by Ron Lealos
The Irish witch sat across the table, green eyes sparkling like Burmese sapphires in the candlelight. A sneer close to a smile bent her lips and pushed her dimples into squished craters.
“You must be expectin’ Giap’s Second Division armed like that,” Colleen said. She could see the spoon on the grenade hanging from the outside of my pocket.
The pin on the M34 jabbed my thigh and made me feel as uncomfortable as Colleen’s stare. I pushed the grenade lower in my pocket.
“The only reason this city isn’t off-limits after dark is because we’re ordered to be armed at all times,” I said. “After the last incident here in friendly Cần Thơ, I’m surprised grunts are allowed in at all. But where would the REMFs go at night if the city were shut down?”
I leaned forward, elbows on the pitted Formica table, and stared at Colleen.
“Two weeks ago,” I said, “the MPs found a supply clerk from the base crucified on a lamp post on Hoa Doa Street. They took his eyes.”
Colleen had changed out of her nurse’s uniform and wore a purple ao dai painted in hyacinths. A white orchid was pinned to her hair, contrasting with the deep red of her braids. She fingered the orchid and the smirk disappeared like VC down a tunnel.
“Well, laddie,” she said, “you surely know how to get to a lady’s heart. It would be nice if we could forget the war for the eve’nin’. Make believe we’re on Regent Street for a nice side of mutton.”
The red clay under my fingernails was as much a part of me as my rotting toes. Now the red was darkened by a mix of greasepaint and rifle oil. I picked at the nails on my right hand with the plastic sword toothpick that used to hold the umbrella in my Singapore Sling.
“There’s nothing I’d like better,” I said. “But there’s the matter of millions of VC trying to kill us as well as their own countrymen. Did you find a home for Tran?”
A few minutes after sunset, Luong and I delivered a sleeping Tran to the orphanage, where the baby vanished through the back door of Colleen’s office in the hands of a clucking mama-san. When I handed Tran over to Colleen, he instantly put his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. She stroked his head and cooed in Tran’s ear.
Luong waited near a hedgerow that marked the north border of Cần Thơ. Tonight’s op wouldn’t begin until well after midnight, and his recon would be good enough to write the death warrant on another target.
Rice paper napkins were next to the plates, and their slightly brown tint was darker than Colleen’s skin. She picked up her napkin and rubbed it between her fingers, looking down at the painted French plates, a holdover from colonialism.
“Not yet,” Colleen said. “But we have someone in mind who would be better than one of the refugee orphanages.”
“We’ve got a deal, ma’am. As soon as you find out, you’re going to tell me.”
“At the end of the day, I don’t know how much difference any of it makes.”
“Why do you say that? Something change in the last few hours? Looks to me like you’re letting this place get to you, too.”
Colleen’s head rose, and a quiver started in her shoulder. A small tear formed next to the lash in her right eye.
“Wanted so much to have an nice evening out and put this place aside,” Colleen said. “Got less chance of that than the Queen mum bein’ next month’s centerfold.”
The half of me that was Irish was under the spell of this woman who spoke a lilt right out of the streets of Londonderry. The other half was the normal reaction of a soldier in a distant land enjoying the rare presence of a beautiful woman. I tried to smooth my hair, but it was full of red dust from the day’s march and sweat from the tropical sun.
“What is it?” I asked. “Does it have anything to do with Tran?”
Colleen rubbed her eye and picked up a fork that must have been liberated from an army PX. The US MILITARY stamp was still on the handle.
“No,” Colleen said. “We got an intelligence report today that most of the widows who take in the kids get their pensions knicked by the local ARVN commanders. They sell the extra rice chit we arrange for them. Many of the tykes are starving. It just seems there’s no end to the mischief here. Makes Belfast look like God’s own.”
“You shouldn’t be telling me that, Miss O’Hara,” I said. “I’m not going to let it happen to Tran.”
“And that may not even be the worst of it,” Colleen said. “Now, the drums are beating that it might be the son of the vice president selling babies. Nothing much we can do but our jobs with what we have. I’ve filed an official complaint. In triplicate.”
