Fields of Fire (9 page)

“Groovy.” Snake took his letter-writing gear from his pack, and opened the tablet. He wrote quickly in a tightly lettered scrawl.

“What you doing, Snake?”

“Writing a letter.”

“That didn't take long.”

“Didn't have much to say.”

He found a can of C-ration fruit cocktail and opened it, eating hungrily. The sun was peeping over brown, rended earth, over fields scarred like an acned face, pocked and ripped by years of bombs and mortars. In another hour the sun would be so angry that it would not let them eat. He shed his flak jacket, pulled out a heat tablet from his low trouser pocket, and cooked up some cocoa in his canteen cup.

Flaky switched on his transistor. It was six o'clock. The radio blared out with a cheerful, optimistic voice that was sitting behind a microphone in the Other World of Da Nang.

“Goo-o-o-o-od morning, Vietnam!”

Snake lit a cigarette, stirring cocoa. First platoon was halfway to the treeline. “Fu-u-u-uck him. What does he know about it?”

“About what?”

“Vietnam.”

5

Major Otto, the battalion executive officer, sat behind his field desk and examined Hodges’ record book. He was young for a Major, in his early thirties. He seemed pleasant enough to Hodges, who had expected a hatchet-faced, ravening warrior after hearing of the Major's background. Otto had been a company commander during his first tour, and was highly decorated. His right forearm was gashed with a six-inch, purple trough left by a bone-shattering machine-gun bullet. And yet he had the inquisitive, sensitive demeanor of a brooding scholar.

He smiled casually to Hodges. “So. You think you're ready?”

Hodges stood at a loose parade rest in the musty heat of the tent. He was scheduled to attend three more days of regimental indoctrination school, but he had not found it helpful, and he had learned to hate the dust-filled boredom of An Hoa.

“Yes, sir. I'm ready.”

“Think so? Good. They need you out there. Lost another Lieutenant last night.” The Major watched him closely.

“Yes, sir. I heard.”

“Yeah. Good old Dying Delta. They like to call themselves Deadly Delta. Hah.” Otto chuckled. He had a beaten tone in his voice, as if he had seen the ritual so many times that it had lost its meaning. “Deadly Dying Delta.”

Hodges watched him, dripping with sweat in the dark heat. Outside, a jeep rumbled past, leaving a wave of red dirt that seeped underneath the tent flap like creeping fog. In the distance, an artillery battery fired a mission toward the Arizona territory. The Major swiped at a fly, then lit a cigarette. As an afterthought, he offered one to Hodges.

“No, thank you, sir.”

Major Otto sighed. “You'll learn.” He dragged deeply on the cigarette, frankly studying Hodges. “Yeah. Dying Delta. You're not ready, Lieutenant. The only reason I'm telling you is I don't want you to panic when you get there and find out. Nothing in your entire goddamned life will have prepared you for the bush. Not a damn thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what I mean?”

“No sir.”

“Jesus Christ.” The Major dragged again on his cigarette. “Deadly Delta. Yeah. They really caught the shit last night.”

“I watched it.” It was almost embarrassing to admit it. He still felt uncomfortable about the irony of sitting on a bunker and watching someone else's war.

Otto leaned forward, absently rubbing the purple gash along his forearm. “Well, what kind of a person do you think goes through that shit day in and day out, Lieutenant? Because that's what it is. Shit. And that's the way you take it. Every stinking day. Something piddly-ass or something heavy. This isn't World War Two, where we can pull you out to Australia and a parade after a month of fighting. Nope. And it isn't 1965. When we first came into Vietnam we would send a company out on a two-day operation, then bring the men back for hot chow and liberty. Yeah. That's right. Liberty, Lieutenant. In Da Nang.

Then we started week-long operations. Then it was a month. Now, well, we just leave 'em out there all the time. It's more convenient.”

The Major offered Hodges a small, challenging smile. “They go wild, Lieutenant. And there's nothing you can do about it. You'll go wild, too. Wild as hell. You spend a month in the bush and you're not a Marine anymore. Hell. You're not even a goddamn person. There's no tents, no barbed wire, no hot food, no jeeps or trucks, no clean clothes. Nothing. You're an animal. It gets so that it's natural to squat when you take a shit. You get ringworm and hookworm and gooksores. You roll around in your own filth. You forget how bad you smell. Dead people, guts in the goddamn dirt, miserable civilians, it all gets sort of boring. You cry when your friends are killed, but a new friend comes in on the helicopter a few days later, and the dead friend becomes enshrined, a martyr to friendship. You teach the new friend about him, and you all remember him. It's very romantic.”

