by Chris Lynch
It is thrill. It is adrenaline mixed with a shot of absolutely, and a bit more of let’s-do-this-again pride.
“Well done,” he says calmly, but with some satisfaction that I can definitely hear.
“I will take that rifle now, private,” he says.
I am this close to answering oh, no you won’t, even though that would get me a one-way ticket to military jail, but that is simply how huge I feel right now.
But I roll over on my back, straight out as if I am standing at attention horizontally. I present the rifle normally, with two hands, to my boss.
In exchange, he hands me down the binoculars. “Here ya go, have a look through those.”
I do. I hold them up to my eyes. I hold what’s left of them up to my eyes, that is. The left telescopic tube is just as it was, and through it I see the blazing southern sky. The right tube has been shot in half, the far end of it gone off with the rifle shot, and the whole remaining piece of kit hangs together wobbly.
I have hardly even noticed the raging firefight our guys are involved in, which is continuing right now. But just beyond Systrom I stare with one eye through the solo binoc as one, then two massive helicopter gunships thunder past, heading right for the action. I roll over on my side, the lieutenant crouching beside me, as the gunships fly in low and hard, firing rockets and an impossible barrage of machine-gun fire into the area of the fight.
“I hope they don’t hit any of ours,” he says low. “For goodness’ sake, get that fat head down, Kuns….”
We are down at the base of the tree when Systrom’s radio crackles to life.
“Yeah,” he says, “is everybody okay? Great. Right. Bring it in.”
He gives them the coordinates where we are to rendezvous, and we make our way across the sweaty four hundred yards of brush. I move through the jungle with the softness and silence of a big cat, and my feet do not feel any earth underneath. I am struggling with what I am feeling and trying to understand it at the same time.
How can I be so electro-charged on the inside, so full of rocket power, and at the same time be showing nothing but complete composure on the outside?
I notice Lt. Systrom checking me every few seconds out of the corner of his eye.
“You all right?” he whispers, an uncertain smile creasing his mouth.
I nod, silently padding across the soft ground toward our destination.
He nods in return.
It takes longer to cross the four football fields of distance than it would take to run a five-kilometer race in the real world. But we make it with all our body parts and life force intact, so it is worth the care.
Which is much, much more than we can say for this guy.
Lt. Systrom crouches right down, stopping for no niceties. He takes the rifle away from the enemy sniper, even though it isn’t half the weapon the one he’s holding is. Then he pulls the body by the leg out of the remaining cover he is in. Once he’s got him in this small space of clearing, Systrom takes his hand roughly, like a tough old schoolteacher about to administer a few crisp lashings across the knuckles.
But that’s not what he has planned for these knuckles.
I look at the Vietcong soldier, lying there, the top left quadrant of his forehead opened up like a little door off its hinges showing the whole pulp of the inside of his head.
I follow the line of shot, from where we were to where we are to where he is, to where a part of him isn’t.
I take three strides toward his flimsy, stupid little bush cover that wasn’t ever going to save him from me. I drop down on hands and knees, see the blood, fish around with my hands.
And pull out the hunk of head.
It is the size of the shell off a decent steamed clam.
When I think this, my whole body, for one second, aches for Massachusetts and a bowl of steamers and a Moxie or six.
I stare at the clamshell, then at the former owner. The shell fits exactly, perfectly, in my palm.
“In body-count terms,” Systrom says, “now he’s a two-score.”
I look up when the other guys, Parrish and Lightfoot and Kuns and Arguello, come trooping, silent and stooped and sweaty but unmarked, into our cozy clearing.
Quickly, neatly, respectfully, I take the shell and rub it firmly along my thigh, cleaning up the stray bits and the wet bits as well as I can until it is not clean but clean enough for a person to carry.
I hold it between my hands, prayerlike, and I bow to the dead warrior.
Then I slip the fragment of him into my breast pocket and we begin the march back, two by two.
There is a slap at my back, Cpl. Lightfoot, I believe, but I do not acknowledge it because that would be out of order just now.
There’s a cease-fire,” says the voice in my ear.
