Jake Fonko M.I.A. (3 page)

In Vietnam combat could be there and gone before you realized it. I happened to be looking over at the embankment to the left just as, no more than twenty yards away, the brush parted and two gun barrels poked out and opened up. Apparently I was out of their line of sight, maybe obscured until that instant by the brush on the hillside. Whatever, I whipped my weapon—an M16 with underslung grenade launcher—up to my shoulder and fired the grenade at the hole, then snapped off a burst on full automatic and hit the dirt behind some brush. Meanwhile Lieutenant Hanna and Henry went down. The other men scrambled down the creek bank. They were met with loud bangs—landmines ! I heard a muffled explosion from the hillside. I saw Henry dazedly crawling toward the stream, heading for what he thought was safety. I scrambled to my feet and made straight for Henry, falling on him just as he started down the bank. Then it dawned on me that we were sprawled out there in the open, point blank in front of that tunnel opening. I rolled over to get my pack between me and it, then clenched my teeth and waited to be shot to pieces.

It didn’t happen. Except for the groaning of the men who’d been hit, the stillness of disturbed jungle once again prevailed. Damn if my grenade hadn’t gone right into the tunnel and taken out two skedaddling Charlies.

Well, if you ever get a chance to choose one thing to be, choose “lucky.” I sure had more luck that day than some of the others. Lieutenant Hanna got hit pretty bad. One of the fellows who’d found the mines had bought the farm—not much we could do for him but retrieve the body. The other one had lost half a leg and was bleeding like crazy. Henry was more stunned than anything, as the pack on his back had taken most of the rounds. He’d been spun around and knocked down, but otherwise just grazed. The other guys down the stream bank retraced their steps
very
carefully.

It was a neatly arranged ambush, I had to admit. When shooting starts you instinctively dive for cover away from the fire. The gooks must have been keeping track of us, had figured we’d pass this point and had laid a trap, mining the brush and high grass down the stream bank. Why they hadn’t waited for the rest of us to arrive I can’t say; and the two Charlies were in no shape to enlighten me. Maybe nailing a LRRP officer was an irresistible temptation. Had I been anywhere else at that precise moment than where I was, they’d have gotten away with it, and maybe even gotten me. As they say, timing is everything.

Now the only effective team leader, I assumed command, and our next move was obvious—haul ass out of there. No telling what else Charlie might be up to in that sector, and we’d already had enough contact for one day. We’d passed a spot a couple of klicks back on the trail that would be easier to secure as a landing zone. We patched up the wounded, got ourselves together and booby-trapped the bodies in the tunnel with grenades. As we pulled out I radioed the coordinates for an airstrike. Even before we reached our LZ we could hear the jets plastering it.

I’d called ahead for the pickup and medevac, timing it so we wouldn’t have to sweat it out waiting for them—good thinking, as the VC’s weren’t about to let us leave in peace. As the choppers arrived, so did incoming mortar. I clambered aboard, the last man in, and took a few fragments in the legs from the shell that finally found the range. Otherwise we got away clean. Henry was okay, and Lieutenant Hanna eventually recovered. Later recon determined that we’d been ambushed at a branch of a new tunnel network intended to be a staging area for an upcoming offensive. Air strikes never did permanent damage to VC tunneling, but at least we’d located it and given them something to think about. Mission accomplished.

Headquarters must have been short of their hero quota that month, because for the afternoon’s work I wound up with a Distinguished Service Cross, also a Purple Heart. And it may have had something to do with my recommendation for OCS at the end of my tour. What I remember most vividly about the episode was laying there on top of Henry waiting to be riddled by AK-47 slugs. Not the easiest way to make a living.

We’d been sipping at our beers and passing small talk. Sarge was stretched out, amply filling his rattan and leather planter’s chair. “How’d you wind up enlisted anyhow, Jake?” he asked. “Henry says you were a good soldier. But you just don’t seem like no grunt. Why weren’t you an officer right from the get go?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” I answered.

“No kind of luck I’d ever wish on a man,” he quipped, but he was plainly proud of being Army. “Weren’t you some kind of football player in college, where was it Henry said, that UCLA?”

“Tailback on the frosh squad, benchwarmer thereafter. Dropped out of school midway into my sophomore year.”

