13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Not even you callin Silvers a token Jew?”

  “You don’t understand yet,” Egan said. “Takin it personal is for people back in the World. We got a separate culture out here. And in some respects it’s better. Fuck Man, an AK round don’t care what color your paint job is.”

  Cherry took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You got no feelings, Eg,” he said. It was the very first time Cherry had ever used the nickname. He felt slightly apprehensive yet it brought him to Egan’s plane.

  “You don’t understand, Man,” Egan said. “You’re goina have to experience it all for yourself first. I got feelings.”

  “Goddamnit,” Cherry grunted. “I don’t understand you. I think you just hide in that hardass role you’re always playin.”

  “What?”

  “Silvers gets blown away. Brunak gets wounded. You either don’t care or you hide it awfully well.”

  “Man, you’re bein an asshole.”

  “Silvers got blown away. I’ll never see him again. He’s dead, Man.”

  “What difference does that make to you? Or to me?” Egan was feeling quite heated. “He’s dead. You want me to write his folks and say, ‘Ah, I knew yer kid. He didn’t die bad. There wasn’t time for pain cause he caught it in the neck.’ Maybe you’d have me go easy. Say, ‘He got it fuckin a sleeze in the ville at the height of orgasm.’ What the fuck do you want from me, Man?”

  “Nothin,” Cherry said. Their conversation wasn’t going as he had expected.

  “Look, Cherry,” Egan calmed. “If I’m goina mourn for a dude, I gotta do it in my way, in my time. Man, boonierats are different kinds of people. You want to think about Silvers, think about why he got blown away. For me, I gotta think about what to do. I had to replace him, make Jax squad leader. That wasn’t easy. Marko and Denhardt both could a been made squad leader.”

  “You didn’t do that cause Jax is black, did you?”

  “Fuck no. Denhardt’s got no brains at all and Marko couldn’t lead his grandmother through a supermarket without antagonizing her. I mean it when I say boonierats is a race. Look, I love these guys out here. I know I can depend on em.”

  Cherry did not answer.

  “One night on 882 we had twenty-eight wounded,” Egan said. “Everybody seemed to be bleedin. Black, white, yellow. None of the docs said, ‘Go find a medic yer own color. I only treat my kind.’ The docs treat everybody. Pointmen lead everybody. When some of those dudes died everybody felt bad. Jax felt for his white boonierat brothers just like I felt for my black ones. It don’t always show. And I hate to see fucken blacks riot in the World. Fuck it. I don’t think it’s s’pose ta show.”

  Cherry and Egan lay back. Cherry was on radio watch. Egan passed quickly from awake to semi-consciousness. His mind zigged and zagged in agitation. Stephanie appeared and calmed him. He watched her form, the image solidify. The sun came out. It was spring and warm and the air was sweet with the smell of fresh cut grass. How had he ever let her slip away? Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps she would be there when he returned. The closer he came to his DEROS and ETS the more he thought of her.

  Daniel Egan visited Stephanie often during the summer of her divorce and through the following autumn and winter. His memory exploded with small anecdotes of those days. His entire body burned with desire for her. The soft sleepy neck of Stephanie rose from a woeful droop and swung back tossing her hair in a gleeful, careless arc. Her eyes glistened. Her moist lips trembled with laughter. Come, her image beckoned to him. Come with me. On the jungle floor Egan’s body quivered in resistance. Come, she beckoned. His body shook. He felt at peace. Smoothly, silently, pleasantly, his spirit slipped from his body and joined Stephanie in the image in his mind. For a moment Daniel glanced back at the soldierly figure, the cold filthy miserable body crumpled on a hundred-pound pack, then the spirit turned its back and smiled at Stephanie. They strolled in a glistening world by a small stream. Before them a stone bridge arched.

