Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  Dan continued to stare directly into her eyes as he spoke. “She VC. Fucking A, uh huh. No shit.”

  Goodrich, already fearful of being ambushed, was becoming uneasy with the increasing anger of the other squad members. It had become worse with every frustrated attempt to gather information. He wanted out. If he had thought he could make it safely, he would have bolted from the patrol and made his own way back to the company. But the mile of killer weeds …

  He attempted to speak calmly. “Look. Let's take them back, so some trained interrogators can work on them. I know the company will stay another couple days if we get something out of these people. Come on. Let's get the hell out of here. I'm getting flaky.”

  “You been flaky all your life.” Snake walked slowly over to the papasan and stared coolly at him. “We're right on the verge, Senator. I ain't leaving now. Look at him. He's shaking like a drunk with the DTs.” Snake laughed shortly, remembering mornings with Old Bones. “Fucker looks like my old man.” He felt the man's muscles. “Bagger's right. You're a gook, all right. Har-r-r-d-core. So's your old lady. You VC, huh?”

  The man shook his head frantically, and produced a can cuoc identification card. Snake laughed. “Ohhh, good thinking, Papasan. Even got yourself a can cuoc.” He slapped the man on the back of the head. “Oh, I'll bet my ass you know where Ogre and Baby Cakes are. I'll just bet my ass.”

  The hootch was at the end of the village. It was the nearest living space to where the incident had occurred. Snake pushed the papasan toward the spot where Ogre and Baby Cakes disappeared. The others followed. Cannonball prodded the mamasan with his rifle barrel. She now frowned tightly, her face rigid with hate. They stood at the spot for a few moments, Dan pumping both captives with acid, angry questions. Neither showed a revealing emotion.

  Snake stood in the parched earth where the engineer's explosive bag had erupted, totally stumped. He examined the faces of papasan and mamasan. They both wore masks: mamasan, cold and hating, daring to be disgusted, as a woman may. Papasan, attempting to acquiesce just enough to survive the interrogation, shrewdly misunderstanding the harder questions. “Khong biet,” said papasan, over and over. “Khong biet.”

  Finally Snake grabbed papasan by the nape of the neck and pushed him back toward his hootch. “Come on, Luke. We gonna take a look around your house.” They walked back in their cluster, once again through the back way.

  Cat Man noticed it first. Just the slightest drop. There in the soft dirt of a corrugated potato patch, the rows perfectly aligned, the powdery gray dirt holding wilted sticks that jutted out crookedly toward the baking sun. Two dips, like saddles, where the rain of the night before had settled the dirt. Unnatural.

  Cat Man walked into the patch and stood before the dips. The dirt of the dips was wetter than the other portions of the patch. It slumped, cracked at the top from having settled.

  Snake squinted, walking toward the hootch. “Whatcha got, Cat Man?”

  Cat Man stood silently, glaring at the dirt, not wanting to accept the possibility, yet vibrating from its very feasibility. “Get a shovel.”

  Goodrich searched the hootch and found a spade, his own insides electrified. He jogged out and handed it to Cat Man. The others moved solemnly to where Cat Man stood. Cat Man extended the shovel to papasan. “Dig.”

  Papasan eyed the dirt warily. He feigned ignorance again. “Khong biet—”

  Cat Man, the calm one, exploded. He kicked the man in the ass, then swung his rifle butt and struck him in the head. The man cowered in the dirt, his hands before his face. Cat Man grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him off the ground and shook him mightily, swearing at him in Spanish. He threw him back to the dirt, dealing him several kicks in the stomach, then picked up the shovel and threw it at him.

  “Cabron! Hijo de la chingada! Dig!”

  Papasan bled slowly at the edge of the welt the rifle butt had made on his head. He eyed Cat Man fearfully, fetched the shovel, and began to dig in the wrong place. Cat Man exploded again, rushing the man, striking him again in the head with his rifle.

  “You motherfucker! Here! Do you think we are blind?”

  Papasan comprehended. He bled doubly from his head, slow rolls of red that oozed down his neck and disappeared along the ridges of his back muscles. He walked to the first low place in the dirt, eyed Cat Man one final, petrified time, and lifted out spadefuls of earth.

