by Mark Dapin
Shorty also had a number of irritating theories about Izzy Berger, with whom he had spoken several times at Le Boudin without gaining any deeper understanding of his story. Berger seemed to think Caution was being hidden from him on a US base. Shorty’s idea was Berger had been robbed by the Mamasan – whose clutches, in Shorty’s mind, spread all the way to Kings Cross – who had abducted Caution and chained him up in her dungeon in the non-existent sewers of Vung Tau, so that he might take the blame for the disappearance of Izzy Berger’s investment.
The traffic crept, fettered by convoys, and the jeep arrived at Long Binh minutes before dusk.
Shorty was disappointed by the US base. He had imagined tall buildings with thousands of eyes. Instead, he found another sprawling campsite, swelling with snaking aluminium sheds like giant slaters, monster insects half-buried in the sand. He saw a shadow of enemy prisoners, gathered behind razor wire.
The jeep was met by an MP spec 4, who told Nashville they were late, the show had already started, and they should hurry backstage to put on their make-up.
‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ said Nashville.
‘Are you Corporal John Grant, the VD guy?’ asked the spec 4.
Nashville agreed that he was.
‘You’re on next,’ said the spec 4.
Nashville told Simpson and Eagle to grab themselves a beer, and he and Shorty followed the spec 4 to a low stage overlooking a wide piece of waste-ground, where a couple of hundred GIs were assembled like chequers: whites on one side, blacks on the other.
‘Where’s your costume?’ the spec 4 asked Nashville. ‘I heard you pull a condom over your head.’
‘I do not,’ said Nashville.
The dressing room was a large tent. The spec 4 opened the flap, then turned his back to the entrance.
Inside, a naked white woman was polishing her breasts with baby oil.
‘I find this very fucking difficult to believe,’ said Nashville.
Two other women were painting lipstick on their nipples. All the girls were blonde, but only recently. They had pale skin, caked whiter still by their make-up.
The woman with shining breasts noticed Nashville, stood up and shook his hand. ‘You must be the VD guy,’ she said.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Nashville to her breasts.
Shorty couldn’t speak.
‘My name’s Diane Arouse,’ said the breasts to Nashville.
Shorty’s chest tightened at the sounds of her voice. She was an Australian naked woman. In Vietnam.
‘Are you going to go on stage like that?’ Diane Arouse asked Nashville.
‘I do feel a bit fucking overdressed,’ Nashville admitted.
The woman giggled. ‘Oh, these aren’t our costumes, darling,’ she said, and she touched Nashville on the chest.
The stage manager, a US Army nurse dressed in orange shorts and a white blouse, held up five fingers, to show Nashville he had five minutes before he was to speak.
‘Who’s your cute friend?’ Diane Arouse asked Nashville.
Shorty blushed hot and red, like a sunset.
Nashville introduced them. The naked woman shook Shorty’s hand too. She told him she was from Randwick, New South Wales.
Diane Arouse would not let go of Shorty, so he tried to ask her about the case. Yes, she had heard of Izzy ‘the Deal’ Berger but they had never met, and around Kings Cross, where she was occasionally employed, he was better known by his more common name, ‘the Twat in the Hat’.
‘What is a twat?’ asked Nashville.
Diane Arouse pointed, which gave Nashville permission to look.
Shorty looked too. Diane Arouse caught him staring and smiled. The rest of the time she spoke to Nashville, she looked at Shorty.
‘I’ve never seen a VD guy,’ said Diane Arouse to Nashville. ‘Is it your own act?’
‘I’m the only one in Asia,’ said Nashville.
‘And your friend?’ asked Diane Arouse. ‘Is he unique too?’
‘I ain’t never met no one like him,’ said Nashville.
Shorty realised he had lived all his life in the company of men. Here he was, outnumbered for the first time by women. Their world was soft and pink. It sounded musical and smelled sweet.
The stage manager signalled one minute to go, when the tent flaps shook open, and a lumbering, precarious drunk balanced in the doorway, leering. The girls waved and giggled and pretended to cover up. The drunk fell towards Nashville, holding out his hand. His fingers quivered.
‘Glad you could make it,’ said the drunk, ‘corporal sick motherfucker.’
