Nam-A-Rama

by Phillip Jennings

  “But—”

  “Jack, the day after we left Hanoi, the North Vietnamese attacked every damned city in South Vietnam. The President has bigger problems than what the hell to do with us.”

  “But Hoche, I mean Ho Chi Minh, attacked them because of us.”

  “We don’t know that. They might have been planning that all along. Devious little bastards, you know. Table shape, my ass.”

  “But don’t you think—”

  “JACK! Damn it! Stop worrying about shit you can’t change. We went, we saw, we fucked up. Forget it. Relax. Have another whiskey. Mama-san, dos whiskeys, por favor.”

  I did relax. Or at least did my best impression of it. I looked around the darkened room. I tried to imagine the marketing meeting where the entrepreneurs of Olongopo discussed the merits of serving alcohol to U.S. servicemen sitting in a cave. It was lost on me. But it was a very popular bar.

  I looked up from my sorrows to see two black-suited men staring down at me.

  “Are you Almost Captains Armstrong and Gearheardt?” the taller one asked. He had a wimpy mustache and acne scars.

  “Who’s asking?” Gearheardt replied.

  Two wallets appeared. “U.S. Secret Service. I’ll ask you again, sirs. Are you Almost Captains Arm—”

  “Yes, yes, don’t mind him. I’m Armstrong and that’s Gearheardt. Are you from the President? Is he here?”

  “That’s not for me to say, sir.”

  Both agents turned away. In a loud voice the taller one said, “I’ll have to ask you all to immediately leave the bar. Mama-san, please get those girls out of here. I don’t care where you take them. This place is off-limits until further notice.”

  He turned back to Gearheardt and me as his partner helped shoo the women, a few patrons, and the bartender out the back of the club.

  When the bar was empty except for the four of us, one of the agents went to the front door and stood by it. Almost immediately the door was opened and the President of the United States strode into the room, grinning from ear to ear. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, khakis, and sandals.

  The grin fell quickly to disappointment and then to pretty pissed off, if I knew my grins.

  “Where in the Blue Billy Hell is everbody?” the President asked. His huge jowls closely followed the face he swung around the room, his eyes blinking as they adjusted to the semidarkness.

  The senior Secret Service agent stepped forward. Three aides to the President had now followed him into the bar. They stood blinking in their dark jackets, identical attaché cases in their hands.

  “The bar is secure, Mr. President,” the agent said confidently.

  “Well, son,” the President said, beginning slowly, “do you think that I flew eleven thousand miles over here so I could set in a goddam bar with a papier-mâché stalagmite up my ass—and no women?! You ain’t got the sense God gave a chicken. Get them women back in here, and get somebody behind that bar. Hell, son, the kind of folks that want to do harm to the President don’t hang around Olongopo bars, for Chrissakes. Now, get on with it.” He grabbed the stunned agent and spun him around. Then he turned to his aides.

  “You boys spread out and watch my back. Soon as I say there ain’t nobody in here wants to harm me, some idiot will shoot me and I’ll look like a fool.”

  He looked at Gearheardt and me for the first time. We were standing at attention beside our table.

  “Well, what have we here?” The President ambled over, a smile on his face that wouldn’t have cheered the sick. “Is this my old friend Gearheardt? I believe it is.”

  I could smell bay rum aftershave.

  “And this must be Lieutenant, excuse me, Almost Captain Armstrong.” I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his smile became colder.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President,” I said.

  “Oh, you don’t have to be so formal, boy, does he, Gearheardt? What say we all sit down and have us a drink.” The aides scrambled to pull a chair up to the table where Gearheardt and I had been sitting. Seconds earlier and the President would have sat on thin air.

  “Oh, lookee here. Hello ladies.” A crowd of people including maybe twenty bar-girls was streaming back into the club. The patrons followed and the room was transformed. A Filipino band began playing a Beatles song. The President watched them and hummed along with them while a glass of whiskey and ice was placed in front of him. He took and raised it. We raised our glasses.

  “Here’s to success, boys. God knows I need some.” He drank deeply from the glass, blew out breath, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He raised his glass again and we followed. “And here’s to that son-of-a-bitch Ho Chi and that Gip fellow.”

