Fields of Fire (26 page)

He turned to Dan. “Tell them, no can do. Tell them, maybe in a month or so.”

“No understand ‘month.’ ”

“Tell them to walk. And to take the dead babysans back to the ville with them.”

Dan told them. The group walked slowly back across the sand, crushed into numbed apathy. They carried two bamboo-pole stretchers. Hodges watched them carry the dead girl past him and noted, with fury, that her pajama bottoms were pulled down to her knees. He swore: Maye would pay.

Warner stood beside him, watching also. “She was such a pretty little thing.”

20
STAFF SERGEANT GILLILAND

Just outside Camp Pendleton, California. Joseph Frederick Gilliland, Staff Sergeant, USMC (Resigned), exited the Camp Gate, seabag up on his shoulder, and walked ten steps to a sign that read GIVE A MARINE A LIFT. He dropped his seabag next to the sign and pushed his piss-cutter hat low onto his eyebrows, sparing his forehead the agony of the sun. Then he allowed himself one last glance back inside the gate. The eyes grew molten and he shrugged resignedly, as if to shake the military nimbus from his shoulders, and he turned his back to it with finality, staring down the road.

So long, Mother Green. Hello, world. Mister Gilliland is back.

He had not even had a chance to put his thumb out when a car cut sharply off the road, just in front of him, and braked to a halt. A curtain of dust went into the wind and settled like snow over Gilliland's clean uniform and shined shoes and his seabag. He spit and wiped his mouth to clear the dust, then grabbed his seabag and went to the door of the car.

It was a new car, a Monte Carlo. Gilliland looked across the wide seat at a gruff-spoken, scowling old man who told him with two words to get in. He obliged the old man, throwing his seabag into the back and climbing into the front, next to him.

Gilliland had sweated freely into the crispness of his uniform while walking the Last Mile from the processing center to the gate. The car's air conditioner was clean and cool against him, and he opened his coat, waving it in his hands to bring the cold air inside his clothes.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it in his automatic, magic way, a C-ration match appearing from nowhere and needing no guidance from the eyes that remained on the driver, studying him. It was obvious to him that the man was an ex-Marine. He was crew-cutted, thick and stubborn-looking, with a fat squinched-up face that still scowled out at the road. He wore a tattoo that had faded into his arm so that it was unrecognizable, but Gilliland had an identical one on his own forearm, now fading also, so he knew what it was. Once it was a bulldog, fierce and colorful.

Gilliland completed his inspection, then nodded to the man. “Hey, thanks, Top.” All the old-timers became Top or Gunny, he remembered humorously.

The man nodded, apparently pleased to have been recognized as a former Marine. “Sure thing, Sarge. You a little old to be hitch-hiking, though, ain't you?”

Gilliland shrugged, then smiled winsomely. “You're never too old when you're broke. Besides, ain't you a little old to be picking up strange men?”

They laughed together, reaching a pugnacious rapport.

“Where you headed?”

“Pismo Beach.”

The old man grunted. “That's a damn long way.” He considered it. “I'm going up to Tustin. I'll let you off on the freeway there. I know a pretty good place.”

“Much obliged, Top.” Too old to hitchhike, Gilliland mused. A little old to be with three kids and no damn job, too. He began to doubt himself again, remembering the security and the good experiences of his ten years in the Marine Corps. Then he forced himself to shrug it off. Like old Snake used to say, don't do no good to think about it when you can't change it. I am a fucking civilian. Like it or not.

He consoled himself with thoughts of Pismo Beach. It had been his wife's idea. He had never been to Pismo Beach, but his wife had spent several vacations there as a girl. She had written him as soon as he had definitely decided not to reenlist, and informed him that she was leaving the children with her mother and meeting him at Pismo Beach, money or not, job or not. He smiled again, appreciating her more than ever. That woman knows me like she has a hot wire to the inside of my damn head.

She had written about the beach and the pier, where he could rent a pole and fish if he desired, and the blocks of arcades where he could play games and pinball machines. She had known, even more quickly than he himself, that if he went straight home it would be too much.

The old man had inspected his uniform. “Three Purple Hearts, huh? A man's gotta be some kind of crazy to go through that.” The old man was visibly impressed.

Gilliland smiled complacently. “Well, I ain't crazy, Top. Matter of fact, I just quit.”

“You quit?” The old man seemed stunned. “The whole Marine Corps? Nah. Ain't anybody quits as a Staff NCO.”