He had boiled eyes and red, peeling skin, as if he’d been buried up to his neck and left to die in the sun.
‘Shorty,’ said Nashville, ‘I’d like you to meet somebody.’
Shorty dragged his eyes from Diane Arouse.
‘This,’ said Nashville, ‘is the late Sergeant Timothy James Caution.’
TWELVE
Diane Arouse and the Dream Team danced onto the stage wearing tight blue spangled dresses. Spotlights made from searchlights caught the glitter of their sequins and reflected it onto the faces of the GIs, making the black men cry tears of snow. The girls’ dance steps were loose and unchoreographed, their act unrehearsed. They opened the show with ‘Baby Love’. It was supposed to start with a ‘oooooh ooh ooh-ooh’, but instead the girls sang ‘oh oh oh-oh’, as if they’d been taken by surprise.
Diane Arouse had a thin voice, and didn’t know the words. Behind the girls stood a group of Japanese musicians, playing like puppets. The guitarist smiled over his embarrassment.
The GIs booed. One man shouted for Bob Hope. The same thing had happened during Nashville’s brief performance.
Nashville and Caution sat together in the front row, and Nashville gently questioned Caution about his disappearance.
Caution said he didn’t know he had disappeared, and he hadn’t killed the chickens either.
The band swelled and surged into ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’. When Diane Arouse sang ‘Stop!’ she and the girls stood still, then hooked their thumbs under their shoulder straps and pulled down their dresses over their breasts. The spotlights rushed to sight their nipples.
The GIs roared. They began to shout ‘Stop!’ at the end of every line. The girls, pretending confusion, played along.
Nashville interviewed Caution, while keeping both eyes on the stage. ‘Where have you been, TJ?’
‘Looking after these girls,’ said Caution, pointing to the act.
‘Why you?’ asked Nashville.
‘Because I’m the fucking entertainment manager at Long Binh,’ said Caution.
Nashville scratched his neck. ‘Since when?’ he asked.
‘Since I went to Sydney, Australia on R&R,’ said Caution, ‘and rustled up a bunch of broads who’d sing with their titties out.’
‘But who gave you permission to go?’ asked Nashville.
Caution gave a drunk’s complacent laugh. ‘You did,’ he said.
Nashville had been expecting any answer but this one.
‘You were the leave officer,’ said Caution, ‘while the Captain was in Long Binh. But it seemed like the leave officer himself was absent without leave. Sure, you had all your little buddies covering for you – “Oh dear me, I’m sure Nash-hole will be along any minute, Mister-fucking-Sergeant, sir” – but I wasn’t going to miss the one spare seat on the first R&R flight to Sydney just because you’d got your cock stuck in a six-year-old. Didn’t you get my form?’
Nashville hated Caution.
‘I filled out the leave request,’ said Caution, ‘gave it your drunk-ass signature and the unit stamp, and I left it in an envelope made out to you. It would’ve been the first thing you saw, Nashville, when you finally got back to your fucking desk.’
Nashville scratched the back of his neck.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been at your desk in two weeks,’ said Caution.
Nashville did not tell him that.
‘But what about the note we found on your rack, TJ?’ he asked. ‘From a girl.’
Caution snorted. ‘What about it?’ he asked. ‘You think you’re the only one who gets any pussy in this town? Let me tell you, I see more yellow ass than your ma sees truckers’ cocks.’
‘You’re a funny guy, TJ,’ said Nashville.
And a dead man.
‘I chased that pussy down and stretched it all night long,’ said Caution. ‘Whenever I felt myself about to blow, I just had to think of the cadaver in the bar, and I bought myself an extra ten minutes. Next day, I climbed on that big bird to Sydney, Australia for seven nights of white women and song.’
Nashville didn’t like Caution’s explanation for his absence, because he suspected it might be true. ‘Why’d you shoot the corpse anyway, TJ?’ he asked, with little interest.
‘Some dumb-ass grunt moved his gnarly old arms and I thought he was reaching for a gun. What does it matter? Zipperhead had gone to the ancestors long ago, from what I hear.’
There was something odd about the way he said this.
‘You heard that, did you?’ asked Nashville.
‘I heard it,’ confirmed TJ.
