by Ron Lealos
Another hour and we’d grease the dogs that slept under the servant’s wing of this mansion, the only dry place in the rain and fog that oozed out of the jungle. But first, it would be wise to find out if the marked papa-san wasn’t going out for night duty. Or if his baby-sans had dysentery that kept them shitting through the wee hours.
Luong was next to me, and his every breath communicated all I needed to know. We packed enough artillery to blow this hootch to Cambodia, and Luong was eager to waste any Vietnamese that wasn’t a Montagnard. His RPG touched my shoulder and was more than enough to scatter anything inside the flimsy hut.
Too many letters to the Colonel. My thoughts were on Stars and Stripes, the USMVN answer to the New York Times that was more like a comic book written by Westmoreland and War, Inc.
Months beyond a year in this tropical hellhole, propped up through the day with jars of bennies. And the night. Grooving on the color of tracers crisscrossing the sky and the melody of mortars and artillery whumping to the beat of the Pentagon. Screams in my rare nights when sleep came, only possible with Jim Beam, weed, opium, or Quaaludes to let me close my eyes to the faces imprinted on my eyelids. Heads with perfect round holes in the back. Women’s heads. Men’s heads. Babies. Bloodless holes the size of a dime that always gave a vision clean through the skull to a death smile that said, “I forgive you.” I couldn’t forgive me.
Fuck it. Don’t mean nuthin’. No mood to write more whiney brain chatter to the Colonel. Do some story composing for Stars and Stripes. Hell, I always wanted to be a journalist.
SLEEP DISORDERS ROCK
VIETNAMESE VILLAGES
(Saigon, June 24,1970—Exclusive to Stars and Stripes) Liem Tran, a recent graduate of the Sorbonne, slept peacefully in her bed outside the small hamlet of Cu Thi. Her day had been spent working in the nearby orphanage devoted to amputee war victims, all under the age of twelve. But this night would be her last.
Like ten others in her village over the last year, she would be discovered in the morning, dead from a mysterious new virus that leaves those infected with a fatal hole in the head.
“At least she died without pain,” said Dr. Quan Duc Yuen, the local tire merchant and butcher responsible for critical care in the village. “None of the victims of this fatal disease appear to have suffered.”
Dr. Yuen spoke off the record to Stars and Stripes. “There have been numerous sightings of strange machines flying in the area at night. I believe that we are the targets of some type of extraterrestrial activity aimed at making monkeys the dominant species in this country. There is no other way to explain both the deaths and the behavior of the local leadership.”
Dr. Yuen asked not to be officially quoted or identified, but Stars and Stripes has found that Dr. Yuen lives at 14 Yo Don Street, between the Chiclet distributor and Luc’s Cyclo Shop. He is five feet one inch tall and has a distinguishing mole on his left cheek shaped like Che Guevara’s head. At last count, three long white hairs curl from the mole to below the collar of his pajamas.
Contacted high above the Ia Drang Valley in his unmarked black Huey Command gunship, General William Westmoreland said, “This is a very sensitive top-secret issue. I cannot comment, but I have high-level intelligence operatives attempting to verify this classified information. The peace-loving people of South Vietnam should be assured that I will not rest until we find the cause of this pandemic. The undercover operatives who work out of Second Battalion, based in Cu Thi, have been designated to carry out Operation Simian under the command of Colonel Yu Tu Monk at ARVN headquarters and will spare no effort. His agents can be seen investigating the claims wearing colorful masks imported directly from Indonesia by US Military Command, Saigon. Of course, all the information I have given you is ‘need to know’ only and any breach of security will be punished by immediate shipment stateside.”
Colonel Monk can be reached in Cu Thi over channel 6 of Military Command Radio, codename “Chimp,” password “Ringtail.”
The rain changed from the sneaky kind that didn’t drown out all sound when it pounded on the banana leaves. The kind that made you think, “This ain’t no worse than a regular Seattle drizzle,” while it soaked everything you wore down to the shriveling white skin. Now, the rain was the typical eardrum-shattering sound of M60s at close range. Wouldn’t be no need to creep up on this terminal gook. We could drive a tank through the puddles all the way to his bamboo door, and he’d still be sleeping the sleep of a thousand Buddhas.
