"Stow it, Joker," Mr. Shortround interrupts: "Animal Mother, listen up. You harass one more little girl and I'm going to put my little silver bar in my pocket and then you and I are going to throw some hands."
Animal Mother grunts, spits, picks up a bottle of tiger piss. He hooks a tooth into the metal cap and forces the bottle up. The cap pops off. He takes a swallow, then looks at me. He mutter, "Fucking poge..." He takes another couple of swallows and then says very loud,
"Cowboy, you remember when we was set up in that L-shaped ambush up by Khe Sanh and blew away that NVA rifle squad? You remember that little gook bitch that was guiding them?
She was a lot younger than the one I saw today." He takes another swallow. "I didn't get to fuck that one either. But that's okay. That's okay. I shot her motherfucking face off."
Animal Mother burps. He looks at me and smirks. "That's affirmative, poge. I shot her motherfucking face off."
Alice shows me a necklace of little bones and tries to convince me that they're magic Voodoo bones from New Orleans, but they look like dry old chicken bones to me.
"We...are animals," I say.
After a couple of minutes Crazy Earl says, "Grunts ain't animals. We just do our job. We're shot at and missed, shit on and hit. The gooks are grunts, like us. They fight, like us. They got lifer poges running their country and we got lifer poges running ours. But at least the gooks are grunts, like us. Not the Viet Cong. The VC are some dried-up old mamasans with rusty carbines. The NVA, man, we are tight with the NVA. We kill each other, no doubt about it, but we're tight. We're hard." Crazy Earl tosses an empty beer bottle to the deck and picks up his Red Ryder air rifle. He fires the air rifle at the bottle and the BB ricochets off the bottle with a faint ping. "I love the little commie bastards, man. I really do. Grunts understand grunts. These are great days we are living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking with the earth with guns. The people we wasted here today are the finest individuals we will ever know. When we rotate back to the World we're gonna miss having somebody around who's worth shooting. There ought to be a government for grunts. Grunts could fix the world up. I never met a grunt I didn't like, except Mother."
I say, "Never happen. It would make too much sense. It's better that we save Viet Nam from the people who live here. Of course, they love us; we'll kill them if they don't. When you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow."
Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."
I stand up. The beer has gone to my head. "I'll be Bob Hope." I hesitate. I touch my face.
"Oh, wow, my nose ain't big enough." Mild laughter.
A hundred yards away a heavy machine gun fires a long burst. Scattered small arms fire replies.
I do impressions.
"Friends, I am Bob Hope. You all remember me, I'm sure. I was in some movies with Bing Crosby. Well, I'm here in Viet Nam to entertain you. The folks back home don't care enough about you to bring you back to the World so you won't get wasted, but they do care enough to send comedians over here so that at least you can die laughing. So have you heard the one about the Viet Nam veteran who came home and said, 'Look, Mom, no hands!'"
The squad laughs. They say: "Do John Wayne!"
Doing my John Wayne voice, I tell the squad a joke: "Stop me if you're heard this. There was a Marine of nuts and bolts, half robot--weird but true--whose every move was cut from pain as though from stone. His stoney little hide had been crushed and broken. But he just laughed and said, 'I've been crushed and broken before.' And sure enough, he had the heart of a bear. His heart functioned for weeks after it had been diagnosed by doctors. His heart weighed half a pound. His heart pumped seven hundred thousand gallons of warm blood through one hundred thousand miles of veins, working hard--hard enough in twelve hours to lift one sixty-five ton boxcar one foot off the deck. He said. The world would not waste the heart of a bear, he said. On his clean blue pajamas many medals hung. He was a walking word of history, in the shop for a few repairs. He took it on the chin and was good. One night in Japan his life came out of his body--black--like a question mark. If you can keep your head while others are losing theirs perhaps you have misjudged the situation. Stop me if you've heard this..."
Nobody says anything.
"The war is ruining my sense of humor," I say. I squat.
Cowboy nods. "There it is. All I'm doing is counting my days, just counting my days. A hundred days and a wake-up and I'll be on that big silver Freedom Bird, flying back to the World, back to the block, back to the Lone Star State, back to the land of the big PX. And I'll have medals all over myself. And I won't be fucked up. No, when you get fucked up they send you to Japan. You go to Japan and somebody pins a medical discharged to what's left of you and all that good shit."
"I'd rather be wasted," I say. "Hire the handicapped--they're fun to watch."
Cowboy grins.
T.H.E. Rocks says, "You know, my mom writes me a lot of letters about what a brave boy T.
H.E. Rock is. T.H.E. Rock is not a boy; he's a person." He drinks beer. "I know I'm a person because I know there ain't no Santa Claus. There ain't no fucking Easter bunny. You know?
Back in the World we thought that the future is always safe in a little gold box somewhere.
Well, I'll live forever. I'm T.H.E. Rock."
Crazy Earl grunts. "Hey Skipper, what say we stuff some dope into your shotgun and toke it through the barrel?"
Mr. Shortround shakes his head. "No can do, Craze. We're moving most skosh."
Donlon is talking into his handset. "Sir, the C.O. wants the Actual."
Donlon gives the handset to Mr. Shortround. The Lieutenant talks to Delta Six, the commanding officer of Delta One-Five.
"Number ten. Just when we were scarfing up some of the bennies," says Crazy Earl. "Just when we were getting a little piece of slack..."
Lieutenant Shortround stands up and starts putting on his gear. "Moving, rich kids. Saddle up. Craze, get your people on their feet."
