So you’ve been told, thought Howard and grabbed his ruck off the deck with one hand, adjusting his grip on his rifle. So are the scorpions, centipedes, and vipers. Not just snakes. Vipers. Oh and make sure to tell him all about the punji sticks and traps they make with those things. He’s got to see what those do to a man.
Let it go, he told himself.
“LZ’s secured, SGT,” shouted the LT as he watched Jim get his gear ready. “Don’t worry about it.”
SGT Howard nodded and turned his back on the stupid LT. The chopper landed and by the time he cleared the skids, he could hear the whine in the turbine rising ever so slightly. Just a subtle nod upward in the pitch meaning the pilot wanted out fast.
Howard crouched and raced through the tall yellow grass for Captain Dasher.
Then he heard the shot. Heard it a long way off. He got down and crawled toward the edge of the LZ. When he looked back, the legs of the LT were hanging out the door as the helicopter pulled itself urgently skyward. The reporter was trying to drag the dying LT back onto the deck of the aircraft.
“Can you believe it, Howard, he just stood there!” roared Captain Dasher over the beat of the departing chopper. “Some sniper out there had all the time in the world to take his shot and get back into the tunnels. Stupid!” And Dasher was leading him back through the jungle to a red dirt road and a jeep, where both driver and gunner had their weapons ready, watching the tree-line and the ever-present jungle.
Once they were moving, Captain Dasher turned from the front passenger seat and held out a folded map. “We’re going over toward Alpha Company today. They’ve got big problems, Sergeant Howard. Real big problems. They’ve lost six in three days trying to clear this complex they found outside some no-name village that isn’t even on the map. Anyway, I told Battalion to let me work on it and they said fine. So that’s where we’re headed.” Captain Dasher turned and watched the road ahead.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Howard. Dasher turned back to him, waiting. “How’d they lose the six?” asked Howard.
Without pause, Captain Dasher recounted the six grisly deaths.
One shot in the head down tunnel.
Two found a trip wire and managed to set it off, blowing themselves to shreds. One of those two lived through that, but probably died when the tunnel caved in around them. The VC helped out with that part.
Punji traps on the next two, and the last guy drowned.
He ended the account with, “You know how it is, Sergeant Howard. Typical VC trickiness.” Then, “That gonna be a problem, Sergeant?”
“We’ll see, sir.”
Chapter 10
1982.
Beyond Tucson, out near a place called Gila Bend where the Ten turns toward Southern California, Jim picked up a hitchhiker. She wore tight cut-off jeans and a tube top. Her hair was feathery and blond and she told Jim she was going to be a movie star.
Like Marilyn Monroe.
“That’d be nice,” he told her. They drove on and she talked about Hollywood and how great it was going to be, and she said nothing about wherever it was she’d come from. Later when she ran out of dreams, she popped in a cassette tape of some punk band called Who Screamed. Their wailing over the guitars reminded Jim Howard of the thoughts inside his head when he tried not to think of the darker parts of ‘Nam. Of ’68.
At nine they reached Santa Ana, California. It was an old town, quiet and nice. He could smell the oranges from the groves in the night. The endless groves surrounded everything. The air was balmy, almost dreamy.
“Where you going from here?” she asked. Her eyes big. Her lashes long.
“Somewhere else,” he said as they parked on Main Street.
“It’s late,” she said looking around, holding herself close as though she feared being cold. Or alone. Her bare shoulders, tanned, gleamed in the moonlight.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“Probably too late for a bus to Hollywood,” she whispered.
He got them a room. Her really. He’d planned to sleep in the back of his car in some orange grove out of the way. He thought that would’ve been nice. But he could tell she needed a place to stay.
He had thirty-six thousand dollars, and he had to be careful with it if his plan was going to have a chance.
He got the room and picked up a six pack and they went up. Later, after the sex and beer, she slept and he watched her eyes flutter in a dream.
A dream about Hollywood, he guessed.
