She ate two bites of the macaroni and cheese and three of the Spam before she pushed her plate away to concentrate on her coffee, which was black as mud and just as thick.
“Mmm, Army coffee,” Luke Farrell said, holding his cup aloft. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” he added dramatically.
“Mon Dieu, I hope not.” Casey laughed. When she felt her eyeballs were back to normal, she lit a cigarette. “This is something else I’ll get used to, right?” Nobody bothered to answer her.
Luke leaned across the table. “Casey, if you were serious about helping me with the letters, I’d like to start after rounds this evening.” Sam looked at Lily. She nodded.
“Did any of you fix the shower?” Major Hagen asked. “Look, I want it done today. I will not have those chopper pilots circling overhead to look at my girls naked in the showers. You gave me your word!”
“It’s not our job,” the doctors complained in unison. The major rose to her feet to tower over them. “We’ll do it, we’ll do it,” they grumbled good-naturedly. “When the sun goes down. Is that okay?”
“In writing, Doctor,” the major said, whipping a small pad and pencil out of her breast pocket. “And don’t think for one minute that I don’t know you cruds have been standing on the dispensary roof looking down into the shower. You’re all damn lucky I haven’t turned you in.”
“To who?” Luke grumbled. “Anyway, why would you want to do a damn thing like that, Maureen? You should be flattered that the three of you are so desirable. It’s a goddamn compliment.”
“My ass, Captain! You’re all perverts.” It was said good-naturedly, but there was a ring in the major’s voice that told the men enough was enough. By dusk there would be some kind of roof over the shower enclosure, even if it was patched-together cardboard.
To her nurses Major Hagen said, “Free time till four o’clock. And don’t, for God’s sake, get sunburned. Casey, wear your boonie hat, but take your helmet with you. Remember, flak vests.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Casey said.
HER ROUTINE WAS established. As the days wore on, Casey adapted easily to the rules and the routine. She was needed. She’d come here to do a job, and she was doing it to the best of her ability. She was helping save lives. She was making a difference. It no longer mattered that she worked fourteen-hour shifts, slept little and ate less. The blood and the chart by the door were now a part of her life.
April Fool’s Day was her one-month anniversary in Vietnam. When she checked off the date on her calendar, she winced. A whole month and there had been no word from Mac. He’s never going to find me, she thought sourly.
Several things happened on Fool’s Day, as Lily referred to it. A C-130 landed with four nurses aboard. Casey no sooner finished clapping her hands with delight than Maureen Hagen handed her a manila envelope and told her she had ten minutes to pack her gear and board the C-130 with Lily and Luke.
“You’re going to Pleiku. A new MASH unit is coming in-country. You’ll be working out of tents, supporting the Fourth Division. The Air Force is already there. It’s my understanding there will be six nurses in all, six or seven doctors, and a few med techs. This is paradise compared to where you’re going. Good luck!”
Numb with shock, Casey threw her things in her duffel and ran to the plane. She wanted to say good-bye, but there was no time. No time to leave word for Mac in case he managed to get word to her here. Would anyone know enough, care enough, to say she was in Pleiku? She gave sound to her thought as the plane lifted off.
“One of the chopper pilots will bring your messages. Anything to do with home or,” Luke grinned lasciviously, “love is a priority. It might take a month and it might take two, but if there’s a message, you’ll get it.”
“It’s going to be cooler in the mountains,” Lily said quietly, to change the subject.
“Lookee here,” Luke chortled as he held aloft a copy of the New York Times. “It’s only eight days old. My old man sends me one issue a week so I know what’s going on back home.” He held up two other issues that were older. “It doesn’t matter what the dates are. It’s like fresh news to us, so sit back, ladies, and I’ll read to you,” he drawled. “Let’s do it this way. I’ll read the headlines, and if you want the story, I’ll read the whole thing, okay?” The girls nodded agreement.
