Starlight

by Scott Ely

  As the chopper lifted off to take them back to the firebase, Jackson found he could breathe easy again. As it climbed over the Cunt, Jackson looked past the door gunner toward the gorge, thinking Light was somewhere in that sea of green and that the enemy would never put Light’s head up on a pole.

  CHAPTER

  8

  JACKSON WATCHED MAJOR HALE work at the map tripod beneath the bunker’s single naked bulb. The TOC was the only bunker in camp with electricity. Sometimes the bulb burned very bright, but most of the time it was dim, illuminating only the center of the TOC and leaving the rest of the square room, especially the corners, in shadow. Hale was bent over the map on the table with a pencil in his hand. Occasionally he made a mark on the map with the pencil and then stared off into one of the dark corners. Jackson hoped Hale was not planning an attack on Holiday Inn base camp.

  A conversation had just come over the radio between a company commander at Dak To and the medevac at Pleiku air base. The captain pleaded for a dust off, saying that many of his men, wounded in an attack which had just been beaten off, were going to die if they did not send a chopper. Jackson listened to the professionally calm voice from Pleiku tell the captain that they had none to send, and he would have to wait.

  “These men are going to die!” the captain said. “Jesus, send me something!”

  Then the transmission was broken off abruptly, but the captain must have held down the transmission bar for a second because Jackson heard the sound of small-arms fire and men yelling. Hale, still lost in thought, had paid no attention to the conversation.

  The radio was silent, and the operator dialed another frequency out of Dak To. As the operator twisted the dial, Jackson noticed a strange smell in the bunker. Hale smelled it too, for he looked up from his maps, both men at the same time seeing the figure standing in the semidarkness at the doorway of the bunker, which was even darker than the corners because it was at the end of a narrow hallway. It was that rotting leaf smell but with something added that Jackson could not identify.

  Tom Light stepped out of the darkness, crossing the room to Hale. Jackson wondered why Light had not called him on the radio again to tell him he was coming in.

  “I told you not to come back without confirmation,” Hale said.

  “I know,” Light said.

  Hale said, “How in hell did you get back in here? The front gate has orders not to let you inside the wire.”

  Hale rang up front gate on the field telephone.

  “I didn’t come in the gate,” Light said.

  Hale stood there looking at Light with the phone in his hand.

  “No chopper has landed. How?” Hale asked.

  “I’m here,” Light said. “It don’t matter how.”

  Hale put the phone down.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?” Hale asked.

  “No,” the sniper said, reaching into his pocket and taking out something wrapped in fresh leaves.

  The leaves, Jackson thought, must have been the reason for the unusual smell. Light was unwrapping the leaves, and Jackson moved closer. Then Light had it in his hand and Hale, recoiling, stepped back, the stench filling the bunker. Light dropped it on the map, the severed cock landing with a splat, the black clotted blood dribbling a trail across the white paper. Jackson thought of the black rubber snakes he bought when he was a boy and hid under the sheets of his sister’s bed. If left on a window sill, the snakes would turn soft and melt in the sun, losing their round shape, flattening out. That was what it looked like.

  The cutting had been done with a razor sharp knife, no rough edges left where it had been lopped off. Jackson, gasping for air, did not want to look at it, wished that the generator would suddenly fail, plunging the bunker into darkness, and when the bulb glowed again Light and the thing on the map table would be gone. Although trying hard to stay cool, Hale had taken another step back from the table.

  The thing had obviously been taken several days before, since it had turned a dark brown from its original yellow and had shrunk to the size of an infant’s. It was uncircumcised. Jackson wondered if all of them were like that. The smell of the thing was something he knew he would always remember.

  Hale finally spoke, his voice shrill and uneven, “Get that thing off my table!”

  “I want my R&R,” Light said, making no move toward the table.

  “That’s just one,” Hale said. “I want you back out in the bush.”

