R&R

by Mark Dapin

  It was the first time Caution had mentioned the incident to Shorty.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Shorty asked him. ‘Why shoot him when he was already dead?’

  Then Shorty realised it was a dumb question. ‘I suppose you didn’t know,’ he said.

  Caution examined Shorty’s face, as if he were trying to see how it held together.

  ‘Of course I knew the asshole was dead,’ he said. ‘That’s why I shot him.’

  There was less of the war in Saigon than Nashville had expected, but still more than he would have liked. It disturbed him that GIs walked around carrying weapons. He felt safer in Vung Tau, where only military police had guns. But his speech was well received, and gained credibility from not being used as a warm-up act for a troupe of mediocre Australian strippers. He had spent a happy evening beforehand making a collage of photographs copied from medical textbooks at the 36th Evac Hospital, and matching them with captions such as ‘VD will leave you scabrous, pustulating and infectious – just like Communism’. Another showed a picture of a vagina, a skull and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with the warning, ‘While venereal diseases primarily affect the genital region, Communism infects the head and the heart.’

  The men had cheered the vagina, and listened respectfully to Nashville’s Baptist digression about idolatry, brought on by the image of the Sacred Heart.

  Afterwards, he found a bed above a bar with Natalie Susan Mitchell, a young and energetic hostess. When Nashville left in the morning, she kissed him with ferocious enthusiasm, and he considered requesting a transfer to Saigon.

  He got back to the PMO midafternoon and retired directly to his rack, where he put Alice’s Restaurant on the stereo, folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. As Arlo began to explain that Alice’s Restaurant wasn’t the name of a restaurant, Caution turned up at Nashville’s doorway, uninvited and unwelcome.

  ‘Got to talk to you, Corporal,’ he said.

  Nashville put his finger to his lips. ‘Hush until this song finishes, TJ,’ he said.

  Caution waited sixteen and a half minutes.

  After the audience’s applause, the sergeant spoke. ‘I’ve got a business prop­osition for you.’

  Nashville picked up the cover of Alice’s Restaurant – it was just large enough to obscure Caution’s face – and began to read the liner notes.

  ‘Offence intended, TJ,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t go into business with you selling whiskey to the Cherokee.’

  Caution cracked his knuckles. ‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘You remember Diane Arouse and her pals? Those broads ain’t musicians.’

  ‘Damn right they ain’t,’ said Nashville.

  ‘I can’t get them another gig,’ said Caution, ‘It’s a godawful fuck-up. They’re eating me out of house and home, Nashville. And you know what they’re eating?’

  ‘Rice?’ hazarded Nashville.

  ‘Cock,’ said Caution.

  Nashville began to understand. ‘They’re whores?’

  ‘Well, they ain’t fucking Motown artists,’ said Caution.

  ‘And you’re their pimp?’ asked Nashville.

  Caution bridled, as Nashville had intended. ‘I’m their business manager,’ said Caution. ‘I take forty per cent. Have you any idea how much those sluts can make in a single day?’

  ‘I have not,’ said Nashville.

  Caution told him.

  Nashville was startled.

  ‘It’s an officers-only service,’ said Caution, ‘the only round-eye un-slanted pussy, dead cert, on tap, twenty-four hours a day.’

  Caution dropped his police notepad onto Nashville’s table, as if it were a wad of dollar bills.

  ‘This is my proposition,’ said Caution. ‘I’m going to rent out white pussy in Vung Tau, all year round, and I want you to join me.’

  Nashville looked at the ceiling.

  ‘There ain’t no white pussy in Vung Tau all year round,’ said Nashville. ‘Only nurses. And they ain’t pussy, or so I’ve been told.’

  This was Caution’s moment.

  ‘There’s a joint in Australia called Kings Cross,’ he said, ‘and it’s like Vegas, excepting it ain’t in the desert. The streets’re paved with whores, and they’re all looking for a vacation, Nashville. Diane Arouse and the others are just the tip of a cuntberg. There’ll be no call for the boys to go to Sydney on R&R. We’ll fly the Aussie pussy in to Vung Tau and save them the price of a hotel.’

  Nashville lit a cigarette. ‘You had Aussie partners, TJ,’ he said. ‘Why’d you rob them?’

