by Gil Hogg
Weston and I were silenced, and then Weston said, “This man Trask is one of three picked up for questioning over the riot.”
Vaughan’s good eye sharpened. “Is he?”
“We don’t know whether he’s the guy who wielded the bottle,” I said.
“Oh, but he is involved.” Vaughan paused to see if we were following his thoughts.
“Well, sir, we’ll have to see… ” Weston began.
Vaughan’s colour was changing from a cheesy pallor to lined redness. His voice had an edge. “No, Major Weston, we won’t see. Mr McDade will deliver Trask to my orderly room with appropriate charges. I’ll get it out of him. By the time he’s had thirty days in the stockade in Guam, he’ll have paid his dues for last night, and his fairy story about a massacre will have been knocked right out of his skull.”
Vaughan smiled slightly at the neatness of the solution. “I think I’ve solved our problems, gentlemen. Dismiss.”
17
Torn paper in the trash can. Would that end it?
The rain began. I drew my cape around my shoulders and let the water wet my hair and run down my neck. I walked silently with Weston and parted from him knowing what I should do. I should return to my quarters, write a full report on the patrol and formally ask Colonel Vaughan to carry out an investigation. I should just do that, and let it all go to hell and take me with it, if it must. At least then I would be able to breathe. I would have rid myself of the fever breeding inside me. Maybe Vaughan would react as he did a moment ago: accept Blake’s view that he was carrying out a legitimate interrogation. Of course that is what Vaughan would do, and perhaps that would be confirmed by other witnesses. Vaughan would impede the calling of many witnesses. He would claim operational necessity. He would make sure Blake’s story was backed up by Nguyen. If I knew the men of my patrol, never mind Blake’s, none of them would testify against Blake, his men, or Nguyen. The old mantra ‘Don’t know nothing about it, sir,’ would apply.
I reflected, my eyes down, kicking the wet gravel on the tarmac. If I reported what I knew, my friendship with Blake would be destroyed, and my future with Gail. How could there be a future if Gail’s lover crucified her beloved and heroic brother? However much my report was found to be truthful and justified, I would surely be a leper in Gail’s eyes. And I would be boycotted by my fellow officers. No comrade in arms could be as evil as our enemy, the fanatical and virtually subhuman Viet Cong who blew our balls off with their mines, and drove us into madness. I would be a pariah. And if the events in my report were followed through and found to be factual, Blake could end up in prison, discharged in disgrace. And a vital – it seemed vital now – part of my own life would be laid waste in pursuit of… what? A kind of abstract justice.
And who were the victims? They might have been the hated VC, as likely as not to die in battle. Perhaps it didn’t make much difference that they had their throats cut. Or were the victims intimidated or half-innocent villagers, aiding and abetting the VC? There were children; were children always innocent? Surely in all this land there were many simple people who lived and died cropping and fishing, and if there were, those whom Blake ordered to be killed may have been innocent… It all swirled before me in a turbulent flow.
I rolled my cape over my arm. The rain had stopped. Steam was rising from the hot ground. In the past, in the moments when my imagination wasn’t making me fearful, Vietnam seemed so attractive; the harshness of the weather, and the harshness of the Army bearing down on lives. Now, I yearned for the peace of wearing any old clothes and going to the supermarket unshaven… having a conscience that was clear and shiny as a mirror.
I hitched a ride to the guard house on a truck. Feeling queasy, I had missed breakfast. My eyes watered as I scanned the arid spaces of the fort from the cab of the truck, blind sheds and little anonymous khaki creatures scurrying like beetles. Tentacles of lightning grasped the low clouds. My ride dropped me at the guard house compound. I argued with the sentry in a cloud of diesel smoke from the departing truck. I didn’t have a pass. A misty rain began to fall on my shoulders. I pulled my cape around me roughly. The sentry was dry in his box. The guard corporal was dry under the porch of the building inside the wire. The rain intensified. The sentry yielded and let me into the compound.
