Sand in the Wind (9 page)

Hamilton called Chalice into the shrine, where he found the others standing around looking at each other. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“We’re trying something,” Childs answered. “All right, are you guys ready?”

“I’m always ready,” Forsythe answered.

Childs continued, “All right, everybody think about Jesus.”

They stood silently until Chalice again asked, “What’s going on?”

“We’re trying to get high on Jesus,” Childs answered.

“Yeah, man,” Hamilton added, “let’s give it a chance.”

After standing around for a minute, Childs asked, “Is anybody high?”

“Not me,” Hamilton replied, shaking his head.

Forsythe had a confused look on his face. “I don’t understand it. Maybe we’re doing it wrong.”

“I doubt it,” Childs said. “Why don’t we try something else in the mean time?”

“Good idea.”

Childs reached in his pocket. “I thought you’d like it, Hamilton.” He pulled out a cellophane pack containing ten cigarettes. They were a little shorter than Pall Malls. He lit one and took a big drag. Chalice began to grin: there was no mistaking the aroma.

Childs handed the joint to Chalice who studied it for a while. “Man, I’ve never seen one this size before.” He took a big drag and held it in. They passed it around until there was only half an inch left and Childs flicked the butt in the corner. “What’d you do that for?” Chalice asked in a surprised voice.

“It was getting hot.”

“But the roach is the best part.”

“I know, but we’ve got plenty more. It’s easier on the throat this way.”

Hamilton cut in, “Saving roaches is great back in the world, but it’s a waste of time out here. We get all the grass we want for ten cents a joint.”

“
Ten cents,
for a joint that size!”

“Yeah, and they’re not junk either. This stuff is opium-cured. Hit you yet?”

“Wow, has it ever. I gotta sit down.” He sat with his legs crossed and the others joined him in a close circle. They started smiling because the change of position had made them dizzy. “Would Tony 5 be pissed-off if he knew we were blowing grass?”

They all started laughing. Forsythe became hysterical and fell over backwards. Childs stopped long enough to ask, “Did you think his last name was 5?”

“
No,
I knew it was a nickname.”

“Wait
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
wait and I’ll tell you how he got it.
  
.
 
.
 
. He’s got a real short temper and when they made him a fire team leader he almost went batshit. There’s usually at least one moron in each fire team. Tony had the Eighth Wonder of the World in his, a guy named Craig. This guy couldn’t open a can of C-rats. If he hadn’ta sent home for one of those big can openers your mother uses, he’d a starved to death. We were so scared he was gonna shoot one of us, we made him keep his rifle on safe all the time. That didn’t stop Old Craig though. One time he had an accidental discharge and the round went right by Tony’s ear. You shoulda seen the look on Tony’s face. We knew it was all over for Craig. Just as he started to go after him, I grabbed him around the waist. I didn’t want Tony to kill him, not in front of all those people anyway. Next thing I remember, I was on the ground and a few other guys were trying to hold Tony back. He threw ’em off like flies. He finally gets to Craig — there he is standing over him panting like a water buffalo while Craig is lying on the ground trembling, rolled up in a little ball, ready to die. Tony bends down and kisses him right on top of the head. Then he says, ‘Thanks, Craig. Thanks for being the worst shot in the world. You can’t even hit what you don’t aim at.’ Craig looks up and says, ‘Thanks, Tony.’ Anyway, we had a conference and decided to take the firing pin out of his rifle while he was sleeping. The dumb sonofabitch walked around the bush for three weeks without a firing pin.

“Anyway, we had some new guys in the squad that made all kinds of mistakes. We’d go on a night ambush and they’d make enough noise to tell every VC within ten miles where we were. To keep from losing his temper and killing someone, Tony stayed stoned practically all the time. A lot of us had been smoking, but never when we thought we were gonna hit the shit.

“We got the word one day that the whole battalion was going into the Arizona and we’d be there a couple of months. This meant we’d have to put Craig’s firing pin back in. The Arizona’s the only place you can’t get grass, and if he ran out, Tony knew he’d go nuts, so be bought five hundred joints to take with him. Half his pack was filled with grass. A week after we went in, we got a new guy in our squad, also named Tony. It was kinda confusing so we started calling Tony 5, Tony 5. He was stoned the day we went into the Arizona, the day we came out, and all the days in between.”

