“They’ll probably set up their 81s, zero us, and take us out that way. Why take more casualties? Then they can be on their way.”
“We tried,” said Donny.
“We fought a hell of a fight,” said Bob. “We hung ’em up a bit. Your old dad up in Ranger heaven would be proud of you.”
“I just hope they find the bodies, and my next of kin is notified.”
“You ever file that marriage report?”
“No. It didn’t seem important. No off-post living in the ’Nam.”
“Yeah, well, you want her to get the insurance benefits, don’t you?”
“Oh, she doesn’t need the money. They have money. My brothers could use it for school. It’s okay the way it is.”
Nothing much to say. They could hear movement at the base of the hill, the occasional secret muttering of NCOs to their squads.
“I lost the picture,” Donny said. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Julie’s picture?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Sometime in the night. No, the late afternoon, when I went after that flank security unit. I don’t remember. My hat fell off.”
“It was in your hat?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, tell you what, I can’t git you out of here and I can’t git you the Medal of Honor you deserve, but if I can git you your hat back, would you say I done okay by you?”
“You always did okay by me.”
“Yeah, well, guess what? Your hat fell off your head, all right, but you been so busy, and now you’re so tired you ain’t figured out that you was wearing a cord around the hat to pull it tight in the rain. It’s still there. It’s hanging off your neck, across your back.”
“Jesus!”
Donny reached around his neck and felt the cord; he drew it tight, pulled the hat up from around his back and removed it.
“Shit,” he said, because he could think of nothing else to say.
“Go on,” said Bob, “that’s your wife; look at her.”
Donny pulled at the lining of the hat and removed the cellophane package, unpeeled it and removed, a little curled and bent, slightly damp, the photograph.
He stared at it and could see nothing in the darkness, but nevertheless it helped.
In his mind, she was there. One more time. He wanted to cry. She was so sweet, and he remembered the three days they’d had. They got married in Warrenton, Virginia, and drove up to the Skyline Drive and rented a cabin in one of the parks. They spent each day going for long walks. That place had paths that ran along the sides of the mountains, and you could look down into the Shenandoahs or, if you were on the other side, into the Piedmont. It was green, rolling country, checkerboard farms, as far as you could see; beautiful, all right. Maybe it was his imagination, but the weather seemed perfect. It was early May, spring, and life was breaking from the crust of the earth with a vengeance, green buds everywhere. Sometimes it was just them alone in the world, high above the rest of the earth. Or was it just that all soldiers remember their last leave as special and beautiful?
“Here, look,” said Donny.
“It’s too dark.”
“Go on, look!” he commanded, the first time he had ever spoken sharply to his sergeant.
Swagger gave him a sad look, but took the picture.
He looked at Julie, but saw nothing. Still, he knew the picture. It was a snapshot taken in some spring forest, and the wind and the sun played in her hair. She wore a turtle-neck and had one of those smiles that made you melt with pain. She seemed clean, somehow, so very, very clean. Straw blond hair, straight white strong teeth, a tan face, an outdoorsy face. She was a beautiful girl, model or movie-star beautiful. Bob had a brief, broken moment when he contemplated the brute fact that no one nowhere loved him or would miss him or give a shit about his death. He had no one. A middle-aged lawyer in Arkansas might shed a tear or two, but he had his own kids and his own life and the old man would probably still miss Bob’s father more than he’d miss Bob. That was the way it went.
“She’s a great-looking young woman,” Bob said. “I can tell she loves you a lot.”
“Our honeymoon. Skyline Drive. My old captain gave me six hundred dollars to take her away when I got my orders cut. Emergency leave. He got me three days. He was a great guy. I tried to pay him back, but the letter came back, and it was stamped, saying he had left the service.”
“That’s too bad. He sounds like a good man.”
“They got him too.”
“Yeah, they get everyone in the end.”
“No, I don’t just mean ‘them, they.’ I mean a specific guy, with influence, who set about to purify the world. We were part of the purification process. I’d still like to look that guy up. Commander Bonson. Here’s to you, Commander Bonson, and your little victory. You won in the end. Your kind always does.”
Flare. Green, high. Then two or three more green suns descending.
“Git ready,” said Bob.
They could hear the ponk-ponk-ponk as a few hundred yards away, three 81mm mortar shells were dropped down their tubes. The shells climbed into the air behind a faint whistle, then reached apogee and began their downward flight.
“Get down!” screamed Bob. The two flattened into the mud of the shallow hole.
The three shells landed fifty meters away, exploding almost simultaneously. The noise split the air and the two Marines bounced from the ground.
“Ah, Christ!”
A minute passed.
Three more flares opened, green and almost wet, spraying sparks all over the place.
Bob wished he had targets, but what the hell difference did it make now? He lay facedown in the mud, feeling the texture of Vietnam in his face, smelling its smells, knowing he would never see another of its dawns.
Ponk-ponk-ponk.
The shells climbed, whispering of death and the end of possibilities, then descended.
Oh, Jesus, Bob prayed, oh, dear Jesus, let me live, please, let me live.
The shells detonated thirty meters away, triple concussions, loud as hell. Something in his shoulder began to sting even before he landed again in Vietnam, having been lifted by the force of the blast. Acrid Chinese smoke filled his eyes and nostrils.
He knew the drill. Somewhere a spotter was calling in corrections. Fifty back, right fifty, that should put you right on it.
Oh, it was so very near.
“I was a bad son,” Donny sobbed. “I’m so sorry I was a bad son. Oh, please, forgive me, I was a bad son. I couldn’t stand to visit my dad in the hospital, he looked so awful, oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry.”
“You were a good son,” Bob whispered fiercely. “Your daddy understood, don’t you worry about it none.”
Ponk-ponk-ponk.
Bob thought of his own daddy. He wished he’d been a better son too. He remembered his daddy pulling out in his state trooper cruiser that last night in the twilight. Who knew it was a last time? His mother wasn’t there. His daddy put his hand out to wave to Bob, then turned left, heading back to Blue Eye, and would there go on out U.S. 71 to his rendezvous with Jimmy Pye and his and Jimmy’s deaths in a cornfield that looked like any other cornfield in the world.
The explosions lifted them, and more parts of Bob seemed to go numb, then sting. This triple shot bracketed the position. This was it. They had them; they had merely to drop a few more shells down the tube and the direct hit would come out of statistical inevitability, and it would be all over. Fire for effect.
“I’m so sorry,” Donny was sobbing.
Bob held him close, felt his young animal fear, knew there was no glory in any of it, only an ending, a mercy, and who would know they lived or died or fought here on this hilltop?
“I’m so sorry,” Donny was sobbing.
“There, there,” Bob said.
Someone fired an orange flare over on the horizon. It was a big one, it hung there for the longest time, and only far past the moment when reasonable men would have caught on did it at last dawn on them that it wasn’t a flare at all, it was the sun.