Starlight

by Scott Ely

  “Keep down,” Light said. “You’ll get your fool head blowed off.”

  For the first time Jackson was enjoying the war in the way that his father had always claimed he had enjoyed his duty as an infantryman. Now with Light’s protection he would go home with stories to tell around the fire at deer camp after the guns had been cleaned and racked, he sitting and drinking whiskey with the rest of the men.

  Finally they walked up a narrow trail to the big rock, which was really not one rock but a series of rocky outcroppings on which little vegetation grew. The outcroppings ended in a cliff covered with vines and small trees, and Jackson saw the only way in or out was along the trail.

  “What if they catch us here?” Jackson asked.

  “There’s another trail round the side of the cliff,” Light said. “They won’t come up here.”

  On the ridge below, Jackson saw flashes and heard the sound of enemy mortars firing. In a few seconds he saw the flashes at the firebase and heard the sound of the explosions. The mortar squad sent up illumination followed by high explosive rounds.

  I’m fucked, Jackson thought.

  Hale was up by now and mad as hell.

  Well, just fuck it, Jackson thought. What could Hale do? Send me to Vietnam?

  In the glow of the illumination, the small parachutes drifting over the rock, Jackson read Light his mail. Light’s mother was doing better, and his father had been making good catches of fish. The old man was thinking about buying a new boat. Then Jackson wrote another letter for Light which was almost exactly like the first one.

  The illumination was up and the guns still firing, but Jackson felt calm, breathing as easily as if he were sitting on the porch swing at home after supper.

  Another series of mortar rounds were fired at the firebase from another location giving the firebase’s mortars a new target.

  “Our guns never kill any dinks. Blow up bamboo, that’s all. Dinks up and gone by the time them rounds hit. Ain’t I done for you like I promised? You’ll get home,” Light said.

  “You’re the fucking best,” Jackson said.

  “What’re you going to do when you get home?” Light asked.

  “Maybe go to college on the GI Bill. And you?”

  “Fish. Nothing like going out and finding the lines full. A few channel cats run thirty or forty pounds. Cut some good catfish steaks off ’em.”

  More illumination went up and drifted over them.

  Light continued, “But sometimes I don’t know if I’d like to go home. I went home once. Couldn’t get comfortable until I was back in country. Here’s where I belong. Me and the starlight.”

  Jackson felt a tightness in his chest, hoping that Light was not going to start talking about seeing things in the starlight again.

  “Home’s where I want to be,” Jackson said.

  Light laughed and said, “Your time’s just started. Later won’t be so easy.”

  I won’t end up like you, Jackson thought to himself. The day I get home I’ll forget all about the war.

  A gunship had been called in, and Jackson heard the grind of its Gatling guns, turning to watch the red tracers come down in an unbroken stream.

  “I think the dinks have brought in a man,” Light said.

  “What man?” Jackson said.

  “Someone like me, a sniper. I heard about him. They call him the Tiger. About three or four days ago he took a shot at me. Bullet hit a vine. Was a good shot. Never come up against a man before that could shoot like that,” Light said.

  What if Light was killed, Jackson thought. Then the sniper, better than Light, would kill all of them.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll waste him,” Light continued.

  “Sure, you’ll waste him,” Jackson said.

  It made sense. Light had never even been wounded. No one could stand against him.

  “Have you got a girl?” Light asked.

  “Yeah, she works in Birmingham,” Jackson said.

  “Does she write you?”

  “Pretty often.”

  “Have you told her about me? How I’m going to keep you safe?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said, wondering if somehow Light would know that he was lying.

  “You’ll go home and marry her and have kids?”

  “Yeah. But there’s lots of guys in Birmingham.”

  “Plenty of Jodys back in the world.”

  “Sure,” Jackson said. Then he continued, “I’ve got to go back.”

  “Shit, wait till daylight.”

  “Hale ordered me not to go out. He was asleep when I left. He’s up now and looking for me. I’m supposed to stay close to him with the radio.”

