I nod. "Affirmative. That's affirmative, you fucking lifer. But this man is only a lance corporal. And he takes his orders fromme."
The big dumb M.P. shrugs. "Okay. Okay, motherfucker. You can tell him what to do. You can fill my sandbags, corporal. Many, many of them."
I look at the deck. An explosion is building up inside me. I experience fear, and a terrible strain, as the pressure grows and grows, and then release, relief. "No, you dumb redneck. Negative, you fucking pig. No, I'm not going to fall out for any Mickey Mouse working party. You know why? Huh?" I slam the magazine back into my M-16 and I snap the bolt, chambering a round.
I'm smiling now. I'm smiling as I jam the flash supressor into the big dumb M.P.'s jelly belly and then I wait for him to make one sound, any sound, or just the slightest movement and then I'm going to pull the trigger.
The big dumb M.P.'s mouth falls open. He doesn't have anything else to say. I don't think he wants me to fill his sandbags anymore.
The clipboard and the pencil fall.
Then, walking backward, the big dumb M.P. retreats into his bunker, mouth open, hands up.
Rafter Man is too scared to say anything for a while.
I say, "You'll get used to this place. You'll change. You'll understand."
Rafter Man remains quiet. We walk. Then, "You weren't bluffing. You would have killed that guy. For nothing."
I say, "There it is."
Rafter Man is looking at me as though he's seeing something new. "Is everybody like that? I mean, you were laughing. Like..."
"It's not the kind of thing you can talk about. There's no way to explain stuff like that. After you've been in the shit, after you've got your first confirmed kill, you'll understand."
Rafter Man is silent. His questions are silent.
"At ease," I say. "Don't kid yourself, Rafter Man, this is a slaughter. In this world of shit you won't have time to understand. What you do, you become. You better learn to flow with it. You owe it to yourself."
Rafter Man nods, but he doesn't reply. I know how he feels.
The Informational Services Office for Task Force X-Ray, a unit assigned to cover elements of the First Division temporarily operating in the Third Division's area, is a small frame hootch, constructed with two-by-fours and slave labor. Nailed to the screen door is a red sign with yellow letters: TFX-ISO. Roofed with sheets of galvanized tin and walled with fine-mesh screening, the hootch is designed to protect us from the heat. The Seabees have nailed green plastic ponchos along the side of the hootch. These dusty flaps are rolled up during the furnace of the day and are rolled down at night to keep out the fierce monsoon rain.
Chili Vendor and Daytona Dave are doing fleetniks in front of the ISO hootch. Chili Vendor is a tough Chicano from East L.A. and Daytona Dave is an easy-going surf bum from a wealthy family in Florida. They have absolutely nothing in common. They are the best of friends.
About a hundred grunts have stuffed themselves into every available piece of shade in the area. Each grunt has been given a fleetnik, a printed form with spaces for all the necessary biographical data required to send a photograph of the grunt to his hometown newspaper.
Daytona Dave is taking the photographs with a black-body Nikon while Chili Vendor says, "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
The grunt next in line kneels down beside a little Vietnamese orphan of undetermined sex. Chili Vendor slaps a rubber Hershey bar into the grunt's hand. "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
Daytona Dave snaps the picture.
Chili Vendor snatches the grunt's fleetnik with one hand and the rubber Hershey bar with the other. "Next!"
The orphan says, "Her, Marine number one! You! You! You give me chop-chop? You souvenir me?" The orphan grabs at the Hershey bar and jerks it out of Chili Vendor's hand. He bites the Hershey bar; it's rubber. He tries to tear off the wrapper; he can't. "Chop-chop number ten!"
Chili Vendor snatches the rubber Hershey bar out of the orphan's hands and tosses it to the next grunt in the line. "Keep moving. Don't you guys want to be famous? Some of you dudes probably wasted this kid's family, but back in your hometown you gonna be the big strong Marine with a heart of gold."
I say in my John Wayne voice: "Listen up, pilgrim. You skating again?"
Chili Vendor turns, sees me and grins. "Hey, Joker, que pasa? This might be skating, man, it fucking might be. These gook orphans are hard-core. I think half of them are Viet Cong Marines."
The orphan is walking away, grumbling, kicking the road. Then, as though to prove Chili Vendor's point, the orphan pauses. He turns around and gives us the finger with both hands. Then he walks on.
Daytona Dave laughs. "That kid runs an NVA rifle company. Somebody blow him away."
I grin. "You ladies are doing an outstanding job. You're both born poges."
Chili Vendor shrugs. "Hey, bro, the Crotch don't send beaners into the field. We're too tough. We make the grunts look bad."
"You guys getting hit?"
"That's affirmative," says Daytona Dave. "Every night. A few rounds. They're just fucking with us. Of course, I've got so many confirmed kills I lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their dead. I do believe that those little yellow enemy folks eat their casualties. Blood trails all over the place, but no confirmed kills. So here I am, a hero, and Captain January has got me doing Mickey Mouse shit with this uppity wetback."
"CORPORAL JOKER!"
"SIR!" Later, people. Come on, Rafter."
Chili Vendor punches Daytona Dave in the chest. "Doubletime up to the ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one, a really skuzzy one."
"JOKER!"
"AYE-AYE, SIR!"
Captain January is in his plywood cubicle in the back of the ISO hootch. Captain January is the kind of officer who chews an unlit pipe because he thinks that a pipe will help to make him a father figure. He's playing cut-throat Monopoly with Mr. Payback. Mr. Payback has more T.I.--time in--than any other snuffy in our unit. Captain January isn't Captain Queeg, but then he's not Humphrey Bogart, either. He picks up his little silver shoe and moves it to Baltic Avenue, tapping each property along the way.
"I'll buy Baltic. And two houses." Captain January reaches for the white and purple deed to Baltic Avenue. "That's another monopoly, Sergeant." He positions tiny green houses on the board. "Joker, you've scarfed up beaucoup slack in Da Nang and I am sure that now you are squared away to get back into the field. Hump up to Hue. The NVA have overrun the city. One-One is in the shit."
I hesitate. "Sir, would the Captain happen to know who killed my story on that howitzer crew who wasted a whole squad of NVA with one beehive round? In Da Nang some poges told me that a colonel shit-canned my story. Some colonel said that beehive rounds were a figment of my imagination because the Geneva Convention classified them as 'inhumane' and American fighting men are incapable of being inhumane."
Mr. Payback grunts. "Inhumane? That's a pretty word for it. Ten thousand feathered stainless steel darts. Those flechette canisters do convert gooks into lumps of shitty rags. There it is."
"Oh, damn," says Captain January. He slaps a card onto the field desk. "Go to jail--go directly to jail--do not pass go--do not collect two hundred dollars." The captain puts his little silver shoe into jail. "I know who killed your beehive story, Joker. What I don't know is who has been tipping off hostile reporters every time we get an adverse incident--like that white Victor Charlies recon wasted last week, the one the snuffies call 'The Phantom Blooper.' General Motors is ready to bust me down to a grunt because of that leak in our security. You talk; I'll talk. Do we have a deal?"