Fields of Fire (24 page)

Three artillery rounds impacted casually in the tree-line. H and Is. Behind him, the 60-millimeter mortar section fired five more in the vicinity of the high dike. Then there were quiet, elongated moments spent sitting under total blackness, as if he were locked inside a strangely odorous, mosquito-infested closet. So alone, so lonely like this.

And at night like this they visited him, those old ghosts who had come alive each Sunday in his grandma's kitchen. He had joined them. He was one of them. They descended from the heavens, or maybe from the hollows of his memory, and they were real. He commiserated with them. Sometimes they were so close he felt the swishes of their passing. They tickled his neck. They brushed his arms. They ached inside his own misery.

He stared into the blackness, dragging on his cigarette, communicating with them. All my life I've waited for this, he mused. Now I've joined you and your losses are a strength to me. I ache and yet I know that Alec retched with pain on the dust road that went to Corinth. I breathe the dust and yet I know that Grandpa breathed the gas that made a hero out of Pershing. I flinch when bullets tear the air in angry rents and yet I know that Father, and three farmer boys at Pickett's Charge, felt a cutting edge that dropped them dead. How can I be bitter? You are my strength, you ghosts.

And I have learned those things, those esoteric skills and knowledges, that mark me as one of you. That loose-boweled piles of shit, too much shit from overeating, plopped randomly around the outer dikes of a ville, mean trouble. Catching the aroma, seeing the groupings, watching flies dance lazily, rejoicing in their latest fetid morsel that bends the low grass in a muddy glob like a bomb of cow dung. Trouble.

I can tell from the crack of a rifle shot the type of weapon fired and what direction the bullet is traveling. I can listen to a mortar pop and know its size, how far away it is. I know instinctively when I should prep a tree-line with artillery before I move into it. I know which draws and fields should be crossed on line, which should be assaulted, and which are safe to cross in column. I know where to place my men when we stop and form a perimeter. I can shoot a rifle and throw a grenade and direct air and artillery onto any target, under any circumstances. I can dress any type of wound, I have dressed all types of wounds, watered protruding intestines with my canteen to keep them from cracking under sunbake, patched sucking chests with plastic, tied off stumps with field-expedient tourniquets. I can call in medevac helicopters, talk them, cajole them, dare them into any zone.

I do these things, experience these things, repeatedly, daily. Their terrors and miseries are so compelling, and yet so regular, that I have ascended to a high emotion that is nonetheless a crusted numbness. I am an automaton, bent on survival, agent and prisoner of my misery. How terribly exciting.

And how, to what purpose, will these skills serve me when this madness ends? What lies on the other side of all this? It frightens me. I haven't thought about it. I haven't prepared for it. I am so good, so ready for these things that were my birthright. I do not enjoy them. I know they have warped me. But it will be so hard to deal with a life empty of them.

And there are the daily sufferings. You ghosts have known them, but who else? I can sleep in the rain, wrapped inside my poncho, listening to the drops beat on the rubber like small explosions, then feeling the water pour in rivulets inside my poncho, soaking me as I lie in the mud. I can live in the dirt, sit and lie and sleep in the dirt, it is my chair and my bed, my floor and my walls, this clay. And like all of you, I have endured diarrhea as only an animal should endure it, squatting a yard off a trail and relieving myself unceremoniously, naturally, animally. Deprivations of food. Festering, open sores. Worms. Heat. Aching crotch that nags for fulfillment, any emptying hole that will relieve it.

Who appreciates my sufferings? Who do I suffer for?

The mortar fired behind him, five more rounds at the high dike, and the ghosts were gone. Hodges stood slowly and dusted off his trousers, carrying the radio with him as he began to check lines.

He hoped that Snake would be awake. He felt like shooting the shit.

18

Staff Sergeant Gilliland broke through the scraggly hedgerow from the landing zone, located the platoon command post, and walked quickly across a potato patch toward it, leaving an ashen, gray-powder wake behind each step. He ambled up behind Hodges, who sat in the dirt, dressed only in tiger shorts, writing a letter. Nearby, a transistor radio blared toward a baking sky. Gilliland swung his pack cavalierly in front of Hodges, dropping it. Hodges looked up and noticed an uncharacteristic grin lighting the scarred face, even lifting the sagging moustache.

