The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  The path was narrow, but well worn. I asked the scout about it. Master explained in Vietnamese, translated by Van, that the villagers occasionally used the watering hole in daylight hours. We continued on in silence.

  After perhaps two hundred meters, we started downhill and quickly reached a pool of stagnant, bug-covered water, a quarter acre at most in size. Master looped the goat's lead around a branch, chattering in Vietnamese and gesturing at a large tree. Through the moonlight I could make out a crude platform in a limb crotch halfway up the trunk. I thought about asking why, if I could see the blind, the tiger couldn't also. However, Master was already up the tree, and Al on his way, so I didn't bother. I followed the first two climbers. After Van handed heavenward all our gear, he joined us.

  The blind, sturdy enough in a hand-hewn way, faced the pond. There were some newer branches and fronds camouflaging the front. Master explained through Van how the tigers would appear at the far side of the pond, and where to aim, and so forth. Al was to have the first shot.

  Master scrambled back down the tree and led the goat around the pond to a point directly across from us, perhaps forty meters line-of-sight. He tied the goat's lead to a downed limb and then lightly stepped back around to us. The goat, who I assume by now was getting the general drift of what was happening, began to bleat. Incessantly.

  Master returned to our platform, a big smile on his face. He said something to Van, and Van said, "Master say we wait now."

  It took nearly an hour for the goat to cry itself hoarse, straining against the leash. It took another hour for me to lose a pint of blood to the mosquitoes. Nothing moved in the bush.

  I started to say something humorous. Master hissed and Van said, "All quiet now."

  Another half an hour of nothing. I closed my eyes and thought of back home: summer Sundays on Carson's Beach in Southie or Crane Beach in Ipswich, the Yankees against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the (back-then-realistic) rivalry between Boston College and Holy Cross in football.

  A stand of high grass rustled off to our right. Four heads whipped over there, live counting the goat's. The bait had no more voice, but resumed hopping and tugging against the lead for all it was worth.

  "Cop," whispered Master. No need for translation now. Tiger.

  More rustling, then a pause, then more rustling, then a pause. The unseen creature moved around the perimeter of the pond. Al tensed and eyed his weapon. I was to have the second shot, but I had no intention of firing unless the cat was coming straight at . . .

  A stumble and crunch in the bush as the creature neared the virtually hysterical goat. Al seated the rifle butt against his shoulder. The creature cried out, not a roar, not a growl, just a simple word.

  A seven- or eight-year-old girl, yelping what was probably the goat's name, rushed up to it and began hugging it.

  Master cursed. Van said, "That is the girl from father that Master buy goat." I remembered the child's voice crying back at the village. The girl started trying to untie the goat's lead.

  A1 said, "Jesus," and lowered his rifle. Master, still muttering curses, drew a knife and put it between his teeth. He started down the trunk.

  "Van," I said. "Tell Master that if he touches the girl I will kill him."

  Master, who had probably heard the English word "kill" often enough, nodded vigorously as if to confirm that was the goat's, and possibly the girl's, immediate destiny.

  A1 said, "John . . ."

  "Tell him," I snapped at Van.

  Master had started around the pond. Van spoke to him in Vietnamese. Master stopped, turned, and protested. Van said to me, "American pay for tiger hunt, American get tiger hunt."

  I said, "Tell Master he can keep the money. The girl keeps her goat, and the Americans go back. N0ow."

  Van translated. Master shrugged, sheathed his knife.

  I said, "Now tell the girl. Call to her. Tell her the Americans give her back her goat."

  Al said, "John, for chrissakes, there may be VC within earshot."

  "Tell her," I repeated.

  Van called over to the girl. She succeeded in untying the goat, then bowed down to us as she led it off around the way she came.

  She got maybe five meters when a mine exploded. The top half of her somersaulted through the air toward us. Head, arms, trunk to her waist. It splashed into the pond, scattering a roomful of insects. A few branches and clumps of grass and goat followed her trajectory into the water.

  Al bit his lower lip, then lowered and shook his head. Van showed a tear. Master, who had hit the deck at the explosion, was standing up, brushing himself off.

  "Let's go," I said, and climbed down out of the treehouse.

