R&R

by Mark Dapin

  ‘Look at the statistics, Shorty,’ said Berger, ‘read the newspapers. In real life, the only person who hates a bloke enough to neck him is his wife. So if Caution had a broad, she did it. After his dame, the squarehead most likely to knock a fella is his best mate, but Caution didn’t have any mates in Vung Tau. That leaves enemies. Generally speaking, you’re safe with your enemies: if they’re going to knock anybody, it’ll be their wives or their best mates. But you can never rule them out, because not all your enemies will have read the statistics.’ Berger nodded in agreement with his own observation.

  ‘Then there’s business killings,’ said Berger. ‘In some commercial situations, men might settle a dispute outside the courts. If one side feels the other has fraudulently obtained an advantage over them in a joint criminal enterprise, the injured party might resort to murder. But more commonly – and it’s a funny thing, this – the bloke who’s committed the fraud will knock the defrauded fella, for fear he’ll come after him if he doesn’t.’

  Shorty watched Diane Arouse leave the bar with the first secretary.

  ‘In war, of course, there’s always the chance the enemy might’ve done it,’ said Berger. ‘Especially if you had dealings with them which, my intuition tells me, Caution probably did. I wouldn’t have thought an American MP in Vung Tau would be much of a target for the VC – unless, of course, he’d robbed them. But I don’t think even Caution would risk that.’ Berger scraped his chin.

  ‘The last possibility,’ he said, ‘is an accident. Although I’ve never heard of an accident that left a bloke halfway up a mountain with both his ears cut off.’

  The bottle of burgundy was empty. Berger ordered two beers.

  ‘Do you think the Mamasan killed Caution?’ Shorty asked again.

  ‘If he was fucking her, maybe,’ said Berger. ‘If he was her friend, maybe. If he robbed her – or she robbed him – maybe. If not, I think it’s more likely Nashville necked him. Or you.’

  Berger’s wisdom had run dry.

  ‘But can’t you help me?’ asked Shorty.

  By an unpredictable accident of fate, Berger could.

  Although it dismayed Berger to find himself in the sexual entertainments business, as his goal had always been to help make careers for recording artists, the sex trade in Saigon came with benefits Berger had never imagined. His girls slept with every important person in town, and the pillow talk in the Caravelle was different from that in the Cross, in that the mugs in South Vietnam liked to discuss matters of international importance with prostitutes they had recently met.

  So Izzy Berger knew many secrets about the war, none of which interested him. His sympathies, in so far as they existed, lay broadly with the Viet Cong. Berger knew the US generals believed the guerrillas were on the edge of defeat but would never stop fighting, and so were industriously engaged in devising new ways to kill them off more quickly. The diplomats despaired of ever reaching a rapprochement with the North Vietnamese, who seemed to be running the show as surely as the cops controlled the Cross. Many important South Vietnamese were double agents, a handful of American journalists worked for the CIA, and one Australian reporter seemed to be in the pay of the Chinese.

  Berger knew who was sleeping with whom (generally, it was Diane Arouse), who was betraying whom and who was manipulating whom, but the only thing that actually concerned him was the possibility of staging pop concerts in the Opera House. However, he promised Shorty he would find the name of Nashville’s important ally before the end of the next day.

  Nashville’s guard for the evening was Doom, who pulled up a seat by the side of his hospital bed, and stuck the barrel of his gun into Nashville’s ear.

  ‘You know what your problem is?’ Doom asked the beaten, bound prisoner, who had been accused of murder by the US Army and passed into the custody of men determined to kill him.

  Nashville appeared to consider the question.

  ‘No,’ he said, eventually.

  Doom withdrew his weapon and allowed himself an inferior smile.

  ‘You’re too clever,’ he said.

  Nashville was prepared to accept this.

  ‘Now, I ain’t stupid,’ said Doom. ‘Just because there’s brawn in my arms don’t mean there ain’t a brain in my head. You don’t get to be a spec 4 at twenty years of age if you ain’t smart, Nashville. But it seems to me there’s big a difference between smart and clever.’

  Doom stroked his chin in the manner of a thinker.

