Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  Cornbread challenged Cannonball. “See? How come Baby Cakes take Vitelli? He was a white motherfucker. Homicide hit in the head, man.”

  “Awwww, ma-a-an! Vitelli was all fucked up! I seen it. He died, man. Homicide walk back in by hisself at first light. Him an’ Bagger. They even fragged some gooks that was already dead.”

  Cornbread eyed Cannonball skeptically. “That ain’ what Homicide tol’ us in the Black Shack.”

  Cannonball went back to cleaning his .45 pistol. Cornbread was too far gone to convince. He shrugged. “I seen it, man. Ask Cat Man. Ask anybody.”

  Cornbread remained unconvinced. “Anyway. I'm skyin’ out o’ here.”

  Cannonball began to reassemble his pistol. “Go 'head. Ain’ nobody stoppin’ you. Doan’ hurt y'self, now.”

  GOODRICH walked along the lines in his tiger shorts, his large, loose-skinned body dripping with sweat. Other than the tiger shorts, he wore only boots, his helmet, and his flak jacket. The rest of his gear was wrapped up inside his poncho. He carried it like Santa Claus over one shoulder, a great, drooping bag.

  He was making the Great Migration to Bagger's hole, fifty feet away. The others in the squad seemed to studiously ignore him as he paraded past. No one called to him or chided him, the way they did when Snake sauntered along the lines. They don't like me. Oh, this is insane. And I'm hardly a third of the way through it. Four and a half months. Oh, Christ. Only two hundred and fifty-three more days of this absurdity. Goodrich felt as if he had been in the bush for years.

  He observed the others. Seven left, not counting me. Snake. Ogre. Baby Cakes. Cat Man. Cannonball. Bagger. Cornbread. Where the hell is Cornbread? He watched them individually as they lounged in the midday heat. They're so damn good, at least at this, and what does it get them? This squad has the best head (Snake sat writing a terse letter), the best eyes (Cat Man browsed over a Mexican comic book), and the biggest set of balls (Baby Cakes laughed heartily at a clowning Ogre) of any squad in the company. And what good does it do? We take twice the casualties that even Pierson's squad, in the same platoon, takes.

  Goodrich pondered that, nearing Bagger's hootch. That makes more sense than it would first appear. Who's made it out? Flaky, with his skating ricochet of a Purple Heart, now hiding somewhere in the rear, soaking every minute out of it. He'll make it. The Black Shack's occupants, from what Bagger says about them. They might get court-martialed but they aren't going to get blown away. Sergeant Gilliland, who hung up his jock and quit. He's safe. And Mark and his thousands, who refused even to expose themselves to it.

  He reached Bagger's poncho hootch, still brooding over his discovery. Goodrich dropped his pack and flak jacket next to Bagger's dozing frame. Bagger rolled over, looking at him edgily. “What do you want, Senator?”

  Goodrich experimented with a shrugging, preVietnam grin. “I'm in your team now.”

  Bagger grunted, then rolled away. “You sure you want to take the chance?”

  Goodrich sat down on his flak jacket, peering under the poncho hootch. He grinned again, feeling a rapport with Bagger's obvious misery. “Watch it, Bagger. People are going to say you're acting like me, for Christ sake.”

  Bagger started mildly, then peered at Goodrich, his confused face squinting. “You really know how to hurt a guy, Senator.”

  Goodrich felt comfortable with Bagger. No pretensions, he thought. “Yeah. Well, it was a hard thing to say.”

  Bagger struggled to a sitting position, his head stretching the center of the poncho roof so that it resembled a pyramid. “Sorry I been red-assing you, Senator. I got nothing against you.” He pondered Goodrich. “You can be in my team. Matter of fact, you can have my team.”

  “What?”

  “You're team leader.”

  Team leader. Decisions. Dealing with Snake. No way. “I can't be your team leader, Bagger. You have two months bush time on me!”

  Bagger waved Goodrich off, his eyes gaunt and tired. “That don't mean a goddamn thing. I couldn't give less of a damn. I ain't telling any-damn-body to do any-damn-thing any-damn-more.” He grunted. “I never did like it. I wish I never joined this Green Motherfucker. John Wayne. Shee-it. I ain't no military man. If you want to be with me, you gotta be team leader. Dig?” Goodrich sat stunned, unanswering. He had not escaped Baby Cakes in order to deal with Snake head-on all day, every day. “Now. I'm gonna catch some Zs. Wake me when you want me to do something.”

