Who Shot the Water Buffalo?

by Ken Babbs

But according to my outward show

  I believe in everything I appear to know.

  And who around can give me the lie

  When my icy demeanor freezes his eye?

  Captain Beamus brings the ground training session to an end. Before we can escape, the Admin Officer, Captain Miles “Standish” Briggs stands up and annouces that the Commandant of the Marine Corps is coming for a visit. The Commandant doesn’t want us doing anything out of the ordinary. The dispatch from headquarters says it will be a working-day inspection. He’ll walk around and talk to the men and get his own opinion of what we’re doing, and we’re to treat it like any other day.

  Which means we’ll scrub and clean and wax and hide our garbage and worn-out equipment in preparation for the inspection.

  “Remember, this isn’t really an inspection. Normalcy is the SOP. But have your top NCOs stationed in key locations so if the Commandant stops to ask questions he won’t be talking to some yo-yo who can’t tell the time.”

  Hops are cancelled. Work on the helicopters ceases. Every man turns to and polices the shops and the offices. Captain Beamus orders the metal shop to construct racks in the ready room where the pilots can hang their flight gear and flak suits. He numbers every slot on the clothing racks and assigns each pilot a number.

  “You will hang your flight gear and flak suits on the proper hook. If you want to use hangers you’ll have to supply your own.”

  Everyone ignores him. So, early the next morning, Captain Beamus picks up every piece of gear—helmets, pistol holsters, map cases, kneeboards and flak suits—that isn’t hanging in its proper niche and hauls it all to the equipment cage and dumps it in a pile in on the floor. That will show those insubordinate cretins.

  The Commandant arrives right on time. The NCOs man their posts as if it is a normal working day, while the goldbrickers are hidden behind shelves or sent to the mess hall for an early all-day chow. The ready room is clean and tidy, a tribute to Captain Beamus’s zeal. The floors are swept and the benches are in precise rows. Comfortable canvas-backed chairs are lined up for the Commandant and his covey of officers.

  The monsoon rains seep into the hangar and the ready room. The air is heavy and funereal, and, in the line shack, we the pilots, banished from the ready room, wait morosely for the visit to end.

  Only Cochran is excited.

  “Is he here yet? Dammit, don’t block the door.”

  Cochran jumps in and out of the rain, camera poised, waiting to snap the Commandant, capture his presence, devour his visage.

  Cochran hasn’t shaved—never shave on a rainy day, might have to go back to bed and it would be wasted—and the stubbles on his face are as thick as scrub elms along a farmer’s fence. He has thrown his absorbent Marine Corps raincoat around his shoulders, and his misshappen baseball cap, shrunken and faded from rain and sweat, gloms to his head like a limp rag.

  The Commandant’s arrival is heralded by a throng of newspaper-men and photographers pushing into the line shack. They too are barred from the ready room briefing, but after being shuttled about for weeks they don’t feel any animosity about being shunted aside. One shack’s as good as another. Soonto’s cur raises his hackles at the intruders. He growls and slinks behind the counter—never trust a stranger, might turn you into meat for the table.

  The press corps includes a woman. She is short and squatty, hair streaky and stringy, glasses covering puzzled eyes. A Leica hangs around her neck and a photo bag is draped over her shoulder. A torn trench coat covers a man’s shirt and a pair of dirty slacks. Wet sneakers glom to her sockless feet.

  “Oh, man,” Cochran says, “look at that. Real roundeye ginch but what a butch-looking babe.”

  He edges away from the door. The woman stands apart, warily casing the pilots.

  “She’s got her eye on you, can see you’re un hombre grande,” I tell Rob Jacobs, who has taken Cochran’s place at the door. She gives Rob Jacobs a casual glance. Rob looks rastier than Cochran.

  “Yeah, I think she has at that. Do you suppose she wants to take my picture?”

  Not so very long ago Rob Jacobs was a very dapper young man with his large smiling mouth, curly lion’s mane and smooth tanned skin.

  “I’m the most handsome man around, including Cassius Clay,” he would say to himself in the mirror, but that was before he was hooked on the booze and the bars, and before he got eighty-sixed at the blackjack table in the O club. He was at the table every chance he got, doubling and tripling his bets until he was tapped out and borrowing money from everyone in the squadron.