  He drank again, and a waiter appeared and refilled his glass. I wasn’t prepared for how subdued Gearheardt remained. No wisecracks. No PresiLarry Bobs.

  “I suppose you boys don’t know the latest.”

  We both shook our heads.

  “Son of a bitch up and died this morning. Rotten little bastard.”

  “Who, sir? Ho Chi Minh?” I asked.

  The President looked at me like I was retarded. “Naw, I’m talking about Mortimer Snerd. Of course I meant Ho Chee, the old boy you were supposed to make a deal with.”

  He slammed his glass down on the table. “Now what the hell happened and it better be good. Couldn’t you boys follow a simple plan? Do I have to do ever’ damn thing myself in this country?”

  “Sir, we tried to—”

  “Tried don’t get the hogs slaughtered, boy.”

  “Sir, Captain Gearheardt and I received some conflicting orders, and also—”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean, conflicting orders? Let me call one of my aides over here and see if I ain’t still President. Comander in Chief last time I read the constitution or that other deal. Shit-fire, son, did you try to make a deal with him or not? I got about twenty-five hundred lepers floating around on Navy boats, and I personally guaranteed a damn condo loan. Wasn’t like I didn’t give you boys a hell of a hand to deal.”

  “He wouldn’t go for the Molokai deal, Mr. Larry Bob.” Gearheardt said.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t, would he? Mr. High and Mighty wouldn’t trade a few shit-covered rice paddies for a hundred and seventy five miles of beachfront?” He paused and looked at the go-go dancers, all of whom were watching him as they gyrated on their little platforms.

  Gearheardt was fully engaged. “Sir, we offered him just what you suggested. We were kind of playing him along, you know. I think he was about to go for it but that damned Geepster—”

  “Am I supposed to know who the hell ‘Geepster’ is?”

  “I mean Giap, Mr. President. Anyway he barged in, and Hoche, I mean Ho Chi Minh, kind of gave us the signal that the Geepster wasn’t in on the deal. We had agreed to meet again the next day and I think that we’d of struck a deal. I really do.”

  “Mr. President—” I began.

  He turned on me sternly. “This better not be some of that whinin’ you’re famous for, Armstrong.”

  “No, sir. I was just going to ask what difference it would have made if we had struck a deal. I mean since he’s dead anyway, wouldn’t we be right where we are now?”

  The President scrooched up his lips like he was trying to control a harsh reply. “You got State Department experience, son? You sound like some of those pointyheads over there in Foggy Bottom.” He squared himself around in his chair so that he was facing me. “If you’d of made a deal it would have been binding even if he dropped dead on the spot. He might have been a raggedy-assed commie leader of a pissant country, but he was President. I know a bit about presidentin’, you might notice, and that’s the way these things work. If he gave the word to those boys in Paris, and I know he wouldn’t have wasted no time doin’ that, then wham bam we got ourselves a real peace talk. And I got me an election that I might have a chance to win. Way it is now, I ain’t got a chance in old Billy heck unless the Republicans dig up the corpse of Joe Stalin to
run against me. Hell, my boys tell me I can’t even beat Nixon! Lord, what is this world comin’ to?”

  Against my better judgment I had to continue. “But I still don’t see what or how—”

  “Goddamm it, son, do I have to sit here in this bar and be fussed at by a Marine almost captain? The day I let soldiers tell me how to run a damn war is the day Flipper marries the Pope.” He drained his glass. “Anybody got a decent cigar around here?”

  Gearheardt jumped in. “Jack means no disrespect, sir. He is kind of a worrier. Likes all the little details crossed and dotted. He was just—”

  “See if those Mexicans know ‘Sentimental Journey,’ John,” the President said to a hovering aide.

  “Filipinos, Mr. President. I’ll check for you, sir.”

  “Filipinos? They look like Mexicans. ‘Cept these boys play real well. None of that ‘Cucaracha’ shit.” He rose up in his chair and clapped his huge hands head high. “Nice goin’, boys!” he yelled above the noise of the bar.