  Light took off his floppy bush hat and pulled his dogtag chain over his head. He threw it on the table. Jackson saw in the place of dogtags there was something strung on the chain looking like pieces of dried fruit. He realized that the sniper had taken his trophies and dried them in the sun, afterwards stringing them on the chain.

  “Count ’em,” Light said. “There’s six. I took the fresh one on the ridge west of your camp three days ago. He was down in a spider hole. You need a recon, Major. There’re beaucoup NVA up there. One of these nights they’re gonna come down here and cut off yours.”

  “I want goddamn bodies,” Hale said.

  Light smiled and said, “You know, Major, once I had a company commander made us count smells. We’d shelled a bunker complex. Bodies buried under dirt and logs. So he made us sniff at the holes and cracks. Like a pack of rabbit dogs nosing a brush pile. We turned in them smells. Probably got himself a promotion out of it.”

  “Bodies,” Hale said.

  “Once these are dried in the sun they turn black as the inside of your asshole,” Light said. “No difference between a round eye and a gook dick. Americans’d be lot easier to kill than the dinks.”

  The bulb began to fade, leaving Hale outside the circle of light. But Jackson could still see Light clearly. He was looking toward Hale, waiting for an answer. Hale was mad but was trying hard to control himself.

  “In the morning,” Hale said. “There’s not a chopper available.”

  Jackson took some slow, deep breaths as he thought of the NVA massing up on the ridge. Light would not be around to protect him.

  “Then get one from Pleiku,” Light said.

  “It’s a hot night,” Hale said. “The NVA are pushing hard up at Dak To.”

  “Now,” Light said.

  The bulb glowed bright again, so bright that Jackson wondered if it would explode from the sudden surge of power coming from the generator. Hale looked like he wished it would, so he would be protected from Tom Light by the darkness. In the glare Jackson saw every crease in the major’s face, the network of wrinkles around his eyes. Hale looked old, making Jackson think of his grandfather.

  “You’ll have your chopper and your R&R, but I want you back here in three goddamn days,” Hale said. “Don’t plan to set foot in this camp.”

  Light grinned and said, “There’s plenty NVA in the mountains. I’ll be back.”

  “Get me General Morton’s headquarters. Put it on the secure net,” Hale said to Jackson.

  Once Jackson had raised the general’s headquarters, he placed the transmission on a scrambler so that neither the Americans nor the enemy could eavesdrop on the conversation. Hale took over the radio and asked to speak to the general.

  “Light’s here in my TOC, Sir,” Hale said. “He’s got his kills and wants to chopper out of here for R&R. My ships are gone. If the men find out he’s here, I could have a mutiny on my hands. I need a chopper for him now.”

  “He can wait,” the general’s voice came over the speaker.

  Hale said, “General, you sent him up here. I can’t protect the fence if my men mutiny.”

  The general paused and said, “Goddamn it, Hale, you better not have a mutiny up there, or I’ll have your head. I sent him because he kills the enemy. He’s got more kills than your entire battalion. The fence is behind schedule. Those engineers haven’t strung enough wire to fence my backyard. If you’d do more killing and less worrying about Light, we’d have it built. He’ll have his chopper. Don’t call me again for something like this. Out.”
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  “You stay down here until the chopper comes,” Hale said to Light. “Jackson, get rid of those things.”

  “Where?” Jackson asked.

  “Burn, bury, throw ’em out in the wire,” Hale said. “Take that map too.”

  Light went over to one of the dark corners and after propping the rifle up against the side of the wall squatted gook fashion.

  Jackson stood by the map tripod and looked at Light’s trophies. He was not sure if he was going to be able to touch them.

  “Leave the chain,” Light said.

  Jackson unsnapped the chain and pushed the dried cocks off it. They had dried to the consistency of leather and did not smell, having lost almost all resemblance to what they once were. The fresh one was another matter. He did not want to touch it, so he wrapped it up in Hale’s map of Laos. Going out of the TOC, he went down by the latrine and with an entrenching tool dug a hole and buried them.

  Back at the TOC he found Hale busy with his maps again and Light still squatting in the corner. Hale left the TOC, leaving Jackson alone with Light. Jackson sat at the radio and waited for Light to speak to him.

