The light died. Voices were silenced. Darkness and fear replaced light and reason. The whisper of a leaf scraping on bark would make heads turn involuntarily and hearts gallop. The surrounding blackness and the unseen wall of dripping growth left no place to run. In that black wet nothingness the perimeter became just a memory. Only imagination gave it form.
Mellas shivered in his hooch and listened to the whispers of the company communications network. Through the mud he could feel Hamilton shaking but couldn't see him, curled up in a greasy nylon poncho liner. Mellas's own wet undershirt clung to him. At home, he'd snapped at his mother for dyeing it too pale a color. "I'll be spotted a mile away." She had bit her lip to hold back the tears. Mellas had wanted to hug her but didn't.
He had hole-check at 2300 and 0300 to make sure those on watch were awake. Meanwhile, he sat like someone who needs to urinate but doesn't want to leave a warm bed. A rat crept through the vegetation, and Mellas could hear it rustling through discarded C-ration containers. He imagined it dragging its wet belly on the ground. He watched the minute hand on his watch creep its luminous route toward eleven. At exactly eleven, far to the east, he heard what he surmised was an Arc Light mission, B-52s from Guam, flying far to the east and so high they couldn't be seen, dropping hundreds of 500- and 1,000-pound bombs. The bombing could make a small area of suspected enemy troop concentration a furnace of pain and death, but to Mellas it seemed like only sterile thunder without rain. He watched the minute hand creep past eleven. The inner voice of duty won. He strapped on his pistol, put on his helmet, and crawled outside.
Invisible rain struck his cheeks. The warmth from his poncho liner drifted away like a thin cry over stormy water. He headed downhill, slipping in the mud. Then, after groping his way for what seemed far too long a time, he grew frightened that he would overshoot the lines and be killed by his own men. He tripped face forward over a root, grunting, hurting his wrist as he broke his fall. Cold water from the mud worked through his clothing. Blinded, he crept forward on hands and knees, hoping to find the machine-gun position directly downhill from his own hooch. He tried to imagine its occupant, Hippy, who had questionably regulation hair and wore, hanging from his neck, a silver peace medallion that looked curiously like a passenger jet.
A voice, barely audible, floated through the darkness: "Who's that?"
"It's me," Mellas whispered. "Character Mike." He was afraid that if he said "lieutenant" a North Vietnamese soldier lurking just outside the lines would fire on him.
"Who the fuck's character Mike?" the voice whispered back.
"The new lieutenant," Mellas responded, frustrated and realizing that he'd probably made enough noise to be shot anyway. Mellas crawled toward the voice. Suddenly his hand encountered freshly turned clay. He must be near a fighting hole. He felt, rather than saw, a shadowy shape inside his small circle of awareness, barely a foot from his eyes.
"How's everything?" Mellas whispered.
"I keep hearing something down the finger."
"How far?"
"Can't tell."
"If it gets close and you want to throw a Mike-26, make sure you tell me or Jake." Jacobs had replaced Fisher as leader of Mellas's Second Squad.
"I'm in Third Squad."
Mellas was suddenly confused. He peered intently in the direction of the man's face but couldn't make out who it was.
"Who've I got here?" Mellas finally whispered.
"Parker, sir."
Mellas was aghast. He'd crawled in a totally different direction from what he had intended. He tried to visualize Parker and then he remembered that Parker was the one who felt he'd been passed over for his R & R in Bangkok. Sullen.
Then both of them were silent, trying to see in the dark. The spattering rain precluded any hope of hearing somebody moving in the jungle. Mellas felt it plastering his shirt to his back and began to shiver. The noise of his shivering made hearing even harder. Parker shifted his weight impatiently.
Mellas tried to think of something to say to make a connection. "Where you from, Parker?" he whispered.
Parker didn't answer.
Mellas hesitated. He didn't know if Parker was being defiant or was simply afraid to make any more noise. He made a choice, though.
"Parker, I asked you a question."
Parker waited a full three seconds before answering. "Compton."
Mellas didn't know where that was. "Oh," he said. "Is it nice there?"
"I wouldn't call it that."
"Sir," Mellas appended.
"I wouldn't call it that, sir."
Mellas didn't know how to answer. He felt the chance to make a connection with Parker slipping away. He gave it a last shot. "I'm from Oregon, a little logging town on the coast called Neawanna."
"Neawanna?" There was a hesitation. "Sir."
"Yeah. Funny name, huh? Indian name."
Silence.
"I've got to move on," Mellas whispered, sensing Parker's discomfort. "Who's in the next hole to your right?"
Parker did not respond immediately, and Mellas wondered if he too was having a problem keeping all the names straight. Finally Parker whispered, "Chadwick."
"Thanks, Parker." Mellas crawled off toward the next hole. That hadn't gone well, he thought. He felt awkward and incompetent.
The rain, propelled by a sudden gust of wind, blew into his face briefly and then subsided into a slow, steady patter on his helmet. He was crawling through mud on his hands and knees in total darkness, knowing that he had missed his first and second squads completely and would have to double back to pick them up. He sensed another mass. "Chadwick?" he whispered, hoping that Parker had told him the right name. No answer. "Chadwick, it's me, Lieutenant Mellas." His whisper floated across the silence.
It was greeted with a clearly audible sigh of relief. "Jesus fuck, sir, I thought I'd die. I was about to blow your ass away."
It took two hours to cover his platoon's 140 meters of the perimeter. He came back exhausted, his clothing soaked and clotted with mud, leeches clinging to his arms and legs. Twice a night, 389 nights to go.
Several hours later the leader of Mellas's Third Squad, Corporal Jancowitz, watched gray gradually infiltrate the blackness. He was not happy to see morning, because he knew he had to go out on patrol. But he wasn't unhappy, either, because it meant one less day until his R & R in Bangkok, where he'd see Susi again. It also meant that the predawn 100 percent alert was over and he could fix breakfast. He told the squad to stand down and stationed his third fire team on watch.
