13th Valley (25 page)

During the pre-dawn Cherry had lain bewildered and silent in the trench at LZ Sally. He had been silent yet he had wanted to talk. He had contemplated asking Jackson something but he could not think of anything to ask. He could not rest. The anxiety about the coming combat assault had caused his muscles to tighten, his stomach to squeeze.

He had been up at 0400 hours. Then it had been hurry up to chow, hurry up and pack, hurry up lug that crazy ruck up the hill from the battalion area to the Oh-deuce pad then wait. At 0440 he had hurry-upped into the Chinook and at 0503 he had hurry-upped out of the bird and into the trench. Then he had waited. “Hurry up and wait,” he had muttered. “SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.”

Throughout it all no one had spoken to him. It was as if he had never met them. It was as if he had not spent the entire night drinking and smoking and talking to them. Again he was an outsider.

It was still cold in the trenches and it was uncomfortable. Restlessly he fiddled with his helmet, his weapon, the radio in his ruck. He fiddled self-consciously, quietly, trying not to disturb anyone, hoping someone else nearby would be fiddling with his equipment also so he could speak. Cherry lay back and closed his eyes. He tried not to force them to stay shut but tried to allow them to remain closed of their own relaxed accord. His eyes would not cooperate.

The sky grayed. The silhouette of mountains to the west turned green-black where the lifting darkness accentuated ridges yet remained jet-black in the canyons. Within the ravines darkness still hung. Laconic chats and extended grumbles disrupted the close silence, the tiring rest.

Doc was suffering hangover pains and pains from the lump on the back of his head and the laceration on his forehead. The thought of the open wound irritated him. “What a sucka. Man, a cut's a real sucka. Fuckin helmet rub it and keep it open for all them bacteria. Mothafucka gonna get infected. Can't wear no fuckin helmet.” Doc tied his helmet to the top of his rucksack, shook the pack to be sure the helmet was secure and that it would not rattle when he walked.

“That a good cut, Doc,” Jax said. “Wish I had a cut like that. I think I's catchin cold. That good too.”

“You need somethin fo it?”

“No way. Not yet. I got this cold now an I's gowin keep it.”

“You need somethin.”

“I needs this cold, Man. Sound pretty bad, huh?”

“Sounds bad.”

“Like bronchitis?”

“Gettin there.”

“Yeah. Good. In three or fo days I get pneumonia. Gotta keep smokin.”

“There's mo cig'rettes up in the Sundry pak.”

“Yeah. I's got get me sah mo. Yo need any?”

“I got em.”

“Ef I's get pneumonia in a few days you gowin send me in on resupply fo a week a bed rest.”

“If you gets pneumonia.”

“I's bet I can pull that out ta a month profile,” Jax said. He pulled out his hair pick and fluffed up his ‘fro. He said, “Then with the rains startin they aint ee-ven gowin send ol Jax back out. I's gowin sit in that hootch all day with my water bowl an get fahhcked up. Let everythin pass til—WHAM! E-T-S.”

Morn's early pallor penetrated the last light of the moon, permeated it, diluted it and finally diffused it until the moon disappeared. The fourth wave of Chinooks deposited Delta Company at LZ Sally. Warm sun assailed the ocher clay. The ground became warm then hot; the air lost its morning heaviness, the paddies their mist. The sun became blinding. In the ravines 246 boonierats huddled, covered their heads and eyes with towels or buried their faces beneath olive drab helmets still hoping time would pass without their having to endure its long uncomfortable minutes, its lagging dragging slow minutes, still waiting for the assault to begin. Slow minutes only a soldier knows. No, they are not like the minutes in a locker room before the big game nor like those backstage minutes before the opening night curtain rises. They are unique minutes. Soldier's minutes. Boonierat minutes, undistinguishable minutes, undistinguishable millennia, unsavored, endured lonely minutes 13,000 miles from home. Once the assault begins the minutes will be different. They will be filled minutes. But these. These minutes. These. Perhaps the last minutes.

