Don't Mean Nuthin'

by Ron Lealos

  The letter was harder than others, whipped out on my mind screen with cynicism and pain. Too many thoughts of Colleen and Tran interfering like an early-morning wakeup call with a garbage can lid. A note like this, questions of an unknown feeling like love, were as foreign to me as a trip to Paris. Never the receiver, and only a taste of what love might bring. Never a chance at being around a child. I wondered what was happening. Was I finding a can of grape Crush in the middle of a firefight?

  We slogged through a flooded paddy and stepped into the jungle. I lit a Lucky, and we took turns burning the leeches off our legs while artillery fire in the distance blocked the sound of the breeze in the palms. Luong handed me his canteen, and we rested for a few minutes. It was only a few klicks now to Pham Bien. And Colleen.

  Black smoke danced in its own wind above the scorched earth that was once Pham Bien. The sight of flames and smell of burning bamboo reached us before the sound of AK-47 fire. Luong, in the lead, stopped and silently pointed across the rice paddy to a woman running toward the muddy water, her hair burning, silent screams coming from her open mouth. A few meters from the dike, her arms flew up and her back curved inward, shot by someone shrouded in the smoke. She fell on the bank and rolled to the bottom, legs digging the dirt in a last spasm.

  Trees and elephant grass had given cover for our approach. Now, we waited, M16s on rock and roll. The horror wasn’t new. I had seen the burning of small vils and execution of rice farmers many times, the perpetrators NVA, Vietcong, ARVN, or the devil dog Americans. It didn’t matter who was responsible for the massacre to a dead Vietnamese. I knew what we would find.

  During the years of following the Colonel to postings around the world, I groomed a mask I believed served me. Its value became even more important when I landed in Da Nang for my first tour of duty. If that little tingle in my heart began to twitch, I shut it down. Post haste. History had shown me that it was a lie and led to pain the Colonel, Mother, or the US government were incapable of repairing. Later, viewing the aftermath of a mad minute, I was glad there was no way the horror would open the armored scars. Thanks, Colonel.

  There was no chance to cross the paddies undetected between our hiding spot and Pham Bien without crawling through the muck of the paddies. It would take Luong and me minutes of eating sludge to make our way to the slaughter I knew awaited. But someone would pay. Hopefully, Colleen’s role as a neutral aid worker would give her a pass. I doubted it.

  As we got closer, the urge to pick myself out of the stinking mud and run to the vil, M16 ablaze, and blow away the bastards who did this, began to eat at me like a jungle tick. After five minutes, the only sound from the smoke and flames was exploding coconuts. No screams. No wailing. No shots. That was the bad news. The good news was it was over.

  No one in black pajamas or dirty olive-green fatigues had shown their faces on the paddy side of the vil. That meant the butchers had probably di di’ed in the other direction through the islands of jungle. And saved my life. I had disabled parts of my psyche, but blind rage was still the answer I gave all too often. Consequences, like a bullet through my chest, didn’t enter into the picture. Not even halfway across the paddy, I stood and headed in. Luong tried to pull me back, but I pushed him down into the slime. Dung covered every part of my jungle fatigues and filled my nose with the stench of buffalo shit. But the perfume I smelled was anger.

  The first casualty was the burning woman with a bullet in her back. Face up on the clay, smoke still drifted from her head. The hair from a quarter-inch mole on her right cheek was the only thing that kept her from being completely bald. Ants and centipedes were already attacking a pool of blood that leaked from under her left armpit. Her pajamas were nearly burned away, showing buckling skin, blackish red, and oozing over most of her body. A pocket of flesh on her stomach still smoldered as if it were phosphorous jelly. Eyes wide open, her lips moved slowly in prayer. I shot her between those black eyes with the Hush Puppy.

  The flames in the vil hadn’t died down. Bamboo crackled, and every few seconds a pole would explode with a high-pitched pop that couldn’t be mistaken for an AK-47 round. Two dogs ran through the smoke, tongues nearly hanging to the ground and eyes filled with madness. When they saw us, both dogs turned and ran back into the inferno. Now, the smell was a Saturday afternoon barbecue. The world had turned peach and black, as if I was looking through a night Viewfinder with an orange filter.