  “Let that bastard come out here if he wants the radio. He gives you any shit, you tell him I’ll start living at the firebase. He can’t stop me.”

  Nobody could fuck with Light. Nobody, Jackson thought.

  Jackson and Light sat at the big rock and talked of home until morning. By then Jackson had learned all the details about Light’s mother’s bad heart, the commercial fishing business, his sister Ellen who lived in Memphis. He told Light about the farm and how much trouble it was to raise chickens, how on especially hot summer days you had to walk them in the chicken houses, keep them moving, or they would die of suffocation. Cleaning up used cars and selling them in Chicago was what interested Light most.

  “That’s smart,” Light said. “I could learn to do that.”

  In the morning just before sunrise Light led him back through the jungle and left him at the edge of the scrub.

  “Don’t let Hale fuck with you,” Light said.

  “Keep my ass from getting bio wed away,” Jackson said.

  “I never saw a man more worried about dying.”

  “I wrote your letters. Remember that.”

  “You keep listening on the radio. I’ll call. You come out.”

  Then Light stepped away, disappearing into the jungle.

  Jackson came out of the trees just as the sun rose over the mountains. All over the scrub were the small, white parachutes from the flares so that Jackson, basking in the warmth of the morning sun after the cool highland night, fancied that he was walking among the blossoms of gigantic white flowers.

  When he reached the TOC, Hale was waiting.

  “Pack up your shit. You’re going to the fence,” Hale said.

  “Light won’t like that,” Jackson said.

  “Goddamn, I don’t care what he likes!” Hale shouted. “You’re going to the fence.”

  Jackson gasped for breath and said, “You fuck with me, you fuck with Light. He’ll come in. Stay here.”

  “See these!” Hale screamed, holding up his collar where his oak leaves were sewn in black thread. Then, talking fast, “No goddamn sniper is going to fuck with me. Don’t even wear a uniform. Runs around in fucking dink sandals. Fucking starlight scope. Fucking rifle. I’m in command!”

  Hale noticed that two lieutenants and a sergeant were standing in the corridor which led to the stairs. They looked like they were trying to decide whether to come in or go out. The radio operator at the big radio had become very interested in his log.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Hale said. “Get out of there and kill the enemy.”

  The officers left.

  Then Hale turned to Jackson and said, “You stay here. You go AWOL again and I’ll ship your ass out to Hanoi.”

  Hale went into his cubicle, slamming the only door on the fire-base behind him, brought from the air-conditioned office Hale once had in Pleiku.

  Jackson lay down on his cot, breathing hard.

  I can go live out in the bush if I want, he thought. No more “fish on the bank.” Light’s going to make fucking sure nothing happens to me.

  CHAPTER

  7

  THE NVA MADE IT hot at the fence. The engineers measured their progress in meters. An enlisted man might dump a bag of concrete in a mixer and then spend the next hour flat on his back while the infantry tried to flush out a sn
iper. After weeks of work, only fifty meters of wire had been strung, most of that filled with holes from attacks by sappers.

  Hale spent the time screaming over the radio at his platoon leaders down in the Cunt. Jackson was beginning to fear that Hale was going to go down and direct operations personally. Hale often cursed Light for not living up to his reputation as a killer of NVA.

  It had just turned dark, and there was a firefight in progress in the Cunt.

  “Goddamn, I don’t care if you’re understrength!” Hale shouted into the radio. “Keep them off the fence!”

  Hale slammed down the handset.

  Jackson noticed a soldier had come into the TOC. The man walked over to Hale.

  “Major, I wanna join up with you,” the soldier said.

  “What’s your name and unit, soldier?” Hale asked.

  The soldier drew himself up straight, almost coming to attention, and said, “Private Savitch, Sir, Twenty-fifth Engineers.”

  “You’re AWOL,” Hale said.

  “I’m not going back,” Savitch said.

  Jackson thought Hale would explode, but instead the major laughed.

  Hale said, “No one volunteers for the infantry.”

  “I’m volunteering,” Savitch said.

  “Two Corps sends me replacements,” Hale said. “Why should I take you?”

