Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
Mind says, "You have to go back."
"On the contrary," says Spirit. "I do as I please. You two have no control over me."
"Forget him," says Body.
Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
"No. We don't need him."
Mind considers the situation. "Perhaps Spirit has a valid argument. Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
"Yet, actually, nothing would be achieved by not going back. Our actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change the game one way or the other. In fact, losing men seems to be the whole point of the game. We must be practical. Come along, Body, we're going back."
Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."
In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone tablets with lightning bolts you're got to be brief, about how the Free World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of death...
"Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."
"What--?" I recognize the rooms I'm in. I remember the room from an earlier visit to Hue.
I'm in the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden City.
Cowboy punches my arm. "Okay, Joker, stop acting. We know you're not dead."
I sit up. I'm on a canvas med-evac stretcher. "There it is. I did it! Number one! I got my first heart."
Rafter Man says, "A Purple Heart?"
Cowboy laughs. "Tough titty, you poge. No heart."
I pat myself with my hands. "The hell you say. Where am I hit?"
Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some other guy got the shrapnel."
"Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."
Animal Mother grunts and spits. Animal Mother spits a lot because he thinks it makes him look tough. "Lifers never get wasted. Just the ones I frag, that's all."
Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon is glaring at Animal Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.
Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay gave you some morphine. You were trying to punch him out."
"There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when I'm unconscious. But that's some very good shit, that morphine."
Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses up on his nose. "I could use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."
I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "Mr. Shortround is KIA." Cowboy pulls a red bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper round through the knee. The Skipper went out to get him. A frag got him. A frag got them both. At least..." Cowboy turns to look at Animal Mother. "At least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."
I shake the cobwebs out of my head and pick up my gear. "Where's my Mattel?"
Cowboy hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got wasted. Use this." He hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.
I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."
Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."
"Where's Craze?"
Cowboy leads me outside a long row of body bags and ponchos stuffed with human junk.
We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally went berserk.
Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook gunners. You should have seen it. Craze was laughing like a happy little kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."
I nod. "Anybody else?"
Cowboy checks his weapon, snaps the bolt to see that it's working smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock.
A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you about it. Right now we got a job to do.
We got to find that sniper. I'm personally going to waste that gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E.
Rock was the first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."
Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't see him, but he's there."
Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags. He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.
Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.
Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.
Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries away, fumbling with the handset.
Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's corpse. "Go easy, bro."
The squad files by.
I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I say, "Well, you're short, sir."
I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun was a stupid thing to do.
But then anything you could say to a dead officer who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.
Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.
We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.
All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.
Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index finger at a street of big mansions.
Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard. Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace. They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point.
The sniper shot T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him, one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off fingers, toes, ears--everything. The guys in the road were crying and begging and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us back. Then Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed Animal Mother's collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I thought he was going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the sniper started putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."
I don't know what to say.
Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit. Nothing left but rear guard squads. We sto
mped the NVA and they stomped us and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr. Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down. The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow, which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."
I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say, "That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to do. If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd know." I scratch my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you give the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."
Cowboy thinks about it. Then he grins. "You're right, Joker. You shitbird. You're right. I've got to get my program squared away. I wish Gunny Gerheim was here. He'd know what to do." Cowboy thinks about it. He grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."
The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.
Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip. He doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.
The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.
Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.
We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when a tank rumbles up.
Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"
"No," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."
"That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.
I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't budge gook grunts without supporting arms."
Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."
I double-time down the road to meet the tank. I run past heaps of rubble which were houses yesterday, bricks and stones and shattered wood today.
The tank jerks to a halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me away.
The top half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch. The lieutenant is wearing a flak jacket and an olive-drab football helmet with a microphone that protrudes over his lip. He is a mechanical centaur, half man, half tank.
I point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.
Cowboy comes over and tells the lieutenant to "wait one" and then to start wasting the mansions, one after another.
The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.
Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the row of mansions.
Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.
The tank rolls up to the first mansion.
The rest of us double-time down an alley and cross the road a hundred yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.
At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round of high explosives. The upper story of the first house is blown apart. The roof collapses.
Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner. Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.
We wait.
When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.
Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at their end of the street.
Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with his black steel machine gun.
The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The second story of the second house explodes.
Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.
Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The explosion splits the plaster over our heads.
Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches Rafter Man and Alice.
He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants the men in the squad to take.
Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.
Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.
The tank is two houses away. It fires.
We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.
On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're standing on.
I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother. Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the house.
The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.
We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.
The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters the skylight.
We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library. Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff the book into my thigh pocket and reach to the front of my flak jacket for another grenade.
We work our way through the house, fragging every hallway, every room. But we can't find the sniper.
The tank fires into the second story of the house next door.
I say, "No time."
Cowboy shrugs. "He wasted T.H.E. Rock."
I take a few steps down the stairs. Cowboy holds up his hand. "Listen."
Animal Mother's M-60 is ripping up the roof over our heads.
I say, "Is Mother dinky-dow? Crazy?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "No. Mother is a prick, but he's a good grunt."
We run back to the library.
We drag a heavy antique desk to the ruined skylight and Cowboy climbs up onto it and lifts himself back onto the roof.
The crack of a Simonov sniper's carbine pierces the muted rhythm of Mother's machine gun.
Cowboy falls back through the skylight. Alice, who has climbed up onto the desk, catches Cowboy and eases him down to the desktop.
I pop a frag. I climb up onto the desk and take hold of the roof with my left hand. I let the spoon fly. The spoon phinnnnings away and rattles across the floor. I hold the sweaty green oval for three seconds and, lifting
myself up, I flip it up and back so that it rolls across the roof directly over us. The frag bursts, spraying seven hundred and fifty pieces of steel wire across the roof. The ceiling splits. Alice hugs Cowboy. Plaster and splintered wood bounce off my helmet.
Rafter Man jumps up onto the desk and lift himself up onto the roof.
Surprised, I pull myself up after him.
The tank fires into the ground floor of the house next door.
Rafter Man and I crawl on our bellies on the roof.
Behind us, Alice lifts Cowboy over his head like a wrestler, deposits him gently upon the roof. Then Alice climbs up. He picks Cowboy up in his arms as though Cowboy were an oversized baby.
Doc Jay calls to us from the roof of the first house.
Alice pulls a tent rope from a thigh pocket and ties it under Cowboy's arms. He flips the other end of the rope to Doc Jay. Doc Jay gets a good grip on the rope and braces himself as Alice lowers Cowboy into the chasm between the houses. Doc Jay pulls in the slack as Cowboy falls. Cowboy's limp body swings over and thuds into the wall beneath Doc Jay's feet. Doc Jay grits his teeth, pulls Cowboy up. Alice looks back at me, but I wave him on.
He leaps over to the first house.
Doc Jay gathers up all of our gear and Alice throws Cowboy over his shoulder and they start back down.
Rafter Man has crawled up to the crest of the roof. He peeks over the crest.
Bang. A hiss.
I crawl up beside Rafter Man. I take a peek. From behind a low chimney at the opposite corner of the roof a thin black line protrudes.
We hear the incredibly loud clanking of the tank as it rolls on the street below. It stops.
Animal Mother and Lance Corporal Stutten stop firing.
"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste the gook."
Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.
I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.
I fall on my back.
The sniper is moving.
Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline on his ass.
The Short-Timers Page 9