Better Times Than These (21 page)

But Holden hadn’t made up his mind yet about Kahn. He was a little put off by what he took for cockiness. He had learned Kahn was from the South and he suspected he was a Jew, and while the first enhanced his interest, the second diminished it just a bit—but that wasn’t what troubled him. It seemed that behind Kahn’s apparent cockiness there was a great deal of uncertainty, and it bugged Holden a little because it was a weakness of his own.

“Last week, for instance,” the Graves Registration lieutenant continued, “we had to go into the Ia Drang after three guys from the Twenty-fifth Division who’d been there sixteen days. Boy, was that a mess . . .

“They were at the bottom of a little ridge that had been taken by us and then taken back by the gooks and then taken back by us again. These guys got it when the gooks took it back the first time, and the gooks just shoveled some dirt over them after a while so they wouldn’t smell . . .

“Well, let me tell you, when they’ve been under for a while—I mean, that shallow—they fill up with gas and they just come up to the surface—a hand or a leg will just pop out, you know? That’s how we found them, but it took nearly four hours to find the last one . . .”

From the distant mountains came a deep grumbling of artillery, and a thin tremor ran through the plank floor of the tent. Kahn looked up from his beer.

“You gotta get used to that,” the Graves Registration lieutenant said. “Goes on all night.”

Holden went to get them more beer. While he waited at the bar, he took out Becky’s letter and looked at it again. He had a sudden urge to put it to his nose to see if he could recognize her smell, but instead simply ran his fingers over her signature several times. After the convoy arrived, he had hunted down the mail clerk and persuaded him to open the mail tent. The letter was there, but it took him a long time to find it . . .

“Oh, here you are, sir,” the mail clerk said. “It must have come in yesterday.”

Holden thanked him, and as he was leaving, the mail clerk said, “I know how it is, sir; I got a girl at home too.” Holden made a mental note to do something nice for the mail clerk. Because of his job, the mail clerk was the most popular man in the Brigade.

He went off alone to read it.

The sun was low behind the mountains, and Holden found a knoll at the edge of the compound where he sat down and opened the letter carefully. The first thing he took out was a
Time
magazine photograph in which Becky, beautifully defiant, was featured with five or six others in front of an academic-looking building. In the background, a crowd of students held up antiwar signs.

“Hi,love,”
the letter said.
“This is my latest photograph.”

The accompanying clipping described a demonstration in Boston to protest military-type research being performed in various departments of the consortium of universities. Quoted prominently was a Dr. Richard Widenfield, who was described in the article as “the emerging leader of the growing antiwar movement.”

He stared at the clipping a long time before reading the rest of the letter, anger and fear and jealousy and hatred welling up inside him. Widenfield again. It was always Widenfield somewhere, waiting in the wings. He resented him, resented him because he was there, and because he was older, damned near old enough to be her father—and because he had had her; but mostly, right now, because Widenfield was there and he was here and there was nothing he could do about it except maybe get himself shot up and sent home.

At the table, the Graves Registration lieutenant was still holding forth:

“Did you know it takes four men to carry one remains? You’d think it would only take two, but it takes four—especially because of the jungle and underbrush.”

The Graves Registration lieutenant’s face was white and long, the kind of face that never tans, and his thin blond hair was receding at the temples. Kahn asked him what happened if they got shot at while they were doing their work.

“You drop him right there and hit the dirt,” the Graves Registration lieutenant replied cheerily. He seemed pleased he’d been asked the question.

“Now, that isn’t the school solution, but I don’t want any of my men killed. And he’s already dead—what does it matter to him?”

Holden suddenly wanted to read the letter again; to study it closely; weigh it against the implications of the photograph and clipping; search it for any sign she might be involved with Widenfield again. Why had she sent it? The uncertainty was maddening. Even though they’d tried one weekend before he left, they hadn’t really resolved it to his satisfaction.

It had been the Fourth of July, two weeks before he shipped out, and he had invited Becky to his parents’ summer home near Southampton, Long Island. They sneaked away early from a big fireworks beach party and walked down a dark, sandy lane until they found their car. She touched him and kissed him, and during the ride back she had slowly taken off her clothes and begun taking off his, and they had driven the last five miles completely naked, laughing drunkenly and hysterically through several historic villages where Holden was mildly concerned that if a local policeman should stop them for something they would be thrown into jail forever.

They pulled the car close behind the guest cottage where Becky was staying and dashed madly for the bedroom, where they spent the next hour doing practically every imaginable erotic act. They did things Holden had never dreamed he would do, could never have pictured himself doing and would have felt extremely uncomfortable doing—except with her.

She was a good, dirty woman.

Afterward, he made them tall glasses of daiquiris, which they took back to bed, lying on top of the sheets. Through the French doors they were bathed in light from the silver moon that hung over the dunes and the flat potato fields which stretched from the ocean to the edge of the lawn.

It had come up again when he had asked if she was coming to North Carolina the next weekend.

“Oh, baby, I can’t—Richard’s called a meeting in New York to plan what we’re going to do in the fall. They’re counting on me—I just have to be there,” she said.

Holden got up and put on his pants and went into the small living room. She came in after a while, wearing a terry-cloth robe, and sat on the sofa across from him, her legs tucked beneath her.

“Frank,” she said finally, “we’re going to have to do something about this.”

“You bet we are!” He said it as though he had a mouth full of ashes.

