The Preserve

by Patrick Lestewka

  Only one city fit the bill: Tinseltown.

  I returned in the Fall of 1975 and rented a bungalow off Encida Boulevard. I purchased time at a Burbank studio, adopted the director’s name of “Cyril St. Cyr,” and hung out my shingle as an adult film producer.

  You reach a saturation point, of course. I’ve seen more cumshots than a veteran glory hole guzzler, heard more faked orgasms than an octogenarian billionaire with a trophy wife, smelled so much sex it’s permeated my nostrils the way smoke will permeate a wool sweater. About the only thing that gives me a boner anymore is a hot shower, good Szechuan takeout, and a Lakers game on NBC. My job has become just that, with all the tedium, self-doubt, and borderline loathing felt by any beancounter trapped in any dead-end occupation.

  “Give us the money shot, big guy!” I shout now, moments before Chad blows his load on Charity’s jutting chest with a heifer-like grunt. I’m astonished—not pleasantly—when Chad’s cock burps out a weak, thin, dismal stream of jizz. Semen does not so much spurt as stagger out of his heroically-proportioned cock, as if the long march has left his little soldiers exhausted. An eighty-year-old eunuch could’ve done better.

  “Poor guy’s a dribbler,” Frederico whispers to me.

  “Uhhh…that’s a wrap, I guess.”

  The crew starts taking down the klieg lights, tripods, and tinting screens. Charity’s pusher hands her a clean towel and she wipes Chad’s deposit off her tits with a brisk swipe. The pervy old producer had freed his cock from his robe—it resembled a baby mouse, or, charitably, a shaved vole—and had been flogging it desperately up until Chad’s less than stellar finale. Now he tucks the poor shriveled thing away and heads onto the balcony, shaking his head in dismay.

  I congratulate everybody on a job well done, even Chad. Who am I to break his heart? As I’m climbing into my Jeep Cherokee, Charity sidles alongside and cadges a lift.

  I drive down Mulhulland’s twisting slope, aiming for Sunset Boulevard. The sky is darkening, only a few blue ashes of light to the west, over the Pacific. Charity’s wired out of her mind, chirping on about the outrageous price of liposuction. Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” lilts out of the speakers.

  I stare at the man who stares back at me in the rearview mirror. The man is thirty-nine years old, teetering on the verge of true middle age, buttery from years of liquid lunches. His hair is pinned back in a gray-streaked ponytail that he knows looks faggy but is a necessary evil in the industry. This man has spent so many years just happy to be alive, passed two decades trying to forget what he has seen in the dark jungles of Vietnam, spent half a lifetime struggling with the concrete knowledge that, no matter what filth fills his camera lens, he can always say, with terrifying sincerity: I have seen worse.

  No family. No children. No ties. The man wonders how his life might have unfolded had he not enlisted. Would he have saved his mother from his father’s tyranny? Enrolled in college? Earned a degree? Met a pretty young freshman, married her, house in the suburbs, two-and-a-half children, the prototypical American family? Was there ever a chance, however remote, that he might not be haunted by dreams in which the skinned limbs of faceless Vietnamese children burst through the black jungle soil, a million legs and fingers and toes swaying like wheat in a wind-whipped field?

  Did that possibility even exist?

  Charity’s condo is off Sepulveda. By the time I drop her off she’s gone through one vial of coke and is itching for another.

  “Call me,” she says, leaning over for a cheek-peck and crotch-squeeze, the traditional porn biz adieu. “I love fucking for you, Cyril.”

  It strikes me that, despite working on-and-off for nearly five years, we don’t know each other’s real names. Ten feet from her door, she pukes. Illuminated under the glare of arc-sodium security lights, she appears to have vomited white-flecked blood.

  I drive up Mulholland into the Hollywood foothills, stopping near the summit of Mount Lee, a stone’s throw from the Hollywood sign that Peg Entwhistle, a fading starlet, made infamous by jumping to her death off the fifty-foot high “H.” This city will do that to you. Chew you up, spit you out. It’s nothing personal. The town was here before you arrived and will remain long after you’ve gone. Its highways and byways, thoroughfares and side-streets, mansions and flophouses are all part of a great, glittering illusion, an illusion that always promises but seldom delivers. The town does not care about you, whether you live or die. It is a dream factory.