  ‘For example,’ said Doom, ‘when there’s a war to be fought and his country calls, and a smart man steps up to do his duty, he don’t need to spend time puzzling over which side he’s on. If he’s born under the stars and stripes, a smart man thinks, Hey, I must be on the American team. In a fight between caucasians and negroes, a smart man’s only got to look in the mirror to figure out where his loyalties lie.’

  Nashville showed no signs of hearing him.

  ‘But for a clever guy,’ said Doom, ‘the questions are a whole lot more complicated. A clever guy thinks, But what if the good guys are bad guys and the bad guys are good guys? What if black is white and white is black? What if men’re the children of monkeys and the Earth is millions of years old? What if I know better than the government and God?’

  Doom shook his large head and smiled with hostile sympathy.

  ‘So, where a smart guy sees duty, a clever man sees choices. He don’t have to do what he’s supposed to do, because he’s’ – Doom read Nashville’s name from his medical chart – ‘John Ulysses Grant and that makes him the general of his own fucking army. But you know what, Nashville? The trouble with that is, you ain’t got no one else on your side.’

  Doom made as if to scan the room for Nashville’s men.

  ‘You made choices that weren’t there, buddy,’ he said. ‘You took a path that don’t exist. There ain’t no such person as a white man who murders another white man because he hurts a retarded yellow boy.’ He poked his pistol back into Nashville’s ear. ‘Least there won’t be,’ he said, ‘for very much longer.’

  Shorty had only been in bed for a couple of hours when he heard his hotel-room phone ring, then the voice of Izzy Berger chattering excitedly in his ear – as far as Shorty knew, Izzy Berger never went to sleep. Berger told him that a colonel in the Judge Advocate Division of the US Marine Corps had taken an interest in the incidents at Vung Tau. The colonel was a liberal and, Berger believed, a Jew. He had not met Nashville, but he was unhappy that the KKK were organising on military bases, and concerned their influence should not spread to Vung Tau, where they might come into contact with marines on R&R. He did not believe Nashville had murdered Caution, as he had received intelligence that the killing was a local political matter. He was using marines on his own staff at the Free World Forces Headquarters to try to keep Nashville safe. Unfortunately, there were other officers whose political sympathies might lie elsewhere, so the colonel’s influence was limited until he could prove there was more to the case than a personal vendetta between two rival psychopaths from the state of Tennessee.

  Berger offered to come to Shorty’s room and discuss the matter further over another bottle of Moët, but Shorty said he would meet him for lunch once he’d spoken with the colonel.

  That morning, Shorty was the only man in the hotel to take breakfast at the buffet. He ate his bacon and eggs in lonely silence, then rang the Free World Headquarters. The line was dead.

  He took an elevator down to the empty lobby, where he asked the concierge to call him a cab to the Free World Forces Headquarters.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the small Vietnamese, ‘there are no cars.’

  Shorty looked out of the bulletproof-glass doors and saw the rank was empty. ‘Where is everybody?’ he asked.

  ‘Free World Forces Headquarters,’ said the concierge.

  Shorty thought he had misunderstood the question.

  ‘This morning there was a bomb,’ said the concierge. ‘The Free World Forces Headquarters are gone
.’

  Izzy Berger found Shorty in the hotel coffee shop, warming himself over a pot of tea in the icy air conditioning. The Free World Forces Headquarters were still standing, he said, but the front wall had been blown away. Men were digging in the rubble for the body of Nashville’s colonel.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Shorty was carried in a chopper back to Vung Tau. When he stepped off onto the landing pad, he felt like he was home. He reported back to ALSG, then marched out to Le Boudin. He had an urgency, a purpose, a reason for every step he took. Shorty refused to believe Nashville would die with the colonel. He was determined to save his partner, and he understood now that only he could help him. The answers, he knew, lounged in Le Boudin.

  ‘Cherry man!’ called Quyn as Shorty paraded into the bar, and she seemed pleased to see him, which was her job. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him on the nose and said, ‘Where you been?’

  Shorty looked at her breasts and wanted to go to bed with her. He whispered in her ear and she answered, ‘Maybe . . . pussy patter.’

  ‘Now,’ said Shorty.

  ‘You were nicer when you were a cherry boy,’ said Quyn, and pouted.

