TWENTY-FIVE

Betty met Shorty as he came in off his patrol. The whites of her eyes had run pink, a dye from her blood, and she didn’t look like anyone he knew. She said they had to talk, so he let her take him to the wire, where they could stand together and look out to sea. She asked how he was. He told her he was fine, but that Nashville was still in trouble and he would have to go and help him.

‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ said Betty. ‘I never meant to hurt you.’

Shorty knew that. ‘We were never right for each other,’ he said.

Betty dabbed her eyes. He watched the water. She put a hand on his arm. He moved gently away.

‘Don’t go cold on me, Shorty,’ said Betty.

He was impatient with this. ‘It’s just over,’ he said.

Betty wondered how he could be so composed. ‘You’re relieved, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You never wanted me.’

Shorty wasn’t sure any more. ‘It didn’t seem right,’ he said.

‘I don’t even know what that means,’ she said.

‘Well, you did it with the orderly,’ said Shorty. ‘Did that seem right?’

He noticed for the first time that Betty had very big hands.

‘I must’ve been mad,’ said Betty. ‘But you won’t hurt him, will you?’

‘No,’ said Shorty.

‘Some men would,’ said Betty. ‘After what he did.’ She despised Anderson.

‘I’m a provost,’ said Shorty.

‘You’re not even jealous, are you?’ asked Betty. ‘What’s happened to you, Shorty?’

‘Things’ve changed,’ he said.

‘What things?’ asked Betty.

But she still had beautiful eyes.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Shorty.

Betty lit a cigarette, her cosmopolitan affectation. ‘Were you seeing someone?’ she asked. ‘Was it that girl from the restaurant?’

Shorty blushed, because he thought she meant Quyn, but Betty had only seen Tâm.

She watched him redden.

Shorty closed his heart and pretended to himself he was some­where else.

‘What if she had a disease, Shorty? Did you ever think about that?’

No, he didn’t.

‘I never did it when I was with you,’ said Shorty.

Betty froze. ‘So it’s true?’ she asked. ‘That you did it?’ She looked around for somebody to help her. She started to cry, but hid her tears behind her hands.

‘You were just waiting for an excuse,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t . . .’

She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘How long did you wait?’ she asked.

Shorty didn’t reply.

‘It must’ve been hard for you,’ she said, ‘being around those whores every day, and watching your mates do whatever they wanted with them.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Shorty.

‘How did it feel when you finally did it?’ she demanded.

‘How did you feel when you did it with the orderly?’ asked Shorty.

She began to cry again. ‘I felt filthy,’ said Betty, ‘and guilty and horrible and stupid and used.’

Shorty watched her try to calm herself. He took her in his arms and stroked her shaking shoulders.

‘Was it the same for you?’ she asked. ‘Did you know straight away what a terrible mistake you’d made? Did you feel like you hated her?’

‘No,’ said Shorty.

The Captain didn’t have an evidence cabinet per se, as his MPs rarely gathered the type of physical evidence that might require storage. He kept the letter to Nashville locked in the office strongbox with his Montecristos, in an envelope marked ‘evidence’ to distinguish it from cigars. He allowed Shorty to look at the note, but warned him it could not leave the office, due to the rules of evidence.

Shorty asked if he could copy it. The Captain said yes. Shorty asked if there was a photocopier in his office. The Captain said no. The Captain was force to bend the rules of evidence only moments after he had invented them, and allow Shorty to take the letter to the next-door office, where a duplicator sat beside an old, empty filing cabinet.

The letter read: My darling, Come quickly. My body is ripe for you. It was signed with a kiss, or a cross.

‘It’s just like Caution’s,’ said Shorty.

‘That’s because the same person wrote it,’ said the Captain. ‘Nashville.’

