by Dennis Foley
The rural Georgia countryside flew by the bus windows. Some on board talked about girls and cars. Hollister gazed out the windows, not really seeing anything—thinking about his wife, Susan.
“Kudzu,” Sergeant Elliott said.
“Huh?”
“Never seen anyplace that had as much of this stuff as Georgia. Look. Look there, sir,” Elliott said. “It’s eating up that telephone pole.”
It was completely covered with the native vine. Hollister chuckled. “I remember Ranger School. I’ve walked through, slept in, and untangled enough kudzu to cover two states.”
“Bet you don’t miss that.”
Hollister paused. “Actually, I kind of feel like I’m ghosting here in C Company. We pull so little field duty, we ought to be backing up to the pay table.”
“I’d say that’s lucky. At least we’re back from Vietnam. I haven’t even been back long enough to get completely unpacked. ’S gonna take me a while to get used to all the comforts of home.”
“You like being back, huh?”
“Like it? Sir, how long since you been back here?”
Hollister thought for a few seconds. “Goin’ on a year now.”
“It’s bad, sir. I don’t mean the combat V stuff. I mean the other shit …”
“Like?”
“Like them starting to pull the troops out.”
“That’s not good?”
“It’s good for them goin’ home. It’s real bad for them still there. Everybody’s spooked. Nobody wants to be the last American wasted over there. And the drugs and the race shit.”
A black soldier standing next to Hollister and Elliott, a combat veteran himself, heard the comment “I hear that shit, man. Nobody needs it—nobody.”
“What do you think we should do?” Hollister asked Elliott.
“We either got to do the job and get it done or pack up and get out in a New York minute. This drawdown and Vietnamization shit is bad news.”
Hollister let Elliott’s words sink in. He had always found the line soldier’s take on things to be somewhat exaggerated or oversimplified, but almost always solidly based in the reality that the soldiers felt. They never came up short of opinions when asked. “Well, maybe we can still come out of there having done some good.”
“Not as I can see, sir.”
Hollister flipped the pages in his small army-green notebook and refreshed his memory—the name of the deceased, next of kin, and the name of the church. He didn’t want anyone at the funeral or the cemetery seeing him checking his notes. He wanted them to think that he was almost as familiar with the key names at the funeral as the family was. But he knew better. He had been to almost seventy-five such funerals since he had assumed command of C Company, and every one tugged at his heart and his gut. He knew Sands, George A, E-5, 4th Infantry Division, Vietnam, wasn’t going to be any easier to bury than the others had been.
“We’re ’bout there,” the bus driver said.
The signs on the roadside signaled the approach to Calumet. One indicated the miles, another advertised the Rotary Club, and another sign read: POPULATION 488.
Every man on the bus groaned. Someone in the back offered, “Don’t be holdin’ yer breath waitin’ for no local lovelies to be comin’ by to see us. Be surprised if this town even has electricity.”
“Check this out,” another soldier said.
Suddenly the bus went silent. On a side of an abandoned outbuilding, a poster had been stapled up announcing a Ku Klux Klan meeting in Calumet for that very evening.
The silence was finally broken by a black soldier’s voice. “Hope we beat feet out here before dark, Cap’n.”
“Count on it,” Hollister said.
Hollister had dropped off the firing squad at the cemetery to find a good spot not too near the mourners, while he, Elliott, and the pallbearers went on to the church to wait for the hearse. Since a light rain had started to fall, Hollister had instructed Elliott to keep the pallbearers on the bus until they were needed.
He slipped into the church and found it filled with nearly a hundred local people and what looked like relatives who had come to town for the funeral.
An elderly man introduced himself. “I’m Fest, Mister Fest, with the funeral home.”
Hollister quickly slipped off his white cotton glove and took the old man’s frail hand. He wasn’t sure why the man would want to make a point out of being known as Mister Fest, but he went along with it. “Mister Fest, I’m Captain Jim Hollister. Are things on schedule?”