  And dreams—like nightmares—never die.

  A Smith and Wesson .38 rests in my glove compartment, loaded with hollowpoint slugs. If anyone ever asked, I would tell them it is a precaution against the road-ragers plaguing the freeways.

  Of course, that would be a lie.

  The truth?

  It’s my fifty-foot high “H.”

  By the time I arrive home, early morning sunlight is throwing long embers over the horizon. I empty my mailbox and leaf through the envelopes.

  Bill. Bill. Invoice.

  Now what the hell’s this?

  — | — | —

  War Zone D, South Vietnam

  July 15th, 1967. 18:30 hours.

  A-303 Blackjack had been on the hump for six hours. They carved a zigzagging path through the jungle, Oddy walking point. The landscape was post-apocalyptic: copses of trees shattered by Stinger missiles, hilltops blackened with napalm scars, the sickly-ripe smell of corpses left to rot on the jungle floor.

  They waded across a fast-moving stream, firearms held at port arms. On the far shore, Tripwire shook a canister of chili powder along the banks to throw off the dogs. Zippo pulled a bottle of bug juice and squirted it on a plump leech stuck to the side of Crosshairs’s throat. When he showed it to the sniper, Crosshairs recoiled in disgust. Zippo pulped the blood-fattened leech between his fingers and grinned.

  About a klick past the stream, the unit came across a tiny hamlet. Most of it had burned down, the bamboo huts reduced to smoldering ash and char. The smoke from the burning hootches smelled like straw; it moved in patches across the village square, not thick, just a light, foggy rippling. The ground was stitched with bullet holes, small deep craters where the Cobra gunships had laid down long lines of fire.

  An old man lay dead in the middle of the square. It looked as if he’d been carrying water: a length of bamboo with large pails on either side still hung around his shoulders. He lay on his back in the square, a ragged hole in his chest where the gunship’s .50-caliber bullet ripped through. Flaming straw fell on his face, igniting his hair, scorching his face beyond recognition. The only noise came from the pig pen, where three or four piglets ran in mad, squealing circles. Slash went over and opened the pen’s gate. The piglets tore off into the jungle.

  The boy could’ve been thirteen, though maybe younger. He sat in front of a burned hut. He had black hair and brown skin. He was drawing strange patterns in the dirt: intersecting lines, concentric circles, odd looping scrolls.

  “The hell’s he doing?” Gunner said.

  The boy didn’t look at the men. His fingers continued to describe weird shapes and configurations in the loose red earth. The men searched the wreckage but there wasn’t much to find. Zippo and Crosshairs dragged the burned man into some bushes and wrapped him in an old blanket. The boy drew more, his canvas spreading and growing; sometimes he smiled to himself, sometimes frowned.

  “Why’s he doing that?” Gunner said.

  “It doesn’t matter why, son,” Oddy said. “He just is.”

  Answer stepped past the boy, into the burned hut. “In here,” he said. The men went in and saw the bodies. An infant and an older woman and a younger woman. They were all badly burned and there must’ve been something wrong with the old woman’s legs because she was still sitting. She must’ve sat all the while, even as the flames consumed her.

  When the men dragged the bodies out, the boy kept drawing. In fact, he drew a bit quicker. He placed the palms of his hands against his ears, then over his eyes, then
his mouth, each one in time, then went back to his odd task. His limbs were very graceful, his body tight and limber. What was he drawing; what was he trying to say?

  “The fuck’s he doing?” Gunner said.

  Tripwire offered the boy some M&Ms, which he usually saved for badly injured soldiers. The boy wouldn’t look at him. Tripwire scattered some candy on the ground near his legs, over the strange things he’d drawn. They looked very colorful against the brown earth and black soot. “C’mon,” he said softly. “Try them.” The boy traced circles around each M&M: a dozen multicolored eyes peering up from the ground.

  The men wrapped the burned bodies in blankets and fronds. There was nothing more they could do. “Let’s diddlybop,” Oddy said. The unit moved out. Zippo looked over his shoulder. The boy was still drawing, grinning, alone in the still-smoking hamlet.