  Caution laughed. ‘Look what they gave me!’ he said. ‘The only thing the whores needed to do – apart from the obvious – was sound like entertainers, and those circumcised kangaroo-bangers gave me the three worst singers this side of, I don’t know . . .’ he waved at Nashville’s stereo ‘. . . Arlo Guthrie.’

  Nashville realised he disliked Caution more than any man on earth.

  ‘They robbed me, buddy,’ said Caution. ‘Anyhow, we don’t need no hymies on the payroll. This is America.’

  Nashville lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of his last.

  ‘You’re next for R&R,’ said Caution. ‘All you’ve got to do is get to Sydney, find a bunch of broads who can suck cock and sing, and we’ll set up a tour as cover for them – maybe backed by the famous VD guy – and base them for a week in Long Binh, and two weeks in Vung Tau. I’ll run Long Binh, with Hillier and Doom, and you look after things. What do you say, Nashville?’

  ‘No,’ said Nashville. ‘It ain’t my game.’

  Caution banged his fist into his hand. ‘You’ve got to join me,’ he said. ‘I need a cop the zipperheads get along with, and you’re the only one. The Mamasan wants you in.’

  Nashville was tired of hearing about the Mamasan, and of listening to Caution’s voice.

  ‘You know what I think?’ asked Nashville. ‘I think there ain’t no Mamasan.’

  ‘That’s damn fucking strange,’ said Caution, ‘because she sure believes in you.’

  Nashville blew a smoke ring. It was one of his smaller pleasures.

  ‘The whores like you,’ said Caution, ‘The Mamasan likes you. Seems I’m the only guy in town who can see through you.’

  A bunch of medics from the 36th Evac Hospital were celebrating a twenty-first at Le Boudin, with a cake iced white and decorated with a bold red cross, like a crusader’s shield. The boy with the birthday sat in a wheelchair with tubes leading from his nose to an oxygen cylinder. Baby Marie cut the cake and helped him blow out the candles, her cheek touching his. Nashville thought maybe he hadn’t spent enough time looking at Baby Marie. He remembered the curve of her calves as he had watched her leave her bed, and the little grunts of passion she made, almost as if they were real.

  Quyn passed Nashville on her way to the cellar to fetch cheap wine disguised as champagne, another kind lie. Nashville again tried to recall if he’d ever been to bed with her. He supposed he must have. He asked after Tâm. Quyn told him she was around the back. Nashville rose to go and find her, but Baby Marie said, ‘She with someone.’

  He took another drink and thought, What do I care?

  Nashville wasn’t like the other guys. He didn’t fall in love with bar girls. He never thought, This one’s different, because he knew they were all the same. He decided he’d go with Baby Marie – but when he looked at her again, he realised he didn’t want her. He was turning faggot.

  He sat staring at the shelf of hard liquor on the other side of the bar, and attempted not to imagine Tâm with another man. An hour passed. Quyn tried to speak to him about Shorty. She wanted to know if he liked her. Nashville looked at Quyn – old and sharp and drawn, with long, thin fingers and cauldron eyes – and said, ‘Of course he likes you. You’re beautiful.’

  And he meant for her to believe it, because once she had been lovely and that was her dignity.

  ‘What the fuck is she doing for an hour?’ Nashville asked Quyn. Most men, when they came in from patrol
, couldn’t last five minutes.

  Nashville stood up. Quyn put a hand on his arm. He touched her fingers.

  ‘I need a piss,’ he said.

  He walked through the washroom, out the back, and into the annex where the girls met their men. It was empty. Behind the building was a small house where Tâm and Baby Marie lived. The door was open but there was nobody inside. Attached to the house was a courtyard, where Nashville could hear Tâm’s voice.

  He opened the gate to find her bathing a boy in an oil drum, patting his brow with a wet cloth, using warm water she had boiled over a fire. She wiped his chin carefully, and dabbed the dried blood on his cheeks. As she worked, she sang a mother’s lullaby.

  When she looked up and saw Nashville, she said, ‘You, fuck off.’

  The boy in the barrel turned his head slowly.

  ‘Americans nambawan,’ said Bucky, grinning.

  His smile split the corner of his mouth.

  One of his eyes was swollen shut.

  Nashville ran to him and took hold of his hands. Bucky seemed to think he was trying to lift him out of the barrel, so he stood up to help. His bruised knees trembled. His chest was a storm of lurid bruising, shredded by scores of small cuts, which rode over older scars raised by brandings and burning, torches and cigarettes.

