by Tim O'Brien
Doc had gone on to explain that the biles are a kind of glandular substance released during emotional stress. A perfectly normal thing. Like adrenaline, Doc had said. Only instead of producing quick energy, the biles act as a soothing influence, quieting the brain, numbing, counteracting the fear. Doc had listed the physical symptoms: numbness of the extremities in times of extremity; a cloudiness of vision; paralysis of the mental processes that separate what is truly happening from what only might have happened; floatingness; removal; a releasing sensation in the belly; a sense of drifting; a lightness of head.
“Normally,” Doc had said, “those are healthy things. But in your case, these biles are … well, they’re overabundant. They’re leaking out, infecting the brain. This Cacciato business—it’s the work of the biles. They’re flooding your whole system, going to the head and fucking up reality, frying in all the goofy, weird stuff.”
So Doc’s advice had been to concentrate. When he felt the symptoms, the solution was to concentrate. Concentrate, Doc had said, until you see it’s just the biles fogging things over, just a trick of the glands.
Now, facing the night from high in his tower by the sea, Paul Berlin concentrated.
The night did not move. On the beach below, the barbed wire sparkled in moonlight, and the sea made its gentle sounds behind him. The men slept their hard, dense sleeps. Now and then one of them would stir, turning in the dark, but they slept without stop. Oscar slept in his mesh hammock. Eddie and Doc and Harold Murphy slept on the tower floor. Stink Harris and the lieutenant slept side by side, their backs touching. They could sleep and sleep.
Paul Berlin kept the guard. For a long time he looked blankly into the night, inland, concentrating hard on the physical things.
True, he was afraid. Doc was right about that. Even now, with the night calm and unmoving, the fear was there like a kind of background sound that was heard only if listened for. True. But even so, Doc was wrong when he called it dreaming. Biles or no biles, it wasn’t dreaming—it wasn’t even pretending, not in the strict sense. It was an idea. It was a working out of the possibilities. It wasn’t dreaming and it wasn’t pretending. It wasn’t crazy. Blisters on their feet, streams to be forded and swamps to be circled, dead ends to be opened into passages west. No, it wasn’t dreaming. It was a way of asking questions. What became of Cacciato? Where did he go, and why? What were his motives, or did he have motives, and did motives matter? What tricks had he used to keep going? How had he eluded them? How did he slip away into deep jungle, and how, through jungle, had they continued the chase? What happened, and what might have happened?
Three
The Road to Paris
Yes, they were in jungle now. Thick dripping jungle. Club moss fuzzing on bent branches, hard green bananas dangling from trees that canopied in lush sweeps of green, vaulted forest light in yellow-green and blue-green and olive-green and silver-green. It was jungle. Growth and decay and the smell of chlorophyll and jungle sounds and jungle depth. Soft, humming jungle. Everywhere, greenery deep in greenery. Itching jungle, lost jungle. A botanist’s madhouse, Doc said.
Single file, they followed the narrow trail through banks of fern and brush and vine. There was weight in the air. Smells came together, and the final smell was of rot. They moved slowly. The heavy grind of the march: Stink still at point, then Eddie, then Oscar and the lieutenant, then Harold Murphy toting the big gun, then Doc, then, at the rear, Spec Four Paul Berlin, whose each step was an event of imagination.
For two days they had moved through simple jungle. Cacciato had escaped—a trap sprung on a small grassy hill, flares in the dawn sky, but the trap was empty. A few empty ration cans, some Hershey bar wrappers, Cacciato’s dog tags. That was all. So, regrouping, they pressed on. They crossed the last mountains. They followed the lone clay trail as it slowly descended, narrowed, twisted westward into the jungle.
And now it continued. They marched steadily, stopping only for water or to cut vines or to give the lieutenant time to rest.
In the early afternoon, when the heat became impossible, they stopped along a shallow creek that ran parallel to the trail. They drank, filled their canteens, then removed their boots and lay back with their feet in the stream. No one spoke. Paul Berlin closed his eyes, thinking it would be nice to have a cold Coke, or a tray of ice from the freezer, or an orange, or … He told himself to cut it out. He sat up, checked his feet for blisters, then rinsed out his socks.