“It doesn't sound very romantic.”

“That's after a month. Or two. But Lieutenant. When you do it for six, or nine, or even longer, by Christ, you'll never shake it. The bush gets in your blood and you hate anyone who hasn't fermented in his own stench for months, or stood inside a dirt hole all night, waiting to kill a man who's trying to kill him first.”

Major Otto scrutinized Hodges. “Oh, yeah. I've done a lot of thinking about it. That's something a grunt isn't supposed to do.” He chuckled again, a sort of dry bark. “But what else can a man do in An Hoa? Oh. And An Hoa. It becomes an oasis. You like An Hoa, Lieutenant?”

“I hate it.”

“You'll like it when you get back to it from the bush, I guarantee. So. What kind of person can take it, for months on end?”

Hodges felt uneasy. He had expected the Major to wave the flag and talk about Iwo Jima, then send him aboard the resupply helicopter with fire in his heart.

“Someone who is very dedicated, sir. Either that or someone who is very crazy.”

“Well, there you are. That's it in a nutshell. You just hit the nail on the goddamn head.”

Hodges continued to stand at a loose parade rest, watching Otto light another cigarette off the end of the one he was smoking. Otto again extended the cigarette pack to him. “You sure?”

“No, thank you, sir.” Hodges stared solemnly at the Major. What does he want, he mused again and again.

“You see this?” Otto held out his arm. The bone was unnaturally curved, and the discolored scar shone like the vestige of a bad burn. “I got this a few miles from here. I thanked the fucking Lord the day I was hit, that this was all there was.” Otto chuckled whimsically. “A few miles and a few years. Can you believe it? Here I am, back where I got my ticket home the first time, and the only thing that's changed is the people who are getting hit.”

“Sir, I—”

“You're going to get hit, Lieutenant. You might as well face it. You've got better than an eighty percent chance of getting hit. Did you know that?”

“I've heard a lot of figures. But I didn't know that. No, sir.”

“How does that make you feel? Knowing you're going to get hit, I mean?”

Hodges felt the Major was taunting him. “I think I can handle it, Major. I've waited a long time to do this.”

“Well, you won't have to wait much longer.” Otto seemed to catch himself. “I'm supposed to be telling you to do a good job, to be a good Marine. Well, I want you to do a good job, and I know you will. And in a couple months, come back and see me, Lieutenant. We could talk, then. I'd like to know what you think about it. I don't mean the wild part. You can handle that. I mean the rest.” Major Otto closed Hodges’ record book, dismissing him. “Don't go out there thinking I was giving you a redass. I wasn't. I just look at you and say, ‘that used to be me. But it isn't anymore.’ ”

HODGES made his way toward the Logistics Operations Center, where he would embark for the bush on a resup-ply helicopter. His conversation with Major Otto had left him feeling unsettled, and strangely jaded. I used to be Otto, Hodges mused, wondering at what the Major had left unsaid. No, he used to be me. But he isn't anymore. And in a month I won't be, either.

THE helicopter rotor whipped red dirt into him like a thousand tiny darts, and he trundled clumsily up the rear door. He struggled under the weight of the gear he carried: flak jacket, helmet, pack, poncho, poncho liner blanket, four canteens of An Hoa water, an M-16 rifle, two bandoleers of ammunition, a LAAW rocket (carrying the disposable bazooka-like weapon more for effect than anticipated use), and the sundry odds and ends such as a towel and toothbrush that he had stuffed into his pack.

In five short minutes he was peering down at a mass of sawgrass and unpatterned lean-tos made of ponchos. Bronzed Marines in various stages of undress lay prostrate over their belongings, saving them from the rotorwash. A few poncho liners and pieces of C-ration cardboard whipped into the air from the helicopter's gale. Hodges ran down the tailgate and into the weeds with a half-dozen other new arrivals and stood lost in the middle of a hundred scattered, apathetic figures who returned to cleaning weapons and writing letters as soon as the helicopter departed.

Ho hum, joked Hodges to himself, vainly trying to discern order in the perimeter, wondering where the company commander's hootch was. Another boot Lieutenant.

