The Last Road Home (24 page)

C
HAPTER
50

O
n Valentine's Day 1967, Snake and me sat under a banyan tree beside the HQ tent. He looked over. “Junebug, I've put in my retirement papers; time to leave this war stuff to you young bucks.”

I spit out the coffee in my mouth. “You're shitting me!” I felt sick to my stomach. “When you leaving?” Snake had become the nearest thing to a daddy I'd ever had.

“Day after tomorrow.” I'd never seen his hands shake before.

“Son of a bitch. I would a thrown you a party if you'd told me sooner.”

“Scared to, figured you'd get so excited you'd get me killed out there in the bush.” His big jaw crooked in a smile. “We'll save the party until you get home.”

Two days later, I went with him to the chopper. He passed me his M-14. “Use it in good health.” When we shook he kept a grip on my hand. “Son, you're on a road that's got a lot of ruts and low shoulders, and there's going to come a time you'll wish you'd taken another one. This shit ain't real, Junebug, it's a nightmare that some will wake up from and some won't. When your time is over, get your ass home and do something else. This ain't no life for a man.” He gripped his hand behind my neck, and held my eyes. “Be good at what you do because you have to be, not because you like it.” Snake let go and smacked me on the back. “Come find me in Texas, son, and we'll have a real throw-down. I'll keep the beer cold and the stories warm.”

There were very few secrets between men living with each other twenty-four hours a day, and Snake knew all of mine. I threw him a salute as the chopper lifted off. I was on my own again.

* * *

I worked the bush alone, and got better and better at killing. The night was my friend. I was able to dissolve into the shadows, to smell the air and listen to the wind and let them tell me their secrets. I'd swallowed pain and fear in the other life, but the jungle was a place no man could hurt me. I no longer feared my soul going to hell; let the ones I hunted worry about it. I was God in this place. If I died, they could just leave my body to rot until the earth took me back piece by piece.

I broke the news of Snake leaving to Huy. Fat tears fell out of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “Don't cry. He wanted me to visit you and make sure to bring you a box.” I handed him the carton of c-rats.

He smudged the tears with his dirty hands. “Sergeant Snake my friend.” He took off a little braided water-buffalo-hair bracelet he wore on his arm. “You send him this for me?”

I took it and stuck it in my pocket. “You bet I will. He would want you to be a brave boy. I'll stop and see you whenever I come this way.” Huy hugged my neck and I patted his behind, sending him home. He was the only semblance of sanity in this place of insanity.

* * *

In May of 1967, my year was up. I went to the captain and told him I wanted to extend for another six months. “You're due for some R&R, Hurley, so take it and get out of here for a few days.” I did just that, caught a chopper to Phu Bai, hitched a ride on a convoy to DaNang, and got a plane to Hong Kong.

I'd never been much of a drinking man, but I tried real hard to become one that week. I stumbled into a street bar one night and heard a loud voice cussing and raising hell. It sounded familiar. I weaved along the bodies until I got to the source. It was Hotah. “Man, what the hell are you doing here?” I slapped him on the back.

He spun around on his stool, let out an Indian war whoop, and leaped up to hug me. “You ain't dead yet, white man?”

“Can't kill a redneck, or evidently a red man. Where you been hiding in the jungle?”

“They stuck me up on a little hill around Hue. Plenty of action, though, killing a lot of those little slants. You creeping and peeping?”

“Yeah, up by the DMZ.”

“What are you collecting?”

“Collecting what?”

“Souvenirs, man. I'm collecting eyeballs, got a sack full.”

I'd heard of ears, but never eyes. “Why?”

“Old Indian custom. If you take your enemy's eyes, he won't be able to find you in the next life. They used to take feet and hands too, but I ain't got room for all that.”

Hotah and I drank until he passed out in a booth. I managed to fall into a cab and get back to my hotel. It was the last time I saw him.

I bought Fancy several gold jewelry trinkets and mailed them to her, hoping they'd catch up to wherever she was. I sent a letter with them, telling her I'd extended my time in Vietnam because I'd rather be here than in some boring base stateside. I didn't tell her I stayed because I loved it.

When I got back to the hill, there was mail waiting and a letter from Fancy.

She included a small picture. I sat and stared at it. She had changed her hair, lightened it and cut it short. I could see a much happier look than I remembered, and something was different about her expression, the direct way she stared at the camera. Fancy's beauty as a grown woman was starting to show itself. I wondered if any of the new friends were men. The part about a chance for us to be together creeped into my mind, but I shoved it out. Death was too close in this place for daydreaming.

The captain said most of the recon boys were out on a big operation and wouldn't be back for a week, so I could occupy myself however I felt I could do some good. I packed a ruck and walked north the next morning to see what might be happening. Huy spotted me crossing the dike and came running. I was in no hurry, so we sat and gibberished at each other for a while. I reached in my pocket and surprised him with a little gold wristwatch from Hong Kong. He hopped up and down, laughing and hugging my neck. I gave him a rat box and headed into the heavy bush, crossing the valley to a favorite spot Snake and I had used to catch folks crossing the DMZ. There wasn't a day that went by I didn't miss the security of having him with me. I stayed out three days, getting two kills, which brought my total to twenty-six for the year.

It was so humid and hot my sweat was sweating when I dragged by the guard post the afternoon I returned. I was paying a high price for all the whiskey I'd drunk in Hong Kong. Two steps down the bunker ladder I stopped. There was a funny smell. It hit me that it was aftershave lotion. At the bottom, I saw a black guy sitting on Snake's cot.

“What're you doing in my house?”

