Starlight

by Scott Ely

  Then Reynolds & Raymond quit shadowing Labouf.

  “Alabama, you seen R&R?” Labouf asked Jackson.

  “No.”

  “I liked it better when I knew where they were,” Labouf said.

  The next time Jackson saw Reynolds & Raymond was when he came out of the TOC one evening just before sunset. They were standing under the tower with so many cloth bandoleers for M-16 magazines slung across their chests they couldn’t lower their arms. Clusters of frags were hooked to their web gear. Raymond wore a K-Bar fighting knife on his belt along with a bayonet, and Reynolds carried several LAWs slung over his shoulder.

  “Expecting trouble?” Jackson asked. “Gonna shoot those LAW rockets at NVA tanks?”

  Raymond said, “No. Sappers.”

  They both fidgeted nervously, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Reynolds played his M-16.

  “The dinks got a tunnel,” Raymond continued, talking very fast. “Can put your ear to the ground and hear ’em digging. When they dig through, we’ll be waiting. Been hunting those dink tunnel diggers all over ’Nam. About time we’d get ready to waste them, we’d get shipped out. Been to Cheo Reo, Dak To, Bong Son, An Nhon, Song Cau, Tuy Hoa, An Khe, Kontum. Jesus, there’s no place in fucking Two Corps where the dinks don’t have a tunnel. Seriously, this motherfucking country will collapse one day. They got it undermined. Careless fuckers. Don’t keep the tunnels shored up. Shipped us out to Dak To last time. Said this place was the end of the line. We like it fine. Right, buddy?”

  Raymond patted Reynolds on the shoulder. Reynolds giggled.

  “We’re tunnel rats,” Raymond continued. “Cong killers, dink destroyers, gook greasers.”

  “Where’re they digging?” Jackson asked.

  “Over by the mortar pits,” Raymond said. “Where the chaplain holds church. That short fucker. Too short for an American. Chaplain’s a goddamn dink in disguise. Had plastic surgery done on his face up in Hanoi. He’s been signaling to the dinks up on the ridge. We’ve been watching. When he makes the cross sign during communion, it’s a code. My buddy cracked it. Should get a medal.”

  Reynolds grinned.

  “You boys’ll waste ’em,” Jackson said, humoring them.

  “Come on ambush with us,” Raymond said. “We think they’ll be digging through tonight.”

  Reynolds sang, “You’ve got me blowing, blowing my mind/Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?”

  “No thanks,” Jackson said.

  Later that night Jackson walked out of the TOC to go to the latrine. He was glad it was in the opposite direction from where Reynolds & Raymond had set up their ambush.

  “Sappers!” someone yelled.

  There was M-16 fire on automatic, another LAW, and the chug of a heavy machine gun from the perimeter. Red tracers crisscrossed the firebase. Jackson dropped to the ground. He did not want to be trapped in a bunker by sappers tossing satchel charges.

  Maybe Reynolds & Raymond had been right. The fire was coming from a position near the mortar pits.

  Another LAW went off, the rocket impacting near the TOC. Now fire from the whole perimeter was turned inward, directed at the mortar pits. Flares went up, and he saw men crawling across the compound. Then the fire from the mortar pits stopped.

  Jackson got up and ran for the TOC. Leander and Hale were there. Leander had taken off his pith helmet and held it with one hand by his side. Labouf was at the radio.

  “You find those bastards!” Hale shouted at Leander. “You make sure they don’t have weapons again when they are on this firebase. We go over into Laos, they’ll be walking point.” Then Hale continued, “Get rid of that fucking helmet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Leander said, putting on the helmet before he left the TOC.

  Hale went into his room.

  “Fucking R&R have stepped in the shit,” Labouf said and grinned. “Won’t be following me around no more. Leander said they started shooting at the mortar crew when his guys got called out on a fire mission. Shit, R&R got one half of this fucking place shooting at the other. Lucky no one got killed.”

  “What’s Hale mean about going to Laos?”