He took out a can of chopped eggs, added some chocolate from a Hershey Trop bar-a high-melting-point chocolate developed for the jungle-and mixed in some Tabasco and A1 sauce, both of which he'd carefully hoarded from his last R & R. Then he added apricot juice, throwing the apricots and the can into the jungle. He ripped off a small piece of C-4 plastic explosive, placed it on the ground, set the can on top, and lit the explosive. A white hissing flame enveloped the can. Thirty seconds later Jancowitz was spooning the contents into his mouth and thinking about Susi, the Thai bar girl for whom he had extended his tour another six months. The extension had earned him thirty days' leave in Bangkok. They were the best thirty days of his life. Now he'd been back in Nam long enough to earn another week of R & R with Susi, just days away. When he got back he'd up for his second six-month extension. That would get him thirty more days with Susi. Six months after that and he'd be done, really done, out of the Crotch-the corps-and married, with more than two years' savings to start them out.
Here he was, nineteen, a corporal, and a squad leader. He was up for meritorious promotion to sergeant for the Wind River op. The Jayhawk said he'd try and get his ass sent back to the rear to serve out his second extension, and that looked a lot better than going home to the assholes waving signs and shouting at him. Besides, there wasn't going to be anybody waiting for him. Three months stateside to muster out, then back to Bangkok with nearly three years of pay. Things could be worse. Bass had even said he was counting on Jancowitz to help break in the new lieutenant, now that Fisher was gone.
The new lieutenant was breaking in his new .45 by working the action back and forth. His radio operator, Hamilton, was eating breakfast: ham and lima beans mixed with grape jelly. Mellas wasn't hungry.
"Don't worry, sir, it'll work," Hamilton said, his mouth full.
Mellas looked at the weapon, then put it back in his holster.
"Besides," Hamilton went on, pointing at it with a white plastic spoon, "it ain't worth a fart in a shit fight. I'd have a sawed-off twelve-gauge if I could get one."
Mellas didn't know how to answer. The standard table of equipment, the document that authorized which weapons went to which military occupation specialty, allocated only pistols to officers, on the theory that officers were supposed to be thinking, not shooting. He looked down at his pistol and then over at Fisher's carefully oiled M-16 and bandoleers of magazines, each with eighteen bullets. A magazine was supposed to hold twenty, but kids had died learning that the springs came from the factory too weak to properly feed into the rifle the twenty that were specified. The standard table of equipment was beginning to look impractical. Mellas took Fisher's rifle and started working the mechanism.
"Don't worry, sir, it'll work too," Hamilton said.
Mellas flipped him the bird.
Hamilton ignored this. He chewed contemplatively for a moment and then reached into his pack for the highly treasured Pickapeppa sauce that had been mailed to him from home. He carefully added two drops to the cold ham, grape jelly, and lima beans, stirred them in, and retasted. The new lieutenant still wasn't hungry.
By the time Jancowitz came trudging up the slope to Mellas's hooch, Mellas had his gear on: three canteens, two filled with Rootin' Tootin' Raspberry and one with Lefty Lemon; five hand grenades; two smoke grenades; a compass; a map coated with plastic shelving paper from home; bandages, battle dressing, and halazone; water purification tablets; his pistol; two bandoleers of M-16 magazines; and food cans stuffed into extra socks that were in turn stuffed into the large pockets on the sides of his utility trousers. Some people just hung the socks filled with cans on their backpacks.
He carefully bloused his trousers against his boots with the steel springs to keep the leeches out and stuck a plastic bottle of insect repellent into the wide rubber band circling his new green camouflage helmet cover. He looked at his watch as the tail end of Goodwin's patrol disappeared into the jungle below. He'd never convince Fitch that he was any good if his patrol didn't leave on time.
Jancowitz grinned at Mellas. "Sir, I'd, uh…" He hesitated and then tapped the side of his soft camouflage bush cover.
Mellas looked at Hamilton. "The insect repellent," Hamilton said. "The white stands out in the bush. Makes a great target."
"Then what's the rubber band for?" Mellas asked, shoving the bottle into his pocket.
"Beats me, sir," Hamilton answered. "Holds the fucking helmet together, I guess."
"You could put things in it like branches for camouflage," Jancowitz said carefully.
Hamilton giggled, and Mellas smiled tightly. It wasn't fair. He'd seen Marines on television with squeeze bottles of repellent strapped to their helmets. He'd carefully noted the details. Suddenly it dawned on him that the television shots were all around villages, where the people with cameras were more likely to be, and there was no wall of dark green jungle on all sides.
"We're all set, sir," Jancowitz said. "Just waiting for Daniels." Lance Corporal Daniels was the enlisted FO, the artillery battery's forward observer. Fitch assigned him to the patrols that he felt might need what little support they could get from Andrew Golf, the distant battery at fire support base Eiger.
As Jancowitz led the way down to Third Squad's sector, the sound of Marvin Gaye singing "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" broke the morning stillness. Mellas could see the Marines of Third Squad standing around, some nervously fiddling with their gear, all apparently ready before Jancowitz had gone to get Mellas. A group of black Marines were huddled together smoking cigarettes. At their center was a well-built, serious-looking young man who was squatting over a portable 45-rpm record player.
"OK, Jackson, cut the sounds," Jancowitz said briskly.
Without looking up, Jackson raised his hand, palm toward Jancowitz. "Hey, man, cool off. The a.m. show ain't over yet."
Several of the group laughed softly, including Jancowitz, who quickly glanced at Mellas to see if Mellas objected.
Mellas didn't know whether he should object or not. He looked back at Jancowitz and Hamilton for a cue.
Bass broke the momentary impasse by walking up behind them. "Why don't you play real music, like Tammy Wynette, instead of that fucking jungle music?"
"Beats washtubs and broomsticks," Jackson said, waiting for the laughter that followed. Mellas joined in awkwardly. Jackson looked up, hearing an unfamiliar voice. Recognizing Mellas, he immediately turned off the record player and stood up. The small group got serious, attentive, all business, crushing cigarettes in the mud.
