“Joey, I ever tell you? The Martians, they’re already out there amongst us.”
A startling change of subject and a new wrinkle.
“Uh, where?”
“They’re out there all over. I betcha we pass them on the street every day.”
“We do?”
“They’ll show themselves when Mariner 4 snaps its snapshots. They’ll make their move. They got to.”
“They do?”
“Don’t you know shit, Joey? Their cities and bases, they’ll be exposed. Once we have bigger missiles, they’ll be sitting ducks.”
To deflect the looniness, I asked, “Your Mariner 4’s still on course?”
“A million miles out, steady as she goes,” Ziggy said.
“Until that spaceship, nothing has ever seen Mars up close? Correct?”
“Damn straight.”
“Tell me again how much it weighs and when it was launched, Zig.”
Ziggy took a long swig and handed me the Scotch. “Its dry weight is five-hundred-seventy-four pounds, sixty of it instrumentation. On 28 November 1964, it lifted off from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas D booster.”
He ticked off the gadgetry on sausage fingers. “TV camera, solar plasma probe, ionization chamber, trapped radiation detector, helium vector magnetometer, cosmic ray telescope, cosmic dust detector. Omnidirectional antenna, four solar panels, nitrogen gas jets for attitude control. You got your pressure vanes and gyroscopes too.”
“And lookie at this.” He dug into the heap of pulp magazines and newspapers at the foot of his bunk and fished out a paper. “This article in here says Mars got no life on it. The guy claims to be a scientist, but he don’t know jack shit. He wants to get his name in the paper is all, the stupid motherfucker.”
It was not prudent to argue with Ziggy on this subject. I said, “Yeah, some people are born dense.”
“Joey, all you gotta do is look at them encyclopedia pitchers and the ones in that 1955 National Geographic I got down in my stuff somewheres. The fertile red soil. You could grow anything in that dirt. Canals and polar caps, they’re as plain as day. Tell me there ain’t no life on Mars.”
“Not me, Zig.”
“Percival Lowell, the astronomer, way back in 1895, he saw the canals and deserts and oases from his telescope.”
Apocrypha or not apocrypha, that was the question Mariner 4 sought to answer. “No argument.”
“How come they’re saying Martians ain’t there and here?”
“Can’t tell you,” I said, although I didn’t think that even Ziggy’s most imaginative astronomers saw gondoliers and high priests and zombies.
To steer the conversation elsewhere, I asked, “Hey, Zig, 4578 times 865?”
“Cut it out, Joey.”
“C’mon, Zig.”
“Up yours, Joey. Up your butt.”
“C’mon, Zig. C’mon.”
“Up your nose with a rubber hose.”
“C’mon. 4578 times 866.”
“You said 865,” he corrected.
I’d tried talking him into using his gift to benefit mankind, namely us in barroom bets. He’d have none of it. I wasn’t goading him to be cruel. I was fascinated, waiting for him to be stuck or wrong just one time.
“How much?”
“3,959,970.”
“946 plus 454 divided by 8 times 25.”
“4375.”
“State capitals. Oregon.”
“Salem.”
“West Virginia.”
“Charleston.”
“South Dakota.”
“Pierre.”
“The elements. Atomic weight of bismuth.”
“208.9804.”
“Zirconium.”
“91.22.”
“World Series champ, 1947. In how many games.”
“Yankees in four.”
“Are you sure it was four?” I teased.
Ziggy ignored me. He wasn’t done on Mars. “In a matter of days, Mariner 4 will snap pitchers. Then they’ll find out.”
“Sure will.”
“Joey, ever see War of the Worlds?”
“Yeah. Scary flick. Those Martian machines zapping you with a death ray and a tin smile.”
“I’d be pissed if I was a Martian.”
“How come pissed, Zig?”
“Their attitude’s probly we oughta be minding our own beeswax. Can’t blame ’em.”
I completed my calculation on paper, verifying the 3,959,970.
“No. No you certainly can’t blame them.”
He reburied himself in his magazine and said, “Don’t blame me for the shitstorm when it comes.”