Fucking Ky. Now, he was connected to two women I knew. One was dead and the one across from me was drowning in his swamp. Now I was afraid for this spunky Irish lass. You didn’t mess with someone like Ky unless you had a battalion to cover your back.
“I think we may have done better for Tran,” Colleen said. “I’ll know more tomorrow. As sure as one lives and breathes, this place is arsed-up.”
Nothing I could do about Ky. For now. But his was a mounting debt that had to be called before I rode the sweet bird home. I took a sip of the drink and changed the subject with the grunt way, a story.
“Back at the base,” I said, “we adopted a local kid to clean up for us and run errands. His left foot was gone, courtesy of one of Uncle Ho’s mines. Called him Festus because he limped around with the stump stuffed in an old tennis shoe filled with dirt and tied tight to his ankle. Gave him a few p most every day. He never stopped smiling and loved to sing ‘Proud Mary’ and have us join in. His teeth were already rotten at ten years old, and he couldn’t have weighed thirty-five pounds. Don’t know if he had any parents alive, but one day I was coming back to base and I saw a mama-san slapping him and pulling at the pockets on his ratty shorts. He never wore a shirt. The old bitch was screeching. ‘Tien bac, tien bac.’ Money. I went over and pulled her off. She tried to scratch my face, and I shoved her down, put Festus under my arm, and hightailed it for our tent. Festus never quit bowing and thanking me, and he cleaned the place spotless. He left before dark. The next morning, his good foot was nailed to the gate, still in the tennis shoe. Never saw Festus again. See why I don’t want Tran goin’ down that trail?”
Armed soldiers, mostly officers, drank Tiger beer at the bar and ate at the wobbly tables. After a glance at me and a second of thought, they all knew what a dirty boonie rat with no insignia on his camo fatigues casually eating with a beautiful woman meant. And they didn’t want to know anything else. I couldn’t have been any more obvious as a Phoenix or SOG agent if I got up with my Hush Puppy and put a silenced bullet to the back of the barkeeper’s head.
The smell of nuuc luan fish sauce overpowered the smell of the exhaust from the cyclos on the street and the sweat from the march. A night in a bomb crater didn’t make the aroma any sweeter, and, with a few day’s beard added in, I wondered how Colleen could stomach having dinner with me.
Colleen watched me like I was in line for a command inspection. She put her fork down and folded her hands together on the edge of the table.
“That was a bad patch for you,” Colleen said. “But I have to live with it every day.”
The waiter put a heaping plate of river lobsters on the table and two bowls of rice. He bowed and walked away, a pair of dark slacks several sizes too big for him dragging on the linoleum and covering all but the soles of his rubber tire sandals.
My beard itched, and I scratched softly, always afraid that some incurable skin rot would make it slide off in my fingertips.
“Enough, please,” I said. “Tell me how a woman like you got to Cần Thơ.”
The tear peaked out of Colleen’s eye again, and she looked down at her hands, clasping the napkin tight enough to turn her fingers red.
“Seems as if I traded one war for another,” Colleen said. “At least here, I don’t know the people bein’ killed. And doin’ the killin’.”
The rice in the wooden bowl was still steaming. I scooped a spoo
nful on Colleen’s plate and mine and then dropped a lobster on top.
“You were involved in the Troubles?” I asked.
“No way of escapin’ it,” Colleen said. “Like here, there’s always someone who wants you dead.”
“Then why would you come to this shithole?”
“I couldn’t do any good in Belfast. Thought maybe here I could help someone.”
“How did you get to the orphanage?”
“Answered an advert in the Irish Times. Sounded about as far away as I could get. Never wanted any babies in Belfast. Not another one for a crazed bomber to blow up. But here, babies are everywhere. And needin’ help.”
The ceiling fan turned slowly through the dense night air, working as hard as a sternwheeler on the Mississippi. On every rotation, the fan clicked. The sound was like snapping my M16 to full auto.
