Matterhorn (82 page)

Someone was shaking him awake.

“What the fuck is it?” he whispered, his head aching badly.

“It’s me, China, sir.”

“Goddamn, China, what the fuck do you want?” Mellas rolled over. His wounded eye was pounding even worse than his head. He
wondered what he’d done with the patch, or whether he’d lost it someplace. Then he found it on top of his head.

“Lieutenant Mellas, you got to help. They’s gonna be trouble tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I think they’s gonna to be someone killed,” China whispered.

Mellas heard a scraping sound outside the tent behind China. Then a match was struck and he saw Mole lighting a candle. Mole’s
face, like China’s, was tense and worried.

Mellas said, “Oh, fuck, I got to piss. Give me a fucking second.” Mellas stood outside the flap of the tent and peed into
the darkness and cold. When he returned, China and Mole were talking in low whispers. The others were sound asleep, except
for the new lieutenant, who was staring at the three of them wide-eyed, but keeping out of things. Mellas led them outside.

“Now what the fuck’s going on?” Mellas whispered. He was fully dressed, not having undressed when he had collapsed on the
floor.

“It’s Cassidy, sir,” China said. “I think they gonna frag him tonight. I wanted to just throw a fuckin’ fake in, you know,
to make a statement, but they gonna waste him instead. They said a fuckin’ pop won’t get nothin’ done.”

“But Cassidy’s in fucking Quang Tri,” Mellas said. “What the fuck can I do about that?”

“No, he’s not, sir. He’s come back. We saw the lights on in there tonight.”

China’s words jerked Mellas’s spine straight. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “The Jayhawk’s in there.”

Mole, startled, looked at China. “That’s why we couldn’t find him.”

Mellas started running. He could think only of getting Hawke out of Cassidy’s rack. He felt sick and wanted to throw up but
kept running.

Mole flew past Mellas, his longer legs moving even more swiftly, sprinting with everything he had to reach Hawke. China, who
was stockier, came behind. All three were filled with a dread that pushed them like a hand on their backs, racing with them,
as the low ground fog swirled beneath their running feet.

The explosion ripped through the air and sent Mellas ahead even faster, running as he had never run before, but burdened by
despair.

Dark shadows flitted away from the tent. Mellas rushed through the entrance just behind Mole. He could see nothing inside.
He smelled the sickening, burning odor of TNT. Mellas stumbled over to the rack where he had laid Hawke. The grenade had gone
off directly beneath him. Pieces of mattress ticking still hung in the air. What remained of the torn mattress was sticky
with blood. He tried to feel where the bleeding was coming from, running his hands over the limp body. “Get a light!” he screamed.
“Get a fucking light!” Hawke was lying facedown. Mellas located Hawke’s head and felt his neck for a pulse. There was nothing.
He felt beneath his body for his chest and encountered only warm pulp. He’d been laying facedown when the grenade went off
beneath him.

Mellas heard footsteps outside, and then a flashlight shone in through the door. The light shone on Hawke’s face. His eyes
were open. He must have heard the grenade clunk to the floor just before it exploded.

China was trembling in the doorway of the tent with the flashlight. Mole was talking to him quietly, his arm over China’s
shoulder. They both looked at Mellas, terrified.

Mellas began to shake. Unable to control the shaking, he squatted on his haunches, steadying himself on Hawke’s rack, looking
at Hawke’s open eyes. There was no Hawke behind them.

“Bye, Jayhawk,” he said, and closed the eyes.

He stood and looked at Mole and China. He wanted to beat them senseless, cut their tongues out, for keeping quiet until it
was too late. He wanted to scream accusations of murder and send them to prison. At the same time he knew that nothing would
be gained but more bitterness. Justice in the midst of war was a scrap of paper in the wind. If he implicated Henry, he would
drag in China and Mole, and he didn’t want to do that. Their only sin was the one he’d committed too often himself, not speaking
up. Besides, he liked them, and the company couldn’t afford to lose its two best machine gunners. He was suddenly aware that
he was thinking like the company commander. He had 200 Marines to take care of. Everyone could deal with his own conscience.
Mellas truly no longer cared about justice or punishment—at least, he no longer cared about the kind the courts stood for.
Revenge would heal nothing. Revenge had no past. It only started things. It only created more waste, more loss, and he knew
that the waste and loss of this night could never be redeemed. There was no filling the holes of death. The emptiness might
be filled up by other things over the years—new friends, children, new tasks—but the holes would remain.

