The Phantom Blooper (3 page)

"What's your name there, dipshit?"

"Private Owens, sir." He steps forward. I shove him back.

"Been in-country long, hog?"

"All week, sir."

I turn away. I don't laugh. After a few cadence counts, when I trust myself, I do an about-face.

"The correct answer to that question is 'all fucking day.' And stow the Parris Island 'sir' shit, lard ass. Shut your skuzzy mouth, fat body, and listen up. I am going to give you the straight skinny, because you are the biggest shitbird on the planet. Don't
even
play pocket pool when you're supposed to be pulling bunker guard in my area. You
will
police up your act and get squared away, most ricky-tick, or you are going to have your health record turned into a fuck story. In Viet Nam nice guys do not finish at all and monsters live forever. You got to bring ass to get ass. A few weeks ago you were the hot-rod king of some hillbilly high school, stumbling around in front of all the girls and stepping on your dick, but be advised that Viet Nam will be the education you never got in school. You ain't even born yet, sweet pea. Your job is to stand around and stop the bullet that might hit someone of importance. Before the sun comes up, prive, you could be just one more tagged and bagged pile of nonviewable remains. If you're lucky, you'll only get killed."

The New Guy looks at me as though I've slapped him, but does not reply.

I say, "We are teenaged Quasimodos for the bells of hell and we are as happy as pigs in shit because killing is our business and business is good. The Commandant of the Marine Corps has ordered you to Khe Sanh to get yourself some trigger time and pick up a few sea stories. But you are not
even
here to win the D-F-M, the Dumb Fucker's Medal. The only virtue of the stupid is that they don't live long. The Lord giveth and the M-79 taketh away. There it is. Welcome to the world of zero slack."

The New Guy swats away a whining mosquito, looks at his boots, says sweetly, hating my guts, "Aye-aye, sir."

I don't say anything. I wait. I wait until the New Guy looks up, looks at me. He snaps to attention, a ramrod up his ass, his chin tucked in. "Yes, SIR!"

I stroll down the muddy catwalk of rope-handled ammo crates. I pick up a short black cardboard cylinder from the firing parapet. I tear off black adhesive tape from around the cardboard cylinder until it breaks open. An olive-drab egg drops into my hand, hard, heavy, and cold. There is tape around the spoon; I tear it off.

I say, "I know you've seen all of John Wayne's war movies. You probably think you are in Hollywood now and that this is your audition. In the last reel of this movie I'm supposed to turn out to be a sentimental slob with a heart of gold. But you're just another fucking New Guy and you're too dumb to do anything but draw fire. You don't mean shit to me. You're just one more nameless regulation-issue goggle-eyed human fuckup. I've seen a lot of ol' boys come and go. It's my job to keep your candy ass serviceable. I'm the most squared-away buck private in this green machine lash-up, and I
will
do my job."

I hold down the spoon on the grenade with a thumb and I hook my other thumb into the pull ring. I jerk out the cotter pin. I put the pull ring into my pocket.

The New Guy is staring at the grenade. He thinks now that maybe I'm a little
dien cai dau
--"crazy." He tires to move away but I punch him in the chest with the frag and I say, "Take it, New Guy, or I
will
get crazy on you. Do it
now
."

Awkward, stiff, and scared shitless, the New Guy touches the grenade with his fingertips to see if it's hot. His trembling fingers get a grip on the spoon. I let him breathe his bad breathe into my face until I'm sure he's got control of the spoon, then I let go.

The New Guys holds the grenade out at arm's length, as though that will help if it goes off. He can't take his eyes off of it.

I say, "Now, if you need gear, do not go to supply. They sell all of the good stuff on the black market. Supply will not issue you any gear, but they might sell you some. No, what you do is you wait until you hear an inbound medevac chopper or until somebody says that some dumb grunt has been hit by incoming. They you double-time over to Charlie Med. Outside of Charlie Med there will be a pile of gear the corpsmen will have stripped off of the dying grunt. While the doctors cut the guy up, you steal his gear.

