by Robert Roth
“That’s ridiculous. What’s the point of playing cards if they all cheat?”
“I don’t know. I guess it evens out. Besides, winning is one thing and collecting another.”
There was some commotion in another direction and Hamilton’s voice could be heard yelling, “Those dirty, slant-eyed motherfuckers, I oughta kill ’em all.”
Chalice and Forsythe walked over to his hootch. Hamilton was inside rummaging around and cursing, while Childs sat out front with his glasses off and his forearm held close to his face as he studied his lump. “What’s going on?” Chalice asked.
“Oh nothing, the Gooks stole that radio Hamilton bought off them a few days ago.”
Chalice peered in and saw Hamilton dumping out his pack in disgust. “Hey Childs,” he called out, “you better get in here and check your pack.”
“I don’t have anything to steal. . . . Wait a minute!” Childs hurriedly crawled in as Hamilton came out.
“I hid it in the bottom of my pack so those fucking Gooks wouldn’t steal it, but they found it anyway. I’ll bet they stole it from some Marine in the first place. That’s it! The same guy who sold it to me probably stole it back.”
“Sonofabitch!” Childs cursed from within the hootch.
“What’d they get?” Hamilton asked.
“Sonofabitch!”
“What’d they steal?”
“Wait a minute. Here it is.” Childs emerged from the hootch holding his billiard ball. “Had me worried.”
“Didn’t they steal anything?” Hamilton asked.
“Just my food.”
“How much?”
“All of it.”
At first Chalice felt the whole affair was humorous, but then the idea of being robbed by their “allies” while they were “killing” themselves up in the mountains got to him. Ignoring this, he said, “We seem so rich to them, they really can’t look on it as stealing.” His defense of the Arvins satisfied neither the others nor himself.
“C’mon,” Hamilton said in an angry voice, “let’s see if we can get it back.” They followed him to the Arvin side of the perimeter. As they walked around looking for the man that had sold Hamilton the radio, they were met by grins and pleas for handouts. They brusquely snubbed these Arvins and eventually found the one they were looking for. Hamilton immediately started yelling at him. The Arvin seemed to have no idea what Hamilton was shouting about, and he just stood there with a bewildered grin on his face. Hamilton, red with frustration, angrily turned to Chalice. “You know how to talk to these thieving Gooks. Tell him I want my radio back.”
The Arvin told Chalice he didn’t know anything about it. Hamilton reached across and grabbed the radio that the Arvin happened to be holding. “When you bring me mine, you’ll get this back.” He then added sarcastically, “Numba one, numba one,” before walking away. The Arvin protested loudly as Chalice tried to tell him what Hamilton had said. By the time he finished, Hamilton, Childs, and Forsythe were already on the Marine side of the perimeter. He rejoined them as they were telling Tony 5 what had happened. Payne walked over and also got the story. They were sitting around laughing when they heard the Arvin yelling to some of his friends, exhorting them to follow him in Hamilton’s direction. The Arvin walked over and stood in front of Hamilton. “You give radio!”
Hamilton stared up at him and said, “No, numba ten, you give me my radio first.”
The Arvin raised his rifle and pointed it in Hamilton’s face. Hamilton stood up slowly without saying anything. “You give radio,” the Arvin repeated while shaking the rifle in his face. Hamilton just stood there glaring back at him. Childs walked behind the Arvin and pointed his rifle at his head. Another Arvin pointed his rifle at Childs’s head.
Payne ran to get Kramer. He and Kovacs arrived in time to find fifteen Arvins and Marines standing alternately in line with their rifles pointed at the heads of the men in front of them. Startled into silence, Kramer glanced at Kovacs who began yelling for everyone to put their rifles down. No one heeded him. Rifles in hand, the large crowd of Arvins and Marines circling the line moved in closer. The Arvin lieutenant came running up. Kramer tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t make himself understood. His eyes darted around the area looking for Chalice only to locate him standing in the line with his rifle pointed at an Arvin’s head. Without lowering his rifle, Chalice explained what was happening to both lieutenants.
