“No one made him do it.”
“Now you are sounding like Cramer.”
“He extended because he wanted to.”
“You’re kidding. He’s been out in the boonies so long, he thinks this is the way things are.”
“Don’t sell him short.”
“Sell him short? Christ. It’s not that he could be home, it’s that he should be home, and you know it.” David managed to get control of himself. “Any way to change it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Crazy damn kid … nine months.” David was furious with himself, Cramer, the Army and Tom. “He never mentioned it.”
“Leave it alone,” Tyler offered.
“He was worried about me not knowing what the hell I was doing.”
“It will be okay,” Tyler said. “David”—Tyler hesitated a moment—“you’re a lucky fellow.”
In the afternoon a gunship flew into the 40th. David was in the dispensary when Sergeant Parker and the crew chief, a lieutenant, walked in.
“The lieutenant wants to know if we can spare some morphine.”
“Sure.” David went to the medicine cabinet and opened the glass door. “There’s a box of forty vials in there. We can get more over in the pharmacy.”
“No, sir, I think the forty will do.”
David carried the box back to the desk. “Anything going on?”
“No, sir, nothing big, but a lot of little stuff.”
“Little stuff …”
“Well, sir, hard to tell exactly what’s happening. Units are making contact out in the middle of nowhere and the gooks are standing and slugging it out. It’s not only in the mountains north of here but all over Nam. Most of the time there’s nothing around worth fighting for. Up in I Corps there are a couple of NVA divisions fighting the Marines for three hills near Khe Sanh, and from what we’ve been told, all those hills protect are another bunch of hills that ain’t worth anything. That one’s getting to be a big damn battle, tying up half of the tac air in Nam. There must be a couple hundred sorties a day, not to count all the B-52 raids. There’s a couple of battles like Khe Sanh only not as big down in the Delta, again over nothing.”
“Anything around here?”
“Around here? No, sir, the whole plateau’s quiet.”
“And in the hills northwest of here? Anyone reporting anything?”
Parker, with a sudden look of concern, stared at David.
“No, sir, nothing.”
The next morning, as David walked into the motor pool, Tom stepped back from the jeep like a painter admiring his canvas. A six-foot whip antenna stuck up from the rear bumper.
“Looks good, huh,” he said as David walked over to him. “From five meters everyone’d think we had all the air support in Nam at our fingertips.”
“Real fine.” Tom, excited, didn’t notice David’s soberness.
“Looks real, too, don’t it?”
“Yeah,” David answered.
Tom smiled proudly. “Hell, it should. Took it off a real radio. Come on,” he said cheerfully, “let’s treat the natives.”
Tom remained cheerful throughout the rest of the day. David had never seen him so at ease. For the first time since they’d met, he looked actually happy. David didn’t say much, but Tom’s cheerfulness was infectious, so that by midmorning he found, though he wouldn’t have admitted it, that despite his shock and growing embarrassment at Tom’s having done so impulsive and stupid a thing as extending, his misgivings began to fade and he started to relax.
“I should have thought of the antenna before,” Tom said after they left the second village. “Damn good idea. No one likes to screw around with air strikes.”
David agreed it was a good idea. He watched at the next village as Tom examined the villagers, smiling at a few, even letting an old woman listen to her own chest. Maybe Tyler was right, David thought. Maybe it would work out. Occasionally, though, David found himself looking over at the jeep, at the antenna sticking up from the frame. He had forgotten how terribly alone they really were.
Chapter 28
DAVID WAITED TILL THEY were done with the day’s work before he brought up the issue of Tom’s extending his tour.
“I learned something about the Army yesterday,” David said as they were packing up. “You don’t have to go back to the States to extend; you can do it right here. You don’t even have to go to Saigon.”
Tom continued to put the pills in the cartons.
“You extended for nine months.”
“I wasn’t ready to go home,” Tom answered. “Besides, I didn’t lose all that much. I still would have had six months left before discharge anyway.”
“No difference between six and nine months, huh?”
“I’d rather stay here than do garrison duty with a bunch of lifers somewhere in the States. Besides, lots of people extend.”
“I’m not talking about lots of people.”
Tom didn’t reply.
“Well, at least it gives us time to get things done …” Tom, suspicious, stopped filling the cartons. “College,” David said. “Think of it as just another prolonged extension of one’s tour of duty. Four years instead of nine months. It’s settled. I mean it. I’ll come and get you after dinner and we’ll send out the letters. That’s final.” Tom saw the look on David’s face and didn’t argue.
After mess David tracked Tom down in what passed for the NCO club, a small supply building that had been cleaned and partitioned into a small bar and a larger area with half a dozen tables and a 1950s-type jukebox.
“Come on,” David said. “There’s no one at the dispensary.”
“You’re serious,” Tom said.
“I’ve never been more serious. You’re not afraid, are you?”
Tom looked at the two other troopers in the room, slowly stood and followed David out of the building.
