“Maybe not, but the enlisted Marines here have a whole other story going around,” Kirkwood offered, and sat still on Ebberhardt’s chair.
“You know how the troops get, anytime someone gets into some shit,” McKay answered.
“Yeah, I know,” Kirkwood agreed, still sitting on the chair, holding his toiletry kit in his lap. The two Marines sat for a full minute, and neither spoke until the captain cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“I lost my best friend when I was seventeen,” Kirkwood began. “He was a boy who lived next door to me in San Luis Obispo, where I grew up. We started first grade together there, and he remained my very best pal in the whole wide world right up until two weeks before our high school graduation, when he killed himself. My dad and his found him hanging from a tree in this grove behind our houses, where we had built a hideout. We played war out there, you know, as ten- and twelve-year-old boys do. Ironically, his name was Jimmy, too. Jimmy Sandoval.
“My dad carried his body home. My dad and Mister Sandoval cut him down off that tree where he had hanged himself. They took him home, and then called the police. They didn’t want Jimmy left hanging out there while all the cops mulled around, drank their coffee, and investigated.
“Dad came home crying. That’s how I found out about it. I had never seen my father cry until that day.
“He and Jimmy’s dad were buddies, too. They took us fishing, up at Big Sur, and hunting out west near Paso Robles, where Jimmy’s uncle ran a sheep ranch. They use these majestic, white Great Pyrenees dogs to shepherd the flocks out there.
“Jimmy’s father never has gotten past his son’s suicide. Destroyed both him and Jimmy’s mom. They barely muddle through, still, mourning their poor son. I saw Mister Sandoval just before I shipped out, a few weeks ago, and he still talked about what if Jimmy hadn’t hanged himself.
“I damned near didn’t graduate high school because of my best friend committing suicide. You know, I blamed myself for it. I should have known. I should have seen his unhappiness. I even thought of killing myself, too.
“My dad never left me alone after that. I think he was scared I’d hang myself. I didn’t go to school, and he didn’t go to work. He stuck to me like glue until I finally broke down one day and let it all go with him. That’s the second time I saw my father cry. He cried for me.
“Tommy, I know what you’re feeling.”
“I’m sorry about your friend, Jon,” McKay said, snuffing his nose and now looking at Kirkwood.
“I’m sorry about yours, too,” the captain said, and put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.
“You know, growing up in the Texas Panhandle, coming from a respected family, playing football at Dumas High School, and getting a full-ride scholarship at the University of Texas, I had it pretty good,” McKay said, turning a black ballpoint pen in his fingers and looking at it as he spoke. “Like most boys from out there in that High Plains ranch country, I had my ample share of prejudices, even though I had not taken account of them.
“We didn’t have a lot of black folks living up there: a few, but not many. However, we did have a whole shitload of Mexicans. Mostly they worked on the ranches, or did the really dirty jobs out in the oil fields. To us white boys, they were all worthless wetbacks. We called them taco benders and bean balers. Greasy spics. Right to their faces. And we’d laugh about it.
“I look back, and I feel ashamed of myself. Those folks lived as poor as people can ever imagine. They heated their shacks with wood stoves, if they were lucky enough to have a stove or wood. Some had to cook on grass twists and dried cow flops. Most of them didn’t have running water or a toilet. They worked like dogs, and we treated them worse. And we thought ourselves better for it. While those people starved and survived a wretched life, we went to church on Sunday and sang praises to Jesus as though they didn’t exist.
“I met Jimmy Sanchez the day I checked in the dormitory in Austin. They had the gall to put him in my room!
“When I walked through the door and saw this Mexican sitting in there, I had a fit. My dad and I marched down to the housing office, and told them what they could do with this fart blossom they put in my room. Hell, the idea of a white boy sharing space with a wetback insulted the white right out of us.
“The lady who made the assignment, a sweet old blue-haired gal I later came to adore named Isabelle Brown, very politely told me and my dad that we could kiss her bright, rosy pink, Tyler, Texas, ass, and she used those very words. She said that I would take the room assigned, or that my dad could pay tuition, room, and board for me elsewhere. We went to the athletic director after that, and made an even a bigger mistake showing our prejudices to him. I damned near lost my scholarship over it.