Above the first set of ravines the platoon sergeants of Alpha surveyed their men; Egan from the first; Pop Randalph from the second; Don White from the third. They spoke slowly and easily, the mark of old-timers. They laughed at each other's quips and gestured toward the fuck-ups and laughed and cursed. The light skin of Egan's face was already beginning to re-blister from the sun. Pop's face, tanned deep red-brown with concentric creases surrounding watery red eyes, was dirt splotched where helicopter dust stuck to sweat. Don White, tall, wiry, coffee black, shrugged an unconcerned shoulder to the sun and lightly mocked Egan as Egan wiped salve on his lips.

“Mothafuckin cunt whore son of a bitch,” Egan mumbled scraping sand bits from sun blisters on his face and arms. “I hate these mothafuckin Shithooks and this fuckin REMF sun.”

Egan bent down and rifled through a sundry pak at his feet. The box contained candy and cigarettes, razor blades and shaving cream, toothpaste and brushes, writing paper, pencils and various odds and ends. The other sergeants picked through the box too. They left the box open for anyone who wanted to come up. Sporadically troops approached, took the candy and the cigarettes and returned to the ravines. Egan bent down and picked up a package of light blue stationery, then he rose, spat toward the trench and sauntered away. Fuck it, Mick, he said to himself. Drive on. His platoon was in order, had been in order for two hours. Echo Company still had not arrived.

Company commanders and operations officers and NCOs from Intelligence formed small groups on the landing strip. They had long since hashed and rehashed the operation schedules and objectives and now stood mostly silent, waiting to be under way. The sniper teams came in by Huey and reported to their assigned companies, dropped their rucks and regrouped on a small sharp ridge between the ravines of Alpha and Charlie companies. They too were mostly silent, smoking, checking their rifles and scopes.

The platoon leaders of Alpha joined Pop and Don White by the sundry box. All three were first lieutenants, young, in their early twenties, white, all-American ROTC officers. Two carried M-16s. Lt. Larry Caldwell carried a CAR-15. Pop sneered at him and the carbine and thought, that piece a shit. That weapon couldn't hit a water-bo at two paces. Goddamn barrel's too short, the buffer don't sweep right and the damn thing jams evera other round. Wonder why Brooks lets Boy Asshole carry it.

In the trench below them one man finished reading a Fantastic Four comic book. He passed it to the man next to him who had been studying a worn skin magazine. That man passed his material to a man sitting up the ravine wall who had been reading a book on the religions of the people of Vietnam. The man on the ravine wall put the book down, glanced at the magazine, passed it on and returned to his book. The sitting and waiting became unbearable so men stood and waited. There was nothing else to do. It was impossible to rest anymore. Some men hunched over their rucksacks and adjusted the straps and ties and checked the pins on the grenades tied to the sides of the pack, tightening anything loose, checking the extra ammo to insure its easy accessibility. Other men cleaned their rifles, cleaned, polished, applied a light coat of LSA oil. It was the most repetitive action of the infantry, cleaning weapons. Soldiers disassembled their rifles, cleaned them, assembled them, checked them and then began again. Time passed.

Bellowing laughter exploded in a gully halfway down the landing strip, one very loud guffaw followed by secondary eruptions of giggles and chuckles. Men in other ravines stood and looked, strained their necks to see. Cherry climbed a step up the ravine wall to witness the joke. A smile came to his face. Yet the looking seemed to extinguish the joke and the gully quieted and the soldiers returned to their immediate worlds.

The restless infantrymen in the trenches and their clustered sergeants and lieutenants and captains on the landing strip represented a collective consciousness of America. These men, Chelini, Egan, Doc, Silvers, Brooks, all of them, were products of the Great American Experiment, black brown yellow white and red, children of the Melting Pot. Their actions were the blossoming of the past, blooming continuously from the humus of decayed antiquity, flowering from the stems of living yesterdays. What they had in common was the denominator of American society in the '50s and '60s, a television culture, the army experience—basic, AIT, RVN training, SERTS, the Oh-deuce and now the sitting, waiting in the trench at LZ Sally, I Corps, in the Republic of Vietnam.

A feeling of urgency, a contagious expectation swept over the men. The terrible enduring of minutes gave way to impetuous movement and thought, accelerating gradually, continuously, as lift-off time approached.