  It started out as fun but he became obsessed and, ultimately, possessed, a demon raging within, and when he was barred from the table, the demon howled for release. Gone are the joke sneezes. Gone are the fake laughs. Gone is the shipshape Lieutenant. Gone is any pretense of holding it together, his manners slopped so low they wallow with the hogs. He’s been kicked out of the O club, he’s a social pariah in the Frog House, he spends every spare minute in town, drinking, until the MPs throw him in the bus, for the last ride to the base.

  The alcohol benumbs and benigns. Everything is loose and all right. There is no longer a war in Vietnam, the smiling brown bar girls click into full frame beauty and Rob Jacobs is riding on top, his demon at peace. But only for a while. His behavior in town gets so outlandish—tabletop dancing, grabbing the microphone from the vocalists, mooning the Air Force officers, spilling trays of drinks—he gets barred from every bar in Da Nang.

  No matter. He crawls through a hole in the perimeter fence and crosses Highway One into Dogpatch, a ratty-ass slum-jumble of huts and hooches nailed together out of flattened beer cans, where piss-warm bam bai bao beer can be had for five piasters a can, and where the sleaziest whores, too pock-marked for town, put out for 20 pees. Rob Jacobs’ demon is at full-bore roar.

  His outlet is sex. Sex which is more than the normal dorking. Inhibitory commands are deafened as deep briney excursions are logged in the big score book. Horniness whips him to the max. He’ll outdo every stud ever come cock swollen and nut throbbing through the fence. He’s singing the long dong song, meanwhile his chinga is savoring the thought of the new blouse she will buy with the piasters she’s earning. For Buddha’s sake can’t you hurry up, Yankee dolt? She pulls his hair, come on, you, and he is gone, gone around the bend and over the edge of the last cliff to nowhere.

  “I’m deep, I’m down deep,” he tells us. “I can’t control myself. Unspeakable forces at work.” He holds his head in his hands.

  Cochran recommends an exorcism, or if not that, a counseling session with the chaplain. Seeing these suggestions have no effect, Cochran gets down to the bone.

  “Rob, don’t you have any willpower?” Cochran asks him.

  “Yeah, I’ve got lots of willpower, I just don’t have any won’t-power.”

  “Ask yourself, Rob. What would your daddy think?”

  “Oh Lordy, why did you have to bring him into this?”

  “Because a strong daddy is a force that sticks in your craw. My dad told me one time to sit in for him in the poker game that went on every afternoon in the Molten Iron Club. He gave me ten thousand dollars to play with. I was shitting blue bricks, sitting at the table with men who would break your kneecap if they thought you were looking at them funny. They cleaned me out in two hours. Then I had to face Papi. He surprised me by clapping me on the shoulder and congratulating me. Turned out it was dirty money he had to get rid of.”

  He pauses.

  “And all the time I was trying to win.”

  Poppa power prevails. Rob Jacobs cleans up his act. The normal daily routine helps. He still has to roust out with the rest of us at reveille. He still has to fly. He’s still a Marine. Cluching the symbolic globe and anchor he treads the straight and narrow. He still looks like shit. The photographer lady is the first thing to arouse an interest in feminine pulchritude since his reclamation effort began.

  Cochran jabs Rob Jacobs with his elbow to pry him away fr
om the door.

  “Beat it,” says Rob, not giving ground. “I’ve got something going here.”

  “You?” Cochran is incredulous. “No way.”

  “Guess again,” I say. “Check him out.

  Rob Jacobs stands up straight, stomach in, shoulders back. He spits on his hands and slicks back his hair. For all the good it does. His pistol hangs half way out of his shoulder holster. His camouflaged flight suit is ripped under one armpit, exposing dirty skin and a grungy shirt.

  “Okay,” says Cochran. “I get it. He’s trying for svelte. Good luck, Marine.”

  The photographer holds up her camera, idly focusing around the line shack, ostensibly getting a light reading. Rob Jacobs turns so he is in half profile. His hand slides up and fondles his pistol butt. I stand aside so the rip and dirty shirt are in plain view. The camera clicks.

  “Hey,” Cochran yells. “You think that picture will come out, dark as it is in here?” He leans over her shoulder. “What setting are you using?”

