by James Webb
The insanity was not so much in the events, but that they were undirected, without aim or reason. They happened merely because they happened. The only meaning was in the thing itself. And what does it get me to know that, Goodrich mused bitterly, confused. Harvard shit-bird. College turkey. Even Hodges calls me that. But Wild Man has college. And his father is a successful man. Some kind of business.
There was no outrage from the others. They just didn't care about anything other than the experience, for its own sake.
Help me, Senator. Can't you stop it?
Ottenburger. Every night as he stood watch alone in his fighting hole. He could not shake the steady eyes, the flat, resigned voice. They were their own metaphor for the futility Goodrich felt. He just bled and bled, talking like that, until he ran out of blood. Did I do it? I just had to watch him die.
It was growing dark. Snake approached, walking casually along a low dike from the squad area. Goodrich felt himself grow taut. He was still in awe of Snake's ability to master this insanity of dust and weeds, but he found the spindly, tattooed squad leader insensitive and overbearing. The perfect Marine, mused Goodrich. A vulgar, violent little shit with a chip on his shoulder.
“Make like a mole and get in your hole, Senator. We're gonna get hit tonight.”
“Oh, good. Did you arrange it?”
Snake laughed at him. “Nope. Captain Crazy arranged it by setting up in this damn ville.” On the lines someone was burning trash. Snake yelled at the man, “Put that fire out! It's dark!” He turned back to Goodrich, shaking his head in mild disgust. “Put us here with a dike in the front like that, treeline over there. What the hell does he expect? We got followed in here. You see all them gooks? Every time we crossed a paddy I could see 'em. Come on, Senator.”
Goodrich rose slowly. “Oh, I can't wait.”
Snake stopped and turned back to Goodrich. “You think we can? You think you're the only one that don't like this, don't you, Senator? Well, Buddhist Priest.” Snake stared coldly into his face. “If anybody dies, I hope it's you.”
Goodrich swallowed hard, unnerved. No one talked about that, not in the bush. “Why?”
“ ’Cause you're a pissant crybaby. And you don't carry your own weight. When's the last time you did something for somebody besides yourself, Senator?”
“Do you realize how ridiculous it is? Can you truly comprehend, Snake? You're doing for each other and you're dying for each other. That's all. I mean all! And the lousiest thing in the world to die for is another sucker who's only for you. Do you get what I mean? The only reason any of us are dying is because we're here. It's like two scorpions in a jar. They'll kill each other, but only because they're in the jar. Do you get what I mean?”
Snake stared quietly at Goodrich for a long moment. On the lines, a man lit a cigarette. Snake screamed at the silhouette: “Put out that smoke!” He turned back to Goodrich and tapped him on the chest. “You get down in that hole, like most ricky-tick, or I'm gonna punch you in the mouth. Make your hat, Chicken-man!”
Goodrich picked up his weapon and resignedly followed Snake along a narrow dike, walking in the blue dusk toward the lines. In front of him, the treeline, a hundred meters out, somnolent in the darkness, suddenly went bright red with the flashes of several B-40 rockets. Green and red tracers followed as he watched, for a moment frozen in awe. Finally he dropped to the ground, seeking cover from the tremendous, instantaneous eruption that made him feel as if he were standing inside a cookpot that had exploded a thousand kernels of popcorn, all at once.
Goodrich crawled, whining, naked in the cropped dirt of an open field, between the old hootch and his fighting hole. The whine escaped him in a steady, involuntary gag, his vocal cords constricting tightly in his fear, causing him to emit a sound that was a child's cry. NNN-NNnnnnnnhhh. He found the edge of the dike and leaned into it, safe. The rounds went over his head.
Curses in the field, raw with pain. Just out from him, in the open, Snake lay curled in a ball, holding one leg. Goodrich hugged against the dike. Snake writhed. Dust spots kicked up around him from the incoming bullets.
If I helped him, Goodrich thought suddenly, he would leave me alone. They would all leave me alone.
But his fear immobilized him. Die for Snake because Snake is out there dying for me? Makes no sense. He lay against the dike and contemplated it some more. But if I crawled out to him I could drag him back over here. Then I could help him and there wouldn't be very many rounds. They would leave me alone, then.
