by Ron Lealos
A gecko poked its head through the louvers on the window to Colleen’s right. The little green lizard’s pink tongue flicked in and out in search of a mosquito, and his bugged out eyes studied Colleen almost as intensely as I watched the striking woman.
Wrinkles formed on Colleen’s forehead, and her green eyes turned up the temperature on my face hotter than a pound of burning C-4. She tapped the Bic on the stack of files. Colleen’s stare had me locked into her sights.
“So you don’t really know if Tran’s mama-san is dead or alive?” Colleen asked.
Ham and lima beans were the most hated meal of all the shit that passed for food the US government gave to boonie rats, much of it left over from the Korean War. Ham was supposed to be a dark red when cooked and lima beans white. Ham and lima beans in a C-ration can were a solid gray and smelled like they had been aging in the tropical sun since Dien Bien Phu. The taste and texture was worse than chewing on a letter from The World. Fruit cocktail was number ten best, and no boonie rat without a serious head wound would trade a dozen ham and lima beans that were number one worst for a fruit cocktail. Colleen was a fruit cocktail.
The ant bite itched, but Colleen’s eyes were causing a tingle to start somewhere else. An itch that hadn’t been scratched in months and had been MIA since I wasted Liem.
The bent folding chair was causing me to feel off balance and dizzy. Maybe it was the dense, hot air. I stretched my bush boot to the left and tried to straighten myself.
“The vil was home to an American grunt,” I said. “We killed a couple of the VC. Charley’s brothers will want revenge. If the mama-sans were alive, they’re paddy food now. Or packing supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But you can check yourself. The vil is called Do Lai 3 on the topo maps.”
The left hand that held the Bic to Colleen’s mouth was ringless. There was no telling white circle around the tan of her ring finger. Colleen chewed on the tip of the Bic and tapped her other hand on the table.
“We will,” Colleen said. “Why don’t you bring Tran in? The bush isn’t any place for a baby-san to be without a mum. We can take care of him here.”
One of the buttons on the chest of my fatigues had gone missing. I tried to close the breach with my hand and felt the sweat on my body.
“What are you going to do with Tran?” I asked. “Let’s say his mama-san has joined her ancestors. I want to know exactly what happens next. I’m not bringing him in until you tell me.”
Freckles dotted Colleen’s cheeks. The brown spots were barely visible, but they seemed to be getting darker. No makeup covered her face. Colleen didn’t need any. She was refreshing. A cherry-vanilla ice cream cup the Hueys dropped into the LZ sometimes during resupply on holidays. Or after a successful op with a high body count.
Colleen nudged aside the pile of files and took a form from the top desk drawer. She held up the paper.
“We fill this chit out,” Colleen said. “On it are queries that it seems only you can answer for Tran. The bottom half is a report for the army medics who come by every few days. No totty is released without a physical. Before we put the kids out for adoption, we try to get them healthy. If you couldn’t tell, there’s a nursery and infirmary in back. Will you help me fill this in?”
Colleen smiled, the dimple a small mortar crater on her cheek, and pointed the Bic at me, the other hand on the form.
Days of rain, mud, and brown paddy water turned my feet white and wrinkled as soaking in a bathtub for hours. A hint of pink was at the bottom of every crease where the skin hadn’t rotted off. The pink off-white of Colleen’s face. With no wrinkles. I lifted my toes and felt bone on leather.
“You get intel on the Vietnamese parents?” I asked. “Maybe I can give you a hand.”
“Those chits are confidential,” Colleen said.
“So is Tran’s location,” I said. “But I’ll bring him in if you tell me where he’s going. Don’t want you to pay his new parents and they sell him back to some gook official. Maybe I’ve got sources I can use.”
“No can do, Mr. Smith.”
“Well, it seems we’re stuck like the Paris Peace talks, Miss O’Hara.”
“At least let us take a gander at him. For medical reasons.”
“I’ve compromised too many times in this hellhole. Tell me who his new mama-san’s going to be. Or you’ll never see him.”
“What alternative do you have, Mr. Smith?”
“It’s Russian roulette here anyway. Maybe I’ll di di to Saigon and see if I can get Tran adopted back in The World. For no money. Some of the baby-sans are getting on the Freedom Bird.”
