Better Times Than These (19 page)

“Ah . . . one hundred piasters is three of your American dollars . . . here,” Bac said. “In Nha Trang, Saigon, you see one hundred Pee worth only half of that. But here it worth more . . . you make twice as much for your dollar.”

Crump turned to the others. “Three dollars . . . that ain’t much for a live monkey, trained an’ all.”

“Jesus, Crump, you gotta be outta your mind. You can’t buy no fuckin’ monkey . . . What’ll you do with it?” DiGeorgio rasped.

“Never mind what I’ll do with it,” Crump said. He reached into his pocket and drew out three dollars. “Here.” He gave the money to Bac, who stuffed it into his shirt pocket and handed Crump the banana-cat, collar, cord and all.

“Well there, little feller,” Crump said soothingly, “you and me gonna get along just fine.” He patted the banana-cat tenderly on top of its head. It seemed to go to sleep.

“One moment, gentlemen,” Bac said as they started to walk away. He looked sadly at the traded-off banana-cat cradled in Crump’s arms.

“I think there is something else I can do for you . . . perhaps a favor for both of us,” Bac said.

“What’s that?” DiGeorgio asked.

“It is about money . . . your money and mine,” he said. “You are in luck you come here today, because things will not last as they are.”

Bac began telling them a story—about Vietnamese money and American money. About how the values were changing every day as more and more Americans arrived. Once, he said, American dollars were worth a great deal in Vietnam. But as the Americans arrived in force, they spent more and more dollars, thereby driving the worth of the dollar down in relation to the Vietnamese piaster. There had been a time, he said, when the dollar was easily worth three hundred piasters, but that was rapidly changing . . . especially in the big cities like Saigon, and in places where there were many Americans . . . like the places Bravo Company was going . . .

Bac’s theory of economics was that as the war progressed, corruptive influences like the black market and inflation would soon render the dollar practically worthless. Then, he said, they would be unable to buy certain necessities . . . girls, souvenirs, decent food . . .

However, he told them, these corruptive circumstances had not yet reached this village, and the dollar was still worth what it should be, although most Vietnamese here had no way of converting it to piasters and consequently did not want it. Bac, on the other hand, had a brother in Qui Nhon who could still turn dollars into piasters for a slight profit. Therefore, Bac said, he was in a position to make some money for all of them.

“I will buy your American dollars for their value of thirty-three piasters each. You will then have many more piasters than you could buy where you are going, and I will be able to make a few cents on them through my brother toward the purchase of a new leg.”

Spudhead, Crump, DiGeorgio and Madman Muntz went into conference.

It sounded plausible. After all, hadn’t Bac been straight with them so far? Hadn’t he talked the proprietor down on the sodas? Hadn’t he let his banana-cat go for a measly three bucks? What did they have to lose?

After talking it over, each of them drew into his wallet for bills. Spudhead turned over twenty-five dollars, Crump ten, DiGeorgio thirty and Madman Muntz, ordinarily very parsimonious, forty-five.

Bac carefully doled out three thousand, six hundred forty piasters.

Pockets full of the valuable piasters, they started back down the pressed-earth street, Bac tagging behind on his crutch. It was late in the afternoon, and a cool breeze was blowing in off the ocean, which they knew lay somewhere beyond the line of trees opposite the emerald mountains. Crump, using a trick he had learned with flying squirrels, had tied the banana-cat’s leash through his belt so that it wouldn’t get away. The village was full of other soldiers from the convoy now, and nearly a dozen of them were bargaining with the proprietor of the store.

A battered stucco house was situated among some coconut palm trees. Candles flickered inside, and through the windows and door a strange wailing sound wafted out into the street. Muntz walked closer and tried to peer inside and Bac caught up with them.

“A funeral,” he said. “There were killings here last night.”

“Killings,” Spudhead said. “What do you mean . . . murders?”

“Oh, no, no . . . killings . . . not murder. It was VC,” Bac replied nonchalantly.

“You mean there are VC here?” Muntz demanded, looking around quickly.

“No . . . no VC here . . . down there,” Bac said, nodding toward a dark lane through some palm trees.

“What? You mean VC killed people here yesterday?” Muntz cried, his eyes getting big.

“No, VC not kill. Ahmercans kill . . . Ahmercan artillery. They think VC here, but VC already gone. This man’s family all killed . . . Come, I show you,” Bac said offhandedly, going toward the dilapidated little house.

Hesitantly, they followed him inside. Shades had been pulled over the windows, and in the dim light of the candles they could see three rough wooden coffins, one large and two small, resting between two crude tables. Squatting on the tile floor, six or eight women dressed in loose black garb raised a constant, pathetic wailing. Beside a stand of candles, a crucifix leaned crazily to one side, the bottom of its cross stuck into a box of sand. No one seemed to notice the intruders, and they stood reverently near the door as the wailing continued.

“See,” Bac said, “all dead.”

“Holy Christ,” DiGeorgio whispered. “I think we ought to get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah,” Muntz muttered quietly, “this place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Spudhead was gawking goofily at the coffins when the man threw himself upon him.

None of them had noticed him standing in the shadows behind the door when he came in.

He seized Spudhead first by the shoulders and then slid down to his feet so that his arms were entwined around Spudhead’s knees. The man howled like a dog.

Spudhead was frozen in terror. The others sprang back, nearly knocking over a coffin. As DiGeorgio instinctively drew back his rifle butt to brain the man, Bac recovered and restrained him.

“Please, no,” Bac said. “He mean no harm.”

“Jesus,” Spudhead said. He felt as if he were going to throw up. The man continued to howl and wail awfully and kept a lock on Spudhead’s knees so that he couldn’t move away.

“What’s wrong with him?” DiGeorgio asked fearfully.