  “I’m better at killing than stringing wire,” Savitch replied.

  “I should send you down to take the place of that goddamn sorry reserve lieutenant. He don’t like it here at all. He wants to be back in his fraternity house,” Hale said.

  Savitch laughed and said, “I’m no college boy.”

  Hale had Jackson raise Little Tit on the radio, and after Hale promised the engineer CO two engineer replacements, the CO agreed to let Savitch stay. Hale told Savitch he could sleep that night in the TOC and in the morning he would assign him to one of the platoons. Then the major left.

  Jackson learned Savitch was from Chicago and, like Jackson, had been drafted after high school. He had already been in country six months.

  “Lemme tell you why I got away from the motherfucking engineers,” Savitch said. “When I get in country they assign us to paving this road out of Bong Son over on the coast. Charlie don’t like paved road. Can’t mine it. First morning we go out Charlie hits the lead and rear trucks with B-40s, so our ass is stuck right there. By the time the gunships show up, me, O’Brien, and Washington are the only ones left alive out of the new guys. O’Brien got himself killed at the fence last week. Washington wasn’t good for nothing after the ambush. They sent him home. That fence is worse than a hundred fucking Bong Sons. All those motherfucking engineers is gonna die.”

  “Tom Light’ll kill the dinks,” Jackson said.

  “Yeah, I heard about that motherfucker. He’s not so good. The dinks have been kicking ass,” Savitch said.

  “You wait, you’ll see.”

  “I don’t believe those stories. Yeah, he’s greased a few dinks. He’s not that good. Nobody is. Harry is as good as Light. Maybe better.”

  Then Savitch told him about an Australian mercenary named Harry.

  “They were paying him $100 a man, $500 for officers,” Savitch said. “After I finish my tour, I’m going into business for myself just like Harry. He gave me his address in Sydney. He’ll show me the ropes, but he said I gotta have experience. If I don’t get me some experience, I’ll have to go back to Chicago. What’s for me in Chicago? Nothing. Steal cars, maybe knock off a liquor store. I’ll end up in Cook County Jail. All my friends are there. I can’t be a fucking mercenary if I spend the war working on roads and fences. Men like Harry and Light can name their own price when the war’s over.”

  “I want to go home,” Jackson said.

  “I’m not going home to work in a gas station.”

  “My cousin Leland does. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing, if you want to watch other people driving the big cars and getting the good-looking broads. Getting it whenever they want it. Everyone is making money out of this war but me. The chopper pilots are shooting tigers out of their ships and selling the skins in Hong Kong. They got a piece of the action in some whorehouse in Vung Tau. They’ll go home rich.”

  “I’d pump gas the rest of my life if I could get out of here right now.”

  Savitch laughed and said, “Are you a farm boy, Jackson?”

  “We run a few cows and some chickens. Only eighty acres. My daddy works at the steel plant in Birmingham,” Jackson replied.

  “You come to Chicago after the war. One week with me and you won’t want to go back to the farm,” Savitch said.

  Jackson liked Savitch because the man was not afraid. Jackson wished that he could be like Savitch, go through the war without being afraid all the time.

  “Don’t you worry about getting blown away?” Jackson asked.

  “Naw, I don’t think about it. Sure, it could happen. Harry told me he liked it out in the bush. Things make sense out there. Did Tom Light tell you he was afraid?”

  “No.”

  “I heard you spent the night in the bunker with him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “He doesn’t talk much.”

  “Light’s good. Harry’s good. But I’m going to be better. Tell me one thing Light said.”

  “He said to keep my head down.”

  Savitch laughed and said, “Jackson, if you stayed here a hundred years you’d always be a fucking new guy.”

  The rest of the night Savitch talked of the money he was going to make as a mercenary and the broads, cars, and boats he was planning to buy with it.

  In the morning Hale assigned Savitch to one of the platoons. After a few days, Jackson learned from Hale that Savitch had repeatedly volunteered for point.