“Well, kiss my ass. What's happening, Sarge? Didn't expect to see you back out here!”

Gilliland continued to smile, as if he had found some inner peace, some odd logic that made it all mean something. “Well, I won't be back here for very long, Lieutenant.”

“Gonna be a Motor-T jock, huh?”

Still the smile. “No sir, I'm gonna be a fucking civilian.”

Hodges started, almost as if slapped. “Come on, Sarge. Say it isn't so.”

Gilliland folded his arms, sitting across from Hodges, the murky blue memory of a Devil Dog tattoo showing underneath the tan of one forearm. His molten eyes expertly examined this latest perimeter, noting distances between fighting holes, locations of machine guns, pieces of prominent terrain. “That's a hell of a good job on the perimeter, Lieutenant. We got an OP out there?”

“OP in the trees. I been bringing it back to an LP near that dike at night.”

“Good idea. That dike is high enough to be a good B-40 pos. Know what I mean?”

Hodges grinned slightly, admiring Gilliland's bush sense. “Oh, it sure as hell was, Sarge. Last night. Didn't even have the LP out yet. Boom, boom. Two B-40s, right behind the dike.”

Gilliland nodded sagely. “Figures. Gun in the tree-line?”

“One mortar tube. Small arms. It wasn't much. Hey, Sarge. Quit putting me off. You ain't really gonna be a civilian, now are you?”

“Oh, yeah, Lieutenant. It ain't no bullshit. Couple weeks I'm gonna be Mister Gilliland.” Gilliland grinned frivolously. “Wanna buy a used car? How about some insurance?”

Hodges shook his head unbelievingly. “Sarge, you're crazy, man. You got ten years. Ten more, you can retire. Half-pay. All that shit.” He scrutinized Gilliland, who still gazed unconcernedly around the perimeter. “Tell me, Sarge. Do you have medical insurance for your kids?”

“Nope. Course not. Marine Corps takes care of that.”

“Do you have a—have you ever—do you think you're gonna get a job that'll compare, where you won't have to start at the bottom?”

Gilliland shrugged, unconcerned. “Maybe. Maybe not. I had reserve duty a couple years ago, and everybody kept telling me, you know, if I get out come on back and work. But Lieutenant, you ain't even asking the right questions, anyway.” For a moment Gilliland looked searchingly at Hodges, then he regained his sardonic front.

“It ain't what's waiting for me on the outside. Not any more. Nope. It's the way things have changed.” A cigarette appeared magically between his thin, now-somber lips. “It just doesn't mean anything to be a Marine anymore, Lieutenant. Vietnam did that.”

Hodges nodded, grinning wryly, remembering Sergeant Austin's comments about Vietnam Marines. “You mean all the discipline is gone, all the spit and polish, blind obedience—”

Gilliland cut him off. “Nah. Sir, we got discipline. Only time the discipline disappears is when a man don't rate it anyway. It's one thing to ask for blind obedience when you tell a man to shine his shoes in a damn barracks. It's a whole new thing to ask for it when a man is gonna stand up and take a round between his eyes. Listen, sir. I was over here in ’65, when the Old Corps invaded the Nam, know what I mean? Before the draft kicked in, when we had what they called ‘true volunteers.’ Well, we couldn't do what these kids can do. I mean it. We had a lot of hot shits on the parade field, and a lot of motivated sons of bitches, but there wasn't anybody in a company who knew how to fight a goddamn war! Couple gunnies, maybe, who remembered something about the Frozen Chosin in the Freezing Season. But that was it.

“So we did dumb-ass things. We hung grenades from our pockets by the spoons, like John Wayne, and then lost 'em in the dark because they fell off. We straightened the pins on 'em for quick action and then got so excited that we'd pick the grenades up by the pin and it would pull loose and we blew each other up. Stupid stuff.” Gilliland laughed sardonically, remembering. “One time we started a brushfire, trying to burn some gooks out of a treeline, and the wind shifted and the fire came back around and burned us out of ours! The gooks had a field day on us! Oh, yeah. Stupid stuff. But then we learned. And now each kid that comes in is surrounded by people who know. Yup. They're all better grunts for it. And these kids. They are truly crazy, Lieutenant. They'll do things I never dreamed of doing.”