  Sleep, mused Goodrich, fretting over Bagger's snoring frame. The great escape.

  There was a loud boom just outside Baby Cakes’ hole that ripped through Goodrich's thoughts. Someone howled. OWwooo. OWwooo. In a moment, Cornbread came scampering into the perimeter, almost dancing. His head was back and he howled, as if at the moon. He lifted his knees high as he ran. Both hands were pressed against his bulbous buttocks.

  He screamed again, looking warily for Snake and Baby Cakes. “Ah ain’ hit! Ah ain’ hit!” He raised his hands in front of him, noting gobs of blood. “Ah'm hit! Ah'm hit!”

  Bagger awoke and looked out knowingly from his hootch, actually gaining strength from the weakness shown in Cornbread's actions, which were similar to what he had been contemplating for days. “That fucker fragged himself. I'll bet a month's pay.”

  Snake and Baby Cakes shared knowing expressions of contempt. Snake ambled up to Cornbread, who now stood in one spot, jumping up and down, still holding his buttocks. He spoke mockingly. “What happened, Cornbread? Some gook do you out there?”

  Cornbread bounced, looking straight ahead. “Ah doan’ know, man. Ah was out there fixin’ to take a shit an’ all of a sudden it went off. Boom!” He glanced at Snake. “Coulda been a gook, Ah jis’ doan’ know.” He noticed Snake's grimace. “Probly was a booby trap, though.”

  Snake folded his arms, peering sagely up at Cornbread. “Well, I guess we better go out in the weeds and find the trip wire so we can call in a Booby Trap Report. Where were you when it went off, Cornbread?”

  Cornbread was being cool now. Rabbit was dressing his wounds, and had indicated he would be medevacked. “Shee-it. Ah doan’ remember, Snake-man. Ah was walkin’ so fast. It happen so quick. Ah doan’ know.”

  “Where'd you drop your E-tool?”

  Cornbread's face went startled for a quick moment. He peered sideways at Snake. “Say what?”

  “Your E-tool. How were you gonna take a shit without digging a cat hole with your E-tool?” Cornbread was thinking hard. “You weren't just gonna shit on the grass out there and smell up the whole squad area, were you?”

  Cornbread had it. He grinned slightly. “Oh, yeah. Ah jis’ can't remember every time. Ah probly woulda come back in an’ got it when Ah got to where Ah was goan’ dig the hole.”

  Snake shrugged helplessly. Don't Do No Good. “Hell of a place for a booby trap. Out here in all this grass.”

  The medevac was on its way. Cornbread suppressed a pained grin. “Yeah, man. That's jis’ what Ah was thinkin’.”

  Cornbread walked stiff-legged toward the landing zone to await the medevac. He passed Cannonball and clenched his fist, smiling shyly through pained lips.

  “You be careful, hear?”

  Cannonball clenched his own fist perfunctorily, then smiled and shook his head. “Doan’ worry 'bout me. You stay outa trouble, man.”

  Cornbread chuckled, speaking rapidly to Cannonball, as if he were deeply humored. “Ma-a-an, they want stupid niggers, they'd all pay to see a dumb-ass nigger. That's all right. Ah ain’ goan’ get in any trouble. Ah'm too dumb to get in trouble!”

  26

  CANNONBALL

  A thin, winding strip of asphalt, choked with roadside weeds. Wide, flat fields of tobacco. In late summer the fields would go all golden, as if the plants were throwing back the sun into the sky, and the mule carts would wind along the rows, he and two brothers turning leaves, starting at the bottom of the plants. Later they were hung to dry inside a paintless shed.

  His mama. Junk Lady Washington, they called her. Fat
, warm, and freckled. A laughing, religious mix of Indian and African and white, narrow-nosed and thin-lipped. She worked homes in a nearby town and her employers had a habit of giving her the items they no longer needed, always assuming she did not have enough, until eventually one entire room of their tiny house was so filled with furniture and old vacuum cleaners and small appliances and clothes that they could not use it. The room became the supply point for the whole rural neighborhood, and Mama became Junk Lady. She never threw a thing away. Somebody might be needing.

