Fallen Angels

by Walter Dean Myers

  Chapter 6

  I got guard duty with Lobel. Sergeant Walcott from Bravo Company was sergeant of the guard, and he gave us a pep talk. We were on from eight to midnight.

  There were sandbags around the shallow foxhole we had to sit in. At Fort Devens a four-foot-deep hole was plenty. Now it didn’t seem so great. It was about seven feet wide. I had my M-16 and Lobel had his and an M-79 grenade launcher. There were sandbags piled in front of the foxhole, with a place to shoot through. The perimeter of the camp was marked by intricate patterns of barbed wire barriers. The wire itself had razor-sharp protrusions as well as trip flares planted throughout. Lobel and I had to watch about sixty meters of the wire to make sure that no VC broke through.

  “Perry, you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You look a little uptight.”

  “I feel a little uptight.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Still thinking about Jenkins, I guess,” I answered.

  “Who’s Jenkins?”

  “The guy I came in with. You remember, he stepped on a mine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing can get through that much wire,” I said.

  “Nothing can get through it without getting messed up,” Lobel answered. “But they try.”

  I didn’t answer. For all the talk, the war was still far away. All you had to do was to be careful, and you’d be okay. Jenkins hadn’t been careful.

  “You know, Perry, if I was going to make a movie over here, I’d make it a love story,” Lobel said dreamily.

  “How come you always talk about movies?”

  “Because they’re the only real thing in life,” Lobel said. He slumped down in the foxhole. “You didn’t think any of this was real, did you?”

  “Look, Lobel… why don’t you get up and watch the wire with me?”

  “You scared?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Oh, okay.” He got up, just like that.

  There were things chirping out beyond where I could see. I remembered going to the old cowboy movies and seeing the cowboys sitting around a campfire and the Indians sneaking up on them and making noises like owls and stuff. I looked over toward Lobel, who was looking out toward the wire.

  “Hey, Lobel, I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I guess I’m just a little nervous.”

  “No sweat.” He wore his helmet down low over his eyes and the top part of his face was in shadow. “I’m a little nervous, too. I’d be real nervous, except I know none of this is real and I’m just playing a part.”

  “What part you playing?”

  “The part where the star of the movie is sitting in the foxhole explaining how he feels about life and stuff like that. You never get killed in movies when you’re doing that. Anytime you get killed in a movie, it’s after you set it up.”

  “You play a part when we were on patrol?”

  “That wasn’t a patrol,” Lobel said. “That was a firefight.”

  “I thought a firefight was when you shot at something.”

  “Anytime anybody is getting shot at it’s a firefight,” Lobel said. “Anyway, I was playing Lee Marvin as a tough sergeant. That’s my best part.”

  It got quiet again, then I heard somebody’s radio. It sounded a little like Wilson Pickett.

  “What do you think the VC are like?” I asked. “I mean really like?”

  “Who knows?”

  There were two radios on. In the distance I heard what sounded like a chopper but could have been a generator. The shadows were deepening. I didn’t want to say anything else to Lobel.

  There were lights on towers behind us that played on the wire. I saw something furry scurrying just outside the wire. The damned thing scared the crap out of me. I could see that it was a small animal. I knew it was a small animal. And yet it still scared me being out there in a place I was supposed to be watching.

  A bug crawled on the back of my hand. I decided not to move. I had to get used to the bugs, I told myself. I felt him crawl over the back of my hand and start up my wrist. I slapped him away.

  “What’s your favorite movie of all time?” Lobel asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Shane, maybe.”

  “You ever see foreign movies?”

  “I saw a Japanese movie I really liked once. I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “What was it about?”

  “This guy was a farmer. He and his wife use to carry water up a hill all day…”

  “The Island. That’s the name of it,” Lobel said. “The kid gets sick and he has to go get a doctor…”

  “Then the kid dies…”

  “Right. The Island, good flick.” Lobel put down the grenade launcher and sat down in the foxhole again. “If you like that flick and you liked Shane, you probably qualify to be a real movie freak, like me.”

  “You see a lot of movies?” I didn’t turn toward him, hoping that he would stand up again.

  “My uncle’s a director,” he answered. “I’ve dated more starlets than you can imagine.”

  “You got drafted?”

  “Unh-uh. Enlisted.”

  “How come?”

  “Long story,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  I looked at my watch. I still had three hours to go. I had time for a long story. I hoped that Lobel didn’t fall asleep. I swept my eyes over the gate, the way they had showed us to on night maneuvers back at Devens.

  I thought about Mama. I worried about her. She had hoped that when I finished high school I would get a job and help her keep the house together. When I told her I was going into the army, she cried.

  “I might as well get it over with,” I had said, sitting in the tiny kitchen. Over the stove the old electric clock was five minutes early. Kenny always set it early in the mornings, knowing that by evening it would be late.

  “You don’t have to go,” Mama had said. She didn’t say it as if she meant it. She said it like a little girl hoping that I wouldn’t leave. There was liquor on her breath. I had bent over and kissed her cheek, and she had put her arm around me.

