“But the major don’t need no radio man,” the same soldier said. “He don’t go outside the wire.”
All the men laughed.
Leander was there, still wearing his pith helmet.
“Hey, Leander, you think Alabama draws fire like Light?” a soldier said.
“Looks like he’d draw fire,” Leander said.
Someone turned down the music.
Jackson decided to say nothing, wishing he had not smoked. Instead of feeling good, watching the colors and listening to the music slow down, the guitar runs almost frozen in time, he was beginning to feel uneasy. His chest grew tight, and he took a deep breath to try to relax.
Another soldier said in a slow, thick voice, “I bet this mo’fucker draws fire, just like Tom Light.”
“That LRRP team in the Ia Drang Valley got themselves fucked because of him,” the soldier who had offered him the hit said.
“Yeah, that’s so,” Leander said. “Ain’t you Light’s bro? Went on R&R with him. You go out to the graveyard with him and dig up dead dinks?”
Jackson said nothing. That was the same rumor he had heard in Pleiku at the airbase.
“We thought Dak To was the bad shit,” another soldier said. “Nothing worse than this crazy ass place. I get an R&R out of here, I’m not coming back. I’ll volunteer for an LRRP team. Anything’s better’n this.”
“Fucker, don’t you come messing around this bunker no more,” Jackson heard Leander say to him, the man’s voice pot cool, soft and calm. “Nothing personal. Don’t want to go home in no sloppy rubber bag because of you.”
No one took up his defense, and Jackson left the bunker, hearing the men laughing behind him.
Tom Light’s got my ass covered, Jackson thought.
Jackson laughed softly to himself as he thought of what they might have done if they had known about Light’s prediction. That might have been enough to set off the mutiny Hale worried about.
Now he was stoned and wished he could have stayed with the mortar squad and listened to music. He went to the TOC and climbed up the sandbags. The sandbags had recently been painted with tar to keep water out of the bunker, and the tar, still soft from the heat of the day, stuck to his hands and the seat of his fatigues. On the perimeter someone on a heavy machine gun began firing out into the bush. He listened to the slow chug of the gun and watched the red tracers, fascinated by the way they glowed. Like fireworks, he thought, the machine gun a giant Roman candle. The gun stopped, the gunners popped a flare.
And Jackson, stoned beyond fear, lay back on the sandbags and watched the magnesium flare crackle and sparkle, showers of white sparks dropping off as its parachute carried it over the wire.
Jackson turned on the radio.
“Tom Light, Tom Light,” he spoke into the handset, as he had night after night after night, receiving no reply.
He began to wonder if he would ever see Light again. It was easy for him to imagine Light wandering off through the jungle, walking the ridges of the Long Mountains toward China.
No reply, only the white noise from the handset. Another flare went up on the perimeter and a gunner fired a long burst on an M-60 machine gun. He’s going to burn up the barrel, Jackson thought. Perhaps there were sappers in the wire, but the response was not frantic enough for that. The firing stopped and more flares went up. He lay on his back, watching them sparkle.
Jackson picked up the handset again.
“Loretta, Loretta, Loretta,” he said, releasing the handset’s transmission bar.
And although he did not hear his girl’s voice come out of the handset, and did not want to hear it because that would mean he was as crazy as Light, he imagined what she would say.
“Jackson, I’m waiting for you,” her soft voice spoke within his head.
He tried to figure out whether it would be day or night back in the world. If it was day she would be at her typewriter in the lawyer’s office in Birmingham, and if it was night she would be at her apartment which she shared with another girl.
“I’ll meet you in Hawaii for R&R,” Jackson said into the handset.
Static hissed from the handset. Jackson, even though stoned, knew he was imagining the whole conversation, but he had heard her voice. A little breeze came up, and he shivered. He buttoned the top button of his fatigue jacket.
“We’ll stay in a hotel right on the beach,” he said.
“All day in bed with you,” she said.
A soldier walked past the TOC. Jackson wondered if the man had overheard him. Then Jackson imagined he was undressing her, feeling her warm, smooth skin against his fingers, fumbling with hooks and buttons. He worried about getting the tar on her which had stuck to his hands. Now he was hard, his dick tight against his fatigues. She was unbuttoning his fly.
“I’ll send you money for a ticket,” he said.
“I’m waiting for you,” she said.
Jackson could see her clearly — breasts, legs, the dark patch of hair. He ran his hands over her body, explored with his fingertips between her thighs.
“I’m coming home,” he said. “Nothing will stop me.”
“Yes,” she said.
Now her voice was clearly coming out of the handset, not out of his mind. Jackson sat shivering in the breeze, cold except for the hot place between his legs.
“Just for me, Loretta,” he said.
“Yes.”
And Jackson thought that it was not real because she was agreeing to everything. He wondered if she agreed with whatever the men in Birmingham suggested to her. There appeared a picture in his mind of her bent over one of them in bed, her mouth over his dick, just as large and erect as Jackson’s was now. She could do as she liked, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her. She could suck and fuck every man in Birmingham, dance in one of the topless bars, walk the streets, and there was nothing, nothing he could do.
“Loretta, you wouldn’t—” he began.
“No, just for you,” she whispered. “Just for you.”
And the imaginary voice broke across the static and filled his ears coming out of the night, out of nothingness. Jackson looked up at the star-filled but still moonless sky and wished he could hide her away from all the Jodys in that blackness.
“Loretta, you promised me,” he said.
“Tom Light, Tom Light!” a shrill dink voice came out of the handset.
Jackson lost his hard-on in an instant, lying atop the bunker breathing heavily as if he had just spent himself in the girl.
“Tom Light, you motherfucker!” the high-pitched dink voice said again. “We kill you!”
Laughter from the handset.
“Light’ll waste your dink ass!” Jackson said into the handset between gasps.
“Someone fucking you girlfriend right now,” the dink voice said. “All at Desolation Row die. No one have a nice day.”
Jackson wanted to switch the radio off but could not. He wondered if Light was listening, wished Light would come on the frequency and tell the slope his ass was as good as greased.
“Tom Light, Tom Light,” Jackson said.
“The jungle is our friend,” the dink voice said again. “The jungle has killed Tom Light.”
“He’s out there,” Jackson said. “He’ll blow you away.”
More laughter. To stop it Jackson pressed down on the transmission bar and shouted, “Tom Light! Tom Light!”
But still there was nothing, only the hiss of static. Jackson switched the radio off and felt like crying. He wanted to smell the jungle smell of Tom Light, but instead there was the sharp, sour stink of a piss tube in the air.
The mortars began firing, and Jackson stood up to watch the impacts. When the rounds hit up on the ridge, a series of flashes, it was with the soft whump of willie peter instead of the sharp crack of high explosive. He lay back on the sandbags and imagined that white phosphorous cloud of fire dropping down on the dink he had just talked to on the radio. Now the night was quiet.