I love you as always,
Fancy
She included a small picture. I sat and stared at it. She had changed her hair, lightened it and cut it short. I could see a much happier look than I remembered, and something was different about her expression, the direct way she stared at the camera. Fancy’s beauty as a grown woman was starting to show itself. I wondered if any of the new friends were men. The part about a chance for us to be together creeped into my mind, but I shoved it out. Death was too close in this place for daydreaming.
The captain said most of the recon boys were out on a big operation and wouldn’t be back for a week, so I could occupy myself however I felt I could do some good. I packed a ruck and walked north the next morning to see what might be happening. Huy spotted me crossing the dike and came running. I was in no hurry, so we sat and gibberished at each other for a while. I reached in my pocket and surprised him with a little gold wristwatch from Hong Kong. He hopped up and down, laughing and hugging my neck. I gave him a rat box and headed into the heavy bush, crossing the valley to a favorite spot Snake and I had used to catch folks crossing the DMZ. There wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t miss the security of having him with me. I stayed out three days, getting two kills, which brought my total to twenty-six for the year.
It was so humid and hot my sweat was sweating when I dragged by the guard post the afternoon I returned. I was paying a high price for all the whiskey I’d drunk in Hong Kong. Two steps down the bunker ladder I stopped. There was a funny smell. It hit me that it was aftershave lotion. At the bottom, I saw a black guy sitting on Snake’s cot.
“What’re you doing in my house?”
The kid got to his feet. “Came in today. Gunny Phillips said you needed a replacement. Moses Lane, folks call me Mo.” He was black as coal, big-eyed, and had giant hands.
“How you doin’, Mo. I’m Junebug. Consider yourself a substitute, ’cause nobody’s capable of replacing the man whose rack you’re sitting on.” He had big arms and his hair was shaved down to the skin. “I’ll drop this stuff and we’ll visit awhile.”
We walked up to the medic tent where the coffee was always hot. I introduced Mo around and we took a load off on a couple of sandbags in the shade. I don’t know why it surprised me to see a black man as a sniper, but it did. “Where you from, Mo?”
“Mississippi.” He had an easy smile.
“You get confused and stand in the wrong line?”
Mo dipped his head and laughed. “My brother was a marine. When he got killed, I decided I needed to come see what he went through.”
“If you came here for payback, let me be the first to tell you that you messed up.”
“Not that. I was studying to be a preacher at Biloxi Seminary College. My brother’s dying hurt my folks real bad, and I had a hard time with it too. We lost three from our little community in a year, and I decided if I was going to be a comfort to people in pain, I needed to understand what the war was like.” His eyes were calm and steady, like he was fixed on what he had to do.
“A lot of folks would say a black man fighting for a white man’s country ain’t too smart.”
He nodded his head slowly. “That’s true. And a lot of them are angry they ain’t good enough to be treated equal except when it comes to going to war. The way I see things, it won’t always be the white man’s country.” He smiled innocently, but it was clear Mo wasn’t the type to shy away from straight talk, or be intimidated. I hoped that would translate to the bush.
Back at our house, we ate some c-rats while Mo told me about the new sniper school they’d sent him through back in Camp Pendleton. “Is it as bad out here as they said it would be?”
“How bad did they say it would be?”
“That I probably wouldn’t live through it.”
“Yep.” I fluffed my pillow and blew out the lantern. “I’m going to rest up tomorrow, but you need to report to the latrine officer first thing in the morning. He’s got some new guy work for you.” I lay back on the bunk and closed my eyes. I heard him undressing. When he was down to his skivvies, I said, “Put your clothes back on.”
* * *
It was important for me to get a feel for what motivated Mo and how he thought about things. Once we started in the work for real, I had to feel comfortable he would have my back. Was I being more cautious because he was black? Maybe. After several days, I came to believe he was a man I could trust. Besides, the captain in charge of the recon unit started pushing me to get back in the field. It was time to quit yakking and start packing.
“In the morning we’re going creeping.”
