Sergeant Dickinson (3 page)

“I don't know,” I said. I raised my can of fruit cocktail. “Food.”

“Food? Oh, you mean about Southeast Asia being the rice bowl of the world, and like that?”

“Like that.” I turned away from him. He asked the man beside me, “How does it feel to be eating C-rations on a Tuesday afternoon?”

“Better than eating them on a Saturday,” the man said, and laughed contemptuously.

The woman lay on her back in a cave dug into the side of a trench. As I passed she opened her legs. I went on to wake up a man who was sleeping. When I saw her again, a Ranger was on top of her.

I followed the shadow-sweep of the dying flare through the trench. Impatient of it, I stepped into the light and continued my round. A rock glanced off my shoulder; it had come from outside the perimeter. The Vietnamese standing beside me pointed to the bush beyond the wire; he was smiling either from amusement or bewilderment. I completed my tour of the camp and returned to the same spot. A second rock hit me. I pretended not to notice; I was hit again. “Why
doesn't he shoot?” The Vietnamese shrugged and laughed. It was a question without an answer.

A bullet, barely warm, fell on my shoulder. The other Americans were unbelieving. “It must have been fired from two miles away,” one said. I put it in my pocket beside the suicide round.

The rat crouched on a sandbag at the entrance to the command bunker, its legs tucked under it, staring at me. I swung my rifle like a baseball bat. The butt hit it with a soft
phump
and it flew off the sandbag, landing on its side, its legs still tucked in. “It must have been dead before you hit it,” said an American. There was no blood on it. “The concussion must have got it. Or it died of fright.”

They were in the wire, or where the wire used to be before the bombing, and we called in a strike on top of them and got down behind the wall of the inner perimeter. I heard a sound like
zzzzz
and looked over the wall. A shard of bomb frag was burning its way through the wall's dirt pack; I saw it and couldn't move, I was fascinated. It stopped at a stick of wood before it got to me.

Three walls and the ceiling of the latrine were shot away. I
dropped my pants and sat down over one of the holes and began to read
Studs Lonigan
. Occasionally I heard a
spang!
or a
thack!
when a bullet struck metal or wood. When I was finished I bent over to retrieve my pants; I waggled my ass at the perimeter.

They had smeared other men's blood on themselves and tied phony bandages on their arms and legs. We threw them out of the helicopter as fast as they climbed in. The pilot was shouting, trying to lift off. We jumped; the helicopter lifted and swung to the side, scraping off against the ground the Vietnamese clinging to its struts. Not more than a couple of them got out of the camp that way.

Red dust kicked up to my left. I continued eating. I knew he would bracket me with his next round. It struck to my right. I slid a few feet down the slope of the bunker and to the left. The third round was dead center on my first position. I waited, giving the sniper time to adjust his scope, then I moved again, forward and to the right. The fourth round was high and well to the left. I moved to my left. The fifth round struck to my right, still high. I stood up and walked back to my original position and sat down. The sixth round hit where the first had. I didn't move. The seventh hit wood on the command bunker. The eighth and ninth followed it. The tenth went to my right, the eleventh below my feet. I finished my peaches, tossed the can aside, and stuck the
spoon in my shirt pocket. Rounds were going everywhere. I ran back inside the fence of the inner perimeter. The eyes and mouths of the other Americans made perfect Os. They made me laugh.

On the ninth night I rolled up in a poncho against the wall of the inner perimeter. I lay on my back and tried to focus on the stars behind the light of the flares. I woke up at noon to quiet voices and a dessicating sun; I had slept for twelve hours. Faces were grinning at each other. The battle noises had stopped. The North Vietnamese had gone; the First Cav was chasing them into the Ia Drang.

The brown grass flattens in whorls. The red dust is sucked up into the cabin so that even before we have settled it coats the clay caked into my skin, my nose and ears. We touch ground, rock, settle, the blades continue to whirl. I jump out, grasping my rifle. The door gunner hands down my rucksack. The
wop-wop-wop
of the rotors smoothes to a high whine; I run back out of the way and the helicopter lifts sideways and up.

