Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

Breakfast was soft eggs and stiff bacon, neither of which Claypool touched. He was forcing down a cup of bitter coffee for the caffeine when Brown took his picture.

“All my photographs are perfect,” explained Brown, taking the seat opposite, “cause my hands don’t shake. Used to be I’d blur everything. The guys would even have to light my cigarettes. That was before the bags. Mind if I take another? You’ve got the changingest face I’ve ever seen.”

Claypool tried to assume that fresh serene look most often found in nearly every high school graduation photo except his own, soldiers of life confident the fray ahead can do them no harm.

Click.

“There I was, standing on the tarmac, all scrubbed up, my khakis pressed, watching the freedom birds going in and out. I must have been high, I think I shared a couple joints with this goofy Marine in the latrine, anyway I know I was feeling good, I was on my way to Hong Kong, I was on R&R and for a week there wasn’t gonna be any war when this little bitty truck that had been unloading crates off the planes tooled by and this box fell off and broke and all these shiny plastic bags slid all over themselves across the concrete and I had never seen them before so when this Marine told me what they were I just knew that one of ’em was mine, my personal bag. It just had to be. I mean, that was a moment. Hey, could you take my picture. It’s this button here on top. Let me… okay, great.”

“Sorry, I’m afraid I might have jiggled the camera.”

“That’s cool. This pic can be part of my mortar attack collection. All my earlier stuff looks like we’re taking heavy fire.”

“How bad is it?”

“The faces are fuzzy but you can still recognize the people.”

“I meant the enemy, how bad is the action?”

“You ever kill somebody?”

“No.”

“Don’t mean nothing. You’ll understand, after you’ve seen your bag.”

Mouth finished gobbling down the food on Claypool’s tray. “Should have eaten breakfast,” he said. “Now you’re gonna feel like hell all day.”

The leather case was there waiting on Claypool’s bunk along with the rest of his gear, the field pack, the web belt, the helmet, the prescription sunglasses he had worn at home whenever he went downtown. Jones sat on the opposite bunk, licking out the inside of a pear can.

“Matthews said you put a scratch on it he’ll slit your throat with a roll of Kodachrome. God, he makes me laugh. He’s the funniest guy in the company.”

Claypool snapped open the case. Inside was a glittery Nikon F studded with enough knobs and dials and buttons to outfit a Phantom cockpit.

“I can’t take this.”

“Suit yourself. Like, there’s no reg or nothing but you’d be the only one without and that could make things kind of spooky, know what I mean?”

“I’ve never been out before.”

“Shit, no one holds it against you. Everybody’s got to get laid the first time.”

Claypool tried hard to smile. He had never been laid either.

The sun was a ripe blister overhanging the tree line when the company walked single file through the wire. Claypool’s heart running like a mouse on a wheel. Against the perimeter gate lounged a soldier without insignia or name tag, his uniform stiff and white with dried sweat. Silently, he watched them pass, one by one. A set of flat lizard eyes pinned Claypool’s own distant blues. “Do it,” the soldier said. Claypool looked away, pretended not to have heard. A piece of barbed wire caught at his sleeve and, yanking it away, he tore his shirt. Behind him someone laughed. Ahead stalks of tall grass drooped across a narrow trail winding off into the trees where half a dozen bamboo and thatch huts posed as a new life hamlet. The sharp grass cut at his face and hands. The sun went behind a cloud. Claypool wiped his forehead with a green handkerchief. He was in it now. Beyond the perimeters. In the village a woman nursing a baby went inside at their approach. The children stopped playing. The dogs refused to bark. Everywhere the clinging odor of charred wood and rotting fish. The patrol moved on through the trees and out into another field where two farmers, conical hats, brown faces, splay feet, turned their backs to work the hard ground with their hoes.

“Look, here they come again, so many.”

“They move like apes, funny white apes.”

“Don’t make such a face. They will think you are a VC.”

“No, I think they will take my picture.”

“They are strong and healthy.”

“They smell like apes.”

“Look at all their big guns.”

“Look at their big feet.”

No one in the passing column understood a word of this dialogue, least of all Claypool. At the sound of the language he reached down to feel for the portable dictionary in his thigh pocket and tripped on a root. “Watch it,” Mouth hissed. Off in the distance stretched paddies thick with shoots of green rice. A buffalo ambled through the water, a small boy clutching a stick perched on its dark back. Turquoise sky, silky clouds. A travel poster. An Occidental romance.

The patrol entered the jungle. At first Claypool was grateful for the shade. Five minutes later his uniform was heavy with sweat. He had difficulty breathing. It was like being locked in a sick room with a vaporizer jammed on high. A cloud of tiny bugs swarmed about his face, flew in and out of his mouth. He spit out some, swallowed the rest. Fat drops of sweat slid across the lenses of his glasses, transforming the forest into a swirling blob of shimmery green. His pack grew heavier. The straps cut into his shoulders. His back ached. His feet hurt. He was afraid to check his watch for fear the four hours his body had ticked off were only thirty minutes by the clock. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe. He thought he would pass out. Then everyone sat down. Claypool lay on his back staring up into the deep green canopy. He felt like one of those miniature porcelain divers fallen unnoticed in the silt of a neglected aquarium. A bird flashing blue and gold through the trees startled him for a moment. He had thought it was a VC flag. He closed his eyes. The ground was so soft, a nice warm sponge. Someone punched his shoulder.

“Get up,” Mouth said.

Claypool rolled into a sitting position. Mouth was unbuttoning his shirt, Jones was pulling up his pant legs.

“What’s going on?”

“Leech check,” said Mouth.

“What?” said Claypool. “Where?” He yanked his own pants out of his boots. “No one told me about this.” He ran both hands up and down his sticky white legs.

“Looks like one on the back of your neck,” Mouth said.

“Aaaaaaaaaa!” Claypool screamed, leaping to his feet. His hand touched something slimy.

“Don’t do that,” cautioned Jones. “You’ll tear the skin.”

“Get it off, get it off.”

“Hold still,” said Mouth. Inserted in the elastic band around his helmet was a small plastic bottle. He squeezed some liquid onto Claypool’s neck.

“Is it off?”

“Yeah,” said Jones, pointing to the shiny black worm writhing in the mud.

Mouth stepped on it. Blood squirted from under his boot.

“Yuck,” said Claypool, rubbing his neck.

“Fucking MI,” muttered Mouth.

In ten minutes they were up again, staggering through vines and humidity. Claypool started seeing creatures darting across the corners of his vision but he kept quiet. Behind his smeared glasses everything looked sinister and alive. A florist’s nightmare. He concentrated on the round scuffed toes of his boots stumbling on over the undergrowth. Rhythm. If he could establish a comfortable rhythm. Then everyone sat down again. He could hear whispers, rustling movement up ahead. His finger folded around the trigger of his rifle. Heart pounding like a parade drum. “Move out.” Following the words SQUEAKY CLEAN bobbing on Jones’s helmet through creepers and thorns, his breath an asthmatic wheeze, stumbling surprised into a clearing arranged as a movie village. Grass huts, coconut palm, banana trees, a stone well, a cooking pit, a dirt path running in and out spiked with booby traps. No one home. A ghost town. The open space made Claypool more nervous than the jungle. A scrawny chicken, its tail caked with filth, rushed out to greet them. Jones lowered his rifle. “No,” said Sergeant Wilson. Squads of men moved quickly from hootch to hootch, probing the walls with bayonets, banging rifle butts on the earthen floors. Several of the roofs had collapsed and inside weeds grew in the bright light flooding through the holes. Food jars were overturned. A rusted Coca-Cola can rolled out onto the ground.