“What happens if someone dies?”
“What?”
“No, I mean it,” Tom said. “Say one of them villager’s a bleeder. Somethin’ wrong with his clottin’ system, one of those factors like fibrin is down and we don’t know it.”
“Fibrin,” David said. “Where did you hear about that?”
“You mentioned it one of those days when you were talkin’ about bleeding problems. I did some checkin’, that’s all. Now what happens if we pull a tooth, leave, and an hour later they begin to bleed to death?”
“Out here,” David said, “the chance of that happening is pretty slim. This isn’t exactly the easy life, you know. Anyone with a significant clotting disorder wouldn’t last much past infancy, let alone childhood. Don’t worry. There aren’t going to be any hemophiliacs walking up to the jeep. Come on. Now what’s really bothering you?”
“Well,” Tom said, “the VC could play up a death, any death. I mean, even if it wasn’t our fault. It would only have to look like it was. The VC could use it to get the villagers to set us up. I ain’t sayin’ they will, but if we get too good—real good at what we’re doin’—we could become important, and that ain’t so smart—not out here. Ever hear of being targeted?”
David waited.
“It’s the kind of thing that happens during firefights when people notice you. Most enemy contacts are a mess—shells going off all over the place, rounds skippin’ and whistlin’ by, no one knowing what’s happenin’, people runnin’ in all directions, a lot of screamin’ and yellin’, cries for medics. All kinds of noise. If you get hit, that’s it, kind of bad luck. Sometimes, though, in the middle of all the confusion, you know someone’s shootin’ at you. Not just in your direction, but at you.” He glanced over at David. Suddenly he looked older. “Someone sees you. In all that mess, somebody’s picked you out. Maybe it was the way you moved, stood up when someone near you dropped. It don’t matter, though,” he said softly. “All that counts is that someone’s seen you. When that happens, you’ve got to know it because he’s gonna kill you if you don’t kill him first.”
“And you think something like that could happen to us?”
Tom’s expression softened. He shrugged. “Hard to know. Things can change real quick over here.”
“No way of getting it to work the other way?”
“The gooks protect us?” He shook his head. “Nah. These people know that we come and go, but the VC and North Vietnamese are gonna be here for a long time. It ain’t in their interest to help us. They put up with us, take what they can, but sooner or later it’s their own they’re gonna have to live with. In the Delta, if the VC didn’t get what they wanted from a village, they’d go in and cut the throats of the village chief’s wife and kids, wire the bodies to the gates. The villagers would have to push them aside to get in and out. If anyone cut ’em down before they rotted off the wire, the VC’d come back, kill someone else, and hang ’em up. Compared to stuff like that, pullin’ teeth don’t carry much weight … I ain’t sayin’ we should stop,” he added as if anticipating an argument, “just be more careful.”
Tyler was in a snit. He’d walked out of the dispensary three times, only to return each time more annoyed and agitated than before. Finally, after checking the desks and treatment rooms a fourth time, he turned to David.
“Do you know where the hell the Stedman’s is? I can’t find it anywhere.”
“The medical dictionary? No,” David said, “I haven’t seen it either.”
“Damn it. It’s got to be somewhere.” He left again, slamming the door behind him.
“You haven’t seen it?” Plunkett asked from across the room. He was sitting at the laboratory bench, using the specific gravity meter to check a urine sample.
“No. Why, should I have?”
“Wondering, that’s all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just thought you’d have seen it. Griffen’s been borrowing textbooks; I imagine he took the Stedman’s.”
“Tom?”
“Couple of weeks ago I was looking for Harrison’s Textbook of Medicine—needed to look up something about pemphigus—and couldn’t find it. I asked Sergeant Bradford and he told me that Griffen comes into the dispensary couple nights a week, takes a few textbooks and brings them back before breakfast. He must have forgotten to bring back the Stedman’s—or decided that we were too smart to need a medical dictionary.”
David shook his head. “And I thought I was such a great teacher. No wonder he’s always asked so many questions about things days after we’d discussed them.” David smiled. “And fibrin,” he said, amused. “Damn. I’m surprised he didn’t want to know about factor eight and thromboplastin.”
“You didn’t tell him to take the books?”
“No, I didn’t. I should have,” David said, “but I didn’t.”
Chapter 23
DAVID WAITED UNTIL THEY had stopped for lunch. “I’ve been wondering,” he said. “Any plans for when you get out?”
“Plans? You mean after the Army?”
“Gonna be a rifleman all your life?”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“The future. And none of that let’s-wait-till-the-end stuff.”
“Construction, I guess; somethin’ like that.”
“Where?”
Tom gave David his annoyed but indulgent look. “Atlanta, someplace like that.”
“Any money?”
Tom raised an eyebrow. “What about money?”
“You’ll need money.”
“I’ve put all my salary into the ten percent overseas soldiers’ fund. It’ll be enough to get me a car and keep me goin’ for a while. What you gettin’ at?”