  They walked to it and crossed and walked on to a pond. The day was warm. Fat-leafed maples reflected in the water. Daniel broke pieces of bread from a loaf he was carrying and tossed the pieces to the ducks swimming nearby. The colorful birds paddled closer, a few even came out of the water to feed near their feet. The ducks fought one another aggressively yet they remained timid and watchful as Daniel tossed the food to them. Stephanie knelt down by the water’s edge and the ducks came to her and took the bread from her hand. She sat back and the ducks stretched their necks across her lap. She stroked them tenderly and they ate. Daniel inched nearer to pet one. They all scattered. We’re all like that, he had thought. Anyone can come to her without fear, yet she herself is so timid. She’s so strong yet so timid.

  “Do you remember the book you left me in New York?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said lying back.

  “When you came back I told you I hadn’t read it.”

  “I remember.”

  “You said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t.’”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “Um-hum, you did. If you bring me The Sun Also Rises, I promise I’ll read it. I started Hawaii two weeks ago.”

  “How do you like it?” he asked.

  “I’m really enjoying it,” Stephanie laughed, “but I must admit big books kind of scare me.”

  The image flowed. The physical being on the jungle valley floor pushed it, trying to force it, to speed it up as if time were running out and the body wished to relive as many episodes as possible. “I received your book today,” Stephanie’s voice came to Daniel over the phone. He was back at school. He had sent her his battered copy of The Sun Also Rises. “It’s a beautiful book,” she said. “I haven’t started it yet but I like to touch it and to look at it. It’s beautiful.

  “I’m sending you my Sandy Bull album, Fantasia. I think it’s more me than any others I have or anything else I have, except my eyes. Which I can’t give you though I’d like to.” Stephanie laughed gleefully for a time and Daniel laughed though no sound came from him. “I’m reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand,” she said. “You’ve probably read it but if not I’ll send it to you. I really like it and Howard Roark reminds me of you. How is the Alaska house coming? Please don’t forget how much I want to see your drawings.”

  On some plane in between, Daniel Egan was aware he never showed Stephanie the Alaska house drawings. Now, in another image, she let him have it. They were in a small upstate bar, Stephanie was sad and serious and so delightful. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do this but I am. You know, Daniel, in some ways you’re very selfish. I know you know it. Talk to me, Daniel. I know it’s there but you won’t give it to me. I love you and hate you for doing it.

  “Daniel,” she pleaded, “I want, and I am trying, to come to your level. Oh, that sitting back level, that observing confident level. I want it. I’m getting it. But Christ, Daniel, will you talk to me? Are you doing it purposely? I bet you are. I can meet you there. TALK TO ME! You bastard. You beautiful bastard.”

  “Stephanie,” Daniel answered her now an answer he had never given. “I care. I care for you more than for anything else I’ve ever known. I just don’t know how to say it.”

  His thoughts sped on. Stephanie, I’m striving to gain your level, the level of natural humanity uncluttered with mass produced technology. I care for you … I care … I love … I love you.

  “I’ve been volunteering at the daycare center.” Stephanie smiled. They were lying together. The day had been exquisite and the night was warm. Stephanie was happy and sorrowful and troubled. “I’ve been working in a room with eleven children, seven of which are Negro. The first day I walked in all I had to do was smile and there were six children hanging around my neck and on my legs. They seemed so starved for affection. This one little boy named Jeremiah is one of my favorites. Daniel, he is just darling. I want to adopt him. His mom is on relief and she’s an alcoholic. Jeremiah comes to the center with no underwear, pants five sizes to big with the zippe
r broken and the pants pinned to his shirt so they won’t fall down. I went to a rummage sale and bought him underwear and shirts and sent them home with him. The next day his mom sent a note with him saying she didn’t mind Jeremiah coming to the center but she did not approve of us trying to buy his love with clothes. Wow, Daniel, I was really hurt. I guess I’ve got a lot to learn.

  “Oh, Daniel, there are some sad moments but mostly we really have fun. I could go on and on about the funny things the children do. I wish you could see them. You’d love them too.”

  Daniel sat and listened and loved her for being so enthusiastic and so sensitive and for loving the children. But he said nothing except to ask her if she’d given up art completely. She responded in a way he never understood. “Daniel, no one will ever really know, will they? No one will ever know what’s inside you. They can get an idea but they’ll never really know. That makes me sad.”

