Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  Phony and Wild Man shambled by, waving absently to Hodges and Gilliland. Wild Man teased the Sergeant. “What you doing back here, Sarge? Uh huh. Just can't stay away.”

  Hodges laughed with them. He lit a cigarette. “Well, you're right about that much. They are crazy.”

  Gilliland watched the thin, retreating frames, amused. “Ah, they're pretty damn good. A little salty, maybe. But a man has to be a sucker to keep doing this. You don't go through this just for the fun of it. I don't want any more of it, Lieutenant. I've just had it with Vietnam. Call me flaky. Call me what you want. I've had it.”

  He noted Hodges’ apparent perplexity. “I'll tell you a little story, maybe it'll make sense. When I came back from Vietnam the first time I went to the Reserve Training Center, like I said. It wasn't really big over here yet. We all knew it would get bigger, though, and we figured Johnson would call up the Reserves. We kept telling all the Weekend Warriors that they'd better get their shit in one bag, because they were going to war. Like Korea. And it got bigger, but Johnson didn't have the balls to call up the Reserves. Reserves can vote. And they drive airplanes for United. And they run businesses. Instead, Johnson just made a bigger draft, filled it with loopholes, and went after certain groups of kids.”

  “You said yourself the kids were great.”

  “It ain't what happens here that's important. It's what's happening back there. Shit, Lieutenant, you'd hardly know there was a war on. It's in the papers, and college kids run around screaming about it instead of doing panty raids or whatever they were running around doing before, but that's it. Airplane drivers still drive their airplanes. Businessmen still run their businesses. College kids still go to college. It's like nothing really happened, except to other people. It isn't touching anybody except us. It makes me sick, Lieutenant.”

  Gilliland moodily lit another cigarette. “We been abandoned, Lieutenant. We been kicked off the edge of the goddamn cliff. They don't know how to fight it, and they don't know how to stop fighting it. And back home it's too complicated, so they forget about it and do their rooting at football games. Well, fuck 'em. They ain't worth dying for.”

  “We do all right, Sarge. Fighting, I mean. The Corps.”

  “Don't get me wrong, Lieutenant. I love this green motherfucker. I wish you could have seen me the day I put on my staff NCO stripes. I never been prouder of anything in my whole goddamn life. I mean that. I thought, ‘Now I'm really somebody. I'm a staff NCO in the United States Marine Corps, the President's Own, guardians of this country.’ Now I wear my uniform back home and they look at me like I'm an animal. Wait till you go home. You'll put on all those ribbons—I know you, Lieutenant, you'll be the first sucker off that plane to run and buy 'em—and somebody's gonna spit on you for it. No bullshit. It happened to me in the L.A. Airport on the way back here. Some broad. I'm coming back to Viet—fucking—Nam because I'm a professional dedicated to protecting her prissy, babied way of life and she spits at me. Oh, I've had it. Let her boyfriend get drafted and come over here to take my place. Except he's probably found a way to bag it.”

  Hodges pondered Gilliland's tirade. He spoke flatly, with no attempt to prod the Sergeant. “Sergeant Major wouldn't let you be a Motor Transport jock, huh?”

  The question seemed to give Gilliland momentum for another diatribe. “Called me a coward! Three Purple Hearts I got and that fat potato looked me square in the face and called me a coward!”

  “Did you roll a frag under his desk when you left?”

  Gilliland grinned excitedly, remembering. “Not quite. But I did the man a number, Lieutenant. I truly did. First I yanked his chain. I said, ‘Sergeant Major, I been looking bullets straight in the eye for fifteen goddamn months all told, watching people die, digging holes to shit.’ He says, ‘War is hell, Gilliland.’ I says, ‘Yeah, but combat's a bitch. You wouldn't know that. How many cat holes have you dug since you been here?’ He says, ‘I dug mine in Korea.’ I says, ‘I didn't know you needed to dig any at Division headquarters in Korea in 1953.’ Then I says, ‘Sergeant Major, it looks to me like, if anybody's got anything to prove to anybody else about being a coward or not, you got something to show me.’ He says, ‘Gilliland, get the fuck out of my office.’ ”

  Hodges indulged him. “Get so-o-ome, Sergeant Gilliland.”

