Court Martial (18 page)

The front cover of the large-circulation weekly bore Spencer’s picture. He was smiling and his Medal of Honor hung around
his neck. The picture was expertly touched up to emphasize even more his boyish good looks and fiery blue eyes.

“Cute, Spence—real cute!” David Woods leaned over Spencer’s shoulder and looked down at the cover. He patted Spence’s rear.
“Cute ass, too!”

Spencer ignored the kidding and kept looking at the cover.

“You falling in love with yourself?” David reached over to take the magazine and Spencer pointed to a person in the crowd.
“Mary!”

Spencer nodded. Mary was in the background, a little out of focus but recognizable.

“I can see that’s going to be framed,” arnason said, joining the kidding.

“Yep.” Spencer smiled.

“So! How are you guys doing?” The psychiatrist sat down at the end of the picnic table and tried opening a conversation.

“Good… What’s going on over at the trial?” arnason asked.

“So far, they’ve just approved the board: four officers and three enlisted men. James’s lawyers demanded that there be enlisted
men on the board, and according to the
Manual for Courts-Martial,
he’s entitled to that privilege.”

“What does he think? Enlisted men are going to go
easier
on him?” Woods was getting angry.

“They feel that he has a better chance than with all officers.” The psychiatrist looked over at Spencer and met a large smile
followed by a slow wink. “I must say they did a decent job picking the enlisted board members; Sergeant Major Thomas is black,
Master Sergeant Valdez is Mexican, and Sergeant First Class Colorado is an American Indian.”

“I know him” arnason looked at Spencer. “He’s a fine recon man. Two tours in Vietnam.”

“Which one?” Martin asked. He was playing the psychiatrist’s game of asking questions that didn’t seem to have much impact
but normally ended up as very important.

“Colorado… he’s a pure blood Cheyenne. He even practices the old Indian religion and worships the manitou. I can’t see James’s
lawyers letting him stay on the board without challenging him. He is one hard-core soldier.”

“He was the only one they
didn’t
challenge.” The psychiatrist glanced again at Spencer and received the same smile and slow wink. A flash of irritation gave
away what the shrink was thinking and Spencer smiled even more.

“That’s interesting.” arnason shook his head.

“When do you think we’ll be called on the stand?” Woods was getting tired of waiting.

“Probably late this afternoon or early tomorrow morning. I think the first witness will be Major General Garibaldi.”

“He’s here?” Spencer spoke with the smile still glued to his face. He knew that it was getting to the psychiatrist.

“Do you have to smile constantly, Corporal Barnett?”

“I’m
happy, well
adjusted, and recently laid.” Spencer wiggled his eyebrows.

Lieutenant Colonel Martin turned away from Spencer. He had failed to get to the soldier and he knew it, but that didn’t change
his assignment. He was supposed to monitor all the witnesses for signs of strain, but actually he was the one who was feeling
the strain. The Army’s colonels review board had just released its recommendation list for promotion to colonel and his name
wasn’t on it. He was sure that the lieutenant general had taken him off the promotion list because of Spencer Barnett, but
he couldn’t prove it.

“Look at that.” Spencer drew their attention to the cicada that had just fallen out of the pine tree they were sitting under.

“What is it?” The psychiatrist was city-bred.

“A cicada.”

“Shit” Woods slipped over the seat away from the thrashing cicada. “Look at the size of that mother!”

A wasp dropped down out of the tree on her three-inch wings and grabbed the paralyzed cicada. The insect was too heavy for
the giant wasp to fly away with, so the mother hunter used her legs to drag the cicada over the loose sand and her wings to
give her a little lift. She walked her prey over to the trunk of the pine tree and climbed up the bark until she was about
five feet off the ground before she let go and flew over the picnic table on her flight back to the communal nest that she
shared with two of her sisters.

“Damn!” Woods leaned back as the giant wasp flew within a meter of his head.

“She won’t bother you. She’s too busy getting food for her larvae.” Spencer sipped his warm Coke.

“That was one
big
fucking wasp!” Woods shook his head. “That thing could knock down a Cobra gunship!”

“Not quite, David.” Spencer huffed and smiled over at the psychiatrist.

