Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

The thump of the landing gear locking down jolted him awake. Da Nang, Marines, whores, bands of five-year-old beggars. Parked on the ground amid all the armed clutter of Phantom fighters and Cobra helicopters was a massively incongruous jumbo jet blue-lettered PAN AM. In a matter of hours this airliner would screech down into Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Bangkok, or some other mythical R&R spa too distant to imagine. In the open doorway an awkwardly poised stewardess tried to keep the wind from lifting her skirt.

Inside the passenger terminal, in addition to the usual airport confusion, a group of Australians in bush hats and tailored camouflage fatigues, their plastic chairs drawn into a cozy circle, were singing in accented English and to harmonica accompaniment a bawdy version of “Home On The Range.” Griffin headed straight for the counter. The Air Force sergeant here said there was nothing for him until possibly 1000. Griffin stretched himself out across several uncomfortable chairs and closed his eyes. The terminal sounded like the noise inside a sea shell. At 1000 the Air Force sergeant told him to come back at 1300. At 1300 he said to try again in an hour or two. Griffin wandered outside to watch the jets take off, plumes of fire and soot spurting from their tails. In a rusty trash barrel he found half a magazine. After Hours With Your Senator—A Lively Guide To D.C. Sex Clubs. Enhance Your Pleasure With Our Amazing Erection Extender. Debbie’s Favorite Foods are Shredded Coconut And Bananas. At 1500 there were still no vacant seats headed south, but around back there might be an army helicopter with some room leaving for Chu Lai in about twenty minutes. The overhead blades had just begun to turn when Griffin found the Huey parked behind a row of F-4 revetments. Holding onto his cap, he ran up in a crouch. “Chu Lai?” he screamed. The door gunner nodded. Griffin clambered aboard. The helicopter seemed to tighten for a moment as if screwing itself into the ground, then it leaped into the air like a grasshopper.

There was only one other passenger, a Spec Four with black rimmed glasses and pimples on his chin who looked almost twelve. He and Griffin nodded, mouthed “Hi” to one another. The engine noise made any conversation other than an exchange of shouts impossible. Griffin held his cap in his hands. The sharp humid wind roaring in through the open doorway stung his eyes and turned even the short strands of hair the army permitted him into tiny whips across his forehead. The chief, of course, had been chauffeured nonstop to Tan Son Nhut in Captain Fry’s Mohawk. Griffin wondered if he had caught the clap yet. The door gunner, in large polished boots, one-piece flight suit, thick gloves, head surrounded by a huge bulbous helmet, face masked behind a sun visor, sat on the floor, feet dangling above the skid outside. He looked like a robot or the man from the fumigation company.

The door gunner sat as still as an artist’s model, studying the squares of flooded paddy below with the concentrated intensity of a chess master. He made Griffin nervous. What did he see? What was he expecting to see? What was he waiting for? Griffin looked down. It all seemed pretty routine to him, farms, roads, trees, hootches, the same routine in fact that was forever erupting into violent surprise. Idyllic valley one moment, howling badlands the next. The door gunner’s job obviously was to watch, to detect quickly the signs of impending metamorphosis, his care a matter of SOP, not an omen. Reasoning so, Griffin coaxed himself into an alert relaxation, allowed his body to settle into the webbing of his seat. He was only a passenger anyway, there was nothing he could do. His fate in other hands, he was soon asleep again, eased into unconsciousness by the magic fingers of Bell Helicopter.

When he woke Pimplechin was staring at him with an annoyingly clinical expression. The same dreary landscape was moving endlessly past the door. He might have been out for a minute or an hour. How far from Chu Lai? The door gunner, now semierect, leaned easily in the doorway as if he were a bus rider awaiting his stop. Griffin tapped him on the leg. The door gunner bent over to listen, then seemed to lose his balance on the slippery vibrating floor. Griffin reached up to steady him but just as his hands touched the door gunner’s arm and chest the man fell clumsily across Griffin’s lap. “Whoops,” said Griffin, smiling, and saw in the dark sun visor of the door gunner’s helmet a modest white-rimmed hole radiating silver cracks across the unrecognizable reflection of Griffin’s horrified face pushing the door gunner off his knees onto the floor. Quickly unbuckling his seat strap, he stood, looking about the small interior of the helicopter in frantic confusion as if he had lost something personal or forgotten something important. Across from him Pimplechin continued to sit quietly in his seat looking up at Griffin with an air of serene amusement. This person is insane, Griffin thought. The helicopter rocked hard to one side. Griffin held on to a handful of exposed wires overhead. The pilot, a chubby burr-headed warrant officer, was turned halfway around in his seat, waving his arm, and yelling something Griffin could not understand. The helicopter rocked again. Griffin’s body swayed back and forth. Pieces of paint and dust shook down into his eyes. Pimplechin, his unamused face now a marble gray, pointed to Griffin’s hand. Blood from somewhere was dripping off the tips of the fingers. There it is, he thought, it’s coming out and I can’t stop it. A sudden roll slammed his body painfully against the wall. The door gunner did not move. Pimplechin was trying to unbuckle himself, but his hands couldn’t seem to manipulate the lock. What the hell was the pilot shouting? Repel all boarders, it sounded like. Blood was pumping out of a white plastic hole. A thin rivulet was winding its deliberate way among the corrugations stamped into the metal floor. Griffin was still trying to remember. The helicopter shook and shook like a wet dog. In a moment the gears and all the bolts would come loose, trickle out the bottom in a runny metallic shit. If he could remember all of this would stop. The engine sounded like gravel in a blender. Griffin heard a voice in his ear, “Waste those motherfuckers, oh goddamn goddamn,” and his hands were shaking the machine gun and his arms were shaking too and Pimplechin shaking up and down beside him was helping to feed the belt into the gun that shook to the trees, the paddies, the huts, the bugs on the ground, the bugs everywhere, shaking and shaking, his own parts coming loose, sliding around like yolks in a pan, shaking the bolt out of the center of the world so a trillion agitated pieces come falling down like Christmas snow in a plastic ball in synchronized vibration until all the bugs were gone because the pilot had swung the damaged machine away to sputter along off the bone white coast above the unarmed sea. Griffin hunched over, heaving, unable to get enough air, his tongue turned to sand. He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you’re okay,” said Pimplechin. The pilot, again twisted around in his seat, held up a thumb. The floor was awash in red fluid as if a hydraulic line had burst. The wind screamed through the open doorway. Molded to the machine gun in front of him were a pair of ugly sculptures in wax, his hands. The crotch of his pants was wet. “You ever do that before?” asked Pimplechin. “No,” replied Griffin, wondering where he could find a clean pair before anyone else noticed. “I think you must have got at least two of them,” said Pimplechin. “Two what?” asked Griffin. Pimplechin punched him playfully on the shoulder. The red fluid flowed around Griffin’s feet and out the corner of the door, whipped to a spray by the wind. Pimplechin was squatting over the door gunner, feeling through his pockets. Then there was a wallet between his fingers and a wad of bills he slipped inside his boot. He looked up at Griffin and shrugged. Behind him a wall of green ocean water blocked the door. Griffin’s hands, bouncing up and down, remained locked about the gun all the way in to Chu Lai. Now and then he glanced with cold curiosity at the door gunner beneath him who lay in the most awkward position imaginable but so still and relaxed he might have been stretched out on the softest mattress in the world.