13th Valley (10 page)

Where the road turned from west to north there stood the hangars of Eagle Dust-Off, the division's medical evacuation helicopter unit. The hangars were open. In one Chelini could see mechanics working on the jet engine of a ship. In another six men were playing basketball.

They came to the infantry areas: 1st of the 501st, 2d of the 327th and at the westernmost point of Camp Eagle, down the hill from brigade headquarters where they delivered the captain, where the jeep slowed and crept and turned, Chelini suppressed his excitement at seeing the 7th of the 402d.

During the ride back to Phu Bai and the jeep trip through Camp Eagle an anxiety plagued Egan and would not allow his muscles to either relax or tighten. In the jeep he sprawled across much of the rear seat. He felt like a plastic garbage bag filled with oil or pudding. He kept his eyes closed against the harsh sun. The jeep jolted, his head snapped on a limp neck. Don't mean nothin, Egan moaned to himself. It don't mean a fuckin thing. Through his shut eyes he could feel something glinting silver in the sun before him. He cracked the lids, dust and glare stung and he closed his eyes more tightly. Something glimmered. An amber glow through a draft at Louis' Tavern in Paddington just south of Sydney or the instruments and light show at Whiskey-A-Go-Go. He opened his eyes again. The cherry beside him was awed by the antique which served as a cargo and commute train. Egan shut his eyes and said something but he did not hear his own voice. The jeep turned and his head flopped on his neck. The glitter turned. It was coming through an ice cube in a cool drink of citrus with water. The glass was moist, wet on the outside, dripping over the small fingers holding it. Wet fingers, fine and fragile. Over the glass oval lip, beyond the glint of the cube, between outstretched delicate arms the face of a dark-eyed girl glistened, looked at his face then cast down.

He opened his eyes. They were passing through the Gia Lai Gate. Back, he thought. Mick, you're back in the motherfuckin Nam.

The dust clogged his nostrils and he began breathing through his mouth. The dust dried his throat. The captain was fussing. Egan didn't want to hear it. He squeezed his eyes harder and shut his mouth and sucked air slowly through a slit between his chapping lips. Through his eyelids the warm sun was Mexican fire opal refracting on a ring on her finger on a warm spring day in a small town in western New York.

It was that light, that certain light, that glare that hit him across squinting eyes. That glistening would trigger in his mind the thoughts and memories and questions which would not stop. There it was in his mind, on his mind, the affair, the beautiful Stephanie. Their love had blossomed, withered, reblossomed, matured and withered again, and it was still with him, on his mind, never out of mind. A haunting relationship which periodically reran itself in his brain and tortured him. The story would be in his mind for ten days or two weeks and it would produce in him a sadness, a loneliness of a depth only an infantryman in a war zone could feel so deeply, could hurt over so much and then at times could so completely forget for weeks and weeks. Then it would spawn again and begin its run, embellished as memories often are until one cannot separate the real from the imagined.

The glint on Egan's eyelids triggered the memories. She was as delicate as Mama-san's daughter. She had pale skin and large lovely eyes that sparkled. Egan fidgeted. That was the feeling. The jeep, with the driver and the captain from S-5 and the cherry, rumbled down the dirt gravel road shaking the earliest moments of his relationship with Stephanie and jumbling those with more recent thoughts of Mama-san's daughter and of his R&R ladies.

The jeep whipped. Egan opened his eyes. He sat up, licked his lips. He glared at the approaching units and at the road choked by the dust of every vehicle which had passed for an hour. Egan looked at Chelini and at the back of the captain's head. He turned and spat dry mud from his mouth. Crazy cherry, he thought. At least he's got the brains to keep his mouth shut most of the time. I'll give him that.

Now Egan could not close his eyes. The driver brought the jeep up to the First Brigade Officer's quarters where the vibration of a generator could be felt beneath the rock music on the stereo set it powered. “Motherfucker,” the driver said as he turned away from brigade. He had a low mild voice. “Motherfucker didn't even say thank you.”