“Okay, here goes. Now remember, feel free to interject at any point.” Lily tittered. Casey smiled. “Hedda died! That’s Hedda Hopper, known for her hats. She’s a . . . was a feisty old broad who was a gossip columnist. If she wrote about something, you could believe it. Titillation at its best. Anyway, she’s dead at the age of seventy-five. Sophie Tucker died too. She was seventy-nine. Her theme song was ‘One of These Days.’ Oh, shit, Buster Keaton died. I loved Buster Keaton. Jeez, he was seventy. I hate this, I goddamn hate this,” Luke snarled. “These people died last month, and I’m just reading about it now. It’s not right, and it sure as hell isn’t fair either. Ah, shit!” There was silence for a moment or two before Luke continued. “Nehru’s daughter, Indira, is now the Premier of India. He up and died too. I thought only GI’s died over here,” he said nastily.
“Hey, girls, did anyone tell you the United States troops launched their biggest offensive of the war? They hit a stronghold twenty miles northwest of Saigon. Where the hell is the Iron Triangle?” he asked Lily.
“In the jungle. It’s an American term.” She wrinkled her nose at Luke.
“Eight thousand army soldiers were involved? There’s nothing about the number of . . . of wounded or dead. Guess they don’t print that back home. I can’t get over this, there’s nothing good in this damn paper. Nothing. Look, here’s an article on Chester Nimitz.” He raised his eyes over the paper. “He was the commander of the United States Pacific Fleet in World War Two. Guess you girls weren’t born then, huh? Anyway, he’s dead too.”
“What’s the good news?” both Casey and Lily heckled.
Luke grimaced. “Guess you didn’t hear me. There isn’t any. There aren’t any funnies in the Times either.” He read on, his voice a monotone.
“You want more?” he asked, lowering the paper to better observe his captive audience, who by now were sound asleep.
He snorted. “Can’t say that I blame you, it’s all bullshit.” He rattled the paper before he turned to the financial section to compute his net worth. He snorted again, not liking the numbers swimming around in his head. He folded the papers neatly before stuffing them into his bag. Later, on one of his sleepless nights, he would read them from cover to cover, line by line, word by word.
He wished he was home, back in his sterile office with nothing more on his mind than what he was going to do for the weekend: play golf, tennis, or take off fishing. He hated this country, hated this goddamn plane, hated the smell, hated seeing kids die who should be back home playing sandlot ball and chasing girls in flowered skirts.
Luke’s face scrunched itself into a grimace so he wouldn’t cry. Every time he lost a kid he thought of Jimmy Oliver and Katy in her flowered skirt. His sister Betsy wore a flowered skirt the night before he left, when she went out on a date with Teddy Wyler. Teddy was nineteen. The kid had looked so dreamy-eyed when he told Betsy the skirt looked like a flower garden. His mother was wearing something soft and flowery that night too. He thought then about the flowers Casey and Lily had planted around the compound. If he was a poet or a writer, he would have said there was a riot of color, a profusion of rainbows, something corny like that. In the beginning he’d thought the guys would pick the flowers or laugh and make jokes, but none of them had. He’d seen a lot of them staring down at the different rainbows. He’d seen a misty eye or two. But what really amazed him was the lack of weeds. He’d almost wet his pants the morning he’d seen the company commander stop to pull a weed before leaving the compound. Shit, he didn’t even know the names of the flowers Casey planted. Didn’t know the names of the flowers on Betsy’s or Katy’s skirts either.
He thought then about Mary Baker, hi
s office nurse. His sister told him Mary was sweet on him. And why the hell shouldn’t she be? He’d cleared up her goddamn acne and hadn’t charged her a cent. She’d promised to write him, but so far he’d only gotten one letter, a newsy, chatty page or so about what was going on in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania. He’d given a lot of thought to answering the letter, but so far he hadn’t. He didn’t know what to say in a letter. He couldn’t talk about all the kids who died under his hand or the kids he’d saved. He couldn’t talk about the arms and legs he’d amputated. How could he tell her there were days he literally swam in blood? He wondered if Casey had a flowered dress. Mary was pretty, with soft brown eyes and a delightful smile. She liked to kid with him, to kibitz and read him the comics between patients. She was young though, twenty-three, and he was thirty-three. He was too old for Mary Baker, he’d told his mother when she asked him for the thousandth time when he was going to get married and give her grandchildren. Too old. Now he was ancient. Casey was twenty-six. Just the right age.
