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I hit a bunch of three on the left at about fifteen yards with the shotgun; they washed into five more, and the mass was ripped apart. Then another one on the right at five yards as he killed the man next to me, then another out of the air as he leapt over the trench. That was the last of the charge. I traded the shotgun for the Armalite, then went down the right after those who had fled to the spare safety of the vans. One in the foot as he knelt, another in a shower of sparks as he poked head and rifle around a van, and a third in the back as he climbed into a van.
Then Joe Morning stepped out of the door of the third van, shot a kneeling man in the back of the head. Then he ran into the midst of them, firing from the hip like a hero, but he hit at least three more before he folded at the waist like a waiter giving a surly bow, folded, fell, lay still.
After Joe Morning, we mopped up. The VC were beat, but not a single one surrendered. It was over. Oh, the planes chased the VC through the jungle, and the troops stayed on full alert, but it was over.
We collected our wounded, leaving the dead to sleep until daylight. Casualties were high; the 721st ceased to be operational. So many dead, so many ways to die. The mortars had done the worst damage. Dottlinger was the only one I saw without a shrapnel wound of some sort. (I don't mean to imply that he stayed in the CP; he was up firing during the charge, after the charge, after it was over.) Haddad had a black hole in the very center of his bald head, but not another mark on him, the round disappearing as surely as if it had been fired into the sky, and it is buried with him. A nickel-sized piece of shrapnel had torn through Qui
I was supposed to be checking the dead VC, but I wandered past Morning's body being dragged away (I knew he was dead), and into the van he had come out of. Eight jumbled positions, four bodies present and accounted for, three new guys whose names I didn't want to know, but the fourth was a VC, a small terribly old man sitting in the corner. He looked like the one with the dynamite grenades that I had missed, but I couldn't tell.
Suddenly I had to pee so badly that tears welled in my eyes. Holding my crotch, I ran out the side door, slipping in blood or coffee at the door, but not falling, then rushed to the still smoldering latrine. All the canvas had burned away and the wooden seat still smoked. I couldn't imagine why I had come to the open latrine to pee, and then I couldn't stop giggling. A paperback collection of Huxley essays and a flashlight also smoked on the seat. I peed on them. Goddamned Joe Morning caught in the can reading by flashlight while the VC shot the hell out of the place. Shit. But he'd fallen too… I finished, then wandered back to the van, feeling his loss, feeling the guilt creep in on tiny but sharp-clawed feet.
Lost, tired, afraid, I can't go on. I sit next to the old, the ski
"There you go, pops," I say. His short flat nose was all mangled and bloody, his eyes were silent as his voice. "No place to get shot, pops, right in the snoot. And in the chest too. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and one in the snoot for eight. Somebody had a grudge on you, old man. Say, what's an old fart like you doing mixed up in this shit, anyway?…
"Not telling, huh? Maybe you don't know either. By God, old Joe Morning knows. Knew. Generals, politicians, captains of industry want us here, he says. But you could have stayed in your rice paddy, and I could have stayed home. But you weren't meant to be a rice farmer, nor I a college man. We're here 'cause we're afraid, old man. Joe Morning didn't know shit. That's why he's dead. I don't know why you're dead, but that's why he is. He thought he knew. You ever meet him? Too bad, 'cause he's lying out there now, deader than shit, deader than shit…"
But now I slept, my left arm cradling the old man, and I let my dreams tell him all I knew about Joe Morning, all I knew.
I woke in faint light, blinking in the shadows as a shaft of bright air fell across the open door. There were voices outside, Tetrick, Saunders, Dottlinger, making a KIA and damage report, and a loud throbbing of choppers as they lifted out the last of the wounded. The three came in the door, and I started to get up, but Dottlinger shot me before I could stand. The old man's body had fallen across me and took two.30 carbine slugs for me, but one knocked my right arm back against the wall, and another slammed my right leg hard against the metal floor. Dottlinger saw, almost as he did it, who I was, and he dropped the carbine.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "You got the machine gun, Krummel; you'll get the distinguished… you know… cross… something… commissioned in the field… I didn't…"
Tetrick and Saunders stood on either side of him, fatigue tugging at their faces. Tetrick cried. Saunders turned and knocked Dottlinger back out the door with the clipboard in his hand.
Stu
… and I woke here in this bed, determined to tell someone the truth. All this leading up to the truth. But it has taken too long. I find myself trapped by my own confession. The scene, the moment of extreme truth, swept past without me, the keys of my old machine clacking like knitting needles, and I without blade to cut the thread.
Turn back, turn back, dear reader: "Then he ran into the midst of them, firing from the hip like a hero, but he hit at least three more before I swung my sights across his middle and blew out the base of his spine with three quick rounds, and he folded like a waiter giving a surly bow, folded, fell, lay still."
There it is. I killed Joe Morning. I shot Cock Robin. Rah, rah, rah.
But you already suspected that, didn't you? That's all right. The whole purpose of any confession is to make the confessor, the guilty party, feel better. One whispers his crimes into the ear of a priest, or shouts them at his friends, or lends them to paper. Murderers tend to think they are poets; how distressing to discover that they were poets all along. It wasn't guilt that made me hesitate to confess my murder of Joe Morning, but my vanity. I knew it would affect you if it seemed that I couldn't bring myself to confess. Nonsense. I cared more when I killed him on paper than I did when I killed him for real. I also thought about letting him live. I wanted to kill him for a reason, rather than on a whim. No such luck, you say, He's dead. Nonsense. He's not dead at all.