Better Times Than These (31 page)

Wounded men were different. They could look at wounded men, because there was hope for them. In fact, they would often stare unashamedly at the wounded man and discuss whether or not, in their opinion, he would make it, and if so, what the extent of permanent damage might be. The general assumption was that the wounded could be made whole again after a few months in a hospital, and then be returned to their homes, free men.

Meantime, a further wrinkle had developed. Kahn’s hand had been aching for days and had become almost useless to him. It was badly infected, and it was decided, with the concurrence of Colonel Patch, to have it attended to back at the Monkey Mountain hospital.

Kahn was standing in the clearing waiting to board the next helicopter when four men, moving like sleepwalkers, stumbled past him carrying a poncho stretched between them. On the poncho was a man, wounded badly. His knees were tucked up tightly and his eyes were shut. He was very pale. As the little procession went by, Kahn got a glimpse of the man on the poncho. His stomach and chest were covered with his own dried blood, and his fingers twitched occasionally and tapped on the poncho. It was Sergeant Jelkes—the watery-eyed Mess Sergeant; the father of Sally the sex bomb. The bearers looked bleary-eyed and exhausted.

Kahn stepped closer. “How bad is he?” he asked.

The bearers kept their pace, but one of them looked at Kahn. “He’s gut-shot, sir. He might of made it if we could of got him out last night,” the man said.

Kahn followed them to the helicopter, where they lifted the poncho with Jelkes still on it and gently laid it on the deck. He showed few signs of life except for the spasmodic twitching of his fingers. Kahn leaned inside the door, putting his face very close to Jelkes. “Sergeant Jelkes . . . Sergeant Jelkes,” he said softly; but Jelkes did not move or give any indication that he heard.

Kahn walked away and tried to light a cigarette. Because of his bad hand he fumbled it, and it fell to the ground. A private he had never seen before picked it up and lit it for him. “There you are, sir,” the private said. “Hope your hand gets okay.”

It was all so fresh in his mind—the night he’d gone to Jelkes’s little house and picked up Sally. The look on the sergeant’s face, his embarrassment . . . it didn’t seem like a year ago. And the next day, after what had happened . . . Jelkes’s profuse apologies. He’d felt sorry for him . . .

He had taken her to the officers’ club for drinks—not the fancy main officers’ club, but an annex that was the hangout of the Airborne division; then early in the evening they had gone, at his suggestion, back to the BOQ, up to his room. There had been heavy petting, and one thing had led to another. She stopped him when he reached under her skirt.

“Why not?” he asked innocently.

“I don’t want to—now,” she said.

A few minutes later he tried again.

“No,” she said, moving his hand, “I told you I don’t want to. Not here.”

“What’s wrong with here? I live here—it’s my home,” he said.

She sat up on the bed and adjusted her sweater. He lay beside her sullenly, his hands behind his head. “Listen,” she said after a while. “I know what you think. You think I’m a good lay, don’t you?”

When he protested, she cut him off.

“It just isn’t true—I mean, about me going to bed with everybody. I see how they look at me in the PX. They’re always trying to get me to sleep with them because they’re officers. Well, I don’t sleep with people I don’t like. I mean, I don’t even know you . . .”

He started to protest again, but she bent over and kissed him softly.

“I really like you. You don’t stare at me and say all those things—you know what I mean. You just pay your check . . . That’s why I went out with you,” she said.

He pulled her down beside him, and when he tugged at the elastic again there was only a mild reproach.

A little before midnight they left the BOQ. He drove her to a girlfriend’s house where she was to spend the night, and on the way she held his hand in the car. At the door they kissed for a long time, and after she went inside he stood on the porch for a moment to light a cigarette. It was a tiny house in nineteen-thirties style—what his father would call a “shotgun house” because of its narrowness. He’d got a whiff of house odor when she’d opened the door—the sickly-sweet smell of food and people in a shut-in place. The stark glow of a television set danced on the walls in a darkened front room. He tried to imagine the girlfriend.

As he walked down the steps he felt warm and satisfied. He was glad he’d met her—there weren’t many like her around an Army post—and
what a body!
So what if she wasn’t a whiz kid? At least she knew it herself and wasn’t ashamed of it. They’d actually had a good time together, and he was going to call her again—maybe tomorrow . . .

Two boys stepped out of the bushes in front of Kahn as he walked to the street. For an instant he was startled, but they stepped aside to let him pass. His car was beneath a street light in front of the house next door. As he turned down the sidewalk, the larger boy, a tall, rawboned youth of about eighteen, fell into step beside him. The other—shorter, squatter—followed behind.

“Hey, let me ask you somethin’,” the tall boy said. His hair was black and slicked down. He was holding a beer.

“You date my sister tonight?” he said. “Your name Lootenant Kahn?”

“Yeah,” Kahn said, stopping, feeling relieved. “Are you Sally’s brother? It’s nice to meet you.” He stuck out his hand. The boy did not take it. Instead he looked at Kahn with cold, narrow eyes.

“Yeah, I’m her brother. I look out after her,” he said. Kahn finally dropped his hand to his side. There was an awkward silence. What the hell can this be? he thought. Then he found out.

“I hear you a Joo,” the boy said. “That right, Lootenant?”

Kahn felt his face flush. He looked at the boy’s mean eyes in astonishment.

“Yes, I am Jewish,” he said coolly.

“Well, uh, see . . . my sister, she don’t want to go out with Joos,” the boy said. “I bet you didn’t tell her you was a Joo, did you?”

The other boy leaned against a car on the street and scratched some acne on his face. Kahn realized something was about to happen. Time was moving fast and slowly at once. Both of them were younger—but they were both pretty big.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t see what difference—”

“It makes a damn lot of difference,” the boy cut him off. “A fucking lot of difference, ’cause Sally, she don’t go out with wops, niggers or Joos—even if they are lootenants,” the boy said.

