1968. Part 3

"Naw, no way we could afford Hawaii. I just went to Bangkok, try some of that slope p.u.s.s.y."

"How was it?"

"Out. standing." He closed his eyes. "I couldn't f.u.c.kin' walk for a week."

"Sounds great." Actually, Spider didn't have much information to go on (see "Spider's s.e.x life [1]"), other than pictures. Everyone who went to Bangkok brought back Polaroids.

He didn't think he would go to Bangkok if he were married to Beverly. But he wasn't sure, of that or a lot of other things.

Love letter January 6th, 1968 Dear Spider, Thanks for the long letter. I'm sorry you aren't safe in an office any more, but it must have been awful, working with all those dead boys. It made me want to cry and throw up at the same time, you know what I mean, the way you wrote about them.

You know there was that red dust all over your letter, inside and out. I can't imagine, it must be like flour.

I went with some friends down to a demonstration at the White House last week. n.o.body got hurt, though there were a lot of police, riot police. A band started playing but they confiscated all the amplifier stuff. So we sang anyhow.

I'm getting to be a real peacenik. I hope you still feel the same way. I don't want you over there, I don't want anybody over there. Except maybe Lyndon Johnson and his gang.

It was exciting, with all the singing and chanting. Some of the cops, the young ones, looked like they wanted to be on our side. Some of them looked like they wanted us to drop dead.Everybody lookedcold!

Afterwards we went back to College Park where a church had hot cider and cookies for those of us who were there. One guy could do great Phil Ochs songs, even the fancy guitar playing. He was SO cool.

After the church thing shut down we went down to the Starlight, but they were checking IDs. I wonder how many kids get killed because they can't get served near the University and so they drive into the District and get loaded, then try to drive home. That must seem pretty remote to you. I wish I could send you a cold beer.

Better hit the books. Keep your head down and your chin up, as they say.

Love, Beverly Love letter 10 Jan 68 Dear Beverly, It's funny how sometimes your letters get here in a couple of days and sometimes it takes a couple of weeks. We're out in the boonies now, the boondocks, and I didn't think I'd hear from you until we got back to the fire base. But a helicopter came in with mail and hot food! (Never thought I'd love spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s and wilted salad.) This morning we went out to "hump the boonies" or what the newspapers call a search & destroy mission. We didn't find or destroy anything, we just walked around as quiet as possible. I had to walk point for an hour, which was pretty scary until I got used to it. Walking point is when you're in the front of the line.

We stopped once in the morning when we heard a machinegun. Turned out to be nothing but some triggerhappy grunts back at the fire base, but we had to put out ambushes and sit around. Us X-Rays had to find a placeto blow an LZ in case of a fire-fight, so we were out in the jungle by ourselves for a while. That was not cool. But Moses showed me how to set the charges to blow down the trees but we didn't do it, we just gathered up all the stuff and went back to humping again.

I met a grunt named Murphy who walked behind me most of the time. Other outfits, people don't have to call each other by their code names.

About 3:00 we stopped near the top of a hill and dug in. I went out to chop down some trees while Moses and Killer dug a hole. You cut down a few trees about 4 inches in diameter and then cut them into two short logs and a bunch of long ones. Gave me two good blisters on my palms.

We took the logs back to the hole, which looked a lot like a grave! About three feet by six feet by five feet deep. There was a sandbag for each corner; we put the short logs on the three-foot sides and then laid the long ones out in a roof. Then we filled more sandbags with the dirt out of the hole and put them on top. They say four layers of sandbags will stop a mortar round. We did five.

You don't sleep in the bunker. It's just in case of an attack during the night. We sleep outside on our air mattresses, just like at the fire base. It won't rain at night until monsoon season, and then it won't stop.Sounds pretty awful. Sure wish I was with you in all the snow and cold. I'd go down to the White House and give them h.e.l.l too.

Could you send me a newspaper, or at least some clippings you think I might be interested in? Back at Graves I at least gotStars &Stripes and sometimesTime orNewsweek. Out here we don't git nuthin'.

Mother sent me some Christmas cookies but they were all moldy. Don't tell her! I'm going to write how good they were.

Love, Spider John P.S. My gun doesn't work. But I never wanted to shoot anybody anyhow. (They're getting me a new one, they say.) Beverly's s.e.x life (1) The "SO cool" guitar player who had impressed Beverly at the peace rally and the church-sponsored afterglow was Lee Madden, a housepainter and sometimes hippy who lived in San Francisco. He'd left after the Summer of Love and come to Washington for the march on the Pentagon in October, '67, and had been staying with local people in the Movement since. He got along with odd jobs and by retailing a little marijuana every now and then. A friend with a farm outside of Berkeley sent him a coffee can full about every two weeks, on consignment; Lee sent back a scrupulous 50 percent of the money he got, after holding back a few Baggies for smoking and barter.

