The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

by Aaron Polson

  One day, the lieutenant lost it. His college education blocked common sense—wisdom that even I, a straw-headed farm kid from Kansas—could comprehend. After stopping the column, the thin line of green men snaking through the leaves, Lt. Wucker steamed past me and moved forward, approaching The Surgeon as he knelt at the front of our unit.

  “What the hell are we doing?” he asked in a near-whisper, his voice quavering enough to belie his frustration and insecurity.

  “Avoiding traps.” The Surgeon didn’t speak often, but his voice was low, grinding like slabs of concrete rubbed together. He looked forward, into the jungle ahead, not really speaking to the lieutenant at all.

  “Like hell. We’re heading the wrong direction.” Lt. Wucker squirmed a bit as he spoke, an effect of the jar of swimming eyes hanging around The Surgeon’s neck.

  “Your mistake,” said The Surgeon.

  “I’m in command. Decker, on point. Karnowski, you head to the rear of the column.”

  We didn’t march long before we all realized Lt. Wucker’s error. While walking point, Nick Decker, nineteen-year-old high school dropout from Alabama, stepped into a small hole filled with sharpened bamboo shafts—a hole in the ground like the maw of some awful, prehistoric shark. The point of one stake punctured the bottom of his boot, slicing through his foot, and punching through the leather upper. Nick released a sharp yelp of pain and dropped to his knees. We spent an hour sorting out a medivac.

  “Fucking Lieutenant,” Tallman muttered as we sat on the orange earth and smoked.

  When we weren’t walking and digging holes in the dirt, we waited in the rear. The rear—sounds like we actually had a front line—only a newbie called it the rear for long. But short stints at base camp brought better sleep, quick showers, and nights of poker under a corrugated steel roof that amplified the rainy season.

  “Linder, stop fucking around and deal,” Tallman said after biting the tip off of his cigar and spitting the brown plug onto the dirt floor of the hootch. I quickly tossed five cards to each of the guys around the table, Tallman, Dave Rowe, Mickey Hernandez, Cliff Manalo, and myself.

  “Did you guys hear about Decker?” Rowe, a pale kid from Minnesota, asked in his slow northern drawl while the rest of us scrutinized and organized our cards.

  “Lost his foot.” Tallman flipped open his Zippo and ignited the end of his cigar.

  “No shit.” I looked past Tallman to where The Surgeon sat on his bunk, casually flipping through the pages of Hot Rod. The dim light of the barracks cast a pall over his face, graying his features like a silver gelatin print of some grim-faced old salt from one of my high school history books. The jar sat on a small shelf next to him, covered with a green towel.

  “Fucking gangrene. Had to amputate.” The cigar tip glowed as Tallman inhaled.

  “Fucking Lieutenant,” Manalo said, laying his cards face down on the table. He was a solid and square man with a dark face and smudged jaw.

  “Should have listened to The Surgeon.” Tallman tossed five cigarettes in the center of the table. “Ante up, boys.”

  I didn’t find much sleep at night, any night, but I spent that particular night stretched on my bunk, staring at the dark ceiling of the bunkhouse, thinking about Nick Decker’s missing foot and The Surgeon’s jar of eyes, eventually dreaming about one-eyed men marching toward me, each extending one hand. The next morning, as we saddled up for a return to the bush and our hide-and-seek game with a phantom enemy, curiosity ate at my stomach like I’d swallowed a fist full of nails.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, clutching my M-16 like a lifeline.

  “What don’t you get?” Tallman tightened the straps on his rucksack.

  “Does he always just cut out one eye?”

  “Yeah, since I’ve known him.”

  “I don’t get it…”

  “What’s there to get?” Tallman shrugged and shouldered his pack while the deafening thump of helicopter blades devoured us.

  In the field, our lives resumed the predictable pattern of walk, dig, sleep for two, three hours, and repeat. Lt. Wucker received word from the CO that elements of D Company drew the job of flushing out a contingent of North Vietnamese regulars massing north of An Khe. To us grunts, all this meant was more walking with the chance that some violence would break up the tedium of routine. We were bait.