“Does your father know you’re—”

“Fuck my father,” the boy interrupted. “He don’t know shit. Joos are dirty people—my sister don’t date dirty people. You stay away from my sister,
hear?”

Kahn had taken several steps toward his car when the beer can hit him in the back. It knocked the breath from his lungs, and he was only vaguely aware of the boy flying through the air at him. They hit the pavement hard, and Kahn landed on his elbow. A ribbon of pain shot through his arm, and he was stunned by the boy’s punches on his face.

He rolled and struggled to his knees. He threw a wild right hand which, to his surprise, caught the boy flush on the nose. Blood spurted out. The boy hollered something unintelligible, and then Kahn felt other arms holding him from behind.

“Don’t let him go—hold him,” the boy panted.

Kahn struggled frantically. There seemed to be a lot of noise, and time moved very slowly again. The boy hit him twice in the stomach.
This isn’t happening,
he thought
—I don’t believe this.
Somehow he got an arm free and pulled the acne-faced boy down. The three of them were on the ground cursing and punching. Then other voices were there, and two beefy men jerked them apart. Five or six people were on the sidewalk; a woman was screaming something. One of the men, wearing an undershirt, held the brother tightly by the scruff of the collar. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. The brother continued to hurl incoherent threats at Kahn.

When he was let go, Kahn picked up his cap, which had fallen into the gutter, and wiped his mouth. Blood came off on his sleeve, and he spat a bright red wad onto the ground.

“He’ll tell you,” Kahn said, jerking his thumb at the brother, who, still held tightly by one of the men, continued to rain curses and threats.

He got into his car, grateful that it started up right away. As he pulled off, he saw several people standing on the porch of Sally’s girlfriend’s house, but she was not among them. He thought he saw her inside the door, peering out, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t slow down for a second look.

23

A
brilliant tropical moon illuminated the heavens and the earth, reflecting the day’s sun, which long since had disappeared behind the chain of rugged mountains that lay before them. From its bivouac in some low foothills, Bravo Company could gaze up at the peaks which, bathed in the silver moonglow, appeared as black forbidden castles in the sky.

For six days following Kahn’s departure they had forged ahead, with Sharkey in command. The ordeal of the jungle had ended that morning, and the rest of the day they had worked their way through low, dried-out scrub brush to the new Battalion staging area where they would stay the night, then be thrown back into the breach.

For several days there had been savage fighting up and down the rows of mountains at the northeast end of the valley. The North Vietnamese division had miraculously slipped past the Mechanized Infantry regiment and was now firmly entrenched in the mountains. American units had emerged from the jungle in hot pursuit, but the battle was not going well. One group of North Vietnamese, possibly of regimental size, clung tenaciously to the high ground they could see from here, and seemed determined to fight it out. Several assaults, including an attempt by one of the Airborne companies, had been driven pell-mell down the slopes under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire.

Tomorrow it was Bravo Company’s turn. Officially they were “in reserve,” but they had been told to expect to attack behind Alpha and Charlie companies and secure the crest of a hill known as “The Fake” which was so named because it did not appear on any of their maps. Actually, The Fake was a series of five rolling, successively higher knolls, which was probably why it had been skipped over by the cartographers. But from the perspective of the men below, it was assuredly a difficult and dangerous obstacle.

Their first objective would be to move to the second knoll and relieve a company of the Airborne battalion which had been under heavy fire for a day and a half; then push on to the next knoll and the next. All during the night artillery from far-off batteries had been pounding The Fake and some mountains beyond. Since the staging area had been used by other outfits, there were already holes dug, and Bravo Company simply took them over, grateful they did not have to dig their own.

They lay there during the night, filthy and exhausted, nervously awaiting the dawn, a few sleeping fitfully when they could. Ammunition was running low and they were nearly out of grenades. Somewhere between “Nobody told me to do it” and “I ordered it done,” these items had been forgotten, and it was obvious they were going nowhere until they arrived. Some place in the rear, at this very moment, supply sergeants were yelling at beleaguered privates stacking up crates of these munitions for loading aboard the morning helicopters; but not knowing this for sure, Bravo Company sweated in its ratlike holes and prayed silently that the supplies might somehow fail to arrive.

Three days earlier, Kahn had been released from the field hospital with an improved but still tender hand, and he had been going back for treatment twice a day. In the morning he would board one of the Supply helicopters and rejoin the Company. Patch occasionally briefed him on the changing situation, but Kahn could still not picture it completely. At least, he thought, they were out of the jungle. He could not imagine anything as bad as that.

Alone in the officers’-club tent, he was nursing a beer when the first of the “regulars” began to wander in from their staff jobs. They bellied up to the plywood box set up as a bar, paying him no attention. Because he was clean, he thought, they probably assumed he was on a staff too. At the hospital, he had visited the shower tent twice and often three times a day. He had thrown away his ratty fatigues and been issued new ones; still, considering the dirt and grime that seemed impossible to remove from under his fingernails and the patches of skin that peeled off from his arms and neck, he wondered if he would ever be completely clean again.

During his six-day stay in the rear, Kahn had not been preoccupied with thoughts of the Company. On the contrary, he had managed to put it out of his mind, except when he attended the twice-daily briefings on the progress of Operation Western Movie.

He went to these briefings for lack of anything better to do, and would sit quietly near an aisle while the general and other luminaries listened to the clipped assessments of Staff men outlining the features of the campaign. No one had ever asked him for an opinion, and he had not volunteered any. Obviously, back here they were not interested in his opinion. Everything that was done was done on paper; or, when the situation demanded, over the field radio—the reports coming in out of a black void, orders going out into the void, none of it having much relation to reality.