  “That ain't all. Then I did the second thing. I says, ‘Sergeant Major, I'm leaving. But first I want my ration.’ He says, ‘What the hell you talking about?’ I says, ‘Well, I been in the bush for something like three months this time around, and I ain't had my beer and soda ration. That makes ninety beers and ninety sodas you owe me.’ He goes white as a turnip and he squints, threatening me like he's a mafioso. Says, ‘I don't know what you mean.’ I says, ‘O.K., forget it. I'm gonna request mast to my Colonel and ask him about it.’ You know the Colonel and his staff ain't been missing their beer and soda, Lieutenant. Finally he does a truly stupid thing. He walks outside his hootch and unlocks a big Conex Box—you know, those big trash bins? He reaches in and gives me three cases of beer, Lieutenant, like he was dispensing manna from heaven. Three cases. That Conex Box was full!”

  “Why the hell would he do a thing like that?”

  Gilliland grinned ironically. “Well, I guess he figured cowards could be bought off because they don't have the balls to turn anybody in.” Then he shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe he figures he's stronger than the Colonel, that he can weasel his way out of it even if I do blow the whistle.”

  “Did you take the beer?”

  Gilliland laughed. “You bet your ass, Lieutenant!” He gestured across the potato patch, toward the landing zone. “Brought it with me. We can send a working party up to get it in a minute. But that ain't the best part.” Gilliland continued to smile. “He gives me the beer, like he's making some kind of payoff. I'da asked him for the whole ration for the company, to start sending it out like he's supposed to instead of selling it to rear pogues, but I woulda tipped my hand. I thanked him, then I went straight over to Regimental Legal and turned his fat ass in.”

  Gilliland beamed behind the sagging moustache. “They're gonna investigate him!”

  Goodrich worked the C-ration can opener around the tin. It's common sense, he thought. Basic biology. Or chemistry. Hell, I forget which. But flies like sugar and shit.

  The lid was off. Blackberry jam shone back at him from inside the tin. A fly immediately buzzed in and landed on it. He gloated. Goodrich, you're a genius. In a day or two you're going to be in the rear, getting treatments at the Battalion Aid Station.

  He took the jam and rubbed some into a gook sore on his stomach, filling the ulcerous hole, and also treated two on one of his arms. He beamed. Com-pli-cations. Heavy. Then he lay back, his shirt off, and decided to take a nap.

  By the time I wake up, mused Goodrich, I'm going to be a very sick man. I hope.

  Cornbread, new to the squad, sat in the fighting hole, cleaning his M-16. He had watched Goodrich curiously during the whole process. “What you doin’, Senator? You crazy?”

  “Crazy? Hell. I'm a genius, man. It's the smartest thing I've done in at least a year.”

  “How you goan’ git that outa the hole? I wouldn't rub no jelly in my sore. You crazy.”

  “The flies are gonna eat it up, see? Maybe lay eggs in it. In a day or two my gook sores are gonna be a mess, man. A real mess.”

  “That's right.”

  “And I'm gonna get a vacation in the rear. Maybe even Da Nang.”

  Goodrich rolled over and went to sleep, feeling exuberant. In twenty minutes he woke up, his stomach on fire. The gook sore was exploding. He looked down and discovered he had rolled over near an anthill. There were a hundred ants working feverishly to move their anthill into his gook sore.

  He swiped at them. A dozen of them stung him, buried in the jam. Cornbread howled with glee. Goodrich had to wipe the ants out with his skivvy shirt.

  The flies loved the jam on his skivvy shirt.

  TIME, like an ever-f
lowing stream, bears all its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day…

  It echoed on the church walls in a piece of Hodges’ memory, some old hymn from a saner portion of his past. Time was everything. Time kept them there, and time would let them leave. They were doing time, marking off the days, keeping track religiously of exactly how long it would be before thirteen months were up and the insanity ended. And yet the lulls and frenzies of the bush made it a timeless world. Each day counted as one when a man marked it off on his calendar, but a day could be a week, an hour could be a month. An afternoon spent under fire when a patrol was caught in an open paddy would age them all a year, tighten their faces until the eyeballs bulged, make them whine and leave them weak, yet when the patrol came back to the company perimeter it had been a year for them but only an afternoon for the ones who had not been on the patrol. And when the cruel sun fell below the western mountains, it still had only been a day. All that for a stinking day.