  They marched for another hour and reached a bamboo thicket. Slash removed a machete from his utility belt and set to work cutting through it. The thicket terminated on the ridge of a deep, wide valley spread with breadfruit and other dark-leafed trees.

  “Hunker down,” Oddy said. “Chow.”

  The men unshouldered their packs. Zippo cleared a spot in the wet earth, lit a cube of incendiary C4, and set a pot of water atop the smokeless flames. They boiled rice and mixed it with tinned beef, Spam, or whatever c-rations they had. None of them could cook worth a shit and their dishes possessed all the flavor of wet napkins.

  “Tastes like ripe ass,” Gunner said.

  “What would you know?” Crosshairs said. “All the amphetamines you been jamming, I’d be surprised you got a tastebud left in your head.”

  “Gotta stay sharp.”

  Oddy slapped Gunner on the shoulder and said, “Keep jamming on those little pink pills and you’re gonna wind up sharp as a balloon.”

  The soldiers ate in defiance of the food’s flavor, needing the nourishment. Nobody talked about the dancing boy. Best to forget and move on. Memories like that didn’t do anyone any good.

  Afterwards, Crosshairs produced a deck of cards from his helmet’s webbing and he and Slash played poker by the light of the dying sun. Gunner and Zippo leaned together against a shattered tree trunk and talked of the haunts they would frequent on their next visit to Ho Chi Minh City, which whores they intended to fuck, and in which orifices. Answer sat on a decomposing stump far from the others. Oddy and Tripwire crouched near the valley ridge, smoking Luckies.

  “How far you think we got to go before hitting this village, Sarge?”

  “The Viet told Answer what—ten, twelve klicks?” Oddy said. “Getting close.”

  Tripwire said, “You think he might’ve been lying?”

  “You remember anyone feeding Answer a lie?”

  Tripwire chewed on it for a moment before saying, “I guess not, no.”

  “Boy could make Satan himself roll over.”

  Oddy lit a fresh Lucky off the butt of the last and passed the pack to Tripwire.

  “Does it make sense to you?” Tripwire said. “VC stockpiling arms in a pissant village miles from the hot zones?”

  Oddy rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Not to get overly philosophical, son, but nothing about this conflict has ever made much sense.”

  Tripwire nodded. It was all he could do when Oddy got in this frame of mind. “Logistically, though, it’s a mindfuck. Transporting the weapons alone…”

  “I know what you’re saying,” Oddy said. “Very un-Charlie. Then again, he’s always doing what’s least anticipated, uh?”

  They sat in silence, staring out over the Vietnamese landscape. Lush and vibrant, the valley’s green canopy etched in ebbing sunlight, the sky now a dull orange, a lingering band of copper tracing the Earth’s curve. The knowledge that he could call an airstrike and destroy acre upon acre of this beautiful countryside filled Oddy with a gnawing melancholy.

  Then, deep in the valley heart, a flash of light.

  “Gunner,” Oddy said. “Toss me your specs.”

  Gunner retrieved a pair of Bushnell high-powered binoculars and handed them to Oddy. “See something, Sarge?”

  Oddy put the binoculars to his eyes. The rest of the unit made their way over to the ridge. They squinted down into the valley, trying to spot what had twigged their Sergeant.

  “The village is down there,” Oddy said. “Almost missed it.”

  He handed the binoculars to Tripwire and pointed out the village’s location. It was about one-thousand yards down-slope, in the base of the valley. A small circle of thatched huts, two outlying longhouses, a central fire pit. It seemed to be deserted: the fire remained unlit despite the evening’s chill, no smoke rose through the vents in the huts, nobody congregated in the village proper.

  “Where is everyone?” Tripwire asked.

  Oddy shrugged. “Could they be in one of the longhouses?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Crosshairs, give it a boo.”

  Crosshairs retrieved his sniper rifle, its Gewher scope much more powerful than the binoculars. “Nothing,” he said, scanning the village. “They could be inside, but…sitting in the dark?”

  “Doesn’t make any sense,” Zippo said.

  “Maybe they got their wind up,” Answer said. “They know we’re coming.”