  I sat on my helmet, cleaning my M-16 for the second time that morning. Around me, other members of the platoon milled around, smoking, flashing quick glances at each other without speaking. While reassembling my weapon, my roving eyes caught The Surgeon, standing alone, dissecting the pile of forest in front of him. The jar rested in the palm of his right hand, and I thought his lips moved a little, like he was talking to someone I couldn’t see. He turned and strolled toward the Lieutenant. I stood, snagging my pot and dropping back on my head as I meandered in the same direction.

  “Lieutenant,” said The Surgeon.

  Lt. Wucker looked at him, folded the map he studied a moment before, and stuffed it inside a plastic bag before speaking. “Yeah Karnowski?”

  “Bad vibes today.” The Surgeon’s eyes wandered past Wucker.

  “We have orders, Karnowski.” The Lieutenant tried to meet his gaze. “I don’t give a shit about your goddamn vibes, understand?”

  The Surgeon thrust his thumb over one shoulder toward the thick trees behind him. “Sniper. Thought you should know.” With this, he turned and marched away from Lt. Wucker and over to a small group of grunts—Tallman and Manalo among them. Wucker stood like a whitewashed statue for a moment before turning back to the radio and digging his map out of the plastic bag.

  Fifteen minutes into the thick canopy and a VC sniper split Private First Class Matthew Tallman’s head with one well placed shot. He walked only ten feet in front of me, and with one quick snap, his body dropped to the ground like an abandoned marionette. I instantly burrowed, clutching my helmet to my head, terror slashing and burning through my prone body. I inhaled the pungent mud and dropped my weapon. I scratched at the ground while some members of the platoon returned fire; the popping reports of M-16s sounded like little firecrackers lit under a Folgers can, seeming so far away.

  After a few moments of fear, I scrambled for my gun. My eyes caught The Surgeon boring straight into me with an infrared glare. He pointed at me and then pushed toward me with his hand. Without thinking, I obeyed, rolling to the other side of a jagged tree stump. A small geyser of earth erupted where I’d been. I swallowed hard while my eyes were drawn by that small smoking crater.

  Members of our platoon sprayed the treetops with gunfire until a slight man in black dropped like poisoned fruit. He hung in space, tied to a rope attached to the top of the tree, dangling in front of the tree trunk just feet off the ground.

  Lt. Wucker sent a few men on perimeter watch while the medic attended Manalo, his right side ripped into a jagged, crimson wound by the sniper. Hernandez and Rowe zipped PFC Matthew Tallman’s nearly headless body into a black bag. Only then did the chattering jungle sound return. That was the odd thing, the quiet, listening jungle followed by the slow rise of distant monkeys, birds, and buzzing insects.

  The Surgeon stood alone next to the sniper, rolling a toothpick in his mouth. He pulled the knife from its hilt, sawed the rope, and dropped the body to the ground. Kneeling then, with deftness and precision, he carved out another eye for his jar as the heavy beating of a medivac helicopter closed around us.

  Somebody should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernandez scowled as we hunched outside our tents and smoked the last cigarettes of the day. I looked from him to Dave Rowe, and then The Surgeon.

  “Yeah, fuck him. He should listen to The Surgeon.” Rowe looked at me, and my stomach squirmed.

  “Can’t be helped,” said The Surgeon as he tossed the smoldering butt of his cigarette into a stand of damp grass and ducked inside his tent.

  “I still say we should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernadez puffed out his chest an
d sucked in a long drag. Through the shadows just inside his tent, I could see The Surgeon’s face, eyes open and staring beyond the green canvas.

  After a few weeks of intense search and destroy, the company returned to the rear for a week of rest, part of the constant cycle. During that month of combat, The Surgeon continued to collect eyes until a full school like little fish swam inside that small jar. After Tallman’s death he withdrew, talking little to anyone, not even the Lieutenant. Tension in the platoon mounted with causalities, and we would never wash the orange earth from under our fingernails.

  The Surgeon approached the officers’ hootch the night before we were scheduled to ship out again. While sucking on a cigarette and enjoying the night sky in relative safety, I watched him knock on the door, say something to the man that answered, and wait. Wucker came to the door when summoned, and The Surgeon seemed to be explaining something to him, gesturing with his arms more than I’d seen in the past. The Lieutenant shook his head, returned inside, leaving The Surgeon to turn and wander away. He walked toward the perimeter, and my legs started in that direction without conscious thought.