  As we walked back to our perimeter, I wondered what kind of funeral the little girl would have. Not a military one. No flag-covered coffin, surely, the Stars and Stripes whipped down and tucked securely around the base.

  The first time I remember seeing an American flag around a coffin was President Kennedy's funeral. On television. A cold, blustery November Saturday. The riderless black horse, John-John saluting, the older males in the family walking solemnly uphill in mourning coats, their path lined by Green Berets with weapons at "present arms," bagpipes skirling. My strongest memories, however, are of other military funerals. Or wakes, if you will; I guess the funerals took place back home. The wakes were in Vietnam, though. Three filthy, stinking GIs, standing over a sealed green body bag at some impromptu Graves Registration Point, alternately dragging on a joint and saying, "Shit, man."

  It is, I think, the greatest irony of our time, at least of my time. A President I thought I understood and would have died for dropped us into a war in a country which none of us understood and where nobody should have died.

  Seventeen

  -•-

  I REACHED THE POINT WHERRE AL SHIPPED HOME. We had a short-timer's party for him at the Officers' Club, and I could barely walk for two days afterward. Al promised he would stay in touch. And he had. I closed the last file. I tossed down the last of the ice water and reviewed my list.

  Twenty-three names. Most Americans, some French and Vietnamese. Maybe one of them lives in Boston, maybe not. Maybe he's still using his real name, maybe not. Maybe he killed Al, maybe not. Maybe something to show for the afternoon, maybe not.

  I stood up, folded the list like a business letter and slid it into my jacket pocket. I wedged all the files back into the drawers of the cabinet. I stiffly donned my jacket, thinking I could call J .T. tomorrow and ask him to put the names through the computer to see if there was anything current on them.

  I opened the door. Ricker stood up. I didn't see his L'Amour novel. The clock said 19:15, 7:15 P.M. real time.

  "Yessir?"

  "I'm all finished, Sergeant. Colonel Kivens said I'd need you to lead me out of here."

  Ricker grinned broadly. "Yessir. It's a real maze out there. Me, I was lost for weeks when I first drew duty here."

  He went to a coat rack and got a regulation, olive-drab trench.

  "Sir, you got transportation here?"

  "No. Thought I'd just grab a cab."

  Ricker chuckled. "These cabs, sir, they're tough to get out here sometimes. Where're you headin'?"

  "Marriott, Key Bridge."

  "Aw, hell, sir,'° said Ricker as he turned out the lights and closed the door. "That's right on my way. Let me give you a lift."

  "Thanks, Sergeant, but I've already held you—"

  "Please, sir, my pleasure, I insist."

  I yielded gratefully. We threaded our way out down corridors dark and deep.

  Ricker's vehicle was a spotless customized Ford pick-up, shiny even in the dark. We maneuvered through the vestiges of rush-hour traffic.

  "Have you spent much time in Washington, sir?"

  "No, not much. Weekend here or there."

  "Fine city. Proud and powerful. But I'm a country boy myself. Four more years and out."

  "That'll make twenty?"

  “No, sir, thirty." He turne
d and smiled. "Thirty years with the Big Green Machine. Then a nice spread in Looziana, northeast comer."

  He really looked familiar when he smiled. "You ever stationed in Saigon, Sergeant?"

  The smile died, then rekindled. "Yessir. I had two tours in-country. First one in Saigon."

  "When were you there'?"

  "Let's see," he said, rubbing his chin, "December '66 to October '67."

  "Just before my time," I said.

  "You were there with the Colonel, sir?"

  I nodded. "For a time."

  "Colonel's a good commander and a fair man."

  "Then he hasn't changed."

  Ricker smiled again. So familiar.

  "Sergeant, are you sure we didn't serve somewhere together?"

  "Wel1, sir, no I'm . . . uh-uh, what's this?"

  I looked ahead and saw nothing. Ricker decelerated and began edging onto the shoulder.

  "What's the matter?" I asked.

  "Felt a shimmy from that left front wheel again."

  "I didn't notice anything."

  "Ach," said Ricker as we pulled to a stop, "truck ain't got four thousand miles on 'er and this is the second time she's done this." He looked at me. "Mind reachin' into the glove box there and gettin' me the flashlight?"