  I wouldn’t have joined if I had seen anything else to do. When I figured I couldn’t afford college, I just didn’t want to be in Harlem anymore.

  There was an old woman who used to sell the Daily News outside of Sydenham Hospital. She was the first person I told about going into the army.

  “Why you want to go off to war?” she asked. She was short and dark with eyebrows turned white with age, although her hair was only lightly streaked with grey. Her voice was high and wavered uncertainly as she spoke.

  “Got to get away from here,” I said. “See something new.”

  “What you want to get away from here for?” she asked. “You got your peoples here. They ain’t got this many black folks no place else in the world, cept maybe Africa and Haiti. You ain’t going there, is you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then stay on around here!” she said, a smile lighting her face. “You ain’t doing no better than us, child.”

  “Perry, what the hell you thinking about?” Lobel looked up at me.

  “An old black woman in Harlem.”

  “No market,” Lobel said.

  “What?”

  “No market for old black women,” Lobel went on. “If we’re going to make a fortune on the silver screen, we got to figure what’s going to sell. What we need is young girls. You got a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Didn’t think that much about them,” I said. “Between playing ball and school I filled my time up pretty good. I wish I had one to write to now, though.”

  “You worried about it?”

  “Worried?” I looked at him, he was looking out toward the wire again. “No, I’m not worried. Just wish I had somebody else to write to, that’s all.”

  “You want to write to a starlet?” Lobel asked. “I know one who can just about read, she might know how to write
.”

  “I mean a real girlfriend,” I said.

  “There you go again,” he sighed, stood up, and picked up the grenade launcher. “You’re really hooked on reality. It’s a bad scene, Perry.’’

  “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Nope, and I’m worried about it, too.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’ll be twenty on the third of May and I’m still a virgin.”

  “Big deal.”

  “What do you mean, big deal? I could be playing the part of the baby-faced virgin who gets killed and all you see is a pan shot of him near the end of the flick. You think I want that?”

  “I thought you were playing Lee Marvin,” I said. “Don’t you know what role you’re playing?”

  “No, not for sure. You know what role you’re playing?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “What roles you got?” “The role you got to stay away from is the role of the good black guy who everybody thinks is a coward and then gets killed saving everybody else. That’s a bummer. You can’t be the romantic lead.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t have a girlfriend, you just said so.”

  “I met a nurse on the plane coming over here.” “White or black?”

  “White.”

  “No good, then it becomes one of those noble flicks about interracial love, and they kill you off at the end so they can show it in Georgia.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s why I keep saying we should make this whole war into a musical. A big Busby Berkley number. Thousands of little VCs running up and down stairs in their little black PJs. We won’t even have to pay them scale.”

  Captain Stewart came around with a television crew, and we were all filmed. First they got us cleaning our weapons. Then they asked each one of us why we were fighting in Nam. This is what everybody said:

  Lieutenant Carroll said that we had to demonstrate that America stood for something, and that’s what we were doing.

  Sergeant Simpson said that we were trying to free the South Vietnamese people to do what they wanted to do.

  Brunner said he was fighting because he hated Communism.

  Walowick said that he was fighting because his country asked him to. I liked that.

  Lobel said something about the domino theory, how if Vietnam fell to the Communists then the rest of Asia might fall.

  Brew said the same thing about the domino theory. I think he was just repeating what he had heard Lobel say.

  I said that we either defended our country abroad, or we would be forced to fight in the streets of America, which everybody seemed to like.

  Then the news team got to Peewee and asked him why he was fighting in Vietnam.

  “Vietnam?” Peewee looked around like he was shocked or something. “I must have got off on the wrong stop, I thought this was St. Louis!”

  The news guys just walked away from him, and then they started talking to Brunner, who talked a good five minutes. Captain Stewart watched Brunner, and I could see he liked what Brunner was saying. He left for a few minutes and then came back and told Lieutenant Carroll that we had to go on patrol. Captain Stewart said that the television guys were coming with us.

  Lieutenant Carroll looked over at Simpson and Simpson looked away.

  We got into the Hueys — big, mean-looking choppers — at 1200 hours and headed north. Part of the squad was in the first chopper and the rest in the second. The news guys were filming everything. We landed in a sandy area about two kilometers from the sea.

  Simpson put Monaco on point again, but this time he told Johnson to be the trailer. Johnson looked at me, and I could see he wasn’t happy to be the last man on the line.

  The news team was in the middle. We walked along a trail for about twenty minutes with the television guys photographing us, and then headed back toward the Hueys.

  We were in sight of the landing zone when Monaco opened up.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!’’ Sergeant Simpson had ducked behind a tree.

  Carroll moved toward Monaco, who was still firing, and yelled something to him. Monaco stopped firing and yelled back.

  Carroll put his back to a tree, pointed to his eyes, and held up one finger.

  “What’s that mean?” Peewee asked.

  “He means he saw one VC,” Brunner said.

  We stayed low for a while, then the cameramen started getting up and easing forward.

  There was another burst from Monaco, and then I heard Lobel yelling.

  “There he is! There he is!”