6

The bomb crater was old and deep, as natural to the field as would be a tree or dike. The shards of earth once set loose from far into the earth had melted back into their origins, two years of rain and sunbake having mended the gaping wound, leaving only its memory in the deep pock of a scar. A thin carpet of yellowed sawgrass continued from the field down one side of it, as if an entranceway. Hodges stood in the brittle grass at the crater's edge, sweating freely from a skyful of sun, and peered down at the first dead person he had ever seen.

Four, actually. The corpses leaned against the crater's walls, two together here, the other two in individual death, flat against the earth like bended reeds. There was a foot gone on one of them, a blackened, gaping imperfection with the beginnings of a tourniquet over it, the second corpse dead underneath the foot. A head blown apart over there, as if someone had killed the man again, in afterthought. Homicide had, earlier that morning. Weapons and cartridge belts and parts of uniforms were gone, spoils and souvenirs. All that remained were bodies.

Hodges looked closely at them. They were short-haired and thin. Their skin was already beginning to singe with rot. The killing wounds were black from the sun and their edges were deep brown, the color of copper. Some jokester had placed a cigarette between the lips of one dead enemy, no doubt for pictures. Another body held a similarly placed can of C-ration spaghetti in its lifeless fingers. The flies had found them and they swarmed patiently around the wounds, looking for egg nests. In two days there would be great stenches. And maggots.

Flaky elbowed Hodges. There was a note of importance in his voice. “We got more over here, Lieutenant.” As if he were offering up merchandise that was to be commented on instead of bought, and as if the comments themselves would be payment for his last night's travail, that Hodges dared to miss.

“Right over here.”

Hodges followed the jaunting figure to a nearby dike. Behind the paddy dike, and in the narrow field beyond, there were five more dead men, similarly stripped of souvenirable parts, also surrounded by mobs of swarming flies.

“You all must have really been in the shit last night.” There was a note in Hodges’ voice that was almost envy: that every man on that barren piece of scarred earth, save him and the ones he brought with him on the resupply helicopter, had faced such a brutal test and had prevailed. And his only feat had been to sit on a bunker four miles away, in the regimental rear of An Hoa, and watch the tracers and the mortars land.

“There it is, Lieutenant. Been like this for ten days now. I'm the only one left from the CP. Me and Rabbit.” Flaky was shrewdly sizing Hodges up. “Yup. I been radioman for three months. Already had me three lieutenants.”

Hodges nodded absently. He had been hearing such stories since Basic School. Flaky still eyed him as he viewed the dead men, staring secretly at the set of his mouth and eyebrows, the squint of his eyes, the way he stood, looking for a way to work him.

“Where you from, Lieutenant?”

“Kentucky.”

“Kentucky? Hey-y-y. Good old boy, all that shit. Right, sir? You should talk to Baby Cakes when he gets back. He got hit last night. Priority evac. He'll be back. He's from down there somewhere. Tennessee. Mississippi. One of them. And Bagger. He's from Georgia. And Cannonball. He's from one of them Carolinas. South, I think. Only he's—. Well, I know how you must feel about splibs, huh Lieutenant?”

“What's a ‘splib’?”

“Splib. You know, sir. A neee-gro.”

Hodges sensed he was being tested. He did not like Flaky, he had already decided. He looked icily at him for several seconds. “Fairchild, it's only been fifteen minutes and you already piss me off.”

Flaky became immediately suppliant, retreating into his passive role. “I'm sorry, sir. No shit.” He sought a means to change the subject, and finally held out his Instamatic camera to Hodges. “Sir, would you mind taking a picture for me? I asked some of the others and they all gave me a hard time.”

Hodges shrugged absently, taking the camera. Flaky scratched his head excitedly and studied the field of dead men as if he were preparing to buy one off a rack. He selected a body that half-sat against the dike, shot in the face. “Perfect. C'mon, gook. We gonna take our flick together.” He sat next to the dead man, adjusted the body so that its back was on the dike, then put his arm around it. Flies buzzed his face and he swiped at them, swearing. “O.K., Lieutenant. Knock yourself out.”

Hodges stared through the lens at the smiling wisp of man, wondered about his sanity, and took three pictures. Flaky rejoined him. “Hey, thanks a lot, sir. Folks back home will never believe this if I don't send 'em flicks. They think we're all sitting around stoned, letting the B-fifty-twos do the killing.”

Hodges gazed at the scattered corpses. “What are we gonna do with the bodies? They'll stink us out of here in a couple of days, won't they?”