"Moving. Moving."
We all stand up, except for the NVA corporal who remains seated, a beer in his hand, a pile of money in his lap, his split lips curled back in a death grin.
Alice steps up with a machete in one hand and a blue canvas shopping bag in the other. He kneels. With two blows of the machete Alice chops off the NVA corporal's feet. He picks up each foot by the big toe and drops it into the blue shopping bag. "This gook was a very hard dude. Number one! Big Magic!"
The grunts stuff beer bottles, piasters, long-rats, and looted souvenirs into their baggy pockets, into Marine-issue field packs, and into NVA haversacks souvenired from enemy grunts they have wasted. The grunts pick up their weapons.
Moving. Moving. I walk behind Cowboy. Rafter Man walks behind me.
I say, "Well, I guess this Citadel shit is going to be oh so bad. But it could be worse. I mean, at least it's not Parris Island."
Cowboy grins. He says, "There it is."
We see the great walls of the Citadel. With zigzagging ramparts thirty feet high and eight feet thick, surrounded by a moat, the fortress looks like an ancient castle from a fairy tale about dragons who guard treasure and knights on white horses and princesses in need of assistance.
The castle is black stone against a cold gray sky, with dark towers populated by shadows that are alive.
The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of the Annamese Empire. When Hue was the Imperial Capital, the Citadel protected the Emperor and the royal family and the ancient treasure of the Forbidden City from pirates raiding from the South China Sea.
We are big white American boys in steel helmets and heavy flak jackets, armed with magic weapons, laying siege to a castle in modern times. One-Five has changed a lot since the days when it was the first battalion to hit the beach at Guadacanal.
Metal birds flash in and shit steel eggs all
over the place. F-4 Phantom jet fighters are dropping napalm, high explosives, and Willy Peter--white phosphorus. With bombs we are expressing ourselves; we are writing our history in shattered blocks of stone.
Black roses of smoke bloom inside the Citadel.
We ditty-bop Indian-file along both sides of the road, twenty yards between each man. The lines pop and snick as cocking levers are snapped back and bolts sent home, chambering rounds. Safeties are clicked off. Selector switches are thumbed to the full automatic position.
Those Marines armed with M-14's fix bayonets.
Machine guns start typing out history. First our guns, then theirs. Snipers on the wall fire a round here and there, sighting us in.
War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.
A bullet crunches into a wall.
Somebody starts singing:
M.I.C...K.E.Y...M.O.U.S.E.
The machine guns are exchanging a steady fire now, like old friends having a conversation.
Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.
The snipers zero in on us. Each shot becomes a word spoken by death. Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not like death but death likes us. Victor Charlie is hard but he never lies. Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding."
War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.
I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"
I send guard-mail directives to my personal Tactical Area of Responsibility, which extends to the perimeters of my skin. Dear Feet, tiptoe through the tulips. Balls, hang in there. Legs, don't do any John Waynes. My body is serviceable. I intend to maintain my body in the excellent condition in which it was issued.
In the silence of our hearts we speak to our werewolf weapons; our weapons reply.
Cowboy is listening to me mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's right. This ain't real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul Newman. I'll be a horse."
"Yeah."
"Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"
"The Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.
Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."
"Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo," says Stutten, honcho of the third fire team.
The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.
"Who'll be the Indians?"
The little enemy folks audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip across a wall to starboard.
Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three squad leaders, including Crazy Earl, double-time to him. He talks to them, points at the wall. The squad leaders double-time back to their squads to confer with their fire team leaders.
Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle and then we're all running like big-assed birds. We don't want to to this. We are all afraid. But if you stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal, running, running, running...you don't look back.
We double-time, werewolves with guns, panting. We run as though impatient to sink into the darkness that is opening up to swallow us. Something snaps and we're past the point of no return. We're going through the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop.
Nothing can stop us.
The air is being torn.
The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like sand on the beach.
Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.
Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a covey of quail taking flight.
And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.
People tell you what to do.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.
You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.
Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing. Walls falling into the sea.
Metal hornets swarm overhead.
Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...
Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU
MOTHERFUCKERS! DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.
Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles. People curse.
"Oh, fuck."
Keep moving.
Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your eyes and onto your lips.
Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the hell are my feet?
A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
Keep moving.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's happening to you.
Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound. The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins. You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"
You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight. You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A, formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60
machine gun, locked there forever by rigor mortis. His finger in on the trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of the Marine without a head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
You reach out. You touch his hand.
S
omething stings your arm.
Suddenly, you are very tired. You are breathing hard from the running. Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to want to tear its way out of your body. Through the center of your heart there is a star-shaped bullet hole.
Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
"No," you say. "NO!" You try to explain to the hands that part of you is missing in action.
You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't want your missing part to be left behind. But you cannot speak. Your mouth won't work.
You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are lifting you up.
In your dope dream of death you are an enlistment poster nailed to a black wall: THE
MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
You feel yourself breaking up into three pieces...you hear strange voices...
"What's wrong?" one voice says, confused and frightened. "What's wrong?"
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"Who's there?"
"I'm Mind. Are you--"
"Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
"This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a third voice. "This can't be happening."
"Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
"I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to be logical about this. Our man is down. We've got to get organized."
Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's me lying there--not you. You don't know what it's like."
Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we all go."
"Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
"No," Mind observes. "Not necessarily. They play this game. I'm not sure we are allowed to interfere."
Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
"I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
The Short-Timers Page 8