The truck jolted forward and started a slow acceleration. Singer grabbed the sideboard, jostling against the men beside him. Children scattered when the truck lurched into motion, though some ran along beside it. In less than a hundred yards, they were stopped again. The truck behind them braked too hard and skidded, stopping just a couple feet behind the men who sat at the rear, their legs dangling over the edge.
“Fucker,” someone said.
A rifle was raised and pointed. The driver leaned away and held up his hand, as if that might stop a bullet.
Singer strained to look down the road and see the lead truck in the convoy to gain some clue as to their erratic progress up Highway One.
“This is bullshit,” Trip said. “In the Cav we’d have gone in choppers and be there already. At this rate it’ll take three days to get there.”
“You’re in a big hurry to get to the fighting,” Bear said.
“We’re sitting ducks on this fucking road.”
“Better keep an eye out, then, instead of whining about your choppers. You ain’t in the Cav no more.”
Bear looked out beyond the line of Vietnamese moving down the road in the opposite direction, surveying the fields that stretched toward mountains too distant to be a threat.
“That’s for damn sure,” Trip said. “I wonder if the 82nd has anything besides trucks.”
The trucks rolled forward, gaining speed, and dust rose up along the convoy. In the procession at the side of the road, people carrying loads on yokes, bicycles, and carts covered their mouths and moved without pause in what seemed an endless line plodding south. A woman stooped with age and the weight she carried bent lower in a coughing fit then set down her load and squatted, twisted fingers holding the yoke vertical like a cane. It made Singer wonder if she’d get up. A white-haired man with eyes hidden amongst wrinkles balanced on wobbly legs and peed to no one’s obvious concern, then shuffled onward, on a trek that looked to be his last. Children ran along dangerously close to the big truck’s tires before turning back to continue moving south, while other children joined the chase.
“Where are they going?” Singer asked.
“Away from the fighting,” Rhymes said.
“They aren’t bringing much.”
“That’s all they have or all they can carry.”
Singer couldn’t see the end the procession or where it might begin. “Is it bad in Hue?”
“It might be over before we get there,” Rhymes said.
Singer secretly hoped it wasn’t so he could see some part of it. Some real fighting. He hid his smile at the thought. Even though he’d heard Sergeant Prascanni was dead, it didn’t seem like it except that he was gone. There hadn’t really been a fight. And the way Sergeant Prascanni went down, with no sound at first and far enough away so Singer couldn’t see the blood or the wound, made it seem as if he had just fallen. Though certainly the sniper’s bullet, which Rhymes said was a large caliber, would have done massive damage. Singer hadn’t even had a chance to fire his rifle, which was what he was waiting for.
No one spoke of Sergeant Prascanni’s death. Certainly no one said anything about how it made them feel. Something, though, had changed, subtly. Mostly it was just that things were subdued, more quiet, as though no one knew what to say or were thinking of their own vulnerability, resolving to hold their breath through their remaining days. It wasn’t outright anger, but the men seemed more irritable. Rhymes was the steadiest and least unchanged by it. Bear and Trip were at each other more. Just small things, grating and poking, always stopping just short of something ugly. Red, perhaps in deference to the mood, had given up promoting Rose as MVP, which left him mostly silent. Sergeant Royce seemed withdrawn, preoccupied with something. He gazed at in the distance no matter where they were. Shooter went on lugging the big gun and sharpening his knife. Stick, who Singer had heard saying, “It wasn’t fair,” seemed sullen and downcast.
It was a long stretch before the truck stopped again, though they’d never built up much speed. With the line stalled, the dust settled except for that stirred by the hundreds of feet moving past. The children were there again, all but climbing on the trucks, hands out, some silently pleading with eyes that were difficult to resist. Others offered English platitudes of GI being number one or petitions for a dollar. Singer dug out a can of Cs, crackers with a condiment, and tossed it to the side so the smaller kids might have a chance. Then he watched them scramble on the ground, fighting for possession before rising and rushing back beside the truck, arms outstretched again. The scene reminded Singer of times as a boy when he had fed ducks at a local park, the ducks crowding around in a tight group, quacking loudly, stretching their necks, begging for food, and pushing at each other for the best position. They would all scramble, fighting madly over the pieces of bread he threw. Singer lobbed another can and watched the children dive for it.
“Don’t give them Cs,” Trip said.
“The kids are hungry. Go ahead,” Rhymes said.
“They’ll use the cans for booby traps. I seen it.” Trip said.
“They’ll find things even without our help,” Rhymes said.
Bear leaned over the side and dropped a candy bar into a boy’s open hands, then looked at Trip.
“I ain’t sharing mine when you guys are hungry,” Trip said.
“Didn’t expect you to,” Bear said.
The truck crept forward, settling into an even but slow speed. Smells were stirred up with the dust, and Singer swiped at his nose in a gesture that held no hope of removing such pervasive odors. The swish of water he ran around his mouth did nothing to eliminate the grit that still clung to his tongue and teeth. Maybe it was the smells and grit that really had Trip wishing for choppers. They passed a group of kids trailing a woman pushing a bicycle with bundles and pots tied to it. Two small girls paused and turned, wide-eyed, holding hands, dirty smiles spread on their faces. Singer smiled back, thinking the girls’ grins were just for him.
“Yeah, cute,” Bear said without conviction.
“Their faces, smiles,” Singer said.
“You won’t think they’re so cute when one of them throws a grenade at you or you trip a booby trap made from a C-rat you gave them.”
Singer was quiet a moment, feeling the heat in his cheeks.
“But you threw—”
“A candy bar to fuck with Cav boy.”
“You think they’re VC?”