Flaky gestured impatiently, immersed in his sudden importance as an expert on such things. “Ah, we move every couple days anyway. If we stay longer than a couple days in one spot the gooks figure us out and kick our asses. We'll probably move tomorrow.”

“And just leave 'em here?”

“Hell, yeah. I mean, yessir. Villagers'll bury 'em. Or their buddies.” Flaky stared almost threateningly at Hodges. “You think you're gonna get a Marine to sweat out there in the field to bury a gook that tried to kill him last night?”

Hodges walked slowly back to the perimeter, and then to his platoon CP. Last night's agonies were clearly visible. The rent poncho hootch of his predecessor still sagged where the mortar rounds had blasted it. There was a large scab of blood on the hard dirt next to it, and the ground was still littered with used battle dressings and tatters of clothing.

Ten feet away from the hootch he saw the man's boot. He almost retched. It appeared to be a bad omen to him. Walk a mile in my shoes. Hell, yeah. Flies buzzed through the air, landing on morsels scattered through the CP.

“Fairchild, I want a burn call. That hootch. All the battle dressings. Pieces of torn gear. That boot—”

“Lieutenant. Sir. That boot's got part of him in it.”

Hodges felt the itchings of a deep rage crawling up his neck. He could not decide whether it was his dislike for Flaky or his threatening nausea. He put his face within a foot of Flaky's.

“If you want to save it, put it in your fucking pack. It ain't doing the man any good laying here feeding flies, is it? Burn call, Fairchild. Like now.”

Fairchild grumbled off, daintily gathering bloodied pieces of clothing and battle dressings. Hodges erected his own poncho hootch, carefully distant from the dead corps-man's and the departed Lieutenant and Kerlovic's. Then he sat near the platoon radio, pretending to study his map, but instead studying the clumps of men, browned by sun and dust, who now comprised his platoon.

They were a wild-looking bunch. He realized for the first time that the groups of dirty ruffians on Okinawa had been tame compared to the grunts. The ones down the hill from him were grubby and unshaven, motionless with apathy.

Near one fighting hole, two deeply tanned figures played a bored hand of back alley, tossing cards and scoring as if the game were somehow a burden. Most of the others were asleep, exhausted from the night before, huddled underneath the shade of poncho hootches. Virtually all of them were stripped down to tiger shorts and boots because of the intense heat and the almost-barren hill.

They were, he decided, surveying them with a tentative affection, the kind who would say no. He found he could not define it further. They simply emanated a weird sort of stubbornness, not really hostile, perhaps not even conscious on their part. Like they've all been beat and one more fuck you to some mindless order isn't gonna sink them any deeper, and they know it, he mused.

He surveyed the squalid, ramshackle city of jerry-rigged poncho hootches that was the perimeter. Scavenged sticks and strands of bootlace supported makeshift poncho homes. Incredible, he thought. That the air-conditioned, stewardess-patrolled flight, that all the starch and salutes of Da Nang, that the huge tents and bunkers of An Hoa's regimental rear would boil down to this. And beyond him on all sides, the quaint repetitions of gentle ridges filled with treelines and villages, adrift in veritable seas of rice.

TWENTY meters down the hill, across a plain of scraggled grass and brittle bushes, Snake was interviewing his new dudes. He talked with them, one at a time, assigning them to fire teams and trying to think of names for them. Everyone had a name. More often than not, Snake decided what it would be. Today there were four new dudes. He had already interviewed Shag (the name carried over from civilian days) and O’Brien (a name would come in time), who had become the property of a thoroughly bewildered Bagger.

He now peered at a man who was only slightly taller than he, and almost as wiry. The man was small-faced, with wild, active eyes. His hair was thick and curly, deep brown, shot with red highlights. His face and entire body appeared mottled with light freckles, over very light, almost pallid skin.

The small face parted in a devilish challenge of a sneer as the new dude dropped his pack in front of Snake. “Lurch already started calling me Wild Man.”

Snake's eyebrows raised. He pushed his glasses into his face. “Lurch calls you that?” The man nodded, still grinning. “Why'd he call you that?” Snake pondered it a moment. “We already had a Wild Man. He wasn't like you.” Snake sized the man up. “He got shot.”

The man was unbothered by the omen. “Lurch already told me. So what, anyway?” The new dude shrugged impatiently. “Look, man. I couldn't give a shit, know what I mean? I came here to kill gooks. You can call me any damn thing you want.” The wild eyes flashed a warning. The smile reappeared. “Long as you smile when you say it.”

