by Rex Miller
Because of the unusual sound-carrying acoustical properties of the land they all heard it easily three hundred yards away. It sounded like somebody was blasting apart the barn with a machine gun. And by sundown there was no barn at all. Just piles of rotting debris.
BUCKHEAD SPRINGS
Donna and Jack Eichord and Tuffy were playing on the living-room floor of their house. That is, Donna and Jack were laughing; Tuffy was doing the playing. He had a little crumpled ball of paper that was his favorite toy of the moment.
“A month ago,” Eichord said when he got control again, “somebody says, You're gonna be buying cat toys, I woulda found it a little hard to swallow.” He'd just gone into a store and purchased a fake mouse.
“I know. But the little guy is so much fun to watch. What a mess,” as if Tuffy had heard her he attacked the paper with renewed ferocity, and as it skittered away across the rug, he went with it, end over end in a mad scramble. “Look at him!"
“Tuffy, you're gonna kill yourself."
“If you live that long."
“That's why I named him that. When I saw him playing in that cardboard box Shari brought down to work, he was running at the walls like a kamikaze pilot. He looked like a daredevil cat to me."
“I hate that word."
“Cat?"
“I hate words like ‘daredevil.’ I don't even like the guy's name—Mr. Kuhneeval. The first name. I don't like that word."
“Yeah?"
“I don't like spooky words. Tuffy doesn't like ‘em either. However, we DO like the word ‘spooky.’”
“Good name for a little black cat.” Eichord looked the way he did when he was only there with the surface of his mind. “I know what you mean, though, about words. I have some words I don't like to hear either.” His face grew serious. “A few proper nouns I'd just as soon never hear again.” He had that look in his eyes she'd learned to recognize in Dallas, and she smiled and quickly changed the subject.
“Hey."
“Yeah?"
“Sex aside,” she said, snuggling close as Tuffy watched them, his tiny pink tongue hanging out after all the rambunctious activity, “I want to know which of your official birthday goodies you liked the best. Tell me."
“Sex aside, you say?” he said, snuggling next to her. “Well, that's number one shot down. I guess my favorite was the quick game of catch. I thought you were dynamite in that shirt and cap. Cute stuff."
“You liked ole Dad, did you?"
“Posilutely."
“You liked burnin’ ‘em in to old Dad?"
“A regular Bob Feller."
“Who's Bob Feller?"
“Who is BOB FELLER? You jest, surely.” She shook her head no. “Even a youngster like you shoulda heard of Bob Feller. Hmmm. Well. Bob Feller. He was a pitcher. They used to say Feller only had three pitches, a fast ball, a burner, and a high hard one."
“That's all any man needs."
“Yeah?"
“Sure. You guys can do just fine as long as you got a couple of balls and a hard one.” She said it very seriously.
“Uh huh."
“Be right back,” she said, getting up off the floor. “Don't you two go away."
“We won't,” he promised.
“I'll be right back,” she repeated as she bounced off down the hall. A few moments later she reappeared. The sweatshirt and jeans were gone. She had on his shirt again, and the Mets cap.
“Hello there,” he said, checking her out. “That was a quick costume change."
“Like you always say, I aims to please."
“Uh."
She was bare legged and wore no shoes. And the shirt was open in front and he could see the beautiful swells of those proud twin globes. She pulled the shirt apart a little farther and said, “You wanna come inside and play?"
“Right,” he said hoarsely. He got up and followed her down the hall toward the bedroom to inspect her fast-breaking curves.
Tuffy was busily batting his crumpled ball of paper all over the living room, his little fur ball of a body flying at top speed until he chased left when he should have chased right and ran right smack dab into a wall. The little kitten got back up, dazed, shook it off, and looked around.
Where the heck did everybody go?
When Jack snuggled against her something was changed. She could tell immediately, even as he was touching her, that her husband was just going through the motions, and to Donna Eichord it was a confusing irritation. This time she couldn't hold her tongue and said, “I can tell I'm driving you insane with desire,” in a tone that made him draw back from her and he smiled a little and kept touching her but he didn't try to fake a response.