“That is his family,” Bac said, nodding at the coffins. “He believe you have come here to pay him.”

“Pay him . . . pay him for what?” Muntz said.

“The reparations,” Bac replied. “When Ahmercan kill, they pay, you know? . . . You are Ahmercan . . . he think you sent by Army to give him money.”

“Jesus,” Muntz said.

“Tell him we didn’t have nothin’ to do with this,” DiGeorgio said. “You tell him that, hear?”

Bac said something to the man, and he quit wailing and looked up at Spudhead and then to the others. He seemed bewildered and babbled something to Bac.

“What’s he say?” Muntz asked.

“He want to know why you come here then,” Bac said.

“Tell him . . . uh, tell him we was just passing through or something. Tell him we’re sorry about his family,” DiGeorgio said.

Bac spoke again to the man, who looked even more bewildered and put his head back down and began a low moan, still clinging to Spudhead’s knees.

“He not understand. He want to know when he get paid,” Bac said sadly.

“Ask him to let go of me,” Spudhead said.

Bac spoke to the man, who slowly released his grip and stood up. He looked plaintively at Spudhead and searched the faces of DiGeorgio and Madman Muntz. They looked back sympathetically. Then, without warning, he flung himself howling at the feet of Crump, who had been gazing idly at the crucifix and stroking the banana-cat.

Crump leaped back in fright and nearly fell down because the man had hold of his knees. Instantly the banana-cat flew at the man’s head with a wild, screeching noise and began to tear at his hair.

“Aiiiieeeee,”
the man cried, and beat madly at his head to drive the monkey away. The banana-cat sprang back and forth on its leash like a living yo-yo, using Crump’s chest to carom off between the man and the ceiling and the little table where the crucifix was. The wailing women jumped up hysterically, and the man began to shout what were unmistakably curses.

“Oh, my God,” Spudhead said frantically.

Bac seized the banana-cat in midair as it was headed back to Crump’s chest.

“Please, we go now,” he said, gripping the animal by the neck, pulling Crump, still with the leash tied to his belt, behind him. They hurried out the door, pursued by the cursing man and the band of shrieking women, who stopped at the steps and continued to hurl what sounded to the men like oaths as they walked quickly down the street.

As they approached the convoy, Bac slowed behind them and stopped.

“I must go now. I am very sorry . . .” he said, nodding back toward the house where the funeral party still clustered on the porch, gesturing furiously to each other.

Spudhead, Crump, DiGeorgio and Madman Muntz thanked Bac awkwardly. He winked at them and hobbled off down the dark lane through the palms. When they got back to the trucks, word had just come down that the convoy was ready to move again. As they pulled out, each of them began eagerly relating to others what had happened in the village . . . about the sodas and meeting Bac and the acquisition of the banana-cat and the killings and the horrible scene at the funeral house. However, they had all agreed to keep quiet about the deal they had made for piasters, and it wasn’t until two days later, during their orientation, that they learned a dollar was worth over two hundred piasters and they had been gypped out of their money.

16

S
everal plastic ponchos had been set out in a neat row, and as the convoy crept by, a Graves Registration squad was diligently sorting out what was left behind. Remnants of watches, wallets, pens, rings and other personal effects were tossed into one pile.

The personnel carrier lay in the rice paddy like a dead elephant. Its undercarriage had been ripped open as if by a huge can opener, the thick armor plate peeled back in jagged edges. A side upturned crazily toward the road was bulged outward by the blast, and the rear door rested in mud twenty yards away.

A second pile contained shattered helmets, packs, boots, canteens and torn flak jackets. On the third, rifles, ammunition bandoliers, a cracked machine-gun stock and a few grenades had been heaped. All of this would be sorted again, resorted, and the personal effects packed into brown cardboard boxes and shipped to the next of kin. The remains of the vehicle’s occupants had already been removed by helicopter.

MPs directed the trucks past a preposterous-looking tank extractor which sat by the crater where the mine had exploded, waiting to remove the APC with its crane. Two mud-covered tanks crouched in the fields like sullen monsters, their sweat-stained crews standing glumly by, watching a gunship fly along the edge of the distant line of trees, looking for an excuse to open fire.

Bravo Company viewed all this with a macabre fascination, as though they had happened by the scene of a brutal automobile accident.

Because they had not yet experienced the war itself, they had not come to terms with its essential scheme—that this was an act carefully planned and executed, with no particular malice toward those aboard the APC, with no thought of gaining their immediate possessions, with no hope of bringing the conflict to an end by this individual deed.

So they looked upon it as an act of fate. Long ago, most of them had begun to accept their own fate. In the teeming cities of New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston; and small towns like Orangeville, Waycross, Poplar, Tupelo; in villages in New England, the Prairie States, the South and Far West; in the kitchens of carry-out restaurants, mechanics’ shops, stockbrokerage houses, pool halls, high schools, truck stops and universities—all of their lives this sense of fate and destiny had been working itself into their minds, and they were slowly beginning to understand it and deal with it and sometimes use it to their advantage. Buddies and girlfriends had been killed in car crashes; relatives had died of cancer, heart disease and old age. They had attended the funerals in Sunday-school suits, shaken, but reaffirmed in their belief that fate had called. They had also known the rewards for jobs well done: the winning of a basketball game, passing tests, the paycheck at the end of the week—and the penalties for failure: the silence of a locker room, an instructor’s scorn, no paycheck. They accepted these things, most of them, because it gave an order to their lives, and they had worked a place for fate into the scheme, the random happenstances that would inevitably select some of them for its mysterious purposes, although none of them accepted the idea that he might be the one.

Though few of them realized it, they were about to enter a new period in which these rules of fate would not apply. Very soon, in fact, they would be living by instinct.