“This is not war. It‘s—”
“It’s okay. There’s always going to be some innocent victims.”
The man talked on, but his voice became silent. The little girl’s stark body, half charred death, half pink life, leaned against the wire, almost free. Suddenly I heard ringing.
I awoke hearing my voice echoing off the far wall. The phone was ringing on the night table.
“Hel—” I gulped. “Hello?”
“Your call to the United States will be coming through in fifteen minutes,” said the voice.
The call! Of course. The call to Patience. “Thank you.”
“We wanted to make sure you would be here for the call, Mr. Mason.”
“Yes. Yes, thank you. I’m here.”
The phone clicked off and I held the buzzing receiver in my hand for a minute before setting it back on its cradle. I shivered as an air-conditioned breeze chilled me. The sheets were wet and twisted.
I lit a cigarette with shaking hands and sat up to wait for the call. I was having these dreams almost every night. I began to feel better. I was awake, after all, away from the dreams.
After four miserable nights, I decided to cut my leave short and return to Vietnam. The leave had been a disaster. Gary had come to Hong Kong with me, but he left the second day for Taipei. I had bragged about the women there too convincingly, and the call girls in Hong Kong were too experienced, too professional, and too expensive. Resler packed up and left. I was going to follow, but when I tried to get a ticket to Taipei, I was refused because I was a serviceman on leave to Hong Kong, and that’s where I’d have to stay. I don’t know how Gary slipped through the red tape, but I was alone.
I had not the slightest desire to hire a call girl; I really just wanted to talk.
“I love you. Over,” I said.
“I love you too. Are you okay? Over,” said Patience. Her voice struggled weakly through the hiss and whistles of the radiophone connection.
“I’m fine. They say I won’t have to fly any more combat assaults when I get back. Over.”
“No?”
“That’s what—”
“The party has not said ‘over,’ sir.”
“Oh,” said Patience. “Over.”
“That’s what the doc said when I left. He said that the Prospectors were going to put their last-month short-timers on ass-and-trash missions. Over.”
“Oh, I hope they keep their word. Over.”
“They will. These guys are not the Cav. Over.”
I listened to the howl and echoes of interfering electronics, sorting out the words. Patience, my son, Jack, and my family had become phantoms. They were dreams, too. When we finally stopped talking, when her voice melted into the static, the tenuous link to my home fantasies broke. “Over,” I said.
And there I sat, on the edge of the bed, just like after every other dream.
It was very similar to my hometown, Delray Beach. There was a beach; it ran north and south. There were palm trees, sandy roads, salt smells, girls playing in bikinis, and quietly rolling surf. It was late afternoon, almost dusk, and the sun glinted off parts of the heavy wire screen that surrounded the terrace. My table stood near the front of the terrace, allowing me the best view.
Voices chattered quietly behind me. Vietnamese sounds lovely even if you can’t understand it.
It did feel like home.
Golden dolls, wearing bikinis so brief they were ribbons of modesty, strolled with pale GIs. As it got darker, the beach crowd broke up, drifting into the town.
“Manh gioi khoung? How are you?” said the smiling waitress. I noticed her Vietnamese glance of nerves and felt comforted by familiar behavior. “What would you like?” she asked.
I would like to jump you like a rabbit. “I’ll have another beer, please,” I said. The girl prompted immediate lust. Perhaps I could find solace in solace. My conscience immediately began to pummel me with shots of raw guilt, delivered at high voltage. “Monster!” it railed. “Married. Short-timer. And not only that, but you’re just getting over the clap!” It was mercilessly rational. I succumbed to its barbs.
The waitress bowed and left to get the beer. I smiled as I watched my phantom flit naked from me to the girl, to hump her happily while she leaned over the bar.
She returned, beaming, friendlier, and served my beer. Her arm brushed mine and I felt warm electricity flicker between us. My mind savored salty-sweet smells and orgasmic contractions, hearing her voice as an echo. “Would you like…”
Her voice was obliterated by the sudden ripping, zipping howl of a stylus skidding across a record. She dropped to the floor and rolled under a table.
At the sound of crashing chairs and breaking glassware, I turned and saw the Vietnamese taking cover. Five men crouched low behind the bar. I sat alone on the porch and took a sip of beer. The girl knocked over a chair as she crawled toward the back of the porch.
All because of a stylus skidding across a record? Damn, they were even jumpier than I was. I looked around the bar. Nothing was happening. There was no fight. People peered from behind the bar and tables, looking up front. It had just been the sound that spooked them. They had absolutely no confidence that their city was secure. They knew the facts. The VC were everywhere.
Cowards, I thought. Anger flushed through me. I felt betrayed, revolted. They’re really afraid.
For five minutes I had complete quiet as I watched the surf foam glow in the gathering dusk. At the end of that time, the bar, the customers, the porch, came back to life.
I paid my tab and walked to the room I had rented.
I sat against the wall on the bed, thinking about the panic at the bar. The old question “Why don’t the Vietnamese fight the VC like the VC fight the Vietnamese?” seemed very valid. Without the support of the people, we were going to lose. And if they didn’t care, why were we continuing to fight? Surely the people who were running this fiasco could see this, too. The signs were obvious. Plans leaked to the VC, reluctant combatants, mutinies in the ARVN, political corruption, Vietnamese marines fighting Vietnamese marines at Da Nang, and the ubiquitous Vietnamese idea that Ho would eventually win.
I stabbed a cigarette into an ashtray. Without American financial support and military support, the South Vietnamese government would have failed long ago, as a natural result of its lack of popular support.
The whole problem settled on my shoulders. In a few hours, I was going to voluntarily go back into battle and risk my scrawny neck for people who didn’t care.
I stayed up and smoked cigarettes all night. I tried to sleep, only to jerk awake, sitting in bed, listening.
I was back at Dak To, home, the next day. Here, the war was simple. We did our job well, beat the VC almost every time, and kept them on the run. Here, I was a member of the honorable side. The reluctant, cowardly Vietnamese were not visible to remind me that they didn’t care. I could go on believing that simply by killing more and more Communists we would win. When I crawled into my cot my first night back, I fell instantly asleep.
The next day, Gary and I sat on the deck of our Huey waiting for the grunts to finish eating. Their platoon was one of several that were pushing toward the west, scouting for the VC. We joked in familiar surroundings.
“You shoulda come, you know,” said Gary.
“I tried, asshole. They wouldn’t let me. How did you get a ticket?”
“I just went to the ticket counter and bought it.”
“Well, you must have looked like a civilian, because they wouldn’t sell me anything.”
“It’s really a shame. You missed Grass Mountain.”
“What’s that?”
“Grass Mountain is packed with geisha houses. Wanna know what it’s like to go to a geisha house?”