by Nagle, Pati
If only he could command that sort of obedience at night, when the bullets, mortar rounds, and grenades started to fly.
The route took them across a narrow sliver of jungle and back into cultivated land. Breaking through a bamboo thicket, DeWitt spotted the familiar rows of pepper and rice, with the ville on the far side.
The squad approached the area carefully but openly—this was theoretically Friendly country. The residents put away their farm implements and gathered between their hootches in plain sight—women, children, and old men. The headman, hat in hands, bowed and came forward, swallowing visibly at the sight of automatic weapons pointed at his chest. DeWitt gazed at him as one would look at a longtime acquaintance, and uttered several well-rehearsed lines of Vietnamese, a language he’d not known during his original tour.
The headman’s eyebrows rose, but without comment, he waved forward a middle-aged woman. She bowed to DeWitt. He explained again what was needed.
The mama-san gave a nod. Her lips drew back, revealing teeth made dark from long years of chewing betel nut. The expression could not have been called a smile, but it denoted consent, however grudging. Business was business. She called out in a raucous voice. A young woman came forward and bowed. The latter was small, her breasts mere bumps beneath the fabric of her pajamalike garments, but her eyes betrayed her worldliness.
DeWitt nodded his approval. At the mama-san’s burst of orders, the young woman disappeared into a hootch.
“Reggs.” DeWitt waved one of his men forward. “Got a job for you.”
Reggs had barely arrived In Country. His nostrils twitched nervously as he strode up, obviously concerned that his sergeant had singled him out.
DeWitt whispered in his ear.
“You want me to do what?” Reggs’s eyes went wide.
DeWitt took Reggs’s weapon, and tilted his helmet toward the drape over the doorway. “You got fifteen minutes. You think you can figure out the details?”
Reggs gaped like a fish. DeWitt waited calmly. The older man already knew the outcome. No doubt on the original patrol, Reggs would have been too much of a Fucking New Guy to realize the stakes. But it was early in the replay. Some part of the greenhorn private knew what he was being offered. This was not an opportunity to waste.
“The girl will help you out,” DeWitt said. “Go do America proud, boy.”
The squad spread throughout the ville, glances roving swiftly from here to there, fingers inside trigger guards, safeties off. If any of them found the circumstances odd, they didn’t reveal their doubts. DeWitt gave the mama-san the money and leaned back against a stack of woven baskets, just outside the hootch containing Reggs and the whore.
The villagers dispersed, pretending to return to their tasks. DeWitt kept his glance down, preferring not to think of what these conservative rural folk must think of the intrusion on their morality. It was one thing to look the other way when the mama-san took a selected few of the village’s young women to work the shantytown near the military base. It was a different thing entirely to have a transaction occur in their midst, at gunpoint. Though they didn’t show it, he knew an anger was burning behind their placid eyes, fuel for the Viet Cong cause. Had this been the original patrol, DeWitt would never have provoked them so.
But no shots would be fired inside the community. The villagers might all be VC. Snipers might have every last grunt in the crosshairs of their scopes right now. But both sides would save the bullets. Later, out Beyond in the jungle, after night extinguished the sun, there would be plenty of time for gunpowder, for lead, for principles.
Sounds leaked through the thatch of the hootch—little sighs of feigned female pleasure, amazed grunts from Reggs, and slapping, wet echoes of flesh meeting flesh at a frantic pace. Slowly, the tense lines in DeWitt’s forehead faded to smoothness.
The noises were a balm. For five years, through countless replays, DeWitt had seen Reggs die too young. Finally, DeWitt had realized what kind of bargains could be made with mama-san. Though he had yet to learn how to save Reggs completely, at least now when the mortars or the grenades or the punji pits took him out, the rifleman died a man.
“Hey, GI,” said the mama-san, startling DeWitt. “Numbah one girl you? Ownnee two dollah.”
She gestured at another of her charges. The woman was a nut-brown beauty, slightly older than the nymph currently seeing to Reggs’s needs, with hips wide enough to handle a big man like DeWitt. She shyly turned away when she realized he was watching her—a cultivated but effective bashfulness.
