Walter Myers: Fallen Angels

Nobody answered him. He nodded and left. “Who the hell is he to lay this shit on us?” Lobel asked. He seemed really mad.

Peewee told Walowick to open the letter.

“That’s not right,” Walowick said.

“I didn’t say the shit was right,” Peewee said. “I just said open the damn letter!”

Walowick opened it and Lobel read it.

Dear Sandra,

I have finally made a decision on the storm doors. I think we should go on and have the glass-paneled doors the way you want. We’ll put my den in that room, and I’ll put a good

strong door that we can lock between that and the hallway leading to the bedrooms. That way it’ll be safe even if someone does try to break in, and you can still have the doors the way you want them.

I don’t know what you should do about the paper boy. If he insists upon being a wise guy tell him not to deliver the damn paper anymore. The only reason to get the paper from him is to have something to read while you’re having breakfast.

Tell the kids I said hello. You were always better with words than me. Could you please tell them how much I love them? Try to explain that I love them as much as I love you and you know how much that is.

Things are going okay over here. I’m with some okay guys.

Love,

Ricky

I wished I had a wife and kids. I mean I really wished I had a wife and kids, somebody somewhere that loved me in a way I could look forward to going back to the World to. I knew Mama loved me, but I also knew when I got back, she would expect me to be the same person, but it could never happen. She hadn’t been to Nam. She hadn’t given her poncho to anybody to wrap a body in, or stepped over a dying kid.

Maybe she was worried about me the same way a wife would. I didn’t even know how a wife would worry. Gearhart wasn’t talking about her worrying, he was just talking about the paper boy. It was like she was away, and going through the crap. Maybe she was, in a way.

“Peewee!” I called over to where he was reading a paper. “You think I should tell my little brother about how things are over here?”

“You ain’t told him yet?”

“I keep trying to, but I can’t get it out right. You know, I don’t want him to think about it like you do when you go to the movies.”

“You gotta tell him it’s just the way things are in the movies,” Lobel called out from across the aisle. “You tell people what this is really like, and who’s going to come to the next war? They’ll have all the announcements out and everything, and nobody’ll show up.”

“Yeah, but you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that whatever I tell him he’s going to start thinking about heroes and stuff like that.” “Heroes?”

“You know, to a kid if you kill somebody and the somebody is supposed to be a bad guy, you’re a hero.”

“You ain’t killed nobody yet,” Peewee said. “They gots to be people before you can kill them. You think these Congs is people?”

“Yeah, sure they are.”

“What they names?”

“How the hell would I know their names?” “What they like to eat?”

“I don’t know.”

“See, they ain’t people to you yet. You figure out all that shit, what they names is, what they like to eat, who do the dishes and shit like that, then they people. Then you shoot them you killing somebody.”

“You’re talking technical stuff,” Lobel said. “You shoot some guy and he falls down, you’ve killed him. Pure and simple.”

“Hey, Lobel, if they was people to your ugly, overweight ass, you couldn’t kill them because you wouldn’t have the heart.”

“You couldn’t, either,” I said.

“Yeah, I could,” Peewee said. “I’m a damn animal, man.”

“Old Peewee is going to fight the next war all by himself.” Monaco was putting powder on his crotch.

“No, I’m going to go out get me some more seventeen-year-olds like us that don’t know nothing and turn them all into animals,” Peewee said. “And if I catch some dude putting face powder on his crotch like you doing, I’m gonna put him on point cause I know he ain’t got no sense.”

“This is supposed to keep the jock itch down,” Monaco said.

They argued about whether or not Monaco was enough of a jock to have jock itch with Peewee saying that Monaco was just about enough man to have jock tickle but not near enough man to have jock itch. I started writing to Kenny.

I just told him that the war was about us killing people and about people killing us, and I couldn’t see much more to it. Maybe there were times when it was right. I had thought that this war was right, but it was only right from a distance. Maybe when we all got back to the World and everybody thought we were heroes for winning it, then it would seem right from there. Or maybe if I made it back and I got old I would think back on it and it would seem right from there. But when the killing started, there was no right or wrong except in the way you did your job, except in the way that you were part of the killing.

What you thought about, what filled you up more than anything, was the being scared and hearing your heart thumping in your temples and all the noises, the terrible noises, the screeches and the booms and the guys crying for their mothers or for their wives.

And exciting. It was exciting, too. Sometimes, when we were waiting to make a move, to go into some area where we hadn’t been before, it was as if the time would never come soon enough. That’s what kept it going somehow, that and the idea that we were better than the Congs. It was that, the knowing that we would win, and the excitement that overcame the being scared. If we just did our job, we would be all right. But I didn’t think it was going to last forever. I was growing too tired. It was good that we were only in Nam for a year.

“Y’all children can relax now,” Peewee said as he stood in the doorway to the hooch. “This war only gonna last about three more days. We got us a body count of four hundred and thirty-three Congs in the last fight.”

“Four hundred and thirty-three?” Johnson looked up to see if Peewee was kidding.

“Yeah, every time we shoot one of them his cousin and his uncle die, too,” Peewee said.

Walowick and Monaco made jokes about the body count, but they ended when Captain Stewart told us that afternoon that we were going out again.

“This area is secure,” Captain Stewart was saying, “so they’re moving the First Cav up to the DMZ, and we’re going to be patrolling the region east of the firebase at the edge of the valley. The marines still control the firebase, so we just have to check on any buildups in the area.”

“Yo, do the Congs know that shit?” Peewee asked. “The Congs know everything,” Johnson said. “Yeah, but do they know they moving out the First Cav and putting us in there?”

“Two things, soldier,” Captain Stewart’s voice hardened. “The first was that I’ve already told you that the area is secure and the second is a question. Are you saying that the First Cav are better soldiers than we are?”

“Fucking A right!” Peewee said.

Captain Stewart’s face turned whiter as he went over to Peewee. “Where the hell is your pride, soldier?”

“In Chicago, sir. Can I go get it?”

Captain Stewart put Jamal back into medical again. Peewee said that he did it just so that Jamal could serve him coffee anytime he wanted him to. With Sergeant Dongan gone the squad was down to seven guys again. Gearhart was commanding our squad and two others. The other squads were down to five men each.

“You guys want to switch squads so they’re all equal?” he asked. “If you don’t you’ll probably be out more than the others.”