The kid got to his feet. “Came in today. Gunny Phillips said you needed a replacement. Moses Lane, folks call me Mo.” He was black as coal, big-eyed, and had giant hands.

“How you doin', Mo. I'm Junebug. Consider yourself a substitute, 'cause nobody's capable of replacing the man whose rack you're sitting on.” He had big arms and his hair was shaved down to the skin. “I'll drop this stuff and we'll visit awhile.”

We walked up to the medic tent where the coffee was always hot. I introduced Mo around and we took a load off on a couple of sandbags in the shade. I don't know why it surprised me to see a black man as a sniper, but it did. “Where you from, Mo?”

“Mississippi.” He had an easy smile.

“You get confused and stand in the wrong line?”

Mo dipped his head and laughed. “My brother was a marine. When he got killed, I decided I needed to come see what he went through.”

“If you came here for payback, let me be the first to tell you that you messed up.”

“Not that. I was studying to be a preacher at Biloxi Seminary College. My brother's dying hurt my folks real bad, and I had a hard time with it too. We lost three from our little community in a year, and I decided if I was going to be a comfort to people in pain, I needed to understand what the war was like.” His eyes were calm and steady, like he was fixed on what he had to do.

“A lot of folks would say a black man fighting for a white man's country ain't too smart.”

He nodded his head slowly. “That's true. And a lot of them are angry they ain't good enough to be treated equal except when it comes to going to war. The way I see things, it won't always be the white man's country.” He smiled innocently, but it was clear Mo wasn't the type to shy away from straight talk, or be intimidated. I hoped that would translate to the bush.

Back at our house, we ate some c-rats while Mo told me about the new sniper school they'd sent him through back in Camp Pendleton. “Is it as bad out here as they said it would be?”

“How bad did they say it would be?”

“That I probably wouldn't live through it.”

“Yep.” I fluffed my pillow and blew out the lantern. “I'm going to rest up tomorrow, but you need to report to the latrine officer first thing in the morning. He's got some new guy work for you.” I lay back on the bunk and closed my eyes. I heard him undressing. When he was down to his skivvies, I said, “Put your clothes back on.”

* * *

It was important for me to get a feel for what motivated Mo and how he thought about things. Once we started in the work for real, I had to feel comfortable he would have my back. Was I being more cautious because he was black? Maybe. After several days, I came to believe he was a man I could trust. Besides, the captain in charge of the recon unit started pushing me to get back in the field. It was time to quit yakking and start packing.

“In the morning we're going creeping.”

I opted for Snake's M-14 and Mo carried his Remington when we headed past the guard post in the early morning dark. I said to Mo, “Always make sure they see you go out so they'll be expecting you to come back in a few days. If they don't, somebody will come looking.”

I decided to take him along the same route Snake had taken me the first day. It was hard to believe that was over a year ago. Sure enough, when we started across the dike, I spotted the boonie hat coming out of the village. At first Huy was shy around Mo. He touched the skin on Mo's face. “
Mi dang,
” he said, and I figured it meant “black man.” We messed around a bit, and Huy began to warm up to Mo. I gave him his rat box and a pat on the butt for him to go home. We headed over the hill.

When we'd made our way into the valley where Snake's targets still hung in the trees, we stopped. I wanted to see what kind of training Mo had gotten stateside. I pointed out the steel plates. “Let's see what you got.”

Mo was dead center on almost every shot. He moved easily between the targets from four hundred to six and back again. In a couple of hours, I'd seen enough. “You're good. Let's go.”

It was nightfall by the time we had worked our way four miles up and along the DMZ. I hacked a clear place in the middle of a bamboo thicket. Once the ponchos were unrolled, we ate cold beans and fruit and chased them with water. “I'm going to get some z's. If you hear anything don't tell me; I'll know you did if you ain't here in the morning.”

“Very funny.” He yawned and lay back. “Stars seem mighty close this high up. Pretty amazing what God created, ain't it?”

I thought about the conversation Fancy and me had about God so long ago. “You're a religious man, Mo. Tell me if you really think somebody sat around for a week magically sticking all those stars up there, making oceans and animals, not to mention creating people.”

“Start out with the hard questions, don't you?” He rolled to his side. “When I was a kid, an old man down the road from us kept bees, you know, in hives he tended. I used to love to talk to him. He was a deacon at the church, and I considered him a wise man. We talked about this very thing one day, me having some doubts about God. I followed him to his backyard. ‘Moses, you see them bees?' he said. ‘I don't mess with them too much except to keep wasps away, little stuff like that, but I'm always watching out for their well-being. Who do you imagine them bees think I am?' I thought about that for a long time, Junebug.”

That was a curveball. I lay there thinking about it for a few minutes. “Sounds like a pretty wise man, all right. Tell me something, Mo. If there's a God-plan, why would He let shit like this happen, us running around in a hellhole killing each other?”

He yawned. “You surely are a man in need of answers, ain't you? If I was to decide to kill you while you are asleep, is it because there's no God, or did I just make up my mind to do it? Junebug, folks still got free will. God ain't going to stop the world from doing evil; He's just going to be sure you pay for it when the time comes. What makes you such a bitter man, Junebug, like you don't have a lot of hope in your life?”

“Oh, I got hope. I hope I wake up one of these days and this has all been a dream. But you and me both know that's not going to happen. I went to church when I was a kid, but, Mo, the next time you see some eighteen-year-old boy crying for his momma because his face is half shot off, tell me why it happened and where was God when he needed him.”

Sounds of bombs and heavy firing reverberated in the distance.

“And another thing, how do you square being a preacher man with coming out here to kill people?”