Better Times Than These

by Winston Groom

  “If we push straight through,” Dalkey said, “we’ll lose our air cover at dark. Those gunships can’t do us any good at night. If we hole up somewhere along the way, we ought to be all right, but if there’s a squad of VC around we’d be sitting ducks for a mortar attack.

  “On the other hand, there aren’t any facilities for the men here on the beach, and the Old Man is expecting us sometime today—he’s got an orientation schedule all set up for tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

  “Try to get through again,” Patch said, looking at his watch.

  Holden picked up the canvas-covered field phone and cranked furiously, then waited.

  “Torch,” he said loudly, “this is Typhoon; get me Wicked Blast. Over.”

  Something incoherent was muttered from the other end of the line. Moments later, a faint voice identified itself as Wicked Blast.

  “Wicked Blast, this is Typhoon; get me Smokey-One. Over,” Holden said.

  There was a pause.

  “No, no—Typhoon—this is TYPHOON,” he said.

  Another pause.

  “TYPHOON—tango-yankee-papa-hotel-oscar-oscar-niner. Over.”

  “What’s he say?” Patch asked.

  “He thinks I’m saying ‘Baboon,’ ” Holden said.

  “Give me that thing,” Patch said impatiently. He snatched the handset and spoke directly into it.

  “This is Typhoon-One; give me Smokey-One,” he said.

  “No, no, TYPHOON—TYPHOON! Over,” Patch shouted.

  There was a long pause.

  “LISTEN, FORGET WHO I AM—JUST GET ME SMOKEY-ONE—UNDERSTAND?” Patch bellowed.

  “Sir, I believe you’ll be more successful if you hold it a little bit away from your mouth,” Dalkey offered.

  “Shut up, Major, I’m handling this,” Patch said, grinding out his cigar in an ashtray.

  After a while there was a squeaking, scratching sound at the other end of the line.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Patch said, sounding pleased.

  “Smokey, this is Typhoon-One; get me Smokey-One. Over,” Patch said.

  Again a scratching, growling noise.

  “NO, TYPHOON; I SAY—GET ME SMOKEY-ONE! YOU HEAR?”

  Another pause. Patch turned to Dalkey. “Who the hell is this ‘Baboon’ everybody’s talking about? What kind of call sign is that?”

  “I think it’s something to do with the Navy, sir,” the major said.

  Patch returned to the phone.

  “LISTEN, THIS IS COLONEL PATCH, YOU HEAR—I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE GENERAL,” he roared.

  More scratching sounds. Patch’s eyes suddenly became wild.

  “I KNOW COLONEL PATCH ISN’T THERE, YOU IDIOT—THIS IS COLONEL PATCH. GIVE ME THE GENERAL!” he bellowed.

  Another pause, and then a thin voice came onto the line.

  “Ah,” Patch said, “finally.”

  “General,” he said. “We are here at Cam Ranh Bay. We are ready to move out. The situation is this: If we leave now we will be traveling at night, and Dalkey informs me the roads are not secure. We can wait till tomorrow, or we can leave now and push on through and arrive your location by about twenty-three hundred, or we can leave now and set up somewhere and arrive your location approximately ten hundred tomorrow. It is up to you, sir, what do you say? Over,” Patch said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “What’s that you say, sir?” Patch said, leaning into the phone. “Say that again!” he demanded.

  The person on the other end repeated the message.

  “WHO IS THIS?” Patch screamed. His face contorted as though he had just stuck his finger into an electric socket.

  “JEEP DRIVER! I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO ANY GODDAMNED JEEP DRIVER—I WANT GENERAL BUTTERWORTH, DO YOU HEAR ME?”

  The line went dead and Patch slumped down in a chair, the handset dangling limply in his hand.

  “It’s impossible,” he said dejectedly. “We are on our own.”

  15

  They left within an hour. The men were packed into the trucks like cattle, and the incessant jolting and bouncing soon became almost as irritating as the seasickness aboard the transport. Aside from this, their journey into the afternoon sun took on a strange, mystical flavor. The caravan wound its way slowly out of the sand and heat of the beach, past the seething-reptile city; past the artillery site on a low, flat hill; past the dark oil and gasoline storage bins strategically located away from the neat tent town in case someone decided to blow them up, and on into the countryside.