  “Hey Linder.”

  “Hey,” I said, sidling next to him, “how’d you know…”

  “…it was you? Easy.” He held the glass jar toward me, white orbs dancing as the liquid jostled inside. “Take it. Give it a try.”

  I moved my left arm to take the jar, but hesitated, a vice squeezing my lungs.

  “They won’t bite.” He dropped the jar in my hand, and I felt it as a small electric pop—like static electricity but moving through my arm and chest. The eyes bounced and jumped. I looked at him, his rectangular face, washed with an even pallor in the twilight, and then his face faded, the sharp coil of concertina wire in front of us faded, even the night faded like so much color washed down a drain.

  I glimpsed snatches of jungle, trail, rice paddy, and even here in the camp through dozens of eyes at once. I reeled for a moment, spinning and lost with no solid substance beneath my feet, then, looking down, realizing I had no feet. My skull burned, but I heard his voice saying, “focus, focus” inside my brain. The ground rushed at me, and I fell to my knees, my perception suddenly thrust back behind my eyes as I doubled over, retching, on the hard ground.

  “It gets easier Linder.” He held the jar again, and offered a hand to help me stand. “Focus on where we are right now.”

  I took the jar again, cold and heavy in my hand, and concentrated. Again, the world faded, but this time the colors melted together again in an eerie, not quite daylight glow. My eyes seemed to stretch their scope and vision into the jungle, reaching out almost like fingertips. In the strange space, people—soldiers—walked from between the trees. The whole scene vibrated inside-out, like a shimmering photo negative.

  Some of these shadow soldiers approached me and reached out with black fingers. The jar vibrated in my hands, almost dancing as the figures approached. Each had one eye, the other just a space, and empty circle of white. I didn’t really feel anything—no fear, no repulsion.

  One of the shadows stepped in front of the others. He touched the side of his face, the space next to his intact eye, and I suddenly stretched like a thin filament through space, drawing into his vision. Daylight burst in normal colors. Our company lined up outside the bunk houses, and an unfamiliar officer paced in front of the line of ragged grunts. I saw faces I knew, but no Gerard Karnowski or Lt. Terry Wucker.

  Suddenly, blackness and stars leapt at me while The Surgeon chuckled at my side. “You’ll learn.” Then a pop, a nearby but muffled sound. I hugged the earth, fearing sappers—a surprise attack. As I hunched to the ground, my eyes were parallel to his boots, black but caked with too much of the red-orange dirt. The Surgeon hadn’t even flinched.

  “That’ll be the Lieutenant.” He knelt down next to me as I pushed myself into a sitting position. His eyes flashed for a moment, almost fading to bright red before dissolving into his usual brown. “I tried to warn him.” I looked into camp and saw dark forms rushing about in the night as the raid sirens began to crank.

  “What?”

  “Look. You keep this.” He set the jar on the ground next to me. “I’m tired. It’s gotten too heavy.” He strolled back toward the hootches, tumult, and commotion, vanishing in shadow and movement. I sat on the ground next to the jar, just studying the eyes for a short while before scooping it up and heading for shelter.

  Gerard Kowalski was gone the next morning. In his bunk lay his clothes and bowie knife, but nothing else, no letter, no clues to his disappearance. Lt. Wucker died, officially, at the hands of a VC sapper. Most of the members of D Company knew the truth. One of us—hell, all of us—fragged him for not following The Surgeon’s advice.

  In time, I learned to rely on those shadow-soldiers. I learned to “see” like The Surgeon: avoiding mines, snipers, and helping to make the platoon one of the most efficient in the 1st Infantry. Our new Lieutenant learned to value the gift The Surgeon left behind. At the end of June, 1970, I boarded a Freedom Bird and came back to The World. The jar, wrapped in brown paper, rested in my lap on the plane. Disconnected from war, its power faded, but it sits, my one souvenir, on a shelf in my basement, next to old Christmas ornaments and board games—still wrapped in plain brown paper.

