The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (3 page)

So everything’s turning blue, he says, and I’m floating up out of my body over this rice paddy, these goddamn ching-ching snipers are darker blue, and when I come back down I’m moving through this nice blue world and I know where they are, and I get every goddamn one of them in their trees. 

But it doesn’t matter, he says. There’s this light-weapons sergeant, a guy they called the Dogman, who’s crazy and barks like a dog and makes everyone laugh even if they’re bleeding, even if their guts are hanging out. He scares the VC when he barks. He humps his share and the men love him. 

When the world turns blue, the Dogman’s in cover, everything’s fine, but then he rubbernecks, the sonuvabitch rubbernecks for the closest ching-ching—he didn’t have to, he just didn’t have to—and takes a round high. I don’t see the back of his head explode, so I think he’s still alive. I go for him where he’s hanging half out of the treeline, half in a canal full of stinking rice water. I try to get his body out of the line of fire, but Charlie puts the next round right in under my arm. I’m holding the Dogman and the round goes in right under my arm, a fucking heart shot. I can feel it come in. It’s for me. Everything goes slow and blue and I jerk a little—I don’t even know I’m doing it and the round slides right in under me and into him. They never get
me
. The fucking world turns blue and everything goes slow and they never get
me
. 

I can always save myself, he says—his name is Steve and he’s not smiling now—but I can’t save
them
. What’s it worth? What’s it worth if you stay alive and everybody you care about is dead? Even if you get what
they
want. 

I know what he means. I know now why he’s sitting on a chair nearly crying, I know where the body is, which curtain it’s behind, how close it’s been all this time. I remember the dream now. 

Nobody likes to die alone, Steve says. Just like he said it in the dream. 

He stays and we talk. We talk about the dreams and his blue world, and we talk about what we’re going to do when we get out of this place and back to the Big PX, all the fun we’re going to have. He starts to tell me about other guys he knows, guys like him that his people are interested in, but then he stops and I see he’s looking past me. I turn around. 

There’s this guy in civvies at the end of the hallway, just standing there, looking at us. Then he nods at Steve, and Steve says, “I got to go.” 

Real fast I say, “See you at nineteen hundred hours.” He’s looking at the guy down the hallway. “Yeah, sure,” he says. 

When I get off he’s there. I haven’t thought about a needle all day and it shows. We get a bite to eat and talk some more, and that’s that. My roommate says I can have the room for a couple of hours, but I’m a mess. I’m shaking so bad I can’t even think about having a good time with this guy. He looks at me like he knows this, and says his head hurts and we ought to get some sleep. 

He gives me a hug. That’s it. 

The same guy in civvies is waiting for him and they walk away together on Phan Hao Street. 

The next day he’s gone. I tell myself maybe he was standing down for a couple of days and had to get back, but that doesn’t help. I know lots of guys who traveled around in-country AWOL without getting into trouble. What could they do to you? Send you to ’Nam? 

I thought maybe he’d call in a couple of days, or write. Later I thought maybe he’d gotten killed, maybe let himself get killed. I really didn’t know what to think, but I thought about him a lot. 

Ten days later I get transferred. I don’t even get orders cut, I don’t even get in-country travel paper. No one will tell me a thing—the head nurse, the CO, nobody. 

I get scared because I think they’re shipping me back to the States because of the smack or the dreams—they’ve found out about the dreams—and I’m going to be in some VA hospital the rest of my life. That’s what I think. 

All they’ll tell me is that I’m supposed to be at the strip at 0600 hours tomorrow, fatigues and no ID. 

I get a needle that night and I barely make it. 

This Huey comes in real fast and low and I get dust in my eyes from the prop wash. A guy with a clipboard about twenty yards away signals me and I get on. There’s no one there to say good bye and I never see the 23rd again. 

The Huey’s empty except for these two pilots who never turn around and this doorgunner who’s hanging outside and this other guy who’s sitting back with me on the canvas. I think maybe he’s the one who’s going to explain things, but he just stares for a while and doesn’t say a thing. He’s a sergeant, a Ranger, I think. 