  "Sure," I said, leaning forward and pushing the box button.

  "Sorry about this, sir, but I don't want to press my luck."

  "I don't see any—" I glanced up and over at Ricker, who squirted a cloud of something from a tiny spray can into my face.

  I remember the sound of my forehead bouncing off the dashboard.

  * * *

  We were slogging through a rice paddy. The men were bunched up, though, in formation like on a parade field. I yelled for them to maintain their interval, maintain interval. They couldn't hear me because they were singing a Jody call. You know, "Jody, Jody, don't be blue, ten more minutes and we'll be through" and so on. They were marching through this paddy and singing to keep in step. Stupid thing to do, mines, mortars . . .

  There was a dash of light and a tremendous explosion. The platoon was thrown up into the air and just burst. Rides and arms and legs and heads dying outward and landing with a sploosh all around me. The little goat-girl, too.

  I was kneeling behind an overturned jeep. It was on fire. A sergeant in full dress greens rushed up with a hose. But he had only the nozzle of the hose, there was nothing connected to it. He turned to me with it. It was Ricker, now in the uniform of a National Policeman.

  "Sorry about this, sir," he said, "but I don't want to press my luck."

  The water hit me in the face. I woke up shivering, but my face was dry. I was staring at a Sheetrock ceiling with some peeling pipes and crudely rigged rafter space. There were wide water skis, ancient fishing rods, and chipped wooden oars. It was dark, but not pitch black.

  My eyes smarted and my head hurt worse than my mugging aches. I was tied spread-eagle on an old iron twin bed. My suit, tie, and shoes were gone, my shirt, briefs, and socks still on. My mouth was taped. I could move my head one hundred eighty degrees, my line of sight like the arc of an old protractor. I could just touch my chin to my chest, but the additional view wasn't worth the discomfort.

  There were broken lawn chairs and a dust-covered old bicycle in one comer. Paint cans and a bucket with a rake and broom in another. Some army olive—drab canvas hung from a rafter. A magnified rectangle of indirect moonshine spotlighted a patch of concrete floor from a high, closed window. By arching my back and riding up on my neck like a wrestler, I could see, upside down, the top couple steps of a wooden staircase.

  It was early March, and I was freezing to death in somebody's cellar.

  I lay quietly for about fifteen minutes. I couldn't hear anyone walking around upstairs. In fact, no noise at all. No TV, radio, car, or even wind noise. Just a nagging, numbing cold.

  The backs of my wrists were lashed palms outward to the top of the iron bed's headboard to keep me from grasping the railing with my fingers. My ankles were secured similarly at the other end. I tried throwing my hips ceiling-ward to see if I could rock the bed. It bucked a little, producing almost no noise or progress.

  Then I heard footsteps above me.

  The cellar door opened, and a light flicked on. High heels clattered lightly on the slat steps. I decided to play possum.

  The shoes sounded more muffled on the concrete floor. A whiff of perfume preceded the accented, female voice.

  "Open your eyes."

  I stayed asleep.

  "My husband put pressure thing on the bed. Wire upstairs. I know you awake. Open your eyes or I hit you in the nuts."

  I opened my eyes.

  She smiled down at me. She was Vietnamese, maybe thirty-five. Probably five feet tall without the heels. She wore designer jeans, a cowlneck sweater, and a baby blue parka. She held a short hunting knife in one hand and a short leather sap in the other.

  "Better. When my husband come back, you talk. You talk plenty. But now you be quiet. O.K.?"

  I nodded my head.

  She looked me over, head to foot. "You good-looking man."

  I didn't nod.

  She set her knife down on the bed. She unfastened the top two buttons of my shirt and slid her hand in. It was warm against my cold skin. She ran the tips of her nails lightly over my right nipple. She spider-walked her fingers over to my left nipple and did the same.

  "You like?" she said, licking her lips.

  I nodded, very slowly.

  She slipped her hand out of my shirt and drew it slowly down my front. She stroked and probed very gently around where my zipper would have been.

  "Ah," she said huskily. "You like a lot."

