Fallen Angels (9 page)

I didn’t believe it, then.

“They got guys on an island out in the middle of the Pacific that can never go home again.”

I didn’t believe that, either.

“And if that don’t get you, the stuff they spray on the trees will eat your liver up.”

I was beginning to believe it all as I lay on the end of the bunk.

It was almost 0500, and the company was usually up and around at 0600. I would go on sick call then.

0510. I could hardly stand up I had so much pain. I went to the latrine. I crapped out most of my insides. The cramps were worse. When I got back to the bunk, my hands were shaking.

0520. I crapped out the rest of my insides. I was getting nauseous from the stink. I was sweating.

0541. I tried to hold off, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have anything left to crap out so I just crapped out water.

0555. Again. I stopped off at Jamal’s hooch and got the Kleenex.

0630. Again. This time Peewee came with me to the john. He sat on the john next to me and asked me if I thought Jimi Hendrix was for real. I said I thought he was okay.

“You know, I can play some blues,” Peewee said.

“You can?”

“I ain’t as good as Jimi Hendrix,” he said, “but he play them citified blues, anyway. I’m thinking about writing a blues number for you. I’m gonna call it “The Serious Stink Blues.”

“Peewee, go die.”

0800. The squad went on patrol. Jamal came by and I asked him if he had any softer Kleenex. He told me not to bother wiping.

I was still weak the next day, but getting around. At any rate I wasn’t in the bathroom every five minutes. Jamal gave me potassium tablets. There was a lot of excitement in the camp. A sergeant from Charlie Company refused to take his squad out on patrol. He said the war would be over as soon as the truce went into effect, and he didn’t want to be the last guy to die in Nam. I stayed in bed all day and read a supply of Ebonys that Peewee got for me. Everybody was talking about the possibility of a truce before the holidays were over.

Johnson and Walowick got into a fight. Johnson wanted something from Walowick, I think it was a cleaning patch, and called Walowick a farm boy. Walowick threw Johnson the patch and called Johnson a cootie.

“What you call me?” That’s what it sounded like Johnson was saying as he flew across the room.

He hit Walowick and sent him reeling across the floor. Then it was on. I had never seen human beings hit each other so hard. Everybody else in the hooch was trying to get out of it. There was blood everywhere. I got out just behind Peewee, and we both stumbled over Lieutenant Carroll trying to get in.

I thought about going back in to help Lieutenant Carroll stop the fight, but by the time I turned around, Lieutenant Carroll came hurtling through the doors. Then Johnson came out with Walowick around his middle. They went about three meters, hit a patch of mud, and went sliding into some crates of ammo. It took six guys to break them up.

Okay, the worst part of the fight was that Lieutenant Carroll got a broken tooth. His back tooth on the left side split right down the middle. He showed all of us. Also, it bled around the bottom and his jaw was swollen. Johnson and Walowick got called to the company commander’s office. Then I got called as a witness.

“Tell im what he called me,” Johnson said. “Tell im.”

“Before you open your mouth, Private,” Captain Stewart was chewing on the end of his cigar, “make sure you know what you’re talking about. I don’t want any rumors starting anything around here.”

“He called him a cootie, sir.”

“A what?”

“That’s what he called me,” Johnson said.

“What the fuck’s a cootie?”

“It’s a bug,” Walowick said.

“That’s like calling me a nigger,” Johnson said.

“Is that a racial thing?” Captain Stewart looked at Walowick.

“A cootie’s a cootie,” Walowick shrugged. “He shouldn’t have called me no farm boy. If he calls me a farm boy, I’m gonna call him a cootie again.”

That’s when Johnson hit Walowick again, and the fight started again. This time Lieutenant Carroll got out of the way. When the fight was over, Captain Stewart told them both to stop talking to each other. That was that.

Peewee asked me to write a letter to his girl for him. I had been right about her writing him a Dear John letter, and it really messed him up.

“Every time I get ready to write the damn thing I get messed around,” Peewee said.

“Peewee, I can’t write a letter to your girl for you,” I said.

“Hey, if somebody in Chicago is doing my night work for me, you can write a letter,” Peewee said.

