Deros Vietnam (7 page)

The last straw for Myron was the fact that not one of the women took a single sip from the cans of Clamato juice he'd distributed. Mai in particular turned up her nose. Myron didn't even bother passing around the boxes of exercise shoes.

It was getting late and the women were fidgeting. As recommended by Dr. Maxwell's
Quick Weight Loss Diet,
Myron had begun drinking eight glasses of water a day. He desperately needed to pee.

“Class dismiss…” he started to say when Swenson appeared at his side.

“Take five, Sergeant Swoboda.” Swenson patted him on the back. Instead of arguing, Myron hustled to the latrine.

On his way back inside the club, Myron was startled to hear the women singing something that sounded like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in rounds. There was laughter, too. At the front of the room, Swenson was conducting the class with a large cucumber as his baton.

When they stopped singing, the women burst into applause. Mai was clapping the loudest.

“Sar-Jen ver lee good swinger,” Mai directed at Swenson.

“Honey, you don't know the half of it,” Swenson patted her cheek. Myron wanted to run and hide.

“All yours, Sarge.” Swenson turned to leave.

“Where you going?” Even to himself, Myron sounded helpless.

“Gotta go. Got
beaucoup
work.”

As if on command, all the Vietnamese workers rose to leave with Swenson. Myron pleaded with them, especially Mai, to take their cans of Clamato juice with them. “You drink, Numbah One,” his voice rising. “Stay thin, go to America!”

No one turned around.

“Doesn't anyone want to go to America with me?” Myron mumbled under his breath, defeat beating him down yet again. He looked up to see Swenson handing each of the workers two cans of Clamato juice and a pack of Salems.

“You gotta know how the local economy works,” Swenson said with a wry smile. “We'll find a way to use the stuff, just wait and see.”

* * *

“That's it,” Myron admitted to Swenson the next time he dropped by the NCO Club. “This entire damn nation can stay fat and Communist as far as I'm concerned.”

“Don't sweat the small stuff, Sarge.” Swenson patted him on the back. “These slopes care more about
nuoc mam
than your special brew. Besides, we're just fattening ‘em up for the slaughter anyway.”

Myron changed the subject. “My buddy in New York said he'll take all the cans back and not charge me for them. Can you return those cases of Clamato juice to the APO today?

Swenson let out a whistle. “No can do, First Sergeant.”

“Whaddya mean, no can do?”

“Well, since the slant eyes didn't much want to drink your juice, I did a little experimenting.” Swenson waved his hands like a magician. “A splash of vodka, some salt and pepper, a little bit of Worcestershire—a dash of oregano, and voila.”

“Volia what?”

“Voila this,” Swenson handed a repurposed can to Myron. “The Clamato Cong cocktail.”

Myron handed the drink back. “How dare you,” he blustered. “You had no right. These cans were for me and my, for me and my…”

“They were for Mai all right,” Swenson interrupted. “You wanted to get into her pants and you wanted more room down there to fool around.”

Myron was speechless.

“Sarge, after a while you'll realize that the bigger the load the better the ride,” Swenson licked his lips. “Lock
and
load.”

“Why, you no good, cheating, vulgar …” Myron was turning from red to blue to purple.

Swenson squeezed Myron's arm.

“Don't pull that holier than thou shit with me,” he snarled. “We're both after the same things—a little nookie and some relief from this fucking hellhole. I'm no goddamn saint, but neither are you.”

Myron started to speak, but Swenson cut him off.

“And remember, I know about all your special shipments and your sorry-ass crush on Mai. I have friends in high places.”

Painfully aware that all was lost, Myron felt like crying.

“Chins up, Sarge,” Swenson beamed. “I can cut you and your buddy in on this action. The wetbacks over at the Motor Pool can't get enough of this Clamato cocktail stuff, so you just keep the cans coming and I'll keep those taco troopers slurping it down. Everybody wins!”

Abruptly, Myron pulled a Myron—he spun around and walked away. Nothing had gone right, but the hell with it. He still had his love for Mai and their future together in America. He'd complete his Army paperwork and drop it off at headquarters the next morning. It helped that Myron was well acquainted with DOD Reg 7000.14-R, Volume 7B, Chapter 1, Initial Entitlement—Retirement. He would fill out the necessary paperwork faster than you could say “Richard Milhous Nixon.”