The Captain had the story figured out. Nashville – or an accomplice – had planted the note on Caution’s pillow, to lure Caution to Le Boudin, where he knew he would be rattled by the sight of a corpse with no ears drinking at the bar. He’d then used the stolen paint to mount a sham campaign around town, culminating in daubing Caution’s own hut, to divert suspicion towards genuine local protestors who, in this case, were both peaceable and had a perfectly good reason to be angry. Once he’d given the zipperheads a motive to come after Caution, and laid a false trail of evidence to suggest they were chasing him down, he’d set up a sham fistfight for everyone to see, and lost the contest – even though every man in the PMO knew Nashville could whup Caution’s cracker-ass all the way back to Asshole, Tennessee. Nashville thought everyone else was stupid enough to believe Caution had beat him, and so they wouldn’t think he’d go back to the hill where Nashville had first dug the old zipperhead out of the ground, and finish off Caution in private. Of course, Nashville was too clever for his own good. He had cut off Caution’s ears, to make it a revenge attack by the locals, and planted a note on his own rack to make it seem as though he’d been elsewhere at the time of the killing. It was an elaborate plan, the Captain admitted, and it might well have succeeded, if it hadn’t been for the Captain ordering a search of Nashville’s room and finding the paint, and Moreau and the bar girl being unwilling to provide Nashville with an alibi. Now the low-lifes at Le Boudin had got what they wanted – which was Caution out of the way – they weren’t looking for any further trouble with the military, so they’d given Nashville up. They’d hung him out to dry. It would be easy to feel sorry for Nashville. He was probably Moreau’s patsy in this whole affair. But the truth was, Nashville was both a murderer and a traitor – almost certainly led into the conspiracy by the tip of his cock – and he deserved everything that was coming to him, which was plenty.

Shorty tried to find a sample of Nashville’s handwriting, to prove he had not written the notes, but as Nashville had never filed a single report, or even written a word in his notebook, all Shorty had was a signature, which Nashville signed J G, for ‘John Grant’, followed by a wiggly line.

A cloudburst tapped a cramp roll on the tin roof of Le Boudin. Quyn thought Shorty had come to see her. She brought a drink for each of them, kissed him on the lips and found a perch on his long, bony knees. He eased her aside and called out to Moreau, who turned reluctantly to face him.

‘I need you to do something to help Nashville,’ said Shorty. ‘I know you’re a civilian, but can you write a statement to the military police, describing what you saw before the blue? Explaining how Sergeant Caution started it?’

Moreau said, ‘I cannot.’

Shorty waited.

‘As you may have noticed, Inspecteur,’ said Moreau, ‘I am missing a finger on my right hand. The digit next to it is paralysed, and I have no feeling in my thumb. Writing is a difficult task for me, and I try to avoid it when it is futile. I have already made a statement.’

Shorty looked at the stub of Moreau’s knuckle. ‘What happened to your finger anyway?’ he asked.

‘I was captured,’ said Moreau, ‘by men who cut it off, in an effort to make me talk.’

Shorty dipped his eyes, out of respect for Moreau’s torture.

‘And did you talk?’ asked Shorty.

‘Yes,’ said Moreau. ‘I did.’

Shorty could have guessed Moreau was the type who would break under interrogation.

‘I told them,’ said Moreau, ‘in their own language, to go fuck their mothers.’

He put down the cloth and the cup he was holding, took his kepi by the peak, and removed his hat. There was a small, round scar on his right temple. The flesh inside looked burned.

‘They shot me through the head,’ said Moreau. ‘The baker’s boy and I have very much in common. So you see, you can question me all you like, and shout across my bar, where you drink for free, in the space below my home, where you were invited for dinner with your fiancée, where you sit now with your arm around the woman I provided for you to lose your virginity. You can yell and you can pout in the seat once occupied by a harmless, friendly imbécile, who did you no injury but whom you helped a madman beat almost to death, and you still will not get the answers you would prefer to hear.’

Shorty reddened.

He had no answer for Moreau. He had not planned for things to turn out this way and, as soon as he had freed his partner, he hoped once again to live a life of which Harry Long could be proud – or, at least, one he might understand.

Until then, Shorty had to figure out what was really going on in Vung Tau. He felt the Captain’s theory missed important points. Shorty was convinced everything was connected, from the shooting of the chickens at Long Tâm Thu to his attack by the boy who called himself Ginger Meggs, and the Captain took neither incident into account. Shorty did not understand how Ginger Meggs could speak Australian, and he was frustrated because he couldn’t tell allies from enemies. He had thought about what Jack Adams had said, and he was not sure if the Australians – or any of the foreign troops – were really doing any good in Vung Tau.

‘I will answer one of your questions,’ said Quyn, ‘then you will shut up and buy me a dress.’