Kramer heard some shouting behind him. He spun around in time to see Appleton shove an Arvin to the ground. The Arvin started to raise his rifle towards Appleton, but Harmon kicked it from his hands and stood on it. The yelling became louder and another Arvin shoved Harmon off the rifle. Harmon turned to see Appleton shove an Arvin towards him. Valdez stepped between them and flattened the Arvin. Two more Arvins ran for Valdez. Harmon grabbed one around the chest, and Appleton kicked the other in the groin. The shouting increased as Kovacs ran over and started shoving people out of the way. By this time the group was a mass of swinging fists and rifle butts. The only motionless bodies were those of the men still standing in the line. An Arvin slammed his rifle butt into Appleton’s neck, at the same time accidentally pulling the trigger and sending off a deafening burst of automatic rifle fire. In that split second all movement froze except for the jerking of heads towards the line of men still standing with raised rifles.
There was complete silence, no one moving or speaking for fear that the men in line would start shooting. Kramer slowly let out a deep breath as he watched their intense stares. It was a few seconds before he finally stepped towards them. Everyone else remained completely frozen and silent. His eyes searched out the Arvin lieutenant who now also stepped forward. Kramer pointed to the last Arvin in the line. The lieutenant nodded, then gently tapped him on the shoulder. The Arvin slowly lowered his rifle and stepped back a few paces. Ski was the next man in line, and Kramer got him to do the same. Everyone else remained silent as Kramer and the Arvin lieutenant cautiously worked their way down the line until the last rifle was lowered. There were some murmurs from the men, but after a few seconds they again became silent. The soldiers slowly split into two opposing groups with their lieutenants between them.
After some discussion, Kramer said to Hamilton, “All right, give him back the radio.”
“What about my radio?”
“He,” referring to the Vietnamese lieutenant, “is going to search his men and see if he can find it.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet that’ll do me a lot of good.”
“Give it back,” Kovacs shouted.
Hamilton threw the radio in the Arvin’s direction. It bounced in front of him and landed at his feet in two pieces. This was followed by a lot of commotion and a few raised rifles, but eventually the two groups of soldiers were herded back to their respective sides of the perimeter.
As they walked to their hootch, Kovacs said, “Not bad, Lieutenant.”
“Not bad, just lucky.”
Three o’clock that afternoon supplies and mail came in on a convoy. Chalice picked up a letter for Forsythe. When he handed it to him, Forsythe muttered, “The cheap bastard,” and threw it aside.
Chalice, knowing how much he’d have liked to have gotten a letter, asked, “Aren’t you gonna read it?”
“I’ll wait till after I eat. It’s from my old man and I don’t wanna lose my appetite.” He picked up the letter and handed it to Chalice. “Look at the stamp. As soon as I saw it wasn’t sent airmail, I knew it was from him, the Last of the Big Time Savers.”
“He can’t be that cheap.”
“Bull fucking shit he can’t! Why do you think I’m in the Marine Corps? The bastard wouldn’t give me the coins to go to college.”
“Couldn’t you get any financial aid?”
“Not a chance. He’s too loaded. I was accepted at Duke. I didn’t apply for any financial aid because he said he’d pay for it. Besides, when they’d find out how loaded he was, they’d think I was nuts asking for it.”
“H
ow come he decided not to pay?”
“I handed him a good enough excuse. I gave one of the speeches at graduation. All the phonies got pissed off at what I said, and they wouldn’t give me my diploma. I had to get a lawyer from the Civil Liberties Union to get it for me. My old man sure wasn’t gonna spend his ‘hard, earned money’ for one.”
“He still wouldn’t pay for college?”
“Hell, no! He said I disgraced the family name, and I should work my way through like he did. Family name my ass, the only thing our family name stands for is penny-pinching.”
“Is your mother the same way?”
“No, but she hasn’t got the guts to stand up to him. He bought this wreck of a boat and everytime the fishing was good, that’s all we’d eat. We once had fish for supper twenty-three nights in a row. . . . Maybe that’s why I still can’t eat pussy.”
“You must of went nuts.”