GIs were filling the restaurant, and the jive-assing was getting louder in the bar, directly related to volume of Tiger beer being chugged.
One supply clerk yelled, “How the fuck would you know, you fuckin’ pussy. If Charlie walked in here, you’d get slivers in your dick divin’ under the bar.” His buddies slapped him on the back of his spotless fatigues and they called for another round.
“Damn straight!” the soldier next to the clerk kept screaming, leaning into the REMF so he wouldn’t eat any of the cigarette butts on the floor.
Old Spice aftershave joined the smell of fish sauce and spices. But nothing could overcome the burnt, dead stench that draped everything in ’Nam.
Colleen and I picked the meat out of the lobsters and chased the bites with spoonfuls of rice and swallows of cold beer. She didn’t look at me, but I marveled at the thick cleanness of her hair.
The nuuc luan was spicy, and the beer helped cool my mouth. I took a swallow and noticed that Colleen was looking at me, green eyes mirroring the candlelight.
“We’ve started down the wrong trail from the beginning,” I said. “Maybe we could just rap. Tell lies like the grunts over there.” I nodded toward the men at the bar.
The smile lost in the jungle of Belfast returned to Colleen’s face. She put her spoon down on the table and wiped her hands.
“Not bloody likely,” Colleen said. “Couldn’t escape it there. Can’t do it here either. Back in the pubs, all we talked about was the Troubles. Here, it’s just a more clinical way of killin’.”
Lobster shells were piled high on my plate next to the rice. I dropped another on top and stared at Colleen.
“You’ve seen your share of misery,” I said. “But we’ve got a deal. Tomorrow morning, I want to know where Tran is going. By the way, my name is Morgan.”
“Roger that, Morgan,” she said. “Let’s toast to Tran. And all the wretches who don’t have mothers in this place you call a shithole.”
Colleen raised her Tiger beer, and we clinked the brown bottles together.
“How is it possible that you have the slightest interest in a baby-san, even if you did save him in a firefight?” Colleen asked. “Why are you responsible? There’s thousands more just like Tran.”
There was napalm burning the inside of my mouth. Now, the heat from the blazing fish sauce moved toward my chest. I took another hit on the beer.
“I’ve seen grunts bend over to tickle a baby-san and end up in so many pieces the medic only put the bigger parts in the body bag,” I said. “I watched a smiling little girl toss a grenade in a command jeep, killing two lieutenants on the road outside Saigon.” I scratched at the stubble on my face and tried to keep eye contact with the witch. “All the way here, I asked the same question you did. Only thing I come up with is that a cooing, helpless baby is the same all over the world, even if his daddy works nights for the VC. The baby-san is innocent.” Colleen’s eyes were sited in on me like a Starlight scope, and I felt the crosshairs. “I’m not innocent. Maybe there’s still a little place in my heart that makes me human. Tran touched it. Part of it is the guilt that every grunt carries and never leaves. Like his P-38 or M16. If I do something noble in this hellhole, there might be a chance. In the next life anyway.”
Humping through the mud, eighty pounds of gear digging into my shoulder, I didn’t feel any heavier than now. My head nearly slumped to the Formica.
Colleen slid forward in her chair and touched my forearm. I was afraid to look at her.
“Morgan,” she whispered, “I’ve heard lots of stories and seen more than I ever wanted to. If there is any action that can be ‘noble’ in this country, it is what you have done and are doing to save Tran.” She sat back, putting her hand in her lap. “Enough,” Colleen said. “We just keep getting into the horrors. Tell me the tale of Morgan in The World.”
From one dark side to the other. The past was only a touch lighter than the present, but at least it might get me away from the vision of babies and body parts. I closed my eyes and tried to figure where to begin.
The Colonel was burrowed into my memory. I told Colleen just enough to give the picture of an army brat raised on marching orders and parade-ground discipline who never had a home other than a temporary posting. A graduate in Asian studies with an education perfect for America’s plans for the “yellow plague.”
