Arizona Moon

by J. M. Graham

  The office pogues hated it when grunts were summoned to the company hooches; it always meant dirty work for them. The two groups seldom mixed on the base. The grunts resented the pogues because of the relative safety and comfort of their jobs, and the pogues resented the grunts because being in the land of elephants and seeing the elephants were not the same thing.

  Strader dropped his pack and helmet by the steps in front of one of the buildings and went in. Panels on the side of the building blocked the sun and kept the interior in shade while an oscillating fan on top of a file cabinet bathed the room in a sweeping breeze. The room was populated with desks and files and a large table next to a wall that divided the length of the building in half. A large map detailed 2/5’s tactical area of responsibility. From where he stood Strader could see the green spot in the Arizona marking the TAOR where 1st Platoon was now sweating. Since there was no one else in the room, he went up close to the fan and let the rush of air wash over him.

  Before long a door in the partitioning wall opened and Cpl. Donald Pusic stepped into the office. His clean, starched jungle utilities had been tailored to fit, and his canvas-sided jungle boots were coated with Kiwi black. He smelled of soap and aftershave. In one hand he carried a file folder; the other held a cold Coca-Cola. He stopped when he noticed the Marine enjoying the fan. “Strader,” he said, “is 1st Platoon back already?”

  Strader held his flak jacket open on one side to let in the breeze. “No, just me.”

  Pusic moved behind one of the desks and shuffled some papers. “I don’t remember the captain giving me any orders about you.”

  Strader tore himself away from the fan. He hadn’t washed or shaved in five days, and his jungle pants showed every inch of his travels. They were rolled up above worn-out boots with holes abraded in the ankles and nearly every bit of black on the leather scuffed away. His forehead was divided by a tan line showing where his soft cover fit, and his arms were marked to the elbows with scabs from elephant grass cuts. He leaned his M14 against the desk next to a carved wooden placard warning against asking for favors that said: DUTY MARINES HAVE NO FRIENDS AND GIVE NO HUSSES. “Lieutenant Diehl sent me back. If you have any arguments, they’re with him.”

  Corporal Pusic was a political realist when it came to the Marine Corps hierarchy. He never questioned officers. If a question was going to a lieutenant, it would come from a captain. The trick was to get the captain to ask the question. “I never argue with Lieutenant Diehl,” Pusic said.

  Strader leaned both hands on the edge of the desk. His arms were covered with tracks where sweat had eroded the dirt. “That’s probably best, because it seems Diehl has decided to let the Chief resolve all his problems.”

  Pusic’s eyes widened. “The Chief?” he said.

  “Yeah. He was going to shoot me this morning if I didn’t get on the chopper. And he likes me. Can you imagine what he would do to someone he didn’t like?”

  Pusic briefly imagined what horrors that might involve, then decided to regain some command over his domain. “What is it you want from me, Strader?”

  “I want a hot meal and a shower, but what I need is some sleep. I need a rack.”

  Pusic leaned back in his chair. “Third Platoon is manning the lines. They’re in the hootches along the runway on the mess hall side. There should be some empty cots.”

  Strader snatched up his rifle and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in the morning for a checkout list. I’ve got three and a wake-up and I wanna get the paperwork done as soon as I can.”

  “So, you’re going to leave your happy little family here?”

  Strader stood in the doorway and looked down the road, across the runway, all the way to the distant Ong Thu shrouded in the Arizona haze. “I already did that,” he said. “Now I’m going back to the world.”

  After the supply chopper lifted off, 1st Platoon moved northwest of the clearing, the lead fire team hacking a path as quickly as they could. The point man swung his machete until his arm was spent, then the second man took over. The three Marines rotated point until the platoon had traveled more than a click from the LZ and Lieutenant Diehl called a halt so the supplies could be distributed. Replacement equipment, ammunition, and twelve cases of C rations had come off the chopper and had to be dispersed through the platoon. The men carrying the heavy cases were glad to hand them off to squad leaders. Bandoliers of M60 and M16 ammunition were passed out. The two M79 men split thirty rounds between them, and Deacon got his new pants.

