The Phantom Blooper

by Gustav Hasford

  As I leave the Quonset hut, trying to figure out the meanings of the papers in my hand, I hear the fucking pogue lifer reply to a comment from someone in the rear of the office. He says,

  "Yeah. It was a dumb grunt. Just another dumb grunt."

  Far in the rear of the office, someone laughs.

  Outside, in the cold light of a counterfeit sun, I laugh too. I don't say to myself, "Well done, Marine." But I do say, "There it is."

  Pulling a tour of duty in the military service of your country is like being put onto a chain gang for the crime of patriotism, except that on a chain gang you get shot if you run away and in the military you get shot if you stay.

  Walking to the bus station, I contemplate my bleak and hopeless future, a future populated by surly file clerks, loyal company men, hall monitors who grow up to be cops, brainless civil servants, sexless schoolmarms and stern librarians and Hitler Youth meter maids, and a whole catalog of pasty-faced bureaucrats bloated up fat and sassy with money extorted from taxpayers by force, sopping up gravy they didn't cook. The whole damned world is ruled by fucking pogue liters and Viet Nam has taught me that my religion is that I hate pogues.

  Still in uniform, I take a bus from El Toro to Santa Monica, California, via Los Angeles.

  Sleeping on the bus, I have a dream in which Charlie Chaplin turns into a werewolf and vomits up the arm of a child. Part of me is bleeding in the dream.

  Los Angeles is a big concrete refugee camp lost inside a Gordion Knot of freeways, a place where stores have iron bars over their doors and where bag ladies patrol the street picking up scraps.

  Santa Monica is by the sea.

  In Viet Nam, Bob Donlon never stopped talking about the glories of the Oar House bar. He made it into a legend.

  On the wall outside hang two huge boat oars.

  Inside, the Oar House is a dismantled carnival that has been glued onto the walls of a long narrow cave, a junkyard of the past and a museum of the bizarre. On the walls and ceilings hang branding irons, old movie posters, a brass diver's mask, a stuffed shark, a wooden wagon with a World War I German Iron Cross painted on the side, an old motorcycle, a canoe, a stuffed wolverine, a stuffed muskrat, a stuffed baby elephant, life-size clown dolls, and a painting of a guy picking his nose and coming out with a miniature cheeseburger.

  There's a lot of other stuff, but it's getting blurry.

  The floor is an inch deep with sawdust and peanut shells.

  Between chugging pitchers of beer I'm telling Katrina, a sexy German barmaid with hypnotic legs, who is as pretty as a silver dollar, the story of my life: "Like the Indians, we fight to stay on the land. On the land we are men. We are free. We don't need anybody. In the cities we are refugees. Katrina, the Indian agents gave government cattle to the Indians. Beef on the hoof. The proud Sioux warriors didn't know what to do with cattle. They didn't know how to kill them so they could eat them. When they got desperate, they stampeded the cattle and pretended they were buffalo, then rode them down and shot them with flint-tipped arrows. In refugee camps we have no dignity. We'll be forced to beg from the fucking pogue liters and live on their handouts. The pogues want us in the cities. They own the cities."

  Katrina does not speak English well, so she makes a good listener. At some point in my babbling I ask Katrina to call Donlon on the phone for me. I give her the number. "Tell him the Joker says to polish his brass and present his ass, most ricky-tick."

  Katrina calls, gives Donlon my Papa Lima, my present location.

  By the time Donlon comes in with a hippie girl I'm a hammered Marine hanging on to the bar, throwing marriage proposals at Katrina like darts, and mumbling about Song and the Woodcutter and Hoa Binh and Johnny Be Cool.

  Donlon and the hippie girl take me home with them and put me into bed.

  At breakfast there is little time for a reunion.

  "Welcome home, bro," says Donlon. He hugs me. He has grown paler and fatter. "Joker, this is my wife, Murphy."

  "Hi, Murphy," I say. Murphy is wearing blue jeans and a leather vest with nothing on underneath. On the front of the vest are two yellow suns and jagged yellow lines. Murphy has very big breasts and sometimes you can see a brown half-moon of nipple. Murphy is not a pretty woman, but she is very earthy, very attractive. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't smile. She walks over, hugs me, kisses me on the cheek.

