Starlight

by Scott Ely

Sometimes the mess sergeant at Pleiku sent them hot food on the choppers in mermite cans during a lull in the fighting. In the insulated containers was the same old army food that he had grown used to eating in the States. Most of the time they ate C-rations. Once, Jackson ended up with five straight meals of ham and beans, food that tasted terrible, making it impossible to trade for fruit cocktail or spaghetti. Sometimes they got a case of dehydrated rations. Jackson liked the chicken and rice.

  Every day was the same, clear and hot. They were given beer, but it was always hot. Jackson would have given a month’s pay for a cold beer. There was plenty of drinking water but not enough for showers. One day Hale had fifty-five-gallon drums of water flown in and a shower rigged up using a drum with holes punched in the bottom. Everyone got to lather up and rinse off. Later they built a permanent water tank, the water heated with a diesel fuel fire. For a few days they all took hot showers until the NVA took out the water tank with a lucky shot from a 122-millimeter rocket.

  Jackson knew it could have been much worse for him. He could be an RTO for one of the lieutenants stationed in the Cunt. One lieutenant had already lost three radio men. But Jackson wished he was back at one of the big base camps in Pleiku or, better yet, Cam Ranh Bay where they had movies, swimming pools, ice cream, and passes into town.

  Gradually the NVA began to step up their rocket and mortar attacks on both the engineer camp and the firebase, although except for probes by small squads of NVA, there had been no ground attacks. If a ground attack against the firebase came, it would have to be launched along a long ridge that connected the mountaintop with the rest of the chain. This was the place where he was to meet with Light when Light contacted him on the walkie-talkie. Although he set the radio on Light’s frequency every night, Jackson had heard nothing from him.

  The intensity of the attacks increased, and Jackson sat in the TOC listening to the incoming, the dust from the sandbags above his head sifting down on him as each shell or rocket exploded in the compound. Although he was afraid, he did not believe he would die. He had moved the cot Light had slept on into the TOC. Pressing his nose against the canvas fabric of the cot he tried to remember how Light had smelled, that stink of decaying leaves and damp earth.

  “You promised. Goddamn, you promised,” he often whispered into the canvas.

  After the attack was over he would lie on the cot, just outside the circle of light thrown by the TOC’s single naked bulb, and think of home.

  I could have gone to college, he often thought. I could have had a deferment.

  But Jackson found it difficult to take the deferment. Jackson’s great-grandfather had ridden with Forrest, his grandfather had fought at Belleau Wood, his father in Normandy, and his uncle Frank in Korea. He had noticed how excited his father and Frank got when they watched the war on the news, the camera bouncing around all over the place when the action got hot. They expected him to enlist.

  The summer he graduated from high school he began to help his uncle Frank at the cleanup shop for used cars. Then it was fall, and some of his friends went off to college while others were drafted. He polished cars with a buffer in the shop and waited.

  “It won’t last much longer,” Frank said. “You’re going to miss it.”

  “Mama wants me to go to college,” Jackson said.

  “You can go after. Sure, I know you’re worried now. You’ll be all right.”

  Frank had been the one who had cured him of his fear of hand-grabbing for catfish. Every spring he had dreaded the sound of the first heavy rain falling on the roof because that meant the lake would soon flood the woods and fields.

  On Saturday mornings his father and Frank would take him to the backwaters and force him to wade through the flooded trees and brush and stick his hand down into that cold, muddy water to grope about for a fish under a submerged log or in a hollow tree trunk.

  There was a trick to it he just couldn’t seem to learn. He always got finned by the fish or ended up with a turtle and a few times with a snake or, worse yet, grabbed the fish’s tail and the cat, twisting its cold, slick body out of his grip, escaped.

  Finally in disgust they allowed him to stay in the boat. Then one day Frank had made him get out of the boat and taking his hand showed him how to place it gently on the fish, both their hands under the log together, he smelling the whiskey on his uncle’s breath.

