Don't Mean Nuthin' Read online

  The road to Bien Ha gave me two choices. Check out the snake pit I opened by greasing Viper and explain that my AWOL was caused by an ambush that had killed my entire squad. Or go rogue. Die at the hands of cowboys, not Indians. Only twenty-eight days to get my ticket and the one chance of riding the Freedom Bird was to wing it. Maybe Viper was expendable. There was no way to link me with Colonel Hoang. I closed my eyes and tried to act like the black grunt, but green eyes kept me from sleep.

  The whoosh of a Soviet RPG flying over the deuce and a half canopy brought me back instantly. The rocket-propelled grenade exploded on the other side of the road, knocking two peasants off their bicycles. Bananas and tangerines littered the highway next to wheels and blood.

  The truck driver slammed on the brakes. Before the deuce and a half stopped rocking, I was on my belly in the mud, scanning the grove of trees two hundred yards across the paddy. A puff of smoke and another grenade headed our way. M16s opened suppressing fire on the trees. AK-47s answered.

  “Where are they?” the cherry asked. His hip touched mine in the mud. The cherry’s rifle was pointed toward the palm and bamboo trees, but he wasn’t shooting.

  An M60 started a steady burp, and pieces of the distant trees flew into the air. The second grenade landed within ten yards of the truck. The tires nearest to the impact blew up in a haze of black. Burning rubber and cordite smell mixed with the smoke from the explosions. AK bullets pinged off the steel body of the deuce and a half like slot machines paying off. The black grunt rolled to the ditch behind us and fired a burst from his M16.

  “Keep your fucking head down!” I yelled at the cherry. His head was moving quickly from side to side, and his helmet was drooped over his left ear. The shaking of his body rattled the dog tags that hung out of his fatigue neck, close to the sucking clay. The dimples were gone, and his skin turned the white of M34 phosphorous grenade smoke.

  The muddy road where we lay was flat. Nothing to crawl behind and hide.

  Before I could shove his face into the mud, the cherry jumped up and ran toward the truck. A grenade made a direct hit on the deuce and a half, blowing pieces of the cherry’s upper body into the road next to the peasants.

  I kissed the mud and pulled the helmet tight to my skull. The last thing I saw was pieces of green fatigues floating on the wind. AK rounds whizzed over my head, making a thuuth sound when they hit the mud. Grenades landed in the paddies and exploded with a boom, muffled by tons of water, rice shouts, and slime.

  A mudpack of clay plastered my eyes shut. The taste was just like the muck at Benning, but I was twelve thousand miles from there, and this wasn’t a drill. I pushed down on my helmet with both hands and waited.

  Two minutes and it was over. Not even enough time for the 105s to start up from Bien Ha. The paddies were so quiet I could hear the mosquitoes. Flames billowed from the truck. Soldiers crawled out of the ditch and from behind trucks and AVs.

  Mud and blood pulled at my web boots when I walked across the road toward the burning deuce and a half. It had been knocked fifteen yards to the side by the RPG and lay half-submerged in the ditch water.

  The black grunt stood next to the two truck drivers and looked at the blood, bananas, tangerines, and body parts on the road. M16s hung from their hands. One driver had his helmet in his armpit and bowed legs far apart.

  “That cherry makes it a fruit cocktail,” the grunt said. “Don’t mean nuthin.” No one laughed.

  Thank whatever God brought us here, I didn’t know the cherry’s name.

  The heat oozed from the jungle floor. Over the last eleven months, the Phoenix masters sent me to places where frying my brain was one of the more benign risks. Today, Vishnu must have been apologizing for the torrent of last night by putting the drying cycle on nuclear, mixing it with humidity thick enough to paint the walls. Mekong Delta hot. This kind of heat, Pantini said, “Don’t matter if I got the squirts, the fuckin’ heat melts it before it can get outa my asshole anyway.” In our off-limits Phoenix sector of the camp, we called it “asshole heat” in memory of Pantini. He died when a gook sapper made it under the wire, after a grunt on perimeter fell asleep, and threw a satchel charge into Pantini’s hootch. An “asshole number ten” day was the worst, and we were approaching that level now.