  "Let's go, Murphy," says Donlon. "We're late."

  Donlon safety-pins a white band of cloth bearing a blue and red peace symbol around his bicep. Murphy puts on an armband that says MEDICAL AID.

  "Make yourself at home, Joker," says Donlon. "We'll be back tonight, maybe late."

  "Where you going?"

  "Federal Building in Westwood. Protest by the VVAW."

  "The what?"

  "The VVAW. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War."

  "I'll go with you."

  Donlon says, "It might get violent."

  I laugh. "If you're going, I'll go with you."

  Murphy goes into the bedroom and comes out with a logger's shirt and some faded blue jeans.

  "You can wear these."

  I say, "No. But thanks, Murphy. I'll wear my uniform. I'm proud to be a Marine."

  Donlon laughs. "Lifer!"

  I shrug. I say, "Once a Marine, always a Marine."

  During the drive to Westwood in Donlon's orange Volkswagen bug, Donlon says, "We sort of been expecting you to visit. We saw your picture in the L.A. Times. It said the Crotch souvenired you one Silver Star for being an outstanding and squared-away POW. All of the guys were glad to hear that you were a POW. The Green Machine had you down as MIA, but we all know what that means. We figured the gooks had planted you in a tunnel wall somewhere north of the Z."

  I say, "What a pretty picture."

  Murphy says, "It must have been bad over there, as a prisoner. "

  I say, "No, it wasn't so bad.

  Donlon says, grinning, "So did you ever meet the Phantom Blooper face to face?"

  I say, "Does a teddy bear have cotton balls? Does Superman fly in his underwear?"

  Donlon says, "Bullshit."

  I say, "No, that's straight skinny. The Phantom Blooper and I were tight. We used to hang out together down at the Viet Cong E.M. club."

  Donlon laughs. "There it is."

  Before we get to the Federal Building, Donlon brings me up to date. Donlon is studying poly-sci at UCLA. Animal Mother is alive; he escaped from a Viet Cong prison camp in Laos. He's still in the Crotch, a lifer, stationed at Camp Pendleton.

  Stutten lives in New Jersey and has a kid with a harelip.

  Thunder is a cop with the LAPD and is a star sniper on a SWAT team.

  Hand Job died of colon cancer at age twenty-two.

  Daddy D.A. is an alcoholic working as a mercenary with the Selous Scouts somewhere in Africa.

  Bob Dunlop joined the cancer-of-the-month club and is dying of cancer of the mouth.

  Harris, the hillbilly, shot himself in the head, but didn't die. When people ask him if he served in Viet Nam, he denies that he is a Viet Nam veteran.

  The Federal Building is so big that it dominates Westwood, the chic cluster of boutiques nestled against the campus of UCLA. Overlooking a vast veterans' cemetery that extends as far as the eye can see, the Federal Building looks like the Tomb of the Unknown Veteran.

  On the front lawn along Wilshire Boulevard, thousands of people are massed in the sun.

  There are banners and placards everywhere. A pretty teenaged girl's T-shirt reads: TO HELL

  WITH NATIONAL HONOR--WE WON'T BE USED AGAIN. And I see a middle-aged woman carrying a hand-lettered sign that says: MY SON DIED FOR NIXON'S PRIDE.

  Donlon parks the car ten blocks away and we walk back and join the crowd. We listen to a lot of fiery speeches. One vet says, "Viet Nam means never having to say you're sorry."

  Another says, "Viet Nam is like a piece of shrapnel embedded in my brain."

  Donlon steps up to the microphone and says, "I want all of
the FBI informers in the audience to raise their hands."

  Nobody raises a hand, but everybody looks around at everybody else.

  One of the guys behind Donlon raises his hand. The guy has a red bandanna tied around his head. He says, "I confess!"

  Everybody laughs.

  Donlon says, "That's just the King, people." To the King he says, "Your Highness, sit your silly royal ass down." The King makes a courtly flourish with his hand and steps back.

  Donlon continues: "Okay, now I want everybody who thinks that one of the individuals on either side of you is an FBI informer to raise your hands."

  Everybody looks around and laughs as all hands go up.

  Donlon does an about-face and addresses the Federal Building. "Yo, J. Edgar. How's it hanging?" Then, to the audience: "The FBI is the highest achievement of the federal civil service. It's the phone company with guns."

