his bucket of a beak.
The Irishman watched the pelican make his catch. He was making a fishing lure. He had set up a
.small vise on the edge of a table and was carefully twining and ret wining nylon, hook, and feathers,
weaving them into a shiny lure. He had stopped to watch the pelican, keeping the line taut so it would
not ravel.
He was a big man with one of those florid Irish faces that would look fifteen years old until he was
ninety. A few lines grooved its smooth surface, but not enough to mar his youthful, carefree
expression.
There was very little traffic along the bay. A few shrimp boats had gone out against the rising tide
arid a weekend sailor was trying, without much success, to get a lackluster wind in the sails of his
boat a couple of hundred yards away. Otherwise it was so quiet he could hear what little wind there
was rattling the marsh grass.
This was the Irishman‟s love, his escape from a business he neither liked nor understood. He felt like
a misfit, a Peter Principled gunman forced to act like a businessman. O‟Brian liked to settle disputes
his own way. Negotiating con fused him. But here he was king; he was alone and free, master of
himself and his tiny domain, for O‟Brian had mastered the secrets of fishing. It was one of the few
things he did well, and he loved the sport with a consummate passion
When the phone rang, he snapped, “Damn!” under his breath and weighed down the loose end of the
lure with a metal clamp before he went into the main room of the cabin to answer it.
“It‟s me, boss, Harry,” the gravelly voice on the other end of the line said. “He‟s through eating
breakfast. You sure you don‟t want I should follow him out, make sure he isn‟t bringin‟ company?”
“I said alone.”
“He could bring company.”
“Now, he won‟t do that.”
“You never know with these Feds.”
“He don‟t have nothin‟ on me,” the Irishman said.
“He‟s pretty quick, this guy.”
“Just camp out at Benny‟s down the road. I need ya, I holler.”
“Want I should ring once and hang u when he leaves?”
“Good idea.”
“Everything calm out there?”
“No problem. Coupla shrimp boats went by. Nobody‟s been down the road. There‟s some jerk out
here trying to get his sailboat back to the city marina, which is kinda funny.”
“What‟s so funny about it?”
“There ain‟t no wind.”
“Well, don‟t take no chances.”
“Don‟t worry. You just hang out there at Benny‟s, have a coupla beers, come on in when you see him
leave.
“Gotcha.”
They hung up and the Irishman switched on the radio and walked out onto the deck for a stretch. The
sailboat had drifted four hundred feet or so west of the shack, toward the city, and the sailor was
trying vainly to crank up his outboard, a typically sloppy weekend sailor in a floppy white hat, its
brim pulled down around his ears. The putz, he thought, was probably out of gas. But he had learned
one thing since discovering the sea—sailors helped each other.
He cupped his hands and yelled:
“See if you can get it over here, maybe I can help.”
The sailor waved back. He shoved the submachine gun under his Windbreaker near his feet, took an
oar from the cockpit of the sailboat, and began to paddle toward the Irish man. ...
38
FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE FIRST SIX
The twelfth day: Today I killed a man for the first time. I have a hard time talking about this. What
happened, we‟re moving on this village, which was actually about a dozen hooches in this rice field
seven or eight kliks downriver. This village was at the bottom of some foothills. There were rice
paddies on both sides and a wide road lined with pepper trees anti bamboo kind of dead-ending at it.
Before we start down, Doe Ziegler, our medic, hands me a couple of buttons “What are these for?” I
ask “Dex,” he says. “Make you see better, hear better, move faster. lust do it.” So I popped the speed.
It took about twenty seconds o kick my ass. I‟ve never had speed before. I felt like taking on the
village all by myself I mean, I was ready‟
We go down toward it, two squads on each side in the rice paddies, because they make good cover,,
and we have the Three Squad backing us up in reserve. We go iii on the left and the One Squad on the
right. They take the first hit. The VC opens up with mortars and machine-gun fire and starts just
chewing them up. One guy, the whole top of his head wert off. The noise was horrendous; I couldn‟t
believe the racket.
The lieutenant runs straight toward the village with his head down just below the edge of the ditch
and I‟m right behind him. The radio man is having trouble calling up the reserve platoon because
we‟re in this little valley and the reception is for shit, so the lieutenant sends back a runner an4 then
he says, “Fuckin‟ gooks are eating One Squad up, we got to take them,” and he goes out of the paddy
and runs for this stretch of bamboo which is maybe twenty yards from the gooks and rue still right
behind him.
That tips Charlie and they start cutting away at us. They‟re shooting the bamboo down all around u,
just cutting it off. Then I see this VC in his black pajamas and he‟s got his head out just a little,
checking it out, and I sight him in and, ping! he goes down, just throws his hands up in the air and
goes over backward. Then another one comes running over and he‟s shooting as he comes, only he‟s
aiming about ten meters to my left and I drop him. Then I see the machine gun, which is in the dirt out
in front of the first hooch, and there‟s two of them and they‟re just cutting One Squad to shit, so I run
u through the bamboo and get in position and blitz them both, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!