Snake remained curious. “Why'd Lurch say you should be Wild Man?”

“ ’Cause I was gonna shoot him. Nah. That's not right. I just called him is all. M-sixteens. Across the tent. He wouldn't go. No balls.”

Snake ogled him unbelievingly. “Nah-h-h. Did you really do that?” Wild Man-elect nodded comfortably, folding his arms as if resting his case.

Snake turned to his fourth new arrival, who sat near him, smoking nervously as he eyed the unfamiliar sights of the perimeter. “Did he really do that?”

“I'm sorry?” The fourth man had been rather dazedly scanning the perimeter, oblivious to the conversation.

“Well, don't be sorry, sweetheart, just answer my goddamn question!” Snake laughed and the fourth man seemed mildly stunned. “Did numbnuts here really do that?”

“Do what?”

“Call Lurch with his M-sixteen. In the rear.”

The fourth man gazed briefly at Wild Man-elect and smiled exasperatedly, shaking his head. “From what I could hear while I was getting my ass out of the way, I'd say yeah. He really did that.”

Snake took on an air of humorous excitement, reaching the level of a grudging respect. “Well, you're crazy as hell, you know that? Why'd you wanna do old Lurch? He's a Number One dude, man. Even used to be a grunt.”

Wild Man shrugged easily, still sneering. “Didn't really want to. Dig? But he was pulling some lame shit, man. Really bugging me, know what I mean? Called me across the tent like I was his goddamn servant, just 'cause he runs the working parties. Like he was some kind of whip cracker. I don't mind working parties, but I couldn't let him get away with that. Corporal. Kiss my ass. Wasn't anything else I could do. Anyway. He said he was sorry. And I believe him.”

Snake was convinced. He laughed almost enviously. “Whooeee. O.K. You are sure enough Wild Man. But don't pull any of that out here. I ain't got time to baby-sit you.”

Wild Man grinned confidently, stroking his M-16. “I don't need no baby-sitter. You gonna have to run to keep up with me, Snake-man. I came to kill. Old Luke the Gook better be saying his damn Hail Marys.”

Snake contemplated Wild Man for an instant, then decided. “I was gonna give you to Cat Man. But I think Bagger could use you. He needs help, man. You get on down to Bagger's hole.”

As Wild Man departed, Snake eyed his fourth man and leaned back against his pack, lighting a cigarette. The man looked awestruck and childlike, swaddled in the bright greens of new-issued clothes and flak jacket and gear. His face had the air of a child viewing his first circus.

Snake nodded humorously to him. “So what are you ‘sorry’ about?”

The man scanned the perimeter, searching for some sort of order or structure in its apparent randomness. He warmed tentatively to Snake, laughing at himself. “Well, the last six months, for starters!” He motioned toward the lines and squinted to Snake. “Hey, man. This is scary. Where the hell are we and where the hell are they?”

Snake put his finger to the dirt. “We are here.” He then made a circle in the air. “They are everywhere else.”

The man still attempted to determine the reaches of the perimeter. Poncho hootches seemed scattered everywhere. He squinted again. “I still can't make any sense of it.”

“Don't worry. We'll point you in the right direction in your fighting hole tonight.” Snake dragged slowly on his cigarette, studying the man. “What's your name, man?”

“Goodrich. Will Goodrich.” The man smiled faintly. “Like the blimp.”

“Blimp.”

“You know—the Goodrich blimp?”

“Your old man owns a blimp?”

“No. It was—”

“What the hell you talking about a blimp for?”

“It was supposed to be a joke.”

Snake grimaced. “Some joke.” He finished his visual examination. “You look like a goddamn blimp. How much you weigh, man?”

Goodrich's eyes danced and his fleshy face beamed good-naturedly. He pulled on a rubber nose and leaned forward. “Well, you see, that's why I decided to come to Vietnam. My doctor told me to stay away from rich foods for a while.”

Snake begrudged him a tolerant smile. “You're about three kinds of weird, you know that?” He flipped his cigarette across the dusty hill. “Shag says you been to college. Says you went to Harvard. That right?” He did not wait for a response. “We had a couple dudes with college, you know, like Vitelli, he had two years of it somewhere. He got killed last night. But what the hell is somebody from Harvard doing out here?”