Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  He nudged Dan. “Tell 'em if they don't like it, they can always leave.” Dan cocked his head inquisitively at Hodges. “Tell them if they don't like getting shot at they can move to the resettlement village.” Dan still did not understand. “Tell them, no like mamasan, babysan bac-bac, didi Duc Duc, got boo-coo rice, fucking hootch, no VC.” Dan nodded, smiling. Ah. He translated once again.

  There were knowing, ironic looks among the villagers. A very old man with a thin nose and shocked eyes pointed to Dan and spoke slowly, gesturing toward Liberty Bridge and An Hoa, both unreachably far away. Dan nodded, again and again.

  “He say, no can do. Got VC, Cu Bans, La Thaps, stop mamasan, papasan, say go back home.” Hodges appeared skeptical. Dan remembered his own experiences as a VC in the Arizona, and the days he was posted along the riverbank with the same mission. He nodded affirmatively. “No shit.”

  Hodges pondered it a moment, staring at the beaten, suffering faces, a few of which were actually daring to hope as they watched him in thought. All right, he decided. I'll call their damn bluff.

  “Tell them to go get their gear. We'll put 'em on a helicopter. You know. Same-same medevac.”

  Dan appeared skeptical, but dutifully translated. The villagers mulled the proposition, attempting to gauge Hodges’ sincerity, then set out in half-lopes back toward the treeline, which still smoldered here and there from the recent Beacon. Dan watched them depart, envious of the ease in which they were escaping. It would have been so easy for me this way, Dan thought, remembering.

  Dan addressed Hodges without looking at him. “They say, fucking A, honcho Number One. Back most ricky-tick.”

  Warner, from Pierson's squad, stepped up beside Hodges and watched the spindly mob struggle across the barren sand. “Can we really do that, Lieutenant? Evacuate a whole ville, just like that?”

  “Why the hell not? That's what we're here for, ain't it, Warner? Hearts and Minds, all that good shit.”

  Warner was tall and slightly meaty, with a sensitive, open face. He had enlisted after two years at a small midwestern college, where he worked forty hours a week frying hamburgers to pay for his school. He was the only member of the platoon who spoke consistently of national objectives, communism, or winning a war. But even he had recently ceased such speculations: in the bush, they were irrelevant.

  Now Warner smiled, though, his thin lips ironically parting. “You better watch it, sir. A couple days like this and I might start believing again.”

  Hodges eased down the embankment into the sand. “Don't do that, Warner. It's been nice having you sane.” He approached Rabbit, who had just shot the old mamasan with morphine. “How are they, Doc?”

  “Babysan's dead. That girl there has shrap metal in her gut. I'd say she hasn't got a prayer. Old mamasan here is gonna tough it out.”

  The patrol surrounded the makeshift stretchers. Warner knelt down next to the unconscious girl and stroked her hair. “God. She's such a pretty thing.”

  Maye, also from Pierson's squad, snorted. He was stringy and tough, coal-digger tough, a stolid, accepting boy-man who was too realistic, too knowledgeable for sentiment. “Three years she'd be like all the rest of 'em. If she's lucky she'll live through this and stay in Da Nang when she gets out of the hospital. Then maybe in a year or two she'll make a good whore.”

  The girl was indeed beautiful, naturally so, her face calm and smooth in its unconsciousness. The lips were full, and underneath the pajama top were the sproutings of delicate breasts.

  Warner looked sharply at Maye. “C'mon, man. Knock it off.”

  Maye grinned, knowing he had rankled Warner. “Wonder if she's grown a pussy yet? She's about old enough. Know how long it's been since I seen a pussy?”

  “Well, however long it's been, it's gonna be a little while longer, Maye.”

  Hodges stared calmly at both of them.

  “Ah, Lieutenant. Just a peek. She won't even know.”

  “Sure. And the next time you'll want to cop a feel, maybe get a stinky finger. And after that you'll want a ride.”

  Maye shrugged absently, giving no ground. “So what, Lieutenant? She's gonna be a whore, anyway!”

  Warner's fists clenched. “Goddamn it, Maye, you never let up, do you? The whole world's your damn whorehouse.”

  Hodges nodded toward the dying girl. “Take her up to the perimeter. We'll see if we can't at least preserve her alternatives.”