Bear leaned closer fixed a stare on Singer. “Where are their fathers?”
“What?”
“See any men all morning, other than the ones older than my grandpa?”
Singer studied the procession. When it dawned on him that all day he’d seen only women, children, and old men, he turned to Bear with a question on his lips.
“One army or another,” Bear said. “You won’t ever see the men. Some are out right now setting booby traps or hiding weapons.”
“Shit,” Singer said.
“Jesus Christ, you new guys are all alike, slower than an inbred mule.” Trip edged closer. “I hope you live long enough to learn something.”
“What can we do?” Singer asked.
“That’s the big question. Now the man’s starting to understand. You don’t know who’s who and you can’t just kill them all,” said Bear.
“There’s an idea!” Trip said, pointing his rifle back and forth as though spraying the line with gunfire. “Let God sort them out.”
The truck lurched, bringing an end to the conversation—or maybe it was over already. Singer looked at Trip and then at Bear, uncertain if he knew them. They were both starting to sound like Shooter. Is that what was destined to happen to all of them if they stayed long enough? He had his ideals and understood right and wrong. He’d never be like them. He wanted to push away, to get out and walk, but he was stuck there between them, pinned against the sideboards.
Smoke billowed from the vertical exhaust with a sudden acceleration that had Singer grabbing at the sideboard with his left hand. He rode in quiet, thinking about where they were going, where events would take them, and what it might mean for each of them. He tried not to think about Sergeant Prascanni, but he could still see him falling, thinking he had only tripped, never seeing the impact of the shot, nor any blood, and not understanding until seconds later when he heard the far-off shot and Trip had yelled, “Sniper.” Would all his understanding of this time be like that? Delayed seconds or even years until some realization cracked from the distance across his consciousness, bringing clarity to earlier events?
Occasionally he could hear one of the other men on the truck talking, though the words were swallowed by the noise of the convoy. The light was already fading when they turned off the main road onto a dirt trail that angled west. After a short, bone-shaking distance, they stopped in the shadow of a sea of bunkers, tents, radio antennas, and equipment piles. They were on the southern edge of a low, expansive hill. Rice paddies stretched out below them, dark in the shadow of western mountains. The last bit of light rose up from behind the mountain peaks, shooting up into the sky in a brilliant display that was not without some beauty.
The men dismounted slowly on unsteady legs, and the trucks moved off toward the security of the base behind them. The base was new or had expanded in recent days beyond old perimeters, as there were no bunkers or wire where the men stood. They were the new southern perimeter. They spread out by fire teams, dug shallow fighting holes in the last of the day’s light, and set out trip flares and claymores before eating cold Cs. Darkness settled in over the men with the quiet uneasiness of night in a combat zone. The men sat together at each position, staring into the shadows before beginning the first guard rotation.
“Put out the cigarette, you stupid fuck,” someone down the line yelled. “Christ, you want to get us all killed?”
In the southwest, near the mountains, red tracers originated out of the blackness in the low sky and raced toward the ground in a continuous stream. Green tracers in short, broken streams rose from the ground toward the spot where the red tracers began. There was no sound, only the streaks of crimson and emerald intermingling on a dark canvas. Singer was transfixed by the beauty of the lines of bright red and green racing back and forth with the backdrop of the ghostly mountains, their shapes standing out even against the murky sky. He wondered who might be dying, thankful to be watching from a distance. Then he saw Sergeant Prascanni tripping and going down, not moving, but the deadly tracer light show remained beautiful.
That night Singer dreamed of watching fireworks, sitting on the lake-shore, the blossoms of colors exploding over the lake. In his dream it was a hot, sticky night, the kind typical of the Fourth of July. Susan was next to him, and he had his arm around her. He could smell the lingering scent of shampoo in her hair when she leaned her head on him and the smell of her sweat in the hot night, which he found pleasant and made him think of lying together sweating and exhausted. Then he woke to the gloomy view of rice paddies and distant mountains and he felt tired, despite the sleep.
Throughout the following days they filled sandbags and strung concertina wire, working shirtless and sweating in the hot sun. Occasionally in those first few days, when the wind was right, Singer heard sounds from the north of what could have been gunfire and explosions but were too muted to say with certainty.
“Hue,” Rhymes said.
“I thought we were going there.”
“Soon enough.”
Singer lost track of the days. His arms hurt from digging and throwing sandbags to build bunkers, each large enough to hold a squad if everyone crowded in. Maybe this was how they made each unit pay their dues before they let them fight. If Bear was bothered by Ghost’s daytime absences, he didn’t let on, and seemed content that he showed up each evening and was still there at dawn. Singer wondered though if Bear trusted him enough to let him pull nighttime guard alone. It became sort of an obsession for Singer, or a diversion to the mindless work and oppressive heat, to discover how Ghost slipped away each day unnoticed. But even though he tried to watch, he never saw Ghost leave. At some point he’d realize he hadn’t seen him and would look around, unable to find him. He never did see him lift a single sandbag or touch a strand of wire.
Sergeant Milner regularly appeared and stood up on the hill surveying the work, sometimes yelling out an order that everyone seemed mostly to ignore. During each break Rhymes sat with a book, and only sometimes put it down when Singer talked to him.
“You brought all those with?” Singer asked, seeing the pile beside Rhymes’s ruck.
“What’s life without a good book?”
This made Singer quietly confused by something he never considered before, that life might be empty, or at least incomplete, without a story to read. He had never found this to be true, but Rhymes said it with the conviction of someone who firmly believed it.
