Tree of Smoke (28 page)

At Ton Son Nhut the previous afternoon he’d witnessed unbelievable airborne activity, an array of fighters and bombers landing and leaving, and cargo planes the size of mountains disgorging heavy armaments as big as houses. How could they fail to triumph in this war?

He found the villa’s door. It wasn’t locked.

Inside, behind the bar, stood Rick Voss, who said, “Welcome to our demented little show.”

“And good evening.”

“You found us.”

“Are you staying here too?”

“Always, whenever I’m in the Twilight Zone. Martini? I’ve got the makings.”

“I just spent half the night not getting drunk.”

“Welcome to the second half.”

“I’m ready to turn in.”

“Been clubbing with the colonel?”

“Just a wee skosh.”

“Has he snagged you? Did he put you on a task?”

“Not as yet.”

“I have something for you. Just busywork.”

“Thank God,” Skip said.

“Just keeping you close,” Voss said, and mixed him a surprisingly cold martini.

A
ssaulted by the scalding damp, their free hands thrown up against the rippling glare, they wrestled their duffels down the gangway onto the tarmac, PFC James Houston and two other new men of Echo Recon, and made their way to a staging area in a large open hangar where they sat on their gear and drank Cokes until a couple of spec fours came in who seemed to understand who they were.

Neither man actually greeted the three privates. They went on with their conversation as they guided the new arrivals to an M35 carryall big enough to haul a platoon, one saying to the other, “Who I specifically asked for was Carson, but who did he put in my ride? You. And now that means I’m saying, yes, fuck you, stay out of the Long Time, that’s my bar.”

“You mean you’re the only person in hell gets inside the Long Time. You’re their only customer on the planet.”

“No hard feelings.”

“Yes hard feelings, shit hard feelings.”

“Well, then, hard feelings, then. But stay the fuck out of my bar. Are those your orders?” he continued, now addressing the three new ones.

James had collected the papers for all three of them and held them in a tight sweaty grip.

“You realize your pay’s gonna be hung up, right?”

“Why? What’s wrong with our papers?”

“Nothing. They’re all fucked up.”

The other one said, “It all gets routed around the world, down your throat, and up your ass.”

The two hosts rode up front in the cabin and the new ones in the back, in a canvas-covered cavern, as far from the open end as they could manage. They bumped forward as the view of the airfield behind them, the jumble of crates, Quonsets, vehicles, aircraft, then the city, the wildly colored buildings, the streets full of people who didn’t know how strange they looked, gave way to a general vegetation. James had trained for jungle environs in South Carolina and in Louisiana, but only during the fall and winter. His feet steamed in his boots. He took off his helmet. The day was cloudy, but the glare of it behind them through the open tarp made it impossible to keep his eyes open. He nodded forward into a brown stupor and slept until the truck jumped and explosions roared around his head. Fisher and Evans had already flattened themselves on the deck among their duffels. James fell on top of them. The truck had stopped. The doors slammed. The two from up front now both stepped up on the rear bumper and peered in at the tangled grouping. “I told you they were queer,” one said. The other held his cigarette aloft and touched to it what turned out to be the fuse of a string of firecrackers, which he pitched in beside them. Another deafening, rattling burst. The two captors disappeared. The vehicle resumed its motion. The three privates were horrified at the callousness of the joke. James almost wept from fear, and Evans said, “If we had guns we could shoot that guy in the back of his head and leave him laying, doesn’t he know that?” “Jesus God!” Fisher shouted. He kicked viciously at the wall of the cabin. The truck stopped again. “Now see what you done!” Houston cried. “These bastards are gonna kill us now!” Only one—Flatt—popped up at the rear. “GI!” he shouted. “GI motherfucker! Incoming!” One at a time he tossed in three cans of Budweiser beer. “That was a stupid gag,” he admitted.

“Goddamn right,” Fisher said.

“Well, anyway, those are real-ass stateside cans of Bud with pull tabs. Eat up them beers, and no hard feelings.”

Fisher continued as spokesman: “
Yes
hard feelings! Jesus God! What
are
you, a goddamn NVA Vietcong
spy
?” He popped his beer and foam sprayed everywhere and he cried, “Fuck!”

