Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  “Where's your sister?” She pulled on the robe's terry-cloth belt. Rich flesh exploded from the middle of her. Still the devil smile.

  “She won't be back.” She took his hands and put them on her breasts. “You gonna be a big bad Marine, Jerry Dean? You'll miss me, you know that.”

  That did it. In the pen the dogs were restless but had ceased their baying. Inside the trailer it was quiet with rhapsodic, animal enjoyment.

  A throated, laughing voice. “You just a big old teddy bear, J.D.”

  “Uh huh. Your teddy bear got one of these?”

  GRADUATION. Left tackle marries pregnant cheerleader. The team departs for war. The calamities of adulthood have overwhelmed Bagger.

  23

  “Cat Man's got something in the trees.”

  Snake gestured with his head toward a mat of overgrown foliage just off the trail. Sweat flew off his face when he moved it. He was bare-chested underneath his flak jacket, and rivulets of perspiration poured down his trunk, gathering in his soaked trousers. “Over there, he says.”

  The platoon knelt or sat on the trail. Several men guzzled from canteens. Hodges peered across the field and saw an old abandoned hootch and a clump of banana trees. He shrugged, and queried Cat Man. “What?”

  Cat Man's roving eyes met Hodges’ for one brief, stolid flash and then returned to the field. Beyond it was the Thu Bon River, down a steep bank. “The banana trees.”

  Hodges looked at Stork, his radioman, who shrugged confusedly. He turned to Snake. “What?”

  Cat Man pointed cautiously. “Stalks are gone.” The old hootch was an empty, broken skeleton. The banana trees next to it were lush green, like an oasis in the brown field. Cat Man was right. Several stalks were gone. Beware banana trees, remembered Hodges. NVA seek their shade, lay on their broad, cool leaves, sometimes eat the younger stalks like celery.

  “All right. Let's check it out.”

  Phony shook his head disgustedly, his face deep red from the heat. The platoon had been on patrol for several hours. “Ah, Lieutenant. Peep this out. Peep that out. We could find old Ho Chi Minh hisself back there and it wouldn't make no never-mind.”

  Hodges lit a cigarette, and raised his eyebrows to Phony, a rebuke. “You can stay back here on the trail if you want.”

  Phony put his helmet back on his head. “Yeah. Old Luke the Gook would love that. Christ. Cat Man and his damn bent grassblades.”

  They moved toward the old hootch, the whole platoon on line. It was a bored, perfunctory sweep. They fought the high weeds, weapons carried loosely in one hand, more worried about the high grass than the object of the sweep.

  BBBBBRRRROOWWWW Two bursts of automatic rifle fire, unaimed, a wide spray that encompassed the whole platoon. The banana clump was only fifty yards away, but no one was hit. The front men of the sweep returned fire quickly and Hodges knelt, lost in the high grass. He looked cautiously around him. He knew that all portions of the old villages such as this one were latticed by deep, grass-hidden trenches, that the platoon could be completely surrounded and not even become aware of it until the enemy began firing. For a moment, he considered retreating back to the trail, but he realized that there would be no protection on it, no guarantee that it also was not covered. On its other side, there was more village, more matted fields, other trenches.

  He grimaced. We are the bait, dangling. “Assault to the riverbank!”

  They moved immediately forward, firing from the hip. It amazed him every time. They were so young in so many ways, so vulnerable, and yet an order filled with that kind of unknown was always obeyed almost before it was uttered. They did this part so goddamn well.

  No other fire from the banana clump. The front of the sweep reached the riverbank and automatically set in, watching their front.

  Big Mac passed the banana clump. He stopped, and peered down at a Marine ammunition box, half-buried in the dirt. He called to his team leader. “Hey, Cat Man! How'd you miss this!”

  Big Mac reached over and lifted the ammo box, to show it to Cat Man. He straightened, the lid of the ammo box in hand, and—disappeared. At one moment he was stooping, grinning caustically to Cat Man, and in the next there was a violent rending of the earth, a belch of smoke and dust that sprayed half the platoon, the equivalent of a large artillery round impacting underneath him as the pressure-release detonator set off the booby trap. He did a full flip in the air. His rifle spun into the distance, a black baton. He landed where he had stood grinning to them only a half-second before, but now he was a scorched, decapitated ash heap that reminded them all of how very close they stayed to death, even on a boring day.