  He turned back to Gearheardt and me, face sober. “Now, for the sixty-four-dollar question. Why in the hell didn’t you boys shoot him? I didn’t hire myself a couple of pussy boys, did I?”

  I raised half out of my chair. “Shoot him? Did you say shoot him?”

  Gearheardt grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the chair. The President didn’t change expressions. I leaned across the table toward him. I could feel myself shaking. My voice was a low growl that caused the President to tilt back in his chair and catch the eye of one of the Secret Service men.

  “Weren’t we just getting our asses chewed out for not making a deal with him? Wasn’t that what we were just talking about fifteen seconds ago? Goddammit! Before I die I would just like for someone to give me a straight answer. Were we supposed to shoot him or make a deal with him?” I stopped, panting from stress and anger.

  The President studied his fingernails. He raised his eyebrows at Gearheardt now, who shrugged. Finally he took a deep breath and blew it out at his chest.

  “You through, son?” He looked up at me. “Let me tell you a little story about a chicken my daddy gave me to raise once. Seems it had two—”

  “I don’t want to hear about a damn chicken. I don’t want to hear about your damn childhood or your daddy or about anything else! There is a war going on and my pals are fighting it. I’ve had it, Mr. President. No, don’t make excuses for me, Gearheardt. And tell that Secret Service man if he comes one step closer I’ll ram that pistol up his asshole if I can figure out which end it’s on.” I slumped back in my chair, feeling beaten, exhausted.

  “—so my daddy said, son, either way the chicken is going to be dead, and you don’t lay eggs.” The President looked at me. “I’ll ask you one more time, son. Are you about through?”

  I weakly shook my head.

  “Plan B was for you to shoot the son-of-a-bitch which—don’t interrupt, I know he’s dead—would have thrown the Vietnamese into such a tizzy that they would have done something stupid and we’d have bombed them into the by-God Stone Age.”

  Gearheardt was drawing circles on the tabletop with his swizzle stick. He looked embarrassed. For me or for the President?

  I closed my eyes and spoke softly. “With all due respect, sir. Ho Chi Minh is dead. The North Vietnamese have launched a stupid military initiative. The North Vietnamese live in the stone age.”

  “And who gets the credit, Mr. Smart-ass Almost Captain? Who gets the credit?” After a moment he squinted his eyes and looked directly at me. “A little birdie told me you couldn’t pull the trigger anyhow. Is that right, son?”

  I sat up straight and looked at Gearheardt, but he looked as shocked as I felt.

  “But I—I—it was the weapon, my pistol—”

  “That’s what the military always says.” He raised his voice and mocked, “But we don’t have the right weapons. Not our fault. Hmmmph.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “And if puttin’up with those prima donnas weren’t bad enough, I got ever’ news hack in the world runnin’ around takin’ pictures and discoverin’ that people get killed in wars. Now there’s a flash for you. And the hippies! You know any hippies, son? They think old Ho Chi’s gonna give up if we just talk nice to him. That’s ’fore he’s dead, of course. They think we can just sit over here and screw our sisters and smoke marywanna and the Rooskies, and Chinese, and North Koreans, and Cubans and everbody else with a bug up his butt ’bout the United States will just go their merry way and we’ll all have a peace-in or some shit. How’d you like to walk into the Oval Office ever mornin’ and have so many situations that you don’t know whether to shit or go blind?” He snorted and craned his head around. “John, what in the hell does a man have to do to get some women over here?”

  His aide hurried over, escorting the mama-san, who was dressed in her Sunday best. She snapped her fingers and five Filipino girls quickly appeared in front of our table. A grinning President stood up and shook the hand of each. “Howdy, ladies.”

  He kept his grin wide as he leaned behind the five and spoke to the mama-san. “Fine, fine. You got anything with tits?” He held his hands out six inches from his chest.

  The mama-san lowered her head in shame and snapped her fingers again. Five more girls replaced the five in front of us. The President was gazing around the bar. His eyes landed on Lizzado. She was sitting in a chair by the ladies’ room, cleaning her toenails with a sliver of bamboo. Her bare-midriff blouse exposed multiple rolls of fat protruding as she bent over to reach her toes.

