by Gus Lee
At Dak To I lost two platoon leaders, Curt Tiernan and Cyril Magnus. We inserted into the Iron Triangle and set the Dong Nai ambushes, denying to the NVA a key swath of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We killed hundreds of the enemy; I slew a family of women.
I had prayed over the girl's grave as Murray recited the Twenty-third Psalm. I stared into the soft, pungent, fertile, violated earth, our entrenching tools heavy with wet, adhesive mud.
Foul-luck demons swarmed out of the dead.
“Urchin, there's a purpose to our losses.” His voice lilted in a dark, Irish moment in equatorial Asia.
“Bullshit,” I said, spitting out my bitter yuing chi, my fortune, the girl's blood in the pores of my soiled hands, changing my chemistry and the honor of my clan. My hands touched frag pins, knife, ammo packs, compass, canteen, notepad, inventorying the familiar. I observed the ruin of me in the shallow ditch; I could crouch motionless at ambush for a week, but now I could not stop my hands from fretting with the memory of the shooting.
Josh Lott, exec, had the company on perimeter. Top Sergeant, Moms, Doc, Murray and the battalion sergeant major stood with me at the graves. We had made forty men and six females disappear. Murray stood closest, unafraid of the mental unhinging that flared in my unfocused eyes, trying to carry a portion of my loss, to annul blame.
But there are losses that defy words and the passage of time. In that moment in the mud, I felt revealed as Asian, my American cloak falling from me like a reptile's dead skin. I spat like a Chinese yaofan, a want-rice beggar, rich with ill fate.
“She's your angel, Urchin. She's made you a force for the good. You'll let no harm befall the innocent.” He spoke as if I were the person I had been, as if we were walking up to Michie Stadium above the Hudson. It would be a crisp autumn day with Gaelic drums, emerald fields gracing the Corps like the enchantment of first love. The granite forests of West Point would be turning gold, yellow and orange, the river a deep, calming, pristine blue with soft currents and no gorges, each lap of the river against the rock restoring my youth in bright and blooming innocence, and all the odds in Heaven canted in our inculpable favor.
I had played the Chinese blood game. Kill the enemy and make them disappear, facedown in foreign mud, beyond the reach of Taoist honors and the ritual talks with their descendants, unable to hear reports on the health of the clan's firstborn sons, burning in the silent eighteenth level of a lonely Eastern hell.
Do not flinch when you kill them and bury them like animals, even if they look more like you than the men you command, the American men you must keep alive, who look at Asians as things.
I looked out the window of the airplane into the Eastern sun. I drank a Virgin Mary, toasting the girl as she flitted, unbidden, from the deep recesses of an obsessed memory. I felt her fine hair in my hand and tasted her death in my mouth. I left the piano.
I wish you good things, bohbooey, Little Precious. For you, I hope there really is a Heaven, filled with good and tender white rice, fresh and crisp long beans, the warm chatter of the jia on winter nights, kind men and grandmothers with big hearts.
Murray had been wrong; the girl was no diaphanous angel with wings of down, rouged cheeks and gilded halo. She had become a cross, all dead iron and coarse, splintered wood stained with old brown blood on a path with no end. She had joined the swollen ranks of the premature dead, a sad society to which my parents had donated two sons.
Only Cara Milano, the woman with too many men, the woman I had promised I would never leave, had been able to chase away the bloody girl.
I shut Cara from my mind.
I had a job to do.
2
BITTER AND SWEET
The mission packet held orders and a Richelieu letter—a sweeping authorization from The Inspector General that would open most doors in the military world. I studied the glossy Official Military Personnel File photo of my target.
Colonel Frederick C. LeBlanc. Noble features, clear eyes, heavy jaw, creased cheeks, a compelling gaze. A man with dislikes and grooming, nicknamed the Wizard, suspected of high crimes, drawing me to the East. In contravention of standard operating procedures, I was about to investigate a superior officer, and in questioning an elder, I was offending a fundament of ancient Chinese propriety.
Carlos Murray's call began with conventional solemnity. “Urchin, ¿cómo dice la buena vida?” What says the good life? “Amigo, I have good news and I have bad news.”
Law Man. I knew the voice but I smiled anyway. “You find me, as always, in quailing fear of you. I'm happy to hear your voice, despite the fact that I know who this is.”