  Patchwork rice paddies stretched toward a forbidding line of trees on their right, and on the opposite side of the road, more rice fields covered the earth all the way to the emerald mountains. Every so often a shining white villa was glimpsed among tall palm trees, and in the fields an occasional farmer, his black pants rolled to his knees, worked behind a large water buffalo. On both sides of the narrow, bumpy road the convoy intermittently passed men and women headed in the direction of the seething-reptile city, some on foot, some riding bicycles and many carrying some kind of produce.

  A few were fixed up with a yoke device across their shoulders on which straw baskets were suspended, and they moved in a peculiar, bent-over quickstep as though some mysterious force had catapulted them forward and they were trying to come to a halt. Someone in Crump’s truck identified these people as peasants, and after thinking about it for a while, Crump decided that except for the land and the peasants’ clothing, it wasn’t much different from what went on along the roads into Tupelo, Mississippi. This made Crump wonder if he would be considered a peasant if he had been born here instead of in Tupelo.

  They rolled on for another hour, crossing a rickety bridge over a dark, hyacinth-choked stream with banana trees growing on its banks. From a sandbagged rathole just below the side of the bridge, three Oriental men emerged, wearing the green uniform of the South Vietnamese army and carrying carbines. They waved as the trucks went by the same way country people sometimes wave at passing automobiles. Crump was the only one in his truck who waved back, and he felt a little foolish for doing it. All the others seemed slightly on edge and gripped their rifles in a tense way, even though they had been told not to load them or even to open the cardboard ammo boxes stacked on the floor of the trucks.

  Kahn, riding in the truck cab, was still thinking about the rock-throwing incidents on the beach. It was the first time he had ever had to chew out a fellow officer, and it continued to nag at him both because of what Brill had said and because he realized he was probably going to have to do it again, and often.

  He had taken Brill down toward the beach, out of earshot of the men, and as Trunk was dealing with them, he dealt with Brill.

  Brill freely admitted to throwing the first rock, but he argued excitedly that the children were obviously preparing to throw rocks at him and that he wanted only to get in the first lick to scare them away. In other words, Brill saw nothing wrong with it, and as he spoke, in eager, exercised tones, Kahn found himself worrying what Brill might have done if they had had ammunition for their weapons.

  At first Kahn had tried to reason with him. He was going to be Company Commander for—well, maybe for good—and he would have preferred to stay on the good side of his officers if possible. So he explained to Brill that they simply couldn’t allow this sort of thing to occur, because the fact was, they were all going to be in this country for a long time, living among the people, and the less strained relations were, the better . . . and also that they had just gotten there and really didn’t know what was going on, so they’d best not stir up anything unnecessary, and . . . furthermore, that it just didn’t look good . . .

  While Kahn was talking, Brill had stared out across the water, his steel-blue eyes narrowed and his thin mouth set tightly, but with almost the hint of a tiny smile. As he listened, Brill took out his custom-made Randall knife—which he had once confided to Kahn he had purchased by selling his stamp collection—and ran the razor-sharp blade ever so lightly across his
thumb, which was disconcerting to Kahn, but he ignored it and proceeded with the matter at hand.

  When he finished, Kahn asked if Brill understood what he had said. Brill, however, did not look at him, but continued to stare across the water and saw the blade of the Randall knife lightly back and forth across his thumb, and Kahn finally exploded and said, “Goddamn it, Brill, I’m talking to you! Do you understand what I’m saying?” and Brill finally looked up, while Kahn proceeded to deliver a stern warning to him not to do that kind of thing anymore. All during this admonishment Brill nodded as though he did, in fact, understand it, but he never stopped sawing away with the Randall knife, and a thin ooze of blood had appeared on his thumb. Even as Kahn was talking, it began to occur to him that Brill might be disturbed, if not seriously crazy.

  At the outskirts of a small village the trucks came to a halt.

  Two helicopter gunships rattled by, headed for the front of the convoy, their door gunners peering down curiously at the men in the trucks. Fifteen minutes later word came back that “some kind of accident” had occurred ahead and they would be there for a while. Trunk announced that the men could get out and stretch and relieve themselves in the fields. Many of them needed to take bowel movements but were reluctant because they had sighted women in the village.

