Army Blue

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Oh. This. It's Captain Morriss's. I took it out of his closet.”

  “Does he know you're here?”

  “No. I left after he went to sleep.”

  “What are you doing here at this hour of night?”

  “I don't know. I needed to talk to someone. Captain Morriss put me in a room in the BOQ and went to sleep. I knocked on his door trying to wake him, but I didn't get any response.”

  “Captain Morriss told you about me.”

  “Just before he went to bed. Yes.”

  “He told me you were under orders not to speak to the press.”

  “He said something about talking to you off the record. I could talk to you and you wouldn't tell anyone. He said he trusted you.”

  “I'm glad. I trust him, too.”

  The Lieutenant smiled, then dipped his head and gulped air as if he hadn't taken a deep breath in weeks.

  “Are you okay?” Cathy Joice asked.

  He looked up blankly.

  “I've got to get out of here,” he said. “I've got to get to someplace bigger than a little room like this. Being in that cell got to me. I've never been locked up before.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Come on. Let's go get a drink.”

  “I wanted to go back to my unit, but Captain Morriss told me it doesn't exist anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “He said they shipped everybody out right after I was arrested.”

  “Won't you be needing those guys as witnesses?”

  “I think that was the point of shipping them out,” said the Lieutenant.

  “Of course.”

  The Lieutenant was staring out the open door to her balcony, staring, staring, shoulders hunched forward, arms dangling at his sides.

  “I'm in big trouble. You know that, don't you? I mean, Captain Morriss, he told you, didn't he?” he asked.

  “Yes. Captain Morriss . . . Terry told me.”

  The Lieutenant continued to stare out the balcony doors, breathing in shallow, forced gasps of air. His chest was heaving convulsively, and beads of sweat had formed on his forehead and were dribbling down his face.

  “Are you okay? You sound like you're hyperventilating.”

  “Just... a ... minute . . .” he gasped. “Give . . . me ... a ... bag . . . paper . . . bag.”

  She rummaged in her closet and found a paper bag and handed it to him. He held the open end of the bag tightly over his nose and mouth and breathed into the bag quickly, shallowly. The bag inflated and deflated with every breath. Slowly his breathing grew deeper and more even. In a moment he removed the bag from his mouth and nose and turned to look at Cathy Joice.

  “I'm . . . s-s-s-sorry,” he stammered. “I didn't mean to put you through this.”

  “That's okay. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “I think I need a drink.”

  “I think you do, too,” she said, leading him to the door.

  “I'm finding it harder and harder to give a shit what happens to me,” said the Lieutenant, following her. “So much bad has happened already, I don't care what happens from here on out.”

  “Let's go find someplace open and get drunk,” she said.

  “I know a place,” he said. “One of the guys in my platoon told me about it. It's down on the waterfront somewhere, near a canal.”

  “What's it called?” she asked.

  “The Kit Kat Klub.”

  “Let's find it.”

  They wandered from the Continental down Tu Do Street toward the Saigon River waterfront, and from there south, past the Hotel Majestic and the Club Nautique, across the Ben Nghe Canal into South Saigon, a thick undergrowth of shacks and alleys and backstreets along the Saigon River.

  As they crossed the canal, the Lieutenant asked what Captain Morriss had told her about him.

  “Not much,” she said. “Only that he thought you were innocent.”

  He followed her as they headed down one alley after another, each darker than the last, all of them spookily hooded by line after line of laundry blowing softly in the breeze overhead.

  They rounded a curve and the street dead-ended. Ahead was a barnlike structure made from sheets of tin and scavenged sides of corrugated aluminum shipping containers from the States. The logos of a dozen American companies stared down at them from the side of the building like testimonials. Over the door, a single lightbulb illuminated a childishly hand-lettered sign reading KIT-KAT-KLUB.

  “This is the place,” said the Lieutenant. “They said it looked like a warehouse.”

  He pushed open the door and they entered.