  “Feel him, boy?” Frank asked. “Pretend it’s a woman. Tickle her, find out where she lives.”

  His father and Frank had laughed.

  But suddenly he had understood, not because he knew anything about touching a woman. He understood because Frank had said the right words, had showed him. Closing his hand around the fish’s tail, he jerked the cat out from under the log.

  Maybe Frank was right about the war, Jackson thought. Maybe I should enlist.

  But instead he waited, and Frank kept telling him about the good times he had had in Korea. Frank showed him the leather holster and pistol taken off a North Korean officer he had shot in a night ambush.

  But Jackson’s mother had other ideas.

  “None of my family ever went to college, no Jackson either. Bill’s going,” his mother kept saying every time Frank mentioned the war.

  And his father said, “I told him I’d pay. He says he don’t want to go.”

  So Jackson worked on the cars and looked after the cows and made sure the five thousand chickens in the three big chicken houses had plenty of feed and water while his father drove off to work fifty miles away at the steel plant in Birmingham.

  On weekends he and Loretta went to the movies and afterwards went to the old Jackson homesite to make love in his pickup. Years ago there had been a fire. Now only the foundation, the well, and the jonquils remained.

  He remembered one night they had driven out to the homesite. Loretta had just found a job in Birmingham as a legal secretary.

  “Maybe we should get married?” he said. “I could find a job working on cars in Birmingham.”

  “You’re going to be drafted,” she said.

  “You could come live with me after basic.”

  “You’ll be going to Vietnam.”

  “Maybe I’ll get Germany.”

  Her clothes were gone, and he reached out for her. She pushed his hand away.

  “Are you going to spend the rest of your life fixing up cars?” she asked.

  “You know I’m waiting on the draft,” he said.

  “Go to college.”

  “Frank’s teaching me the business.”

  “You don’t want to marry me.”

  She began to dress. After that he still took her to the movies occasionally, but they no longer went to the homesite.

  Then Jackson got the letter. He was relieved someone had made up his mind for him.

  In late October he and his father went to the river near the home-site. At the churchyard across the river, the cavalryman and the marine lay buried. They fished for bass, wading the shoals. At noon they stopped for lunch on a large, flat boulder in the center of the steam. They gutted the fish, throwing the entrails into the river. Jackson washed the blood off his hands in the cold water.

  “Were you afraid?” Jackson asked.

  “Sometimes, mostly before we fought,” his father said. “Once it started I was all right. You’ll be all right too. Jacksons have always been good soldiers.”

  “Did you hate the men you killed.”

  “They were Kraut bastards. They killed my buddies. I hated them during the war but not after. They were soldiers like me.”

  “I don’t hate the Viet Cong.”

  It was funny, Jackson thought. He had imagined he would be fighting little men dressed in black pajamas, not NVA regulars.

  “You’ll learn,” his father said.

  But he had not learned to hate them. He would kill them if he could, but it was hard to hate men who had been trapped by the war the same as he.

  When he came home on leave after basic, Loretta showed up
at Frank’s shop. Jackson was steam cleaning an engine.

  “I’m thinking about moving to Birmingham,” she said.

  “When?”

  “You’ll be gone.”

  “This time next year I’ll be home.”

  “You be careful.”

  He put down the steam hose and kissed her. Then he drove her home.

  And in the bunker at night he often tried to picture his homecoming, his parents and uncles, and Loretta meeting him at the Birmingham Airport. But one night he closed his eyes and found it impossible to imagine what Loretta looked like.

  “Loretta, Loretta,” he said out loud, hoping the words could make her appear.

  But all he could imagine was the figure of a girl without a face. He knew if he did not have her picture wrapped in plastic in a pocket of his fatigue jacket he would never be able to summon up her green eyes and red hair, her knees skinned from playing softball.

  But one person whose image was always clear in his mind, whom he was able to call up anytime he wished, was Light. All he had to do was close his eyes and there was Light with his skin that was too white, his washed-out blue eyes, his face set in an expression that gave no clue to what he was thinking.