“So do we have to remain in uniform the rest of the day?” arnason asked. He wanted to slip into shorts and get a little sun.

“No, but have your uniforms ready just in case they call you to appear.” The psychiatrist glanced again at Spencer. “As soon
as General Garibaldi is finished over in the court room, I want to bring him over here to brief you on what’s going on so
that there won’t be any surprises when you testify.”

“Fine with me. I want to see the colonel again.” Spencer leaned over to untie his dress shoes. The sun was so hot that the
spit shine was melting. He would have to polish them again as soon as it got dark, and then he would put them in the empty
refrigerator in the back of the barracks so that the wax would harden.

“He’s a
major general now....”
The psychiatrist was becoming irritated with Spencer’s constant referral to the Air Force general as a colonel.

“I know that.” Spencer pulled off his socks and picked up his shoes. He started walking back to the barracks.

“We should be here by four.”

Spencer nodded and disappeared into the dark barracks. He slipped out of his khaki pants and folded them neatly on a hanger
before going back outside carrying an olive-drab Army blanket to lie on in the sun. He was wearing only his white briefs as
he passed the psychiatrist.

“I hope you’re going to have more than that on when the general comes over here.”

“I might… sir.” Spencer smiled and winked.

He lay on his back in the hot sun and felt the sweat forming pools in the eight-pack of muscles that covered his stomach.
Woods was stretched out on a blanket a few feet away from him, wearing only his underwear too; neither of them had thought
to bring shorts with them to the court-martial. Sergeant Arnason wore a pair of cut-off tiger pants that he always took with
him to use as pajamas. Woods was sleeping on his stomach with one of his legs pulled up. Arnason tried reading the paperback
book he held in front of him but the position was becoming very uncomfortable. He had to hold the book away from his body
so that the sweat wouldn’t ruin the pages. The upper right-hand corners of the pages were damp from his fingers turning them.

“Shit!” arnason swore under his breath. A large drop of sweat fell off his nose and landed on the center of the page. “Christ,
is it hot out here!” He adjusted his position on his blanket and decided to call it a day and go inside to take a shower.

Spencer moaned in his sleep.

Arnason stopped folding his blanket and looked over at the soldier.

Spencer moaned again but this time there was fear and pain in his voice.

Arnason laid his blanket down on the picnic table and sat on the bench. He used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off
his face and snapped it, sending a line of wet dots across the sandy soil.

Spencer started breathing very shallowly and rapidly in his deep sleep. He arched his back and whimpered.

Arnason started looking worried.

Spencer spoke. “Please?… Please… get the fuck away from me.” He brought his legs up to his chest and curled into a fetal position
on the warm blanket. “Colonel! That bitch is sticking her tongue out at me!” There was a pause, then Spencer mumbled under
his breath, “Uh… huh… I will, Colonel.” He sighed deeply like a person who was about to give up. “Oh… shit… her head is only
a foot away from me! Colonel… I can’t take this shit anymore!”

Spencer jerked upright on the blanket with his eyes wide open, scaringarnason.

“Fuck it! Do you hear me, Sweet Bitch! Fuck
it…
fuck
you…
fuck
James!…
Fuck all your commie asses with elephant dicks!” Spencer’s eyes weren’t focused.

Arnason saw Woods staring at Spencer with a look of fear on his face. “Sarge… is he all right?”

Arnason nodded. “Shhh…”

Spencer dropped back down on the blanket and groaned again, then screamed at the top of his lungs. His own voice woke him
up and he lay there blinking his eyes, drenched in sweat. He sucked in a lungful of air and shivered when he exhaled. “Fuck!”

“Bad dream?” arnason spoke softly.

“Yeah.” Spencer held his head in his hands and looked down between his legs as he sat on the blanket. “Real bad.”

“Who’s Sweet Bitch?” Arnason maintained the same tone of voice.

“She was the NVA lieutenant who ran our POW camp.... She used to really smoke my ass.”

“How?” arnason realized that Spencer had never before told anyone about what had happened in the POW camp.

“I was just dreaming about it.” Spencer remained sitting on the blanket with his eyes locked on the large black letters printed
on the cloth: USA. “She had captured a huge flicking snake… I mean
huge.”
He looked at Arnason, who could see that Spencer’s face was white.
“It
was bigger around than my waist and at least thirty feet long! Colonel Garibaldi said probably thirty-five feet!”

