The thing had obviously been taken several days before, since it had turned a dark brown from its original yellow and had shrunk to the size of an infant’s. It was uncircumcised. Jackson wondered if all of them were like that. The smell of the thing was something he knew he would always remember.
Hale finally spoke, his voice shrill and uneven, “Get that thing off my table!”
“I want my R&R,” Light said, making no move toward the table.
“That’s just one,” Hale said. “I want you back out in the bush.”
Light took off his floppy bush hat and pulled his dogtag chain over his head. He threw it on the table. Jackson saw in the place of dogtags there was something strung on the chain looking like pieces of dried fruit. He realized that the sniper had taken his trophies and dried them in the sun, afterwards stringing them on the chain.
“Count ’em,” Light said. “There’s six. I took the fresh one on the ridge west of your camp three days ago. He was down in a spider hole. You need a recon, Major. There’re beaucoup NVA up there. One of these nights they’re gonna come down here and cut off yours.”
“I want goddamn bodies,” Hale said.
Light smiled and said, “You know, Major, once I had a company commander made us count smells. We’d shelled a bunker complex. Bodies buried under dirt and logs. So he made us sniff at the holes and cracks. Like a pack of rabbit dogs nosing a brush pile. We turned in them smells. Probably got himself a promotion out of it.”
“Bodies,” Hale said.
“Once these are dried in the sun they turn black as the inside of your asshole,” Light said. “No difference between a round eye and a gook dick. Americans’d be lot easier to kill than the dinks.”
The bulb began to fade, leaving Hale outside the circle of light. But Jackson could still see Light clearly. He was looking toward Hale, waiting for an answer. Hale was mad but was trying hard to control himself.
“In the morning,” Hale said. “There’s not a chopper available.”
Jackson took some slow, deep breaths as he thought of the NVA massing up on the ridge. Light would not be around to protect him.
“Then get one from Pleiku,” Light said.
“It’s a hot night,” Hale said. “The NVA are pushing hard up at Dak To.”
“Now,” Light said.
The bulb glowed bright again, so bright that Jackson wondered if it would explode from the sudden surge of power coming from the generator. Hale looked like he wished it would, so he would be protected from Tom Light by the darkness. In the glare Jackson saw every crease in the major’s face, the network of wrinkles around his eyes. Hale looked old, making Jackson think of his grandfather.
“You’ll have your chopper and your R&R, but I want you back here in three goddamn days,” Hale said. “Don’t plan to set foot in this camp.”
Light grinned and said, “There’s plenty NVA in the mountains. I’ll be back.”
“Get me General Morton’s headquarters. Put it on the secure net,” Hale said to Jackson.
Once Jackson had raised the general’s headquarters, he placed the transmission on a scrambler so that neither the Americans nor the enemy could eavesdrop on the conversation. Hale took over the radio and asked to speak to the general.
“Light’s here in my TOC, Sir,” Hale said. “He’s got his kills and wants to chopper out of here for R&R. My ships are gone. If the men find out he’s here, I could have a mutiny on my hands. I need a chopper for him now.”
“He can wait,” the general’s voice came over the speaker.
Hale said, “General, you sent him up here. I can’t protect the fence if my men mutiny.”
The general paused and said, “Goddamn it, Hale, you better not have a mutiny up there, or I’ll have your head. I sent him because he kills the enemy. He’s got more kills than your entire battalion. The fence is behind schedule. Those engineers haven’t strung enough wire to fence my backyard. If you’d do more killing and less worrying about Light, we’d have it built. He’ll have his chopper. Don’t call me again for something like this. Out.”
“You stay down here until the chopper comes,” Hale said to Light. “Jackson, get rid of those things.”
“Where?” Jackson asked.
“Burn, bury, throw ’em out in the wire,” Hale said. “Take that map too.”
Light went over to one of the dark corners and after propping the rifle up against the side of the wall squatted gook fashion.
Jackson stood by the map tripod and looked at Light’s trophies. He was not sure if he was going to be able to touch them.
“Leave the chain,” Light said.
Jackson unsnapped the chain and pushed the dried cocks off it. They had dried to the consistency of leather and did not smell, having lost almost all resemblance to what they once were. The fresh one was another matter. He did not want to touch it, so he wrapped it up in Hale’s map of Laos. Going out of the TOC, he went down by the latrine and with an entrenching tool dug a hole and buried them.
Back at the TOC he found Hale busy with his maps again and Light still squatting in the corner. Hale left the TOC, leaving Jackson alone with Light. Jackson sat at the radio and waited for Light to speak to him.
“The major wanted proof,” Light said.
Jackson turned to face the dark shape that was Light.
“You could’ve radioed.”
“Look, they were dead when I done it to ’em. A dick’s the only thing a man has got one of besides a nose that’s easy to take and carry. I met an Australian mercenary out there once who took noses. Thought I’d do something different.”
Jackson said nothing.
“They do worse than I’ve done,” Light said. “You can’t hurt the dead. That general the major was talking to sent some LRRP patrol up in those mountains around that big base camp. I made contact with ’em. Told ’em the dinks knew exactly where they was right from the time they rappelled down into the big trees out of the chopper. That goddamn lieutenant didn’t listen to a fucking thing I said. Next time I saw him was in the forest about a day after the dinks had ambushed ’em. Every man had his dick cut off and stuffed in his mouth. The lieutenant chewed his half in two. So I know they’d did it to him while he was still alive. Trying to spit it out to breathe, I guess.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone. I couldn’t mutilate bodies,” Jackson said.
“You’re no better than me, base camp soldier. We’re all here to kill the dinks.”
“You like it.”
“No, it’s just what I do.”
“You could live out in the bush until your tour is over.”
“They’d leave me out in the bush until the old Mississippi dried up unless I kill. Until all those troops started dying when they went out with me, I was like you. Waiting to go home. Counting the days. Then all those troops got wasted. Decided this fucking place was where I belonged. You belong here too. Just don’t know it yet.”
“I don’t belong here.”
Light laughed softly. “You got a long ways to go before you climb on that freedom bird.”
Light paused and sighed before he continued, “Maybe one day I’ll just quit. It ain’t the dinks or the bugs or the jungle rot or eating snakes and lizards. It’s being alone. Sometimes it’s like there’s nobody left in the world but me.”
Light’s talk about being lonely made Jackson uneasy. That made Light an ordinary man, not someone who could keep him alive.
“You got to come on R&R with me,” Light said.
“Hale won’t let me,” Jackson said. “I’ve only been in country two months.”
“You have to go. Hale’s RTO is gonna die. I saw it in the scope.”
Jackson gasped for breath.
“Calm down,” Light continued. “You’re going with me.”