  Bucky reached out for Nashville, and cuddled his head.

  ‘I think he’s dying,’ said Tâm.

  FIFTEEN

  Nashville woke up un-hungover, wrapped a towel around his waist and shuffled to the shower. It was a windy morning. The flagpole rattled. Sand blew around his legs, fizzing like static on his skin. He washed under a slow flow of tepid water, and returned to his hut to find Shorty standing outside.

  ‘They let you in, then,’ said Nashville, redundantly.

  Shorty pointed to the outside wall of the hut, where a pattern of curves had been freshly sprayed in army green paint, just below Caution’s window.

  ‘The walls have ears,’ he said.

  Nashville spat in the sand. ‘It don’t look like ears to me,’ he said. ‘More like tits.’

  Life, to Nashville, was one long Rorschach test.

  ‘Is there anything that doesn’t look like’ – Shorty forced himself to use the word – ‘tits to you?’

  Nashville stroked his chin. ‘Ass,’ he said.

  He went into the hut and methodically put on his uniform. He checked his pistol was loaded. He slapped his nightstick into his palm. He did not speak to Shorty as they drove a long, apathetic loop around the town. They shared a silent breakfast at a noodle stand, then Nashville took Shorty to Sam Singh’s.

  The tailor greeted them with his customary bow, and Nashville bowed lower, as if they were in a bowing competition. Shorty dipped his head. Sam Singh presented Shorty with a silk suit. Shorty tried it on in the cubicle. The jacket sat lightly on his shoulders, the sleeves reached his wrists, and the cuffs of the pants rested on the insteps of his size-fourteen feet.

  ‘This is a wonderful suit,’ said Sam Singh.

  Shorty brushed his fingers over the cloth.

  ‘It will change your life,’ promised Sam Singh. ‘No longer will the women laugh, and whisper, “Here comes the goalpost,” “Look at that bamboo tree,” or, “It would be like going to bed with a giant joss-stick.” Never again will you be known as the tailor’s needle’ – he pointed to his own – ‘or pipe-cleaner man. The girls will cease to see you as a cherry hayseed from a town nobody has heard of in a country no one knows. This suit may even draw attention away from your enormous feet, which are like skis in a land without snow.’

  Shorty stared at him, embarrassed and shocked. He hadn’t realised he was a joke.

  Sam Singh returned his gaze, humbly and sincerely, through round glasses that lent him the air of a butterfly collector. Then he giggled. ‘I am sorry, Mr Short,’ he said. ‘Nashville asked me to say those things.’

  The shop smelled of turmeric and cumin, fried onions and chopped garlic.

  ‘Is your daughter cooking?’ asked Nashville and, as he spoke, the girl slipped in from the back of the shop, and gave her father a bowl of swollen, dimpled samosas.

  Sam Singh blocked Nashville’s view of her body. ‘For you I have no daughter,’ he said, ‘you sick motherfucker.’

  He pointed the men out of the door.

  On the side wall of his shop, half-scrubbed away, Shorty noticed a large and ugly spray painting of a pair of ears.

  In the sky above the Flags, rain burst the bellies of overfed clouds and pelted the jeep with their entrails. A crowd of schoolgirls in elegant ao dai laughed under the shelter of an overhang. When the rain passed, Nashville realised he needed a piss. Shorty wanted to stretch his legs.

  ‘They sure do need stretching,’ said Nashville.

  Shorty didn’t know why everyone always felt they had to point out he was tall, as if he hadn’t noticed.

  Both men walked to Le Boudin. Moreau was in the cellar. Baby Marie took their order.

  ‘I found Tâm at home last night,’ said Nashville to Shorty. ‘She was bathing Bucky in an oil drum.’

  Shorty felt he was being asked to explain himself. ‘There was nothing I could do,’ he said, although he no longer believed that was true. ‘Caution thinks Bucky’s VC.’

  ‘No, he don’t,’ said Nashville.

  ‘He just likes to hurt people,’ said Shorty.

  Nashville nodded.

  ‘Why isn’t Caution on charge for going AWOL?’ asked Shorty.

  ‘Because it turns out he weren’t hardly AWOL at all,’ said Nashville. ‘His R&R was legit, and the commander at Long Binh authorised the girls’ show. So Caution was only technically AWOL for the day that I was technically AWOL, and I’m not greatly inclined to push things in that direction.’