“Darrel Trask,” I said to the corporal. “Hearing at ten-thirty today. I need to see him. Prepare charges.”
“You haven’t got a pass, sir?” the corporal said. “I have to have a complete record.” He pointed to a thick book, eyes swelling behind his glasses.
I pointed to my wristwatch. “I’ll lose an hour going back. There’s no time.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“That’s it? Oh, shit.”
“I can’t help you, sir.”
“Get me your boss on the phone.”
The corporal paused, looked at the intercom handset on the table, his eyeballs roving behind the glasses. “Well… OK, sir,” he said, standing aside to admit me.
I followed the corporal down the cell corridor. “No smoking, no matches, no gifts, sir,” the corporal said.
Trask, stripped to the waist, lay on a bunk. He did not look up as I was let in. I sat on the cover of the lavatory bucket and leaned back on the mesh door.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Trask said, swinging himself up and around into sitting position. He was a fit man, wide shouldered with a thick muscular neck and a narrow blade-like head. The comic book he had been reading fell to the floor between his feet.
I threw a pack of Camels and a box of matches on the bed.
Trask was enlivened for a moment. “You’re a real bolshy, aren’t you? Breaking all the rules. Whaddya want?”
“I have to prepare charges against you.”
His rough fingers extracted a cigarette from the pack; he had a miserable boy’s face posing as an adult’s. I knew his personal file. Army convictions for assault, disorderly behaviour, drunkenness. A hardball. Yet a relatively good head. A clean civilian record. Qualifications as an electronics technician. A man the Army hadn’t tamed.
“Don’t ask me for help. I’m innocent, I am. Yeah.” He spun himself back to lie on the bed looking at the ceiling, as if to underline a resolve to admit nothing.
“There’s the shirt, and the marks on your face and hands.”
“And is the shirt mine? You better find out. What can you prove?”
“The girl.”
“Slut.” He jerked up on his elbow, his eyes wavered, perhaps sliding back to the memory of her. He fell back. “She can’t identify me because it wasn’t me. As for the cuts, I slipped off the catwalk backstage last night, bits of metal and bolts sticking out everywhere. Got me as I fell. You won’t get anywhere.”
“The guy that got cut is in bad shape.”
“You’re making me cry, copper.” He pointed derisively to the raw trail of the scar which crossed his own chest.
I pitied Trask, but the man was determined not to help me or himself. “You’ll need to get your witnesses together. I can see them and do that for you.”
“Yeah? You’re going to help me? What kind of a sucker do you think I am?”
“There could be more charges.”
“Whaddya mean?” Trask said, jerking up on his elbow again.
“The girl. Indecent assault. Or assault with intent to rape.” I didn’t think it would get this far but I wanted to give him a shock.
Trask’s face flattened. He was at bay, hair pricked up. “I never touched the bitch. You charge me with what in hell you like! Do your damnedest!”
I got up to go hesitantly.
“Oh, and one thing Mr McDade, sir, don’t forget my complaint about mass murder. I haven’t forgotten. You were there Mr McDade, sir. You saw. You’re railroading me because of my complaint, aincha? I know. Fuckin’ Army!”
18
Weston and I went to see Vaughan at HQ.
“We’re in difficulty on the assault charge against Trask, sir,” Weston said. “
Mr McDade has established that Trask denies it and there’s no other evidence.”
Vaughan exhaled a long breath of exasperation. I looked at the two framed photos Vaughan had placed on the shelf by his desk. One showed him as a subaltern, a German prisoner of war; as now, thin to the point of emaciation. The other photo was a picture of an old woman with a family resemblance, genteel and proud.
“I can hardly believe it! We have casualties, we’re overrun, and when I’m trying to explain it to the brass, we have a brawl under our noses! The General thinks the unit has gone to hell. If that isn’t enough, we have an evil little grunt alleging a massacre! I’ll be damn lucky if I’m not recalled. Bring the sonofabitch to the barrier! He’ll scare.”
“But, sir,” I said.
“What about the injured man?” Vaughan asked, ignoring me.
