Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War

by Karl Marlantes

  After the usual small talk, Cassidy said he had a problem. “It’s about the order to cover the fighting holes with roofs.”

  “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “The colonel told the skipper that we had three days to cover the fighting holes with roofs. Wants them sandbagged, leave slits for the rifles and M-60s. You know. Guns of Navarone.” The sergeant major sat there, watching him. Cassidy fidgeted. “Well, goddamn it, Sergeant Major, it’s a stupid fucking order. You got to hear and see and you can’t do either in a fucking cave, not with rain beating on the roof. Fucking gooners can crawl right around and hit us blind on our backsides if we can’t hear them. Our men are fucking exhausted. We’ve been patrolling the shit out of this place, building the fucking LZ, laying goddamned wire, clearing fields of fire, and all we get to work with is our fucking K-bars and E-tools. Our goddamned hands are full of pus.”

  “You’re talking about your commanding officer, Staff Sergeant Cassidy,” Knapp said quietly.

  Cassidy swallowed. “Yes, Sergeant Major.” He felt his face burning. “If we get hit, it’s going to be by sappers sneaking up on us at night. The gooks won’t hit us with artillery. They ain’t going to waste ammo that they hauled through air strikes over four hundred miles at night on a fucking hill like this.” The sergeant major listened impassively. Listening to junior NCOs was part of his job. Cassidy’s voice intensified as he saw Knapp’s indifference. “They sneak up on you, goddamn it. You’ve got to listen for the little bastards. I don’t see why these men got to build their own fucking coffins.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “I ain’t no fucking crybaby, Sergeant Major, and we got a good fucking company of Marines. We can do what we’re told, and no griping, but I think the colonel don’t understand the situation, that’s all. This ain’t fucking Korea. Maybe you could talk to him.”

  “Why doesn’t Lieutenant Fitch do that?”

  “I guess he tried.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  Cassidy could see that the sergeant major wasn’t about to use up chits to help out a young staff sergeant who felt overworked and underpaid.

  Knapp patted Cassidy on the shoulder. “Tell you what, Staff Sergeant Cassidy, I’ll see if I can’t spare you some men to help after we get done setting up the CP area. I might even be able to secure a chain saw or two. My God, anything we can do to help. Just ask.”

  Cassidy walked wearily down the hill, knowing he had damaged his standing with the sergeant major and failed the kids in the company as well. He cursed his temper.

  By the next morning a full storm was hurling itself against the hill. The platoon moved in slow motion all day, buffeted by the wind, hampered by cold hands that made grasping E-tools and knives even more difficult than normal. It seemed cruelly unnecessary to Mellas to have to return to the backbreaking work of digging and chopping just when they had reached the point where they could start working on their own living quarters. Yet they dug and chopped, finding the meaning of their actions within the small prosaic tasks, casting from their minds the larger questions that would only lead them to despair.

  Vancouver and Conman alternated filling sandbags, one holding a bag open while the other one shoveled in the sticky clay. To Vancouver each sandbag was just that, nothing more—one filled sandbag to be followed by the next. The small E-tool burned his blisters and sores. He watched the blood and pus from the jungle rot on his fingers and wrists smear in with the mud and rainwater. He paused occasionally to wipe his hands on his trousers, not even thinking that he had to sleep in them. Everything soon had the same greasy consistency anyway, mixing in with the urine that he couldn’t quite cut off because he was so cold, the semen from his last wet dream, the cocoa he’d spilled the day before, the snot he rubbed off, the pus from his skin ulcers, the blood from the popped leeches, and the tears he wiped away so nobody would see that he was homesick. Except for his size and the role that he’d taken on, or fallen into, Vancouver was no different from any other teenager in the platoon. He knew that the role gave the others heart and he had to admit that he liked playing it, because of what it did for his friends and for himself. He liked the respect—hell, he was almost a celebrity. But he was not ignorant of what it cost. Being on point scared him every time he took it, yet something compelled him to take it every time.