  “The major wanted proof,” Light said.

  Jackson turned to face the dark shape that was Light.

  “You could’ve radioed.”

  “Look, they were dead when I done it to ’em. A dick’s the only thing a man has got one of besides a nose that’s easy to take and carry. I met an Australian mercenary out there once who took noses. Thought I’d do something different.”

  Jackson said nothing.

  “They do worse than I’ve done,” Light said. “You can’t hurt the dead. That general the major was talking to sent some LRRP patrol up in those mountains around that big base camp. I made contact with ’em. Told ’em the dinks knew exactly where they was right from the time they rappelled down into the big trees out of the chopper. That goddamn lieutenant didn’t listen to a fucking thing I said. Next time I saw him was in the forest about a day after the dinks had ambushed ’em. Every man had his dick cut off and stuffed in his mouth. The lieutenant chewed his half in two. So I know they’d did it to him while he was still alive. Trying to spit it out to breathe, I guess.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone. I couldn’t mutilate bodies,” Jackson said.

  “You’re no better than me, base camp soldier. We’re all here to kill the dinks.”

  “You like it.”

  “No, it’s just what I do.”

  “You could live out in the bush until your tour is over.”

  “They’d leave me out in the bush until the old Mississippi dried up unless I kill. Until all those troops started dying when they went out with me, I was like you. Waiting to go home. Counting the days. Then all those troops got wasted. Decided this fucking place was where I belonged. You belong here too. Just don’t know it yet.”

  “I don’t belong here.”

  Light laughed softly. “You got a long ways to go before you climb on that freedom bird.”

  Light paused and sighed before he continued, “Maybe one day I’ll just quit. It ain’t the dinks or the bugs or the jungle rot or eating snakes and lizards. It’s being alone. Sometimes it’s like there’s nobody left in the world but me.”

  Light’s talk about being lonely made Jackson uneasy. That made Light an ordinary man, not someone who could keep him alive.

  “You got to come on R&R with me,” Light said.

  “Hale won’t let me,” Jackson said. “I’ve only been in country two months.”

  “You have to go. Hale’s RTO is gonna die. I saw it in the scope.”

  Jackson gasped for breath.

  “Calm down,” Light continued. “You’re going with me.”

  “We need to tell Hale not to get another RTO. Warn him,” Jackson said.

  “Can’t do nothing about it. It’s in the scope. Done. Finished. You stay, you’ll get wasted.”

  “You stay, keep me from getting blown away.”

  “Nothing I can do. I saw it in the scope. It’s gonna happen.”

  Hale came back into the TOC.

  “Jackson’s going with me,” Light said.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Hale said.

  Jackson thought of walking up the long concrete walk to Loretta’s house, she waiting on the porch, he trying hard to remember how she looked, her green eyes, red hair.

  “Then I’ll take my R&R right here,” Light said. “I got three days this time instead of one night.”

  Hale said, “Goddamn, you think you can do any fucking thing you want. Got lucky and walked away from those ambushes. Lucky is all you are. Goddamn dinks are kicking our ass at the fence. I need Jackson. I need more troops.”

  “He goes, or I stay,” Light said.

  Hale paused before he spoke.

  “Jackson, you’re fucking crazy to go with him. Watch out or you’ll end up like Light. No friends. Everyone scared shitless of you.” And then he turned to Light. “I’m not afraid of you. You can die just like any other man. One of these days somebody’ll put a round through your head.”

  “Plenty have tried,” Light said.

  “Don’t set foot on this firebase again,” Hale said. “I’m giving the perimeter instructions to fire on you.”

  Light laughed. “You’re supposed to be fighting the dinks, not me.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Hale yelled.

  Jackson followed Light up the steps. The chopper was waiting at the pad, and when it lifted off, Jackson wished he did not have to return to Desolation Row again. He saw Light sitting slumped in his seat, the rifle wrapped in the poncho.

