Better Times Than These (16 page)

E
merald mountains ringed the harbor where the transport lay, and across translucent waters palm trees rippled softly in the ocean breeze. The sun had not worked into the energy-sapping blast furnace it would become later in the day, and everyone on the beach was preparing deliberately for the unloading before it got too uncomfortable. Except for a sense of dark foreboding among the men on board, it was the picture of tropical paradise.

Bravo Company was among the first to be off-loaded. They stood at the rail in full battle dress, but without ammunition and rations, which somebody had forgotten to have removed from the hold and which would not be provided for hours. A little procession of LCIs was motoring toward them from the beach, and most of the men were watching these and thinking brief, solemn thoughts when Crump noticed the two smoke puffs on the ridge.

Finally they were here. Everything that had happened along the way—the food, the seasickness, the fights, the storm and the rest—all seemed to vanish into the recesses of their minds. Later in their years, children and grandchildren would learn about these things. Each one who returned would have his stories to tell, in cities and towns all over America, the way he had seen it. But these were not things to be worried about now.

The land that stretched before them, peaceful as it looked from here, was what occupied their thoughts.

It took a few seconds for Crump to connect the smoke puffs in his brain, and while he was doing it, two other puffs appeared. They looked very tiny, and the white smoke from the first puffs drifted gently skyward over the crest of the fairy-book mountains before the deep reports reached out to the transport like distant thunder. Bravo Company suddenly stopped talking, as though a fearful voice had spoken from the bowels of the earth and told them to be quiet. Everyone turned toward where the sound had come from, except Crump, who was pointing toward the ridge and the puffs of smoke.

“Up there, see—right below that dip,” he said. Other puffs were now appearing, and the rumbling continued.

“Jesus,” DiGeorgio said. By now the top of the ridge was obscured in white smoke.

Patch was standing at the rail with Kennemer, near Bravo Company, when the sound reached the ship. He watched the little show on the ridge with a detached, superior air, and when DiGeorgio mustered the courage to inquire if the artillery was “ours or theirs,” Patch was delighted to answer.

“Damned right it’s ours, young man—that’s one-oh-fives—and you should thank your lucky stars the enemy doesn’t have one-oh-fives, because there’d be hell to pay for it.” When the others saw Patch talking to DiGeorgio, they drifted around to hear what he had to say, and Patch, now that he had attracted an audience, was in a talkative mood.

What had evidently happened, he told them, was that somebody thought they had spotted some VC on the ridge and called in artillery to harass them. It was unlikely there was a firefight going on up there, because the artillery had only fired a brief salvo. This, he said, went on all day and night, so that anytime VC moved they could depend on having a batch of 105 rounds lobbed on their asses. “It is your job,” Patch said, “to chase these bastards out into the open so the one-oh-fives can blow them away.”

The men listened to this eagerly, and Patch was pleased the artillery had provided him an instructive forum. As he was trying to think of other informative things to say, another rumbling of the guns came across the water and everyone became silent again.

“Sir, do you think we’ll see any VC today?” DiGeorgio asked tentatively. It was naturally the question on everyone’s mind.

“Young man,” Patch said, drawing himself up, “we may see VC and we may not see VC. If we do not see them today, we will see them tomorrow, or the next day . . .

“This is not Honolulu. You did not come here for a rest. There will be no naked dancing girls to greet you here.

“From the time you set foot on that beach until the time you leave it, you may depend on one thing,” the Battalion Commander declared:

“We
will
see VC.”

Lieutenant Frank Holden was at the dock looking at the transport through field glasses. The Transportation Corps people had told him the unloading would take most of the day, and he was hoping it wouldn’t be longer so that they could get away before dark. The artillery firing was much closer to him than the ship, but it scarcely fazed him because he had lived with it night and day for the last month, while they were establishing the Brigade fire base in the shadow of Monkey Mountain. Today, General Butterworth had sent him and a senior aide down to accompany the convoy of Four/Seven to its new home, and Holden was not looking forward to the trip.