  10: Bottom Feeders

  We rode our bikes to Potter’s Pond on lazy Saturday afternoons in the spring, before school let out for the summer and the heat grew too oppressive. I struggled on my brother’s ten-speed while Joel raced his red Huffy. We traveled with our fishing poles balanced on handlebars, jutting out in front of us like antenna. Potter’s Pond was a forbidden place tucked behind Greenwillow Cemetery, a secluded spot to fill Saturday afternoons. Joel’s dad had lectured him about trespassing and how much trouble we could find—but we laughed at his warnings, and Elroy Jantz, the old owner of the bait shop, told stories that drew us like moths.

  “Hope you’re not planning on heading up to Potter’s Pond,” he told us as he scooped baitworms into a brown paper sack. “It’s a pauper’s grave, full of folks who couldn’t feed their families or buy a small hunk of land of their own.”

  We snickered at first.

  “Dressed ‘em in old throwaway suits and dresses from the DAV for a quick service, then tossed the bodies straightway in the water, just as soon as the dead man’s folks left.” The old man leaned forward, examining us with his black gaze, and then laughed in a thick tone that killed our smiles but roused curiosity. “They died hungry, and they’re still hungry.”

  The sky was clear, and the bright sunshine chased away any shivers spawned by Elroy’s story as we wound through the gravel paths of that immense cemetery. Generations of Spring County residents lay under the rolling grass with plenty of hills and trees blocking the view, so we couldn’t take in the whole place from any one vantage point. I struggled on the gravel roads because of the narrow ten-speed tires; Joel rode ahead and would mock me over his shoulder with lines from B-movies we watched on late night TV.

  “They’re coming to get you, Denny,” he said that day.

  We left our bikes at the back of the cemetery as usual, laying them down just outside a barbed-wire fence hiding in the tree line. That fence marked the border between Potter’s Pond and Greenwillow. Erected years ago out of crooked tree limbs and poorly strung, the fence wouldn’t hold our weight, so we took turns squeezing between the sharp wires while the other pried them open, crossing the threshold one at a time.

  Through a path between trees—tall oaks perfect for climbing with low, untrimmed branches, dying brown pines, and knobby arthritic redbuds—we saw the green of the pond. The odors of dirt, moss, and decay floated in the air. Stout Kansas wind rarely broke the water’s surface because of the trees that encroached on its lip; only two small bare patches of packed dirt remained open for fishing. The pond wrapped around at the eastern end, bending out of sight. I’m sure it would be a sort of gourd shape if seen from above, with curved stem hidden from vi
ew by branches and aggressive undergrowth. The land around the pond was so green and alive, yet somehow twisted, crooked, and diseased. Sometimes old man Jantz’s stories were easy to believe.

  Joel sat and busied himself with knots and fishing line. I worked a writhing earthworm onto a single barbed hook. We never used treble hooks in that pond anymore; the bullhead, these runty catfish, had small mouths, and we lost many hooks before learning our lesson. A worm threaded on a thin hook worked well enough on those eager bottom feeders.

  “How many you shooting for today?” Joel asked as he tied the nearly invisible knot with his adept hands.

  “At least a dozen.” I chuckled, casting my line into the slime, studying my orange cork bobber, waiting for the inevitable action.

  After a few moments of silence, Joel stood and tossed his line in, angling away from mine. “I’m going for something big today.” He sat on the packed earth, staring into the water. “Something big has to live in there.”

  We waited. Joel’s bobber was the first to dip below the still surface. “First blood,” he said. As he yanked the pole to set his hook, the line held.

  “First snag,” I replied. Potter’s Pond may have been full of hungry bullhead, but it also contained more than its share of snags—bits of log, vines, and roots of trees that undoubtedly created a thick underwater labyrinth. This made a perfect home for bottom feeders, scavengers lying in wait, and a perfect spot for snags.

  Joel tugged hard, walking his pole up the bank. “Whatever it is, I’m pulling it out.”

  I glanced into the stinking water. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “I don’t want to tie another damn knot and lose a hook if I can yank this out.”

  I watched the spot where his line broke the surface. Slowly, steadily, the water split open and something green-black under the afternoon sun grew out of the pond. At first I thought it was a log, a mossy bit of fallen tree until the heavy vulture’s head of a massive snapping turtle rose from the surface.