Sergeant Dickinson Read online

  Mitch: “I’m a very limited cat.”

  Second chess player “He’s just lookin’ for somethin’. You lookin’ for somethin’, man?”

  Mitch: “No. You got somethin’?”

  Second chess player: “Yeah, I do.”

  Lambert: “Cool it, man. I got six days left, let me talk. Christ, I don’t know why I’m runnin’ off at the mouth like this. There’s this guy at the Eighth Field got shot through both hands. He’s wandering around in the jungle looking for friendlies. He comes up on this NVA, and the NVA levels on him. The American holds up his hands to show he’s wounded, and instead of shooting him the NVA points him in the direction of a Cav aid station. Okay, next day the kid’s at the aid station and it’s overrun. There’s a Chinese officer with the NVA—the kid swears the guy was Chinese, on account of his size—and he’s going from one guy to the next, shooting them in the head, the coup de grace, you know? The doctors and medics have already di di mau’d, right? So this Chinese gets to this kid and the kid holds up his hands in front of his face, protecting himself with his bulletproof bandages, right? And the Chinese passes him by, shoots the man next to him. Weird shit. When I saw him this kid was out of his skull. He was the only one left alive out of everyone who was at that aid station. Fuckin’ Ia Drang.”

  First guy at the bar: “The Cav, man. They’ve lost a battalion and a half in a week and a half. Some shit.”

  Second guy at the bar, a young captain whose light hair and red cheeks make him look still younger, a golden boy: “I was at An Khe yesterday when a Cl30 brought in sixty-four replacements for the Cav. Somebody said they had less than a week in country. As soon as they had disembarked, sixty-four body bags were loaded on and the plane took off, it never even stopped its engines. The faces on those new kids: nobody said word one. Meat.”

  Third guy at the bar: “Which was meat? The dead ones or the live ones?”

  Captain: “Both.”

  First chess player: “The Army said there were eighty-seven American KIA last week.”

  Lambert: “Shit! That was how many were killed when that aid station was overrun. That happened in a few minutes.”

  First chess player: “You know those Americans. They have no regard for human life.”

  We laugh. Maybe it’s true.

  Second chess player: “I saw this company top at Holloway turning over these stiffs, a platoon that got aced. He’d get the toe of his boot under a stiff’s shoulder and flip him over and call out the guy’s name, the company clerk would make a little check next to the guy’s name on the company roster. This lieutenant was standing off a ways to the side, crying, man. I mean he was really crying. And every time the top flips a guy over he calls out the name of the dead guy to the company clerk and yells at the lieutenant: ‘You should have been with them, sir!’”

  “Jesus!” several of us say.

  Captain: “At Dak To the Arvins raped and burned for two days, two fuckin’ days. We had to call in Tac Air before the Arvin commander would call off his troops.”

  Third guy at the bar: “Remember when VNAF wanted to bomb that Montagnard refugee column because the NVA had infiltrated it? We called in Tac Air and told the Vietnamese we’d shoot them out of the sky if they bombed the Yards.”

  First guy at the bar: “Yeah. So they bombed them the next day instead. This time they didn’t ask our permission.”

  Captain: “And the NVA had left the night before. How about when we were coming back from Pleiku City—Dixie, you were there—and those Arvin Rangers opened up on us with a Browning and forced us into the ditch?”

  “I was there,” I say. “We went back to Pleiku with the Nungs, and the Nungs cut the ears off of every Ranger they could find.”

  Mitch: “The thing is to stay alive. It don’t matter who’s shootin’ at you. If they’re shootin’ at you, you shoot back.”

  Second chess player: “Even if you only think they’re going to shoot at you.”

  First chess player: “Remember that shoot-out at Holloway when that guy from the Fourth Division blasted some guys from the One Seventy-third? Killed four, five guys before somebody put one though his head.”

  First guy at the bar: “Like that incident in Da Nang when the Marines and the Hundred-and-first shot it out for control of the whorehouses.”