“He was
nice
all the time,” Forsythe added.

“Didn’t you guys have a better chance of getting killed with him stoned?”

“Naw, he was used to it. He’s about the only guy we’d trust stoned.”

“Did you smoke much in the Arizona?”

“Naw, unless you’re like Tony 5, it’s too dangerous.”

“What happened to the other Tony?”

Childs’s expression turned serious. “We were marching outa the Arizona, it was the last day, and Plain Tony was walking point. All we had to do was cross the river and we’d be outa there. It had been raining heavy and there was only one place for a couple a miles where we could cross. Everybody had a feeling it would be booby-trapped, so Tony 5 took the point and Plain Tony walked behind him. Just as we got to the river, Tony 5 tripped a booby trap. If those fucking things are put in right, you can never see ’em. Tony 5 only got a little scratch, a cheap Heart, but Plain Tony really got messed up. He died in a few minutes.
  
.
 
.
 
. A good kid.”

“That’s a bust.
  
.
 
.
 
. What happened to Craig?” Forsythe and Hamilton started laughing again.

“Oh him.” Childs paused to light another joint. “The second day out we found some small bunkers and were fragging them to make sure no VC were inside. Craig was with me. I was ready to frag this one bunker and he was on the other side of it. I told him to watch out. Then I threw the grenade in, yelled ‘Fire in the hole’ like I’m supposed to, and hit the deck. As soon as it blew, Craig started yelling ‘I’m hit, I’m hit.’ The idiot had stuck his head in the other opening of the bunker when I threw the frag in. He didn’t know it was just another entrance. He thought he’d tripped a booby trap.
  
.
 
.
 
. The lucky sonofabitch didn’t get hit too bad, just bad enough to get sent back to the world.”

The three brightly colored frescos on the wall opposite Chalice drew his attention. Each one was a different geometric design in orange, blue, and white. Their soft, curving configurations had an almost hypnotic effect on him. Childs waved an unlit joint in front of his face to ask whether he should light it. Chalice made no response and heard, as if from a distance, Hamilton’s voice, “Go ahead”; then Forsythe’s, “Run it.”

Childs lit the joint and held it out to Chalice, who just stared at it for a while. Finally, he took it and said, “I can always tell when I’m stoned it gets to be too much of a hassle to reach for the joint.”

He passed it to Forsythe who added, “I always know I’m stoned when I’m halfway through an answer and I realize there wasn’t any question.” As he took a deep drag, the others burst out laughing. He tried to keep from laughing himself, but couldn’t and started to cough.

Hamilton took the joint away from him and, before taking a drag, said, “The first time I realized how great grass is, was when I was driving around wrecked and stopped for a red light. Usually nothing pisses me off like a red light, but I just stared at it and smiled. It looked like the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.”

“Did I ever tell you guys what it was like the time I was wrecked and got hit by a truck?” Childs asked.

“No.”

“Uh, uh.”

“It was kinda nice.”

They sat grinning at each other until Hamilton awkwardly rose to his feet. “C’mon, we gotta get back to the hootch. I can’t wait to find out the working party the gunny’s got ready for us.” The others stumbled to their feet and followed him out the passageway. As Chalice emerged from between the ammo bunkers, a surprisingly strong breeze brushed against his face, bringing with it the smell of rain. This was the first time he’d been high in a couple of weeks, and he had forgotten how pleasant it could be. Somehow he’d ended up with the cue ball, and was rubbing its smooth surface between his hands. The valley below had never looked so green, or so peaceful. It was hard for him to believe there were people down there with guns, just waiting for him.

3
The Bad Bush

The days passed with recurrent monotony, differentiated only by the various types of working parties that filled them. Chalice again found himself standing in the company formation waiting to be assigned another tedious working party. The corporal at the front of the formation was arbitrarily picking out men to be sent to different places on the hill. He pointed to Chalice. “You, you’ll ride around on the Gook truck.”

‘Not bad,’ thought Chalice. He had been wanting to get the job ever since he’d been on the hill. All it involved was riding on the Vietnamese garbage truck and seeing that they didn’t pick up live ammunition or anything else that could be used as a weapon or booby trap. His interest stemmed from more than the lack of work involved. A pretty Vietnamese girl rode on the truck. He wanted to meet her, thinking that at the very least he would be able to get some practice speaking Vietnamese.

