Fields of Fire (27 page)

It was high and comfortable in the cab. They drove along the coast toward Santa Barbara and Gilliland could see the frothing waves and the pockets of surfers out in them, grouped in the special good places for surfing. It looked tranquil. It calmed him. He called across the cab to the driver.

“Is the ocean like this at Pismo Beach?”

“Better. No rocks. Not so many people.”

The driver did not fit Gilliland's image of a trucker. He seemed too thin, as if he would be unable to shift the gears, and he wore glasses with thick black frames.

The driver peered over to Gilliland, then looked back at the road. “You like the Marines?”

“I just quit. That answer your question?”

“I don't blame you.” The driver shifted gears. His whole body labored to do it, but he did not have the trouble Gilliland had imagined he would. “You was in Nam, though, huh?”

“Two tours. Too long.”

“Yeahhh, I was in the Army. Korea.” The driver paused, remembering. “I hated it. Did you hate it?”

Gilliland pondered the question, feeling naked in his new status as a civilian. “Sometimes I did. Sometimes it was all right. The people, anyway.”

“No, I really hated it. Somebody always bugging you to do something. Somebody always playing God.” The driver checked his rearview mirrors. “I drove trucks. We ran convoys up to the front. They say there ain't any front in Vietnam. That right?”

Gilliland shook his head yes, then no. He smiled hopelessly. “Shit, man. I don't know. I know we used to like to get back to the rear. There was a rear. But we were never on any front, or anything. We just roamed around the bush, or went somewhere on an operation for a while and then left. We just moved in circles, mostly.”

“Sounds crazy.”

“Well, it was. It was crazy as hell.”

“Do you think we're winning?”

Gilliland thought about it for a moment. He lit a cigarette and took a drag and thought about it some more. He was somewhat shocked, not by the question, but by the fact that he'd never considered it in his entire second tour. They had never talked about it in the bush. It had nothing to do with being in the bush and fighting gooks. They had talked about good contacts and bad contacts and Getting Some and Bummers. But not about winning.

“Christ, I don't know. You probably know more about that than I do. I don't know anything about it.”

The driver seemed to take offense at Gilliland's answer. He glanced over at him as if he had been rebuffed, then turned on the radio. The radio played country music and Gilliland found himself listening intently to the commercials rather than the songs. He hadn't heard commercials in months.

Mountains rolled like gentle waves near Gaviota, in varied shades of brown and green, and Gilliland examined them. His gaze caressed knolls and crevices with professional authority. Each shadowed draw and naked finger had deep meaning to him. I would walk there, he decided. I'd follow that finger to the top. And I'd put another squad on the finger to the right, and one on the finger to the left. Hodges'd like that. He'd say something like, “Sarge, you are a savvy dude. I shit you not.” Kind of miss those guys. Then we'd move real slow up that mountain, like leapfrogs. No ambush that way. Put Snake's squad in the middle. Cat Man on point.

He searched the deep gray shadows along the top of the mountain. And I'd set up there. We could put a whole platoon up there. Maybe a company. It's a bare-ass hill but we could dig in real deep and we'd be spread out enough that they could mortar us and we'd do O.K. And at night I'd put an LP down that main finger, 'cause the gooners would come up that way, too.

He looked away and lit another cigarette and was overwhelmed by an emotion that was somewhere between a sense of loss and of rebellion. Hell. I'm just an old grunt. That's all I'm good for. What the hell am I gonna do? Ten years I played that silly game and up till five days ago it was the most important thing in the world—You Bet Your Life—and now it's gone. Walk through the gate, stick out your thumb, and the whole world changes. I'll never set a squad into a hill again.

Still he could not shake the thought that a squad set in at Gaviota Pass was more real than a fishing pier at Pismo Beach.

He suddenly realized that, on top of everything else, he was afraid to meet his wife at Pismo Beach. I'm counting too much on it being good, he fretted. What if it isn't like that? I been planning this too hard. I'm about to the point that if there isn't any fishing or the water's too cold to swim in I just might have a damn fit. Something's gotta be the way you think it's gonna be.