“Oh, yes. Things are exactly on time, Captain.” He lifted his watch from his vest pocket and held it in his palm. “The deceased will be here in six minutes. We’re always exactly on time.”
Hollister looked into the church. “Can you point out the family? I understand that Sergeant Sands wasn’t married.”
Fest pointed his long slender finger as discreetly as only an undertaker could. “The lady with the lavender hankie is Mrs. Sands, and the gentleman next to her is the deceased’s father.”
Hollister leaned a little closer to Mr. Fest. “I’ll be outside getting my people ready to bring the casket in.”
The rain continued to fall—a little heavier than before, but Hollister and the others didn’t put on the ugly brown raincoats that the army had issued them. Each man stood at a rigid position of attention—to the rear of the ten-year-old white hearse carrying Sergeant Sands’s remains.
Hollister opened the huge rear door, and the first two soldiers leaned in to grasp the casket and pull it out.
Hollister took up his position behind the casket and was about to give the command to move the pallbearers up the stairs when he noticed Mrs. Sands standing in the door of the church, her hand to her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No …” she said. “No, I won’t allow it. No sir.”
Her words were not directed at anyone, but Hollister waited for a second to see if she would say something else that would help him understand. Under his breath he spoke to the pallbearers. “Steady. Hold what you’ve got.”
He stepped around them and moved toward Mrs. Sands. Mr. Sands and Mr. Fest tried to console Mrs. Sands, who was alternately sobbing and complaining.
“You can’t do this, young man,” she said.
“Can’t do what, ma’am?” Hollister asked.
“I’ll let ’em carry my boy’s body to the door, but those coloreds can’t come into my church. No sir, I will not allow those coloreds into this tabernacle of God. My boy had to serve with nigras over there, but he wouldn’t want them in his church.”
“Ma’am. I realize how much pain you’re in, and I’m sure you don’t mean what you’re saying. These are soldiers. They have come to pay the highest respect to your son. I’m sure you know how sorry they are for your loss.”
The woman snatched the balled-up handkerchief from her face. “Boy … I’m not gonna tell you again. That box with my son in it is coming into the church my family has prayed in for three generations, but those black faces will not be carrying it.”
Mourners had gathered behind Mrs. Sands, waiting for Hollister to respond. She put him in a no-win situation. The last thing he wanted to do was lash out at her on the day she was burying her son.
Hollister raised his finger to wipe the rain off the leather brim of his service cap. “Madam, this detail is here for you and your son. I will not weed out the black soldiers for you or anyone else. You must accept my burial detail as is or I’ll be forced to take them back to Fort Benning right now.”
Mrs. Sands became hysterical and told Hollister he’d regret that.
The bus ride back to Fort Benning was no easier for Hollister than it had been to Calumet. He knew he would be faced with criticism from the chain of command for not staying, for not finding another solution to the problem. Certainly someone would blame him for not separating the soldiers by color, or for just arguing with the next of kin.
It was dark again by the time he pulled into his parking space at the BO
Q. He fumbled with his keys and finally got the sticking door to open. As if on autopilot, he flipped on the TV and the light switch, and dumped his hat and keys on the quartermaster-issue coffee table.
While the television warmed up, he poured himself a drink from the ever-present bottle that stood on the sideboard of the kitchenette.
He stood by the sink, drinking the warm bourbon, and only turned to watch the news. He knew that as soon as he sat down on the couch, he’d just have to get up to refill his glass.
He never missed the Vietnam casualty reports and the news pieces filed by only a handful of competent newsmen. He had little use for the crowd that spent most of its time at the Caravelle Hotel or the ones who rewrote the press releases handed out by the Joint Public Affairs Office in Saigon’s Rex Hotel. He only trusted the reporters whom he had personally seen in the field, collecting information to file themselves.
Sometime during the news he dozed off. The station signed off after midnight, and the hissing noise that replaced programming woke Hollister.