The days of labor were beginning to take on a dull routine, and the irritation of boredom started to grow around the edges. Some days Singer found himself even sitting down near Red, who had regained his enthusiasm for citing statistics and telling memorable games play by play. Singer even asked a few baseball questions, a game he cared nothing about at all, but Red seemed pleased. It killed the time and temporarily displaced Singer’s anxiety over their lack of action.
Even the old guys were showing signs of stress over being stuck in the work of firebase expansion, something any laborer could do.
“This is fucking nuts. They brought us over here again for this shit. Sending us back was just political bullshit.” Trip threw down a wirecutter and his gloves and walked away.
It was Rhymes who eventually retrieved him. They walked back down the hill side by side and Trip went back to work as if nothing had happened. Rhymes never did say what he told Trip to get him to return. When Singer asked, Rhymes merely said. “This is not a good place to get crosswise with the brass, or anyone else for that matter.”
Sergeant Royce just ignored the whole episode, and luckily Sergeant Milner wasn’t there and likely never heard or, as Bear said, he would have probably loved to nail Cav boy with an Article 15 and hang his ass. Sergeant Edwards probably heard, or that was at least what they figured, but he understood such things and might have even thought the same as Trip, though he could never say it.
Things reached a peak—or the bottom, depending on the view—when in the middle of the day Shooter opened up with the M60 from the top of one of the completed bunkers, sending a trail of red tracers out into the empty paddies. The gunfire sent everybody diving for the ground. When the sound of the machine gun stopped, Singer could hear Shooter laughing, a high-pitched, crazy wail with a rhythm similar to gunfire. Some men cursed. A few laughed, as well, after looking around and then standing up.
“That fucker is one crazy white guy,” Bear said.
Rhymes shook his head and went back to work, ignoring Shooter and the commotion. Sergeant Milner stormed down, ranting about undisciplined fire and endangering men.
Shooter spun around with the M60, so that Sergeant Milner ducked. “Got to get more ammo, Sarge.” He left Sergeant Milner alone, talking to himself.
Singer saw Sergeant Edwards watching from up the slope, and he seemed to smile. Later he saw him talking to Shooter, though, they both stood relaxed and it looked to be a friendly conversation. It was understandable. Singer wanted to fire his weapon, too, and perhaps if Shooter had told him of his plan he would have stood beside him with his M16 and run through a clip or two. Though he saw that Rhymes didn’t like it and probably would have chewed him out, which would have upset him, so maybe it was better he hadn’t known.
After Shooter’s episode there were a few more eventless patrols into the paddies below them, likely more to remind them of their real role as infantrymen than to actually look for the enemy. At least it gave Singer a chance to feel like a soldier and to embrace the illusion that he was really doing something.
On one of the patrols, they were working a brush-line at a field edge. Singer was taking it slow, then held up to check for what he thought might have been a trip wire but was just a vine. Sergeant Edwards must have come forward to check with Sergeant Royce because Singer heard him as he was down on one knee checking.
“Why do you have Singer on point again?” Sergeant Edwards asked.
“He wants to,” Sergeant Royce said.
“Rotate your point man, Sergeant.”
So Singer got pulled off point right then. Afterward, even though he asked, it was only occasionally that he was allowed, which meant some of the second tour guys had to take a turn. Whether he did it because it was the most dangerous and thus the most exciting position or by doing it he might spare Rhymes and Trip, he wasn’t quite sure.
The patrols were a small relief in the days that mostly involved shoveling and the piling of sandbags. In the end, they had a perimeter with a bunker line and triple coils of wire strung and staked to the front. When the perimeter was done and the men had comfortable positions to defend, they moved on. Despite the relative safety of their new perimeter, Singer was relieved at the news.
Trucks carried them the short distance north into the city of Hue. The first sign of the fighting that had taken place came even before they reached the city. They crossed an engineer’s floating bridge installed across a small river beside concrete-and-metal wreckage of the former bridges. A contingent of gaunt Marines with fifty-caliber guns were in place as guards.
“Where is this?” Shooter asked from the front of the truck.
“An Cuu Bridge, Phu Cam Canal,” a Marine said. “Hue’s open now. You Cherries on the tourist plan?”
“Fuck, you’re the Cherry. Every man here is a second-tour man,” Shooter said. “What took you guys so long to kick a few farmers out of town? They’re always sending us in to mop up stuff you guys can’t finish. Talk to me after you’ve done two tours. Fucking jarheads.”
They were already over the bridge, well beyond the Marines, and Singer doubted that they heard. But he kind of liked being included as a vet in Shooter’s boast even if it wasn’t true.
The signs of destruction grew as they moved farther toward the city center, where Rhymes said the Perfume River and Citadel were. What the hell the Citadel was, Singer had no idea, but he figured better to wait and see rather than ask and sound like he didn’t know anything.
“Jesus,” Singer said, seeing all the bombed-out buildings and bullet-pockmarked walls. The scenes resembled images in his high school history books, though Vietnam fighting wasn’t in any of those books. They had never even discussed the war. He covered his mouth and nose at the pervasive smell, which reminded him of the stench around small lakes in the spring that had frozen out and whose shores were lined with piles of rotting fish. The source of the smell wasn’t evident, and he tried not to imagine the scenes of dead or where the corpses might lie.
“They say the Marines saved Hue,” Rhymes said.
“It looks like they destroyed it,” Trip said.
“Never seen nothing like this,” Bear said. “They bombed the hell out of this place.”
On a main street called Hùng Vương, Ghost crossed himself and started on some Spanish homily with the cadence of a prayer as they passed a huge rubble pile that might have been a church. Parts of benches, maybe pews, protruded from piles of stone, and within the debris was a pointed structure that could have been a steeple that still held two arms of what looked to have been a cross.