Rainwater dripped from the brim of Luong’s bush hat and ran down the bandoleers on his chest. There was a slight smile on his face, and I could see the outline of the black stumps of his teeth. Whenever he knew there would be dead Vietnamese near in ricky-ticky time, the grin was sculpted in place. He’d give up the betel nut, food, the chicken bone and snakeskin amulet on the thong around his neck, the crucifix, everything, for the chance to waste a Vietnamese over the age of twelve. Now, I knew he stared unblinking at the shack, fantasizing about the night’s meal. I had to watch that he didn’t lob a grenade into the hootch when we were di di-ing.
The leeches would be falling from the trees by now. It wasn’t just water that was running under my poncho and down my shoulders. The slimy cocksuckers were sure to be feasting on my back and legs. It always seemed like they knew exactly when to attack. Times that I couldn’t strip and use the bug juice, Zippo, or a KA-BAR to peel off the bastards. Once, on patrol, we took a helmet and the squad filled it with writhing leeches picked from our bleeding bodies, dropped in a little C-4, and danced to their snap, crackle, and pop. “Bloodsucker Rag,” we called the jig.
The green dial on my Navy SEAL watch read 3:13 a.m. Almost time for creep and weep, but there were enough minutes left to write another Stars and Stripes article about this wonderful adventure.
WESTMORELAND:
WAR OVER IN NEXT FEW DAYS
(Saigon, June 24, 1970) On Thursday, MACV ordered squad leaders in all operating theatres of Vietnam to begin counting ammo issued to troops as presumption of “confirmed kills.”
General “It’s my War” Westmoreland, said, while dining at the officer’s club in the old Imperial Hotel in Saigon, “The American taxpayer has paid billions of dollars to train the most effective fighting force in the history of the world. We must assume that every bullet expended has led to the death of an enemy. Soldiers under my command are disciplined and patriotic. They would not dare sacrifice valuable resources unless they were assured of hitting their target.”
According to sources at Command Headquarters, the immediate result of this new order was a body count yesterday, the first day of this new policy, of 7,356,783 North Vietnamese or Viet Cong KIA and 14 US. There were no civilian deaths. The second part of the new directive stated, “Casualties will no longer be listed, but reported as KIA.”
General Westmoreland commented, “It is traitorous to think that the best soldier’s in the world would not hit within the kill zone for every shot fired. My soldiers are taught to kill, not to wound. I will no longer allow these honorable fighting men, nor myself, to be insulted by claims that they cannot fulfill their mandate. I predict, at this rate, the war will be over within the next few days.”
Only a few minutes now. There was no letup in the intensity of the rain, an always-welcome cover to the phfffupp sound of my Hush Puppy. I might be able to get away tonight without murdering the papa-san’s mother, who, if she had survived thirty years of war, would surely be sleeping with the children. The Vietnamese family structure and custom called for the mothers to live with sons and be caregivers until they reached their death karma.
My mother lived in Sedro Wooley, north of Seattle, in a mental hospital run by the state of Washington. The Colonel had her committed and said, “That weak woman is the only reason I haven’t gotten my first star.” Sometime after I was born, but earlier than my first memories, she went AWOL to the land of Gordon’s on the rocks. When she was sober, the kitchen floor was spotless and the meals were char
coal. She didn’t stray far from the ice trays. The Colonel ate his meals on the base, and I scrounged at the neighbor’s, where touching wasn’t a sign of an imminent descent to sissiness. A handshake and salute passed for intimacy in our family. Maybe I’d write her a letter, but I didn’t know if Thorazine impaired reading comprehension.
The dogs hadn’t moved over the last few hours, except to scratch themselves, and the pig slept in a growing puddle. Staccato rain was the only noise. I touched Luong on the shoulder and pointed to the hootch, signaling him to follow.
No need to crawl through the mud. We could use the darkness, bushes, and contours of the ground for cover. Not even a sentry ten feet away would see or hear us moving slowly across the little swamp of open space.
Two minutes and we were beside the hootch. The threat was the dogs. I was already holding the Hush Puppy in my right hand, aimed toward the dog at my feet. Luong held a KA-BAR to the throat of the other. I looked at Luong, lowered the silenced 9mm, nodded, and fired at the base of the dog’s skull. Luong slit the throat of the one he knelt above, grabbing the dog’s muzzle as the blade sliced through like a piece of hot shrapnel. There wasn’t a sound from either dog, and the only movement was a few inaudible kicks.
