The Vietnam Reader (84 page)

At seven-thirty, she heard noises. Low scratchings of gravel—maybe a dog, or some deer. She sat behind the tree, out of sight of the clearing, and waited as the noises grew louder. She wondered if it was Emmett, looking for her. Or was it a hunter? If a hunter saw her move, she might get shot. Hunters would shoot anything that moved. They were always shooting each other, mistaking each other for turkeys or deer.

There were peculiar new rustlings, something creeping, a sort of shuffle. It couldn’t be a rapist, she thought. Rapists didn’t go out into the wilderness, where there weren’t likely to be any women to rape. They were calculating. Sam was defenseless. She looked around for rocks and sticks. She felt inside her backpack for a weapon. She had the can of smoked baby oysters with a roll-key opener. Hurriedly, she worked to create a weapon with the sharp edge of the can. The smell of smoked oysters sickened her. Too late, she realized the smell would give away her position. She tried to remember what she had been told
about self-defense. Jab his eyes out with a key and knee him in the balls. She could take the open can, with its dangerous edge, and smash oysters all over his face and cut his nose.

The birds grew quieter, and the footsteps were on the boardwalk. She should have made her camp farther in the woods. What an idiotic thing to happen, she thought—to face the terror of the jungle and then meet a rapist. It would be like that scene in
Apocalypse Now
where the soldiers met a tiger, the last thing they expected in the guerrilla-infested jungle.

30

The footsteps on the boardwalk grew louder. Sam closed the zipper on her backpack, inching it along. She intended to leave the path and creep through the jungle back to the car. But it seemed a cheat to have a car for escape. She should have had a foxhole, with broken branches to cover it, to hide in. But the V.C. would know the jungle, and they would see where she had been. They would see the picnic cooler. The V.C. rapist-terrorist was still at the boardwalk. A bird flew over but she didn’t dare glance at it. Its shadow fell on the bushes.

Here she was in a swamp where an old outlaw had died, and someone was stalking her. In her head, the Kinks were singing, “There’s a little green man in my head,” their song about paranoia. But this was real. A curious pleasure stole over her. This terror was what the soldiers had felt every minute. They lived with the possibility of unseen eyes of snipers. They crept along, pointing the way with their rifles, alert to land mines, listening, always listening. They were completely alive, every nerve on edge, and sleep, when it came, was like catnapping. No nightmares in the jungle. Just silent terror. During the night, she had stayed awake in the dark swamp, watching and waiting. She could make out faint rings of lights and winking lightning bugs. She put herself in Moon Pie’s place. In Emmett’s place. She had fantasized Tom there with her in her sleeping bag, the way her father had tried to imagine her mother. But Tom floated away.
She was in her father’s place, in a foxhole in the jungle, with a bunch of buddies, all breathing quietly, daring to smoke in their quiet holes, eating their C-rations silently, their cold beans. She remembered Emmett eating cold split-pea soup from the can. She felt more like a cat than anything, small and fragile and very alert to movement, her whiskers flicking and her pupils widening in the dark. It was a new way of seeing.

Now she felt no rush of adrenaline, no trembling of knees. She knew it was because she didn’t really believe this was real, after all. It couldn’t be happening to her. In a few moments, everything would be clear and fine.

Her breathing was silent. Not even her eyes moved. She could see bushes stir as the rapist approached. He had left the boardwalk and was heading down the path in her direction. Her only hope was to remain hidden, with the can of oysters ready to cut his eyes out. The greasy oysters leaked onto her fingers.

A leaf moved, a color flashed. Someone whistled a tune, “Suicide Is Painless.” This was a joke, after all, for it was only Emmett, in an old green T-shirt and green fatigues. He was empty-handed. His running shoes were wet with dew and his hair was uncombed. She stood up, feeling like a jack-in-the-box. In Vietnam, this scene would never have happened. It would always be the enemy behind a bush.

“Hey, Emmett,” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I saw your car out there.”

“I know that. But how did you know my car would be here?”

“Just a guess.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Walked.”

Her knees were still trembling. She hadn’t been scared. She marched ahead of him on the path, and he trailed after her. She had her backpack, and he had grabbed the cooler. She said, “It was crazy to walk all the way out here.”