A quick, large shadow emerged as he watched, and Waterbull scooped Snake up like a steam shovel grabbing a lump of dirt. In one motion he picked up Snake and headed for the dike. He landed, rolling Snake over the top of him to cushion the fall, only feet from where Goodrich lay, still contemplating.
In front of them, the lines now poured a steady rate of fire back at the treeline. Waterbull reached for Snake's foot. A B-40 rocket slammed into the hootch where Goodrich had eaten his dinner, setting its half-roof of thatch ablaze.
Snake protested as Waterbull probed. “I'm all right, Bull. Lemme alone.”
Waterbull searched along the leg Snake had been holding. A burst of AK fire interrupted his effort, throwing a veil of dust from the dike into Bull's face. He lay flat for a moment, then grabbed Snake's leg again.
“Goddamn it, lemme alone, Bull!”
Snake seemed in deep pain. “Thanks for getting me. I mean it. I just want to peep it out myself.” He pushed his glasses back to the top of his nose. “Now.” He reached tentatively for his foot. “I think I took a round in my toe.”
Bull guffawed. “In your toe?”
“You think it's funny, shoot your foot and see how it feels, asshole.” He began to unlace his boot. A string of mortar rounds walked slowly across the perimeter. Snake listened for a moment. “One tube is all. This shit's gonna be over before you know it.” He grimaced as he started to pull his boot off, and noticed Goodrich. “Hey, Senator. Be a hero and get my helmet, will you? I need the battle dressing off it.”
“I was going to help you. I was just getting ready.”
“Good. Get my helmet.”
The incoming rounds had stopped, at least for the moment. Goodrich crawled quickly out and retrieved the helmet, tossing it to Snake. It skidded across the dirt and stopped a yard away from Snake's face.
“Nice job, Senator. Silver Star, at least.” Snake took the battle dressing from the helmet band, and, in one painful yank, pulled his boot off.
There was no blood. He felt the crusted sock, counted his toes. The sock was dry. All toes were present. Waterbull knelt, preparing to apply the battle dressing.
“Take the sock off, Snake.”
“Don't need to.”
“ ’Course you need to. Come on. Take it off.”
“I don't need to, Bull, all right?” Snake felt the bottom of his sock, finding a tear in it that was perhaps an inch long. “Gimme my boot.”
Waterbull cocked his head, flabbergasted. “You mean after all that, you ain't even wounded?”
“The boot, Bull. All right?”
Waterbull reached along the dike where Snake had thrown the boot, and handed it to Snake. Snake examined it carefully, feeling the front with one hand. He shook his head in disbelief. “Look at that, will ya? Check this out.”
There was a small hole in the toe of the boot, where the bullet had entered. There was no exit hole. Snake cackled. “Somewhere inside this boot there's a bullet that went between my toes.” He stuck his foot in the air, showing them the torn sock. “Can you dig it?”
Waterbull caught a glimpse of the tear from the glimmer of a distant illumination round. “Nahhh. I don't believe it.”
Snake laughed, relieved. “I'll tell ya, it felt like somebody put a whack on my foot with a damn sledgehammer. Knocked me on my face.”
Waterbull nodded sagely, slouched against the dike. “You should call in a Heart for that, man. Yup. Definitely worth a Heart.”
Snake shoo
k his head, still laughing. “No blood. Not a drop. Forget it.”
The three made their way toward the lines, Snake limping slightly. It was quiet now. Goodrich walked beside Snake. He spoke hesitantly.
“I was going to help you. I was coming. Waterbull beat me.”
“The day I gotta count on you I'm hanging up my jock, Senator.”
THE perimeter was quiet as a tomb. Medevacs were safely out, one man up, three down in the fighting holes. The treeline and high paddy dike had been silenced hours before. Hodges sat next to his poncho hootch, standing radio watch. Every fifteen minutes he called security checks to the listening posts. At the end of an hour he would walk the platoon lines, checking fighting holes, rapping with those on watch, ensuring the lines were awake. But, other than that, a time to ponder, to ruminate, to plan.
He held his helmet on his knees and cupped a cigarette inside it, lighting it. Not supposed to, but screw it. It's three o'clock. The gooners are all in bed. Nonetheless, he continued to cup it as he smoked. There's always that chance. One sniper round can do it. Every now and then it happens.