DeWitt frowned. What was happening here? He’d never been offered a girl of his own before. That hadn’t occurred in 1969, and it was not something he’d tried to make happen on any replay. If he had, he would have staged it differently—the offer would not have been made in unrefined, pidgin English, for one thing.
“No,” he told the mama-san. He willed the goodtime girl to vanish. But she remained, rich with the aroma of female sweat and betel-nut on the breath. He could hear her murmuring to the mama-san, and though his command of Vietnamese was inexact, he could have sworn they were discussing ways to make him linger.
Reggs’s voice rose in a huff-puff-ahhh and trailed away. DeWitt tapped his foot on the hard-packed clay until the beaming young man lifted the drape and stepped outside. “Move out!” DeWitt announced instantly.
The jungle waited, as threatening as ever. That hadn’t changed.
∞
Night came, and so did the NVA. The trees were suddenly full of them—just like the first time. The skinny devils had bunkers dug and claymores wired, they had mortars set up, catwalks strung in the upper canopy. They were ready, and no squad of American grunts, no matter how well led, stood much chance against them.
DeWitt chose the strategy that had worked the best in the recent past. He divided the squad into three groups, and sent the other two into areas he knew would draw the worst fire. With four men, he traced a long, circuitous route toward the LZ. He gave them one absolute rule—don’t shoot, no matter what. Gunfire always drew the wrong kind of attention. By silent running, they could avoid contact for many klicks. One of these times, they’d make it far enough.
Sometimes the men resisted. Sometimes DeWitt had to wait until the shit started coming in from all sides before he could gain their cooperation, and by then it was too late. Little of what he ordered them to do followed regulations. He had learned the words to convince them only through long, bitter trial and error. Once night fell, they remembered nothing at all of the other replays.
This time, it worked. He, Johnnie, Zuniga, Boone, and Smith glided through the bush, packs left far behind, listening to the firefights where their buddies had become pinned down. The only time they entered battle themselves was when DeWitt took out a sentry with his bayonet.
He had never chosen this exact combination of companions. He always kept Johnnie with him if he could, but seldom brought Boone—only the memory of the last replay prompted him to do it now. Most of all, he regretted the absence of Welles. He hated being without an RTO. But more than once, the noise of the radio had betrayed the plan, and humping the equipment slowed the entire group down.
He realized his mistake when the rumble of aircraft began to shake the trees. Someone had called for air support.
“Down!” DeWitt shouted.
The rumble became a roar. Abruptly, branches evaporated off the trees behind them. Soil fountained. Hot lead cut a track through the jungle and right through the small knot of soldiers, like a giant’s scythe, come to harvest. Puff the Magic Dragon breathed.
The ringing in DeWitt’s ears drowned all other sound. Spitting grit, he lifted his head from the mulch.
The top half of Johnnie’s body lay near him. Near the gory remnant lay Boone’s head and possibly one of his arms. DeWitt choked and rolled to his feet, turning away. He staggered to the other two bodies. They were more intact, but just as dead.
His face contorted into a painful rictus, but he didn’t cry. Af
ter all these years, he had no tears left. The channels in his heart that carried his frustration, his anger and sense of loss, were so deep now that the emotions poured like a flashflood through him. He shook his fist at the sky, kicked the ground, and it was done. The familiar stench of despair rose up in a viscous mass, entered him, and dissolved all real feeling.
He stumbled off into the jungle. He didn’t bother choosing a direction. Any route he took led to the same place.
∞
At some point, as he plodded along, eyes half-closed and mind numb, the surface beneath his feet changed. He looked down. Linoleum. He was standing on his kitchen floor.
Three muddy footprints lay between the refrigerator and the sink. The tread marks were distinctive—the characteristic spoor of combat boots. They came from nowhere. They led nowhere. Yet there they were.
DeWitt lifted his foot. The bottoms of his shoes contained not a speck of mud. And he was wearing his Sunday loafers, not boots. His gun was gone, too. And his fatigues. And the leeches.
He sighed. Moistening a sponge, he cleaned the floor. Wanda wouldn’t want a mess waiting when she got back from the pizza parlor.