That would get the retirement clock ticking. And that nice little ring he'd bought in Saigon last week—he'd give that to Mai tomorrow, too.

Yes, tomorrow would be better,
Myron consoled himself as he turned in that evening. But he hardly slept, awakened by dreams of having sex with Mai in all kinds of public places—the mess hall, the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut, in front of the Statue of Liberty. After he dreamed of making love to Mai on the lawn of his mother's house in Oak Grove, he had to wash the sheets.

* * *

Myron was up before reveille the next morning, completed his mess hall rounds in record time, and marched to company headquarters to deliver his retirement paperwork. He decided to swing by the NCO Club on his way back to his hooch to see just how much Clamato juice Swenson was hoarding. He didn't trust him, and he knew his nemesis wouldn't be here at this early hour, so he could avoid the usual confrontation.

Myron tiptoed behind the kitchen toward the supply room and freezer. There was the long ash of a barely smoked Marlboro in an ashtray on Swenson's desk. His heart stopped.

“Lock and load,” Swenson's voice piped up from the supply room. He came out to greet Myron.

“You're up early,” Myron stammered, glancing at Swenson's pants.

“Are you admiring my pecker, Sergeant Swoboda?

Myron flinched. Swenson laughed.

“It's all that fucking Clamato juice,” Swenson explained. “Man, that shit makes me horny as hell.”

Myron remained stoic.

Swenson put his arm around Myron's shoulder, gave it a little press, and started to escort Myron out of his office.

“You try way too hard, Sarge, you know that?” Swenson's voice seemed friendlier. “You don't need to try so fucking hard.”

“All I know is trying hard,” replied Myron. “That's how I was raised. That's how you survive. You try as hard as you can”

“Just the same, guys like you need guys like me to look out for you, to save you from.…”

Just then, there was a low rumble under Swenson's desk. And another. And suddenly there she was, flushed, smiling, her hair tussled, wiping something from the front of her blouse.
Dear god, no!

Myron stepped back as if he's been knifed through the heart. He could barely stand up, and he couldn't hold back the sobs.

“Mai, how could you? “Myron whimpered.

“Could me wha?”

“How could you deceive me?

“D.C.?”

“You know, lie to me.”

“I no lie, Sar-Jen. I stand,” Mai smiled, oblivious to Myron's meltdown.

Myron bolted out the door, the blinding Asian sun hitting him square between the eyes. He stumbled, falling on to a mound of sandbags. SFC Myron Swoboda put his head in his hands and wept, the tears resting on top of a used can of Clamato juice, forming a pool of salt above the big red letters.

Nightly News

The hearty inhabitants of Eveleth, Minnesota, liked to engage in daily pleasantries. The topics of conversation had been the same for years—the weather, hockey, taconite, and kids.

Erik and Agnes Swenson were finding it harder to be pleasant these days. Their son Robbie, like the Lindstrom boy and Herb Long's kid, was stationed in Vietnam. Fortunately for the Swensons, Robbie wrote often and even called home a couple of times.

But that didn't really help them sleep any better.

On October 9, 1969, their TV trays again stood at attention, the beef pot pies sending pockets of steam to the alabaster ceiling, two glasses of milk resting at ease. Five nights a week Erik and Agnes ate dinner in front of the NBC
Nightly News.
They preferred the Huntley-Brinkley duo to the opinionated Walter Cronkite. And they liked that NBC did not play politics with the war, but just gave them informative, daily reports from Vietnam. Somehow, it made them feel connected to Robbie.

Between the commercials for Anacin and Tums, the dour David Brinkley introduced a segment by saying that “a former booking agent for Officers' NCO Clubs in Vietnam, June Collins, testified that club managers had demanded kickbacks. When she complained, she was boycotted and her acts were not hired.”

A segment of testimony by June Collins came next. “Sleazy harlot,” Erik muttered into his pot pie when he saw the shapely, bouffant-haired Miss Collins. She told her questioners that corruption was widespread in NCO Clubs across Vietnam.