Mellas saw Hawke’s tin-can cup hanging on his belt suspender over the back of a chair. He unhooked the cup and stuffed it
into one of his own pockets. “You two had better get out of here,” he said quietly to Mole and China as he walked out past
them.

Mellas stayed around for the inevitable hullabaloo. Bravo Company, to a man, stonewalled, as did he. All he knew was that
he’d been asleep when the grenade went off. Any investigators would have to find their way to Henry on their own. If they
didn’t, so be it. If they did, there’d be insufficient evidence to bring about a trial, much less a conviction. Moreover,
there was a war to fight, and no one would benefit from a long and time-consuming murder investigation.

When the hullabaloo died down, Mellas walked alone to the edge of the deserted landing strip and lay down in the mud. He cried
until he could cry no more. Then he just lay there, empty, alone beneath the slowly graying sky.

Goodwin finally found him and helped him up. They walked to the COC bunker, where Blakely informed them that Mellas would
be the new company commander until a captain arrived. If Mellas did a good job, maybe he’d get a company of his own later—maybe
even Bravo Company. His first task, however, once Eiger was secured, would be to help the S-1 write up the investigation of
the accidental death.

T
he operation kicked off at 0600 as planned. By 1000 the company was set in and Mellas had three patrols out. Only with the
coming of evening and its soft fading light could he finally be alone. He hid behind a blasted stump and he tried to think
about meaning. He knew that there could be no meaning to someone who was dead. Meaning came out of living. Meaning could come
only from his choices and actions. Meaning was made, not discovered. He saw that he alone could make Hawke’s death meaningful
by choosing what Hawke had chosen, the company. The things he’d wanted before—power, prestige—now seemed empty, and their
pursuit endless. What he did and thought in the present would give him the answer, so he would not look for answers in the
past or future. Painful events would always be painful. The dead are dead, forever.

Mellas longed to go out on patrol, back to the purity and green vitality of the jungle, where death made sense as part of
the ordered cycle in which it occurred, in the dispassionate search for food that involved loss of life in order to sustain
life. He thought of the tiger that killed Williams. The jungle and death were the only clean things in the war.

The warm evening was a harbinger of the post-monsoon heat that would soon follow. Mellas felt the dark night beginning to
enfold him like a woman’s arms. The listening posts were out. So were the major stars, brilliant in the sky. Toward Laos,
lazy green NVA tracers and antiaircraft fire floated beautifully above the horizon. The NVA were trying to kill an American
pilot, but the distance made the effort seem
no more than a slow-motion fireworks display. Mellas felt a slight breeze from the mountains rustling across the grass valley
below him to the north. He was acutely aware of the natural world. He imagined the jungle, pulsing with life, quickly enveloping
Matterhorn, Eiger, and all the other shorn hilltops, covering everything. All around him the mountains and the jungle whispered
and moved, as if they were aware of his presence but indifferent to it.

He started to fix coffee, knowing he’d need the caffeine to stay awake through the night, and it would soon be too dark for
him to heat anything safely. Hawke’s old pear-can cup felt familiar and good. Mellas had found comfort in it several times
already that day as he carefully and mindfully brewed coffee, remembering Hawke. When he finished making the coffee he took
a careful first sip; the edge of the cup was heated to a satisfying lip-burning temperature.

He became aware of someone, down on the lines below him, tapping out a rhythm on a drum made from a C-ration box. It was a
strange, wild, strong rhythm. It grew loud, then soft, but it was always fierce. Then soft voices, chanting in a weird atonal
harmony, rose like spirits from the earth below him. As the rhythm became stronger, the voices became more intense, although
not really louder. Gradually he could make out the words of the chant, as if he had tuned in to its frequency. The words chilled
him but at the same time lifted his soul skyward.

The voices were chanting the names of the dead.

If it’s good enough for Jacobs, then it’s good enough for me.

If it’s good enough for Jacobs, then it’s good enough for me.