“Jesus fuckin’-A Christ!” Emmett yelled suddenly. “You worried
me half to death! Crazy? I’d say it was crazy to camp out here. I thought you’d gone off the deep end. Man, I thought you’d lost it.”

Sam reached into her car and opened the door and set her stuff in the back seat. The windows had mist on them. The car inside seemed damp and cool. It must not be watertight, after all. Emmett was haggard and unshaved, and his T-shirt was dirty. The smoke from his cigarette flooded the swamp, obliterating the jungle smells.

“You scared me,” he said. “I was afraid of what you might do. You might have considered that some people would be worried about you.”

“Ha! I’d talk if I’s you. At least I left a note.”

“I was worried. I was scared you’d get hurt.”

“You didn’t have to come after me.”

Emmett sat on a front fender and put his hands on his face. He was trembling, and his teeth chattered. A bird flew by and Emmett didn’t look up. It was a Kentucky cardinal, a brilliant surprise, a flash of red, like a train signal.

“What were you doing out here?” Emmett asked.

“Humping the boonies.”

“What?”

“I wanted to know what it was like out in the jungle at night.” Sam scraped the dew off the bumper with her boot.

“This ain’t a jungle. It’s a swamp, and it’s dangerous. I thought you aimed to stay at the Hugheses’ last night.”

“I didn’t want to. Where were you?”

“I went over to Jim’s. He’s back from Lexington. I thought it would be a good time to set off that bomb, with you gone. But I went back to round up Moon Pie at dark and I went in and found your note.”

“Did you leave Moon Pie in the house to breathe those fumes?”

“No. I took him to Jim’s. He hated riding in Jim’s truck.”

“When I found that stupid flea bomb, I thought you’d flipped out again.”

“I had to get rid of those fleas.”

“Those fleas don’t even bother Moon Pie, and you know it.”

He smoked his cigarette down and ground it out on the gravel. He said, “I found out something yesterday morning after you left.”

“What?”

“Buddy Mangrum’s in the hospital. His liver’s real bad.”

Sam kicked at the car. “I hate Agent Orange! I hate the Army! What about his little girl?”

“She’s home. That operation went O.K., but I don’t know how they’re going to pay all the bills. If he dies, maybe his wife will collect some benefits, but I doubt it.”

Emmett leaned against the VW hood, its prim beige forehead. He said, “Jim and me went up to the hospital for a while, but we didn’t see Buddy. We hung around in the waiting room a long time arguing about Geraldine Ferraro.” Emmett smiled. “I guess Jim’s afraid Sue Ann might decide to run for President or something.” Emmett seemed old and worn out. He said, “I know why you were out there. You think you can go through what we went through out in the jungle, but you can’t. This place is scary, and things can happen to you, but it’s not the same thing as having snipers and mortar fire and shells and people shooting at you from behind bushes. What have you got to be afraid of? You’re afraid somebody’ll look at you the wrong way. You’re afraid your mama’s going to make you go to school in Lexington. Big deal.”

“I slept out here in the swamp and I wasn’t afraid of anything,” she said. “Some people are afraid of snakes, but not me. Some people are even afraid of fleas. I wasn’t afraid of snakes or hoot owls or anything.”

“Congratulations.”

“And when you came, I thought it might be a hunter, or a rapist. But I wasn’t scared. I was ready for you.” She had left the can of smoked oysters behind, but her hands still smelled.

Emmett lit another cigarette and the sun came up some more. The fog was burning off. Emmett’s pimples were crusted with yellow salve. Bile was yellow. Maybe his bile was oozing up from his liver. His liver would go next.

“I wanted to see that bird,” she said. “That bird you’re looking for.” He shrugged, and she went on. “I saw a cardinal. And some raccoons. And a blue jay teasing a squirrel.”

“Good for you.”

She breathed deeply and kicked at the fender. She was bored with
Cawood’s Pond. How could that outlaw have stayed out here in hiding? What did he eat? What did he do for recreation? She said, “How did you know I was here?”

“I called around.”

“Nobody knew I was here.”

“I thought you might have gone to Lexington, but I called Irene this morning and she hadn’t seen you.”

“You didn’t tell her I was missing, did you?”