“We’re taking an R-and-R detour,” the man said. “Have you ever had sideways pussy?”

The three had rearranged themselves now on the benches. Nobody replied.

“I repeat: Have you ever had sideways pussy?”

They continued pondering the question.

“I believe I have your attention now,” Flatt said, and he hopped off the bumper and they recommenced their travels.

“Jesus God!” Fisher said.

“Don’t say Jesus God no more,” Evans said.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“
I
don’t know. How am
I
supposed to know?”

James held his beer can down by his feet as he popped it. He dropped the tab into the can and turned it up to his face and guzzled warm Budweiser till the tab hit his tongue, and still he sucked at the opening.

A storm came over, fell like a cataract for five minutes, and subsided. Then it was foggy, hard to breathe. James slid himself along the bench to the end of the carrier and ventured to look out at the Vietnam War—rain dripping from gigantic leaves, deformed vehicles, small people—the truck gearing down, engine bawling, mud boiling under the big tires—barefoot pedestrians stepping away from the road, brown faces passing, rut after rut after rut, the beer lurching in his stomach. He mopped his face with the hem of his shirt, shielded his brow with his hand, and watched the sunset, as it fell below the level of the clouds, turn the colors of the world both somber and powerful. They’d joined a highway. All the roadside vegetation looked dead. The concrete pavement had acquired a reddish tint from all the mud rubbed into it. All kinds of vehicles used this road, bicycles and motor scooters and larger contraptions apparently created out of exactly such two-wheeled conveyances, and oxcarts and pushcarts, as well as half-naked pedestrians in conical hats, bent down by large bundles. The truck pushed east along the road with much honking, much zigging and zagging, braking and gearing. For a while they moved so slowly a cart behind them was able to keep pace, and James stared for a long time into the stupid, deeply sympathetic face of a water buffalo.

The dark came abruptly. For a while the traffic got very sparse, and then it appeared they were slowing, they were in, or near, some kind of town. The carrier stopped before a structure made mostly of bamboo, with a sign out front dimly lit by a red bulb and saying
COCA-COLA
and
LONG BRANCH SALOON
. Floating in its red cloud, the place looked hot, damp, mysterious, lonely. Music thudded within. Houston leaned out and peered frontward and could see quite a lot of doings ahead, shadowy structures and the tiny moving lights of bicycles. Between here and there, however, lay a long patch of darkness.

Their hosts, or captors, approached. Flatt said, “Get out of my truck.”

“Really?” Houston said.

“Give them a break, Flatt. Come on.”

“All right,” Flatt agreed. “I’m sorry I been fucking with you. You guys are the best thing happened all week. Your ride coming in so late means we should really, really in the interest, you know, of the wisest judgment, spend the night here in Bien Hoa. So you and Jolly entertain yourselves, and meanwhile, I gotta go in here to the Long Time and see a couple important enemy spies.”

“We’re coming with you, right?” Evans said.

“No. You can’t go in there.”

“We can’t?”

“No, it’s off-limits.”

James said, “Well, ain’t you going in yourself right now?”

“I’m on official business,” Flatt said. “You guys better just find another spot up the street there. Go over to the Floor Show.”

“Up the street?” Fisher said. That’s not a street. It’s dark.”

“Corporal Jollet will escort you into town.”

“All right—shit. Fine. Shit. I’ll take over,” said Jollet. “All aboard, let’s go.”

“Oh no you don’t. The truck stays here.”

“It’s near a klik to anyplace else!”

“Men,” Flatt said, “carry on. Move in single file and pray your asses don’t get ambushed your first night on the ground. You got any money?”

“Shit,” Jollet said. “They don’t have any money.”

“You keep saying ‘Shit’ like it’s my name,” Flatt said. “Stop saying ‘Shit’ like it’s my name. How much you guys got? Because in this wacky-ass modern world where we’re living,” he explained, “you can’t get laid without no money. You got enough for a beer?”

“How much is a beer?”

“I got a couple bucks,” James admitted.

“U.S. cash or MPC?”

“Regular dollar bills.”

“Corporal Jollet, take these new guys to the Floor Show.”

