Word of Honor (55 page)

They each took a handle and carried the trunk into the living room and set it before the fireplace. He took a box of firestarter candies from the log bin and threw it onto the grate, lighting the entire box with a match.

Mason looked around the living room. "Some castle you got here, Mr. Tyson."

"Yes, it is." He stood and went into the kitchen, coming back with two frosted mugs filled with beer. He passed one to Mason. Tyson raised his mug. "To liberty and justice for me. "

"Amen." They touched glasses.

Tyson finished half the beer in one swallow. He took a key from his wallet, knelt, and opened the trunk.

On the left-hand side of the divided trunk were neatly folded jungle fatigues and khakis, plus a pair of canvas jungle boots, a bush hat, and a powder blue infantry four-WORD OF HONOR e 427

rag6re. On the right was a photo album, maps, R and R brochures, and bundled letters from Hope Lowell, the girl he'd been seeing before he shipped out.

There was also a metal ammunition box that held an Army compass, Army watch, Army flashlight, and other purloined government issues.

It didn't appear that anything had been disturbed, but when he looked through the photo album, he saw a few photos missing. Also missing were his orders for the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry awarded for actions on 15

February 1968. Missing, too, was his logbook, but he'd lifted that himself.

Tyson turned to Mason and saw he was eyeing the contents of the trunk.

Tyson said, "I don't know why men keep junk I ike this."

Mason said, "I had a brother in Korea. Durin' that war they was havin'

there. Only thing he came home with was underwear. Stole three duffel bags of underwear."

"Sounds like a practical man," observed Tyson. He took a tied bundle of letters. "Well . . . ... He hesitated, then threw it on the blazing mass of wax and watched as the flames licked around the edges. Item by item, beginning with the most combustible, he fed the fire until all that remained were the metal items, the boots, and the photo album. He picked up the boots and crumbled the dried mud in his fingers. "Southeast Asia.

Instant Nam; just add water." What a peculiar slime it was, he thought.

Three thousand years of intense recycling: rice, dung, blood, rice, ash, blood, rice, dung. And so on. He dropped the boots back into the trunk, then leafed through the photo album. He extracted a single picture, a snapshot of him and Teresa standing in front of the Hue cathedral. There had been two more, but they were gone. He slipped the picture into his breast pocket and threw the entire album into the fire.

Sweat ran down his face, and the smell of~mustiness and ash clung to his nostrils. He closed the trunk, locked it, and gave Mason the key. "You can have the trunk if you want. The flashlight and the other odds and ends too.

I'd like you to throw the boots and the rest in the garbage."

428 * NELSON DEMILLE

"Yes, Sir." Mason put his beer carefully on the coffee table. He stared at Tyson. "You feelin' better, or you feelin' worse?"

"I'm not feeling."

Mason nodded.

"Can you take the trunk by yourself? I have a few more things to do."

"Yes, Sir." Mason hefted the nearly empty trunk onto his shoulder.

Tyson said, "I'll meet you outside." He reached into his hip pocket and drew out the small hide-bound logbook. He sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it, leafing through the pages with his sweaty fingers. A drop of perspiration rolled from his chin and fell upon a page already stained by sweat and water twenty years before. He came finally to the entry for 15 February and read the last lines: Platoon on verge of mutiny.

Overheard death threats. Filed false radio report re: hospital battle this A.M. Investigate. God-He tried to recall how he felt after the massacre but could only remember the fear for his own life. He tried to imagine that he gave serious thought regarding the best way to report his platoon to Captain Browder or to the battalion commander. But his mind wouldn't play the game. In reality he knew he had never once seriously considered swearing to murder charges against the men of his platoon.

Tyson continued to turn the pages, noticing that the days after 15

February were represented by only a line or two of insignificant details, mostly grid coordinates and radio frequencies. He came to 29 February, the day he was wounded, and noted the only entry for the day read: Refugee assistance. Battle for Hue officially closed, as per radio message.

The next entry was for 3 March. He read: USS Repose; South China Sea.

Logbook returned today by orderly. Did anyone read entryfor 15 Feb? Who cares? Nice to be alive. My hands look very clean. Knee giving me pain.

Darvon only. No morphine. Doctor said, "You don't take morphine well."