I opted for Snake’s M-14 and Mo carried his Remington when we headed past the guard post in the early morning dark. I said to Mo, “Always make sure they see you go out so they’ll be expecting you to come back in a few days. If they don’t, somebody will come looking.”
I decided to take him along the same route Snake had taken me the first day. It was hard to believe that was over a year ago. Sure enough, when we started across the dike, I spotted the boonie hat coming out of the village. At first Huy was shy around Mo. He touched the skin on Mo’s face. “Mi dang,” he said, and I figured it meant “black man.” We messed around a bit, and Huy began to warm up to Mo. I gave him his rat box and a pat on the butt for him to go home. We headed over the hill.
When we’d made our way into the valley where Snake’s targets still hung in the trees, we stopped. I wanted to see what kind of training Mo had gotten stateside. I pointed out the steel plates. “Let’s see what you got.”
Mo was dead center on almost every shot. He moved easily between the targets from four hundred to six and back again. In a couple of hours, I’d seen enough. “You’re good. Let’s go.”
It was nightfall by the time we had worked our way four miles up and along the DMZ. I hacked a clear place in the middle of a bamboo thicket. Once the ponchos were unrolled, we ate cold beans and fruit and chased them with water. “I’m going to get some z’s. If you hear anything don’t tell me; I’ll know you did if you ain’t here in the morning.”
“Very funny.” He yawned and lay back. “Stars seem mighty close this high up. Pretty amazing what God created, ain’t it?”
I thought about the conversation Fancy and me had about God so long ago. “You’re a religious man, Mo. Tell me if you really think somebody sat around for a week magically sticking all those stars up there, making oceans and animals, not to mention creating people.”
“Start out with the hard questions, don’t you?” He rolled to his side. “When I was a kid, an old man down the road from us kept bees, you know, in hives he tended. I used to love to talk to him. He was a deacon at the church, and I considered him a wise man. We talked about this very thing one day, me having some doubts about God. I followed him to his backyard. ‘Moses, you see them bees?’ he said. ‘I don’t mess with them too much except to keep wasps away, little stuff like that, but I’m always watching out for their well-being. Who do you imagine them bees think I am?’ I thought about that for a long time, Junebug.”
That was a curveball. I lay there thinking about it for a few minutes. “Sounds like a pretty wise man, all right. Tell me something, Mo. If there’s a God-plan, why would He let shit like this happen, us running around in a hellhole killing each other?”
He yawned. “You surely are a man in need of answers, ain’t you? If I was to decide to kill you while you are asleep, is it because there’s no God, or did I just make up my mind to do it? Junebug, folks still got free will. God ain’t going to stop the world from doing evil; He’s just going to be sure you pay for it when the time comes. What makes you such a bitter man, Junebug, like you don’t have a lot of hope in your life?”
“Oh, I got hope. I hope I wake up one of these days and this has all been a dream. But you and me both know that’s not going to happen. I went to church when I was a kid, but, Mo, the next time you see some eighteen-year-old boy crying for his momma because his face is half shot
off, tell me why it happened and where was God when he needed him.”
Sounds of bombs and heavy firing reverberated in the distance.
“And another thing, how do you square being a preacher man with coming out here to kill people?”
He sighed. “I made the mistake of being the best shot in my basic training outfit. Next thing I knew I was in California at sniper school. Guess I could have objected to it, but I have a strong belief in destiny. God must want me out here for a reason, to teach me something. All I can do is have faith.”
I rolled to one elbow and fixed on him. He was genuine, a gentle guy. “What you going to do when you get home, Mo?”
“Try to finish school, I hope, then find me a little church that needs a preacher. What about you?”
I raised my hand in front of my face and folded and unfolded my fingers. “Hell, I don’t know. Might go to France.”
“You know somebody in France?”
“A girl.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“In a tobacco patch.”
“Can’t wait to hear that story.”
“Her momma and daddy were sharecroppers.”
“Now, wait a minute. Her momma and daddy were French sharecroppers?”