“Not a chance, seventeen years of anything and you’ll get used to it. I’ll tell you one thing, as soon as I got the diploma I got the fuck out of there.”
“Is that when you headed for California?”
“Yeah, the day the lawyer got it for me I went home, folded it up like an airplane, put it on my old man’s desk, and went out to get drunk. I couldn’t find anyone to go with me, so I went alone. I wanted to get drunk as fast as I could.
“It wasn’t even four o’clock, and the only open bar I could find was just about the raunchiest place I’d ever seen. The whores were so ugly they’d of had to pay me. I started guzzling as soon as I sat down. There was this big clock in front of me and I was timing myself on every glass. I was getting pretty fucked-up, but not as fucked-up as I wanted to be. If you’re drinking alone, always drink enough so you don’t know you’re alone. I looked at the clock and saw it was seven-thirty: ‘No sweat,’ I thought, ‘still plenty of time to get really shit-faced.’
“Then this fat-assed, big-titted whore walks up and leans her elbow on the bar right next to me. You should of seen her. She was wearing this shiny blue dress, almost as blue as the eye shadow she had smeared all the way up to her eyebrows. That may not seem like any big thing, but her real eyebrows were plucked and she had a set penciled in halfway up her forehead. She had this big mop of frazzly bleach-blond hair. Ordinarily I don’t go for bleached blonds, but she also had this cool, black mustache to go with it, would of taken me a week to grow one like it. I’m sitting there trying to see my reflection in her lipstick, must of had five coats of the reddest stuff I’d ever seen, when she says, ‘Hey good looking, how about buying a lady a drink?’
“ ‘Sure,’ I said. She was still leaning on the bar with her elbow and playing with these giant pearls around her neck. They were all about the size of golf balls except the one in the middle. That one was just a little smaller than a cue ball. The bartender brought the beer over, and I said, real suavelike, ‘Put it on my tab,’ then I gave her a big grin. I could tell she really dug me.
“Man, could that broad guzzle beer. She wrapped her claw around the glass and just poured it down. Both her arms had about ten pounds of bracelets on them. When she put the glass down, she gave me a big smile with her yellow teeth and said, ‘Thanks Mack, you’re a real gentleman.’
“As soon as she said that I got the greatest idea: I’d take her home to meet Mom and Dad. I knew their faces would really be something to see. I was so excited I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to come out with a really cool line, and I finally thought of one I thought was just right. I said, ‘Tell me something, gorgeous, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’
“I remember seeing a big, meaty arm covered with bracelets come swinging at me, then the next thing I remember I was lying on the floor sprawled out on my back with the whore and two Neanderthal Men standing over me. She’s yelling, ‘The queer insulted me! The dirty little fag insulted me!’
“One of the Neanderthal Men bent over and started waving his thumb in my face. He said, ‘If you don’t know how to talk to a lady, you better beat it, pal.’
“I got up and staggered to the door when the bartender started yelling, ‘He’s trying to get out without paying his tab.’ One of the Neanderthal Men dragged me back to the bar. As soon as I paid, they threw me out the door.
“Here I was flopped over this big Triumph motorcycle, so I threw my leg over it and sat down. That thing was huge. It was blue like the whore’s dress and I thought maybe it was hers. I could even picture her tearing around town on it.”
Chalice sat captivated by Forsythe’s story. He noticed for the first time that Forsythe’s teeth were slightly bucked. This and the expressions that flashed across his face as he talked added to the effects of his words. “You stole the bike and headed for California!”
“Yeah! No, wait a minute. The key was in the thing. I fucked around with it for a while and somehow started it up. The next thing I knew, it lurched onto the road carrying me with it. I tried to slow it down, but it accelerated instead. The wind was smashing against my face and I felt great, so I opened the throttle all the way and flew down the road not giving a shit where I was headed. I kept going for about an hour when I started to get sick. I pulled off the road to puke and the next thing I knew I was shading the sun from my eyes. I must of spent the night sleeping in the bushes.