We had some gung-ho stationery, the kind with a picture of GIs jumping out of a chopper on it. The picture was in light blue and you could write over it.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say, ‘Dear Two-Timing Slut.’ ”

“What’s her name?”

“Her name Earlene.” “Okay, so I’m writing, Dear Earlene.’ ’

“How can you leave me for that old, fat Eddie Thompson when his feet stink, he ain’t got no hair, and he got breath that smells like a polar bear what done died from eating too much garlic?’ You got all that?”

“Wait a minute.” I wrote it all down, then told him to go ahead.

“I know you need help with you and Little Mommy being on relief and everything, but I told you I would take care of you as soon as I got back into the World.”

“Who’s Little Mommy?”

“That’s her daughter. She’s real cute,” Peewee said. “Earlene was married before, but her husband drove a cab and got kilt in a holdup.

“I know it is hard to wait for anybody, but I will try to be worth waiting for, so give it a try. Yours truly, Peewee Gates.’ ”

“Hey, Peewee,” Monaco called over. “You gonna marry her?”

“If she wait,” Peewee said.

“I ain’t getting married,” Monaco said. “I’m playing the field my whole life.”

“That’s cause you so ugly there ain’t no pressure on you,” Peewee said. “As handsome as I am, I got all kinds of pressure on me to get married.”

I finished Peewee’s letter and gave it to him. “You think she’s going to wait for you?” I asked. “No, man, she already married this fat fool.” “Then why are you asking her to wait?”

“Just to break her damn heart,” Peewee said.

I saw Peewee put a stamp on the letter and take it out to the mail sack. When he came back, he was quiet. It wasn’t like Peewee to be quiet. I left him alone.

Johnson came in, and Brunner opened his mouth to him. Something about being called a name not being a big thing.

“You call me a cootie, and I’m going kick your ass, too,” Johnson said.

“You said what?” Brunner was about six-three and as bulky as a football player.

“I said I was gonna kick your ass if you call me out my name.” Johnson got up and walked over to Brunner.

Brunner looked at Johnson, shook his head, and picked up a magazine. He didn’t want any part of Johnson.

I couldn’t stand the smell of the insect repellent, and it woke me up in the middle of the night when I put my arms near my head because that’s where I put most of it. I looked around and saw Brew kneeling by the side of his bed, praying. It was a good idea. I felt a little guilty about waiting until I got to Nam to think about God. On the other hand I didn’t want to not be close to God. I checked Brew out again, and he was praying away. I started out with the Lord’s Prayer as best as I could remember it, got messed up with the part about trespassing, and gave it up.

When I was small, Mama used to say a prayer with me before I went to sleep. It was before Kenny was bom, and things had been pretty good for us. When I got bigger, she used to say it with Kenny.

The night Daddy left she came in and sat on Kenny’s bed and started saying it, and Kenny saw her crying and he started crying, too. When she got to the part about dying before you waked I put my head under the cover. I didn’t say it in Nam, either.

The sound of incoming choppers woke us up in the morning. A moment later we were being yelled at, whistles were blowing, and the morning cursing had started.

The air outside was still and muggy, but I could smell cordite in the air. Lieutenant Carroll was near a tree, and I went over to him and asked him what was going on.

“Beats the hell out of me,” he said. He had coffee in his canteen cup, a cigarette between his fingers, and was leaning against a tree to take a leak. He peed all over his pants. “The next time I join a war I’m going to get circumcised first,” he said. “How you doing?”

“Good,” I said. “How’d the patrol go yesterday?”

“Bad. Nothing happened, but I don’t think we should have been out there.”

“Stewart?”

He shrugged and walked away.

We got powdered eggs and cold potatoes for breakfast. Then Lieutenant Berger from Delta Company came over. I thought he had something important to say, but he had the mail, which was pretty important. Nobody in our squad got mail but Johnson. He got a bill from the telephone company.

After breakfast things settled down to a boring normal. Lobel said that he weighed one seventy-three and Walowick said that he should lose weight.

“You should take some of that candy they have,” Walowick said.

Lobel and Walowick went through some magazines until they found an ad for the candy that was supposed to make Lobel lose inches from his waistline.