  “They can’t kill Savitch,” Hale said to Jackson one night. “Goddamn Light is probably dead. That son of a bitch Savitch smelled out an ambush yesterday. Lieutenant Hightower’s platoon got three kills, the first ones that goddamn reserve lieutenant has made. You know what Savitch did? Put a bayonet on his rifle and practiced sticking dink corpses. Said he wanted to make sure his bayonet worked.”

  Hale laughed, and Jackson felt his stomach tighten.

  “Morton can have Light back whenever he wants him. I got my own killer,” Hale continued.

  And then Savitch graduated from point man to infantry scout. One night in the TOC, Jackson watched Hale show Savitch a spot on the map where the Cunt narrowed into the gorge.

  “There,” Hale said jabbing his finger down on the map. “I think they’re building bunkers somewhere up in these grid squares. Find them. We’ll call in a B-52 strike.”

  “No problem, Major,” Savitch, now a corporal, said.

  Soon after Savitch rappelled down out of a helicopter into the jungle one night, the daylight attacks on the fence stopped. But the enemy still blew up sections of the fence in the early morning hours.

  “See, he’s reconning and killing at the same time,” Jackson overheard Hale tell the first sergeant. “He’s got the enemy on the run. He’s already done more for us than that goddamn Light ever did.”

  Hale had Jackson try to contact Savitch on his walkie-talkie but with no success. Jackson decided that Savitch was either dead or had thrown the walkie-talkie away. The major insisted that Jackson log in ten attempts every day to contact his scout.

  Another week passed and still the NVA left the fence alone during daylight. Jackson was asleep in the TOC one morning when he heard Hale calling his name. He opened his eyes and saw Hale standing over him.

  “Get your radio and rifle,” Hale said. “We’re going to the fence.”

  As Jackson tied his boot laces, he watched the major putting on his steel pot and flak jacket. He guessed that the enemy had decided to make a daylight assault on the fence, and it had gotten so bad Hale had been forced to direct the defense personally. But nothing was coming over the big radio, the
bored operator sitting by the machine drinking a cup of coffee.

  Down at the fence Jackson got out of the chopper breathing hard. Gunships were circling overhead to provide security for the major. They followed the lieutenant in command of the platoon across the cleared ground which had grown up in scrub. A group of men were standing by the fence.

  “Still haven’t got it figured out, Major,” a staff sergeant said.

  Jackson saw there were men posted out in the scrub, their eyes fixed on the jungle. They followed the sergeant along the fence, and then Jackson saw the thing up on the fence post. Jackson gasped for breath, the hot, humid air feeling like water entering his lungs.

  “They got it booby-trapped,” the sergeant continued. “We found one of the trip wires. My EOD man thinks they meant us to find it.”

  It was Savitch’s head.

  They all watched the emergency ordnance demolition man looking at the wire below the head.

  Hale said, “I want that thing down.”

  “Yes, sir, he’s the best,” the sergeant said, nodding toward the EOD man. “He’ll figure it out.”

  The EOD man backed carefully away from the wire and walked over to the sergeant. He and the sergeant talked to each other in low tones.

  “Major, he thinks they’ve booby-trapped the head,” the sergeant said.

  Jackson wished that the sergeant had not called it a head.

  “I want it off the pole,” Hale said.

  Jackson could tell that Hale was getting mad, and the sergeant and the EOD man knew it too.

  The sergeant and the EOD man walked off a little distance from the major and had another conference.

  “Sir, he thinks the best thing to do is drop a frag on it,” the sergeant said.

  “Go ahead,” Hale said.

  Everyone took cover and the EOD man threw a frag out beside the post. The frag went off followed by an even louder explosion. Dirt fell down on top of Jackson who lay with his face pressed to the red clay. When the smoke and dust cleared, no head was on top of the pole.

  “Jesus, they packed that thing full of TNT,” the EOD man said.

  Hale had the men search the scrub for remains but all that turned up were a few pieces of skin and a bit of skull with the hair still attached to it. No one at the fence had much to say. Jackson knew everyone was thinking of what their head would look like up on the pole.