Gilliland chuckled, shrugging helplessly. Marine Corps logic, he thought. I'm crazy if I stay and I'm a disloyal son of a bitch if I leave. Can't win. “Well, I gave 'em two tours, Top. Two tours and three big Hearts. And what the hell did it prove? Nobody in this goddamn country gives a shit. I've had it.”

Top begrudged him his right to be a traitor. “Been pretty bad, huh? Hard to tell sometimes, from the papers. They're just so against it.”

“Yeah, it was a bad trip, as the troopies say. And it was worse this time than it was the last time. Can you believe that? Everything we put in there and it just gets worse. Kind of crazy.”

Gilliland looked out the window and watched the people in the other cars, trying to get used to being back. It was all he had thought about for months, the major topic of conversation in the bush. Life's goals reduced to ground zero: stay alive long enough to leave.

“You're pretty young to be a Staff Sergeant. My day it took twenty years to make Staff.”

“Yeah, but it meant something then. Hey, Top—” Gilliland grinned conspiratorially to the old man—“I wouldn't make a pimple on a good Staff Sergeant's ass!”

The old man liked that. It reminded him of a story. He told the story to Gilliland and Gilliland laughed and told the old man a story that he in turn was reminded of. Then they talked about Vietnam and World War Two and how scared they were and how many people they had seen killed. Gilliland liked the old man's honesty and he felt close to him, as if each had touched the devil and could talk about it because the other person had also touched him. The devil was on the other side of a grotesque culture warp and Gilliland realized for the first time that he was afraid to face people who had not experienced such things. He was afraid they would not understand him. He didn't know what civilians talked about.

They reached Tustin and the old man dropped Gilliland off at the ramp he had mentioned, and told him where to change freeways to get to Pismo Beach. When he pulled away Gilliland felt deserted, as if the umbilical cord had finally snapped. He buttoned up his coat and mashed the piss-cutter down over his eyes again, then balanced his seabag up on his shoulder, like a native girl carrying a water jug.

He walked up to the on-ramp sign and stood under it, feeling isolated and abandoned. The cars whizzed by and he studied the flashes of people that passed him. Some were driving to the beach. Some seemed to be working. Some appeared to be merely driving.

He began to feel deeply depressed. It hasn't even touched them, he mused darkly. All the broken bodies and the nights in the rain and nobody even gives enough of a shit to give me a damn ride.

Finally a pickup truck filled with lumber pulled up. There were two men in the cab. They allowed Gilliland to sit in the bed of the truck with the lumber. He straddled his seabag, on top of a mound of two-by-fours and two-by-eights and one-by-fours. Neither man had mentioned his uniform when they stopped. The edges of the lumber were splintery and uncomfortable. The wind messed his hair, and he was beginning to smell himself through his uniform coat.

She wouldn't mind. She had never minded. She had always taken him just as he came. She took him right off the roads in the early years, when his hands were dusty and black under the nails and his body was soaked with sweat and dirt. And she hadn't minded his tattoos. And she was not uncomfortable with a body scarred by mortar rounds, a smaller leg shot through and through by an AK. She could handle a stinking uniform.

The truck left him at Anaheim and he stood on the off-ramp, trying to remember the old man's instructions about how to get to Pismo. Finally he hefted the seabag to his shoulder and crossed the street to where the next on-ramp was. The seabag weighed on him, even when it was balanced properly. When he reached the entrance sign he dropped the bag and sat on it and lit another cigarette.

His uniform was heavy with sweat, and had lost its crispness. He pondered taking the coat off and loosening the tie, but something inside him would not let him do it. When I get to Pismo, he mused, I'll throw the damn thing away. But I wore it right for ten years, and I'm damned if I'll stop now. He snorted, examining the Staff Sergeant chevrons he had once been so proud of. The President's Own. Guardians of the Free. He remembered an old troopy jingle as he watched cars whiz by. Doing the impossible. For the ungrateful.

A bottle flew at him from a passing car and smashed next to his seabag. Somebody in the car yelled something at him. Fascist. Something like that. Gilliland lit a cigarette, pensive behind the gash of moustache and the scarred cheeks. The molten eyes watched car after car drive by, but after the bottle he did not follow any car with even a movement of his head.

They're scared of me. The uniform. He pondered the irony of that. Things don't make any goddamn sense at all. I beat my head against a wall for these fuckers and they're scared of me. Wasn't like this a few years ago, I'll say that. I never waited longer than a half a cigarette for a damn ride.

