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Chantal was alone in the pontoon as I eased into the water. She watched wordlessly as I floated up to her. I pulled myself up onto the wet, black rubber. She wore a gold charm shaped like a spoked wheel on a gold chain around her neck.
I nodded at it. “What’s that?”
She smiled at me. “It mean good luck. Buddha’s luck.”
“You know something?” I said.
“What?”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You lie,” she said, but I could tell she was happy. She tightened the cloth chin strap of her hat.
We looked at each other for a while. With the sun blocked by the overhang of the bridge, the water seemed to grow colder. My teeth started chattering a little.
I looked into her eyes and I felt like we were moving into each other. Somewhere in the dark under the bridge an eddy gurgled softly. “Do you want to go out?” I said.
“Go out?” she said.
“You know, go see a movie maybe, or have dinner together.”
“No have movie.”
“We could go for a walk,” I said.
“You cold,” she said.
“No,” I lied, but my teeth were chattering.
“Your lips blue.”
“Let’s go into town.”
“Engineer go away for two weeks.”
“Where?”
She smiled sadly. “I waiting for you all morning.”
“Really?” My heart was pounding. I really loved her.
“Wait,” she said. “I get changed.”
Chantal took me to a little restaurant, and we ate the best meal I’d had in six months. They served us these little pieces of meat with a sweet sauce on them, rice, and salad stuff. It was delicious. But better than that, was just being with her.
After the meal I said to her, “I wanted to be with you the moment I saw you.”
She smiled. “Really?” Her R’s sounded like W’s.
“Really.” I sipped my Coke. “I want to see you often.”
“I come tomorrow. We go swimming.”
We spent the next day together swimming and sunning ourselves on the pontoon. I brought some C-rations over for us to eat for lunch and she prepared them on a little stove she got from the hooch. She was a great cook. Afterward we talked some more.
“I want to take a walk with you in the moonlight,” I said. I thought it would be really neat.
“We get shot,” she said, “all blow up!” She laughed. “You crazy guy.”
“Crazy about you.”
She started fixing the hair behind her ear. “I here every day, but at night I go home to mother.”
“Can I walk you home?”
She smiled. “Yes. Walk home with me.”
We got word there would be a big convoy coming through. I watched from the bunker roof with the binoculars and spotted it a full two hours before it arrived. It first appeared as a tan smudge on the southern horizon, like a dust storm. I adjusted the binoculars and a giant rooster’s tail of dust, like the vapor trail from the big B-52’s, came into focus as it rose from the road. All the vehicles except for the lead one, a jeep with a fifty-caliber machine gun on top, were invisible, obscured by the dust.
I went over to the banyan tree and sat down to wait. Little Joe joined me. After a half hour the jeep and the first big diesel trucks rumbled by. Then a whirling, roaring, reddish-brown cloud of dust engulfed us, blotting out sun and sky. Tanks and trucks rumbled and rattled across the metal bridge, not fifty feet away from us, but we could barely see them. They sank the pontoons almost completely beneath the water, sending wave after wave sloshing against the bank beneath us. I counted at least fifty trucks and tanks by the time the noise began to abate. When the last truck had gone, a quiet calm settled over us, but the dust cloud remained.
I didn’t want Little Joe running around on the bridge and so I took his hand and we crossed together. There ahead of us, I thought I saw something. We approached cautiously and a thin American soldier materialized out of the cloud. Seeing us, he took out his hanky and wiped his face.
“What’s happening, brother?” I said, extending my hand.
“Indeed,” he said. He looked a little annoyed, but he shook my hand anyway. Joe extended his hand and that seemed to cheer him a little. He took off his camouflaged steel pot and brushed it off, uncovering a little, black, second lieutenant’s patch stitched to it. Satisfied, he put his helmet back on and started slapping the dust from his fatigues till they were green, bright, cruit green. Finishing, he looked at me. “Do you know where Specialist Fourth Class Ron Jakes can be found?”
I had never heard anyone speak as beautifully as this guy did. His voice was totally without an accent and he spoke better English than my Lit teacher at State. “Yes, sir,” I said. “He’s my squad leader. We’re all right over here in the compound.” The compound was now becoming visible to our left.
“Hmm. What is your name, soldier, and where is your shirt?”