A few Vietnamese were bent over, straining to move bricks or look under collapsed concrete walls at what must have been homes. A woman squatted beside a half-wall, face buried in her hands while her body convulsed in inaudible sobs. But mostly, the streets were empty, though they passed an ARVN patrol whose faces offered nothing but exhaustion. There were no children playing on the streets or sidewalks. None rushed out to run beside the trucks begging for treats. Singer saw one child looking out from a first-floor window, a frightened face pressed against the iron grate across the opening. A few people here and there stood in undamaged doorways and shopfronts, looking nervous and afraid to venture out. A woman pulled two young children closer to her side, keeping her arm wrapped tightly around them, and stepped deeper into the shadows. Not the hero’s welcome Singer envisioned.
“Where is everybody?” Singer asked.
“We saw some of them on the road when we came up from Chu Lai. Most probably left weeks ago at Tet, when the fighting started. The Americal guys said it was bad here,” Rhymes said.
“It looks quiet now, almost like a ghost town.”
“Don’t let that fool you. A few weeks ago you would have had to fight to come up this road and it might have taken days to make a hundred yards, with half of you dying.”
“Jesus. That must have been something. We were stuck filling sandbags while that was going on.”
“It was probably mostly over. In Chu Lai they were all talking about Hue, said the NVA held the town for weeks and didn’t run even when the Marines came in.”
“What happened?”
“After almost a month of fighting, most the NVA left. It must have been some heavy shit if it took the Marines so long to take back the town. Be thankful we didn’t get here a month ago.”
“Damn!” Singer said, regretting that he hadn’t gotten in on the fight and wondering when they would get their chance. Still, it was puzzling how they could drive up this road unmolested and that none of the remaining residents showed gratitude. No one applauded their arrival. No flowers were thrown to them. No women rushed up to hug and kiss them. He didn’t feel much like part of the liberating army.
On the north end of Hùng Vương, near a compound signed MACV, which hadn’t entirely escaped the damage, they dismounted the trucks, which immediately turned around to retrace the route with just the drivers and a man riding shotgun on each. An APC blocked the compound entrance and guards with M16s looked on with disinterest.
The Perfume River lay ahead, a wide span cutting east and west, appearing to bisect the city. Hùng Vương went straight, the road rising on to a metal-span bridge that clearly wasn’t right. The first section dropped toward the water, as did a length from the other side, and part was simply missing.
“Guess we got to swim,” Bear said.
They formed up in platoons and moved off on separate assignments. The fourth moved north the short distance to the river, then went west on Lê Lợi Street, paralleling the waterway.
Before they started walking in a staggered double column, Rhymes slid up next to Singer.
“You have a round chambered?” Rhymes asked.
Singer opened the bolt just enough to see the brass. “Yup.”
“Keep your safety on, but stay alert. Don’t get careless.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be secure?”
“It doesn’t look secure. You never know who stayed behind.”
They pushed down Lê Lợi past the blackened hull of a burnt-out truck, its tires burned away. Past blocks and bricks, tree limbs and torn sheets of corrugated metal scattered in the street. The Perfume River on their right was wide and muddy, with a fast flow that carried debris of tree limbs and boards easterly. No boats plied the waters.
“What’s that?” Singer asked, pointing at the huge walls across the river.
“The Citadel,” Rhymes said. “The walled city of the emperor. Built 900 years ago.”
“You were here before?”
“I read about it.”
“Looks like a fortress.”
“It is or was.”
“Your man there knows everything,” Bear said.
“Shut up and watch our flanks,” Sergeant Royce said.
Even with towering walls broken and breached, giving some clue to their thickness, and shattered towers that would have been fighting positions, it still looked impressive and a tough obstacle to take. The challenge of fighting in Hue was beginning to form in Singer’s mind and he worried it was where they’d stay.
The odor of death lingered even in the air beside the river, but he’d already become used to it and no longer felt the need to cover his nose or suppress a gag now and then. They were on foot, moving through what truly looked like a war zone, away from the tedium of bunker construction that offered to save no one except the nameless men who might come to occupy them in the months ahead. Here there was hope of heroic acts and of actually saving people, though, from the look of things, for many they were already too late.
On their left they passed the shell of a two-story building with bullet-scarred walls and dark, distorted window shapes blown out by gunfire. A yellow flag with three red horizontal bars across the center flew from a pole in the litter-ridden courtyard, a smaller version of the one that hung above the Citadel on a pole that still stood atop the center tower. The flags hung limp in the heat, lifting half-heartedly at a sporadic breeze.
During the patrol down Lê Lợi Street the only people they saw were four ancient Vietnamese men bearing a box that surely was a coffin, trailed by a woman and two girls of almost the woman’s height. They passed almost soundlessly, except for footsteps and soft sobs. Singer stopped and watched them pass until Rhymes prodded him to get going.
Near what seemed the west edge of the city, a tall concrete tower loomed on a small island connected to each shore by an unbroken trestle that stood starkly vacant. A thread across the water, connecting things, though Singer couldn’t say what. The tower stood dominant and undamaged, a contrast to the scenes of rubble, and Singer wondered how it had been spared. In the far distance were the indigo forms of mountains that made Trip stutter-step before he looked away, making Singer wonder what he saw.
Once they closed the distance to the island, Singer saw the railroad tracks leading across the bridge. A mounted quad-50, which Singer marveled at, unable to imagine the firepower, sat nearby. The Marine in it waved as fourth platoon turned to follow the tracks single file, north onto the bridge. At first it seemed they were going to cross the river on the walkway that ran beside the tracks to the fortress that extended the entire way until the massive wall bore north to parallel the rail line. But instead they dropped off beside the tower onto the island. There they found two unoccupied concrete, one-story houses which still contained the meager furnishings of the former occupants, who had likely fled the fighting. Sergeant Edwards set up a command post in the westernmost house while Singer and the others were assigned defensive positions around the island perimeter.