“It isn't you, love."
“That's good news,” she said.
“Come on,” he said very softly, feeling her draw away from his touch. “You know better."
“I thought I did, but...” She knew how she must sound. She let it trail off into space.
“Really,” Jack said, sighing, “it's work. You know. Sometimes it just doesn't shake off at the front door."
“That's okay. But you know, before, we've always talked about it if something is bothering one of us."
“I know."
“I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing something wrong."
“Hey. Don't be silly."
“I don't think it's being silly. Obviously something is out of kilter all of a sudden,” she said.
“Nothing about us. I just have a lot on my mind."
“It hasn't been a problem before.” (Let UP for crissakes—what is your problem?)
“I love ya a lot, you know that.” He touched her lightly on the tip of her nose. “I'm just having an off week."
“Okay.” She smiled. “If you feel like talking about it...” Jeez, kid, she thought to herself, why can't you shut your trap? But she couldn't. It was too important not to let anything ever wedge itself between them. “You know I'm here to listen. Whatever it is."
“Some things are just better left unsaid.” He sat up against the headboard. “If you really want to hear about it I don't mind telling you about it. It's no mysterious thing. You really want me to tell you the details?” He could no more stop himself now than she could.
“It might make YOU, you know"—long pause—"feel better to have, uh, to be able to talk about it. I don't mind.” Her voice very quiet.
“A multiple homicide and robbery in a Chicago butcher shop. It was something got called to my attention. Just one of those awful killings where the sickness of the perpetrators keeps screaming at you. So we make bad jokes. We do this and that. Usually we can let it all drop at the front door. This one's just been harder to shake. Somebody butchered the butchers, you might say. Cut their throats in a very cold-blooded way the same way you might slaughter something for food.” She seemed to shrivel as he told her about it. And the more Donna recoiled from it, the more it irritated him that she'd goaded him into telling her about it. And the more he told her of the gory details, the more he felt like he did when he was trying to gross out some woman reporter in the squad room, or some TV schmuck at a crime scene. And when he'd finished she was still irritated, and he was irritated, and nobody was feeling very loved, and something awful and sick and horrible had inserted itself into the intimacy of their warm marriage bed.
“It has NOTHING to do with us,” he said, knowing even then that what he'd just said couldn't be further from the truth.
STOBAUGH
Daniel had a trot line in back of the Darnell's Field, and adjacent to a place known locally as Gum, which led to the New Cairo Ditch. But he'd never walked that far, nor had he ever wanted to go through all the tall weeds, swamp, quickmud, poison ivy, and thickly overgrown areas between Michael Hora's ground and the New Cairo. There was also a shallow ditch that ran down through Gum parallel to the Sandy Road, running past Darnell's, Hora's, Thurman's, and the Lingo Field to the extreme eastern edge of the land on this side of the river, the point of the fishhook. The top
left of the hook as one saw it on a map would be the New Cairo, a deep and swift-moving ditch that curved back around the farmland feeding into the river. There was good fishing in the New Cairo, and Daniel had driven all the way to Texas Corners and put a line in there, which he ran when he thought about it.
He had decided he was going to try to walk the whole distance, a long, boring, tough, solitary march to wear himself down. Just one more variation on his daily theme—to tire himself to the point where he could ignore his hungry, screaming belly, which was shrinking just as his companion's seemed to grow more prominent by the day.
So it was a new experience as he cut down through the swampy Dutch Barrow, plowing through the high, wet grass, moving up a little weed-covered hill full of cottonwoods and willows, down over the ditch bank, and in that eyeball click he was back in Vietnam.
