Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  Ogre grew a tad more serious, and slapped Baby Cakes’ thigh. “It wasn't my fault, man. Who can tell about MPs?”

  Baby Cakes knocked Ogre's hand away. “Ahhhh. MPs hell. First he takes me to the worst skivvy house in Da Nang. They were ugly as a mud fence, every one of 'em. I never saw such ugly girls in my life.”

  “You just weren't as horny as you let on to be. If you were horny enough—”

  “I was, Ogre! I was! I was so goddamn horny I signed away my mail-sorting job! Tell me about being horny!” Baby Cakes ignored Ogre once again. “Second place, when the MPs come, the son of a bitch won't try to sky out with me. I go back and bang on the door, yelling, ‘Ogre! Ogre! MPs, man!’ and he just says, ‘I'll be there in a minute, uh, huh, I'll be there in a minute,’ like I was telling him he was gonna miss the bus or something. Then we both got caught, and I had to give away my gold tooth—you remember that gold tooth I took out of that gook's head? The day Squeaky lost his eye?”

  Snake nodded.

  “That tooth. I was saving it to show my grandkids. Now some boot MP who'll never even see a goddamn NVA is gonna have a war story, thanks to asshole here. All because he wanted to finish off a smelly old whore.”

  Ogre grinned, unabashed, appealing to the amused audience. “You ever try to pull it out in the middle of a stroke when you know you can't put it back? Huh? I just figured as long as I was gonna get caught, I may as well get what I was coming for!”

  Applause. Cheers. Ogre had won them over.

  Baby Cakes renewed his attack. “Goddamn, I'm sick of you! That ain't all. We get back to the troop area and we get written up for being out of bounds, anyway. They catch us coming over the fence.”

  Snake shook his head, commiserating, trying to suppress his grin. “I never heard anything like it. What a bust.”

  Baby Cakes warmed to the slight encouragement. He rolled Ogre onto his head, then pushed him over. It was a quick, effortless gesture that brought new cheers from the onlookers. “And that ain't even all of it! In a couple of days I got the clap so bad I can't even take a leak. My gut's so stretched out from trying to hold back pee I'll never look the same! And here I am back in the bush. And we almost didn't even get here!”

  Ogre stood up, his ugly head drooping. “Oh, that. He'da never known, Baby Cakes.”

  “Well, you're mighty lucky.” Baby Cakes looked around for lifers, and found none. “We're on the convoy coming back and we're in the truck bed with this Lieutenant who's on the way to the bush. It was about four days ago—remember when An Hoa was getting rocketed so bad, and they wouldn't allow choppers in? Oh, hell. A lot you all care about rockets in An Hoa. Anyway. It was a big thing in An Hoa. And we had to ride the convoy in. We're in the truck bed with this Brown Bar, and Ogre gives him a loaded Salem, starts rapping with him, you know, telling him sea stories about what they do to officers—”

  Snake smiled slightly. “Hear about what Phony did to Sergeant Austin?”

  Baby Cakes grinned knowingly. “I heard it was a mortar. Anyway, Lieutenant's scared shitless to start off with, but by the time we reach the Bridge he's stoned out of his mind, and he doesn't even know it! Keeps talking about how beautiful everything looks. Ogre slipped the man about four joints.”

  Ogre shrugged, grinning slyly. “He needed to relax.”

  “Yeah. Uh huh. And you're lucky he wasn't smart enough to let you relax in the goddamn brig!”

  Ogre waved him off. “Ah. Lieutenants don't know about shit like that. And the ones who do don't care.”

  “Could have been a CID. The way you are, you prob'ly got CIDs watching every move you make. They could clean up Da Nang, just closing down every place you stop at on an average day, Ogre.” Baby Cakes had concluded his diatribe. The crowd had departed. He turned back to Snake, comfortable in the knowledge that the squad now knew of his sufferings at the hands of Ogre. “Speaking of Lieutenants, how's ours? In the rear they say he's all right.”

  “He's a hillbilly. Like you. He don't give anybody any shit and he don't take any shit off anybody. Austin was gonna write me up on the Bridge and he took that bastard apart. It was so cool. I told him about Wild Man Number One doing Kersey and—”

  “You told him?”