They shut the blackout screens and David turned on the lights in the doctors’ area. He pulled two chairs over to what used to be Cramer’s desk and turned on the lamp above it. The cone of yellow light diffused gently throughout the dispensary. In its soft glow the green walls and wooden ceiling lost their worn, makeshift look as the dispensary seemed to fold itself protectively around them. Half-hidden in the shadows, the enameled cabinets with their glass doors and rows of shelves filled with beakers and flasks spoke of an earlier, more contemplative time in medicine, a time of penicillin shots and quiet consultations.
Tom, too, was affected by the coziness of the room. As they sat there, the silence mixing with the smells of alcohol and ether, David could see him relax.
“You’ve been here before at night, haven’t you?” David said. In the dim light Tom’s features had softened. David realized how much older he looked than he really was.
“A few times,” Tom answered. “It’s quiet here, no stereos. Nice place to think; kind of comforting.”
“Yeah, I like it, too,” David admitted. “I didn’t think it was all that much at first, but I do now … You didn’t tell Thorpe about the footprints in the creek bed, did you?”
Tom shook his head.
“I didn’t tell Tyler either. If they cancel the med caps, you could be reassigned, right?” David said. “And with your skills they wouldn’t think twice about another combat unit.”
“That ain’t likely to happen.”
“No,” David answered. “Not while Thorpe and the computer say you’re assigned to med caps at the 40th. Looks like we’re in business for another nine months.”
David opened the desk drawer and took out some paper and envelopes. Across the top of each sheet gold letters read U.S. ARMY, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM; watermarked with the shield of the U.S. Army.
“Got to admit,” David said, holding up the paper, “it’s impressive stationery. Nothing too good for the Army.”
Tom didn’t smile.
“What’s bothering you?” David asked.
Tom looked at the paper for a few moments and then
at David. He didn’t look distressed or nervous. He was serious, though. “I ain’t so sure about school.” It wasn’t a frivolous comment. “You said you’d been in college twelve years. That’s a long time.”
“You take it a year at a time.”
“It’s more than just the time,” Tom said.
“You’re not worried about those city boys, are you?”
“Truth is my mother’d worry I’d be oversteppin’ myself. Oh, I guess I could learn to live with that. But I’ve got to think about all that time you put in and what happens if it don’t work out. Gotta be tough on anyone, put four, eight, ten years into somethin’ before you can use it and then find out it ain’t for you, and have nothin’ to show for it. I mean, you can’t be a lawyer or doctor till you’re done with the whole thing. There ain’t no half-trained surgeons in the world. I’m right, ain’t I?”
“Listen, Tom,” David said. “You won’t have any trouble. Besides, I don’t know about lawyers, but I’ve never heard of anyone who started medical school who didn’t finish.”
“No one?” Tom said, surprised. “Must be some damn smart people; I mean, for all of ’em to finish.”
David thought for a moment. “You know,” he said, “you might just have solved something that’s bothered me since I was pre-med. I always wondered where the lousy doctors I’d met had come from. No, I’m not kidding. You’re right. You can’t be a doctor till you’re done, and I’m sure that after three, four, five years, a lot of people are reluctant to say what they’ve been doing isn’t for them. And probably more important, after all that time no one’s going to want to fail them.” David waited. “Something else is bothering you.”
Tom sighed. “Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s all that important.” He hesitated a moment. “Well, I like using my hands, doing things. Been that way since I was a kid.”
“College isn’t all sitting around and reading. Anyway, who knows—you may even find that you like that part; you like dictionaries, don’t you?”
Tom laughed. “Well, I ain’t sayin’ I don’t want to go to college or be a doctor, but …”
David raised an eyebrow. “Look. There’ll be some tough moments, maybe a lot of them. It’s like anything else that’s worthwhile. But this isn’t all just for you. We could really use a few more doctors who like using their hands.”
They wrote four letters, one to the University of Georgia requesting an application to their undergraduate school for the next academic year, a second to Tom’s high school requesting a transcript of his records and two more to teachers Tom was sure had liked him, asking for letters of recommendation. There were colleges closer to Tom’s home, but Tom admitted as they were talking about schools that one summer his seventh-grade class had traveled to the university and he’d walked around the campus awed by the manicured lawns and the stately buildings.
Tom wavered only once, when he had to sign the letter asking for the transfer of his records.
“I didn’t do well in science,” he said as if he were confessing.
“Bored?” David asked.
“Sort of,” Tom mumbled.
David took his hand and put the pen in it. “Go on, sign. You’re not going to be bored anymore.”
“I don’t know,” Tom admitted. “I wish I was writin’ away for a huntin’ license. I’m a damn good shot.”
Chapter 29
DAVID NEVER DISCUSSED THE med caps with anyone anymore, not even with Tyler, except to say that everything was fine. He didn’t want any rumors that things were not going well. He and Tom didn’t even talk about them unless they were alone. They continued to go out every other day but stayed on the perimeter of the flats, occasionally working a village in the foothills.
They started to sew up the occasional cut and pack superficial wounds, adding some minor surgery to the tooth extractions. David showed Tom how to put in sutures, and the two of them now discussed surgical as well as medical problems during their lunches, but always with the emphasis on what they could do with their limited resources that would still make sense for the patient and not leave things worse than they found them.
“We can’t open any cavity, chest or abdomen,” David said. “That’s for sure. But we can pack wounds, even deep ones, if we come back within four or five days to remove the packs.”