"Sorry, sir," Jackson said. "I didn't know you were there."
What struck Mellas about Jackson was that he clearly wasn't sorry. He was just being polite. He looked at Mellas with an openness that declared he was quite capable of defending himself, without being defensive. Mellas smiled. "That's OK. Hate to stop the show."
Bass, satisfied that Mellas was in good hands with Jancowitz, grunted and moved off to join Second Squad to bird-dog Jacobs on his first day leading a patrol.
"Where's Shortround?" Jancowitz asked, looking around.
Jackson sighed and pointed toward a pair of ponchos that covered a hole dug into the side of the hill. "He had listening post last night. I guess he's still eating."
"Shortround!" Jancowitz shouted. "Goddamn it. Get your ass down here."
There was a grunt. A head, still unseen, poked clumsily into the low-hung poncho. Two short legs, covered by large dirty trousers, backed out of the hooch. A short kid with curly brown hair and an oversize nose grinned at Jancowitz. Spaghetti sauce was smeared on his face. He wiped it off with large hands stained dark brown with ingrained dirt.
"Hi, Janc," Shortround said brightly, grinning.
Jancowitz turned to Mellas. "Sir, this is Pollini, only we call him Shortround. And it ain't because he's small and fat." A short round was an artillery shell that fell short by mistake, often killing its own men.
Pollini quickly stuffed several Trop bars into his pockets, grabbed his rifle, and joined the group just as Daniels came down the hill from the CP, carrying his radio on his back. Jancowitz introduced him to Mellas, then took the handset from Hamilton's radio and called the CP. "Bravo, this is Bravo One Three. We're moving."
The squad wound its way into the jungle in one long snake-Jancowitz three from the front; Mellas behind him, watching Jancowitz's every move; Daniels behind Mellas. No one spoke. Mellas was thinking that Jancowitz had been in the bush nearly nineteen months. He probably knew more about staying alive than anyone else in the company.
Once the kids were under the trees, the leeches started dropping on them. They tried to knock each leech off before it dug in and drew blood but were usually too late because they were focusing more attention on the jungle, straining to hear, see, or smell the clue that would give them, and not the North Vietnamese, the first shot.
The leeches made full use of their victims. Mellas watched some fall onto the kids' necks and slide under their shirts like raindrops. Other leeches would wriggle on the damp humus of the jungle floor, attach to a boot, then go up a trouser leg, turning from small wormlike objects to bloated blood-filled bags. Occasionally someone would spray insect repellent on a leech and it would fall squirming to the ground, leaving blood trickling down the kid's arm, leg, or neck. During the patrol, Mellas began to take great pleasure in killing the little bastards and watching his own blood spurt out of their bodies.
The fourteen-man snake moved in spasms. The point man would suddenly crouch, eyes and ears straining, and those behind him would bunch up, crouch, and wait to move again. They would get tired, let down their guard. Then, frightened by a strange sound, they would become alert once again. Their eyes flickered rapidly back and forth as they tried to look in all directions at once. They carried Kool-Aid packages, Tang-anything to kill the chemical taste of the water in their plastic canteens. Soon the smears of purple and orange Kool-Aid on their lips combined with the fear in their eyes to make them look like children returning from a birthday party at which the hostess had shown horror films.
They stopped for lunch, setting up a small defensive perimeter. Jancowitz, Mellas, and Hamilton lay flat on the ground next to the radio, eating C-rations. They littered the jungle with the empty cans. Flies and mosquitoes materialized from the heavy air. Mellas doused himself again with repellent. It stung fiercely as it got into his cuts and bites. He found two leeches on his right leg. He burned them alive with paper matches while he ate canned peaches.
Already tired from lack of sleep, Mellas now struggled with physical fatigue from fighting his way through nearly impenetrable brush, slipping up muddy slopes to gain a ridgeline, searching for tracks, searching for clues. He was wet from both sweat and rain. Effort. Weight. Flies. Cuts. Vegetation.
He no longer cared where they were or why. He was glad he was new and Jancowitz was still more or less in charge, though he was ashamed of feeling that way. Three hundred eighty-nine days and a wake-up to go.
At one point they hit a wall of bamboo they couldn't avoid. It lay between them and a checkpoint, a ridgeline where the NVA machine gun might be. They had to hack through it. All security was lost as the kid on point took out a machete and smashed a hole in the bamboo. Soon they were in a bamboo tunnel. The ground sloped upward. It got steeper. They began to slip. The kid with the machete tired and another took his place. They needed an hour to go about 200 meters.
Suddenly, Williams, the point man, went rigid, then slowly sank to one knee, rifle at his shoulder. Steam rose from his back. Everyone froze in position, ears straining, trying to stop the noise of their own breathing. Jancowitz quietly moved forward to find out what was happening. Hamilton, a good radioman, moved up too, as if he were part of Jancowitz's body. Mellas followed.
"You hear that, Janc?" Williams whispered. He was trembling and his forehead was tight with tension. They had stopped on the side of a ridge. A rivulet trickled through thick brush and plants with broad leaves. Mellas strained to hear over the sound of his breath and his pounding heart. Soon he could distinguish soft snorts, muffled coughlike noises, and a cracking and tearing of branches.
"What is it?" Mellas whispered.
"Gook trucks, sir," Daniels said softly. He had slipped up behind Mellas, so quietly that this whisper frightened him. Mellas saw that Daniels was grinning and his mouth was smeared red with Choo Choo Cherry, which heightened the flush of his cheeks.
"Gook trucks?" Mellas asked. "What are you talking about?" He turned to Jancowitz, who was watching him with mild amusement.
"Elephants, sir," Jancowitz said.
"The gooks use them to carry shit," Daniels said.