It is hot. The sweat runs into my beard, muddying my face and neck. The sky is whiter than it is gray or blue. Where the sun is behind the clouds I can't stand to look for the glare. I walk from the helipad across the road to the gate. The Nung on guard duty salutes. The camp is red and the color of baked adobe. There is grass which is just beginning to sere. There are the fatigue-green and camouflage stripe-and-mottle of men going into and out of billets, Supply, Air Operations, the latrine. Vaguely, I begin to feel that I have made a mistake.

At Supply is a man whose name I can't remember. He says, “Welcome back.”

I don't remember his name. He is a captain. “I need a
room.”

He takes a key down from a board with nails in it and numbers painted on it. “You can have your old room back.” He looks at me as though studying me, then hands over the key.

The Enlisted Men's billets is the next building down from the massive concrete communications complex they call a bunker. Inside the entrance I stop to allow my vision to adjust to the dark. Here the air is almost cool. A Vietnamese woman comes out of a room carrying fatigue uniforms. She sees me and stops but says nothing; nor does her face. She scurries on to the far end of the corridor. The laundry room is there.

I have forgotten my room number and it is not written on the key. A tall American comes by. I ask him which room is Dickinson's.

“Dixie?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you were dead.”

“Not this time.”

He looks at me like the captain did at Supply. Finally he points to a door. “This one is yours.” He walks on toward the white sunlight beyond the door at the end of the corridor.

This room is mine. I have been here before. I am home here. Suddenly I am very tired. My legs are sore. The muscles between my ribs ache. I hang my rifle by its sling on a nail in the wall, toss my rucksack in a corner, my pistol belt and canteens after it. I let myself down on my bunk and begin to unlace my boots. They have not been off in nine days.

A Vietnamese girl comes into my room and stares at me. Like the American I didn't recognize, like the captain at Supply. She smiles, tentatively at first, then without reserve. She says something that I do not understand. “Không biêt,” I tell her. But now she is crying. I stand up and put my arms around her. Others come in, they are crying too. Then they are laughing and chirping like small birds; they are making fun of me. One points to my armpit, then pinches her nostrils with her thumb and forefinger. The others respond with hilarity, and I laugh, too. There is something between us, something from before I went away, but I don't remember what it is. And now there is something new between us, a distance, a numbness, which they do not perceive, and which I am only beginning to. I shoo them out of my room and sit down again to pull off my boots. I am still in my socks when one of the maids comes back, she is crying again, and presses my hand with both of hers. She drops it quickly and runs out. Oh God, I think. I, too, am beginning to cry. But I swallow hard and the threat dissipates.

I undress, wrap a towel around my waist, and start to the latrine. To achieve the latrine I must cross an open flat of about fifty meters; I do this quickly, without running.

The water pounds my back, hot, hotter still, then cold, then hot again, until I doze on my feet. How odd to be alive: This thought enters my head. It shocks me awake. I feel fear, but fear without relish. I think again with intent: How strange to be alive. As though to rehearse the line.

I dry myself, sling the towel over my shoulder, shave, brush my teeth, tongue, palate. A girl comes in, sets a pail
under the tap in a utility sink. She smiles and puts her thumb in the air. I wonder who she belongs to, she is too pretty to be free. I wrap myself in the towel and start back to my room. My reflection in the mirror as I turn reveals that my back is covered with yellow-green pustules. I reach over my shoulder and rub my finger across one. It is hard and does not hurt; I continue on to my billet. The oldest of the maids, the one in charge of the others, I remember, is waiting for me. She offers one of the girls to me, I will not have to pay, she says. The one I recognize as the one called the Cambodian is standing behind her. I ask the old woman if she is talking about the Cambodian. No, another one, Mama-san answers. She looks around but the girl she wants to give me is not in sight. I thank her but tell her I want to sleep. “Slip?” “Da phái. Slip.” I bring my palms together and place my cheek against them. Mama-san giggles.

I lie on my bunk wondering if the boils on my back will break and soil my blanket. My ears and the soft skin inside the bony rims of my eyes still have in them the red Highlands dust. If it were night, tiny gnats would be crawling through the holes of my mosquito bar; a net with holes small enough to prevent the gnats from coming in wouldn't allow me to breathe. My legs jerk; my feet lie at the same angle as Dale's but his are dead. I turn on my side. Soon I do not know whether I am sleeping or awake.