  “And he said he wished Wild Man had been a better shot. I think he'd do Kersey hisself if he had the chance. He's a goddamn grit, I tell you.”

  Baby Cakes grinned easily. “Whoooeee. He wished Wild Man had been a better shot. That's heavy.”

  “And he cried the night Boomer lost his legs. He don't know I know. He was on radio watch and I went up to talk to him and he was sitting there, shaking his head, crying. I went back to my hole. Later he came on down and we shot the shit about Boomer. He likes to shoot the shit.”

  Baby Cakes seemed impressed. Snake had fought the other Lieutenants. “Sounds like you like the man.”

  “Yeah. I do. He's one of them, watcha-callits—” Snake grinned, referring to the slogan often used on recruiting posters—“Leaders of Men.” He nudged Baby Cakes, pointing to his gear. “Pick up your trash. We gotta report you in. You got a team again, Cakes. Take Ogre—”

  Baby Cakes grinned again. “Oh, no. You take Ogre. I've had it with him.”

  “Come on, Cakes. Don't start in on that again. Ogre's O.K. in the bush.”

  “Sure. Got me shot—”

  Ogre interrupted. “That was your own damn fault.”

  Baby Cakes hesitated dramatically, then acceded. “Oh, all right. But you're gonna be the death of me, you goddamned toad.”

  Snake continued. “And you got Senator and Cornbread. Cornbread tries to act dumb, but he ain't. Senator ain't really a Senator. Yet. He just tries to make you think so.”

  “That's the Harvard dude, right? Top was talking about him one day. He's got about a hundred-and-fifty I.Q. Hell. I won't even know how to talk to the man.”

  “It's easy, Cakes. You talk real straight, 'cause he's a shitbird. You say, ‘Senator do this,’ and ‘Senator do that.’ And if he gives you any of his jack-shit you say, ‘Senator, you got point.’ It's the only thing he understands. He's scared to death of walking point. He's scared to death of everything.” Snake looked coldly toward Goodrich's fighting hole. “He let Burgie die.”

  Baby Cakes seemed surprised. “I thought they were blown away by a one-oh-six. Blown all to shit.”

  “They were. But Burgie bled to death, man. We got out there the next morning and Senator was sitting right next to him. Hadn't even put a tourniquet on the man. Burgie was all fucked up. But he bled mostly out of his legs. I seen the ground where he bled. All of us saw it.”

  Baby Cakes shook his head in disbelief. “Well, what kind of a man is that? What you giving him to me for, Snake?”

  “ ’Cause if he screws up I know you'll break his head. And I didn't want you to get bored. If you get bored, Senator can tell you about anything you ever wanted to know about. Just ask him. He can tell you about the tiger cages—”

  “What the hell is a tiger cage, except a cage for tigers?”

  “Ask Senator. And he can tell you about the Geneva Accords—”

  “So what about it?”

  “Ask him. Ask him. You're gonna come away a genius, Cakes!”

  “I think I better work on coming away alive.”

  THE perimeter was almost motionless under the close, windless swelter of the afternoon heat. The ragged, overgrown hill that had been carefully shaped into terraces some centuries ago, that had held manicured gardens only years ago, now hosted a hundred chest-deep holes, a city of jerry-rigged poncho tents, a tribe of nomad warriors. In two days they would leave it raped and scarred by their survival needs: scorched by trash fires, pitted by new fighting holes, reeking and maggoty from a half-dozen straddle trenches. And perhaps, if Buddha turned his head again, pocked by new ravages of war.

  The sun beat down relentlessly. Men stripped to tiger shorts and boots, and sought the shaded ovens of their hootches. They listened to transistors. Some wrote lett
ers. Some played back-alley card games. Some slept off the watches of the night before.

  Ogre and Baby Cakes paraded the perimeter's fighting holes, seeking familiar faces. They found few. They were stripped to tiger shorts, and Ogre wore a wide-brimmed bush hat, pulled low over his ears in a carefully coaxed, bush-Marine style. The rear pogues wore them curled up, like cowboy hats worn sideways.