  Corporal Middleton dropped two cases of meals on the ground and snapped the wire banding with the slots in the flash suppressor on his M16. Each meal had the contents printed on the box top, and some meals were more prized that others. Wieners and baked beans were a favorite, while ham and lima beans were universally despised; the combination of the ham and the beans just didn’t work, and the Marines made it known which ingredient was the culprit by naming the meal “ham and motherfuckers.”

  Middleton flipped the cases over so only the unprinted bottoms of the individual meals showed. In theory, each squad member would choose an anonymous box in turn until the case was empty. Unfortunately, every case was packed exactly the same way, so the configuration was easily memorized; if you were too new to know or too late to pick, you either learned to love ham and limas or starved.

  Middleton tossed a green bundle to Deacon. “Here, don’t rip these,” he said. “And I don’t want to have to tell you again, lose the skivvies.”

  Deacon dropped his gear and started stripping off his torn trousers as fast as he could. He didn’t want to be caught half naked if the platoon moved out.

  Up ahead, Lance Corporal Burke was handing out C-rats to 3rd Squad in the same manner and with much the same results. Burke had eight months in-country and, though only an E-3, with Strader’s departure now found himself in charge of a squad in the most dreaded area in I Corps. Sergeant Blackwell had promised to stay close, but since the sergeant had been with the platoon only a little over four months, he didn’t find the promise comforting.

  “Blackwell says I’m to honcho 3rd Squad,” Burke said to the others as they stowed their new meals in their packs.

  “Where the hell is Reach?” one of the Marines said, flipping his meals over to confirm what he would be eating.

  “The lieutenant sent him back on the chopper.”

  It took a second for that to take hold. Reach was gone. They were glad to know that one of their own was going home, but his departure left a hole in the squad, an important hole that made them more vulnerable.

  Sergeant Blackwell moved down the line, pushing the Marines to gather their gear and get ready to move. He found Deacon wearing only a helmet, flak jacket, and boots. “Do you think this is a nudist colony, Marine?” he said, watching as Deacon tried to dance into his new pants. “Get those lily-white legs back into green before some VC takes a shine to your ass.”

  Whistles came from around 2nd Squad. Middleton laughed.

  “It ain’t funny, Middleton. You got a man doin’ a striptease in the Arizona,” the sergeant said.

  Middleton laughed again. “He’s just practicing for a section eight discharge.”

  “I am not,” Deacon said, struggling to button his fly.

  The sergeant looked around at the debris. “Get those empty cartons torn up and buried, and don’t leave any of the wire here.”

  Middleton pulled his KA-BAR from his belt and tossed it to Deacon. “Here you go, Gypsy Rose. Cut up those boxes.”

  Deacon sliced away at the empty C ration boxes, worrying all the while that the “Gypsy Rose” label was going to stick and haunt him the rest of his tour. Being given the name of a stripper old enough to be his mother would be hard to live down.

  Farther along, Sergeant Blackwell reached the CP. Two Marines in clean uniforms stood behind Lieutenant Diehl gulping water from their canteens.

  “Sergeant, meet Privates Haber and DeLong,” the lieutenant said. “See if you can find a place for t
hem.”

  Sergeant Blackwell looked the replacements up and down. “Out-fucking-standing,” he said.

  The Chief stood directly behind the two, his M16 cradled in his arms.

  “Chief, get back up to 3rd Squad and take these two with you,” the sergeant said. “But tell Burke to keep them away from point.”

  The Chief pushed past the replacements and started up the column.

  “Go on, you two,” Blackwell said. “Stay with the Chief and watch where you step. This country tends to jump up and bite you in the ass.”

  Haber and DeLong hurried by, trying to watch the ground and keep an eye on the Chief at the same time.

  Lieutenant Diehl unfolded his map and traced a line with his finger so the sergeant could see. “We’re moving along here. I want to stay close to the mountains so we can get into the foothills tonight. You stay with the 3rd and try to keep the new blood out of trouble.”

