Fields of Fire (23 page)

Ain’ worth it, mused Cannonball. An’ I did this. Doan’ ask me how, I doan’ know how, but I know I did this. Only one way out of it, too. He turned to Bagger. “Bagger, you book on out o’ here, man. I gotta rap with a brother, hear? Catch you later, man.”

Rap Jones smirked. Bagger glared unbelievingly. “You mean you're gonna go in there?”

Cannonball shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “Yeah. You doan’ understand, man. I'll just catch you later. O.K.?”

Cannonball walked up the steps. Rap Jones dropped the short-timer stick on a near cot and passed the Power to Cannonball in an overlong, exaggerated series of hand grabbing, celebrating his victory over Bagger.

“Heyyy, there's a Brother. What's happenin’, now?”

“You what's happenin’, Rap Jones. An’ the nevahendin’ struggle.”

“All right! An’ what is Blood?”

Bagger watched, amazed. He bent the grenade pin back. The three men disappeared inside the Black Shack and tightened the tent flap behind them.

Bagger stood for a moment, watching after them, then walked dazedly back to the transient tent, muttering to himself. “Niggers. Jesus Christ. I never thought Cannonball was like that. Out in the bush, they need you, they're all right. Get 'em back in the rear and they turn to shit.” He mimicked Rap Jones. “An’ what is Blood? Well, kiss my ass. Goddamn spooks.”

17

The sun fell like a red balloon through the haze above the western mountains, streaking the mists with sheets of flame that made the hills appear to burn. At last it was cool enough to eat. Goodrich sat alone underneath the half-thatch of a burnt-out hootch, at the edge of the latest confluence of village and trees that had become their two-day home.

No one lived in the village anymore. It was filled with hootches like the one Goodrich sat under, blown apart and abandoned. Latticed trenches dug by the NVA zigzagged throughout it, connecting hootches and advantageous firing points. Fighting holes from three years of Marines surrounded the village along the paddy dike that encircled it. Some of the holes were so old and the grass had grown so high inside them that they were unnoticeable unless someone fell into them when walking. Others, like the one Goodrich had just finished digging, were raw on their insides, walled with a clay that clung to a man each time he rubbed against it.

But you never use an old fighting hole, Goodrich remembered, opening a can of Spiced Beef. Either it's booby-trapped, or the gooners know exactly where it is and can hit it with a B-40 blindfolded. Always dig a new one. He snorted helplessly. A few more times in this ville and we'll have a trench dug all the way around it.

Goodrich ate his dinner, surveying the ghost town that had once bustled with villagers. Sometimes, when he could shake the permeating fear out of his mind and focus on it, the futility of what they were doing overwhelmed him. Abusing the land until it became unworkable, killing and being killed, and yet nothing changing beyond the tragedy of the immediate event.

Those tragedies had accumulated in his mind like particles of silt in a filter, until they had completely plugged up his logical processes, preventing the saner portions of his existence from registering any longer. Every day, some new horror inflicted in the name of winning Hearts and Minds. It either numbs you or it infuriates you, he lamented. No wonder the other people didn't get uptight when I shot that old mamasan on my first patrol.

He tried to count the tragedies. The villages they had assaulted on line for fear of being ambushed when they crossed open areas: “reconnaissance by fire,” Hodges called it. Shot dogs and chickens and hogs. Accidental wounds and deaths of civilians. They were a routine, almost boring occurrence.

Marines denying villagers their extra food, on the premise that the food would only wind up with the enemy. Destroying unused C-rations, punching holes in the cans and tossing them into burn holes with the trash. It had become a familiar sight, from some black-humored theater of the absurd, whenever the company pulled out of an old perimeter. The last part of the company column would still be on one side of a hill, or on one edge of a village, as a horde of tattered villagers massed on the other end, like an anxious army of rats. And the column hardly clear of the hill or village when the rats began to cover it, children and women and old men scampering about the trash holes, flicking out C-ration tins with long sticks. Occasionally, the company would mortar its own perimeter with White Phosphorus rounds after leaving it, to scare the scavengers away. But it never achieved more than a momentary effect.

Then denying the villagers their own food as well: not being able to distinguish between an enemy rice-collection point and a family's storage area, so taking all rice beyond a villager's immediate needs. Or, if no helicopter was available, destroying the rice by urinating on it or dropping smoke grenades in it.

The prisoners. Goodrich had come to Vietnam with a Miniver Cheevy view of war, believing that reason would rule over emotion, that once a combatant had been removed from the fray he would be accorded a certain sum of dignity. He had also thought the North Vietnamese soldiers and the fabled Viet Cong would face captivity with a sort of gallantry. It had confused and amazed him to see prisoners shit in their pants and grovel before him. And he could not get used to men being beaten and kicked, for no apparent reason.

