TWENTY-FOUR

Shorty asked Quyn to take him to the house behind Le Boudin. He saw the pictures of the guys who’d promised to come back. They were always photographed in uniform. They wanted to be remembered as soldiers. Beneath the wall of missing lovers burned joss sticks in a jar.

‘Is this what you want to see?’ asked Quyn.

Bucky and Tâm lay on a mattress in the living room. Bucky’s head was wrapped in a bandage. A tin bowl, which each of the bar girls kept under her bed to wash and flush and drip, was lodged between his pillow and the wall, and spattered with black, sticky blood. Shorty could see Bucky’s cuts were healing, but the blood was coming up from his lungs.

‘What you doing here, motherfucker?’ asked Tâm.

‘Americans nambawan,’ said Bucky, faintly, then spasmed and spat into the bowl.

Tâm picked up the bowl and threw it at Shorty. It caught him on the forehead and tipped blood and mucus into his eyes.

‘Motherfucker!’ screamed Tâm, and leaped at Shorty. Her movement jolted Bucky, who rolled on the mattress and moaned. Tâm raised her arms above her head and slapped Shorty on the cheek, sliding her hand through the mess of fluid. ‘You didn’t help him!’ she screamed.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Shorty, and showed his hands, as if to say they were empty, or clean, or dirty, or bound.

‘Look what you have done!’ cried Tâm.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Shorty.

‘Your cock will rot!’ she cursed.

Quyn took Shorty’s arm and pulled him out of the house and into the long room behind the bar. He could hear another girl behind the curtains as they lay down.

She squealed and sighed, and cried to her customer in English and Vietnamese. She told him she loved him.

Quyn presented herself on all fours, like the animals on the farm. Every time they made love, she showed him something new. She was kind to him, and taught him to move more slowly but with greater purpose.

When he was finished, she asked him to bring her cigarettes.

Shorty walked past the storeroom where Moreau kept sacks of rice, crumpled like bound and hooded prisoners. Baby Marie stepped out from behind the curtain, naked, and punched him in the side of the head.

‘Bastard!’ she shouted.

Everywhere Shorty went, women seemed to scream at him.

Baby Marie, perfectly beautiful, smacked him in the eye for looking at her body. A GI scuttled behind her, his clothes bundled in his arms, dashing for the exit.

The truth hit Shorty suddenly. He had chosen the old, dry woman against the soft, young girl, and he couldn’t remember why.

Baby Marie stormed in on Quyn. ‘Whoregash!’ she shouted.

‘Stinkcunt!’ screamed Quyn.

Baby Marie grabbed Quyn by the hair and slapped her. Shorty ran to pull her off. Baby Marie caught him with the back of her hand. With a short, fast fist, Quyn punched Baby Marie in the throat. Baby Marie gagged then thrust her head forward and bit Quyn on the breast.

Shorty stepped back, unable to decide how best to break up a fight between two naked women.

Baby Marie jumped on Quyn, bent one leg on her chest and pushed a knee under her chin. She slapped and scratched while Quyn squirmed and screamed and, despite himself, Shorty was fascinated. He knew it was something he’d never see again.

Eventually, the noise of battle brought Tâm from the house behind. She screamed at both women, and kicked Baby Marie in the back. Baby Marie turned on Tâm, but Tâm was clothed and carrying a kitchen knife. When Quyn tried to use the moment to spring at Baby Marie, Tâm thrust the blade close to her belly.

Quyn came towards Shorty, her arms open, but he was ashamed to look at her. She saw it and it hurt her. ‘I saved you, cherry boy,’ she cried. ‘Look at Baby Marie. Look at the stinkcunt!’

Baby Marie covered herself with her hands.

‘Can’t you see she’s got a disease?’ yelled Quyn. ‘Oh, she’s got cunt disease, sure. But cunt disease can be cured by the cunt doctor: penicillin, no problem.’

Tâm stood warily between Quyn and Baby Marie.

‘But Baby Marie has a special disease,’ shouted Quyn. ‘You dig into her gonorrhoea pussy, and she’ll tell you, “Oh, you big boy, I love you very much,” then you’ll go back to Le Loi or ALSG and you will die. She’ll kill you with her VC pussy, Shorty. Her first man died, your friend lost his arms. Baby Marie’s number twelve. She’s number thirteen, number four, the number of death.’

That was when Shorty knew he’d bought Adams Baby Marie, not Quyn, with his grubby, folded ten-dollar bill.