“Now, why would a man drop out of college, with the draft facin’ him? Turn on, tune in, drop out, like the feller said? You weren’t doing no drugs, were you?”

I could see why Sarge knew everything going on worth knowing. He was the kind of guy you just couldn’t help talking to. “It wasn’t exactly that I dropped out. Seems the dean gave me the boot, thanks to a little incident.”

“Come on, Jake, they wasn’t expelling nobody from college back in those days. All those kinds of hell the students was raising, and did anything ever happen to any of ‘em?”

“We’re treading on sensitive ground here, Sarge,” I protested. But what the hell, I knew whatever I said would stop at Sarge’s lips. I’d never told anybody the whole story, and maybe it was about time. “It had to do with this girl I was going with,” I began.

“Nothin’ new since Old Man Adam,” he reflected with a knowing smile.

My girlfriend, Dana Wehrli (“Whirlybird,” the surfing gang called her), had decided to go respectable. No future in running with surf rats, she’d calculated, and time was slipping away from her, she being all of nineteen years old. So she up and transmuted from Gidget-Gone-Ballistic to Miss Junior Leaguer; and she had the looks, and her family had the money, to carry it off. She even managed to get herself engaged to a medical student.

This happened during our sophomore year, about the same time it became clear that Tony Gilliam, not me, was destined to be starting tailback. To be honest, I never would have been. Everybody was getting bigger but me. Tony transferred in from junior college. He had that extra step, that slightly sharper angle cutting inside the defensive end, that instinct for anticipating the flow, and most importantly, the Desire. As for me, I enjoyed playing football, but I was more into surfing, so spent more time in the water than on the grass. Of course I realized all that much later. At the time, what with one thing and another, I was feeling pissed off as hell.

Then I heard about the wedding shower that Dana’s sorority sisters had planned for her. I decided the moment had arrived for my personal statement on the matter. Streaking that shower would show the world what I thought of Miss Dana Wehrli and her diddley-ass medical student.

It took place on the patio of the Bel Air home of Dana’s sorority “big sister,” on a crisp and sunny Sunday afternoon in late October. The property sat inside a jug handle curve. Our plan had D.D. and me stopping my Mustang along the fence at one side of the yard; and Bagel and Wild Blue Under would have the van parked by the fence at the other side, back doors wide open and motor running. The fence was 1 x 12 redwood planks, tightly spaced, about five feet high. I’d vault over it, sprint through the astonished throng, shoot over the fence on the other side (maybe pausing at the apex to moon the whole sorry lot of them) and be gone before they knew what hit them. From what we could see, peering through a crack in the fence, it looked like no problem.

I shucked off all my clothes, took a deep breath and went over the top. Unforeseen problems emerged immediately. First problem: we’d overlooked that directly on the other side of the fence sat a low arrangement of rose and pyracantha bushes. My shriek of pain took away the element of surprise. I wrenched myself out of the thorns, panic fortunately dulling the agony. Freed, I started my sprint. Second problem: it wasn’t a straight shot after all. I’d have to skirt around a swimming pool that we hadn’t factored into my flight plan. Third problem: at the point where I changed direction, an invisible puddle of water sat on the flagstone deck.

My bare feet hit that spot and went right out from under me. A buffet table had been set up poolside. The hostess and her mother were standing behind it, fussing over the punch bowl and petit fours. They stood there, transfixed with horror, as my stark naked, scratched and bleeding carcass came hurtling across the patio and body-blocked the whole shebang into the deep end (it was a damn dumb place to put a buffet table, if you ask me).

In my own defense, I must point out that I did save the mother from drowning. She was thrashing around, rendered helpless by hysteria, and it seemed only decent to grab her by the frock and steer her over to the ladder. Once she had a firm grip on it I stammered an apology, though I don’t remember exactly for what, lunged up out of the water and hightailed over the fence with a single, frantic bound.

My getaway team had been tracking my progress through cracks and were so convulsed with laughter as to be completely useless. I slipped into the extra sweatshirt and Levi’s I’d brought and jumped into the driver’s seat still barefooted and soaking wet. They tumbled into the back, and we peeled out. Even before the police were called we were far, far away.