  He wasn't the first to go. The Army had already ruined his brother. That was what his mother maintained. His brother had been drafted three years earlier, and had left home, excited and ambitious, filled with dreams of marching and spit-shined shoes and discipline, and had come back with hot stares and angry words, out early on a discharge he had been too embarrassed to define. Ruined, Junk Lady had maintained, crying. His brother had stayed at home for a month and then moved to the city. Washington or Baltimore, he had said, although he had not written or called since. His brother's words had been so ambiguous, so filled with hate for the Army and the officers and whites in general, that it had been impossible to discover what had happened. His mother had finally decided that it was the Army. And when it came his time to go, he wanted no part of an Army that had so destroyed his brother.

  On Sundays there was church. He needed it. The world was changing so rapidly, every week a new advancement and a new crisis, that he could not comprehend his place in it. Black people marching. He saw it on the television, and heard about it on the radios. He could feel it. Five years before, if he had not called some people “sir” they would have been after him. Now, those same people seemed embarrassed when he called them that.

  It was too much to digest and he needed the Reverend's words. He would sit and watch the man's intense, sweating ebony face, the black eyes reaching for him, the rich baritone words speaking about the Lord and he would feel his spirit move right up there with the Reverend and he would just have to say Amen. It wasn't because anybody else said it, everybody else said it because the Reverend had reached down inside them, too.

  The man would talk about the Lord but he was talking about the People, too, and Roland needed that. The Reverend wasn't anybody's man but his own self and he wasn't anybody's servant except God's and the African Methodist Episcopal Church's.

  The Reverend dug Martin Luther King early on and he told his people the right way to be on that, too. He would scorn Cleaver and Carmichael and Brown from the pulpit. “There's only one race,” the Reverend would sing, “and that's the human race. And what you got when you burn down the ghetto? You got a burned-down ghetto.” Amen.

  It was the Reverend who advised him to enlist in the Marine Corps. He had received his draft notice shortly after turning eighteen, and had been terrified of the Army. His mother had wept off and on for a week. “I don't want you goin’ in no Army,” she had moaned, remembering his brother. And there was only one person who could tell him how to be.

  The Reverend had grabbed him by the shoulders, and he could feel the power flow into him. Those warm black eyes had owned him. “You don't need to do no runnin’,” the Reverend had intoned. “You don't like the Army, well, go sign up for somethin’ else. You go be the best one there, my man, and you ain't gonna be in any trouble. You can do it. You can be the best.”

  BUT it wasn't the Army. He learned that quickly. It was the Revolution. In boot camp, there were small hints of the problems that had ruined his brother. In infantry training they had blossomed. In Vietnam's rear areas they had exploded. Group reactions to discipline. Group hates. Group concessions. The merry-go-round was spinning full-speed. Be a Brother or face the risk of being alone, rejected by both groups.

  What you got when you burn down a ghetto? A burned-down ghetto. What you got when you hate everybody but yourselves? Hate machines.

  27

  Villages survived on Go Noi, great wasted remnants of the old towns that once sprawled thick and wide as railroad stops in French times, now flattened and redone in thin, scattered groups of humpbacked hootches where the remnant families hid from what it had all become. Stone pagodas stood here and there, left over from the railroad days, now pockmarked with machine-gun memories and broken by dead bombs. When the railroad ran, the stone was cheap and each village built its own pagoda. Now the railroad bridge was a blackened memory and the wooden track ties held up the insides of family bunkers and the stone pagodas died a little bit each battle.

  And the most notable remark that one could make of Go Noi was how fine the family bunkers were, with railroad-tie supports.

  The villages began just beyond the first great sea of elephant grass. From that point they twined and intermingled with the grass, like islands. They were as bleak, as desolate and deprived, as the Arizona. The shattered, dirt-floor hootches appended to a mound of earthen bunker, surrounded by uprooted trees and huge pocks of rended earth, populated by motionless, staring zombies, permeated with trains of scurrying rats. Experiencing them was as enriching, as stimulating, as strolling through the empty, blackened caverns of the moon.

  But better than the killer grass. It was a relief to reach the villages and walk their relative openness. The hootches and the mamasans, the pecking chickens and the wirehaired, ugly dogs, struck comforting chords, even in their misery. They were recognizable, familiar sights.