He wouldn't take it well either if he'd been given a triple dose.

WORD OF HONOR 0 429

Tyson lowered the logbook and let his mind go back to the Strawberry Patch.

Ben Tyson lay on his back in a drainage ditch, actually the local honey pit, the place where offal was collected for sale to vegetable farmers.

Green tracer rounds streaked over the ditch, lustrous against the dull gray sky. He could hear the muted chatter of automatic weapons and the occasional explosion of small rounds: 50-mm rifle grenades, 60-mm mortars, an occasional rocket. It was a desultory firefight between two spent armies, like two exhausted boxers, moving leaden limbs, taking a few obligatory swings at one another. A month before, he'd have taken this very seriously. But today, 29 February, he would describe the incident as light contact. The only remarkable thing about the day's contact from his point of view was that he'd finally been hit.

As the shock wore off, the pain became more severe, until finally it dominated his entire consciousness. The stench around him didn't matter, neither did the bone-chilling water or the occasional thump of the enemy mortar trying to put a round into the ditch where dozens of civilians were leaping for cover.

Within a few minutes the ditch had become crowded with Vietnamese: old men, a few young men who were ex-ARVN amputees, women, and children who did not cry. Only the babies cried.

A pig had gotten into the ditch, and it sniffed around him, then licked the blood from his knee. Tyson kicked the pig in the snout with his other foot. About ten of his men had withdrawn toward the ditch, and they slid in, cursing the muck and the Vietnamese refugees. One of his men, Harold Simcox, spotted him and called, "Medic! Lieutenant's hit!"

Of the two remaining company medics, it was Brandt who answered the call.

Brandt worked

430 * NELSON DEMILLE

quickly and professionally, first examining Tyson for wounds more serious than the obvious knee injury. He checked Tyson's pulse, felt his forehead, and looked at his eyes. It was only then that Brandt cut away the trouser leg and squeezed a tube of antibiotic ointment onto the open wound. He folded the flaps of flesh and stringy pink ligaments over the exposed patella. Tyson picked up his head to watch, but Brandt reached out and casually pushed his head back into the muck. "No peeking," said Brandt as he always said when dressing a wound. "Don't want you getting sick on me.

"

Tyson said irritably, "I've seen worse than this. "

"Not on yourself. Just relax." Brandt applied a pressure bandage, tying the strings loosely. "Pain?"

"Some.

"Do you want morphine?"

Tyson wanted something for the pain, but he didn't want to become drowsy while there was still enemy contact. "Maybe just some APCs. "

"Right." Brandt put two of the aspirin compound tablets in Tyson's mouth and placed the remainder of the bottle in Tyson's breast pocket. He pulled out a red grease pencil and wrote on Tyson's forehead, NM. No morphine given. He said, "They'll give it to you on the chopper."

"Right."

The gunfire had slackened, and Tyson noticed more of his men rolling into the ditch as they made their way across the exposed area where they'd been pinned down. Brandt found a helmet in the water and put it under Tyson's head.

"Thanks. "

Brandt stared at him, then lit a cigarette and put it in Tyson's mouth.

Brandt lit one for himself as there didn't seem to be any more customers for him at the moment. Brandt said, "It's a good wound. A good-bye wound."

WORD OF HONOR * 431

"Million dollar?"

"Eight hundred thousand. You're going to limp. But you'll be limping in New York."

"Right. " Tyson propped himself up on one arm and looked along the wide, shallow trench. About a dozen soldiers were kneeling, firing short bursts at the far-off line of fruit trees from where the rockets and gunfire had originated. But Tyson didn't think they were drawing return fire any longer. The rest of Alpha Company had decided not to participate in this particular firefight and were hunched down, smoking cigarettes, eating C rations, bantering and bartering with the civilians. Farley had a chicken perched on his head, and the Vietnamese thought that was comical.

Michael DeTonq was talking very seriously to a young girl, and Tyson guessed the subject without hearing a word. Lee Walker had the pig in a neck lock and was writing or drawing something in grease pencil on its face. The men around him thought it was pretty funny whatever it was.

Tyson was glad everyone was relaxed.