It was the first time Nashville had not believed him.
‘Why didn’t you come straight back to the PMO?’ Nashville asked.
‘I got word the Aussies had sent someone to town to grease me,’ said Caution. He looked at Shorty, as though it might be him.
‘Why didn’t you tell the Captain?’ asked Nashville.
‘I heard somebody was talking to the fucking newspapers,’ said Caution, ‘I heard the VC had formed a fucking committee. I know all you bastards would love to see the back of me, because I’m the only real cop in town, so I figured I’d be better off here, in the belly of the mighty US war machine.’
Nashville nodded, because he would have done the same thing himself.
Diane Arouse sang ‘Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart’. On the word ‘heart’, she lifted the hem of her dress. She wore no underwear, and her hair was shaved into the shape of a heart.
A huge, redhead GI jumped up shouting, ‘I love you!’ and lunged for her. Two MPs shoved him back. He raised his arms like wings, as though he expected to fly, but fell onto the knees of a seated black man, who pushed him aside. Red landed in the dirt, then jumped up and punched the black man in the face. The black man’s buddy stood up, and Red knocked him down too. A taller, lighter black man was silently elected by the crowd, and pushed out to face Red. He threw a long, loping punch and caught Red on the chin.
All the US MPs except Nashville and Caution ran to separate the men.
‘Why do the Aussies want you?’ Nashville asked Caution.
A white GI pitched a rock at the blacks.
‘While I was over there, I spotted a business opportunity,’ said Caution. ‘I borrowed their girls and took their dough. I thought I’d make it right once they’d played a couple of shows.’
A white MP clubbed the black champion on the back of the head. The stunned GI’s knees quivered then dropped him, as if he had suddenly come to weigh more than his legs could carry.
‘But you can pay the Aussies back now,’ said Nashville, ‘right?’
‘Wrong,’ said Caution. ‘I only get four hundred dollars a show and out of that, I have to pay the airfares. I ain’t even covered my expenses.’
A pair of MPs dragged the unconscious black man out of the crowd. Bigger cops made a line to hide him from his buddies, while the others beat him up. Black MPs reinforced the whites, and turned the black GIs back to their barracks.
A man with an angry moustache and gleaming captain’s bars marched up to Caution, who jumped to his feet. Caution’s fingers shuddered, even in salute.
‘Are you out of your redneck fucking mind, Sergeant Caution?’ hissed the captain. ‘You’ve started a fucking race riot.’
Caution passed around a bottle of bourbon he’d smuggled back to the hut, where Nashville and Shorty were resting in racks vacated by dead guys. The three men toasted the US and Australia, and Guatemala, which had provided the beach towels.
‘The boss didn’t like the show,’ said Caution. ‘He’s sending me back to Vung Tau.’
He shook his head. ‘I thought it went okay,’ he said to Nashville. ‘And it was great to have you, of course, the VD guy. As soon as the CO told me you were coming over, I knew I had to get you on the bill. The guys didn’t seem too impressed but, hey, that’s probably because they figured you don’t have a pussy. See, they don’t know you like I do, Nashville.’
Nashville was very unhappy to have Caution back in South Vietnam.
‘The girls’ll never get another gig,’ said Caution, smiling.
Nashville didn’t like his grin, which crinkled his face to his hairline and almost closed his eyes.
‘I don’t understand how you plan to make money out of this, TJ,’ said Nashville.
The bourbon burned, a friendly fire.
‘I’m a lousy businessman,’ said Caution. ‘But that ain’t no concern of yours. Your job is to protect me from the Aussies, that’s all.’
‘I ain’t certain they’ve sent their best man after you,’ said Nashville.
Two MPs came back from their shift in the stockade. There was a big smiling rhino named Hillier, and a smaller bodybuilder whom Caution called Doom. They were both from Smyrna, Tennessee. Sometimes it seemed to Nashville that every man in the army was born under the Confederate flag.
‘I hear your concert went good, TJ,’ said Hillier. ‘The boys were howling to get out. I swear, a man inside can smell pussy half a mile away.’
‘We had to deal with them,’ said Doom. ‘Teach them against hollering.’