  Pieces of Big Mac pattered on the leaves and grass for several seconds, like gentle rain. They had not noticed Phony staggering nearby without direction. Finally he screamed, high-pitched and confused. “DOC! Doc! They got my arm, Doc! They got my arm!” There was nothing underneath his right shoulder but a ragged tear of red that pulsed jets of blood with the rapid beating of his heart. His arm lay near him, in perfect shape, and as Phony staggered it seemed he did a voodoo dance over his severed limb.

  “Doc! Snake!” Snake reached Phony and made him lie down. “They got my arm, Snake.”

  “Lieutenant!” Someone on the riverbank. “Jesus Christ, there's gooks everywhere!” The front of the sweep opened fire toward the river. Cannonball's blooper thunked and boomed flatly down the bank.

  From below a wail of fire, aimed at the banana clump, where several Marines had gathered to help Phony. Phony still screamed. Hodges called for Stork, and bolted toward the riverbank, where the platoon was firing madly.

  He burst through an old hedgerow, half-jogging, and it erupted just behind him. He felt himself sail forward from the blast, so totally shocked by its unexpected force that he did not register what was happening for several seconds. AK-47 rounds passed over him with their stacatto pops and he heard the platoon firing back and when he looked up Rabbit was near him, yanking out a dozen battle dressings, trying to choose between him and Phony and Stork and apparently a few others.

  Then he noticed the ooze that covered his arms. He felt it in his hair and along his neck and on the back of his legs and at the base of his back. He tried to sit and gushed blood from the seat of his trousers, then rolled over on his stomach as Rabbit finished Phony, whose screaming had given way to an incoherent babble.

  Phony pointed toward Rabbit's morphine sticks. “Gimme another one, Rabbit. Ha hahh. Ha Hahhh. It don't matter, man. They got my fucking arm.”

  Somebody said that Stork was dead. Hodges didn't look for the tall, gawky radioman. Cat Man crept over and helped Rabbit dress his wounds, his normally emotionless face angry and confused. Rabbit dripped sweat in his face.

  Snake was directing the fire of the platoon. He crept stealthily to Hodges. “They got a goddamn hospital or something on a little island out there, Lieutenant. They're making their didi over into the Arizona. They can wade it. I think they're just fucking with us till they get out of there.”

  Compos and Wolf Man worked the machine gun methodically. Hodges tried to lift his head. “Getting any?”

  Snake shrugged. “A few.”

  “Put some artillery on the far bank. Blow 'em away.”

  “Ah. It's too late.” Three minutes more, and the firing ceased. “We gotta get your ass out of here, Lieutenant.”

  The morphine was hitting Hodges. He felt good, warm and weak. The shrapnel holes had felt like bee stings, down deep inside, but they didn't hurt anymore. He listened as Snake called in the medevac request. Two emergencies, two priorities, two routines. Two dead men.

  “Who's hit?”

  “You are. Sir.” Snake lit a cigarette. “And Phony. And Stork. And Big Mac. Two others. Big Mac is all fucked up. Hey, Lieutenant—” Snake grimaced pensively—“this really sucks.”

  Cat Man called to them from where Stork lay. He seemed apologetic, uncertain. He held the radio handset. “Lieutenant? Snake? They want the Actual.”

&n
bsp; Hodges was floating on the morphine. Snake dragged on his cigarette, and nodded to Cat Man.

  “Who?”

  “It's the Six. They want a Mine and Booby Trap Report.” Phony was still babbling. Cat Man spoke haltingly. “They told me all the things. Ah, hell, man, I can't remember. Who am I? They want to know what kind of round went off, was there a trip wire, how far we were dispersed—”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “They want to know how it was camouflaged—”

  “Tell 'em if we knew all those things we would have found it, instead of tripping the motherfucker. Tell 'em to come out here and kiss my ass!”

  Hodges laughed softly, eyeing Snake. “Uh huh. You thought there was nothing to being a platoon commander, didn't you, you little shit? You didn't know about the paperwork.”

  “Now, Lieutenant, how the hell can we answer any of those questions? And what the hell difference does it make, once it goes off?”

