Matterhorn (4 page)

Mellas crawled into the hooch and rummaged for some stationery and a pen. He decided to try to write to her. The letter came
out as a cheery “Here we are in a place called Matterhorn. I’m fine, etc.” He pasted together the gummed parts of the special
envelope. In the jungle there was so much moisture that normal envelopes would stick together before anyone could use them,
and in the summer water was so precious that people absolutely loathed licking anything.

“Hey, Mr. Mellas.” Every so often Bass used the formal, traditional naval form of address, to emphasize that Mellas was still
a boot lieutenant.

Mellas could make no objection. Bass was perfectly correct. “Yes, Sergeant Bass.”

“If the bird doesn’t make it in and Fisher can’t piss, then what happens? Does he just fill up and bust?”

“I don’t know, Sergeant Bass. I suppose something like that.”

“It’s a pisser,” Bass muttered. “I got to go see if Skosh is still awake.”

Mellas didn’t smile at what he knew was an unconscious pun. He crawled after Bass into the dark interior of his hooch, where
Bass’s eighteen-year-old radio operator, Skosh, was on radio watch. He was so slight that Mellas wondered how he managed to
pack the heavy radio on patrols. Skosh had a dark green towel wrapped around his neck and was reading a pornographic book
that looked as if it had passed through the hands of every radio operator in the battalion.

“Find out what’s the word on the medevac,” Bass said. He moved to the back of the hooch. Mellas followed him, crawling over
smelly quiltlike nylon poncho liners, his knees hitting hard ground as they sank into Bass’s rubber air mattress.

Skosh didn’t answer but picked up the handset and started talking. “Bravo Bravo Bravo, Bravo One.”

“This is the Big B,” the radio hissed out. “Speak.”

“What’s the story on the medevac? Over.”

“Wait one.” There was a brief pause. Mellas watched Skosh, who was reading his book again and listening to the faint hiss
of the receiver. There was a burst of static as someone on the other end keyed the handset. A new voice came over the air.
“Bravo One, this is Bravo Six Actual. Put on your actual.” Mellas knew that Six Actual was the skipper, Lieutenant Fitch,
and he was asking to speak to Mellas personally—to First Platoon’s actual commander, not just anyone tending the radio.

Mellas took the handset from Skosh and keyed it, a little nervous. “This is Bravo One Actual. Over.”

“It looks dim for your bird. The valley’s souped in from Fire Support Base Sherpa on out. They had one bird try to get out
and couldn’t find us. Since we’ve got a couple of hours before your character Foxtrot gets too bad, they’ll wait at Sherpa
to see if it clears. Over.”

“I thought it was an emergency medevac,” Mellas answered. “Over.”

“We sent it in as a priority. It won’t be upgraded to an emergency until it gets so bad he’ll die unless they get him out.
Over.”

Mellas knew they didn’t want to risk the bird and the crew when they could hold on for a couple of hours and maybe get better
weather. “Roger, Bravo Six. I got you. Wait one.” Bass had been signaling Mellas. Mellas released the transmit key on the
handset.

“Ask him if we got an order in for any class six,” Bass asked.

“What’s class six?”

“Just ask him.”

Mellas rekeyed the handset. “Bravo Six, One Assist wants to know if we’re getting any class six in. Over.”

When Fitch rekeyed the handset Mellas heard laughter dying out. “Tell One Assist we got it on order.”

“Roger. Thanks for the info. Out.”

Mellas turned to Bass. “What’s class six?”

“Beer, sir.” Bass’s face was stonily innocent.

Mellas felt foolish and unprofessional. His jaw muscles tightened in anger. He’d looked bad in front of the whole command
post group.

Bass simply looked at him and smiled. “You’ve got to keep reminding them, Lieutenant, otherwise they forget about you.”

Hawke watched Corporal Connolly, leader of Mellas’s First Squad, struggling up the hill through the mud and blasted stumps
on his short powerful legs. He guessed that Connolly would put out that much effort for only one thing: beer.

Connolly stopped to catch his breath and then shouted, “Hey, Jayhawk. You just get to stand around now that they made you
XO?”

Hawke smiled at hearing his own Boston accent. He let out a deep-throated growl and raised his right hand, curling his fingers
over like talons in what everyone in the company knew as the hawk power sign, a parody of the black power fist or the antiwar
protesters’ peace sign, depending on which political movement Hawke wished to satirize at the time. He roared, “Conman, I
can do anything I want. I’m a second lieutenant.” He started shadowboxing and then raised both fists above him like a winning
prizefighter and shouted, “I’m Willy Pep. I’m in round thirteen of my famous comeback fight.” Then he went into a dance, arms
above his head, first and second fingers still curved like talons.