“No. No I won’t.”
Ziggy had told me about the reformatory he’d been in. There’d been a disturbance. A hack had caved in the side of Ziggy’s skull with a Louisville Slugger. Ziggy boasted that he’d bounced off cell bars and dropped to a knee, but hadn’t gone down for the count. They’d put a metal plate in his noggin. Maybe or maybe not exaggerating, he said it was the size of a playing card. I would not rule him out as a walking extraterrestrial antenna, making radio contact with those Martians of his.
Our gecko was parked on the other side of the ceiling.
I reached for a book. The Tan Son Nhat library carried a fine selection, and they were accumulating in our cubbyhole, piling against and under my bed as if a berm, most overdue. Some had acquired a patina of dust.
They were an eclectic mix of esoteric subjects. None was on a waiting list. But let me be five minutes tardy with best-sellers like Kiss Me Deadly or Peyton Place, and the library Gestapo would be on me like a bad smell.
I’d been on a history jag lately, unable to get my fill. My current page-turner was on the French Indochina War (1946-1954), when the Vietnamese commies were called the Vietminh.
Once upon a time, back in 1954, the French got sick and tired of the Vietminh’s hit-and-run tactics. The war was going on and on, ever since the end of World War Two, a drain on France’s manpower and budget. The Frogs were fidgety on the home front, anxious for results, so they laid a trap.
They set up a sprawling base at the floor of a valley out in the boonies by the Laos border, at a village named Dien Bien Phu. The valley was surrounded by forested hills. Taking the low ground was a warfare no-no, but there was no way the Vietminh could hump artillery up to the tops of those hills. The plan had been to lure the Vietminh out to engage in a conventional battle, to fight like men, a fair fight instead of sneaking in and out of the jungle like sissies. They’d slaughter the little guys.
I paged to the photograph plates. The Vietminh were building trails up the hills. They’d disassembled the heaviest guns and hauled them up piece by piece, foot by foot. A hundred men might tug a single cannon barrel along by ropes. They were like ants. They were patient and well camouflaged and team-oriented.
They attacked the French when they were ready to.
I was at the part in the book where the Vietminh were marching French troops from Dien Bien Phu to a prison camp. I read a few more pages, had a pull of Johnny Red, and stretched out. I couldn’t sleep. I got up and told Ziggy I was going out. He was too absorbed in his reading to even grunt.
Saigon streets were even more chaotic at night. City policemen dressed in white. We knew them as White Mice. They stood on intersection kiosks, signaling and whistling, risking their hides directing traffic. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. Cyclos, motorcyclos, scooters, military and civilian vehicles, pedestrians and the ubiquitous cream-and-blue Renault taxis went as they would, from Point A to Point B.
Le Loi Boulevard, the Street of Flowers, perpendicular to Tu Do, had the goods I sought. I walked into a Monet garden and a perfumery rolled into one. I picked this and that individual flower, making a rainbow of petals. I stopped when funds ran perilously low and rode a taxi to Mai and her sister’s.
The farther I walked in from the main drag, the darker and quieter it was. For all I knew I’d be walking into the weekly meeting o
f the local Vietcong Benevolent Society. The night throughout the land did belong to the Reds.
Nobody bothered me in the pitch blackness. A butter stinker in this neighborhood at this hour, with only blossoms to defend himself, had to be off his rocker. Demented people in any culture were dangerous to handle and were given a wide berth.
Quyen, the big sister, answered the door. “You, huh?”
“Sorry to barge in on you at this hour, ma’am. Do you speak English?”
She shook her head so quickly that I knew she did.
I played the game. “For Mai. Biết?”
I was ashamed to admit that biểt, Vietnamese for “understand,” was one of the few non-profane Vietnamese words I’d troubled myself to learn.
“I biết. You with captain war hero today, huh?”
“I do. I am. I mean I was.”
Quyen smiled and extended her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. “Captain, him like this.”
A wonderful anecdote told in passable English. I had to smile.
“What you want?”
