Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

Hasten to the battlefield

Our will is strong

Our foes tremble

Let the truth of our struggle sweep all obstacles away

Let the blood of Vietnam flow through one heart

Let our people unite in the cause of peace and tụ́udo or tụ́tụ́?

Claypool scraped at the mud specks with a bent paper clip. A hole opened in the rice paper. He sighed. If there were special tools for this sort of work Claypool hadn’t been told where to find them. Now the last word was lost and he would have to guess. He leafed through his English-Vietnamese dictionary. Well, this shouldn’t be difficult. Certainly the people were not being asked to unite in peace and suicide. So it was “tụ́do” then. The line ended in “freedom.”

When he began his study of the language at the army school in Monterey it seemed that too many of the words not only sounded alike but looked the same on paper, as if the Vietnamese would be quite content with just one word that, depending on subtle variations in spelling and pronunciation, could represent all the known objects of the world. A beginner’s impression. Unfortunately, he did not think his understanding had improved substantially since then. Two hours to translate a simple DRV marching song. Struggling on with a weakening will.

“Drop your cock!”

Claypool flinched. He hadn’t heard Sergeant Mars come through the door.

“Saddle up, kid.” Beer breath. Rough hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “The one-seventy-sixth needs an interpreter ASAP and you’re our volunteer.”

“But I’m… this document…”

“No sweat. They’ve got the best kill ratio in I corps. Never lost a lady yet, ha ha. What an opportunity. See the country. Brush up on your dink. Wish I could go.”

“I don’t have… I’m not…”

“Helicopter leaves in forty minutes. Have your gear and your ass out on the ramp in thirty.”

The office had a double bank of fluorescent lights, two air conditioners, buffed linoleum, a green refrigerator stacked with cold soda, a clay ashtray molded into the shape of a duck on Captain Raleigh’s desk. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Claypool had reenlisted, exchanged a year of his life for the security of a noncombat job. He wasn’t supposed to carry a gun, to hump, to get shot, the army had promised. There was a guaranteed contract on file in St. Louis. He couldn’t go. He didn’t know what gear one packed to the field.

In the shower room, fully dressed, Claypool twisted all the squeaky handles back and forth. Finally, from one rusty nozzle a thin trickle. He held up his canteen. Someone passed the door whistling “The Colonel Bogey March.” Passed and reappeared. It was Griffin.

“What’s the matter?”

“There isn’t any more water… and, uh… this canteen, I guess I need it.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you ODing in here or what?”

“They’re sending me out.”

“Out? Out where?”

“The field… the boonies, I guess.”

“Wonderful.”

“The one-seventy-sixth. Are they really the…”

“Wonderful.”

“How can they do this? I can’t shoot. In Basic the drill sergeants cheated on my scorecard to pass me through. I flunked the PT test twice.”

“Look, listen to me. There hasn’t been any noise out there for a couple months. That area’s been so worked over there’s nothing left but stumps and stones.”

“Then what do they need an interpreter for?”

“Well…”

“Who’s the beneficiary on your GI insurance?” Trips stood behind them, dark eyes shining, fingers tugging at the string of beads around his neck.

“Leave him alone,” said Griffin.

“Hey, I’m only trying to be of service. If the kid here’s really going out, there’s certain information he needs to know, certain attunements to the reality.”

“I’ve already ‘attuned’ him.”

“I heard. Now he’s all set for Boy Scout camp. Or a nature hike. Or a botanical expedition. What’s he gonna do when the botany starts blowing up?”

“No one’s going to dump some green MI type out into the middle of VC land.”

“Hang loose, kid. Watch your step, don’t touch anything.”

“Don’t worry,” said Griffin through a smile that made Claypool feel terribly lonely.

“Take as many magazines as you can carry,” said Trips.

Had Claypool known a good place to hide he might have been absent from the battered jeep bouncing over the airfield to the helicopter skimming above a landscape of green on green to a slash of brown crammed with bunkers and tents and a bucktoothed major; a captain whose cousin sold stationery in New Harmony, Indiana, Claypool’s home town; a distracted first sergeant; a snoring buck sergeant; and a nervous PFC whose name tag read SMITH and who said, “I guess I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“Thanks,” Claypool replied.

“Do as I say and you’ll be around to thank me later.”

“He’s the best shot in the company,” offered someone with a crooked nose and pimpled cheeks. Claypool glanced at the name tag. JONES.

“In the division,” said someone who looked Italian. JOHNSON.

“If it moves, The Mouth can kill it.” A soprano in a boys choir. BROWN.

Half-circled around him, stale as wild dogs, an expensive camera dangling from each sunburnt neck, they peered at Claypool with such intense good humor he felt compelled to check his fly.

“Mouth?” he asked.

A pink bubble appeared between Smith’s lips, swelled slowly to cover his head. When the gum burst it collapsed over his face like a wrinkled mask. Smith peeled it off, popped the wad back in. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I can’t stop.”

“He ate five steaks at the last company party,” said Jones, “and sucked the marrow right out of the bones.”

“Once I saw him swallow seventeen eggs,” said Johnson. “Intact.”

“On R&R he bit off a whore’s nipple,” Brown said, “and spit it out the window.”

“You don’t want to get too close when he’s hungry,” advised Jones.

Mouth clicked a button on his Minolta, recorded an image of Claypool: forlorn surprise.

“You got a lens?” Jones asked.

“No, I never wanted to…”

“I’m putting together a slide show for the Rotary back home.”

“I had an Instamatic once years ago.”

“Let me hunt you up one. There’s that Canon of Taylor’s but I think Top already sent it out with his effects. Frank’s in Taipei with his Miranda. Lewis, Peterson… Let’s see, I think Matthews is still in the dispensary with the trots. He probably won’t be using his tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

Mouth’s camera clicked several more times. “We were supposed to go today, but they can’t find it. Captain Miller says to be ready at dawn.”

“What can’t they find?”

“I don’t know, some gook village supposed to have a VC headquarters buried under it or something. Listen, you know how to shoot?”

“I was a marksman in Basic.”

“I don’t mean that, I’m taking care of that, I mean you know how to shoot.” He aimed his camera at Claypool’s head. Click-click-click.

“You look through here and press here?”

“Last MI we had he couldn’t shoot worth a damn either. You better stick real close to me.”

That night Claypool couldn’t sleep. As he was getting ready for bed Johnson strolled in stripped to the waist and offered Claypool his back, the knobby ridge of scar tissue traversing his shoulders, go ahead, touch it if you want. His bunk smelled of feet and mildew. The man in the tent with him kept mumbling Is that you? I know it’s you. Is that you? The light from intermittent artillery fire burst across the canvas roof like popping flashbulbs. When Mouth came for him he was staring quietly down the length of his body having become convinced several hours earlier that a poisonous centipede was attempting to crawl up his leg. He got up and walked out into one of those startling Asian dawns that go from dim to bright in a matter of minutes. Claypool examined the distant black tree line. It looked as if it never slept.