Matterhorn_ A Novel of the Vietnam War Part 48

'If one of the f.u.c.king nurses comes in, I ain't covering for you,' the man said and stepped aside.

Mellas approached the bed. Jackson turned his head slightly, then looked away.

'Hi, Jackson. How you doing?'

'How the f.u.c.k you think?'

Mellas took a breath and nodded his head. He didn't know what to say. It was clear that Jackson didn't want to see him.

'Look, Lieutenant, just get the f.u.c.k out of here.'

Other Marines, who'd been half-listening from nearby beds, went back to reading or fiddling with the tie strings on their light blue pajamas.

Mellas, also in pajamas, standing alone, felt suddenly naked. He seemed to be a pet.i.tioner at Jackson's stumps. 'Jackson?'

Jackson turned his head again, looking coolly at Mellas.

'Jackson, I . . .' Mellas tried to keep some dignity, not wanting to break down in front of everyone. 'Jackson, I'm sorry it happened to you.'

Jackson turned back to the bulkhead. Then his lips started to quiver. 'I lost my legs,' he said, his voice shaking. He started to moan. 'I lost my legs.' He turned to Mellas. 'Who's going to f.u.c.k someone with no legs?' His voice rose and he broke down completely. 'Who's going to f.u.c.k a G.o.dd.a.m.ned watermelon?'

Mellas backed away a couple of steps, shaking his head, feeling he'd done something wrong for still being whole, for having collapsed, for letting Jackson do the hole-checks. He wanted forgiveness, but there was none. Jackson was now thrashing back and forth, shouting. Corpsmen rushed to hold him down, and one shot a needle into his thigh. 'You better get out of here, Lieutenant,' the corpsman said.

Mellas limped into the pa.s.sageway. He listened to Jackson's m.u.f.fled screaming until the drug took effect; then he walked slowly back to the officers' ward.

He slept and slept, waking up only for meals. When he finally had enough courage to visit Jackson again, he found someone else in the bed. Jackson had been flown to j.a.pan.

Between bandage changes Mellas took long showers, ignoring the Navy's plea to take short ones. Then he slept some more. He occasionally saw the nurse from triage. They studiously avoided each other. He also saw the red-haired nurse coming into and out of the ward. He couldn't help watching her. To his displeasure, she seemed to be on good terms with the triage nurse.

He tried to engage the red-haired nurse in conversation, but it was clear that she was on duty and had little time for it. She was polite and would occasionally give him a warm smile after checking on his eye. Soon they were having short conversations. He found out she, too, was from a small town, but in New Hampshire, and that they both used to like to pick blackberries. Although he was grateful for the brief conversations, what he wanted was to have her enfold him in her arms and hold him so tightly that it would be as if they had crawled inside each other. It wasn't to be.

Within a couple of days his wounds were no longer bleeding and he was asked if he wanted to eat his meals in the officers' mess. He accepted.

He walked hesitantly into the polished wooden interior wearing his old boots, fresh jungle utilities, and a gold second lieutenant's bar on one collar. Filipino mess men were putting the final touches on tablecloths. The tables were set with gleaming silver and white china. Mellas looked down at his scarred boots against the carpeted deck. One of the Filipinos motioned him toward a table for eight with four lighted candles as a centerpiece. He sat down. The chairs around the table filled with nurses, seven in all.

Mellas's heart hammered with joy at sitting next to these women. He tried to contain his excitement by rubbing his hands over the tablecloth. Several of the nurses tried to talk with him, but he couldn't respond intelligently. He was struck dumb. All he could do was stuff food in his mouth, look at them, and laugh. They were talking about commissaries in Manila and Sasebo, and about leaves in Taipei or Kuala Lumpur. Some made innuendos about male officers while the others giggled.

Mellas wanted to touch them. He wanted to reach out across the table and put his hand over their hearts and on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He wanted to put his head on their shoulders, smell their skin, and absorb their femininity.

But they were older than he was, and they outranked him. They were also uncomfortable, a.s.suming that he was h.o.r.n.y. This was true, but it was not the whole story. Eventually their talk among themselves became less awkward, eddying around and over him, ignoring the problems and opportunities caused by the fact that they were women and he was a man. Finally they made their excuses and left Mellas alone. The Filipino stewards cleared the tables. One brought him fresh coffee.