  Both were pale after months away from the scorching sun that fired the bush. They proudly, consciously modeled deep scars from their earlier wounds: Baby Cakes the long pink gash, like a strip of cord laid from his midback to his neck, Ogre the deep crisscrossings in his calves and thighs that disappeared under his tiger shorts.

  A large peace symbol hung from Ogre's neck on his dogtag chain. Ogre had made it out of C-ration wire, carefully shaping the design with powerful, stubby fingers, making the more difficult bends in the strong wire by pushing it through the flash-suppressor opening at the end of his M-16 barrel. Such skills came naturally to Ogre. He had once made similar items for a living. Under a massive thatch of scraggly, unwashed hair, wrapped inside a stained, musty Indian blanket, Ogre had sold wire trinkets in the parks of San Francisco. Until one day, totally stoned, Ogre got curious, and the next thing he claimed to remember clearly was getting off the bus at boot camp. Now he called himself the Hippy CIA. Just peeping out the other side, grinned Ogre.

  Cannonball looked up from a back-alley game and smiled at the passing figures. “Man, that was some kind o’ shit.” He surveyed the scars, then nodded to Wild Man. “You ain’ never seen shit like that night, Wild Man. Dudes droppin’ everywhere, gooks in between us, Ogre runnin’ through 'em, Baby Cakes runnin’ back out. Shee-it.”

  Bagger tossed a card onto the poncho liner that was their table. He was not yet comfortable with Cannonball again, after the incident in front of the Black Shack, and had rarely conversed with him since. But now he agreed. “There it is. I was out there on that LP, thinking I was gonna die, radio all blown to shit, stuck in that old fighting hole we found when the shit blew up. I never seen the platoon as fucked up as that night. Nobody knew where anybody else was. We had rounds going out just over our heads, rounds going in just over our heads, grenades going off all over the place. Then here comes Baby Cakes. He picks up Vitelli and turns around and asks us if we want to come back with him, like we were out there sunbathing on a beach or something. That dude has balls. I wasn't gonna leave that hole for nothing. He just shrugs and says, ‘Well, fuck ya then,’ and takes off. What a dude. Just to save Vitelli.”

  Wild Man watched the sauntering, scarred figures, in awe of Baby Cakes. “I never knew Vitelli.”

  “He was already dead. Don't ever tell Baby Cakes.”

  Phony leaned forward and took the cards on the poncho liner, shuffling them. “Yeah. Baby Cakes is gonna get a medal for that. He rates it, too.”

  Cannonball nodded. “No lie. Ain’ it good to see him, now?” He stretched like a wary cat, smiling over to Bagger, hoping to regain a portion of their damaged friendship by speaking to him around persons Bagger was comfortable with. “Hey, Bag-man. You never did tell us about your R & R. You make another baby?”

  Bagger put a meaty hand on his forehead, groaning. Then the confused flat face broke into a grin. “Don't even think that, man. I must of changed a hundred diapers. She said it would be good for the kid. You know, to get to know his day-uddy and all.”

  Wild Man laughed. “Sounds like she foxed the hell outa you, Bagger.”

  “Ah, so what if she did. I thought about that, too.” Bagger shuffled cards. “You know, I gotta admit something. I hate the bush. I hate this bullshit. But all the time I was with her, all the time I was walking that phony beach where all the Beautiful People were laying out getting their just-right tans, all the time I was stuffing myself with food I couldn't afford, I kept thinking about the bush. Like I belong here, and all the other stuff is only important because I earned it here, because it's a part of being here. Like I been here all my life, and the people in the bush are real, are my people. Like nobody in the world except for us understands this, or gives one flying fuck about it, but that's all right, because it matters to us.”

  Cannonball eyed him narrowly, smirking. “So as soon as you got back to An Hoa you extended.”

  “Jesus Christ, don't even say that, Cannonball.” Bagger laughed back.

  Phony leaned over, his innocent face nodding in agreement. “Well, I know what you mean, Bagger. I never had a home in my life till I came out here.” Nowhere to go back to. Stay forever.

  Wild Man grinned ironically to Phony, then called over to Goodrich, who was sitting several yards away, under a poncho-liner hootch, reading. “Yeah. This shit's just like college. Right, Senator? Sit around the frat house with all the brothers, planning parties, having fun. Ain't that right, Senator?”