My stomach dropped. I wondered if he was here because of my missing 201 file. “PFC Carl Melcher, sir. I’m having my shirt laundered by one of the locals.”
He blinked some dust from his eyelids. “Don’t you have a spare set of fatigues?”
“No, sir.”
He closed his eyes for a second, then snapped them back open. “Well, we’ll see what we can do about that.”
Relief swept over me. He didn’t know anything about the 201 file. Maybe they had already found it on the jeep and returned it. He headed toward the opening in the wire. I sent Joe home and followed him.
Ron, Glock, and Chico stood at a loose form of attention before the lieutenant. They were all bare-chested. Ron wore a handkerchief pulled tightly around his head like a pirate. Glock had his black beret on, and Chico wore a towel twisted around his head like a turban. I didn’t know where Bubba was.
“I’m looking for the third squad of Company B, First of the Eighth, Fourth Infantry Division,” the lieutenant said.
“You found it, sir,” Ron said.
“Really?” The lieutenant’s brow furrowed. “I thought I’d found the lost brigade of the Salvation Army.”
No one said anything.
“Which one of you is Specialist Ron Jakes?”
“I am, sir,” Ron said from behind his sunglasses. The tiniest hint of a smile spread out from the corners of his mouth.
“I’m Lieutenant Goodkin, your new Platoon Leader.” The lieutenant had a soft, baby face. He was about six feet tall and he stood stiff and straight. Even in the uniform there was something about him that suggested money. I’d bet he’d joined the army. Guys like him didn’t get drafted.
“Do you know you are setting a very bad example for your men, Specialist,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Ron, tingeing his face with sadness, “I’m sorry, sir.”
The lieutenant seemed pleased with Ron’s new demeanor and relaxed somewhat. He was young, maybe four or five years younger than Ron.
“The captain has been getting some rather strange reports about your men running around nude, about wild parties. Is there any truth to these reports?”
“Absolutely not, sir,” Ron said. “This here is about as nude as we ever get, and only because of the heat, you understand. And we don’t really party any more than anybody else around here.”
“I see.” The lieutenant seemed momentarily at a loss. “What is your mission here?” he said after a moment.
“We were sent here to guard the floating bridge, sir.”
“I see that it’s still there. Good job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The lieutenant moved to the edge of Bubba’s hole and looked down. “How long have you been working on this bunker?”
Ron moved to his side. “Since we got here, sir. We take turns at it, but we usually don’t do anything during the late afternoon when it gets real hot like this, sir.”
Lieutenant Goodkin hooked his thumbs through his web gear and turned to watch the river. “How deep is the river?”
Ron laughed. “I don’t know, sir. I can’t swim.”
I looked at the bridge to see if Chantal had come. She hadn’t.
“It’s well over ten feet, sir,” Glock said.
“How’s the current?”
“Very swift, sir,” I said. “If you swim really fast you can barely move against it.”
Everybody began to relax a little. Out in the street a small crowd of boys watched quietly, trying to hear what was being said. The lieutenant climbed up onto the roof of the bunker to look around. I heard something in the street and turned to see Ted pull up in a jeep. He beeped the horn once and waved at the lieutenant. The lieutenant waved back and climbed down.
“Specialist,” said the lieutenant.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to use some of the time you and your men have on your hands to figure out several ways to transport a squad across a river such as that one over there.”
Oh, boy, I thought, here we go. Now we’d have to play Green Berets. How would I get away to spend time with Chantal?
“Like, what kind of ways, sir?” Ron asked.
The lieutenant looked pleased. “That’s part of the problem, Specialist. You and your men formulate some plans and put them into action. I want a full report in a week when I return. Is that understood?”
Ron smiled. “I’m not sure, sir. You want us to actually cross, with all our gear?”
“That is correct. Come with me. I want to have a closer look at that river.”
As the lieutenant, Ron and Glock moved down to the river, Chico and I walked out into the street to see Ted.
“Hey, fellas,” he said. “I hear you’re having some real good times here?”
“Damn right,” Chico said, “and we deserve them, too. Right, Carl?”
“Dig it,” I said.
Ted raised his eyebrows. “I wish I could join you guys. You don’t know how good you have it.”
“Oh, we do, we do,” Chico said in a loud exaggerated tone. “We know how good we got it, don’t you worry about that.”
Ted laughed. “I’m tellin’ ya, any other guy in the company’d give a month’s salary to be in your shoes here.”