He saw someone getting up from a chair across the room. It was the red-haired nurse. She seemed to hesitate, then walked over to Mellas's table.

'Mind if I sit down?' she asked.

'Please do,' Mellas answered. He tried to think of a joke about the empty chairs around him but couldn't.

'How's the eye?' She sat down and leaned closer to him, inspecting the bandage.

'OK.'.

'You like coffee, huh?' she asked. She smiled warmly. She had let down her hair from where it usually sat on the top of her head. It reached almost to her shoulders.

Mellas opened up like a flower. He found himself telling her every detail of how to make coffee with C-4 explosives. They both talked about home, about growing up in small towns. She kidded him about paraphrasing Eliot just before the eye operation, but then she said, 'Somehow I felt that I was the shadow.'

Mellas cleared his throat and sc.r.a.ped his boots on the rug beneath his chair. 'Well, not exactly. I mean you were part of it. You really want to know?'

'Sure.' She smiled as if to say, We're all grown-ups here.

'Out in the bush,' he said, 'it's first the bang and then the whimper. Then you end up here and it's all whimper and no bang.' He immediately regretted this attempt at being clever.

'Not so funny,' she said.

'You're right,' Mellas said. 'Sorry.' He paused. 'I just get tired of being politely treated like a s.e.x offender.'

'You think we don't get tired of every kid that comes mooning in here out of the jungle, desperate for it?'

'It' being s.e.x.'

'I didn't think it was necessary for me to spell it out for you.'

'No, I can spell real good. Listen. S-E-X. Right?'

She smiled sarcastically. 'Clever.'

'Yeah. Clever.' He looked at his coffee mug. 'It's what every red-blooded American tiger wants, isn't it?' He c.o.c.ked his head, looking at her. He saw Williams, slung from a pole. 'It's only natural, right?'

'Sure,' the nurse said, not unkindly.

The calm, kind way she said 'sure' made Mellas realize he was talking with an actual human being who cared. It defused his anger at being perceived as a threat and at his own failure to tell her that he just wanted to make friends. He stared at his mug.

She sat back and looked at him somewhat quizzically.

'They know they can't have s-e-x because enlisted men don't f.u.c.k officers,' Mellas said. 'Maybe all they want is someone to be a woman around them instead of fake men with fake-men talk. They just want a real woman to smile at them and talk to them as though they were real people instead of animals.'

'You'd see it differently if you were in our shoes,' she said.

'And you'd see it differently if you were in ours,' Mellas replied.

'There it is,' she said. She looked him in the eye and smiled warmly. 'Look, I wasn't trying to be prissy.' He noticed that her own eyes were green.

Mellas could see that she was trying to connect with him. He melted and smiled back.

'You've got to understand what we do here,' she said. She started to reach her hand toward him on the table, but checked it and put both hands on her coffee cup instead. 'We fix weapons.' She shrugged. 'Right now you're a broken guidance system for forty rifles, three machine guns, a bunch of mortars, several artillery batteries, three calibers of naval guns, and four kinds of attack aircraft. Our job is to get you fixed and back in action as fast as we can.'

'I know. I just don't feel very much like a weapon right now.'

'How often do you think I feel like a mechanic?' she shot back. Then she softened. 'It's not why I became a nurse.' She put her palms to the sides of her forehead and rested her elbows on the table. 'I do do get so tired of it all.' She looked up at him, no longer a Navy nurse, just an exhausted young woman. 'There's too many kids coming on board,' she finally said. 'They're lonesome. They're in pain. They're scared of dying.' She paused. 'We can only patch the bodies. For all the other'-she searched for a word-'stuff, well, we try to keep our distance. It isn't easy.' get so tired of it all.' She looked up at him, no longer a Navy nurse, just an exhausted young woman. 'There's too many kids coming on board,' she finally said. 'They're lonesome. They're in pain. They're scared of dying.' She paused. 'We can only patch the bodies. For all the other'-she searched for a word-'stuff, well, we try to keep our distance. It isn't easy.'

'There it is,' Mellas said. She was stirring up all the feelings he'd had when the meal started. He was afraid he'd say something wrong and she would leave, so he said nothing.

She broke the silence. 'They're sending you back to the bush, aren't they?'

Mellas nodded.

She sighed. 'It's like I do my job well, and the result is sending you back to combat.'