  The bodies were everywhere. Some in the open by the well or on the paths that crisscrossed the vil. Others were still burning in hootches. Almost every body had been shot in the head.

  Luong was right behind me. He tried to grab my arm and pull me into the jungle. He wasn’t crazed. Any dead Vietnamese filled his appetite for hatred, no matter what the flavor.

  Body after body, all women, children, or old men. No sign of Colleen. Maybe she was late or had left before the massacre. Yeah, and maybe LBJ was a loving grandfather. There was no need to check faces, she would be easy to identify by her size alone. Tran would be harder. I had already rescued him once from a scene almost identical to this. Second chances didn’t come down the trail often in ’Nam.

  The mantra in my head was “Don’t mean nuthin’.” Three words, the anthem that defined this police action, added to my armor. It must have been VC or NVA that did this, because I had heard the easily recognizable pop of AK-47s, not the chunk of M16s. It meant that Colleen might have been the target. And Pham Bien paid in blood for cooperating with foreign white devils. And, somehow, Ky was responsible.

  We had gotten as close to all the burning hootches as the flames allowed, and I turned over any charred baby’s body that might be Tran. I used my Hush Puppy on two of the unlucky survivors. The path at the far side of the vil led into a thin canopy of trees. A few meters down the trail, I could see a blackened lump the size of a mortar shell.

  Intuition. No one had the knowing of a grunt in the middle of a firefight. Every sound, every sight, every smell was magnified beyond any sense of proportion. The world was a 3D movie on your eyelids, playing at full volume on a concert-quality Marantz high-fidelity system. And you’d read the plot. It always ended badly.

  I stooped to touch the smoking bundle. A breeze blew some of his ashes toward the trees. When I stroked Tran, there was no softness to what little flesh remained on his bones. I tried to turn him over, but his little body felt like it would crumble at my touch. There was no blood. I could see a bullet hole in the back of his skinless head. Dead before they shot him.

  Luong stood above me, his eyes searching the tree line for gooks. The violent deaths of children, even the ones he loved, were a part of Montagnard life. It was one of the reasons that he and his brothers were some of the fiercest and most merciless fighters on earth. His life’s goal was to kill as many Vietnamese as possible before he met the gods. But, now, Luong bent down and gently touched Tran. I swore there was a tear in his eye. No fucking way that was possible.

  It was hard to get my hands under what was left of Tran. I slid my arms as gently as possible beneath his body and moved him to a spot under a banyan tree a few meters off the trail. The ground was covered with a layer of rotting leaves and brush. I swept it to the side and dug into the clay with my entrenching tool while Luong stood sentry. Every few seconds, Luong looked back and watched me dig. The thick roots around the banyan made a tomb that fit Tran perfectly. I covered his body with clay and gathered a few rocks to put over the grave.

  The Colonel and Mother weren’t churchgoers, and any religious bent I may have held was lost the minute the 727 touched the ground of ’Nam. The myth that there were no “atheists in a foxhole” was pure bullshit. God and Jesus, along with LBJ and Westmoreland, were the most cursed beings in any ’Nam foxhole I ever experienced. I took off my helmet and bowed my head. I remembered meeting Tran and rescuing him from a firefight when his adoptive parent had died with Tran in his arms. Now, Tran was dead. I remembered the way he sucked on my fingers and kept quiet when a VC patrol pa
ssed close by. I even remembered Luong smiling at Tran’s grin. Mostly, I remembered Colleen ruffling his thin hair and tickling him under his chubby chin. I couldn’t summon a prayer. Only memories. Don’t mean nuthin’.

  No Colleen. Not among the smoldering corpses. Kidnap was an often-used NVA and VC tool, and they must have thought this red-haired woman might buy a few more AKs or vials of morphine.

  On the trail, Luong pointed to boot tread marks, a giveaway it was regular NVA troops, sandal-wearing Viet Cong, who carried out the massacre. At least a dozen NVA had gone this way, and the length of their strides told us that they were moving fast. A daytime action like the massacre of Pham Bien would surely draw the interest of any American troops in the sector. If we didn’t catch them quickly, they would disappear with Colleen down one of the thousands of tunnels to wait for the night. After they put some distance between themselves and Pham Bien, they would stop leaving tracks. Luong and I followed at a trot.

