

  "This be numbah one GI, Ba," the girl said as she laid a surprisingly cool hand against Gil's chest. He shivered under its pressure. "I be his girlfriend Vietnam."

  The old woman nodded her sparsely covered head and smiled. Worn, betel-stained teeth gleamed at Gil in the murky half-light.

  "You like, you like," she hissed at him, "you see, she numbah one suckee girl. How old you, GI? How old you?"

  "What?" Was there an AGE requirement? "Nineteen. And a half."

  The mammasan hooked a gnarled finger under the whore's chin and lifted the perfectly heart-shaped face.

  "She eighteen, GI. . . an' half, like you, GI. She no do this so much like other girls. I keep her special for you, GI. I keep her clean. Just for you, GI."

  And it's not even my birthday.

  "An' she virgin . . . just like all girls here. She suckee you good, GI, but no fuckee. She virgin."

  That must have been a major problem, Gil thought, considering that every woman he'd met in Nam was—by her own admissions or those of her pimp—a virgin. Gil wondered if Uncle Sam knew he was waging a war against immaculately conceived VC.

  Still nodding, the mammasan grabbed Gil's arm just above the elbow and began leading {dragging) him toward one of the closed curtains. The exposed corner of the record bumped against the dog tags hanging at his throat. Rattling them. Reminding him.

  The mammasan heard the noise and turned without stopping, fingered the bright red one and smiled.

  "Pretty, pretty . . . you like, for sure. Virgin girl know how to make GI plenty happy."

  Gil felt the blue-dressed "virgin" brush past him and push the curtain open. Another bamboo chair, identical to the one he'd seen holding the black grunt, sat in the middle of the tiny room. Although room was too big a word for the space he was looking at.

  There was just enough room for the chair and a woman kneeling in front. Watching.

  Gil took a deep breath and watched the girl bend down and fluff the thin pillow in front of the chair. As she straightened, she began slipping the tiny covered buttons on her shirt through the silken loops. In less than a minute she shrugged out of the knee-length top and draped it over the fanned back of the chair. Her tiny, rose-nippled breasts trembled with the motion . . . begging for his tongue ... his fingers . . . his . . .