He lay awake next to her, just watching the ceiling. He popped the last beer and took a long drink.
~~~
Down in the tunnels.
That day at Cu Chi had been one of the longest. Three days long. When he came out, he wasn’t just some grunt on his second tour for Sergeant Stripes anymore. That was something to respect in and of itself. A vet. Hardened. Been there, done that. Seen things that oughtn’ta been seen. The new guys thought that was something and they wanted to know everything he knew so they could get the hell out of ‘Nam in one piece.
No, after Cu Chi, he became the Mongoose.
The animal that hunts in the tunnels.
The snake killer.
Jim Howard wasn’t big. Nor was he a small man. He was tight, compact, and all muscle. Had to be to bust horses on a ranch in hard knock Texas. When a horse was mean, it didn’t give no quarter. Didn’t expect none from you either. A mean horse would sooner die than let you bust ‘im. So you had to be all muscle.
You needed every muscle to bust a mean horse.
Which was all there was room for down in the tunnels. Muscle. Anything else would get you killed.
That day began with just a square tiny hole in the ground. New rats, volunteers, they went in hands up because the holes were so narrow and American shoulders so broad. High over your head like you were surrendering already.
That’s what Jim Howard thought when he saw the new Tunnel Rats go that way.
That day, like every day, like every time he went down into the tunnels and the dark, he went in head first. Lowered in by a couple of guys holding his feet.
“You want someone with you?” asked Captain Dasher. Jim Howard merely smirked.
“Yeah, I gotta ask. SOP,” said Captain Dasher with a guilty smile. And then Jim Howard disappeared into the darkness, forty-five out, slightly behind the crook neck flashlight.
He was gone for three days that time.
The truth was he got lost.
The legend was he became a ghost.
The truth was he wandered that maze of pits and traps and underground cisterns and recovery rooms full of sleeping VC snipers, and hospitals with wounded and burned dying men and women, and headquarters and munitions bunkers for three full days.
He killed some.
He left others and couldn’t have told you why.
When he thought about it now, he told himself that back then, he’d thought he was protecting America. Protecting his dad’s old place back in Texas. That it would be there when he got home and away from all this. That’s what he told himself every time he went down into the tunnels.
Three days later, he knew the VC were afraid he was deep down inside them. Like the parasites and malaria they all had. Like he’d gotten the first time, last year in Operation Cedar Falls. By the end of three days, he could see the fear in their eyes. They’d been telling each other there was a monster down there in the dark with them. He’d invaded their world of small little cathedral-shaped passageways, and crawled down into sudden pits of darkness and water only to find giant rooms, all of it going for miles and miles. The chatter up above was that the VC tunnels went for hundreds of miles.
Three days later, thirteen miles away, he came out covered in blood and sweat. Twice he’d almost been done in by vipers hanging from their tails in pitch dark rooms. His flashlight batteries had gone dead and he’d resorted to the VC candles and little lanterns. And sometimes he just adapted to being in the black. To not seeing. That’s when he learned how
to survive blind. When he learned not to fear the black, even if it was his enemy.
He’d spent one night sleeping in an underground cistern with the body of some poor slob that had been MIA for over a week. They found that out later, after Jim got back and turned in the guy’s dog tags.
In the years that followed, Jim often wondered if command had ever sent anyone back in there after that guy. Brought him home before they blew the whole tunnel complex to hell.
He often wondered about that. About that guy. Who he was. If the people who missed him had a grave they could go and sit near.
He lay awake in the motel room, finishing the beer and thinking about the war. Later he turned over and went to sleep, holding the young girl close to him. He was the Mongoose the snakes couldn’t kill.
~~~
“Well, I gotta split for LA, mister,” she said in the morning.
He watched her go. Watched her smile once, briefly, sadly, as she ducked out the door of the little motel room. Then he sat in the quiet and listened to the silence. Distantly he heard a vacuum cleaner begin to whine and he knew the maids were coming.