All during the month at Monkey Mountain there had been a lot to do, and it was hot, dusty work, but mostly they had stayed inside the compound and had not seen VC or been mortared, although the artillery constantly pounded the hills around them. Once he had accompanied the general in a helicopter over some jungle near the edge of the Ia Drang and they had been shot at, or at least thought they had, but it wasn’t the same as traveling over unsecured ground, as he would be shortly, when the convoy left.

The chopper that flew them down at dawn had followed the road they would take back—the Vietnamese preposterously called it a highway. From here it would be one hundred twenty-five miles westward, crossing flat paddy fields along the coast, then up into the highlands, winding through heavily forested hills and mountain passes, then into jungle so deep and tangled the road disappeared into it from the air.

No, it was not a trip Holden looked forward to. There was always the off chance they would be ambushed or run over a mine—incidents that were occurring with alarming frequency as more and more transports and airplanes arrived to pour out thousands of soldiers for the war. Even from his position of relative security at Monkey Mountain, he had heard the stories: the squad that never returned; the dead soldiers with their penises cut off and stuffed into their mouths. He had seen them bring in dead men to the airstrip stuffed in body bags.

It had taken only a few days for him to understand that this was actually a war, a real war, which he had not been able to comprehend before—even after the long hours of training, the lectures, the mock VC villages they had attacked in the pine hills of North Carolina, the night patrols with blackened faces and blank cartridges, the escape-and-evasion course, the live-fire exercise with real machine-gun bullets whining overhead. All of it seemed puny and worthless here, because when you drove up Highway One you didn’t know from one moment to the next if you would be blown sky high.

Holden was disturbed he hadn’t heard from Becky, even though he’d gotten letters from his parents and from his sister, Cory, and from his uncle the stockbroker, who’d offered him a position when he returned. Every day it bugged him, and at night it bugged him worse.

They had met that Sunday after the dance, inside by the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center, drinking hot buttered rum and talking about everything but the war and their respective involvements in it. She drove him to the airport at sundown and he kissed her there—gently, politely, at first, and when she responded he felt himself getting excited. At the boarding gate he kissed her again for a long time, ignoring the people filing by, Holden in his uniform, she in a red sweater and tan slacks.

Four weeks later, just before Christmas, she came to see him and they went to the shore for the weekend. There was a fresh blanket of snow on the flat Carolina roads and the hardened, wind-swept tobacco fields that disappeared only when they reached the dunes of the Outer Banks. All the way down he’d avoided bringing up accommodations, but when they got to the deserted little motel it was unavoidable, so he asked if she wanted separate rooms.

“Of course not; that would be silly,” she said. He protested clumsily that money wasn’t a problem, but she put her hand on his face and said, “That’s not what I meant, silly.”

There were other visits in the months afterward. Sometimes he went to New York, sometimes she came down. They took excursions into the Southern countryside—along the Blue Ridge Mountains, down to the ocean or occasionally just to quiet back-road inns. Their lovemaking was spectacular, and in time it became that to Holden—lovemaking.

He lived for those weekends—times when everything seemed to go right. The days in between were dreary, tedious hours of paperwork and phone calls, checking and double-checking to make sure General Butterworth’s preparations were being carried out, and he phoned her at least once a week.

It was late spring before he found out he wasn’t the only man she was seeing.

He’d called early one night, and Becky’s roommate said she’d gone for coffee with Professor Widenfield. He tried later—at eleven, when the dorm closed—and she was still out, and again at midnight, and at two and finally at five-thirty in the morning. She had evidently gone out for the night.

Two weeks later he asked her about it.

They had the use of a handsomely furnished cabin in the mountains that belonged to the family of a classmate at Princeton. Spring had taken hold earlier that month, and the woods were glorious with flowers and tender shoots. They went for a walk in the sun along the old Appalachian Trail, stopping at lookout points and picnicking on a granite outcropping high above a clear, meandering river. The valley below was alive with sprouting grain and corn in various shades of green, and they ate fat ham sandwiches, cheese and pâté de foie gras and drank a bottle of Saint-Émilion, and when they got back to the cabin it was chilly enough to build a fire. After two brandies they went to bed.

