Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

“A new motto: If you can’t trans-cend, you might as well descend. I’m scoping out the bottom here. Acquainting myself with our amazing mineral friends. Look at these specimens, for instance. Mass. Density. Permanence. Finality. Termination. Rock. Even the word conveys heft, a certain assurance. No loss of focus here.”

“But what happened to all this plant jive?”

“I don’t know. It’s not working out. Maybe plants are too creepy, swaying between worlds, mind/no-mind, like what’s going on there. It’s scary. Now a rock is something that has weathered the crisis. A rock is a survivor. Look at this stuff. No growth, no decay, no streaming fluids. The substance of walls, of fortification. Like to see a deuce and a half breach two solid feet of that.”

“Words, words, words.”

“I should, of course, experience the various species in their native habitat. Down in the damp bowels. I need to crisscross the globe from one mammoth cave to the next with my miner’s hat, my reinforced climber’s rope, my geologist’s hammer. We could go together, a spelunker’s holiday, visit all the world’s great holes.”

“Listen, why don’t you get yourself a nice window box, a package of seeds, and try growing something real for a change? Brighten up the room, test how green your thumb really is.”

“Exactly what Arden suggested.”

Arms braced against the sill, she leaned delicately forward, touched her puckered lips to the glass. In the middle of the frost, when she drew back her head, was one clear, precise, perfectly rounded O.

Deposition. Compaction. Stratification. Consolidation. Sediment.

Night. The moonlight was unusually strong. The long row of officers’ hootches sat silent and dark. For the space of several breaths nothing moved. The door to the first hootch—the CO’s—opened and Major Holly descended the steps, turned to his right, and began walking down the road toward the O club. Suddenly from the shadows between two hootches a figure leaped out at the major, knocking him to the ground. The attacker’s left hand stuffed a wad of cloth into the major’s mouth, the right hand rose and fell in mechanical strokes inserting and then withdrawing a large knife, perhaps a bayonet, into the hunched curl of the major’s back. Blood splashed freely all around. The attacker’s face was marked by a monstrous grin, visible even in the moonlight, an expression unchanged even as he ceased his stabbing, climbed off the major, and directed his attention and the violent movement of his hands to the major’s groin. The figure straightened up, looked around, and after wiping the blade on the major’s shirt, tucked it in his belt, and disappeared back into the shadow. The major’s right forearm outstretched on the ground before him twitched for a moment, fingers quivering like a spider’s legs, then stopped. The ground around the body darkened. The moonlight was unusually strong.

“Freaky,” said Griffin.

“The blood’s green paint,” Wendell explained. “He had rubbers filled with it taped under his shirt.”

“I hardly recognized Vegetable. Amazing the resemblance between him and the major. I never really noticed it before.”

“The filter helps.”

“And Simon. Who would have believed he was capable of such ferocity.”

“The camera’s an X-ray machine.”

They were locked inside Wendell’s hot cramped room for a special sneak preview of the rough cut.

“What’d you use for the knife? Looked like a real blade going in and out.”

“Sssssh. Attention to the film, please. Questions later.”

The film ran over four and a half hours. Griffin didn’t know whether it was this body-bruising length or the generous amount of refreshment he consumed during the showing, but when the wall finally went blank he wasn’t sure what he had seen.

“Well?” asked the director.

“Wendell, uh, this movie…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a mess.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I couldn’t make any sense out of it at all. I mean, there’s no beginning, no middle, no end. There’s no coherence. It just kind of settles over you. Like a musty tent.”

“You know nothing about cinema.”

“Okay, but was I hallucinating or was there really about five minutes in there tracking a cockroach across a floor?”

“It wasn’t just a cockroach.”

“And what was that egglike thing cracking open with the pus thing inside?”

“What do you think it was?”

“Sunset over the South China Sea?”

“Cute.”

“Hey, I liked the murder part and the scenes I was in.”

“They can be cut.”

“Wendell, I’m sorry.”

“The War in Vietnam: Philistines At Large.”

Dear Folks,

Not much time now. Just a note to let you know what’s happening. They’ve been sending me out on patrol the last couple weeks because of a shortage of infantry in our area. Seems the casualty rates have been climbing pretty high lately. Won’t bore you with the details of those excursions. Now they’ve put the entire base on 100% alert, which means we aren’t getting much sleep. A lot of activity at night, flares, some shooting every now and then, but nothing major so don’t worry. The CO says this sort of stuff happens occasionally and usually nothing comes of it. Just thought I’d write so if you saw anything in the paper about a big battle shaping up or something you wouldn’t worry. VC have only broken into this base once in its history. We know how to beat them now. Semper Fi. See you all in 87.

At 0218 one humid morning a high explosive artillery shell scheduled to leave a steel tube at Fire Base Ringgold for coordinates 619238 detonated instead in the air above 238619. Directly below, Vegetable, the night’s gate guard at the 1069th, was awakened by a clap of God’s hands and the hot spittle of his breath. Across the street the line of hootches known as Officer’s Row emptied in an instant; men in their underwear milled about in the darkness asking each other what had happened. Speed Graphic came out of the photo lab carrying a film canister that had been on a shelf no more than six inches from his elbow. There was a warm hole punched through the top and another exit hole in the bottom. “I’ve been hit,” cried Chief Winkly, pointing to the specks of blood on his shorts, and everyone laughed, more lurid details for his sex stories. Captain Marovicci had a circular bite taken out of the flesy part of his forearm. “This means another Purple Heart,” he said, “for the collection.” Lieutenant Tremble had to be waked up and told that he had just missed getting killed in his sleep. Everyone kept going over to Vegetable, who simply stood there silent and sheepish, not a scratch on him, and these officers kept rubbing his head and patting his butt. “Drunks and pot-heads,” exclaimed Sergeant Mars in wonder, “Drunks and pot-heads.” “Who’s missing?” asked somebody. “No one,” came an answer. “Aren’t we all here?” said someone else.

Then they discovered Lieutenant Mueller.

Peering over the round blue lenses of his sunglasses, Griffin examined the corroded thermometer hanging from a bent nail on the wall outside his hootch door. The painted scale of graduated lines and numerals, once glossy and distinct, had become pale and flecked with rust, the enamel blistered and peeling. Even in the bright surgical glare of high noon the temperature, if anyone cared enough to try, was difficult to read; beneath a clouded moon it was impossible.

Griffin reached into his pocket and pulled out a battered cigarette lighter engraved on one side with the initials F.T.A. and, on the other, a cartoon drawing of a dog lying blissfully supine along the peak of a doghouse. Below the picture was the caption: SCREW IT. Mueller’s lighter. Holding it aloft like Liberty’s torch, Griffin satisfied himself that the temperature still stood above the ninety-degree mark. “Wonderful,” he muttered. He paused a moment, then placed the flame directly under the bulb at the thermometer’s base and waited until the column of tinted alcohol climbed to the top of the glass stem and the narrow cylinder exploded. “Wonderful.”