A few Marines on the lines down below him turned their heads. Once they saw it was Jayhawk doing the hawk dance they went
back to staring over their rifle barrels at the wall of jungle, quite used to him.

Hawke stopped his antics. His eyes went blank. The bluegrass tune came back to him: “Men have tried and men have died to climb
the Matterhorn.” The five-string banjo would come on strong behind the wailing fiddle and the high-pitched Appalachian voices
would rise in an east Tennessee lament, “Matterhorn. Matterhorn.” Hawke wanted out of the bush. He wanted to hold a girl who
smelled nice and felt soft. He wanted to go home to his mom and dad. He knew, however, that he wouldn’t leave Fitch and the
rest of Bravo Company with three boot butterbars until they were safely broken in or dead, the only two possibilities for
new second lieutenants in combat.

Connolly finally reached Hawke and, gasping for air, asked, “Hey, when we going to get in some class six?”

“Conman, I knew it. Do I look like a fortune-teller to you?”

“The chopper going to make it in?”

“You must really think I do look like a fortune-teller,” Hawke answered. “And if your squad could do something besides litter
the jungle with Kool-Aid packages and Trop bar wrappers, maybe we’d find that gook machine gun so the zoomies will fly us
in some Foxtrot Bravo.”

“I don’t want to find no gook machine gun.”

“I could hardly have guessed.”

“Hey, Jayhawk.”

“What?” Hawke never minded being called by his nickname, as long as they were out in the bush.

“Troops got to have mail.”

“Thanks. You fucking Dear Abby or something?”

“I
wish
I was fucking Dear Abby.”

“She’s too old for you. Get back to your herd, Connolly.”

“You get your ass promoted to XO and suddenly we’re cattle.”

“Suck out.”

“How come they didn’t make you skipper? You got more time in the bush than Fitch.”

“Because I’m a second lieutenant and Fitch is a first lieutenant.”

“That don’t cut no ice with me.”

“Well, you’re not Big John Six, so no one cares what you think. And you won’t be Big John Bravo One-One Actual if you don’t
quit pestering me.”

“So relieve me of my command and send me home in disgrace.” Connolly turned away, heading downhill, hitching his too-large
trousers up around his waist. The dragging cuffs were ragged and filthy from being stepped on.

Hawke smiled affectionately at Connolly’s back. But then he thrust his hands into his pockets, and the smile turned to a wince
as the pocket edges scraped the jungle rot. He watched Connolly heading back to the lines in the gloom, passing Mellas, who
was climbing up toward him. He sighed and, methodically but very firmly, began to smash the stick
against a log until it broke. What he really wanted to do was crawl out of his wet, filthy clothes and curl up into a small
unconscious ball. Then the song came back.

Mellas knew Hawke had seen him coming up to talk, but Hawke had turned away to climb the short distance to the flattened landing
zone, the LZ, without him. He felt a twinge of anger at the unfairness with which guys like Hawke and Bass treated him, just
because they’d gotten here before he had. Everyone had to be new sometime. Feeling like a kid trying to catch up with his
older brother, he continued to climb. He saw Hawke join the small group of Marines who had gathered around Fisher and someone
he thought he recognized as the company gunny: Staff Sergeant … somebody. God, the names. He should be putting them in a notebook
to memorize.

When he reached the LZ, panting for breath, Mellas could see that Fisher was in severe pain. Fisher would sit on his pack,
then lie on his side next to it, then stand up, then repeat the motions again. Hawke was telling a story and had everyone
laughing except Fisher, though Fisher was smiling gamely. Mellas envied Hawke’s ease with people. He hesitated, not sure how
to announce his presence. Hawke solved his problem by greeting him first. “Hey, Mellas. Just had to see how Fisher managed
to get himself medevaced without getting a scratch on him, huh?” Fisher forced a smile. “I know you’ve met the gunny, Staff
Sergeant Cassidy.” Hawke indicated a man who Mellas thought must be in his late twenties, given his hard-used face and rank.
Cassidy had cut himself, and the infected cut was oozing watery pus. Putting together the pepperish red skin tone, the name,
and the hillbilly accent, Mellas pegged him as redneck Scots-Irish.

