Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  Goodrich approached them on the trail. He walked morosely, dressed only in tiger shorts and jungle boots, carrying a green towel and a bar of soap toward the well. He did not notice them at first. He was contemplating his feet as they stirred the dust of the trail. Then he saw the babysans near the hootch, staring numbly at him like four dirty, stolid statues. He felt like helping them. He decided they needed to be clean. He stopped on the trail and motioned to them.

  “Hey. Lai day, babysans. Come on.” He exhibited his bar of soap. “You washy-washy me, I washy-washy you. Khong biet?”

  The children did not change their expressions, or acknowledge him. Goodrich examined their sores from his distance. Capitalism, Goodrich thought. The only answer. “Hey. Look. You lai day, washy-wash, me give you chop-chop. O.K.?”

  The children looked at each other, apparently comprehending. Goodrich became enthused, and raced back to his fighting hole, returning with several cans of C-rations. He was under orders not to give food to civilians, but he didn't care anymore. The babysans still huddled together next to their family bunker. He showed them the cans.

  “Lai day! Come on. You washy-wash, I give you chop-chop. Khong biet?”

  The children began to move, and mamasan stood up, curious about Goodrich's overtures. He turned to her, and noticed Dan. The Lucky Strikes and the food were between Dan and the mamasan. Dan smiled benignly to Goodrich, but his face was irritated, his nod impatient. The woman looked down, masking her emotion.

  Goodrich comprehended, studying the C-ration tins. He was angry at Dan, and wished he had not brought the food for the babysans, so he would be able to criticize the Vietnamese scout in front of the woman. He viewed Dan as a traitor in many ways. Dan grew fat on Marine food as his people starved. Dan brutalized his own people in order to eat well and not be brutalized himself.

  He walked toward Dan, staring at the food and at the woman. “What are you doing?”

  Dan shrugged and winked at Goodrich, putting on the jive act the command post Marines had taught him. Ringo in rare form. “Hey-y-y, man. Me got coe, you know, party time. You know, mebbe boom-boom.”

  Goodrich felt protective. “What does she say?”

  Dan maintained his smile, and turned to the mamasan. “Do you want the food he has brought your children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell them to help him at the well. Tell them to go with him.”

  The woman spoke abruptly to the children. They hesitated, then as a group joined Goodrich on the trail. Goodrich stared at Dan, and then at the woman, in mild disbelief. Finally he shook his head and walked with the children toward the well.

  “Christ.”

  Dan turned back to the mamasan, standing over her now, very close. He pointed up the trail. “Honcho,” he said, with a forced sense of self-importance.

  Mamasan carried the cans and the cigarettes onto the thatch porch and set them on an earthen ledge, next to her fireplace. Dan followed her and stood very close, his groin pressing slightly against the back of her. She froze for a moment, her head bent, trying to ignore him. Then he spoke, still not touching her with his hands.

  “Go inside the bunker.”

  Gray slivers of light intruded through the two bunker openings, but otherwise it was dark. Resignedly she shed her bottoms and he took her on the floor. She was motionless at first, her insides dry. He attempted to kiss her and she turned her head away, refusing him.

  But slowly she oiled herself and in minutes she was pressing back at his thrusts, having to forcibly restrain herself from a groan of ecstasy. Dan dared to crush her to him and she acquiesced and he marveled at it, could not understand it. But he felt a sense of total power from the knowledge that she despised him and what he stood for, and yet was unable to restrain her nether parts from seeking him.

  It is the animal, he decided, just before he shuddered with explosions on her body. The animal seeks to satisfy its hunger before it thinks of games.

  15

  DAN

  War is as natural as the rains. There are years when there is no war and there are seasons without rain. But always war and rain return. There is no difference. It is the nature of things. Thunder booms and so does artillery. The sting of a rifle is deadly. So is the tongue of the viper. If a man steps on a booby trap he will die. So also if he falls off a ledge in the mountains. One brother died from cholera. One brother died from Marine gunfire. There is no difference. Buddha turned his head both times and the brothers died. So thought Dan. Life had taught him that.