Luke let his mind roam then because he didn’t want to think about how old he was and he didn’t want to think about flowered dresses either. Poison ivy. If he could come up with something to take the itch out of ivy poisoning, or sumac, or poison oak, he could make a fortune. One thing about the Vietnamese, they had an herb for everything. He dreamed then about seeing his discovery in JAMA. He’d be on the six o’clock news. Casey Adams would be at his side in a flowered dress saying, “I knew he could do it. When it comes to poison ivy, Luke Farrell is your man.” His stocks and bonds would soar, his bank account would swell. He could pay off his medical loans and still have enough left to join the Squirrel Hill Country Club and put a down payment on a house. He’d move into larger offices, set up a small company in Saigon to import the herbs that were going to make him a force to be reckoned with in the medical field.
Luke woke with a start, his mental being back in Squirrel Hill, giving his interview on the six o’clock news. “Poison ivy!” he said happily.
“What is that . . . poison ivy?” Lily asked, certain it was some dread disease she’d never heard of.
“What do you mean, you never heard of poison ivy? I need you to know so I can take an herb back home for a cure. Oh, shit, you mean I’m not going to be rich and famous and be written up in JAMA?”
“Guess not.” Casey giggled as she got her gear together.
“Oh, well, it was a hell of a dream. Best one I’ve had in months. Best one since coming here, actually. What about pit acne and heat rash? What do you use?” he demanded irritably of Casey.
“Calamine lotion,” Casey quipped.
“Smartass,” Luke snapped.
“It is a compliment, is it not?” Lily asked in a serious voice, her dark eyes sparkling.
“You bet. By the way, Casey, do you have a flowered dress?” Casey nodded. “Good, I’d hate for my dream to be a total waste.
“Welcome to Pleiku.”
Chapter 4
HE HAD SEEN her. It wasn’t a dream.
“Jesus Christ, is it always this hot?” Mac demanded of no one in particular as he took his seat on the bus and swabbed his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
A pressed and creased first sergeant eyed him and said, “Just what the hell was that all about, Captain?”
“My sister,” Mac said evenly. “She’s a nurse.” The lie rolled off his tongue so easily, Mac almost laughed. The surprise on the NCO’s face held disbelief.
“To answer your question,” he said, “yes, it’s always this hot. Actually, relatively speaking, right now it’s cool.
“Sit back and enjoy the ride,” he barked to the whole bus, taking his seat. “Oh, by the way, welcome to Vietnam.”
Mac grinned when he heard a fresh-faced lieutenant mutter, “Up yours, Sergeant.”
Christ, she was here. He’d seen her, actually touched her arm. He’d been that close to her. Now he knew what people meant when they said time stopped for the barest second. Time and his heart. He’d never seen a smile like hers. It had lit up the airfield. Jesus, the chances of finding anyone the way he’d just found Casey, and under these circumstances, had to be about one in a zillion. He felt giddy, light-headed, not like himself at all. Calm and collected, that was his nature.
The bus ground to a halt in front of the BOQ. The Sergeant stood at the front of the bus, his clipboard in hand.
“Straight through the main door. Briefing room is down the hall to the left. Latrine to the right. Twenty minutes before you can get some shut-eye. Move it, what are you, old ladies with blisters on your feet?”
Ninety minutes later Mac was under the shower singing at the top of his lungs, to the amusement of the other officers. They joined in. The sound wafting through the louvered door sounded, the colonel thought, like a bunch of high-strung cats on a fence.
With a towel wrapped around his middle, and a razor in his hand, Mac looked around at the men and asked, “Do any of you know how I can get a message to my sister? She’s a nurse. I said I’d leave word at the USO.”
“That sister on the runway?” a baby-faced lieutenant asked, smirking. “Listen, man, don’t shit me. If she’s your sister, then I’m your brother. Level with me and I’ll take your message. I’m catching a ride up to the Continental for a breakfast meeting.”
Mac looked at the fast-talking lieutenant and grinned. “Long-lost love and all that. Give me five minutes and I’ll scribble off a message. How far is Long Binh from Saigon?”
“Twenty miles or so. Hurry it up, okay? I’m meeting one of my lost loves for breakfast, and she doesn’t know what it is to wait around. She’ll go off with the first grunt who’s willing to buy her steak and sweet potatoes.”