  The audience laughs and applauds.

  Most of the men in the audience have ragged beards and are wearing hippie beads, peace symbols, and military gear--mildewed boonie hats, faded utility jackets studded with unit patches and badges, representing all branches of the military.

  Donlon reaches over and takes my arm and pulls me to the microphone. "This is Joker, a brother, just back from the Nam. Come on, Joker, say something funny."

  I look at the audience and I think about what I should say to men who have gathered together to fight against their own war. When the silence starts to make me feel self-conscious, I say,

  "You can't fight bayonets with songs."

  Someone says angrily, "What does that mean?"

  "Yeah," says the audience.

  I say, "I mean that you people are warm-hearted, you're good people, but you are kidding yourselves if you think that slogans printed on gumballs are going to stop the Viet Nam war.

  The audience grumbles, jeers, moves closer to the podium.

  The King jumps forward and says, "He's right! Pick up the gun! Pick up the gun!" His face is wild. "Off the pigs!"

  Donlon pushes the King back, says to me and to the crowd, "Joker, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War observes a strict policy of nonviolence. We're not going to fight anybody.

  Not even against Nixon, the skull-king of San Clemente." He taps his armband. "I'm a peace marshal. That means that it's my job to prevent any of our people from resisting arrest by any means except passive resistance."

  I say to Donlon and to the crowd, "I wish you luck."

  Before anyone can say anything there is a sudden flurry to port. We all look over there and we see a long double line of the biggest policemen in the world advancing, faces hidden behind tinted Plexiglas helmet shields. The policemen are carrying long walnut nightsticks.

  Their uniforms are so blue that they look black. They attack, silver badges flashing in the sun like shards of burning metal.

  The black lines merge and whack at the edge of the crowd with nightsticks, attacking without warning and without mercy. Before we can react, chaos breaks out as tear gas canisters are lobbed in from starboard, followed by a second double line of cops, a blocking force.

  People run around in circles, trying to escape, choking on the tear gas.

  I see Murphy frantically distributing damp dishrags to be used as primitive gas masks.

  A ragged verse of the song "We Are Not Afraid" ripples through the demonstrators while white-helmeted tactical squads in blue flak jackets elbow their way through the trapped demonstrators, clubbing everybody. Some of the veterans lose their tempers and take swings at the cops with their fists while peace marshals try to restrain them.

  The King picks up one of the slim gray tear gas canisters and throws it back at the police.

  The smoking canister hits a cop in the kneecap and brings him down. This enrages the police even more.

  I see Donlon and some of the other peace marshals begging the police to have mercy. The police ignore the peace marshals and hit them with their nightsticks.

  I move toward Donlon and I hear a police Sergeant give the order: "Pound the shit out of everything hairy that moves."

  The cops converge on a fifteen-year-old girl. The girl is wearing a boy's sweater. The sweater is gold-colored and has a black high-school varsity letter on it. One cop gets behind the girl and latches a bar arm control on her throat with his nightstick, chokes her with his nightstick across her throat. Her tongue comes out. She's suffocating.

  The middle-aged housewife with the MY SON DIED FOR NIXON'S PRIDE sign moves clumsily, pulls at the cop's arm, but he shrugs her off. The cop says, "Get away from me, bitch. You're next."

  The housewife hits the cop with her cardboard sign. The cop releases the girl in the varsity sweater and allows her to collapse unconscious to the ground. Then he turns and hits the housewife in the face with his nightstick.

  The cops reach the microphone, where twenty disabled Viet Nam veterans in wheelchairs are jammed together. The cops dump the crippled and legless veterans out of their wheel-chairs onto the ground and beat them with nightsticks as they try to crawl away.

  I see Donlon trying to protect the wheelies and I'm right behind him, ready to kill. Donlon tries to talk to the cops, tries to reason with them, tries to calm them. But the cops are as reasonable as Brownshirts in Nazi Germany. When Donlon tells the cops that the crippled men are wounded veterans, the cops get even madder.

  One cop turns and hits Donlon in the face with his nightstick. Donlon falls.

  The cop who hit Donlon turns away and returns to beating the wheelies. The wheelies who have arms hold up their arms to block the blows.