“Another klick,” Doc said. He spoke softly, showing the map to the lieutenant. “Where these elevation lines drop … these little lines here? That’s Laos. One more klick.”
The lieutenant nodded. He was on his back, looking up at where the trees opened to a sliver of sky. He looked dazed.
“Then what, sir? At the border?”
Sighing, the old man closed his eyes. He lay still a long time.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t. That’s one bridge we might’ve already crossed.”
“Turn back,” Harold Murphy said. He leaned against his machine gun, left hand absently tapping the barrel. For a big man his voice was very high. “The border, that’s where we turn back. Right, sir?”
Lieutenant Corson did not answer. His face flushed. The cheekbones looked as if they had once been broken and had never mended properly, too high and knobby.
“Isn’t that right, sir?” Murphy said. “I mean—you know—we can’t cross the border, can we? That’s—” He let it trail off.
“Desertion,” the lieutenant said. “That’s what it is. It’s desertion.”
“I tell you this,” Harold Murphy said. “I don’t like it. I say we turn our butts back right now. Let him go.”
Stink laughed.
“I just don’t like it.”
They rested another ten minutes. Then, without speaking, the lieutenant got up, put on his rucksack and helmet, and motioned them forward.
The jungle kept thickening. All afternoon the squad plodded through banyan and neem trees, and trees they couldn’t name, vines and deep brush, soft country. They trudged along slowly, painfully, stopping often while Stink or Eddie went to work with a machete. Hacking, sometimes crawling. Once, late in the afternoon, the trail gave out entirely. It simply ended. Taking turns, they chopped through blunt jungle for nearly an hour. It was hard, awkward work. The machete handle turned slick. There was no room for leverage or full swinging at the tangled thickets, and the air was heavy with a kind of heat Paul Berlin had never known before. He measured his breathing: inhaling, holding it for two counts, swinging the machete and exhaling at the same time, pausing, inhaling, holding it, swinging. Twenty strokes left him exhausted.
Flopping down next to Oscar Johnson, he felt the sweat leaving his body as if through a tap.
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Oscar said softly. “Pooped?”
Paul Berlin nodded. He wanted to smile, to show he was holding up. He watched silently as Eddie took up the machete and began hacking away at the jungle.
“I’ll say one thing,” Oscar murmured. “Cacciato ain’t passed this way. Not through this shit.”
“Think we lost him?”
Oscar shrugged. “All I know’s what I see, an’ I see he ain’t been here. That’s all.” He glanced at the lieutenant. “And I know this, too. The old man, he’s ready to fall out. The man’s in ungood health.”
Harold Murphy made a bitter hooting sound. “Turn back, then,” he said. “Right now, while it’s still possible.”
Oscar pushed his sunglasses tight against his eyes. “We do what we do,” he said. “No use thinkin’, just do it.”
He got up and went over to relieve Eddie.
It took another half hour to cut through to the trail. They rested a time, concentrating on their fatigue, then again they began moving. The earth was damp now, springy with crushed ferns and mushrooms, ancient smells, and there was the dank hush that comes before a summer storm. The heat came in layers. It was a sucking heat, the sort that
draws moisture out of living things, and they filed through it with the dull plodding motions of men who move because they must.
Near dusk the trail began to widen. The trees thinned out, and the trail slipped down into a gully which, after a time, brought them to a wide, dark river.
There they stopped.
“Laos,” Doc said. He hitched up his pack and pointed to the far side of the river. “Over there, that’s Laos.”
They gazed across at it. The same sheer jungle. Trees grew to the river’s edge, their roots snaking down the bank and into the slow water. Things were very still. The river was like a pond without currents. Dusk gave it a murky brown color.
“No bridges,” the lieutenant finally said. He stood slightly apart from the others, blinking as if trying to decide on something. Then he sighed. “I guess that’s one good thing. No bridges to burn behind me.”