“Well now, Mr. Smith. Won’t your unit miss you? Won’t your commanding officer think you’re AWOL? Or is your brief ‘need to know’?”
Colleen dropped the Bic on the desk next to an ancient black telephone with no dial and put her chin in her hands, elbows resting on the teak. Her whole face smiled like she had found a pearl in her fish ball.
The only sounds came from the clicking of the ceiling fan and the bleets of moped horns on Hoa Tao Street. Exhaust clouds drifted through the louvers and formed a layer of blue fog at the top of the room. The walls were molding in the constant tropical humidity, and the smell joined the orchid bushes outside the windows, fighting a losing battle with the traffic fumes. I watched Fred Astaire twirl Ginger Rogers around a ballroom filled with happy soldiers and thought about Bic pens. One of the stories that circulated in the firebases was about a grunt with chest wounds who couldn’t breathe. Under attack and lacking the proper instruments to vent the gagging solider, the medic stabbed the barrel of a Bic into the man’s throat. I could never look at a Bic again without seeing it dangling from a bleeding grunt’s neck.
The times when I didn’t wear boots in the boonies, I was on a black op. I became Vietnamese. I could walk with the stooped shuffle of a barefoot peasant, leaving no tracks but toe prints in the clay. In a pajama top and a conical hat, head bowed, not even the VC could tell I was a white devil. I could stand next to a hootch in the shadows and VC five feet away didn’t know I was there until the Gerber or the Hush Puppy gave them a wake-up call. Or the shitstorm exploded from one of my escort’s M60 pig machine guns.
Several methods were used for questioning VC. One was terror. Like hooking electrical clamps to a suspect’s balls. The wires led to a hand-cranked field phone. One turn on the crank and the lines lit up, causing the suspect’s back to arch and his eyeballs to pop out. It was called the Bell Telephone Hour. Another method was silence and isolation. But this method took patience, in short supply in the bush. Colleen and I used method two.
At Benning, I was taught to show no fear to a prisoner. Always be the one in control and powerful. The giver of life. Or taker. But Colleen’s stare made the itch spread from my feet, a sensation like laying my poncho on an anthill for a night bivouac.
The green fluorescent dial on my Navy SEAL watch read 4:21. I had to get back to Luong and Tran before dark, when the VC quit their day jobs and came out of the tunnels to take the night.
Relax, Morgan. Or Smith. Float in the land of opium dreams. Escape to a world of red hair and freckles rocking in a hammock strung between the green palms of China Beach. Hear the sound of emerald waves lapping on the white sand, and feel a ripe coconut breast pushed against your shoulder, fingers tracing the Delta through the hair on your chest. The touch of moist lips on your cheek and a knee pressed tight to your thigh. Let the smell of a woman fill your nose.
Green eyes darker than the pebbled skin of the gecko watched me. Colleen must have played this game. Or been trained well by whoever she worked for. Most of the white civilians in ’Nam had some cover to cloak them from their real mission of gathering information for one of the ABC intelligence agencies.
The watch read 4:25. Colleen’s chin still rested in her hands, and the power was shifting faster and more real than the Domino Theory.
The skirmish was over. But I hoped the battle had just begun. I pushed the leg that had g
one to sleep against the floor and straightened myself in the leaning chair.
“Okay, Miss O’Hara,” I said. “Let’s deal. I’ll bring Tran in. You do your med workup. I’ll be around. When you send him out, you agree to tell where he went.”
The short sleeves of Colleen’s white blouse stopped just below the curve at the edge of her shoulders. She raised her arms straight above her head and shook her hands awake. Through the gap in her sleeves, a thin bra covered breasts the size of moped headlights.
“Deal, Mr. Smith,” Colleen said. “I was askin’ myself how long it would take. For a tick, I thought you nodded off.”
My left side was numb from keeping upright in the bent chair. I stood, careful not to put too much weight on my leg.
“One more thing,” I said. “I’ll be back with Tran before dark. Then I’d like to continue rapping. I’m not dressed for a candlelit dinner, but maybe we can grab a beer somewhere.”
Colleen tried to rub the wrinkles out of her blouse top with her right hand. The left smoothed long, red hairs that were sticking to the side of her head.
“Bring Tran in, laddie, and I’ll see about that,” Colleen said.