Murray was the most powerful staff lawyer in the U.S. Army. He was staff judge advocate for The Inspector General—TIG. Carlos advised the Joint Chiefs of Staff and played hangman on bad officers. Rotten lawyers hated him for his lack of professional courtesy while victims named children after him. He was a Thomas More, attended by raving affection and bitter enemies.
TIG was the ultimate police authority in the Army, and law was the new faith; TIG lawyers were the anointed high clergy, bearing badges to cleanse fraud, correct wrongs, repair faith and ship defendants to speedy trial for maximum punishments.
“Ah, Jackson, my favorite son in a raggedy band. A black Irishman of the Chinese variety. Scramble your line.” I punched the button that made our conversation secure. My heartbeat went up.
“You go to the DMZ. Now. That's the good news.”
He had said what my soul needed and what my heart feared. It was a Chinese moment, full of sweet and bitter. He was offering me a chance to leave the woman I probably loved, to work on a debt that worked on me like an angry cancer. There was a relief in his mission call; Cara had repaired parts of me, but her intimacy was an unknown threat to old demons.
“The bad news?”
His jaw cracked through my earpiece. “Jimmy Buford is missing in Korea. He has been out of net six days. Local ROK authorities have found nothing. I have ruled out accident.”
Jimmy lost in the ROK. The Republic of Korea.
“The man he was to investigate has taken over the search. I trust no one. I cannot call there without knowing who is who in the zoo. I am not screwing around anymore. You are going in.”
My big brother, drawling, indomitable James Thurber Buford. He and I had been the lead neurotics on a workaholic legal team at Bragg. After I left for the Pre sidio, Jimmy, Beth and the three boys had gone to the Pentagon to work for Murray's low-profile, high-octane ethics unit on the second floor of the D Ring of the Pentagon.
Jimmy had gone to Carlos on my recommendation.
He had become Murray's best solo hunt dog, returning with bad judges, defense counsels and prosecutors between his fine, legal teeth. Jimmy had never been in combat but had the courage of lions; he had set the precedent of captains hunting colonels. He used the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Fed Regs like Sinatra used a mike. He called up the most obscure opinions at will. Jimmy was two times the lawyer I was, and I wasn't half bad.
I pulled out a mission notepad. “Give it to me.”
“Jimmy,” said Carlos, “went in the military replacement flight. His target was the Second Infantry's SJA” — Staff Judge Advocate, the top lawyer for the lonely, forgotten American division on the DMZ.
“Urchin, you go in-country as a U.S. attorney. Deep and dark, civvies and foreign airlines into civilian airports. Jimmy went in uniform, grinning at strangers and kissing babies. So you go quiet, in a suit and tie. Trust no one.
“Inform no one of your mission. Your alibi is sick call. Your SJA will be told you are at Walter Reed for back surgery and that you are not to be contacted. I will take care of your case load. All you need is shots. A medic is on the road.”
The attorney general, John Mitchell, had sworn a few judge advocates into the Justice Department, making me an Army prosecutor and an acting assistant United States attorney. Carlos was picking me for my federal badge, my Asian face, my Irish sympathies, my loyalty to his lonely causes
. My laughing at his bad jokes.
“Once at Camp Casey on the Z, put on the uniform. TIG will not let you go completely incognito; once there, show the IG flag.
“Port of call is San Francisco.” He gave me flights. Japan Air Lines to Narita at Tokyo, Korean Air to Kimpo in Seoul. The place names were music, heavy on the bass and elevated pulses, on the far side of the second meridian, full of sudden death and second chances.
“At Kimpo, wait for your contact. As we speak, I do not know his identity. He will find you by looking for the big Asian at Korea's largest airport. I presume you will stand out, like you did in the highlands and the Triangle.”
Except in the bush, I had not merged quietly into Vietnamese society. I had drawn mobs.
“Tell me about the man Jimmy went after.”
“Colonel Frederick C. LeBlanc, a.k.a. the Wizard, West Point ‘53, the DMZ's SJA. He has been in Korea since Peter caught fish in the Sea of Galilee. The community worries about him.” The Pentagon. I wondered why.
“His Defense section has the lowest acquittal rate in the Army. JAGCs get assigned to him and volunteer not to come home, violating the one-year DMZ rotation policy.” JAGCs were Judge Advocate General's Corps lawyers. Carlos had left something out. A mystery.