“No. I just talked about something else. I knew she’d mention it if you were there. I finally figured out you were here from your note. For one thing, I figured you’d go someplace to escape. And also someplace dramatic, because that’s like you. Also, you took my poncho and space blanket. When I read that diary I tried to imagine what I would have done, and this is what I would have done. Once when I was little and Daddy gave me a whipping because I didn’t feed the calves on time, I ran away from home. I ran to the creek and stayed there till it got dark, and while I was there I thought I was getting revenge, for some reason. It’s childish, to go run off to the wilderness to get revenge. It’s the most typical thing in the world.”

“That explains it, then,” Sam said disgustedly. “That’s what you were doing in Vietnam. That explains what the whole country was doing over there. The least little threat and America’s got to put on its cowboy boots and stomp around and show somebody a thing or two.”

Emmett walked down the path to the boardwalk, and Sam followed him. She watched her feet, carefully avoiding a broken plank. He flung his cigarette into the water.

She asked, “What did you think of the diary?”

“I didn’t sleep none after I read it.”

“He couldn’t even spell ‘machete.’”

“Are you disappointed?”

She fidgeted. “The way he talked about gooks and killing—I hated it.” She paused. “I hate him. He was awful, the way he talked about gooks and killing.”

Emmett shook her by the shoulders, jostling her until her teeth rattled. “Look here, little girl. He could have been me. All of us, it was the same.”

“He loved it, like Pete. He went over there to get some notches on his machete.”

“Yeah, and if he hadn’t got killed, then he’d have had to live with that.”

“It wouldn’t have bothered him. He’s like Pete.”

“It’s the same for all of us! Tom and Pete and Jim and Buddy and all of us. You can’t do what we did and be happy about it. And nobody lets you forget it. Goddamn it, Sam!” He slammed the railing of the boardwalk so hard it almost broke. He would have fallen into the murky swamp. Emmett was shuddering again, close to sobbing.

“Oh, Emmett!” cried Sam. She was standing with her arms branched out, like the cypress above, but she was frozen on the spot, unable to reach him. She waited. She thought he was going to come out with some suppressed memories of events as dramatic as that one that caused Hawkeye to crack up in the final episode of
M*A*S*H
. But nothing came.

“Are you going to talk, Emmett? Can you tell about it? Do the way Hawkeye did when he told about that baby on the bus. His memories lied to him. But he got better when he could reach down and get the right memories.” Sam was practically yelling at him. She was frantic.

Emmett said, “There ain’t no way to tell it. No point. You can’t tell it all. Dwayne didn’t begin to tell it all.”

“Just tell one thing.”

“O.K. One thing.”

“One thing at a time will be all right.”

Emmett lit a cigarette and started slowly, but then he talked faster and faster, as though he were going to pour out everything after all. He said, “There was this patrol I was on and we didn’t have enough guys? And we were too close together and this land mine blew us sky-high. We was too close. We had already lost a bunch and we freaked out and huddled together, which you should never do, so we was scrambling to an LZ to meet the chopper. And first we hit this mine and then this grenade come out of nowhere, and I played like I was dead, and I was underneath this big guy about to smother me. The NVA poked around and decided we were all dead and they left, and I laid there about nine hours, and I heard that chopper come and go,
but it was too far away and it didn’t spot me. I was too scared to signal, because the enemy was there. I could hear ’em. They shot at the chopper. What do you think of that? For hours, then, until the next day, I was all by myself, except for dead bodies. The smell of warm blood in the jungle heat, like soup coming to a boil. Oh, that was awful! They got the radio guy and the radio was smashed. I couldn’t use it. I was petrified, and I thought I could hear them for a long time.”

“That sounds familiar. I saw something like that in a movie on TV.” Sam was shaking, scared.

“I know the one you’re thinking about—that movie where the camp got overrun and the guy had to hide in that tunnel. This was completely different. It really happened,” he said, dragging on his cigarette. “That smell—the smell of death—was everywhere all the time. Even when you were eating, it was like you were eating death.”

“I heard somebody in that documentary we saw say that,” Sam said.

“Well, it was true! I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Dwayne smelled it.”

“He probably liked it.”

“Oh, shit-fire, Sam! We were out there trying to survive. It felt good when you got even. You came out here like a little kid running away from home, for spite. Now didn’t it feel good? That’s why you weren’t afraid. ’Cause it felt good to worry me half to death.”