  “I’ve always believed,” Daniel’s image sounded very far off, “that a person is what he does. A person is what he accomplishes, what he creates. An artist, for example, is a person who creates art. It’s not one who fosters the image to others that he creates art when in fact he creates nothing. That’s a pseudo-artist. A person who takes care of children is a child care specialist. That’s who they are. Do you see? If you are what you do then identity crises are caused by not knowing what to do or by not doing. An identity must be constructed by doing, creating, building …”

  “How about by reading and thinking and dreaming?”

  He heard her say that now. He saw the hurt on her face now. Why wouldn’t I allow myself to hear her? he asked now. I was a bastard.

  Again, tumbling through weightless voids and into another scene. His body no longer wanted to push the fantasy. He no longer wished to reexperience all their times yet he was out of control. The picture flowed at its own speed, its own discretion, on its own energy. It was the same scene he had remembered the day of the CA but this time it was clearer and their positions were reversed. They were in a room in the old Martinson Hotel which looked out across the railroad tracks to a dully lit cobblestone street. It was raining. Daniel was standing by the only window in the room. The empty eyes of the stores across the tracks, across the street, reflected mud-ash earth and debris. On the corner up the street a tavern sign flashed Iron-City Beer—On Tap.

  The window sill and frame of the hotel room were partially lighted from the light of the street. The room was dark with the exception of a single candle burning in the corner. Stephanie lay in the bed looking at Daniel’s back. The room was old and dingy. Stephanie rose, circled the bed and put her arms around Daniel’s shoulders. She lay her cheek against his back. Daniel turned and she let go. She was still naked. She stretched her hands gracefully toward him, he took them softly and held them then brought her to him.

  “I’m sorry, Steph,” he said. “I didn’t understand.” It was his spirit speaking. It was not his image. He had hurt her while they made love. During his campus exploits he had developed a harsh dominant athletic style which did not suit Stephanie at all. Harshness hurt her. The abortion had left scar tissue at her cervix which caused her pain on deep thrusts. “I’m sorry,” Egan’s spirit said. “I’m sorry for all of this. Someday, I’ll make it up to you.”

  After that time he did not see Stephanie for many months. Now watching the lone mirage he thought how insensitive he was to all the things Stephanie said. That is the tragedy of his life. He was not sensitive to Stephanie when it had been possible. He had not even been sensitive to his own feelings. The hallucination rolled and shook violently. He was above his own body, his cold wet sleeping body wrapped in poncho and poncho liner. Squatting beside him was the sapper. The enemy smiled—his teeth glistened. I’ve got you this time, the soldier seemed to say to the hovering spirit. Slowly the machete lifted. In slow motion the dark foe whipped the silver blade in a circle then powerfully brought the blade down toward Egan’s face. “I’ve got to get back,” the spirit cried. “I’ve got to get back into my body. I’ve got to help him.” The spirit was frantic, the body on the ruck cowed, the enemy blade descended in slow motion. The razor sharp edge pierced the bridge of Egan’s nose. Slowly the blade, driven by the might of the enemy’s powerful hand, cleaved into Egan’s eyes dividing the orbs. The spirit slipped back into Egan physically expanding his cringing viscera. A series of small explosions shook his ears. Then an M-60 opened up far to the north.

  “What’s that,” Cherry whispered.

  Egan grabbed his face. He was silently crying.

  In the dark, in the rain, two NVA sapper teams noiselessly crawled up the cliffs of the north escarpment to the rock outcropping which held Delta’s NDP. Below, half of Alpha was asleep, half was on vigilant watch. Egan was in the midst of dream. The sappers slid silently to the perimeter edge then froze and observed. For two days the NVA had been watching the Americans from above. Delta barely altered their alignment from the moment they set up and they quickly established a routine movement pattern. The sapper unit studied Delta’s fighting positions, the positioning of the poncho hootches and the behavior habits of Delta’s troops. They carefully conceived and detailed their attack. At dusk they began to execute the plan.