  There were only a dozen or so houses, set low among coconut palms and built of a white, stuccolike substance. The earth around them had been padded hard and bare, and in the street a few small children played in puddles of green, slimy water. Bravo Company had been told to stay within shouting distance of the trucks, but this still allowed them to go into the village. At the end of the street was a small tin-roofed shack, its front open to display an assortment of shabby vegetables, fruits and other goods, including several cases of American C rations. The proprietor, wearing a conical straw hat, stood at the entrance as Crump, DiGeorgio, Spudhead and Madman Muntz approached.

  “Lookit that guy there,” Muntz said sourly. “Whatdaya suppose he thinks about at night?”

  “He probably don’t think nothin’ . . . He looks like a crook to me,” DiGeorgio said.

  “I’ll bet we can get a soda pop there,” Crump said cheerfully. “Anybody want a soda?”

  The man began to smile when he saw them headed for his store. His teeth, what there were of them, had been stained a nasty brown by betel-nut juice, and he began to nod and bow as they came up.

  “Lai, lai, sai, Ahmerican . . . tune-dok-cat. Jayo-no we-do woe,” the man babbled.

  “That’s what’s wrong with these people,” Muntz declared. “They’re okay till they open their mouths; then they sound so goddamn stupid.”

  The store owner reached into a box behind him and retrieved an olive-green container of C-ration canned peaches.

  “Tun-duc-tan?” he said stupidly.

  The men howled with laughter and the proprietor joined in with them, repeating over and over again his singsong sales pitch.

  Spudhead recovered enough to proceed with the conversation.

  “No-no—soda pop—see—so-da-paahp,” he said carefully, shaping his hand to grasp a nonexistent round object.

  The man looked confused for a moment, then went to a basket of bananas and held one out to them.

  “Oh, for crissake,” Muntz said dismally.

  “Uh, no-no,” Spudhead pleaded. “We want . . . uh . . .” He thought for a moment.

  “Kok-ah-kola,” he said finally. “You got Kok-ah-kola?” Spudhead felt like an idiot.

  A broad smile crossed the proprietor’s face and he departed into the dark recesses of his shack. Moments later he returned holding two live chickens in his fists.

  “Ah—kokahkola,” he announced happily.

  “Fuck me,” DiGeorgio groaned.

  From behind them, a raspy voice injected itself.

  “You want me to help you, soldiers?”

  They turned to find a frail young man balanced on one crutch, his pant leg pinned up just behind the knee where his leg had once been.

  “I speak American, I speak Vietnamese,” the man smiled. “My name is Bac,” he said.

  “Uh, yeah—tell him we want soda pops, will you?” Muntz said in an authoritative voice.

  “I was Vietnamese soldier,” Bac continued, “until VC blow off my leg. I was number-one soldier. I was sergeant in Two Corps. I was decorated by Marshal Ky himself—for fighting bravely.”

  “Could you just ask him if he has any Coca-Cola?” Spudhead said nicely.

  “Oh, Kokahkola, yes.” Bac grinned. “Of course.”

  Bac turned to the store owner and yammered away at him. The store owner yammered back. It reminded Crump of barking dogs.

  The proprietor disappeared again, and Bac addressed the men.

  “You let me talk with him for you, okay? He say too much money, Ahmercan, but I get good price for you,” he said.

  They looked at one another and eyed Bac suspiciously, but DiGeorgio said, “Okay.”

  The proprietor returned with four dripping-wet bottles of Coca-Cola clutched to his chest. He yammered something at the men, but Bac interceded.

  “What’s he say?” Muntz demanded.

  “He say fifteen piasters apiece,” Bac said. “Fifty Ahmercan cents.”

  “Half a buck for a stinking Coke!” DiGeorgio cried. “Tell him he’s full of shit.”

  Bac spoke to the man again. They yammered away for nearly a minute, and Bac turned once again to the men.

  “He say twenty-five Ahmercan cents . . . no less. He will not change,” Bac said.

  They bought the Cokes for a quarter apiece, and as they gulped them thirstily, Spudhead felt a rush of generosity.