Phony and Wild Man shambled by, waving absently to Hodges and Gilliland. Wild Man teased the Sergeant. “What you doing back here, Sarge? Uh huh. Just can't stay away.”

Hodges laughed with them. He lit a cigarette. “Well, you're right about that much. They are crazy.”

Gilliland watched the thin, retreating frames, amused. “Ah, they're pretty damn good. A little salty, maybe. But a man has to be a sucker to keep doing this. You don't go through this just for the fun of it. I don't want any more of it, Lieutenant. I've just had it with Vietnam. Call me flaky. Call me what you want. I've had it.”

He noted Hodges’ apparent perplexity. “I'll tell you a little story, maybe it'll make sense. When I came back from Vietnam the first time I went to the Reserve Training Center, like I said. It wasn't really big over here yet. We all knew it would get bigger, though, and we figured Johnson would call up the Reserves. We kept telling all the Weekend Warriors that they'd better get their shit in one bag, because they were going to war. Like Korea. And it got bigger, but Johnson didn't have the balls to call up the Reserves. Reserves can vote. And they drive airplanes for United. And they run businesses. Instead, Johnson just made a bigger draft, filled it with loopholes, and went after certain groups of kids.”

“You said yourself the kids were great.”

“It ain't what happens here that's important. It's what's happening back there. Shit, Lieutenant, you'd hardly know there was a war on. It's in the papers, and college kids run around screaming about it instead of doing panty raids or whatever they were running around doing before, but that's it. Airplane drivers still drive their airplanes. Businessmen still run their businesses. College kids still go to college. It's like nothing really happened, except to other people. It isn't touching anybody except us. It makes me sick, Lieutenant.”

Gilliland moodily lit another cigarette. “We been abandoned, Lieutenant. We been kicked off the edge of the goddamn cliff. They don't know how to fight it, and they don't know how to stop fighting it. And back home it's too complicated, so they forget about it and do their rooting at football games. Well, fuck 'em. They ain't worth dying for.”

“We do all right, Sarge. Fighting, I mean. The Corps.”

“Don't get me wrong, Lieutenant. I love this green motherfucker. I wish you could have seen me the day I put on my staff NCO stripes. I never been prouder of anything in my whole goddamn life. I mean that. I thought, ‘Now I'm really somebody. I'm a staff NCO in the United States Marine Corps, the President's Own, guardians of this country.’ Now I wear my uniform back home and they look at me like I'm an animal. Wait till you go home. You'll put on all those ribbons—I know you, Lieutenant, you'll be the first sucker off that plane to run and buy 'em—and somebody's gonna spit on you for it. No bullshit. It happened to me in the L.A. Airport on the way back here. Some broad. I'm coming back to Viet—fucking—Nam because I'm a professional dedicated to protecting her prissy, babied way of life and she spits at me. Oh, I've had it. Let her boyfriend get drafted and come over here to take my place. Except he's probably found a way to bag it.”

Hodges pondered Gilliland's tirade. He spoke flatly, with no attempt to prod the Sergeant. “Sergeant Major wouldn't let you be a Motor Transport jock, huh?”

The question seemed to give Gilliland momentum for another diatribe. “Called me a coward! Three Purple Hearts I got and that fat potato looked me square in the face and called me a coward!”

“Did you roll a frag under his desk when you left?”

Gilliland grinned excitedly, remembering. “Not quite. But I did the man a number, Lieutenant. I truly did. First I yanked his chain. I said, ‘Sergeant Major, I been looking bullets straight in the eye for fifteen goddamn months all told, watching people die, digging holes to shit.’ He says, ‘War is hell, Gilliland.’ I says, ‘Yeah, but combat's a bitch. You wouldn't know that. How many cat holes have you dug since you been here?’ He says, ‘I dug mine in Korea.’ I says, ‘I didn't know you needed to dig any at Division headquarters in Korea in 1953.’ Then I says, ‘Sergeant Major, it looks to me like, if anybody's got anything to prove to anybody else about being a coward or not, you got something to show me.’ He says, ‘Gilliland, get the fuck out of my office.’ ”

Hodges indulged him. “Get so-o-ome, Sergeant Gilliland.”