  THE unpatterned clump of thatch hootches in the southern Arizona was choked by sawgrass and blue-green jungle foliage, steeped in sweltering heat. The rains had only recently passed and the sun cooked out the moisture from the dirt and vegetation and the wind would not blow in the late morning and the little field that Dan was working was a steam bath. He stood in the seedbed, dressed only in linen shorts, and leaned against his hoe.

  He was short and thin, but tight-muscled. The muscles of his back bulged out from the spine, making a deep river for the sweat to pour down as he stood in the steamy heat. His face was the definition of endurance, eyebrows slightly raised, the brown eyes acquiescent and unquestioning. There was no smile.

  He had been preparing the seedbed. That afternoon he would plant the seeds. Later, when the rice plants grew large enough, he would take them one at a time from his seedbed and place them in the paddy with his hands. Each plant was a child to him. And in the paddy they would make rice. One could not grow a plant from seeds in the paddy. Dan did not know why. He only knew it would not happen. One had to plant the seed and nurture it in the seedbed and, when the seedling was strong, he had to dig it out and cup it in his hands and place it in the paddy. It had always been that way. One did not question why. There were no answers. And answers would not change it.

  Dan grew tired in the sunbake and walked under the open umbrella of thatch that was his outer home and dipped out a cup of water from a metal pot. The pot was made from a rusted Marine gasoline can, and the dipper was an old C-ration can. The thatch was thick above him and it was cool in its shade and the water was clouded with dirt and rust but also cool. Dan dipped out two more cans of water, drinking slowly.

  He spoke softly to his wife, who was sitting on a low wooden plank in the corner of the thatch, nursing a child. His voice was melodious, and as it played the singsong tones of Vietnamese dialect one was easily entranced by its strength and resonance. His wife nodded slowly, working betel nut between her teeth, rocking slightly as the baby nursed. Her teeth were beginning to permanently blacken from the betel nut. The baby would not nurse long. There was little milk. His wife was twenty-four and the milk was almost gone.

  There were four other children. The next-youngest, a little girl not quite a year old, was sleeping inside the family bunker, behind the thatch. The other three played quietly on the dirt floor of the thatch. Two small boys, scarcely a year apart, were squatting, examining the little pool of urine that a dog had just left on the dirt floor. Dan kicked the dog. Even the boys knew to urinate outside the hootch. Neither of the boys wore bottoms yet. They wore old black shirts. They would not wear bottoms until they learned to control their bladders.

  The eldest child, a girl of six, was staring with empty eyes at the stand of banana trees outside the thatch. She was slender, delicate and beautiful, and wore gold earrings. The earrings were the only things of value Dan owned. Her beauty was already marred, though, by ulcerous sores that grew on her legs and arms, and by the scars of sores now healed. The sores, which the Marines called gook sores, grew in deep circles that penetrated the skin. They oozed a clear liquid. They became very large. They lasted for months. Dan did not know how to stop them. In fact, he had never considered stopping them. They had always grown on people. They were as natural as mosquito bites.

  The girl stood and walked quietly across the dirt under the thatch to Dan and wrapped a slender arm around his thigh. She then turned, standing behind him, and continue
d to watch the banana trees. Two men appeared, walking silently on the trail that emerged from the foliage near the trees and passed Dan's hootch. One was dressed in green and the other in dark blue. They both carried rifles. The man in green carried two rifles, an AK-47 and an M-14.

  Dan set the cup down next to the watercan and greeted them. He had known them both for many years. They greeted him warmly and the man in blue caressed the girl's hair. She remained behind Dan, smiling shyly to the man in blue. He was older, perhaps thirty-five. He was the VC village chief, leader of the local forces.

  The man in green thrust the M-14, barrel up, into Dan's chest. Dan took it from him, examining the weapon. It was his brother's weapon. His brother had taken it from the body of a Marine a year before. His brother had killed the Marine in an ambush. His brother had been very proud of the weapon.

