"Jesus Christ!"
Donny felt a hand on his shoulder as the words exploded into his ear. He turned.
"What the h.e.l.l are you you doing here?" doing here?"
Of course it was Crowe, in jeans and a work shirt looking very proletariat. He had-where the h.e.l.l did he get that?-a camouflaged boonie cap on to disguise his hairlessness. He held a beer in his hand and was with three other young men who looked exactly like him except their hair was real, and long. They looked like three Jesuses.
"Crowe," said Donny.
"I didn"t know this was your kind of place," said Crowe.
"It"s a place. They have beer. What the f.u.c.k else would I need?" Donny said.
"This is my corporal," Crowe said to his pals. "He"s a genuine USMC hero. He"s actually killed guys. But he"s a good guy. He only made me drop for twenty-five today instead of fifty."
"Crowe, if you"d learn your s.h.i.t, you wouldn"t have to drop for any."
"But then I"d be collaborating." collaborating."
"Oh, I see. f.u.c.king up funerals is part of your guerrilla war on the grieving mothers of America."
"No, no, I"m only joking. But the funny thing is, I can"t tell my left from my right. I really can"t."
"It"s port and starboard in the Marine Corps," said Donny.
"I don"t know them them either. Well, anyway. You want to join us? Tell these guys about "Nam?" either. Well, anyway. You want to join us? Tell these guys about "Nam?"
"Oh, they don"t want to hear."
"No, really," one of the other kids said. "Man, it must be f.u.c.king hairy over there."
"He won a Bronze Star," said Crowe with a surprising measure of pride. "He was a hero."
"I was lucky as s.h.i.t not to get wasted," Donny said. "No, no war stories. Sorry."
"Look, we"re going to a party. We know this guy, he"s having a big party. You want to come, Corporal?"
"Crowe, call me Donny off duty. And you"re Ed."
"Eddie and Donny!"
"That"s it."
"Come on, Donny. Chicks everywhere. It"s over on C, right near the Supreme Court. This guy is a clerk. He knew my big brother at Harvard. More p.u.s.s.y in one place than you ever saw."
"You should come, Donny," said one of the boys. Donny could tell that the hero thing had cut through politics and somehow impressed these war-haters, who just a few years back had been worshiping John Wayne.
"I"m engaged," Donny said.
"You can look look, can"t you? She"ll let you look, won"t she?"
"I suppose," said Donny. "But I don"t want any Ho Chi Minh s.h.i.t. Ho Chi Minh tried to kill my a.s.s. He"s no hero of mine."
"It won"t be like that," Crowe promised.
"Trig will like him," one of the boys said.
"Trig will turn him into a peacenik," said the other.
"So who"s Trig?" said Donny.
It was a short walk and as soon as they were outside, one of the boys pulled out a joint and lit up. The thing was routinely pa.s.sed around until it came to Donny, who hesitated for a moment, then took a toke, holding it, fighting the fire. He"d had quite the habit for a few months in "Nam, but had broken it. Now, the familiar sweetness rushed into his lungs, and his head began to buzz. The world seem to come aglow with possibility. He exhaled his lungful.
Enough, he thought. I don"t need more of that s.h.i.t.
Capitol Hill had the sense of a small town in Iowa, under leafy trees that rustled in the night breeze. Then, through a break in the trees, he suddenly saw the Capitol, its huge white dome arc-lit and blazing in the night.
"They sacrifice virgins in there," one of the boys said, "to the G.o.ds of war. Every night. You can hear them scream."
Maybe it was the gra.s.s, but Donny had to smile. They did sacrifice virgins, but not in there. They sacrificed them ten thousand miles away in buffalo s.h.i.t-water rice paddies.
"Donny," said Crowe. "Can you call in artillery? We have to destroy the place to save it."
Again, maybe it was the gra.s.s.
" "Ah, Shotgun-Zulu-Three," " he improvised, " "I have a fire mission for you, map grid four-niner-six, six-five-four at Alpha seven-oh-two-five, we are hot with beaucoup bad guys, request Hotel Echo, fire for effect, please." "
"Cool," one of the kids said. "What"s Hotel Echo?"
"High explosive," said Donny. "As opposed to frags or white phosphorous."
"Cool as s.h.i.t!" s.h.i.t!" the boy responded. the boy responded.
Music announced the site of the party far earlier than any visual confirmation. As at the Hawk and Dove, it blasted out into the night, hard, psychedelic rock beating the dark back and the devil away. He"d heard the same stuff over there, though; that was the funny thing. The young Marines loved the rock. It went everywhere with them, and if their tough noncoms hadn"t stayed on their a.s.ses, they"d have played it on ambush patrols.