“It doesn’t sound like much of a life for someone who’s reading medical textbooks in his spare time.”
“Oh, that,” Tom said under his breath. “I just kind of scan ’em, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. I suppose you’re into scanning the medical dictionary, too. Take much science in school?”
“A little.”
“How did you do?”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Okay,” Tom answered sharply.
“And your other classes?”
“What’s going on here?” Tom asked, annoyed.
“How did you do?” David asked again.
Tom continued to eat. “Depended,” he said.
“Depended? On what? You’ll have to get more specific. Colleges like to know things like that.”
Tom stopped chewing, his mouth still full. “Colleges?”
“Anyone in your family ever go to college?”
“My family?” he blurted, almost choking.
“There must be a university near your home,” David said matter-of-factly. “What do you have down there, Georgia State?”
Tom stared at him.
“If you can read medical textbooks, you can read anything. Cramer thinks the Army’s a land of opportunity. He might be right. You do have the GI Bill.”
Tom went back to his lunch. “You’re crazy,” he said, dismissing David’s comments.
“No,” David said, “I’m not, and you know it; and if there’s one thing I know about, it’s college. It’s not any harder than this. Besides, you don’t think the people in Georgia aren’t going to keep needing doctors?”
“Doctors!” Tom suddenly caught himself and with an indulgent sigh went back to finishing his tin of biscuits.
“It’s all right,” David said lightly. “New ideas are like the heat over here; they take some getting used to.” He left it at that.
Ten minutes later, two helicopters appeared on the horizon, changed directions and flew directly at them. When they were about a quarter-mile away, the gunships dropped to ground level. The door gunners waved as they roared past.
“Checkin’ us out,” Tom said.
Chapter 24
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN he’s gone?�
� David demanded.
“Cramer sent him back,” Tyler said. “It must have been the IV fluids; he woke up this morning after you left. Cramer saw him, talked to him twice—once before and once after lunch—decided the kid was okay and sent him back on the afternoon supply chopper. It won’t help to get mad.”
“Okay … all right,” David said angrily. “How did he look?”
“Tired, but okay.”
“The kid would have had a better chance if they’d evaced him to a circus instead of here. There’s about as much chance of telling if someone’s crazy by looking at him and talking for a couple of minutes on a carnival midway as there is after he wakes up from a couple of grams of Thorazine.”
“Well, at best, even a psychiatric ward is a tough assessment,” Tyler said with unexpected defensiveness.
“Oh, really,” David answered. “And Cramer goes home in two days, while he sends this kid who may be seeing his dead friend again this evening back to get his head shot off.”
“Cramer’s not a bad man. It’s like he’s a manager of a big steel company. If you told him his plants were polluting the air and water, he’d answer that his job was making steel. I don’t know if that makes him evil.”
“Just stupid, huh,” David said.
“The trooper looked all right,” Tyler said again.
“That must have been real comforting to the kid; it sure as hell’s going to be comforting to his unit commander. Don’t want any crazy-looking kids stepping off the choppers.”
“Something bothering you?” Tyler asked.
David ignored the question and poured himself a glass of water out of the ice chest.
“You started to meet with our commander yet?”
“Yeah,” Tyler answered, “yesterday. We’ve begun going over lists. The man is determined not to lose a single paper clip during the transition period.”
“And the new colonel?”
“The rank may have been a little inflated. Thorpe tells me the chance of Cramer’s replacement being a full colonel or even a lieutenant colonel is remarkably small. We are not, as you are probably aware, a major installation.”
David hesitated and then looked at Tyler as if for the first time. “So you may stay commander.” There was an embarrassed silence. “You like this, don’t you?” David said.
“Parts,” Tyler answered with reticence.
“You’re thinking of staying in.” As soon as he said it, David knew he was right.
“Well,” Tyler said, “even if we do understand the Cramers of this world, we can’t turn the whole thing over to them, can we?”
“You’ll do fine,” David said.
Tyler relaxed. “Well, someone’s got to do it.”
“It couldn’t be anyone better.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said. He actually looked taller, or maybe, David thought, he was only standing straighter. “It means a great deal to me that you think that.”
Chapter 25
CRAMER LEFT RIGHT ON schedule. They had a small party in the dispensary. The hospital personnel and the base officers and NCOs were there. Thorpe made a speech of appreciation and presented Cramer with a mounted certificate of merit from both med command and MACV. Cramer, to David’s amazement, was pleased with the award and, indeed, touched by what had to be the standard going home plaque. There were the expected reminiscences, but with most of the people Cramer had known during his year already gone, the “good old days” took on a historical rather than a sentimental tone, the people at the party politely listening to stories that mattered to no one but Cramer.
David was struck with the realization that there was no past to Vietnam, no real record of what happened other than what each person carried with him. No two people felt the same way because no two people shared the same experiences. Even those who worked together came at different times and left alone. What affected one man might remain forever unknown to his neighbor. Tyler was right. This was not a five-year war but a one-year war five times.