The jeep slowed and entered the battalion area. An old white soldier was chewing out a lethargic black soldier by the basketball courts. Charlie Company was in informal formation with its gear spread out. Platoon leaders and platoon sergeants and company commanders were meandering and checking and asking questions. A supply truck was unloading cases of C-rations by Recon's hootch and the clerks from S-l were preparing the stage at the theater for a floor show. It was already difficult to remember what the World had been like. Egan could not even be sure if the eyes of the gypsy in Sydney had been blue or green or brown.

“Fuck,” he growled. “Just fuck. Twenty-six en a wake-up.” Oh man, he said to himself. Twenty-six en a wake-up. If we can just keep from hittin the shit. Twenty-six en that Seven-Oh-Quick Freedom Bird's goina drop me off in Stephanie's AO. Echo. Tango. Sierra.

When the jeep stopped before Company A's headquarters the dust which had tailed it along the road and into the battalion area caught it, swirled and engulfed the vehicle, passengers and all those who were within a five-meter radius.

Brooks stood up coughing. First Sergeant Eduardo Laguana came out of the hootch, ineffectively swatting the dust away from his face. “Turn that thing off,” Laguana shouted. “You try to drown the company commander?”

“Hey, L-T,” Egan called as he hopped from the jeep. “What's happenin?
¿Que pasa, Top?”

“Say hey, Babe,” the lieutenant greeted Egan. “You know, Danny, I knew you were coming in right now.”

“Yeah, L-T. That's my aura. You tuned into it. I've got one hell of a strong aura.”

“No. That wasn't it. I could hear Top up there in the office. He just got a call from brigade. Somebody complaining about my troop's military courtesy. I knew it had to be you.”

“That fucker complained? Fuck im. Hey, what's happening anyway? This place looks like a giant cluster fuck.”

“How was your R&R?”

“Short, L-T. Too fucking short.”

“You,” Brooks pointed to the back of the vehicle, “you must be Choolee-nee.”

“Yes Sir,” Chelini said and he awkwardly saluted the lieutenant from his cramped seat beneath the baggage.

“Yeah? Hum.” The lieutenant sized up the neophyte with sweeping glances. “I'm Rufus Brooks. This is First Sergeant Laguana and you've already met Platoon Sergeant Egan. Top,” Brooks thumbed at Laguana, “will get you squared away with a bunk for tonight and a ruck for tomorrow and all the paperwork Personnel requires. S-l says you're a wireman.”

“Yes Sir,” Chelini said. “I work on telephone systems.”

“Hum,” Brooks stroked his chin. “A telephone man. Yeah. Good. You're going to be Daniel's RTO.”

“What?” Egan said, startled. “L-T? This cherry goina be my RTO?”

“Yeah, Daniel. Tompkins extended for a clerk job with supply. Now,” he added laughing, “you got zero five to get out of those civvie threads and make a strack troop of yourself. You and I are going to catch a bird to Evans. They're briefing us about tomorrow's CA. I want you to come up with me.”

“You come here, Scholdier,” Sgt. Laguana said to Chelini; “we get you squared way. Bring jor equipment and we lock it away.”

“Pop, De Barti, Thomaston and Whiteboy are up there already,” Brooks told Egan. “And Caldwell can't make it. Hey, tell me, really, how was your R&R?”

Egan looked at the lieutenant and chuckled. “God fuckin damn, L-T. Shee-it. That cherry's goina be my R-fuckin-TO! I thought they'd drop him off with the Delta Darlins. I just get back en you loadin my ass with briefins en CAs en cherries. Now you wanta hear a cock story. And, Man,” Egan paused, “do I got some good shit to lay on you. Let me tell you bout the tattooed lady.”

“Come on, Danny,” Brooks said stepping forward and putting his arm around Egan's shoulders. “Tell me about it.”

C
HAPTER
5

Chelini waited outside the orderly room shack for the first sergeant to call him. He felt completely lost. This was not a training unit where everyone was new or a replacement station where everyone was transient. This was the infantry, a permanent assignment and he was an outsider. The men were busy in closed groups or loafing in closed groups.