'Kind of a bind.'

'Nothing like going back to the bush.'

Mellas smiled at her again. He felt understood. He felt that he could talk with her.

'It's different this time,' he said. 'I know what I'm in for.' He swallowed, looked up, and then exhaled briefly. 'I'm afraid to go back.' He looked at her, worried that he may have overstepped a boundary, revealed too much. He ran his open palm over his unbandaged eye, shutting out the soft light of the wardroom. Images flooded in: stiff twisted bodies, the terror on Jacobs's face, a leg pumping blood.

'Remember that feeling you got picking blackberries?' he asked. 'You know, with friends, and maybe somebody's grandmother who's come along and she's going to make pie when you get home, and the air's so warm it's like Mother Nature is baking bread.'

She nodded, smiling. 'I remember.'

'There used to be a great patch,' Mellas continued, 'near the garbage dump of this little logging town where I grew up.' He smoothed the tablecloth. She waited for him to continue. 'It's like a car suddenly roars down on you with six beefy guys in it. You stand there next to this old kind woman with your berry bucket in your hand and you're suddenly a little scared. All the guys have been drinking. Their faces are covered with masks. They have rifles. One takes the berry buckets and throws them down on the side of the road. They shove you around. Then they take you to the dump, laughing a little, as if they're expecting some fun. You're instructed that you're all going to play a game. Here's the rules.' Mellas carefully pressed a b.u.t.ter knife into the white tablecloth. 'The men, that is the boys, have to crawl through the dump from one end to the other. Whenever we come across a can whose lid we cannot see, we must pick it up and show it to the men with the rifles. If the can turns out to be empty, we can continue. If it turns up unopened, then we get killed. We get down in the garbage. The dump always has a fire smoldering. The smoke makes you puke and cough. The old grandma's job consists of bringing water to any of us who come up with a pleasing or clever way of revealing the can. We even get ribbons if we're particularly clever. Of course, if we refuse to pick up any cans, then we have to stay crawling in the garbage forever, or at least until the strange men get tired of their f.u.c.king game.'

Mellas had to force the last sentences out between clenched teeth. He was bending the b.u.t.ter knife against the table, his knuckles white. 'And one by f.u.c.king one'-the knife bent slowly-'the guys you picked berries with get killed. And you just keep being clever.' He rocked forward with each word. 'And the game goes on and on and on.'

He looked up at her, the knife in his hand. The same rage that had caused him to whip out his K-bar and slash plants rose inside him. He wanted to lash out and cause pain. He pushed the knife's point into the tablecloth and with both hands bent the blade ninety degrees.

This clearly scared her. She rose. 'I'm sorry, Lieutenant,' she said. 'Maybe I-' She started to say something more, but stopped.

Mellas was bewildered at what had just happened. 'I'm the one who should say sorry,' he said. He nervously placed the bent knife next to a plate, wanting it out of his hand. It looked very odd there. 'It just spills out. I feel really stupid.'

She reached across the table and put her hand on his. 'Don't be hard on yourself. It might be what gets you through.' She pressed his hand quickly a couple of times. 'G.o.d knows we all need something.' She looked at him for a moment. 'You take care of yourself out there.' Then she walked rapidly through the hatch.

Mellas was alone with his pounding heart and his inexplicable rage. He knew that he'd destroyed the one chance he had to talk with the one woman who'd offered him what all the others were afraid to give. He wanted to run to her, grab her, talk with her about love and friendship. Instead he grabbed a handful of the polished silverware from the white tablecloth and hurled it against one of the plushly upholstered couches that lined the bulkhead. A Filipino mess man stuck his head out from the swinging doors of the galley. Seeing Mellas standing there, fighting for control, he quickly pulled back inside.

Mellas finished his coffee in silence. He could see his reflection in the polished wood paneling. It was obscure, a little distorted, but it was him, as he was now, alone.

Mellas wanted off the hospital ship.

Mellas was afraid to go back to the bush.

Mellas had no place to go.

His orders arrived in the morning. He was to return to his unit by 2000 hours the next day. So, with the arrival of this mimeographed sheet with his name on it, his feet had touched the ground. Time flooded back into his life like an unexpected but inevitable tide. He'd been on the ship five days.

He set out to get back his rifle and Vancouver's sword.