“They’re black as you are.”
The pause was long. “Junebug, my man, you are full of surprises. The two of y’all get to courting?”
“Grew up together, then it just seemed to come natural. Crazy, ain’t it?”
“Why’s she in France?”
“Went after the Klan threatened to kill us.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t. How’d she get there?”
“She went to New York, then hired on with a lady who travels.”
“And you’re still carrying the torch for her?” He sounded disbelieving, like I’d told him there really was a Santa Claus. “I’m beginning to understand what’s got you so bitter, Junebug. Being a good Southern boy, you think what you did is a sin, don’t you?”
The night critters went silent, or at least I wasn’t able to hear them. “No. She’s not a sin. But the fact I killed her brother is.” I watched a streak of light flash high in the sky. “And she don’t know I did it.”
Mo’s voice became serious. “I see your troubles.” He didn’t ask me why I killed Lightning. “Do you need forgiveness, Junebug?”
“No.”
“Then what do you need?”
“Peace.”
I heard Mo scratching his face. “Junebug, in the Bible, Romans 7, verse 21, Paul says that, as mere men, we cannot always control the evil that lives in us, and sometimes we sin because we’re not strong enough to fight it off, that we’re all subject to the power of the devil. But even when we fail, Junebug, God will forgive us if we ask. Do you want me to pray with you?”
“No. But you can pray for me.”
CHAPTER 51
I shook Mo awake before sunup. “Time to go hunting.” I took the point and moved beyond the bamboo onto a small walking path leading downhill toward a stream. We got cover in some elephant grass. With the binoculars I could see a trail on the other side of the creek. It came out of the heavy bush and led toward where the water was just a trickle, a good crossing point. The sun had just started its climb in the east when I spotted movement at the edge of the trees.
One came out, then another. Both were wearing the ragged clothes of a farmer, but each carried a pack strapped to his back. I knew they were satchel charges. The little bastards were sappers looking to fade into a village, then surprise some marine base in the middle of the night. I pointed them out to Mo and handed him the glasses. “Use your football fields and watch the tops of the grass.”
Mo stared through the binoculars longer than he needed to. He was sucking up the reality that he was expected to kill a live human being. In this moment he would decide. Just like I had been, Mo was scared. It was hard the first time.
He lowered the binoculars and picked up the Remington, sighting and adjusting. I got ready with the M-14 in case he changed his mind. I was focused on the targets, and the boom of his rifle startled me. The man in front jerked sideways. Mo chambered another round. The second one was crouching, trying to figure out where we were when his head exploded. Mo dropped his forehead on his rifle.
I slapped him on the back. “Good job.” I lifted the M-14. Taking aim at the backpack of the lead guy, I punched a round. The charge blew up, setting off the second one as well. When I looked through the glasses again, there were body pieces scattered here and there. I grabbed Mo by the scruff of his shirt. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We moved steadily, stopping for water breaks every two or three hours. By sundown, we were halfway home. We shimmied up a big banyan tree and tied ourselves in the crook of branches to wait out the night. It took all the next day to make it back to the hill leading to Huy’s village and the rice paddy dike.
The sun was fading, and I didn’t want to be walking up to the guard post in the dark, so we hurried down the hillside and came out of the jungle a hundred yards from the crossing. I squatted in the dusky light and watched through the fog lifting off the paddy water for a minute to make sure the way was clear.
I was surprised to see Huy’s boonie hat at the far end of the dike. We started across and I called his name. “Huy, chao anh.” He didn’t move. When we got within fifty feet, I saw why. I began to run. The boy was tied to a stake; the rope strapped from his neck to his waist. His skinny arms lay on the ground at his feet. They had been cut off just below the shoulders. He had been left to bleed to death. Streaks of tears had dried on his dirty face. Flies and insects crawled all over him. I puked.
“God almighty,” said Mo. “God almighty.”