  Lambert: “When I was processing in at Nha Trang this time, there was this guy used to come over to that little cafe across from the Playboy Club, I forget what unit he was with, some straight-leg outfit. Anyway, for about a week he comes over with his M-14, saying he’s gonna kill himself a Green Beret, a Green Beret took his girl away from him, he says, and beat him up in front of her, and now he’s gonna kill himself one. Meanwhile, the place is filled with Green Berets coming and going, listening to the guy rave. One time Garcia, you know Garcia? an E-eight down at Bien Hoa? kicks the chair out from under the guy, Garcia knows a demoralized case when he sees one. The kid picks up his rifle and starts screaming about how he’s gonna kill the Green Beret who beat him up in front of his girl. Finally somebody called the MPs and they came and took him away. I think the kid was grateful that somebody was finally gonna take care of him.”

  In ‘64 when Kontum was overrun, an American sergeant had his arm blown off by a grenade. He pulled his knife and chased down the VC who had thrown the grenade and stabbed him to death. The two bodies were found next to each other, the VC with the knife sticking out of his neck and the American drained of blood. The man who told me this story said, “Man, if you have to die, that’s the way to do it. Kill the guy who killed you so in Heaven you won’t be his slave. The more men you kill the better off you are when you die, because all the men you killed on Earth have to be your slaves in Heaven.”

  I tell this story to the others. As I get up from my chair Lambert makes the sound: “Whoo!” and somebody else says: “Christ!”

  In my room is a letter from my ex-wife. Dennis is dead. She detailed all of the details, how Dennis’ friends had picked him up at his mother’s house, how Dennis left the house with two hundred dollars in his pocket, how Dennis’ mother begged him not to go, how the hotel maid found Dennis’ body, and the money missing, and the police report of an OD. Dennis had gone into coma immediately, Roger Hermann said. He had supplied the shit, Roger Hermann had, was with Dennis in the hotel room, with the others fled, cried terribly and remorsefully at the funeral. When the maid discovered it, Dennis’ body was in a kneeling position at the side of the bed and the needle was still in his arm. Dennis’ mother was taking it very hard, she visited his grave every day. Dennis’ father disclaimed all responsibility, he had a young wife and a young son by her, also named Dennis.

  I read the letter twice. I do not remember what Dennis looked like, nor who Roger Hermann is. I laugh. It’s laughable, something is. I won’t write back; I never do.

  I walk over to the radio bunker.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Skyraider buzzed the town. Then it buzzed the camp. Then it buzzed the town again. Then the camp. Then the town. Roy found the Skyraider’s frequency, put it on the camp speakers. The pilot was hooting like a rodeo cowboy. Someone at Holloway was talking to him. The pilot laughed, the laugh coming out over the speakers as a witch’s screech. Finally the pilot said, “Oh well, I’m out of gas.” From Holloway there was silence.

  It was very good. It was a beautiful day, and the sun was warm, and we’d had the Skyraider. I greet Roy at the entrance to the radio bunker: “Perfect day for an airstrike.” Roy laughs.

  “They’ll ground him,” he says.

  “You think so?”

  “Sure.”

  “Think they’ll disappear him?”

  He laughs again.

  “Say, you know who was here the other day?” I ask. “Galen. I think you were on shift.”

  “Galen?”

  “Yeah. You remember him. He was mixed up in that Montagnard revolt last year.”

  “That FULRO business?”

  “Yeah.”


  “I was between tours then. I don’t think I know him.”

  “Oh. Anyway, he was passing through. He’s the first guy who was involved in the revolt that I’ve seen since it happened.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know. Sniffing around for a job, I suppose. I don’t think anyone trusts him now.”

  “Did the Americans actually shoot any of the Vietnamese?”

  “I think Galen’s team did. But most of the teams just stood by while the Yards rubbed the Vietnamese out.”

  “Some war. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to go down to the government whorehouse.”

  “See you.”