By this time everyone had relaxed, and the squad was already in the inboard-outboard defense position, every two men alternating the direction of sight. Jancowitz pointed at Pollini and Delgado, a gentle-eyed Chicano kid whom everyone called Amarillo, because it was his hometown. These two reluctantly heaved themselves to their feet and crept out, one on each side of the squad, to act as outposts.
"So?" Mellas asked. He was uncomfortably aware that trouble was coming his way.
"Don't you think we ought to call in a mission, sir?" Daniels asked.
"A fire mission? On some elephants?"
"They're gook transportation, sir."
Mellas looked at Jancowitz. He remembered a major at the Basic School telling him to trust sergeants and squad leaders-they'd been there. The major hadn't mentioned that the sergeants were nineteen-year-old lance corporals.
"He's right, sir," Jancowitz said. "They do use them for hauling shit."
"But they're wild," Mellas said.
"How do you know, sir?"
At this point Daniels chimed in. "We shoot them all the time, sir. You deny the gooners their transportation system."
"But we're at extreme range."
"It's an area target, sir," Daniels answered. An area target was one that covered a general location, such as troops in the field, so accuracy was less of an issue than for a single-point target, like a bunker.
Mellas looked at Hamilton and at Tilghman, who carried the M-79 grenade launcher. They both just stared back. Mellas didn't want to look sentimental or foolish in front of the squad. It was war, after all. Nor did he want to buck a standard operating procedure when he wasn't really sure of his ground. He'd been told to trust his squad leaders. "Well," he began slowly, "if you really do shoot them…"
Daniels grinned. He already had his map out, and now he reached for the handset of his radio.
"Andrew Golf, this is Big John Bravo. Fire mission. Over."
In his imagination, Mellas saw the battery scrambling into action as the call for a fire mission came crackling in to its fire control center.
Moments after Daniels relayed the map coordinates and compass bearings, the first shell came through the jungle, sounding like a train speeding through a tunnel. There was a dull thud transmitted through the ground, then a louder shattering crash through the air. Then there was the sound of brush cracking and the movement of heavy frightened bodies. Daniels made a quick adjustment, and a second shell roared. Again the earth moved and the air shattered. After that, the muffled sounds could be heard no more.
Daniels called off the mission. "They'll be to fuck and gone by now," he said, smiling with satisfaction.
Jancowitz didn't want to bother checking for results, since it meant going all the way down in the ravine. To climb back out again would take hours. Mellas agreed.
When they finally struggled back inside the company perimeter, the squad immediately began cleaning weapons and fixing dinner, getting ready for the evening alert and the long night of watch. Jackson started his record player and Wilson Pickett's voice floated across the tiny man-made clearing in the jungle. "Hey, Jude, don't make it bad…"
Mellas could barely drag himself up to the CP to report to Fitch. He simply wanted to collapse and sleep. Bass was already in with nothing to report-as was Goodwin, except for some tiger tracks. Ridlow, Goodwin's platoon sergeant, however, had discovered some footprints near a stream. It was impossible to tell how many people had left them. He figured they couldn't be more than two days old; otherwise, the rain would have washed them away.
Mellas listened while Fitch relayed the negative reports to battalion. An entire day of patrols, and all they had proved was that someone was in the jungle, as if a downed helicopter and a bunch of dead crewmen hadn't already proved that. He also listened while Fitch turned in the coordinates of the footprints to the artillery battery for harassment and interdiction-H & I.
When Fitch got off the hook, Mellas asked, "What happens if it's a montagnard?" referring to the indigenous people who had been pushed into the mountains centuries earlier by the invading Vietnamese.
Fitch pursed his lips. "If it is," Fitch said carefully, "then he's got to be working for the NVA. Otherwise, he'd have cleared out or come in to the position."
"I don't know. Maybe," Mellas said.
Hawke was listening while he poured powdered coffee and sugar into a battered cup that he had fashioned from a C-ration pear can by leaving the lid attached and folding it back to make a handle. He poured water from his canteen into the can and placed it on a small wad of C-4 plastic explosive. The cup's lower half had turned steel blue from many heatings.
"There's leaflets all over the fucking place telling people it's a free-fire zone," Fitch said.
"You know they can't read," Mellas said petulantly.
"Shit, Mellas," Hawke cut in. "He knows it. You going to call off your H & I because it might fuck up some lost mountain man?"
"I don't know. I'm the new guy around here," Mellas snapped. He was so tired that he was beginning to regret he'd even brought the subject up.
Hawke lit the C-4 and a brilliant white flame engulfed the can, turning it cherry red and bringing the water to a rapid boil almost instantly. The action stopped the conversation until the flame died. Hawke gingerly touched the makeshift cup, now filled with boiling coffee. "Well, I'll tell you, then," Hawke said. "You don't. Jim's fucked either way. If we get attacked, and he didn't call in H & I, he's shit-canned. If he does call them in and kills a montagnard, he's shit-canned too. Things have changed since Truman left. The buck's sent out here now."
Fitch smiled, thankful for Hawke's support.
Mellas looked at the ground, sorry he'd lost his temper. "You never did say why," he said.
"So you don't get your fucking ass blown away, that's why," Hawke said, softening when he saw Mellas look at the ground. He dabbed at the handle of the cup again and, feeling that it was safe, picked it up with his thumb and forefinger.
"You call off H & I," Fitch said, "and the gooks have access to this mountain like a freeway ramp. It's my fucking troops over any lost mountain man, and it'll stay that way. I decided that a long time ago." Fitch looked quickly up at the darkening sky, seemingly embarrassed over his sudden speech.
Hawke held the steaming coffee up toward Mellas. "Here. Take it."
"No, it's yours," Mellas said.
"I make the fastest cup of coffee in I Corps. This little cup's been with me ever since I got here. It's the ever-flowing source of all that's good and the cure of all ills." He smiled and gestured again for Mellas to take it. "It even cures hot tempers."
Mellas had to smile. He took the cup. The coffee was sweet and good.