“And drains?” Tom asked.
“Same problem. You’ve got to be sure you come back and take them out. A foreign body in a wound only makes things worse. There’s no chance then of clearing up the infection. It’s the reason you pack open wounds of more than eighteen hours instead of just suturing them closed. After half a day, the chance of an open wound getting contaminated is so great that closing it up will lead to an abscess. So you pack them, keeping the wounds open so that they can heal from the bottom and letting any infection drain out the top; sooner or later, though, you’ve got to remove the pack or the drain.”
“Did you learn that in medical school or after?”
David looked up with interest. They had talked very little about school since they’d mailed the letters. David had sensed that Tom wanted it that way.
“After, I guess. I’m sure,” David said, thinking for a moment, “that we must have learned the differences between primary and secondary closures of wounds during medical school, but I really only understood it when I was an intern rotating through the emergency room.”
“That would have been”—Tom was counting—“at your tenth year. I mean, not counting high school.”
“Ninth,” David corrected. “But like I said, you take it a year at a time.”
Tom looked at the road and the miles of plateau beyond it. “Nine years of schoolin’ seems like a lot for what we’re doin’.”
“We’re not doing much; like I said before, this is baseline medicine. All the years of medical school, internship and residency are to be sure that you can handle everything.”
“Hell,” Tom said, not the least bit impressed, “our doctors at home don’t do much more than we do.”
“Some patients need more care; subspecialty training takes even longer. Immunology requires a three-year fellowship after a full residency in internal medicine, and neurosurgery is at least another six or seven after you finish your general surgery training.”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “We ain’t seen no brain tumors and I don’t remember any at home either. Most people there have infections, anemia, stuff like that, just like the people out here. Couple years should be all you need to help ’em.”
“Tom,” David said appreciatively, “you’re going to be a very challenging student.”
A few days later they were on a narrow dike across a dry creek bed barely wide enough for the jeep. Both of them had to lean over the sides and watch the wheels to keep from going over the edge. Tom was moving the jeep forward a few feet at a time when, at the opposite end of the dike, a group of Vietnamese suddenly appeared. The first two had stepped onto the causeway before they saw the jeep. When they finally did see it, they stopped so quickly that those behind bumped into them. David, the wheels on his side clear of the edge, looked up and saw them first.
The Vietnamese stood like statues. There were seven of them. David reached over and touched Tom’s leg.
“What is it?” Tom mumbled, still leaning over the side, watching the left side of the jeep. As he turned, he saw the Vietnamese. “Don’t move,” he whispered, still bent over. He reached under the dash and, pulling the rifle over to him, sat up and put both hands on the top of the wheel.
There was a small ledge near the end of the dike. As the jeep moved closer to the Vietnamese, the first two stepped onto the ledge while the others moved to the end of the dike.
Tom, acting as if nothing was wrong, continued to glance down at the tires, but he kept his hands visible, on top of the wheel. There wasn’t a sound. Whatever the Vietnamese’s initial confusion, it had been replaced by stony silence.
The jeep rolled past the first two, missing them by i
nches, but neither moved. David could feel the hostility. The others weren’t going to get out of the way either. As the jeep edged past the next two, David’s arm brushed one of their knapsacks. He could feel something hard, like a shell or grenade.
A strange discipline held them all, as if they each knew that as long as no one moved everyone would be okay.
Tom kept the jeep rolling forward. The last three Vietnamese stood like pillars, their square faces completely expressionless. David realized he had not drawn a breath since they’d seen the Vietnamese. They finally cleared the end of the causeway. David didn’t dare turn around. “I know,” Tom said under his breath, “something’s wrong.”
As soon as they were out of sight of the Vietnamese, Tom pressed down on the accelerator and, taking the jeep off the road, drove it a hundred yards across the open ground to the foot of the nearest hill.
Leaving the motor running, he grabbed the M-16. “Get the binoculars,” he said. They scrambled up the slope together, crawling the last few yards to the crest.
“Those weren’t refugees,” David said.
The seven Vietnamese had continued on across the causeway and stopped on the other side of the dike. They seemed to be arguing. Tom took the binoculars from David, kept them on the Vietnamese for two or three minutes and then, searching the hills on both sides of the causeway, found something.
“Over there at nine o’clock behind that ridge,” he said, handing David the lenses.
David adjusted the focus and a small, paved road came into view.
“That’s the road they should be on.”
David swung the binoculars back to the Vietnamese. The two who had led the group had fallen in behind the others. They were talking as they walked along, occasionally looking back over their shoulders in the direction of the causeway. There was something familiar about those two, about all of them.
“They’re VC, aren’t they?” David asked.
“No.” Tom took back the binoculars. “That ain’t the way VC walk, not when they don’t think anyone’s watchin’. They like to gossip. These walk single file. They’re used to walkin’ that way, and they ain’t screwin’ around. Did you notice how sweaty they were? They’ve been doing some movin’. And they were real surprised to see us. If they were from around here they’d be used to seeing GIs or at least, with all the ARVNs, U.S. jeeps.”
Another War, Another Peace Page 12