I leap up out of bed and find Lightfoot. I am not even sure what I am feeling, other than utter shock at the news because nobody, anywhere, has spoken of anything other than war, followed by war, followed by some more war for the foreseeable future. Which was fine by me.
He is laughing in my face, holding me by the shoulders.
“It’s just for today,” he says.
I fall back down onto my bunk.
“It’s for the holiday. Buddha’s birthday.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not kidding. Both sides have declared a cease-fire, twenty-four hours, from 0600 this morning until 0600 tomorrow. That means we have only twenty-three hours of peacetime left.”
“To do what?” I say, reaching under my bed to pull out one of my four remaining cans of Moxie. When the commissary guy finally brought the six-pack out to me, I had to wipe about a half inch of dust off the tops because, he said, nobody ever asks for it. That doesn’t make any sense to me, but he did say if he was going to order any more he wanted the money in advance and an extra buck for his troubles. So I guess he meant it.
“How can you drink that stuff?”
“In the morning, you mean,” I say through an ecstasy of Moxie burp bubbles.
“Or the afternoon, or when you are conscious, or on any day that has a Y in it …”
“Because it is the beverage of the gods,” I tell him. “Because it is my strength, my power, my genius.”
Lightfoot stares at me, clueless. I feel sorry for the guy.
“Right,” he says, “so we got leave. They’re just keeping a skeleton crew on duty today, giving the rest of us lucky slobs the day off.”
“Cool,” I say. “Think I’ll go out to the firing range for a load of extra — what are you shaking your head at?”
“I am shaking my head at the most boring killing machine in the whole Army, that’s what. I have a better plan for you.”
“Yeah?” I say. “What’s that?”
“Commemorate,” he says sagely, standing right over me with his hands on his hips.
“What?” I laugh, sipping some more. “Commemorate what, exactly?”
“Commemorate you, Private Ivan Bucyk. The fact that you broke on through to the other side.”
“Other side of what?”
“Of the whole population of the world. There are those who know not and never will know the sensation of the human kill. And then there is us. The vast minority. We who know the righteous kill.”
It was righteous. It was right, and it was righteous, and the moment of it has come through the cinema of my mind about a hundred and thirty thousand times just like it is doing right now.
“Do I need to commemorate it?” I ask. “I feel like I already commemorated it. A lot. And like I’m gonna keep on commemorating it for the rest of my life.”
“Think of it like this. Catholic, right? Did you get a confirmation?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, it’s like that. Soldier of God or whatever they called you then. Now you are a soldier of soldiers.”
He is very serious about this.
I swing my legs back over and to the floor.
“Okay, so how do you commemorate
your first kill?”
“Why, with a tattoo, of course.”
Now I show him a little surprise, though I don’t like to do that ordinarily.
“What? I mean … what? You want me to get a tattoo? That’s your big idea?”
“Yes. We all got ’em.”
“What? No you don’t. I’ve seen Systrom’s, and Arguello’s … and you don’t have one.”
“Of course I do.”
He unbuttons his shirt all the way. He spreads the shirt like the curtains opening on a show. Underneath, he is wearing a tank-top-style undershirt, just like always. He starts squawking a kind of unveiling music.
“You sing like a goose, man,” I say.
“Shut up,” he says, and raises the T-shirt to his chin.
“Ta-dah.”
It is, to me, the nicest tattoo I have seen. It is a picture of an Indian warrior nearly naked and sitting bareback on a horse. The horse is standing tall and straight but its ears are back a bit, angry. The brave — long hair falling over his shoulders — is looking up at the sky with his arms spread out at his sides at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. His palms are up.
“Appeal to the Great Spirit is what it’s called,” he says, all modesty and reverence now. “I got it from a sculpture I saw.”
“It’s amazing,” I say.
The warrior’s head is right in the middle of Lightfoot’s sternum, the arms stretching out below each pectoral across his ribs. The horse looks to be standing on the corporal’s belt.
It is perfectly designed to fit right inside that tank-top undershirt.
“I can’t believe I never saw that before now,” I say. “I suppose that’s why you are about the only guy who never goes around with no shirt on.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Lightfoot stresses. “I am proud of this. I think it’s beautiful. I take it out every once in a while. It’s just that whatever I do here, in this place, is between me and the Great Spirit.”
