by Scott Ely
Jackson looked around. The bottom of the bunker was covered with dead soldiers, only he and Hale left alive. Hale sat in the same position, his back against the wall. The rain was rapidly filling up the pit.
“Major, we’ve got to get out of here,” Jackson said.
“Call in an arclight. Bombs. Goddamn dicks. Kill ’em all,” Hale said, talking so fast now Jackson could barely understand him.
“No time for an arclight,” Jackson said.
The rifle fire had almost stopped. Jackson stuck his head cautiously over the edge of the bunker. A soldier dressed in a pith helmet and green fatigues ran across an open space and jumped into a bomb crater. When a second soldier ran across the space, the man running in what seemed to Jackson like slow motion, Jackson shot him, the dink collapsing with a groan. The man moved, and Jackson emptied the rest of the magazine into him.
“Major, should we surrender?” Jackson asked.
Jackson’s hands shook as he loaded a new magazine.
“Never surrender. We’re getting out of here,” Hale said.
Hale jumped to his feet and started to climb out of the pit.
Jackson pulled at Hale’s fatigues, but Hale turned his rifle on Jackson.
“You mutiny, I’ll kill you!” Hale shouted.
The major climbed out of the pit, paused, and fired a burst from his M-16 into the grass. It was answered by AK-47 fire, and Hale collapsed.
Jackson was alone.
Goddamn you, Tom Light, we had a fucking deal, Jackson thought.
Jackson heard the NVA yelling to one other as they closed in. He decided to surrender. No point in resisting any longer.
Mortar rounds began to fall, the gunners walking them toward the pit. Closer and closer they came, the shrapnel whistling overhead until Jackson decided they had rounds in the air that were going to fall into the pit. Jackson started to scramble up the side, but as he put his hand on a sandbag, a great sound filled his ears. He was falling, but he felt no pain. Then he heard himself hit the water with a splash. He could still see and think. He was not dead. But when he looked down he saw his intestines had fallen out of his stomach. They were shiny and wet looking. He reached down carefully and tried to put them back in. They were wet and slippery and hard to handle, kept falling out of his hands. He worried about the rain falling into his open belly. He smelled his own feces.
I don’t want to die, he thought. Not here. Not like this. Tom Light, you bastard.
Then he succeeded in pushing the intestines back into his stomach and placed his hands over his belly, spreading his fingers to keep them from falling out again. Jackson felt a great sense of relief. Still there was no pain.
He looked up a saw and little man dressed in a green uniform and wearing a pith helmet standing at the edge of the bunker. Jackson searched for his rifle with one hand and could not find it. Instead his hand closed around what he thought at first was a piece of shrapnel, but it was too smooth for that. When he raised it out of the water, he saw Hale’s silver eagle in his hand.
The NVA soldier had a frightened expression on his face, his mouth open, revealing a gold tooth. He carried his AK-47 with the muzzle pointed at the ground. Then the man’s expression changed to a grim, frightened look like he had come upon a dangerous animal like a snake and the soldier brought the barrel of his rifle up.
Jackson raised one hand while keeping the other on his stomach.
“No, don’t,” Jackson said.
Someone yelled in Vietnamese to the soldier who looked over his shoulder. Then the man ran, not bothering to look at Jackson again.
Jackson saw another figure appear at the edge of the pit. It was Light, standing there with the rifle cradled in his arms. Light started down into the pit.
“You bastard, you lied to me,” Jackson said.
As Light bent over him, Jackson tried to speak, to curse Light, but could not. And then the rain and the clouds and the stink of his bowels and Light disappeared.
CHAPTER
24
JACKSON OPENED HIS EYES. The sun was shining. He lay on the grass beneath a banyan tree, the grass smelling like his father’s pasture in the spring, fresh and clean and new. The grass, waist-high, stretched away with clumps of trees and bamboo scattered here and there. Above the trees rose stone temples with trees and vines growing out of the crevices between the weathered stones. Beyond the city were green mountains covered with clouds, and the sun was setting behind them, the light shining on the temples.
Tom Light, cradling the rifle in his arms, walked into Jackson’s field of vision. Jackson felt dizzy and weak, barely able to focus his eyes on Light.
“Where am I?” Jackson asked.
“My city,” Light said.
Jackson felt his belly, the skin warm and smooth beneath his fingertips.
“Come,” Light said.
Jackson touched the scars again expecting to wake from this dream to find his intestines in his hands, blue and slick and full of shrapnel holes. Light’s figure went out of focus again. When Jackson opened his eyes, he expected to find himself with Light in some jungle clearing. Instead he saw the ruined temples and Light squatting gook-style with the rifle across his knees.
“Where’s Labouf? Where are the men?” Jackson asked, looking at his belly now, the skin wrinkled from the rain but unbroken. It was all too real to be a dream. He remembered the feel of the intestines beneath his hands.
“I ain’t raising no more. You’re the last one. I kept my word,” Light said.
“If I’m a ghost, how come I can feel my heart beating?” Jackson asked.
“You ain’t a ghost,” Light said.
They entered the city at twilight, the sun disappearing behind the mountains. Monkeys climbed about over the stone temples, most of the carvings of animals and humans so worn and faded that Jackson had no idea what they represented. But he did recognize the carving of an elephant carrying men into battle and a human figure with six arms.
Light stopped at a plaza paved with stones. He took the starlight off the rifle and turned it on, placing it in Jackson’s hands. Then Light walked away, Jackson hearing the pat of Light’s sandals on the stones. Jackson felt cold and traced his scars with his fingertips. The starlight glowed with green light and an image took shape.
“Loretta,” Jackson said.
She was walking across the big yard toward his parents’ house. Jackson could smell his mother’s roses. Loretta stopped and turned to face him. He reached out for her and pulled her away from the porch, out onto the grass beneath the pecans.