At the north end of the landing strip Egan sat alone, his legs dangling into a ravine. He was thinking of the World again, his non-Nam, pre-Nam World. I never did send her those sketches, he thought. He pictured the drawings of two homes that he had designed for a pre-architecture course. In their student days, his and Stephanie's, he had sketched homes for her and she had designed interiors for him. In their heads they worked for each other yet they seldom actually sent the works to each other. Fuck it, Mick, Egan said to himself, I'll bring them to her when I get back. He stared for a moment into the paddies before him then at the writing paper on his lap. He began a letter to Stephanie. He did not include date, time or salutation.

You are on my mind again. It is three years, maybe four now, since we lay on the freshly mowed lawn in the sun of mid-spring's warmth. Maybe it is longer. Perhaps it is five years since we walked down darkened city streets in the quiet of pre-dawn or since we first sat on the floor in your room and listened to Sandy Bull's Fantasia. I remember every moment, every word we said, everything we did. I do not know why my time here has not blunted my memory of you. Days with you stand out as if they were happening today, even with all that has happened between. I think I laughed a lot. You'd have to tell me for I don't laugh like that anymore and it is possible I did not laugh then either but simply think I did when I think about you and me. I need to know if we ever really had what I sense we had or if it is just something in my mind now and it never was a reality.

When I was drafted—I wasn't drafted. I enlisted. Did you know that? Was I that honest with you? I think you knew that whether I was honest or not. I have experienced it now, all and more than I wanted and I think now I could have stayed there with you and you would have been all the experience I'd ever have needed. But if I'd not gone I would have never known. Stephanie, we are starting a new operation this morning and I must get busy. I'll continue this later.

Leon Silvers sat in a trench with Minh, Whiteboy and Doc. He also was restless. The others were fidgeting but not talking. Silvers opened his journal to make the day's first entry.

Day 223—I look around me at my boonierat brothers and their sincerity amazes me. My own sincerity amazes me. I do not know if I am or am not my brother's keeper or if I should be. I do not know if it is morally proper for my country to attempt to assist another to stop the infiltration from a third. I do not know if we should fight and spill our blood and have those we try to rescue spill theirs and again spill much of our enemy's. Perhaps we should not. Perhaps we should not have gone to Korea either. Or to Europe for the First and Second World Wars. I don't know if morality has anything to do with it, yet I look around and see these young men here about me. How can we feel this responsibility? Is that not morality?

All mankind is my brother
.

Am I not my brother's keeper?

If then, one of my brothers

Turns against another
,

Am I not responsible to maintain

The latter's keep?

All mankind is my brother
.

I do not wish to side with one Brother against another.

I do not wish to have a brother

Against me
.

But if all mankind is my brother

Mustn't I be the keeper

Of my brother in need?

Why do some of my boonierat brothers think we should withdraw completely? Would we then not be like so many Jews in the 1930s allowing the world to push them around? I look about me and I know these men believe as I do, most of them at least, we must be here. If we were to leave, it would be immoral. Once we behave in an immoral way, we will lose our spirit and wander in the wilderness.

Silvers stopped writing. He looked around. It was very warm. There still was nothing to do. He removed a sheet of paper from the back of his journal and began a letter to his brother.

Friday, 13 August 70

Ab,

So your old lady wants you to marry her. No sweat, GI. Want me to discourage it? Can do. Can do it in a very tactful way. Tell her first you can't wed til I get back, which really you can't. I gotta be there. That's about five months off and nobody gets married in January so you got it made at least til spring. I've got a year after I leave here and no telling where they'll send me that I won't be able to get back from so that puts it in winter again. Maybe what you should tell her is like this—tell her you want to get married in Europe while you're racing formula 3 or 2 (if you can rob a bank). What could possibly sound more romantic than getting married in the pits at Monte Carlo just after your oil cooler's sprung a leak and put you out of the race? The cars are still zinging by. You are covered with oil and depressed. Your bride is in a white leather suit of hot pants and vest (no bra) and boots. Just the sound of the whole thing will make your lady want to put the ceremony off til then. And that is, at least, a stay sent from the governor himself.