“Concussed. Didn’t see who hit him,” Weston said.
“The woman?”
“I understand she doesn’t know anything,” Weston replied. “She’ll have gone now. Her party were pulling out at first light this morning.”
“Do I have to do everything myself?” Vaughan groaned, his head with its wall eye gyrating. “Has the woman gone? Stop her! Bring her to HQ immediately!”
*
When we left Vaughan’s office Weston detailed a staff sergeant to find Ann James.
In twenty minutes she was outside Vaughan’s office.
“What’s all this about?” she asked me, while we waited in the general office.
“You told me you couldn’t remember who the guy was who was making free with a bottle last night.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You need to tell the Colonel.”
In the hustle of the office Ann James appeared to simmer. The clerks couldn’t take their eyes off her, her brightly coloured erect figure, outlined breasts, nipples pressing under her T-shirt, and the sickly sweet perfume.
Vaughan called Weston and me in. “Have you talked to her? No?”
“Well… ” Weston began.
“Good. I’ll do it. Then we call Trask and get her to identify him.”
“Wouldn’t it be better, sir” I said, “if she was asked to choose from the group of others who have been implicated?”
“Jesus, mister! This is the Army, not the fucking FBI. Bring her in!”
When Ann James was shown in, Vaughan unusually and awkwardly stood up, but it was a formal politeness without charm. “I know you want to get away, Miss James. I’m sorry you’ve been troubled. But I’m afraid we had a serious breach of discipline last night and men have to be charged and punished. We’ve got the man we’re certain is the right one. We want you to confirm it.”
“Uh-huh. And if I can’t?”
“In that case you won’t get away today or tomorrow or even later. I’m determined to find out who did this, and you’re a material witness. Do you follow me, Miss James?”
Ann James nodded miserably. Vaughan asked Weston to bring Trask in.
“Is this him?” Vaughan asked her.
Trask, a large figure in a small space, quivered like a fractious horse, his head rolling on his pylon neck.
Ann James hardly seemed to glance at him. “Yes, that’s him. Sure.”
“Fuckin’ liar!” Trask shouted.
“Shut it, soldier!” Weston barked.
“Hear that, Mr Weston and Mr McDade? We have identification.”
I thought I ought to intervene, but if I did I’d have to explain my conversation with Ann James, when and where we talked… In a few seconds the opportunity passed.
“March out the accused,” Vaughan grunted with satisfaction.
*
I followed Ann James into the outer office. “Can you wait a minute? I want to talk to you.”
“I haven’t time,” she said, slipping elegantly down the steps and beginning to walk back towards the drill hall, her ass wriggling energetically and her sling-backs clacking on the road.
I caught her up. “Listen, you told me… ”
“What a woman says in bed is one thing.”
“Christ, we were never in bed. Not in the way you mean. This is serious!”
“So’s my job.” She stopped, faced me. We were alone together in the oven, sweat on our faces, suffused by the smell of her, like a choking gas. “Are you trying to make trouble for me?”
“Trask is one of my men. I want to see he gets a fair shake.”
“You ought to train your men better. I’ll tell you. I saw him after the show. Before I was in business with Major Boyd. He paid me, and afterwards the sonofabitch took the money back and nearly broke my arm! He’s a shithead. He deserves all he gets.”
“He may be a louse, but that doesn’t mean… ”
“Yes it does. It might as well have been him. Now I’m going.”
I caught her arm. My fingers sank into her flesh. It didn’t really matter if I told Vaughan and Weston where I was when she told me she couldn’t identify the attacker. I was just pretending to be good. “No, you’re coming back with me.”
“Get off!” she shouted, shaking herself free as a Jeep skidded to a halt a few feet away.
“Tut, tut, mustn’t squeeze the fruit,” Boyd laughed.
Ann James hissed private words for me alone: “If you insist, I’ll identify that bastard again, and tell your Colonel that you were drunk in bed with me. It won’t look so good for you!”
She strode away, thighs quivering as she stamped her feet.