  “No pictures inside. Not enough light.”

  “How’s about letting me shoot one of you?”

  Cochran backs off and points his brownie. She stands rigid as though the camera were a gun. Rob Jacobs bellies up.

  “Mind if I have a copy of that picture you just took of me?” he asks. “I can give you my name and address. You can drop one in the mail.”

  “Get the hell out of the way,” Cochran says “You’re blocking the light.”

  “I think inside is too dark,” the girl murmurs, pulling her coat tighter.

  “I’ll just grab a pencil and piece of paper.”

  “Hold still, dammit—”

  “Here he comes, Mike,” I interrupt. “The Commandant is here.”

  Cochran elbows his way out the door into the rain. The Commandant, heading an entourage of Generals, Colonels, Majors and a couple of weary looking Captains, strides around the corner of the line shack, the Hammer marching at his left, one proper pace to the rear.

  “Hold her, General.” Cochran plants himself in the Commandant’s path and aims in.

  “Got it. Thanks a lot, sir.” He steps aside and salutes. The Hammer stares ahead.

  “Your public information man, Colonel?” the Commandant asks.

  “Ah, not exactly, sir.”

  “Fine boy. Out in the rain doing his job, I like that kind of attitude. I didn’t catch his rating. A corporal, I imagine.”

  “No, sir. That was one of our pilots.”

  “Oh?” The Commandant glances around.

  Cochran has climbed on top of a pile of lumber. When the Commandant spots him, Cochran waves and grins. Points to the camera and makes a round O with his thumb and forefinger; everything’s okay.

  The Commandant goes into the ready room for the Hammer’s briefing. Cochran climbs down from the lumber pile and hunkers under the eaves of the hangar. I join him there. Rob Jacobs stays in the line shack, he’d rather study the woman.

  After the briefing, the Hammer leads the Commandant on a tour of the hangar and working spaces. Staff NCOs stand at attention in every office and every shop. There isn’t a sound of a tool being used or a machine at work. A Marine begins pounding a nail in the supply cage and the Hammer motions to the First Sergeant. He scurries away and puts the kibosh on the whang bang.

  At every stop, during every talk the Commandant has with an average-picked-at-random-during-a-normal-working-day Marine, Cochran is close by, snapping pictures. I pretend I’m his assistant. The entire inspection party having ascertained through whispers that the Commandant made a favorable comment about the madman, ignores Cochran’s wild antics. The Hammer endures Cochran’s presence, reluctant to leave his favored spot to the left, one pace to the rear, confident that he’ll get Cochran later. We circle back to the line shack and the reporters file out, the inspection over. The Leica lady darts out. Rob Jacobs follows, calling out his name and address. He stops, despondent and miffed.

  “Probably some cheap foreign bull dyke anyways,” Rob says.

  “You could tell that from her trench coat,” I say.

  Cochran runs up to us. “One picture left. Where’d she go?”

  “Gone,” says Rob Jacobs.

  “Gone? Why that no-good German. She was German, you know.”

  “How do you know that? By her accent I suppose.”

  “Accent? What accent? All photographers who wear trench coats, slacks, and follow wars are Germans. Besides, her hair was streaked, wasn’t it?”

  Rob Jacobs and I nod our heads.

  “Proves it. You didn’t want to fuck with her. She wears M-80s for tampons. Piss her off and she raises her leg, points her crotch at you and lights the fuse. Hold that.”

  He takes a picture of us. There’s a snarl at our feet. Soonto’s cur stands at the door, hairs on his neck bristling, tail stuck straight out. He sniffs and steps outside to piss on a rain-soaked plant.

  We plod over to the ready room and scarf down the donuts and lemonade the Commandant’s entourage left behind. The Duty Officer announces all flying is scrubbed, and we go outside and catch the bus to the Frog House, leaving just before the Hammer returns to the ready room. He finds the place empty and the lemonade and donuts gone. Rob Jacobs is still there and he tells us later that the Hammer seemed pleased with the impression he made on the Commandant, the neatness of the area, the appearance of the men and their prompt correct answers to the Commandant’s questions, but Rob could tell the Hammer was also pissed at Cochran, the nerve of the man, in a thousand places at a thousand times with his goddamned camera. Only Cochran would have thought of a camera.

