CHAPTER 5

Chelini waited outside the orderly room shack for the first sergeant to call him. He felt completely lost. This was not a training unit where everyone was new or a replacement station where everyone was transient. This was the infantry, a permanent assignment and he was an outsider. The men were busy in closed groups or loafing in closed groups.

The battalion to which Chelini had been assigned was on the last day of a five-day refitting and training stand-down. Before stand-down the men of the Oh-deuce had spent 105 days in the boonies, up the Sông Bo and Rao Trang rivers, on the hills by Firebases Veghel, Ripcord and Maureen, and in the swamps west of Quang Tri City. They were the division reaction force. It was not uncommon for them to be extracted from one jungle only to be inserted into another.

Chelini went to the screen door of the hootch and tried to see inside. He could see nothing. He turned and scrutinized the battalion area. Before him was a quadrangle surrounded on three sides by buildings. On the far side a steep hill rose to a helicopter resupply point.

At the center of the quad there was a boxing ring and a PSP basketball court. By the court the old white soldier was still chewing out the same lethargic black boonierat. From where Chelini stood the words were unintelligible. The black soldier had very dark skin. He was shuffling his feet in the red dust, casting upward scowls from a down-hanging head, bouncing and jiving with his knuckles on his hips. The old white soldier was shorter than the black man and much heavier. His head was round and bald on top with the sparse hair at the side shaved. The skin was very red, as if blood was trying to escape.

Very near Company A’s office was a narrow moldy structure with a boat on the roof. Five white enlisted men with deeply tanned arms, faces and necks and pallid torsos carried olive drab towels and shaving gear into the shower house. They joked and fooled and slapped each other with the towels and stepped gingerly over the muck patch which flowed past the four-holer EM latrine toward the drainage ditch. They did not even look in Chelini’s direction.

Close to the screen door of the office where Chelini stood two men converged, stopped and commenced a strangely ritualistic clapping and shaking of hands and forearms and slapping of each other’s shoulders and tapping of each other’s fists. One of the men was black, dark brown, not as dark as the soldier at the quad’s center; the other was light brown, the color of wheatbread. The ritualized greeting went on for what seemed a long time.

Chelini turned. A clerk opened the screen door. The first sergeant called him in by methodically curling one index finger. Chelini gulped. The first sergeant fumbled with a stack of papers and forms. His desk was clear of everything except essentials. He dusted the land-line telephone with his hand and directed the clerk to empty the trash containers. Then he handed Chelini the forms and a pencil. “Complete thees,” he said and turned away. Chelini nodded. Holy Christ, he thought. I’m lost. I’m stuck. I gotta get out of this unit. Chelini glanced at the forms briefly and began filling in his name on a weapons card. He looked up, out the door. The dark black soldier from the center of the quad had joined the black soldier and brown soldier at the front of the office. The greeting rite of raps and slaps and shakes began again.

“Troop,” the first sergeant said. Chelini jumped. “Can’t you write any faster? You scared of that pencil?”

“No, I just …”

“Troop, you a college graduate, aint you?” Oh, shit, Chelini thought. Two strikes against me already. “You let pencil run you. T’row that pencil down.”

“T’row it down?”

“Yeas. That what I said. T’row it down.” Chelini dropped the pencil. “Chee!” the first sergeant shouted. “What it do? It don’t jump up and bite you, do it? It’s daid, Scholdier. Now pick it up and run it.”

Chelini began signing the forms. Oh shit, he thought. How’d I get stuck in an infantry unit? They put all the dumb kids in here. Of all the places to be assigned. I wonder what happened to Kaltern from basic. He had a good head. Or Baez from AIT or Ralston. They were some okay people and now I gotta get stuck with a bunch of high school dropouts.

“Troop,” First Sergeant Laguana said, “you getting some very expensive equipment. You getting the best weapon in the world. You know that? When you get here at Eagle no magazine in weapon, hokay?” The first sergeant picked up Chelini’s weapons card and brought it close to his face. “When you on berm guard you lock en load. You lock en load on helicopter for CA, hokay? On CA you keep the chafety on. If you on the first chopper you go in on automatic, hokay? I don want none my troops schot.” Chelini nodded and nodded. This guy’s an idiot, he told himself.

The three men who’d been in front of the office came in. The first sergeant ignored them and they ignored him. Chelini looked up. The nearest one nodded and winked. Chelini nodded back. The dark black soldier saluted Chelini with a clenched fist. Chelini startled, stared. He nodded agreement. He was frightened not to. He knew he’d been assigned to a unit of crazy racist psychopaths. The first sergeant picked up the remainder of the forms and scrutinized each. “You getting the best radio in the world,” Laguana said. “You know that? You getting seven hun’red channel. You know that?”