At night, the men of the fourth platoon lay in shallow holes around the island’s edge. Singer gazed into the blackness, straining to see the far riverbank, but somewhere over the water the blackness merged, swallowing distant shapes and forms. The night air was calm and held the daytime heat. It was quiet enough that Singer could hear the current slide and bubble against the island’s banks, only the sound giving a hint of the river’s eastward flow in the darkness. The mosquitos that had swarmed at twilight, forcing Singer to roll down his sleeves and apply bug dope that was little deterrent, had largely gone quiet.
“Where does it go?” Singer had asked before the last light gave out.
“The South China Sea. About six miles,” Rhymes said.
“And the mountains?”
“They look closer than they are. They extend into Laos about thirty miles as a crow flies, I would guess. A short helicopter ride, but a long march.”
Maybe Trip, when he flinched at the sight of the mountains, was seeing Laos or imagining what they would have to go through to get there. Did he know something the rest didn’t?
Beside Singer was Rhymes’s sleeping form, so hard to discern in the blackness that he kept looking toward it every few minutes, resisting the urge to reach out for reassurance. He tried to concentrate, listening for the soft stroke of a paddle, the stir of a swimmer, or the movement of grass which swimmers might make pulling themselves from the water, imaging himself on a deer stand listening for a footstep or scrape of a branch. The stillness was so complete Singer wondered if he could hear at all. His mind wanted to drift. He turned his head slightly, scanning the nothingness, struggling to avoid being hypnotized by it.
He tried not to think about the fear he felt sometimes. Tonight was one of those times when he felt it, the hole in his gut and the dryness in his mouth. Perhaps it was the new position, trapped on a small river island. Or maybe it was the images of the damaged town and Citadel, weeping women digging in rubble, and the coffin he couldn’t push from his mind. If only a breeze would come up it might chase away the smell of death, if not the images.
He lifted his hand from his M16, pushed his arm out his sleeve until his watch was visible, then held it close to his face trying to make out the time. Only ten minutes had passed since he last checked. He was certain it had been an hour. In the dark stillness it was easy to believe he was alone. The last survivor on the planet. Was the form beside him real?
“Wake me if you hear anything,” Rhymes had told him. He thought of waking him, telling him he had heard something. Then they could sit up together and he wouldn’t feel alone or afraid. It was just the strangeness of everything and not knowing what to expect. He couldn’t let it get to him.
He tried to think of mornings in a duck blind, sitting in the darkness with a gun in his lap waiting for dawn and the first sound of wings. He hadn’t been scared then, but this was so different. He gazed into the blackness, determined to see the river bank and anchor himself. If he could see the riverbank maybe the aloneness, the feeling of floating, would fall away. But his vision gave out only a few yards in front of him.
That night passed into another, and the days into a week. The monotony of nighttime guard challenged Singer’s ability to stay alert. Daytime patrols provided more images of destruction and grief, their repetitiveness already threatening to harden him. But the fear and uncertainty had lessened with each night, though his anxiousness for what he imagined they were there for grew.
On one of their patrols, Singer got two ducklings, just weeks old, from a woman they encountered with at least fifty jammed into a basket, a yellow, peeping mass. She let him hold one and it sat there in his hand, turning its small yellow head to examine him with one eye, then peeping in acknowledgement or petition. It sat while he stroked its back with two fingers, the touch of down and the small heartbeats soothing so that he had to keep it.
“You can’t eat those. They’re too damn small,” Bear said.
Quickly he made a deal and left with two ducklings peering from his pocket as he continued the patrol.
“Jesus,” Trip said. “Get a dog if you want a pet.”
Back at the island, Rhymes helped Singer pick seeds and catch bugs to feed them. The ducklings ate easily from their hands and took to waiting for the next morsel. They ventured into the river, slipping from the bank and looking near panic, peeping frantically, before climbing out two meters downstream. They took to following Singer around, which was a problem when they had formations, which Sergeant Milner liked to call often. But the problem was solved when on the third day they disappeared. “Maybe the river or some animal,” Rhymes said. Singer suspected Trip was involved in their demise, though he denied it.
The evening the ducklings disappeared brought some excitement, at least for Singer, with the announcement that it was their last night and tomorrow they would move. The news had little effect on Rhymes, who clung to the comfort of his reading whenever he could. If he marked off each day as one closer to leaving, he kept it to himself, unlike Trip who announced it maybe to assure himself rather than for the public display. Like Bear and a few others, Trip seemed content with the island duty and the relative peacefulness of post-Tet Hue. Trip muttered to himself at the news, and then he and Bear shared a glance, perhaps each unhappy that they shared a common thought.
The blanket of clouds brought an early nightfall that didn’t dampen Singer’s spirits. He settled down in his island foxhole that had nearly become a familiar home, entertaining scenes of battles and heroic rescues of grateful villagers that played out absent of any fear. Tonight he had no doubts. Rhymes had already lain down after abandoning his book, well beyond the point Singer thought it might be possible to read.
* * * * *
With a start, Singer woke bolting upright, frightened. He groped for his weapon and pushed the poncho liner off his shoulder. His fatigues clung to his body in a wet clamminess and his heart pounded like he was in a sprint. He looked about, trying to chase his confusion and determine what had scared him.
“You all right?” Rhymes asked.
“Yeah.”
But he still didn’t have his bearings. The first rays of dawn reflected off the river though the island trees, and the concrete tower threw long shadows over them. The blackness was gone, replaced by browns, grays, and the green of the distant riverbank.
