Fields of Fire (38 page)

“Cannonball. Hey, man. Why'd the Black Shack take their sign down?” Bagger had become used to assigning each morning's frustration to the presence of the sign, and the remembrance of his encounter with Rap Jones.

Cannonball shook his head, attempting to evade the question. “Ah doan’ know, man. Doan’ ask me.”

“Don't bullshit me, man. ’Course you know. C'mon. Level with me. Somebody did 'em a Job, huh? Busted their asses?” The three new men watched the encounter, interested. Lister ignored them, accustomed to Bagger and Cannonball's squabbles.

“Look. Doan’ always ask me what Ah know, man. Ah doan’ always know. Now, Ah heard—”

Bagger snorted. Gotcha, you mother. “All right. What did you hear about the Black Shack, Cannonball?”

Cannonball recited, mildly irritated. “Well. Ah heard that Sergeant Sadler an’ Top Lee from over in Charlie Company cleaned 'em out. Ah heard there ain’ any such thing as the Black Shack anymore. That's what Ah heard.”

Bagger slapped his thigh, delighted. “WHOOOeee. Man! I'll bet Top Lee and old Sadler really made the list. I'll bet they're Number One Enemies of the People, all that shit. Oh, yeah. I think I'm gonna like old Sadler. Yes, sir. He don't take shit off anybody.” He grinned to Cannonball, who was attempting to resume his catnap in the bouncing truck. “Well, what'd they do with Rap Jones. And—who else?”

“Knock it off, O.K., Bagger? Ah doan’ know who else. Homicide's in the Da Nang brig. Rap Jones is back in the World.”

“The World? How did he get back in the World?” Bagger mulled it. “He murdered somebody.”

Cannonball remained silent. Bagger nudged him with a boot. “Huh?” Cannonball elbowed Bagger's leg away. Bagger repeated. “How, Cannonball? Huh?”

“He got a medical.”

“A medical?” Bagger contemplated. “Psycho. Had to be.”

Cannonball spoke slowly. “Hemorrhoids.”

Bagger groaned. “Hemorrhoids? Oh, Cannonball. Say it isn't so.” Cannonball ignored him. “Well, that goddamn does it. No shit. I quit. That's just another reason why. All you got to do to get outa this Green Motherfucker is lay down and quit. All right. I quit.”

Cannonball sighed resignedly. He was thinking about his brother. “No you doan’. You ain’ got the balls. Ah doan’ either.”

The truck stopped suddenly, throwing them forward. They were at the edge of An Hoa's outer perimeter. The truck had stopped outside an opening in the wire, next to a wide, shallow hole with loose earth in it. The driver poked his head through the opening in the rear of his cab that once held a window. “This is it, folks. Start loading sandbags. Let me know when you're ready to leave.” He stretched out on the seat of his cab and prepared to take a nap.

Bagger walked to the front of the bed and peered inside the cab, his muscular arms resting on his hips. “You know something? You piss me the hell off. Who do you think you are? Rushing us out here so you can take your goddamn nap. You should be out there helping us fill sandbags, you know that?”

The driver ignored him, feigning sleep.

“Just because you drive a goddamn truck. Uh huh. Drive a truck, play around here in the rear, sleep in a rack, get a little stoned. We get our asses shot off every day for months, and they bring us back to the rear for a couple days, and we load goddamn sandbags, while you skate.”

The driver continued to ignore him. Bagger reached in and shook him awake. “Well, I'll tell you what. You ain't getting much sleep. I mean it. ’Cause I'm waking you up every five minutes.” Bagger exited off the side of the truck. The rest of the working party awaited him on the ground, amused.

They worked listlessly, filling sandbags and loading them into the bed of the truck. True to his word, Bagger kept the driver awake. He kicked the truck door every time he passed. He stuck his head inside the window and screamed to the driver. The driver lay on the seat, continuing to ignore the stocky bully.

Small groups of Vietnamese approached the working party, conversing with them, or merely calling to them as they passed by. A boy sold ten sticks of marijuana to one of the new men, who lit up immediately, grinning. The ever-present babysans converged, these from the resettlement village in Duc Duc, and very friendly. A few even helped load sandbags, in exchange for cigarettes and gum. Bagger and Cannonball were especially playful with the babysans, warming to them after the stolid, empty faces of Go Noi and Arizona.

On the other side of the crater there were low mounds of earth and thick clumps of high weeds. A girl sauntered through the weeds, as if she were emerging from a mist, and stood across the crater from them, smiling brightly. She was perhaps eighteen, short and mildly attractive, her beauty a coarse, natural type that would likely fade in a few years with the emergence of betel nut and children. She wore a long shirt, and a scarf around her neck, even in noon's oven heat.