  It was a long, narrow, rectangular room with a high cathedral ceiling and a bar at one end. A post-and-beam structure held the roof aloft, and the insides of the scavenged packing crates and tin sheets could be seen along the walls, many of them stenciled CAM RAHN BAY, the place they were shipped. Three rows of bleachers ran along either side of the room, and they were filled with Vietnamese men, every one of whom seemed to be smoking. The air hung thick and low with the acrid cloud of smoke from their cigarettes. The room was utterly silent. The only sound that could be heard was the soft shuffle of slippers along the wooden floor as a half-dozen ao dai -clad waitresses scurried back and forth to the bar, carrying trays of large earthenware jugs.

  “What kind of place is this?” Cathy Joice asked.

  “I'm not sure,” said the Lieutenant. “One of the guys in my platoon told me about it a couple of months ago. He said it was open around the clock and that you'd never find a place like it back in the States.”

  “I guess not,” she said, standing perfectly still, taking in the scene.

  A short Vietnamese man with a wispy gray beard and a gray ponytail materialized next to them. He was wearing a black silk robe with a purple and yellow orchid embroidered on the back. The cuffs of the robe were turned back, revealing a purple and gold patterned silk lining, the same colors as the flower.

  “This way, please,” he said in unaccented English. He bowed and moved his arm as if sweeping aside a curtain, and shuffled down the bleachers. From the way he moved, he appeared to be in his seventies or eighties, but his face was completely unlined and his eyes shone with energy and intelligence.

  He stopped halfway down the row of bleachers. Three men hurriedly stood and moved away, disappearing in the smoke.

  “Please,” he said, bowing and gesturing with his robed arm.

  They sat down on the bleachers where he pointed. He bowed and snapped his fingers. One of the waitresses appeared out of the smoke and bowed to him and to the Lieutenant.

  “You want to drink,” said the robed man, more as a statement of fact than a question. He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress disappeared, her black ao dai rustling against her thighs as she scurried into the smoke.

  “Many pleasures,” said the old man as he backed away from them, bowing as he went. He clapped his hands twice and was gone.

  The lights went out.

  “What's going on?” Cathy whispered.

  “I don't know,” said the Lieutenant. Instinctively he reached for her hand and found it clammy with nervous sweat. He gripped her hand tightly and hugged it to his stomach.

  The waitress emerged from the darkness, handed each of them a tall ceramic jug. Before they could pay her, she disappeared into the dark.

  The Lieutenant took a sip from the jug.

  “It's rice beer,” he whispered. “It's strong. Kind of sweet. Try it. It's good.”

  Cathy raised the jug to her lips and swallowed.

  “Hey, you're right. I wonder why you can't get this at the hotel.”

  “I think they make it here,” said the Lieutenant.

  “Where? In a back room?”

  “Here. In this part of Saigon. It's home brew, I'm pretty sure.”

  “I think this is exciting. I've never seen this side of Saigon.”

  “Neither have I.”<
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  A spotlight blinked once, twice, then snapped on, flooding the empty floor between the bleachers with yellow light. A sound could be heard floating softly into the room from somewhere behind the bar.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick . . .

  “What's that?” the Lieutenant asked, leaning over to whisper in her ear.

  “Sssshh.”

  Suddenly the tin-walled space was awash in light and a hundred men were before them holding drums and cymbals and lance-sticks and garbage-can lids and iron chains and tin cans full of pebbles nailed to the ends of sticks and jeep wheels and long strips of tin that quivered eerily in the smoky light.

  The men were half-naked, wearing jockstraplike loin wrappings and sarilike lengths of dyed cloth wrapped around their necks and upper arms. Some of them had hair that had been tied in a topknot and festooned with bright pieces of string that dangled to their waists, and others had heads shaven bald except for a single thick tuft of hair that emerged from the backs of their heads and cascaded down their backs like black waterfalls.

  The spot blinked off-on and the men began to move, shuffling about the room haphazardly, but on the same beat.

  Shuffle-stomp-shuffle-stomp . . .