She asked Moreau if she could take Shorty from his stool for ten minutes. Moreau said she could remove him for the rest of his life. Quyn took his hand and led him outside. The bright sunshine startled him after the darkness of bar. He had forgotten it was early afternoon. Quyn walked him across the road and behind a row of bars used by Korean soldiers, up a dirt path to a timber building with an open door. Inside, forty children sat at desks beneath a ceiling fan, facing a blackboard. Their teacher was a white man wearing Australian military uniform, but Shorty didn’t recognise the insignia of his corps.

On the walls were postcards from Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney: churches, koalas, beaches and the harbour bridge. There was even a picture of Puckapunyal.

‘This is the Australian school for orphans,’ said Quyn. ‘Your engineers built it. Your soldiers teach the classes. Their education is a gift from your government.’

The teacher noticed Shorty. ‘G’day, dig,’ he called, and smiled.

He waved his hand, and the children cried, in a shrill, tinkling chorus, ‘G’day, dig.’

‘Now,’ said the teacher, ‘let’s give our visitor a song.’

The children rose from their seats and stood to face Shorty. They wore approximations of uniform, dirty cream blouses, flapping blue pants and skirts.

‘Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong . . .’

Shorty wiped a tear from his eye.

He applauded the class, even bowed to them, and kissed Quyn on the cheek, as if she too were a child.

‘Thank you,’ he said to Quyn. ‘You’ve shown me it’s not all worthless.’

She stared at him, astounded, and wondered if he could ever be made to understand a single thing about the city of Vung Tau.

The bootsteps of the guards at Long Binh stopped at the door of Nashville’s Conex. As they fell still, Nashville heard insects singing in the night. The first guard unbolted the container door, and looked around for the prisoner. They had expected him to be asleep against the wall, but Nashville lay in the middle of the floor, waiting.

The first man scanned the Conex with his flashlight, bouncing the beam off each corner. Nashville grabbed him by the ankles and tore him down. The man flapped around on the ground, his feet caught up in his own white robes. He strained to stand, but Nashville sprang up first, raised his foot and stamped on his head. His heel burst the man’s nose. The blood ran red through the white of the man’s hood, and Nashville thought he looked beautiful, a swan dying in the snow.

The others rushed in, and Nashville slipped into his chosen corner, so they could only come at him from a single angle. They all wore their glory suits: white belted gowns, pointed cloth masks, and a cross in a circle painted over their hearts.

Nashville thought they might be the same men who’d moved him, and, for a moment, believed he could take them all. They found it awkward to fight in robes. Their eyeholes kept slipping from their eyes.

Nashville ducked his second attacker and dug a fist beneath his ribs, then opened his fingers to pull out his spleen, a faith healer in a trance. The man screamed as if he really had been eviscerated. Nashville the sorcerer would have liked to show him his entrails. Instead, he rolled his gutted body into the man behind. The third guy was the biggest, and Nashville realised it was Hillier.

‘Kneel for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,’ said Hillier.

Nashville hit him with a left hook, which swung into Hillier’s jaw from out of his line of sight. Hillier staggered then toppled onto Nashville.

I’ll bet his eyes rolled, thought Nashville. I wish I could’ve seen that – his eyes looking up at his brain.

When their faces came together, Nashville bit a piece out of Hillier’s cheek. Hillier screamed inside the hood, and rolled aside, his hands tearing at the cloth.

Nashville was animal now, bloodied and exhilarated. The next man who touched him, Nashville chewed into his finger, and turned his head so as to tear the flesh from the bone. He kicked at his kneecaps, and grabbed another man’s testicles and twisted them up to his stomach. He would’ve taken them off, except his buddy punched Nashville hard in the ear, and a man he’d put down clawed at his shins, and the boys at the back of the group turned out to be the toughest of all, and they’d just been waiting until Nashville was worn out before they came in, punching straight like fighters, not swinging wide like hopeless dopes in clowning cloaks and pillowcase veils.

Nashville knew he wouldn’t feel anything until the blow that took him down, and even that would be no more than a heavy caress. Two men grabbed his arms and dragged him out of his corner, and another jumped at him and Nashville thought he was going to die, but he jerked forward and butted the leaping clown with such force that Nashville blacked out for a moment. The other man fell unconscious and everyone stopped to look, as if some kind of magic had been performed.