  “Make something up. That's what I do. Ever want to get back at a lifer? Make a story up that'll blow his goddamn mind. Tell 'em to come out here and see for their goddamn selves. Tell 'em that. What the fuck do they know.”

  Snake nodded to Cat Man. “Tell 'em we ain't got any report.”

  Cat Man walked away, avoiding both of them. “You tell 'em. Who am I? I don't even talk right, man.”

  SNAKE watched the medevac helicopter ascend. It was a high and distant deus ex machina that now left them again abandoned in the wilderness. Baby Cakes sat down next to him. They sat quietly, drawing on cigarettes, the rest of the platoon in a hasty perimeter that had secured the landing zone.

  Baby Cakes broke the silence. “So what do we do now, Platoon Commander For A Day?”

  Snake watched the helicopter. It had become a speck in the distance. “Burn down Vietnam.” Phony's arm lay nearby, reaching for him.

  “Hodges'll be back.”

  “Think so?”

  “Sure. They'll send him back. He's hit about like Ogre was that night. He'll be back, Snake.”

  “He's got four months in the bush. They won't send him back to us.”

  “We better get out of here. There was a lot of gooks crossing that river. This ain't any place to get hit.”

  Snake stood up, placing his helmet back on his head. He loaded a fresh magazine of ammunition into his rifle. “No, I think you're right, Cakes. He'll be back. He likes it. I mean us. You know, I been in trouble all my life, man, 'cause I never been able to work for anybody. I can work for him. I like the son of a bitch. And I just know he'll come back.”

  “Yeah. And Phony'll be all right, man. He's tough.” “Yeah. He's tough. Now. Squad Leader For A Day. Get your ass in gear and let's get the hell back to Henderson Hill.”

  THE column stretched wearily back toward the company perimeter, several miles away. Behind it, like random torches, the hootches of the nearest village spent themselves in orange rages. The flames rose anonymously, but it was the platoon's collective act of passion, a substitute for not being able to fight the enemy that had ravaged them. The hootches burned like funeral pyres. That one is for Big Mac. That one is for Stork.

  Finally they reached Henderson Hill. It was low and flat, deep-red clay dust marked by huge craters and a steam-shoveled inner perimeter, the vestige of a Great Experiment. Years before, a Vietnamese Popular Forces unit had been ordered into the An Hoa Basin, and had built a compound on the hill. It had seemed an ideal place: less than two miles from Liberty Bridge, easy access to the convoy road's supply train, readily defensible. But the notion of a localized Vietnamese unit operating on a permanent basis had aroused the ire of the local Viet Cong, and the hill had been repeatedly attacked, regularly overrun, until the Popular Forces unit had refused to remain. It was withdrawn, the sandbag bunkers were plowed under, the towers felled and burned, and the wire around the perimeter abandoned to enterprising VC units who pilfered great sections at night.

  But the hill itself remained an ideal company position, and it was used for short periods by many Marine companies operating in the Phu Nhuan villages. And the villagers around the base of the hill had remained peacefully ambivalent about the warriors who continued to ravage the Basin. With the exception of the Duc Duc and Mau Chanh villages, which hugged the wire at An Hoa, the Henderson Hill villages housed the most friendly, most cooperative civilians in the Basin.

  The children greeted the patrol as it wound along the high, wide paddy dike that joined the village at the northern edge of the hill. Cheerful, doting faces, calling out to favorite Marines in husky, gutter English. “Hey-y-y-, Wattaboo, you need washy-wash, O.K?” “Hey-y-y, Wi’Man, you Numbah One bac-bac VC, huh?” “Hey-y-y, Bac se, you gimme cigret?” The platoon chided the children back, trading friendly insults, clowning with them as they danced along with the movement of the patrol.

  Bagger slipped off his flak jacket and dropped it onto the shoulders of a small, thin boy. The jacket reached the boy's ankles. He laughed, calling to the other children, and jogged proudly, keeping pace with Bagger. He growled convincingly. “Ahhh! Me bac-bac VC!”

  One small boy in a wide-brim version of a bush hat had alternately stood and walked next to the column, somber eyes squinched, searching. Finally he saw Wild Man. He skipped along next to him, tugging at his flak jacket, and spoke intensely. “Where Phony, ma-a-an?”

