Jungle Rules

by Charles W. Henderson

  “I thought these chairs looked familiar,” he said, lifting the freshly cut lid from the can of his beef and potatoes and handing the thumb-size, P-7 can opener he had just used to O’Connor.

  “Go ahead and string that John Wayne on your dog-tag chain, Terry,” the major said, returning with a three-gallon thermos jug filled with Kool-Aid, and seeing Kirkwood handing off the can opener. Then he rummaged in the C-ration case and took out a small brown paper packet, tore it open, and removed a new P-7 from the package.

  “One for you too, Kirkwood,” Hembee said, and tossed the opener to the lawyer. “Like spare socks and boot laces, you need to have one of those with you at all times in the bush.”

  “Major Danger, sir,” a lanky, blond-haired staff sergeant wearing a faded green T-shirt said, ducking under the tent where Kirkwood, O’Connor, and Hembee now sat, eating in the shade.

  “What ya got, Goose?” Hembee said, looking up at the Marine who held a yellow slip of paper in his hand.

  “Good news and bad news, sir,” the staff NCO replied.

  “Shoot,” Hembee said, working the lid off his ham and motherfuckers.

  “Good news first,” the sergeant said. “All eight of our wounded got aboard the Huey, now inbound to Charlie Med. The three worst ones still have their eyes blinking and hearts pumping. Looks like they have a chance if that chopper doesn’t go down first.”

  “Doesn’t go down?” Hembee said, sitting up and looking at the staff sergeant he called Goose.

  “That’s the bad news, sir,” the blond Marine said. “Inbound here, your luncheon guests took a few dings from the NVA. A hydraulic line or connection must have gotten creased or cracked by one of the rounds. At any rate, they sprung a leak. Got a warning light just after takeoff from the bush with the wounded aboard. If he makes it to Charlie Med, the pilot’s shutting it down there for repairs. One way or the other, he sure as hell ain’t gonna make it back here today. So your house guests may have to spend the night.”

  “Logistics bird usually drops on our doorstep about zero eight,” Hembee said, looking at Kirkwood and O’Connor. “You can catch that to Chu Lai tomorrow, or you can try to ride out of here this afternoon on one of the supply trucks. They convoy to Chu Lai at about two o’clock, get you there by five or six this evening. I don’t recommend going by truck, though, unless you like gunplay.”

  “Ambushes, you mean?” Kirkwood said.

  “Lots of opportunity for them,” Hembee said, now digging into his canned lunch with a spoon. “Mines and booby traps, too. We have guys clear them every day, but they still keep springing up like daisies each morning. Charlie’s an industrious little bastard.”

  “We’ll wait for the chopper,” Kirkwood said, relaxing in his chair and focusing back on his meal.

  “You’re Hembee, right?” O’Connor said, spooning out ham and lima beans from his can.

  “Right, Jack Hembee,” the major said. “Born and raised on the family cattle ranch near Cody, Wyoming.”

  “That staff sergeant addressed you by another name,” O’Connor said.

  “You mean what Goose called me?” the major said and smiled. “Major Danger. That’s the nickname my Marines assigned to me. Sooner or later, everybody gets one out here. Kind of a family thing. Could have gotten one like Major Disaster or Major Fuckup, just to name a couple that come to mind.”

  “Your men must think a lot of you,” O’Connor said, smiling at the major.

  “I hope so,” Hembee said. “Even though I’m just the operations officer, they know I’d put my life on the line for any one of them. I trust they’d do the same for me, or any of the other guys in our battalion. Meanwhile, since you combat virgins will spend the night, we got to get you some accommodations.”

  The major sat up in his chair, looked in several directions, and then shouted, “Rat! Elvis! Henry! Front and center!”

  In less than a minute a short, black Marine flanked by a tall, dark-haired man that looked strikingly like Elvis Presley, and a pug-nosed fellow with big ears whose shaved head glistened in the bright sunshine, looking like Henry from the Sunday newspaper comic strip, appeared under the tent.

  “Yes, sir,” the black Marine who answered to the name King Rat spoke to the major.

  “This is Captain Kirkwood and Captain O’Connor,” the major said to the three enlisted Marines. “They will remain overnight with us. Set up two cots in my hooch, and see if you can round up a canteen full of that raisin jack that your cannon-cocker buddies over at Golf battery cooked up last night. You might make sure that the sergeant major gets a taste, too; otherwise he’ll go snooping.”