Finally they overwhelmed him. Nashville felt their merciful hands on his wrists and ankles, their kind knees on his chest, their gentle fists battering his head.

Then he came back up, with a strength he had never known. He thought maybe he was dead and feeling his spirit rising, but Klansmen fell around him as he roared. He saw Hillier cowering, clutching his cheek, and Nashville mounted him and arched his back. The hair rose on his forearms, his calves and the back of his neck. His hands were his claws and they tore at Hillier’s eyes. His teeth were his fangs and he bit into Hillier’s ear.

Shorty couldn’t get to visit Nashville until the weekend, when he rode up to Long Binh with a US truck transporting filing cabinets shipped from Dayton, Ohio. The guard at the stockade refused to let him see the prisoner. Shorty wouldn’t leave and, eventually, Sergeant Doughface came to pick him up. He told Shorty he could take a look at Nashville, but he couldn’t speak to him. Shorty thought that must be a rule but, when he reached the Conex, he realised it was just a fact. Nashville paced his container, naked and unshaven, stooped and smeared with gore. When he saw Sergeant Doughface, he leaped at his bars and roared. Nashville’s eyes were glazed. He was blood-drunk, a vampire.

‘What did you do to him?’ asked Shorty.

‘He put three of my guys in hospital,’ said Sergeant Doughface. ‘They ought to shoot that mad dog. Or drop him on the Viet Cong.’

When Nashville noticed Shorty, he cocked his head like a hunting dog and pissed on the floor of his Conex.

Shorty caught a chopper back to Vung Tau with a pilot who flew because he loved to fly, and never felt free on the ground. Some people were lucky, the pilot told Shorty, and they found the thing that completed them. For many guys, that might be a woman. For the pilot’s brother, it was his son, but for the pilot – Shorty thought he was going to say it was his helicopter – it was the war.

Shorty and Quyn lay on the mattress, talking. She was naked, he wore underpants. Her nipple pressed against his skin. Her fingers twisted at the dusting of hair on his chest.

‘Have you ever had another job?’ Shorty asked.

‘Yes,’ said Quyn. ‘I used to be a professor at the Sorbonne.’

She laughed, so Shorty realised it was a joke.

‘You are thinking what could I do if I came back to Australia with you,’ she said, because she’d had the same conversation many times on many different mattresses. ‘I could do nothing.’

Shorty cupped one small breast.

‘But it does not matter,’ said Quyn, ‘because you will not take me back. I can do nothing for you, Shorty, but this.’ She stroked him, slowly. ‘I cannot bear children because of what has been done to me.’

‘By who?’ asked Shorty, ready to avenge.

‘Men,’ said Quyn. ‘A Chinese came for me when I was nine years old. He took me away from my village to Cholon, to learn. They taught me how to read and write, to sing and dance, to recite poetry and play pleasing music.’ She smiled. ‘And how to fuck like a dragon.’

She lit a Lucky Strike, drew the smoke into her lungs and breathed fire through her nostrils.

‘But the fat Chinese beat me,’ she said, ‘so one day, I ran away, back to my village. While I ate rice with my mother, my father sent a messenger to Cholon. It was only then I understood I had been sold. The second time I ran, I came here. It was in the time of the French, this town was Cap St Jacques, and I was fifteen. I found a Frenchman who would take care of me. I learned his language, I read his books, I sucked his cock. And when the Chinese came after me, he shot him. It made him feel like a good man. As if he’d saved me. But all he had done was buy me. Or steal me.

‘He was a butcher,’ she said. ‘He taught me how to cut meat.’

Shorty listened to her story, sad but distracted.

‘When my Frenchman tired of me,’ she said, ‘I could have returned to my village, but I chose to stay in Vung Tau until my father died.’

Shorty imagined an evil man, a hunchback.

‘So you see, Shorty,’ she said, ‘there is no one you can kill for me. They are all already dead.’

She wriggled beneath him and guided him inside her. Shorty gasped.

‘I wanted to know,’ he told her, ‘because I was wondering if you could write.’

‘Yes,’ said Quyn. ‘I can write.’