The black cop was known as Blacksmith, not because he shod horses but because he had been through basic military training with a white man also named Smith. Blacksmith didn’t lock Nashville in the back of the truck. He let him sit next to Seamus in the cab, where both men spoke to Nashville like a buddy.

‘I don’t recognise your badge,’ said Nashville to Blacksmith.

‘We’re under a different command,’ said Blacksmith.

At Long Binh, they drove Nashville directly to the stockade, which was closed off from the rest of the camp by high and tight cyclone fencing and razor snakes of concertina wire. The guard at the gate asked them to unload their pistols and dry fire into a bucket, then he took their weapons.

Unarmed, Seamus and Blacksmith uncuffed Nashville, then followed him through processing. Seamus stood over the clerk as he filed Nashville’s paperwork, and both men waited while the smiling rhino Hillier ordered him to strip.

‘You guys come here to look up his ass?’ asked Hillier.

‘Perk of the job,’ said Blacksmith, although Hillier had addressed the white man.

Nashville took off his clothes, showing the bruises left by Caution’s boots.

He bent down, lifted his balls, and moved them to either side. Hillier’s gloved fingers probed his armpits. The guard held down his tongue with a spatula as he looked into his mouth. He parted Nashville’s hair, as if he might be wearing something stapled to his scalp, and pulled back his ears. He was thorough but not rough.

‘Prisoner’s clean,’ said Hillier to Doom.

‘I ain’t clean,’ said Nashville. ‘I got a hundred dollars and a box of matches shoved halfway up my ass.’

‘You’re a sick motherfucker,’ said Hillier.

Hillier waited for Nashville’s escort to leave. They did not move.

‘How come I ain’t never seen you guys before?’ Hillier asked Seamus. ‘Why didn’t they send him up with his buddies from the PMO?’

‘Couldn’t be trusted,’ said Blacksmith. ‘Had to be somebody from outside.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Hillier. ‘You ain’t from here and you ain’t from there. Neither asshole nor cunt.’

‘That’s right,’ said Blacksmith, ‘we’re the taint squad.’

‘Then you must be a black taint,’ said Doom.

A barber planed Nashville’s head, gave him a boot-camp cut, as short at the top as it was at the sides. Nashville blinked as bristles rained into his eyes, and he spat out hair from the corner of his mouth. An orderly gave Nashville a bar of soap.

Nashville was assigned to Compound Three, with the other pre-trial cases. Hillier and Doom marched him off towards a line of tents. Seamus and Blacksmith followed behind, as if guarding the guards.

The compound was without shade, overlooked by gun towers. Hillier put Nashville in a tent with five black GIs and two whites. There was no floor or furniture, only wooden boxes to sleep in.

Nashville thought he saw the biggest negro make a sign to Blacksmith. Hillier thought he saw it too.

‘You two know each other?’ asked Hillier.

‘That ain’t easy to say,’ said Blacksmith. ‘We all look the same.’

Nashville peered into the empty box that was to be his bed.

‘I don’t know what you’ve been told,’ said Hillier to Nashville, ‘but you ain’t got nothing to fear from us. Tomorrow, you’ll get given work, and if you keep your head down and do your job, you’ll be treated fairly. Ain’t that right, boys?’

None of the prisoners answered.

‘That’s right,’ said Doom.

‘If you make trouble,’ said Hillier to Nashville, ‘you’ll get trouble, but that’s just the way of the world. There ain’t nothing special about Long Binh. If you’ve got any complaints about the way you’re treated, just come to me or Doom and we’ll see you get a hearing.’

Nashville was satisfied he could whup every man in the tent. The biggest negro had muscle but no grace.

Seamus and Blacksmith walked the length and width of the tent. Blacksmith put a hand in Nashville’s box and tapped the side.

‘We’re finished with the prisoner now,’ said Hillier to Seamus. ‘You guys want to come for a beer? Tell us a bit about yourselves?’

‘We’ve got to get back,’ said Blacksmith.

‘Where to?’ asked Doom.

‘Base,’ said Blacksmith.

‘You two are the most mysterious pair of taints I ever met,’ said Hillier. ‘I think the CO’d be interested to meet you.’

One of the white prisoners started driving push-ups on the floor.

‘Afraid we have to leave now,’ said Blacksmith. ‘Got to be home before dark.’

‘Base must be a way away,’ said Doom.

A black prisoner played with himself in his pants.

‘We’ve got things to do along the road,’ said Seamus.