It’s supposed to be dangerous to fly at night in Indian Country, I know, but we fly at night. We stop twice and I know we’re in Indian Country. This one guy gets off, another guy gets on, and then two more. They seem to know each other and they start laughing. They try to get me to talk. One guy says, “You a Donut Dolly?” and another guy says, “Hell, no, asshole, she’s Army, can’t you tell? She’s got the thousand yards.” The third guy says to me, “Don’t mind him, ma’am. They don’t raise ’em right in Mississippi.” They’re trying to be nice, but I don’t want in. 

I don’t want to sleep either. But my head’s tipped back against the steel and I keep waking up, trying to remember whether I’ve dreamed about people dying, but I can’t. I fall asleep once for a long time and when I wake up I can remember death, but I can’t see the faces. 

I wake up once and there’s automatic weapon fire somewhere below us and maybe the slick gets hit once or twice. Another time I wake up and the three guys are talking quietly, real serious, but I’m hurting from no needle and I don’t even listen. 

When the rotors change I wake up. It’s first light and cool and we’re coming in on this big clearing, everything misty and beautiful. It’s triple-canopy jungle I’ve never seen before and I know we’re so far from Cam Ranh Bay or Saigon it doesn’t matter. I don’t see anything that looks like a medevac, just this clearing, like a staging area. There are a lot of guys walking around, a lot of machinery, but it doesn’t look like regular Army. It looks like something you hear about but aren’t supposed to see, and I’m shaking like a baby. 

When we hit the LZ the three guys don’t even know I exist and I barely get out of the slick on my own. I can’t see because of the wash and suddenly this Green Beanie medic I’ve never seen before—this captain—has me by the arm and he’s taking me somewhere. I tell myself I’m not going back to the Big PX, I’m not going to some VA hospital for the rest of my life, that this is the guy I’m going to be assigned to—they need a nurse out here or something. 

I’m not thinking straight. Special Forces medics don’t have nurses. 

I’m looking around me and I don’t believe what I’m seeing. There’s bunkers and M-60 emplacements and Montagnard guards on the perimeter and all this beautiful red earth. There’s every kind of jungle fatigue and cammie you can think of—stripes and spots and black pajamas like Charlie and everything else. I see Special Forces enlisted everywhere and I know this isn’t some little A-camp. I see a dozen guys in real clean fatigues who don’t walk like soldiers walk. I see a Special Forces major and he’s arguing with one of them. 

The captain who’s got me by the arm isn’t saying a thing. He takes me to this little bunker that’s got mosquito netting and a big canvas flap over the front and he puts me inside. It’s got a cot. He tells me to lie down and I do. He says, “The CO wants you to get some sleep, Lieutenant. Someone will come by with something in a little while.” The way he says it I know he knows about the needles. 

I don’t know how long I’m in the bunker before someone comes, but I’m in lousy shape. This guy in civvies gives me something to take with a little paper cup and I go ahead and do it. I’m not going to fight it the shape I’m in. I dream, and keep dreaming, and in some of the dreams someone comes by with a glass of water and I take more pills. I can’t wake up. All I can do is sleep but I’m not really sleeping and I’m having these dreams that aren’t really dreams. Once or twice I hear myself screaming, it hurts so much, and then I dream about a little paper cup and more pills. 

When I come out of it I’m not shaking. I know it’s not supposed to be this quick, that what they gave me isn’t what people are getting in programs back in the States, and I get scared again. Who are these guys? 

I sit in the little bunker all day eating ham-and-motherfuckers from C-rat cans and I tell myself that Steve had something to do with it. I’m scared but it’s nice not to be shaking. It’s nice not to be thinking about a needle all the time. 

The next morning I hear all this noise and I realize we’re leaving, the whole camp is leaving. I can hear this noise like a hundred slicks outside and I get up and look through the flap. I’ve never seen so many choppers. They’ve got Chinooks and Hueys and Cobras and Loaches and a Skycrane for the SeaBee machines and they’re dusting off and dropping in and dusting off again. I’ve never seen anything like it. I keep looking for Steve. I keep trying to remember the dreams I had while I was out all those days and I can’t. 

