Back in the mud, Billy asked Double O, “We going to return fire?”
“If we start shooting, they’ll know our position right away,” Double O said.
“They lost their commander. Without him they’ve got to be a little afraid,” Billy answered. “If we can make them think there’s more of us out here, maybe they’ll run off.”
“Nice thinking,” said Double O. “You ain’t half as dumb as you look.”
“I’ll slip around to the right, low in the water, and draw their fire away. Then you open up on them from this side. They’ll think we’ve got at least two platoons out here.” He pulled out one of his grenades. “I can buy us a little more cover with this.”
“You do realize that the men shooting at us are allies of the United States?” said Doc.
“Sure,” said Billy. “But right now I’m not fighting for the United States. I’m fighting for that boy and his mom. It’s the warrior’s code.”
“Right on,” said Double O, nodding approval at Billy. Billy smirked. He figured this would be a good story to impress Nancy Werner … if he survived it.
He pulled the pin from the grenade and tossed it in a high arc to their left, as far he could throw it. He didn’t want it to land in the village because of all the civilians. He didn’t really want to hit any of the soldiers either. He just wanted to distract them.
Seconds later, the grenade exploded with a bang, showering mud and fragments of hot metal into the air, and forcing the Vietnamese soldiers to take cover. Double O immediately popped up through the grass and fired, keeping them pinned down behind their truck and the low buildings of the village.
“Don’t hit their tires,” Doc called up to him. “We want them to be able to leave!”
Billy ran as fast as he could through the watery rice paddy. His heart thumped hard enough to burst out of his chest. He kept his head down and his rifle high. When he guessed he was far enough away from the others to create the illusion that there were more than four guys and a dog in the fields, he threw himself into the grass, his pants soaked and caked with mud.
He settled his gun against his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, sending a burst of gunfire into the side of the jeep in the village. One of the Vietnamese soldiers peered around and then ducked back behind the tires when Billy’s bullets hit. Billy couldn’t help but feel powerful.
He glanced over at Double O’s position and saw the streaks of tracer fire slicing into the village. Hopefully the illusion was working. The Vietnamese soldiers were concentrated in the square while Double O and Billy fired on them from two different points. It was like a triangle of death, and Billy really hoped they’d get the point and leave.
One of the soldiers behind the personnel truck popped out and fired a few shots toward Double O. Billy shot near the man’s feet, so he had to dive back behind the truck. Then he pulled out his second grenade. He hesitated. It was his last one. But he couldn’t resist. He pulled the pin and chucked it overhand so that it landed near the jeep.
Right after the explosion, the prisoners streamed from the back of the truck and ran into the village to hide. The soldiers fired halfhearted shots after them. Billy squeezed off a few more rounds to keep them down, to keep them from giving chase. He saw the body of the commander lying in the mud. He saw another body, another Vietnamese soldier, lying near the crater where his grenade had hit.
He knew, right away, that he’d done that.
He’d killed a man.
He felt transfixed by the body on the ground. His eyes lingered on it. Where once there had been a man doing his job, full of life and ideas and wants — all the normal stuff of being a person — there was just a lump of uniform and flesh and bone, no life in it at all. It might as well have been a soccer ball as a person. It was just a thing.
Billy couldn’t believe he’d done that. The excitement vanished, the thrill of battle gone. He did not feel the urge to smile. He felt, he realized, nothing at all. Above him the sky was gray. He wished the clouds would part so he could look up at the blue, just like in his first gunfight, so that he could remember how great it felt to be alive.
He didn’t regret throwing the grenade — the man had been shooting at him, after all — but he also wasn’t glad. It just seemed a waste. All this killing, and he couldn’t remember why. Why was he in this village? Why was he in Vietnam at all? Shouldn’t he be at the movies in Minneapolis, or slow dancing with Nancy Werner at the prom? It just made no sense to him at all.
He didn’t notice that he was standing at his full height, lost in thought. He didn’t notice that he’d stopped shooting. His mind was a thousand miles away.