  The man in blue put his hand on Dan's shoulder. “Your brother is dead.”

  “I am sorry,” Dan said, continuing to examine the weapon.

  He was not sorry. He had known his brother was dead as soon as he examined the rifle and recognized it as his brother's. He had known his brother was going to die for two years. His brother had believed too strongly and had tried too hard. He had already accepted his brother's death, and had already been sorry. The moment merely finalized the death.

  “I am sorry,” he said again, looking into the older man's eyes. “How did it happen?”

  He did not care how it had happened. The man in blue did not care, either. He had not come to tell Dan how it happened. “His cell was ambushed last night,” the older man said. “Four were killed. But we got the weapons. He died for his people. You can be proud of that.”

  “I know,” said Dan. He was not proud of that. His brother had left his family to starve so that he could die for his people. Fights do not grow rice. Fights do not feed children. “I know.”

  Dan held out his arm, handing the rifle back to the man in green. The man kept his own hands at his sides, refusing to accept it. The man in blue stepped forward, his chin set and his body taut. “It is your rifle now, Dan. You must carry it with us. You must come to the mountains and take your brother's place.”

  Dan stared blankly at the older man, already beginning to accept the inevitability of it. They would kill him if he refused. They would kill his family if he ran away. “I have five children,” he said slowly. “And I am a farmer. I do not know rifles.”

  “We all have families,” the older man responded, his jaw still set. “And none of us likes to fight.” Dan blanched inside at the untruth of that. His brother had liked to fight. Many of them liked to fight.

  “There is the rice,” Dan said. “Only today I am putting the seeds in.”

  “Let your father put the seeds in.”

  Dan smiled slightly, hoping. “My father is dead two years of cholera.”

  “Then let your wife.”

  “My wife is two weeks out of childbirth.”

  “Then let your mother.”

  “My mother is—”

  “You come today. Plant rice when the war is over.”

  Dan shrugged. The war will never be over, he thought to himself. The rice will never be planted.

  “Tell your wife good-bye. We will pass through soon. And we will help to harvest when we are able.”

  Walking down the dust trail to the mountains Dan felt a deep urge to kill the two men. He was carrying his brother's rifle. He debated for an hour about doing it. The man in green was in front of him and the man in blue walked behind him. Dan reasoned that he could kill the man behind him first, quickly and easily, and still have enough time to kill the man in front of him before the man could turn and comprehend the older man's death and shoot Dan.

  But the rifle was unfamiliar in Dan's hands. He would probably do something wrong. And if he succeeded he could never go back to farming again anyway. They would seek him out and kill him and his family. He envisioned the oldest girl lying dead under the thatch and decided not to try. There would be another way.

  In the mountains the men lived comfortably in caves and thatch shelters, carefully camouflaged so airplanes could not see them. They trained in grassy areas or slept during the day, and moved through the foothills to the valley at dusk. At night they would ambush Marine patrols and hold meetings in the villages far from Marine positions. When the North Vietnamese moved from base camps further back in the mountains to attack the Marines, Dan's unit supplied guides for them, moving them quickly through the speed trails inside the treelines, past Marine outposts.

  Dan learned to shoot the M-14 well, and also became proficient with a submachine gun. But his heart was not in it. He would never make an adequate warrior. His leaders soon learned this, but they also quickly learned a greater truth. They watched the villagers become entranced when Dan talked to them at meetings. Dan was magnetic. He loved the villagers and he looked upon fighting with distaste. The villagers felt this when he spoke to them. And his clear voice played a melody when it worked the intonations of his language. Dan spoke and people listened. He smiled sadly and touched them when he spoke and his presence was very strong, very convincing.

  Dan became a propagandist. At night he would filter with a cell of men into an Arizona village and the villagers would gather in a knot around him, old people and young women and children. And Dan touched them and told them beautiful fairy tales about victories over the Marines. Be strong, he told them. It is almost over. We defeat them every day. Work the fields and give us rice and soon it will be over and your men can return to the villages.