  “Can we buy you a Coke too?” he asked Bac.

  “No, thank you,” Bac said. “You are very kind, Ahmercans, but I do this service for you. I do not wish to be repaid.” They were astonished and thanked him politely and started to walk away.

  Bac hobbled after them on his crutch.

  “Please,” he said. “There is something I would like to show you . . . You come with me, okay?”

  They stared at him in silence.

  “Ah, no, I don’t think we can . . . Uh, we have to go back . . .” Spudhead gestured toward the road.

  “Only a moment,” Bac pleaded. “Ahmercan don’t come here much . . . I think you like what I show,” he said. His eyes looked earnest, almost desperate, and a sad grin crossed his pockmarked face.

  “Well, what is it you want us to see?” Spudhead asked tentatively.

  “Please, you come . . . over here,” Bac said, pointing to a tiny shack behind a run-down villa. He took a few steps and turned on his crutch, still smiling.

  “Well, what can it hurt?” Muntz said. “Maybe he’s got a girl back there or something.” The others looked nervously at each other but forced obligatory smiles at this prospect. “What the hell?” Muntz whispered. “He don’t know these weapons ain’t loaded.”

  “Yeah, why not?” Crump suddenly declared, walking toward Bac. The others followed uncertainly.

  Bac limped ahead of them, his pinned-up trouser leg flapping as he walked. They passed a gathering of children and a few older people engaged in various forms of work. Crump thought again of the freak-show crowds at the fair. Each of them felt a queer exhilaration at what they were doing. They had been warned so many times about the Vietnamese . . . that they were untrustworthy, that all were suspect, that they would fall on you without mercy at the first opportunity. But somehow they trusted Bac. His pleading grin and sawed-off stump lulled them into a sense of security.

  As they walked, some of the older people and most of the children began to follow behind them. By the time they reached Bac’s shack they had attracted a small crowd.

  Bac ducked inside the canvas door flap and remained there for what seemed a long time. When the flap opened again, it was not Bac that appeared, but a small apelike creature about a foot tall which sprang out on all fours and looked around nervously. A long cord leash was atta
ched to a red collar on its neck, and at the end of the leash was Bac, smiling crazily, coming through the door.

  “You see,” he said proudly, scooping up the animal and holding it out to them—“banana-cat.”

  “Hey, lookit . . . a monkey,” DiGeorgio said.

  “I’ll be . . .” Crump said. The creature reminded him of a singed possum. “Hey, don’t be scared, little feller.” He reached out to touch it, and the banana-cat seized his bony fingers and tried to jam them into its mouth.

  “Ah!” Crump cried, drawing back his hand.

  “No, please . . . banana-cat very friendly . . . he like Ahmercan . . . not hurt you,” Bac said, scolding the animal gently.

  “You buy banana-cat from me? I must sell . . . not much money, okay?” Bac said.

  Crump, DiGeorgio, Spudhead and Madman Muntz looked at each other and a wistful grin came over Bac’s face. The banana-cat glared at them resentfully. Suddenly it began to cheep loudly and struggle in Bac’s arms. He petted it and it calmed down.

  “Uh, I don’t think we need no monkey, Bac,” DiGeorgio said finally.

  “Please,” Bac said. “Not much money . . . I give you for only one hundred Pee . . . you take, okay?”

  “Ah, no, thank you, Mr. Bac,” Spudhead said. “You see, we really don’t have any place to keep a monkey.”

  “Ahh . . . banana-cat very clean,” Bac pleaded. “Catch mice and frogs . . . keep your house clean.”

  “We ain’t going to no house, Bac,” Muntz said. “We gonna live in the woods . . . out there, see?” He gestured into the distance toward a dark stand of jungle across the paddy fields.

  “Oh, yes, yes . . . banana-cat very good in jungle too, eyes wonderful at night . . . smell VC long time away . . .

  “You see,” Bac said, “I have banana-cat long time, since he very tiny. But I must go to Nha Trang soon . . . for proslectic.” He pointed down at his missing leg. “Very expensive; you see, I must buy from doctors there . . .” The banana-cat began to chirp again, and Bac stroked it into silence.

  “You take, okay?” he said. They felt embarrassed.