“Loretta, Loretta,” he said, pulling her close to him, unbuttoning her clothes but at the same time knowing she could not be real, that all this was a dream, and when he woke it would be to the terrible pain of a belly wound. Perhaps Light had given him morphine, all this nothing more than a morphine dream.
He felt her close around him soft and wet, and he did not care if it was a dream. The cicadas whined above their heads in the pecans.
“Loretta, I’m home,” he said.
“Don’t leave me again,” she said.
He shuddered atop her, and it went on and on, the warmth draining out of him, Jackson thinking that if he held onto her tight enough, he would never have to leave her. But he felt her slipping away. The green light was fading.
Trying to hold her was like trying to embrace a pool of green water. “Loretta!” he cried.
Jackson found himself on the plaza again. Light stood watching him. He gave Light the starlight.
“You can stay here,” Light said.
“We had a deal. You said you’d get me home.”
“I raised you.”
“Should’ve kept me alive.”
“Nobody leaves this place.”
Jackson started to gasp for breath but managed to control himself and speak.
“Don’t want to spend my time looking at spooks in the starlight!”
“You leave and you’re on your own.”
“B
etter than staying here.”
Light paused before he spoke.
“All right. I’ll take you to Firebase Mary Lou. You live. You die. It’s up to you.”
“You look in the scope. Tell me what’s gonna happen.”
“You ain’t in there now, but you could be later.”
“Leave. Come with me.”
“Can’t. I’m staying here.”
“I’m leaving. I’m going home. You take me to the firebase.”
“We can be there by morning if we move fast.”
He followed Light out of the city into the jungle, wondering what it would be like to spend the rest of the war without Tom Light but most of all dreading the moment when the morphine would wear off and the dream would end. Light had given him an M-16 and two bundles of Labouf’s money still wrapped in plastic. Jackson wished Light had raised Labouf. As they walked through the rain and clouds, Jackson considered all the ways he could die and at the same time thought of life in the temple city. Maybe that was what Light was offering, a permanent morphine dream. All night they walked, mostly along the ridges. From time to time Jackson stuck his hand under his fatigue jacket to make sure the wound had really disappeared. He still kept expecting to wake up and die.
“We’re close now,” Light said as he called a halt in a narrow valley.
“Come with me,” Jackson said.
“Can’t leave. I belong at the city.”
“Your parents?”
“I’m MIA. I’m dead.”
Jackson took Light by the shoulders, Light’s body wet but warm through the sweater, that rotting leaf stink on Light again. Light was no ghost either.
“Go home to Loretta,” Light said. Then he continued, “Mary Lou is over the next ridge. You can find it easy.”
Light walked off into the jungle. Jackson wanted to call out after him. He shivered from the cold and took a deep breath before climbing back up into the mountains.
Instead of walking to Firebase Mary Lou, Jackson planned to follow the mountains to coastal plain. Walking for real or in a dream, it didn’t matter.
He might not see another person until he came down from the mountains. No Vietnamese lived in the mountains, only the Yards. The Vietnamese were smart, left the malaria and the tigers and the leeches and the snakes to the Yards. Jackson moved easily though the jungle, the leaves wet against his face, the constant drip from the huge, vine-covered trees rattling against the leaves. He looked up, the drip wet against his face, the tops of the trees lost in the low clouds which hung over the mountain. And he was afraid, the trees and vines forming a green net over him. Not the gasping, choking, “fish on the bank” panic this time, but something worse, deep within him, chilling his bones. Not the fear of death, but the fear of being alone, lost in the green sea of the jungle. He ran a hand over his belly—still smooth and warm and alive.
Don’t let me wake up, he thought, wondering if he was pleading with God, Tom Light, or the jungle itself. Please don’t let me wake up. Let me keep dreaming if this is a dream.
But this was no dream, Jackson thought, the rain wet on his face, the wet air heavy in his lungs. Light was the dream. He remembered how Light had walked off, the jungle closing around him. Light might build a hut near one of the temples, his clothes rotting away, no one to talk with, only the ghosts of the men he had imagined he had raised. Light had raised no one, all of that a crazy dream. One day the battery would run down, and the starlight would go dark. Too late for Light to go home. No place for him but the city of ghosts.
Crazy, fucking crazy, Jackson thought.
Jackson touched his belly with his fingertips, traced with them where the scars should be. Yes, he would walk to the sea, walking at day and night also. Maybe he would come upon a Yard village where he could buy food. If not he would live off the land. Food was everywhere: snakes, insects, grubs under rotten logs, fish in the rivers. Light had lived that way. Maybe he would get lucky. The next ridge might be one that ran all the way to the sea.
Once at the sea he would follow the coast to Vung Tau, walking on the white sand by the blue water. At Vung Tau he would hire one of the fishing boats to take him out to the line of freighters. Then he would buy passage home, standing on the deck and watching the green mountains fade and disappear as the ship carried him out into the South China Sea.
About the Author
Scott Ely (1944–2013) served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. After the war, he received an MA from the University of Mississippi and an MFA from the University of Arkansas. He taught at Winthrop University in South Carolina and other schools. He wrote five novels and four collections of short stories.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for the following:
LITTLE WING by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1968 and 1973 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
PURPLE HAZE by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1967 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
THE WIND CRIES MARY by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1967 and 1968 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
BOLD AS LOVE by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1968 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
FOXY LADY by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1967 and 1968 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
VOODOO CHILD by Jimi Hendrix. Copyright © 1968 by Sea-Lark Enterprises, Inc. and Yameta Co., Ltd. All rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1968 by Dwarf Music. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission.
Copyright © 1987 by Scott Ely
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6680-7
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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