  The others also comprehended, and were silent.

  Scoop by scoop the earth revealed a long prone form, lying facedown underneath a row of plants, stretched comfortably as if at rest. He still wore his flak jacket. The helmet was gone, as were his pack and weapon and all ammunition. The waves of blond hair were matted and black in the back of the head, and strangely flat.

  Bagger leaned down and began to turn the body over, then recoiled at its rigidity. Finally he took a shoulder, and Cannonball the boots, and they lifted Baby Cakes out of the ground as if he were a board. They rolled him onto his back, and Bagger gagged. Baby Cakes’ skin was tawny, as if burnt in a frying pan. His eyes were gone. Squarely in the middle of his forehead was a bullet hole. The matted black behind his head was where the bullet had blown the back of his head away.

  Papasan was digging out the other body, now anxious to appear cooperative. In a few minutes Ogre lay comfortably inside his own shallow grave. Goodrich and Cat Man rolled him out. He also had been shot in the forehead. His handmade peace symbol still hung on his dog-tag chain. Ogre grinned an eyeless, ironic grin.

  Snake stood with Dan and the mamasan, waiting. Mamasan appeared absorbed in papasan's effort. She did not look at the bodies. Snake glared at papasan, who now stood alone with his shovel. He spoke calmly, his face seething with murderous rage. “You motherfucker. You piece of shit.”

  Papasan raised his hands in another futile gesture, babbling to Snake. He finished, looking expectantly to Dan. Dan spoke disgustedly, his breast heaving with emotion. “He say, not my fault. He say VC bac-bac Ogre, Baby Cake, make him bury. He say, no VC. He say, mebbe mamasan VC.”

  “So he says it wasn't him, huh? So it was his buddies. Oh, I'll bet he really laughed his ass off to see two Marines get shot between the eyes. I'll bet he really got his rocks off. Well. We're gonna send your buddies a little message.”

  Goodrich looked up, nauseated from staring at the decaying forms that once were Baby Cakes and Ogre, and comprehended what Snake's “message” would be. He started, standing quickly, his eyes going round. “Ohhh, no. Let's get out of here. We found 'em. Let's get back.”

  “We'll be leaving in a minute, Senator.”

  “I came out here to find Baby Cakes, not to kill civilians. No.”

  Bagger erupted. “I said all along that motherfucker was a gook. He just looks like a gook.” He walked up to the man. “Yeah. Well, we ain't letting you get away with this, sweetheart.” He grabbed papasan by the neck and bent him down over Ogre's body. Papasan resisted, but Bagger possessed massive strength. He bent papasan nearer and nearer, until the man's bleeding face was only inches above Ogre's corpse. “Yeah. Take a good look, gook. You think we should let you go after that?”

  Goodrich took off his helmet and rubbed his fleshy face with one hand. “No! Don't do it, man.”

  “You don't care, do you Senator?” It was Cat Man, still so angry he was flushed, trembling. “It don't bother you that they done that to 'em.”

  Guilt. Goodrich admitted inwardly that his greatest emotion at seeing the bodies was repulsion, a wish to be done with them, to get back to the perimeter and be away from them. And irritation that carrying them back would increase the chance of ambush.

  “It does bother me. Just not enough to kill civilians.”

  “They ain't civilians, fucker!” Bagger.

  “You didn't even like Baby Cakes. You couldn't wait to get out of his team. You thought Ogre was an ass. I seen you, Senator.” Snake glared through him with razor eyes.

  Goodrich felt himself backing away. They had all turned on him.
“That wouldn't matter. I mean, it's not true, but it wouldn't matter, even if it was.”

  “We been baby-sitting you too long!” Snake grew fierce.

  Cannonball smiled curiously. “You doan’ like to kill, Senator? Ol’ Senator, so goo-o-ood an’ smar-r-rt. He doan’ like to kill. You killed Burgie, Senator. You sat on yo’ fat ass two feet away from the man an’ let him die. I seen it.” Cannonball lost his smile. “Mebbe you only like to kill Marines. These gooks friends o’ yours, Senator? You like what they did.”

  Help me, Senator. “Oh, for Christ sake! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone.”