Chapter 11
It took a week to find a card house that would let him, a white man, play in Little Saigon. He’d spent the week in a motel in Garden Grove watching the Vietnamese, the immigrants the US had taken off the embassy roof in Saigon. Already they had large families. Some even owned stores.
He ate in a restaurant simply called Pho, the national beef broth-based dish, and the year the immigrant had come over. This one bragged the number 56. Long before the American troubles. A badge of honor, Jim guessed.
He was friendly, tipped well, and even hired some hookers he met in a bar run by a Vietnamese man named only Mr. Larry. He spent lots of money on the two tiny girls, trying to show them that he was just some big, rich, dumb Texan driving around in a Cadillac with loads of money to lose. He took them to a fancy dinner and bought them clothes for the three days he spent with them. The two slight girls were incredulous, chirping in their sing-song bird language. He knew they were telling each other they couldn’t believe their unbelievable luck at finding such a stupid rich Texan and his big sky blue Cadillac. They imagined he had millions.
He was under twenty-five thousand. The money he’d been saving from the oil rigs to pay off the back taxes on his dad’s old place.
At the end of their three days he asked, “You ladies know where I might find a game of cards?”
They both looked at each other.
No, they didn’t know.
But later, one of them suggested that her cousin Pham knew some boys who liked to play cards, and that she could ask him because the “big man from Texas so good to her and her friend”.
Later he dropped them off at a home in a tract neighborhood in Garden Grove. All the other houses in the cul-de-sac were post-war Anglo-American families with the children long gone or growing up. But in one house, the Vietnamese had moved in. They’d saved and scrimped and cut nails and whored and done every job no one else would do for a slice of the American dream. And now they had it. A single story ranchero with a wide front lawn they’d already planted some palms and bamboo in.
The two party girls led Jim Howard into the house and introduced him to Cousin Pham.
After a couple of cold beers and the half speak of a conversation in both Southern and Vietnamese, Cousin Pham was sure he could find a place where his new “Texas Best Friend Jim” could play a few hands. He would do well, Cousin Pham assured him. Vietnamese people were notoriously horrible gamblers and very bad at cards.
It began to rain in the morning. A warm, wet rain that made Jim think he was back in ‘Nam, as Cousin Pham showed him the way to the card room, pointing the big sky-blue Cadillac along the wet rainy streets of Garden Grove.
They reached a bar called The Happy Hour, an old faux stone front-windowless bar inside a fading strip mall, nestled amongst an urban sprawl of endless tract homes. Inside, older Vietnamese gentlemen played American-style poker. No Pai Gow. Just poker.
For a week he played and lost. He had to lose, he told himself. Really just a thousand every day, by the end of the day, on top of the four thousand he’d make on winning hands each day. That way it looked like a lot. His plan had been simple: win big at first, then drink a little too much, and yes have a big bowl of pho and get sleepy, and then start to lose. Finally, frustrated, throw it all away in front of all those South Vietnamese ex-colonels and ex-generals, all of them exiles, but not the ones he was looking for.
That was the part they loved. When he lost all their money back to them and then some. Mr. Best Friend Texas Jim. So sorry. Very bad luck. Next time, much better.
On the last day, he was down to that day’s last thousand, which wasn’t even a thousand because it was eight-hundred and fifty-six dollars. On that last lose-another-thousand-dollars day in which Jim Howard was giving up on ever finding the type of man he needed to find, in walked Mr. Vo.
He was small. He was thin. His eyes squinted into slender slits, as though the oppressive glare of the lone overhead light of the card room in the back was just too much to bear. He smoked incessantly and coughed quietly.
Maybe, thought Jim Howard. Maybe we have a winner.
He beat everyone that day and didn’t lose. He won fifteen thousand dollars and in particular, six thousand of Mr. Vo’s money. Mr. Vo stared at him without hatred. Without contempt. Without emotion. Just a vacant-eyed stare. A look Jim had seen before. Cold. Tired. Some VC tunnel fighter facing him with a knife or a sharpened punji stick, resigning himself to live just a little longer, no matter what it took to do so, down in the tunnels for just another day.
