Better Times Than These (40 page)

The Chaplain wrote eighteen letters of condolence at one sitting to the families of dead soldiers, making each one of them sound different.

The expression “Sorry about that” was repeated at least six thousand times between Reveille and Taps.

A Negro soldier named Carruthers was arrested by the MPs after he was found weeping hysterically at a table in a bar in the native village. A bloody six-inch switchblade knife was in his hand, and bystanders said he had used it to stab one of the girls who worked in the bar.

The field telephone in Kahn’s tent growled twice, and he groped out foggily for the handset.

“Is this Bravo Company, Four/Seven?” a voice asked.

“This is Lieutenant Kahn, yeah.”

The voice identified itself as that of a sergeant from the MP detachment. “We got a man down here name of Carruthers says he belongs to you.”

Kahn thought sleepily for a moment. Carruthers? Carruthers? “Ah, yeah . . . mortar platoon . . . big black guy?”

“Black as the ace of spades,” the voice said, “and he’s in a world of shit.”

“What’d he do?”

“Want me to read the charges?”

“Go ahead.”

“First off, he’s charged with assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a deadly weapon, assault with intent to do bodily harm, assault with intent to commit murder, mayhem, disfigurement and so forth; being present at an off-limits establishment and attacking a foreign national—and that ain’t all. They’re typing up some more stuff now.”

Kahn was beginning to come awake. “What in hell did he do?”

“Cut a bar girl with a knife.”

“Jesus, he must have worked her over bad.”

“Don’t know about that yet, Lieutenant; she took off and went to the doctor,” the sergeant said.

“What do you want me to do?” Kahn asked.

“Up to you, sir—he’s your man.”

“Will he keep till morning?”

“Oh, yes, sir—we got him cuffed to a CONEX container. He’s still pretty drunk and kind of wild. Might be good to let him calm down a bit.”

“Okay, Sergeant—thanks. I’ll come down first thing in the morning.” Kahn hung up the phone and lay back down on his cot. In the darkness the paperwork lay stacked before his eyes like a tall white chimney.

At fifteen minutes after seven in the morning the field telephone rang again. Kahn was shaving when someone called out his name.

“Lieutenant Kahn,” he said into the mouthpiece. From the other end a voice demanded gruffly, “Do you speak Nigger?”

“I beg your pardon?” Kahn said. He wasn’t sure if he had heard the question. It sounded like Colonel Patch.

“I asked if you speak Nigger,” the voice said again.

It was Patch. Kahn stumbled for a second. “Ah, well, sir, I uh . . . am from the South. I have spoken with a lot of Negroes.”

“Then get the hell down here and translate for me,” Patch said. “This is your problem too.” He hung up the phone.

When Kahn arrived in Patch’s headquarters, Carruthers was standing at attention in front of the colonel’s desk. Two MPs were waiting outside. Patch was scowling.

“Kahn,” Patch said, “this man has apparently done something terrible. I am trying to find out what his version is. I have asked him three times and I haven’t understood a goddamn word he says.”

Kahn looked at Carruthers. His eyes were bloodshot, and even though he was at attention he was blubbering quietly and trembling from head to toe.

“Carruthers,” Kahn said gently, “I want you to tell me very slowly what happened.”

“I already said that,” Patch grumbled in a low voice in the background.

Carruthers suddenly seemed to hyperventilate. He gasped a few times and then spewed out a glub of words, which sounded to Patch like this:

“Wellsuhlutent . . . Isndis bah wivsom gazn axed fadis gult’ daince wibme’n . . . ’n she said she ont daincewib no nigras’n she . . . a sayed ta me ta githail awayfrum er’n I’s clean’n my fangernells wibma naf’n it slipt’n cutuh . . . bud I dint meen’t isware . . .”

Carruthers’ big beefy hands were rolled into tight balls, and he began to choke and sob.

Patch glowered at Kahn. “Can you make any sense out of that?”

“I believe so, Colonel,” Kahn said, looking at Carruthers. “He says he and some other men were at a bar and he asked a girl—a bar girl—to dance with him and she refused because he’s black, and she told him to leave and—I’m not exactly sure about this part, but I believe he was cleaning his fingernails with a knife and it slipped and cut her but it was unintentional.” Somewhat composed, Carruthers nodded his head in agreement.

“That is amazing,” Patch exclaimed. “I ought to put you in for a medal.” He ordered Carruthers out of the room.