It grew dark and Gilliland slumbered in the truck. They reached Pismo Beach and the driver pulled off to the side of the road, just beyond the off-ramp, and Gilliland climbed out. He waved briefly to the driver as the truck pulled back onto the highway. Its exhaust covered him with new slick smells.

He stood in the dark next to the highway and felt a cool breeze wash against him. He sucked it into his lungs. So this is Pismo Beach. Smells good, even from here. Smells like sea and fish and food. He put his seabag onto his shoulder and began walking toward the ocean. The seabag beat at him, bouncing as he walked. He felt older than twenty-nine. Maybe it's the jet lag, he reasoned. It's only eight o'clock, but I been up all night, Vietnam time. Maybe it's me.

He walked past a drive-in restaurant before he reached the motel. The lights flashed harshly at him, hurting his eyes. There was an electric contraption that hung like a lamp and zapped every time a bug flew into it. The first time it flashed he jumped. It looked like a muzzle flash from a rifle, and his mind had been wandering. Inside, the jukebox moaned:

It wasn't me that started that ol’ crazy Asian war But I was proud to go and do my patriotic chore—

Four hippies sat at a table outside the restaurant. They wore faded blue jeans and rough-cut shirts and their hair was long and two of them had beards. They must be hippies, mused Gilliland. Ain't anybody would hire a man dressed like that and looking like that. But he doubted himself. Hell. I'm the weird-looking one, not them.

They leered at him as he walked past, struggling with his seabag. He kept to the sidewalk, but they were only a few feet away. One of them called to him.

“Evening, hero.”

He ignored them. Another spoke loudly, so everyone in the restaurant would take notice.

“Hey, how was your war, Killing Machine?”

He crossed the street, careful not to look back. He was too tired to fight them. There were too many of them, and he didn't care anymore.

The desk clerk at the Shore Cliff Lodge had been in the Navy during World War II. He had driven landing craft for the First Marine Brigade in the Pacific. He had fought at Saipan and Tinian and Guam. He told Gilliland all about it as soon as he saw Gilliland's uniform, before Gilliland could ask him what room his wife was in.

The clerk took notice of the Purple Heart with its two gold stars and nodded expertly. “You're just back from Vietnam. Man, I just wish they'd let us win, you know? Craziest thing I ever saw.” The clerk was bigger than Gilliland, and meaty.

Gilliland nodded, wiping sweat off of his moustache. He was tired. “Yeah. Now what room is—”

“We should just bomb 'em back to the goddamn stone age—”

“I'll tell you, Chief, we been doing that pretty damn—”

“Make Hanoi a parking lot. I mean it. How can you fight a war with your hands tied behind your back is what I want to know, Sergeant.”

“You don't. You quit.” Gilliland leaned over the counter and looked coldly into the clerk's eyes. The Vietnam War was over. It happened only to individuals, and it had ceased happening to him. “Can you knock off your bullshit and tell me which room Mrs. Gilliland is in? You wanna talk about the war, go write a letter to your Congressman.”

21

A violent, thunderless noon rain scudded across a blue sky and soaked them thoroughly, even as the untroubled blue peeked around its edges. Then it suddenly abated, leaving them inside a thin, steamy mist. In minutes the resupply helicopter powered through the mist, driving it away with rotor wash, whipping the mist as winter wind drives chimney smoke. And they cringed, naked on the terraced hillside, feeling new horizontal rain that was driven by the helicopter's blades, lifted from long leaves of greening saw-grass.

Then the bird was gone, the moment of brief, fierce communication with the Other World had passed, and they were again abandoned. And mercilessly scorched, under an unharnessed sun. It was they that steamed now, clothes and poncho liners and packs reaching for the hot blue sky in hundreds of wispy, individual fogs.

A clump of burdened men trundled down the hill, jumping each hand-molded terrace like children descending grassy giants’ steps. Shoutings accompanied the jaunt: an argument, many hours old, was being waged along the hillside.