“Hey, Babe, we got us a new RTO,” the dark black man said snapping his fingers. “Oh Babe, that fucka gowin kick yo ass.” He gave Chelini a second power salute. Chelini smiled dumbly and nodded and made a half-hearted attempt to emulate the gesture and the black man laughed.

“Hey, Top,” the brown man laughed. To Chelini the laugh seemed bitter. Oh Man, he thought. These guys would slit your throat for a cigarette. “You got a new wristwatch.” The brown man grabbed for the first sergeant’s arm but the NCO pulled it back. Shit, Chelini thought. Even the first sergeant’s scared of them.

“What choos want?” Laguana snapped. “Jackson. Out,” he said to the dark black. “Doc. Out,” he added. To the brown man he said, “El Paso. You stay.”

The two black men departed after chiding and jiving the first sergeant. The light brown soldier stayed.

“Hokay, now I get a rucksack.” Sergeant Laguana reached beneath his desk and with a theatrical flip of the wrist produced an aluminum frame with a nylon bag attached. “Thees,” he said, “is rucksack. Thees rucksack weigh one pound. By the time I schow you, we get you a P-R-C twen’yfive, chow, ammo and canteen …”

“That motha’s goina weigh a hundred pounds,” El Paso inserted.

Chelini shifted toward the brown soldier and a bit out of the way. El Paso was older than Chelini had thought when he’d first seen him standing in front of the office.

“Troop,” Laguana addressed Chelini trying to ignore El Paso again, “you gon carry everyt’ing you need right here. Here, you try it on.” Chelini reluctantly reached for the rucksack.

Laguana scowled and walked into the back storeroom and returned with a PRC-25 radio. Then he left again and returned with a case of C-rations. He dropped that on the floor by the growing pack and disappeared into the back room singing to himself. El Paso fitted and secured the radio inside the ruck’s main pocket. He fastened it in such a manner that it could be easily removed and carried separately.

“Hey,” El Paso said. “Ask Top to give you two extra pair of bootlaces. He’ll be okay to you now cause you’re new. You won’t be able to get them later.”

“Thanks,” Chelini said. He wanted to ask the brown soldier questions but he was wary.

Top returned with four one-quart canteens, an empty steel ammo can, an M-16, eighteen empty magazines and eighteen boxes of cartridges, four fragmentation grenades and two smoke grenades. He dropped the equipment on the pile and whistled his way back to the storeroom.

“Hey,” El Paso yelled at him, “get him some more canteens. This aint enough.”

“Thas enough,” Laguana yelled back.

“Guy’s a fuckin shithead,” El Paso said. “I won’t tell you, though. You can’t tell one man about another.” El Paso set to work filling the rucksack, carefully ordering items with the attention he would give to his own gear. Chelini watched him. “Shit,” the brown man said. “Ham and lima beans. Taste like shit. Worst Charlie Rat there is. You oughta throw it out. Aint worth humpin. These, canned fruit and pound cake, they’re worth their weight in gold.”

The first sergeant returned with four radio batteries, a machete, an entrenching tool, a claymore with wire and firing device, a poncho and poncho liner, one olive drab towel, a web belt, ammo pouches, helmet with liner and cover, a long and short antenna for the radio, and small bottles of LSA and bug repellent. El Paso continued sorting through the food asking Chelini what he liked and throwing what he himself didn’t like to one side. From the heavy cardboard of the C-ration case El Paso cut a broad section and fitted it on the inner side of the ruck so it would lie between the lumpy cans and batteries inside and Chelini’s back.

“Look at this shit,” El Paso said. “Take the batteries but see that you get somebody else to carry one of em. Fuck the E-T and the claymore. When you hump a Prick-25 you can’t carry all that shit. Machete’s optional. Top’ll have you humpin two hundred pounds if you let him. Make sure he gets you more canteens.” El Paso tied the empty ammo can, a small steel box with a watertight seal, to the base of the ruck. “That’s where you keep all your personal stuff,” El Paso said. “Toothbrush, writing paper, extra socks. Everything that’s you and not the army.” Then he said, “Dump your duffel bag out.” Chelini emptied his duffel bag onto the floor. “You can’t carry any of that stuff,” El Paso said. “You can maybe take a book and you gotta take your razor. Top’ll lock away any personal shit you got. The uniforms go into the company clothes fund. You might want to keep out an extra T-shirt but that’s all.”