  It was the most important part. Time was Vietnam. But it became so immeasurable in a man's emotions, some days so long and some so short, that it was irrelevant, except for what it did to the face of a calendar.

  Hodges grinned whimsically, dripping streams of sweat as he lay listening to his radio in the oven of his poncho hootch. How long have I been here? Well, let's see. I've got almost ten months left to do. But that don't mean a goddamn thing. I've been here forever, man. For—fucking—ever.

  THE resupply helicopter that brought Gilliland also brought ice. The platoon commanders were called to the company command post. It was a serious occurrence. Hodges had not seen ice in the bush during his whole time there.

  The company supply sergeant had stolen a piece from the mess hall in An Hoa and put it in a metal ammunition box. The ammunition box had sat on the resupply strip next to the runway for several hours. By the time it reached the field, the piece of ice was the size of a large grapefruit.

  Five representatives gathered solemnly at the company command post; one for each rifle platoon, one for the weapons platoon, and one for the company headquarters personnel. Ceremoniously and exactingly, under the security of the five men, the company commander divided the ice into five roughly equal chunks. Hodges received his. It was the size of a golf ball.

  He raced toward his platoon lines, the ice cube melting quickly in his hands. It was deliciously cold. He had felt nothing so cold and inviting in months. The air was oven-hot and the cube was disappearing as he jogged. He was tempted to eat it. No one knows why I went to the CP, he reasoned excitedly. I could just throw it into my mouth and no one would ever know. The inside of his mouth was dry. He was sweating and hot. The cube was passing quickly, coldly, through his fingers.

  He kept his head, and did not eat the ice. He called to Gilliland as he reached his platoon command post. “Get the squad leaders. Quick, man. Oh shit. Hurry up!”

  Gilliland jogged to the lines, knowing it was important, whatever it was. Hodges did not get excited without reason. Hodges placed the ice cube under his poncho hootch, in the shade. By the time the squad leaders had assembled in front of him, it was the size of a quarter.

  Hodges motioned toward it. “We got ice. Anybody got any ideas how to pass it out? It's so small now, I don't think anybody could divide it. It should go to one man.”

  They could not decide. They debated as the cube melted away. Finally Hodges picked up the now nicklesized piece and nonchalantly tossed it across the perimeter. He laughed, shaking his head in amazement at his earlier panic. He still felt the luxurious coldness on his fingers. He sucked them. “Jeee-sus. Who ever sent that out was a damn sadist.”

  19

  Hodges stared boredly at a fleeting speck that came only near enough to sprout stubs of barely discernible wings, that stayed only long enough to display one quick flash of rounded, all-weather nose before it screamed away, back to the Other World. From its orbit in the heavens, a thousand feet above reality, the Beacon Hop had struck. The waggle of a stick, the simple pressing of a button by an unsweating, air-conditioned hand, and the mission was complete.

  He grinned ironically. Two more points toward that next Air Medal, eh, Major?

  And in the treeline across scraggly squares of empty paddies there had been a short, unsettling scream as the jet passed over, then a deep volcanic roar, a flow of fire and metal quick and hot as lava. Twenty-eight 500-pound bombs, erupting in the space of a few unfightable seconds.

  Hodges was sitting on a bed of sawgrass a half-mile away. He still could not hold back a mighty wince as the impact of the explosions sailed across the empty field. He had watched large jags of shrapnel dig into the dirt, even as far from the treeline as his knoll.

  And then had waited, ticking off the minutes, knowing they would come. And the field filling with them, little specks at first, like termites gushing from a piece of old wood that had been mashed, destroying their home. Little white dots oozing into the unkept rice field, swarming slowly toward the Marine perimeter, not understanding the connection between this latest volcanic eruption and the circle of dirty, sun-hard men, but collectively knowing, mutually in awe of the fact, that these strange men had the power to invoke such wrathful gods. And had the power, as well as the means, to help mend the newest gaping holes that the froth of fire and steel had left them.