  Dark clouds swept over the valley, visible from below as a change in the translucent quality of the light in the treetops. The air filled with the smell of the rain to come.

  “Do you think we’re gonna get soggy?” the sergeant asked.

  The lieutenant looked up at the darkening shadows in the trees. “Count on it.”

  Two rows of barracks hooches faced each other across a wide, dusty space, interspersed with sandbag bunkers and twelve-man tents that held the rifle companies’ personal gear. Beyond the hooches, past the barrel latrines and piss tubes made from rocket pods, was the southern end of more than three thousand feet of runway. Just past the runway, perimeter bunkers overlooked strands of concertina wire meant to keep whoever was beyond it from getting in, or at least to slow them down. Strader walked between the two rows, looking into each building as he went. The sounds of Armed Forces Radio emanating from one of the barracks told everyone within earshot the sad story of Billy Joe McAllister and a bridge on the Tallahatchie. It was one of the few current popular recordings to get AFR approval. Many of the lifers acted as though the sand in their boots was from Tarawa and Iwo Jima, and they saw rock-and-roll as a subversive noise that rotted the brain and loosened the morals. Most of the music AFR played for the troops had either a 1950s country twang or the innocuous big orchestra drone popular on elevators. If the clueless brass couldn’t rock your world with Mantovani, they would try stirring your blood with John Phillip Sousa. Eventually the lower echelons learned to either do without or hum along with Pat Boone and Jim Nabors.

  Strader pulled the screened door open. Two steps took him out of the sun and onto a plywood floor. No one was home except one of 3rd Platoon’s corpsmen, sitting on a corner cot reading. He looked over his glasses as Strader entered. “Hey, Reach,” he said.

  Strader swung his pack to the floor. “Hi, Doc, any empty racks in here?”

  The corpsman indicated the other end of the building with the paperback book in his hand. “There’s some down on the end. You finally decide to join a good platoon?”

  Strader pulled his pack up by one shoulder strap. “Well, Doc. Did you ever hear a gook say that something good was number three? I don’t think so. First Platoon is number one. It’s a numerical fact, and numbers don’t lie.”

  The corpsman laughed. “I thought you guys were out poking the Arizona with a stick. What are you doing here?”

  The floor vibrated with Strader’s steps, booming as though he were walking on a drumhead. “I’m too short to be anywhere else,” he said.

  Most of the cots were piled with helmets and flak jackets. Packs and web gear filled the spaces in between. Military-issue shower shoes mixed with Ho Chi Minh sandals purchased from the enterprising locals who set up stands on the road just outside the wire. The three end cots on the right were empty. Strader dropped his gear on the one closest to the door and leaned his rifle in the corner.

  “Are Brede and Garver okay?” the doc said over the music.

  “They were this morning when I left.” Strader sat on the cot and stripped away his jungle boots. His mottled green socks gave off a putrid odor like stagnant water. He peeled them off and tossed them under the cot. His own rank aroma mixed with the musty stink of the canvas cots and the essence of creosote and fuel oil that wafted through the screens on the hot breeze. He lay back on the bare cot and stared up at the rafters and the corrugated steel roof that was giving off heat like a convection oven. “Hey, Doc. I’m gonna catch some Zs. Don’t let me miss chow, okay?”

  The corpsman waved and turned down the volume on the radio.

  Before Bobbie Gentry could sing Billy Joe under the muddy water below the Tallahatchie Bridge, Strader was asleep.

  In an attempt to raise morale, the Seabees had put together some sheets of painted plywood that served An Hoa as a movie screen. Occasionally the bulletin board would announce a movie—meaning that the projectionist was going to light up the night with that screen and try to get through a film without taking fire from the wild country west of the base. Attending was a calculated risk. The prospect of a blazing screen surrounded by an audience of Marines sitting on empty ammo cases was often too much for the VC to resist, and the distant thump and swish of incoming mortar rounds would send the movie into a prolonged intermission. The VC might just as well have saved their precious ammunition, because the same powers that filled radio broadcasts with Andy Williams and Percy Faith also chose movies they felt were appropriate for troops in a combat zone. This wasn’t a plus for attendance.

