Gustav Hasford - The Short-Timers

Rafter Man says, "I will?"

Mr. Payback takes a few hits off the joint and then passes it to Chili Vendor. "I used to be an atheist, when I was a New Guy, a long time ago..." Mr. Payback takes his Zippo lighter out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Rafter Man. "See? It says, 'You and me, God--right?'" Mr. Payback giggles. He seems to be trying to focus his vision on some distant object. "Yes, nobody is an atheist in a foxhole. You'll be praying."

Rafter Man looks at me, grins, hands the lighter back to Mr. Payback. "There sure is a lot of stuff to learn."

I'm whittling a piece of ammo crate with my K-bar jungle knife. I'm carving myself a wooden bayonet.

Daytona Dave says, "Remember that gook kid that tried to eat the candy bar? It bit me. I was down in the ville, scarfing up some orphans and that little Victor Charlie ambushed me. Ran up and bit the shit out of my hand." Daytona holds up his left hand, revealing a little red crescent of tooth marks. "The kids says that our chop-chop is number ten. I bet I get rabies."

Chili Vendor grins. He turns to Rafter Man. "There it is, New Guy. You'll know you're salty when you stop throwing C-ration cans to the kids and start throwing the cans at them."

I say, "I got to get back into the shit. I ain't heard a shot fired in anger in weeks. I'm bored to death. How are we ever going to get used to being back in the World? I mean, a day without blood is like a day without sunshine."

Chili Vendor says, "No sweat. The old mamasan that does our laundry tells us things even the lifers in Intelligence don't know. She says that in Hue the whole fucking North Vietnamese army is dug in deep inside an old fortress they call the Citadel. You won't come back, Joker. Victor Charlie is gonna shoot you in the heart. The Crotch will ship your scrawny little ass home in a three-hundred-dollar aluminum box all dressed up like a lifer in a blouse from a set of dress blues. But no white hat. And no pants. They don't give you any pants. Your friends from school and all of the relatives you never liked anyway will be at your funeral and they'll call you a good little Christian and they'll say you were a hero to get wasted defeating Communism and you'll just lie there with a cold ass, dead as a mackerel."

Daytona Dave sits up. "You can be a hero for a little while, sometimes, if you can stop thinking about your own ass long enough, if you give a shit. But civilians don't know what to do, so they put up statues in the park for pigeons to drop turds on. Civilians don't know. Civilians don't want to know."

I say, "You guys are bitter. Don't you love the American way of life?"

Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister. Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."

I grunt. "There it is."

With my magic marker I "X" out a section of thigh on the nude woman outlined on the back of my flak jacket. The number 58 disappears. Fifty-seven days and a wake-up left in country.

Midnight. The boredom becomes unbearable. Chili Vendor suggests that we kill time by wasting our furry little friends.

I say, "Rat race!"

Chili Vendor hops off his canvas cot and into a corner. He breaks up a John Wayne cookie. In the corner, six inches off the desk, we've nailed a piece of ammo crate to form a triangular pocket. There's a little hole in the charred board. Chili Vendor puts the cookie fragments under the board. Then he snaps off the lights.

I toss Rafter Man one of my booties. Of course, he doesn't know what to do with it. "What--"

Shhhh.

We wait in ambush, enjoying the anticipation of violence. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Then the Viet Cong rats crawl out of their holes. We freeze. The rats skitter along the rafters, climb down the screening, then hop onto the plywood deck, making little thumps, moving through the darkness without fear.

Chili Vendor waits until the skittering converges in the corner. Then he jumps out of his rack and flips on the overhead lights.

With the exception of Rafter Man we're all on our feet in the same second, forming a semicircle across the corner. The rats zip and zing, their tiny pink feet clawing for traction on the plywood. Two or three escape--so brave, or so terrified--in such situations motives are immaterial--that they run right over out feet and between our legs and through the deadly gauntlet of carefully aimed boots and stabbing bayonets.

But most of the rats herd together under the board.

Mr. Payback takes a can of lighter fluid from his bamboo footlocker. He squirts lighter fluid into the little hole in the board.

Daytona Dave strikes a match. "Fire in the hole!" He pitches the burning match into the corner.

The board foomps into flame.

Rats explode from beneath the board like shrapnel from a rodent grenade.

The rats are on fire. The rats are little flaming kamikaze animals zinging across the plywood deck, running under racks, over gear, around in circles, running faster and faster and in no particular direction except toward some place where there is no fire.

"GET SOME!" Mr. Payback is screaming like a lunatic. "GET SOME! GET SOME!" He chops a rat in half with his machete.

Chili Vendor holds a rat by the tail and, while it shrieks, pounds it do death with a boot.

I throw my K-bar at a rat on the other side of the hootch. The big knife misses the rat, sticks up in the floor.

Rafter Man doesn't know what to do.

Daytona Dave charges around and around with fixed bayonet, zeroing in on a burning rat like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. Daytona follows the rat's crazed, erratic course around and around, over all obstacles, gaining on him with every step. He butt-strokes the rat and then bayonets him, again and again and again. "That's one confirmed!"

And, as suddenly as it began, the battle is over.

After the rat race everyone collapses. Daytona is breathing hard and fast. "Whew. That was a good group. Real hard-core. I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack."

Mr. Payback coughs, grunts. "Hey, New Guy, how many confirmed did you get?"

Rafter Man is still sitting on his canvas cot with my boot in his hand. "I...none. I mean, it happened so fast."

Mr. Payback laughs. "Well, sometimes it's fun to kill something you can see. You better get squared away, New Guy. Next time the rats will have guns."

Daytona Dave is wiping his face with a dirty green skivvy shirt. "The New Guy will do okay. Cut him some slack. Rafter ain't got the killer instinct, that's all. Now me, I got about fifty confirmed. But everybody knows that gook rats drag off their dead."

We all throw things at Daytona Dave.

We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.

Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their hootch to pay their respects.

Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen. Confirmed."

I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."

I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the rat and I kiss it.

Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to Rafter Man.

Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.