  “How did you know they made a batch last night?” King Rat said, grinning wide at the major.

  “I’ve got a nose, Rat-man,” Hembee said. “I’d have to have one bad sinus problem not to smell that shit cooking. You might bullshit the bull-shitter, but you can’t snow the snowman.”

  “You know, that shit’s illegal, sir,” Rat said, offering a sarcastic smile to go with the reminder.

  “We have no tax stamps in Vietnam, so its up to the commander’s discretion,” the major said. “Besides, I have my defense counsel sitting right here. Now disappear.”

  Quickly the three Marines ducked from the tent in three different directions.

  “I think making distilled spirits does violate a few regulations, Major,” Kirkwood said, finishing his can of beef and rocks.

  “You tell on us, and I won’t give you any,” Hembee said, grinning at Kirkwood.

  Terry O’Connor spit in the dust. “Hell, I’m game for a little rotgut raisin jack.”

  “You have any rounds to fit these rifles?” Kirkwood asked, picking up the M14 he had taken from the helicopter.

  “One thing we have lots of, Skipper, that’s rounds,” Hembee said.

  AT FIRST, TURD did not recognize James Harris as he stepped from the bathroom, showered, stinking of cologne and his hair cut slick on the sides and nearly to the scalp on top. The dog slouched under the coffee table and gave the man a second glance before finally seeing that his friend had merely changed his appearance and now smelled much differently. Turd blew his nose, sneezing the way dogs do, the new scent of his master irritating the membranes inside his nostrils.

  “At least I look better than you do after a bath,” Harris said to the dog, admiring himself in the full-length mirror and slipping on the brownish-green T-shirt and white boxer shorts that Brian T. Pitts had given him. He then forked his toes into a pair of yellow and white rubber shower shoes and flip-flopped out of his bedroom.

  Turd, who had gotten his skin drenched in motor oil and then endured a fitful soap and water scrubbing in a metal tub on the patio, slunk in step behind Harris.

  “That has got to be the ugliest fucking dog in the world,” Brian Pitts proclaimed in a boisterous voice from the living room where he sat flanked by two young Vietnamese females, neither hardly more than sixteen years old. Huong and two other cowboys sat in chairs at the dining table, paying little attention to their new cohort and his companion beast whose tan skin was now shown in the hairless gaps where mangy scales used to exist.

  “That dog look like shit now, but you wait,” Huong spoke as he slammed mah-jongg tiles onto the tabletop, playing the game with his partners. “That dog he look pretty good, pretty soon. Don’t worry. He plenty smart, too. He see thing come when we not see. We keep him. I think he good luck. So why you call him shit?”

  “Turd,” Harris said. “Not shit.”

  “Turd is shit,” Huong said, throwing down another mah-jongg tile. “So why you name a good dog like this one such a bad name like that?”

  “He brown like a turd, man,” Harris said, and smiled, hoping to raise some sense of humor from Huong. “Then when I spend the night under that concrete with his nasty ass, he smell like a turd, too. His breath even smell like shit.”

  “Why not call him Joe?” Huong said, taking a sip of his tea and looking at the other two cowboys studying their
game pieces. “I like name like Joe. Not like shit name.”

  “Man, he’s Turd, and that’s that,” Harris said, flopping in a velvet upholstered sofa chair and spreading out his legs. The two girls cuddled next to Brian Pitts giggled as they looked at the view the black man had given them up his boxer shorts’ legs.

  Seeing the two young hookers taking notice of his somewhat exposed genitals, Mau Mau grabbed his crotch with his right hand and shook it hard as he spoke.

  “You want some of this?” he said, pumping his hand back and forth and laughing at them. “You never go back to that slinky white thing once you had a taste of this Chicago black snake.”

  The two girls hid their faces in Brian Pitts’s shoulders and giggled harder.

  “You could wear a robe, you know,” Pitts said, also noticing the billowing open legs of Harris’s underwear and his exposed nether regions. “What I see is not a pretty sight.”

  “Then don’t look, motherfucker,” Harris retorted, and flopped his legs up and down, shaking what he had. Both girls giggled harder.

  “With you beaming your ass in my face, it’s hard not to get an eyeful,” Pitts said. “What if I was queer? How would you feel then?”

