Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  “Pismo Beach.”

  The driver mumbled it to himself several times. “Pismo Beach. Pismo Beach.” He looked over to the girl. “Where the fuck is Pismo Beach?”

  She had a protective way of handling the driver. She stroked his leg and said comfortably. “North. Way north, sweetheart.” Then she turned to Gilliland. “We can take you as far as Hollywood. If you think you want to go to Hollywood.”

  Gilliland grinned winsomely, happy to have a ride. “Oh, yeah. I always did want to go to Hollywood.”

  She giggled as if he were Bob Hope and he threw his seabag into the back seat and climbed in with it. He sat it on its end on the seat, like a fourth passenger, as they drove.

  The car entered the freeway and the girl pulled out a large brandy snifter full of something crimson from under the dashboard. She took a long drink and laughed loudly, with her head back, and gave the snifter to the driver. He took a long drink, too. Then she turned around and offered the snifter to Gilliland.

  “Want some? It's dynamite, man. Really dynamite.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, it's—just really dynamite.” She giggled uncontrollably.

  “No, thanks. I got a long way to go today.”

  “Well, it'll take you there.” She was still giggling.

  “No, thanks. Really.” Gilliland was becoming uneasy.

  She ignored him after that. She and the driver continued to drink out of the snifter. The driver then casually reached over and caressed the insides of her thighs, up very high. She laughed in her throat and moved against his hand. Gilliland could not see the driver's hand, but he caught facefuls of the girl's long hair as she undulated, and could tell that her nipples had become hard.

  He was afraid. He stared tightly at the driver's face, ready to grab the wheel if the driver forgot what he was doing and lost control. This bastard wants to kill me for a damn finger-fuck, he thought grimly. The driver started to take his hand away and she held it there. Gilliland wondered briefly whether she was a nymphomaniac. Fucking Hollywood, he mused. The whole place is X-rated. He took a Marlboro out and the driver noticed and pulled his hand away from the girl and grinned. “Hey, man. Wanna do a number?”

  Gilliland looked the man in the eyes, through the rearview mirror. “What's a number?” Is this guy queer, or what?

  “You know, man. Don't you smoke dope? I thought all you dudes smoked dope. I heard the Nam was the best dope in the world, man.” It was the first hint that the driver was even aware Gilliland was back from Vietnam.

  “I'm too old to smoke dope.” Gilliland looked uneasily into the mirror, upset by his entry into the Real World. He barked almost sullenly. “I'm twenty-nine.”

  “Twenty-nine? No shit. You don't look that old.”

  “I feel eighty.”

  Hollywood was deliverance. Gilliland jumped from the back of the car and stood on the roadway and held his head for a full minute, relieved to have made it alive. He groaned as the Volkswagen screamed back onto the road, toward a different freeway. And that's what I been bleeding for? Why didn't somebody tell me?

  It was midafternoon. He bought a hamburger at a Big Boy's restaurant and walked back to the freeway ramp. His back ached from the weight of the seabag. The weight of it reminded him of the bush. He knew that someday he would have to stop relating all his actions, every anguish and pain, to the bush. But he could not help it just then. The bush was still realer than Hollywood.

  He pondered the miles he had walked in the bush, aching under the flak jacket and pack, feeling the heavy weight of the rifle in his hand and the cut of the pack in his shoulders. The only ones it touched were us. And I went twice so these bastards wouldn't have to go at all. The garish absurdity of Hollywood made him feel profoundly hostile. He felt used, irrelevant.

  Cars and trucks passed on the ramp and he lit another cigarette, waiting. The trucks belched huge clouds of black smoke as they inched up the ramp's hill. The black settled over him. There was no wind and he felt slick and oily and dirty in his uniform. A car passed by, filled with kids in bathing suits. They stared at him as if he were Clarabelle the clown, dressed up in his monkey suit.

  A large truck pulled over. The driver was hauling a trailerload of vegetables to Seattle. He told Gilliland he would take him all the way to Pismo Beach. Gilliland climbed into the cab, throwing his seabag before him and then pulling himself up with his hands, placing his feet into the metal stepping places.

  It was high and comfortable in the cab. They drove along the coast toward Santa Barbara and Gilliland could see the frothing waves and the pockets of surfers out in them, grouped in the special good places for surfing. It looked tranquil. It calmed him. He called across the cab to the driver.