They crossed the river.
The lieutenant went first. He stepped into the slow water, paused a moment, then began wading. The others followed. It was easy. They waded across single file, holding their weapons high. The warm feeling of passage. They regrouped on the far side.
“I don’t like it,” Harold Murphy whispered, but it was done.
For six days they marched through jungle. Once they skirted a deserted village. Once they crossed a frayed and spindly rope bridge. Once, in the heat of early afternoon, they passed through an ancient tribal cemetery. But there were no breaks in the ongoing rain forest. And there were no signs of Cacciato.
It was a routine. They would rise at daybreak and march until midafternoon, when the heat seemed to click on like a furnace. Then they would rest, spinning out the hot hours in petty conversation or sleep. Later, as the shadows appeared, they would resume the march until dusk. The fatigue played heavily on all of them. Mostly, though, it showed on the lieutenant. Partly it was his age, partly the dysentery. But it was something else, too.
One afternoon as they were fording a shallow creek, the old man lost his balance and teetered and fell back. He sat there, watching the cold water rush past. He did not move. Slowly, like a pair of logs, his arms bobbed in the stream. He watched them. Then his pack slipped off, his rifle sank, and he floated.
Doc and Eddie dragged him out.
They propped him against the bank, dried him off, retrieved the M-16 and rucksack. The lieutenant’s eyes were open and his lips moved, but he did not speak.
“Sick,” Doc whispered. “The old man’s had it.”
They spent the night there. When the lieutenant was asleep, Oscar convened a meeting around the fire.
“Democracy time,” Oscar said slowly. He removed his sunglasses, inspected them, put them on again. “Decision time. Do we go on with this shit or do we call it quits? That’s the question.”
Stink flicked his eyebrows and grinned. “Speeches!”
“Spit on speeches. We’re taking a vote, no bullshit.” Oscar’s face was hard. His sunglasses sparkled in the firelight. “Doc says the LT’s probably got a case of sunstroke … nothing serious, anyhow. No temperature, the dysentery’s clearing up. But he still ain’t exactly in wonderful shape. So we got to consider—”
“Turn back,” Harold Murphy said. “That’s my vote. I say we turn back now.”
“Tonight?” Eddie said.
“Now.”
Oscar ignored him. He held up a hand for quiet. “On the other hand,” he said slowly, “we got certain responsibilities to consider. Catching Cacciato … We got to consider that. The mission is—”
Harold Murphy made a high mocking sound.
“Speech, Murph?”
“No speech. Screw mission, that’s all. I vote we bag it up. It’s nuts. Chasing after the dumb slob, it’s crazy as hell. There’s a word for it.”
“A word?”
“Desertion,” Murphy said. “That’s the word. Running off like this, it’s plain desertion. I say we get our butts back to the war before things get worse.”
Stink Harris cheered. “Murph’s my man! Elect Murphy, by God, and happy days is here again. Let’s—”
“Cut it.”
“Vote Irish. Stick a pope in the White House.”
“Cut it out,” Oscar said. “I don’t need this crap.”
Harold Murphy studied his hands. “Look,” he said, glancing up at Paul Berlin. “I’m just saying how nutty it is. Running away, that’s what it comes down to. No mission crap. You can’t … you can’t do this. Know what I mean? You can’t.”
The others were quiet.
“You just can’t. It’s not right.” Murphy shrugged. “So there’s my vote.”
“More speeches?”
No one moved.
“Okay, then,” Oscar said. “Time to cast ballots.”
It went quickly. Harold Murphy and Eddie voted to turn back. Oscar and Stink and Doc voted to continue.
“Berlin?”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
Paul Berlin looked at Murphy, then looked at the fire. The possibilities were endless.
“Keep going,” he said. “See what happens.”
“That’s your vote?”
“Yes,” Paul Berlin said. “I vote to move on.”
In the morning, Harold Murphy and his big gun were gone. They continued west without him.