He’d seen that look before.
Chapter 12
Jim Howard and Mr. Vo sat across from each other later that week in one of south Orange County’s only five star restaurants, Chez Cary’s.
“So, here we are Mr. Texas,” said the small Vietnamese man. “Duck a l’Orange ordered. Wine poured. All very French. All very nice.” Mr. Vo leaned back in the ornate chair, cushioned in crushed red velvet, pulling a cheap silver case from his jacket and tapping out a cigarette on the table. “All very nice,” he said to himself.
Jim took a sip of his wine, leaned back and folded his hands in his lap.
The silver lighter Mr. Vo snapped open with a sudden eruption of butane disappeared back inside his coat pocket, and he leaned forward, drawing a heavy glass ashtray on the dining table toward himself. Then he drew on the cigarette and exhaled after a brief moment. White smoke spilled across the table as Mr. Vo fixed Jim with a glare.
“What all this about Mr. Texas?”
Jim smiled to himself.
“You smoke back in ‘Nam?”
Mr. Vo leaned back. No one talked about Vietnam. Even Mr. Vo’s fellow Vietnamese never talked about Vietnam. Vietnam never happened.
Then, “Yes. I smoke since I was a boy.”
Jim closed his eyes.
“I never smoked.”
Mr. Vo narrowed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Then, “Good for you, Mr. Texas.”
“Which was a good thing down in the tunnels,” continued Jim, watching Mr. Vo’s face and his eyes in particular, “‘cause you folks could smell that smoke on us. You guys didn’t smoke at all down there, did you?”
Mr. Vo took a deep drag of his cigarette and exhaled through his nose. He looked like a tiny angry Asian dragon sitting in a chair in a fancy French restaurant.
“You assume all Vietnamese VC, Mr. Texas? You not consider that only Vietnamese in America are losers. Ones who lost to the VC and the North, Mr. Texas. So if I am in America now, and not home being victorious winner after long struggle against tyranny and oppression, how is it that I am VC and not American friend?”
Jim smiled, reached forward and took up the gaudy crystal goblet in front of him from the heavily starched white tablecloth. It rose above a dizzying and glittering array of tableware, ready soldiers, waiting for the battle to com
mence once the main course arrived.
“Well, I’ll tell you my friend.” He took a drink. “I don’t rightly know. It’s just a guess.”
Mr. Vo snorted and smoked.
“You live all alone. No woman. No big family like all the other Vietnamese,” said Jim flatly.
“Maybe family die in war,” shot back Mr. Vo, his face as toneless as Jim’s voice.
“And the other Vietnamese don’t like you very much, Mr. Vo. I could tell by the way they play cards with you. The way they act when you’re around.”
“They don’t like anyone, not even themselves.”
“You have no money, other than the money you make at cards. Hence the pay by the week motel you live in.”
“Maybe I’m cheap. Save money in mattress or better yet, put in Great Western Savings with John Wayne, all American hero.”
Jim smiled.
“No, Mr. Vo. I don’t think any of that’s true. I think you were part of the 9th Viet Cong Division serving at Cu Chi and eventually Black Mountain. I think somehow you got captured, and you informed. You told the CIA a lot, maybe more than you needed to, and they gave you a ride out of the country as a favor because you knew once the South fell, you were in deep trouble if the “winners” ever found you. Or maybe you were a prisoner of war and, once again when the South fell, you got yourself on a raft to China and then got here because one of Ho Chi Minh’s boys might one day go through all the captured documents back in Saigon and anyone with your name was going to get dragged in for some talk. Whatever it was, the boys back in the card room at The Happy Hour, they tolerate you but they know you weren’t a colonel or a general like they were, because no one knows you, knows what you did during the war, which is probably the worst thing for a Vietnamese living in America right now. They don’t know anything about you, so you might be that other word they hate so much. You might be a...”
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