  Ky. The further we went into the bush, the more I was convinced the evil was his. Beyond the slaughter, it meant he was working with the NVA. It was their signature we followed, and he must have ordered it done. Certainly the NVA were capable of massacring a vil, but it usually wasn’t their style. They used the “kill one monkey” strategy of Phoenix on their own people, kidnapping or forcibly enlisting those of fighting age. Not torching every living soul.

  The trail stayed in the trees, winding around rice paddies. After a few klicks, the terrain became slightly hilly and the jungle canopy thicker with fewer rice paddies. Monkeys chattered in the limbs, warning their brothers and sisters that more of the ugly men who walked on two legs were near. The men who carried death in the sticks in their hands. It was already near one hundred degrees and 90 percent humidity as we climbed the first of a line of rolling hills more like large mounds. Sun occasionally broke through the trees and cast shadows that seemed to hide a million gooks. No wind penetrated the thick growth, and all normal precautions were ignored. I kept up the pace.

  At the base of a banana tree, Luong, on point, motioned me to stop. During the chase, we had leapfrogged whenever the slightest hint of danger came up. He raised his nose to the canopy and sniffed. I did the same. Cheap tobacco. They were close.

  Pointing to the right and left of the trail, we slid into the jungle on opposite sides. Slowly we moved toward the smell, using trees, ferns, and low palms to hide our progress. The jungle was quiet, another sign that they were easily within range of an M16.

  There wasn’t time to lay a planned ambush. We would be outnumbered, and any second they might disappear down one of the thousands of Alice in Wonderland holes camouflaged in the country. My guess was they were celebrating a successful massacre and kidnap before they descended into darkness. We had to stop them getting into the tunnels.

  Five minutes later, I heard the low murmur of voices speaking Vietnamese. I gently pushed aside a palm frond with my M16 and counted fourteen men squatting on the clay or leaning against an ancient termite mound at least fifteen feet high. And one woman. Colleen’s hands were tied with bamboo vines. She was barefoot. There were scratches on her legs up to where her shorts ended just above the knees. Her khaki blouse was ripped and dark spots the size of C-ration cans covered her clothes. Black soot was smeared over her face and her red hair was a few shades darker. The closest NVA soldier jabbed her every few seconds with the barrel of his Kalashnikov. Colleen’s green eyes were closed, chin on her chest.

  At another time, I would have been overjoyed to encounter fourteen dinks together, all within range of a few well-thrown grenades. Full of victory and slaughter, this squad must have forgotten their training. But now, there was no way I could loft a grenade into the nest.

  I often marveled at the way Luong became invisible in the bush. Then, reading my mind, he would appear like a Montagnard ghost at the very moment I first needed him. Now, he was ten meters away behind a palm, staring at me. Using my hands, I made clear that we would open fire at my signal, working the kill zone out from Colleen. If any NVA ran to the jungle, we would use the grenades. Luong knew I would target the NVA to Colleen’s right and he would take those on the left.

  Before I could shoot, the NVA who had been prodding Colleen moved to the base of the termite mound a meter behind him and brushed away the dirt. There was a trap door. He said something to the other soldiers, they all laughed, and he dropped below the ground. No more time.

  My M16 was on semiautomatic for accuracy rather than to lay down a field of fire. I shot the man closest to Colleen in the head, immediately aiming at the next soldier. On Colleen’s left, NVA tried to shoulder their AKs or headed for the jungle. Only one made it. I could see all this in panorama without a thought or hesitation. On the right, I shot five soldiers, including one who dropped to his knees and pointed his rifle at Colleen. I caught a glimpse of black pajamas escaping behind a banana tree and wasted several shots that pinged off the bark. When I turned back, the muzzle of an AK appeared out of the tunnel opening, pointing at Colleen, standing in the same spot, frozen, her eyes still closed. I screamed, “No!” and ran out of the bush. Before I could reach her, the AK fired and she fell to the clay, the back of her blouse instantly turning red. Luong got to Colleen at the same time as me, took another step and dropped a fragmentation grenade down the hole. He turned back and squatted, scanning the jungle and switched his M16 to automatic. The ground shook with the explosion and chunks of the termite mound broke off, smoke billowing out of the tunnel.