The truck was an old bus with the seats taken out and garbage piled ceiling high in their place. The driver, a young Vietnamese, owned the truck and gave the orders. The girl was one of his relatives. An older Vietnamese man rode along and did the dirty work. Before putting the garbage on the truck, he would sort it. All food waste was put aside to be sold as hog feed. Any wood, metal, or heavy cardboard was sold to the villagers to repair their huts. What little garbage remained was thrown away.

The girl was quite friendly and talkative until the driver made his resentment obvious to both her and Chalice. When he handed her a few cookies, she slipped one to Chalice. It tasted good, until Chalice realized it must have come from the garbage. When no one was looking, he flipped the rest of the cookie out the window. Noticing some members of his platoon heading back towards the company area, he waved. One of them yelled, “Didn’t you get word? We’re moving out.” Chalice jumped off the truck and caught up with them, thinking, ‘I should have known it, finally had a decent working party.’

The company area was alive with men filling canteens and adjusting packs. Chalice quickly got his equipment together. Sergeant Kovacs yelled for everybody to stage their gear in front of the hootch, and the packs were quickly arranged in four neat rows. Tony 5 handed Chalice a bar of C-4 plastic explosive to carry in his pack. Kovacs yelled, “SQUAD LEADERS,
pick up your C-rats,
six meals per man.” When Chalice received his C-rations, he realized why only a few members of the platoon still had Marine Corps packs. Aside from their being more uncomfortable, they didn’t hold as much as Vietnamese packs.

Chalice found himself caught up in, and awed by, the activity around him — the ordered chaos of well over a hundred men getting ready to do something they had known they would have to do, relieved and excited at the same time, glad enough about the coming change, as they would have been about any change, to be heedless of its consequences. The inertia of the hot, heavy air was broken by hurried footsteps, shouted orders, and the cracks of rifle bolts going home on now loaded chambers. As he looked around him, he realized that something different was happening; that his senses, mind, and reflexes had sharpened to a point that, in the drudgery of his days on the hill, he had forgotten was possible. It was as if, without knowing it, he had stepped over a line, one that separated irrevocably twenty-three years of past from whatever was to be his future. For the first time he sensed something that had been so absent as to throw doubt upon its existence, something that can only be myth until it becomes experience, a rare, demanding kind of excitement — the excitement of men at war.

Sergeant Kovacs called Second Platoon together. “All right, Fourth Platoon has the point. First Platoon follows them with the captain and the rest of the CP. We go next, and Third Platoon plays Tail-End Charlie.”

Fourth Platoon had just put on their packs when the order was given to “Move-out.” As Fourth Platoon started down the road, First Platoon put their packs on. The company was moving out in two columns, one on each side of the road. The gunny walked by Chalice, heading for First Platoon. He was followed by another man about thirty years old. Although he had never seen this man before, Chalice knew he had to be Captain Trippitt, the company commander. Their eyes met for a second, Chalice drawing his away first. Trippitt’s ruddy face looked capable of only two expressions — dissatisfaction and rage; yet he still seemed far more human than given credit for in any of the descriptions that Chalice had heard. First Platoon started to move out, and Kovacs yelled, “Saddle-up.” The squad leaders repeated his command, and everybody put on their packs. When Chalice got his on, Payne walked up to him. “Well Professor, now you’re gonna see the
bad
bush. How’s your pack feel?”

“It’s killing me.”

“Be glad you don’t have to hump a radio, like me. This thing would really kick your ass. Hey, why don’t you put your magazine pouch and law on after your pack? That way, when you wanna take off your pack, you can take them off first and they don’t get in your way. Here, I’ll give you a hand.” The law had a strap attached at each end, and Chalice wore it across his chest like a bandoleer. He took it off and handed it to Payne, who said, “I don’t know why we need these things when we’ve got 3.5’s. They’re more accurate and have a longer range.” Chalice handed Payne his magazine pouch, then put his pack back on. He took the law from Payne and put his head and arm through the strap, adjusting it until it hung at his side. Chalice put on the magazine pouch in the same manner, except on the opposite shoulder. “Ain’t that a lot better?” Payne asked with a look of satisfaction.