  “What about that young lady there?” the President asked.

  His aides, the Secret Service men, and the mama-san were momentarily speechless.

  I stood up. “I’m afraid that one’s mine, Mr. President. That’s Lizzado.” I lowered my voice and spoke confidentially into his ear. “She showers in her underpants.” Lieutenant Riggens had told a story about a fat girl in the Cave Bar who insisted she shower before getting into bed with a customer. But she wouldn’t take her underpants off. For no reason at all, she became an object of my desire. And I needed to not let the President win every round. After all, it was him who had sent Gearheardt and me to Hanoi on the lunatic excursion.

  The President swung around to face me. He was a big man. He set his jaw tight and I saw it begin to quiver. “Jack,” he said reasonably, “I got just a bit more info for you and Gearheardt. You ain’t Marines anymore. The CIA figured out that you boys are also Dexter and Narsworthy, and they got you under contract.” He smiled. “I fixed it with the chiefs over at the Pentagon so you boys will be flying in Lay-ohs from now on. And I do mean now on. They got a little piddly-assed war goin’ over there, and you boys will fit right in.”

  Gearheardt was on his feet. “But Mr. President, what about my career?”

  “Same as mine, son. Shit.”

  He was looking back at Lizzado. She smiled at him and patted a frizz or two back into place on her head. She was missing a tooth in front. Remembering, she held her chubby hand in front of her mouth.

  “Jack,” the President said, “you and Gearheardt should know that I don’t have no hard feelings. I’ve screwed up a time or two myself. ’Course this will be the first war I screwed up, but that’s no nevermind of yours. You boys be careful.”

  He stuck out his hand. After a moment I reached for it. “Well, sir, it may seem—”

  He coldcocked me with a roundhouse right to my jaw.

  When I woke up Gearheardt and the mama-san were kneeling beside me. Someone had put a seat cushion under my head, which hurt like a bastard. They gave me aspirin and told me that the President had left with Lizzado in the presidential limo. Gearheardt and I were to have our asses on an airplane to Danang in one hour and from there we would go to Vientiane, Laos. In the taxi back to the airfield, the driver told us that the U.S. forces had killed more North Vietnamese in the last two days than in all the time since the war had begun. I felt good about that.

  Then he told me that the U.S. Congress had dec
lared the war officially insane and demanded the U.S. pull out of the war because the North Vietnamese refused to fight fair. The Pentagon revised their official body count downward and declared that we actually hadn’t killed many people after all and sent out an order forbidding anyone in the military from slicking their hair straight back.

  We sat in the cold, equipment-laden cargo aircraft, wishing that we had earplugs. An hour out of Cubi Point, Gearheardt, looking like he had lost his best friend, leaned close so that I could hear him. “What does it mean, ‘She showers in her underpants’?”

  “How should I know?” Of course I did know. Girls who had no home but the one which was provided by the guy paying to screw them that night, often would shower in their underwear, just to get clean. The squadron chaplain had overheard me telling this sad fact in the bar and tried to build it into a sermon about not chasing women who showered in their underpants, but no one got the point, and trying to find someone who showered in their underpants became a legendary chase for the Holy Grail. I went back to sleep. I dreamed of black panties. It was the last thing I heard Juanton cry when I was leading Hoche out of the bar.

  Gearheardt and I were on our way back to Vietnam to be drummed out of the Marine Corps and inducted into Air America. An airline for pilots with more balls than sense.

  In Danang, Gearheardt and I scrounged up clean flight suits and polished our boots as best we could. We were to report to the wing commander’s office at 0900 in a ceremony dismissing us from the Marine Corps and transferring us to Air America, the CIA’s airline in Southeast Asia. It was now 0855. Gearheardt put a final touch to his wet, slicked-back hair and then tossed his cigarette into the sink.

  “Where did we go wrong, Jack? We did—”

  “We did shit, Gearheardt. Let’s go in and get this over.”

  We knocked sharply on the wing commander’s door and then let ourselves in.

  The wing commander, a massive lieutenant general who wore a specially sewn-on shoulder holster for his pipe, looked up quickly. His face turned red.