  As I move toward Donlon some cop involved in a violent struggle drops his helmet. I pick up the helmet, which looks like headgear for a Martian gladiator.

  I charge the cop who hit Donlon. By the time he looks at me I'm already swinging the helmet and the helmet hits the cop's Plexiglas face shield and the face shield shatters and the cop's nose breaks and blood splatters the inside of the Plexiglas so that he can't see. While the cop takes off his helmet I get an armlock on his throat and I put my knee into the small of his back.

  I say, "Drop the nightstick or I will break your spine.

  Somebody lays a nightstick hard across one of my kidneys and it hurts and I fall down.

  When the police handcuff me I'm spread-eagled on the deck. Donlon is lying next to me, unconscious.

  A cop steps up to Donlon, says, "We're Viet Nam veterans too, asshole." The cop spits in Donlon's face.

  Another cop says, "That boy is going to lose that eye."

  The spitting cop says, "Yeah. Life is hard, then you die." And they both laugh.

  I'm herded together with a hundred other prisoners of war. The pigs don't see us as people anymore. We are no longer American citizens. We're the Viet Cong. We're the enemy. We are dupes of Moscow. We are round-eyed gooks and we have no I.D.

  Except for the guy they call the King. The King flashes FBI credentials at the cops and they let him go.

  A blond cop comes up to me, looks me over. He is a snarling, sneering little shit. "Look.

  Just lookie lookie," he says, and two more cops come over to check me out. Blondie taps my chest with his nightstick. "Look at this rack of fruit salad. He's got three Purple Hearts. But no stripes."

  Blondie gets up in my face and says, "You make me ashamed to be a Viet Nam veteran."

  I say, "You make me ashamed to be a human being."

  The blond cop slaps his nightstick into his gloved hand. "Yes, this is starting to look like another case of resisting arrest.

  Suddenly a cop, still wearing his helmet and with his face shield down, shoves his way past the three cops and says, "This one is mine."

  The helmeted cop drags me away and throws me roughly into the back seat of a black and white prowl car with a rack of blinking blue bubble-gum machines on top. Inside, the car smells of vomit, whiskey, and cheap perfume.

  As the prowl car pulls away, the blond cop and his pals wave goodbye to me and laugh know
ingly. I feel like a Viet Cong Suspect who has just been invited along for a friendly little chopper ride.

  I watch through the metal screen as the cop takes off his helmet and looks back at me, grinning.

  Thunder laughs. "Joker, you piece of shit. Where the fuck did you come from? We thought the Phantom Blooper wasted your ass at Khe Sanh, the day before we pulled out. You're a real ball of tricks, man. You're a fucking magician."

  Jerking myself clumsily up into a sitting position, I say, "Thunder, you fucking pogue lifer.

  What the hell are you doing being a cop? It's good to see you, man."

  Thunder shrugs. "Hey, man, maybe half of the guys in the department are Viet Nam veterans.

  What can I say? It's a good job. Good pay. Twenty years to a pension. I ain't no Einstein.

  They got me with the snipers. Only now I don't waste gook officers. I waste dirt-bags, junkies, and pimps."

  I say, "Yeah, sure, and dangerous criminals like those people back there."

  "Listen," says Thunder, looking back over his shoulder as he drives, "I hate that bullshit. I really do. Hey, Donlon is a friend of mine. I was looking for him when I found you.

  Somebody told me he was hurt. I'm in the VVAW too, Joker, only don't tell them that downtown. Orders is orders."

  I say, "How bad is Donlon hurt?"

  Thunder says, "Listen, we'll go to this place I know. I'll get you out of those cuffs and we'll have a couple of beers. Give the fucking pogue liters downtown time to book the demonstrators. I'll call the station and find out where they took Donlon. I didn't see Murphy.

  She must have got away."

  "That's solid, man. Thanks. And thanks for the huss."

  Thunder says, "Don't thank me, bro. We're family."

  I don't trust myself to make a reply.

  VVAW lawyers have Donlon out on bail in a couple of hours and Thunder drives me to the hospital in Santa Monica where they've taken him.

  Thunder stays in the car. "I can't be seen talking to Donlon," he says. "I'll wait for you. I'll drive you to the airport."