  Broyer figured he needed sixteen of the small logs to complete their bunker. He knelt before the first one, squinting at it through his glasses, not wanting to start. His hand was swollen. He’d cut it on razor grass two days earlier and it had become infected. He’d seen the squid about it, but all Fredrickson could do was paint it with some red shit and give him some Darvon for the pain. When he touched the handle of his K-bar the pain made him want to pull his hand away and hold it under his armpit, nursing it with the warmth of his body.

  He hacked at the log with the knife. The pain was intense. The K-bar bounced back from the hard wood, leaving only a small nick. He stared at the nick. He took his left hand and tried again. He was ineffectual left-handed; the K-bar merely bounced off the wood instead of biting at it.

  “You’ve got to get mad at it,” Jancowitz said, coming up behind Broyer unexpectedly. “Like this.” He took the K-bar from Broyer’s hand and attacked the log, cursing it. He smashed the large knife against the wood again and again. He screamed filthy language. Small chips began to come out of the wood. Janc suddenly stopped and smiled. He threw the K-bar into the wood, point first, and left it there quivering. “Eight fucking days until I see Susi in Bangkok,” he said. He walked off down the line.

  When Second Squad returned from patrol, Jacobs immediately noticed how far behind his squad was in building the bunkers, even though Lieutenant Mellas and Sergeant Bass both had promised him that the squads not on patrol would work equally hard on the entire platoon sector. Hippy’s machine-gun position did have the beginning of a wall around it, as well as some rather crooked logs, which Jake guessed were rejects from the other squads. He sat down heavily in the mud, legs dangling inside the hole.

  Hippy took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them on his shirt. He held them up to the rain and looked through them. He put them back on, and then slowly took off his boots, grimacing. He carefully peeled his wet socks from his feet, which were discolored and puffy.

  “Those look ugly,” Jake said.

  Hippy grunted. He began massaging his feet. “There it is.” He rubbed a few minutes more, then put his boots back on, wincing, and started taking apart the gun to clean out the dirt and vegetation.

  Jake wished desperately that Fisher were back, but Fisher was gone. Just like that, taken away, and now here he was, feet dangling in Hippy’s machine-gun position, everyone tired, the fucking rain beating into the earth, his squad without bunkers, and only two days left to complete them.

  “No one did shit for us today,” Jake said. He kicked at the side of Hippy’s hole, and a glob of mud splashed into the water. He saw Lieutenant Mellas approaching him from Conman’s section.

  Mellas squatted down next to the hole. “Thought I’d save you the trouble of walking uphill to give me the after-action report.”

  Jake noticed that Mellas, too, was dirty and tired, and it made him feel good to think that the lieutenant had been working on the lines as well. “Nothing, sir. Nothing but rain and fucking jungle.”

  “No footprints? Nothing?”

  “You’ve been out there. Nothing.”

  Rain suddenly slashed down on them in heavy sheets. Water ran off Jake’s helmet onto his nose and neck in tiny cascades. Jake looked at the lines. “I see they got a lot done on our bunkers today, sir.”

  Mellas looked away briefly. “They did the best they could. As far as they were concerned you guys got to screw off with a walk in the park.”

  Hippy slammed home the bolt of the machine gun, startling both Jake and Mellas. “Tell me something, Lieutenant,” Hippy said. “Just tell me where the gold is.”

  “Gold?” Mellas looked puzzled, but Jake knew that Hippy was struggling with something
deep. He could see Hippy’s jaw muscles trying to control the frustration and exhaustion.

  “Yes, the gold, the fucking gold, or the oil, or uranium. Something. Jesus Christ, something out there for us to be here. Just anything, then I’d understand it. Just some fucking gold so it all made sense.”

  Mellas didn’t answer. He stared at the jungle for a long time. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I wish I did.”