Our night vision was good enough to see forms of bodies lying on straw mats in the darkness of the hootch. This family didn’t have much. A cooking pot, a few dishes and cups made from old C-ration cans, standard for the “best china” across ’Nam, a small altar with a Buddha, pewter bowl for incense, a rice basket, and pajamas hanging from pegs in the bamboo wall supports. We stood hunting-tiger still, breathing shallow and silent, just like the good-ole-boy instructors at Langley had taught me. It came naturally to Luong.
The highest point in the hootch was the place of honor. Papa-san would stay dry and away from the snakes and scorpions. It was as futile to wonder what crime this supposed VC commando had committed as it was to wonder why old men sent boys out to die. It was him or Leavenworth for me, if I survived the interrogation. It was different if I waxed a few of our own in a bar. That could be written off as “boys will be boys” or a psychotic moment much desired by Phoenix. Failure to follow orders to murder would be treason. And I could already be on the list for disobeying in a hootch just like this one. I moved slowly toward the sleeping Charlie, Luong on drag in case one of the baby-sans was foolish enough to cry. We were both on full rock and roll, but would only need a waltz to vaporize this scene. My Hush Puppy cut through the dark in front, and I knelt beside the man who could have been anywhere between twenty and fifty.
Scars that looked like Frankenstein’s monster’s ran across the VC’s back. Or the local pajama maker had stitched the wounds. Greasy, black hair touched the bottom of his neck, reflecting what little light seeped through the cracks in the bamboo walls. His head rested on a pillow made of an old burlap rice sack, and his breathing was the ragged sound of past bouts with pneumonia. Next to him, an old mama-san snored lightly, covered only by a sleeping ao dai. I gently pressed the Hush Puppy to the back of the VC’s head.
VC? Was this pitiful old man really a VC? Now wasn’t the time to hesitate, but recent missions seemed to make me a killer for hire, not an instrument of war. It was days since Liem, and I couldn’t get her death smile from my psyche. The trigger on the Hush Puppy was filed so that the slightest touch caused someone to die. With pressure softer than a heartbeat, I moved the trigger. The 9mm jumped in my hand less than the bounce of the papa-san’s head on the burlap. The bullet went into the pillow, not a millimeter from his skull. I covered his mouth with my hand and pushed down, holding hard and staring into his wide open eyes.
From the corner of the hootch, a baby-san began to whimper. He was sitting up and watching me with charcoal eyes, his mouth open. Luong turned and aimed his M16. Without taking my eyes off the baby-san, I pushed the barrel of Luong’s rifle toward the clay floor with the Hush Puppy. No one else in the hootch moved, but I sensed they were awake.
“Ben ngoai,” I hissed at Luong. Outside. “Bay gio.” Now. I had to make it appear as if another gook was dead with a hole between his eyes, if only for a few days. There was no way in the dark Luong knew this target still lived.
Without a glance back, Luong nodded slowly and stepped out, his slump looking like someone had stolen his fish ball dinner after days in the bush without food.
Slowly, I turned back to the man, who was as stiff as one of the grunts in a body bag on the Da Nang tarmac.
“Bien mat,” I whispered. Disappear. “Hay ongba chet.” Or you’re dead.
Standing, I watched the baby-san and moved silently toward the bamboo door. This baby-san and his family wouldn’t be fatherless and would survive to smell the paddies being warmed in the morning, not acceptable behavior in the Phoenix unpublished handbook. The chance these civilians would raise the alarm and risk Luong and me being greased was a death sentence I was willing to risk. I slipped through the door, vanishing quickly into the jungle, only the squeal of the roused pig and the thwap of raindrops on the banana leaves echoing around us. The box score was two walks and fifty-plus strikeouts. It was the eighth inning.