I was on my knees heaving my guts. “Cut him down, Mo.” He did and gently lowered Huy to the ground. The gold wristwatch was stuffed in his mouth. I should have left him alone. I couldn’t stand up. This was my fault. All I could do was kneel on the ground and cover my head with my arms.
I felt Mo’s hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do for him, Junebug. We got to get out of here. We can come back in the morning.”
I struggled to stand up. Anger so dark it filled everything in the universe took me over. I saw the devil standing on that mountain, fire shooting from his hand. My mind calmed. “You go on back, Mo.”
“I’m not leaving you.” He tried to pull my arm.
I moved the barrel of the M-14 to his chest. “You go on back, Mo. I’ll be along directly. Don’t argue now, just get moving.”
Mo stepped closer to stare me down, and I could see the edge of his jaw twitch. When he stretched out his hand, I took it. Mo closed his eyes and bowed his head. After a minute, he released me and headed across the berm without looking back.
I dragged my finger in the blood from Huy’s clothes, streaked it along the sides of my face, then across my forehead. I took the poncho from my rucksack and covered him. I sat with the boy while I waited for complete darkness before walking toward the village. There was no hurry.
My head started to throb. I circled behind the village, staying in the shadows. The smell of rice and vegetables cooking drifted on the air, and I could hear the singsong chatter of women. I eased to a place that had a good view of the common area. Whoever did this to Huy was here somewhere.
I squatted and watched for half an hour before three men, dressed in the black garb of VC cadre, strapped with bandoliers and carrying AK-47s, appeared from trees behind the hootches across from me. They stacked their weapons like a tripod and chose a log at the edge of the gathering place to sit. A couple of women brought bowls of food for them.
I heard a clatter from the other end of the village, and a woman came running up to the three men. She screamed in their faces, then threw something one of them had to dodge. He got to his feet and knocked her flat with his fist. I figured her to be Huy’s momma. They’d murdered her child, and she had to leave the boy where he was or risk punishment for ev
eryone in the village. This way, they would only kill her. Before he could hit the woman again, I stood and walked into the light of the cooking fires, raking a single burst above their heads. Everything went silent, chopsticks frozen in place between bowl and mouth.
I made a direct line to the VC. Only their eyes moved: They were wondering if they could get to the AK-47s behind them. I motioned up with the M-14. After they stood, I shoved them shoulder-to-shoulder, took a step back, and stitched 7.62 rounds across their legs. They fell, grabbing and crying out in pain, attempting to drag themselves by their elbows in some futile escape attempt. One by one, I kicked and shoved each of the three men along the ground to where everyone could see, then picked up Huy’s momma.
I rolled the log they’d been sitting on to where they lay in the dirt. When I stretched the first one’s arm over the wood and unhooked the machete from my pack, he began to slobber and beg. It took two hard strokes to cut all the way through the bone. The villagers began wailing and waving their hands. The other two men were squirming, trying to crawl. The second man got his turn to suffer what they had done to Huy.
When I extended the last man’s arm over the log, Momma grabbed my shoulder and gently pulled the machete from my hand. “Lam uhhu, Lam uhhu.” She bent down to the last man. He was just a teenager. She rubbed his young face gently, stood up, and then, screaming Vietnamese words I couldn’t understand, the old woman hacked him to pieces.
All three lay facedown in the bloody dirt. I took the machete and walked out of the village. When I reached Huy’s body, I knelt down and stroked his head. All he was guilty of was being a kid who liked c-rat peaches.
CHAPTER 52
Sixteen months in the jungle had taught me to feel what I couldn’t see. I turned around to look toward the village. At that moment I realized I should have searched for any other VC. The sudden impact felt like a baseball bat slamming into my chest, knocking me backward. There was no pain, just a sense of falling, of being sucked down a pitch-black, silent hole. Eventually, I emerged into a soft, calming white light. I could see my body lying face-up in the water at the bottom of the dike and the hole ripped into my chest, but felt nothing. This was a peaceful and warm place, and I no longer cared about that body. Dying wasn’t so bad. I wondered if Fancy would miss me.
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