And worse. He had watched Wild Man shoot a bottle off one prisoner's head, on a dare. The prisoner had fainted, then shit in his pants when he was awakened. He had seen Bagger try to talk a wounded soldier into killing himself, handing him a bayonet knife and placing the tip of it into the soldier's belly. He had been amazed to see Waterbull, normally a nonparticipant in the abuses, toss a prisoner into the water of a bomb crater when he had tired of carrying the enemy soldier, who had been shot through the knee. Waterbull then yelled jocularly that the prisoner was trying to drown himself. Goodrich had helped fish him out of the water, to the taunts of some of the others.

The pain of watching living corpses. The worst had been two North Vietnamese soldiers who had been either napalmed or hit by White Phosphorus, it wasn't clear which, and had walked to their perimeter to surrender. A villager had patiently guided them. They were scorched from head to foot, blinded, their hair burnt off and their skin pink and cracked, like a hot dog on a charcoal grill. Their throats were also scorched. They could not speak or cry. The villager identified them as enemy soldiers.

The insanity was not so much in the events, but that they were undirected, without aim or reason. They happened merely because they happened. The only meaning was in the thing itself. And what does it get me to know that, Goodrich mused bitterly, confused. Harvard shit-bird. College turkey. Even Hodges calls me that. But Wild Man has college. And his father is a successful man. Some kind of business.

There was no outrage from the others. They just didn't care about anything other than the experience, for its own sake.

Help me, Senator. Can't you stop it?

Ottenburger. Every night as he stood watch alone in his fighting hole. He could not shake the steady eyes, the flat, resigned voice. They were their own metaphor for the futility Goodrich felt. He just bled and bled, talking like that, until he ran out of blood. Did I do it? I just had to watch him die.

It was growing dark. Snake approached, walking casually along a low dike from the squad area. Goodrich felt himself grow taut. He was still in awe of Snake's ability to master this insanity of dust and weeds, but he found the spindly, tattooed squad leader insensitive and overbearing. The perfect Marine, mused Goodrich. A vulgar, violent little shit with a chip on his shoulder.

“Make like a mole and get in your hole, Senator. We're gonna get hit tonight.”

“Oh, good. Did you arrange it?”

Snake laughed at him. “Nope. Captain Crazy arranged it by setting up in this damn ville.” On the lines someone was burning trash. Snake yelled at the man, “Put that fire out! It's dark!” He turned back to Goodrich, shaking his head in mild disgust. “Put us here with a dike in the front like that, treeline over there. What the hell does he expect? We got followed in here. You see all them gooks? Every time we crossed a paddy I could see 'em. Come on, Senator.”

Goodrich rose slowly. “Oh, I can't wait.”

Snake stopped and turned back to Goodrich. “You think we can? You think you're the only one that don't like this, don't you, Senator? Well, Buddhist Priest.” Snake stared coldly into his face. “If anybody dies, I hope it's you.”

Goodrich swallowed hard, unnerved. No one talked about that, not in the bush. “Why?”

“ ’Cause you're a pissant crybaby. And you don't carry your own weight. When's the last time you did something for somebody besides yourself, Senator?”

“Do you realize how ridiculous it is? Can you truly comprehend, Snake? You're doing for each other and you're dying for each other. That's all. I mean all! And the lousiest thing in the world to die for is another sucker who's only for you. Do you get what I mean? The only reason any of us are dying is because we're here. It's like two scorpions in a jar. They'll kill each other, but only because they're in the jar. Do you get what I mean?”

Snake stared quietly at Goodrich for a long moment. On the lines, a man lit a cigarette. Snake screamed at the silhouette: “Put out that smoke!” He turned back to Goodrich and tapped him on the chest. “You get down in that hole, like most ricky-tick, or I'm gonna punch you in the mouth. Make your hat, Chicken-man!”

Goodrich picked up his weapon and resignedly followed Snake along a narrow dike, walking in the blue dusk toward the lines. In front of him, the treeline, a hundred meters out, somnolent in the darkness, suddenly went bright red with the flashes of several B-40 rockets. Green and red tracers followed as he watched, for a moment frozen in awe. Finally he dropped to the ground, seeking cover from the tremendous, instantaneous eruption that made him feel as if he were standing inside a cookpot that had exploded a thousand kernels of popcorn, all at once.

Goodrich crawled, whining, naked in the cropped dirt of an open field, between the old hootch and his fighting hole. The whine escaped him in a steady, involuntary gag, his vocal cords constricting tightly in his fear, causing him to emit a sound that was a child's cry. NNN-NNnnnnnnhhh. He found the edge of the dike and leaned into it, safe. The rounds went over his head.