I’d frozen in a moronic grin, my tongue tied in knots. Even if I could stammer out the words, I could think of nothing further to say. Jesus H. Fucking Christ, where was I? In the seventh grade at the Friday afternoon sock hop in the gym? Too bashful to tap a girl on the shoulder and ask for a dance?
I thrust the flowers in Quyen’s hands, idiotically repeating, “For Mai. Biết?”
She did not accept them. She stepped back, and I thought she was going to slam the door in my face. Then she called inside. I didn’t understand a word, but they held the tone of a command.
Mai came out and took the flowers.
“For you, Mai.”
Without a word, she blew me a kiss and quietly shut the door.
7.
I GOT back to the room, all atwitter, too wound up to sleep. To grab a wink I tried to get my mind off Mai by counting, not sheep gamboling over a fence, but those Vietminh ants in their black pajamas and coolie hats. I finally dozed into half slumber, half recollection. The ants had led me not to the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, but to Seattle’s Armed Forces Processing Center on the 9th day of 1964.
Doug Hooper and I were taking our draft physicals together. And why not? We’d been best buddies since the middle of the fifth grade, when his family had moved in across from us in West Seattle, in a modest neighborhood of crackerbox ramblers and competitive lawns. They were Navy people and Doug had attended four different schools, but his dad was retiring soon and they stayed put. Upon graduating from high school, we went our separate ways, me to professional studentdom, Doug to Boeing, working swing shift at the Renton plant, bucking rivets on the 727 wing line.
As previously stated, the Selective Service System was losing patience with me and my academic meandering, a career in itself. They cynically presumed that six-plus years with umpteen majors and sophomore status did not constitute scholarly achievement. They likewise cynically presumed I’d stuck in school only to hang on to my student deferment. To avoid Uncle Sam in those tense times, either you went to college or you knocked up your girlfriend and did the right thing by her.
I think Judy was willing to go along with the knocked-up part, but I wasn’t ready to do the right thing. That entailed buying a ring, saying “I do,” picking out furniture, settling down, et cetera. I knew Judy was losing patience with me, too. I couldn’t blame her. The role of sort-of fiancée left her in romantic limbo.
Doug wasn’t serious about anybody at the moment, although I suspected he had a secret crush on Judy. He was no keener than I about going into the army, but when he told me what he was gonna do, I didn’t believe him. Doug could be as full of shit as a Christmas goose and you never knew when.
It was nearly as cold inside the processing station as out. They marched us from here to there with our shirts off, poking and probing and measuring and ordering us to fill a bottle whether we had to take a leak or not. I might’ve known from that goofy grin plastered on Doug’s face that he wasn’t kidding. Nobody else had so much as cracked a smile. We had no reason to.
Then they lined us in a row, fifteen at a time. The medic told us to drop our drawers, bend over, and spread our cheeks. The doctor came along, looking for whatever he was looking for. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was not young. He had acne scarring at his collar and a wispy pompadour. He didn’t seem any happier to be here than we were. I felt halfway sorry for the poor bastard. This had to be the Siberia of medicine. Somewhere in his past was a clamp sewn inside a patient.
Doug was next to me. Redheaded and freckled, he was the spitting image of Howdy Doody. That is, if you twisted Howdy’s mouth into an evil smirk and threw in a giggle or three. I shushed him, but he continued snickering.
The doctor came to a dead halt behind Doug and his pink silk panties. They were awfully baggy. He’d swiped them from his mom, who was a big lady. He hadn’t dropped them all the way down. He was holding them at knee level to make sure they weren’t missed. Doug would do almost anything on a dare, but he’d dreamt this up on his own.
The doctor said, “Nice try, son. Ever read Catch-22?”
I had. I loved Catch-22. I guessed what was coming, but Doug didn’t. He wasn’t a recreational reader.
He answered, “Who?”
The doctor explained, “Catch-22 is a famous novel. Its primary protagonist, Captain Yossarian, was a bombardier in World War II Europe, an extremely hazardous vocation. He attempted to get out of combat duty by claiming he was crazy. Captain Yossarian fell victim to a catch in the regulations known as Catch-22. Catch-22 said that if you tried to get out of combat duty by claiming you were crazy, it proved that you were perfectly sane. Are you getting my point, young man?”