As he rinsed out the sponge, he noticed a tiny sliver of bamboo. This he kept, taking it to the bin under his work bench. He put it beside the photograph of Boone’s girlfriend.
The bin contained a melange of strange objects: The chain from a set of dog tags. Four spent cartridges from an M-16. Several tins of C-rations. Leaves from a number of tropical plants. A rabbit’s foot. An annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. A locket containing an ersatz daguerreotype of Smith’s girlfriend.
Sometimes, DeWitt would open the bin and sit for hours, stroking the rabbit’s foot—that had been Johnnie’s—or sifting through hand-written notes, memorizing the addresses, imagining that he might make use of them again.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I have a message from your son.”
“My son died in Vietnam.”
“I know, but he gave me a message for you.”
Sometimes they believed the communication really was from their son. Sometimes they shouted into the phone that DeWitt had better never call again or they’d tell the cops. He never tried to explain how the duty had fallen to him. If they asked, he said he’d carried the word for years and neglected to pass it along.
He especially remembered Johnnie’s mother, crying in relief to hear that Johnnie knew who his real father was, a secret that she had always been ashamed she had never told him before he left for Vietnam.
The Purple Haze had done good things. Knowledge, mementoes—he’d brought these things back. He could do that if he stepped in the right places, took the right turns, and made it as far as the LZ. How else had he survived the first time, if not for the luck of a step here, a turn there? One of these days, his buddies would be as lucky as he. They’d cross the threshold, alive. All he had to do was keep going back for them. Jesus Almighty had given him a gift. He meant to use it.
His daddy had taught him, when he was young, a man doesn’t abandon his people.
∞
The haze clung to the horizon as he rode to work Monday morning. DeWitt saw a violet plume in his rear view mirror, rising from a factory smokestack. But there was no smell of ozone, no sense of shadows walking. DeWitt’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel, anticipating the cold kiss of a trigger guard against the calluses.
He worked that day listening for the whine of malarial mosquitoes. That night, Wanda’s body against him pressed with the heat of a Southeast Asian noon. The orgasm she gave him brought only partial relief. A summons stretched like a tripwire across his path, waiting for his blundering foot.
By midday Tuesday, he jumped when his supervisor suddenly appeared around the partition of his work cubicle.
“Langdon, could you come in for a minute?”
DeWitt set down a sheaf of invoices and stood up. As always, his boss didn’t wait. DeWitt caught up with him at the threshold of the executive suite.
“Close the door behind you.” The older man took his seat behind the desk, and waved for his employee to sit in the guest chair.
A trickle of sweat stained the back of DeWitt’s starched cotton shirt. If this were about daily business, his boss would have had him lean over the desk, to view whatever material he was working on.
“Can you guess why you’re here?”
DeWitt swallowed. “Sorry, Mr. Sawyer. I’m afraid I have no idea.”
Sawyer pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his bifocals. The pale puffiness under his eyes exaggerated his owlish, half-blind stare. His stern look was so at odds with the words that followed that DeWitt had to repeat them in his head:
“I’ve decided to give you a promotion.”
DeWitt blinked twice. “Wh-what?”
Sawyer coughed. “I must say no one was more surprised than I at your good work, young man.” His voice squeezed the last two words out; as if sensing too late that to call a man near forty young was unnecessarily dismissive.
DeWitt said nothing.
“I’m not the sort who likes to admit he’s wrong, DeWitt, but I thought I ought to be straight with you.” Sawyer tapped his pen against his desk blotter. “I only hired you because of affirmative action. Oh, you were qualified, yes, but so were ten other guys. You got the job because you were black.”
One of DeWitt’s scars itched. Not any of the ones from ’Nam. The old scar, from childhood.
“You knew that, didn’t you?” Sawyer stated.
DeWitt flushed. “Yes.” The only surprise was that the man was saying it out loud.
“I thought you might. I know I must not have been friendly, at first. It was never anything personal. I just don’t like regulations telling me who I can and cannot hire.”
“I understand,” DeWitt mumbled.
