Tree of Smoke (30 page)

What was he rattling on about? The colonel was part joke, part sinister mystery. Sometimes he sounded like a cracker, other times like a Kennedy. He liked to have the Screwy Loot drive him around the mountain in a jeep while he chewed cigars and sipped from a pint of whiskey, clutching an M16 between his knees, hoping to shoot at tigers or leopards or wild pigs.

“Now, this Notre Dame–Michigan State game I’m telling you about is already being called the Game of the Century. It’s important to me not just as a former tackle for the Fighting Irish, but as an enemy of the Vietcong right here and now. I’ve been trying to get hold of the films of this game. I’d like every soldier in this theater to study what happened. I hope I can get some film of the train ride our Fighting Irish took to the Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan. People standing in the cornfields and dairy farms beside the train rails holding up signs saying ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, Notre Dame’s in second place.’ I’d like to show every one of you what the Irish saw, heading into a stadium full of seventy-six thousand people chanting and rocking and swaying and hollering. I wish we could all sit down together and watch the kickoff.

“The Irish played under a cloud of misfortune. Our main pass receiver—Nick Eddy—slipped on the ice getting off the train and wrecked his shoulder before the game even started. Next setback, after the first play of the game our best center left the field on a stretcher. Then our quarterback Terry Hanratty went down in a pile and
he
was dragged off with a separated shoulder. Well into the second quarter, Michigan State was tromping us ten to nothing. But this young diabetic second-string quarterback name of Coley O’Brien somehow tossed a thirty-four-yard touchdown pass to a second-string receiver named Bob Gladieux—not even an Irish name—and then the Irish held Michigan State off until our kicker made a field goal right at the start of the fourth quarter.

“And there you are, a tie game, ten to ten. One minute thirty seconds left. Irish have the ball on our own thirty-yard line. There’s the field. There’s the goal. Here are the men.

“But the head coach, Coach Parseghian, elected to run the clock out and take the tie. Elected to leave the field without a victory.

“Now, why was that?

“It was because taking the tie didn’t diminish their chances of winning a national championship. A tie still left them in first place, nationally. And a couple weeks later they did, in fact, take the national championship. They trounced USC fifty-one to zero.

“Now, do you think I’m going to tell you that was wise? Well, maybe it was. Maybe it was wise. But it was wrong.

“Because that day in East Lansing, against their bitterest foe, they left the field without a victory.”

The sweat poured out of his silver flattop down his face, but he didn’t wipe it away. He removed his hands from his hips and slapped his right fist into his left palm, a fist as broad across the knuckles as any heavyweight champion’s. “By God,” the colonel said, “I’m going to get the film of this game. We’re going to sit down and watch it together right here in this camp.

“Now, listen to me. I don’t want you to get confused why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you this because it’s exactly what we ourselves, right here, are always up against, invariably. Invariably we are up against a stretch of ground and an enemy. And to give up the stretch of ground in pursuit of some theory about the future is not the way we do things here. Now, your mission is to keep this hill secure for our LZ up there, and to check out tunnel entrances and mark them on the map. You do not have to go down inside those tunnels. We have people for that job.”

Indeed, there were people for that job: the badass Kootchy Kooties. These guys slithered down face-first into dark holes in the earth with a pistol in one hand and their balls in the other and a flashlight in their teeth, anywhere in the Cu Chi region. “Kootchy Kooties” was a fabulous name. As for Echo Recon, they didn’t have a flashy call-name, but owing to their proximity to Cao Phuc they couldn’t avoid being known as the Cowfuckers, a stupid bit of luck. They didn’t even get to paint it on anything because it was dirty language.

“We will win this war.” Was he still talking? “And the efforts of this particular platoon will be instrumental in that. Think of us as infiltrators. This land under our feet is where the Vietcong locate their national heart. This land is their myth. We penetrate this land, we penetrate their heart, their myth, their soul. That’s real infiltration. And that’s our mission: penetrating the myth of the land.

“Questions?”

There came a long pause during which they listened to the birds down here and the whack-whack-whack of a helicopter up on the mountain.