‘I don’t know if I could keep it up,’ said Hillier, ‘being as mysterious as you guys. But then, I ain’t no taint.’

All the MPs left the tent. Nashville shook hands with the big negro.

‘Wagner,’ said the black man. His handshake felt like a threat.

Nashville’s bed reminded him of Nguyễn Van Tran’s casket.

‘It’s to guard you from scorpions,’ said Wagner, ‘but scorpions ain’t much of an issue in the stockade. The problem here is guys hanging themselves from white sheets.’

‘There a lot of suicides?’ asked Nashville.

‘Look around you,’ said Wagner. ‘See any white sheets?’

At eight p.m., Nashville was sitting on the edge of his box, flipping coins with Wagner, when the chanting began.

‘Pig! Pig! Pig!’

It rose from the tents around them, a high, angry song, deepened by the bass of open palms drumming timber boxes.

Wagner pulled a drowsy fly out of the air.

‘Kill the pig! Kill the pig!’

Nashville mouthed the words to himself.

‘We ain’t never had a military police in here before,’ said Wagner. ‘You must be one sick motherfucker.’

The chant grew louder, as if the voices were drawing closer, but it was just that more men had joined in the call.

Six white guards came into the tent. They all had the same raisin eyes and doughfaces, too fat to be fit.

‘Prisoner Grant,’ said Sergeant Doughface, ‘you’ve got to move.’

Nashville didn’t.

‘You’re being transferred to maximum security for your own protection.’

‘I don’t need no protection,’ said Nashville.

‘If you stay here, where they can get you, you’ll start a riot,’ said Sergeant Doughface.

‘I won’t start nothing,’ said Nashville.

‘Funny thing,’ said Sergeant Doughface. ‘Seems like you’ve got buddies in Saigon looking out for you. And they’re mighty vexed about the hostility you might face from your kith and kin here, after you butchered a Southern boy and cut off his ears. So they try to push us simple men around and tell us they know best, and order us to lock you up with the niggers and – how about this? – the shitskins want you dead too. On account of the fact you’re one of us.

‘Ordinarily, we wouldn’t be able to move you without permission, but in this case – with your life in danger and all – we ain’t got no other choice. Let’s go, prisoner.’

Nashville figured he could go or he could not go. It was the same feeling he’d felt when he’d followed Caution up the hill. No matter how it began, the end was going to be the same. He looked at Sergeant Doughface and felt a brief, cold sympathy.

Is it going to be you?

Executioner or executed, it was all the same.

The doughfaces appeared to be men, but Nashville saw meat. He frightened himself, but he laughed.

Sergeant Doughface thought he heard defiance, but Nashville offered him the opposite. He bowed his head.

Like Jesus, thought Nashville, being led to the cross.

The doughfaces – Roman soldiers – formed an escort around him, and marched Nashville out. He carried his bar of soap, a poor crucifix. The Stations of his Cross were dour and unremarkable.

‘We’re going to Silver City,’ said Sergeant Doughface.

That was the Sentence.

Nashville thought of a ghost town in Idaho, the miners all gone, a screaming Indian baby left behind in a shaft.

The doughfaces cuffed him, so they could prod him and push him around. Even after sundown it was as hot as Golgotha, and Nashville was hungry, excited and nervous. It came out of him as sweat, which dripped from his shaved head and into his eyes. Nashville tripped first in the compound, but quickly found his feet. A guard wiped his face with a rag, and Nashville fell a second time.

The doughfaces marched him through the compound to a segregated area, lit by beams from lights on poles. They brought him to a row of shipping containers with barred doors, corrugated boxes lined up like cargo unloaded from a wharf.

They think I’m ballast, thought Nashville.

He stumbled a third time.

‘Silver City,’ said Sergeant Doughface, opening the door to the Conex. ‘They can’t get you in here. You sleep well, now.’

He freed the prisoner from the cuffs.

There was a floor in the Conex, so Nashville didn’t need a box to sleep in. He was alone, without witnesses, freight in a derailed car. The roof of the container was six feet two inches off the ground, about the same height as Nashville. The boxing books said Jack Dempsey used to train in a five-foot cage, shadow-boxing from a crouch to build power in his legs. Nashville dropped low and threw sharp punches in the air. He danced around the Conex in the dark, mapping out the ring. He found the corners and leaned into the walls as if they were ropes. After a couple of rounds, Nashville’s knees began to shake, not through the effort of the exercise but out of fear of the night.

It was two a.m. when Nashville heard them come for him, eight pairs of marching feet.