  Quyn led Shorty to the long room. She kissed him softly and laid her hands on his ribs. He eased her onto the bed. The straw mattress was stiff with memories. They made love quickly, and as soon as Shorty was spent, he began to question her.

  ‘Who killed Caution?’ asked Shorty, a naked, limp interrogator.

  Quyn rolled away. ‘Who knows?’ she asked.

  ‘You do,’ said Shorty.

  She turned back to him. ‘No, I don’t,’ said Quyn. ‘You think I know everything because I know how to fuck, because you know nothing, and don’t know how to fuck.’

  Shorty forced his face not to show his hurt. ‘Who was Caution’s girl?’ he demanded.

  On the other side of the curtain, they heard Baby Marie licking, kissing and giggling.

  ‘He didn’t have a girl,’ said Quyn. ‘He was like you.’

  ‘Was it Tâm?’ asked Shorty.

  ‘Tâm?’ repeated Quyn, and laughed.

  He reached for her. She pushed him away.

  Shorty clenched his fists and banged them on his thighs.

  ‘I know you know something,’ he said.

  ‘I know a cherry boy goes off like a firecracker,’ said Quyn, ‘but with a shorter fuse.’

  Shorty glowered at the woman who had allowed him inside her. ‘What’s happening in this town?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Quyn. ‘It doesn’t matter. It will soon be over, and Nashville will be fine.’ She seemed certain.

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Shorty.

  ‘Tâm read the leaves in her jasmine tea,’ said Quyn. ‘They made the shape of a happy ending.’

  Shorty left Quyn on the bed, her knees pulled up to her chest. At the door of the long room, Baby Marie, in a soldier’s shirt, kissed her GI goodbye, then she whispered to Shorty, ‘I will help you.’

  She took Shorty’s notepad and pen, and made a sketch. She leaned into her drawing, so Shorty could look down her buttons at her breasts, and she traced a map of the village of Long Tâm Thu. She drew houses like eyebrows, or half-birds in flight.

  ‘Here,’ she said, dabbing her pencil on a house near the middle of the map. ‘You go this place tomorrow. You take bookoop soldiers.’

  The sun rose over the bamboo treetops and cast first light on the paddy fields around Long Tâm Thu, sparking agitated chatter between cicadas and frogs. The mist was the tears of mourners, giving form to the spirits of the dead.

  They came early, Shorty, Simpson and Hauser, in the jeep with a submachine gun mounted on the back. Each man carried an Armalite and said nothing, as if they were worried they might be heard, as the rice plants rustled in the breeze.

  Simpson was angry at pulling another jerk-off detail. He knew there were no VC in Long Tâm Thu. Eagle was silent and curious, too dumb to question orders. They were the only US soldiers on a bullshit Australian operation, acting on intelligence from a crazy bar girl about the man who had killed TJ Caution, which everyone at the PMO knew was Nashville, and they loved him for it.

  Their driver was an ARVN interpreter. His constant smile reminded Shorty of Mickey, the Vietnamese mouse. He said he was born in Vung Tau, but the MPs had to tell him every street to cross and each corner to turn. He’d never had reason to visit Long Tâm Thu, as it was a Buddhist village. He touched the bone crucifix that hung beneath his throat and drove quickly and clumsily, wrestling against the wheel.

  Behind the MPs, riding in an armoured car, were two sections of Tommy Callaghan’s Ten Platoon, although Callaghan was buried under a plaque in the war cemetery at Carr Villa, Tasmania, and one or two of the men could no longer even remember his face. The rest of the platoon was out in the bush, but a dozen had been spared to make a ring around the village and guard the cops, who wouldn’t know VC if they jumped out at them from behind a bush which, of course, the VC wouldn’t, because there was no point in brassing up provosts, which is why they hadn’t knocked the American sergeant in the first place.

  The platoon hated cordon-and-search operations. They had come to Vietnam for a fight. The one thing they wanted was to meet an enemy the same size as them – no, bigger – and fight him hand to hand, toe to toe, eye to fucking eye, to shoot at men in uniform and be blasted in return. They craved their fathers’ war, not this one.