The colonel removed his sunglasses and succeeded in staring the whole platoon in the eye at once. “Here’s what we said about tie games when I played for the Irish: we said a tie game is like kissing your sister. I didn’t come out to Southeast Asia in 1941 to kiss my sister. I came to Southeast Asia to fly missions with the Flying Tigers against the Japanese, and I stayed in Southeast Asia to fight the Communists, and I now tell you something, men, with all the solemnity of the deepest kind of promise: when I die, I will die in Southeast Asia, and I will die fighting.”

He looked to the Screwy Loot, and the Screwy Loot said, “Dismissed!”

They moved to their respective duties. Screwy and Sarge and the Kootchy Kooties congregated over by Bunker One with the colonel. In general the platoon resented this civilian, but they were youngsters, after all, and they acknowledged his experience and had a vague superstition that he brought a blessing on them, for there were some—like Flatt and Jollet, at the moment MIA but probably just AWOL—who’d done a whole tour and upped for seconds and had still never once taken enemy fire.

Around eleven hundred hours—fifteen hours late—they heard the M35 pulling in: Flatt and Jollet bringing three replacements, one short, one medium, one tall.

Sarge was standing there to greet them, Staff Sergeant Harmon, a sunburned man with his sleeves turned up to his biceps, his leggings tucked meticulously, his blond, almost white hair neatly trimmed. He appeared never to sweat. “I consider you to be just coming back from AWOL with a government-property vehicle.”

“No no no no no no no no,” Flatt said, “no, Sarge, it ain’t like that at all. These guys can explain.”

“You two’s the ones going to explain,” Sergeant Harmon said.

“Whatever you say, Sarge.”

“You men stow yourselves in Number Four,” Harmon told the replacements, and took Flatt and Jollet into Bunker One.

As soon as they’d gone from sight, Private Getty, who was as usual very upset about something, slapped his helmet down on the wet ground outside the showers and sat on it with his feet apart and his knees together like a little girl, holding his sidearm in his lap.

Somebody yelled, “SARGE…”

Getty raised his weapon overhead so they could all see it and promised to kill the first motherfucker who got within six feet of him.

Sergeant Harmon came back out to find the three replacements watching Private Getty undistractedly.

“Steer off that man,” the sergeant said.

The tallest one was upset, almost tearful. “We don’t even know that guy. We just got here.”

Getty shouted, “I just want everybody to realize!”

The sarge turned on Flatt and Jollet, now squatting by the door of Bunker One. “Ease up on him some.”

“Aaah—”

“He was fine till you turned up just now. Quit riding on him.”

“Listen, Sarge.”

“You already made me say it twice. I’m done telling you.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“No response required. I’m gon’ watch how you do.”

The sarge was one of those casually shining, exemplary guys, tall, strong, relaxed, very blond, with blond eyebrows, even, and disconcertingly blue eyes, blue from fifteen feet away. A scarred, seasoned lifer, a survivor of Pork Chop Hill, one of the Korean War’s most heroic battles, later a movie starring Gregory Peck.

“Lost your guns,” he said.

The three new men kept silent.

“Y’all pacifists?”

“Sergeant, we got routed all wrong. We went to Edwards instead of San Diego and we went to Japan someplace instead of Guam.”

“They put us on a cargo plane, Sarge.”

“Nobody gave us any weapons. Nobody said a word.”

“I’m just fooling with you. We have weapons for you. What I don’t have is time to sit waiting for my truck. Why did it take you fifteen extra hours to make your way sixty-eight kliks on good roads?”

“We got routed completely wrong.”

“And the plane was late, real late.”

“We spent hours and hours in Japan.”

“I think my watch is stopped. Yeah—see? It’s stopped, Sarge.”

“We don’t even know what town we’re in.”

“Or which province.”

“Or even what a province is.”

The platoon waited to see how the three would handle this inquiry. It appeared they couldn’t remember whatever they’d been coached to say by Jollet and Flatt. But they continued in this way, making nothing clear.

“Listen up.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“This is Cao Phuc where you’re currently at, Echo Reconnaissance Platoon of Delta Company. We’re at the southwest corner of the Cu Chi District of South Vietnam—district, not province. You heard of the Iron Triangle? We are not in the Iron Triangle, we are southwest of there in a friendly zone. We keep this region secure for the LZ established on top of the mountain which we are not allowed to call a base for reasons of military protocol. Echo’s down here, the rest of the company’s up top. They give you that whole ‘don’t be no pin-on-no-map sermon? Well, this here’s a pin on the map. We don’t call it a base but this
is
a permanent base, and we have two types of permanent reconnaissance patrols. Around the mountain then over, or else over the mountain then around.