The battalion to which Chelini had been assigned was on the last day of a five-day refitting and training stand-down. Before stand-down the men of the Oh-deuce had spent 105 days in the boonies, up the Sông Bo and Rao Trang rivers, on the hills by Firebases Veghel, Ripcord and Maureen, and in the swamps west of Quang Tri City. They were the division reaction force. It was not uncommon for them to be extracted from one jungle only to be inserted into another.

Chelini went to the screen door of the hootch and tried to see inside. He could see nothing. He turned and scrutinized the battalion area. Before him was a quadrangle surrounded on three sides by buildings. On the far side a steep hill rose to a helicopter resupply point.

At the center of the quad there was a boxing ring and a PSP basketball court. By the court the old white soldier was still chewing out the same lethargic black boonierat. From where Chelini stood the words were unintelligible. The black soldier had very dark skin. He was shuffling his feet in the red dust, casting upward scowls from a down-hanging head, bouncing and jiving with his knuckles on his hips. The old white soldier was shorter than the black man and much heavier. His head was round and bald on top with the sparse hair at the side shaved. The skin was very red, as if blood was trying to escape.

Very near Company A's office was a narrow moldy structure with a boat on the roof. Five white enlisted men with deeply tanned arms, faces and necks and pallid torsos carried olive drab towels and shaving gear into the shower house. They joked and fooled and slapped each other with the towels and stepped gingerly over the muck patch which flowed past the four-holer EM latrine toward the drainage ditch. They did not even look in Chelini's direction.

Close to the screen door of the office where Chelini stood two men converged, stopped and commenced a strangely ritualistic clapping and shaking of hands and forearms and slapping of each other's shoulders and tapping of each other's fists. One of the men was black, dark brown, not as dark as the soldier at the quad's center; the other was light brown, the color of wheatbread. The ritualized greeting went on for what seemed a long time.

Chelini turned. A clerk opened the screen door. The first sergeant called him in by methodically curling one index finger. Chelini gulped. The first sergeant fumbled with a stack of papers and forms. His desk was clear of everything except essentials. He dusted the land-line telephone with his hand and directed the clerk to empty the trash containers. Then he handed Chelini the forms and a pencil. “Complete thees,” he said and turned away. Chelini nodded. Holy Christ, he thought. I'm lost. I'm stuck. I gotta get out of this unit. Chelini glanced at the forms briefly and began filling in his name on a weapons card. He looked up, out the door. The dark black soldier from the center of the quad had joined the black soldier and brown soldier at the front of the office. The greeting rite of raps and slaps and shakes began again.

“Troop,” the first sergeant said. Chelini jumped. “Can't you write any faster? You scared of that pencil?”

“No, I just …”

“Troop, you a college graduate, aint you?” Oh, shit, Chelini thought. Two strikes against me already. “You let pencil run you. T'row that pencil down.”

“T'row it down?”

“Yeas. That what I said. T'row it down.” Chelini dropped the pencil. “Chee!” the first sergeant shouted. “What it do? It don't jump up and bite you, do it? It's daid, Scholdier. Now pick it up and run it.”

Chelini began signing the forms. Oh shit, he thought. How'd I get stuck in an infantry unit? They put all the dumb kids in here. Of all the places to be assigned. I wonder what happened to Kaltern from basic. He had a good head. Or Baez from AIT or Ralston. They were some okay people and now I gotta get stuck with a bunch of high school dropouts.

“Troop,” First Sergeant Laguana said, “you getting some very expensive equipment. You getting the best weapon in the world. You know that? When you get here at Eagle no magazine in weapon, hokay?” The first sergeant picked up Chelini's weapons card and brought it close to his face. “When you on berm guard you lock en load. You lock en load on helicopter for CA, hokay? On CA you keep the chafety on. If you on the first chopper you go in on automatic, hokay? I don want none my troops schot.” Chelini nodded and nodded. This guy's an idiot, he told himself.