If it’s good enough for Jacobs, then it’s good enough for me.

Good enough for me. Good enough for me.

The voices chanted on. With each new name the rhythm would be altered to fit the syllables. Mellas walked slowly down the
hill to find the chanters, being careful not to spill his hot coffee. They were Conman, Mole, and Gambaccini. Mole was drumming
the C-ration box. The three of them were staring into the darkness, lost in their rhythm. Mellas sat down. He didn’t disturb
them.

He heard a slight noise behind him and looked up. China was standing there listening and watching. Mellas moved over slightly
and patted the ground next to him. China sat down. Mellas lifted the hot tin-can cup in a silent toast to Hamilton. He handed
it to China, who took a drink and handed it back. Neither said a word.

If it’s good enough for Shortround then it’s good enough for me …

Each of the names evoked a remembered face, an outstretched hand reaching down from a rock or across a rushing stream—or a
look of fear as a friend realized that death had come for him.

If it’s good enough for Parker then it’s good enough for me …

Mellas tried to shake off the other images: the burned bodies, the smell, the stiff awkwardness beneath the wet ponchos. He
couldn’t. The chanting went on, the musicians giving in to the rhythm of their own being, finding healing in touching that
rhythm, and healing in chanting about death, the only real god they knew.

Mellas didn’t sleep that night. He sat on the ground and stared out to the northwest, toward Matterhorn. He watched the mountains
subtly change under the shadows of clouds cast by a waning moon as it moved across the sky until the shadows began to fade
with the coming of light in the east. He tried to determine if there was meaning in the fact that cloud shadows from moonlight
could move across the mountains and yet nothing on the mountain would move or even be affected. He knew that all of them were
shadows: the chanters, the dead, the living. All shadows, moving across this landscape of mountains and valleys, changing
the pattern of things as they moved but leaving nothing changed when they left. Only the shadows themselves could change.

actual
Specific person commanding a unit, as opposed to just the unit in general. For example, if someone calling on the radio said,
“This is Charlie One,” this would mean that it could be anyone on the radio, usually the radio operator, calling from First
Platoon of Charlie Company. If the person said, “This is Charlie One Actual,” it would mean that the speaker was the actual
commander of First Platoon. “Put your actual on” meant “I want to talk to your commanding officer.”

A. J. Squaredaway
Marines used made-up names to personify conditions or standards. A. J. Squaredaway meant looking sharp. There were others.
Joady was the guy screwing your girl back home and Joe Shit the ragpicker was the opposite of A. J. Squaredaway.

AK-47
Standard-issue automatic weapon used by the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong. It fired a 7.62-millimeter bullet at
a lower velocity than the M-16. It was much less accurate than the M-16, but far easier to maintain under jungle conditions;
and in close-in jungle fighting, accuracy at a distance was not a significant factor.

Arc Light missions
“Arc Light” was an Air Force operation that used B-52s based on Guam. These B-52s were modified to carry thirty tons of conventional
bombs, which were guided to the targets by ground-control radar. The missions were most often flown at night against enemy
base camps, troop concentrations, and supply lines.

arty
Artillery.

ARVN
Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South Vietnamese army—allies of the United States.

ASAP
As soon as possible.

Avenues
A gang of the 1960s in Los Angeles.

baseball team
Radio brevity code for a squad (thirteen Marines).

Basic School, the
Lowest-level Marine Corps officer school, where all Marine officers, including Marine pilots, are given the basic education
needed to run a rifle platoon and company. It is located in Quantico, Virginia, and its name is abbreviated TBS.

basketball team
Radio brevity code for a fire team (four Marines).

battalion
A battalion, usually about 1,200 to 1,300 Marines and sixty naval medical personnel, had four rifle companies, and one larger
headquarters and supply company (H & S) that held the 106-millimeter recoilless rifles, the 81-millimeter mortars, and the
supply, maintenance, communications, mess, medical, and administrative personnel. Each battalion usually had a specific 105-millimeter
artillery battery attached to it permanently from the regiment’s artillery battalion. A battalion was usually commanded by
a lieutenant colonel, often called a “light colonel.” That rank is designated by a silver oak leaf. In the Marine Corps during
the 1960s, command of a battalion was critical for advancement to high rank.