  The platoon had lost four men, including Callaghan and Reffo, and never even seen a VC. They were fit and hard and armed and angry, trained up like first-grade footballers, moving instinctively as a team, working exactly the way they had been drilled. And every week – every single fucking week of the season – they were promised a fixture against the opposition, but when they arrived at the stadium the ground was deserted, with only a handful of old men in the stands, who hated them for their stupidity and their audacity, and turned their backs when the team waved to the crowd.

  They were infantry soldiers, and none of them enjoyed frightening farmers. They felt they’d been lied to, but they couldn’t say by whom. And now here they were again, marching into the dawn, bogeymen for the village children.

  The women in the fields saw the jeep coming, and whispered a small child back to the hamlet. Hai was a second son, five years old, small and fast. When he ran, he hardly disturbed the grass. He had eyes like polished onyx, and he could remember everything that had happened to him since he was two – his grandmother’s tales of the elves in the mulberry trees; a drawing of his mother in the dust; the timber scent of a freshly cut boat. He could count to twenty-five.

  The old men were smoking in the shade of their homes. They watched Hai dash into a hut, and remembered him as a baby, rolling in the dirt. So they knew about the jeep and the APC before they saw the MPs, but there was nothing old men could do except bear witness, and remember the dead at altars, in temples and by roadsides, with incense and oranges. In the village, girls looked like boys and boys looked like men and children couldn’t be made to stay inside until the MPs passed, because their fathers and brothers were gone.

  The headman rushed out to meet the jeep, wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, Ray-Ban Aviators and fresh flowers in his hair. He had been drinking rice liquor at breakfast. His mouth slipped around his face. Shorty showed him the map, and he chattered desperately.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Shorty asked the interpreter.

  ‘He’s lying,’ said the interpreter.

  The unarmed interpreter pushed past the headman, as if he too were carrying a gun, or the MPs were his weapons. Shorty found the hut circled on Baby Marie’s plan. It was close to the headman’s home, and newer than many of the village buildings. Outside were children’s toys – sticks, wheels and painted masks. Shorty felt alert to every sound, every insect in the air. He could hear his own heartbeat as if it were something outside himself, a drumming to pace his steps.

  It seemed strange that he should have been taugh
t to kill VC in country Victoria, where the ground froze in the winter, and a sentry’s breath steamed like a campfire. He imagined himself tall and hunched, jittery and angular, misplaced in the tropics, pale-skinned and fair, and wondered if he looked foolish. Then he saw the faces of the villagers watching him, and realised they saw him as death.

  The infantry made their ring around the village, scowling and cursing. According to doctrine, they were supposed to corral the civilians then search their empty homes, but the provosts didn’t seem to know how things were done and were making up their own operation as they went along. The platoon sergeant didn’t even go forward with the MPs. He felt he would be better used on the perimeter, looking after his men while this bullshit squeezed itself out.

  Shorty approached the door of the hut scattered with toys, and kicked a wheel aside. The interpreter stood beside him and shouted in Vietnamese. He was supposed to say, ‘Come out and we won’t hurt you’, but he could have shouted anything, even a warning to run from the soldiers.

  The headman ran behind them, calling, ‘No, no, no!’

  Eagle caught him in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles against his skull, a schoolyard bully, cruel simply for the distraction of it. Shorty’s fingers trembled like Caution’s used to do, jumping like a typist’s over invisible keys. The morning had seemed balmy, doused by the breeze, but now the air was on fire. Shorty’s scalp tingled and sweat gathered at the roots of his hair.

  The interpreter barked sounds that could have been words, but the door to the hut remained closed. The interpreter shouted more loudly, and scraped his heel in the dirt, like he was about to charge.

  Shorty couldn’t stand for much longer, fixed in the fearful moment outside the hut. He tried to picture what might be happening inside, whether the VC had a machine gun trained on the entrance, or a bomb fixed over the door. What if they were hiding behind the children?

  ‘Do it,’ said Eagle.

  Shorty stepped up, threw out his foot, and kicked down the door. It fell inwards. He rushed inside the hut with Eagle behind him, their rifles turning to each corner. He kicked through a bamboo screen, kicked over a bowl of water, kicked a picture off the wall, kicked the head off a doll, kicked a book in the spine and kicked an altar to pieces, strewing joss sticks across the floor.