Fifteen more minutes. A yellow Volkswagen turned off the road and stopped for him. It was a convertible and the top was down. A black-haired, bearded man was driving. He was thin and his hair exploded from his head in every conceivable direction. A chubby, long-haired girl sat beside him. She was wearing white short-shorts and a red halter that showed most of her breasts from the top. Her nipples stood through the fabric. She had very large breasts.

The driver was spaced-out. He smiled ethereally to Gilliland. “Hey, man. Where you going?”

“Pismo Beach.”

The driver mumbled it to himself several times. “Pismo Beach. Pismo Beach.” He looked over to the girl. “Where the fuck is Pismo Beach?”

She had a protective way of handling the driver. She stroked his leg and said comfortably. “North. Way north, sweetheart.” Then she turned to Gilliland. “We can take you as far as Hollywood. If you think you want to go to Hollywood.”

Gilliland grinned winsomely, happy to have a ride. “Oh, yeah. I always did want to go to Hollywood.”

She giggled as if he were Bob Hope and he threw his seabag into the back seat and climbed in with it. He sat it on its end on the seat, like a fourth passenger, as they drove.

The car entered the freeway and the girl pulled out a large brandy snifter full of something crimson from under the dashboard. She took a long drink and laughed loudly, with her head back, and gave the snifter to the driver. He took a long drink, too. Then she turned around and offered the snifter to Gilliland.

“Want some? It's dynamite, man. Really dynamite.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, it's—just really dynamite.” She giggled uncontrollably.

“No, thanks. I got a long way to go today.”

“Well, it'll take you there.” She was still giggling.

“No, thanks. Really.” Gilliland was becoming uneasy.

She ignored him after that. She and the driver continued to drink out of the snifter. The driver then casually reached over and caressed the insides of her thighs, up very high. She laughed in her throat and moved against his hand. Gilliland could not see the driver's hand, but he caught facefuls of the girl's long hair as she undulated, and could tell that her nipples had become hard.

He was afraid. He stared tightly at the driver's face, ready to grab the wheel if the driver forgot what he was doing and lost control. This bastard wants to kill me for a damn finger-fuck, he thought grimly. The driver started to take his hand away and she held it there. Gilliland wondered briefly whether she was a nymphomaniac. Fucking Hollywood, he mused. The whole place is X-rated. He took a Marlboro out and the driver noticed and pulled his hand away from the girl and grinned. “Hey, man. Wanna do a number?”

Gilliland looked the man in the eyes, through the rearview mirror. “What's a number?” Is this guy queer, or what?

“You know, man. Don't you smoke dope? I thought all you dudes smoked dope. I heard the Nam was the best dope in the world, man.” It was the first hint that the driver was even aware Gilliland was back from Vietnam.

“I'm too old to smoke dope.” Gilliland looked uneasily into the mirror, upset by his entry into the Real World. He barked almost sullenly. “I'm twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-nine? No shit. You don't look that old.”

“I feel eighty.”

Hollywood was deliverance. Gilliland jumped from the back of the car and stood on the roadway and held his head for a full minute, relieved to have made it alive. He groaned as the Volkswagen screamed back onto the road, toward a different freeway. And that's what I been bleeding for? Why didn't somebody tell me?

It was midafternoon. He bought a hamburger at a Big Boy's restaurant and walked back to the freeway ramp. His back ached from the weight of the seabag. The weight of it reminded him of the bush. He knew that someday he would have to stop relating all his actions, every anguish and pain, to the bush. But he could not help it just then. The bush was still realer than Hollywood.

He pondered the miles he had walked in the bush, aching under the flak jacket and pack, feeling the heavy weight of the rifle in his hand and the cut of the pack in his shoulders. The only ones it touched were us. And I went twice so these bastards wouldn't have to go at all. The garish absurdity of Hollywood made him feel profoundly hostile. He felt used, irrelevant.

Cars and trucks passed on the ramp and he lit another cigarette, waiting. The trucks belched huge clouds of black smoke as they inched up the ramp's hill. The black settled over him. There was no wind and he felt slick and oily and dirty in his uniform. A car passed by, filled with kids in bathing suits. They stared at him as if he were Clarabelle the clown, dressed up in his monkey suit.

A large truck pulled over. The driver was hauling a trailerload of vegetables to Seattle. He told Gilliland he would take him all the way to Pismo Beach. Gilliland climbed into the cab, throwing his seabag before him and then pulling himself up with his hands, placing his feet into the metal stepping places.