  Back at the base, Comer hadn’t been around to greet me. No interrogation over Viper’s death. No time. Too many gooks to grease. Viper’s temporary replacement, Martand, handed me a piece of paper, watched while I read the message, and lit it up with his Zippo when I finished. “Good fishin’, troop,” he said and walked out the door, the holster of his Colt scraping the bare knee of a stubby leg. He was one of the little people more suitable as a tank jockey, where big people took up too much space—not another phony-ass macho Phoenix spook in Bermuda shorts and flowered shirt.

  Now I crouched next to a Hmong scout, surveilling the hootch on the edge of a vil three klicks from base, the leaning hut supposedly covering a tunnel entrance and the home of a suspected VC sector lieutenant. At least that’s what the Martand-delivered orders read.

  Late afternoon and we were waiting for the asshole day to be replaced by a few-degrees-cooler asshole night. Wasting the gook LT in daylight wasn’t recommended procedure and, usually, not my style.

  During the few breaks in the walk to this muddy vil, I found out my escort’s name was Dang. Hmongs, Hoa Haos, Nungs, and Montagnards passed through my days in ’Nam like bottles of 33 beer, more commonly known as Tiger Piss. The Phoenix brain trust didn’t want agents getting tight with scouts. Or, in the paranoia that defined ’Nam, let too many “yellow-skinned motherfuckers” know our faces. Dang had spent most of his twenties fighting for the Americans in South Vietnam. His English was passable, but there was no way I would ever be able to predict his mind. The Hmongs fought and died for totally different reasons than grunts. They hated Vietnamese more than anything, except possibly the Chinese, mainly because the Viets had pushed whole clans into the mountains and tried to starve them when outright massacre wasn’t enough. At least the Hmongs didn’t detest Montagnards, Nungs, and Hoa Haos—the tribes tolerated each other as oppressed brothers fighting the same enemy. For now.

  The afternoon started to turn bronze in the fading sunlight. Battalions of mosquitoes came out for the last feeding. A soft breeze made the ferns and elephant grass where we hunkered wave innocently, like they didn’t conceal two assassins. The monkey chatter increased, calls to come home for the night screeching in the trees. Mama-sans lit cooking fires and hung pots filled with rice and water over the flames, masking the smell of festering jungle. Two girl baby-sans splashed water on each other from a mud puddle not evaporated by the day’s scorching heat and ran behind a hootch, laughing.

  Night brought a few new dangers. One, I hated nearly as bad as the fucking leeches. Kraits. The black-and-white-banded killer was fifteen times more deadly than a cobra and hunted at night, not daytime. In the bush, these fuckers liked to crawl into sleeping bags, boots, and tents. Tonight, at least they wouldn’t nail me while I was napping. The grunts called them “step’n a half” snakes, because you only got one and a half steps until you dropped dead.

  Dang could have been dead, already suffering rigor mortis. I couldn’t even see him breathe only inches from my face. It must have been history and survival that made the hill people so disciplined. Grunts could get stoned, swap lies, and cook in the middle of a night bivouac, no matter how close Charlie was. I never knew if it was a death wish, stupidity, or rebellion. But the result was a cargo hold full of body bags leaving Da Nang.

  A few hours and I would enter the hootch behind the cooking women. Papa-san might not be sleeping, but the intel said he would be spending the night. Maybe a vacation, since VC duties were more often carried out after darkness fell.

  At times like this, I sometimes passed the time composing letters never mailed to my mother. If it wasn’t that, I couldn’t stop the memories. Once, arriving at the door to our house in Fort Lewis after a
little league game, a jeep full of base MPs slid to a stop. The sound of gunfire came from the backyard. Rushing around the narrow space between houses, we found Mom with the Colonel’s Colt shooting at empty bottles of gin lined up on the fence. Garbage was scattered all over the yard. In the hand without the pistol, she held a nearly empty bottle of Gordon’s. She wore only her lace pajamas, and her hair looked like the cats had combed it. Weaving, she aimed and pulled the trigger, most of the bottles safe from her drunken aim unless they were unlucky. She was babbling. “Fort Ord, Fort Dix, Germany, Fort Meyers, Japan…,” a litany of all the places she had lived with the Colonel. But, between every location, she said, “Charlotte,” and fired. Charlotte, my never-to-see-the-light baby sister, died two years before from “complications” at delivery. Now, no chance I’d ever have a little sister or brother. Mom ignored the order of the MPs to “put down the gun.” That time, she was gone for three months. One of the Colonel’s most often used words in Mom’s presence was hysterical. It came to describe most all of the few sentences she spoke around him. It was the Colonel’s firm belief the only reason we didn’t address him as “general” was because Mom manifested her hysteria every day the sun rose.