  “Is the ocean like this at Pismo Beach?”

  “Better. No rocks. Not so many people.”

  The driver did not fit Gilliland's image of a trucker. He seemed too thin, as if he would be unable to shift the gears, and he wore glasses with thick black frames.

  The driver peered over to Gilliland, then looked back at the road. “You like the Marines?”

  “I just quit. That answer your question?”

  “I don't blame you.” The driver shifted gears. His whole body labored to do it, but he did not have the trouble Gilliland had imagined he would. “You was in Nam, though, huh?”

  “Two tours. Too long.”

  “Yeahhh, I was in the Army. Korea.” The driver paused, remembering. “I hated it. Did you hate it?”

  Gilliland pondered the question, feeling naked in his new status as a civilian. “Sometimes I did. Sometimes it was all right. The people, anyway.”

  “No, I really hated it. Somebody always bugging you to do something. Somebody always playing God.” The driver checked his rearview mirrors. “I drove trucks. We ran convoys up to the front. They say there ain't any front in Vietnam. That right?”

  Gilliland shook his head yes, then no. He smiled hopelessly. “Shit, man. I don't know. I know we used to like to get back to the rear. There was a rear. But we were never on any front, or anything. We just roamed around the bush, or went somewhere on an operation for a while and then left. We just moved in circles, mostly.”

  “Sounds crazy.”

  “Well, it was. It was crazy as hell.”

  “Do you think we're winning?”

  Gilliland thought about it for a moment. He lit a cigarette and took a drag and thought about it some more. He was somewhat shocked, not by the question, but by the fact that he'd never considered it in his entire second tour. They had never talked about it in the bush. It had nothing to do with being in the bush and fighting gooks. They had talked about good contacts and bad contacts and Getting Some and Bummers. But not about winning.

  “Christ, I don't know. You probably know more about that than I do. I don't know anything about it.”

  The driver seemed to take offense at Gilliland's answer. He glanced over at him as if he had been rebuffed, then turned on the radio. The radio played country music and Gilliland found himself listening intently to the commercials rather than the songs. He hadn't heard commercials in months.

  Mountains rolled like gentle waves near Gaviota, in varied shades of brown and green, and Gilliland examined them. His gaze caressed knolls and crevices with professional authority. Each shadowed draw and naked finger had deep meaning to him. I would walk there, he decided. I'd follow that finger to the top. And I'd put another squad on the finger to the right, and one on the finger to the left. Hodges'd like that. He'd say something like, “Sarge, you are a savvy dude. I shit you not.” Kind of miss those guys. Then we'd move real slow up that mountain, like leapfrogs. No ambush that way. Put Snake's squad in the middle. Cat Man on point.

  He searched the deep gray shadows along the top of the mountain. And I'd set up there. We could put a whole platoon up there. Maybe a company. It's a bare-ass hill but we could dig in real deep and we'd be spread out enough that they could mortar us and we'd do O.K. And at night
I'd put an LP down that main finger, 'cause the gooners would come up that way, too.

  He looked away and lit another cigarette and was overwhelmed by an emotion that was somewhere between a sense of loss and of rebellion. Hell. I'm just an old grunt. That's all I'm good for. What the hell am I gonna do? Ten years I played that silly game and up till five days ago it was the most important thing in the world—You Bet Your Life—and now it's gone. Walk through the gate, stick out your thumb, and the whole world changes. I'll never set a squad into a hill again.

  Still he could not shake the thought that a squad set in at Gaviota Pass was more real than a fishing pier at Pismo Beach.

  He suddenly realized that, on top of everything else, he was afraid to meet his wife at Pismo Beach. I'm counting too much on it being good, he fretted. What if it isn't like that? I been planning this too hard. I'm about to the point that if there isn't any fishing or the water's too cold to swim in I just might have a damn fit. Something's gotta be the way you think it's gonna be.

  It grew dark and Gilliland slumbered in the truck. They reached Pismo Beach and the driver pulled off to the side of the road, just beyond the off-ramp, and Gilliland climbed out. He waved briefly to the driver as the truck pulled back onto the highway. Its exhaust covered him with new slick smells.