  The two teams climbed straight up the cliff, one settled among the rocks at the cliff edge, the other veered and followed the path which Alpha’s rendezvous element had used during the afternoon. For three hours the sapper teams motionlessly watched as Delta troops fidgeted and fussed and divulged their positions. Then the team at the cliff edge penetrated the perimeter. The sapper team leader found two Delta soldiers asleep with their M-60 machine gun on bi-pod between them. Noiselessly the sapper thrust a thin-bladed bayonet into the first soldier’s throat. He drove the blade upward toward the back of the head, twisted and withdrew. The body twitched then relaxed. Next to him his buddy slept on. The sapper cautiously circled the dead man. The second guard awoke, startled. He tried to sit up to scream. The sapper smashed stiff fingers into his Adam’s apple knocking the man back, stifling his scream. Then, quickly, he bayoneted the man’s throat. The team infiltrated the NDP, worked to predetermined points among the rocks and brush and became rigid. At Delta’s CP two men were smoking.

  The second sapper team remained outside the perimeter. Slowly, soundlessly, they crawled about Delta’s claymore mines. As they found each one, they turned it around and aimed it in upon the defenders. Then they all lay quietly. After a pause of fifteen minutes the outside sapper team again began to move. They made a little noise. Delta did not react. The sappers moved again making more noise.

  “Sir,” a Delta perimeter guard came to the CP. “I think we got movement inside the claymores.”

  “You see anything?” O’Hare asked. He was up. He put out his cigarette.

  “Whatcha got, Bobby?” an RTO asked.

  “I aint sure. Bat Man thought he heard somethin.”

  “Throw a frag at it,” the RTO said.

  “No, wait a minute,” O’Hare said. “Call the firebase,” he directed the RTO. “Tell em we want some illum.”

  The guard returned to his position and several minutes later a mortar-launched illumination flare popped over Delta casting the rocks and vegetation in a queer flat light. The sappers remained low and motionless. More flares popped and floated gently downwind on their parachutes. The sapper team within Delta’s perimeter eyed their foes. The illum glimmered on the wet poncho-hootches. More flares popped. The mortar team kept the area lighted for twenty minutes until O’Hare cancelled the mission. Delta went back to sleep.

  Two hours passed. The sappers had not moved a hair. Delta twisted beneath their poncho tents. “Let’s keep it down,” O’Hare called out to a perimeter position at one point.

  “Augh, Sir, it’s Willie,” a troop called back. “The fucker keeps snorin.”

  A third voice called out, “Bullshit. Now shut up.”

  From another position a man giggled. Then the chatter subsided and Delta slept again.
The sappers moved. The outside team infiltrated between two sleeping guard positions. The inside team spread out. On a single click-signal all the sappers unloaded and fused their sachel charges. Then deftly they placed the charges by and where possible between the heads of the sleeping Americans. Immediately they began their withdrawal. The first team in crawled back to their cliff entrance and grabbed the M-60 and the ammunition. The second team crawled out. The first sachel charge exploded. Then another and another. All the GIs were up. People were running, screaming. More sachel charges exploded. O’Hare’s RTO found one between him and the captain and flung it out of their hootch. It exploded wounding a perimeter guard who had run for the CP as the blasts began. Someone yelled, “SAPPERS!” An M-60 opened up firing into the NDP. Other soldiers fired at their own men. Several Delta troops began running, shouting, trying to organize the unit. The M-60 fired upon the running troops. There was mass confusion. Delta did not know who was who. Then came a quick succession of small explosions.

  Explosions vary in length of time depending upon the amount and type of explosive. A quick explosion makes a sharp sound. Slower, longer burning materials cause a deeper sound, more of a roar. The sachel charges were slow and of relatively little power. The first few blew heads apart but most at best only blew out eardrums or eyes. At Alpha, a kilometer away, the old-timers recognized the sound. Four months earlier, on Hill 714, the NVA had killed five Alpha boonierats using similar tactics. Now the NVA were throwing sachel charges into Delta’s perimeter to increase the chaos, get the GIs up and running so they would be shot by their own men.

  The unmistakable crackblast of a claymore resounded from Delta. Everyone in Alpha was up then down. Alpha lay perfectly still, prone, in the mud. On 100 percent alert. At Delta a perimeter guard had squeezed his claymore claquer firing device. The claymore removed his face.