  The Hammer zeros in on Rob.

  “What are you gawking at Lieutenant? Get that flight suit replaced, it’s a disgrace.”

  Then, Rob tells us, the Hammer roared off in his jeep, blowing past Private First Class Alvin Sneedly who stepped out of the line shack just in time to come to attention, snap a salute and catch a shitload of mud across his clean starched utilities.

  19. Time is a Tightrope

  What time is it, Doc? … can’t you get this show moving? … fooling me all the time … like the time Daddy and I went to visit mi abuela … with my little dog, Dingo … white with brown spots, bristly hair … goes everywhere with me … up early, time to go home, where’s Dingo?… he had to go out, niño, I thought it was all right … Dingo, come here, boy … where are you, Dingo … Daddy is impatient … Tomas, we have to go, we don’t have time to look now … not enough time for Dingo … we never found him, Doc … time, she run out on Dingo … where does time go, Doc … stretched so thin, does it break and then end …

  We’re going to the dogs, Doc … ever since Soonto got his cur it opened the doghouse doors … seems like every enilisted man in the squadron has his own dog … they are all over the compound, the hangar, the equipment cage … the pilots stick to walking the Dawg … what we call the helicopter … we’re sitting on a pad of an outpost we just resupplied, and an American all dressed in jungle gear demands we take him to some spot over on the Laotion border … he can’t believe it when we say nothing doing … he says this is a dog mission … what? … he gives us the wink, we still don’t get it … “dog,” he says again, “you know, oh for Christ’s sakes do I have to say it out loud” … he looks around, leans in close … “CIA,” he whispers, “special orders” … “a dog mission is the code that gives me clearance” … Cochran laughs, shouts for anyone to hear: “CIA my ass” … “if you don’t go through our operations section and get an ops order, we don’t take you on any mission, secret or otherwise” … “but we will give you a ride back to Da Nang” … the secret agent declines and stomps off fuming … after first promising regal retribution from offices on high … a lot we care … we leave the dog man behind and fly back to the base … that’s where the relief is …

  We muster in the ready room. The maps, pencils, flight gear, flak vests and pants usually spread all over the place are missing. A few things hang neat and tidy
on Captain Beamus’s clothing rack. We thrash around the racks and behind the mapboards looking for our equipment, recalling the Rajah’s warning: We’ve built these racks and assigned every pilot a hook. The hooks are numbered and your number is on this list. Everyone start using them.

  “If you’re looking for your gear, it’s in the equipment cage,” Emmett says, walking in the door with his flak vest.

  A mad rush to the equipment cage, paw through the pile in the middle of the floor, everyone frantic to find their gear, except for a few who stay in the ready room, not wanting to get enmeshed in the mess. I walk over to the rack and lift off a set of vests and pants. These will do. So what they’re not mine.

  “That son of a bitch,” says Cochran.

  “Which one?”

  “Beamus. What the hell he have to do that for?”

  “Yeah,” says Ben-San. “Who gives him the right to fuck with our gear?”

  “I’ll fix his ass,” says Cochran. He walks over to the rack and searches around. Captain Beamus and the Hammer are huddled together over a map in the front of the room. They ignore the abuse running in rivulets under their feet, a backwash of anger swirling around their ankles. Cochran opens the ready room door and throws a set of flak pants and vest out in the mud. A murmur of laughter. Captain Beamus looks around suspiciously. He and the Hammer split up, the pilots gather in small groups to brief for the day’s runs. The duty officer writes the plane assignments on the acetate schedules board.

  Cochran groans. “We’re flying again. I was hoping the weather would cancel us out.”

  A three-plane flight to Duc Pho, an isolated outpost at the bottom of a deep river canyon forty miles from home base. Captain Beamus and his copilot, Wee Willie Weems, are leading the flight. Cochran and I are flying on their wing. Ben-San and Rob Jacobs are piloting the third bird, and they grouse over our chances of getting home early. Practically nil with Captain Beamus leading.

  Bennett walks up. “Before you get through briefing I’ve got something to pass out,” he says.

  Bennett hands Cochran six bullets for his pistol, tracers that leave a red trail when they are fired.