First Sergeant Laguana returned again and handed Chelini an extra pair of bootlaces. “Don let nobody see thees,” he smiled. “They always try an take them from me. I gotta keep thees locked up.”

“Top,” El Paso looked up angrily. “You’re an ass.”

“Jus go trim that mustache,” Laguana shouted.

“Don’t harass me. I’ll get the Human Relations Office to slap the back of your head. This place is fucked up.”

Laguana bent down to check and adjust the straps on Chelini’s rucksack. “He Company Senior RTO,” Laguana said proudly trying to mollify the young brown soldier.

El Paso pushed Laguana away. He grabbed the ruck. “Don’t fuck with my RTOs,” he said. He turned to Chelini. “Try it on.”

“He schow you how to put the ruck together pretty good, eh?” Laguana smiled. “Oooo, you gon cuss me. Now I got somet’ing to do. You go cut that mustache. Now get out.”

“Hey, Top?”

“Out.”

“If you don’t listen to me I’ll tell the IG.”

“What you want?” The first sergeant feigned exhaustion.

“About my R&R request. I’d like to change it from Bangkok to Sydney. Like Egan’s.”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“Out.”

“I want to talk to the L-T.”

“He aint in.”

“You aren’t going to let me see him.”

“Get out of here you chon-of-a-bitch,” the first sergeant erupted, jumping out from behind the desk, his eyes bulging and his fists clenched.

El Paso ran out of the hootch. He called back through the screen, “I’m only teasing you, Top. Cut yourself some slack.” He walked away mumbling, “That stupid asshole. He doesn’t have any right to tell me to trim my mustache. Son-of-a-bitch. Gives us Chicanos a bad name. Can’t even speak English.”

Chelini staggered out of the office hunched under the weight of the ruck. He plodded down to the boonierat shacks behind the theater. The weight of the rucksack was immediately oppressive, the shoulder straps cutting. Surrounding the hootches were the shacks the boonierats occupied when in from the bush. There were only half a dozen of these and when the entire battalion was in on stand-down these shanties were supplemented with twelve-man tents. Now, the tents, with their sides rolled up, filled the gaps between the hootches behind the theater. Chelini entered the hootch the first sergeant had told him was for the second squad and command post of the first platoon.

The hootches were all the same: the architectural essence of the 101st. These modular buildings dotted all the base camps. They were elevated on cinder blocks laid on the earth. Floor joists ran from block to block and to these a flooring of 4 x 8 half-inch plywood was nailed. The standard building was sixteen feet wide and thirty-two feet long, stud-framed to a height of five and a half feet with a pitched roof rising to ten feet above the long center axis. The sides were again 4x8 sheets of plywood laid horizontally and tacked to the stud framing. This allowed eighteen inches of open space running down both sides for windows. Roofs were corrugated galvanized iron sheets which absorbed the dry-season heat and made the hootches ovens or resounded with and amplified the rain of the monsoons, making enough noise to drive a man crazy. There was no heating. Electrical wires ran to the buildings but were not connected to a power source. The offices and buildings for rear-echelon personnel were of similar design, though more refined.

Chelini looked down the long low narrow barracks. It was somewhat like a tunnel with windows. There were two rows of canvas cots. On some of the cots various articles of field gear lay exposed. Rucksacks were scattered against the walls. The floor was covered with dry brown dirt and the wood was splintered. In the far corner a man lay on a cot. He had on no boots or socks, no shirt. He wore a pair of OD boxer shorts and a Star of David on a black bootlace around his neck. The man was emaciated. Lying down he appeared nearly six feet tall, 140 pounds at most. His ribs rippled the chalky white skin of his chest. Across his shoulders were red-yellow acne bumps. On the man’s hollow stomach was a small black cassette tape recorder.

“Say hey,” the man said when he noticed Chelini staring at him. “You a cherry? Pick yourself a bed. Last chance for a good night’s sleep.”

“All these taken?” Chelini asked.

“That one’s not.” He indicated the cot across from him, which was missing a cross bar at one end where the canvas sagged. “Who you goina be with?”

“Company A.”

“Damn, you are a cherry. This area is all Alpha Company. I mean which squad. This hootch is for the first platoon.”

“Oh. I’m supposed to be with the command post. The first sergeant said I’m goina be Sergeant Egan’s RTO.”

“Ha! You Egan’s cherry. He’s okay but he’s goina hump yer ass off. That man likes ta walk. What’s yer name? I’m Leon Silvers.”