“I couldn’t figure out where I was, so I hopped back on the cycle and headed for home, or where I thought was home. I passed this sign that said I was heading west, so I slowed down to turn around. But just as I turned I got the idea to fuck everything and head for California. I made a full circle and was on my way.”
Valdez walked by in front of them. Changing his mind, he turned around and sat down next to Chalice, slapping him on the back as he did so. “Well Prof, you almost saw your first fire fight today.”
“If there would have been a fire fight, I wouldn’t have seen much at all, not the way that Arvin had his rifle pointed between my ears.”
Forsythe cut in, “The way they shoot, you still would of had a fifty-fifty chance.”
Chalice leaned back and stretched out on the ground saying, “I like my odds a little fatter than that.”
Valdez reached over and helped himself to a cigarette out of Forsythe’s pocket. He lit it and leaned back on his elbows. “Around here, you have to take any odds you can get.” He quickly sat up again. “Hey, what day is today?”
“Saturday,” Forsythe answered.
Valdez fumbled with the button on one of his shirt pockets. “Shit, I almost forgot.” He pulled out five cards and displayed them to Chalice and Forsythe: the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of spades. “I gotta write my letter,” he said while getting to his feet. “See you later.”
“What was that all about?” Chalice asked.
“A month after he got in-country, his girl sent him a package with a deck of cards in it. He sends one back to her every week. The ace of spades goes with him on the plane. It’s a good way to keep track of time.”
“That is kinda cool. Maybe I’ll do something like that.”
“A lot of the other guys have ways of keeping track of time. One guy started out with a bottle of fifty-six malaria tabs. Every week he’d take one, but he got sent home before the bottle was half empty.”
“What did he get sent home for?”
“Malaria.”
“How the hell could he get malaria three times if he was taking the tabs.”
“I already told you. Those things aren’t good for anything except givin’ you the shits.”
Kramer and Kovacs were sitting in front of their hootch cooking some C-rations when Kramer said, “Everybody seemed kind of surprised when we ran into those Gooks up on Charlie Ridge.”
“I was as surprised as anybody. It ain’t often you catch Charlie with his pants down, and I’m sorry we did.”
“Why’s that?”
“Now you can bet your ass we’ll be going back up there.”
Kovacs was right. Trippitt started sending the p
latoons up one at a time. Third and Fourth Platoons went up first. Neither one of them made contact, but Fourth Platoon found a small ammo cache and some documents. It was Second Platoon’s turn, and they were to follow the same procedure as before — leaving at three in the morning so as not to be spotted.
Kramer had taken the last watch that night to make sure they left on time. He crawled into the hootch to wake Kovacs. “It’s time. Let’s go”
“Okay,” Kovacs replied in an alert voice. He’d been awake and merely waiting for Kramer to call him. Kovacs woke Preston and Milton. Walking back towards Kramer, he could make out the dark forms of the rest of the platoon as they put their gear on and gathered in groups.
They were to take a different trail this time. Alpha’s patrol the day before had led them by it, so Kramer gave them the point. The squads lined up in one column. Hamilton assigned Bolton the point; but when Childs complained that he walked too fast, Hamilton switched Childs to the point. By the time the platoon had reached the foothills, he was glad he had made the switch. Childs’s pace had been slower and steadier than that of the last operation, and they seemed to have reached the foothills in half the time with much less effort.
The trail followed the ridge lines as it twisted through the mountains. This eliminated a lot of needless movement up and down the valleys. The marching didn’t become strenuous until the last hour when the steepness of the grade increased enough to necessitate more climbing than walking.
The platoon was strung out vertically along a rocky slope when they took their first break. Chalice tapped Forsythe on the shoulder and whispered, “How much farther?”
“I’m not sure, but I think this is it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said I wasn’t.”
“Okay. . . . It sure was a hell of a lot easier this time.” Moving off the trail, he fumbled in his pockets for some toilet paper. He had forgotten to place it inside his helmet, and it was soaking wet. He dropped his pants and squatted down while rushing to separate the sheets of soggy paper. ‘Here it comes. Learned a lot of things lately, wish pissing through my asshole wasn’t one of them.’