Four
How They Were Organized
Even before arriving at Chu Lai’s Combat Center on June 3, 1968, Private First Class Paul Berlin had been assigned by MACV Computer Services, Cam Ranh Bay, to the single largest unit in Vietnam, the Americal Division, whose area of operations, I Corps, constituted the largest and most diverse sector in the war zone. He was lost. He had never heard of I Corps, or the Americal, or Chu Lai. He did not know what a Combat Center was.
It was there by the sea.
A staging area, he decided. A place to get acquainted. Rows of tin huts stood neatly in the sand, connected by metal walkways, surrounded on three sides by wire, guarded at the rear by the sea.
A Vietnamese barber cut his hair.
A bored master sergeant delivered a re-up speech.
A staff sergeant led him to a giant field tent for chow, then another staff sergeant led him to a hootch containing eighty bunks and eighty lockers. The bunks and lockers were numbered.
“Don’t leave here,” said the staff sergeant, “unless it’s to use the piss-tube.”
Paul Berlin nodded, fearful to ask what a piss-tube was.
In the morning the fifty new men were marched to a wooden set of bleachers facing the sea. A small, sad-faced corporal in a black cadre helmet waited until they settled down, looking at the recruits as if searching for a lost friend in a crowd. Then the corporal sat down in the sand. He turned away and gazed out to sea. He did not speak. Time passed slowly, ten minutes, twenty, but still the sad-faced corporal did not turn or nod or speak. He simply gazed out at the blue sea. Everything was clean. The sea was clean, and the sand and the wind.
They sat in the bleachers for a full hour.
Then at last the corporal sighed and stood up. He checked his wristwatch. Again he searched the rows of new faces.
“All right,” he said softly. “That completes your first lecture on how to survive this shit. I hope you paid attention.”
During the days they simulated search-and-destroy missions in a friendly little village just outside the Combat Center. The villagers played along. Always smiling, always indulgent, they let themselves be captured and frisked and interrogated.
PFC Paul Berlin, who wanted to live, took the exercise seriously.
“You VC?” he demanded of a little girl with braids. “You dirty VC?”
The girl smiled. “Shit, man,” she said gently. “You shittin’ me?”
They pitched practice grenades made of green fiberglass. They were instructed in compass reading, survival methods, bivouac SOPs, the operation and maintenance of the standard weapons. Sitting in the bleachers by the sea, they were lectured on the known varietie
s of enemy land mines and booby traps. Then, one by one, they took turns making their way through a make-believe minefield.
“Boomo!” an NCO shouted at any misstep.
It was a peculiar drill. There were no physical objects to avoid, no obstacles on the obstacle course, no wires or prongs or covered pits to detect and then evade. Too lazy to rig up the training ordnance each morning, the supervising NCO simply hollered Boomo when the urge struck him.
Paul Berlin, feeling hurt at being told he was a dead man, complained that it was unfair.
“Boomo,” the NCO repeated.
But Paul Berlin stood firm. “Look,” he said. “Nothing. Just the sand. There’s nothing there at all.”
The NGO, a huge black man, stared hard at the beach. Then at Paul Berlin. He smiled. “Course not, you dumb twerp. You just fucking exploded it.”
Paul Berlin was not a twerp. So it constantly amazed him, and left him feeling much abused, to hear such nonsense—twerp, creepo, butter-brain. It wasn’t right. He was a straightforward, honest, decent sort of guy. He was not dumb. He was not small or weak or ugly. True, the war scared him silly, but this was something he hoped to bring under control.
Late on the third night he wrote to his father, explaining that he’d arrived safely at a large base called Chu Lai, and that he was taking now-or-never training in a place called the Combat Center. If there was time, he wrote, it would be good to get a letter telling something about how things went on the home front—a nice, unfrightened-sounding phrase, he thought. He also asked his father to look up Chu Lai in a world atlas. “Right now,” he wrote, “I’m a little lost.”
It lasted six days, which he marked off at sunset on a pocket calendar. Not short, he thought, but getting shorter.