“So I stomped back to the dormitory and took up residence with this brown kid from South Texas with dead koodies dripping off his hair and the smell of DDT fresh in his clothes. My tilted perspective at that moment.
“I hated life, the University of Texas, and especially him. After about a month of suffocating in silence, I finally spoke up and told him that since I had to share space with his stinking ass, I might as well get to know him. That’s when he put out his hand, and I swallowed my pride and shook it.
“Of course, living in Austin, training with the freshmen team, and coming in contact with all sorts of different types of people, pretty soon Jimmy Sanchez seemed to develop lighter skin. He didn’t talk like a Mexican. He showered daily, kept his hair cut short and clean, too.
“By the time that first semester had ended, and we went our separate ways for Christmas holidays, we had become friends. I got home and told my dad it wasn’t so bad sharing a room with a Mexican. In no time, during the spring semester, Jimmy and I started going to movies together, eating out, even double dating.
“The next fall, I looked forward to seeing him. We voluntarily roomed together from then on. He quit being a Mexican to me and became human. My best friend. That’s when we told each other all our secrets, and confessed our families’ shames to each other.
“Jimmy Sanchez’s mother and father both came across the Rio Grande one night, back during World War II, and took up residence in Texas, working for half the wages that white cowboys made, something like fifteen dollars a month. All with the hope of a better life.
“Still kids themselves, they wanted their yet to be born children to enter this world in America, to live free and have opportunity. The two of them had left behind the most abject poverty anyone can imagine. People died of starvation. Kids walked around in the dead of winter with no shoes and no coats, and it snows and gets cold in northern Mexico, where they grew up.
“About the time Jimmy turned twelve years old, his father got busted up really bad by this renegade paint stallion they called Big Baldy. He worked breaking horses and gathering range cattle for this rancher, who let the Sanchez family live in one of his dilapidated fence-line shacks. Right off, the old gringo took a liking to Jimmy’s dad. You see, his father was quite a good horse wrangler and vaquero, and the rancher admired those skills. Mister Sanchez could spin that sixty-foot Mexican lariat full circle around both him and his horse at a full run, and catch a calf on the fly thirty feet away with it.
“After Big Baldy gave him a stomping, Mister Sanchez laid in that shack for a week, his wife nursing the fever that set in, and then he finally died. He had convinced Jimmy’s mother that he just needed to lay in the bed for a few days. They didn’t have any money anyway, not even for a doctor, and he thought he’d mend on his own.
“Kind of like he treated his range stock, the old rancher just figured the Mexicans that got hurt working for him could tough out their injuries with what they had at hand. Survival of the fittest, so to speak. Calling a doctor never crossed his mind. That fellow was about as prejudiced against Mexicans as me and my dad were, too, and I think we were pretty typical of most white people in Texas.
“When his dad died, Jimmy had two younger sisters and three younger brothers. Damned be
aners, you know, they breed like cockroaches. So this old prejudiced, son-of-a-bitch patrón, seeing this twelve-year-old boy quitting school and taking up the work of his dead father, trying to support this raft of little ones and his mother, who washed and ironed laundry, cooked and cleaned house for this guy for something like two dollars a week, I guess the bastard finally got bit by his own conscience seeing them struggle so hard.
“He took the Sanchez family to his bosom, and moved them up to a pretty nice house, just below his own grand castle, where his late mother had lived, and it had then sat vacant for several years after she died. Jimmy’s mother kept on cleaning and cooking and doing the laundry for the rancher, but he started paying her a good deal more money for her work, and he fed the family, kept the kids and mother in good clothes, and he sent Jimmy back to school. He said he owed Jimmy’s dad at least that much.
“My buddy Jim graduated from high school with a 4.0 grade point average. He got an academic scholarship to the University of Texas, which paid for his tuition and books for four years. That gringo rancher shelled out for Jimmy’s room and board, even bought him a pretty nice, used pickup truck to drive, and gave him a hundred dollars a month to spend. The man said he owed Jimmy’s father at least that much, too. Him dying on his ranch with broken ribs and whatever else that bronc busted up on his insides, as he did, and not seeing a doctor at all. So the man paid penance by raising Jimmy as a son.
