“We need to tell Hale not to get another RTO. Warn him,” Jackson said.
“Can’t do nothing about it. It’s in the scope. Done. Finished. You stay, you’ll get wasted.”
“You stay, keep me from getting blown away.”
“Nothing I can do. I saw it in the scope. It’s gonna happen.”
Hale came back into the TOC.
“Jackson’s going with me,” Light said.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Hale said.
Jackson thought of walking up the long concrete walk to Loretta’s house, she waiting on the porch, he trying hard to remember how she looked, her green eyes, red hair.
“Then I’ll take my R&R right here,” Light said. “I got three days this time instead of one night.”
Hale said, “Goddamn, you think you can do any fucking thing you want. Got lucky and walked away from those ambushes. Lucky is all you are. Goddamn dinks are kicking our ass at the fence. I need Jackson. I need more troops.”
“He goes, or I stay,” Light said.
Hale paused before he spoke.
“Jackson, you’re fucking crazy to go with him. Watch out or you’ll end up like Light. No friends. Everyone scared shitless of you.” And then he turned to Light. “I’m not afraid of you. You can die just like any other man. One of these days somebody’ll put a round through your head.”
“Plenty have tried,” Light said.
“Don’t set foot on this firebase again,” Hale said. “I’m giving the perimeter instructions to fire on you.”
Light laughed. “You’re supposed to be fighting the dinks, not me.”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Hale yelled.
Jackson followed Light up the steps. The chopper was waiting at the pad, and when it lifted off, Jackson wished he did not have to return to Desolation Row again. He saw Light sitting slumped in his seat, the rifle wrapped in the poncho.
What’s in that fucking scope, Jackson thought.
Then he thought of Hale’s new RTO and wondered who it was going to be. He hoped Hale picked a new man, someone Jackson did not know.
CHAPTER
9
At Vung, Tau they checked into a hotel. The town was on a plain between two mountains and looked out on the sea. They had both changed into new fatigues at Pleiku, and Jackson noticed Light kept his bush hat pulled down low over his eyes. Light now looked like an ordinary soldier, but even after a shower the jungle stink still remained on his body.
“Don’t write down my name,” Light said as Jackson started to sign the register.
So Jackson wrote only his own name but the Vietnamese clerk at the desk did not give them the key.
“You name please, sir,” the clerk said and smiled, offering the pen to Light.
Jackson took the pen and wrote, Melvin Hale. The clerk looked at the signature and handed over the key.
“Welcome to Vung Tau, Mr. Hale,” the clerk said to Light.
Light grinned.
“First we get something to eat,” Light said. “Next we’ll hit the beach. Then find some girls.”
On a terrace at the USO they ate steak and drank cold beer. Across the street was a school, the yard filled with children at recess. Jackson had noticed no one was carrying weapons except for security people. But Light still had his rifle wrapped in a poncho. It leaned against one of the extra chairs. Jackson had learned from Light that Vung Tau was a kind of free zone, and the VC left the town alone, seldom mounting any rocket or mortar attacks. Occasionally there was a kidnapping or an assassination.
When they had ridden from the airfield on the bus, with grenade screens over the windows, Jackson saw two story houses painted in pastel colors. Light told him there were big villas outside of town, built by Saigon politicians and generals who were growing rich off the war. The larger houses in town all had walls built around them topped with bits of broken glass. Many had RPG screens and concertina wire attached to the top of the walls. In the compounds roses grew, but they all looked withered and in need of water. Pepper and eucalyptus trees were planted in rows along the streets. The power poles were like those in an American town, making Jackson think that Vung Tau could be mistaken for a small southern town. Light pointed out the smaller Vietnamese poles which were no longer in use beside them.
Jackson noticed a group of Vietnamese standing on the street and staring toward their table. One of them was an old man with a beard who led a little girl by the hand. When they saw Jackson looking at them, they smiled and walked away.
“What do those people want?” Jackson asked Light.
“Sell us something,” Light said.
The old man and the little girl did not return. When they left the USO Jackson felt good, a little drunk from the beer, his stomach full of steak. They took a bus to the beach.
At the beach Jackson and some other soldiers rented a ski boat. Light sat under an awning and drank beer. Jackson could almost imagine he was at Pensacola except for the fact there were soldiers in fatigues. A band was playing in a compound but there were no girls, the drunken soldiers dancing with each other.
Jackson skiied all afternoon. Then he returned to the beach and sat with Light under the awning. Just as Jackson lay back on the sand to go to sleep, he saw the old man and the little girl. They stepped out from behind a stand that sold hamburgers, and the old man pushed her toward where he and Light were sitting. The little girl carried a Styrofoam cooler.
“Hey, GI, want a beer?” she asked.
Jackson paid for his beer. Then the girl went over to Light who sat with his back against the tree, facing the town. But instead of giving Light his beer, she just stood and stared at him. Suddenly she ran off towards the town, leaving the cooler.
Light started to open it.
“Stop!” Jackson said, thinking the cooler might be booby-trapped.
Light laughed and titled the open cooler toward Jackson. It was filled with beer, not high explosive. “Dinks are crazy,” Light said.
Jackson finished his beer and lay in the sun. When he got hot, he went to the sea, wading out until he was waist deep in the warm, clear water. Out off the cape a line of freighters moved past on their way to and from Saigon, seventy or eighty miles away. Jackson swam out from the beach and dived, spreading his arms out wide and floating, feeling his body relax, the war fading away. He wished he could stay under that warm water, not have to surface to breathe.
Then Jackson rose to the surface and again looked at the ships. The ships seemed only a few hundred yards away, but he knew they were several miles out. A Vietnamese fishing boat had moved in and dropped its nets just outside a bar. Small baitfish began to jump, pursued by a school of porpoise.
I could get them to take me out to a ship, Jackson thought.
Jackson floated on his back, letting the tide carry him. The beach looked very far away, the sound of the music from the band growing faint. Then he saw a figure on the beach waving its arms.
Light. Wants me to come in, Jackson thought.
He turned from the open sea and swam back towards the beach.
They left the beach and took a bus into town. It was like walking through K-Mart, Jackson thought. Everywhere vendors had black-market American goods for sale: boxes of soap, shaving cream, soft drinks, beer, stereos, tape decks, and watches. The buildings were single, some double story with red tile roofs and white walls and others made out of cinder block with tin roofs. Rows of eucalyptus trees and a few palms grew along the street.
“Hey, GI, you want boom boom?” a boy no more than ten or twelve said to Light, “Numba one.”
Light gave the boy money and they followed him down a side street.
The boy stopped at a two-story house. They went in through a passageway and then up on the roof of the first story. Girls and soldiers were there. A group of soldiers who all wore thirty-eights in shoulder holsters were sitting around in bathrobes. Music came from speakers set on the rail of the terrace.