“She put you
in
the cage with it?”

“Yeah.”

Woods felt like he was going to cry but fought the urge. Spencer wouldn’t have been captured if Woods had insisted on staying
back as the rear guard on the mission, instead of Spence.

Spencer continued, “They put a South Vietnamese officer in the cage the first night.... He committed suicide before dawn by
hanging himself with his pants.” Spencer’s eyes lost their focus for a couple of seconds and he tried smiling but failed.
“So, when they put me in the cage they stripped me naked.... I didn’t give a fuck at first, but then when I saw Mother Kaa
close up, even a
pair of pants and a shirt would have helped… but being
naked,
I felt so… helpless.” Spencer’s hand started shaking. “She was one
big
snake.”

“So what happened?” arnason wanted to get Spencer’s mind away
from
the snake.

“A Montagnard boy was hiding under the cage and shoved some bamboo sticks up through the floor in front of me so Mother Kaa
couldn’t touch me.... There was some kind of stuff rubbed on the bamboo, because she wouldn’t come near it.”

“Was the Montagnard boy the same one they killed?” David entered the conversation.

“Yes! How did you know that?” Spencer’s eyes focused completely now and he joined his friends back at Camp McCall.

“We just came back from a mission over there with his father.” Woods could see that Spencer was very interested and continued,
“The old chief and his son have started a private war with the NVA and we set up a resupply for them.”

Arnason shook his head. “We’ve been fools! We should have told you earlier about this!”

“Go on!” Spencer used his hands to emphasize.

“There’s not a lot more to it. We set up a resupply drop and the Montagnards now have some modern weapons to fight with.”
David went over and took a seat near Arnason in the shade in front of the fan. “The Montagnards have a way of letting the
NVA know that it’s them killing their comrades.”

“How’s that?”

Arnason grabbed David’s arm and shook his head.

“Tell me!” Spencer’s jaws tightened.

“You don’t need to know.”

“Tell me!”

“They impale the NVA on bamboo stakes.” arnason watched for Spencer’s reaction.

“Through their asses?”

“Yes…” Arnason’s voice was a whisper.

“Good! Those mother fuckers deserve it!” Spencer smiled, “Payback is a bitch!”

Arnason sighed. He was worried that talking about it would break Spencer, but the opposite had happened. Spencer actually
looked relieved of a great guilt.

“They put that little Montagnard boy on one of those stakes and made me watch....”

“That’s not the way the chief tells the story.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that you volunteered to take the boy’s place.”

Spencer shrugged.

“That was a brave thing to do, Spence....” Arnason nodded.

“No… actually it was the cowardly thing to do. The brave thing would have been to sit there and
watch them
torture that kid and do nothing.” Spencer’s logic was clear to his teammates.

“Why did they bury the boy underneath you?” David risked asking for an answer to the question that had been bothering him
ever since they had rescued Spencer and he had seen the tiny hand in the dirt under his teammate.

“They had left him on the stake for three days in the jungle heat…” Spencer didn’t have to go into detail for his teammates—they
knew what a body looked like after three days in the sun, “and they weren’t going to bury him. He was being made an example
for the rest of the Montagnards because he had helped me.” Spencer grinned and added, “I bet they wish now that they had left
that kid alone!”

“So who buried him?”

“I did, and then James came up with the bright idea that I should be buried up to my neck in the grave
over
the kid.... He thought that was funny.”

“James did that?” Arnason felt his throat muscles tighten in anger.

“Yeah, and then he was going to blow my brains out, but only after I suffered for a couple of days in the sun. Nice guy, huh?”

“I didn’t know....” David felt the first tear coming.

“Don’t start bawling on me, Woods!” Spencer frowned.

Woods smiled. “You are one hard-core southern boy!”

“That’s right! I owe you!… Remember?” Spencer sprung at Woods and knocked him off the blanket onto the sandy ground.

“Get off me!” Woods used his leg to flip Spencer over on his back and jumped up on his feet. “Or I’ll have to really whip
your skinny ass good!” David dropped down into a wrestler’s crouch.