Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

One morning, as most of the unit stood in insolent attitudes of at ease listening to the First Sergeant’s monthly medical lecture on the horrors of the Black Syph, Uncle Sam, the unit’s Vietnamese carpenter, a hammer dangling from his web belt, castoff combat boots curled up at the toes like a genie’s slippers, and his tool-box-toting crew crossed the dirt road before the tracking eyes of the entire formation and entered the orderly room. In a few minutes the morning calm was shattered by the sudden comical sounds of outrageous banging and sawing. The First Sergeant visualized the venereal enemy for them as a thousand-legged, hairy-bodied, sewer-colored bug with honed pincers and razor teeth that loved nothing better than dining out on nerve ends and soft tasty brain matter. After a while the noise stopped, an empty truck pulled up, and Uncle Sam and his crew began carting out of the orderly room basket after basket of fresh dirt. The First Sergeant advised everyone to check their underwear regularly and if it ever looked like someone had blown their nose in there it was time to visit the dispensary.

By noon the whole 1069th knew.

“It’s a tunnel,” reported Simon, “from the orderly room to his hootch, from his hootch to the command bunker. We’ll probably never see him again.”

And outside of the occasional office glimpse no one ever did. Their commanding officer had gone underground.

At Fire Base Hula everyone was a mole. The gun crews slept in stinking dirt caves and ate their cold C-ration meals squatting in the trenches. The last man to take a peek over the top had developed a third eye and seen paradise. At night there was the Orient Express roaring in, during the day random but incessant sniper fire. The surrounding hills and jungle were scoured constantly by foot patrols, battered by artillery, bombed by shrieking jets. Occasionally a deserted tunnel was found. There was a standing offer of a three day R&R in Da Nang for anyone who shot a sniper so binoculars and rifle scopes and protective vantage points to look through them from were at a premium. When the sun was at a certain angle the base twinkled with lens reflections. Everyone was tired of nights without sleep and monotonous days broken by cans of food that despite the label claims contained the same inedible gunk and of themselves and each other and the dirt and the smell and the unflagging tense expectation. Often there were outbreaks of crazy fire when a charging bush would be “wasted,” a moving shadow “waxed,” so no one was surprised one warm dawn when the weapons started chattering up and down the perimeter and the familiar frantic cry, “I see him, I’ve got one, I’ve got a gook over here!” and all the glasses turned until someone said, “My God, I think he’s white!” not even astonished yet because by now the legend of the American who lived in the bush and ran with the Cong was part of the general folklore of the war and if you could get three days in grubby Da Nang for zapping a gook what must be the reward for bagging an out-and-out traitor?

Everyone with a rifle started blasting away at the tree line.

“Wait a minute, wait a fucking minute! Hold your fire down there! I think I hear something.”

They lifted their fingers from the triggers and listened. What was that? It didn’t sound like gookese, it sounded like…

“Timothy Leary!” in a faint cry, “Eldridge Cleaver! Jimi Hendrix!”

They went out and brought the man in. He had obviously been out there for some time, fatigues filthy and torn, eyes bloodshot and ringed, right arm broken. He seemed to be okay mentally, he told them his name, rank, unit, the details of how he had come to be where they found him, but what he wanted to talk about most was the jungle, its aloofness, its beauty, its breathing life, and certain nonverbal secrets it had imparted to him through the intimacy of its soft green touch.

“Sure,” they said, “you’ll be fine now, a helicopter’s on its way.”

Above the clouds every day was merely the game light played with space, breaking, falling, the passage of purity across an inviolable expanse. Above the clouds the quick crisp air stung like antiseptic. Heights of pleasure in the sheer blue. Above the clouds the superior leader enjoyed a transient security.

Through the window a shaft of blazing sun struck The General in the chest, igniting a forest of purple-green palms on his yellowish-orange Hawaiian shirt, and rendering almost transparent his white white hand. The hand held a small plastic-wrapped package.

“Ham and cheese?”

Major Holly shifted in his seat and took the sandwich without comment.

“You’re disappointed.”

“No, no, not at all.”

“You were expecting cracked crab at the club with linen and Filipino waiters.”

“This is fine.”

The bread was cold and damp.

“I know I’d be damn well disappointed. I hate these picnic lunches.” The General poked around in the open cooler. “No Swiss.”

“Here, take the ham out of one of these.”

“No, it’s just as well. Had a couple bouts with air sickness last week that took me by surprise I can assure you.”

“That bad ear acting up again?”

“Feels like one of those damn Asian bugs that hunkers down and hangs on for weeks.”

“The Cochin crud.”

“Couple of congressmen at the Ambassador’s last night drank me under the table. Pitiful thing when you can’t even keep up with the goddamn civilians.”

“You always claimed politicians had no insides.”

“But they require such special handling.”

“Thick gloves and snake boots.”

“Complexities of strategic thought are not readily obtainable to the mind engaged in the rush for public office. Something to be said about The Opponent’s advantage in that area—no elections.”

“Is this plane bugged?”

The General smiled. “We sweep it daily. But as I was attempting to explain to the representatives around the pool this morning our program is winding down to a satisfactory close. Vietnamization is proceeding right on schedule, at least as well as could be expected within the parameters of our given circumstances. The ARVN have demonstrated conclusively they’ve got the stuff to do the job. The governments of our neighboring client states are firming up rather nicely, pointing out another lesson we might well ponder. Do you see The Opponent bogged down in the mire halfway around the world? Hell, no, he has his proxies do the bloody work for him. Hope to God we’ve managed to learn a few things from this affair.”

“What lessons do you think the congressmen took home with them?”

“Count your martinis and punt.”

The General laughed and the plane banked on a long slow curve to the left and then began descending through the clouds. “Here we are,” said The General. “This might be interesting.” He leaned toward the window. The clouds broke apart and Major Holly found himself once again confronting the long lean inescapable geography of South Vietnam. The mountains looked like a raggedy green tarp dropped over a body. The rice fields appeared flooded in mud.

“I was still in Vientiane when the call came this morning,” said The General. “Rushed out without changing my clothes. Spooked the congressmen. I think they thought we were invading North Vietnam.”

“Or vice versa.”

“I miss you at our briefings, Marty. No one has the gumption to speak to me that way. It’s become pretty boring.”

“Who says this outfit is the Fifth?”

“Nobody says anything. It’s a strong suspicion. Prisoner picked up in the vicinity yesterday morning claimed affiliation.”

“If his words were translated properly, if he wasn’t too scared to agree to everything, if he wasn’t a plant.”