“That ain't all. Then I did the second thing. I says, ‘Sergeant Major, I'm leaving. But first I want my ration.’ He says, ‘What the hell you talking about?’ I says, ‘Well, I been in the bush for something like three months this time around, and I ain't had my beer and soda ration. That makes ninety beers and ninety sodas you owe me.’ He goes white as a turnip and he squints, threatening me like he's a mafioso. Says, ‘I don't know what you mean.’ I says, ‘O.K., forget it. I'm gonna request mast to my Colonel and ask him about it.’ You know the Colonel and his staff ain't been missing their beer and soda, Lieutenant. Finally he does a truly stupid thing. He walks outside his hootch and unlocks a big Conex Box—you know, those big trash bins? He reaches in and gives me three cases of beer, Lieutenant, like he was dispensing manna from heaven. Three cases. That Conex Box was full!”

“Why the hell would he do a thing like that?”

Gilliland grinned ironically. “Well, I guess he figured cowards could be bought off because they don't have the balls to turn anybody in.” Then he shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe he figures he's stronger than the Colonel, that he can weasel his way out of it even if I do blow the whistle.”

“Did you take the beer?”

Gilliland laughed. “You bet your ass, Lieutenant!” He gestured across the potato patch, toward the landing zone. “Brought it with me. We can send a working party up to get it in a minute. But that ain't the best part.” Gilliland continued to smile. “He gives me the beer, like he's making some kind of payoff. I'da asked him for the whole ration for the company, to start sending it out like he's supposed to instead of selling it to rear pogues, but I woulda tipped my hand. I thanked him, then I went straight over to Regimental Legal and turned his fat ass in.”

Gilliland beamed behind the sagging moustache. “They're gonna investigate him!”

Goodrich worked the C-ration can opener around the tin. It's common sense, he thought. Basic biology. Or chemistry. Hell, I forget which. But flies like sugar and shit.

The lid was off. Blackberry jam shone back at him from inside the tin. A fly immediately buzzed in and landed on it. He gloated. Goodrich, you're a genius. In a day or two you're going to be in the rear, getting treatments at the Battalion Aid Station.

He took the jam and rubbed some into a gook sore on his stomach, filling the ulcerous hole, and also treated two on one of his arms. He beamed. Com-pli-cations. Heavy. Then he lay back, his shirt off, and decided to take a nap.

By the time I wake up, mused Goodrich, I'm going to be a very sick man. I hope.

Cornbread, new to the squad, sat in the fighting hole, cleaning his M-16. He had watched Goodrich curiously during the whole process. “What you doin’, Senator? You crazy?”

“Crazy? Hell. I'm a genius, man. It's the smartest thing I've done in at least a year.”

“How you goan’ git that outa the hole? I wouldn't rub no jelly in my sore. You crazy.”

“The flies are gonna eat it up, see? Maybe lay eggs in it. In a day or two my gook sores are gonna be a mess, man. A real mess.”

“That's right.”

“And I'm gonna get a vacation in the rear. Maybe even Da Nang.”

Goodrich rolled over and went to sleep, feeling exuberant. In twenty minutes he woke up, his stomach on fire. The gook sore was exploding. He looked down and discovered he had rolled over near an anthill. There were a hundred ants working feverishly to move their anthill into his gook sore.

He swiped at them. A dozen of them stung him, buried in the jam. Cornbread howled with glee. Goodrich had to wipe the ants out with his skivvy shirt.

The flies loved the jam on his skivvy shirt.

TIME, like an ever-flowing stream, bears all its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day…

It echoed on the church walls in a piece of Hodges’ memory, some old hymn from a saner portion of his past. Time was everything. Time kept them there, and time would let them leave. They were doing time, marking off the days, keeping track religiously of exactly how long it would be before thirteen months were up and the insanity ended. And yet the lulls and frenzies of the bush made it a timeless world. Each day counted as one when a man marked it off on his calendar, but a day could be a week, an hour could be a month. An afternoon spent under fire when a patrol was caught in an open paddy would age them all a year, tighten their faces until the eyeballs bulged, make them whine and leave them weak, yet when the patrol came back to the company perimeter it had been a year for them but only an afternoon for the ones who had not been on the patrol. And when the cruel sun fell below the western mountains, it still had only been a day. All that for a stinking day.

It was the most important part. Time was Vietnam. But it became so immeasurable in a man's emotions, some days so long and some so short, that it was irrelevant, except for what it did to the face of a calendar.