  “Cannonball.” Snake called them off. “Well, Senator. We're gonna do what we think we have to. You do what you think you have to. If you don't like this, leave.”

  Leave. Killer weeds. A mile. “You know I can't.”

  “Then go up by that hootch.” Snake ignored him now. He instructed Dan and Bagger. “Put 'em in the same graves they put Ogre and Cakes. Make 'em lay down.”

  Goodrich walked quickly away. He heard Snake count behind him.

  “One.”

  He went under the thatch porch and sat, looking out at the fields of sawgrass.

  “Two!”

  I'm in hell. I'm being punished. How did this ever happen to me?

  The mamasan yelled something. Dan yelled back. Shots cut through the heavy air. A lot of shots. Goodrich held his head. He felt wronged, humiliated. He had told them not to and they had not listened.

  Goodrich did not return to the grave sites. He waited for them in the hootch. They worked in the field for a few minutes. He could hear them conversing. He heard the spade pitch dirt. Then they returned to the porch. They were somber, spent, like after making love. Dan smiled faintly.

  Only Snake spoke to Goodrich. “You keep your mouth shut, Senator. Know what I mean?”

  THEY tore sections off of the thatch porch and made two sledlike stretchers. Baby Cakes was loaded onto one of them, Ogre onto the other. Then they wound slowly back through sawgrass fields, two men pulling each stretcher like somber pallbearers, a gut-wrenched funeral procession that had avenged the murders of its kin.

  And, when they returned, the Spot Report to regiment read: 2 VC KIA.

  28

  CAMP HANSEN, OKINAWA

  Hodges stood at the base of the low, flat hill and felt a dry, insistent wind confront him as he stared up at the Officers’ Club. He stood uneasily in the raw wind, no longer used to the elements after a month of Japanese hospital beds and wards, and questioned reality again.

  Am I really on my way back to Vietnam?

  It was a difficult truth to accept, after all the days of shots and probing rods and gouging scalpels, all the doctors peering over him as if he were a specimen on a book page or pickled in formaldehyde, all the pain. He thought of the days of warm floating and then falling into valleys of excruciating pain. Days when warm and pain were the total conscious focus, his mind nothing but an image on the ceiling, and thought could not be considered. Only little blurbs flashing through, like a slide show on the ceiling. Booby trap. Rabbit over him, dripping sweat into his face. Blood gushing from his arms and through his trousers. Picture faded. Booby trap. Grandma's lips are set, her eyes in tears. We all so proud of you. Picture faded. Booby trap. Picture of father, cap at a cocky angle, footlocker behind it. I'm not afraid.

  Then pain would chase the slide show off the ceiling, leaving only red throbs that flashed from behind his eyebrows. Warm and pain and uninvited slide shows. It was terrible and he felt he could not go through it again.

  But dreading it was not that easy. He had developed a numbing ambivalence that prevented him from feeling any real bitterness about being sent back. He enjoyed his status as a wounded infantryman. He missed the people in the bush, more than he had ever missed any group of people in his life. There was a purity in those relationships that could not be matched anywhere else. A person's past was irrelevant, unless it affected his performance. A person's future was without exception bright: the Great Reward for doing battle awaited all of them in the World. There was a common goal, and a mutual enemy. And the stakes were high enough to make each minor victory sweet, each loss a cause for grief.

  Hodges scratched his head, climbing the hill. I hate it. It's terrible. It's destructive. Nobody gives a rat's ass whether any of us live or die. They've sold us out back in the World. It makes me cry every time somebody gets screwed up. The damn civilians are all VC. It's so stupid any more I can't believe it.

  But damn it, I can't wait to show Snake my scars.

  Nothing in the Club had changed and that alone reminded him of how different he had become. He entered through the game-room doors and watched anxious young Lieutenants drink and play pool and shuffleboard. The electric tension of the uninitiated dominated all their motions.

  Not young, he thought. They were his age. Merely different. Green. The thin green line, he mused, allowing himself a small grin. He had met several of them, had even allowed himself a war story or two, but he did not yet enjoy exploiting their greenness. He would fly back to Da Nang with them. The bush was still too real, too much a killer to be laughed at. He liked the honored place his scars and experience accorded him, but most of all he found them naive and boring.