A loud crack from a bullet whizzing by his head snapped him back to the moment, and he ducked. He returned fire, but he wasn’t really looking where he was shooting. If he hit anyone else, he didn’t want to know it.
Lying in the grass, not very far from Billy’s position, Chuck reached around and, with his fingers, touched his back where he felt the pain blossoming like a hothouse flower. He touched the tender wound and brought his hand back around to look at his wet red fingers.
Blood. Lots of it. He’d been shot in the back, the shoulder, the leg, and the left hip. He knew right away that the mission to get Ajax to safety had just gotten a lot more complicated.
He listened to the gunfight. He could no longer see it over the grass. He couldn’t stand. He heard another explosion. Double O must have thrown a grenade too. Moments later came the screech of an engine and the sound of tires squealing. The shooting had stopped; the South Vietnamese army truck was racing away.
“We won,” he whispered to Ajax. “It’s all okay. It’s over.” He felt very tired. He was relieved they’d won, and maybe now he could take a rest.
“Chuck! Chuck!” He heard his name being called, but he couldn’t find his voice to answer.
He let go of Ajax, and the dog wiggled out from underneath him and ran off into the grass.
“Go get ’em,” he whispered.
He waited in the grass, feeling his heart working doubly hard to pump blood through his body, even as the blood was spilling out of him. He’d been shot once before, the first time Ajax had saved him, but he knew the wound wasn’t as serious that time. He stopped himself from thinking about it too much. Worry wouldn’t do him any good now.
Moments later, Ajax was back, leading Double O and Billy Beans and Doc right to him. “Good boy,” he said, and he looked up with a wink. “Hey, Doc.”
He tried to push himself up to stand, but his leg gave out. Pain shot through his side, and he saw stars. He fell back with a splash into the mud.
“I’ve been shot,” he explained. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Ajax offered the only medicine a dog knew. He licked Chuck’s face.
Doc immediately bent down to examine the wounds. He ran his hands over Chuck, feeling out the gunshot in his hip and just below it in his leg, another two in the back of his shoulder, blood rushing out and muddy water soaking the wounds.
“You just stay cool, Devil Dog,” said Double O. “Doc’ll get you fixed up.”
Chuck looked up and saw Doc’s heavy face hanging over him, and he caught the worry etched on the medic’s brow. Behind him, Billy shifted nervously from foot to foot.
“It isn’t good, is it?” Chuck asked. His voice came out crackly. He swallowed hard and found his throat ached.
Doc took a deep breath, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s okay,” said Chuck. “The Frenchman will help me out.”
“The Frenchman,” echoed Doc, and Chuck closed his eyes, just for a second, just to get some rest. He figured he’d need his strength if they were going to get to the Frenchman.
With his eyes closed, lost in his dreams, he didn’t see Doc look back at Double O and at Billy and shake his head from side to side, and he didn’t hear Doc whisper up to them, his voice heavy with regret, “It’s not good at all.”
In his dream, he was already running through an open field
, Ajax barking gleefully beside him.
In the village, the people shoved their meager possessions into bundles and sacks, gathering together to flee into the jungle. They feared the army would return with more soldiers to punish them and to pursue the escaped prisoners. They might burn the whole village to the ground. The villagers knew they had to leave.
Double O watched them running to and fro, gathering what food they could carry. Ajax lay at Chuck’s side, his ears perked up and his senses on high alert. Whenever someone passed near Chuck, Ajax growled.
Double O watched the woman holding the boy’s hand as a few of the escaped prisoners dug a small grave for her cousin. When he was in the ground, she came over to Double O.
“Thank you,” she said.
Double O nodded.
“Your friend, he is hurt?” she asked.
Double O nodded again. He turned back to Doc and Billy, who were discussing what to do about Chuck. They had bandaged his wounds and stopped the bleeding as much as they could.
