One Very Hot Day

by David Halberstam

  Beaupre, looking for signs of hidden conversations with the Colonel, nodded and said the Colonel was too smart a man to push it too much on a hot day.

  Then deliberately, as if hiding his need of water were something to be ashamed of, like an alcoholic proving he was not an alcoholic, Beaupre took his canteen and took a long drink of water while the Lieutenant watched.

  “This goddamn country,” Beaupre said, “has the worst tasting water in the world. You think it tastes bad because the geniuses of the United States Army have placed chemical after chemical in it. But you're wrong. It tastes just as goddamn awful without the chemicals. Actually the chemicals sweeten it just a very little bit. The problem, of course, is ancestor worship. You see, these here people always bury their ancestors in the best part of the land which always turns out to be near the wells so when they are drinking water, they are really toasting their ancestors. The ancestors just don't taste so good, that's all. Well, everyone knows that, I mean, they may be stupid but they're not that stupid, you see. The real problem is politeness. They're a very polite people, you know that. Well, it's a well known fact that someone can't smell himself or taste his own ancestor, so he doesn't know his ancestors taste so bad. But he goes to his neighbor's house and the water there is terrible and the ancestors taste like hell, but he's too polite to say anything, I mean, you can't go over to Dang's house there and drink the water and make snide remarks about his grandfather, can you?”

  He walked a few steps more. “That's the trouble with this country,” he said, “the water and the people smell the same.”

  "Don't let the psywar people hear you talking about the people like that,” Anderson said. “They're real close to the farmers.”

  He was amused by Beaupre now in conversations like this. He never knew which way it would go, whether Beaupre was serious and bitter, or being funny, or a little of each; in the latter two cases he could relax and enjoy it, but sometimes in the first it turned sour and he had to be careful; he played his role with Beaupre cautiously now.

  “Screw the goddamn psywar people. They all work for the goddamn VC, anyhow. Every week they come down and tell us how to be nice to these people, be nice, be friendly, be gentle, don't turn the nice little friendly peasants into bad VCs. Be nice to the peasants and understand them because they had a hard life and their mothers didn't love them enough. Crap like that. You ever see a psywar gentleman on an operation? Shit, it happened one time when I first got here, and we were moving along and ran into a little trouble, wasn't even an ambush, just a few VC popping away with old French rifles and rubber bands. So the Viets started to fire, it was small enough that they weren't frightened and this psywar gunner was firing more than even the goddamn Arvin. He didn't know what the hell he was shooting at. I believe he was holding his weapon up and just pressing away to beat hell. He was scared shitless, but finally either the VC went away, or by mistake we even killed them, you never know, and he was there just thanking the hell out of me and saying what a hell of a guy I was and brave and cool, you know, the usual. But then the sonofabitch went back to Saigon and he wrote this report about how bad the area was, Charleys everywhere, and making it seem that the reason it was so bad was that we had behaved badly right from the start and hadn't treated the peasants nice and right and didn't give them enough psywar. Feed them more psywar, he said. He reported about me, too, and there wasn't anything about me being a hero like I expected. He described me as being unsympathetic to the aspirations of the people and not likely to win either their hearts or minds, and surly. Surly!”

  “Bad weekend in Saigon, huh? Too much of it,” Anderson said. He was loyal to his wife, and went to Saigon only for PX supplies, or to see a movie, and then only at the express command of the Colonel who was fond of him and worried that he was taking the job too seriously, and thus forced him to leave the Seminary.