“We’re good for shares down here. We got fourteen guys and three share-heads, but no chemical latrines. So you dig your own kaibo over in the bush, and keep your business covered. Don’t want no stink up my nose. We got no mess, it’s all rations down here. Mess is up the mountain, two hot meals daily, you rotate one of those, one hot meal per day, you work that out with the guys as to your rotation, and if I get a lot of whining in my ear about people coming up short on the hot meals and I have to work out a complicated schedule, I’ll be pissed off and looking to make life hell. If you’re easy on me, I’m easy on you, that’s the system here. You keep yourselves sorted out and squared away and I will be just no more than a presence. Questions. None. Good. Now.

“There are outfits all over this theater living in open rebellion against their officers. This ain’t one. I am here to carry out the orders of Lieutenant Perry and see to it that y’all do the same. Do you hear my words?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“I come in slow and easy, but I mean what I say.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Now, Private Evans, Private Houston, Private Fisher. You have just received the speech. Do you have any current questions? No? I am available for all questions at all times.”

“What’s shares?”

“Shares? Shares. Look at my mouth—show-ers. Do you have any further questions?”

“What’s a kaibo?”

“That’s your to’let-hole, Private. I think it’s Filipino.”

“Sarge, we need shut-eye.”

“Good deal. Sack out. I want your bodies on stateside time, because I want you up nights. You gon’ be pulling guard for a while. Stow yourselves in Bunker Four. If you want to sling yourselves a hammock in the trees, that’s fine. Never no Charlie around here. See Corporal Ames for hammocks and weapons.”

They couldn’t find any Corporal Ames. In their new quarters, a tarp-roofed sandbag bunker smelling of dirty socks and bug repellant, they found four cots, three of them free of clutter. Evans brushed dried mud from one and sat down and said, “Only three hundred and sixty-four more days of this shit.”

As they sorted themselves out, their friend Flatt appeared at the entry. “Welcome to World War Three. Hey, I’m sorry about that fucked-up little thing I did with the firecrackers. Come on over to the Purple Bar and I’ll buy you one.”

“The Purple Bar.”

“If it’s purple, I ain’t going.”

“Are you scared of purple people eaters?” Flatt asked.

“I ain’t scared. I’m tired,” Private Houston said.

“Okay. But I owe you one.” Flatt gave them the middle finger and departed.

Elongated Fisher, the high school basketball center, rubbed his head back and forth on the plastic ceiling. “This ain’t bad,” he said.

They lay on their cots, not moving. After a while, Houston and Evans discussed how to get a Coca-Cola. An overwhelming sense of embarrassment and self-consciousness kept them from moving. But they didn’t sleep—they heard Flatt’s voice outside, and all three rose and followed him to the Purple Bar.

The roadway, roughed out by bulldozers and ruined by jeeps, was so rutted they couldn’t walk on it. They kept to the margin. A jeep from the LZ up top passed them by and honked. “Don’t wave, don’t wave them down,” Flatt said. “They never stop.” He kicked at the bumper as the vehicle blew by in a gust of exhaust.

Many of Cao Phuc’s villagers, considered untrustworthy, had been loaded into trucks one day and moved God knew where. The paddies had gone to hell and herbicides had turned the trails into swaths of desolation. Now the ville was a ramshackle camp for displaced Friendlies dominated by the New Star Temple in the southern hamlet, and in the north by the Purple Bar.

“You wait out here,” Flatt said when they’d reached the Purple Bar.

“Why, goddamn it?”

“Just kidding!”

The sarge had business up the mountain, and half the platoon was here. They all sat around two tables shoved together. On paydays there were lots of women, but today just one, with black high heels and red toenails, sitting at a table with a newspaper, wearing pants and a shirt. Flatt said, “Four beers, hon,” and she said, “I not your slave,” and the papasan, who was always there, brought them the beers from a freezer full of cakes of yellow-brown ice. Before popping his beer Flatt poured iodized water from his canteen over the top, and the others copied him, muddying the straw beneath their feet. Skinny dogs watched them through the entry.