Curses in the field, raw with pain. Just out from him, in the open, Snake lay curled in a ball, holding one leg. Goodrich hugged against the dike. Snake writhed. Dust spots kicked up around him from the incoming bullets.

If I helped him, Goodrich thought suddenly, he would leave me alone. They would all leave me alone.

But his fear immobilized him. Die for Snake because Snake is out there dying for me? Makes no sense. He lay against the dike and contemplated it some more. But if I crawled out to him I could drag him back over here. Then I could help him and there wouldn't be very many rounds. They would leave me alone, then.

A quick, large shadow emerged as he watched, and Waterbull scooped Snake up like a steam shovel grabbing a lump of dirt. In one motion he picked up Snake and headed for the dike. He landed, rolling Snake over the top of him to cushion the fall, only feet from where Goodrich lay, still contemplating.

In front of them, the lines now poured a steady rate of fire back at the treeline. Waterbull reached for Snake's foot. A B-40 rocket slammed into the hootch where Goodrich had eaten his dinner, setting its half-roof of thatch ablaze.

Snake protested as Waterbull probed. “I'm all right, Bull. Lemme alone.”

Waterbull searched along the leg Snake had been holding. A burst of AK fire interrupted his effort, throwing a veil of dust from the dike into Bull's face. He lay flat for a moment, then grabbed Snake's leg again.

“Goddamn it, lemme alone, Bull!”

Snake seemed in deep pain. “Thanks for getting me. I mean it. I just want to peep it out myself.” He pushed his glasses back to the top of his nose. “Now.” He reached tentatively for his foot. “I think I took a round in my toe.”

Bull guffawed. “In your toe?”

“You think it's funny, shoot your foot and see how it feels, asshole.” He began to unlace his boot. A string of mortar rounds walked slowly across the perimeter. Snake listened for a moment. “One tube is all. This shit's gonna be over before you know it.” He grimaced as he started to pull his boot off, and noticed Goodrich. “Hey, Senator. Be a hero and get my helmet, will you? I need the battle dressing off it.”

“I was going to help you. I was just getting ready.”

“Good. Get my helmet.”

The incoming rounds had stopped, at least for the moment. Goodrich crawled quickly out and retrieved the helmet, tossing it to Snake. It skidded across the dirt and stopped a yard away from Snake's face.

“Nice job, Senator. Silver Star, at least.” Snake took the battle dressing from the helmet band, and, in one painful yank, pulled his boot off.

There was no blood. He felt the crusted sock, counted his toes. The sock was dry. All toes were present. Waterbull knelt, preparing to apply the battle dressing.

“Take the sock off, Snake.”

“Don't need to.”

“ ’Course you need to. Come on. Take it off.”

“I don't need to, Bull, all right?” Snake felt the bottom of his sock, finding a tear in it that was perhaps an inch long. “Gimme my boot.”

Waterbull cocked his head, flabbergasted. “You mean after all that, you ain't even wounded?”

“The boot, Bull. All right?”

Waterbull reached along the dike where Snake had thrown the boot, and handed it to Snake. Snake examined it carefully, feeling the front with one hand. He shook his head in disbelief. “Look at that, will ya? Check this out.”

There was a small hole in the toe of the boot, where the bullet had entered. There was no exit hole. Snake cackled. “Somewhere inside this boot there's a bullet that went between my toes.” He stuck his foot in the air, showing them the torn sock. “Can you dig it?”

Waterbull caught a glimpse of the tear from the glimmer of a distant illumination round. “Nahhh. I don't believe it.”

Snake laughed, relieved. “I'll tell ya, it felt like somebody put a whack on my foot with a damn sledgehammer. Knocked me on my face.”

Waterbull nodded sagely, slouched against the dike. “You should call in a Heart for that, man. Yup. Definitely worth a Heart.”

Snake shook his head, still laughing. “No blood. Not a drop. Forget it.”

The three made their way toward the lines, Snake limping slightly. It was quiet now. Goodrich walked beside Snake. He spoke hesitantly.

“I was going to help you. I was coming. Waterbull beat me.”

“The day I gotta count on you I'm hanging up my jock, Senator.”

THE perimeter was quiet as a tomb. Medevacs were safely out, one man up, three down in the fighting holes. The treeline and high paddy dike had been silenced hours before. Hodges sat next to his poncho hootch, standing radio watch. Every fifteen minutes he called security checks to the listening posts. At the end of an hour he would walk the platoon lines, checking fighting holes, rapping with those on watch, ensuring the lines were awake. But, other than that, a time to ponder, to ruminate, to plan.

He held his helmet on his knees and cupped a cigarette inside it, lighting it. Not supposed to, but screw it. It's three o'clock. The gooners are all in bed. Nonetheless, he continued to cup it as he smoked. There's always that chance. One sniper round can do it. Every now and then it happens.