She came around the desk and walked me toward the WEAPONS sign. Her leather sandals squeaked below bare toes with a hint of old white nail polish. A skirt fell below Colleen’s knees and didn’t cover calves shaped like Wilma Rudolph’s. A rope belt was tied loosely around her slim waist, and the ends hung to the top of thighs that showed through the cotton dress.
Maybe the Dexedrine, but tremors stopped me from snapping the steel buckle on the web belt holding the Colt. The canteen that was usually next to the pistol was what I really needed to help the dryness in my throat.
“All a twitter, soldier?” Colleen said. The dimple in her cheek was infecting the side of her face. Freckles around the craters turned the red of her thick hair. She touched the elbow of my camo fatigue.
Colleen’s fingers shook gently. Like Tran’s hand when he tried to hold the morphine tied to my neck. But her feel was the heat of the tropics. Hot enough for me to spontaneously combust.
The goddamn buckle wouldn’t snap. My fingers were numb and as useless as the leg that was still asleep. Colleen’s smell, musk with a trace of lavender, made my good leg feel it wouldn’t keep me standing much longer.
A swish of cotton and Colleen was in front of me. White teeth contrasted with the red lips turned up in a smile that was about to break out in a laughing jag. Her hands moved toward my waist, and she bent over.
“Let me help you, soldier,” Colleen said.
The last woman I touched was Liem.
Giao te. Fuck. Worse than Mother zipping up my fly before I went off to the army’s nursery school at Fort Lewis. I slid an inch back and dropped my arms to my sides. The muscles in my stomach tightened like Cassius Clay was about to punch me and a current from the Bell Telephone Hour ran to my groin.
The back of Colleen’s head gave a glimpse of a white neck dotted with freckles thicker and darker than the crop on her face. Just above her, a fat fly lumbered like a loaded B-52 and tried to find a landing strip in her hair. I swatted the fly away, afraid to continue looking down on the beautiful woman fumbling with my web belt.
“Stand still, soldier,” Colleen said. “I don’t have all day to mess about.”
I couldn’t see the smile that must be on Colleen’s face, but the curve of her back rocked with laughter, and the touch of her fingers on my waist played Roberta Flack singing “Killing Me Softly.” A peek down gave a view of the tops of freckled breasts that disappeared into a bra rimmed with faint sweat marks. Cleavage dark and inviting as a warm night on Au Tau beach.
Heavy breasts. Two of my favorite words in English. Almost as good as Freedom Bird.
The metal on the belt clinked together, and Colleen stood, rubbing her fingers. Green eyes stared into mine, filled with Irish cheer.
“Off you go now, Mr. Smith,” Colleen said. “Bring me that baby-san.”
I pushed the belt higher on my waist and checked the buckle.
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said.
A moment in time in the middle of a war zone where everything stops. Green eyes locked into mine tighter than banyan roots to the jungle clay. Smiles disappear and are replaced by something indefinable. But more electric and filled with promise. The only noise the M79 thumper in my chest.
Colleen stepped aside, almost stumbling in her sandals. She caught herself with the back of the bent chair.
The elbow of my fatigues brushed against her bare arm. I took two steps to the M16. The handle was cool and reassuring. Not a mystery like this Irish witch. I let the rifle hang from my hand parallel to the wooden floor.
The mock salute from Colleen was sloppier than even the most grizzled cynical boonie rat. Fingers bent, Colleen’s cupped hand bumped the top of her nose.
“Cheers, Mr. Smith,” Colleen said. “I’ll think about that pint while you’re fetching the baby-san.”
Phan. Shit. There was no way I could stop myself from smiling back at this redheaded Irish beauty. Just like I couldn’t resist Tran’s coos and the surprising tug that his touch brought to a soul burned by the dead. Maybe Colleen could save us both.
The M16 was in my right hand. I saluted with my left. The sunburn on my face caused my smile to bring a sharp pain to my cheeks.
“Thanks, Miss O’Hara,” I said. “I’ll be back with Tran in a few hours.”
Colleen still held her cupped hand loosely below her forehead, and her white teeth were surrounded by her smile. She was perfectly at ease, shoulders slumped and legs bent.
“Don’t mean nuthin’, troop,” Colleen said. “Just saddle up and ride ’em hard.”