Goodrich looked up from cleaning his weapon, an M-16 bolt in one hand and a toothbrush in the other, and stared curiously at the group that had been deposited by the helicopter. There were six men in the cluster. Goodrich recognized Bagger and Cannonball, now back from R & R, who were laughing mightily, along with two pale new dudes, at the two men who were arguing. One of the arguers was tall and blond, splendidly muscled, with a narrow, jutting face and a thin, broken nose. He walked quickly, seemingly angry, attempting to be rid of the other. The second man, obviously the antagonist, was short and squat, square-faced, with a drooping, too-long moustache, sagging, amused eyes, and a nose like a hawk's beak. The short man followed the other, leaning forward in a crouch, attempting to address him. His face was lifted by an incessant, patient grin.

The tall man ignored his squat antagonist, walking quickly up to Goodrich. He squinted once, an attempt to recognize Goodrich, then looked along the perimeter for a familiar face. Finally he turned back to Goodrich, speaking in a forceful, unbelieving drawl.

“This is third platoon?”

Goodrich nodded, still awestruck by the suddenness of the clown show's arrival. The squat man crouched around and peered up to the blond man's face, still grinning mischievously. Blond man ignored him.

“Where is everybody?” Then, “Where's Snake?”

Goodrich pointed. Thirty meters down the lines, Snake lay sleeping inside a poncho hootch. “He's crashed. Right over there.”

The tall, muscular man marched directly over to the poncho hootch, accompanied by the crouching, grinning clown. The others, including a now-curious Goodrich, followed closely after. Blond man nonchalantly dropped his helmet on Snake's back. Snake coiled inside the hootch, and appeared on the other side with the helmet in one hand, ready to throw it into his assailant's face. He went motionless, dumbfounded, on the back-swing.

The tall man spoke, still unsmiling. “Hey, Snake. Put this crazy bastard out on an LP by himself, will you? Without a radio.” Then he grinned hugely. Snake jogged around his hootch, his thin lips in a generous smile, tattoos dancing on the narrow arms. He threw the helmet into his assailant's stomach. It bounced off harmlessly.

“Baby Cakes! You skating mother! I thought you had a job in the company mail room! What the hell you doing back out here?”

Baby Cakes peered over at his clowning, squatting nemesis. “Never mind what. I'm here. Now, get me away from this asshole, will you? Every time I get around him I get in trouble. He gets me shot, he gets me the clap, he gets me written up.” He shoved the squat man in the face, pushing him off balance. “Get away from me, shit-head.”

The ugly dwarf laughed. “Ah, don't mind him, Snake. He's just a little pissed off. It was his own damn fault but he won't admit it.” The Ogre had returned.

Snake guffawed. “You never done a wrong thing in your life, have you, Ogre?”

Ogre was stoned. Ogre was usually stoned. He grinned affectionately to Snake, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Hell. All I did was tell him about Mine Warfare School. You know. That he should go.”

Baby Cakes pushed Ogre on the top of his helmet, felling him. “Sure.” He turned to Snake, as if presenting a case. “Here I was, had the skatingest job in the company. Sorting mail. Three months left on my goddamn tour, a bad enough Heart that Top didn't make me go back to the bush. And in comes this fucker—”

Ogre interrupted, giggling. “It wasn't like that.”

“Shut up. Asshole here comes diddy-bopping in from the hospital. Made it all the way to Japan, takes three months, almost, while we're out here fighting the War—”

“How many gooks you been killing in the mail room, Cakes?” Ogre sat in the grass, still laughing, now shaking his head as if Baby Cakes’ story was outlandish.

“I told you to shut up!” Baby Cakes turned back to Snake again. “He comes into the company office, starts telling me about all the whorehouses in Da Nang, like he knew every one of 'em personally, and I think he did. Seems he had a little trouble finding An Hoa after his vacation in Japan—”

“Couldn't find the convoy.”

“I'll bet. You were too gaddamned stoned to give a shit.” Ogre shrugged: entirely possible. “So he comes in and tells me all about it. Here I am—”

“Fighting off gooks with his letter opener.” Ogre howled.

“Cut it out. Here I am, haven't seen a woman in months and he's telling me you can get it every night in Da Nang. Says he could take me to five skivvy houses blindfolded. Says it wasn't any sweat, that they were clean, nobody cared. Now, what the hell was I supposed to do? Go into the head and beat off, thinking about it?”

Snake scrutinized Baby Cakes. “You went AWOL?”