“Estimate how long the Wizard has been out there, on the line, sniffing Manchuria's rear and staring down the Mongol hordes.”
I hated to guess at anything, and particularly something so described, but Carlos was my superior officer. “Three years,” I said.
“Nine.” He was silent. He wanted my imagination to engage. Too much power and too much tenure—too much like Congress. Branch Assignments had tied up, leaving a man in Siberia too long.
“What's he doing wrong?”
“Urchin, the man does not love God.”
“Maybe you could be more specific?”
“I cannot. That is why you are going. Cuff him or kiss him. Cuidado—Casey houses a private American army of renegades who prefer Asia to the States. The Second is a bad cluster of angry trained killers. And the weather sucks.” A pause. “And the Reds are pissed, utilities do not work and the food would make dogs barf.
“You will have a carte blanche Richelieu letter that declares your actions to be in the name of the Army Chief of Staff and the Republic. You will have a firearm with ROK and Japanese permits.
“Your cover is race relations. Do not report to the Wizard. Jimmy went in straight and the Wizard did him. Now they are lying in wait. Keep out of grenade range of LeBlanc until you get Jimmy. Then, get me evidence on LeBlanc. Or clear him.”
“Carlos, why'd you wait six days?”
I heard the big hand slap the artificial leg. A month to the day after the Dong Nai ambush, I blew out my back pulling men from the bush and was shot in the head, losing my left ear, and in the gut, losing some small intestine. Two days later, a mechanical ambush on the Rat River ripped off Carlos's left leg. We had been profiled out of Airborne Infantry into the harsh ambitions of the Army practice of law. Carlos's annual ability to charm docs into accepting his prosthesis as a true limb became the lyric matter of Army legend.
“Got messages from him in Korea,” he said. “Bogus.” My stomach soured. No accident. “Foul play.” “My nose says it's LeBlanc.” I heard him sip hot coffee.
“Sir, what's your working hypothesis?” “Something is rotten as pig crap in Korea.” “That's so descriptive, I don't know why I have to go.” “I'll commo you as ‘Hu.’ You call me ‘Justicio.’”
“Why's the Pentagon worried about LeBlanc?” Criminal defense failures didn't keep generals awake at night; they worried about not getting convictions. They detested thieves, dopers, rapists and killers. Murray had left something out.
I lifted my pen.
“Marker Man. Forgive yourself yet?” I said nothing.
“This mission. It will help. I know you can feel that. Going back to Asia. Culero, you sound good, like you quit the gin and are sleeping like a rear-area professional.”
Cara's face, her stubbornly curly auburn hair on the pillow, the soft rhythm of her breathing. I would awaken to look at her, her beauty, to feel her trust, salves on my past. Sometimes I felt this was my yuing chi, my good fortune, to share her bed, to see her innocent sleep, to merge our opposite pasts in love. She had come to me like an answer to an unknown prayer.
“I do Diet Pepsi now.” Saccharin was like rodent poison, but I never drank gin for the taste. Pepsi made me grimace like Bogart and spared me the side effects. “Met someone. I promised I wouldn't leave her. You didn't answer my question.”
“Hombre, good for you. Happy for you. But you are the man and you have the duty. You cannot tell her you are going. I picked you because you are a perpetual bachelor with no dependents.”
If I owed him money, I wouldn't be on this mission. Telling Cara I was leaving would be like telling Abélard it was just a knife. “Not telling her's unthinkable.”
Silence. He had given an order. I heard BaBa whisper that our before-borns watched us, always. Do your job, Hu-chin.
In that moment I knew what I needed to do, more than tell Cara that I wasn't coming home for a while: return to the site of the Dong Nai ambush, reverse azimuth to the villages and give solatium money to her clan. I didn't even know her name. I spoke fifty Vietnamese words poorly and had a lot in savings. I could do it.
“Urchin, do not be thinking that. You go back to Vietnam, as the last crap hits the fan, you will not come out. Hermano, the girl is dead. Let her be. Save Jimmy.”
I put down the phone, my unanswered question forgotten.
A knock. A long-faced medic entered, tired from seeing too many bodies. He closed the door, checked my ID, laid out inoculation needles and antiseptic swabs and punctured me.