Lister gave her a familiar nod, then turned to the working party. “Anybody want a little boom-boom? Five bucks, unless you got a case of C-rats with you.”

Bagger and Cannonball studied her. She smiled back unabashedly. Bagger queried Lister. “She clean?”

Lister shrugged. “Shit, I don't know. I screw her every now and then and I never caught nothing from her.”

“Yeah, but what you been giving her?” Cannonball howled at Bagger's jibe.

Lister shrugged. “Suit yourself. Couple days you'll be out in Arizona wishing you had a piece of anything. Well, she's anything. Better'n beating yourself to death.”

“What's with the scarf? She think she's Queen of Sheba?”

“She's got some napalm burns up one side of her. Starts at her neck up there. But she's O.K. Like they say, you don't fuck the face.” Lister chuckled at his own joke.

Cannonball strode quickly toward her. “Ah'll go.” He took her hand and they disappeared inside the high weeds.

Bagger startled. “Hey!” He shook his head. “Hell. I was the one asking all the questions. What's he think I am, his agent?”

Lister jibed him comfortably. “Well, hell, Bagger. You're a married man. Cannonball just done you a favor, boy. He's—how'd my preacher used to say it—keepin’ you from the snares of indolence and vice.”

Bagger grunted, staring toward the weeds. “Screw around, screw around. Tomorrow I might be dead. My woman wouldn't grudge me one last little piece of nooky. Damn Cannonball.”

“You can still go. He won't take long.”

“Forget it.”

In ten minutes Cannonball emerged, grinning widely. “She a nice ride, Bagger. Ain’ no bu-u-u-u-ullshit.” He nodded to Bagger. “Go on, man. She's O.K.”

The girl had not yet emerged from the weeds. Bagger's loins ached mightily, and yet the uncomfortable, denigrating thought would not leave him. Sloppy seconds to a—Shee-it. If they ever found out about that back in Bowman, man I'd—

“Think I'll wait and see if you come down with the clap. Give you a couple days, man. See how hard it is for you to take a leak.”

Cannonball still grinned without suspicion, his spacious face lit from recent pleasure. “Aw, they ain’ goan’ be no couple days, Bagger. We movin’ out tomorrow or the nex’ day.”

Bagger noted the glow on his friend's face, and felt himself begin to harden at the thought of it. My man Cannonball is right. This is it. What's the difference if I poke it in a hole filled with him? It's that or nothing.

“You're right, man. Where's she at?”

In the weeds she lay on someone's discarded poncho, waiting for him. She held her pajama bottoms casually over her middle parts, as if in modesty. He stood above her, undoing his trousers, and she grinned encouragingly, brightly, as if he were offering her a toy. She laid her bottoms next to her and lifted her knees just a little bit and stroked the inside of her own thighs, still smiling to him.

He was hard, watching her stroke herself, and dropped his trousers to his ankles, kneeling between her legs. She reached for him and caressed him, smiling almost innocently. “Ohhh, nice,” she murmured. “Numbah One.”

He entered her and she was hot and tight, even after Cannonball. She still smiled happily, talking to him urgently as he stroked her. He reached to caress her breasts and she frowned just a bit, keeping his hands from the scarred side of her body. She still wore the shirt and scarf. He grabbed her shoulders and thrust deeply and for those moments she was not herself and he was not amid the weeds of An Hoa, coursing on another man's effluent. He was riding on a star-ship, above all misery, and she was his propellant.

He exploded, throwing off the agony of the bitter, unproductive months, for a moment united with a pleasurable moaning creature, interlocked in life's most creative act. And then it was over, the starship descended to the dirty poncho like a burning meteor, and he stared, almost embarrassed, at the too-easily-smiling creature who had just driven him through her very own Milky Way. He pulled his trousers back up, then paid her. She took his money and spoke deep, amused words.

“Hey-y-y. You Numbah One boom-boom. Mebbe you come back, huh?”

He did not answer her. He could only manage a faintly embarrassed smile.

At the edge of the crater the truck driver awaited his turn. He grinned conspiratorially to Bagger. “Was it any good?”

Bagger grimaced threateningly. “Go back to your nap, pogue. You don't rate any piece of ass.”

31

Snake strolled between red tents along the pallet-box walkway, each square of wood rickety beneath his feet. Fetid odors enveloped him as he walked, first the heavy repulsive mix of excrement and oil from the Officers’ shit-ter on the other side of a tent, along the dirt road, then the nasal irritant of the oil-barrel urinals just to his left. Underneath one tent a dead rat decayed.

Smart bastards, he thought. Give 'em rat poison and forget they'll crawl under the boards to die. May as well let 'em live. They bother you but they don't smell when they're alive. At least you can sleep when they're alive. What the hell. His hands were deep into his pockets and he contemplated the seesaw motions of the pallet boxes as he walked them.