Three artillery rounds impacted casually in the tree-line. H and Is. Behind him, the 60-millimeter mortar section fired five more in the vicinity of the high dike. Then there were quiet, elongated moments spent sitting under total blackness, as if he were locked inside a strangely odorous, mosquito-infested closet. So alone, so lonely like this.
And at night like this they visited him, those old ghosts who had come alive each Sunday in his grandma's kitchen. He had joined them. He was one of them. They descended from the heavens, or maybe from the hollows of his memory, and they were real. He commiserated with them. Sometimes they were so close he felt the swishes of their passing. They tickled his neck. They brushed his arms. They ached inside his own misery.
He stared into the blackness, dragging on his cigarette, communicating with them. All my life I've waited for this, he mused. Now I've joined you and your losses are a strength to me. I ache and yet I know that Alec retched with pain on the dust road that went to Corinth. I breathe the dust and yet I know that Grandpa breathed the gas that made a hero out of Pershing. I flinch when bullets tear the air in angry rents and yet I know that Father, and three farmer boys at Pickett's Charge, felt a cutting edge that dropped them dead. How can I be bitter? You are my strength, you ghosts.
And I have learned those things, those esoteric skills and knowledges, that mark me as one of you. That loose-boweled piles of shit, too much shit from overeating, plopped randomly around the outer dikes of a ville, mean trouble. Catching the aroma, seeing the groupings, watching flies dance lazily, rejoicing in their latest fetid morsel that bends the low grass in a muddy glob like a bomb of cow dung. Trouble.
I can tell from the crack of a rifle shot the type of weapon fired and what direction the bullet is traveling. I can listen to a mortar pop and know its size, how far away it is. I know instinctively when I should prep a tree-line with artillery before I move into it. I know which draws and fields should be crossed on line, which should be assaulted, and which are safe to cross in column. I know where to place my men when we stop and form a perimeter. I can shoot a rifle and throw a grenade and direct air and artillery onto any target, under any circumstances. I can dress any type of wound, I have dressed all types of wounds, watered protruding intestines with my canteen to keep them from cracking under sunbake, patched sucking chests with plastic, tied off stumps with field-expedient tourniquets. I can call in medevac helicopters, talk them, cajole them, dare them into any zone.
I do these things, experience these things, repeatedly, daily. Their terrors and miseries are so compelling, and yet so regular, that I have ascended to a high emotion that is nonetheless a crusted numbness. I am an automaton, bent on survival, agent and prisoner of my misery. How terribly exciting.
And how, to what purpose, will these skills serve me when this madness ends? What lies on the other side of all this? It frightens me. I haven't thought about it. I haven't prepared for it. I am so good, so ready for these things that were my birthright. I do not enjoy them. I know they have warped me. But it will be so hard to deal with a life empty of them.
And there are the daily sufferings. You ghosts have known them, but who else? I can sleep in the rain, wrapped inside my poncho, listening to the drops beat on the rubber like small explosions, then feeling the water pour in rivulets inside my poncho, soaking me as I lie in the mud. I can live in the dirt, sit and lie and sleep in the dirt, it is my chair and my bed, my floor and my walls, this clay. And like all of you, I have endured diarrhea as only an animal should endure it, squatting a yard off a trail and relieving myself unceremoniously, naturally, animally. Deprivations of food. Festering, open sores. Worms. Heat. Aching crotch that nags for fulfillment, any emptying hole that will relieve it.
Who appreciates my sufferings? Who do I suffer for?
The mortar fired behind him, five more rounds at the high dike, and the ghosts were gone. Hodges stood slowly and dusted off his trousers, carrying the radio with him as he began to check lines.
He hoped that Snake would be awake. He felt like shooting the shit.
18
Staff Sergeant Gilliland broke through the scraggly hedgerow from the landing zone, located the platoon command post, and walked quickly across a potato patch toward it, leaving an ashen, gray-powder wake behind each step. He ambled up behind Hodges, who sat in the dirt, dressed only in tiger shorts, writing a letter. Nearby, a transistor radio blared toward a baking sky. Gilliland swung his pack cavalierly in front of Hodges, dropping it. Hodges looked up and noticed an uncharacteristic grin lighting the scarred face, even lifting the sagging moustache.
