Mail call was hard when you didn’t get any mail. I thought that what I needed was to have something more in the World than I had. I remembered what Lobel had said about the starlet, but it was silly. I needed something real. It didn’t even have to be something that was going on at the time, a plan for when I got back would have been fine. I couldn’t think of anything and felt depressed.
An image of the VC we had killed flashed through my mind. I wondered if he had a family? Had he been out on a patrol? When did he know he was going to die?
What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I could become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
“He was the guy — ” I couldn’t believe that Walowick didn’t know who I was talking about. He had been on the patrol when Jenkins was killed. I looked into his face, and I saw that he was for real. “Jenkins was the guy I came in with. He stepped on a mine.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about him,” Walowick said. “You play chess?”
“A little, you got a set?”
Walowick went to get his chess set, and Jamal came back in. He had a clipboard and he put it in front of me. He pointed to a figure. It read “3.” I looked at the column it was in and it was listed “Confirmed Kills.” I looked up at Jamal, but he was already on his way out.
“You know, that guy is a little…” Walowick held his hand out, palm down, and turned it from side to side.
“It takes all kinds,” I said. Walowick had put the chessboard on a box, and we started setting up the pieces.
“How many VC were killed today?” I asked.
“One, I guess,” Walowick said.
“The report said three,” I said.
“You shoot a VC, and they take the bodies and run off with them,” Walowick said. “That’s so you never know how many are killed. You can’t even find shells when they shoot at you. They take those, too.”
“Then how do you know how many were killed?”
“Long as it’s them and not us,” he said. “Take the white pieces.”
As soon as I crossed Manhattan Avenue I knew something was up. The street was quiet except for a radio that blared from behind a window with its shade pulled down. I stopped on the comer and looked down the street. A small girl, too young to be out past eleven, came out of a hallway and peered around a mail collection box.
“The Rovers down there,” she said.
“Who?”
“The Rovers,” she repeated. “They’re from Brooklyn. They looking for somebody.”
I wasn’t about to go down the street. I had heard too many stories about gangs looking for someone who they had to “deal” with. A lot of them were getting out of the gang thing and into a Black Pride thing, but the gangs were still there.
A car, I hadn’t noticed it before, had eased onto the block. Suddenly it picked up speed, wheels squealing, lurching from one side of the narrow street to the other. The Rovers came out and threw rocks and bottles. Then I heard the shots and flattened myself against the wall. The Rovers started running from down the block. A minute later the street was empty again. Then came the police sirens.
“Here’s one!”
It startled me at first. Then I went over to where the woman was pointing. I saw the kid’s frightened face; the eyes wide, as the neon lights from Joe Walker’s restaurant turned it alternately green and red. He had been shot. The police cleared the corner. It was safe to walk up to Momingside, and home.
The next day in the West Indian store I heard two teenagers saying that the kid had died.
Brew came in and put his radio on. He had cupcakes and tossed me one and Walowick one. The radio was playing something about going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair. A nice tune.
We played two games of chess, and I won both of them easily. Walowick didn’t seem to mind. His idea was just to capture as many pieces as possible. If it led him to a bad position, he would just lose. I was glad the game wasn’t hard. I didn’t want anything hard to do.
When I tried to sleep, I kept seeing the VC, just the way he was laid out in front of the company. I pushed my mind away, forced myself to think about other things. I started thinking about Kenny. There was a kid in his class who used to bother him a lot. The lad used to call him a punk and push him around. Kenny wasn’t a punk, but he wasn’t a fighter, either.
Sometimes we used to imagine traveling around the world together. We’d have imaginary trips around the world. I would imagine just the two of us, but Kenny would always include Mama. That was the difference between me and Kenny. He could get other people, mostly Mama, into his dreams easier than I could. He was the bridge between me and Mama, and I liked him for that.
I woke up in the morning, about 0400 hours, with the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. I thought I was having an attack of appendicitis. I was doubled up in bed and had to crawl out of the bed to get to where Peewee was sleeping. I shook him, and when he opened his eyes I told him I needed help. He got up right away and went to get a medic.
Jamal came over and saw me doubled up on the bed.
“You got the shits,” he said.
“No, man, I feel like I’ve been poisoned.”
“Hurts worse than anything else in the world, like it’s burning for a while, and there’s a sharp pain for a while?”
“Yeah.”
“You got the shits.”
“What he got to do?” Peewee said.
“He don’t have to do nothing,” Jamal said. “After a while he’s going to go to the latrine and shit his lungs out, that’s all.”
“He gonna feel better, then?” Peewee asked hopefully.
“No.” Jamal put some pills on the table and some Kleenex. “Every time you go to the bathroom, take two of these. Sometimes it helps, but usually it don’t.”
Then he started to leave.
“Yo, faggot, you got to do more than that,” Peewee said.
“Don’t be calling me no faggot,” Jamal said. “You don’t know me that well.”