He looked at the clock on the nightstand next to his bed, where he had propped himself up to watch the small black-and-white TV and finish another drink. Next to the clock was a framed photograph of Susan.
Her smile tugged at his gut. He missed her. He hated living without her. And he didn’t know if he could ever get her back.
He lit a cigarette, turned off the television, and poured himself another drink.
Standing at the small kitchenette sink, he looked out the window at the circling C-130 aircraft loaded with paratroopers. They were lining up to drop pass after pass of student parachutists on their first night jump.
No soldier ever forgot his first night jump. Hollister was no different. Being an Airborne-Ranger was a life unlike any other. One that so often came between soldiers and the ones they loved.
She’d never come back as long as he was a soldier. He was sure of that. He poured himself another drink and lit another cigarette.
CHAPTER 2
Vietnam
IN A TRAVEL MAGAZINE Yoon Dlei village would look interesting, filled with the textures of a people who fabricated all of their needs from the Vietnamese tropical rain forest.
But only at a distance was the village romantic and exotic. Up close, the rain leaked through the matted palm fronds, once tight and well sealed. It had been a long time since there had been enough men in the small Montagnard village to keep all the structures repaired and comfortable for their families.
Krong, the aging chief of the small band of Montagnards who had slash-and-burn farmed the hills in western Binh Long Province for hundreds of years, tried to patch the hole in the roof. He wouldn’t let himself remember when such tasks were never done by a man of authority in what was once a large tribe.
His granddaughter, Jrae, held her infant child to her breast and huddled in the corner of the longhouse. All she had to squat on was a pallet made of salvaged cardboard, swollen from being wet, then dry, then wet again over the months since it was pressed into service.
Jrae was fairer, less stocky, and taller than the other women in the tribe. It was a matter of no small embarrassment to her that she was not full Montagnard. Her mother had befriended and then was seduced by a French anthropologist who had studied their tribe after World War II. They lived as man and wife until the French-Indochina War heated up, and he was called back to Paris. He had promised to return, but never did. Jrae’s mother went back to her tribal village and lived in shame until her death from tuberculosis.
Jrae’s childhood had made her different from the other girls in the village. By the time she and her mother returned from the city of Da Lat, where they had lived with her father, she had been exposed to Vietnamese and French cultures, had learned their languages and even conversational English from the missionaries who ran the clinic in her neighborhood. But no matter what she had learned—she was still an outcast in the Vietnamese community. She was the daughter of a Montagnard—a spurned ethnic minority for centuries.
For Jrae the cardboard eased the discomfort of the skinny saplings that made up the flooring of the longhouse. The scrap of woven blanket she used to cover her half-naked body and that of her son flaked dried mud each time she moved it.
The rain plopped onto the floor. Children whimpered and coughed. And their mothers rocked and soothed them. One of the women walked to the fireplace, sculpted out of a large termite’s nest, and put some charcoal on the waning fire. She took a large scrap of aluminum that had once been a can and fanned the glowing embers to spread the fire to the new charcoal. Sparks leaped out of the fireplace and popped at the top of their arcs.
The woman pulled her head away but couldn’t avoid the smoke. There was no provision to let the smoke out of the longhouses, except letting it filter out through the roof. Smoke always filled the dwelling, burning everyone’s eyes.
An elder ran into the longhouse. “They come again.”
Krong looked at him, puzzled but worried by Toong’s tone. “Who?”
“Republicans.”
One of the children, old enough to understand, began crying and scurried to put her mother between her and the door to the open village.
Krong closed his eyes for a moment as if to endure some pain or brace for it. He remained silent, summoning up strength from a reservoir of his own making.
He put down the thatch he had been using to repair the roof, brushed back his platinum-threaded hair, and patted the chignon on the back of his head. “I will talk to them.”
He picked up his ratty wool blanket he had once traded a French soldier a hand ax for and wrapped it around his bare shoulders. At the door he turned and spoke to the women. “Stay inside. Do not show yourself.”
