The ant fires.
Machine-gun bullets knock the ant over.
The gunship swings around to verify that it is a confirmed kill.
As machine-gun bullets snap into the wet sand, the ant stands up, aims its tiny AK-47 assault rifle, and fires a thirty-round magazine on full automatic.
The Cobra gunship explodes, splits open like a bloated green egg. The gutted carcass of aluminum and plexiglass bounces along, suspended in the air, burning, trailing black smoke. And then it falls.
The flaming chopper hits the river and the flowing water sucks it down.
The ant does not move. The ant fires another magazine on full automatic. The ant is shooting at the sky.
Tired of firing into floating corpses, the remaining two gunships attack.
The ant walks off the beach.
The gunships hit the beach and sand dunes with every weapon they've got. They circle and circle and circle like predatory birds. Then, out of ammunition and out of fuel, they buzz straight into the horizon and vanish.
Delta Company applauds and cheers and whistles. "Get some! Number one! Out-fucking-standing! Payback is a motherfucker!"
Alice says, "That guy was a grunt."
While we wait for the gunboats to come and take us back across the River of Perfumes we talk about how the NVA grunt was one hell of a hard individual and about how it would be okay if he came to America and married all our sisters and about how we all hope that he will live to be a hundred years old because the world will be diminished when he's gone.
The next morning, Rafter Man and I get the map coordinates of a mass grave from some green ghouls and we hump over to the site to get Captain January his atrocity photographs.
The mass grave smells really bad--the odor of blood, the stink of worms, decayed human beings. The Arvin snuffies doing the digging in a school yard have all tied olive-drab skivvy shirts around their faces, but casualties due to uncontrollable puking are heavy.
We see corpses of Vietnamese civilians who have been buried alive, faces frozen in mid-scream, hands like claws, the fingernails bloody and caked with damp earth. All of the dead people are grinning that hideous, joyless grin of those who have heard the joke, of those who have seen the terrible secrets of the earth. There's even the corpse of a dog which Victor Charlie could not separate from its master.
There are no corpses with their hands tied behind their backs. However, the green ghouls assure us that they have seen such corpses elsewhere. So I borrow some demolition wire from the Arvin snuffies and, crushing the stiff bodies with my knee until dry bones crack, I bind up a family, assembled at random from the multitude--a man, his wife, a little boy, a little girl, and, of course, their dog. As a final touch, I wire the dog's feet together.
Noon at the MAC-V compound. We say good-bye to Cowboy and to the Lusthog Squad.
Cowboy has found a stray puppy and is carrying the bony little animal inside his shirt. Cowboy says to me, "Keep your ass down, bro. Scuttlebutt is, the Lusthog Squad is headed up to Khe Sanh, a very hairy area. But no sweat; we can hack it. And maybe they got some horses up there. So if you ever feel hard enough to be a real Marine, a grunt, bop up to see us."
I pet Cowboy's puppy. "Never happen. But you take care, you piece of shit. We've got a date with your sister I don't care to miss."
Rafter Man says good-bye to Alice and to the other guys in Cowboy's squad. He shakes hands with Cowboy and pets Cowboy's puppy. In my best John Wayne voice I say, "See you later, Mother."
Animal Mother says, "Not if I see you first."
Rafter Man and I ditty-bop down Route One, south, toward Phu Bai. We hump in crushing heat for hours, looking for a ride. But the sun is without mercy and there are no convoys in sight.
We sit in the shade by the road. "It's hot," I say. "It's very hot. Wish that old mamasan was here. I'd souvenir beaucoup money for one Coke..."
Rafter Man stands up. "No sweat. I can find her..." Rafter Man ditty-bops into the road.
I start to say something about how it might be a good idea for us to stay together. There are still plenty of NVA stragglers in the area. "Rafter..." But then I remember that Rafter Man has got his first confirmed kill. Rafter Man can take care of himself.
The deck trembles. A tank? I look up, but I can't see anything on the road. Yet nothing on earth sounds as big as a tank, nothing produces that terrible rumble of metal like a tank. It shakes my bones. I jump up, weapon ready. I look up and down the road. Nothing. But all around me is the clamor of rolling iron and the odor of diesel fuel.
Rafter Man is walking across the road. He does not hear the invisible tank. He does not feel the mechanical earthquake.
I double-time after him. "Rafter!"
Rafter Man turns around. He grins. And then we both see it. The tank is an object of heavy metal forged from a cold shadow, a ghost with substance. The black mechanical phantom comes for us, dark ectoplasm rolling in the sun. The blond tank commander stands in the turret hatch, staring straight ahead and into the beyond, laughing.
Rafter Man turns around.
I say, "Don't move."
But Rafter looks at me, panic on his face.
I grab his shoulder.
Rafter Man pulls away and runs.
The tank is bearing down on me. I don't move.
The tank swerves, misses me, roars past like a big iron dragon. The tank runs over Rafter Man and crushes him beneath its steel treads. And then it's gone.
Rafter Man likes on his back in the dirt, a crushed dog spilling out of its skin. Rafter Man looks at me the way he looked at me that day at the Freedom Hill PX on Hill 327 in Da Nang. His eyes are begging me for an explanation.
Rafter Man has been cut in half just below his new NVA rifle belt. His intestines are pink rope all over the deck. He is trying to pull himself back in, but it doesn't work. His guts are wet and slippery and he can't hold them in. He tries to reinsert his spilling guts back into his severed torso. He tries very hard to keep the dirt off of his intestines as he works.
Rafter Man stops trying to save himself and, instead, just stares at me with an expression that might be found on the face of a person who wakes up with a dead bird in his mouth.
"Sarge..."
"Don't call me 'Sarge,'" I say.
I kneel down and pick up Rafter's black-body Nikon. I say, "I'll tell Mr. Payback about your belt and about your SKS..." I want so much to cry, but I can't cry--I'm too tough.
I stop talking to Rafter Man because Rafter Man is dead. Talking to dead people is not a healthy habit for a living person to cultivate and lately I have been talking to dead people quite a lot. I guess I've been talking to dead people ever since I made my first confirmed kill. After my first confirmed kill, talking to corpses began to make more sense than talking to people who had not yet been wasted.
In Viet Nam you see corpses almost every day. At first you try to ignore them. You don't want people to think you're curious. Nobody wants to admit that corpses are not old hat to them; nobody wants to be a New Guy. So you see lumps of dirty rags. And after a while you begin to notice that the lumps of dirty rags have arms and legs and heads. And faces.
The first time I saw a corpse, back when I was a New Guy, I wanted to vomit, just like in the movies. The corpse was an NVA grunt who died in a great orange ball of jellied gasoline near Con Thien. The napalm left a crumbled heap of ashes in the fetal position. His mouth was open. His charred fingers were covering his eyes.
The second time I really looked at a corpse I was embarrassed. The corpse was an old Vietnamese woman with teeth which had turned black after a lifetime of chewing betel nuts. The woman had been hit by something bigger than small-arms fire. She was killed in a crossfire between ROK Marines and NVA grunts in Hoi An. She seemed so exposed in death, so vulnerable.