Cassidy simply nodded at Mellas and looked at him with narrow blue eyes, obviously appraising him.

Hawke turned to the others. “For those of you not in First Herd, this is Lieutenant Mellas. He’s an oh-three.” When Mellas’s
request to be an air traffic controller with the air wing had been turned down he’d been assigned his military occupational
specialty, or MOS: 0301, infantry officer,
inexperienced. If he was still alive in six months he would be anointed 0302, infantry officer, experienced. All Marine infantry
specialties were designated by zero-three followed by different pairs of numbers: 0311, rifleman; 0331, machine gunner. Zero-three,
called “oh-three,” was dreaded by many Marines because it meant certain combat. Every other MOS was designed to support oh-three.
It was the heart and soul of the Marine Corps. Few attained senior command who didn’t hold it.

There were polite murmurs of “Sir” and “Hello, sir” and obvious relief that Mellas was an infantry officer and not another
supply or motor transport officer. General Neitzel, the current commanding general, had decided that since every Marine was
a trained rifleman, it followed logically that every Marine officer should have experience as a rifle platoon commander for
at least ninety days. The flaw in the general’s logic was that after a non-infantry officer had made the inevitable mistakes
of any new officer in combat, all of which were paid for by the troops under his command, he would be transferred back to
his primary military occupation in the rear, subjecting the troops to breaking in yet another new officer and dying because
of the new officer’s mistakes.

Mellas knew that Hawke had done him a favor by telling the group that he was a grunt like them. Some of his earlier annoyance
at Hawke dissipated. He was beginning to learn that this was a typical reaction to Hawke; people just couldn’t stay mad at
him very long.

Mellas joined Hawke and Cassidy, looking down at Fisher. Hawke went on talking quietly, but now only to Mellas and Cassidy,
even though everyone, including Fisher, could hear him. “I just sent Fredrickson down to ask for an emergency medevac. If
we don’t get him out in a couple of hours I don’t know what will happen.” Fisher was watching Hawke and Mellas intently.

Mellas turned to Fisher. “Hang in there, Tiger.” Mellas was trying to be jolly but couldn’t repress a feeling of annoyance
that he was losing an experienced squad leader.

“I’m hanging, Lieutenant. I sure would like a piss, though. At least I’m finally getting Lindsey here out to Hong Kong.” Fisher
was referring to a forlorn-looking Marine from Third Platoon, also clothed in rotting castoffs.

Lindsey smiled at Fisher. He had been sitting on the landing zone for three days, waiting for a helicopter to take him on
his R & R. “You’d have to have your insides shot out and a will made out to the pilot before one of them would come out to
this cocksucking mountain.”

“There it is,” Fisher replied. The phrase was much-used by stoic grunts everywhere. He’d bitten off the last word in a spasm
and now he began to moan. Mellas turned away. Lindsey watched Fisher. It was clear he’d seen pain before.

Hawke squatted down next to Fisher. “You’ll be OK, man. Hurts, doesn’t it? We just put you down for an emergency. They’ll
get a bird out here now. You don’t think one of those zoomies would miss his movie back at the airfield in Quang Tri, do you?”

Fisher smiled and then arched his back in an uncontrollable spasm, trying to take the pressure off.

“Why the hell did they take so long calling in an emergency?” Mellas asked.

Hawke looked at him, a slight smile on his face. “Whoa. Peevish this afternoon.” He softened. “You call in too many emergencies
and you get a reputation for crying wolf. The dispatcher turns your emergencies into priorities and the priorities become
routines. Then when you really do have an emergency, you don’t get any birds. If you think I’m kidding just stick around awhile.”

“Do I have any choice?”

“My boy, you’re green but you learn fast.” It came out as an imitation of W. C. Fields, which irritated Mellas, but clearly
the kids liked it.

“I always was quick.”

Hawke turned to the Marine waiting for his R & R. “Hey, Lindsey, go down and get the senior squid.”

Lindsey wearily got to his feet and looked down at Fisher. “What’ll I tell him?” he asked Hawke.

“Tell him Fisher’s getting bad.” Hawke didn’t seem to mind explaining what Mellas considered to be fully apparent facts.

Lindsey jogged off down the hill toward the command post.

“How come Lindsey gettin’ out of the bush and not Mallory?” The Marine who asked the question was round-faced, black, with
a droopy
Ho Chi Minh mustache and small light patches on his face from some skin problem. Everything got quiet. Mellas’s political
antenna was fully extended.