  Goodrich had despaired of meaningful communication with the others. He had written home, and his parents had sent him several paperback volumes of philosophy. He was afraid his mind would deteriorate if he did not exercise it with strenuous reading.

  “I didn't hear you.” He had been reading Schopenhauer on genius, from Wisdom of Life. As a rule, wrote Schopenhauer, a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar. Goodrich liked that.

  “Out in the bush it's just like college, I said. Sitting around jiving with all the brothers, planning parties, all that shit.”

  “We went to different schools, Wild Man.”

  “Hey. That's right. I forget, you know. You looked so familiar.”

  Well, I won't be an ass, thought Goodrich. “If you want to know, I get the feeling this is kind of like Russian roulette, myself. Just as senseless. And the players aren't excused until the gun goes off in their face, so you get new players but the old ones can't leave until they lose. So the more times you put the gun to your head, the cumulative chances of its going off are—” He shrugged helplessly. “Well, how many people do you know who rotated without getting hit?”

  Cannonball scowled quizzically at Goodrich. “Say what?”

  Bagger peered at Wild Man. “What's he talking about?”

  Phony answered. “School.”

  22

  BAGGER

  The team. Everything's the team. You work hard with them, early in the morning when everybody else is still asleep. You work hard with them in the afternoon when everybody else has gone home. You take showers together and on the field it's like a battle. You do all these things for each other and with each other. Not for yourself. For the team.

  When you play tackle, your glory is in yards gained through your hole. You don't score points. Somebody else scores points through your hole. You don't win games. The team wins games.

  You stay together in school. Eat lunch with each other. Walk around with your letter sweaters in groups. Everybody stares. There goes the team. Not Jerry Dean Dolan. There goes our left tackle. Good luck, guys. You all stomp 'em Friday night. You hear? Yeah.

  You party together. Screw around on the bus going to the away games. Cut farts and light 'em. That's cool. Sing songs. After the games with the girls. Cheerleaders are the best. They like the team and that's what you are. Part of the team.

  So what can you say when the team decides to enlist? Four years together like that, and nobody's going to college. Not Jerry Dean Left-Tackle Dolan. For sure for sure. Had enough of that.

  • • •

  THEY drove to Athens in two cars. Eight of them. They found the Marine recruiting office and startled the recruiter with the ease of it. No sales pitch, man. Sign us the hell up. You just got the Bowman Rebels football team. The whole first team of graduating seniors. Can you handle it?

  Can I handle it? The recruiter was in euphoria. Somebody lock that door before these gents change their minds!

  Later that day. He slammed the car door, furious and afraid at what he had done. The penful of beagles out back bayed mournfully, announcing his arrival. He walked up the ci
nder-block path to the trailer, feeling blocks wiggle under him, and stared up at the door. She was standing just inside the screen, the screen filtering her, softening her features, giving her a picture-book attractiveness that did not filter out the animal in her. The animal exuded, embraced him as he climbed the steps. Cheerleader. Uh huh.

  She smiled, the eyes dancing happily, mischievously, invitingly. Beads of water ran down sandy strands of hair and plopped on the top of a generous breast, then trickled through the warm, entrancing abyss, finally melting into the terry-cloth fabric of her loose-wrapped robe.

  “Caught me in the shower, Jerry Dean. I bet you planned it that way.” Hair clung wetly to her cheeks and down her neck, drops of shower water resting in the hollows of her face. She cocked her head, leaning on the door. He looked fully at her through the screen door, exploring all her secret parts with his eyes. She smiled back, still inviting him, enjoying his visual embrace. Got herself a left tackle. Uh huh.

  “Did you all really go to Athens?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And enlist?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Well, you all are crazy!”

  “Don't I know it. Hey. It's hot out here.”

  “Well,” She pushed the screen door open and turned. “C'mon in.”

  He followed her into the living room, eyes fixed on the sturdy, well-shaped hips that clung tightly to the terry cloth each time she strode. She stopped and turned, looking him full in the eyes, smiling bold and mischievous. He walked up. She didn't budge. Met his movement, pushed into him with that meaty firmness.

  “Where's your mother?”

  Open smile, widened to a knowing grin. “At work. You know that.”