The McDermotts had 160 acres of rice and this is what he saw as he came through the overgrown ditch bank foliage, stepping out into a rice field that lay across his field of vision all the way to the far tree line. Chaingang had gone over the bank and between a pair of cottonwoods and a willow and some horseweed, but he came out in high elephant grass between two palms in the Rung Sat Special Zone, in another time, another lifetime.
To the mind of this insane killer and precognitive genius and childlike retard and atavistic two-legged mastodon—a strong emotion or a quick psychic jolt will not be the same as it will be for you or me. This bestial man draws on a lifetime of cruelties; tortures and deprivations beyond the line of normal human tolerance.
To us a surprise or shock or consternation will register in a different way. We forget our coffee, which has been sitting there for a quarter-hour and we lift the cup to our lips, preoccupied, busy with something else, and the unexpected coldness is a minor, unpleasant moment. Nothing more. An insignificant annoyance. But to this man, a sound—the metal-cleated footfalls on certain surfaces—or the smell—a feces-clogged tenement toilet—or the sight—a tattooed arm reaching out in a certain way: these are the nuances that can trigger fast, steel-muscled, relentless, deadly responses that strike out to silence the nearest human heartbeat.
And Daniel Bunkowski steps between the rustling cottonwoods and the high weeds and Chaingang emerges into the heat and fearsome dangers of the Rung Sat, and it is the 1960s and the big man is there for only one reason—to KILL—and it is open season on humanity. And he sees no one but he SENSES ... SMELLS THEM ... the little people, and he moves cautiously, moving backward, stepping exactly where he has just stepped before, moving back between the palms disappearing back into the high elephant grass and saw grass, into the myriad, mysterious, many shades of Vietnam green and melting back into the shadows to wait and plan his ambush.
This is Charlie's. Everything is his. Jungle. Delta. Mountain range of straw-carpeted, deep caves. Tiny spider holes that dot the land like cancer. Massive, intricate tunnel complexes. And a mined, bobby-trapped, pungi-sticked paddy running between here and the blue feature. And Chaingang lies chilly in the tan grass. Frozen. Waiting for the cover of night when he will be ready to run the game back on Victor Charles. When he will take it to him.
The Stobaugh County Army Corps of Engineers had just run a piece in the Hubbard City paper about the paddy situation, but Chaingang didn't read the paper. He didn't know he was looking at a rice field that would soon have its dikes leveled so they could simply let the levee water in and help the farmers who had until now been forced to implement the costlier and more time-consuming methods of irrigation. He looked out and saw only the paddies and dikes of the Rung Sat Special Zone. He waits, frozen, hiding in the wet shadows of the Dutch Barrow Pit, but in his mind he is at 331/STAR RACER, at the edge of an area of marshes on the Long Tau River, and he is surrounded by Charlie.
To visualize the area, picture the exaggerated hourglass of a woman's figure. Facing her, the large left breast is the Long Tau, curving around marshland, curving back into the woman's waist, the tree line of palms and cottonwoods, the exaggerated woman's hip curving back out around the field of flooded paddies and an overgrown path leading to the blue feature.
The huge man is not in his geographic location but is, instead, somewhere south of the pagoda woods, to the east of the woman's right breast, north of the rice fields, and west of the comic's edge, like the early stories of Christopher Columbus, who would surely fall off the edge of the world. He is out of body, back in time, transported back to the hot, stinking hell of the RSSZ, Republic of South Vietnam. It is monsoon season, and he is caught in a tidal stench, alone, surrounded by things that could hurt him to death, not the least of which was a company of Ho's fiercest who were using the woods for a base camp and reppo depot.
He preps for the night ambush, sitting there in the scorching down-state sun, in the Vietnamese blast furnace of the foul-smelling Rung Sat, and he begins methodically taping every loose piece of gear, every clanking metallic thing that moved, taping with his precious black friction tape, or slick black electrical tape, pulling out the huge tractor chain and painstakingly taping each individual link so that nothing clicked, snikked, ticked, rattled, clattered, bang, shook, chinged, pinged, or thumped a unnatural noise of warning in the night. No shiny metal will take the reflected jungle moonbeam and light up his night in sudden and fiery pain.