Later that night, outside the perimeter in the blackness, Private First Class Tyrell Broyer of Baltimore, Maryland, on his first listening post, lay shivering, flat on his stomach, the rain seeping through his poncho. Jancowitz had paired him with Williams, from Cortell's fire team, a steady kid who'd been raised on a ranch in Idaho. Williams's muddy boots were next to Broyer's face and vice versa, so they protected each other's backs. "What's that noise?" Broyer whispered.
"The wind. Shut up."
Broyer was tempted to start keying the radio's handset frantically, just so someone would talk to them. He didn't care if he made one of the lieutenants mad at him for getting scared. He shivered again. There was a whirring noise. Instantly the two of them stiffened, their rifles pushing out slowly.
"What is that noise?" Broyer whispered. "High in the air."
"Don't know. Bats? Shut up, goddamn it."
Williams shifted and his boot hit Broyer's face. Broyer stifled a curse and pushed his glasses back on his nose, aware of an irony-he couldn't see a thing anyway. He slowly pushed Williams's boot away. He put his forehead on his fists to keep his glasses clear of the ground and smelled the damp earth, feeling the cold edge of his helmet against his neck. He grabbed a handful of clay and squeezed it as hard as he could. He wanted to squeeze his fear into the clay so he could throw it away. A gust of wind hit his wet utility shirt, sending a cold shiver along his back. He started praying, asking God to stop the wind and the rain so he could just hear something. It was then that Williams reached out a hand in the dark and gently patted him on the back.
That night, God didn't stop the wind or the rain. The next day, however, the rain did stop for two hours. Because of the security patrols, six choppers made it in without taking fire, dumping Marines who were returning from sick leave and R & R, replacements, water, food, and ammunition. Along with that came a large amount of C-4 explosive to help prepare the top of the hill for the arrival of Golf Battery, which was why Bravo Company was on Matterhorn in the first place.
Mellas grew accustomed to the tense monotony of patrolling. Days slid by, mercifully without enemy contact. Eventually the artillery battery came in, blasting out gun pits from the clay, digging in bunkers for their fire control center. Matterhorn was barren, shorn of trees. Nothing green was left in what was slowly turning into a wasteland of soggy discarded cardboard C-ration boxes, cat-hole latrines, buried garbage, burned garbage, trench latrines, discarded magazines from home, smashed ammunition pallets, and frayed plastic sandbags. Whole stretches of what had formerly been thick jungle were now exposed, the shattered limbs and withered stumps turning ashen like bones of dead animals under the overcast sky above. A small bulldozer made the top of the hill perfectly flat. Then came the howitzers, which were flown in dangling from helicopters like fishing weights. Within hours of their arrival the big guns were firing, their harsh explosions hurting ears, thudding through bodies, and, at night, shattering precious sleep.
An intense salvo of the entire battery firing a single time-on-target jerked Mellas awake. It had been just over an hour since he had crawled into his hooch after the last hole-check of the night. Adrenaline pumped through his body. He tried to slow it down, taking deep slow breaths. Rain fell in heavy sheets in the total darkness, and the comm-wire moorings of the hooches snapped with each gust of wind. Mellas pulled his soggy nylon poncho liner tighter around him, rolled over on one side, and tucked his knees up against his chest, trying to keep what remained of the warm dampness from disappearing into the dark.
No patrol today. It was like a reprieve.
The arrival of the battery had considerably increased the payoff for an attack by the NVA, so Fitch had increased the patrolling radius to cover more territory. This forced the patrols to leave at dawn and left them almost no daylight when they returned. The combination of tension from the possibility of making contact and the stultifying fatigue left everyone drained and irritable by nightfall. Kids were falling asleep on watch. To fight the boredom, Mellas found himself making up patrol routes just to see various features of the terrain. He paid less and less attention to where an NVA sniper or observation team might be hiding. In fact, he was torn: he didn't know whether to plan his patrols to avoid finding anyone or to find the NVA machine gun and bring himself to the notice of the colonel. He shifted to his other side, still not wanting to leave the poncho liner. He saw himself taking an NVA machine-gun team by surprise while they were eating their rice, surrounding them silently, and capturing the entire group. Then he was marching them back, finding out a great deal of information, and afterward being commended in front of the colonel and his staff. Perhaps there would be a newspaper story at home about the exploit-name recognition was important-and a medal. He wanted a medal as much as he wanted the company.
Another salvo ripped sound through the ground and air, breaking off his daydream. He stared into the blackness, now totally awake, his mind focused on the problem of replacing Jancowitz, who was about to go on R & R. He had map classes to teach, jungle to clear, and more barbed wire to lay, but no patrol. No patrol today.
He threw aside the thin nylon liner and sat up, his head touching the ponchos strung above him. The greasy camouflage liner smelled like urine. He did, too. Mellas smiled. He untied his soggy bootlaces in the dark and pulled at a wet boot. It came loose, leaving a damp sock, parts of it stiff with decaying blood from old leech wounds. He pulled the sock off carefully-especially in places where the wool, skin, and blood had clotted together over the leech bites and jungle rot. He imagined, from the feel of his foot, that it must look like the underside of a mushroom. A sudden gust of wind spattered more rain against the hooch. He began rubbing his feet, trying to stave off immersion foot. He'd seen pictures of it during training. When the foot was constantly in cold water, blood deserted it. Then it died, still attached to the leg, and rotted until either it was amputated or gangrene killed the rest of the body. He felt guilty suddenly for not having checked the platoon's feet. It would look bad on his fitness report if he had a lot of cases of immersion foot.
Two hours later Mellas was leading a map-reading class for Third Squad, feeling good about being in his own element.
"All right," he said, "who knows the contour interval?" A couple of hands shot up. Mellas was pleased; the kids seemed to enjoy the class. "OK, Jackson."
Jackson looked around shyly at his friends. "Uh, it's twenty meters, sir."
"Right. If you went across three contour lines, then how far would you have walked?"
Parker, not to be outdone by Jackson, raised his hand. "That'd be sixty meters." He smiled, pleased with himself.