  Strader was always on the lookout for little indicators that showed him how much the brass was in tune with the troops they commanded. He wanted to know that those making life-and-death decisions at least knew who their troops were. He was usually disappointed, and never more so than on his first trip to the base movie when the plywood came alive with the 1933 version of Little Women, adapted from the Louisa May Alcott novel. There, in glorious black and white, was indisputable proof that the brass at Special Services didn’t have a clue. Or maybe they had an ulterior motive. Maybe they thought that the sight of Katherine Hepburn and Spring Byington waltzing sedately through Civil War America would curb masturbation. If that was the case, they sorely underestimated the libido and imagination of the average Marine. Strader generously chose to think that command just saw a movie title with the word “women” in it and, lacking a background in literature, decided that it might be something young men would enjoy seeing. None of those scenarios, real or imagined, filled him with confidence. But of one thing he was certain; it was insane to sit in the dark in front of a beacon of light that attracted bullets the way a streetlight attracts insects just to watch a cinematic version of saltpeter.

  The bank of threatening clouds covered the entire Ong Thu mountain range from south of the Song Vu Gia all the way north to the razorback below the Liberty Bridge. The rain started slowly, and the jungle’s triple canopy held it back like an umbrella until it strengthened and forced its way through to soak the jungle floor. From below, the water seemed to be originating from the branches themselves. And the trees would hold the water, dispensing it over hours, keeping the jungle alive with drips long after the storm passed.

  The North Vietnamese kept moving until the relentless rain made the footing sloppy and the energy spent for distance traveled seemed a poor investment. They finally sought cover in the underbrush. Sentries slipped away from the group to prevent surprises while the rest covered their equipment with oilcloths and rubber-coated tarps. They huddled together, holding the covers over their heads as makeshift tents.

  Nguyen squatted shoulder-to-shoulder with Pham watching their tarp shed water in sheets. Raindrops beat at the thick fabric like little pummeling fists.

  “You don’t have to be here,” Nguyen said, feeling oddly uncomfortable being this close to Pham.

  Pham seemed confused. “I could sit with the others.”

  “I mean here in the South. It’s not your place. You should have stayed in the capital where you belonged.”

  Pham’s knuckles whitened as he twiste
d his hat into a wet clump. His hair, plastered to his face, was feeding drips onto the bridge of his nose. “I spent the last six months digging bomb shelters by the Bao tang My Thuat. My only part in the war was to make it safer for citizens to visit the art museum. I wanted to do more. I was ashamed when I heard the guns around the railyards at Duc Noi and Yeh Vien and near the harbor. I didn’t want the war to be something that fell on me. I wanted it to be something I carried to the enemy.”

  Nguyen smiled. “Well, you got your wish. You are now ‘carrying it’ to the enemy.”

  “And when we reach our destination?”

  “Then you will do what you are ordered to do.”

  Pham hung his head.

  “Don’t worry,” Nguyen said. “I’ve spent over three years in the southern provinces, and I can assure you that just being below the Seventeenth Parallel will provide you with many opportunities to ease your conscience.”

  Nguyen was sitting with his arms draped over his knees, and Pham noticed a puckered scar on his hand where a bullet had passed through, leaving the little finger on his left hand permanently curled and a wrinkled mass of burn tissue below his sleeve that passed in mystery under the shirt to peek over the edge of his collar. “You must think me foolish,” Pham said, searching Nguyen’s eyes for some sign of understanding.

  Nguyen smiled. “No. I think that you are a young man who didn’t want to tell his grandchildren that his weapon in the war was a shovel.”

  Pham seemed to find some comfort in those words.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Nguyen continued. “If you or Truong endanger this mission in any way, you will not return to your studies. You will obey my orders without question. If I say run, you will run. If I say hide, you will hide. If I say fight, you will fight. If you do not do what I say, you will die.”