  “Aw, that fucking crazy Morton at Two Corps it always on his ass to go over there. Nothing’ll come of it now that the engineers are stringing wire.”

  Jackson took the radio and went up on the roof of the TOC. The flares had all burned out and the firebase was quite. He set the radio on Light’s frequency and waited.

  “Tom Light, Tom Light,” Jackson said into the handset, thinking of what might happen if Hale took the battalion over into Laos.

  White noise hissed from the handset. Jackson lay back on the sandbags and closed his eyes. He began to think of home, how good it was going to be to walk out of the house on a summer morning and go to the barn to feed the horses his father kept.

  “Jackson,” Light’s voice came out of the handset.

  “I’m here,” Jackson said.

  “I can’t use the starlight no more. Don’t want to see the weird shit. Know what’s gonna happen to the troops. But don’t know what’ll happen to me.”

  Jackson gasped for breath and said, “There’s nothing in the scope?”

  “You keep your head down. You’ll be all right.”

  “What about the Tiger?”

  “You’ll be all right. I’m thinking about going over into Laos. There’s an abandoned city up there. No need to look through the starlight there. No war.”

  “You stay here. Remember your mother’s heart. There’ll be your mail.”

  Light paused and replied, “Maybe I’ll stay, but I ain’t looking through the starlight. No more killing.”

  “I’ll write your letters. I’ll come out.”

  Then Jackson released the transmission bar and waited for Light to talk. Nothing came out of the handset but white noise. He was gone.

  Jackson took a deep, slow breath to try to calm himself but failed and ended up lying on his back gasping. Light maybe gone, walking to Laos. Labouf’s money could get them out. Bribe a chopper pilot and fly to Saigon. From there to Sweden. A year or two to learn the language. Money in the bank. It would be easy.

  But he couldn’t. Just something to dream about. Even if he had the plane ticket in hand he could not run. The people at home: Loretta, his parents, Uncle Frank, and the cousins scattered throughout the country expected him to stay, to die if necessary. He wished he could be with Light, buddies, still soldiers, walking the jungle into Laos, eating deer roasted over a fire, drinking from the mountain streams, Loretta haunting his dreams at night.

  CHAPTER

  15

  WHEN THE TIGER SHOT the Jesus nut off a chopper the main rotor blades went flying off into the bush. As the ship crashed just outside the wire, the fuel tanks going up with a black, oily whoosh, Jackson knew that without Tom Light it was going to be very bad at the firebase. Jackson had not heard from Light on the radio and hoped he had not gone over into Laos.

  Labouf said, “We’re all going to die.”

  “I’ll be safe. Me and Light have a deal,” Jackson said, only half-believing it himself, but it could not hurt to say it.

  “Jesus, Alabama, leave that alone,” Labouf said.

  And it soon began to look as if Labouf was right. The Tiger shot guards out of the tower, door gunners out of choppers, and men at the piss tubes. He shot a chaplain as the priest was placing the host in a soldier’s mouth during a communion service. Always it was one shot, and he never missed. No one was ever sure exactly where the fire was coming from. When the soldiers heard the distant crack of his rifle they would pause for a moment and wonder who had just died.

  Hale called in airstrikes on the ridge, the only possible place the fire could be coming from. For three days the bombing went on, mostly napalm. Every day the Tiger killed a man. Then the air force gave up and went away, telling Hale it was the infantry’s job to flush out snipers. They refused his request for an arclight.

  “I got it figured
out,” Labouf said.

  “You’re going to stay in the TOC the rest of the war,” Jackson said.

  Labouf laughed and said, “No, you’re safe as long as you act normal.”

  And everyone soon lived by Labouf’s theory. Commonplace targets were safe. The Tiger never shot a man unless the soldier’s death was likely to cause laughter among the living. When the Tiger shot a man who was not wearing his fatigue jacket but was doing nothing else unusual, everyone on the firebase began wearing his jacket, no matter how hot the day was. They all adopted a stiff way of moving like people who had suddenly found themselves on stage but were not used to being there.

  “I’ve made a map,” Labouf said.