  “IT won't work, Lieutenant.” Gilliland grinned mischievously.

  “It's got to work, Sarge. Don't be such a goddamn cynic. Just because you're a short-timer—”

  “Hey, Lieutenant. I'm so short I got to look up to look down.”

  “Yeah. O.K. I know. But don't be so negative all the time.”

  “Now, Lieutenant.” Gilliland still flashed a secret, knowing grin. He dragged ceremoniously on a cigarette. “You know there's nothing I'd rather leave you with than a good attitude. Really.” Gilliland lay back on his poncho, his head resting on his pack, staring at the roof of his poncho-liner hootch. “Couple weeks I'm gonna be laying in a real rack with my woman, trying to decide if I want steak or lobster for dinner. Least I can do is try to leave you with a good attitude, for Christ sake.” He rolled his molten eyes, a humorous smile lighting his face. “But it ain't gonna work. I know.”

  “You've got a friend—”

  Gilliland laughed, enjoying the mystery he had provoked. “That's right. I got a friend. He's the Gunny for the regimental Civil Affairs Section.” Gilliland raised his eyebrows, a gesture of finality. “Lieutenant, the resettlement ville is full.”

  “Full? That's goddamned impossible. I saw it a couple months ago. It wasn't even half-full. Hell. A quarter-full. It can't be full.”

  Gilliland grinned ironically. He flicked his cigarette into the grass. “Oh, it ain't really full. It's just full on paper. But you won't get any ville full of people into it, I guarantee.”

  “I don't get it.”

  “C'mon, Lieutenant. You gotta think crooked. District Chief says he's got five hundred bodies in the ville when he only has two hundred. Government sends him five hundred rations of rice. He feeds two hundred people, then sells three hundred rations of rice on the black market. Pretty tricky, huh? Him and the Sergeant Major would make a gruesome twosome.”

  Hodges was stunned, unbelieving. “There's got to be some way to stop that. Why doesn't somebody blow the whistle?”

  Gilliland explained, teasing Hodges with overbearing patience. “Who you gonna blow the whistle to, Lieutenant? This is what they call one of those ‘Civil Affairs.’ The Vietnamese run it. We just coordinate it. If the Man says the ville is full, then the ville is full. You might scream to the Province Chief, but he gets a cut off the rice, you can bet your sweet ass. Only thing to do is get it while you can, whenever they feel like letting a little go. But you ain't gonna get any whole ville in there.”

  “I'm gonna try like hell.”

  “I'll bet you a bottle of booze you lose. Jack in the Black.”

  NO bet. The request was called via the battalion radio channel, and came back within a half hour: the resettlement village was full. Hodges sat moodily at the edge of the perimeter and watched the termites fill the paddy once again, a narrow string of them this time, each figure balancing a large bundle on its head. They approached, fighting the bog of sand, holding clothes and pots and baskets and small babies, and assembled in a tight, faintly hoping group outside the perimeter. The faces were the same: beaten, forever saddened. But there was an electricity among them, a sense of preparation.

  Hodges summoned Dan and took a fire team down to the edge of the sandstrip. The group of villagers studied his face, noted the hesitation in his stride, and as if by command the electricity died. They knew, he decided.

  He turned to Dan. “Tell them, no can do. Tell them, maybe in a month or so.”

  “No understand ‘month.’ ”

  “Tell them to walk. And to take the dead babysans back to the ville with
them.”

  Dan told them. The group walked slowly back across the sand, crushed into numbed apathy. They carried two bamboo-pole stretchers. Hodges watched them carry the dead girl past him and noted, with fury, that her pajama bottoms were pulled down to her knees. He swore: Maye would pay.

  Warner stood beside him, watching also. “She was such a pretty little thing.”

  20

  STAFF SERGEANT GILLILAND

  Just outside Camp Pendleton, California. Joseph Frederick Gilliland, Staff Sergeant, USMC (Resigned), exited the Camp Gate, seabag up on his shoulder, and walked ten steps to a sign that read GIVE A MARINE A LIFT. He dropped his seabag next to the sign and pushed his piss-cutter hat low onto his eyebrows, sparing his forehead the agony of the sun. Then he allowed himself one last glance back inside the gate. The eyes grew molten and he shrugged resignedly, as if to shake the military nimbus from his shoulders, and he turned his back to it with finality, staring down the road.