“Really?” I said. “I thought Dak-To was supposed to be grunt heaven compared to the boonies?”
“It would be if we didn’t have Captain DeVoors on our case.”
Chico’s brows furrowed with concern. “Why, what did he do?”
“What didn’t he do?” Ted said. “Morning, afternoon and evening formations, spit-shined jungle boots, barracks inspections, details... I’m telling you, we were a lot better off on the Firebase.”
“Wow,” I said. We were silent for a moment.
The lieutenant approached. Ron and Glock flanked him, listening respectfully as he gave them their orders.
Ted started the jeep. “Well, you guys better enjoy it while it lasts.”
“We will,” I said.
“Dig it,” said Chico.
The lieutenant paused to emphasize some point to Ron. The jeep engine ticked rhythmically. Ted shook his head, a serious look clouding his normally buoyant, boyish features. “By the way, fellas, there’s been a lot of enemy movement. Supposedly they’re getting ready for their big Tet offensive. Battalion’s probably gonna try and hit them first. There’s been all kinds of top brass flying in for meetings.”
Ted’s talk of “movement” and “offensives,” and his concern, seemed unreal now. That was all going on out there. And we were here. I tried not to let it in. I only wanted to think about Chantal.
Chico dismissed the news with a snarl. “Eh, there’s always talk of the next big offensive! And the generals will always be meeting and smoking their big cigars. So, what else is new, huh? You just want us to worry because you wish you were in our boots.”
Ted laughed. The lieutenant climbed into the jeep beside him.
Ron and Glock approached. Glock held his beret respectfully in both hands. “Can we use rope, sir?” he said.
“That’s up to the Specialist,” the lieutenant said. “I would say that anything that can be carried by four men could be used.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ron said.
Ted shifted into first with a gnashing of metal gears and waved as he turned the jeep around and headed north to Dak-To. As the whine of the jeep receded, Ron mimicked Glock, “Can we use rope, sir?”
Glock laughed and went into a fighter’s stance. Ron did the same. They bobbed and wove in the street for a moment, their faces dark with feigned animosity. Soon a swarm of local ragamuffins boxed playfully in the dust at their feet. We had a laugh at that and went back into the compound to talk.
The next day I spent most of the morning with the squad working on the problem of trying to get five guys safely across the river. Glock had tried swimming across in his fatigues and boots, holding his M-16 aloft. He’d almost drowned but we managed to pull him out. Chico and I had crossed safely, with Chico floating on an air mattress with our weapons and packs, and me swimming and pushing. That seemed to be the best way.
We finished around noon and I went over to the banyan tree and waited for Chantal. She arrived with a lunch of sandwiches and cold Cokes and we ate on the pontoon in the shade.
She smiled at me. “Where you from?”
“Philadelphia.”
“Oh, Liberty Bell.”
“You know about that?”
She nodded. “We study it in school.”
“I think I love you, you know that?”
“You crazy guy.”
“No, I’m serious. I really do.”
“Really?”
I had to laugh again at the way she pronounced “really.” I loved the way she talked.
“You know what else is in Philly?”
“Philly?”
“That’s what we call Philadelphia for short.”
She nodded. “What?”
“Bandstand.”
“Band stand,” she said tentatively.
I nodded. “You know, dancing ... on TV. It started not too far from where I live.”
“Oh, you go to dance?”
“No, I didn’t go there. You have to be really good for that. They have auditions. I went to Chez Vous.”
“You no go my house,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant at first. Then I remembered my high school French. Chez Vous meant ‘your house,’ and Chantal also spoke French. “No,” I laughed, “the dancing place in Philly is called ‘Chez Vous.’ It’s a big roller-skating rink, but they have dances there on Friday nights.”
She nodded as she listened.
“Anyway,” I went on, “I don’t know all of the dances, just the Mashed Potatoes, the Stomp, the Twist, the Hully Gully, and the Slop. Maybe someday I’ll teach you.”
“Oh,” she said slowly, “I don’t think so.” She seemed sad all of a sudden. “You very nice,” she said, folding up the paper the sandwiches had been wrapped in.
“Thank you.” I wished we were back in Philly together. I pictured the two of us riding on the Market-Frankford Elevated train, the car jerking and squeaking as it roared past the black tar roofs and second-story windows of the East Philly row houses.