  Then Jackson wondered where Light was and wished that he was with him, sleeping out in the jungle wrapped in a poncho against the cool night air of the mountains, safe from the incoming, safe from the NVA because the enemy feared Light like death itself. At the end of his tour he would go home and in a few weeks images of the firebase and mountains and Hale and even Light would fade away to be lost forever, for he would carry home no pictures of them.

  CHAPTER

  6

  JACKSON HAD JUST SET the radio on Tom Light’s frequency when Light’s voice, the words spoken in a whisper, came out of the handset. Jackson was sitting on the TOC’s overhead cover and had attached the whip to the radio because he had feared that Light might have wandered far over into Laos and out of range.

  “I’ve been killing, but they’re too proud to give up their dead. Nothing to show the major yet,” Light said.

  There was a long pause before Light spoke again.

  “Some nights I don’t want to look in the scope. See strange stuff. Know what I mean?”

  Static crackled out of the handset.

  Gasping for breath, Jackson pressed the transmission bar but could say nothing, thinking of what he had seen in the scope that first night.

  “Goddamn you, talk,” Light said.

  “Come in,” Jackson said.

  “I can’t come in,” Light said. “I can’t never come in. Can’t go home.”

  “What about me? You promised.”

  “You’re going home. I gave my word. Meet me tomorrow night at the rock.”

  “I’ve never been out there. I don’t know how.”

  “It’ll be just like walking down the street in Saigon. I won’t let nothing happen to you.”

  And Jackson believed Light’s promise, thinking that he was safer out in the bush with Light than in the TOC. At that moment, Jackson thought, an NVA soldier might be humping the rocket or mortar shell down the Ho Chi Minh Trail that was meant for him.

  In the morning Jackson went to see Hale who was down in the TOC working at his map tripod.

  “Sir, I’d like to go out on a listening post tonight,” Jackson said, taking several deep breaths to try to calm himself.

  “Why’s that?” Hale said. “I need you here.”

  “I want to know—” Jackson began, realizing that Hale was probably wondering how he could talk and gasp for air at the same time. “I want to know what it’s like out there.”

  Hale laughed and said, “Stick close to me. Don’t want my RTO wandering around in the bush.” Then he patted Jackson on the shoulder. “I’m going to run this operation from down here. I’ve been out there. This is my third goddamn tour. Go out and the dinks’ll blow you away.”

  “I want to go out,” Jackson said.

  “You’re staying with me. I go out, then you go. Not until.” Then Hale continued, “Go plot those patrol positions for tonight.”

  Stay close to Hale and get fucked, Jackson thought as he went to the map. I want to stay close to Tom Light. I’m going out if I have to crawl through the fucking wire.

  That night, his face painted with camouflage and carrying Light’s letters inside his fatigue jacket, Jackson walked out the front gate on wobbly legs, concentrating on taking slow, even breaths. No one at the gate had questioned him. He carried the radio so he could call the TOC when he started back in and tell them he was coming. Light had promised nothing about protecting him from friendly fire.

  He had considered what would happen if Hale discovered he had disobeyed orders. The major had just gone to sleep when he left, and Jackson hoped to find Light, write his letter, and return before Hale woke up. But if the NVA mounted a probe or a mortar attack, Hale would discover he was gone. Yet Leander was always insubordinate to Hale, and done enough to receive a court martial from another commander.

  Hale won’t do a fucking thing, Jackson thought. Talk, that’s all he’ll do. Won’t fuck with me because he’ll be fucking with Light.

  Breathing hard, Jackson began walking along the edge of the outermost circle of wire, hoping that someone on the perimeter would not open up on him. He tried to remember the ambush and listening post positions he had helped plot in grease pencil on the big map in the TOC. If he walked over one of them, they would kill him.

  What about H&I fire, asshole? he thought. Harassment and Interdiction fire would be fired all night at random locations out in the bush.

  Then the fear took hold of him so strongly that his legs failed him, and he had to sit down for a few minutes and take slow, deep breaths to calm himself.