Ajax nudged Chuck’s face with his snout, letting out small whimpers, and Billy had to pull him back to give Chuck some air. Ajax snarled at him, and Billy let him go. Chuck’s breathing was shallow and his skin pale as paper.
“I don’t know how long he can make it without real medical attention,” said Doc. “I already lost one patient today.”
The woman looked down at her feet.
On the ground, Chuck groaned.
“Hang in there, Chuck,” said Double O. “You gonna be okay.”
“Going to,” Chuck whispered from the ground. “Right way to say it … going to be okay …”
Double O laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. Chuck smiled but drifted off to sleep again.
“We have to get him to a hospital,” Doc whispered.
“What about the Frenchman?” asked Billy. He bent down to get the map out of Chuck’s pocket and Ajax barked loudly at him. Billy jumped back. Ajax rested his head across Chuck’s chest. “Anyway, they said it’s only a day away. Maybe the Frenchman can help.”
“If there is a Frenchman,” said Doc.
“What do you mean, ‘if’?” said Billy. “We came all this way to find him. We risked everything.”
“We came all this way and risked everything because it was better than doing nothing,” said Doc. “Saving that dog felt like the only thing that made sense in this crazy war. But what I know is true is that without a hospital, Chuck is going to die.”
Double O sucked his teeth and looked back to the village square. The villagers had already started streaming into the jungle. No one else said a word to the Americans. No one even looked their way.
“We will lead you,” the woman said. Her boy came scampering over. Ajax raised his head as the boy approached. His tail thumped on the mud.
“That’s nice of you, ma’am,” said Doc. “But we saw those American choppers. There have got to be more around here. It’s a hot area, a lot of enemy activity.” His face flushed as he realized he was talking to a woman whose cousin had been the enemy. That thought made him realize they’d just fought their allies to set a group of their enemies free. Things got so confusing in the middle of someone else’s civil war.
He shook the thoughts from his head, stopped trying to untangle the mess of who was friend and who was foe. He focused on the problem in front of him, just like he’d been trained. “We can set off one of these flares we’ve got, pop a smoke grenade and wait for a chopper to come check it out. They’ll medevac us straight back to base.”
“And arrest us all as deserters,” added Double O, gesturing at the shot-up village. “All this for nothing.”
Ajax kept trying to nuzzle Chuck awake. He let the boy stroke the bristly brown-and-black fur on his back.
“I think Chuck would prefer jail to dying,” said Doc.
“No,” groaned Chuck from the ground. He could hear everything they were saying above him. “Ajax.” He reached up slowly and patted the dog on the head. “We save Ajax.”
The guys looked at each other, trying to communicate with their eyes. The woman nodded. “We will help you,” she said.
“Listen.” Chuck strained to push himself up on one arm. His voice was quiet, but clear. “I can’t go back until I know Ajax is safe,” he told them. “I wouldn’t have lived this long if it weren’t for him. I won’t give up on him now. I’ll be okay.”
“You’ve been shot in the shoulder, the leg, and the hip,” said Doc. “You can’t walk.”
“Then leave me here,” said Chuck. “Come back to get me after Ajax is okay.”
“Not a chance,” said Doc.
“Those soldiers will be back,” the woman explained. “They know this is VC village. They will punish who they find.”
“We can carry him,” said Billy. “Doc and I can carry him on his poncho, like a stretcher. Double O can walk point with the woman and the boy. Ajax likes the boy. He’ll listen.”
The boy didn’t know they were talking about him. He just petted Ajax and let the dog lick his hand.
They all thought about the idea.
“Maybe we’ll make the Frenchman’s place before I get worse,” said Chuck. “Maybe he’s got medicine or something …”
Doc leaned in close to Chuck. “We have no way to know if there really even is a —”
Double O put his hand on Doc’s shoulder to stop him talking. “Everybody needs hope,” he whispered. “All of us.”
Doc bit his lip and nodded. “All right,” he said. He smiled down at Chuck. “Let’s go find this Frenchman and get you patched up.”
Chuck nodded.