“Well,” Patch said, clearing his throat, “we’re going to have to do something about all this. These are pretty serious charges. I’ll have to appoint an investigating officer . . . Any suggestions?”

Kahn held his breath. “Uh, no, sir . . . but maybe we should look outside of Battalion . . . I mean, since the charges are serious . . .”

“Good idea,” Patch said solemnly. “Uh, how about that guy on the Old Man’s staff?—one of the aides—I’ve seen you with him in the officers’ club a few times.”

“Maybe you mean Lieutenant Holden.”

“Yeah—Holden, that’s it.” Patch smiled. He relished the idea of bogging that cocky guy down in a nightmare like this. “Get hold of him and tell him to report to me,” Patch said.

Kahn walked out light-headed. He couldn’t wait to see the expression on Holden’s face. It was like beating him at poker. Almost as good.

Holden looked at the girl across the table. He could see why Carruthers might have been taken with her. Her almond eyes were tantalizing. Her complexion was clear—unlike the faces of most of the women, who had ugly scars from smallpox. This one was different. She wore pretty clothes, and he bet she didn’t shit in the street like the others.

A cast extended from her wrist to her elbow and was set in a sling of silk cloth. She remained aloof while a small, smiling one-legged Vietnamese man tried to explain the consequences of what had happened to her.

“You see,” the man said in a thick but clear accent, “she no can work for long time—two, maybe three months. Regular customers—they not wait so long, so she lose ten, maybe twenty thousand piaster. Also, some maybe find new girl—not come back even after arm well—she lose from this too. She also have to buy new dress—other one ruined—all bloodstains.” The man seemed genuinely concerned.

“What does she want?” Holden asked.

“Here is list,” the man said, handing Holden a slip of paper. “She ask me to write for her. She say if Ahmercan soldier pay, she forget everything.”

Holden studied the list. The total for lost trade, future losses and the dress came to seventy-eight thousand piasters—about four hundred dollars. She asked no punitive damages.

“I see,” Holden said. “Uh . . . let me ask you this, Mr. . . . ah . . . ah . . .”

“Bac,” the man replied. “My name is Bac. I am her friend. I was soldier under Marshal Ky—until I lose leg.”

“Let me ask you, Mr. Bac, who was the lady’s doctor?”

Bac spoke to the girl and she gave a long answer.

“She say she go to doctor in Xuan Lap village, but, uh, he now gone to Qui Nhon. She not remember name—she say she was very upset.”

“Why did she go all the way to Xuan Lap? Why didn’t she go to the hospital at Tuy Than?” Holden said.

Bac spoke to the girl again.

“She say she not trust hospital at Tuy Than. Say they too busy with soldiers—not take good care of her.”

“And she says the soldier attacked her without warning—she did not say anything to him at all—is that correct?”

Bac turned to the girl.

“She say she did not speak to him. He stab her for no reason.”

“I see,” Holden said. He wrote in his notebook. “Well,” he said finally, “tell her, please, that I will get this information back to the commander of the soldier involved and I will let you know what the decision is.”

Bac relayed the message. The girl did not look at Holden, but she nodded her head and turned toward the bar.

“By the way,” Holden said, “could I see the dress—the one she was wearing?”

Bac translated.

“Ah . . . she say dress thrown away—no good now—too much blood.”

“Okay,” Holden said. “I’ll get back to you, and . . . ah, tell her I’m sorry about what happened.”

He walked into the dusty street, where his jeep was waiting. The odor of raw sewage assailed him. This whole little incident assailed him. His girl had assailed him. The Army assailed him. He figured Patch had done this just to twist the knife. A little bit more. What an asshole—even the general thought so, but even he couldn’t do anything. Patch had managed to marry himself up with the daughter of a three-star who was running things in Europe and would probably be running them over here pretty soon, so what the hell could Butterworth do but be nice to him?—though privately—and Holden knew this—privately the old man thought Patch was a little bit off his gourd, the way he carried on about the old-time Cavalry and Indian fighting and how it was all the same over here, just a hundred years misplaced; and the general had said once, to his Chief of Staff, noticing that Patch had allowed his blond moustache to droop a little longer, Custer style, that maybe it was Patch who was a hundred years misplaced.