“Hay-ull no! I'm not the kind to get in trouble, man. You know me. I always try to do my job. I ain't any troublemaker.” He lit a cigarette and dropped his weapon against his pack, which now lay on the grass with his helmet. “I talked with the Top. He likes me, you know. Says I'm a good old boy, all that shit. I talked Top into cutting orders to Land Mine Warfare School for me and Ogre. He said I'd have to go back to the bush, though. Battalion rule about people who been to school. Hell. I figured it'd be worth it for another R & R. That was the way asshole here made it out to be.”

Ogre grew a tad more serious, and slapped Baby Cakes’ thigh. “It wasn't my fault, man. Who can tell about MPs?”

Baby Cakes knocked Ogre's hand away. “Ahhhh. MPs hell. First he takes me to the worst skivvy house in Da Nang. They were ugly as a mud fence, every one of 'em. I never saw such ugly girls in my life.”

“You just weren't as horny as you let on to be. If you were horny enough—”

“I was, Ogre! I was! I was so goddamn horny I signed away my mail-sorting job! Tell me about being horny!” Baby Cakes ignored Ogre once again. “Second place, when the MPs come, the son of a bitch won't try to sky out with me. I go back and bang on the door, yelling, ‘Ogre! Ogre! MPs, man!’ and he just says, ‘I'll be there in a minute, uh, huh, I'll be there in a minute,’ like I was telling him he was gonna miss the bus or something. Then we both got caught, and I had to give away my gold tooth—you remember that gold tooth I took out of that gook's head? The day Squeaky lost his eye?”

Snake nodded.

“That tooth. I was saving it to show my grandkids. Now some boot MP who'll never even see a goddamn NVA is gonna have a war story, thanks to asshole here. All because he wanted to finish off a smelly old whore.”

Ogre grinned, unabashed, appealing to the amused audience. “You ever try to pull it out in the middle of a stroke when you know you can't put it back? Huh? I just figured as long as I was gonna get caught, I may as well get what I was coming for!”

Applause. Cheers. Ogre had won them over.

Baby Cakes renewed his attack. “Goddamn, I'm sick of you! That ain't all. We get back to the troop area and we get written up for being out of bounds, anyway. They catch us coming over the fence.”

Snake shook his head, commiserating, trying to suppress his grin. “I never heard anything like it. What a bust.”

Baby Cakes warmed to the slight encouragement. He rolled Ogre onto his head, then pushed him over. It was a quick, effortless gesture that brought new cheers from the onlookers. “And that ain't even all of it! In a couple of days I got the clap so bad I can't even take a leak. My gut's so stretched out from trying to hold back pee I'll never look the same! And here I am back in the bush. And we almost didn't even get here!”

Ogre stood up, his ugly head drooping. “Oh, that. He'da never known, Baby Cakes.”

“Well, you're mighty lucky.” Baby Cakes looked around for lifers, and found none. “We're on the convoy coming back and we're in the truck bed with this Lieutenant who's on the way to the bush. It was about four days ago—remember when An Hoa was getting rocketed so bad, and they wouldn't allow choppers in? Oh, hell. A lot you all care about rockets in An Hoa. Anyway. It was a big thing in An Hoa. And we had to ride the convoy in. We're in the truck bed with this Brown Bar, and Ogre gives him a loaded Salem, starts rapping with him, you know, telling him sea stories about what they do to officers—”

Snake smiled slightly. “Hear about what Phony did to Sergeant Austin?”

Baby Cakes grinned knowingly. “I heard it was a mortar. Anyway, Lieutenant's scared shitless to start off with, but by the time we reach the Bridge he's stoned out of his mind, and he doesn't even know it! Keeps talking about how beautiful everything looks. Ogre slipped the man about four joints.”

Ogre shrugged, grinning slyly. “He needed to relax.”

“Yeah. Uh huh. And you're lucky he wasn't smart enough to let you relax in the goddamn brig!”

Ogre waved him off. “Ah. Lieutenants don't know about shit like that. And the ones who do don't care.”