A ripe discussion followed, so ripe Mac could feel his ears burn. The lieutenant, Phil Pender, was on his second tour and seemed to know the ropes.
Pender shuffled his feet when he saw Mac pull out a clean uniform shirt with his insignia of rank. “I guess that means you want the info as soon as possible,” he muttered.
“It would help, but it isn’t an order. I’ll be leaving here in about an hour, two at the most. Mac Carlin,” he said, holding out his hand. The lieutenant took it and squeezed. Mac’s eyes watered, but he didn’t relax his grip. He was glad he’d written his message before the bone-crunching handshake. He gave a lazy salute, then attacked his three-day stubble of beard.
Dressed, shaved, cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, Mac passed up breakfast and walked outside. He wanted to see Saigon in the bright light of day.
He drew deeply on his cigarette. It was hard to believe a war was going on. Saigon, from what he could see, looked like any other city back in the States. He saw Western clothes on the men, though the women mostly wore loose black trousers and long-sleeved shirts. He also saw many women, most of them older, in ao dai, their native gowns.
He was aware, too, of the many smells of the city. A green, decayed smell, cheap gasoline, and of course cooking foods, including the powerful fish sauce called nvoc mam. And sewage. He hated it. He realized now he’d been breathing through his mouth since he’d come outdoors.
Mac lit a second cigarette from the stub of the one he’d been smoking. There was sound now, from the corner where a peddler was setting up shop and hawking his wares. He was joined by a second man and then a third. From out of nowhere children appeared, neatly dressed in uniforms. School. The thought was so alien, he stopped in his tracks. Just miles away people were killing one another, and still children went to school while their mothers and fathers sold vegetables, fruits, and anything else they could lay their hands on. Dried fish hanging from a smoky rack nearby made Mac gag. No matter what, life went on. He headed back to the building he’d just come out of and wondered what it was. A public building of some kind, that much he could tell. He hurried back inside to take advantage of the air-conditioning. He was drenched in his own perspiration when he sat down with the other officers.
“Gentlemen, welcome to Vietnam. I’m
Colonel Arlen Morley and I’ll be conducting this briefing. Get comfortable. If you want more coffee, I’ll wait till you get it.” Mac joined the mad scramble to the coffee machine on the paper-covered table. “Smoke if you like.” Another three minutes were used up while the men fired their cigarettes. The room grew quiet.
“We’re all going to Long Binh. I assume you already know that, but I like to keep things clear from the git-go so there’s no confusion later on.” Mac smoked and sipped, one ear tuned to the colonel, the other tuned backward in time, listening to Casey’s thrilling voice.
“Now listen up, men. I’m going to give you some statistics. Last year, in the first three months, seventy-one of our guys were killed. We lost another nine hundred and twenty during the last three months. The powers that be do not like this. Right now we’re into the third month of a new year, and so far we’re down twelve hundred men, that’s four hundred men a month, if you’re counting, most lost to land mines, booby traps, and ambushes. We don’t have fronts here and we don’t have any kind of strategic objectives except one—to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail is crucial to the Cong’s supply operation. It runs for hundreds of miles, through the mountains of Laos. Without its use, the enemy cannot fight because he can’t get arms and ammunition. General Westmoreland wants us to strangle the supply line along that damn trail.”
An aide to the colonel drew the shutters on the windows. As if by magic a map appeared on the stark, white wall. “This is an aerial photograph of the trail. In practical terms, it’s a six-thousand-mile network that’s at least thirty miles wide.” The pointer in Morley’s hand jabbed at the map. “Trails, river crossings, dirt roads and paths, most of it covered by triple-canopy jungle.” The pointer stabbed again, first at Cambodia and then South Vietnam.
“Defectors have spun a story for us that reads like a fairy tale.” Mac listened with one ear to Morely’s droning voice speak of transfer points, ox carts, bicycles, and human hands. “Our best sources of information tell us there are seventy-five thousand working along the entire network. You will be a part of a huge effort coordinated with the other branches of the military. Every day we’ll have hundreds of aircraft in the skies, including B-52’s to hammer the trail with high-altitude bombing.”
For All Their Lives Page 15