He liked Beverly immediately, but then he tended to like every potential s.e.xual partner immediately, occasionally boys as well as girls. (He stayed away from boys on the East Coast, though; too many people were uptight about it.) He walked her back to her dorm after they'd been rebuffed at the Starlight Lounge. She gave him her phone number and a goodnight kiss and politely avoided his hands.

Her roommate Sherry had been watching from the window. "So who's your new hippy hunk?"

"He's just a guy I met at the rally, Lee. He's a folksinger from San Francisco."

Sherry watched him through the window, walking away. "He give you a wide-on?"

"Sherry!"

"I mean like really. You said you don't love Spider anymore. It's not healthy to suppress your s.e.x drive."

"You must be a regular Charles Atlas, then." Sherry was always full of lurid details about what she had done with her dates. Beverly was still a virgin, though she'd never said so. She and Spider had progressed as far as "heavy petting," fast and furtive mutual masturbation. That was about as much fun as she wanted to contend with for the time being.

She looked at Spider's dust-stained letter on her desk. "I never said I didn't love him."

"Yes, you di-i-id. Night before last."

"What I meant was like he's so far away, and I haven't seen him since before Thanksgiving, and before that he was away at Basic for four months and I just, I just don't knowhow to feel. He's not even the sameguy anymore. G.o.d, they fired him from his clerk job and they've got him out in the jungle, in a firingbase, whatever that is."

"You just don't want to send him a Dear John letter."

"I don't know. That would be pretty s.h.i.tty, wouldn't it?"

Sherry pulled down the blind and started undressing. "Well. maybe it might be the best thing. What if you keep leading him on, and when he comes back, you're doing it every night with the San Francisco Kid?"

"Sure, fat chance." She went over to look at Spider's letter. Sherry's casual att.i.tude toward nakedness made Beverly uncomfortable. Bad enough that you had to do it in gym. Beverly took her shower at night and changed into pajamas in the relative privacy there.

"I saw you give him like your phone number, didn't you?"

"You aren't nosy or anything."

"So you're gonna see him again."

"Sure, maybe." In another week, Lee was going to see more of her than Spider ever had.

First contact After he finished his letter to Beverly, he wrote a short, neutral one to his mother. Her letter had been a long and scrawled ramble. One or two highb.a.l.l.s too many. Dear old Dad had done three hundred dollars' worth of damage to the car in a "parking accident"; sure. One of those high-speed parking accidents you're always hearing about.

He'd been stopped for drunk driving two times that Spider knew of. How could he make a living if they took his license away?

Spider sealed both letters into dusty envelopes and franked them, writing "free" where the stamp would normally go. Other than lots of fresh air and exercise, that was the only advantage Spider had found to living in Vietnam.

He heard a helicopter coming in and he and Killer went around the(hill to meet it. There was a "natural LZ" there, a clearing large enough for the chopper.

All the helicopter brought were two old guys, a major and a bird colonel. It waited on the LZ, blades idling, while they walked around in a kind of surprise inspection. Spider put his letter in a mailbag made of fluorescent-pink polyester-for easier spotting in case it fell out of the helicopter-and then followed Killer back to their hole.

The officers walked by their bunker without looking at it or them, which disappointed Spider, since he was rather proud of their handiwork. The colonel walked with his hands in his pockets, frowning, while the major whispered importantly and sliced diagrams in the air.

The chopper left and Batman came by with the good news that since they hadn't brought any extra Cs, the company wasn't going to hump more than another day, back to the fire base.

While he was talking, another chopper came, loaded down with C rations. The engineers split twoboxes; six meals each.

"s.h.i.t," Spider said. "Does this mean we'll be humpin' for two more days?"

Batman shrugged. "Don't mean nothin'. Still might go back tomorrow; might be out for a month. Bet the captain don't know any more than we do. Give me one of them Luckies." He took a cigarette from Spider, lit it up, and coughed. "Jesus. You gonnadie with this s.h.i.t, man."

"So smoke your own."

Batman waved at a tall black man approaching, a buck sergeant who'd been on the left flank during the morning walk. "Hey, fool. What's happenin'?"

"Hey, n.i.g.g.e.r." They slapped palms and he looked at Killer. "You the f.u.c.kin' new guy?"

"That's me," Spider said as Killer pointed.

"Oh." He hunkered down in what Spider recognized as a Vietnamese squatting position, feet and knees together, shoulders thrust forward. It took hours of practice, but definitely proved you weren't an FNG, f.u.c.kin' new guy. "Just makin' sure you don't kill none of us, okay?"

"Don't shoot at me," Spider said.

"Ha ha. Look. My guys gonna be right down the hill in front of you here, in a LP, listening post. You don't shoot or throw no grenade till they come back here, no matter what kinda s.h.i.t's goin' on."

"Okay. My sixteen doesn't work anyhow."

"Oh. That's good." He pointed in a line. "Gonna have a tripwire all along there. You get up to take a leak in the middle of the night, don' trip it. Magnesium flare, somebody shoot you."