  They wandered the floor in aimless patterns, turning left then right then left, stopping, spinning on bare heels . . .

  Stomp . . . they found the beat.

  Clang-clang-clang-clang the pounding began on drums, garbage-can lids, pieces of steel, old jeep wheels . . .

  And a high-pitched wavering sound blew like an ill wind through the air, wheeeeee-eeeeeeeeesssssh it came, teasing the ear with tickling weeping tender tones of doom . . .

  Stomp . . .

  The spot blinked off-on-off-on again, and the room began to shake with light and heat and noise.

  They were both riveted on the mass of flesh and noise in front of them.

  From the other end of the room twenty women emerged from the smoky gloom in single file wearing floor-length ao dai skirts and tight silk body wrappings and towering headdresses of feathers and painted palm fronds and bead strings and cascading strips of colored foil . . .

  Stomp . . .

  The men began to circle them . . .

  The women danced fluidly, hands over their heads, bodies swaying to the shuffle-stomp-shuffle-stomp beat, eyes down, chins left right left right left right, hips swiveling, bare feet gliding across the floor soundlessly . . .

  A noise riffled through the dark room like dry leaves blowing across gravel . . .

  Thunk . . .

  The lances hit the floor and it began again . . .

  The men circled the women in tighter and tighter circles and the women swayed faster and faster and faster until the circling of the men and the swaying of the women became one black aqueous wave of wet bodies and black hair and wavering headdresses and shuddering feathers and pounding instruments . . .

  The women were in the middle of the floor, lying in a wet circle, undulating to the beat . . .

  Stomp . . .

  Bright lights flooding everything, a hundred bodies whirling madly, blazing eyes caught trancelike by the spots, unblinking, wet eyes, black-rimmed eyes, flashing whites, black face holes whirling and spinning and twisting and crying . . .

  Whoosh . . . the wind the spinning mad wet white eyes whirling tin strips twirling arms sweat spraying thud-thud-thud wall of clanging noise . . .

  “Matt, those women aren't really women,” Cathy whispered, tight against his ear.

  “I know.”

  The Lieutenant turned his head to look at Cathy. Her face was dripping with sweat, hair matted to her head, eyes wide, taking it in . . .

  The lights went out and he couldn't see her. He reached for her hand.

  It wasn't there.

  The noise washed over him, laying him back against someone's knees . . .

  "Cathy!"

  He gripped her more tightly, pressed her against his chest, buried his face . . .

  He held her and he could feel her breathing and her wet hair stuck to his face and her neck smelled like sweet wine vinegar and sugar poured over fresh dirt like the edge of a lake where water licked mud and brushed your face with birth air birth wet birth fog birth black birth white . . .

  “Cathy . . .” He whispered in her wet ear.

  "Cathy!"

  They screamed her name banging jeep wheels and tin cans and sabers and lances . . .

  “Cathy . . .” He whispered and he held her to him and they shuddered in the thunder . . .

  "Cathy!"

  They screamed and her name slapped at him through the smoke crushed him smothered him and he bent over and he whispered in her ear . . .

  “Let's go.”

  He clutched her to him and stood up . . .

  Stomp . . .

  He looked to see where he was going and a hundred brown sweating faces stared at him, black eyes gleaming in the blinking spots like buttons sewn on the surface of a nightmare . . .

  He tried to move, but he couldn't. . .

  Stomp . . .

  He looked down . . .

  Thunk . . .

  Both of them were tethered to the bleachers with wire wrapped around their ankles wrapped around the bleacher supports tying their feet to the floor . . .

  Stomp . . .

  Whoosh . . .

  “Let us go! Let us go!”

  They mocked him and they moved as one and a hundred wet bodies stared at them and moved sideways left and stared and moved sideways right . . .

  Shuffle-stomp-shuffle-stomp . . .

  He tried to walk and his feet wouldn't budge and he reached down and tugged at the wire but it was tight too tight . . .

  Stomp . . .