  At times he almost believed his own stories. He spoke, his voice like low flute notes playing up and down the scale, recounting great victories, helping the villagers prepare for the return of their men. But soon the fraud awakened him and he grew terribly depressed. It will never end, he decided. It will always be this way. Why can't I tell them that? Why can't I tell them how horrible it is, how many of us die? They know the horrors of malaria and cholera. Why can't they learn the horrors of this? There is no difference.

  In three months the cell held a meeting in Dan's own village of My Le (1). He had difficulty lying to his own people. They sat in a cluster around him, gathered under one of the thatch porches, and Dan expounded a greatly subdued version of his speech. He spoke long and sadly of the ones who had died since the Marines came into the valley. “We kill many,” he told them, watching wispy beards and crinkled faces nod slowly, seriously, valuing every word as if it were a piece of jade served up on a velvet pillow. “But we lose many, too. I will not lie to you. We lose more than we kill. But—”

  He could not think of a justification. All reasons were like echoes bouncing off his conscience, unable to penetrate it and come out as words. War was like the rains. The French came and the French went. The Marines came and the North Vietnamese came and they too would someday leave. As surely as the monsoon brought its terror and abated.

  There was nothing he could tell them. Finally he smiled sadly at the crinkled faces, loving each face for its suffering, and said: “—but that is the nature of things. Someday it will be over.”

  He saw his wife that night. She was strangely older and could not look at him without crying. The youngest child was dead. “How?” Dan asked.

  “He would not eat.” She stared at the dirt floor, remembering. “He would not take the milk and there was nothing else. He died a month ago. I give my milk to the girl now. She is weak also. We are all weak.”

  She looked at Dan, holding the eldest girl tightly to him, the oil lamp making dancing shadows on the bunker wall behind them. “You make beautiful words.”

  Dan shrugged, immune to sarcasm. “It is better than fighting. I do not like to fight. Words hurt no one.”

  She disagreed. “Words are worse than bullets. Bullets kill. Words prolong the death by giving false hope. It is worse to prolong.”

  “It is worse to die.” Dan stroked the girl's hair. “A dead man has no hope.”

  His wife
cried again. “We will all die while you speak your beautiful words,” she whispered.

  Dan stared quietly at her. “Others endure. You must also endure. There is no other way.”

  The youngest girl cried loudly and Dan's wife put the girl to her breast. The child sucked hungrily. There was little milk. Dan rocked the eldest girl and watched his sons sleeping on the low board of the bunker. “Perhaps there is a way,” he said, speaking softly. He set the girl onto the floor of the bunker and crawled to its entrance, looking carefully from his thatch porch, up and down the trail.

  The trail and porch were empty. The Marines were firing Harassment and Interdiction rounds that night. The rounds crashed in unexpectedly all through the village, slowly, one round at a time. They were meant to discourage enemy troop movements. The villagers did not know that. They viewed the rounds as one would view a rainstorm. Some nights there were artillery rounds. Some nights there were no artillery rounds. It did no good to question it. Questions would not change it any more than they would change the pattern of rainstorms.

  But that is good, Dan thought. My fellow soldiers will be in other bunkers. He stepped back down into the bunker and sat next to his wife, speaking softly. The littlest girl still sucked hungrily but there was no more milk. The wife stroked the girl's cheek, relaxing her, not pushing her away because it would make her cry. At the breast, even without milk, the baby would be silent. The mother did not wonder why. She merely knew that it was so.

  “Would you leave your home?” Dan asked. “Would you leave this valley?” The wife did not understand. “I could run away. I could surrender. But you will have to leave the valley or they will kill you. We could live in Duc Duc. Plenty rice. And the men come home in the day. They do not really fight. The Marines fight. It would be better.”

  “How do you know this?” the wife asked, already captivated by the melody of Dan's voice. Dan showed her a chieu hoi leaflet. There were many of them on the valley floor and in the mountains. The Marines dropped them from airplanes during psychological-warfare missions. They were safe-conduct passes for those who wished to surrender.