A boy who joined the ROTC to defend his country from imminent invasion by the heathens, the real reason to satisfy a father who expected him to become a man someday and not the sniveling punk he thought his son had become.
But I didn’t tell her what my real jacket was. I was trained in disinformation as well as ten ways to kill in less than five seconds. With my bare hands. But she knew. She was part of the drama, no matter what her stories were. There were no innocents in ’Nam. Except baby-sans. I told her I was part of the pacification program in the outlying villages and that’s where I met Tran. There was no need to hide the cynicism. Everyone in ’Nam was a cynic. It led to statements like, “We burned the village to the ground to save it.” Or the campaign I claimed to be part of to win the “Hearts and Minds” of the peasants when all they wanted was for us was to di di back to the US of fucking A so they wouldn’t have napalm raining on their conical hats.
Colleen pushed her plate away and slid back her chair.
“Walk me to the orphanage, Morgan,” she said. “I’m knackered and have an early wake-up.”
The waiter was watching us from behind a false paper wall painted in scenes of the islands off Vung Ta. I waved him to the table and asked for our bill.
By now, the desk jockeys in the bar were polluted. All eyes turned to attention when Colleen stood and walked toward the door. I was right behind, M16 in my hand.
The drunkest REMF was the bravest. And most foolish. He swayed against his brother clerk and raised his beer.
“Check them headlights,” he said, pointing the bottle at Colleen. “They could light up the jungle brighter than a battery of M60s.”
Nobody joined his slobbering laughter. It was unspoken that I could unload my M16 into them and there would be no court-martial. Military rules didn’t cover Phoenix operatives. Maybe I’d be sent back to The World. Or to some remote outpost in Central America. No LBJ. One hard look from me and a hissed “Shut your fuckin’ dumbass mouth” from his buddy, and the clerk looked at the polish on his never-muddied boots.
Colleen went through the door, not acknowledging the remark.
The street was still alive with cyclos and the occasional oxcart. Outside, no longer shielded by the smell of fish sauce and cooking meat, the smoke burned my nose. The high-pitched whine and beep of the mopeds overrode the night sounds of Cần Thơ vendors still hawking their trinkets. Traffic smog now hid the moon.
Children, who never slept until the last grunt staggered back to the base, clutched at my fatigues and begged, “GI, GI, want fucky-suck? Coca-Cola? Chiclets?” I kept up with Colleen’s quick pace and tried to ignore the ragged kids.
At the steps to the orphanage, Colleen stopped and turned to me.
“Good night, Morgan,” she said. “Tellin’ lie
s is what we all do best here. And you’re a pro.”
Colleen stepped toward me, and I put the arm without the M16 around her waist. The kiss lasted longer than the time took between hearing the hushed thud of a mortar tube and the impact. Her lips were full and moist and brought back long-forgotten memories of partings in front of a university sorority house. Her breasts pushed hard against my fatigues, and I worried that she would feel the KA-BAR in my pocket.
No way I wanted this to end. I pulled her tighter and felt something long lost and only newly rediscovered with Tran.
After ten seconds, Colleen pulled away.
“Might have to go to confession now, Morgan,” Colleen said. “See you in the mornin’.” She climbed the three steps and opened the battered screen door, disappearing inside.
I was frozen on the steps for a minute, the war completely fragged. All too soon, I touched the Hush Puppy and headed toward Luong for another night of murder on command.
If there was a health department in this shithole, the shack Luong and I stalked would have been condemned before the next monsoon. Or be floating in a B-52 crater. The roof of palm leaves patched with pieces of scavenged tin leaned close enough to the mud to take a drink. Old Coke cartons were jammed between bamboo poles to form soggy walls that stank almost as bad as the slit trench behind and the pit where the day’s burnt garbage still smoldered. At least what the pig didn’t eat.
Tonight’s brief was to wax another local VC leader. But if Cong officers lived like this, Uncle Ho didn’t have wooden teeth. The dude probably pissed off somebody who knew somebody who had a friend that could get anybody’s name in the Rand computer back in Saigon, even if it was for farting at the wrong time.