The two Montagnard men and two skinny dogs waited in the center of the circle of longhouses for the South Vietnamese soldiers to arrive. The old men stood proudly and defiantly, each trying to remember when they were stronger. When they were warriors, providers, and the defenders of their people.
The Vietnamese burst into the village. Six soldiers in various states of drunkenness stumbled across the rain-swept village. Their sergeant stepped up to Krong. “Rice wine—where is it?”
Krong didn’t answer.
The soldier grabbed the old man’s withered arm and shook him. “What is it that makes you moi act stupid?” he asked, using the term for the savages they believed the nomads to be. “We will make trouble. Act now. Be smart, old man.”
Krong wouldn’t look away from the Vietnamese soldier’s eyes. It was an insult to make direct eye contact with them, and he wanted to show his contempt. He yelled out to an unseen villager in one of the other longhouses. “Bring the wine.”
“Hurry!” the Vietnamese soldier added.
While they all waited for two old women who carried a large crock of fermented rice wine to the center of the village, the soldiers made insulting remarks about the Montagnards and laughed at the women as they carried the jug.
In the darkened doorway of the chief’s longhouse Jrae stood and listened—her baby half-asleep, clinging to her. She knew what the soldiers were saying. They wanted women. They urged their sergeant not to stop at demanding only wine. He should ask for all the women, too. They would then pick the ones they wanted from the group.
Krong heard the talk, too, but pretended not to.
The sergeant laughed at his comrades and agreed. “Your women are good for pleasuring us,” he said, lustfully rubbing the crotch of his wet uniform trousers.
“You have your wine. Now go. Leave us. We are only hill people. Leave us to suffer through this night. Go be with your own kind.”
“We spend these same nights at the outpost down near the river guarding your people. There is a real threat to our people. Still we protect your skinny old men and your stupid women because the puppets in Saigon say we must. Your women—they can warm us tonight. We want women.”
“No. Now go away and leave us,” Krong said, growing more angry with the so
ldiers.
The Vietnamese sergeant shoved him with the heels of his hands. “Shut up! Be grateful that we don’t just kill you and tell Saigon that the Communist VC did it.”
The sergeant spat out encouragement to the others, already dipping cups into the crock and slopping wine on themselves as they drank. He gave them permission to find the women they wanted and just take them.
Krong protested again, but the soldiers didn’t stop. They ran to the longhouses and looked for young girls.
One of them entered Jrae’s longhouse and looked at her standing in the doorway—her baby at one of her swollen breasts. He laughed at her fearful expression but didn’t resist the temptation to reach out to fondle her free breast. She recoiled from his grasp and threw herself off balance. She staggered and the soldier laughed at her clumsiness.
She screamed out for him to leave them. But the soldier walked to the far end of the longhouse and found another girl, Sraang—only thirteen. He grabbed her by the wrist, held her out so he could look at her body, and grunted in approval. She was tall and dark skinned. Her hair was jet black, long and straight to her waist. The soldier looked at her naked chest and yelled out to the others that he had found a young one who was not as disgusting as the rest of them. He laughed and then dragged her out into the night.
Sraang was Jrae’s sister. Her only sister—ten years her junior. She was born to her mother and her mother’s second husband—a Montagnard who was killed by the Viet Cong not long after Sraang was born.
Jrae’s younger brother, Pek, had been taken a year earlier. That time they came with a recruiting pitch—explaining to the Montagnards that the Republican puppets in Saigon would eventually kill them all. Their only hope was to join the Viet Cong to fight Saigon. When the recruiting plea failed, they just took Pek. That was the first of the roundups that eventually took all the men under forty from their village.
After the soldiers left, Jrae collapsed on the cardboard pallet and cried, remembering just such a night when other soldiers had dragged her off. She held the baby who was a memory of the soldiers who used her—drunken and insulting. They had taken turns with her and then left her on the pathway near her village for her tribe to find her. Just remembering the night brought back the pain and the embarrassment of the men handling her small body, sweating on her, grunting, pushing, and hurting her.