Jackson snickered. "You got no brain whatsoever. Sixty meters, shit. Man, you are a stupid individual."
"What is it then, smart-ass?" Parker shot back.
"No way you can tell. Contours go up and down. You maybe went up sixty or maybe down sixty, but you maybe walked to fucking Hanoi before you did." The rest of the squad was laughing, and Parker finally joined in.
Mellas envied Jackson's natural ability to blunt the harshness of his words simply by the way he delivered them. How could you get mad at someone who neither needed to attack nor was at all worried about being able to defend? It was like getting mad at Switzerland. Mellas watched Jackson throughout the rest of the class, seeing that the blacks gravitated toward him for more than his portable record player.
Later that afternoon, Mellas crawled into Bass's hooch. Skosh was reading Seventeen magazine by candlelight and wearing an Incredible Hulk sweatshirt. Bass was lying on top of his air mattress, generally called a rubber lady, writing another long letter to Fredrickson's cousin.
"Heavy stuff, Skosh," Mellas said.
"Hey, Lieutenant, look at her," Skosh said quietly, showing Mellas a teenage girl modeling winter fashions, her face glowing beneath tossed-back satin hair. "You think if I wrote the magazine they'd tell me who she was?"
"Are you shitting me, Skosh? Every horny bastard in the United States would be writing to those girls if magazines did that."
Skosh withdrew the magazine and continued to look at the girl. "Maybe if they knew we was over here in Vietnam and couldn't do no harm or nothing…"
"Skosh, they don't give a shit where you are," Mellas said softly. He thought about Anne.
"I suppose not. Before I quit high school last year there was this girl looked just like her. Of course she was a senior, and me a junior, so I couldn't ever really, you know," his voice trailed off, "get to know her or anything."
"Hang in there, Skosh," Mellas said, "You'll be home-"
"In a hundred eighty-three fucking days and a wake-up," Skosh said quietly.
Mellas settled himself cross-legged on the end of Bass's rubber lady. The luxury of having one of the rare air mattresses was reserved for those with more rank or time in-country. Everyone else slept on the ground. "Class went pretty well today," he started off. "They seemed interested."
"Even fucking grunts get tired of digging holes."
Mellas nodded, smiling. "Hey, I'm thinking of Jackson for squad leader when Janc goes on R & R." He felt he might as well come to the point right away.
"I don't like it, Lieutenant. I don't want him and his fucking buddies all buddy-buddying each other around their jungle music all the time. He's too buddy-buddy, sir."
"You mean he's a brother." Mellas looked at Bass closely to see how he would react. There wasn't a flicker on Bass's face.
"Yes, sir, but not like you think. There ain't one color in the Marine Corps but green, and I believe that. I don't think Jackson does. I mean, I think he'd favor the splibs."
"Yeah, but he's smart. People like him. Chucks and splibs both."
"You don't want a squad leader people like," Bass said emphatically.
"Bullshit, Sergeant Bass. You get a squad leader they don't like and you've got a shitty squad."
"People didn't like me too much when I became a platoon sergeant."
"You're different."
"He's a fucking lifer," Skosh put in.
Mellas laughed.
"You stick to your fucking radio or I'll volunteer your ass for CAG," Bass retorted. "You'll wish you had some fucking lifers around when the fucking gooks desert you."
Skosh hunched his shoulders and went back to his magazine. "I should be so lucky," he mumbled. Radio operators had it easier in set positions, mainly because they were able to stand their night watches inside whatever shelter they managed to build. The longer they were in a set position, the better their shelters. On the patrols and operations, however, they more than made up for that comfort. Not only did they have to pack the heavy radios in addition to the ammunition and equipment that everyone else packed, but they were primary targets because they were the communication links and walked next to the leaders, the other primary targets.
"What's CAG?" Mellas asked.
"Some harebrained cluster fuck thought up by some asshole civilian in an air-conditioned office in Washington."
Mellas waited. Skosh wasn't listening.
"It means combined action group, sir," Bass continued. "Good fucking Marines are supposed to fight with South Gook militia and defend the villages. Only what happens is good Marines end up fighting all by themselves when the South Gooks dee-dee on them."
"I heard that tagging Marines alongside the villagers was working. Or had been, anyway," Mellas said. He suddenly felt very far away from his government; he had a gnawing suspicion that he, too, could be out in the jungle, abandoned like those Marines.
He forced the qualm down and assumed a "let's get back to business" tone of voice. "Anyhow, what do you think about Jackson, Sergeant Bass?" He rushed on without letting Bass reply. "I don't think he'd be too buddy-buddy. You can talk to him about it. Besides, who else have we got? With Fisher gone I've got to use Jake to fill in for him at Second Squad. Vancouver won't do anything but walk point, you know that." Bass nodded. Everyone knew that Vancouver, a big kid who'd actually left Canada to volunteer for the Marines, was probably the best fighter in the company. He just always refused leadership roles, preferring to be the first man in the column, the most dangerous job in any rifle company. Everyone else reluctantly took point only when it was their turn. Mellas made one more effort. "Jackson already knows everyone." He stopped. He could see that Bass wasn't really listening. He was just politely waiting for Mellas to finish.
"Lieutenant, I think a lot of guys are going to think you put him there because he's a brother."
"What do you think?" Mellas asked.
"I think it entered your mind." Bass looked at him, waiting for Mellas's reply.
"All right, it did. I don't want China having any footholds," he said, almost mumbling the last words.
Bass looked at him a moment. "I don't like this fooling around with people because of their color. We could get in deep shit over it." He looked down at the half-finished letter and sighed, as if wishing himself home. "But maybe you're right. It ain't like it used to be, that's for damned sure. When I signed on in 'sixty-four it was protecting American citizens and property. This shit…" He suddenly became aware of Skosh and broke off. "Skosh, get on the hook and see if any Class Six is coming in."
"I asked them this morning, Sergeant Bass."
"Ask-them-again," Bass said, enunciating each word very clearly.