I threw the box of Kleenex at Jamal and told him where to shove them. He picked them up, shrugged, and left.
“I see where I’m gonna have to lack his ass before long,” Peewee said. “You want some water or something?”
“No.”
I remembered that after the orientation the old-timers started telling us about the diseases they said the lieutenant overlooked.
“They got one land of thing they call the Damn Nam jungle rot. It rots you from the insides out. By the time it gets to your skin you’re dead meat.”
I didn’t believe it, then.
“They got guys on an island out in the middle of the Pacific that can never go home again.”
I didn’t believe that, either.
“And if that don’t get you, the stuff they spray on the trees will eat your liver up.”
I was beginning to believe it all as I lay on the end of the bunk.
It was almost 0500, and the company was usually up and around at 0600. I would go on sick call then.
0510. I could hardly stand up I had so much pain. I went to the latrine. I crapped out most of my insides. The cramps were worse. When I got back to the bunk, my hands were shaking.
0520. I crapped out the rest of my insides. I was getting nauseous from the stink. I was sweating.
0541. I tried to hold off, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have anything left to crap out so I ju
st crapped out water.
0555. Again. I stopped off at Jamal’s hooch and got the Kleenex.
0630. Again. This time Peewee came with me to the john. He sat on the john next to me and asked me if I thought Jimi Hendrix was for real. I said I thought he was okay.
“You know, I can play some blues,” Peewee said.
“You can?”
“I ain’t as good as Jimi Hendrix,” he said, “but he play them citified blues, anyway. I’m thinking about writing a blues number for you. I’m gonna call it “The Serious Stink Blues.”
“Peewee, go die.”
0800. The squad went on patrol. Jamal came by and I asked him if he had any softer Kleenex. He told me not to bother wiping.
I was still weak the next day, but getting around. At any rate I wasn’t in the bathroom every five minutes. Jamal gave me potassium tablets. There was a lot of excitement in the camp. A sergeant from Charlie Company refused to take his squad out on patrol. He said the war would be over as soon as the truce went into effect, and he didn’t want to be the last guy to die in Nam. I stayed in bed all day and read a supply of Ebonys that Peewee got for me. Everybody was talking about the possibility of a truce before the holidays were over.
Johnson and Walowick got into a fight. Johnson wanted something from Walowick, I think it was a cleaning patch, and called Walowick a farm boy. Walowick threw Johnson the patch and called Johnson a cootie.
“What you call me?” That’s what it sounded like Johnson was saying as he flew across the room.
He hit Walowick and sent him reeling across the floor. Then it was on. I had never seen human beings hit each other so hard. Everybody else in the hooch was trying to get out of it. There was blood everywhere. I got out just behind Peewee, and we both stumbled over Lieutenant Carroll trying to get in.
I thought about going back in to help Lieutenant Carroll stop the fight, but by the time I turned around, Lieutenant Carroll came hurtling through the doors. Then Johnson came out with Walowick around his middle. They went about three meters, hit a patch of mud, and went sliding into some crates of ammo. It took six guys to break them up.
Okay, the worst part of the fight was that Lieutenant Carroll got a broken tooth. His back tooth on the left side split right down the middle. He showed all of us. Also, it bled around the bottom and his jaw was swollen. Johnson and Walowick got called to the company commander’s office. Then I got called as a witness.
“Tell im what he called me,” Johnson said. “Tell im.”
“Before you open your mouth, Private,” Captain Stewart was chewing on the end of his cigar, “make sure you know what you’re talking about. I don’t want any rumors starting anything around here.”
“He called him a cootie, sir.”
“A what?”
“That’s what he called me,” Johnson said.
“What the fuck’s a cootie?”
“It’s a bug,” Walowick said.
“That’s like calling me a nigger,” Johnson said.
“Is that a racial thing?” Captain Stewart looked at Walowick.
“A cootie’s a cootie,” Walowick shrugged. “He shouldn’t have called me no farm boy. If he calls me a farm boy, I’m gonna call him a cootie again.”
That’s when Johnson hit Walowick again, and the fight started again. This time Lieutenant Carroll got out of the way. When the fight was over, Captain Stewart told them both to stop talking to each other. That was that.
Peewee asked me to write a letter to his girl for him. I had been right about her writing him a Dear John letter, and it really messed him up.
“Every time I get ready to write the damn thing I get messed around,” Peewee said.
“Peewee, I can’t write a letter to your girl for you,” I said.
“Hey, if somebody in Chicago is doing my night work for me, you can write a letter,” Peewee said.
We had some gung-ho stationery, the kind with a picture of GIs jumping out of a chopper on it. The picture was in light blue and you could write over it.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Say, ‘Dear Two-Timing Slut.’ ”
“What’s her name?”