  The situation reports begin to come in. Duc Co, under siege again, reports the number of mortar rounds it has taken, and the number of casualties. Dak To is patrolling, no enemy contact. Dak Pek is still fogged in, running out of food, buying rice from the Jeh villages, worried about depleting the Jeh’s rice supply. Dak Pek says twelve of the fourteen kilos of rice the Americans supplied them six weeks ago were rotten. Plateau Gi, no activity. Plei Me has taken a prisoner, a political officer just down from the North, they found him having tea with his guide in the middle of a trail. The American commander will forward the political officer at first light. Plei Mrong reports seeing an elephant bombed and strafed by six sorties of American aircraft, wants to know what that was about. Plei Djereng reports a civilian bus held up by VC or by bandits claiming to be VC, taxes collected. Le Loi’s new operations sergeant is down with malaria, will be evacuated at first light. One of Ban Me Thout’s radio operators has gone amok and shot six water buffalos, says he thought they were VC. A medical patrol out of Plei do Lim was ambushed, one American, three Montagnards killed, the patrol is trapped between three villages, will try to break out before first light. Nothing happening at Dong Tre. Nor at Tuy Hoa, Qui Nhon, or Bong Son.

  Plei Me calls back, spot report: A Jarai strike force irregular says that he was beaten by the Vietnamese Special Forces stationed at the camp. They told him that some day the Americans will leave, and when they do the Vietnamese will do as they please in the Highlands. The Jarai said that each night for the past three months a different striker has been beaten by the Vietnamese in the camp.

  Dak To, spot report: Two Americans in camouflage, carrying M-l6s, walked into the camp from Laos, asked to use the radio. They forced the radio operator out of the communications bunker, presumably changed frequency, transmitted, and changed back to the original frequency. Then they walked back into Laos. Dak To wants to know what that was about.

  Plei Me, spot report: Four Americans and about one hundred Montagnards have seen an unidentified flying object. It passed over the camp from west to east. It had a red glow and was at first thought to be a ricochet tracer. All electrically operated equipment failed when it passed over. It turned north at a right angle, then south over the camp again, then west again, toward Duc Co. The radio operator at Plei Me tried for twenty minutes before getting his radios working again. He asks me to call Duc Co to determine if they have seen anything unusual. I call Duc Co, Duc Co has seen nothing unusual but reports taking three more mortar rounds, no casualties.

  By twenty-two hundred everything is quiet.

  At midnight Mitch relieves me. I go to bed feeling infinitely more knowledgeable about this war than when I woke up this morning.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Cambodian is watching me. Out the window behind her it is daylight. “You wan’ boom-boom?” she asks in that gravelly raven’s voice. I slide over toward the wall. She hangs her pants and shirt over the chair, slips in beside me under the mosquito bar. She watches me touch her. Her skin is damp. It is yellower than the skin of the other maids. Probably she is not Cambodian. She does not respond; she never does. Finally I take her. It hurts her only at first.

  “Take fi’ hunnit pee,” I tell her. It is the standard rate between us.

  “I go Cambod-ya,” she says. “Papa die.” She coughs in mimicry and thumps her chest with her fist.

  “When you go?”

  “Tomorrow. He sick very bad.”

  “Take two hunnit mo’ pee.”

  “Se’en hunnit?”

  She takes the bills out of my wallet and puts them in her shirt. There is just the hint of a smile as she leaves. But perhaps there isn’t.

  Of the maids only the Cambodian comes into my room now when I am there. Rather than enter my room they knock on the door and I hand out my dirty laundry. They wait for me to leave before going in to change the sheets or to sweep. They are afraid of me. Only the Cambodian comes in when I ask her, or when she needs the money. But this is on the sly; she is not the one designated by Mama-san to service the Americans.

  I drift. I hear the sounds again, see the faces, feel the heat of the white sun on my skin, see Dale’s boots again. I push these back until I feel the danger pass. I sleep.

  A sound I cannot keep out grows louder. At first it is not even a sound, only the sense of a sound, off somewhere in the back of my mind. Then I hear it, faint and vague and irritating, something that does not belong but will not go away. And then I hear it as a woman screaming, and there is another sound, too, and it is the resonant drum sound of fists on hollow walls. And now my pants are on and I am in the corridor and Roy and Mitch are beating on the door of the room next to mine and Vietnamese women are crowding around.

  “Spencer has one of the maids in there,” Roy says.

  “Open the door,” Mitch says.