“I’m James Chelini. People usually call me Jim.”

Silvers sat up and put the cassette down next to him on the canvas cot. He looked shorter sitting but he looked just as thin. “I was just listening to a tape my family sent. It was my folks’ anniversary last month and my father was officiating at the dinner table while everybody was talking.”

“Oh,” Chelini said. He was at a loss for something to say. “Ah, where is everybody?”

“Around. Half the dudes are on guard.”

“Where are you from?” Chelini asked. “I mean … back in the World. I’m from Connecticut.”

“Really? Where?”

“Bridgeport.”

“Ha! You shittin me? I’m from Stamford.”

“Wow! You’re the first person I’ve met from Connecticut. Except for basic. How long have you been here?”

“Me? Seven months. But let me give you a tip. Don’t go around asking everybody you meet how long they’ve been here. You can get only two responses to that question. Either somebody is really short and they’re goina yell ‘SHORT’ or they’re goina interpret it as though you were asking them like how they made it so long without getting their shit scattered. It’s kind of a bad omen. You don’t want to ask everybody right off where they’re from either.”

Chelini stared at Silvers. The skinny man’s eyes were very pale hazel and they bulged from their sockets as if his brain were pressuring his eyeballs and forcing them out of his head. He had prominent cheekbones and a very prominent Adam’s apple. Most of his body was white but his arms below where a short sleeved shirt stopped and his neck and face were weathered red-brown. “I didn’t mean to ah …” Chelini shrugged then blurted out, “It’s just that everybody sees I’m new and calls me a cherry and I guess without thinking I just say, ‘How long have you been here?’”

“Hey, I know,” Silvers laughed. “It don’t really mean nothin.”

“That’s another thing. Everybody I’ve met around here says that. ‘It don’t mean nothin. It don’t mean nothin.’ Why does everybody say that?”

Silvers winked and shrugged, “I don’t know. You know. It don’t mean nothin.” He laughed. “That’s what happens when guys live together. Everybody says the same things.”

Silvers lay back again and Chelini arranged his gear on the cot that Silvers had indicated. Chelini rummaged through his rucksack then cleaned off the cot by slapping it and raising small dust storms. Silvers turned his tape player back on and continued listening. Then he stopped it and said to Chelini, “Hey. You want to listen to some of this? It’s kinda funny. My brother’s talkin about racing. He just bought a super-vee. Both my sisters and their husbands are there. The oldest one and her husband just got jobs at Yale. My other sister teaches high school and her husband’s just been laid off by Sikorski. Listen to this.” Silvers’ large eyes watered with mirth.

“Leon, we just finished stuffing ourselves with cream puffs,” one voice said.

“That’s my oldest sister,” Silvers injected.

The same voice continued. “I wrote to you about the farm we’re going to be buying, maybe. If you think you want a writer’s retreat there and join in with us, I told you, you could pick up one of the shares.”

“Unless you’d rather travel to Europe with me, racing,” a male voice joked.

“Unless you’d rather come to London with me,” came in a second female voice.

“Unless you’d rather stay on welfare with me,” quipped a voice in the background of the taped conversation. “Thirty-nine weeks you’re eligible for.”

Chelini stopped fiddling with his gear. He looked at Silvers and smiled. His stomach relaxed.

The tape continued. “He’s going to be on welfare,” giggled the first female voice. There was a short pause then Leon’s sister said, “I can’t really remember what I wanted to tell you. I guess there isn’t really anything to tell. When you get home we’ll have a good blast.”

“Nobody’s going on welfare around here,” a strong matronly voice commanded. “Really, Leon. The way they all carry on. Everyone is doing just fine. Now don’t you tell Leon your problems. I’m sure he’s got enough of his own to worry about.”

“Leon, dear,” the second female voice came on again, “how are you?” There was much laughing in the tape. “As you know, Sheldon and I are going to London and Dublin in about a month-and-a-half even though we can’t afford anything at the moment. And good things of course come in packages of three. Sheldon has been laid off; our car was stolen; and I might not have a job next year because I had another tiff with my department head but I’ll write you about that. He’s really being asinine and is quite a jerk. Similar to your major or colonel you wrote about having so much trouble with. The situations are parallel even though one is education and one is military. And here’s mother, Leon. I wish you were here with us.”

“Mother can’t say a word,” said an older male voice. “Isn’t that amazing? Are you at a loss for words, Mother?”

Chelini did not look at Silvers now. This was too personal. Chelini was embarrassed for the gaunt man. Silvers simply lay back and listened, shut his eyes and laughed.

