Hooligans (32 page)

ninety.
A
few lines grooved its smooth surface, but not enough to mar his youthful, carefree

expression.

There was very little traffic along the bay. A few shrimp boats had gone out against the rising tide

arid a weekend sailor was trying, without much success, to get a lackluster wind in the sails of his

boat a couple of hundred yards away. Otherwise it was so quiet he could hear what little wind there

was rattling the marsh grass.

This was the Irishman‟s love, his escape from a business he neither liked nor understood. He felt like

a misfit, a Peter Principled gunman forced to act like a businessman. O‟Brian liked to settle disputes

his own way. Negotiating con fused him. But here he was king; he was alone and free, master of

himself and his tiny domain, for O‟Brian had mastered the secrets of fishing. It was one of the few

things he did well, and he loved the sport with a consummate passion

When the phone rang, he snapped, “Damn!” under
his
breath and weighed down the loose end of the

lure with a metal clamp before he went into the main room of the cabin to answer it.

“It‟s me, boss, Harry,” the gravelly voice on the other end of the line said. “He‟s through eating

breakfast. You sure you don‟t want I should follow him out, make sure he isn‟t bringin‟ company?”

“I said alone.”

“He could bring
company.”

“Now, he won‟t do that.”

“You never know with these Feds.”

“He don‟t have nothin‟ on me,” the Irishman said.

“He‟s pretty quick, this guy.”

“Just camp out at Benny‟s down the road. I need ya, I holler.”

“Want I should ring once and hang u when he leaves?”

“Good idea.”

“Everything calm out there?”

“No problem. Coupla shrimp boats went by.
Nobody‟s
been down the road. There‟s some jerk out

here trying to get his sailboat back to the city marina, which is kinda funny.”

“What‟s so funny about it?”

“There ain‟t no wind.”

“Well,
don‟t take no chances.”

“Don‟t worry. You just hang out there at Benny‟s, have a coupla beers, come on in when you see him

leave.

“Gotcha.”

They hung up and the Irishman switched on the radio and walked out onto the deck for a stretch. The

sailboat had drifted four hundred feet or so west of the shack, toward the city, and the sailor was

trying vainly to crank up his outboard, a typically sloppy weekend sailor in a floppy white hat, its

brim pulled down around his ears. The putz, he thought, was probably out of gas. But he had learned

one thing since discovering the sea—sailors helped each other.

He cupped his hands and yelled:

“See if you can get it over here, maybe I can help.”

The sailor waved back. He shoved the submachine gun under his Windbreaker near his feet,
took
an

oar from the cockpit of the sailboat, and began to paddle toward the Irish man.
...

38

FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE FIRST SIX

The twelfth day:
Today I killed a man for the first time. I have a hard time talking about this. What

happened, we‟re moving on this village, which was actually about a dozen hooches in this rice field

seven or eight kliks downriver. This village was at the bottom of some foothills. There were rice

paddies on both sides and a wide road lined with pepper trees anti bamboo kind of dead-ending at it.

Before we start down, Doe Ziegler, our medic, hands me a couple of buttons “What are these for?” I

ask “Dex,” he says. “Make you see better, hear better, move faster. lust do it.” So I popped the speed.

It took about twenty seconds
o
kick my ass. I‟ve never had speed before. I felt like taking on the

village all by myself I mean,
I
was ready‟

We go down toward it, two squads on each side in the rice paddies, because they make good cover,,

and we have the Three Squad backing us up in reserve. We go iii on the left and the One Squad on the

right. They take the first hit. The
VC
opens up with mortars and machine-gun fire and starts just

chewing them up. One guy, the whole top of his head wert off. The noise was horrendous; I couldn‟t

believe the racket.

The lieutenant runs straight toward the village with his head down just below the edge of the ditch

and I‟m right behind him. The radio man is having trouble calling up the reserve platoon because

we‟re in this little valley and the reception is for shit, so the lieutenant sends back a runner an4 then

he
says,
“Fuckin‟ gooks are eating One Squad up, we got to take them,” and he goes out of the paddy

and runs for this stretch of bamboo which is maybe twenty yards from the gooks and rue still right

behind him.

That tips Charlie and they start cutting away at us. They‟re shooting the bamboo down all around u,

just cutting it off. Then I see this VC in his black pajamas and he‟s got his head out just a little,

checking it out, and I sight him in and, ping! he goes down, just throws his hands up in the air and

goes over backward. Then another one comes running over and he‟s shooting as he comes, only he‟s

aiming about ten meters to my left and I drop him. Then I see the machine gun, which is in the dirt
out

in front of the first hooch, and there‟s two of them and they‟re just cutting One Squad to shit, so I run

u through the bamboo and get in position and blitz them both, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!

Next thing I know, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad are running past me and the One Squad

breaks loose and then it‟s all over. Five minutes, maybe. I was thinking, Jesus, I did more in the last

five minutes than I ever did in my whole life. I mean, it was such a high. And to still be in one piece!

There wasn‟t anybody left. Women, kids, old people,
VC.
The entire village was blitzed. Nobody

seemed to pay any attention to that; it was just business as usual. Then they brought in a

flamethrower and scorched the whole place. I didn‟t look at the civilians, I just looked the other way.

I figure, this is the way it‟s done, but it doesn‟t change how I feel about it.

Otherwise we were all feeling pretty good because none of our guys was hurt.

“You okay?” the lieutenant says after he makes the body count, and I says, “Yeah, I feel good.” And I

did.

“You looked okay in there,” he says.

I wasn‟t a virgin anymore and I was still alive. Jesus, I felt good.