I nod. I am staring maybe too intensely at the guy’s torso, but I would pretty much defy anybody not to at this moment.
“So you got it after your first kill?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s what we do.”
“Can I touch it?” I ask.
“What do you think, it’s got texture or something? No, you can’t touch it. Get one of your own, then you can go touch it all you want.”
He pulls down his shirt, and I pull on my boots.
“I’m not a big tattoo guy,” I say, “even though I like my dad’s.”
“I’m not a big tattoo guy myself,” he says, placing a hand on his diaphragm, “but I like knowing this one is here. Makes me believe myself. If that makes sense to you.”
I think on it, maybe a few seconds too long.
“Never mind,” he says. “It will. Just let’s get going.”
I don’t like writing letters. I don’t much enjoy talking on the phone, either, even when the phone is normal and clear and not crackling with static and storms and gunfire and screaming.
I had one of those conversations with Morris. Because he is a radioman now. And he called me. It was okay. Didn’t feel like a conversation, like really talking to the guy. But it was okay.
He is right here. Right here, with me, somewhere. He is part of Operation Giant Slingshot after getting himself transferred to a Zippo boat in the Brown Water Navy. Before that, he was part of Operation Cocoa Butter out there on the USS Boston, floating off the coast, working on his tan and eating pineapple chunks with toothpicks. That’s how I pictured it, anyway.
The thing is with Morris, is that contrary to what you would think, a little communication doesn’t satisfy him for a while, which it certainly does me. No, a little communication makes Morris need more communication. Right away.
I have a letter.
Hey there Ivanhoe,
Are you okay? It was great talking to you, but you sounded kind of funny. I know the line was awful and all, but, you didn’t sound like you. Not that you should sound like you here, since this insanity probably made me sound like anything but the real old me. But you, I figured that this business would make you sound even more like you than ever.
You’ll be happy to know they have me shooting guns now. A lot. Much more fighting for me now compared to when I was on the Boston. I don’t like it. But I guess I don’t hate it. Stop laughing. I see what you mean — a little bit. About what shooting a gun feels like. It sort of settles things? Solves things? I don’t know, but sometimes blasting away is a help to a guy around here, and jeez there is a lot of the time that a guy needs it. Mobile Riverine Force is, in a word, NUTS.
Counting that DERUS yet? Oh yes indeed.
Write, man. And I’ll keep trying to reach you on the radio.
Morris
I do hate writing.
Out comes my letter to Morris that I have been working on, almost since I arrived on the Benewah.
RIGHT, MORRIS. I AM NOT IVANHOE. BUT I DO SEEM TO HAVE ACQUIRED A NICKNAME. THEY ARE CALLING ME MOXIE NOW.
NOT TOO SHABBY, HUH? THE GUYS FIGURED OUT HOW MUCH I LIKE THE STUFF, AND HOW IT IS THE SECRET TO MY SUPERPOWERS AND EVERYTHING. MAYBE IT WAS THE TATTOO THAT GAVE IT AWAY.
SORRY, DID I FORGET TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY TATTOO? THERE IS A TRADITION IN MY UNIT WHERE A GUY’S FIRST CONFIRMED KILL IS CAUSE FOR COMMEMORATION, WHICH MEANS A TATTOO. WHEN IT WAS MY TIME, I HAD NEVER REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT A TATTOO, BUT I WAS HEADING INTO THE PLACE AND I HAD A CAN OF THE STUFF IN EACH HAND. NO IDEA WHAT I WANTED TO GET, BUT I HAD TO GET SOMETHING. THEN I SWIGGED, CRUSHED THE CAN, LOOKED AT THE LOGO IN MY HAND, YOU KNOW, WITH THAT CRAZY-LOOKING SCIENTIST MOXIE GUY STARING AT YOU AND SMILING LOONY AND POINTING AT YOU AND INSISTING YOU HAVE TO DRINK A CAN OF MOXIE RIGHT NOW AND PRACTICALLY JUMPING RIGHT OUT OF THE PICTURE AT YOU? I LOVE THAT GUY.