  No one else to fool. The darkness in my soul couldn’t hide behind bowls of opium or bottles of Jim Beam. Or any of the other mind-altering substances available within yards of the plywood door of my hootch at the base. Earlier, I had decided that I wasn’t going to let the Rand computer, Comer, Martand, or anyone order me to murder another Vietnamese, innocent or guilty. No more lies. No more illusions of patriotism. No more debt to the Colonel. He was repaid with the corpses of too many. But the play had to go on for the days left in my tour.

  Time to write.

  Dear Mom,

  I’d address this to the Colonel, too, but I don’t really give a shit. You can tell him I made him proud yesterday and he can stop being afraid his little girl will embarrass him. I murdered a man in his bed because he helped send me out to grease a guiltless woman. Lost count of the silenced bullets I put in his body. Stopped the imminent invasion of our shores by these heathen bastard Buddhists.

  Wow, the sights and sounds of ’Nam. Now I’m watchin’ two little girls play tag between bomb craters. Kinda like kindergarten recess. You remember those years. We were in Frankfurt, and I was in base school. The Colonel made me learn to iron my slacks and polish my boots before I double-timed it to class. One day he came to visit and gave all us kiddies a lecture on growing up strong so we could give our lives in the noble fight against the oncoming yellow horde. Fuck, sometimes I get mad and hope someone will fire a mortar up his ass. But it’d probably jam on the thirty years of bullshit he’s swallowed in the army. Time ta move on, troop.

  The ruins around here are groovy. Easy to see from a klick away through the matchstick jungle, burned crispy black from napalm. Just wish I could enjoy them in the daylight. Maybe I would appreciate the glory of the fallen empire more than putting a silenced bullet in the head of a woman during a monsoon. Fuck, it rains here. That time the Nisqually flooded and the Colonel made me stand guard outside with my toy rifle in case of looters or a sneak attack, it was just a sprinkle compared to the Snoqualmie Falls downpour we get in serene Viet Nam. Anyway, he made me a lady killer. Oops, I meant man.

  Now, I’m hunkered down in the grass. A spider as big as the Colonel’s Silver Star just crawled by my face. I’m trying to count his legs, but I don’t want to take my eyes off the vil too long or some crazed VC might blow my head into the banana trees. The guy next to me has two legs. For now. His family is dead. Wife and daughter raped in front of his eyes. No wonder he’d rather kill Vietnamese more than eat a rice and warthog dinner back at his village in the mountains of Laos.

  Have a drink on me, Mom, if you’re still able to pour without spilling or dashing to pray in front of the porcelain altar. I truly miss the heartfelt talks we never had. I really miss the Colonel. Here, I have to think and even make a decision. With him, I was too fuckin’ stupid to do that. Must be growin’ up. Already lived longer than some of the kids I blew away. Shit, I’m rambling. I’ll sign off for now. I’d end with an “I love you,” but those words are insubordination in the Morgan quarters. Give my regards to the Colonel. Tell him to go sit on his bayonet and pretend he’s on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Sweet Dreams. Don’t mean nuthin’.

  Midnight and I wanted this act finished. Motioning for Dang to stay behind me, I moved toward the hootch. Not even the mangy dogs stirred. The VC ruled the night, but it must have been a holiday. If there was a tunnel entrance in this hootch, they were using another exit tonight. Or, surprise, the intel was wrong.

  No rain. Foot and animal traffic had muddied the clay. The temperature fell twenty degrees. I sweated anyway, drops running down my back not able to absorb into an already-saturated fatigue shirt. Smoke from the evenings cooking floated above the trail between huts, lingering coals looking like fireflies. No stars in a land where humidity and napalm formed clouds that usually blocked the view. Except for the calls of a few night birds and the distant artillery, silence.

  The door hung from rope hinges and was pushed to the side. Back against the bamboo wall, I peeked inside, Dang behind-and-faced into the vil. One room about the size of the canvas-covered end of a troop transport. Dirt floor. An old blanket strung from twine closed off one corner. Metal cups and plates on a bamboo-legged table, next to spoons and knives bent out of shrapnel, an unlit candle in the middle. Pajamas and straw hats scattered around mats on the floor that held two sleeping baby-sans. Woven baskets against the walls, underneath, the usual place for a tunnel entrance.