“Perry!” Lieutenant Carroll called me to the front of the hootch. “Bring your gear!”

I got my gear and went outside. He told me that he had to supply one man for a patrol with Charlie Company, and since I had missed one patrol with the squad, it had to be me. He said he was sorry, and that I shouldn’t be a hero.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“Perry, sir.”

“Look, Perry, we re going out on a sector patrol. What we want to do is to establish a presence. We re not looking to get into a firefight. We see anything, we call in artillery. You have any questions, you ask me, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we do get into anything, make sure you report any body count. One last thing, you stay close to Scotty over there. Scotty’s our machine gunner. You can feed for him.”

Lieutenant Doyle was short, nervous. He cupped a cigarette in his hand the way I thought Humphrey Bogart would have. Charlie Company was going out in two sectors. The first platoon went out first, the third and the fourth platoon — the one I was assigned to — were going next, and the second platoon was going to be the backup in case anybody got into trouble.

Scotty was about six-five, with a face that was mostly ashy white. But the eyes were what set him apart. They were dark, and darting. I had seen the look on ballplayers before. They were the kind of eyes that wanted to win.

I was nervous being with these new guys. Scotty must have sensed it, because he came over and told me everything was going to be cool.

“Where you from?”

“New York,” I said. “Harlem.”

“You a long way from home, man.”

“Where you from?”

“Tacoma, Washington,” he said. “Doyle tell you about the stand down?”

“No.”

“Charlie Company is going to be the first company that stands down,” Scotty said. “We’ll be standing down for two weeks, maybe even get down to Saigon.”

“The whole battalion standing down?”

“From what I hear,” Scotty said. “And this boy needs a little vacation. Far as I’m concerned we can stand down till this thing is over.”

“I heard it could be over before Christmas.” “Can’t be too soon for this boy,” Scotty said.

Some guys were getting ready to move out, and Scotty got up and shouldered the .6o-caliber machine gun. I crisscrossed two bandoliers of ammunition over my chest and grabbed a boxful. It was heavy as hell.

We went to the pads and then sat down waiting for the choppers.

I liked the idea of standing down. A few weeks away from the combat zone would do me good. If we got to Saigon, maybe we could see what the cities were like before the war was over.

Two black guys came over and asked me if I was new. I said no, that I was on loan from Alpha Company. Then they asked me if I knew a guy named Gifford in Alpha. I didn’t.

Scotty introduced me to a couple of other guys, but I forgot their names as soon as I heard them. Lieutenant Doyle was yelling into the radio that the choppers were late. He was asking if the guy on the other end of the phone wanted us to go to the backup position. The best I could figure out, the answer was no.

“You play ball?” Scotty asked.

“Basketball,” I said. “Played some baseball but nothing to brag about.”

“I played football in high school but couldn’t get into a college. You know the only thing I’m good at?”

“What?”

“M-60 machine gun. You know anybody out in the World need a good machine gunner?”

I smiled. My mind shot ahead. What would I do when I got out? I had read some stuff in Stars and Stripes about Congress expanding the GI Bill. The paper said it didn’t look too hopeful.

The chopper finally came, almost an hour after they were supposed to. We got in and took off.

The LZ was supposed to be secure, but I could see a few muzzle blasts coming from the thick green carpet below me as we came down. I flinched every time I saw one. Scotty and another guy — his name tag read Palumbis — kidded me about the flinching.

“If you see the muzzle blast, it means that the bullet missed.”

He had a lot to learn about physics, but we were already landing.

The struts were supposed to take the jolt out of the landing, but I wanted to be out before they hit. Scotty went just as I was thinking of going, and in a moment I was out and running behind him. The ammo box banged against my legs. I felt as if I were carrying a ton of equipment.

We moved out quickly from the LZ and went into some tall grass. The grass cut-my hands up so fast I thought I had walked into a booby trap. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a thousand paper cuts all over me.

We had to cross a road, and Doyle was telling everybody to look out for mines.

“I don’t know why he tells us that,” Scotty said. “They don’t put the damn mines so you can see them, and we ain’t got no detectors.”