  I didn’t see anything. I looked, but I didn’t see anything. Monaco was firing on a stand of trees and soon the whole squad had opened up. Simpson was crawling back, and I saw him grab Johnson and turn him around. He wanted Johnson to watch our rear.

  I looked to see what they were shooting at, but I still didn’t see anything. I decided to shoot anyway.

  I looked closely at where the others were shooting, then thought I saw something move. I lifted the sixteen and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” This from Simpson.

  Simpson, Monaco, and Walowick moved out. Lieutenant Carroll was telling everybody to hold their fire.

  They found the guy. Walowick dragged him out of the trees. The newsmen went to take his picture while Simpson was posting us around the LZ. My hands were sweating. I looked at my rifle, wondering why it hadn’t fired.

  “You okay, Perry?” Lieutenant Carroll came over to me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Soon as you fire off a clip put a new one in,” he said. “We got better supplies than the VC, we have to use them. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I looked at the rifle after he had left. Then I shoved in a clip. I had forgotten to load the damn thing.

  The newsmen were on the chopper first, then the rest of the squad. Brunner threw on the VC before he got on.

  I didn’t want to look at the VC. I knew, by the way that Brunner had thrown him on, that he was dead. The news guys were getting still photos of the dead VC. Brunner took out a cigar and lit up.

  We got back to the base, and they took off the VC first. They must have called ahead because there was a jeep waiting to take the VC back. Carroll went with the news team in another jeep. The rest of us walked from the chopper pad to the huts.

  We got back, and they had laid the body out on the ground. The arms were out, and the legs were crossed at the ankles. I walked by him. He wasn’t any bigger than Kenny.

  We went directly to the mess hall. They had saved lunch for us. The news guys were buzzing around, checking their gear and everything. They must have taken a hundred pictures each of the dead VC. They even put a weapon down by his body and took a picture of him with that. Simpson came over to the new guys and made sure that we all had our weapons on safe.

  We had baked chicken, carrots, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, and rolls for lunch. And strawberry ice cream.

  I sat with Peewee and asked him what he thought.

  “I done seen two VC over here so far,” he said. “One captured sucker and one dead sucker.”

  “I didn’t even see where he was hit,” I said.

  “Fool had bout twenty holes in his ass,” Peewee said. “I don’t know where you was looking at.”

  Neither did I. I couldn’t tell if there was too much to see, or if my eyes were getting bad. Maybe I just didn’t want to see some of the things I was seeing.

  Lieutenant Carroll came over and said that we had done a good job.

  It wasn’t real. We were eating baked chicken, and all I could think of was that it was pretty good. We had gone out to the jungle and seen one VC and killed him. Then we came back in time for lunch. Maybe Lobel was right. Maybe it was just some kind of movie.

  Sergeant Simpson came to our hut and brought some magazines. I asked him if they had found a rifle or anything near the body.

  “Perry wants to make sure the dude was
a VC,” Brunner said. He still had his cigar in his mouth.

  “He wasn’t no VC,” Simpson said. “He was a North Vietnamese regular, from one of their big units, the 324th. They found his papers on him.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “How I know?” Simpson said. “All I know is my time is getting short. I’m going to go take me a short nap because I ain’t got time for a long one.”

  Monaco wanted the squad to practice volleyball. He had bet twenty-five dollars on our squad versus the Blazers, a team from Charlie Company.

  “We can’t beat them,” Brew said. “They beat us six times already.”

  “You know that tall guy with the big hands?” Monaco was flossing his teeth.

  “Yeah,” Brew was putting salve on his feet. “He’s the one that spikes all the time.”

  “Well, he got hit the day before yesterday,” Monaco said. “He ain’t playing.”

  Chapter 7

  Jamal, the medic, came by with malaria pills. I took one, and he sat on the edge of the bunk.

  “I see you people got three VC today,” he said.

  “Three?”

  “That’s what the report says,” Jamal said.

  “We got one VC,” I said.

  “All I know is what I see on the reports,” Jamal said. “They put three down on their reports, I send three in to Regiment.”

  “I don’t believe they put down three when everybody saw that we only got one.”

  “You’ll get used to what goes on over here,” he said. He had a singsong way of talking, like a child in a man’s body.

  “Did Captain Stewart see the report?”

  “Who do you think gave me the report?” He left some malaria pills on Peewee’s bunk and split.

  “Thanks,” I called after him as he left the hooch.

  One of the correspondents had left a New York Times behind and I went through it. Mostly it was the same old garbage. The Knicks had drafted some guy from Southern Illinois I never heard of, and they were still losing a lot of games.

  There wasn’t much about the war. A lot of VC were killed north of Saigon, and President Johnson was saying that the United States was ready to come to the peace table if the Communists were.

  It wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet, and the weather was already cold in New York. I imagined the brothers hustling down Lenox Avenue trying to get away from the wind. Howard, a guy I used to play ball with, crossed my mind. He was somebody I could write to. He’d probably write back. Three years before, he had pulled a robbery in midtown and been sent up to a prison in Stormville, New York. I had written to him the whole time he was up there. He used to tell me how much he appreciated the letters. Maybe he would answer my letters from Nam.