Tyson lay back on the helmet. The thought occurred to him, not for the first time, that he would miss this, miss the ability to indulge in eccentric if not actually atavistic behavior. Now that it was nearly over for him, he admitted to the excitement of combat, of living on the edge, of being free to release without constraint all of his aggressive energy.

And he would miss too the sense of community offered by combat, the sense of bonding between men that was as profound as any between lovers, if not more so. It was a bond, unlike marriage, that could never be broken by divorce or separation or by anything other than death.

As he lay there in the slime, he thought again about that hospital and what they had done there. And again he felt no sense of failed duty, though by all legal, rational, and moral standards, he had failed miserably.

432 * NELSON DEMILLE

Tyson turned his head toward Brandt. "Who else was hit?"

Brandt replied, "Two guys from third platoon. Not bad."

"Did anyone call medevac?"

"I guess Kelly did."

"Where is Kelly?"

"Out there somewhere. But he's okay. I heard his voice over the squawk box down the line. How'd you get separated?"

Tyson had never been more than an arm's length from his radio operator, and he felt strangely powerless without Kelly and without the reassurance that personal radio contact with the outside world gave him. Tyson said,

"When the firing broke out, a mob of panicky Viets got between us. You're sure he's okay?"

"Yes, sir. No bullshit. You're not hit bad enough for me to lie to you.

" Brandt drew on his cigarette and threw it, still lit, to a Vietnamese boy a few yards away. The boy fielded it with expertise and had it in his mouth before Brandt exhaled his smoke.

Tyson said, "You know . . . I feel a little better. Maybe I should take charge of this herd."

"No. You lay there. Your pulse is a little off, and if you could see the color of your face you wouldn't be thinking about taking charge of anything. "

Tyson tried to remember who the ranking man was, but his head felt strangely light. He said, "Do me a favor, Doc. Find out who's the senior sergeant. Tell him to report here to me."

Brandt replied disinterestedly, "Okay. But I don't think anyone wants the honor of leading Alpha Company."

Tyson said, "Also find Kelly. And if I don't get a chance, tell everyone I said adi6s. Okay?"

"Okay." But Brandt made no move to follow orders. Instead, he said,

"We're finished. Not an

WORD OF HONOR 0 433

officer or senior NCO left. They'll pull us in. Right?"

"I guess so. Hey, good luck, Brandt."

"Thanks. "

Tyson said, "I'm feeling kind of funny."

"Shock. "

"No . . . very funny ... woozy.

"Really?"

"Did you ... you give me something ... ?"

His mind was becoming clouded, and things seemed to free-float around him. Michael DeTonq appeared from somewhere and was telling him something about deserting. Tyson thought he was hallucinating at first, but he realized DeTonq was real. Then Bob Moody, recently returned to duty from his wound at the hospital, was looking down on him. Moody said, "You'll be back in a week, Lieutenant, just like me."

Tyson thought he answered him, "No, not me," but he couldn't be sure he spoke.

Kelly was suddenly at his side, but he didn't say much. Kelly called the battalion commander, Colonel Womrath, on the radio. The colonel spoke to Tyson, telling him what a fine job he had done and how good it had been to have him as Alpha's acting company commander. Tyson replied in similar stock phrases, though somewhat disjointed, telling the colonel that it had been an honor to serve under him and to be part of the Seventh Cavalry and that he'd do it again if he was able. DeTonq said,

"Bullshit." Kelly said, "Amen. I I Then a line of men came at him in a low crouch, each one taking his hand and shaking it, then, against field regulations, saluting him; Richard Farley was first, the chicken still on his helmet, then came Simcox and Tony Scorello. Scorello said, ."Thanks for saving my life," though Tyson didn't recall saving the man's life. Hernando Beltran came up to him and said, "Adi6s, amigo.

434 * NELSON DEMILLE

Watch out for those hippies in Frisco." Selig said his good-bye, then Louis Kalane, then Paul Sadowski gave him a religious medal, and Kurt Holzman accidentally bumped his knee. Finally Lee Walker, a black man, came up to Tyson, still holding the pig. He turned the pig's face toward Tyson, and Tyson saw that Walker had drawn slanty eyebrows and a mandarin mustache on the animal's face. Walker said, "Charlie says goodbye too."

The pig squealed and tried to get away, but Walker held it tightly.