He remembered being woken by gunfire in the night and Rhymes touching his arm and whispering, “Don’t fire. Don’t give our position away.” Then Rhymes put a grenade in his hand, the pin still in. “Use this if you hear them. Let the handle fly before you throw it.” They lay side-by-side, listening, but nothing else happened and eventually Singer fell back asleep.
Now, in the dawn, Singer studied the riverbank and its marsh grasses for a long time, as though trying to memorize it for a test. He took a drink of warm, stale water from his canteen, trying to wash the night from his mouth and his mind.
When they gathered in the courtyard near the houses, Shooter sauntered up to Trip. Shooter’s pants were wet up to his knees and his boots were leaking water.
“Way to light them up, Ace,” Shooter said. “The Marines found a body in the reeds and a sampan a half-klick further down. Three rounds in the chest. One burst and you ripped him. Impressive when you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.”
“I heard the rhythm, had to be paddle strokes. Counted. Measured,” Trip said.
“Yeah, but one blind burst and you nail the guy. I underestimated you. A young gook, too. Good shooting.” Shooter shook Trip’s hand.
“I won’t have that shit. The man had no weapon,” Sergeant Milner said. “He was a civilian. I won’t—”
“His weapon’s on the bottom of the river. Be my guest recovering it,” Trip said.
“I won’t allow indiscriminate fire.”
“I’m going home. I ain’t getting zapped by some dink.” Trip brought his M16 up across his chest.
“You need some fire discipline, soldier.”
“A kill’s a kill, Sarge. One dead gook’s as good as another. Weapon or no weapon, they all go in the same column,” Shooter said. “One more for our side.”
“Without a threat, we don’t shoot.”
“What do you call a nighttime probe? Next time I hear something I’ll let you take care of it,” Trip said.
“You’ll follow the rules or else.”
Bear stepped in next to Sergeant Milner. “The man was Viet Cong. No fisherman’s out in the middle of the night like that. Drag the river, I bet you find an AK. Hell, I’d have shot him, too. Lighten up, Sarge, this is the Nam. There are no rules.”
Sergeant Milner slid away from the arm Bear tried to lay on his shoulder and went back to the house that had become the platoon CP, Bear’s laugh following him.
“I’m going home,” Trip said. “That guy better not get in my way.”
Late that morning they left the island as they arrived, single file over the trestle with the same number as they’d brought. Two Marines beside the quad-50 watched them leave, giving them a thumbs up. When they arrived at a field where the river ran south along the expanse of grass and sinkholes, a few with cattails that to Singer looked the same as those at home, the rest of the company was there waiting in three bunches with the command group forming a fourth side. White birds with long legs, but necks shorter than a blue heron, lifted from the field in twos and threes, circled and resettled. Some rode the backs of buffalo, white passengers atop massive black ships.
At a familiar sound, Singer searched the southern skies and never looked away as a line of specks grew into Hueys that settled down before them, idling without urgency.
“Finally, fucking helicopters,” Trip said. “Wonder where they got these.”
In the first group, Singer raced for the assigned bird and settled on the floor with the others, who were talking nonchalantly. Singer guessed it was nothing new to them and maybe at some point would be the same for him. But now he felt the thrill of having just climbed onto an amusement park ride and looked from one open door to the other waiting for lift off, not caring if the others saw his grin.
The Huey’s blades chopped the air, the engine pounded above his head, and the air streamed through the cabin while the ground sped by below them. Singer saw the river, a grass field, pockmarked hills with trees that hid the ground, but hardly any human structures or signs of habitation. At times he could see another of the Hueys flying beside them, men seated, legs hanging from the door just above the skids, the helmeted gunner swiveling his head, peering at the ground, both hands set on his weapon.
They crossed the river, heading west toward a sea of rising green peaks stretching toward the horizon. To the south the river split, and they headed toward the westward branch before circling a dominant peak with bunkers, artillery pieces, tents, and bare earth that marked a more permanent army encampment.
Singer leaned over to ask Rhymes what firebase this was, but Rhymes either didn’t know or didn’t hear him, as he didn’t respond. No one paid much attention to their arrival, as if it were a common thing. They stood around waiting for the last group. Below the firebase, the river meandered through a mottled green landscape that looked almost tranquil. A single-lane dirt road ran between the river and the mountain, climbing from the east, running past the base of the mountain winding south, then north, then disappearing behind the next mountain.
After a brief wait in which Captain Powers, Charlie Company’s commanding officer, probably conferred with the firebase commander, they left the firebase on foot heading northwest. They descended easily, then crossed open ground in the blaze of sunlight before finding shade under an increasingly thick canopy at the start of a difficult climb. After a few hours of seemingly endless ups and downs, they flopped to the ground on a side slope. Singer’s legs felt like they were still climbing, his body like he was in a steam cooker. He set his helmet in his lap, making his head dizzy with the lightness.
“Keep drinking water,” Rhymes said “Just a little at a time. Stay alert. This is where the NVA live.”
Singer looked around him and put his helmet back on.
“We should have stayed in Hue,” Bear said from downslope.
“Fuck, we should have stayed home,” Trip said.
“I could maybe grow to like you,” Bear said.
“Now you’re scaring me,” Trip said.
Even Rhymes smiled. Bear might have let go with one of his raucous laughs had they been back in Hue or even on a firebase, but here he merely showed large teeth and creases beside widened eyes.