Skosh began raising the CP and Mellas looked at Bass. "You agree on Jackson, then?"
"Yeah, I agree. But no fucking buddy-buddy."
Mellas laughed, more out of relief than humor. "OK. No buddy-buddy."
Mellas slipped back outside into the drizzle. The faint sounds of James Brown doing "Say It Loud" floated from the lines. He saw Hawke coming down the hill with a cigar in his mouth. Hawke's red mustache looked incongruous beneath his wet black hair. Mellas waited for him.
"Whatever you were about to do," Hawke said, "don't."
"Why not?"
"Now that the arty battery's here, the battalion CP group won't be far behind. Fitch wants your lines cleaned up."
Mellas flared. "My lines are cleaner than anybody else's. What am I supposed to do, put out a goddamned red carpet so the colonel can promenade on it?"
"Hey, cool it down." Hawke looked sideways at Mellas. "You really do have a temper, don't you?"
"I'm just tired. I usually don't."
"You mean you don't usually show it. All Fitch wants is the fucking gumball wrappers and Kool-Aid packages put in one spot so it doesn't look like a garbage dump down here. And nobody said anything about you being better or worse than anyone else." Hawke took a long pull on his cigar. "In fact, if you must know, your lines are probably cleaner than the other platoons'." Mellas smiled. "But then you've got Sergeant Bass."
Mellas laughed. "Get back, Hawke. Is that what you came to tell me?"
"Well, not all of it." Hawke closed one eye and looked sideways at Mellas, tasting the tobacco on his lips. "I thought you might want to hear how Fisher came out. Or have you been too busy?"
"How is he?" Mellas said enthusiastically, but he felt his face reddening. He hadn't thought about Fisher in any way except as leaving a hole to fill.
"They sent him to Japan for more surgery."
"What's the prognosis?"
"Don't know. Worst case, I guess, is he'll never get it up again."
"It's the shits," Mellas said. He looked away from Hawke down toward Second Squad's fighting holes. "I still have to replace him." He said it to himself as much as to Hawke.
Hawke surveyed Mellas coolly. "If you don't relax, Mellas, you'll never learn to love it out here."
The joke broke Mellas's mood, and he laughed.
"Who you got in mind?" Hawke asked, blowing a careful cloud of smoke.
"Jackson." Mellas looked for reaction. None came. "He's got some brains."
"Might be all right, and then again it might not be."
"Why not?"
"He's a brother. He's fucking black, Mellas."
"So."
"All the brothers in Third Squad look up to him, right?" Hawke said.
"Yeah, that's why I picked him."
"So he sells out to the man and what do all his brothers think of him then?"
"Shit." Mellas said flatly. "Shit." He felt hemmed in by a force like a magnetic field. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it tightening.
A voice shouted down from the CP. "Hey, Five, we got a bird coming up the valley."
Hawke ran up the hill, leaving Mellas alone.
When Vancouver heard the chopper coming up the valley, he stuck the machete in the earth and left it quivering as he ran up the hill.
"Vancouver, where the fuck you going?" Conman yelled. He was pulling on the end of a roll of razor wire.
"My fucking gook sword's come in," Vancouver shouted, still running. "I know it has."
"What the fuck good is it to be a squad leader with someone like that around?" Conman muttered under his breath. He couldn't follow Vancouver, because he was supplying the tension for Mole-a black machine gunner from Conman's squad-to stake in the razor wire. "Hurry the fuck up, Mole, goddamn it. I got better things to do than get the fuck cut out of me by this shit." The wire had indeed cut through several of the scabs that formed over the jungle rot on Conman's hands, and the blood and pus were slowly oozing over the wire, making it difficult to hold.
Mole gave Conman the finger and continued staking in the wire as methodically as he cleaned his machine gun. "I ain't gonna fuck up this wire job 'cause you want to go read you fucking mail." Mole looked up the hill at the chopper that was now settling down on the LZ, the roar of its turbines nearly drowning out his last words. The chopper touched earth, bouncing slightly on its big wheels. A few new kids ran out carrying the red mailbags.
Vancouver reached the LZ just as the chopper began to shudder and whine for its takeoff. He towered over a new kid and reached for the bag the kid carried. "This First Platoon's mail?" he shouted. The sound was lost in the chopper's takeoff and the mad whirl of air. The kid clutched at the bag. He'd been told in no uncertain terms its value and what would happen to him if he failed to deliver it.
"Give me that fucking thing," Vancouver shouted. He grabbed the bag and started opening its drawstrings.
"Vancouver, what the fuck are you doing?"
Vancouver looked over his shoulder and saw Staff Sergeant Cassidy's red face. He stood up and looked down at him. "Oh, hi, Gunny. I'm looking for my gook sword. I ordered the fucking thing two months ago." The new kid slowly took back the mailbag, his glance vacillating between Vancouver and Cassidy.
"Vancouver," Cassidy said in mock weariness, "go back down to the lines and let me take care of the mail, OK? Because if you don't, and if I ever see that fucking sword of yours, I'll break it over your fucking head. Is that clear?"
"You wouldn't really do that, would you, Gunny?" Vancouver asked.
"Try me."
Vancouver turned and headed down the hill.
Cassidy watched him go with obvious affection. He had intercepted the sword with its ornate scabbard and complicated straps three weeks earlier and hidden it in Bravo Company's supply tent in order to keep Vancouver from getting killed trying to use it. He turned to face the five new kids who had come in on the chopper. "What the fuck you staring at?" Cassidy asked, his smile suddenly gone. "Do I look pretty to you?"
* * *
While most of the platoon was reading the mail for the third time, Mellas was preparing supper. He told himself it would be a while before his mail caught up with him. He was adding Tabasco sauce, grape jam, and powdered lemon tea to his can of spaghetti and meatballs when he became aware of Doc Fredrickson watching him.
"Can I talk to you a minute, Lieutenant?" Fredrickson asked.
"Sure. Beats eating."