“Her name Earlene.” “Okay, so I’m writing, Dear Earlene.’ ’
“How can you leave me for that old, fat Eddie Thompson when his feet stink, he ain’t got no hair, and he got breath that smells like a polar bear what done died from eating too much garlic?’ You got all that?”
“Wait a minute.” I wrote it all down, then told him to go ahead.
“I know you need help with you and Little Mommy being on relief and everything, but I told you I would take care of you as soon as I got back into the World.”
“Who’s Little Mommy?”
“That’s her daughter. She’s real cute,” Peewee said. “Earlene was married before, but her husband drove a cab and got kilt in a holdup.
“I know it is hard to wait for anybody, but I will try to be worth waiting for, so give it a try. Yours truly, Peewee Gates.’ ”
“Hey, Peewee,” Monaco called over. “You gonna marry her?”
“If she wait,” Peewee said.
“I ain’t getting married,” Monaco said. “I’m playing the field my whole life.”
“That’s cause you so ugly there ain’t no pressure on you,” Peewee said. “As handsome as I am, I got all kinds of pressure on me to get married.”
I finished Peewee’s letter and gave it to him. “You think she’s going to wait for you?” I asked. “No, man, she already married this fat fool.” “Then why are you asking her to wait?”
“Just to break her damn heart,” Peewee said.
I saw Peewee put a stamp on the letter and take it out to the mail sack. When he came back, he was quiet. It wasn’t like Peewee to be quiet. I left him alone.
Johnson came in, and Brunner opened his mouth to him. Something about being called a name not being a big thing.
“You call me a cootie, and I’m going kick your ass, too,” Johnson said.
“You said what?” Brunner was about six-three and as bulky as a football player.
“I said I was gonna kick your ass if you call me out my name.” Johnson got up and walked over to Brunner.
Brunner looked at Johnson, shook his head, and picked up a magazine. He didn’t want any part of Johnson.
I couldn’t stand the smell of the insect repellent, and it woke me up in the middle of the night when I put my arms near my head because that’s where I put most of it. I looked around and saw Brew kneeling by the side of his bed, praying. It was a good idea. I felt a little guilty about waiting until I got to Nam to think about God. On the other hand I didn’t want to not be close to God. I checked Brew out again, and he was praying away. I started out with the Lord’s Prayer as best as I could remember it, got messed up with the part about trespassing, and gave it up.
When I was small, Mama used to say a prayer with me before I went to sleep. It was before Kenny was bom, and things had been pretty good for us. When I got bigger, she used to say it with Kenny.
The night Daddy left she came in and sat on Kenny’s bed and started saying it, and Kenny saw her crying and he started crying, too. When she got to the part about dying before you waked I put my head under the cover. I didn’t say it in Nam, either.
The sound of incoming choppers woke us up in the morning. A moment later we were being yelled at, whistles were blowing, and the morning cursing had started.
The air outside was still and muggy, but I could smell cordite in the air. Lieutenant Carroll was near a tree, and I went over to him and asked him what was going on.
“Beats the hell out of me,” he said. He had coffee in his canteen cup, a cigarette between his fingers, and was leaning against a tree to take a leak. He peed all over his pants. “The next time I join a war I’m going to get circumcised first,” he said. “How you doing?”
“Good,” I said. “How’d the patrol go yesterday?”
“Bad. Nothing happened
, but I don’t think we should have been out there.”
“Stewart?”
He shrugged and walked away.
We got powdered eggs and cold potatoes for breakfast. Then Lieutenant Berger from Delta Company came over. I thought he had something important to say, but he had the mail, which was pretty important. Nobody in our squad got mail but Johnson. He got a bill from the telephone company.
After breakfast things settled down to a boring normal. Lobel said that he weighed one seventy-three and Walowick said that he should lose weight.
“You should take some of that candy they have,” Walowick said.
Lobel and Walowick went through some magazines until they found an ad for the candy that was supposed to make Lobel lose inches from his waistline.
“Perry!” Lieutenant Carroll called me to the front of the hootch. “Bring your gear!”
I got my gear and went outside. He told me that he had to supply one man for a patrol with Charlie Company, and since I had missed one patrol with the squad, it had to be me. He said he was sorry, and that I shouldn’t be a hero.
“Don’t sweat it,” I said.
Chapter 8
“What’s your name, soldier?”
“Perry, sir.”
“Look, Perry, we re going out on a sector patrol. What we want to do is to establish a presence. We re not looking to get into a firefight. We see anything, we call in artillery. You have any questions, you ask me, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we do get into anything, make sure you report any body count. One last thing, you stay close to Scotty over there. Scotty’s our machine gunner. You can feed for him.”
Lieutenant Doyle was short, nervous. He cupped a cigarette in his hand the way I thought Humphrey Bogart would have. Charlie Company was going out in two sectors. The first platoon went out first, the third and the fourth platoon — the one I was assigned to — were going next, and the second platoon was going to be the backup in case anybody got into trouble.