"After that, the first thing you need to know is to always tap a fresh magazine of bullets on your helmet in case it's been in your bandolier long enough to freeze up due to spring fatigue. The second thing you need to know is this: don't
even
piss in my bunker. You need to pee, you just tie it in a knot. And the last piece of skinny I've got for you, New Guy, is this: don't
ever
put a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound."

The New Guy nods, tries to talk, tries to pull some air down and cough some words up at the same time. "The pin..." He swallows. "Do you
want
me to be killed?"

I turn to go. I shrug. "Somebody's got to get killed. It might as well be you. I'm not training you to keep you from getting killed. I'm training you so you don't get
me
killed."

I look down at the wristwatch hanging from the buttonhole of the breast pocket of my utility jacket. I say to the New Guy, "I
will
inspect this position again in two hours, you gutless little pissant. You will not
even
fall asleep. When I give you the word you
will
return my personal hand grenade in a serviceable condition. You will not
even
allow my personal hand grenade to blow itself up and hurt itself. You will not
even
mess up my favorite bunker with horrible remains of your disgusting fat body."

The New Guy swallows, nods. "Aye-aye, sir." He's really scared shitless now. He's scared of me, scared of the frag, scared of everything and everybody on the planet.

I say, "When the Phantom Blooper comes, do not work the 60. Pop a frag. Or call in for artillery support. Pop frags all over the area if you want to, many, many of them. When you're standing lines you frag first and forget about asking the questions. Keep your shit wired tight at all times. But do not work the 60. The tracers in the 60 will give away your position."

But the New Guy is not listening. He's distracted.

Down in the wire a squad of Marines is coming in off a night ambush. Somebody pops a star cluster flare and five glowing green balls of beautiful fireworks swoosh up and sparkle down. A bone-weary squad leader issues a military order: "Hippity hop, mob stop."

I say, "What is your major malfunction, numbnuts? How long will it take me to forget
your
name?" Without warning I get a firm grip on the New Guy's Adam's apple and I slam him hard into the bunker wall. Most of the air is knocked out of him. I choke out what's left.

I get right up into the New Guy's face. "I can't hear you, you spineless piece of lowlife. Are you going to cry? Go ahead--squirt me a few. You better sound off like you got a pair, sweetheart, or I will personally unscrew your head and shit in your shoulders!"

His face red, Private Owens tries to speak. His eyes are bulging out and he's crying. He can't breathe. His eyes lock on me, the eyes of a rat in a trap. I stand by to make my hat most ricky-tick. The New Guy looks like he's just about ready to faint and drop the grenade.

"AYE-AYE, SIR!" he screams, crazy, desperate. He shoves me back. He makes his free hand into a fist and hits me in the face. His eyes are turning to the dark side now; he sees himself in my face as though in a mirror. He hits me again, harder. We're relating now, we're communicating. Violence: the international language. The New Guy glares at me with pure uncut hatred in his puffy red eyes.

The New Guy shoves me back again, sneering at me now, daring me to stop him, inviting me to get in his way, meaning it, not afraid now, not caring what I might do, a little crazy now, nothing to lose now, nothing standing between him and that one short step into the Beyond. Nothing but me.

"I'll kill you," he says, and cocks his arm, threatening me with the frag. "I'll kill you," he says, and I believe him, because, finally, the New Guy has become a very dangerous person.

I can't keep the smile off my face, but I dot try to make it look like contempt. "Carry on, Private Owens," I say, and I let him go.

I do an abrupt about-face and dittybop down the catwalk. I pause. I dig the pull ring from the hand grenade out of my pocket. I flip the pull ring across the bunker to Private Owens, who actually catches it.

"Don't play with it anymore tonight, Private Owens."

Private Owens nods, looking glum and totally confused. He brings the hand grenade up to the tip of his nose and picks at the firing mechanism with a fingernail, then pokes around with the cotter pin on the pull ring, trying to reinsert it into the grenade.

"Carry on," I say, aiming a forefinger between his eyes. "
After
I'm gone."

Private Owens nods, stands still, and waits, a human Marine monument to an ignorance hard as iron.