“I’m not doing this against you—any more than you’re doing what you’re doing against me,” she said. “We both have to do what we think is right.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said. “If you want to make a fool of yourself with this protesting business, it’s okay by me. But I don’t like it worth a damn that you’re fooling around with Widenfield. I mean, how do you think it makes me feel?”

“Look,” Becky said sharply, “he’s a very important person in the movement—maybe the most important. Every day there are people—you’d be surprised who they are: politicians, and writers and actors—who phone up or write to ask him how they can help. You really would be surprised . . .”

“I’ll bet. But that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m saying. I’m saying I don’t like him trying to get into your pants, that’s what I’m saying.”

She went to the bar to get a drink.

“You know that Richard and I felt a lot for each other at one time—I’ve told you about that. And he knows about you and he understands and he isn’t always running you down like you do him. As a matter of fact, he asks about you sometimes—in a nice way. He wants to stop this war before you have to go over there and get yourself hurt,” she said.

“You’re still sleeping with him, aren’t you?” he demanded.

“That’s really not any of your business, Frank Holden.” There was anger in her eyes—the first he’d seen since their time in the mountains.

“If you want to believe it, then do. I might as well say this, too: My sex life is my business. If you want me to say my sex life is going to stop while you go over there, I’m not going to. I don’t know. I like sex too. With you it’s been different, you know that; but you might just as well know right now I’m not making any promises. I’m going to be completely honest about it. I’ve said I love you and that’s all that ought to matter.

“Listen,” she said after a silence, “I’m going to take a walk on the beach.”

He didn’t wait for her to dress. He stormed out to the car and took off down the road at high speed, back toward the big fireworks beach party, where he intended to get very, very drunk and, if possible, get laid.

“You wouldn’t believe the paperwork it takes to process a remains,” the Grave Registration lieutenant said. “That’s probably the worst part of the whole thing . . . The smell of the dead isn’t as bad as most people think . . .” He looked as if he were getting a little drunk, and Kahn thought his tone was slightly apologetic.

“It’s just a job,” the Graves Registration lieutenant said. “Somebody’s got to do it . . .

“The thing about it is, you gotta take it seriously—it’s all a matter of respect.” His long face grew suddenly serious.

“You know, when we went out there to get those guys from the Twenty-fifth Division, a wiseass I’ve got working for me installed a sign over my morgue that said ‘Three two eight GR Company—We always get our man.’ Jesus! You never heard grief like I got when we came back. The G-Three saw it and came down and chewed my ass for half an hour. He says, ‘What do you think this is, McCrary, a joke? Would you find it more amusing to spend a couple of weeks as point man out there?’ It took some fast talk to convince him I didn’t have anything to do with that damned sign.” The Graves Registration lieutenant went to the bar for another round of beer.

“I’d hate to have his job, wouldn’t you?” Kahn said to Holden, who was looking despondent.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I’d want yours either,” Holden said.

His mind was still far away, wondering what she was doing tonight, or this morning, by her time, and if she was thinking about him, if she was with Widenfield, twelve thousand miles away—the difference between night and day. He wanted desperately to talk to her now, to tell her he loved her, to hear her say it to him, even though he might not believe it—not that she told him lies, but he felt she was keeping something from him.

But he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Because he was up to his neck in this now. There was no quitting, and no turning back and no place to hide. Secretly, although he would never openly admit it to himself, he wished Widenfield had been successful and that the war
had
ended and that he hadn’t had to come here.

“You know the bad thing about this job?” the Graves Registration lieutenant said. He took a long swallow of beer and peered at them through watery eyes.

“Sometimes people look at me like they think I’m some kind of ghoul.”

18

T
hey had been there a week when Spudhead burned the shithouse down.

It was a week of lectures and endless drilling in do’s and don’ts delivered morning till night by tan-faced sergeants fresh from the fighting.

They told them how to stay alive:

“Don’t touch nothing you don’t know exactly what it is . . .”

And how not to get the clap:

“All these gook women got it, so you don’t want it, you stay the hell away from them. Wait till your R and R—there’s good clean whorehouses in Bangkok and Hong Kong.”

And how to use proper radio procedures:

“I don’t want to hear nobody saying anybody’s name over the radio. I catch anybody saying anybody’s name over the radio, his ass is in big trouble . . .”

And how to behave toward the Vietnamese people:

“Grab ’em by the balls; their hearts and minds will follow . . .”

It was a week of being issued more equipment, of interminable lines into hastily thrown-up sheds and tents wherein lay mountainous piles of canvas-covered steel-soled jungle boots, lightweight poplin jungle fatigues, heavy green socks, black face paint, insect repellent, poncho liners, ponchos, camouflage underwear, malaria pills, sunglasses, toothbrushes, shaving cream, entrenching tools and every other conceivable item to keep a moving army on its feet. They were even issued military scrip in exchange for their American dollars. This was promptly dubbed “funny money.”

The same tan-faced sergeants told them how to use all their new gear.

They said:

“The M-sixteen rifle is an outstanding weapon. But you got to keep this weapon clean. If you don’t keep this weapon clean, this weapon will not fire. If this weapon does not fire when you want it to, you might as well just take out your dick and play with it till they come and kill you . . .”

And they said:

“Everybody wants to carry a roll of this here green tape. Green tape can fix anything. Some of you don’t know it, but the world is actually held together with green tape. Without green tape, the world would fall apart . . .”

And they said:

“These here boots are made to dry out fast, but they ain’t magic, so you always carry two extra pairs of dry socks. If you walk around with wet feet, you gonna get immersion foot, and if you get immersion foot, you gonna be one sorry asshole . . .”