  “Oh, sure,” he said, “rough weekend. But never too much of it.” It was one of his official roles at the Seminary, the swordsman (only two kinds, good and better; the only thing I regret about what I did when I was younger was not doing more of it etc.). The Colonel never encouraged Beaupre to Saigon and indeed delighted in referring from time to time to Beaupre's marriages, his first (or American) wife, his Saigon wife, his Cholon wife, his Saigon Number Two Wife. Which one gets your allotment, Beaupre, he would say. Beaupre had taken to going to Saigon almost every weekend in recent weeks, the Vietnamese usually observing a truce on Sunday. He went to get out of My Tho as much as to get to Saigon (“the only man in My Tho who will risk five ambushes for one hairless Indo-Chinese piece of ass,” the Colonel said); the only trouble was that when he arrived in Saigon despite his reputation as a swordsman, he had difficulty in deciding just exactly why he had come after all, why he had spent the time arranging to get free, the risk driving up the highway (as much avoiding the Vietnamese bus drivers as the VC mines); after that, all that happened was that he spent all his money, drank too much watered whiskey and fake French cognac, and wandered around the city sweating heavily alone with thousands of other sweating American wanderers. But he had gone; it had been a three-day weekend, in honor of one of those innumerable Vietnamese holidays (“the day of homage to the dead goat,” Raulston had called it); he had driven in with three others, but slipped away from them when they entered the city, staying on the outskirts of Cholon in a cheap hotel far from where the other Americans, and particularly officers, stayed. It was a hotel inhabited by a few Vietnamese civilians, officials from the boondocks apparently, some visiting Chinese merchants from Singapore, and occasional Special Forces people, down from the mountains, arriving in groups of three, staying up all night, fighting, drinking, and screaming — memorably one conversation: “I call police. I call Vietnamese police. You no good. I no fraid you, but I call police.” Then a scream, and a shout and a voice: “You call you goddamn hoooore and I'll make them check you out for the fifty-seven goddamn kinds of diseases you're carrying,” then more screams and laughter and silence. The Special Forces people had three days and stayed drunk the entire time until on the morning of departure, a truck was sent by to collect them, still drunk, and take them to their own airline at Tan Son Nhut, to be restored, still drunk and unshaven, to their tiny outposts near the Laos border; it was, they claimed, the great glory of Special Forces, they didn't insist you spend the last day on a pass sobering up, all they wanted was the body.

  There was no soap in the room, no towels, and the toilet paper was so sleek that the Special Forces people used to steal it in great quantities to take to their camps to shine boots. But at the Hotel, unlike the Continental or Majestic or Caravelle, he could bring a girl to his room, and he didn't have to be with the same officers that he had just roomed with all week at the Seminary (knowing what they looked like naked, and which of them brushed his teeth and which didn't. He knew all this of them, and they knew all this and perhaps more of him and he was not anxious to have them around with him in Saigon, so that everything would be reported back to My Tho). Here there was at least a hint at privacy. He had brought women to his rooms a few times, prostitutes, some of them pretty, but he had been uneasy and then somewhat sheepish about the elaborate precautions he had taken hiding his money and his real identification, as though somehow one racket wasn't enough for them, that some sort of second racket must also be involved.

  So these occasions with the whores had not been memorable; successful certainly, but symbolic in that he had never returned to the same girl twice. Never during his weekends had there been (not love, of course) even enough passion for a second try; they arrived, they performed, and they disappeared. He could not remember their names, but more, of eight of them he could remember the body of only one and that only because she had a Vietnamese-size body and American-size breasts and had seemed to fall asleep in the middle of the act. The last weekend in Saigon had been one of the worst. It had started Friday night; he had begun by walking into a Cholon restaurant alone, had looked across the room and had se
en Big William, who shouted: “Well, look what the Good Lord Jesus Christ and his Vienamese counterpart, the Lord Buddha, did send Big William for dinner, Big William's friend Captain Bopay, and Big William knows that Captain is a good cat.”

  Beaupre, not entirely sure whether he was pleased to be with Big William, sat down. It was not that he had strong feelings about the Negro, he liked him more than he disliked him (though he did identify him with Vietnam, they were all tarred by that brush, no one could be loved here), but he liked privacy on his Saigon weekends. They ate a good meal, and Beaupre, more than he realized, bitched about the country and the war, and Big William tried to cheer him up.