“You take the leash now,” he said to the boy, straining to put the leather lead in the boy’s hand. He patted Ajax, showing the boy and the dog that it was all okay. The woman explained to the boy what was happening, and his chest seemed to swell with pride at the role he got to play.
“I’m ready,” said Chuck, gritting his teeth through the pain as they shifted him onto his poncho and hoisted the ends onto their shoulders. Billy took the front, and Doc took the back so he could keep his eye on Chuck.
Double O walked with the boy and his mother, and Ajax walked beside them, glancing back every few seconds to make sure his master was still behind them as he sniffed his way through the village square, now abandoned.
Chuck glanced over from his odd stretcher and noticed the boy’s blue bicycle still resting against the building. There was a string of bullet holes in the wall just above it, but the bike itself was unharmed. It glistened with beads of water and kept a silent watch over the square.
Chuck could hear Ajax pulling in great gasping snorts through his snout, sealing the smells of the village in his dog brain, stored with a million other scents from the country and from the war.
Chuck wondered if Ajax remembered the pine tree smell at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they’d met, or the clean cotton scent of the nice suburban family that had raised him as a puppy before turning him over to the army. He wondered if Ajax remembered what Chuck’s shampoo smelled like or if he would even remember what it was like to be clean. What smells did a dog hold on to and what smells did he forget?
Chuck wondered what would happen if they found the Frenchman and left Ajax in his care. He hadn’t really thought about what they’d do next. They’d have to find the Americans and turn themselves in. He’d take full responsibility, if he could still speak by then. Maybe he could say he kidnapped the others or tricked them. It’d be a hard story to sell, what with them carrying him and still being armed.
Maybe the military court would have mercy. Maybe, after a few years behind bars, he’d be released. He could come back to Vietnam and he could go to the Frenchman again, and Ajax would run into his arms, and he would shout, “Kiss!”, and Ajax would douse him with his pink tongue, his tail wagging up a storm because he knew Chuck’s smell better than any smell in the world, after all those days on patrol and nights in the foxholes and the kennel. They would fly back to the United Sta
tes, first class, and Chuck would get some land out West, some place where no one would ask about his time in the war or where he got that limp, and then he and his dog could play in peace.
Chuck smiled at the thought. It was possible. Possibility was all that mattered to any of them as they walked from the village, across the fields to the misty hills.
One more day of hiking.
He would be okay, and they would find the Frenchman, and Ajax would be safe. Chuck repeated it to himself, over and over, as if thinking and thinking on what he wanted could make it so. Wanting alone was not enough, but their goal got closer with every footstep. Just on the other side of the hill, Chuck thought, anything would be possible. All it took were footsteps — footsteps in the right direction.
Chuck smiled up at the sky as his stretcher swayed like a hammock and the others slogged his weight along. He heard Ajax bark playfully.
“I’m right here, boy,” he called forward in the line, letting him know. “I’m still right here.”
They hiked through the rest of the day and into the night. Ajax’s nose and the woman’s knowledge of the hills and paths guided them through the dark.
They stopped to rest under the cartoonishly large leaves of some sort of tropical tree. Chuck was awake, staring up. The giant trees with their giant leaves reminded him of a movie he’d seen about dinosaurs. He felt like they were in a prehistoric forest, and he began to worry about what might happen now that they had stopped.
“T-Rex,” he said. “Keep quiet. Could be T-Rex out here. Giant dinosaurs.”
“Shh.” Doc put his hand on Chuck’s good shoulder, comforting him. “You’re just dreaming. We stopped to feed Ajax and take a breather.”
They rummaged through Chuck’s bag, and Chuck told them which were the cans of dog food and which were the cans of people food.
“Only dinosaurs out here are us,” said Doc. “We’re the dinosaurs.”
Chuck laughed. Of course there were no dinosaurs in Vietnam. He was having trouble keeping his imagination and the real world straight. Doc put a canteen to Chuck’s lips, and he drank some water, coughing and spluttering up half of it.
Strays Page 10
