We lie on our racks and swap scuttlebutt. On the ceiling, the combat correspondent's motto in six-inch block letters: FIRST TO GO, LAST TO KNOW, WE WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR RIGHT TO BE MISINFORMED.
Mr. Payback performs his sea stories for Rafter Man: "The only difference between a sea story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale begins with 'Once upon a time...' and a sea story begins with 'This is no shit.' Well, New Guy, listen up, because this is no shit. January orders me to play Monopoly. All fucking day. Every day of the fucking week. There's nothing lower than a lifer. They fuck me over, man, but I don't say a word. I do not say a word. Payback is a motherfucker, New Guy. Remember that. When Luke the gook zaps you in the back and Phantoms bury him in napalm canisters, that's payback. When you shit on people it comes back to you, sooner or later, only worse. My whole program is a mess because of lifers. But Payback will come, sooner or later. I'd walk a mile for a payback."
I laugh. "Payback, you hate lifers because youare a lifer."
Mr. Payback lights up a joint. "You're the one who's tight with the lifers, Joker. Lifers take care of their own."
"Negative. The lifers are afraid to talk to me, I got so many ops."
"Operations? Shit." Mr. Payback turns to Rafter Man. "Joker thinks that the bad bush is down the road in the ville. He's never been in the shit. It's hard to talk about it. Like on Hastings--"
Chili Vendor interrupts: "You weren't on Operation Hastings, Payback. You weren't even in country."
"Oh, eat shit and die, you fucking Spanish American. You poge. I was there, man. I was in the shit with the grunts, man. Those guys have got guts, you know? They are very hard individuals. When you've been in the shit with grunts you're tight with them from then on, you know?"
I grunt. "Sea stories."
"Oh, yeah? How long have you been in country, Joker? Huh? How much T.I. you got? How much fucking time in? Thirty months, poge. I got thirty months in country. I been there, man."
I say, "Don't listen to any of Mr. Payback's bullshit, Rafter Man. Sometimes he thinks he's John Wayne."
"That's affirmative," says Mr. Payback. "You listen to Joker, New Guy. He knows ti ti--very little. And if he ever does know anything it'll be because he learned it from me. You just know he's never been in the shit. He ain't got the stare."
Rafter Man looks up. "The what?"
"The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in the shit for too long. It's like you've really seen...beyond. I got it. All field Marines got it. You'll have it, too."
Rafter Man says, "I will?"
Mr. Payback takes a few hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I was a New Guy, a long time ago..." Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You and me, God--right?'" Mr. Payback giggles. He seems to be trying to focus his vision on some distant object. "Yes, nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying."
Rafter Man looks at me, grins, hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback. "There sure is a lot of stuff to learn."
I'm whittling a piece of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle knife. I'm carving myself a wooden bayonet.
Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat the candy bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing up some orphans and that little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit the shit out of my hand." Daytona holds up his left hand, revealing a little red crescent of tooth marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies."
Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter Man. "There it is, New Guy. You'll know you're salty when you stop throwing C-ration cans to the kids and start throwing the cans at them."
I say, "I got to get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in anger in weeks. I'm bored to death. How are we ever going to get used to being back in the World? I mean, a day without blood is like a day without sunshine."
Chili Vendor says, "No sweat. The old mamasan that does our laundry tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in Hue the whole fucking North Vietnamese army is dug in deep inside an old fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker. Victor Charlie is gonna shoot you in the heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a lifer in a blouse from a set of dress blues. But no white hat. And no pants. They don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of the relatives you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they'll call you a good little Christian and they'll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel."
Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes, if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit. But civilians don't know what to do, so they put up statues in the park for pigeons to drop turds on. Civilians don't know. Civilians don't want to know."
I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?"
Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister. Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."
I grunt. "There it is."
With my magic marker I "X" out a section of thigh on the nude woman outlined on the back of my flak jacket. The number 58 disappears. Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country.
Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we kill time by wasting our furry little friends.
I say, "Rat race!"
Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner. He breaks up a John Wayne cookie. In the corner, six inches off the desk, we've nailed a piece of ammo crate to form a triangular pocket. There's a little hole in the charred board. Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board. Then he snaps off the lights.
I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to do with it. "What--"
Shhhh.
We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving through the darkness without fear.
Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.
With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.
But most of the rats herd together under the board.
Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.
Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the burning match into the corner.
The board foomps into flame.
Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent grenade.
The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except toward some place where there is no fire.