“Could have been a CID. The way you are, you prob'ly got CIDs watching every move you make. They could clean up Da Nang, just closing down every place you stop at on an average day, Ogre.” Baby Cakes had concluded his diatribe. The crowd had departed. He turned back to Snake, comfortable in the knowledge that the squad now knew of his sufferings at the hands of Ogre. “Speaking of Lieutenants, how's ours? In the rear they say he's all right.”

“He's a hillbilly. Like you. He don't give anybody any shit and he don't take any shit off anybody. Austin was gonna write me up on the Bridge and he took that bastard apart. It was so cool. I told him about Wild Man Number One doing Kersey and—”

“You told him?”

“And he said he wished Wild Man had been a better shot. I think he'd do Kersey hisself if he had the chance. He's a goddamn grit, I tell you.”

Baby Cakes grinned easily. “Whoooeee. He wished Wild Man had been a better shot. That's heavy.”

“And he cried the night Boomer lost his legs. He don't know I know. He was on radio watch and I went up to talk to him and he was sitting there, shaking his head, crying. I went back to my hole. Later he came on down and we shot the shit about Boomer. He likes to shoot the shit.”

Baby Cakes seemed impressed. Snake had fought the other Lieutenants. “Sounds like you like the man.”

“Yeah. I do. He's one of them, watcha-callits—” Snake grinned, referring to the slogan often used on recruiting posters—“Leaders of Men.” He nudged Baby Cakes, pointing to his gear. “Pick up your trash. We gotta report you in. You got a team again, Cakes. Take Ogre—”

Baby Cakes grinned again. “Oh, no. You take Ogre. I've had it with him.”

“Come on, Cakes. Don't start in on that again. Ogre's O.K. in the bush.”

“Sure. Got me shot—”

Ogre interrupted. “That was your own damn fault.”

Baby Cakes hesitated dramatically, then acceded. “Oh, all right. But you're gonna be the death of me, you goddamned toad.”

Snake continued. “And you got Senator and Cornbread. Cornbread tries to act dumb, but he ain't. Senator ain't really a Senator. Yet. He just tries to make you think so.”

“That's the Harvard dude, right? Top was talking about him one day. He's got about a hundred-and-fifty I.Q. Hell. I won't even know how to talk to the man.”

“It's easy, Cakes. You talk real straight, 'cause he's a shitbird. You say, ‘Senator do this,’ and ‘Senator do that.’ And if he gives you any of his jack-shit you say, ‘Senator, you got point.’ It's the only thing he understands. He's scared to death of walking point. He's scared to death of everything.” Snake looked coldly toward Goodrich's fighting hole. “He let Burgie die.”

Baby Cakes seemed surprised. “I thought they were blown away by a one-oh-six. Blown all to shit.”

“They were. But Burgie bled to death, man. We got out there the next morning and Senator was sitting right next to him. Hadn't even put a tourniquet on the man. Burgie was all fucked up. But he bled mostly out of his legs. I seen the ground where he bled. All of us saw it.”

Baby Cakes shook his head in disbelief. “Well, what kind of a man is that? What you giving him to me for, Snake?”

“ ’Cause if he screws up I know you'll break his head. And I didn't want you to get bored. If you get bored, Senator can tell you about anything you ever wanted to know about. Just ask him. He can tell you about the tiger cages—”

“What the hell is a tiger cage, except a cage for tigers?”

“Ask Senator. And he can tell you about the Geneva Accords—”

“So what about it?”

“Ask him. Ask him. You're gonna come away a genius, Cakes!”

“I think I better work on coming away alive.”

THE perimeter was almost motionless under the close, windless swelter of the afternoon heat. The ragged, overgrown hill that had been carefully shaped into terraces some centuries ago, that had held manicured gardens only years ago, now hosted a hundred chest-deep holes, a city of jerry-rigged poncho tents, a tribe of nomad warriors. In two days they would leave it raped and scarred by their survival needs: scorched by trash fires, pitted by new fighting holes, reeking and maggoty from a half-dozen straddle trenches. And perhaps, if Buddha turned his head again, pocked by new ravages of war.

The sun beat down relentlessly. Men stripped to tiger shorts and boots, and sought the shaded ovens of their hootches. They listened to transistors. Some wrote letters. Some played back-alley card games. Some slept off the watches of the night before.