“You wouldn’t have lasted ninety days here if you hadn’t done your job. I thought you should know that. Maybe you’ll understand how much thought I put into this promotion. It’s strictly my idea. You’ve worked hard for me for two years, DeWitt. That’s what counts. Not some quota bullshit.” Finally, a smile blossomed on Sawyer’s face, bringing into view bright teeth and grandfather smile lines. “I’d meant to do this at the end of the quarter, but I decided to move it up a bit. Your new salary is effective with this paycheck. Call it a wedding present.”
The acid in DeWitt’s stomach slowly changed to alcohol, as he realized the man was not joking. “Th-thank you, Mr. Sawyer,” DeWitt whispered.
He said other, inane things, but registered none of them in memory. The next he knew, he was back in his office. His heartbeat was just returning to normal. He sagged back in his chair.
And guffawed—deeply, from the diaphragm. Was it his imagination, or had the weather turned less muggy? He sighed, unable to wipe the smile from his lips. Too bad Wanda wouldn’t be back until evening. He wanted to call her.
He pulled a cigar out of his desk drawer—saved ever since Tony down the hall had become a father last winter. He lit it, and let the smoke drift lazily toward the ceiling panels.
The smoke took on a purplish tinge.
Abruptly DeWitt was on his feet. To his surprise, the smoke changed back to blue gray and fled up into the ceiling vents.
∞
Not until Friday did the haze call him. There it was, hung like a shower curtain across the office foyer, as he reached for his keys to lock up—he was the last to leave, having worked late in an effort to show how seriously he regarded his new responsibilities.
He viewed the threshold with slumped shoulders. On Tuesday, he had been fresh, prepared. By now, he was beaten down not only by the wait, but by the rigors of a long work week. But he made his feet cross the carpet. He strode through, tasting the ozone.
The road, the rice paddy, the blazing sun greeted him as always. Then his eyes narrowed in surprise. The path had shrunk to a mere fold in the elephant grass. Not that it had ever been a prominent trail—soldiers learned no
t to leave such traces. But this time the way looked neglected, almost as if feet had never trod upon it.
DeWitt reconnoitered. Instantly he ducked into the elephant grass and flicked off the safety of his M-16. To his left, in the distance, he saw someone.
The figure was a teenage Vietnamese girl. Wearing a pair of Guess jeans and a white tee shirt, she sat at a tiny stand marked LEMONADE.
DeWitt’s scowl deepened. This was not normal. This should be against the rules. The Purple Haze had shown him many sides of unpredictability, but they had always made some sort of sense in context.
His head ached fiercely. Lifting the helmet, he rubbed his forehead, all the way up to his receding hairline.
Confused, DeWitt pulled his hand away, as if stung. In 1969, he hadn’t been the least bit bald. He stared at his palm—the creases were deeper than they should be. Closing his eyes, he shook his head, and when he looked again, his hands were smooth and youthful. He touched his head. The hairline was where it was supposed to be.
“Sarge? Sarge?” whispered a voice.
DeWitt jerked his head up, recognized Boone’s whiny, nasal tone, and said, “On my way.”
Boone was at the far side of the punji pit, with Zuniga. DeWitt gestured for them to move ahead of him, and soon they came to the shade of the huge teak, its trunk looped with vines. The rest of the squad waited in the usual places.
Johnnie came forward, thumb offered. “Good to see you . . . brother,” he said, with an odd hesitation. “Tell us about the world.”
He sounded as tired as DeWitt. In fact, he and the others had been sounding tired for many replays now, DeWitt realized. It seemed normal now, yet there had been a time when the whole squad had brimmed with hope and vitality each and every time they set out.
DeWitt sat and talked for the one precious hour the Purple Haze allowed. This time the squad sat in a circle, to the last man, listening carefully, offering little or no comment. The words poured out of DeWitt’s mouth, so fast he didn’t even take time for his usual half dozen cigarettes.
And again, the hour expired. Again, all too soon. As he stood up, his knees afflicted with a strange, rheumatoid stiffness, he knew this replay was going to end early, far short of the LZ. The men all had death peeking through the membranes of their thousand yard stares.