"I wonder if Trig is here," one of the boys said.
"You never can tell with Trig," Crowe replied.
"Who"s Trig?" Donny asked again.
The party didn"t seem at all unlike any other party Donny had attended back at the University of Arizona, except that the hair was longer. Milling people of all sorts. The bar scene, though crammed into smaller, hotter rooms. The smell of gra.s.s, sickly sweet, heavy in the air. Ho and Che on the walls. In the bathroom, where Donny went to p.i.s.s, even an NVA flag, though one manufactured in Schenectady, not downtown Haiphong. He had a rogue impulse to burn it, but that would sure blow the gig now. And really: it was only a flag.
The kids were his own age, some younger, with a few middle-aged men hanging around with that intense, long-haired look that the DC crowd so liked. Judging from the hair, only he and Crowe represented the United States Marines, though Crowe was far from an amba.s.sador. He was telling some people a familiar story of how he almost got out of the draft by playing psycho at his physical.
"I"m nude," he was saying, "except for this cowboy hat. I"m very polite and everybody"s very polite to me at first. I do everything they ask me to do. I bend and spread, I carry my underwear in a little bag, I smile and call everybody sir. I just won"t take off my cowboy hat. "Uh, son, would you mind taking off that hat?" "I can"t," I explain. "I"ll die if I take off my cowboy hat." See, the key is to stay polite polite. If you act nuts nuts they know you"re faking. Pretty soon they got majors and generals and colonels and all screaming at me to take off my cowboy hat. I"m nude in this little room with all these guys, but I they know you"re faking. Pretty soon they got majors and generals and colonels and all screaming at me to take off my cowboy hat. I"m nude in this little room with all these guys, but I will not will not take off my cowboy hat. What a f.u.c.kin" hero I am! What a John Wayne! They"re screaming and I"m just saying, "If I take off my cowboy hat, I"ll die." " take off my cowboy hat. What a f.u.c.kin" hero I am! What a John Wayne! They"re screaming and I"m just saying, "If I take off my cowboy hat, I"ll die." "
"So you weren"t drafted?"
"Well, they kicked me out. It took weeks for the paperwork to catch up, and by that time, my uncle had cut a deal with the Man to get me into a slot in the Marines that wouldn"t rotate to the "Nam. You know, when this is over, all those charges will be dropped. n.o.body will care. We"ll write the whole thing off. That"s why anybody who lets themselves get wasted is a total moron. Like, for what?"
Good question, Donny wondered. For what? He tried to remember the boys in his platoon in 1/3 Bravo who"d gotten zapped in his seven months with them. It was hard. And who did you count? Did you count the guy who got hit by an Army truck in Saigon? Maybe his number was up. Maybe he would have gotten hit back on the street corner in Sheboygan. Would you count him? Donny didn"t know.
But you definitely had to count the kid-what was his name? what was his name? what was his name?-who stepped on a Betty and got his chest shredded. That was the first one Donny remembered. He was such a new d.i.c.k then. The guy just lay back. So much blood. People gathered around him, exactly in the way you weren"t supposed to, and he seemed remarkably calm before he died. But n.o.body read any letter home to Mom afterward in which he told everybody how great the platoon was and how they were fighting for democracy. They just zipped him up and left him. He remembered the face, not the name. A sort of porky kid. Pancakey face. Small eyes. Didn"t have to shave. What was his name? What was his name?
Another one got hit by a rifle bullet. He screamed and bucked and yelled and n.o.body could quiet him. He seemed so indignant. It was so unfair! Well, it was was unfair. Why me, he seemed to be asking his friends, why not you? He was thin and rangy, from Spokane. Didn"t talk much. Always kept his rifle clean. Was bowlegged. unfair. Why me, he seemed to be asking his friends, why not you? He was thin and rangy, from Spokane. Didn"t talk much. Always kept his rifle clean. Was bowlegged. What was his name? What was his name? Donny didn"t remember. Donny didn"t remember.
There were a few more, but nothing much. Donny hadn"t fought in any big battles or taken part in any big operations with dramatic code names that made the news. Mostly it was walking, scared every day you"d get jumped or you"d trip something off, or you"d just collapse under the weight of it. So much of it was boring, so much of it was dirty, so much of it was debasing. He didn"t want to go back. He knew that. Man, if you let them send you back at this late date, when units were being rotated back to the world all the time during "Vietnamization," and you got wasted, you were were a moron. a moron.
Suddenly someone b.u.mped him hard.
"Oh, sorry," he said, stepping back.
"Yeah, you are," someone said.