  Stepping through the doorway, I made my way slowly past the baby-sans to the curtain and gently pushed it aside with the barrel of the Hush Puppy. Back in The World, I might have been some kind of master artist or craftsman. I was at the top of my business, and my trade was sneaking in the night. Not even a cockroach would know I was near. No one moved, and the sleep breathing was louder than any movement I made.

  Two people on the mat in a space smaller than a single bed. A shelf above with another candle and pictures propped against the bamboo. Too dark to see if they were of this couple’s wedding or ancestors. Burlap bags hung from nails in the wall, a jagged window above. A thin blanket on top of the motionless bodies. Only enough room to bend over and I could reach past the woman to the night’s victim. Her long, black hair was splayed across a pile of clothes bundled for a pillow. Putting my hand over her mouth, I touched the barrel of the pistol to the skull of her husband.

  “Yen nao,” I hissed. Quiet. “Su may man dem nay.” Lucky tonight. Four eyes wide open. Invaders in the night. Nothing new to these people in the middle of a war zone. No training told them to be silent. It was natural.

  The Hush Puppy was nearly soundless. Designed for the Navy SEALs, it could be used underwater. But I wasn’t swimming. The Mark 22, Model O, held twenty-two green-tipped Parabellum bullets that discharged through a five-inch suppressor. The projectiles were heavier than normal 9mm shells, slowing down the velocity and making the discharge subsonic, eliminating the snap of a supersonic firing. When the bullets entered a head, they flopped around inside, turning brain matter into red-and-white custard. Only a few hundred had been manufactured by Smith & Wesson. And I held one to the forehead of a now-shivering, accused VC. But the Hush Puppy did make noise, and Dang would expect to hear it. I took the barrel off the man’s head and pointed it out the window. The first pphhuupp was followed by the second, one beat later. I stood and smiled down, tipping the brim of my bush hat. “Co dep ngay.” Have a nice day, I whispered, and stepped silently out past the still-sleeping baby-sans.

  At the door, I nodded at Dang, and we disappeared into the bush. A few more days and no one would die only because someone ordered me to kill. This papa-san would lay low for a few days, knowing he was marked for death, long enough for me to finish my plans and climb the stairs to the Freedom Bird.

  Hanoi Hannah had a voice you just
wanted to fuck. Let the soft tenor wrap you in the cocoon of that voice. Shoot your wad in the silky smoothness. Explode a billion rounds in the crater of her throat. The semen’s song of Vietnam.

  “GI?” Hannah asked, a Dionne Warwick ballad in her tremor. “Do you know who your girlfriend is out with tonight? Parked by the reservoir, listening to Johnny Mathis in a cool Mustang. Does his hand fumble before it unsnaps her bra? Is she nervous? Is she thinking of you? Tonight could be her night. And this one is for you, GI.”

  The lights in the hootch flickered from the concussion of the 105s firing artillery support for a platoon pinned down in a swamp to the north. Dirty cotton shorts were all I wore in the evening heat that was only slightly cooler than the hundred-degree days. The legs of my cot squeaked when I shifted my weight, a shrill insult to the mellow sound of Johnny Mathis singing “Chances Are” over Radio Hanoi. The words came to me in stereo provided by the fifty transistors across the base at Bien Ha tuned to the same song. I closed my eyes and wiped the sweat that puddled on my chest.

  “GI?” Hannah asked. Now she was Roberta Flack singing “Killing Me Softly.” “Did you hear what your brother soldiers did today in Ohio? Shot down students walking across the quad at Kent State. Maybe Stars and Stripes will print the picture of the young girl dying in the arms of her friend, a pool of blood at her feet.”

  My eyelids hurt from squeezing them closed so tight. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I moaned to the empty hootch. The pillow made of an old Arrow shirt stuffed with useless civvies didn’t scream when I punched it.

  “Did you kill anyone today? Was it a woman? Or a little girl too?” Hanoi Hannah asked. “Will tomorrow be the same? Have you been in our beautiful country forever?” Hannah played “For Once in My Life” by Stevie Wonder.