Something is in my room.

“I thought you might be asleep,” Mitch says softly.

I look for the splayed index and middle fingers on his right hand. They are there; I focus on them. The man is neither an imposter nor a dream impersonation of Mitch. I am awake.

“No.” I prop myself on my elbow. “What's been going on?”

“Not much. I just got off shift. Want to get a beer?”

“Not now. Maybe later.”

“Okay. I'll let you sleep.”

“Thanks, Mitch.”

I do not dare to cry. Things too horrible would be released.

It is dark. Mitch has returned. Through the darkness, his voice: “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just lying here. Watching the lightning out my window.”

“That's not lightning. The Air Force is bombing tonight.”

“Oh. I thought it was lightning.”

“I was supposed to tell you earlier that you're on radio shift tomorrow at eight.”

“All right, Mitch. Thanks.”

Roy flips on the light.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You were making a lot of noise.”

I didn't hear any noise. I thought I was dreaming about something else.

“Sorry to wake you,” I say.

“I can't sleep anyway. Do you want to get some coffee?”

“Sure. Let me get some clothes on.”

The mess hall is a long rectangular room of round and oblong wooden tables in four disorderly rows. Four full windows on each side wall line the length of the hall. Each table, regardless of shape, seats eight. To the right rear as you enter are two rectangular tables pushed together. This is the Officers' Section. It is vacant. Rear center is the door leading to the kitchen, closed now. A rat nibbles a piece of popcorn in front of the door, unmolested. Halfway down the left side of the mess hall is a square table covered by a deeply stained linen tablecloth. On this sits a thirty-two-cup stainless-steel coffee pot. Pressed-paper cups, singly and in uneven stacks of three or four or six or eight, canned milk, the can punctured and sticky, cheesy at the punctures, a sugar dispenser, and a large aluminum bowl in which are the stale remains of the evening's popcorn surround the coffee pot.

The mess hall is used as a movie theater in the evening; hence the popcorn. The Vietnamese staff cleans in the morning before the first meal; hence the slovenliness. All of the overhead fluorescent lights are on; not a single shadow falls. The lights project an aura of artificial daylight, of artificial energy.

Only one table, to the right of center toward the rear, bordering the Officers' Section, is occupied. Four men in mixed uniform and mufti are playing poker. They play with concentration, little and mumbled remarking is audible. A few bills and some change are in evidence. As Roy and I enter, the players do not look up. Roy is of average height, slender, with rich brown receding hair. His features are mobile and angular; they reveal each thought as it occurs. His eyes are alert, moving, appraising. He is quick of mind and mood. I am an inch or two taller, broader and heavier, my hair has begun to grow out from a close crop. We are about the same age, in our middle twenties. Tonight we are also dressed alike in tiger suits. Neither of us wears the crush hat which would complete the uniform. I seat myself at the table nearest the coffee pot. Roy pours two cups.

“Popcorn?”

“No, thanks.”

We watch the rat eating the spilled popcorn. “Skoal,” Roy says. He tosses a kernel into his mouth. One of the card players turns to look at us.

“Hey, Dixie. I thought you were dead.”

“Not this time.”

“That was Terrell,” says a second player.

“Terrell's dead? Hell, I didn't even know he was out there.” The image of Dale's booted feet, the angle they formed in death, appears in the space between my eyes and my vision. It fades slowly, unwillingly.

“Well, at least you got out of it okay,” the second player says. “No wounds?”

“No. No wounds.”

Another player asks, “How did Terrell get killed? I heard he exposed himself trying to get a bundle-drop out of the wire.” There is a suggestion of contempt in his voice. He wants to believe that Dale died from his own carelessness, that we die only if we make a mistake. This is our myth, that if you do everything right no harm will come to you. Training is everything, and God knows that we are well trained, even overtrained. Training reduces risk and makes luck predictable; it has been shown statistically, it is scientific. I do not believe it. If it was true last year, it is not true this; the war has gotten too big. Science has lost its grip. We die neither from miscalculation nor from other men's design, nor even because it is our time. I do not know why we die. Only the fact of death is important.