“Do you feel like lying down?” she’d said demurely. There had been that look in her eye.

For nearly an hour they couldn’t seem to get enough of each other, and afterward, when they’d napped for a while, Becky got up and began dressing for supper. They’d heard about a little place down the road.

It was nearly dark outside, but he could see her plainly in the fading light and glow of the log fire. She had put on a skirt and was adjusting her brassiere—an operation that intrigued and excited him because it lent an air of mystery to her marvelous, full breasts, though she’d been naked, next to him, only moments before. She was brushing her hair in the mirror and Holden was lying in bed when he finally asked her.

“Sure, I see other people sometimes.” She smiled. “You don’t want me to be a dorm flower, do you?”

“What do you mean, ‘see’?” he said.

“I just see them—that’s all. What do you think I’m doing, bedding down the town?”

“You never came in that night I called. Do you always
see
people all night long?” He was trying not to be sarcastic.

“That was one night. I just went with Richard for a few drinks and we stayed up late—talking.”

“You stayed up all damned night
talking,
is that what you’re saying?” he demanded.

“Look, I like him—he’s been very nice to me. He’s a very brilliant person, and he thinks I’m an exceptional student. I’m helping him organize some things.”

“What things?—One of those damned protests, huh? What good is that supposed to do? Don’t you know that every time you do that it just hurts this country and it hurts me? Did you ever consider that?”

God, he thought, I don’t want to get into this. All these months they had avoided talking about the war and her opposition to it, and now it was coming out in a way that had nothing to do with what he really wanted to know. Of course she was involved in the protests, but she was high-spirited and needed to get involved in things. It had nothing to do with them—and she knew that too—or at least, he believed she knew it.

“Becky, I’m sorry, okay?—I didn’t mean to go into that. I just need to know if you’re involved with anyone else.”

“I’m not involved with anyone,” she said.

“Not even me?”

“Well, of course you—you know that.”

He blurted it out: “Are you sleeping with anyone else? I mean, have you slept with . . . with Widenfield?”

She put down the comb and looked at herself in the mirror for a while. Finally, she threw back her head, still not looking at him, and said it.

“We have slept together a few times. I told you before, it’s nothing big.”

“Damn,” he said. “Damn it to hell!”

“Darling, it’s you I care about—really it is,” she said quickly. “Can’t you see that? Why do you think I’m here? Why would I come here if I didn’t care about you? I would be with
him
if that was the way it was.” She pulled a gray sweater over her head.

“I don’t understand you,” he said after a while. “I don’t understand how you can sleep with anyone else—especially that bastard—after what we’ve had.”

“He’s not a bastard—and don’t call him that. I told you, he’s a good friend and he’s been kind to me.”

“You mean you fuck anybody who’s kind to you?” he said bitterly.

“I do what I damned well please, Frank Holden. That’s what I do—and if you don’t like it, well . . . it’s too bad.” She walked briskly into the other room and stood in front of the fire.

“Screw it, then,” he said loudly. He got up and began to dress, feeling self-conscious in his nakedness.

It wasn’t a good night. They talked small talk and ate the thick, charcoaled steaks and French fries at the country grill, but much of the evening they avoided each other’s eyes. Back at the cabin, they sat apart in front of the fire and they did not make love when they went to bed. Just before he fell asleep, Holden began to wish he’d never brought the business up.

The next morning Becky woke up first and was in the kitchen in her bathrobe making eggs and sausage for breakfast. She stuck the plates into the oven to warm and came back to bed and snuggled under the blankets, kissing him gently on the chest.

“Baby, baby,” she said tenderly, stroking his hair and face. “I’m so sorry if I’ve hurt you—you have to believe that.” Tears came to her big green eyes, the first he’d ever seen, and he held her close for a long time.

It took most of the morning to unload the transport. On one side, the LCIs were taking off the men, while on the other, larger craft were off-loading heavier gear. Bravo Company and most of Four/Seven were ashore by 10
A.M.
and were standing or sitting on the beach waiting for orders to climb onto the big open trucks they called “cattle cars” that were lined up as far as anyone could see along the dusty gravel road that ran toward the mountains.