  There was a flash of brighter light through the window and the crunching of tires on gravel. She dropped the sap and used both hands to quickly rebutton my shirt.

  "Too bad," she whispered as she snatched up her weapons and click—trotted away and up the stairs. It looked to be a long evening.

  * * *

  "We're in Mexatawney. 'Bout fifty miles from the D. of C. Kind of a fishin' community come springtime. Probably nobody in a mile to hear you if you was to holler or anything."

  I still had the tape on my mouth, is all I could do was listen.

  Ricker shifted his butt on the creaky dinette chair. He'd brought it down the stairs with him. He sat on it backwards, the back of the chair toward me and him astride the seat, like a saddle.

  "Yessir, you're in the house of a friend of mine from the 'Nam. Curly Mayhew. 'Nother Looziana boy. He's part of, oh, kind of a 'club' I belong to. Senior noncoms. Old Curl's a good man, helps another member out, just like in the 'Nam. Don't know how he stands this commutin' though. Fifty miles. Each way, each day. Whew!"

  I blinked a few times. Ricker brought his wrist up to his eye level, exaggeratedly, like an actor in a kid's play. "Yessir, old Curl ought to be awingin' his way to Boston right now, havin' checked out of your hotel for you and havin' paid cash and all for room, cab, and airfare." Ricker tilted his head so his face and mine were on parallel planes. "Yeah, he don't really favor you a lot, Lootenant, but him and you are about the same size and he was wearin' your suit and all. Even got your overcoat back." Ricker righted his head. "For room clerks and cabbies and stewardi, I reckon he'll pass."

  I heard the cellar door open and the clacking approach of my earlier visitor.

  "Ah," said Ricker looking up. "Here comes the wife."

  She came into my view, carrying a TV tray with a towel draped over it. I couldn't see what was on the tray, but I didn't smell any food. Despite the cold, I could feel the sweat forming in my armpits.

  “This is Jacquie, my wife." He winked at me. "But then I understand you met a bit earlier."

  Jacquie gave her husband a light cuff on the shoulder, then let her hand rest on the back of his neck. She aligned her body in an S curve like the Madonna statues in medieval churches, but without the spiritual aspirations.

  "Hello," she said
to me, smiling.

  I nodded a greeting.

  "Jacquie's a real helpmate, Mr. Cuddy. Yessir, we met when I was in the 'Nam, of course. I promised her daddy I'd take her back to The World and be real good to her." He looked up at her lovingly. "And once you promised her daddy something, you made good on it. He was a major in the National Police."

  Ricker let his gaze slide slowly, melodramatically over to me. "Interrogation specialist. He taught Jacquie everything she knows."

  I tried to keep a poker face, but I expect that my eyes might have flickered toward the TV tray. My mind certainly went back to a different basement, halfway around the world, and the condition of Al's body.

  "Haw!" Ricker slapped his thigh. Jacquie giggled. "Oh, Lootenant, you're a good one, you are. But you can relax." He signaled toward the tray. Jacquie stepped to it. She picked up a syringe and did a careful squirt test.

  "Yessir," said Ricker, rising and stepping behind me. "We can't have another incident like Lootenant Sachs. No sir, that would be real suspicious. My orders, from another member of that club I mentioned, are truth serum for you. Yessir, I'd run clear out of old sodium P. Wouldn't you know it? Would've had to chase after some today, but fortunately old Curl had a bit of some new stuff in stock here. He got it through the club. Don't kill your memory or leave traces in the bloodstream. Now, how about that for progress?"

  Jacquie crossed over to me as Ricker clamped down hard on my left arm, immobilizing it. "Good old Curl. He was Quartermaster Corps in-country. Like a squirrel, Curl is. Even now, he never lets go a nothin' that might come in handy."

  Jacquie kneeled down on the floor alongside me. She pushed and bunched my sleeve past Ricker's grasp and above my elbow. She was wearing terrific perfume. She smiled a little more vividly as she jabbed the needle in. I felt the unwelcome, insistent surge of the drug into my arm. She pulled the needle out, and daubed my arm with a cold, wet cotton ball. Ricker let me go, and they rearranged themselves over by the chair. The perfect peacetime couple, a dream matching of cultures.