Doug was getting his point. He muttered “shit” and allowed his mom’s pink silk panties to fall to his ankles.
“You have balls to pull this stunt,” the doctor said as he moved along, examining whatever he was examining. “Your country needs you.”
We waited out front till they called us to the counter one by one and said yea or nay. By then everybody’d heard about Doug. The enlistees were disgusted and gave us plenty of room. The draft bait hung close, acting as if Doug was John Wayne who’d taken out a Nazi pillbox.
All anyone could talk about was what they hoped was wrong with them. No one was anxious for syphilis or cancer, mind you, but we were yearning for nearsightedness or farsightedness, trick knees, high or low blood pressure, flat feet, slipped disks, neuritis, neuralgia, post nasal drip, the heartbreak of psoriasis. We were praying for a backassward Lourdes, where 4-F was the miracle. I had no illusions. If you could fog a mirror, you were probably in.
I told them of a friend of a friend of mine who’d been rejected last year because of a dropped testicle. Three guys asked at once how far it had to drop. I didn’t know. There were limits how far you’d tolerate your testicle dropping, army or no army.
Doug and I passed with flying colors. We went to a tavern down the street. I didn’t know what you called the opposite of celebrating, but that’s what we were doing. Doug didn’t even bother calling in sick at the Lazy B, even though he was supposed to clock in at 3:30. Other future GIs tagged along with us and we ordered pitchers.
“Maybe I should’ve―what’s my mom call it?―accessorized,” Doug said. “You know, nylons and earrings and perfume and lipstick, too, if it wasn’t too slutty.”
That brought down the house. He was dead serious, and they thought he was being funny. We toasted him. We drank to his pink silk panties and his accessorizing. Doug’s money was no good at this table.
I went to a pay phone to call Judy. She wanted to know as soon as I knew. My coin jammed in the slot. It was either a Canadian nickel or an omen. I’d been debating whether breaking up now would be easier than getting Dear John’d later.
I returned to the table and it wasn’t long before the suds were doing our talking.
Some of the guys were con
sidering enlisting. It’d cost three or four years instead of a draftee’s two, but at least you had options in duty and assignment.
Doug said, “What’s the difference? It’s all shit, just a different color.”
“This recruiting sergeant told me that the North Koreans are tunneling under the DMZ,” a beanpole with a crew cut said.
In 1964, Vietnam was a sidebar. We were sweating South Korea. Rumor had it that if you were drafted, you were automatically assigned to the infantry and shipped there, where you’d freeze your ass off sleeping in tents as the first line of defense against the commies, who were itching to come across and slit your throat and stuff your balls in your mouth, not necessarily in that order.
“My buddy’s older brother was in the Korean War,” said a guy, who wouldn’t quit bellyaching that his feet were a whole bunch flatter than they said they were. “He got overrun twice by the Red Chinese. The Chinks, they went on over his foxhole, blowing their bugles, hopped up on opium.”
“If Goldwater’s elected President, he’ll H-bomb Red China so it won’t make no difference.”
“Cuba,” was spoken through a belch. “We’ll be invading.”
“Nope. Don’t have to. My dad says Castro’s days are numbered. The CIA’s gonna slip a stogie loaded with TNT into his cigar box.”
“This friend of mine has a cousin whose best friend chopped off his trigger finger on purpose.”
The table quieted down.
“The army made him into a southpaw marksman.”
We booed him, and this general line of conversation went on and on, growing goofier and goofier. We liberally and loudly used “fuck” in all eight parts of speech, so the banter was colorful if not always intelligible.
Doug had stopped contributing. He was staring into his glass, brooding, normal behavior for him after seven or eleven beers.
Suddenly he looked up. “Goddammit, it ain’t fair! We gotta go in while college boys have these fucking deferments. We work for a living and pay our fucking taxes and don’t spend our fucking lives in college. No offense, Joe. I’m talking rich frat rats.”
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