  So long, Mother Green. Hello, world. Mister Gilliland is back.

  He had not even had a chance to put his thumb out when a car cut sharply off the road, just in front of him, and braked to a halt. A curtain of dust went into the wind and settled like snow over Gilliland's clean uniform and shined shoes and his seabag. He spit and wiped his mouth to clear the dust, then grabbed his seabag and went to the door of the car.

  It was a new car, a Monte Carlo. Gilliland looked across the wide seat at a gruff-spoken, scowling old man who told him with two words to get in. He obliged the old man, throwing his seabag into the back and climbing into the front, next to him.

  Gilliland had sweated freely into the crispness of his uniform while walking the Last Mile from the processing center to the gate. The car's air conditioner was clean and cool against him, and he opened his coat, waving it in his hands to bring the cold air inside his clothes.

  He pulled out a cigarette and lit it in his automatic, magic way, a C-ration match appearing from nowhere and needing no guidance from the eyes that remained on the driver, studying him. It was obvious to him that the man was an ex-Marine. He was crew-cutted, thick and stubborn-looking, with a fat squinched-up face that still scowled out at the road. He wore a tattoo that had faded into his arm so that it was unrecognizable, but Gilliland had an identical one on his own forearm, now fading also, so he knew what it was. Once it was a bulldog, fierce and colorful.

  Gilliland completed his inspection, then nodded to the man. “Hey, thanks, Top.” All the old-timers became Top or Gunny, he remembered humorously.

  The man nodded, apparently pleased to have been recognized as a former Marine. “Sure thing, Sarge. You a little old to be hitch-hiking, though, ain't you?”

  Gilliland shrugged, then smiled winsomely. “You're never too old when you're broke. Besides, ain't you a little old to be picking up strange men?”

  They laughed together, reaching a pugnacious rapport.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Pismo Beach.”

  The old man grunted. “That's a damn long way.” He considered it. “I'm going up to Tustin. I'll let you off on the freeway there. I know a pretty good place.”

  “Much obliged, Top.” Too old to hitchhike, Gilliland mused. A little old to be with three kids and no damn job, too. He began to doubt himself again, remembering the security and the good experiences of his ten years in the Marine Corps. Then he forced himself to shrug it off. Like old Snake used to say, don't do no good to think about it when you can't change it. I am a fucking civilian. Like it or not.

  He consoled himself with thoughts of Pismo Beach. It had been his wife's idea. He had never been to Pismo Beach, but his wife had spent several vacations there as a girl. She had written him as soon as he had definitely decided not to reenlist, and informed him that she was leaving the children with her mother and meeting him at Pismo Beach, money or not, job or not. He smiled again, appreciating her more than ever. That woman knows me like she has a hot wire to the inside of my damn head.

  She had written about the beach and the pier, where he could rent a pole and fish if he desired, and the blocks of arcades where he could play games and pinball machines. She had known, even more quickly than he himself, that if he went straight home it would be too much.

  The old man had inspected his uniform. “Three Purple Hearts, huh? A man's gotta be some kind of crazy to go through that.” The old man was visibly impressed.

  Gilliland smiled complacently. “Well, I ain't crazy, Top. Matter of fact, I just quit.”

  “You quit?” The old man seemed stunned. “The whole Marine Corps? Nah. Ain't anybody quits as a Staff NCO.”

  Gilliland chuckled, shrugging helplessly. Marine Corps logic, he thought. I'm crazy if I stay and I'm a disloyal son of a bitch if I leave. Can't win. “Well, I gave 'em two tours, Top. Two tours and three big Hearts. And what the hell did it prove? Nobody in this goddamn country gives a shit. I've had it.”

  Top begrudged him his right to be a traitor. “Been pretty bad, huh? Hard to tell sometimes, from the papers. They're just so against it.”

  “Yeah, it was a bad trip, as the troopies say. And it was worse this time than it was the last time. Can you believe that? Everything we put in there and it just gets worse. Kind of crazy.”

  Gilliland looked out the window and watched the people in the other cars, trying to get used to being back. It was all he had thought about for months, the major topic of conversation in the bush. Life's goals reduced to ground zero: stay alive long enough to leave.