  There is no sound from inside. The maids watch us do nothing. Then Mama-san bangs on the door, shouts something in Vietnamese. From inside, a woman’s voice calls something back.

  “Open the door,” Mitch says. Then, “Get out of the way.”

  He puts his shoulder into it. Then again, and the door comes open. Spencer is on his back on his bunk, the girl is on top of him. Both are clothed. Spencer’s hands rest on her back, seeming not to hold her down. She is the one Mamasan has assigned to be the whore. The girl gets up and runs to Mama-san, the women begin jabbering through brown wooden faces. Spencer looks at us. His face is brown and wooden too. Mitch and Roy and I face him. Eventually he turns away. The women are gone.

  “Was she raped?” the colonel asks.

  “Yes. She was raped,” Captain Fischer says. The colonel looks as if he didn’t want to hear it, the doctor as if he didn’t want to say it.

  “All right. Thank you,” the colonel says.

  Captain Fischer nods, turns, and walks away toward the dispensary. The colonel turns to Roy. “You want to bring charges on the woman’s behalf.” It is a statement, a cognition, not a question.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t know if that can be done, legally. She may have to act as plaintiff herself. Does she want to do that?”

  “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Kennard said she wanted to. If that’s the procedure, then I’ll be her witness.”

  “Did you actually witness the rape?”

  “No, sir. The maids came to Sergeant Mitchell and me when they heard her screaming. It was over by the time we forced the door.”

  We are standing in the doorway of the communications bunker. For the second time in a week the sun is out. It is hot and bright. White cumulus blow across a blue sky. It is like being somewhere in the midwestern United States. I perspire against a freshening wind.

  The colonel says, “Mitchell, do you want in on this too?”

  Mitch pouts his lips, looks toward the dispensary. “Yeah.”

  “What about you, Sergeant Dickinson? What did you see?”

  “I was there when they broke open the door.”

  “So you’re a witness too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine. Lieutenant Kennard will take your statements.”

  He is turning as if to leave when we salute. He returns our salute without breaking stride.

  “Last year,” Mitch says, “this woman comes in from Pleiku City, has her kid with her. The kid’s dying, you can see
that the first time you look at her. Doc Fischer says malaria, it’s too late. The woman says if the kid dies, she’ll bring the VC. The kid dies, the woman takes her and goes back to the city. Says she’ll be back. The next night they machine-gunned the shit out of this place. Fifty-one calibers. Shot right through our billets into the mess hall. That’s why we got a commo bunker made out of concrete now. It used to be wood.”

  “I wasn’t here then,” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Roy.

  It begins that night in the bar with Spencer saying that he is going to beat the shit out of Roy. Roy begins carrying a knife in a wrist sheath. “The motherfucker’s too big for me. If he gets his hands on me, he’ll kill me. But I’ll make him eat his guts first.”

  Dak Pek: “I have a message. Operational Immediate. One thousand groups. Are you ready to copy? Over.”

  Pleiku: “Say again Group Count. Over.”

  Dak Pek: “One thousand groups. Operational Immediate. Are you ready to copy? Over.”

  Pleiku: “Your signal strength is two. Your readability is two. I am ready to copy. Over.”

  Dak Pek: “Message follows. Break. Authentication. Sitrep.”

  Pleiku: “Break-Break-Break-Break-Break-Break. QSA 1. QRK 1. All After ZUBKF. Over.”

  Dak Pek: “I say again All After ZUBKF.”

  It is the weather: fog at his end, rain at mine. I do not know how much of my copy is the product of my guesswork and how much I have actually snatched from the air.

  Pleiku: “T-T-T-T-T-T. QSA 1. QRK 1. Send Slower. All After RSBLA.”

  I try to decipher as I receive. I send him back when the message does not make sense. He grows angry and sends at top speed. His signal fades, comes in again; I hear a couple of dahs, a rush of dits.

  If he does not slow it is because of fear. If he does slow it is only anger.

  Dak Pek: “I say again All After…”

  He has switched from the bug to a key. The characters are sharp and clear. I imagine him smashing the key with his fist in rage.