  Harris snapped his legs closed and then crossed them, tucking his shorts tight. “Don’t even fucking joke like that, man,” the suddenly shy Marine deserter said.

  “You find that offensive?” Pitts asked.

  “Fuck yeah, man,” Harris said, and then carefully eyed the blond-haired fellow Marine deserter dressed only in a royal-blue silk calf-length afghan-style shirt with matching velvet slippers. “You ain’t queer on anything. I see you with them bitches and all, but you dressed kinda sweet, too.”

  “No, not a faggot,” Pitts said casually, lighting a cigarette. “However, I think that you should consider how you might offend other people by flashing your cock and balls. If you want to fuck one of the girls, just say so. Don’t go trolling for it.”

  “Fuck you, man,” Harris said, standing, angry. Turd jumped up from the floor, ready to beat a hasty retreat with his master. “I want pussy, I say it. I ain’t like some pervert flashin’ my dick an’ all.”

  “Sit down then, and shut up,” Pitts said, taking a long drag from his smoke. “We have some business.”

  “Like what?” Harris said, sitting. Turd laid back down at his feet.

  “Tomorrow, while Huong and the boys make some distributions, we’ve got to attend Sunday Mass, and you’re driving,” Pitts said, looking at Harris and not showing any expression.

  “I ain’t no Catholic,” Harris said.

  “Nor am I,” Pitts retorted. “We have some collections, and Sunday services have proved a good cover. Lots of Marines going and coming, nobody asking many questions, Sunday and all.”

  “Fuck, man, that’s smart as shit,” Harris said, and smiled at his newfound boss and friend.

  “We go in uniform, and you’re driving the jeep,” Pitts said.

  “That’s cool.” Harris nodded. “I feel best in uniform anyway, ’cause wearing something else, CID be asking all kind of questions, you know.”

  “Yes, I suspect so,” Pitts said through a cloud of smoke that came from his mouth as he talked. “Tomorrow you will sit in the jeep, armed with a pistol and rifle. When I meet these people, you will watch me. Anything funny go down, you start taking down everyone around me.”

  “We on base, man?” Harris asked. “At chapel and all?”

  “Yes,” Pitts said, finishing his cigarette. “We’re in a jeep with numbers that do not appear on any missing-vehicle report. I am dressed as a first lieutenant with an ID card and dog tags that match. You will dress as a sergeant, fully identified. Why would anyone question us?”

  “Just gets me all scary and shit,” Harris said, shaking his shoulders as he spoke. “You got giant-size balls do shit like that.”

  “We have more eyes looking for wrongdoing off-base than on-base,” Pitts said, taking a sip from a tall glass of iced tea he had sitting on an end table by a tall, silk shaded lamp. “Besides, why would they even be looking for us?”

  “They be looking for my ass,” Harris said, shaking his head.

  “They’ll be looking for a dirt-bag nigger named James Harris who smelled like a pile of shit and looked worse, not a squared-away black Marine sergeant,” Pitts said, and then added, “no offense.”

  James Harris looked cold-eyed at Brian Pitts, not liking the racial epithet but clearly understanding what he meant by it. He nodded and said nothing.

  “You ever hear tell of a guy called the Snowman?” Pitts said, sipping his tea.

  “A few times I hear guys say that name, but never knew nothin’ about the dude,” Harris said, flipping the lid open on a gold cigarette box and taking out a smoke. “They say he the big man out here. They mostly scared of him. Say he kill lots of guys, ship dope by the truckload back Stateside. When I meet you I think about that, too. Maybe you the Snowman.”

  “Fair-complected, blond hair, rather snowy-looking, don’t you think?” Pitts said, smiling.

  “You be selling lots of shit, too. Snow, you know,” Harris said, igniting his cigarette with a gold lighter that matched the case and gold ashtray. “This pad laid out with some heavy shit, too. Ain’t no cheap stuff in this place. Ain’t no brass. Anything yellow metal, it’s gold. I checked it out. It’s nice. Like a palace or Hollywood mansion.”

  “Then you understand where you are, then?” Pitts said. “What I expect of you. From my end you get loyalty and a fair cut of what we take. It’s a commitment with your life.”