  Nashville drank a coffee laced with cognac, then another, trying to loosen the knots in his thinking.

  ‘I’ve got a strategy for your suit,’ he said to Shorty. ‘You’re gonna wear it tomorrow night. I’ve found a restaurant for you and the nurse. Can you get out by nineteen hundred?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Betty’s on days. We were supposed to go to the movies on the base last night, but she had a headache.’

  ‘I would’ve thought,’ said Nashville, ‘that in the event of a fucking headache, a nurse would be able to get aspirin.’

  Shorty, too, had entertained this thought, then supressed it.

  ‘Did you see the ears on the wall outside the tailor’s?’ he asked Nashville. ‘I think it’s a threat. I think they’re singling out their enemies, and telling them their time’s up.’

  Nashville sucked a Marlboro. ‘I think they’re painting them every­where I go,’ he said, ‘so I can find my way back when I’m drunk.’

  Shorty realised Nashville hadn’t smiled all morning.

  Caution came into the bar, and Nashville’s heart twitched.

  Not here, he thought. Not now.

  Baby Marie disappeared. Caution looked around for Moreau.

  ‘Where is that asshole?’ he asked.

  Nashville finished his beer. ‘Only asshole here is you, TJ,’ he said.

  Caution laughed, as if Nashville had made a joke and Caution had enjoyed it.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Nashville. ‘Why’d you beat up on the baker’s boy?’

  ‘What do you care?’ he asked. ‘He ain’t your retard.’

  ‘Bucky didn’t deserve it,’ said Nashville. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘So what’re you going to do about it, Nashville?’ asked Caution. ‘Are you going to frag me? Are you going to whup me?’

  Nashville stared at Caution standing over him, with his legs apart, his mouth tight, his eyes slit, his jaw set, his fists balled at his waist, trembling. He nauseated Nashville with all his conscious meanness. Nashville saw Caution’s messy, vandalised nose, the stitching scars on his brow, the burst lip raised like a sneer, but just because you took a beating when you were a kid didn’t mean you had to give a beating
to a kid. You couldn’t get rid of a hurt by passing it on. Nashville knew, because he had tried as hard as anybody.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Caution asked Shorty. ‘You got some­thing to say, asshole? So why didn’t you say it in the street? Oh, you were too busy whacking the retard.’

  Caution turned to Nashville.

  ‘Did you know that, asshole?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t me that bust Bucky’s fucking head, it was your pal here, Mr My Asshole Shits Holy Water.’

  Moreau climbed up from the cellar, like a guerrilla coming out of a tunnel.

  ‘Pour me a drink, asshole,’ said Caution.

  Moreau looked at him with tremendous regret, and turned up the volume on his gramophone. He was playing Jacques Brel’s ‘Ces Gens-là’, all that anger about nothing.

  Izzy Berger shuffled in, and asked Moreau for un café s’il vous plait. Moreau served him immediately.

  ‘Do you have to speak fucking French around here?’ asked Caution.

  Berger approached Caution waving his white flag of legal papers. It was the third time he had tried to corner Caution in a bar. Caution pushed him aside with a big, open hand.

  Moreau gave Berger his coffee. It had a rousing, bitter smell.

  ‘Give me,’ said Caution to Moreau, ‘a fucking drink s’il vous plait, asshole.’

  Moreau shook his head. ‘You’re not welcome here,’ he said. ‘Please leave.’

  Moreau kept his old service pistol under the counter. He had never used it in the bar.

  ‘You damaged the boulangerie boy,’ said Moreau. ‘He works for my bakery, Sergeant Caution. Get out of my restaurant.’

  ‘I’ll go when I’ve had my drink,’ said Caution.

  ‘Here,’ said Moreau, and he threw a cup of Algerian vin ordinaire in Caution’s face.

  Droplets of wine clung to Caution’s cheeks like tears of blood. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes with his fists. When he dropped his hands, his irises were pink. He shook his head vigorously, a hunting dog drying off after a swim.

  It’s so easy to confuse him, thought Nashville.

  Caution grinned then grimaced, searching for the right response. Berger saw Caution’s hand move towards his pistol and stepped back, but Shorty jumped in and gripped Caution’s forearm.