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Shoving the hat back on his head, Hathcock turned his interest to the rifle he had captured. He would tag it and turn it in at the command post. Hopefully, he would be able to take it home as a souvenir, just as his father had done with the old Mauser.

The march home took much longer than the trek out that morning. The squad took a return route that brought them to the opposite side of Hill 55 from where they had departed. They knew that often the Viet Cong would rig explosives in trails left by outbound patrols, in hopes of blowing away the soldiers as they backtracked home.

By the time Hathcock reached his hooch, he felt extraordinarily tired—physically drained from the long day, the rain, and the extra miles home. Oeaning his rifle and combat gear seemed a dismal chore, one he had to force himself to complete.

That night, Hathcock sat snaking on the edge of his cot. His legs trembled and his vision blurred. His head buzzed as though he had taken a marathon roller coaster ride. He thought mat it may have resulted from the soaking he took during the day. But deep in his consciousness he knew that it had to be something else. Something that he did not like. A thing that had been subtly attacking him—coming and going—for three years.

It began when Jo gave birth to Carlos Norman Hathcock III. She herself had had to call the Naval Hospital ambulance at Cherry Point to get to the delivery room. Hathcock had suffered fainting and dizzy spells two weeks before that, and the doctors had hospitalized him, as a precaution.

He had been in the hospital when his son was born. It had upset him at the time—he would have liked to have been with his wife—but he sometimes felt it had hardened his resolution to get out of the hospital and take up his responsibilities, even though his physical unsteadiness hadn’t entirely disappeared.

This evening in the sniper hooch on Hill 55, he felt much worse than in many months. He sat there visibly shaking when a meaty hand took him by the shoulder.

“You okay, Carlos?”

Hathcock turned to see his captain standing at the foot of his cot. “Get over to the sick bay,” Land said in his gruff voice. “You look pretty well wrung out.”

“Skipper,” Hathcock said in a high-pitched, singsong voice, “I’m really all right. I just got a little chill from the rain today. I’m gonna get me something hot to drink, and I’ll crawl in the rack. I’ll be okay.”

Land looked at him quizzically, but decided to accept his sergeant’s opinion of when he was sick enough to need a doctor. “I guess that will do, but I’m gonna be keeping an eye on you. I don’t like the way you look. Just remember—life is hard. But it’s one hell of a lot harder if you’re stupid.”

Hathcock smiled as he recalled the John Wayne movie where he had first heard that line. “Yes, Sir. Don’t you worry about me. I may be ignorant, but I ain’t stupid.”

In his heart, however, he knew that life was getting one hell of a lot harder, and he could remain stupid only so long. Some day his secret would be out. The doctors would have to know. But now was not the time.

Less than twenty minutes later, the captain returned to Hathcock, carrying a canteen cup filled with hot chicken soup. “Here, drink this.”

“What is it? Chicken soup? Where you find that?”

The captain smiled, “That staff sergeant at the mess tent. I just asked him for some hot soup and he came up with this. I didn’t ask where or how… I just thanked him and left.”

Land picked up an ammunition crate that the Marines who lived in the hooch with Hathcock had used as a stool and set it down next to the cot and took a seat on it. “You sure you don’t need to talk to a doctor about this? You’re shaking pretty bad.”

“I’m okay, really. I just got a little flu or something today and got the shakes from it.”

Gently cupping his palm over Hathcock’s forehead, the captain did not feel any sign of fever. “You don’t seem to have a temperature. I guess you’ll be okay. Probably is just a little chill. You stay in mat rack tomorrow.”

“I will, Sir, unless I feel real fit. I’ll come see you first.”

“You be sure you do.”

At one o’clock that morning, Hathcock walked to the privy. He stumbled and staggered as though he had been drinking heavily. He was frightened that the problem would not leave before dawn.

Inside the plywood hut, he took short breaths and held them for several seconds each, trying to avoid smelling the stench of the excrement that filled a cut-down fifty-five-gallon drum positioned below the wooden throne on which he sat. He recalled watching a private lift the heavy cans onto the bed of a mule* and how the foul liquid sloshed on the man’s hands and clothes—how his utility uniform bore greasy black stains across the chest and down both legs from this chore.

Hathcock thought how lucky he was to be a sergeant. He did not have to pull shit detail, hauling the shit-filled cans down to the west side of the hill, topping them off with kerosene, and setting them on fire.

When Hathcock awoke the following morning, he felt better. The dizziness had almost gone. The trembling had settled to a slight twitching in his legs. He smiled as he put his feet on the oil-stained plywood floor and stood, feeling steady. “Maybe it was the soaking I took,” he thought.

Although he felt better, he did not go to the field for several days. He spent his time writing lesson plans and debriefing students. And planning patrols—patrols that he longed to lead.

On a sweltering monsoon afternoon, with the temperature and humidity both hovering near 95, Hathcock was writing the day’s report at the green, clapboard field desk. He took off his shirt and wore only his camouflage utility trousers and boots. The snipers had returned from the field early and empty-handed again. Their debrief was short.

Carlos sipped a cold beer. The gunny had bought six when the service club opened at five o’clock, and now two cans sat on the comer of the field desk, water beading down their sides, awaiting the captain.

A large, black mosquito landed on Hathcock’s arm and began drawing blood from skin marked by a tattoo of the confederate flag and the word “Rebel” written beneath it. “Go ahead and suck,” Hathcock said, watching the insect fill its stomach, stretching it round. Just as the mosquito was about to withdraw its proboscis, Hathcock pressed the tip of his finger on the insect and burst it, leaving a bloody smear on the red-and-blue tattoo.

“Damn mosquitoes,” Wilson said, slapping one that bit his neck as he sat on an ammo crate and reclined on his shoulders against the wall of the hooch. “One way or another, I’m gonna wind up leaving most of my blood over here—if Charlie don’t get us, then the bugs will.”

“Gunny,” the captain said, as he walked through the doorway, “if it wasn’t the bugs, you’d be bitchin’ about the heat or the dirt.”

“Now that you mention it, Skipper, this is about the hottest, filmiest sandpile I’ve ever spent time at anyway. I’d just as soon be livin’ inside a shit-can on the Sahara,” Wilson fired back.

“Don’t be joking about that, we’ll probably wind up there next,” Land said.

Hathcock smiled and said, “I don’t know what is so bad about living in this nice little house we got here.”

“You would like this dump, Hathcock. I forgot about you coming from Arkansas. It was probably a step up for you to come here and wear shoes,” Wilson said, evoking a chuckle from Land and a finger from Hathcock.