Flatt and Jollet, both bumping into each other and getting in each other’s way, giving off an aura of mutual dependence and resentment, like brothers, placed their M16s in the carryall’s tool compartment. Jollet said to the privates, “Where’s your weapons?”

“Jesus God!” Fisher cried out. “I TOLD you!”

James said, “We don’t have no weapons.”

“How bizarre,” Flatt said.

“Are we gonna get some?”

“Yes, I believe we can furnish you all the weapons you want,” Jollet assured them. “This is a war.”

Flatt went into the Long Branch Saloon, leaving them with Jollet, who said, “I’m not actually gonna say it, but I feel like saying, ‘Shit.’”

He turned and headed toward the town. They could only follow.

“Where are we?”

“Bien Hoa. We don’t go past the edge. It’s all air force in there.”

It was dark. This was Vietnam. “Goddamn,” James said, trying to keep his voice as soft as the darkness.

“The point being?”

“The point being is, it’s darker’n hell.”

“They should show you a picture of how dark it is here before you sign up at the recruiters,” Evans said.

“I didn’t sign up,” Fisher said. “They drafted my ass. And I qualified for chopper training.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Evans asked.

“What are
you
doing here?”

“I volunteered,” Evans said. “Why? Two things: curiosity plus stupidity. What about you, Cowboy?”

Having mentioned that his mom worked on a ranch, James Houston had become a cowboy. He said, “Just stupidity all by itself, I guess.”

Fisher said, “You think they have any mines around here? Mines on this road? Booby traps or anything?”

“Shut up, all of you,” Jollet said, and instantly they shut up.

James smelled cook-smoke, greasy vapors. They walked toward the vague dim lights, not very far off now, their boots creaking and their canteens ticking. He would never top this feeling, he was sure of it: scared, proud, lost, hidden, alive.

Fisher broke the silence. “Can you please just tell us where we’re going?”

Jollet halted to light a cigarette, sending over the region a glow from his lighter. “To this place called the Floor Show. The floor shows used to be very weird, due to a lack of music.” He waved the lighter and the flame went out. “See? No snipers.”

“What do you mean ‘floor shows’?”

“They should be improved considerably. I heard they got a jukebox.”

“What’s on it?”

“Songs, man. Tunes, you know?”

“Where’d they get a fucking jukebox?”

“Where do you think? Some NCO club someplace. Somebody sold it out the back door.”

“And you don’t know what’s on it?”

“How would I know that, Private? I got no fucking idea.”

“But, I mean—just a general idea.”

Jollet halted, his face toward the sky. “DEAR LORD. I HAVE NOT
BEEN
TO
SEE
THE FUCKING THING YET.”

“Well, okay.”

“I AM ON MY
WAY THERE
RIGHT FUCKING
NOW
.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“I AM ON MY WAY THERE WITH
YOU
.”

A broken-off sign out front of the place said
FLOOR SHOW
. It looked like a barn, only inside instead of goats and chickens there were people, mostly small women. Behind the plywood bar a green neon sign said
LITTLE KING’S ALE
. There were lava lamps. “Sit here,” Jollet instructed them. They sat at a table. “You, sir. Your name is what?”

“Houston.”

Jollet said, “Buy me a beer, Houston.”

“I’ll buy you just one, and that’s all.”

“Yow, daddy! Yer scratchin’ my number.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means I need two dollars.”

One of the women approached. “You want floor show?” She seemed to guess Jollet was the one to talk to, maybe because he hadn’t sat down. She smiled at him in her tight, short blue dress. She’d lost a front tooth.

“No floor show. Beer now, floor show later.”

“I be your waitress,” she said.

“Give me two dollars,” he said. “Four beers.”

James said, “Lemme have a Lucky Lager.”

“No Lucky. Puss Boo Ribbon.”

“Pabst? Nothing but Pabst?”

“Puss Boo Ribbon or 33.”

Jollet said, “Bring us 33.”

“I want Pabst,” James said.

“You want the cheapest,” Jollet said. “Bring it in the bottle. Don’t bring me no dirty glass.”

She took Houston’s money and departed.

Looking terrified, Fisher said, “All righty, then!”

“Fellers,” Jollet said, “I’m gonna sky on out of here.”

“What?”

“Got errands to run. You children stay put.”

“What? How long do we stay here?”