  “There it is,” Jake said. He lifted the butt of his rifle to the earth beside him and pushed himself to his feet.

  Mellas stood with him. “Look, Jake, I know it’s tough, but we’ve got some daylight left. Get some food and see if you can’t fill some sandbags for foundations for the roofs before dark.”

  Jake looked at Mellas dully, trying to comprehend it all. He turned without saying a word to pass the order down to the fire team leaders.

  The light began to fade and the lines grew quiet as the company went on the evening stand-to. Williams and Cortell, who had been working next to Johnson on their own bunker, were cleaning their M-16s in what light remained. These two had been together ever since they came in-country. Cortell, the leader of Jancowitz’s second fire team, was small and, had he been better fed, would have been round. His slightly receding hairline made him look older than his nineteen years. Williams, tall and rangy, with the big hands of a rancher, was almost Cortell’s physical opposite. What they had in common, besides the Marine Corps and eight months in combat, was farmwork, although for the one it was cotton in the Mississippi delta and for the other Herefords and hay.

  Cortell liked this kid from Idaho. Until he joined the Marines, Cortell had never spoken with a white boy other than to excuse himself or conduct business. Even in boot camp, the whites and blacks had pretty much kept to themselves for the brief moments the Marine Corps allowed any of them time to themselves. Now here they were. He could never quite get used to it, expecting Williams to refuse to sit next to him one day or suddenly go off on him for no good reason. But Williams never did. Today, however, Cortell could feel something different about Williams, nothing dangerous or ill-willed, but something self-conscious and hesitant. He took a chance.

  “Somethin’ on you mind, Will?”

  Williams held up the trigger assembly to inspect it.

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cortell waited. He knew that waiting was often the best thing.

  “I mean, I know that Cassidy and Ridlow and Bass are always getting on you about it. But . . . I mean I think you do. I mean congregating. You always go off by yourselves back at VCB. Even out here, you’re always hanging out with Jackson and the other Negroes.”

  “We ain’t Negroes any more,” Cortell cut in, not unkindly.

  “Well, whatever you are. I mean . . . that shit isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

  Cortell carefully snapped the barrel of the M-16 in place. “I bet you think we over there doing some kind of voodoo or somethin’. Hatchin’ up black power plots.”

  “I don’t know,” Williams said. “I’m not there.”

  “Well, hate to disappoint you dumb cowboy ass, but we don’t even think ’bout white folks when we be congregatin’.” Cortell gave his characteristic chuckle. “You ever hear that story ’bout the ugly ducklin’?”

  “I may be from Idaho, but our mommas do tell us fairy tales.” He pointed the barrel of his M-16 toward the waning light and peered through the back side, checking for dirt. Satisfied, he began reassembling the rifle.

  “Well. You know Jesus,” Cortell said. “He spoke in parables. You know why? Because when you speak in parables it’s the listener comes up with the right answer, not what the talker think is the right answer. You with me here?”

  Williams nodded.

  “I bet you think that story be about some ugly little kid that no one like because he be a plugugly little kid and then he grow up and he not ugly anymore because he ain’t no duck. He be a swan. Whoa. And of course the swans be all white and the ducks all dark, but I’m not gon’ go there with this sermon.”

  Williams smiled. Cortell was always getting kidded about preaching when he got excited. He took the ribbing, not without a little pride.

  “Well, let me tell you what I think that story be about. It be about this little duck can’t grow up. Can’t grow up to be a big duck ’cause he ain’t a duck. But he don’t know what he’s ’sposed to grow up to.” Cortell looked carefully to be sure he wasn’t losing Williams. “I mean, you don’t know what you supposed to grow up to, that make it pretty hard to grow up.” He waited a moment. “So, we ain’t congregating, we just hangin’ out with people best we can to figure out where to is. You with me here? To ain’t with the white folk ’cause we be black folk and tryin’ to find to hangin’ out with you chucks just a dead end for us. When I hang out with you chucks, I’m a black man first and who I really am come next. When I hang out with the splibs, I’m me first and there ain’t no black man at all. It got nothin’ to do with white folk. It’s just the way it is. Ain’t no voodoo conspiracy. We just hangin’ out and movin’ on best we can.”