The worst was yet to come, and it came posthaste. It seems the hostess’s father was a prominent Hollywood surgeon, a graduate of the UCLA Medical School, and one of its major contributors. Her mother spearheaded fundraising activities for a variety of organizations, UCLA not the least of them. When my escapade came to the dean’s attention, what choice did he have? I was hardly an honors student. Now that Gilliam was on the squad, the football coach wasn’t going out on any limb for me. My family included no wealthy UCLA alumni. I was 100% expendable. In the circumstances, what would 
you
 have done with me?

Dad was supportive, if dubious. Aside from him, I was Public Enemy Number One. For a bunch of rowdies who routinely ignored all known rules and regulations regarding drinking, hazing, vandalism and public decency, the sudden conversion of my frat brothers to law-abiding model citizens suggested divine intervention. They understood, they’d like to help, the president assured me. But seeing as how I’d been expelled, I was technically ineligible for active membership. So sorry. Be sure and turn in your keys, and oh yes, there’s a little matter of dues still owed…

Mom kept looking at me like I’d climbed out from under some rock. Her main priorities being image, status and appearances, my recent exploit clearly posed a problem. On the few occasions when she couldn’t avoid speaking to me, her voice sounded as though somebody was tightening a tourniquet on her throat.

My stepfather, Evanston, was volubly thankful he hadn’t adopted me, as our surnames were still different; therefore, people who didn’t know the family well wouldn’t connect us. He more than once made it clear that he considered me to be representative of some subhuman species. We lived in a nice place in Pacific Palisades, some might even call it a mansion, but it had ceased being home for me. As an expelled college student, certified sexual deviate and laughingstock of Westwood, my welcome had worn thin enough to watch TV through.

What to do next? Putting a shotgun barrel in my mouth and pulling the trigger would have made a lot of people happy. It was late 1968 then, and the war was drawing in more and more guys. I’d blown my student deferral, so the draft was only a matter of time. Rather than embarrass everybody with my presence while I waited to be called, I drove straight to the nearest Army recruiting station and signed up.

I had a lot to prove to myself just then, so I threw myself into boot camp. So much so that my D. I. suggested I volunteer for Ranger training. My performance in the Ranger course at the Fort Benning School for Boys, and the Airborne School at Fort Bragg, convinced the Army I had NCO potential, so I got some additional training for that. Arriving in Nam as a buck sergeant, I let myself be talked into joining the LRRPs and went through LRRP training at the Special Forces Recondo School at Nha Trang airfield “and that’s how I wound up dodging gook rounds in the steaming jungles of Viet Nam,” I concluded.

Sarge lay there on his back, eyes drowsy and hands folded across his massive chest, doing that deep, rhythmic, growling chuckle of his. If I’d accomplished nothing else so far on this tour, at least I’d brought a little amusement to a beleaguered outpost. “So whatever happened to that Dana and her medical student?” he asked.

“She got bored with being respectable and decided to become a movie star instead. So she dumped the guy and changed her major from Existentialism to Theater Arts. Hey, we didn’t call her ‘Whirlybird’ for nothing. She later told me that my little performance at her shower was more fun than she’d had in years. We still keep in touch.”

Sarge shook his head with wonder. “Man, the things that happens to people… maybe you can explain a puzzle to me. Why is it that white folks is always takin’ their clothes off? You never hear about Black guys streakin’, or Chinese guys, or Mexican guys—only white guys. Same with topless. Always the white chicks, never them others. Why do you ‘spose that is?”

I’d never thought about it, but he was on to something there. I told him it was a mystery to me, which it was.

“Maybe it’s like when I was checkin’ out that Adam Smith a while back, the one that wrote up about wealth of nations and such,” Sarge said. “He was a smart old dude. One thing he wrote was how rich folks and workin’ folks is different. A rich man can get down, cut loose, get wasted, and it’s okay because he knows he got money behind him. Workin’ folks can’t risk it, because if they get in trouble, or if they wake up Monday with the big head and don’t show up to work, then they lose their job, then they’re up shit creek. What I figured out about white folks is, somebody must have gone and convinced ‘em they’re all rich folks, ‘stead of workin’ folks. Because you look at them college kids and them professors and them ones doin’ drugs and acting like jiveass niggers and all, and you have to figure they ain’t keeping their minds on their future. Well, I don’t know about them, but Jake, my man, you got one MIGHTY tale behind you. Can’t say I ever heard the like of it.”