"It's about Mallory, sir."
"Ahh, fuck. I thought you and Bass took care of that."
"He's still complaining about headaches," Fredrickson said. "I give him all the Darvon he can handle and he keeps coming back for more."
"Is that shit addictive?" Mellas asked.
"I don't know, sir. It's just what they give us. I think it's fucking useless." Fredrickson leaned over and looked into the can of spaghetti. "Maybe you ought to put some of that fake coffee cream stuff in it. It'd smooth it out."
"You stick to medicine."
"Anyway, I ain't sure Mallory even has headaches. But I've been watching him close, and on patrol yesterday he looked like he was hurting."
"Him and everyone else. I've got headaches too."
"Maybe you ought to talk to him. I talked to the senior squid, and he says sometimes people get psychosomatic stuff and it really does hurt them even if it's all in their heads anyway. It's also possible that there's really something wrong with him."
"What-you want me to decide?"
"You're the platoon commander. If you think he's telling the truth, maybe we ought to send him back to VCB to see a doctor. Just in case something really is wrong with him."
"OK."
"He's over in my hooch now."
Mellas looked at Fredrickson out of the corner of his eye. "All right."
Fredrickson left and returned with Mallory, a small-boned kid with narrow hips, a thin graceful neck, and a rather large head.
"Hi, Mallory," Mellas said, trying to be friendly. "Doc says you're still having trouble with headaches."
"My fucking head hurts," Mallory said. "I eat all that Darvon and it don't do shit."
"How long you had the headaches?"
"Ever since they humped us without water on the DMZ operation. I think I got heat-stoked or something." Mallory looked quickly over at Fredrickson to see how the corpsman was reacting. Fredrickson had his poker face on.
Mellas took a spoonful of spaghetti and chewed it while he thought. "Well, shit, Mallory, I don't know what it is. Doc's stumped. You have them all the time?"
"I tell you my fucking head hurts," Mallory whined.
"I believe you, Mallory. It's just that there's not much we can do about it. I suppose we could send you back to VCB for a checkup." Mellas watched for a reaction, but Mallory only bent his head over his knees, holding it in his hands.
"My fucking head hurts."
Mellas looked at Fredrickson, who shrugged his shoulders. "Tell you what, Mallory," Mellas said. "I'll see if we can't get you back to VCB for a couple of days to see the doctor. Right now you'll just have to bear with it for a while, OK?"
Mallory moaned. "I can't stand it. It fucking hurts all the time."
Mellas hesitated, then sighed. "I'll go up and talk with the senior squid," he said.
"I already seen him. He didn't do nothing."
"Well, maybe we can get you out. Just hang in there for a while."
"OK, sir." Mallory stood up and dragged himself down the hill toward the lines.
Fredrickson asked, "What do you think, sir?"
"I don't know. I think he probably has headaches. The question is, how bad." Mellas poked at the remains of the spaghetti. "I'd hate to have it be some sort of brain problem and not get it checked out. We could get in deep shit."
Up at Sheller's hooch, Mellas met with some resistance-not from Sheller, but from Hawke and Cassidy, who were playing pinochle with him.
"He's a fucking malingerer," Cassidy growled.
"How do you know that?" Mellas asked.
"I can smell 'em. Half the Marines on this hill have headaches and gut aches and all sorts of fucking aches, but they don't keep asking to go back to VCB."
"Suppose he has a tumor or something. You want to risk that?"
"All he needs is a kick in the ass."
"I think Cassidy's right," Hawke said. "Mallory tried to get out of the DMZ op, but we never let him. He was fine after that. No complaints until now. Everyone knows we got to go down into the valley as soon as Charlie and Alpha Company are pulled out. So all of a sudden, up come the headaches."
"Maybe it's psychosomatic," Mellas said. "I mean, maybe it's true he's scared. Maybe that's what gives him headaches."
Cassidy folded his cards in his hands. "What the fuck's psychosomatic except another fancy word for someone who doesn't want to do something that's hard and scary? Nerves don't break down-they give up. I've got a psychosomatic pain in the ass with all these fucking yardbirds. Go watch the sick bay the day before we shove off on an operation. Every nigger in the battalion's waiting in line. Mallory ain't no different."
Mellas's jaw set at the remark, but he said nothing.
"They don't all go, Gunny," Hawke said. "In fact, hardly any of them. But I'll grant you that Mallory probably would."
Cassidy sighed. "It's your fucking platoon, Lieutenant," he said to Mellas.
"And I'll send him to VCB."
"Fine, sir. I'll let you know when the next bird comes in. Get his ass up to the LZ. Don't be too surprised if he doesn't come back until after we go into the valley."
A chopper bringing in water for the artillery battery came in the next morning, and Mallory flew to Vandegrift Combat Base, VCB. He returned three days later, along with a note to the senior squid from the battalion's navy surgeon, Lieutenant Selby. "I see nothing wrong with this Marine that would keep him from performing his normal duties." Sheller walked it down to Mellas and Fredrickson, and Mellas called Mallory up and handed it to him.
"Sheeit," Mallory said after reading it. "Sheeit. I tell you my fucking head aches." He avoided looking at Mellas.
Mellas wanted to ask why one visit to the battalion aid station had taken three days. But he let it go, since Jancowitz had already dressed Mallory down in front of the whole squad and put him on listening post two nights to make up for the two days he'd probably fucked off back in the rear smoking dope. "You'll just have to live with it, Mallory," Mellas replied. "It's probably psychosomatic. We all get afraid of things and sometimes the body tries to keep us from doing them. You'll just have to get over it."
"You're saying it's in my fucking head?" Mallory whined. His tone of voice was an accusation that lumped Mellas with all the others who wouldn't help. "I tell you it's real, man. It fucking hurts me so I can't hardly think."
"Mallory, it's psychosomatic. You'll just have to get used to it. We can't do anything for you. We tried."
"Sheeit." Mallory turned away, still holding the doctor's note in his thin hand.