The morning dawned bright in Cần Thơ, the sun breaking through the black dragon clouds that promised an afternoon return of the monsoons. Luong was renewing bonds with some of his Hill Tribe brothers, and we were scheduled to rendezvous at 1700 near the gate to the base. Trips home weren’t veiled in secrecy, and we could hitch a ride on a deuce and a half down Highway One, not really worried about orders or schedules as long as the mission was accomplished. As far as Phoenix new. At least I didn’t have to bring back a fresh ear for proof, though many others did. I was eating breakfast at Le Petite Cần Thơ, not wanting to join any of the grunts for base chow. Today, they were too full of macho stories for me to dig the bravado or the runny, white scrambled eggs. Luong and I had marched through the night storm and bivouacked a klick outside town under our ponchos, scraping leeches from our bodies while the rain thwacked on the plastic. I was killin’ time until Colleen’s elegant legs climbed the steps to the orphanage across the street.
The rice on my tin plate was mixed with powdered eggs, green onions, sprouts, and some brown meat that I didn’t want to know. I washed it down with a local homebrew that tasted like DuPont Chemical’s finest. A mixture of fermented rice, water, napalm, and C-4. The meal was delicious and spicy. I called for another beer, and my mind drifted to the first woman I thought I loved and didn’t kill.
Homecoming at the University of Washington meant that ROTC cadets like me would have to run the gauntlet of abuse served up by the fringies and other protest warriors as we paraded through the celebration in our dress uniforms. Eggs, oranges, and rotten bananas were the favorite ammunition, serenaded by “baby killer.” Of course, the oranges had already been drained of the vodka injected into them. In the late sixties, even the quasi-military ROTC still had enough redneck support from east of the Cascades to guarantee a few fights broke out in the bleachers. T-shirt-wearing, muscle-bound, shit-kicking wheat farmers stomping on longhaired peaceniks. For this Saturday’s game with UCLA, I was ordered to carry the flag into the stadium because I had questioned the captain’s use of the words “slant-eyed gooks” in class the week before. Being flag bearer was a punishment these days. No decent co-ed wanted to boink someone they had just seen smeared in banana jelly and named “kiddie raper” in front of sixty thousand people. Not until she made up her mind if she was for or against the war anyway.
Monday, in Asian Studies 315, I was putting books in my backpack. Aly, the frizzy-haired co-ed who gave the most passionate arguments against the Domino Theory and had never said “groovy” about me, swished across the room in her paisley granny skirt and stopped.
“I saw you on Saturday at the game,” she said.
Aly’s brown eyes blazed against the background of her tanned skin, freckles, and curly, shoulder-length hair. She hugged her textbooks against a braless chest that didn’t hide the size of her brea
sts under a loose, tie-dyed top.
“What does it feel like to be part of a killing machine committing genocide against innocent peasants?” she asked.
The scent of patchouli oil filled my nose, more accustomed to the stuffy lecture hall smell. Students mumbled softly on their way out the door to the next class. I glanced up at the clock and saw I only had eight minutes to get across the quad to my Advanced Deviant Behavior seminar. I slung the pack over my shoulder and let myself drown in those brown eyes.
“Not cool,” I said.
Aly put her hand gently on my arm.
“You have time to rap over a cup of java at the Student Union?” she asked. “I really want to get into your head and see what would make someone believe what you do.”
One of the ROTC classes tried to prepare us for torture. They taught about jamming bamboo slivers under fingernails and pouring Coca-Cola down noses, along with even more gruesome torment. Of course these were “war crimes” and only discussed under the guise of “what not to do” with a wink and a grin. I couldn’t imagine the pain, but there was a force in Aly’s touch that nearly knocked me to my knees. My tongue was in a knot tighter than the cuffs around a VC prisoner’s wrists.
“Uhhh,” I said.
“Not so tough, are you, ROTC boy?” Aly said. “Come on. I don’t have scabies.”
She pulled at the sleeve of my denim shirt and tugged me toward the classroom door.
Following orders was something that had been scorched into my auto- response mode. I trailed behind. Deviant behavior would just have to wait.
In the student union, we solved the war and dissected Ozzie and Harriet lifestyles, the pigs, acid comedowns, Gandhi’s death, the military industrial complex, and Hoover’s love of dresses. She described her life as the little sister of two Idaho farm boys. It was the start of trips to uncharted universes. Months later, both of us longhaired byproducts of sex, politics, weed, hashish, and hallucinogens, Aly left for the Chicago Democratic National Convention. And never came back. My head was filled with patchouli oil even as I stepped onto the bus for OTC.