I signed for the mission packet: Far East Theater entry authorization, tickets, a civilian passport smelling of fresh glue and a black padded nylon bag with ROK Korean and Japanese government weapons permits. Inside the bag was a 9mm Browning automatic High Power with a four-inch barrel, ammo boxes and extra magazines.
I looked out the window at the Golden Gate Bridge. Cara, Jimmy's missing in Korea. I am going to get him. Don't sleep with anyone while I'm gone. If there were a God, I'd ask him to watch over you, to keep your smile bright.
It's a short trip. I'll be back.
3
Gu-Gu
Jimmy the Bee Buford had spent his youth killing fish, playing with lizards and feeding stray cats. At Bragg, where I had come as a lawyer after med rehab, he had attacked my moral ills with the pleasures of his family, the soporifics of Methodist chapel and the spices of Carolina Frogmore Stew.
He was a bright, hyperactive, slow-spoken gentleman with a Duke law degree and the slickness of an Everglades water snake. He had graduated with a four-point and Order of the Coif and pretended to be as stupid as a tree branch in the dead of winter. He was masterful in fishing and lousy at sports and had the naturally slick hands of a professional pickpocket. A client had taught Jimmy the art.
Jimmy the Bee was an honest man who employed slowness to relax the opposition and to pry truth. He reminded me of the deceptively bumbling detective from Crime and Punishment.
I had developed my inscrutability, but Jimmy had read my combat fatigue like a book.
“Hey, buddy. Y'all a little sick in the head, ain't ya?”
I looked out the aircraft window at the endless blue Pacific. I had stood as godfather to his youngest son and became a brother to Beth, his wife. In a sentimental moment full of ganjing, the emotionality of pure human relations, he had asked me to take care of his family if anything happened to him. I had said yes.
I traced a finger across the condensation on the cocktail glass. In the summer of 1973, the Bee and I convicted Private Johnson Joe Spheres for the murder-rape of a nine-year-old girl. Spheres got life at hard labor at Leavenworth; I got recurring Vietnam nightmares.
I would wake up in a Carolina night sweat, blowing breath into dead
girls, accidentally shooting civilians and shaking cold, clinging kraits and bamboo vipers from my legs. Shuddering, I covered my good ear to block out the sounds of low-whumping choppers and distant rolling artillery, unable to separate actual installation sounds from triggered memory. I had become a man filled with holes, trying the military panoply of cures: bourbon, scotch, gin and vodka. Gin, a Chinese word meaning “war,” had my name on it, but the sleep it purchased was painfully counterfeit.
I hated my job and disliked juries and judges, triggering all my Asian cultural alarms. I requested posting to the Presidio, where Letterman's psychiatric staff had expertise in treating brains that were still mired in Southeast Asian muds.
The Bufords drove me to Pope Air Base, Bee's bearhug. “Get some shut-eye. Find your smile. God bless ya, Jackson. He shorely knows Ah'm gonna miss ya. Got places ta go, thangs ta do.”
“People to see,” I said, kissing Beth and hugging the boys. He and I were the same age, but Jimmy had been my gu-gu, my older brother, who had helped me morally when help was needed.
I had given them an immense mural-like portrait of their family, a conventionally ostentatious and sentimental Chinese gift. They gave me a wood-carved model of a Chinese sea junk.
I gave the model to BaBa, who smiled and blinked.
In the Presidio and federal court, I prosecuted drug dealers, experiencing all the joys of turning a hamster wheel. I saw Doc Benton, a quiet shrink who regarded my rage as normal. At night, chronically fatigued, I kicked out of uniform, loathing myself for having become a professional Nam vet, full of fecal dreams, alkie sweat and the screaming dead, a member of a growing leper colony.
I felt cored out. I was uninterested in sex and was overcommitted to killing insects that buzzed. I would sit in my Q, a dark, defurnished one-room World War II quarters in Building T-41, across the street from the Spanish iron cannon of the Officers Club, reworking the ambush so the trail party would not die. But all solutions endangered my men. In these undressed hours a long-suppressed Indochinese gut fear swarmed over me like live, steaming entrails, and I would hurl the Randall knife into the splintering desk, trying to silence the unseen devil that gnawed at me from within. Hating self-pity and the bottle, I kept the emotion and quit the juice. But I could not manage neatness.