  Tom Light’ll keep me from getting blown away, he thought over and over.

  He walked on, carrying his M-16 on his hip with the safety off and his finger on the trigger, thinking that he did not want to be captured, remembering all the stories he had heard about what happened to American prisoners.

  “Don’t get captured,” a cadre during basic training had told him. “They’ll cut your ears and nose off and show ’em to you while you’re still alive. Use you for bayonet practice. They’re not human.”

  Off to his right he saw the tall, dark shape of the tower as he walked through the scrub that covered the stretch of cleared ground toward the dark mass of forest. Sounds came out of it: buzzes and clicks and whistles made by the night animals.

  Every time he stumbled over a vine or listened to a dry stick crack beneath his boots, he expected to see muzzle flashes from the enemy’s weapons. And every bush and every small tree and every clump of grass looked like an enemy soldier crouched and ready to fire. But worst of all, after he stared at the dark shapes for a few seconds, they began to move. All around him the night was walking.

  As he entered the trees it was much darker, and he felt safer. He crawled into a bamboo thicket and lay on the soft mat of leaves. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head and began to settle on his face despite the insect repellent he had rubbed on himself.

  Jackson turned on the radio and pressed the transmission bar on the handset.

  “Tom Light, Tom Light,” he spoke in a whisper.

  There was no reply, only static.

  Just as he started to call again, he thought he saw something move in front of him. No bush this time. The M-16 lay on the leaves by his right knee.

  Jackson began to choke for air, feeling so weak that he doubted if there would be strength in his arms to lift the rifle.

  Whatever it was had stopped, a dark shape through the trees only a few meters away that looked to him like a crouching NVA. He looked to one side of it like he had been trained to do to see if it would go away, but it remained there, a black spot in the darkness.

  Goddamn you, Tom Light, where are you? Jackson thought.

  It moved again, and Jackson reached for the rifle. Then it ran, the brush crac
kling, and as he brought up the rifle he realized that it was one of those tiny deer, hardly bigger than a rabbit, that inhabited the forest. Every morning they came up to feed on the grass inside the wire. He sat down on the leaves shaking, soaked in sweat.

  “Tom Light, Tom Light,” Jackson whispered in the handset.

  White noise was his reply.

  Where was the rock? Jackson thought.

  From the tower, getting to the rock looked easy, the outcropping a prominent feature of the ridge. Now he was uncertain how to find the rock, and the gunners at Desolation Row had begun to fire H&I fire, the rounds impacting perhaps a hundred meters away.

  Suddenly Jackson felt the hand on his shoulder, and he wanted to reach for his rifle but could not. He was too scared to scream or even move. As he sucked in his breath to try to yell, a hand was placed over his mouth, and he felt hot breath on his ear.

  “It’s Tom,” a voice said. “Hush up.”

  Jackson collapsed on the leaves, gasping for air, looking at the dark figure of Light who knelt above him, smelling the sharp scent of decaying leaves which was the stink of Light. There was a difference between Light’s stink and the jungle smell of decay. Light’s had something almost sweet to it, and Jackson supposed that the smell came from Light’s rotting skin.

  “Did you bring my letters?” Light asked, bending down to whisper to him.

  Jackson still could not speak but nodded his head.

  “I’ll carry you to the rock. Next time I won’t have to come get you,” Light said.

  By this time Jackson had calmed down enough to walk, so he got up and followed Light through the forest. Jackson kept getting tangled up in vines, most of which seemed to have thorns, but Light moved through the forest like he was walking along a road. Then in a clump of bamboo they were caught by H&I fire, the mortar rounds passing low over their heads. Jackson raised his head a little and watched the high explosive shells hit. The shell fragments glowed red in the dark, sailing toward them and cutting down sections of bamboo above their heads. He noticed he was breathing easily, his body feeling relaxed. Suddenly he felt Light’s hand on the back of his neck, and his face was pushed down hard into the leaves.