Hillier showed Nashville his nightstick. ‘See this?’ he said. ‘I greased the head with cam cream and stuck it all the way up a boy’s ass. If it’d been six inches longer, it’d’ve popped out his neck. I said to him, “You want pussy? Now you’ve got one.” ’
Caution and Doom laughed.
‘Bullshit,’ said Doom. ‘He didn’t even push it halfway. Hillier was like some faggoty fiancé, “Oh, please let me do it. I’ll only put the tip in.” Hillier massaged his asshole, that’s the truth of it.’
When they had left, Shorty told Nashville he didn’t think even the VC should be treated that way.
‘They ain’t talking about POWs,’ said Nashville. ‘Those’re our own coloured boys in the stockade.’
Nashville fell asleep with a cup of bourbon in his hand. When he woke up at five a.m., he lifted it to his mouth and drank.
THIRTEEN
Two days disappeared for Shorty and Nashville in aimless, orbital patrols of Vung Tau. But on the third silver morning after Long Binh, when Shorty went out to meet his partner at the PMO, he despaired to see Caution sitting in the jeep, with Mickey in the back.
Caution patted the seat beside him, as if Shorty were a dog.
‘Your buddy’s been called to Saigon,’ said Caution, ‘to talk his rotten-cock bullshit to the desk warriors and REMs. You and me are partners today.’
Caution slapped him on the back. Americans were always doing that.
‘And as a special treat,’ said Caution, ‘today we’re riding with the zipperheads.’ He waved at Mickey. ‘You’re Mickey Mouse, ain’t you?’ said Caution.
Mickey nodded his head and grinned.
‘Fucking idiot,’ said Caution.
Mickey allowed him to think he was stupid, and Shorty played along.
Izzy Berger was waiting outside the PMO in a cyclo. He amused himself by catching bugs in his hat until the jeep reached the boom gate, when Berger jumped out of the cyclo and called, ‘Sergeant Caution! We have business!’
Caution drove deliberately at the little man in the yellow hat. Berger jumped aside and back into the cyclo, and ordered the weary cycloman to follow the jeep. When Caution stopped for traffic at the end of Le Loi Street, Berger ran at the jeep, waving a white flag of legal
papers.
‘G’day, Shorty!’ he shouted.
Shorty touched the brim of his slouch hat.
‘Sergeant Caution!’ yelled Berger, as the jeep crunched off.
The cycloman panted after them, breathing the jeep’s tail pipe.
Shorty waved sympathetically at Berger.
‘What’s your interest in the Jew?’ asked Caution. ‘That was a joke,’ he realised. ‘Interest, Jew.’
Shorty didn’t get it, but he was used to that. ‘He’s an Aussie,’ he said.
‘You know what?’ said Caution. ‘Nobody else in the world gives a damn whether you’re an Aussie or some other kind of faggot. There ain’t one single soul in America who knows the Australians are fighting in Vietnam. And, if you told them, they wouldn’t know whose side you were on.’
A sea breeze swelled the Flags. Caution parked the jeep in a pile of ox dung. He offered a cigarette to Shorty but not Mickey. The snakeman leaned against a half-crumbled wall, the python’s head resting against his cheek. His blood was full of poison.
Caution traded seats with Shorty and told him to drive. They patrolled Nashville’s regular route. Caution catcalled the girls and glared at the cowboys. He muttered when he saw black GIs.
A peasant crossed the street with a monkey in a basket. Two men carried an alligator strung from a pole. The jeep was crawling along behind a horse-cart when Shorty heard a voice cry, ‘Americans nambawan!’
Bucky pedalled past, grinning. Caution reached out and grabbed him by the arm.
‘Stop the jeep,’ he told Shorty.
Bucky hadn’t noticed Caution, and his mouth fell open. Shorty braked, Caution tugged, and Bucky came off his bike. His panniers burst. Baguettes fell on the road, sliced by cartwheels and crushed beneath tyres. Caution leaned back and slapped the sleeping Mickey on the leg. He opened his eyes, and the military police of three nations jumped out of the jeep to confront the baker’s boy.
‘Bucky’s a local,’ Caution said to Shorty, ‘so we have no jurisdiction here. Mickey has to deal with him. But I’m in command of this patrol, so Mickey has to do what I say.
