“How come when you say ‘gooks’ it sounds like ‘nigger’ to me?” Johnson asked.
“You hear what you want to hear,” Brunner said.
“What I’m hearing is what you saying,” Johnson said.
“Y’all shut that shit up,” Sergeant Simpson looked from Brunner to Johnson and back again.
We had roast beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, carrot cake, and milk for supper. I sat under a tree with Peewee, eating. A bug crawled over his leg, and he put some mashed potatoes on his knee in the bug’s path, but the bug turned and went the other way.
“You think he’s saying something about the chow?” I asked.
“He probably want some of the roast beef,” Peewee said. “He know it Sunday and everything. But he ain’t getting none.”
“Sunday? It’s not Sunday, it’s Wednesday.” “Bugs is four days behind people,” he said matter-of-factly.
Sergeant Simpson saw us and came over. He sat down and asked us how we were enjoying ourselves.
“I’ve seen places I’d rather be,” I said. “Times Square, Lenox Avenue, Fifth Avenue, you name it.”
“I loves it here,” Peewee said. “I ain’t never seen no place in the world better than this place right here. You know what I love the most?”
“What’s that?” Sergeant Simpson was amused by Peewee.
“The bugs,” Peewee said. “You go to sleep at night they right there. You wake up in the morning, they right there. They better than a damn dog.” “So what you guys think about this outfit?” Sergeant Simpson asked.
“It looks okay to me,” Peewee said. “I might have to straighten a few things out, though.”
“Like what?” Sergeant Simpson asked.
“Like Brunner,” Peewee said. “That boy got a quick lip on him.”
“Uh-huh.” Sergeant Simpson looked away. “He might got him a quick lip, but Captain Stewart is the one eligible.”
“Eligible for what?”
“For major,” Sergeant Simpson said. “And his best chance of making it is while he over here. His tour is up the fifteenth day of March.”
“That’s his problem,” Peewee said.
“If he don’t pick up his body count soon,” Sergeant Simpson started to get up, “it’s going to be your problem.”
Chapter 5
The talk about us going to Hawaii was stronger than ever. Me and Peewee decided to save our money and have a blast in Hawaii. I also thought about taking some courses at the University of Hawaii.
I got a letter from Mama at mail call. Peewee got a letter from his girlfriend, but I don’t think he liked it. He crumpled it up and threw it in a butt can. Then he got it out again and reread it.
“Peewee, my mother says you shouldn’t eat any native food over here,” 1 said. “She says it’ll give you the runs because of the heat and everything.”
“Where was she when I needed her?” Peewee answered. He had spent the better part of two days on the crapper.
“How was that wine, anyway?”
“How I know?” Peewee turned over on his bunk to face me. “The only other wine I had in my damn life was some Bird back home.”
“How old you got to be in Chicago to drink?” “Old enough to carry some money to the man,”
Peewee said. “What else your moms got to say?” “You wouldn’t be interested,” I said.
“How you know?”
“You want to hear about how her feet swell up when she walks?”
“My mama’s feet used to swell like that,” Peewee said. “She went to four doctors, and they couldn’t do shit for her. Then she went to a mojo lady who gave her something to soak her feet in.”
“That work?”
“Yeah, she can walk all day now.”
“My mother’s a Baptist,” I said. “She wouldn’t go to a mojo lady.”
“My mama’s a Baptist, too, but she what you call a sore-feet Baptist. Your feets get sore enough, those mojo ladies start looking pretty good.”
Walowick came in pissed off because some motor pool guys were over from Chu Lai to play poker and one of them was smoking pot.
“You know what this guy is?” Walowick was stripped down to his drawers and helmet. “A damn white hippie.”
“A what?”
“A hippie!” Walowick said.
“Yeah, but you said he was a white hippie before,” Peewee said.
“Well, he is white,” Walowick said.
“All hippies is white,” Peewee said.
“No, they’re not,” I said. “You got to come to New York, and you can see some black hippies.” “Everybody in New York is white,” Peewee said. “Perry is from New York, and he sure ain’t white.” “Yes, he is, he passing!”
“You know, we had something like you back in Galesburg,” Walowick said. He spoke carefully, as if he wasn’t sure of the language. “We cut it up and put it in formaldehyde.”
“Didn’t that leave your daddy lonesome?” “What’s that got to do with my daddy?” “Nothing, Walowick,” I said. “Peewee’s just running off at the mouth.”
“He’s a crazy dude,” Walowick said. He got his towel and went out to our makeshift showers.
The next day we got a new film in. It was something about how Julie Andrews wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore. We watched it once and then we watched it again with the reels mixed up, just to be different. Johnson wanted to get the kids from the village up to the base, but a captain said we couldn’t do that, so Johnson and a guy from Delta Company worked on a way to get a generator down to the village so we could show the movie to them.
For two days we didn’t do anything. Nothing. We didn’t have any formations, patrols, nothing. Beautiful.
A new supply of insect repellent came in. Lieutenant Carroll said that it was good for making Molotov cocktails. Peewee wanted to know how come he was thinking about making Molotov cocktails when we had all the explosives in the world right in camp. Good point.
Lieutenant Carroll was a decent kind of guy. He talked a lot about Kansas, which is where he was from. His parents had a farm near Hays and his father was proud of him being an officer in the army. He’d told us that, about his father being proud of him being an officer, twice. It was like he didn’t know what to make of it.
For Sunday chow we had roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, carrot cake, and milk. We seemed to be having that quite a bit.
After chow we put the television on, but nothing was on. Nothing at all. All we got was static. Brew wrote a letter to President Johnson saying that if he wanted us to fight, he’d better send us some good televisions, and we all signed it. Then we threw it away.
Then we watched the movie again without the sound, and we all had parts to play in it. That was the best showing of the movie, especially with Peewee as Julie Andrews.
We listened to the news on radio and heard about peace talks in Paris. There was a lot of talk about how we were kicking the living crap out of the Communists, too.
“Turn that up loud as you can,” Peewee said. “Make sure them Congs hear it.”
We heard stories. Stories about fighting in Dak To, and down south in Pleiku, but we weren’t doing any of it. I thought about it, though. I wanted to know how it felt to shoot at a Cong. The way I thought about it, mostly, was thinking of what I would say when I got home. Maybe even what I would say to Kenny.
Kenny always looked up to me. He couldn’t play ball as well as I had when I was his age, and he didn’t do as well in school. Maybe it had something to do with Dad leaving when Kenny was four. He saw all the fights between Dad and Mom, and I think it hurt him more than it did me. I had basketball, and I was good in school. Later, with Mom drinking so much, all Kenny had was me. I wanted to tell him that I did something in the war.
I couldn’t sleep most of the night. When the rats weren’t running around in the dark, the mosquitoes were after you. Peewee said that the mosquitoes ran patrols for the rats and afterward they split up their catch. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t want to go out to the outdoor latrine. In the first place it stunk too bad, and in the second, as soon as you pulled your pants down after dark the mosquitoes bit your ass.