  “You got to swing with it, baby. Course it ain't what you thought it was, or what you wanted. Course it ain't that. If it was, what you wanted, nice and warm and all that, you wouldn't be here, man. Big William knows that. But you can't fight it, that's something I learned a long time ago in another country, that's the way it is. It was like that afore you got here, it's like that now, and it's going to be like that when you and me are gone, departed and left, and so there is only one rule, swing with it and smile. Even when Big William doesn't swing with it, he smiles so these people here, they think: There's Big William and he's swingin' with it. And they think, oh, that Big William, that is a swinger. You do that, and you keep in mind Big William's other rule, which is, that if this place were any good, why we wouldn't be here. There be nice things and pretty things here, why there'd be a law against people like you and me comin' here, maybe only politicians and such could come, and the Vienamese got to have these Senators and Congressmen for counterparts. You do that and you be all right.”

  But Beaupre remained depressed and a little bitter, and Big William seemed concerned for him.

  “It ain't that bad, baby, it just ain't that bad. Ain't that good, course, but ain't that bad. Ain't but one worst thing can happen to you here which is that one day you and me we're out on an operation and this Vietcong sees us, but he lets Big William go by because he likes black cats, and feels badly about them havin' to go around poor like they do in Alabama, wearin' nothin' but black pajamas, and he zaps your white ass dead. That's the worst, see, and so they send you back with this flag, and right away you a hero. Man, a big funeral, and a band playing sad songs about you, and a big headline, very first page of the newspaper sayin', Our Captain Bopay is a number one Hero, and tellin' how you was a hero and killed all these Vietcongs until they kill you, and they print this big picture of you, not smiling but lookin' very hero-like. And, man, evruhbuddy cry over you, girlfriends you got some off of, and girlfriends never gave you any, all of them cryin'. That's the very worst can happen. All right now, you take Big William, and that same Vietcong is waitin', but instead of zapping you, he lets you by because he likes white cats, and he zaps Big William because he heard about how all the black cats own Cadillac cars, and he don't like none of that shit. Well, first thing, the war end right there that minute for Big William. And then the next thing they send his black ass in the biggest box they got, and all the gravedigger boys complaining because his ass is so big and it causing them trouble because their boxes ain't the right size. Well, they ship this back the slowest way they can, and year or two from now, maybe this war even over, this box get back to Pickens, Alabama. Ain't no Pickens band for Big William, no sir, and the Pickens Citizen States Press they put the story on page fifty-seven, which is the page devoted to What Our Colored Friends Is Up To, and there at the bottom is this little story and ain't no picture, and this story says that Big William, Black Colored Negro Male, who the Army say come from this here city is dead, over there in some Asiatic country, and no mention of being a hero, and then it goes on to say, how about that, we always said it would happen that way if this Big William is the one we're thinkin' of because he was always causin' trouble, and when he was here he was mighty uppity, and it wasn't any bargain the Army got, and let that be a lesson to all of you. So it ain't so bad for you except that the both of us is violating Big William's number one first law which is to swing with it, so we better go to this here swinging bar Big William know.”

  They left, Big William talking about the bar, insisting it was the best in town (“only the king swingers go there, man”); Beaupre had wondered whether he belonged there; the Negro saw the question in his eyes and was puzzled by it at first, and then shook his head and said not to worry about that, this bar was for swingers, even the police who waited outside were the best police swingers in town.

  On the way to the bar, Big William had confessed that the reason he liked this bar was the Mammasan; she was still the best of the lot, all woman, not one of these little chirping flower girls, but a woman, and for him she was free and, in fact, sometimes he stayed in her apartment which was a hell of an apartment, more air-conditioners than a general's house, with five or six houseboys, but all of them like midgets, smallest people you ever saw, even for Vietnamese people, all kinds of good silk things on the bed, and silk clothes for him to wear, and then all these drinks with fresh fruit and brandy in the morning. It swung over there, not a bit like Pickens, Alabama. The Mammasan was a hell of a woman and wanted to marry him, he said, but who the hell wanted to spend the rest of his life in this country, even wearing silk things on a silk bed, and drinking fruit and brandy in the morning. Although, as he said, the Mammasan would put Big William in business too; she would open up a couple bars for him.