“I never heard Jimmy Sanchez speak with bitterness about the way anybody treated him, his mother, his father, or even how I treated him when we first met. Instead he focused on what we could accomplish, and how he looked forward to going back home and teaching school. He wanted to teach school where he grew up.
“Between my junior and senior years in college I spent the summer with Jimmy at his home on that old man’s ranch. I got to know his mother, his sisters, and his brothers very well. They’re a wonderful family. Even that old fart gringo rancher, he loves every one of those Sanchez children like his own kids.
“Jimmy Sanchez showed me a lot about myself and my shortcomings. From his example, I learned to take people one person at a time. He taught me to respect poor folks, not pity them, but admire the people for their courage and their strength of character to struggle against an unfair tide, and not quit. Jimmy gave me a charitable heart and an open mind, and showed me how to accept people, even a dumb fuckhead like Michael Carter, who sneaks in the shadows and eavesdrops.”
The gangly captain nearly fell, tripping around the wall lockers, and almost turned one of them on its side when he caught himself off balance. Carter sniffed his nose, and then offered a sheepish smile at the two men sitting by the wall and open window.
T. D. McKay picked up the writing paper and turned it over, and pointing to it, said, “This is a letter to Jimmy’s mother. It’s my fault he died. I can’t find the words to tell her. To tell her I am sorry. How do you tell a mother you are sorry that you caused her son to die?”
Jon Kirkwood blinked and looked at Michael Carter. Then he looked back at McKay.
“Your fault?” Kirkwood said.
“When Jimmy got shot, we had to carry him to the rally point and the LZ,” McKay explained. “There were four of us: Jimmy, me, the radioman, and the corpsman. Communications were shitty, so we couldn’t make contact with anyone outside the platoon until we got to higher ground near the RP.
“Halfway there, we came to this big open space. To go around it would add half an hour to us getting him to a place where the medevac chopper could land. I saw where Jimmy had the clearing marked as a danger area on his map, and the corpsman and radioman warned me about it, too. But I’m mister touchdown, mister Saturday afternoon hero. So I sent Doc and Sneed around, and I put Jimmy on my shoulders and cut across.
“Just like Doc had warned, the NVA spotted me and started shooting. Somehow I dodged their bullets and got across, but they circled around and didn’t charge across after me. I later learned they had the field heavily mined. So with Charlie now running over the top of them, trying to catch me, Doc and Sneed had to take cover and sit it out.
“I got to the rally point with Jimmy, but I had left his medical aid and our only source of communications to the outside world stuck behind. My shortcut cost Jimmy the critical time he needed to live. He bled to death in the landing zone just as the choppers finally set down.
“He was so shot up he couldn’t talk but in gasps. He suffered unnecessarily for three long hours, fighting for air and battling for his life. All because I left the radio guy and the corpsman behind.
“Had I gone around, I would have avoided the enemy spotting me and pursuing us, we would have gotten to the rally point half an hour later with the doc to help Jimmy, and we could have called for a med-evac as soon as we got there. My fault? Yes! My heroics cost my best friend his life.”
Carter started to speak, but Jon Kirkwood, knowing that Tommy McKay would not take very well the sweet pap doled out by the Boston-bluenose bleeding heart, put up his hand just as the gangling captain began to sputter, silencing the no-doubt ill-thought but well-meaning words.
“You’re probably right, Tommy,” Kirkwood then said. “Your intentions were for your friend, but I see your point. It’s valid. No matter what any of us will try to tell you about it, you’re going to believe what’s in your heart. You were there, we weren’t. Now you have to figure out a way to live with it.”
“Wait a minute! He was saving his buddy’s life!” Carter interjected, his natural instincts to defend the downtrodden kicking into gear.
“Michael, go to your room,” Kirkwood said and pointed to the cubicle exit.
“This lieutenant happens to be under my counsel,” Carter then proclaimed, crossing his bony, flaky arms.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kirkwood growled at the stick-man captain.