Cramer ended the party saying something about a reunion. It would never happen, but it was as good a way to end as any.
The next morning, they were all there to say good-bye. Thorpe, Plunkett, Brown, Tyler, Parker, Bradford, the corpsmen and David. Plunkett and Brown helped carry Cramer’s gear out to the helipad. When they came back, Plunkett told David there had been tears in Cramer’s eyes.
Chapter 26
NOTHING UNUSUAL HAPPENED ON the flats for the next ten days; and so with all the villages directly west of the 40th already covered, they moved a little further north into foothills. It was cooler in the hills. Not much cooler, but enough for David to notice the difference.
“It happens like this,” Tom said. “It’ll be rainin’ in a couple of weeks.”
“You mean it’s actually gonna keep getting cooler?”
“Depends. During the day the edge will be off the heat; the nights, though, especially if you’re wet, can get cold.”
The first village was over a kilometer from the main road, set back in a natural cul-de-sac.
“Hard to see this one even from the air,” Tom said as they parked the jeep.
They had examined more than half the villagers when an old woman, walking up to the jeep, opened her mouth and pointed to a single yellow, rotten tooth.
“Well, what do you know,” David said. “We are finally becoming known.”
Instead of motioning her to move closer, Tom put down his stethoscope and looked down the line at the rest of the villagers and then up at the surrounding hills.
“Be back,” he said, picking up his rifle and setting off at a jog, jumping over the rocks and small boulders. He didn’t slacken his pace until he reached the top of a nearby rise.
David had the woman wait at the side of the jeep and finished up with two more patients before Tom came back down the slope.
“Where you been?” David asked.
“Checkin’ to see if there’s any roads or paths comin’ down out of the hills above this place.” Tom put the rifle down, leaning it against the side of the jeep. “There’s a path. Not much of one, but walkable, on the other side of the rise. It follows a creek bed that looks like it comes straight out of the hills, and I think, from the size of it, that it gets a lot wider further up.” He looked at the woman. “We ain’t been here before. Someone had to tell her we pull teeth. There are footprints about two hundred meters up the creek along a gully. Maybe it was just someone from another village, but these people don’t travel much. Most spend their whole life in one place. They don’t know what’s going on in the next valley, much less around the next bend. It’s still a little wet up there. Whoever they were, they made sure they crossed over above the village. It must have been at night or they’d have seen the mud. They were carrying some heavy gear, too, and they were keepin’ to a good pace.”
“So you think they might have been using the creek to come down out of the mountains.”
“Why cross above the village, unless they wanted to scout it first? It would have been a hell of a lot easier to use the roads.”
“And traveling at night, too,” David said.
Tom gestured for the woman to move closer. “Yeah, but the real question is where are they now.”
Chapter 27
TYLER HAD BECOME MORE talkative, particularly at breakfast. He was taking the job of hospital commander seriously, which surprised Thorpe, and he was enjoying it, which amazed everyone else. Unlike Cramer, he made no pronouncements, but he did stop the daily afternoon meetings at headquarters and set about in a quiet, efficient way to change the call schedules, update the emergency gear and rearrange the triage and mass casualty procedures that had been in place when the 40th was larger. He even added a short evening sick call so that morning call wouldn’t need two physicians, freeing the second in case of an emergency.
At first, Thorpe had been suspicious of the changes, but Tyler simply went on as if what he was doing were routine. He even went so far as to ignore Thorpe�
��s coolness, on many occasions passing up the opportunity to make a cynical remark.
The truth was that even though they did little at the 40th, the things they did began to run more smoothly.
They all finished eating at about the same time. When David got up to leave, Tyler did, too, and they walked outside together. “There’s something I think you should know,” Tyler said.
“You’re going to institute morning formations,” David said.
“No, not quite yet,” Tyler said. “I was going through the personnel and duty rosters last night. I’ve got some news you may not like.” David waited. “There’s no easy way to give this to you. Griffen’s extended.”
“He what!”
“Sorry. Cramer never mentioned it to me. I only ran across it yesterday, and that was by chance. I found a carbon of the orders.”
David was shocked. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
It took David a moment to collect his thoughts. “When did he do it? No, you don’t have to tell me. I already know. It was after I tried to go back out to the village by myself. Damn! How long did he do it for? Never mind. I can figure that out, too … Jesus Christ!”
“You can extend three months at a time,” Tyler said.
“But he did it for nine, right? The exact amount of time I have left.” Tyler nodded. “And that son-of-a-bitch Cramer let him do it.”
“Like I said, Ted believes in the war.”
“Believed!” David corrected. “He’s gone.”
“Thorpe agreed to it, too.”
“I bet. Probably looks good on his record to have someone from his unit extend for extra duty in this godforsaken desert.”
Tyler had enough sense to keep quiet.
David let out a deep, exasperated sigh. “How much longer did he have?”
“You’re not going to like it any more than the rest.”
“How long?” David demanded.
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks! My God, you mean he could have been home by now.”
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