Nashville had been awake for four days when he finally lost consciousness and the guards poured into his Conex. They manacled and straitjacketed him, injected him with a tranquilliser and stretchered him to the camp hospital, where the nurses washed, dressed and shaved him, and the guards laid him down and cuffed him to the frame of a bed.

It was a real hospital, thought Shorty, with clean walls, scrubbed floors and air conditioning, and a garage of gleaming, wheeled machines to put men back together after other machines had blown them apart. It made the wards at ALSG look like a camp site.

A man with a gun stood over Nashville as Shorty fed him cigarettes. Nashville spoke slowly and clearly. He told Shorty there’d be no additional charges laid against him, since none of the men he wounded were even supposed to be on duty.

‘Did you find out who killed Caution?’ Nashville asked.

Shorty shook his head.

‘Do you know who wrote the notes?’ Nashville asked.

Shorty looked into his lap.

‘Do you have any fucking news for me at all?’ asked Nashville.

‘Bucky’s still alive,’ said Shorty.

Nashville smiled.

Shorty wondered if he should tell him the rest.

‘And I’ve split up with Betty,’ he said.

The news seemed to wake Nashville up. ‘You won’t never lose your cherry now,’ he said, and laughed.

‘I already did,’ said Shorty.

Nashville almost jerked upright in his bed, but the cuffs held him down.

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘That’s amazing! Congratulations! So you and little Baby Marie . . .’

‘Not Baby Marie,’ said Shorty.

Nashville was puzzled. ‘Tâm?’ he asked, looking up though hooded eyes.

‘I’d never do that,’ said Shorty.

‘So who?’ demanded Nashville, who’d forgotten he was beat up and chained up in hospital and charged with killing a fellow soldier.

Shorty found he couldn’t say.

‘It don’t count,’ said Nashville, ‘if it was your hand.’

‘A gentleman doesn’t tell,’ said Shorty.

‘Baby Marie, Tâm, Betty . . .’ Nashville counted them off on his teeth with his tongue. ‘You don’t know any other girls.’

Shorty blushed. ‘It wasn’t a girl,’ he said.

Nashville became even more excited. ‘Was it an ox?’ he asked. ‘Was it a chicken?’

Shorty whispered Quyn’s name.

‘No!’ shouted Nashville. ‘You did it with your mom!’

Shorty scratched himself behind the ear.

‘Thank you, Shorty,’ said Nashville. ‘None of this seems so bad now I know that.’

Nashville sat grinning with his eyes closed, chortling and snorting.

Shorty let him enjoy himself for a minute, then said, ‘They say you ate a guard’s ear, Nashville. That doesn’t look good, considering everything.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ said Nashville, ‘I didn’t eat it. I bit it. There’s a big difference. You ask Quyn.’

Shorty wished he hadn’t told Nashville, but he was pleased Nashville knew.

‘So what’re you doing to get me out of here?’ Nashville asked him.

‘I’m going to find the Mamasan,’ said Shorty.

Nashville sighed.

‘She likes you,’ said Shorty.

Nashville shook his head, which was one of the few gestures available to him.

‘That’s what Caution said,’ said Nashville. ‘That’s all.’

Shorty produced his notepad. ‘Does Moreau know who she is?’ he asked.

‘I doubt it,’ said Nashville. ‘He hears things through hoochmaids and whores.’

Shorty wrote down Moreau’s name, for the small pleasure of crossing it out.

‘Did Caution know?’ asked Shorty.

‘Maybe,’ said Nashville. ‘Maybe the Aussies did too. Maybe your buddy Izzy Berger did. For that matter, maybe your buddy Izzy Berger paid someone to grease Caution,  just like he fucking said he would.’

Shorty thought Nashville was trying to make him feel stupid.

‘What happened to your R&C?’ Nashville asked suddenly. ‘Your weekend in Saigon? Who’s gonna go with you now? Quyn?’

Shorty shrugged.

‘Go up there on your own,’ said Nashville. ‘I’ve got buddies in HQ supposed to be looking out for me. I don’t know who they are, but I need you to find them for me, and tell them what’s going on.’

Shorty promised he’d do what he could, which, he suspected, would be nothing.

‘What’ll happen now?’ he asked.

‘When I get out of hospital, they’ll try to grease me again,’ said Nashville.