“Wassamatta Lieutenant?” Boyd asked. “Take a ride. You didn’t get any last night. Kinda too late now.”
I collapsed in the passenger seat. “She’s a treble A bitch.”
“She’s an Alakea Street whore. What do you expect? What you got with her this morning anyway?” Boyd said distantly, easing the vehicle forward. “Nice little show last night, wasn’t it? Wonderful ass.”
19
The Regiment was resting. There was talk of being back at the front in two weeks. ‘Training’ was underway, a refresher for an experienced bunch, enough to keep motors tuned. I visited the various sections where my men were occupied; gun and mortar drills, jungle craft, grenades and landmines, survival skills, first aid. I watched without interest, hardly listening. I was conscious of the minutes ticking by and made my way back along the road to HQ when I was sure the charges against Trask would have been decided.
I met Weston in the squad room, face to face. He had a handful of files and turned away, anxious to move to another job. I pursued him. “What happened, Peter?”
“Ninety days’ hard labour in a high security unit,” Weston said, without emotion.
“Bloody hell!”
“It’s history,” Weston said, beginning to talk to one of the clerks.
*
I came out of HQ into the road almost into the path of a passing Jeep. I rubbed my face with damp hands. I began to walk, my boots jarring on the tarmac, the toe caps glinting in the sun, my hatband compressing my skull into an ache. Trucks laid a thick trail of fumes past me. I gulped blue air.
An Australian Army Jeep stopped near me. “Want a ride, Yank?”
“Vehicle park?”
“No problem,” the driver said accelerating fiercely. The Jeep fishtailed on loose gravel.
“I wish we could take off!” I yelled.
“I’m trying, mate.”
As I climbed out of the Jeep at the park, I saw Blake talking to the driver of a GMC with a trailer; it was the entertainment party’s wagon, and it moved off when I was twenty-five yards away and came past me. Ann James was seated in the front smiling, next to the driver, no doubt looking forward to her next engagement, the footlights, the applause, the money.
“She couldn’t care less,” I said, when I reached Blake, indicating the disappearing truck.
“You mean Lady James? Why should she?”
“She identified Trask so she could get away, and he got ninety days’ hard.”
Blake pulled me into the shade between two
trucks. “Why are you getting in a friggin’ knot about this punk Trask? We throw men into stinking mud-hole combats that nobody will ever hear about or care about, so why bother about this guy?”
As I understood Blake, human life was the fuel that was burned in the war machine; individuals were meaningless. As long as the conditions of the military were sustained – discipline, unity, and strength – and the machine was annihilating the enemy, the cost in friends or foes didn’t matter. War for him seemed to have a kind of beauty, a deep satisfaction, and to fight was the rationale of his life.
I shrugged my shoulders without confidence in the face of such certitude. “The guy is one of my men. He didn’t do the bottle attack.”
We walked to the gate of the vehicle park. Blake gathered a folder of papers from the office at the gate. “No rides. Let’s walk,” he said.
I had the inferior feeling of the amateur talking to the professional when I was talking seriously to Blake about things military. “Vaughan has shut Trask up and buried his report,” I insisted.
“So what? Very wise I’d say. Trask’s a no-good sumbitch who wants to get out of the fire. He’ll get his wish – in hell. I know where I’d rather be,” Blake smiled.
“You think nothing will happen about the report? I saw Vaughan tear it up myself.”
“Nothing. Weston told me. Vaughan won’t wear it,” Blake said lightly, unconcerned.
“But… people know.”
“You calling me a killer?” Blake said with a grin, but with tense lines around his eyes.
It was a crucial moment and I hesitated at first, and then said in a low voice, “Hell, Jim, you’re a hero of mine.”
It was an utter lie. I was behaving like a craven coward and I knew I was. I knew Blake didn’t mind me regarding him as a hero.
“It was a legitimate interrogation, Bob,” Blake said more softly.
I recovered a tiny speck of my guts. “About ten or so people, including children?”
“Three hundred if fucking necessary!”
