“He was here all night, sir. He certainly was this morning when I came to work.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled.
The clerk flinched a little but said, “Was there something wrong with your room?”
“Some people tried to break into our room all night long, you fuck!” said Riker.
“Really? That’s strange,” said the clerk. “Did you call the desk?”
“Yes. Over and over,” I said.
“Well, possibly the phone is broken.”
“Even if the phone is broken,” I explained, “our room is at the most fifty feet from here. Nobody could have not heard that commotion last night.”
“I will inform the manager of this,” said the clerk. He looked at us quietly. His eyes told us he knew exactly what had happened last night and we could yell and scream and complain until doomsday. He was never going to admit it. We hoisted our bags and left.
Phan Rang is near the coast, about 160 miles south of Qui Nhon and 160 miles northeast of Saigon, but that’s not where I went first. First I signed in at the 12th Aviation Battalion’s camp near Nha Trang. Then I waited in a bar in a sweltering sea-level village and talked to a depressing, sallow, and lumpy engineer who worked for one of the many American companies in Vietnam.
“I hate it over here,” he said.
“Why don’t you go home?”
“Money’s just too damn good.” He swilled the last of his beer. “Besides, there’s no poontang at home like the stuff that lives over here. I got a bitch waiting for me back home.”
It all fit. Anyone who lived with Mr. Darkness had to be a bitch, and the only place in the world he’d get the poontang he wanted was where he was transformed into the Rich American Engineer. I nodded, but said nothing. He told me more about his job, his hooch, his lady, his stereo, his growing bank account. I almost fainted from boredom. At a lull in the drone I announced, “Gotta go.” The engineer nodded hazily and turned his snout back toward the barkeep. He tapped the mug on the bar and pointed sternly to it. “More,” he said.
The Huey landed on the sandy patch where I waited. The crew chief ran past me carrying a sack of mail to battalion HQ. I threw my gear on board and fished out my flight helmet.
“You’re Mason?” said the pilot. I nodded.
“Good. We’ll be leaving as soon as he gets back.” He pointed to the retreating crew chief.
I climbed into the idling Huey and smoked. It felt good to be back in a helicopter after wallowing around in air-force transports.
The crew chief returned, and the pilot lifted off through the swirling sand. As we moved forward, the wind felt cool against my skin.
Cam Ranh bay was the halfway point on the flight to the company. As we flew by, I saw scores of navy PBYs (seaplanes) anchored in the harbor. For the rest of the flight I had daydreams about owning a PBY and flying cargo in the Bahamas, or running a cross-Canada, lake-to-lake touring business.
When I saw the concrete buildings at the Phan Rang air-force base, I felt a moment of happiness. I was finally going to get to live like a human. But the Huey flew by the barracks and landed on a grassy field, a mile across the runway. I saw a familiar collection of dirt-covered, sagging GPs that I immediately realized was my new home.
The sun was red in the west and the ground was soggy. We squished across the field and left our chest protectors in a tent. The two pilots, named Deacon and Red, escorted me to the club.
“Well, well!” The major grinned endearingly. “Our second Cav pilot in two days.” Tall, dark-haired, and smooth-faced, he came over to me and shook my hand. “Welcome to the Prospectors. I’m the CO, and as you’ll find out, when I’m not around the boys call me Ringknocker.” The boys, about fifteen of them, sat around some tables in the bamboo-paneled, tin-roofed bar, their company’s club, and laughed. I nodded nervously, never having met a CO who was friendly.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“You looked me right in the eye when you said that.” He grinned. “That’s good. Shows you’re not afraid.” He turned around to the boys. “That’s good,” he said. They nodded. I wasn’t afraid, but I was suspicious. What did he want from me?
“First things first,” said Ringknocker. “Hey, Red, take Mason over to your tent. He gets the empty bunk there.” I started out the door with Red. “When you get your gear organized, come on back. Chow’ll be served in about a half hour, and then we can talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
He beamed.
The tent floor was rolling red dust, but there was a plywood platform next to my cot. I sat on the cot, which was already made, and looked around. Red was smiling at me from his cot. God, they don’t even have a floor, I thought. “Why do they call him Ringknocker?” I said.
“He’s a West Pointer, wears a class ring.”
“Ah.” I had never met one before. Now his aggressive, cordial manner seemed appropriate. “Seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is. Lot better than our last CO. Nobody liked that prick. That’s why he woke up one night with a knife sticking out of his chest.” Red announced this as though that was the typical way in which incompetent commanders were dealt with.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. He was black and an asshole. We still don’t know who stuck him.”
“He was killed?”
“No. We got him to Cam Ranh just in time.” Red grinned. “It all turned out to the good, though. The replacement CO was Ringknocker, and he’s a natural leader. You know what I mean?”
Though I had never met one, I thought I knew what he meant.
The club I had been in was one half of the tin-roofed building. The other side was their mess hall. Dinner was served by Vietnamese waitresses to groups of four sitting at cloth-topped tables set with clean napkins and bronzeware. During the meal, Red told me that everything was paid for out of club dues and the meal tickets. “But don’t get used to it; we’re never here anyway.”
Before we finished, I heard guitar music coming from the club on the other side of the bamboo partition. The building shook as a Phantom F-4C hit its afterburner on takeoff. This was an air-force base. The runway was a quarter mile from the Prospectors’ camp. The Prospectors were a little band of gypsies camped in a vacant corner of the walled city.
A voice wailed from the club as Red and I walked in.
“Man, that’s horrible,” said Ringknocker.
“We can change it, but it’s a start,” said the singer, a captain named Daring.
“Haw, you can take that ditty and flush it, Daring, you asshole!” a pink-faced cherub of a man yelled from the bar. He was Captain King, otherwise known as Sky King.
“Okay, okay, goddamnit.” Daring glared at Sky King. “Let’s hear what you got.”
“What I got goes squish, squish between Nancy’s legs. Right, Nancy?” Nancy, a Vietnamese girl of twenty, had special permission to work at the bar until eight o‘clock. All other Vietnamese workers had to leave at dusk.
“Nooo! You bad man!” She blushed. To my knowledge Nancy never cooperated with any of Sky King’s vulgar requests, or anyone else‘s, either. She was beautiful, neat, efficient, and an excellent barmaid. To all advances she announced that she was married.
“Hey, Mason.” Ringknocker leaned back from his table when he saw me. “Do you recognize your comrade, here?” He pointed to a heavy-set man sitting beside him.
“No, sir, I don‘t,” I said. Ringknocker waved me over.
“This is Mr. Cannon, from…” He looked at Cannon.