“He’s a pretty damned good officer,” the general had said, and Holden had overheard this, “except he carries some of this Cavalry bunk a little too far,” and the Chief of Staff had thought for a moment and said, “Well, do you think he really believes it?” and the general had said, “I’m not sure—but I wouldn’t be surprised,” and the Chief of Staff had said, “That is not a good way to be,” and the general had agreed.

A dozen ragged children surrounded Holden’s jeep, begging and chattering, while the driver did his best to see that they did not steal anything, and when they drove off, bouncing through the potholed streets, Holden tried to keep his mind off Becky’s final letter—which was like trying to keep his mind off a toothache.

“Where to, Lieutenant?” the driver asked.

“Tuy Than—the Vietnamese hospital,” Holden said.

The driver looked across at him. “Tuy Than—that’s a tough ten clicks, sir. There’s a Condition Red on that road—they’ve had some mines . . .”

“Drive on,” Holden said.

“Sir, shouldn’t we better call the Engineers and see it’s been cleared?”

“Live dangerously,” he said.

If Botticelli had somehow missed out on painting Dante’s Inferno, he might have made up for it by drawing scenes from the hospital at Tuy Than. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians littered the corridors on every floor of the dingy three-story building, some near death, some in great pain, most staring blankly ahead. Hope was absent from their faces. There was an awful smell from an open-air incinerator into which arms, legs, livers, spleens and the other human parts shattered by the war were thrown at irregular intervals. Families of the wounded and sick squatted over their loved ones, ministering to them as best they could. Doctors and nurses dealt only with the most complicated treatments.

There was an administration desk of sorts, where Holden employed a combination of sign language and rough Vietnamese to persuade a harried clerk to search the records for a woman with a knife cut on her arm. He had a suspicion. If the cuts were serious, why would she have gone all the way to Xuan Lap? And this business of the disappearing doctor—and the missing dress . . . He was damned tired of deceiving women.

The clerk’s fingers stopped at a line of his ledger book, and he nodded his head and turned it for Holden to see. Holden asked to see the doctor and was led into a small room where a man was sprawled on an operating table, with the doctor working alone over him. The doctor stopped what he was doing and looked up when Holden walked in.

“Uh, excuse me,” Holden said, “I didn’t mean . . .”

“May I help you?” the doctor interrupted in perfect English. He put down a needle he was using to stitch up a tear in the man’s back.

“Ah, I . . . er . . . understand you treated a young woman . . . two days ago. She was cut on the arm,” Holden said uncomfortably. The man on the table groaned.

“I have treated a good many people in the last few days,” the doctor said stoically. “As you can see, we are quite busy here.”

“Yes, of course—but I thought you might remember her. She would have come late at night. The records say you treated her for knife wounds. You put her arm in a cast.”

The doctor thought momentarily. The man on the table groaned again and started to move, and the doctor pressed his shoulder back down.

“Oh, yes, I believe I remember now—a very pretty girl—just a small cut on her arm, but she asked me to make a cast. And why not?—it was a slow night.”

“Then the injury was not bad—it was superficial. Is that true?”

“Superficial—yes. Very minor. But she wanted a cast anyway. She said . . . it was something to do with her work—and, well, she was very persuasive and
very
pretty.” The doctor smiled.

“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

“Of course,” the doctor said.

“Thank you very much,” Holden said. “You will be here if I need to talk to you again?”

The doctor picked up the needle and returned to the man on the table. “I will probably die here,” he said.

Holden walked outside into the sunlight, and it felt good on his arms and face and the back of his neck. At least, she wasn’t going to get away with it, even if . . . even if Becky . . . God! she could always sense things, and when they were together she would say she could feel it when he was in pain or feeling low, hundreds of miles away . . . He thought he might reach her . . . maybe she could feel it now . . . and he thought very hard, hoping that the waves might reach her through all the distance and she would know and feel it back—how much he loved her.

But he didn’t feel anything back, as the jeep rocked crazily down the road back to base camp, yet he kept on thinking, deeper and deeper, sucking down into his brain as hard as he possibly could . . . Please, Becky, please, baby, please . . .

A week later they received orders to move out. No one was particularly surprised, because for days rumors had been circulating that something was up—and only a few men were genuinely upset, because the Mickey Mouse at Monkey Mountain had been driving them all nuts. They had been restricted again after the Carruthers incident. From sunup to sundown they toiled at a number of disagreeable chores, mostly in the capacity of common laborers—loading and unloading, digging, performing maintenance and upkeep—all in the withering heat, with few breaks and less compassion.