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Coming back, I tried to be casual, carrying the Armalite by its handle like a suitcase, four grenades bagging the thin pockets of the civilian suit, two full clips sticking out of my back pockets like fifths of cheap whiskey. Morning commented, of course, "Mamma Krummel back to protect his little brood," but I laughed at him. He expected push-ups and an ass-chewing, and grumbled, "It wasn't a joke," and I said, "Yes, I don't think so either." We smoked and talked quietly, our talk like the chatter from behind the other trucks, relaxed, confident, safe, but this cool babble couldn't cover the raw grunt and moan which slipped out of the forest to the right. No one spoke, then everyone, but the metallic clang of a round snapping into the Armalite stopped the noise. I sent Cagle for Tetrick, Morning to the truck cab for a flashlight, and the men into the opposite ditch, then gave Novotny two of the grenades.
Qui
One of the new men mumbled that he had been seen drifting down the moonlit trail. I gave Qui
"Five yards apart on me," I said. "Qui
The trail seemed twice as white as I moved between the dark walls of foliage, following the faint trail of sharp prints made by new shoes in the dust, then the wavering serpentine track where he had peed as he strolled. The trail bent to the left, and as I cautiously slipped around the corner, I didn't need Morning's flash to see.
Malayan Gates, they call them, a bamboo pole tied to a tree beside the trail, a bamboo pole with three or four twelve-inch bamboo stakes lashed to its end, then bent away from the trail and tied to another tree and a trip wire. Franklin hadn't finished, and urine still dripped into the black pool at his feet where he knelt, his grey face turned back toward me, one arm pegged to his stomach where he had been holding himself, and the points of the stakes gleamed out of his back two inches above his belt. His eyes were wide and alive when I first saw him, but before I could move, they were wide, white and dead in his face. A muscle spasm gripped his mouth, and a rumbling, sputtering release from the large bowel mocked the prayer his mouth seemed to form, but his eyes were dead in his face. Morning quietly said "Jesus Christ" behind me. Novotny, stricken, mumbled "Told him to stay on the road. Told him… Told him… Told…" Qui
"Take him back," I said, my voice colder than I could remember it ever being. "Take the son of a bitch back." I slapped Morning's shoulder and pushed Novotny. Their eyes came back to me from Franklin, then they started to stumble toward him. "No, you bastards, no! Qui
Lake two owls dazed by sudden lightning, they asked, "Who?"
"Qui
I waited with Franklin's body. God, he stunk. He offended me with his rankness, his malodorous halo clinging to the trees. He stunk worse than any animal I've ever gutted. If I hadn't been sure that he lay on a pressure release mine, I would have kicked him until he stopped emitting that fetid, slimy, smell. I might have anyway, but Tetrick ran up, two sergeants behind him.
He stopped, clicked on the safety of his grease gun, then said, softly, "The bastard."
We stood there, looking and feeling guilty for looking, until Novotny came back with the roll of wire and Morning with the poncho. I made a loop, then tossed it over Franklin's head, around his neck.
"Not his neck," Morning said, but nothing more.
We rolled the wire back to the road and made the troops lie back down in the ditch. Then I tried to pull the wire, flinching like a nine-year-old kid firing his first shotgun, flinching as he does until he learns that it is the flinch not the shotgun which hurts him. The second time I didn't flinch.
Nothing happened. The wire jumped toward me like a slim black snake. Each of us, in our own way, jerked away from it.
"It came untied," Tetrick said. "Or broke. I'll get it."
"I will."
Once more down that white trail dividing the darkness, the moon still bright in the sky, still searching, stars twinkling ordinarily, even the small sounds of the jungled forest peeping out once more. I tied a knot that would not slip, then walked back.
I pulled again, huddled with the others in the ditch. The explosion was lost, soft among limbs and leaves, but a naked flash climbed the sky, and the earth trembled under us. Novotny and I went for the body, but there was none: A charred log, not hard like wood, but soft and rubbery as we rolled it on the poncho, and it squeaked, rubber against rubber. Warm rain fell on my hands as I bent over the body, and it would be the next day before I remembered crying.
"Told him, told him to stay, stay on the road," Novotny gasped as we carried the surprising load, too light for man, too heavy for whatever it was.
"You told him; he didn't; forget it."
"Don't know how," was all he answered.
The troops, officers, non-coms and all, here is the first loss, forgot the standing orders against bunching up, bunched like cattle in the rain, lowing, and chewing their fearful lips.
"You?" Capt. Saunders said to Tetrick. Saunders stood among the troops, but they moved away when he spoke. He moved back among them.
Tetrick's head gleamed in the moonlight and his words were half lost under a dropped face. "Too tired," he said. "Krummel, Krummel will."
Sure, sure, Krummel will. Yes, Krummel, savior of his brood, mother-hen to the world and that miscarriage in the poncho. Fuck yes, Krummel will!
I stripped back the poncho, and waited until the sight stuck in every mind, then said, not too loud but loud enough:
"Not much to send home to Mamma, is it?"
No one misunderstood. Now we were ready.
10. Vietnam
For the next ten hours, until the convoy reached Hill 527, I sat in the stifling darkness of the truck, glad of the darkness, pleased with the heat of my own body. None of the ordinary things, none of the expected emotions came to me; no vomiting, only those few warm tears no more real than the glycerin dripped on an actor's cheeks. First there had been cold anger, then calculated madness, and now nothing, so much nothing that I was glad when Morning noted my silence and said, remembering that I knew his secrets, hoping that I would now have a secret guilt too, "What's the matter, Krummel? War not to your taste? The intellectual warrior get sick to his dilettante stomach? Don't be sick, man, that's your war back there, your lovely war incarnate in that sliver of flesh. People die in wars, you idiot…"
Even then I couldn't raise an answer, a spark of feeling.
Oh, I had things to say: No, Morning, not my war, baby, but yours; he wasn't killed in a war, he was murdered.
But these were thoughts without feeling.
Of course it must rain our first two days at Hill 527, air mattresses and shelter halves must leak, and men sweat and stink in ponchos, or stand naked in hard, cold rain, or fall prey to malaria and cat fever and fungus. Boots must mildew, and meals be cold, and mud ball at our feet and creep up our legs and stick to our fingers and clog in our eyes. Sleep must come in nightmare snatches, and guard be stood, and waiting drift in long cross hours, and of course it must rain without pause for two days and two nights square in the middle of the dry season. And of course the sun must shine, eventually. And it all must be endured.