“Fucking gangrene. Had to amputate.” The cigar tip glowed as Tallman inhaled.
“Fucking Lieutenant,” Manalo said, laying his cards face down on the table. He was a solid and square man with a dark face and smudged jaw.
“Should have listened to The Surgeon.” Tallman tossed five cigarettes in the center of the table. “Ante up, boys.”
I didn’t find much sleep at night, any night, but I spent that particular night stretched on my bunk, staring at the dark ceiling of the bunkhouse, thinking about Nick Decker’s missing foot and The Surgeon’s jar of eyes, eventually dreaming about one-eyed men marching toward me, each extending one hand. The next morning, as we saddled up for a return to the bush and our hide-and-seek game with a phantom enemy, curiosity ate at my stomach like I’d swallowed a fist full of nails.
“I don’t get it,” I said, clutching my M-16 like a lifeline.
“What don’t you get?” Tallman tightened the straps on his rucksack.
“Does he always just cut out one eye?”
“Yeah, since I’ve known him.”
“I don’t get it…”
“What’s there to get?” Tallman shrugged and shouldered his pack while the deafening thump of helicopter blades devoured us.
In the field, our lives resumed the predictable pattern of walk, dig, sleep for two, three hours, and repeat. Lt. Wucker received word from the CO that elements of D Company drew the job of flushing out a contingent of North Vietnamese regulars massing north of An Khe. To us grunts, all this meant was more walking with the chance that some violence would break up the tedium of routine. We were bait.
I sat on my helmet, cleaning my M-16 for the second time that morning. Around me, other members of the platoon milled around, smoking, flashing quick glances at each other without speaking. While reassembling my weapon, my roving eyes caught The Surgeon, standing alone, dissecting the pile of forest in front of him. The jar rested in the palm of his right hand, and I thought his lips moved a little, like he was talking to someone I couldn’t see. He turned and strolled toward the Lieutenant. I stood, snagging my pot and dropping back on my head as I meandered in the same direction.
“Lieutenant,” said The Surgeon.
Lt. Wucker looked at him, folded the map he studied a moment before, and stuffed it inside a plastic bag before speaking. “Yeah Karnowski?”
“Bad vibes today.” The Surgeon’s eyes wandered past Wucker.
“We have orders, Karnowski.” The Lieutenant tried to meet his gaze. “I don’t give a shit about your goddamn vibes, understand?”
The Surgeon thrust his thumb over one shoulder toward the thick trees behind him. “Sniper. Thought you should know.” With this, he turned and marched away from Lt. Wucker and over to a small group of grunts — Tallman and Manalo among them. Wucker stood like a whitewashed statue for a moment before turning back to the radio and digging his map out of the plastic bag.
Fifteen minutes into the thick canopy and a VC sniper split Private First Class Matthew Tallman’s head with one well placed shot. He walked only ten feet in front of me, and with one quick snap, his body dropped to the ground like an abandoned marionette. I instantly burrowed, clutching my helmet to my head, terror slashing and burning through my prone body. I inhaled the pungent mud and dropped my weapon. I scratched at the ground while some members of the platoon returned fire; the popping reports of M-16s sounded like little firecrackers lit under a Folgers can, seeming so far away.
After a few moments of fear, I scrambled for my gun. My eyes caught The Surgeon boring straight into me with an infrared glare. He pointed at me and then pushed toward me with his hand. Without thinking, I obeyed, rolling to the other side of a jagged tree stump. A small geyser of earth erupted where I’d been. I swallowed hard while my eyes were drawn by that small smoking crater.
Members of our platoon sprayed the treetops with gunfire until a slight man in black dropped like poisoned fruit. He hung in space, tied to a rope attached to the top of the tree, dangling in front of the tree trunk just feet off the ground.
Lt. Wucker sent a few men on perimeter watch while the medic attended Manalo, his right side ripped into a jagged, crimson wound by the sniper. Hernandez and Rowe zipped PFC Matthew Tallman’s nearly headless body into a black bag. Only then did the chattering jungle sound return. That was the odd thing, the quiet, listening jungle followed by the slow rise of distant monkeys, birds, and buzzing insects.
The Surgeon stood alone next to the sniper, rolling a toothpick in his mouth. He pulled the knife from its hilt, sawed the rope, and dropped the body to the ground. Kneeling then, with deftness and precision, he carved out another eye for his jar as the heavy beating of a medivac helicopter closed around us.
Somebody should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernandez scowled as we hunched outside our tents and smoked the last cigarettes of the day. I looked from him to Dave Rowe, and then The Surgeon.
“Yeah, fuck him. He should listen to The Surgeon.” Rowe looked at me, and my stomach squirmed.
“Can’t be helped,” said The Surgeon as he tossed the smoldering butt of his cigarette into a stand of damp grass and ducked inside his tent.
“I still say we should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernadez puffed out his chest and sucked in a long drag. Through the shadows just inside his tent, I could see The Surgeon’s face, eyes open and staring beyond the green canvas.
After a few weeks of intense search and destroy, the company returned to the rear for a week of rest, part of the constant cycle. During that month of combat, The Surgeon continued to collect eyes until a full school like little fish swam inside that small jar. After Tallman’s death he withdrew, talking little to anyone, not even the Lieutenant. Tension in the platoon mounted with causalities, and we would never wash the orange earth from under our fingernails.
The Surgeon approached the officers’ hootch the night before we were scheduled to ship out again. While sucking on a cigarette and enjoying the night sky in relative safety, I watched him knock on the door, say something to the man that answered, and wait. Wucker came to the door when summoned, and The Surgeon seemed to be explaining something to him, gesturing with his arms more than I’d seen in the past. The Lieutenant shook his head, returned inside, leaving The Surgeon to turn and wander away. He walked toward the perimeter, and my legs started in that direction without conscious thought.
“Hey Linder.”
“Hey,” I said, sidling next to him, “how’d you know…”
“…it was you? Easy.” He held the glass jar toward me, white orbs dancing as the liquid jostled inside. “Take it. Give it a try.”
I moved my left arm to take the jar, but hesitated, a vice squeezing my lungs.
“They won’t bite.” He dropped the jar in my hand, and I felt it as a small electric pop — like static electricity but moving through my arm and chest. The eyes bounced and jumped. I looked at him, his rectangular face, washed with an even pallor in the twilight, and then his face faded, the sharp coil of concertina wire in front of us faded, even the night faded like so much color washed down a drain.
I glimpsed snatches of jungle, trail, rice paddy, and even here in the camp through dozens of eyes at once. I reeled for a moment, spinning and lost with no solid substance beneath my feet, then, looking down, realizing I had no feet. My skull burned, but I heard his voice saying, “focus, focus” inside my brain. The ground rushed at me, and I fell to my knees, my perception suddenly thrust back behind my eyes as I doubled over, retching, on the hard ground.
“It gets easier Linder.” He held the jar again, and offered a hand to help me stand. “Focus on where we are right now.”