Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

The Huey settled with a bump onto a huge red cross. A team of businesslike specialists removed the door gunner from the floor. The pilot came around to shake Griffin’s hand. “Fine work,” he said. “You ever want a job with us, let me know. We got plenty of openings.”

A medic led Griffin to an unoccupied bed and a pair of clean fatigue pants that actually fit. He collapsed into dreamless nothingness until the following noon when a doctor with smudged glasses taped to his nose and what looked like a butcher’s smock tied around his waist woke him up shouting, “Everyone to surgery ASAP.” Griffin stumbled outside and hours later located a Marine Chinook bound for Saigon with half a dozen Marine officers in starched khakis, a squad of armed teenagers representing the army of the Republic of South Vietnam, and a couple families of refugees with a seven- or eight-year-old boy carrying a bamboo cage containing a white duck that, obviously frightened and air sick, quacked and dribbled gray shit all over the floor throughout the flight. One of the Marines said the duck was probably the boy’s sister.

Griffin could never have been completely prepared for Saigon. It had been too long, months in public time, busy eons by the private clock, since he had seen a building taller than one story, a music store, a glass window, the name of a restaurant in neon script, private cars in all shades of paint, and sidewalks crowded with civilians untied and uncaged. In his present state his eyes, unable to process the color and clamor, simply transformed the city scenery into undemanding pasteboard. He was still so tired. He had hitched a ride into town with an efficient looking PFC who said he worked as a courier at MACV. He drove the jeep like a blind man. Traffic was a chaotic jumble of army vehicles, taxis, civilian automobiles, motor scooters, and bicycles weaving among each other with aggressive abandon. The street hovered perpetually on the edge of accident. A flinching Griffin kept himself braced stiff-armed against the dash. Even on paved road the jeep continued moving in and out of mysterious clouds of white dust that left a metallic taste in the mouth. The air streaming in over the dirty windshield reeked of burning rubber that worsened the further on they drove as if the center of the city must contain a large lot piled high with old smoldering tires.

“I hate this fucking place,” said the PFC suddenly, his first words since leaving Tan Son Nhut. For emphasis he leaned on the horn. A gaggle of bicycles dispersed before their hood, but one bike, unable to move quickly enough because of the crush of traffic to its side, was caught by the jeep’s bumper and bike and rider went down. There was a thump and a crunch. The jeep rolled on.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Griffin, turning around to look, “aren’t you going to stop and see if he’s hurt?”

The PFC glanced in the mirror. “He’s okay,” he said.

Behind them an adolescent boy limped to the curb dragging a wreckage of pedals and spokes.

“You could be a little more careful,” said Griffin.

“I don’t think so,” said the PFC. “That’s the third accident this month for me. And I’m the best driver in the shop.”

They passed a theater on Griffin’s side, the line already a block long. A giant billboard showed men in thick mustaches and bandoliers atop galloping horses and bronzed women.

“What is it,” asked Griffin, “a kind of office contest? Wall chart, little stars pasted next to your names, winner gets a case of beer at the end of the month, something like that?”

“Hey,” said the PFC. “I didn’t have to give you a ride.”

“Want me to get out?”

Silent, the PFC drove on with furious energy, working the gear-shift like he was banging a stick around a box.

Suddenly the jeep swerved to the right, skidded to a halt outside a tall gray building with bars on the windows. Faded crimson letters above the door spelled PARADISE HOTEL.

“Thanks for the ride,” said Griffin, rubbing his knee. The jeep screeched back into traffic, scattering bicycles and pedestrians right and left.

On the sidewalk in front of the hotel lay a beggar wearing only a pair of khaki shorts. He dragged himself over to Griffin with his right arm, his one remaining limb. On his head was a steel helmet riddled with holes which he took off and held up like a bowl. He appeared to be about twenty years old. Griffin gave him five dollars in MPC, a violation of currency restrictions. Monetary transactions with nationals were supposed to be conducted in piasters. Now this beggar could scuttle around the corner into the alley beside the hotel, hand the bill over to the waiting VC agent who would use it to purchase arms or inflate the already blimplike economy. “Hey,” said Griffin, calling the man back, “here’s another five.” The man raised his one arm, tossed Griffin a salute.

“Okay,” said Griffin, “okay, okay.”

The lobby of the Paradise looked like a fancy washroom, bushy green plants in large ceramic vases, a mirrored wall, a pair of beaming Vietnamese attendants in black tie and white shirts. To the right was the entrance to the dining room where Griffin glimpsed customers reading leather-bound menus and eating off porcelain plates with shiny silver utensils. The snowy white tablecloths seemed as exotic to him as shoes to an aborigine.

“Monsieur?” ventured a voice. “May I help you?”

Behind the polished wood desk a bald Vietnamese with no eyebrows offered him the register and a fountain pen.

“Yes, could you tell me please which room Chief Warrant Officer Ernest Winkly is in?”

“Oh,” exclaimed the clerk, recognition and mirth lighting his black eyes. “Monsieur Boom-Boom.” He called over to the black ties. “Monsieur Boom-Boom.” Everyone laughed heartily.

“Excuse me, please. You are Monsieur Grief-on?”

“Yes.”

The clerk reached under the counter, handed Griffin a folded piece of paper. “For you,” he said.

It was a message from Captain Patch: Winkly here. Return at once.

After the horse has broken its leg, the canteen run dry, the sandstorm obliterated the trail, there comes a moment when, watching the rattlesnake that has just punctured your leg slither off under a rock, you lay yourself down on the pebbly ground, thinking Thank God, now I can get some rest. Griffin refolded the note, returned it to the clerk, nodded politely, and walked back out of the Paradise. The beggar was gone. Off spending his newly acquired wealth on shiny needles and uncut dope no doubt.

Griffin took a cab back to Tan Son Nhut. The driver, suspiciously enthusiastic, grinned repeatedly at Griffin in the rearview mirror, exposing one brown tooth, and shouting, “Hokay, hokay.” Three blocks from the hotel he produced a joint apparently rolled in tarpaper, which he proceeded to savor with one hand while the other maneuvered the cab recklessly through the city. Still, despite distractions, he was a better driver than the PFC, missing by several feet a procession of school girls and a street vendor whose overturned cart displayed delicacies resembling fried fetuses. The closest accident occurred when the cab was sideswiped by a blue busload of Air Force personnel jeering from behind screened windows. Griffin, convinced his driver was either a lunatic who understood no English and would keep driving until they ran out of gas or a cunning thief on a mission to deliver one hapless American GI to a garage full of thugs with tire irons on the outskirts of the city, searched the streets for familiar landmarks from his ride in. He recognized nothing. The driver looked at him in the mirror. “Hokay,” he said, laughing. “Hokay.” Griffin saw himself stripped and bruised, picking his teeth out of a puddle of oil. He was just about to order the driver to stop the cab when they rounded a corner and there, spread miraculously before them, was the fenced expanse of Tan Son Nhut. Griffin was so relived he overtipped generously. “Hokay, hokay.” He hadn’t been in Saigon more than an hour and a half but at least there were two residents who would remember his visit.