The Short-Timers

"Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."

"What--?" I recognize the rooms I'm in. I remember the room from an earlier visit to Hue. I'm in the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden City.

Cowboy punches my arm. "Okay, Joker, stop acting. We know you're not dead."

I sit up. I'm on a canvas med-evac stretcher. "There it is. I did it! Number one! I got my first heart."

Rafter Man says, "A Purple Heart?"

Cowboy laughs. "Tough titty, you poge. No heart."

I pat myself with my hands. "The hell you say. Where am I hit?"

Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some other guy got the shrapnel."

"Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."

Animal Mother grunts and spits. Animal Mother spits a lot because he thinks it makes him look tough. "Lifers never get wasted. Just the ones I frag, that's all."

Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon is glaring at Animal Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.

Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay gave you some morphine. You were trying to punch him out."

"There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when I'm unconscious. But that's some very good shit, that morphine."

Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses up on his nose. "I could use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."

I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"

Cowboy shakes his head. "Mr. Shortround is KIA." Cowboy pulls a red bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper round through the knee. The Skipper went out to get him. A frag got him. A frag got them both. At least..." Cowboy turns to look at Animal Mother. "At least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."

I shake the cobwebs out of my head and pick up my gear. "Where's my Mattel?"

Cowboy hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got wasted. Use this." He hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.

I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."

Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."

"Where's Craze?"

Cowboy leads me outside a long row of body bags and ponchos stuffed with human junk.

We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally went berserk. Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook gunners. You should have seen it. Craze was laughing like a happy little kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."

I nod. "Anybody else?"

Cowboy checks his weapon, snaps the bolt to see that it's working smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock. A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you about it. Right now we got a job to do. We got to find that sniper. I'm personally going to waste that gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E. Rock was the first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."

Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't see him, but he's there."

Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags. He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.

Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.

Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.

Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries away, fumbling with the handset.

Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's corpse. "Go easy, bro."

The squad files by.

I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I say, "Well, you're short, sir."

I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.

Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.

We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.

All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.

Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index finger at a street of big mansions.

Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard. Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace. They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point. The sniper shot T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him, one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off fingers, toes, ears--everything. The guys in the road were crying and begging and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us back. Then Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed Animal Mother's collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I thought he was going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the sniper started putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss more than a couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he put a round through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and then it was quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."

I don't know what to say.

Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit. Nothing left but rear guard squads. We stomped the NVA and they stomped us and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr. Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down. The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow, which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."