"It's my job," Cowboy says. "It's my job...." Cowboy says, as though his guts are choking him. Then: "Okay?"
I hesitate.
"Okay, bro?"
"Sure, Cowboy. I'll get them all back to the hill in one piece. I promise."
Cowboy relaxes. "Thanks, Joker." He grins. "You piece of shit."
Donlon yells: "LOOK!"
Doc Jay has the New Guy across his lap. The New Guy's face is purple. Doc Jay is kissing the New Guy's purple lips in an attempt to breathe life back into the limp body. The New Guy squirms, claws for air. Doc Jay holds the New Guy down, zips out his K-bar, cuts the New Guy's throat. Air whistles in through the crude incision, blows pink bubbles in the New Guy's blood. The New Guy bucks, wheezes, coughs. Doc Jay spills his Unit One, paws through splints, compress bandages, white tape. Then, frantic, he empties his pockets. The Doc throws everything away until he finds a ball-point pen. He stares at the ball-point pen, draws his hand back to throw the pen away, stops, looks again, unscrews the pen, inserts the biggest piece into the hole in the New Guy's throat. The New Guy sucks in air, breathes irregularly through the small plastic tube. Doc Jay puts the New Guy down on the deck, gently.
Bang.
Doc Jay's right ear is split. Cautiously, the Doc touches the side of his head, feels wet, jagged meat.
Bang.
A bullet cuts off Doc Jay's nose.
Bang.
A bullet passes through Doc Jay's cheeks. He coughs, spits up uprooted teeth and pieces of his gums.
Animal Mother snarls, fires his machine gun into the canopy.
"Get them back," Cowboy says. He drops his Stetson and Mr. Shortround's shotgun. He pops another smoke grenade, lobs it in. He jerks Mr. Shortround's pistol from his shoulder holster. And before I can tell Cowboy that a pistol is useless in the jungle he punches me on the shoulder like a kid and runs, feinting as wildly as the narrow trail allows.
We wait.
I know that I should be getting the squad on its feet, but I too am hypnotized.
From nowhere and from everywhere comes the sound of something laughing. We all rubberneck to see who aming us is so stone-cold hard that he is enjoying a world of shit like this.
The sniper is laughing at us.
We try to pinpoint the sniper's position. But the source of the laughter is all around us. The laughter seems to radiate from the jungle floor, from the jade trees, from the monster plants, from within our own bodies.
As the dark laughter draws the blood from my veins I see something. My eyes try to focus on a shadow. Sweat stings my eyes, blurs my vision. And I see Sorry Charlie, a black skull, perched on a branch, and then I understand that only a sniper that does not fear death would reveal his position by laughing....
I squint. I strain my eyes. The laughing skull fades into a shadow.
Today I am a sergeant of Marines.
I laugh and laugh. The squad freezes with fear because the sniper is laughing with me. The sniper and I are laughing together and we know that sooner or later the squad will be laughing, too.
Sooner or later the squad will surrender to the black design of the jungle. We live by the law of the jungle, which is that more Marines go in than come out. There it is. Nobody asks us why we're smiling because nobody wants to know. The ugly that civilians choose to see in war focuses on spilled guts. To see human beings clearly, that is ugly. To carry death in your smile, that is ugly. War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere. Ugly is the face of Victor Charlie, the shapeless black face of death touching each of your brothers with the clean stroke of justice.
Those of us who survive to be short-timers will fly the Freedom Bird back to hometown America. But home won't be there anymore and we won't be there either. Upon each of our brains the war has lodged itself, a black crab feeding.
The jungle is quiet now. The sniper has stopped laughing.
The squad is silent, waiting for orders. Soon they will understand. Soon they won't be afraid. The dark side will surface and they'll be like me; they'll be Marines.
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Cowboy stumbles into the clearing.
"We're moving," I say, more to Mother than anyone.
Mother ignores me, watches Cowboy.
Bang. Right leg.
Bang. Left leg. Cowboy falls.
Bang. The bullet rips open Cowboy's trousers at the crotch. "No...." Cowboy feels for his balls. He shits on himself.
Animal Mother takes a step.
Before I can make a move to stop Animal Mother a pistol pops in the clearing.
Bang.
Then: Bang.
Donlon: "HE KILLED DOC JAY AND THE NEW GUY!"
Cowboy shakes himself to stay conscious. Then he shoots Alice through the back of the head.
Bang. Alice's face is blown off by the forty-five caliber bullet. Alice flops as though electrocuted.
Cowboy raises the pistol and presses the huge barrel to his right temple.
Bang.
The pistol falls.
The sniper has put a bullet through the center of Cowboy's right hand.
The squad bunches up behind the boulder again. I study the dirty faces of all my bearded children: Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Berny, Harris, Rick Berg, Hand-Job, Thunder, The Kid from Brooklyn, Hardy, Liccardi, and Daddy D.A.
"Stutten, take your people back."
Lance Corporal Stutten looks at Animal Mother, takes a step toward him. The squad is going to follow Mother and commit suicide for a tradition.
Mother checks his M-60. His face is wet with tears, Viking-wild, red with rage. "We'll go for Cowboy, give the sniper too many targets. We can save him."
I take a step into Animal Mother's path.
Animal Mother raises his weapon. He holds the M-60 waist high. His eyes are red. He growls deep in his throat. "This ain't no Hollywood movie, Joker. Stand down or I will cut you in half..."
I look into Animal Mother's eyes. I look into the eyes of a killer. He means it. I know that he means it. I turn my back on him.
Animal Mother is going to waste me. The barrel of the M-60 probes my back.
The squad is silent, waiting for orders.
I raise my grease gun and I aim it at Cowboy's face. Cowboy looks pitiful and he's terrified. Cowboy is paralyzed by the shock that is setting in and by the helplessness. I hardly know him. I remember the first time I saw Cowboy, on Parris Island, laughing, beating his Stetson on his thigh.
I look at him. He looks at the grease gun. He calls out: "I NEVER LIKED YOU, JOKER. I NEVER THOUGHT YOU WERE FUNNY--"
Bang. I sight down the short metal tube and I watch my bullet enter Cowboy's left eye. My bullet passes through his eye socket, punches through fluid-filled sinus cavities, through membranes, nerves, arteries, muscle tissue, through the tiny blood vessels that feed three pounds of gray butter-soft high protein meat where brain cells arranged like jewels in a clock hold every thought and memory and dream of one adult maleHomo sapiens.
My bullet exits through the occipital bone, knocks out hairy, brain-wet clods of jagged meat, then buries itself in the roots of a tree.
Silence. Animal Mother lowers his M-60.
Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Harris, and the other guys in the squad do not speak. Everyone relaxes, glad to be alive. Everyone hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me again; I'll be invisible.