Finally he reached the company office tent. He hesitated once, peering through the open flap. Inside, a typewriter pecked languidly. What the hell. I already made up my mind. He walked briskly up two wooden steps and into the tent, standing in front of a wooden gate, emanating mild arrogance. That gate had a hand-lettered sign taped to it: Entrance by permission only.

A narrow face with startled eyes and a small, puckered mouth looked up from the typewriter and recognized him. “Snake-man! Hey! What's happening?”

“Me and trouble. You know it. Where's the Top?”

“He'll be right back. Come on in. Want a smoke?” Snake nodded his thanks and sat on the edge of the clerk's desk. The clerk, a nervous, deferential man whom Snake had nicknamed Bugs months before, lit the cigarette for him. “Listen, man. I was real shook up when I heard about Baby Cakes. Oh, Christ. He just used to sit in here and shoot the shit by the hour. Used to spend ten hours a day inside that mail cage over there. Hell. I typed up his Navy Cross recommendation. He sure had balls. Man. What a way to go. Top was screwed up, too. He sure liked Baby Cakes. We both got shit-faced the night we heard about it. You all must have taken it pretty bad, too. You and him was pretty tight, weren't you? Hey. I just got a Situation Report on Wild Man. Picked it up at the Adjutant's office just a little while ago. Came in from Japan. He's been in Japan for a couple weeks. He must have taken a hell of a shot, huh? ‘Condition guarded, prognosis poor.’ ‘Prognosis poor’ is O.K., that just means he won't be back. To the company I mean. Once his prognosis is better, they'll ship him back to the World. At least that's good news, ain't it? Shit, I'll bet Go Noi was the biggest bummer you ever saw, huh, Snake-man? I'll bet you're glad as hell you're getting short. You're almost finished, aren't you? How many days you got?”

“Forty-seven. And a wakeup.”

“Forty-seven. Jesus Christ, you're so short you better not take a long piss or you'll miss your plane. You gonna get a Rear job?”

“Nope.” Snake looked levelly at Bugs, reveling in the impact his words would have. “I'm gonna extend.”

“Extend? What the hell for?” Bugs caught himself. “I mean, what job? MP's in Da Nang? That's a good racket. Maybe Embassy. Hell, you got a good enough record to get Embassy duty, you know that? You're the only grunt I ever heard of, at least in this company, who's got combat meritorious Lance Corporal and combat meritorious Corporal.”

“Groovy. But I think I'll stay with the company.”

“In the bush?” Bugs squinted unbelievingly. “Oh, wow. You mean it don't you, Snake-man?” He pondered it, careful not to insult this minor legend who had condescended to smoke one of his cigarettes. “Man. It's people like you who make me believe in what we're doing over here. I'd just never—”

Snake laughed, looking ironically at Bugs. “Come on, Bugs. This ain't any politician's fairy tale. Just give me the papers so I can have 'em ready when the Top gets back.”

One hour later the deed was completely done. Snake left the tent, weighted with a ponderous emotion, and strolled along the powdered dirt roads until he found himself at the western edge of the combat base. He found an empty sandbag bunker (it would be occupied at dusk) and climbed onto its roof and sat heavily, moodily peering across the fields of concertina, like a king on a throne, surveying his wide domain.

Far to the west the mountains rose fierce and blue and ominous, above low layers of thick white fog. They seemed peaceful but he knew their secrets, understood their mysteries more completely than he had ever mastered anything before. He was a comprehending denizen, master of a violent world.

He watched the mountains, and the almost quaint repetitions of paddy and treeline that led to them, and acknowledged that he could do this forever. He sensed that, beyond the terror that was today, there was a fullness that no other thing in the remainder of his life would ever equal. That, beyond doubt, the rest of his life would be spent remembering those agonizing months, revering their fullness. That, yes, he was now twenty—well, almost twenty—and what would always have been the greatest, the most important experience of his life, had almost passed. If he were to go back now—when he did go back—there was nothing, not a thing, that would parallel the sense of urgency and authority and—need. Of being a part of something. And of being needed and being good.

Extend? Hell, yeah. I'll extend until this goddamn thing is over.

He sensed that it was all here, everything, and there was none of it there. All of life's compelling throbs, condensed and honed each time a bullet flew: the pain, the brother-love, the sacrifice. Nobility discovered by those who'd never even contemplated sacrifice, never felt an emotion worth their own blood on someone else's altar. The heart-rending deaths. The successes. All here. None there, back in the bowels of the World. Except for the pain, and even that a numbed, daily pain, steady, like blue funk, not the sharp pain of an agonizing moment, capable of being purged, vindicated, replaced by a beautiful, lilting memory: Baby Cakes was a Number One dude, you know? He'da died for me. And I killed 'em back for him.