  The termites fought the paddy grass, stumbled over dikes, moving slowly toward the perimeter. They reached a wide stretch of sand, a low dip that would hold a deep stream when the monsoon filled the river, and approached the strip of village that loomed across it, home of the Marines. They walked steadily, women and children and old, old men, starkly etched, colorful figurines of agony, plodding through a long moment of white, relentless desert. They carried three stretchers.

  Finally they were close enough. Hodges gathered a patrol, summoned Dan, and moved to the edge of the perimeter to meet them. They struggled across the treadmill of loose sand, reaching him in groups of three or four. There was no terror in their faces. Their faces were incurably sad, hopelessly numb. The pains were too regular to invoke terror. They could not fight it. It did no good to fear it. It was as inevitable as old age.

  Hodges watched them absently as they approached, no longer interested in examining the individuals, having undergone this ritual so many times that each figure became a caricature: the monkey-faced women in their flour-sack tops and dirty black pajama bottoms, hair pulled back into severe buns, lips and teeth stained by betel nut, who began whining the moment they came within earshot. The frail old men, always dressed in white to ensure they were not mistaken for VC and shot at from long range by an anxious trigger, apologetically smiling behind wispy beards and high, crinkled cheeks. The stolid, half-clothed children, conical hats made out of discarded C-ration cases, unspeaking, covered with ulcerous sores.

  The first group reached the patrol. There was a low wail from a mamasan. Dan cut her off with a sharp, gut-teral word and she stifled herself, whimpering. She and another ageless, beautiless hag took a bamboo pole off their shoulders and eased a parachute-wrapped figure to the sand. The parachute was stained with blood. Inside it was a girl, perhaps fourteen years old. She was unconscious, and bled from her midsection.

  The villagers gathered before the Marines. There were perhaps thirty somber persons standing wearily at the edge of the sand, staring up a bush-filled bank at Hodges. The other two stretchers were placed next to the dying girl. There was an old mamasan with an unidentifiable welt that had swollen half her face, and an oozing wound in one thigh that had saturated a bandage made from an old shirt. A small child lay in the other parachute, unconscious from a severe head wound. It was obvious that the child would soon die.

  Doc Rabbit checked the small child first, then shook his head negatively, declining to work on him. He began redressing the older girl's wounds. Hodges watched Rabbit for a few minutes, then nodded to Dan, gesturing toward the patiently waiting group.

  Dan eyed the villagers. They were from Le
Nam, several miles east of Liberty Bridge. Ten miles from his former home in My Le. Dan did not know Le Nam. He felt nothing for the villagers. He spoke strongly, almost arrogantly.

  “What do you want?”

  One mamasan dared to answer, groveling before Dan while shrewdly eyeing Hodges. When she finished, Dan continued to stare at her, his face almost sullen.

  Hodges prodded him. “What did she say?”

  Dan still eyed her. “She say babysan get boo-coo bac-bac bomb, same-same K.I.A. Say honcho mebbe souvenir chop-chop.”

  Hodges squinted unbelievingly at Dan. Is she for real? Dan continued. “She say mebbe one case C-rats same-same one babysan.”

  Hodges turned to the mamasan, studying her. How in the name of God can she prostitute her grief, declare a clean slate, for twelve C-ration meals? Did the kid mean that little to her? Or has she merely accepted the inevitability of it (they are going to die, eventually, all of them) and attempted to wangle the most realistic deal? Or is she starving? He studied her flesh. She was thin but not emaciated, definitely not starving. Hungry, perhaps.

  He shook his head. “Hey, I ain't believing this. Dan, tell her no chop-chop. VC end up with it.”

  Mamasan played her trump card. She leaned over and deliberately stroked the dying child's swollen head, then spoke pleadingly to Dan. Dan still stared directly at her, emotionless. “She say mebbe one poncho same-same one babysan.”

  Hodges shook his head, rubbing his knuckles into one thick palm. “Look. Tell her we're sorry as hell her kid's screwed up. Tell her we'll try to get it to a hospital. But no goodies.” He grimaced. “We're not the goddamn Salvation Army.”

  Dan translated. The crowd, which had been awaiting Hodges’ decision before daring to voice other claims, broke into resigned mumbles, intermittent whines. Hodges watched them, noticing at the same time that Dan had grown cold, almost angry with their agonizings. The thought emerged once again: what the hell right do they have to bitch, anyway?