  “You imagine it. Every time some GI gets himself a piece of ass, white GI or colored, Big William gets a slice of it. Big William become the king of this city. Bars named after him, maybe name one bar after Pickens, Alabama, honor of Big William's birthplace. The Pickens Bar. Big William gettin' richer and richer and helping all these Gls, Big William better than the USO.”

  Beaupre thought he was lying, but when they got to the bar and walked up the stairs and knocked, the door opened, and the Mammasan came, and saw the Negro and said: “My beeg Weellyam” and kissed the Negro, and then very politely shook hands with Beaupre.

  “You have been faithful to me, my William?” she said.

  “Ah Mammasan, Big William is as pure as when he left you,” the Negro answered, and added, “though it ain't necessarily his fault.”

  Beaupre was led into the bar by the Mammasan and was stunned: there was no one there but Negroes. The entire bar was Negro, tall ones and fat ones, Negroes who were obviously officers, and Negroes who were enlisted men. He had never seen anything like it before; it was like being in another world. The girls were all Vietnamese, running around in their antiseptic white costumes, looking somehow like they were nurses for these men. Was it his imagination or did the Vietnamese girls seem lighter; were they lighter because the customers at the bar were so much darker, or were they lighter because the Mammasan who was obviously very clever went out and hired girls especially for their light skins.

  Beaupre shivered and seemed to stop. Big William seemed to move a little closer to him. Nevertheless Beaupre quickly felt the tension and the stares.

  There were two waves of silence: first a wave as the Negroes stopped talking, and then a second, somewhat delayed wave as the Vietnamese girls realized that something was happening and that they were not supposed to talk. Finally one of the Negroes, a tall thin one, elegant with a face like a black American Indian (Beaupre was sure that he was an officer, and found out later that he was an enlisted man, a specialist of some sort), turned, half to them and half to the rest of the bar, so that he was facing neither, and said:

  “Captain Redfern, why don't you just introduce us to your Division Adviser there? Tell us that colonel's name.”

  “Eben,” said another, “that ain't any colonel. That's a general. That's General Harkins. Big William brought us General Harkins.”

  ”Ain't General Harkins, either,” said the first, “General Harkins a slim young fella.”

  In the background Beaupre could hear one Negro say to another, just loud enough so he could hear, “What do you think it is?” />
  “A VC?”

  “Don't look like any VC I ever saw.”

  “No, but remember VC goin' to look different in the bar. No black pajamas when they're on pass, remember.”

  “You think so.”

  There was a moment of pause and then another Negro, wearing an expensive sports coat which tapered out at the shoulders and in at the waist, said, “Gentlemen, you think this general meets the entrance requirements for our club? Captain Redfern, you have not, I hope, forgotten that we are strict here, yes sir baby, very strict.”

  Everyone was laughing except for Beaupre and the Negro. Big William turned from Beaupre and walked to the bar.

  “This man Big William's friend. This man come here with Big William. This man ask Big William, ‘Big William, is it okay if I go with you to this number one best bar you been talkin' about?’ And Big William say, you are my friend, and it is all right because the cats there, they swing just like I told you, they swing plenty, but in addition, they is all gentleman cats. And then Big William add, this here is one place in this here fucked up country ain't fucked up yet. Ain't been ruined yet. And now lookahere what you done. You made a liar out of Big William, and so right here now, at eight forty-seven o'clock pyem, Big William apologize to his friend Captain Bopay. I apologize.”

  Then someone shouted and told Big William to stop talking like a white Baptist preacher, and someone else brought Beaupre a drink, saying “Here you are, General,” and he was for a moment accepted.

  After a while the Mammasan came in and took Big William by the arm and pulled him away. The Negro turned to Beaupre, saluted and said: “She got some brand new silky things ready for Big William and so I got to surrender. Bye bye and be brave, baby. I'm off to my silky death.”