  Williams, who had been holding his breath, let it out. “Yeah. There it is.”

  “There it is,” repeated Cortell.

  “I think it scares people,” Williams said.

  “Scare you?”

  “Yeah. Naww.” He worked the bolt on his rifle. “I don’t know.”

  “We get scared, too,” Cortell said. He looked out at the jungle and back home to Four Corners, Mississippi. “Seems the only way I ever talk with a white man is to be just a little scared.” He came back to Matterhorn and looked over at Williams. “Till you, brother.”

  Williams slammed home the bolt and stood up. “Aww . . .” He shook his head sideways. Then he smiled, looking down at his chest.

  Cortell laughed. “Sit down here, m’ man. You ain’t got phase two of my sermon yet.”

  Williams sat down. “Speak, Reverend.”

  “We ain’t Negroes any more.”

  “You were when I was in high school and that was only last spring.”

  “We ain’t Negroes any more. We blacks.”

  Williams only half-suppressed a smile, knowing Cortell would see he was amused. “So if we were whites last spring are we supposed to be called Blancos or Caucasios or something now?”

  “Get back.”

  “No, really. I mean, what did you folks used to be called?”

  “Niggers,” Cortell said, opening his eyes wide.

  “Not that. Fuck you. I know that’s an insult. You know what I mean. I mean what did you folks called yourselves.”

  “Don’t give me any ‘you folks’ stuff either. You talkin’ to one man here.”

  “OK, then. What did blacks used to call yourselves?”

  Cortell thought a moment. “Well, Negro a lot, actually. The Reverend King called us that. But he dead. It seem too close to nigger now, or nigra.” His mind raced through an image of southern aristocracy and then any possible connective root between the words genteel and gentile, which he quickly dismissed. His mind was always doing that to him. “Negro doesn’t have that, you know, pride thing.” He held up the bolt of his M-16, trying to catch the last of the light on it to see if he’d missed anything. “Sometimes we called ourselves people of color.”

  “People of color. Never heard that one.”

  “Yeah, but you from Idaho.”

  Williams gave Cortell the finger and went back to wiping down the barrel of his own M-16 with another oiled patch.

  “Anyway,” Cortell went on, “we blacks now. Ever’one be some color. Even white is a color.” Now it was Cortell’s turn to let Williams know he was suppressing a smile. “But it be a pretty dull go-nowhere do-nothin’-for-you insipid color.”

  “Whoa, Cortell. In-sip-id.”

  “What, you think I’m some dumb cotton chopper with no vocabulary just because I talk like I live in Mississippi?”

  Williams smiled at him. “People of color,” he said. “Pee-oh-cee.” He paused, then said, “Poc.” He waited just a moment, then, “Poc, poc.” It had the sound
of a coffee percolator just starting to boil.

  Cortell shook his head, smiling at the foolishness.

  Williams was suddenly on his feet again. “Poc, poc, poc.” His head was thrown back and now the sound was like a chicken squawking in a barnyard. “Poc poc pocpocpoc.” He was walking half-crouched, his neck poking forward, hands tucked under his armpits with his elbows out. “Poc, poc, poc, poc.” He crowed and strutted. Heads turned from up and down the line and then turned back to what they were doing.

  Cortell hung his head, trying very hard not to laugh. “You do that shit ’round some of the other brothers they wring you chicken neck.”

  “Poc.” Williams sat down. “Poc, poc.”

  “I know you a dumb Blanco from Idaho so I don’t have to kill you,” Cortell said, “but you make fun of somethin’ serious and do some that poc poc stuff in front of the wrong brothers and you be in some serious shit.”