“Well, kiss my ass. What's happening, Sarge? Didn't expect to see you back out here!”
Gilliland continued to smile, as if he had found some inner peace, some odd logic that made it all mean something. “Well, I won't be back here for very long, Lieutenant.”
“Gonna be a Motor-T jock, huh?”
Still the smile. “No sir, I'm gonna be a fucking civilian.”
Hodges started, almost as if slapped. “Come on, Sarge. Say it isn't so.”
Gilliland folded his arms, sitting across from Hodges, the murky blue memory of a Devil Dog tattoo showing underneath the tan of one forearm. His molten eyes expertly examined this latest perimeter, noting distances between fighting holes, locations of machine guns, pieces of prominent terrain. “That's a hell of a good job on the perimeter, Lieutenant. We got an OP out there?”
“OP in the trees. I been bringing it back to an LP near that dike at night.”
“Good idea. That dike is high enough to be a good B-40 pos. Know what I mean?”
Hodges grinned slightly, admiring Gilliland's bush sense. “Oh, it sure as hell was, Sarge. Last night. Didn't even have the LP out yet. Boom, boom. Two B-40s, right behind the dike.”
Gilliland nodded sagely. “Figures. Gun in the tree-line?”
“One mortar tube. Small arms. It wasn't much. Hey, Sarge. Quit putting me off. You ain't really gonna be a civilian, now are you?”
“Oh, yeah, Lieutenant. It ain't no bullshit. Couple weeks I'm gonna be Mister Gilliland.” Gilliland grinned frivolously. “Wanna buy a used car? How about some insurance?”
Hodges shook his head unbelievingly. “Sarge, you're crazy, man. You got ten years. Ten more, you can retire. Half-pay. All that shit.” He scrutinized Gilliland, who still gazed unconcernedly around the perimeter. “Tell me, Sarge. Do you have medical insurance for your kids?”
“Nope. Course not. Marine Corps takes care of that.”
“Do you have a—have you ever—do you think you're gonna get a job that'll compare, where you won't have to start at the bottom?”
Gilliland shrugged, unconcerned. “Maybe. Maybe not. I had reserve duty a couple years ago, and everybody kept telling me, you know, if I get out come on back and work. But Lieutenant, you ain't even asking the right questions, anyway.” For a moment Gilliland lo
oked searchingly at Hodges, then he regained his sardonic front.
“It ain't what's waiting for me on the outside. Not any more. Nope. It's the way things have changed.” A cigarette appeared magically between his thin, now-somber lips. “It just doesn't mean anything to be a Marine anymore, Lieutenant. Vietnam did that.”
Hodges nodded, grinning wryly, remembering Sergeant Austin's comments about Vietnam Marines. “You mean all the discipline is gone, all the spit and polish, blind obedience—”
Gilliland cut him off. “Nah. Sir, we got discipline. Only time the discipline disappears is when a man don't rate it anyway. It's one thing to ask for blind obedience when you tell a man to shine his shoes in a damn barracks. It's a whole new thing to ask for it when a man is gonna stand up and take a round between his eyes. Listen, sir. I was over here in ’65, when the Old Corps invaded the Nam, know what I mean? Before the draft kicked in, when we had what they called ‘true volunteers.’ Well, we couldn't do what these kids can do. I mean it. We had a lot of hot shits on the parade field, and a lot of motivated sons of bitches, but there wasn't anybody in a company who knew how to fight a goddamn war! Couple gunnies, maybe, who remembered something about the Frozen Chosin in the Freezing Season. But that was it.
“So we did dumb-ass things. We hung grenades from our pockets by the spoons, like John Wayne, and then lost 'em in the dark because they fell off. We straightened the pins on 'em for quick action and then got so excited that we'd pick the grenades up by the pin and it would pull loose and we blew each other up. Stupid stuff.” Gilliland laughed sardonically, remembering. “One time we started a brushfire, trying to burn some gooks out of a treeline, and the wind shifted and the fire came back around and burned us out of ours! The gooks had a field day on us! Oh, yeah. Stupid stuff. But then we learned. And now each kid that comes in is surrounded by people who know. Yup. They're all better grunts for it. And these kids. They are truly crazy, Lieutenant. They'll do things I never dreamed of doing.”