  He walked through the dining area, heading for the bar. He quickly scanned the tables, searching for her, but it was mid-afternoon and the dining area was empty. He moved into the bar area, nodding to the scattered groups of men at the tables, and sat alone at the bar.

  He bought a bourbon-and-water and tipped it straight up, draining it quickly. He bought another and sipped it slowly, waiting for the buzz to hit him. It was his greatest solace. His tongue and lips went numb, then his face. He bought another drink. He was watching himself in the mirror, but he was seeing Vietnam. He felt vaguely like a wounded cock being re-razored and tossed back into the dust arena. His only option was to win another fight, for the glory of the owner, or to die.

  And yet… And yet. Once the cock gets the taste of it, mused Hodges, you may as well throw him back into the arena. He isn't good for anything else because the fight is in his blood.

  And he missed them. He missed the abrasive, deeply dedicated companionship of Snake. He wondered about the misguided antics of Wild Man and Waterbull, and whether anyone had heard from Phony. He even missed the complaints of Bagger, and the morose lamentations of Goodrich. It was all a part of it, he reasoned, drawing on his fourth bourbon-and-water. It all made the whole thing.

  He addressed his drunken image in the mirror. The image stared searchingly back at him as he spoke. “I hate it. Goddamn it, I hate it. But I miss it.”

  He could see the dining area through the mirror, and presently he noticed the waitresses begin to prepare tables for dinner. Their way of walking was no longer entrancing to him. Rather, it appeared timid, restrained. He was used to Oriental women after a month in Japan. During his last ten days in the hospital he had been an ambulatory patient, and had emptied his anxieties into a half-dozen Japanese whores.

  But he had thought of her continually since his mede-vac to Japan, knowing he would transit through Okinawa on his way back to Vietnam. He remembered her freshness, her hesitating innocence. Her earlier reluctance was its own attraction. She was young, fresh, untainted by the spoilings of the others.

  Finally she crossed the mirror, her deceptively curved body hidden by the waitress uniform, her face a study of emotional control. Her presence was a hand that lifted him from his chair and pushed him into the dining area, seeking her. He was alone and confused and she was almost an anchor, a part of his pre-horrific past. Walking toward her, he could not help but marvel at his own earlier conquest. My God, she's dynamite, he thought.

  She was preparing a table in the far corner of the room. She saw him coming and half-smiled, as if embarrassed, then looked around herself to ensure that the other waitresses were out of earshot. Her doe eyes watched him impishly as he approached and he felt light, buoyant, a
part of something clean and electric that had shot between them.

  No time for formalities. Vietnam in three days. He started to take her arm and her eyes grew large and she backed away, looking around the room. “No-o-o! You crazy?”

  He remembered. Resist. Pressure for equal time from officer observers. Image of purity. He backed away, not wanting her to feel cornered or embarrassed. “Please see me tonight.”

  “No can do! I got Okinawa boyfriend now.” She became the slightest bit coy, straightening already straight silverware. “You say four months, you come on R & R.”

  To him it was an admission. “I couldn't. I was hit.”

  She stared curiously at him. “What is ‘hit’?”

  He rolled down his collar, unveiling ropelike welts of scars along his neck and lower head. He secretly reveled in her expression as she squinched her face, on the verge of nausea. Along his back was an ineradicable message that he had endured and conquered an unsharable hell. The ultimate message, mused Hodges drunkenly, that transcends all language barriers. One scar is worth a thousand wasted words.

  “I'm on my way back.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged helplessly, his voice a whisper. “I'm scared.”

  She softened, staring into gray eyes that had shone at her in the dark room months before, while he filled her insides for the first time with the stuff of love. Vietnam. Again.

  “Please. Tonight.”

  She shook her head, upset. “No can do.” He still stood nakedly before her. “Mebbe tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow. No time. Tomorrow could be next year or never. The way flights into Vietnam were handled, tomorrow could be Da Nang. “No tomorrow.” Hodges walked away from her, back to the bar. Got to think about it, figure it out. He felt the stares follow him, from other waitresses and officers at the bar. Screw them. All of 'em. What the hell do they know.