The sailor at the weapons locker looked bored. His weapon? His M-16? It must have been sent on to Fifth Marine Division. Here it is on the list. A sword? No idea. They don't do swords here. They're not considered weapons.

Mellas raged. The sailor sympathized. Mellas demanded to see someone. The sailor turned him over to the chief. The chief turned him over to the supply officer. The supply officer called up the records from the files. The records showed no sword. Don't worry, it's probably gone to Fifth Marine Division with the rifles. Did he have a receipt? Here, fill in this missing equipment form. After all, it is a weapon.

Mellas returned to the ward dejected, feeling powerless.

At dinner that night he was subdued. Everyone at the table knew he was going back to the bush the next morning. He would soon cease to be a problem. Everyone was polite. The red-haired nurse wasn't there.

Around midnight Mellas gingerly pulled his clothes on over the bandages and went to look for her. He stepped into the faintly trembling steel pa.s.sageway. The gradual swell of the South China Sea, along with the vibration of the engines, came up through the soles of his boots. He headed into the interior of the ship, through a labyrinth of pa.s.sageways, down ladders that led to unknown s.p.a.ces.

During the past few days, just as he'd watched girls disappear down strange streets and into unknown houses in high school, he'd watched where the nurses disappeared to when they went off duty. Also he remembered that the red-haired nurse was Lieutenant K. E. Elsked.

Now, in the heat and stillness of the echoing decks and pa.s.sageways lit by dim red lights, Mellas quietly worked his way closer to the center of officers' country. He knew that the area where the nurses lived was off-limits to him. Nevertheless, he nervously pushed ahead. A corpsman and then a sailor pa.s.sed him. Both looked at him but said nothing, because he was an officer. Mellas continued down the pa.s.sageways. His boots, pliable from hours in water, whispered softly against the metal beneath them. He turned a corner in the pa.s.sageway and went by an open door. Inside he glimpsed an older, gray-haired officer, bent over a small desk. With a start, Mellas realized that this was the captain of the ship. He hurried by and worked through a bewildering maze of turns, not certain where he was, trusting to instinct that he'd eventually find Lieutenant Elsked's quarters, with her name over the hatch.

Eventually he did.

His heart was thumping in his throat. If she reacted badly, he would be in serious trouble. He looked up and down the empty pa.s.sageway, swallowed, then knocked.

After a moment there was a m.u.f.fled question to someone else, then a louder 'Who is it?'

Mellas didn't know how to answer. He'd never actually told her his name. Would she remember it from the operating room?

'Who is it?' a second, harsher, voice repeated.

'Uh, it's me.' Mellas felt lame. 'The Marine lieutenant.' He paused, then quickly added, 'T. S. Eliot.'

There was a m.u.f.fled, annoyed, 'Who?' from the second voice, then a responding 'It's OK. I know him.' There was a pause. 'I'm afraid you do, too.'

The door opened. Lieutenant Elsked, clutching a white terry-cloth bathrobe around her, peered out.

'What in the world are you doing here?' she whispered.

'I got to talk to you about something.'

'What?' she whispered. 'You're going to get in real trouble.'

'Let me in, then.'

She tightened her grip on the robe, closing it more firmly.

'Please,' Mellas whispered. He looked at her, pleadingly. 'It's not what you think. I need help.' He saw her fingers relax slightly. 'I need someone who knows the machinery around here. I mean the social machinery.'

She paused a moment. 'OK.' She opened the hatch. 'G.o.d, the things I do for my country.'

Mellas slipped in.

She turned on a desk lamp. 'Sorry, Kendra,' she said.

Mellas looked over to see the nurse from Triage on the lower bunk. She looked back, her jaw tight.

'I believe you two know each other,' Lieutenant Elsked said impishly. 'Second Lieutenant Mellas, United States Marine Corps.' She nodded her head slightly toward Mellas. 'Reserve, correct?' She had a hint of a smile. 'Meet Lieutenant Dunn, United States Navy.' She pulled a chair out from under the desk. 'Now that you've been introduced, maybe you could both relax.' She sat down and pulled her bathrobe tighter around her knees. She leaned back and put her hands in the bathrobe pockets, clearly amused. 'Neither of you is as bad as the other one thinks,' she added.

Dunn glared at Mellas. She pulled her blanket up around her shoulders and turned her back on him to face the bulkhead.