“I don't know of a single custodian who doesn't get kickbacks,” she testified to the TV cameras.

“Screw her,” Erik shouted at the TV.

Agnes asked nervously, “You don't think this has anything to do with Robbie, do you?”

As if on cue, shots of a U. S. Army base appeared on the TV screen. David Brinkley's voice could be heard in the background: “The potential for graft in Vietnam is enormous. One post alone—Long Binh—has forty-two clubs.”

Agnes shrieked. Erik got up to turn off the TV. It took him a while because of his old mining injury.

Before he could reach the set, there were more shots of Long Binh as another reporter, outside a club that looked a lot like Robbie's, began talking. “The more than one hundred such clubs in Vietnam translate into a nine million dollar a year operation,” the reporter named Robert Hager stated.

Click.

Agnes was sobbing. “Erik, you don't think?”

Erik looked down on the RCA Victor. His face was bright red.

“I know what I think,” he stammered. “I think our son is serving his country and doing his duty. I think we're losing this damn war because of the media and the spoiled college kids.” Erik's face turned redder as he added his own private thought. “And I think June Collins is angry because whoever was screwing her, dumped her.”

“But what does any of this have to do with the war and what Robbie does?”

Erik sat back down. He and Agnes stared at the blank TV in silence, the setting sun turning the Mesabi Iron Range pink and blue. In the silence, they almost thought they could hear voices saying, “Goodnight, Chet. Goodnight, David.”

The Beast in the Jungle

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

—William Blake, “The Tiger”

“Can this war get any crazier?” That was the constant refrain from the reporters crowded into the Army's daily press briefings in teeming downtown Saigon. The question always elicited a vocal chorus of “Hell, yes!”

Hunkered down with their colleagues and cigarettes, hands locked and loaded on their gin and tonics, the world's finest correspondents pondered this and other mysteries at “The Shelf,” South Vietnam's equivalent of Shanghai's Velvet Lounge and Paris's Ritz. Tucked away inside the old French colonial Continental Palace Hotel, The Shelf provided a roosting spot for every spy, diplomat, profiteer, and Hawaiian-shirted off-duty military type because it was the ultimate source and dispersion point for any news and intelligence worthy of the designation. At the end of a hard day in the streets or out in the field, reporters flocked to The Shelf to exchange information, sniff the air for ripe political and military initiatives, or obtain hints of intended plots and coups. The drinks and the bar girls weren't bad either.

Not only did sages of the war like Halberstam, Sheehan and Browne frequent the place,
Newsweek
and
Time
had their bustling bureaus on the second floor. Visiting VIPs camped out at The Shelf on their way to meet with the generals and ambassadors, double checking what they'd picked up on their official rounds.

It was also a place where hard-edged professional journalists could let off steam, exhaling with a drink, a laugh, and comradely banter. The nightly ritual began with the obligatory “moment of silence”—and a toast—to fallen or missing colleagues. The fact that there were more names on that list every day correlated directly with the increase in The Shelf's alcoholic sales.

“Okay, try to top this.” The
Chicago Tribune
's Dave Van Slyke fired the first volley. The gawky, unpretentious Van Slyke, his tie at half mast, looked more like a chemistry teacher than a war correspondent. “One of our generals, who shall remain nameless—
Abrams
—pulled aside a few of us at MACV today to report that three soldiers from the 54th Signal Battalion had robbed Bank of America's Nha Trang Branch of three hundred thousand dollars in military payment certificates.”

There were a few snickers and muted laughs.

“We weren't sure if he was going to deputize us or ask to see our wallets!”

Marvin Jones of the
Kansas City Star
waited for the laughter to subside. He was one of the few remaining veterans of all three wars—Kennedy's, Johnson's and now Nixon's—which gave him near celebrity stature among his peers. His standing was further reinforced by his status as a decorated WWII hero, right down to his military haircut and spit-shined shoes.

“That's easy to top.” Marvin's voice bounced off the revolving fans in the bar's high ceiling. “Another of our fearless leaders told me today that Bob Keeshan, otherwise known to most of us as America's beloved Captain Kangaroo, was actually a Marine sharpshooter and that he's supposed to have had something like a hundred and fifty kills in the war.”