  “Of what?” Jackson asked.

  “The Tiger’s kills.”

  They were in the TOC, and Labouf spread a sheet of paper out on Hale’s map tripod.

  “See, there’s a pattern,” Labouf explained. “I’ve figured out where the safest places are. Piss tubes’ll be all right for a while.”

  Jackson laughed and said, “We’re in the safest place.”

  “But we gotta leave sometime. I wouldn’t walk over by the mortar pits. That’s the next place he’s going to kill a man.”

  That night a mortar crewman died as he held his eye to the gun-sight. Soon Labouf was selling looks at his map and the predictions that went with them for ten dollars, payable in advance.

  “Haven’t you got enough money?” Jackson said.

  “No one has enough,” Labouf replied. “I’m saving lives, providing a service. I’m doing more than that fucking Hale.”

  Labouf was right. Hale chose to ignore the Tiger, walking about the firebase like it was business as usual and grumbling about the B-52 arclight the air force had refused to give him.

  “He’s saving the major for last,” Labouf told Jackson.

  “Light could kill that dink easy,” Jackson said.

  “Tom Light’s gone.”

  “He’s out there. Watching out for my ass. He’s better than any map.”

  Labouf laughed and said, “You haven’t died yet, but that don’t mean he has anything to do with it. You’re lucky, that’s all.”

  You’ll see, Jackson thought to himself. Tom Light would live up to his end of the bargain.

  The men began to grumble that they were all doomed, that one by one the Tiger would kill them. Hale posted an extra guard at the entrance to the TOC and started sleeping with an M-60 machine gun.

  Jackson has just finished talking with a radio operator at the fence about the sniper’s latest kill when he heard boots on the stairs. Leander led the mortar squad into the TOC. He had the strap of the pith helmet buckled under his chin.

  “Alabama, where’s the major?” Leander asked.

  “Asleep,” Jackson said. “How’d you get in here?”

  “Those guards want to live too. You wake him up.”

  “Come back later.”

  “Now.”

  The others hung back, letting Leander do all of the talking.

  “You come back,” Jackson said.

  “We’re not leaving until we talk to the major,” Leander said.

  Jackson opened the door of the tiny room where Hale slept at the rear of the bunker. Hale was asleep, snoring. But when Jackson whispered his name, Hale sat upright. His body was in darkness, the light from the TOC blocked by Jackson. Jackson heard Hale draw back the bolt on the machine gun.

  “Who’s out there?” Hale asked.

  “The mortar squad.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Talk to you, sir.”

  “The Tiger again?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Hale sighed and swung his legs off the cot. He was wearing his boots.

  Too scared to sleep with his boots off, Jackson thought. Maybe as scared as me. Hale walked out of the room with the M-60 under his arm, still sleepy, blinking at the light.

  “Soldier, don’t you ever come down here again,” Hale said to Leander.

  “Tiger gonna kill us all,” Leander said.

  “I’ve got patrols out after him,” Hale said.

  “What’s Light doing?” Leander asked.

  “Shit, how am I supposed to know,” Hale said talking fast.

  “You get him to hunting,” Leander said. “He can kill the Tiger.”

  “Soldier, you’re going to be out in the bush humping a baseplate if you don’t watch out.”

  “I ain’t humping nothing for you,” Leander said.

  Here was the mutiny Hale kept worrying about.

  “You can be on the next patrol that goes out after the Tiger,” Hale said. “Get out of here. I don’t want to see any of you in here again.”

  “You can’t let my men get picked off and do nothing,” Leander said.

  “I thought you men were scared of Light?”

  “We want him out in the bush hunting, not here.”

  “He hasn’t been killing,” Hale said. “Maybe he’s taking a break. The dinks haven’t been fucking with the fence.”

  “He knows that fucking fence is going nowhere,” Leander said. “Goddamn fucking generals.”

  “That fence is going up, soldier. Don’t matter to the army whether you like it or not,” Hale said, talking fast.

  Then he turned to Jackson, “You heard from Light?”