It took me a long time to get used to it, that I had killed those people and it was
okay,
that it was what

they expected me to do. For a while I kept dreaming they would come at night and arrest me.

The 38th day:
Doc Ziegler doesn‟t even believe in all this. He‟s a medic, doesn‟t carry any

weapons. He says he would have gone to Canada but his old man had a bad heart and Doc figured it

would kill him if Doc jumped the border. So he said, “Fuck it!” when he got his notice. “I can put up

with anything for a year,” he says. Among other things, Doc supplies the speed, He doesn‟t do it

himself, says he doesn‟t need it since he doesn‟t carry a weapon. But he smokes pot a lot. Morning,

noon, and night. Hell, I don‟t think I‟ve ever seen Doc unstoned. But when there‟s trouble he can

move with the best of them. What the hell, if it makes it easier.
He‟s
been on the line a month longer

than me and he acts like he was born here.

Carmody is the best officer I ever knew. All he thinks about is what‟s out there. He never talks about

home, his wife, nothing. Just business and his men. He was a green shavetail when he got to Nam ten

months
ago. He has a funny sense of humor, like no matter what you ask him, he‟s got a one-liner for

you. I asked him once where he was from.

“My old man had the poorest farm in Oklahoma,” he says. “Our hog was so skinny, if you put a dime

on its nose, its back feet would rise up off the ground.”

Then there‟s Jesse Hatch, who used to drive a truck all over the country, one of those big semis; and

Donny Flagler, who‟s like me, just out of college. Both of them are black guys. And there‟s Jim

Jordan, who was in law school; his old man was a senator and still couldn‟t get him deferred. Jordan

is one pissed-off guy. He‟s a short-timer, has two months to go, a first-class pain in the ass. Hatch is

the M-60 man; he can really handle that mother. Flagler is our radio. None of us are regulars, but

after a month out here, I feel like one.

The 42nd day
:
We get orders to take this knob for an
LZ.
Charlie is all over the place. He won‟t

give it up. They have the high ground; they sit up there and lob mortars down on us all after-fuckin‟-

noon. Carmody gets on the radio and calls in the Hueys. He wants them to blitz the place so we can

rush it, only it‟s raining and a little foggy, and they‟re giving him some stand-down shit and he starts

yelling:

“1 want some air in here, now! Don „t gimme any of that fog shit. Nobody‟s told us to go home

because it‟s raining. Get me some goddamn air support fast!”

He slams the phone down.

Listen, kid, if you can‟t get a chopper in when you fuckin‟ need one, forget it. That‟s the edge. You

don‟t have the edge,
you‟re
in trouble. We can‟t beat these motherfuckers at this kind of game, for

Christ sake, they been doing it for fifteen fuckin‟ years. When you need air, get nasty.”

That‟s the way he was, always teaching me something.

About ten minutes later these two Hueys come over and really waste that knob. Carmody doesn‟t wait

for shit, we‟re off up the hill while the Hueys are still chewing it u
-
Six or eight 50-millimeter and 20-

millimeter cannons working. Good God, there were
VC‟s
flying all over the place in bits and pieces.

A boot with a foot in it hit me in the shoulder and splashed blood down my side. I was getting sick.

Then the gooks broke and ran and we took the knob and sat up there picking them off as they went

down the other
side.
We must‟ve shot ten, twelve of them in the back. After a while I stopped counting.

It didn‟t seem right. Maybe I‟ve seen too many cowboy movies, but shooting all those people in the

back seemed to be pushing it. But then, I‟ve only been on the line two months. I‟m still learning.

The 56th day:
Last night a bunch of sappers jumped this airstrip eight or nine kliks north of here and

pillaged two cargo planes. They got ahold of some of our own Bouncing Bettys. What you got there is

a daisy cutter, a 60-millimeter mortar round, and it‟s rigged so it jumps u about waist high when you

trip it, and it goes off there, at groin level, cuts you in half

We‟re always real careful about mines, but the motherfuckers have these Bettys all over the fucking

place.
A
couple of places they rigged phony trip lines so you‟d see the line and move out of the way

and they‟d have another trip line next to it and you‟d nick that and it was all over.

I hear it go off. Nobody screams or anything, it just goes
boomf!
and shakes some leaves off the trees

where I am. I run back. It‟s maybe a hundred meters. Flagler‟s laying there and he‟s blown in
half.

Two parts of him. I can‟t believe it. I start shaking. I sit down and shake all over. Then Doc comes up

and gives me a downer.

Carmody is taking it the worst. He just keeps swearing over and over. Later in the day we catch up

with a couple of
VC.
We don‟t know whether they rigged the Bouncing Bettys, but we tie the two of

them to these two trees, side by side, and we set one of the mines between the trees and rig it and then

we back off about a hundred feet and we keep shooting at the line and those two gooks are screaming

blood y-fucking-murder. It was Jesse finally tripped it. We left them hanging in the trees.

Psychological warfare, that‟s what we call it.

39

DEAD MAN’S FLOAT

It took me twenty minutes to make the drive to Skidaway Island. Three blocks on the far side of the

bridge I found Bayview, a deserted gravel lane, hardly two cars wide, that twisted through a living

arch of oak trees with Spanish m4ss. Here and there, ruts led to cabins hidden away among trees,

palmettos, and underbrush. I passed a roadhouse called Bennys Barbecue, which looked closed except

for a gray Olds parked at the side of the place that looked suspiciously like the car Harry Nesbitt was

driving when he followed me the night before. After that there was nothing but foliage for almost a

mile before I came to O‟Brian‟s shack.