“Major Dickinson has written a charge sheet on me,” McKay said, now defending Michael Carter’s continued presence. “The blond palm tree standing there is my defense counsel.”
“He what?” Kirkwood then bellowed, and looked straight at Carter.
“Major Dickinson has charged Lieutenant McKay with unauthorized absence, disobedience of a lawful written order, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” Carter then said, stepping back inside the cubicle.
“The dirty son of a bitch,” Kirkwood growled, and kicked Wayne Ebberhardt’s wall locker with his nearly bare foot, losing his shower shoe off it and stubbing his right toe. Hopping and limping, the captain continued his rant. “Damn that wasted fuck! That drip down a whore’s thigh! He chews my ass out this afternoon for me getting the charges dismissed against my client, doing a fucking fantastic job, I think, and then to top off the insanity, he files a charge sheet on a Marine for heroism under fire. I’m never going to make it through a year of his bullshit! I can see it now! We’re not in Vietnam. We’ve all really died and gone to hell!”
Chapter 7
THE JUDAS KISS
“MAU MAU. YO, Mau Mau, that you, man?” a voice called from down the street. James Harris sat in the driver’s seat of a jeep, and turned his head to see a familiar character from the Da Nang Air Base flight line, Lance Corporal James Elmore, ditty-bopping carelessly across the bustling roadway toward him.
His utility blouse unbuttoned, flapping as he bounced on his toes, exposing the clenched-black-fist design printed on the front of his green T-SHIRT, Elmore sauntered mindlessly between passing cyclo-taxis as he ambled his way across the busy boulevard. From the belt up, his body looked like that of a man who stood more than six feet tall, but below the waist, his stubby, out-of-proportion legs held him to an elevation of just less than five feet, eight inches in height. His long arms swinging as he strode with his hat perched on the back of his wooly, puffed-out Afro-style hair, the cover’s bill pressed perfectly flat, the jaunty Marine seemed to openly insult gravity as well as the Corps’ dress standards.
“Brother Bear,” Harris
said, stepping from the open vehicle and walking around it to greet the culprit who had introduced him to dope peddling in Da Nang shortly after his arrival in Vietnam, and had then kept him supplied with ample stocks to sell.
“Look at you now, soul,” Elmore said, rapping his knuckles with Harris’s.
“Done lost that I-want-a-be-just-like-Jimi Hendrix look. Got yourself all high and tight. Starched and squared away. Got sergeant chevrons on your collar. Ain’t you the pretty picture of what’s right all right.”
“Hey, man, just getting by,” Harris said, looking up and down the busy boulevard that followed the river. “Keeping cool. You know. What you doing wandering back here, off the air base in the middle of the day?”
“My off-day, bro,” Elmore said. “Got a meeting with my main man. You know, business.”
“That dude?” Harris said, and nodded toward the open front of the bar where Brian T. Pitts stood inside the shadowed entrance, dressed as a Marine first lieutenant and talking to a heavyset policeman with a cluster of diamond-shaped brass buttons on his epaulettes, and two helmeted bodyguards lurking behind him. Pitts glanced out the doorway, took note of Elmore, and then shifted his eyes back to the high-ranking cop.
“Could be,” Elmore said and smiled. “You connected with the Snowman?”
“Yeah, man,” Harris said. “Pitts and me, we tight, three, four months now.”
“I can see you be tight with the man,” Elmore said, eyeballing the backseat of the jeep where he noticed an open canvas bag with two cameras and several lenses. “Got you chauffeuring his ass around all day. Probably shining his boots, too. Kissing his pearly white ass. Seeing how you done changed and all, you probably like that dark-brown taste in your mouth now.”
“Fuck you, monkey-looking motherfucker,” Harris snarled, putting his hand on the U.S. Government model .45-caliber Colt pistol he wore. “I ain’t gotta put up with your tired bullshit no more.”
“Be cool, man,” Elmore said, flashing his gold front tooth as he smiled. “I’m just fucking with you, man. You know me. I fuck with everybody.”
Jungle Rules Page 18