  They retreated from the ridge. The soldiers took a knee, waiting on Oddy’s decision. Whatever choice he made, they would obey. Not out of fear or responsibility, but out of a deep and enduring respect. Even Zippo and Gunner, who hailed from states in which people of Oddy’s complexion were once lynched and still treated as second-class citizens, accorded Oddy their undying loyalty.

  “We could wait for daylight,” Oddy said. “But we operate best at night. Up to it?”

  Six heads nodded steadily.

  “Okay.” Oddy sketched a diagram in the dirt. “Zippo, Slash, Answer, I want you to flank around the village and set up on the far side. Gunner, Tripwire, Crosshairs, and I will move down the valley and string out along the near side. You boys on the far side, position yourselves to the left of the longhouses, we’ll take the right. That’ll prevent any crossfire. Wait for my signal before moving in.” He removed a Mossberg pump-action shotgun from his pack and said, “Gear up.”

  Crosshairs loaded a fresh clip into his G3SG/1 sniper rifle while Zippo checked the jellied-fuel in his flame-thrower’s dual tanks. Slash strapped a bandolier of fragmentation grenades across his chest. Tripwire filled the pockets of his combat jacket with explosives, blasting caps, insulated wire, and a detonating plunger. He sang his standard pre-combat melody: “My Boyfriend’s Back,” by The Angels.

  “That’s a fag-song,” Gunner said, rolling a lambskin condom over the barrel of his Stoner M63A1 light machine-gun.

  “Hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back,” Tripwire sang, blowing Gunner a kiss. The burly Iowa native flipped him the bird.

  Answer smeared black Kiwi shoe polish on his face and hands and slammed a clip into his M16. The Magnificent Seven were ready to rock and roll.

  “Flanking team,” Oddy said, “take as wide a berth around the village as you can. I’d like to be in position while there’s some daylight left. You dig?”

  “We dig,” Zippo said.

  “So let’s do it to it.”

  Zippo, Answer, and Slash disappeared down the slope. Oddy gave them fifteen minutes before leading the remaining team members down a winding speed trail into the valley basin. Underneath the jungle canopy, everything was tinted chlorophyll-green. To his left, perhaps three-hundred meters, Oddy heard swift-running water. He asked Gunner for the acetate-covered map and unfolded it across the machine-gunner’s broad back.

  “That’s a major waterway,” he said. “A tributary of the Song-Hu river, wide and deep enough to support boat traffic.”

  “Think that’s how the weapons are being transported?” Gunner asked.

  “Could be,” Oddy said. “I thought they’d be air-dropped or slogged in on foot but—
”

  “Charlie’s always doing what’s least expected,” Tripwire said.

  It was a sketchy situation, an ambush waiting to happen. Charlie, you fucking snake, Oddy thought, What are you up to? A B-52 Bomber passed low overhead, the force generated from its six engines vibrating the soldier’s bodies. Something in the Sergeant, a subconscious twinge, told him to pull back and assess the situation. But his conscious mind assured him the men were amped-up and raring to engage. He folded the map and tucked it into Gunner’s pack.

  “Can’t be far now.”

  The village appeared through a gap in the foliage. In the gathering dusk, the huts cast long shadows, their outer walls stained with dark slashes that could have been oil, or river mud, or blood. Embers shimmered in the firepit and pots were ranged on the hot rocks. The longhouses stood in darkness, not a hint of movement from within. It was as if the villagers had grown weary of their location and elected to abandon their homes, a mass exodus, leaving their possessions behind.

  Either that, or someone—something—had beaten them to the punch.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” Crosshairs said.

  “On a nature hike?” Gunner said. He wasn’t smiling.

  Tripwire whispered, “Bad mojo, Mogumbo.”

  Oddy set the binoculars on the bridge of his nose and surveyed the left flank of the far longhouse. He whistled shrilly, the sound a fair replication of a jungle bird’s call. A reply came from the tree line behind the far longhouse. “They’re in position.”

  “Something’s righteously fucked here, Sarge.” The note of apprehension in Tripwire’s voice was jarring. “You think they’re waiting inside the huts—armed?”

  They’d all heard horror stories of headstrong units charging into seemingly safe situations only to be surrounded and torn to shreds by disguised enemy troops, or sometimes even villagers with single-shot Chinese rifles and pitchforks.