When you're a New Guy, and the first shell falls, you're a man, but confused. When the second shell falls, you're still a man, although you're probably soiling your underwear. By the time the third shell falls, fear, like a big black rat, has gnawed clean through your nerves. When the third shell falls, you, the New Guy, like a mindless, terrified rodent, are digging a hole to hide in.

You've got to keep New Guys alive until they realize that we're not going to win this war, which usually takes about a week.

I've walked twenty meters away from the guard bunker when there's the hard
thump
of an explosion to my rear.

For one second I think:
tough titty, grease one New Guy
.

But Private Owens has not blown himself up with personal hand grenade.

Another shell
booms
in. Then another.

Incoming.

"INCOMING! INCOMING!" Teenaged voices echo the word.

Incoming
means jagged steel screaming through the air, sizzling hot and invisible, hissing and smoking and searching for your face.

An old deuce-and-a-half horn nailed to a dead tree bleats; too late. Somebody didn't get the word. Most days we get ten or twelve seconds' warning in which to cover our asses. Marine forward observers on Hill 881 South see muzzle flashes on Co Roc ridge across the Laotian border and radio in, "Arty, arty, Co Roc."

BOOM.

I double-time in the mud, mumbling an obscene grunt bunker-prayer. I'm just about read to bend over and kiss my ass goodbye when I stumble into a flagpole bearing a tattered American flag and a crudely stenciled sing: ALAMO HILTON.

I dive in headfirst. Someone says, "Hey, you fucking asshole, get your goddamn fucking elbows out of my fucking balls."

The air inside the bunker is hot and thick. The bunker stinks of sweat, piss, shit, rotting feet, wet canvas, vomit, beer, C-ration farts, mosquito repellent, and mildewed skivvies. But then since I became a night person I've had the body odor of a ghoul, so I can't complain.

It's black in the bunker; you can't see your hand in front of your face.

Cooing over Armed Forces Radio, the sweetest little blond wet dream this side of heaven: "Hi, love. This is Chris Noel. Welcome to a date with Chris. Now here's a song for First Platoon, Deadly Delta, at Khe Sanh, County Joe and the Fish with 'I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag.'"

The men in the bunker listen to the song in silence until the chorus, then every man abruptly bursts out singing as hard and as loud as he possibly can:

And it's one-two-three what are we fighting for?

Don't ask me--I don't give a damn

The next stop is Viet Nam

And it's five-six-seven open up the pearly gates

Well, there ain't no use to wonder why

Whoopee, we're all gonna die.

After the song ends someone turns down the radio and someone says, "We need us a jarhead song. The Green Beanies have got their own song, and they ain't shit. What we need is a Marine song. A song for grunts."

BOOM
. "Fuck this incoming," someone says, then laughs.

"Yeah. Yeah. That could be the title!"

A chorus of "fucking As" and everybody laughs.

Outside, a hard rain falling, enemy shells, 147 pounds each, heavier than the men who are firing them. First, a long, long whistle, then the rush of air of a falling freight car, then
boom
. The deck shivers, and hot shrapnel sings its mean little song. Most of the shells just bang in and miss. They move the garbage around a little bit and scare everybody and then they turn into paper and somebody puts them into history books.

Listening is a waste of time because you never near the shell that hits you; it just hits you and you're gone.

Anyway, we're thinking, it's a known fact that incoming artillery shells always kill somebody else. Every single time we've been shelled, the shells have killed somebody else. Not once have the shells killed us, not even one time. That's a proven scientific fact. No shit.

So we ignore the incoming, without forgetting that while our bunkers can take a hit from a gook mortar, a direct hit from one of those high-velocity 152 mike-mike flying demolition balls will knock this bunker right off of the face of the earth. Even the dud shells go four feet into the ground.

What's left of First Platoon's black street bloods hunker down in total darkness smoking Black Elephant marijuana and giggling like schoolgirls and telling sea stories. I smoke my share of the dope and somebody else's share.

"Listen up," I say, doing my famous impression of the voice of John Wayne. "This is no shit, pilgrim. The true story of the War for Southern Independence. So your Yankee auto workers up in Motor City were all heads, right? And all of the good marijuana plantations were in the Deep South."