  Jackson said, “He talked about going to live with the mountain people. He—”

  But a soldier broke in and said, “You get him back, Major.”

  “Probably dead,” Hale said.

  Leander shook his head and said, “No way to kill Tom Light.”

  “Jackson tries to make contact with him every day,” Hale said.

  Leander said, “You get Light to kill the Tiger. We’re not gonna get wasted alone.”

  “All of you, out!” Hale yelled, his finger on the trigger of the machine gun.

  They shuffled their feet, glared at Hale, and left.

  “Leander, I see you with that helmet one more time and I’m going to think you’re a gook,” Hale said. “Hope I have an M-60 in my hands.”

  “I’d have a better chance of staying alive if I was a dink,” Leander said as he disappeared up the stairs.

  “Go out there, you bastard!” Hale shouted after him.

  The only reply was the sound of Leander’s boots on the stairs.

  Jackson continued to call Light on the radio but received no response. The Tiger began to shoot men digging post holes, and work on the fence stopped. The engineer CO told Hale he was not going to string any more wire until the sniper was flushed out.

  Hale sent out patrols to look for Light. Some did not return, and others came back with nothing to report except contact with the enemy. The major posted new guards at the entrance to the TOC. Now Jackson did not like to work in the TOC while the major was there, for he expected the men were going to frag Hale at the first opportunity.

  Jackson had just come off pulling a shift on the big radio when the tower guard called to report movement at the big rock. He followed Hale up into the tower.

  Hale snatched the glasses out of the tower guard’s hand and through an observation loophole set in the sandbags focused them on the rock.

  “Where?” Hale asked.

  “Right in front of the big rock, Sir,” the guard replied. “He’s building something. I think it’s Light.”

  “It’s a dink,” Hale said.

  The guard said, “No sir, Tom Light.”

  “By God, it is Light,” Hale said. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “Cutting down trees,” the guard replied.

  Hale handed the glasses to Jackson and said, “Look, see what your man’s doing.”

  Jackson saw Light dragging a small tree across the open space. He stopped and began lopping off branches with a machete.

  He was always out there, Jackson thought. That’s why the Tiger didn’t get me.

  “What’s he doing?” Hale asked again.

  “Don’t kno
w,” Jackson replied.

  Hale said, “He’s already run the Tiger back into Laos.”

  “Light’ll waste him,” the tower guard said, mounting the fire-step and looking over the top of the sandbags.

  Suddenly the guard fell back across the floor like someone had jerked him with a rope, the crack of the rifle reaching them a moment later. Jackson crawled over to the soldier to help but already knew the man was dead.

  “He’s finished. See what Light’s doing,” Hale said.

  Jackson found he could not move, his breath coming in short gasps.

  “Move, soldier,” Hale said.

  Jackson crawled over to the loophole. When he picked up the glasses, he hoped they were broken, but they were all right.

  “Move!” Hale said.

  With one hand, Jackson placed the glasses in the loophole. He expected, hoped, the Tiger would shoot them.

  “They can’t look by themselves,” Hale said.

  Jackson rose to his knees and turned the knob to focus the glasses on the rock.

  “Light still there?” Hale asked.

  “Yeah,” Jackson replied.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Cutting trees.”

  “And the Tiger is killing my men.”

  Hale cursed Light long and eloquently.

  Light built a hooch, a small hut roofed with leaves. He spent most of his time at the hut sitting in the doorway with his back to the firebase. At night there was a glow from the hut as if he had built a small fire to keep away the mosquitoes. But nobody wanted to look at the hut for long because that meant exposing themselves to fire from the Tiger.

  Jackson tried to contact Light on the radio but got no answer, so Hale sent out a patrol to take Light a new walkie-talkie and instruct him to start hunting again. Hale was unable to sit still as he waited for the patrol to make contact with Light. He tried to work at his map tripod but ended up pacing back and forth. Finally the patrol called him on the radio.

  “What did he say?” Hale asked the lieutenant.

  “Says he’s not killing anymore. Going to sit in his hut until the war is over,” the lieutenant replied.