At times Singer heard the whack of a machete, dull, reverberating blows, and he saw Trip cringe and swing his weapon from side to side as though expecting an attack. A long time later, as Singer climbed through sharp stumps of bamboo, where he was careful not to fall, fearing he’d impale himself, he began to understand why Bear and some of others disliked the mountains. Only one day and he already hated the darkness. He could climb hills all day in sunlight—or at least he believed he could, though he had never climbed mountains before nor experienced such heat. There were enemies here besides the NVA that could bring a man down. Still, he was hopeful to find them, though the thought waned with his fatigue and recovered itself after he rested.
He knew things had become more serious since Rhymes didn’t dig out a book during breaks but held onto his M79. Besides this, and Bear’s withheld laughter and Trip’s flinching at each sound, Red had gone silent again, appearing to withdraw inside himself. Ghost looked restless and spooked, bouncing around like a nervous colt while others sat and rested. If he prayed, he did it silently.
Top was often there beside the column as they climbed, watching, as if studying each man, taking some measure. Then he’d come climbing past, acting stronger and younger than all of them though Rhymes said he’d fought in Korea and had heard he’d turned down a field command.
The first days in the mountains were spent patrolling, sometimes as a company but usually as platoons, searching for an enemy that seemed either absent or unwilling to be found. In the evenings they dug in on some mountaintop in a defensive perimeter, waiting and listening for the enemy, staring into the darkness, alone with their thoughts. They went out on ambushes and listening posts that brought Singer a new sense of the night and a different anxiousness. In the morning they moved on to new country, new mountains and new valleys that looked the same as those they left.
Sweat streamed down Singer’s face and soaked his fatigues. Dirt clung to his skin and clothes, weariness grew in his bones, and he wondered if the others felt it, too. Trip counted days, claiming fewer than forty-seven, as Singer guessed everyone was doing except him and maybe Stick. With too many days left to consider, Singer let the days pass untallied.
In late afternoon one day, Singer sat on a rocky edge, his feet hanging over the side, looking over the treetops of the valley they had worked through the past week without finding anything or taking any casualties. With Rhymes and Trip slated for a listening post, he was sharing the night position with Bear, who sat cross-legged next to the shallow fighting hole they had given up on digging any deeper. Bear was heating water over a heat tab in an old C-ration can for instant coffee. His M16 lay beside him, on top of a bandolier of magazines. He had his shirt off and his muscular, hairless chest shone in the sunlight, still glistening with sweat. It had been a tough climb. Sometimes the men above had had to help the men below scramble ahead, holding out their hands or extending an M16 to pull men up the steep slope. Once on top, Singer found a commanding view that almost made the day’s long climb worth it. The NVA, if they had ever used it, weren’t here now and left no signs of earlier occupancy.
They had reached the summit late in the afternoon and held up for the day, stopping earlier than usual. It was a rare break that Singer hoped would give his aching body some relief. He relaxed when he didn’t draw an ambush or LP assignment and could spend the night on the perimeter. With some luck, fourth platoon had drawn a rocky open side of the mountaintop with a steep drop that made it an unlikely approach. That and the days without contact had Singer feeling complacent, letting go of some of the vigilance Rhymes constantly reminded him to maintain.
Below him, a mosaic of shadows played through the treetops. Black holes amid the green gave a hint of the jungle floor far below. The sky was a deepening blue with soft, loose swirls of clouds stretching out over the mountains. A line of distant choppers moved silently across the horizon. The soft murmur of the voices of men in other positions drifted to Singer, the evening so tranquil he almost forgot where he was. He touched his M16 to hold to reality. Drifting away would be dangerous.
He took his helmet off, again lightheaded without the weight, and then removed his shirt. Singer’s hands and arms were a dark brown, in sharp contrast to his starkly white torso. His ribs had begun to show so that each one was defined and easily counted. Though leaner, he’d grown tougher with the days of mountain patrols and the climbs—even like the one he’d just made—were more bearable. Still, the fatigue that came with the long days of battling the terrain and too little sleep was always there.
A few days earlier the first mail from the States had finally caught up with them and he remained cheered by it and the promise of more. That day they’d stopped early on a grassy plateau that seemed to hold few perils and waited for a scheduled resupply. A large, red mail bag came in on the bird that brought in Cs and water. Men clambered toward the bag, leaving the food and water piled for the moment. It was a bright moment in which even the dourest seemed encouraged. Field discipline broke down, with only a small contingent of men staying on the perimeter, but no one said anything. Shooter was one of those who stayed in position, perhaps knowing his name wouldn’t be called. Men crowded around Sergeant Milner, who held the red bag. Singer saw expectation in faces that he imagined mirrored his own.
The bag included a letter for Sergeant Prascanni, and Sergeant Milner called his name before realizing his mistake. They all stood quietly and awkwardly for a beat before Sergeant Milner hurriedly called another name.
Singer walked away with a letter and box of cookies from Susan, a letter from Kathy, and one from his mom. His brother hadn’t written since Singer asked his mom to tell his brother to stop preaching at him. His mom’s letter was filled with mundane small-town gossip and news about food she was baking. He smiled at Kathy’s inappropriate humor about Susan and her sexual comments meant to cheer him up. The cookies were hard as rocks, but no one refused and the box was quickly empty. After reading Susan’s letter twice, he put it in his helmet liner. He shredded and buried the other letters and box wrapping so as to leave nothing for the enemy.
Rhymes received a few books from his father, which had him as excited as Singer had ever seen him. The cache included two more books of poetry and a Steinbeck novel, Of Mice and Men. When Rhymes said he’d have to bury some and hope to get back to them, Singer offered to carry some if he didn’t have to read them. Apparently even Rhymes could only carry so many books along with the bulky and heavy M79 rounds. Trip got one letter, which he said was all he needed. Red got a Cincinnati baseball schedule, which he ran around showing everyone but wouldn’t let anyone hold. Singer listened as the last letter was announced and saw Stick melt away, empty-handed and with downcast eyes.