  He was holding her with one arm and tugging at the wire tugging tugging and his hand was bleeding and sweat ran off his forehead into his eyes and dripped on his hand and a stream of sweaty blood covered his shoes and the wire bit into his ankle and his ankle bled and mixed with the sweat and the blood on his shoes and ran onto the wet floor and . . .

  Thunk . . .

  The lances came down pounding the floor as one . . .

  He tugged and tugged and tugged and she fell from his arm onto the bleachers in a heap and he tried the wire holding her feet to the bleachers and nothing gave way and his hand bled onto her feet and her feet turned wet red wet red wet red . . .

  He felt something . . .

  Stomp . . .

  He looked down . . .

  Thunk . . .

  A hand reached through the bleacher supports holding a bayonet and the bayonet severed the wire and his feet kicked out from under him and he landed on the bleachers atop Cathy and he looked down and the hand and the bayonet slashed through her wires and her feet flew forward and he lifted her arm and wrapped it around his neck and he stood and he started walking . . .

  Stomp . . .

  He felt the weight of her body ease up from his shoulder and he looked to his left across her wet bowed head and Repatch grinned at him crazily in the smoky dark . . .

  Repatch.

  The lances hit the floor . . .

  “This is some shit, huh, Eltee?”

  Repatch yelled at him over Cathy's head and the stomping bodies parted and black eyes followed Repatch warily and they carried her to the door and Repatch lifted his foot and kicked the tin door and it flew open and the cold night air hit them like a wet sheet and they carried her out the door and down the narrow alley with laundry waving over their heads like flags of doom in the dark . . .

  They reached the end of the alley and the Lieutenant felt Repatch turning left, so he followed him, then Repatch turned right, and he followed him, and the alley opened up and they were walking next to the canal and crossing the bridge and they were back in Saigon proper and Repatch stopped at a bus stop bench and they eased Cathy down onto the bench and the Lieutenant collapsed next to her and he looked up.

  “Repatch. What in holy hell are you doing here? How did you find us?”
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  “I been with you for a while,” said Repatch. He was looking to his left and his right and his hand was on the handle of the bayonet which was stuck in his belt and in his other hand he held a .45-caliber pistol. A figure materialized out of the misty dark.

  “Who's that?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “Danny Jannick,” said the figure. “I'm a friend.”

  “He's okay, sir. He's some kinda reporter. He come up to see me in the boonies,”

  “Are you okay?” Jannick asked.

  The Lieutenant nodded.

  “What in hell is going on, Repatch?” he asked.

  “Some weird shit, huh, Eltee? Ever since the clearing and the plane, huh? Some weird shit, that's fo’ sure, sir.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I walked.”

  “I mean, from the unit. From the platoon.”

  “Ain't no platoon no more, Eltee. They disappeared ‘em, every one. I jus’ walked outta the base camp and hitched me a ride from Dak To.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Here? Saigon?”

  “Anyplace.”

  “I been here in Saigon tonight, last coupla nights. Been stayin’ with Jannick.”

  “What are you doing down here?”

  “Waitin’ fo’ you, Eltee. That's what I been doin’ for the past week. I been up Long Binh every day, waitin’. Nights, I been down here.”

  “Jesus, Repatch.”

  “I know, sir. Some weird shit, ain't it?”

  Cathy began to stir, and the Lieutenant brushed the hair from her face and crooked her neck against his shoulder.

  “She be okay, sir. Jus’ give her a minute.”

  The Lieutenant held her and rocked her and she coughed and looked up.

  “Where . . . where are we?” she whispered.

  “We're out of there,” said the Lieutenant.

  “I want to go home,” she said.

  Repatch reached down and hooked her arm around his neck and the two of them stood up and gathered her legs under their arms, and with Danny Jannick leading the way, they carried her the six blocks back to the Continental. When they reached the hotel, Repatch turned left and led them through a side entrance, down a dark corridor, and up a set of back stairs.

  The Lieutenant dug into her purse and pulled out her keys and opened the door and they carried her to the bed and eased her gently against the pillows.