Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

Hidden water gurgled quietly somewhere nearby.

He knew without checking that his pulse was regular, his breathing even. The shock along his nerves would be no more dramatic or intense and of no longer duration than the flash across the gap of a spark plug.

The other men he could see were two-dimensional, clumsy figures cut out of green construction paper, pins stuck through the joints so they could move.

He couldn’t tell where his finger ended and the trigger began.

When it finally came, the explosion was like a tree tearing apart in sharp wet yellow splinters. He shoved the boy with the earplug aside, sprinted forward. The firing lasted for well over a minute, a continuous racket and outpouring of metal absorbed without reaction by The Bush. “Herschel!” he heard voices exclaiming, “Herschel, Herschel!” The name was passed quickly back. Up ahead where the screams were coming from he discovered a group of men standing silently in an appalled circle, looking down at another man on the ground, crying now, the shrieks having subsided, lying still at last in the space in the thick blood-stained grass his thrashings had flattened. The man blubbered, staring with horror at his left leg which rested now incongruously beside his head, upside down and unattached. “Well, shit,” muttered Kraft and kicked the useless leg off into the underbrush. The wounded man’s white face looked as though someone had flicked a full fountain pen across it, a spattering of black marks like powder burns or bits of dirt driven by explosive force into the skin. At his other end black blood drained into the ground. Kneeling at his side, Doc quickly tied off the stump, stuck a needle in his arm. Then he cut open the shirt. “Jesus Christ,” said someone softly in anger and disbelief. The chest resembled a plowed field. The man looked up at Doc, a child’s look, as one hand reached tentatively for his groin, asking in a dry voice, “My balls, are my balls okay?” and Doc nodded, patting his forehead, and the man died. His eyes remained open. “They blew away Herschel, man,” someone said and this too was passed down the line of soldiers. Kraft looked at the mess on the ground. The man had a silver whistle on his dog tag chain he liked to blow during fire fights, claimed it scared the gooks. Second KIA in three days, this after two and a half weeks in the field, taking fire on more than half those days. First they had lost the company clown, now the company idiot. Huge holes in the communal bond. The Bush was reaching in. The company’s nerves had thinned to wire and judging by the current Kraft could feel now there would almost certainly be a blackout when they hit Ba Thien.

Captain Brack came over to supervise the bagging of the body. They would carry it into the village, chopper it out with the results of whatever happened there. “I’m too old for this,” he said to Kraft.

“Save me a talker,” Kraft said.

“Well now, I don’t believe it’s gonna be as bad as all that.” He had a twinkle in his eye, a perpetual irritating twinkle. Kraft wondered if he carried whiskey in his canteen.

“All we need is a little war dance around the campfire.”

“We supposed to be taking this with a smile?”

Kraft stared off at the trees. “You know as well as I do nobody left in that ville now had anything to do with this.”

“Maybe,” said Captain Brack.

“I didn’t come out here for the exercise.”

“Either did I, Mister Kraft. You just take care of yourself and I’m sure we can find a souvenir of some kind for you to take home.” He gave Kraft a wink.

“Do what you want. I’m no referee out here.”

Ba Thien was easy. Occupied but placid. The average village family. Babies and moms and senile grandparents. Vietnamese males grew normally to age twelve then leaped to age sixty. In the country the middle years did not exist. The soldiers moved through the hootches in a grim fever. A grenade was dropped down a hole. Tear gas and coughing women and children poured out. The people were herded together with rough hands and sharp voices.

“I want everyone in the ditch,” ordered Captain Brack, pointing.

Some soldiers stood about nervously clicking their Zippos.

Kraft found a log and sat down. He looked at his watch. When the choppers came in, he would go out. What a patrol. Smudges, all smudges. Let them ask for his help. He’d sit here and wait.

A skinny old man with a blindfold across his eyes, hands tied behind his back, was kicked in the ass, sent sprawling into the dirt.

“Leave him alone,” someone shouted.

“Shut up,” someone answered.

Two laughing soldiers were pissing into a rice jar. A woman ran up, protesting. Arcs of urine swung simultaneously toward her.

A private sat on the ground, yanked off a boot. A wrinkled wet sock was stuck in several spots to the open blisters on his foot. He glanced at Kraft. “God,” he said, “I feel like somebody else has been walking around all day in my legs.”

“Shit,” mumbled a blond corporal, “these bitches is too ugly to rape.”

A tailless dog bounded up yapping at a couple of specialists guarding the detainees. One of the soldiers took a cigarette from his mouth and tossed the lighted butt at the animal. The dog sniffed, pawed, then ate the filter. The soldiers laughed. The other specialist tossed his cigarette. The dog sniffed, turned away. “Hey,” he said, “these are gook dogs. They only eat Salems.”

One of the women in a group being unceremoniously hustled past smiled bleakly at Kraft. An emaciated woman with a fat baby was screaming.

Some of the hootches were already burning. Lines of fire raced up the thatch walls like released window shades. Thick smoke unwound into the cloudy sky.

A conversation overheard, smudges of sound:

“Like there’s gonna be a natural interest when it’s over, right?”

“Tours?”

“Air-conditioned buses. Ex-GIs for drivers. They’ll be turning people away. This country’s got the most beautiful beaches in the world, you know. At least that’s what Sarge says.”

“Sarge says gook pussies are slanted. Look, up there, a crop-dusting plane.”

A chubby lieutenant with a green handkerchief tied around his head approached Kraft. Aunt Jemima, the troops called him.

“Sir?”

“Yes.”

“If you’ll follow me please.”

They walked between rows of fire, the smoke dense and acrid, to an as yet untorched hootch at the edge of the village. Captain Brack was squatting in the shadow of the doorway. He nodded. “Your souvenir,” he said, getting to his feet. Kraft followed him inside. He waited for his eyes to adjust. The darkness smelled like a camp outhouse. Gradually images developed: the extension of Brack’s arm pointing, a jar, a mat, a table, Sarge in the corner visible only from the waist up like a Buddha statue, in his hands a sheaf of papers that seemed to have captured all the light in this dim space and glowed, yellow.

“A gook personnel office,” said Captain Brack. “There’s a fucking library down there.”

Kraft went over to the hole. It had been neatly dug with square corners. He supposed it connected with a bunker, a tunnel. Sarge handed him the papers. “They had a stove over the damn thing,” said Sarge. “Pot of goddamn soup. Warm.”

Kraft walked back out into the sunlight. Captain Brack peered over his shoulder. Kraft leafed through the papers.

“These important?” asked Captain Brack.

“Maybe.”

“ Maybe? I’d like to be able to write Herschel’s mother he died for something more than a maybe.”

“Herschel’s dead because he didn’t look where he was going.”

“You know, once in my military career I’d like to hear one simple fact from you people, just one, mind you, one item of hard unambiguous information.”