  What’s in that fucking scope, Jackson thought.

  Then he thought of Hale’s new RTO and wondered who it was going to be. He hoped Hale picked a new man, someone Jackson did not know.

  CHAPTER 9

  AT VUNG, TAU THEY checked into a hotel. The town was on a plain between two mountains and looked out on the sea. They had both changed into new fatigues at Pleiku, and Jackson noticed Light kept his bush hat pulled down low over his eyes. Light now looked like an ordinary soldier, but even after a shower the jungle stink still remained on his body.

  “Don’t write down my name,” Light said as Jackson started to sign the register.

  So Jackson wrote only his own name but the Vietnamese clerk at the desk did not give them the key.

  “You name please, sir,” the clerk said and smiled, offering the pen to Light.

  Jackson took the pen and wrote, Melvin Hale. The clerk looked at the signature and handed over the key.

  “Welcome to Vung Tau, Mr. Hale,” the clerk said to Light.

  Light grinned.

  “First we get something to eat,” Light said. “Next we’ll hit the beach. Then find some girls.”

  On a terrace at the USO they ate steak and drank cold beer. Across the street was a school, the yard filled with children at recess. Jackson had noticed no one was carrying weapons except for security people. But Light still had his rifle wrapped in a poncho. It leaned against one of the extra chairs. Jackson had learned from Light that Vung Tau was a kind of free zone, and the VC left the town alone, seldom mounting any rocket or mortar attacks. Occasionally there was a kidnapping or an assassination.

  When they had ridden from the airfield on the bus, with grenade screens over the windows, Jackson saw two story houses painted in pastel colors. Light told him there were big villas outside of town, built by Saigon politicians and generals who were growing rich off the war. The larger houses in town all had walls built around them topped with bits of broken glass. Many had RPG screens and concertina wire attached to the top of the walls. In the compounds roses grew, but they all looked withered and in need of water. Pepper and eucalyptus trees were planted in rows along the streets. The power poles were like those in an American town, making Jackson think that Vung Tau could be mistaken for a small southern town. Light pointed out the smaller Vietnamese poles which were no longer in use beside them.

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nbsp; Jackson noticed a group of Vietnamese standing on the street and staring toward their table. One of them was an old man with a beard who led a little girl by the hand. When they saw Jackson looking at them, they smiled and walked away.

  “What do those people want?” Jackson asked Light.

  “Sell us something,” Light said.

  The old man and the little girl did not return. When they left the USO Jackson felt good, a little drunk from the beer, his stomach full of steak. They took a bus to the beach.

  At the beach Jackson and some other soldiers rented a ski boat. Light sat under an awning and drank beer. Jackson could almost imagine he was at Pensacola except for the fact there were soldiers in fatigues. A band was playing in a compound but there were no girls, the drunken soldiers dancing with each other.

  Jackson skiied all afternoon. Then he returned to the beach and sat with Light under the awning. Just as Jackson lay back on the sand to go to sleep, he saw the old man and the little girl. They stepped out from behind a stand that sold hamburgers, and the old man pushed her toward where he and Light were sitting. The little girl carried a Styrofoam cooler.

  “Hey, GI, want a beer?” she asked.

  Jackson paid for his beer. Then the girl went over to Light who sat with his back against the tree, facing the town. But instead of giving Light his beer, she just stood and stared at him. Suddenly she ran off towards the town, leaving the cooler.

  Light started to open it.

  “Stop!” Jackson said, thinking the cooler might be booby-trapped.

  Light laughed and titled the open cooler toward Jackson. It was filled with beer, not high explosive. “Dinks are crazy,” Light said.

  Jackson finished his beer and lay in the sun. When he got hot, he went to the sea, wading out until he was waist deep in the warm, clear water. Out off the cape a line of freighters moved past on their way to and from Saigon, seventy or eighty miles away. Jackson swam out from the beach and dived, spreading his arms out wide and floating, feeling his body relax, the war fading away. He wished he could stay under that warm water, not have to surface to breathe.