With my hand I swept the crumbs off the pontoon and into the river. She said she had to go, and I asked her if she could come back around dinner time. She said no, that she didn’t want to leave her mother alone. But she said she would come tomorrow.
The rest of the day I felt like a million dollars. I really wanted to tell the guys about her, but I didn’t.
That evening a fantastic pink sky stretched as far as you could see. The boom-boom girls didn’t come, and Ron and the guys stayed in the hooch, rapping and playing cards. I stayed up on the roof, reading and thinking. I stared at the purple blur where the sun had been and thought of Chantal, wondering what she was doing now. I pictured her and her mom eating dinner. Their table was wooden and plain, but clean, and they had white china rice bowls. I wondered what you had to do to marry a Vietnamese. Knowing the army, there were probably a million forms to fill out. Guys did it, though.
I woke up briefly in pitch blackness. Crickets chirped, the river sighed, and someone was singing softly. It was Ron, singing that Bobby Love song that went, Ain’t got no money, but I got you, honey. He didn’t have a very good voice, but he put so much feeling into it that I found myself smiling. Before he finished, I drifted back to sleep.
I opened my eyes on the bunker roof. The sun was up, but not too high and it felt warm and good on my face. Down below, the guys were still sleeping. I made myself a cup of coffee and looked over toward the river, wondering when Chantal would come. When it started getting hot, I walked over and sat under the banyan tree. I tried to read but couldn’t. By twelve o’clock she still hadn’t come, and I grew worried. I went back to the compound.
Ron and the others were playing cards. I went in to get some C’s for lunch. I opened up a can of hot dogs and beans, but I couldn’t eat. I climbed up onto the bunker and looked over at the Engineer’s hooch. Why hadn’t she come? Just the other day I’d been on top of the world, but now I felt like I was down in Death Valley. If only Gene were here to talk to, I would’ve felt better. I listened to the radio for a while and took a nap.
The next day I sat under the banyan tree all morning, but Chantal never came. At noon, Ted pulled up to the compound in a jeep. I crossed the bridge to see what was up. Ron, Glock and Bubba were packing up their things.
Ted nodded when he saw me. “You better get it packed up, Carl. We’re moving out.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. I couldn’t believe it.
Ted shook his head. “Movin’ out, man.”
That was just like the army! They would wait till you met a girl you really cared for, then move you away. I started slamming things into my ruck.
Chico slapped me on the back. “You’ll be okay, Vaquero. You’ll be okay.”
They went into the hooch to talk and I left the compound and started walking down the road. When I was half a block away, I started running. I didn’t care. I made it to Tin Can City without seeing Ted and the others. I walked through the town asking people if they knew where Chantal was. I didn’t speak Vietnamese, but I knew a few French words, and many Vietnamese spoke French. I’d touch the hair on my head and say the word, rouge, which meant ‘red’ in French. Most of the people looked at me like I was crazy. About three I saw a jeep in the distance and ducked into a little grocery store. The jeep went by and my heart sank. Captain DeVoors sat next to the military police driver and Lieutenant Goodkin sat in the back next to another military police with a big MP painted on his helmet.
I left the grocery and walked in the opposite direction. Then I spotted her. She was talking to an old mamasan at a vegetable stall. I started running in her direction. I heard yelling behind me. Brakes squealed. Captain DeVoors was pointing me out to the MP driver. I ran as hard as I could and reached her just as the jeep squealed to a stop behind us. She held her hand up to her eyes to block the swirling dust. There was a fine sheen of sweat on her face from the heat, but she looked beautiful.
The lieutenant and MP approached.
“Get in the jeep, creep,” said the MP. I heard the others laugh.
I turned. The MP was smiling and smacking his night stick into his open palm.
“Give him a minute,” said the lieutenant.
I turned back to Chantal. “I have to go.”
“I know,” she said. She took the gold, good luck charm from around her neck and gave it to me. I put it in my pocket.
“You come back,” she said. “You come see me, okay?”
The MP beeped the horn.
“Say good-bye, Private,” said the lieutenant.
The captain and MP laughed at something, but I ignored them. I kissed her and walked back to the jeep. I got in the back between the lieutenant and the big MP.
The driver ground the jeep into gear, and we lurched forward. I turned and looked back, watching her beautiful face disappear behind the swirl of dust.