Finally the Green Beanie medic comes back. He doesn’t say a word. He just takes me to the LZ and we wait until a slick drops in. All these tiger stripes pile in with us but no one says a thing. No one’s joking. I don’t understand it. We aren’t being hit, we’re just moving, but no one’s joking. 

We set up in a highlands valley northwest of where we’d been, where the jungle is thicker but it’s not triple canopy. There’s this same beautiful mist and I wonder if we’re in some other country, Laos or Cambodia. 

They have my bunker dug in about an hour and I’m in it about thirty minutes before this guy appears. I’ve been looking for Steve, wondering why I haven’t seen him, and feeling pretty good about myself. It’s nice not to be shaking, to get the monkey off my back, and I’m ready to thank
somebody
. 

This guy opens the flap. He stands there for a moment and there’s something familiar about him. He’s about thirty and he’s in real clean fatigues. He’s got MD written all over him—but the kind that never gets any blood on him. I think of VA hospitals, psychiatric wards, and I get scared again. 

“How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” 

“Fine,” I say, but I’m not smiling. I know this guy from the dreams—the little paper cups and pills—and I don’t like what I’m feeling. 

“Glad to hear it. Remarkable drug, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” I nod. Nothing he says surprises me. 

“Someone wants to see you, Lieutenant.” 

I get up, dreading it. I know he’s not talking about Steve. 

They’ve got all the bunkers dug and he takes me to what has to be the CP. There isn’t a guy inside who isn’t in real clean fatigues. There are three or four guys who have the same look this guy has—MDs that don’t ever get their hands dirty—and intel types pointing at maps and pushing things around on a couple of sand-table mock-ups. There’s this one guy with his back turned and everyone else keeps checking in with him. 

He’s tall. He’s got a full head of hair but it’s going gray. He doesn’t even have to turn around and I know. 

It’s the guy in civvies at the end of the hallway at the 23rd, the guy that walked away with Steve on Phan Hao Street. 

He turns around and I don’t give him eye contact. He looks at me, smiles, and starts over. There are two guys trailing him and he’s got this smile that’s supposed to be charming. 

“How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” he says. 

“Everybody keeps asking me that,” I say, and I wonder why I’m being so brave. 

“That’s because we’re interested in you, Lieutenant,” he says. He’s got this jungle outfit on with gorgeous creases and some canvas jungle boots that breathe nicely. He looks like an ad from a catalog but I know he’s no joke, he’s no pogue lifer. He’s wearing this stuff because he likes it, that’s all. He could wear anything he wanted to because he’s not military, but he’s the CO of this operation, which means he’s fighting a war I don’t know a thing about. 

He tells me he’s got some things to straighten out first, but that if I go back to my little bunker he’ll be there in an hour. He asks me if I want anything to eat. When I say sure, he tells the MD type to get me something from the mess. 

I go back. I wait. When he comes, he’s got a file in his hand and there’s a young guy with him who’s got a cold six-pack of Coke in his hand. I can tell they’re cold because the cans are sweating. I can’t believe it. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere, we’re probably not even supposed to be here, and they’re bringing me cold Coke. 

When the young guy leaves, the CO sits on the edge of the cot and I sit on the other and he says, “Would you like one, Lieutenant?” 

I say, “Yes, sir,” and he pops the top with a church key. He doesn’t take one himself and suddenly I wish I hadn’t said yes. I’m thinking of old movies where Jap officers offer their prisoners a cigarette so they’ll owe them one. There’s not even any place to put the can down, so I hold it between my hands. 

“I’m not sure where to begin, Lieutenant,” he says, “but let me assure you you’re here because you belong here.” He says it gently, real softly, but it gives me a funny feeling. “You’re an officer and you’ve been in-country for some time. I don’t need to tell you that we’re a very special kind of operation here. What I do need to tell you is that you’re one of three hundred we’ve identified so far in this war. Do you understand?”