What was worse than thinking about him dead was the way we looked at him. At least we had cared for Jenkins, had trembled when he died. He was one of us, an American, a human. But the dead Vietnamese soldier, his body sprawled out in the mud, was no longer a human being. He was a thing, a trophy. I wondered if I could become a trophy.
“We won.” Walowick came in after the volleyball game and sat on the edge of the bunk. “They’re paying us off in beer.”
“Way to go,” I said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Seeing that dead gook mess you up some?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe even more than Jenkins.”
“Who’s Jenkins?”
“He was the guy — ” I couldn’t believe that Walowick didn’t know who I was talking about. He had been on the patrol when Jenkins was killed. I looked into his face, and I saw that he was for real. “Jenkins was the guy I came in with. He stepped on a mine.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about him,” Walowick said. “You play chess?”
“A little, you got a set?”
Walowick went to get his chess set, and Jamal came back in. He had a clipboard and he put it in front of me. He pointed to a figure. It read “3.” I looked at the column it was in and it was listed “Confirmed Kills.” I looked up at Jamal, but he was already on his way out.
“You know, that guy is a little…” Walowick held his hand out, palm down, and turned it from side to side.
“It takes all kinds,” I said. Walowick had put the chessboard on a box, and we started setting up the pieces.
“How many VC were killed today?” I asked.
“One, I guess,” Walowick said.
“The report said three,” I said.
“You shoot a VC, and they take the bodies and run off with them,” Walowick said. “That’s so you never know how many are killed. You can’t even find shells when they shoot at you. They take those, too.”
“Then how do you know how many were killed?”
“Long as it’s them and not us,” he said. “Take the white pieces.”
As soon as I crossed Manhattan Avenue I knew something was up. The street was quiet except for a radio that blared from behind a window with its shade pulled down. I stopped on the comer and looked down the street. A small girl, too young to be out past eleven, came out of a hallway and peered around a mail collection box.
“The Rovers down there,” she said.
“Who?”
“The Rovers,” she repeated. “They’re from Brooklyn. They looking for somebody.”
I wasn’t about to go down the street. I had heard too many stories about gangs looking for someone who they had to “deal” with. A lot of them were getting out of the gang thing and into a Black Pride thing, but the gangs were still there.
A car, I hadn’t noticed it before, had eased onto the block. Suddenly it picked up speed, wheels squealing, lurching from one side of the narrow street to the other. The Rovers came out and threw rocks and bottles. Then I heard the shots and flattened myself against the wall. The Rovers started running from down the block. A minute later the street was empty again. Then came the police sirens.
“Here’s one!”
It startled me at first. Then I went over to where the woman was pointing. I saw the kid’s frightened face; the eyes wide, as the neon lights from Joe Walker’s restaurant turned it alternately green and red. He had been shot. The police cleared the corner. It was safe to walk up to Momingside, and home.
The next day in the West Indian store I heard two teenagers saying that the kid had died.
Brew came in and put his radio on. He had cupcakes and tossed me one and Walowick one. The radio was playing something about going to San Francisco with flowers in your hair. A nice tune.
We played two games of chess, and I won both of them easily. Walowick didn’t seem to mind. His idea was just to capture as many pieces as possible. If it led him to a bad position, he would just lose. I was glad the game wasn’t hard. I didn’t want anything hard to do.
When I tried to sleep, I kept seeing the VC, just the way he was laid out in front of the company. I pushed my mind away, forced myself to think about other things. I started thinking about Kenny. There was a kid in his class who used to bother him a lot. The lad used to call him a punk and push him around. Kenny wasn’t a punk, but he wasn’t a fighter, either.
Sometimes we used to imagine traveling around the world together. We’d have imaginary trips around the world. I would imagine just the two of us, but Kenny would always include Mama. That was the difference between me and Kenny. He could get other people, mostly Mama, into his dreams easier than I could. He was the bridge between me and Mama, and I liked him for that.
I woke up in the morning, about 0400 hours, with the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. I thought I was having an attack of appendicitis. I was doubled up in bed and had to crawl out of the bed to get to where Peewee was sleeping. I shook him, and when he opened his eyes I told him I needed help. He got up right away and went to get a medic.
Jamal came over and saw me doubled up on the bed.
“You got the shits,” he said.
“No, man, I feel like I’ve been poisoned.”
“Hurts worse than anything else in the world, like it’s burning for a while, and there’s a sharp pain for a while?”
“Yeah.”
“You got the shits.”
“What he got to do?” Peewee said.
“He don’t have to do nothing,” Jamal said. “After a while he’s going to go to the latrine and shit his lungs out, that’s all.”
“He gonna feel better, then?” Peewee asked hopefully.
“No.” Jamal put some pills on the table and some Kleenex. “Every time you go to the bathroom, take two of these. Sometimes it helps, but usually it don’t.”
Then he started to leave.
“Yo, faggot, you got to do more than that,” Peewee said.
“Don’t be calling me no faggot,” Jamal said. “You don’t know me that well.”
I threw the box of Kleenex at Jamal and told him where to shove them. He picked them up, shrugged, and left.
“I see where I’m gonna have to lack his ass before long,” Peewee said. “You want some water or something?”
“No.”
I remembered that after the orientation the old-timers started telling us about the diseases they said the lieutenant overlooked.
“They got one land of thing they call the Damn Nam jungle rot. It rots you from the insides out. By the time it gets to your skin you’re dead meat.”
I didn’t believe it, then.
“They got guys on an island out in the middle of the Pacific that can never go home again.”
I didn’t believe that, either.
“And if that don’t get you, the stuff they spray on the trees will eat your liver up.”
I was beginning to believe it all as I lay on the end of the bunk.
It was almost 0500, and the company was usually up and around at 0600. I would go on sick call then.
0510. I could hardly stand up I had so much pain. I went to the latrine. I crapped out most of my insides. The cramps were worse. When I got back to the bunk, my hands were shaking.
0520. I crapped out the rest of my insides. I was getting nauseous from the stink. I was sweating.
0541. I tried to hold off, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have anything left to crap out so I just crapped out water.
0555. Again. I stopped off at Jamal’s hooch and got the Kleenex.
0630. Again. This time Peewee came with me to the john. He sat on the john next to me and asked me if I thought Jimi Hendrix was for real. I said I thought he was okay.
“You know, I can play some blues,” Peewee said.
“You can?”
“I ain’t as good as Jimi Hendrix,” he said, “but he play them citified blues, anyway. I’m thinking about writing a blues number for you. I’m gonna call it “The Serious Stink Blues.”