  He stood in the dark next to the highway and felt a cool breeze wash against him. He sucked it into his lungs. So this is Pismo Beach. Smells good, even from here. Smells like sea and fish and food. He put his seabag onto his shoulder and began walking toward the ocean. The seabag beat at him, bouncing as he walked. He felt older than twenty-nine. Maybe it's the jet lag, he reasoned. It's only eight o'clock, but I been up all night, Vietnam time. Maybe it's me.

  He walked past a drive-in restaurant before he reached the motel. The lights flashed harshly at him, hurting his eyes. There was an electric contraption that hung like a lamp and zapped every time a bug flew into it. The first time it flashed he jumped. It looked like a muzzle flash from a rifle, and his mind had been wandering. Inside, the jukebox moaned:

  It wasn't me that started that ol’ crazy Asian war But I was proud to go and do my patriotic chore—

  Four hippies sat at a table outside the restaurant. They wore faded blue jeans and rough-cut shirts and their hair was long and two of them had beards. They must be hippies, mused Gilliland. Ain't anybody would hire a man dressed like that and looking like that. But he doubted himself. Hell. I'm the weird-looking one, not them.

  They leered at him as he walked past, struggling with his seabag. He kept to the sidewalk, but they were only a few feet away. One of them called to him.

  “Evening, hero.”

  He ignored them. Another spoke loudly, so everyone in the restaurant would take notice.

  “Hey, how was your war, Killing Machine?”

  He crossed the street, careful not to look back. He was too tired to fight them. There were too many of them, and he didn't care anymore.

  The desk clerk at the Shore Cliff Lodge had been in the Navy during World War II. He had driven landing craft for the First Marine Brigade in the Pacific. He had fought at Saipan and Tinian and Guam. He told Gilliland all about it as soon as he saw Gilliland's uniform, before Gilliland could ask him what room his wife was in.

  The clerk took notice of the Purple Heart with its two gold stars and nodded expertly. “You're just back from Vietnam. Man, I just wish they'd let us win, you know? Craziest thing I ever saw.” The clerk was bigger than Gilliland, and meaty.

  Gilliland nodded, wiping sweat off of his moustache. He was tired. “Yeah. Now what room is—”

  “We should just bomb 'em back to the goddamn stone age—”

  “I'll tell you, Chief, we been doing that pretty damn—”

  “Make Hanoi a parking lot. I mean it. How can you fight a war with your hands tied behind your back is what I want to know, Sergeant.”

  “You don't. You quit.” Gilliland leaned over the counter and looked coldly into the clerk's eyes. The Vietnam War was over. It happened only to individuals, and it had ceased happening to him. “Can you knock off your bullshit and tell me which room Mrs. Gilliland is in? You wanna talk about the war, go write a letter to your Congressman.”

  21

  A violent, thunderless noon rain scudded across a blue sky and soaked them thoroughly, even as the untroubled blue peeked around its edges. Then it suddenly abated, leaving them inside a thin, steamy mist. In minutes the resupply helicopter powered through the mist, driving it away with rotor wash, whipping the mist as winter wind drives chimney smoke. And they cringed, naked on the terraced hillside, feeling new horizontal rain that was driven by the helicopter's blades, lifted from long leaves of greening saw-grass.

  Then the bird was gone, the moment of brief, fierce communication with the Other World had passed, and they were again abandoned. And mercilessly scorched, under an unharnessed sun. It was they that steamed now, clothes and poncho liners and packs reaching for the hot blue sky in hundreds of wispy, individual fogs.

  A clump of burdened men trundled down the hill, jumping each hand-molded terrace like children descending grassy giants’ steps. Shoutings accompanied the jaunt: an argument, many hours old, was being waged along the hillside.

  Goodrich looked up from cleaning his weapon, an M-16 bolt in one hand and a toothbrush in the other, and stared curiously at the group that had been deposited by the helicopter. There were six men in the cluster. Goodrich recognized Bagger and Cannonball, now back from R & R, who were laughing mightily, along with two pale new dudes, at the two men who were arguing. One of the arguers was tall and blond, splendidly muscled, with a narrow, jutting face and a thin, broken nose. He walked quickly, seemingly angry, attempting to be rid of the other. The second man, obviously the antagonist, was short and squat, square-faced, with a drooping, too-long moustache, sagging, amused eyes, and a nose like a hawk's beak. The short man followed the other, leaning forward in a crouch, attempting to address him. His face was lifted by an incessant, patient grin.