  “I done got that all clear in my head when old Huong there slap me on my ear with his .45,” Harris said, smiling. “I be loyal with you. Honest, too. I don’t tell no lie. Don’t you go lyin’ to me neither.”

  “We do not tolerate lies from anyone within my house,” Pitts reaffirmed his American cohort. “I will never lie to you. Huong will never mislead you, either. No one will. Ever. Like betrayal, a lie reaps a bullet.”

  “Cool,” Harris said, smiling nervously, thinking about the few times he had fibbed to his old supplier, Lance Corporal James Elmore, when he held back a little extra cash or skimmed a few grams of dope.

  “Nanna has your uniforms nearly finished,” Pitts said, speaking of the woman who ran his household, and bossed the intern hookers who lived there. “She’ll have one of them ironed tonight so you’ll have it for tomorrow. Huong picked up a pair of size 12 double-E Corcoran jump boots for you this morning and got them all spit-shined. Here’s your new dog tags and an ID card to match, Sergeant Rufus Potter.”

  “Fuck, man,” Harris said, sitting up, looking at the dog tags and identification card with his photograph on it that Pitts tossed to him. “Rufus Potter? What kind of fucked-up name you calling me? Man, that’s the fucked-upest name I ever heard. Rufus fucking Potter! Man, you makin’ fun of me!”

  Huong suddenly swore a stream of Vietnamese profanity and looked at his two cowboys, and then with his left hand swept the mah-jongg tiles from the table onto the floor. As he stood from his chair, he pulled his .45-caliber pistol and put it to the forehead of the man sitting to his right.

  “No, fuck, no!” Pitts screamed at Huong just as he pulled the trigger and sent the man’s brains spraying from the back of his head, showering the mahogany dining chair and the oriental carpet below it with blood, bone, and pulverized gray matter.

  The two girls screamed, fully terrified, and fled upstairs, wailing for Madam Nanna. Mau Mau said nothing, and sat motionless in his chair while Turd snuggled close to his feet. Such sudden, unbridled violence made him realize that the seemingly tranquil, family-style atmosphere that Pitts sought so hard to engender in his household offered but a very thin veil over raw brutality, explosive and lethal.

  In junior high school, a teacher had given James Harris a copy of Jack London’s, Call of the Wild to read. He had loved the book for many reasons. The dog and the black kid from the bad side of Chicago held much in common.
Seeing Huong’s deadly tantrum made him think of Buck’s life as a sled dog, becoming leader and killing Spitz. He identified with the dog and his plight at surviving in a merciless place, akin to the nature of his own life back on his block in a neighborhood where life clashed with death daily.

  “That man, he cheat me,” Huong said. The other cowboy stood and nodded, affirming what Pitts’s senior Vietnamese henchman told him. “He cheat at silly game. He do that, then he steal money, too. He sell us out too, if Benny Lam or Major Tran Van Toan pay him. He no good. I no like him long time.”

  “YOU GUYS KNOW Tommy Touchdown?” Jack Hembee said out of the blue, sitting up from his lawn chair and wiping out his canteen cup with a handkerchief. “He’s a lawyer up at First MAW. I bet you guys know him.”

  “Not by that name. Only Tommy I’ve met there is First Lieutenant McKay,” Kirkwood answered, holding out his canteen cup for Terry O’Connor to pour him some of the raisin jack from one of the two containers that King Rat and Elvis had brought them from Golf Company. “I heard a couple of guys call him Tommy, but mostly he goes by his initials, T. D.”

  “Same guy. I know for a fact he’s at wing legal,” Hembee said, stuffing a fresh wad of Beechnut chew inside his cheek and then offering the pouch to O’Connor. “Some of this cowboy candy goes good with that jack, Terry, if you’ve got the gut for it. Just tuck it to one side, and try not to swallow too much juice when you take a drink.”

  “Okay, I’m game,” O’Connor said, taking some tobacco from the major’s pouch and putting it in his mouth. “Chewing and drinking, I’m learning fast.”

  “Why Tommy Touchdown?” Kirkwood said as he handed the major the canteen full of raisin jack.

  “Well, T. D.’s not his initials,” Hembee said. “That stands for touchdown. If you followed college football during the past few years you’d know that McKay has a G for a middle initial. Gaylord. Thomas Gaylord McKay.”

  “No wonder he kept it a secret. Gaylord?” O’Connor yucked.