A good letter, Singer already realized, could keep a man going for days, give him something to fight for, and increase his resolve to make it home—as if that needed any help. Now, sitting on the ledge with twilight not far away, Singer removed the envelope from its safe position inside his helmet. He held the powder-blue paper to his nose. The perfume had faded, and the letter now smelled only of sweat. Some of the ink had faded, but it was still mostly readable—at least the important parts where Susan said she was waiting and what they would do when he got back. He held the letter in his lap, looking at the sinking sun and deepening shadows, reluctant to put it away.
“You reading that again?” Bear asked. “You going to wear that letter out.”
Singer just smiled, not ready to speak, feeling the heat of the letter.
“That the girl you sending your paychecks to?”
“What need is there for money here?”
“I don’t know if I’d ever trust any woman with my money except my mama.”
“We’re saving for our future.”
“Man, that girl’s got you by the balls. There’s no helping you.”
“She’s just a friend.”
“Fuck just a friend. That kind of perfume, you been giving her something for sure. Don’t be carrying that with you, Charlie will follow that smell right to you, kill both our asses.”
“I’ll tell her to be careful with the smell, that she’s making you crazy.”
“You be careful with your thing, too.” Bear gave a soft chuckle.
After carefully refolding the letter, Singer put it back in the top of his helmet liner. Bear was drinking his instant coffee, for which he begged three extra sugars and two powdered creams. Each time Bear brought the C-rat can to his lips, his bicep bulged above a thick forearm.
“You never talk about a girl,” Singer said.
“I’m between girls. Easier right now,” Bear said, grinning as if he had a secret.
“You miss that?”
“What? Sweet letters? I smell enough perfume from yours. There’ll be plenty girls wanting to see me when I’m back on the block. I might even go see your girl, tell her you miss her since you won’t be seeing her any time soon. Thirty-two and a wake-up and I’ll be on the street.”
“Fuck you,” Singer said without anger.
“What are friends for?” Bear asked, spilling his coffee as he laughed. “Thirty-two and a wake-up, then you’ll have to do it without Bear.”
This was closer to the Bear that Singer had come to know from those first days back at Fort Bragg. The stern, sullen Bear of the first patrol near Chu Lai that had disturbed, if not frightened him, was gone, at least tonight. Maybe Bear was over the shock of being back in Nam or, having survived those first patrols, saw himself surviving and was now counting the days and thinking of being back on the block. In thirty-three days, Bear was going home. Singer wondered sometimes what things would be like and what he would do after all the guys left. So many had little more than a month remaining.
For a while they sat quietly, shadows expanding in the valley far below and the sun settling toward the peaks in Laos. Singer put his shirt back on and then his helmet. Soon it would be time to be serious again. He pulled his M16 across his lap
“Think we’ll find them?” Singer asked.
“The NVA?”
“Yeah. Think we’ll find them?”
“Fuck. Hope we don’t. I seen enough of them. If you want to make it back to that girl, you’ll hope so, too.”
“It’s been quiet. I mean, it just seems like we’re doing nothing, you know?”
“Shit, we’re burnin’ days! Good days. Each day’s another day closer to going home. Alive.”
“But . . .” Singer hesitated, uncertain if he should say it. “We . . . ah . . . I came to fight. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“Christ, Singer, you’re fucking hopeless,” Bear said, shaking his head. “Where’d you get them dumb white-ass ideas? This ain’t your war. It sure the fuck ain’t my war. We should all be home smoking, drinking, and chasing pussy. Instead we’re on some fucking godforsaken mountaintop that we fought through jungle to get to and that we’ll leave tomorrow.”
Bear leaned toward Singer, his eyes drawing tighter and darkening.
“It don’t mean a fucking thing to anyone but our mamas and our girlfriends whether we get killed. You think the army gives a shit about you? After enough of us die, some politicians will shake hands and that’ll be the end and our deaths won’t mean a goddamn thing.”
Bear put on his shirt and took up his rifle.
“And afterwards, what do we go home to? I can serve here, but try to find a job or even buy a car with money in my hand and some white guy don’t want to let me in the door. Now they shot our man in Memphis. Don’t you get it? We’re fighting in the wrong place. Where you from, anyway?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck, you’re a pawn as much as me.”
“But you still do it.”
“Yeah . . . I still do it.”
Bear picked up the C-rat cans he’d used for a cup and a stove and put them back in his ruck, then stood up and walked to the ledge beside Singer, his rifle pointed at the treetops.
“Just stop wishing for it,” Bear said. “It’s fucking bad luck. Ain’t enough men died? Wish for good days, man, at least ’til I’m gone. Thirty-two and a wake-up. Then you can have this fucking white-ass war and all the fighting you want.”
The lump in Singer’s throat cut off anything he might say. He still believed they were here to do something good. To stop a bad system and save another. He needed to believe that. He was committed to it and all it meant. He was ready. Maybe there were just too many differences in experiences and backgrounds. Things he couldn’t understand. Yet Bear was here beside him and Rhymes and Sergeant Edwards. It couldn’t all be bad, like Bear said. Was he wrong to want to do what they came here for?
“Get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch,” Bear said
Singer curled up under a poncho liner away from the ledge, behind the shallow fighting hole. It was barely dark and he hardly felt like sleep now. In addition to Rhymes, he saw Bear as a friend and someone to rely on if things got rough. He still did, but he needed to think about what Bear said. Why did he still fight if he believed that? When had things changed, if he hadn’t always thought that way? He finally fell asleep, wondering if Bear believed in it the first time he came here and what had happened to change that.