  The tall man ignored his squat antagonist, walking quickly up to Goodrich. He squinted once, an attempt to recognize Goodrich, then looked along the perimeter for a familiar face. Finally he turned back to Goodrich, speaking in a forceful, unbelieving drawl.

  “This is third platoon?”

  Goodrich nodded, still awestruck by the suddenness of the clown show's arrival. The squat man crouched around and peered up to the blond man's face, still grinning mischievously. Blond man ignored him.

  “Where is everybody?” Then, “Where's Snake?”

  Goodrich pointed. Thirty meters down the lines, Snake lay sleeping inside a poncho hootch. “He's crashed. Right over there.”

  The tall, muscular man marched directly over to the poncho hootch, accompanied by the crouching, grinning clown. The others, including a now-curious Goodrich, followed closely after. Blond man nonchalantly dropped his helmet on Snake's back. Snake coiled inside the hootch, and appeared on the other side with the helmet in one hand, ready to throw it into his assailant's face. He went motionless, dumbfounded, on the back-swing.

  The tall man spoke, still unsmiling. “Hey, Snake. Put this crazy bastard out on an LP by himself, will you? Without a radio.” Then he grinned hugely. Snake jogged around his hootch, his thin lips in a generous smile, tattoos dancing on the narrow arms. He threw the helmet into his assailant's stomach. It bounced off harmlessly.

  “Baby Cakes! You skating mother! I thought you had a job in the company mail room! What the hell you doing back out here?”

  Baby Cakes peered over at his clowning, squatting nemesis. “Never mind what. I'm here. Now, get me away from this asshole, will you? Every time I get around him I get in trouble. He gets me shot, he gets me the clap, he gets me written up.” He shoved the squat man in the face, pushing him off balance. “Get away from me, shit-head.”

  The ugly dwarf laughed. “Ah, don't mind him, Snake. He's just a little pissed off. It was his own damn fault but he won't admit
it.” The Ogre had returned.

  Snake guffawed. “You never done a wrong thing in your life, have you, Ogre?”

  Ogre was stoned. Ogre was usually stoned. He grinned affectionately to Snake, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Hell. All I did was tell him about Mine Warfare School. You know. That he should go.”

  Baby Cakes pushed Ogre on the top of his helmet, felling him. “Sure.” He turned to Snake, as if presenting a case. “Here I was, had the skatingest job in the company. Sorting mail. Three months left on my goddamn tour, a bad enough Heart that Top didn't make me go back to the bush. And in comes this fucker—”

  Ogre interrupted, giggling. “It wasn't like that.”

  “Shut up. Asshole here comes diddy-bopping in from the hospital. Made it all the way to Japan, takes three months, almost, while we're out here fighting the War—”

  “How many gooks you been killing in the mail room, Cakes?” Ogre sat in the grass, still laughing, now shaking his head as if Baby Cakes’ story was outlandish.

  “I told you to shut up!” Baby Cakes turned back to Snake again. “He comes into the company office, starts telling me about all the whorehouses in Da Nang, like he knew every one of 'em personally, and I think he did. Seems he had a little trouble finding An Hoa after his vacation in Japan—”

  “Couldn't find the convoy.”

  “I'll bet. You were too gaddamned stoned to give a shit.” Ogre shrugged: entirely possible. “So he comes in and tells me all about it. Here I am—”

  “Fighting off gooks with his letter opener.” Ogre howled.

  “Cut it out. Here I am, haven't seen a woman in months and he's telling me you can get it every night in Da Nang. Says he could take me to five skivvy houses blindfolded. Says it wasn't any sweat, that they were clean, nobody cared. Now, what the hell was I supposed to do? Go into the head and beat off, thinking about it?”

  Snake scrutinized Baby Cakes. “You went AWOL?”

  “Hay-ull no! I'm not the kind to get in trouble, man. You know me. I always try to do my job. I ain't any troublemaker.” He lit a cigarette and dropped his weapon against his pack, which now lay on the grass with his helmet. “I talked with the Top. He likes me, you know. Says I'm a good old boy, all that shit. I talked Top into cutting orders to Land Mine Warfare School for me and Ogre. He said I'd have to go back to the bush, though. Battalion rule about people who been to school. Hell. I figured it'd be worth it for another R & R. That was the way asshole here made it out to be.”