And the shiniest metal imaginable, a slashing, razor-sharp bowie that weighs as much as a small sword, a flashing silver blade that could sever a one-inch manila hemp line the way you could shave a hair from your arm, a monstrous killer knife is drawn from its oiled sheath and he begins running the blade back and forth across a spittle-wet, oiled whetstone. Ffffsssssssss. Fffffffffssssssssssssssssss. Long, measured strokes with the blade carefully angled to produce maximum results without feathering the razor edge. Long, patient, unhurried sharpening pulls across the rough stone. Ffffffffsssssssss. In tempo with his heartbeat. Then, when he is satisfied with the keenness of the cutting edge, he slices into his wiping cloth and wipes off the filth, laying a light, almost invisible coat of oil on the bright, perfectly hardened and tempered steel that had killed so many times.
He smelled them. They would be coming as the tide moved back in. When the rains came and the monsoon torrents swelled the river over the banks and the rice fields became awash and the whole of the RSSZ became one putrid, dangerous swamp, he would have to find the high ground, and they would be there, a company of the enemy's toughest elite, waiting to kill him.
But they would not kill him. He had heard of the rewards offered among their little soldiers and the ones in the villages who were their spies. They would give much to have the huge man alive. To take him and make his dying a slow and precisely choreographed pain play, a tapestry of agony. They'd enslave him first as they liked to do—keeping him in a hell they would devise to match his worst fears, prolonging his suffering as few races could do better than the hard-hearted North Vietnamese.
He wondered how it would come. His presentience would warn him if capture were inevitable. He would kill many, many of them. But when the M-60 was out of ammunition, the claymores gone, the frags expended, the pistol clips empty, the belts shot up, the explosive used, the chain lost—he would kill as many as he could with the bowie and then turn it on himself. He knew he could summon the resolve to stab himself in the heart and stop his own life force. Or he could save a grenade for the last. Or save one bullet. One special round tucked away for the end.
He absentmindedly finds himself with the oiled bowie in hand, holding it in a death grip, and without thinking, for no reason other than emphasis, makes a deep, quick downward slash over his strong heart.
It is funny. He smiles widely at the sudden bloodstream. It is a deeper cut than he meant to make but of less than no significance. A prank. Nothing more than a jailhouse tattoo, a heart stabbed into the arm from boredom, filled with a poison of inks to darken and dye the skin. LOVE and HATE inscribed upon the knuckles. A pachuco cruciform at the webbing of the thumb. A slash over the heart for luck.
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He is hunkered down beside his huge rucksack in a small woods at the edge of an area of marshes on the Long Tau, where the spike team was to effect an ambush of Viet Cong guerrillas who had terrorized a small, nearby hamlet, torturing and brutally killing a province chief and his family. Intelligence believed that the VC were using the ruins of a pagoda in the woods in back of him for a supply cache near the hamlet, but Chaingang knew it was a setup and he had gone on a different course, alone, waiting and watching. The team had been wiped out by mortars and sniper fire. Set up by hoi chanh dinks who had been double agents or quadruple agents or ... who knows? And the boat was gone. There was no radio. And Chaingang was alone.
He knows he will wait until dark and then make his way to the New Cairo Ditch, which is the Long Tau River in the IV Corps Tactical Zone, 331/STAR RACER, Spike Team M-1350, Republic of South Vietnam.
THE RUNG SAT SPECIAL ZONE (1965)
The LZ, which is named with some ridiculous woman's name, is perhaps fifteen clicks out and the birds change pitch and it signals his on-line terminal that this is the time he hates about to materialize and manifest itself in the sudden drop to the decks, and suddenly your lunch is in your throat and before you can drop your socks and grab your rocks the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) has set them down through the small opening in the green, and a commo “adviser,” a marine sergeant, is yelling at them to double-time it to the blue feature.