  For three weeks the company wound slowly through the villages, across more sawgrass fields, and through still other villages, searching absently for some sign of Phu Thuan, looking more closely during the days for some corner that had good fields of fire, where they could spend the night.

  On this day, Third Platoon had Tail-End Charlie. No big trip, as Ogre said. They sauntered along mindlessly at the rear of the column, confident that all danger was well forward of them, that any initial contact would be made by the point. Tail-End Charlie was a skate.

  For all but Cat Man. He was in such harmony with the subtleties of combat, was such a natural master of those things that others had to struggle to assimilate and use, that he would have had to force himself not to prowl. He walked with his head slightly tilted, his sensuous, small-boned face constantly in motion, examining bends and crevices, piles of litter around hootches, contours of bomb craters. The regularities of even devastated earth were so understandable to him that they could be suspicioned and inspected.

  The village ended and a sawgrass field began again. Just at the edge of the ville, next to a bomb crater that had scooped out a deep sawgrass divot, under melted shards of earth, there was a flat-green stretch of metal. Unnatural. It just broke the surface of the earth, as if the earth were a huge brown sea and it had floated to the top like a dead fish, and now showed a small stretch of belly.

  Cat Man glanced at it, then called ahead. “Hold it up.”

  Slowly, like an accordion expanding, the half-mile of men halted. Most of the column rested uncomfortably in the middle of the field. Sergeant Sadler moved back, and Snake forward, to where Cat Man stood.

  Cat Man pointed to the smooth underbelly. “Bomb.”

  Sadler stared at it, and was tempted to leave it. It was late afternoon and the company would have to be dug into its new location by dark. But he knew that abandoned bombs provided explosives for grenades and booby traps to the enemy. The bomb was a 250-pounder.

  Sadler decided. “We better blow it in place. I'll call up fo’ the Engineers.”

  Snake spoke tiredly, anxious to be moving. “Let Baby Cakes do it, Sarge. He's had Mine Warfare School.” Snake nodded ironically over to Baby Cakes. “Hell. That's why Top sent him back out to the bush.”

  Sadler shook his head decisively. “He doan’ need no two-fifty to break in on.” He mulled it for a moment. “We need security back here, anyway. Leave him for security an’ he can watch. He can blow the next one.” There would be others. Dud rounds were scattered like toadstools on the Basin floor.

  In a few moments the engineer wou
nd his way to the rear of the column from the company command section. He walked jauntily, a cigarette dangling out of one corner of his mouth, a box of blasting caps carried in the breast pocket of his flak jacket. He carried a large green bag of explosives that swung freely under his shoulder, on a strap. He recognized Sadler and nodded nonchalantly. “Where is it?”

  Cat Man pointed. The engineer walked over, knelt down next to it, and caressed its exposed parts expertly. “We'll have to dig it out a little and get a charge under it. It's pretty deep.” He poked the dirt tentatively, like a surgeon examining a prospective patient, then turned to Sadler.

  “Better get the company out of the way, Sarge. This thing is gonna blow up and out. I'd say two hundred, maybe two hundred fifty meters. Better get 'em out of the way now. I'll set the fuse and catch up.”

  Baby Cakes and a grinning, fascinated Ogre joined the engineer. Baby Cakes provided an entrenching tool. Ogre watched curiously, making periodic comments about the engineer's expertise.

  “You ain't gonna blow us up, now?”

  The engineer nodded importantly. “Nope.”

  “You sure this ain't a booby trap?”

  The engineer peeped Ogre. “Nope. I ain't sure. We gotta dig it out some more.”

  “Well, kiss my ass! I ain't gonna stand here while you dig around any damn booby trap!”

  Baby Cakes slapped Ogre on the chest. “Shut up, man. If you wanna learn how to do this, just watch the dude, O.K.? He ain't gonna blow us up. If you don't pay attention, next time you might, though. Just watch, shit-for-brains.”

  The company crawled forward, out of the blast radius of the two-fifty, leaving the engineer, Ogre, and Baby Cakes. Third platoon sat on the trail in the sawgrass, waiting for the three to catch up.

  Five minutes. Nothing. Ten minutes. Snake peered anxiously at his watch. God damn. Wish they'd hurry up. Five o'clock already. We gotta find a new pos, make a perimeter, figure out night acts, dig the hell in, and eat, all before dark.