Where had this action come from? There were three of them, but big like he was. Hair pouring from their heads, bright bands around their skulls, dressed in faded jeans and Army fatigue shirts.
"You"re the Marine a.s.shole, right? The lifer?"
"I am a Marine," he said. "And I"m probably an a.s.shole. But I"m not a lifer."
The three fixed him with unsteady glares. Their eyes burned with hate. One of them rocked a little, the team leader, with his fist wrapped tightly around the neck of a bottle of gin. He held it like a weapon.
"Yeah, my brother came back in a little sack because of lifer f.u.c.ks like you," he said.
"I"m very sorry for your brother," said Donny.
"a.s.shole lifer got him greased so he could make lieutenant colonel."
"s.h.i.t like that happens. Some joker wants a stripe so he sends his guys up the hill. He gets the stripe and they get the plastic bag."
"Yeah, but it happens mainly "cause a.s.sholes like you let it happen, "cause you don"t have the f.u.c.kin" guts to say no to the Man. If you you had the guts to say no, the whole thing stops." had the guts to say no, the whole thing stops."
"Did you say no to the Man?"
"I didn"t have to," the boy said proudly. "I was 1-Y. I was out of it."
Donny thought about explaining that it didn"t matter what your cla.s.sification was, if you obeyed it, you were obeying orders and working for the Man. Some guys just got better orders than others. But then the boy took a step toward Donny, his face drunkenly pugnacious. He gripped the bottle even harder.
"Hey, I didn"t come here to fight," said Donny. "I just drifted in with some guys." He looked around to find himself in the center of a circle of staring kids. Even the music had stopped and the smoke had ceased seething in the air. Crowe had, of course, totally disappeared.
"Well, you drifted into the wrong f.u.c.king party, man," said the boy, and made as if to take another step, as Donny tried to figure out whether to pop him or to cut and run to avoid the ha.s.sle.
But suddenly another figure dipped between them.
"Whoa," he said, "my brothers, my brothers, let"s not lose our holy cools."
"He"s a f.u.c.king-" said the aggressor.
"He"s another kid; you can"t blame the whole thing on him any more than you can blame it on anyone. It"s the System System, don"t you get that? Jesus, don"t you get anything?" anything?"
"Yeah, well, you have to start somewhere."
"Jerry, you cool out. Go smoke a joint or something, man. I"m not letting any three guys with booze bottles jump any poor grunt who came by looking to get laid."
"Trig, I-"
But this Trig laid a hand on Jerry"s chest and fixed him with a glare hot enough to melt most things on earth, and Jerry stepped back, swallowed and looked at his pals.
"f.u.c.k it," he finally said. "We were splitting anyhow."
And the three of them turned and stormed out.
Suddenly the music started again-Stones, "Satisfaction"-and the party came back to life.
"Hey, thanks," said Donny. "The last thing I need is a fight."
"That"s okay," said his new friend. "I"m Trig Carter, by the way." He put out a hand.
Trig had one of those long, grave faces, where the bones showed through the tight skin and the eyes seemed to be both moist and hot at the same moment. He really looked a lot like Jesus in a movie. There was something radiant in the way he fixed you with his eyes. He had something rare: immediate likability.
"Howdy," Donny said, surprised the grip was so strong in a man so thin. "My name"s Fenn, Donny Fenn."
"I know. You"re Crowe"s secret hero. The Bravo."
"Oh, Christ. I can"t be a hero to him. I"m in it till my hitch ends, then I"m gone forever back to the land of the cacti and the Navajo."
"I"ve been there. Mourning doves, right? Little white birds, dart through the arroyos and the brush, really hard to spot, really fast?"
"Oh, yeah," said Donny. "My dad and I used to hunt them. You"ve got to use a real light shot, you know, an eight or a nine. Even then, it"s a tough shot."
"Sounds like fun," said Trig. "But in my case I don"t shoot "em with a gun but with a camera. Then I paint them."
"Paint them?" This made no sense to Donny.
"You know," Trig said. "Pictures "Pictures. I"m actually an avian painter. Really, I"ve traveled the world painting pictures of birds."
"Wow!" said Donny. "Does it pay?"
"A little. I ill.u.s.trated my uncle"s book. He"s Roger Prentiss Fuller, Birds of North America Birds of North America. The Yale zoologist?"
"Er, can"t say I heard of him."
"He was a hunter once. He went on safari in the early fifties with Elmer Keith."
This did impress Donny. Keith was a famous Idaho shooter who wrote books like Elmer Keith"s Book of the Sixgun Elmer Keith"s Book of the Sixgun and and Elmer Keith on Big Game Rifles Elmer Keith on Big Game Rifles.
"Wow," he said. "Elmer Keith."