"They'd think I was a gook?"

"Shoot you for bein'dumb."

"Yeah, yeah." Batman said, "You pop a flare by accident, yell 'friendly!' loud as you can, wave your arms. You can put it out by beatin' it with a shovel. Ambushes out yet?"

"They got two, Bravo and Charlie. Bravo's coverin' that little stream we crossed; Charlie's someplace on the other side of the hill, down past the LZ someplace."

"They really think we're gonna get some action?" Killer said.

"Naw, just Big Bird come out, we gotta act strack for a day or two." He straightened up and cracked his knuckles loudly. "Go an' get my s.h.i.t together. Be cool, fool."

"You be cool." Batman watched him go. "Funny thing, we knew each other back in the World."

"Before Basic?" Spider said.

" 'Way before, junior high.""Never heard of that," Killer said. "Maybe guys from the same city."

"Me neither. I wouldn't've known him, but I saw the name on a TO before I came out from base camp, Abraham Q. Westlake. Can't be too manyof them. He was a year in front of me but we both played baseball; he must've pitched to me a hundred times. He was a long tall motherf.u.c.ker even then."

There was a tearing sound of artillery coming in and Killer and Spider hit the dirt. The sh.e.l.l made a relatively quiet pop sound. "Just a smoke round," Batman said. "Be another one in a minute."

"They're laying down a smoke screen?" Spider said.

"No, they just do that to check our position, calibrate the guns. We get hit tonight, they can respond real fast." Another round popped on the other side of the hill. "If they do respond."

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes we won't have priority. Sometimes the VC and NVA get cute, set it up so they hit several places at once. If the airfield at Pleiku is gettin' hit, they probably can't spare anything for us."

"Same with air support," Killer said. "We don't get artillery and air support, we might could get overrun."

"People talk about that," Batman said, "but I ain't never seen it. Never talked to anybody that went through it."

"Maybe they don't talk because they're all dead," Spider said.

"All you guys from Graves so cheerful?" Killer said.

"We're more cheerful when we have nice fresh meat." Spider licked his lips and stared at Killer. "Napalm especially. Crispy Critters."

"Anybody ever tell you you're one weird motherf.u.c.ker?"

From the jungle below them came a m.u.f.fledhang. "Oh, s.h.i.t," Batman said. "Grenade." He picked up his rifle and put the steel pot on his head. Spider followed suit; Killer was already wearing his.

"That the LP?" Killer said.

"Maybe the ambush, I don' know. Maybe somebody's f.u.c.kin' around, or had an accident." Then there was a sustained burst of automatic-rifle fire. "No, that's an AK-47. We've got contact."

Somebody started screaming, an eerie wavering ululation. There were several bursts of M16 return fire and another grenade blast, then two more. The screaming man stopped, and then started again.

"What're we supposed to do?" Spider said.

"Keep down," Batman said. "Wait an' see."

Four artillery rounds rushed in, s.p.a.ced about two seconds apart. Then three came in almost simultaneously. "Quick work," Killer said."Still zeroed from the smoke rounds," Batman said. "Just drop it a c.u.n.t hair and fire for effect."

Moses came scrambling up the hill. "Know anything?" Batman shook his head.

An M60 machine gun started up, a constant manic chatter to accompany the screaming. When the machine gun stopped, the screaming stopped, too. "Wonder if that's one of us who got hurt," Moses said.

"Oh yeah," Batman said. "Charlie don't scream." In the distance they could hear the thumping blades of a helicopter approaching. "Medevac already."

For a minute there was no sound except the helicopter, louder and louder. Then four men struggled up the hill by their bunker, carrying a casualty by the armpits and ankles. The wounded man had his pants pulled down to his knees and clutched a b.l.o.o.d.y pile of bandages over his crotch. His eyes were clenched shut and he kept repeating "Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh."

One of the carriers was a short black man whose skin was gray with shock or fear or empathy. He recognized Batman. "f.u.c.kin' d.i.c.k shot off, Jesus. Shot clean off." He held out his hand, displaying a small sc.r.a.p of b.l.o.o.d.y meat. "Jesus."

"Anybody else?"

"Huh uh. Dead gook."

They watched them stagger toward the LZ. "Might as well throw it away," Spider said. "No way they can sew it back on."

"What makes you an expert?" Killer said. "You sew on a lot of d.i.c.ks?"

Spider grabbed his crotch. "Sew this, motherf.u.c.ker."

"Let's get down to the LZ, a.s.sholes," Batman said, moving. "Might have to offload some stuff."

Medevacs weren't always done by medical helicopters. If someone was in the air nearby and not on a fire mission, he'd drop in for a pickup if that would move the casualty to help a little faster.

This time it was a medevac chopper, a red cross in a white square painted on the nose. There was one other wounded man aboard, his arm in a makeshift sling and his hand bandaged. He looked annoyed at the interruption.