  Wild Man did not address him. He twirled his finger in a circular motion indicating a helicopter medevac. The boy was genuinely upset: Phony was his “washy-wash” Marine, his personal responsibility when it came to drawing buckets at the well, for which Phony had been lavish with C-rations and cigarettes. He shook a fist. “Aw-w-w-w, ma-a-an. VC bac bac Phony? Numbah fucking One Thousand. Phony come back, he bac-bac booo cooo VC.”

  Wild Man waved him away, on the verge of a snarl. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  Goodrich watched the parade of children. He liked their friendliness. And the villages around Henderson Hill were almost worth fighting for. Or over. Or about.

  Whatever the hell we're doing, he grumbled. Real villages, as he had first imagined Vietnam would be. Cultivated gardens, pecking chickens, and penned hogs that even Captain Crazy did not see fit to slaughter. People who smiled. It was the only area Goodrich had worked in where the Marines dared venture outside their perimeter during the day, to sit under shade trees, run a secret joint, visit with the villagers. Anywhere else, they would be ambushed within fifteen minutes.

  The two booby traps had shaken him. The victims were selected so randomly. You could be 100 percent right and still be 100 percent dead, or permanently scarred, like Phony. There's not a goddamn thing you can do about it, either, mused Goodrich. It enforced his sense of the complete randomness of it all. Like existentialism, he thought again, climbing the hill. Suffering without meaning, except in the suffering itself. But no one would understand that if I told them.

  He had finally despaired of being the “duty moralist” of the platoon. He had personally refrained from setting fire to any of the thatch hootches as they burned the village on their way back, but he no longer spoke to any of the others about their actions. He had decided to maintain his own standards, to preserve a sense of sanity in spite of such events, but it would only have enraged them more deeply to try and stop them. A vote against burning a hootch would have been a vote against the memory of those who had been hit.

  He could sense Snake's deep depression. It was obvious that Snake had been closer to Phony and Hodges, with the possible exception of Baby Cakes, than to anyone else in the platoon. To lose them both together, in addition to the other deaths, the continuing frustrations, had scarred the spindly squad leader's normal toughness. Snake had gone immediately to his poncho hootch when the platoon reached Henderson Hill, waving off the Vietnamese children who normally could count on him for several minutes of frolic.

  And Cat Man had retreated inside a stolid, uncommunicative wall. For one brief moment, after the helicopter ascended with Hodges and the others in it, Cat Man had
cursed himself for noticing the banana clump, blaming his own proficiency for what had happened. But now he spoke with no one. He returned to his fighting hole, broke out a piece of hairy, salted pork his mother had sent him in a food package, and began to make a stew. He studiously contemplated his C-ration stove when others passed him.

  Noticing their frailties, Goodrich for the first time thought them human.

  THERE was a new platoon sergeant, still in An Hoa. They had received word the day before. And tomorrow, they would leave the relative peace of Henderson Hill for a month of roaming through the killer weeds. Goodrich shivered with new fear. He had only heard the stories. Wide, flat, treeless fields of elephant grass. Acres of desolate cemeteries. Whole villages of stone-sad faces. And chest-deep holes that hugged each trail, where a point man all but stepped on his ambusher before he found him. Tomorrow it would be Go Noi Island.

  24

  CAT MAN

  The fields are wide and flat, filled with dust. In the tractor you feel as if you are alone, lost in the ocean, with the dust as fog. It surrounds you and you cannot see beyond it. You turn the soil before it is irrigated and planted. Later you help harvest. In the afternoon the winds blow, sometimes from the sea and sometimes from the desert, depending on the season. On the tractor you live in dust-filled wind.

  On the weekends there are parties. Wine and marijuana. There are girls who mature early and make love young and have children quickly and are old before they are thirty. They grow heavy and they acquire faith. But before they do, there are parties.

  You have friends. You like to laugh. You seem shy outside your circle because you are self-conscious. But you will kill a man over an insult. You do not sue a man who insults you. How much is honor worth? You destroy him.

  ALL the first days. Add them up. They made him Cat Man.

  The first day in the town of dust and fog, in from Mexico with his family, ten of them sharing a three-bedroom house with his uncle's family of five. The first day in the fields, twelve hours, ten dollars, and the glow on his father's face when Tacio handed the money he had earned over to him. When there is a home I will keep the money, Tacio had explained, scowling fiercely as he had imagined a man should.