WELL, IT WAS LIKE A RELIGIOUS THING. I JUST KNEW. IT WAS TOO RIGHT. AND I GOT IT ON MY ARM, ON MY RIGHT BICEP. ONLY. NOT LIKE EVERY OTHER GOON, I DECIDED TO GET IT ON THE INSIDE OF MY BICEP.
HURT LIKE THE DEVIL, BUT ALL MY GUYS WERE IMPRESSED. AND I ONLY HAVE TO FLASH THE TATTOO WHEN I FEEL LIKE IT. AND I FIGURE, IT’S BETWEEN ME AND MY MOXIE ANYWAY.
HAVE YOU BEEN TO SAIGON? GOT MY TATTOO THERE. IT’S LIKE IF YOU SMASHED UP BOSTON’S CHINATOWN AND THE COMBAT ZONE AND JAMAICA PLAIN AND NANTASKET ALL TOGETHER, ONLY WITH MORE BIKES.
RUDI’S DOING GREAT, ISN’T HE? I HAVE NO REASON TO FEEL GUILTY WITH THE WAY HE’S GOING.
MOXIE. THAT’S ME.
The letter is tucked away again, safe until I can finish it later.
I have heard from Beck. Beck has not heard from me. We are both okay with that because of this main thing that you can say about Beck and me: We are opposites in almost every way except for the fact that we can get along without anybody’s support just fine for as long as we need to. If we don’t speak until the end of our enlistments, me and Beck will pick up as if four years and yesterday were about the same thing.
I have heard from Rudi, once in a letter where he sounded just like you would expect — scattered and battered and shattered. Then, again, when he was different. He was a lot of different in a little time. Well done, Marine Corps.
I have another letter from Rudi. When did he learn to write so much? Nobody needs this much communication. I have a job to do, and no time to be sitting around gabbing back and forth with other guys who have the same job to do — so get on with it. I am happy that he is doing well, and that nobody needs to feel sorry or scared or guilty for Rudi anymore but, you know, just the presence of the letter right there in front of me, in Rudi’s underwater handwriting, is enough of an indicator that everything is fine, and so there’s no big hurry to read what he has to say about it just yet, right?
I put Rudi’s letter unopened in the footlocker with Morris’s unsent letter so they can have a conversation together and keep each other company until I have the spare time to deal with them.
The war is taking on a less definite shape, I’m noticing. We have moved f
arther up the Mekong geographically to where the Cambodian border is close enough you could hear the change of languages if you listened hard. We have been part of IV Corps, then III Corps. We are Army, of course, but paired with the Navy in the Riverine Force. We are part of Operation Giant Slingshot, but when our skills are required, we are joined with or loaned out to or shoved up into another force, another operation, another brilliant offensive.
The big, bright event that established the current tone of things for all of us was the Tet Offensive. That was when the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong together targeted all the big cities, the provincial capitals, the important installations of the entire country at the same time. The attacks came on Tet, the equivalent here of the New Year holiday. Who attacks on New Year’s, right? Half the ARVN were off on leave, and the rest weren’t expecting anything.
That’s when it became obvious that there were no borders to this thing. No borders of time and no borders of distance, direction, or determination to do whatever necessary to win.
I was stupid when I came here. I thought the war between the North and the South here was like the American Civil War. There is your North, there is your South, there in the middle is your disputed territory. I thought the North was way up there. I thought either we would push our way all up through South Vietnam and then North Vietnam or maybe they would do the opposite, but it would go one way or the other. Up or down.
I was so stupid. It goes every which way. What’s Cambodia got to do with anything, right over there a lot closer to me than any ol’ North Vietnam is? But it’s teeming with VC, and they come at us from there all the time. Laos. What in the world is Laos? I thought somebody was calling me a name the first time he said that to me, no fooling.
I am not like that anymore, all right? I am no stupid kid anymore.
It is all disputed territory. There are enemies in every direction from where I am standing right now. I could get a hole blown through me at any time from anywhere. Because VC are everywhere here and the truth is, most of us GIs couldn’t tell you what they looked like if they weren’t skulking around at night in their sneaky black pajamas. And now … how could they be working so effectively down here, this deep in the South, if people here didn’t want them here? Huh?