  “You're pretty young to be a Staff Sergeant. My day it took twenty years to make Staff.”

  “Yeah, but it meant something then. Hey, Top—” Gilliland grinned conspiratorially to the old man—“I wouldn't make a pimple on a good Staff Sergeant's ass!”

  The old man liked that. It reminded him of a story. He told the story to Gilliland and Gilliland laughed and told the old man a story that he in turn was reminded of. Then they talked about Vietnam and World War Two and how scared they were and how many people they had seen killed. Gilliland liked the old man's honesty and he felt close to him, as if each had touched the devil and could talk about it because the other person had also touched him. The devil was on the other side of a grotesque culture warp and Gilliland realized for the first time that he was afraid to face people who had not experienced such things. He was afraid they would not understand him. He didn't know what civilians talked about.

  They reached Tustin and the old man dropped Gilliland off at the ramp he had mentioned, and told him where to change freeways to get to Pismo Beach. When he pulled away Gilliland felt deserted, as if the umbilical cord had finally snapped. He buttoned up his coat and mashed the piss-cutter down over his eyes again, then balanced his seabag up on his shoulder, like a native girl carrying a water jug.

  He walked up to the on-ramp sign and stood under it, feeling isolated and abandoned. The cars whizzed by and he studied the flashes of people that passed him. Some were driving to the beach. Some seemed to be working. Some appeared to be merely driving.

  He began to feel deeply depressed. It hasn't even touched them, he mused darkly. All the broken bodies and the nights in the rain and nobody even gives enough of a shit to give me a damn ride.

  Finally a pickup truck filled with lumber pulled up. There were two men in the cab. They allowed Gilliland to sit in the bed of the truck with the lumber. He straddled his seabag, on top of a mound of two-by-fours and two-by-eights and one-by-fours. Neither man had mentioned his uniform when they stopped. The edges of the lumber were splintery and uncomfortable. The wind messed his hair, and he was beginning to smell himself through his uniform coat.

  She wouldn't mind. She had never minded. She had always taken him just as he came. She took him right off the roads in the early years, when his hands were dusty and black under the nails and his body was soaked with sweat and dirt. And she hadn't minded his tattoos. And she was not uncomfortable with a body scarred by mortar rounds, a smaller leg shot through and thr
ough by an AK. She could handle a stinking uniform.

  The truck left him at Anaheim and he stood on the off-ramp, trying to remember the old man's instructions about how to get to Pismo. Finally he hefted the seabag to his shoulder and crossed the street to where the next on-ramp was. The seabag weighed on him, even when it was balanced properly. When he reached the entrance sign he dropped the bag and sat on it and lit another cigarette.

  His uniform was heavy with sweat, and had lost its crispness. He pondered taking the coat off and loosening the tie, but something inside him would not let him do it. When I get to Pismo, he mused, I'll throw the damn thing away. But I wore it right for ten years, and I'm damned if I'll stop now. He snorted, examining the Staff Sergeant chevrons he had once been so proud of. The President's Own. Guardians of the Free. He remembered an old troopy jingle as he watched cars whiz by. Doing the impossible. For the ungrateful.

  A bottle flew at him from a passing car and smashed next to his seabag. Somebody in the car yelled something at him. Fascist. Something like that. Gilliland lit a cigarette, pensive behind the gash of moustache and the scarred cheeks. The molten eyes watched car after car drive by, but after the bottle he did not follow any car with even a movement of his head.

  They're scared of me. The uniform. He pondered the irony of that. Things don't make any goddamn sense at all. I beat my head against a wall for these fuckers and they're scared of me. Wasn't like this a few years ago, I'll say that. I never waited longer than a half a cigarette for a damn ride.

  Fifteen more minutes. A yellow Volkswagen turned off the road and stopped for him. It was a convertible and the top was down. A black-haired, bearded man was driving. He was thin and his hair exploded from his head in every conceivable direction. A chubby, long-haired girl sat beside him. She was wearing white short-shorts and a red halter that showed most of her breasts from the top. Her nipples stood through the fabric. She had very large breasts.

  The driver was spaced-out. He smiled ethereally to Gilliland. “Hey, man. Where you going?”