  Over the last month in-country, I often longed to eat the barrel of my Hush Puppy, no silencer needed. A bullet through the brain just like the victims I had killed in the blackness of night. Especially after Liem. Now, I held Colleen in my arms and kissed the blood that leaked from the corner of her mouth. I vowed on Colleen’s soul that I would kill the NVA responsible and Ky before my tour ended. Liem, Tran, and now Colleen meant a death as painful as possible for Ky. And it didn’t matter if I ended up a rotting corpse nourishing the rice shoots. A bounty was already on my head, and I didn’t care if someone collected the reward. I would leave a body count of dead gooks that would make Phoenix smile.

  My pack felt heavier than Colleen when I lifted her over my shoulder. I walked to the trail. Before he followed, Luong dropped another grenade into the hole. There would be more hidden entrances to the tunnel complex within a few hundred meters of our position. Soon, NVA would be crawling up into the sunlight to kill us. Now I had a mission, but first I had to bury Colleen.

  Two klicks east of where we found Colleen, I stepped a few meters off the trail into a patch of wild orchids and laid her down beside a rubberwood tree while Luong stood sentry. The sun was directly overhead, cooking the jungle to a boil that smelled like a stew of rotting bananas. Flies as big as malaria pills fed on the dried blood that coated Colleen’s blouse and tried to drink from the sweat on my face. I brushed away a blanket of decaying leaves and started to dig my second grave of the day. This one would be bigger.

  Two women in the last three weeks. One died at the end of the barrel of my silenced 9mm. The other might as well have. I condemned her to this hole in the jungle clay. Death followed me like the stink of a latrine. I should have had one of those red skulls that marked the chemical warfare canisters sewn to my face. The first woman entered the spirit world after she freed my soul of any blame. Or so I believed. Liem was a genetic freak in a land of black eyes who I never met anywhere other than the dark. But Colleen, those emerald eyes brilliant in the sun, exposed me to a light that hadn’t burned for years. If ever.

  Love. Months ago, I read a poem written by a dead VC to his girlfriend or wife back home. It was translated by an ARVN lieutenant assigned to intel.

  You call to me

  Every moment of every day.

  Distance can’t keep us apart

  When destiny drew us together.

  I’ll hold you for eternity

  As long as you keep calling.

  Most Vietnamese could quote
the work of their country’s poets, who wrote flowery lines about love, family, and the beauty of the mountains and jungles. Or wrote their own verse. The poorest peasant could break into a singsong chant that even a white devil soldier could tell was poetry. It was culture unknown to most eighteen-year-old draftees only in ’Nam because they couldn’t afford a bus ticket to Canada. For some reason, this poem wormed its way into me and attached itself like a leech. I didn’t understand it then and wanted to own its longing. Brief moments with Colleen had opened a feeling that was only known to me in words. She would never call again, but I would hold her for eternity.

  It took me nearly an hour to dig a grave deep enough to hold Colleen. She had told me there was no family or loved ones who cared if she ever returned from ’Nam or I would have risked carrying her body to Cần Thơ. I dropped the last of the clay over her and spread leaves and rocks on top.

  When I finished, Luong turned to head back toward Cần Thơ. I touched his arm and pointed in the direction of Colleen’s murder, the opposite way. I didn’t wait for him to protest. Luong didn’t anyway, just looked into my anger and nodded. If we didn’t meet any of the pursuing NVA on the trail, I would stay near the tunnels until the rage was cleansed.

  Love may have been Indian country to me, but fury and revenge were friendly territory. Viper was the latest casualty. Colleen’s killers would be the next. Slowly, we made our way toward the tunnels, staying a few meters off the trail, hidden in the bush.

  It was only the scrape of a sandal on the clay. Enough to make Luong hold his palm up for me to stop. I was already crouching behind a Durian tree, M16 in one hand and the Hush Puppy in the other. Three gooks were moving down the trail. In a glance, I saw two carried AKs and one an M16. Bottle grenades were tied to their wastes. One wore the uniform of the Viet Cong, dirty shorts, and T-shirts. The two NVA, black pajamas and checkered handkerchiefs around their necks. I signaled Luong. We had done this so many times that another ambush was as natural as dysentery. Before they reached us, I signaled Luong to take the last NVA with his knife. He moved a meter to our left and stood still as a cobra. I would grease the first two with the Hush Puppy. No noise to alert their comrades or stragglers.