The tape continued. Leon’s brother said, “Leon, you look very strange. You’re only about six inches long. You’ve got a silver head and a black thin body. What are you doing to yourself? Has the army turned you into a piece of plastic?”

“Yes, Leon,” said one of the sisters. “We’re all looking at the microphone pretending it’s you.” There was a loud “Ouch!” “Sheldon just burned himself passing me a cordial over the candles.”

“Just a minute,” Mr. Silvers controlled the conversation. “I’m going to tell him one of the Playboy jokes.” Laughter. “Mother won’t let me tell you a Playboy joke. You’re not old enough.”

“That’s not a good image for a father,” Mrs. Silvers said.

“You see,” continued Leon’s father, “there’s this girl who goes to Harvard to take a sex education course and she refuses to take the course because the last lesson is an oral exam.” There was more laughter.

The conversation went on and on. It made Chelini think of his own family. He laughed when the people on the tape laughed. He pretended he knew them. It made him feel close to Silvers. Finally Leon’s older sister’s husband, who hadn’t yet spoken, said, “Leon, I hope you got the address of the guy who’s putting together stories and poetry by Vietnam veterans. We expect to find some of your writings in that anthology. I’m sure any number of those things you’ve written would be appropriate.”

“Leon,” his father said, “you make sure you get clearance for anything you send. And let them change anything they say must be changed.”

“Pa,” the brother-in-law said, “don’t tell him that. He can write what he likes. This isn’t World War II.”

“Umm. Mother wants me to stop this tape. I don’t know why. We’ve got an hour left on it.”

“Stop it until we have something to talk about.”

“Let’s you and I argue. There she goes, see?”

“Just like always,” Leon’s brother said. “A touch of home, Leon.”

This was followed by the sound of people talking to each other with no one speaking directly into the microphone. There was some jumbled talk of his father selling a portion of his business then Mr. Silvers said clearly, “All things being equal, this year, after you come back, I think Mother and I will pretty definitely go to Europe for about three weeks.”

“Leon,” his mother said, “you can come with us. We’re going to put the machine away now and later I’ll finish the tape to my son. You all had your turn. I’m going to talk to him in private.”

“Shit, Man,” Silvers said to Chelini as he clicked off the recorder, “them folks gettin down. Hey, you been over to the Phoc Roc TOC yet? That’s our little club. Let’s get a beer and I’ll introduce you to some of the dudes.”

“Wait a minute,” Chelini reared back. “Let me think. I’ve seen so many people already I can’t keep them all straight. There was an old man, I mean old, screaming at a dude by the basketball courts. Then three guys in with the first sergeant. There was Egan and the lieutenant. Top was getting me a radio and a rucksack. He told me to get a haircut and this Puerto Rican guy to cut his mustache. Couple of brothers slappin themselves silly …”

“That’s the dap. It’s kind of a way to say hi.” Silvers paused. Chelini didn’t say anything. “Here, give me your right hand. I’ll show you an abbreviated dap so you can greet the brothers.” Chelini held out his hand. Silvers put out his fist. Chelini balled his right hand as Silvers tapped his twice against Chelini’s. Then he rapped the back of his fist twice, then the top and the bottom. Silvers opened his hand, motioned for Chelini to follow, slid the palm over Chelini’s upturned palm. He snapped his fingers. “You’ll get it,” Silvers said. “Let’s see. The old dude had to be Zarnochuk. Old Zarno. He’s battalion sergeant major. Chews everybody out. Hardass, Man, hardass! Who else?”

“There was that Puerto Rican …”

“Oh shit. El Paso. Don’t ever call El Paso a P.R., Man. He’s Chicano. Mexican. History major from the University of Texas. He got a year at law school finished before the draft got him.”

“Jesus! Is that right? Man, he gave the first sergeant a bad time. The other two were both black, I think their names were, ah, one was Jackson and the other was Doc.”

“Ah, El Paso always gives Top a hard time cause Top’s such an ignorant shit. Jackson’s from Mississippi. Doc. That’s gotta be Doc Johnson cause he’s the only black medic we got. Doc’s from Harlem. He’s company CP medic. El Paso’s senior RTO. Jax is a rifleman in my squad—fire team leader if we had enough guys to have fire teams. All those dudes been here forever.” Silvers had put on a pair of shower togs and had pulled on a pair of jungle fatigue pants while he talked. He put on a fatigue shirt and picked up his hat. “Come on. Let’s get a beer. I’ll show you where the barber’s hootch is. You in the Oh-deuce now, Cherry. You gotta get your shit together.”