The laugh started somewhere deep in a place that hadn’t been touched since the coughing fit after getting bazookaed with Fralich’s M16 barrel two months ago. The Cambodian Red seared my throat and caused me to spray the mouthful of Bud all over Fralich’s bare chest. His hand-carved leather peace sign dripped with beer that seeped into his skivvies.
I stood in front of this saluting beauty, tears running from my eyes and stomach feeling the knotted pain of laughter. And relief. Maybe her spirit would be my Freedom Bird.
The lump in my stomach made its way to my throat and lodged like a betel nut. I turned to the ripped screen door and pushed it open.
A convoy of olive-green jeeps and deuce and a halfs filled with ammo crates and C-rations was passing on Hoa Tao Street. Dust covered the grunts riding in the open trucks and formed clouds that hid the stalls across the road. The sun was almost to the top of the jungle canopy that grew on the distant hills.
I stood on the cement steps while the dust settled on the mopeds and pedestrians.
My feet hurt. The thin ragged socks under my bush boots were bunched in the toes. It was a hassle to keep pulling them up. After a few days in the mildew between my toes, my socks were as rank as a greased VC left in the jungle for weeks. And came apart just as easy. I wiggled my big toe to move a clump that was pressing against the bone and leather toe and looked back at the orphanage.
The last glimpse of Colleen through the torn mesh was a stunning redheaded woman smiling and watching me walk down the steps to Hoa Tao Street. I gave Colleen the two-fingered peace sign and headed south to fetch Tran feeling like I was under an Irish spell.
Shit. I couldn’t translate the zaps to my nerves. Not even a krait slithering past or a squad of NVA appearing like wraiths in the mist made the back of my neck twitch like this Irish witch. I couldn’t just pass it off as being around a white woman for the first time in nearly a year. No other had ever gotten into my skin like Colleen. Maybe there was a “no fly zone” that Tran penetrated and now was open for traffic. Maybe it was the way the corner of her mouth turned up just like Mom’s. Maybe it was the wild hair that made me think of faraway lost worlds. Maybe it was that I couldn’t remember ever feeling this way and certainly not this quickly. More likely, it was just ’Nam, a place whe
re any harbor that could possibly be safe cried out to be entered. Whatever the reason, a sense of purpose and hope—dead for months—returned and made me forget, for a moment, Liem’s eyes.
* * *
Only a few mama-sans were on the red ball, most already back squatting in front of cook fires stirring the night’s variation of rice. The ones I passed balanced elephant grass and bamboo baskets, filled with stalks or Coca-Cola from the black market that thrived in every city in ’Nam.
By the time I reached Luong and Tran’s bivouac, the sun was well below the horizon, and I could imagine the first stars of the Southern Cross through the humidity and smoke haze.
“Hoa binh,” I whispered to the green, eight-foot-high wall of grass. Peace. It was the password that Luong and I used to keep from mistakenly unloading a magazine of M16 bullets into the other.
“Chien trauh,” Luong said, just barely louder than the breeze that made the elephant grass sway in the evening wind. War. If he hadn’t answered, tracers would light the night.
Only a slight rustle in the grass and I was standing next to Luong and the pile of weapons. Bats swooped over my head, looking for a sunset meal.
Tran smiled at me, drool in the corner of his little mouth, and clenched his tiny fists. He was propped on Luong’s thighs, bare butt pressed against a fragmentation grenade.
Luong started to his feet, never taking his hand off the M16.
“You louder than con voi, white devil,” Luong said. Elephant. “I hear you coming for half klick.”
I took Tran and nuzzled the baby’s neck. Tran kicked my flak jacket and made cooing sounds.
“Saddle up, troop,” I said. “Gotta find this baby-san a new mom.”
The M16 rested against the rice paper wall of the Chinese restaurant on Thom Cai Street. Fragrant flower. Luong kept most of my arsenal, except the Hush Puppy, which poked under the back of my camo fatigues. A Willie Pete M34 white phosphorus grenade was in my pocket. The kind of grenade that not only provided a smoke screen, but would light up the bamboo walls in this place quicker than a napalm cocktail, letting Colleen and me di di in the white haze. Anyone unlucky enough to get phosphorous on their skin would feel the jelly burn a hole to the bone. And keep on burning to the other side.