Wading through the paddy, listening to the lullaby sounds of his boots, and many other boots, he tried hard not to think. Dead of a heart attack, that was what Doc Peret had said. Except he did not know Doc Peret’s name. All he knew was what Doc said, dead of a heart attack, but he tried hard not to think of this, and instead he thought about not thinking. The fear wasn’t so bad now. Now, as he stepped out of the paddy and onto a narrow dirt path, now the fear was mostly the fear of being so dumbly afraid ever again.
So he tried not to think.
There were tricks to keep from thinking. Counting. He counted his steps along the dirt path, concentrating on the numbers, pretending that the steps were dollar bills and that each step through the night made him richer and richer, so that soon he would become a wealthy man, and he kept counting, considering the ways he might spend the wealth, what he would buy and do and acquire and own. He would look his father in the eye and shrug and say, “It was pretty bad at first, sure, but I learned a lot and I got used to it. I never joined them—not them—but I learned their names and I got along, I got used to it.” Then he would tell his father the story of Billy Boy Watkins, only a story, just a story, and he would never let on about the fear. “Not so bad,” he would say instead, making his father proud.
And songs, another trick to stop the thinking—Where have you gone, Billy Boy, Billy Boy, oh, where have you gone, charming Billy? and other songs, I got a girl, her name is Jill, she won’t do it but her sister will, and Sound Off! and other songs that he sang in his head as he marched toward the sea. And when he reached the sea he would dig a hole in the sand and he would sleep like the high clouds, he would swim and dive into the breakers and hunt crayfish and smell the salt, and he would laugh when the others made jokes about Billy Boy, and he would not be afraid ever again.
He walked, and counted, and later the moon came out. Pale, shrunken to the size of a dime.
The helmet was heavy on his head. In the morning he would adjust the leather binding. In the morning, at the end of the long march, his boots would have lost their shiny black stiffness, turning red and clay-colored like all the other boots, and he would have a start on a beard, his clothes would begin to smell of the country, the mud and algae and manure and chlorophyll and decay and mildew. He would begin to smell like the others, even look like them, but, by God, he would not join them. He would adjust. He would play the part. But he would not join them. He would shave, he would wash himself, he would clean his weapon and keep it clean. He would scrub the breech and trigger assembly and muzzle and magazines, and later, next time, he would not be afraid to use it. In the morning, when he reached the sea, he would learn the soldiers’ names and maybe laugh at their jokes. When they joked about Billy Boy, he would laugh, pretending it was funny, and he would not let on.
Walking, counting in his walking, and pretending, he felt better. He watched the moon come higher.
The trick was not to take it personally. Stay aloof. Follow the herd but don’t join it. That would be the real trick. The trick would be to keep himself separate. To watch things. “Keep an eye out for the good stuff,” his father had said by the river. “Keep your eyes open and your ass low, that’s my only advice.” And he would do it. A low profile. Look for the beauties: the moon sliding higher now, the feeling of the march, all the ironies and truths, and don’t take any of it seriously. That would be the trick.
Once, very late in the night, they skirted a sleeping village. The smells again—straw, cattle, mildew. The men were quiet. On the far side of the village, coming like light from the dark, a dog barked. Then, nearby, another dog took up the bark. The column stopped. They waited there until the barking died out, then, fast, they marched away from the village, through a graveyard with conical burial mounds and miniature stone altars. The place had a perfumy smell. His mother’s dresser, rows of expensive lotions and colognes, eau de bain: She used to hide booze in the larger bottles, but his father found out and carried the whole load out back, started a fire, and, one by one, threw the bottles into the incinerator, where they made sharp exploding sounds like gunfire; a perfumy smell, yes; a nice spot to spend the night, to sleep in the perfumery, the burial mounds making fine strong battlements, the great quiet of the place.
But they went on, passing through a hedgerow and across another paddy and east toward the sea.
He walked carefully. He remembered what he’d been taught. Billy Boy hadn’t remembered. And so Billy died of fright, his face going pale and the veins in his arms and neck popping out, the crazy look in his eyes.
He walked carefully.
Stretching ahead of him in the night was the string of shadow-soldiers whose names he did not yet know. He knew some of the faces. And he knew their shapes, their heights and weights and builds, the way they carried themselves on the march. But he could not yet tell them apart. All alike in the night, a piece, all of them moving with the same sturdy silence and calm and steadiness.
So he walked carefully, counting his steps. And when he had counted to eight thousand and six hundred, the column suddenly stopped. One by one the soldiers knelt or squatted down.
The grass along the path was wet. Private First Class Paul Berlin lay back and turned his head so he could lick at the dew with his eyes closed, another trick, closing his eyes. He might have slept. Eyes closed, pretending came easy … When he opened his eyes, the same child-faced soldier was sitting beside him, quietly chewing gum. The smell of Doublemint was clean in the night.
“Sleepin’ again?” the boy said.
“No. Hell, no.”
The boy laughed a little, very quietly, chewing on his gum. Then he twisted the cap off a canteen and took a swallow and handed it through the dark.
“Take some,” he said. He didn’t whisper. The voice was high, a child’s voice, and there was no fear in it. A big blue baby. A genie’s voice.
Paul Berlin drank and handed back the canteen. The boy pressed a stick of gum into his fingers.
“Chew it quiet, okay? Don’t blow no bubbles or nothing.”
It was impossible to make out the soldier’s face. It was a huge face, almost perfectly round.
They sat still. Private First Class Paul Berlin chewed the gum until all the sugars were gone. Then in the dark beside him the boy began to whistle. There was no melody.
“You have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Whistle like that.”
“Jeez, was I whistling?”
“Sort of.”
The boy laughed. His teeth were big and even and white. “Sometimes I forget. Kinda dumb, isn’t it?”
“Forget it.”
“Whistling! Sometimes I just forget where I’m at. The guys, they get pissed at me, but I just forget. You’re new here, right?”
“I guess I am.”
“Weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“Weird,” the boy said, “that’s all. The way I forget. Whistling! Was I whistling?”
“If you call it that.”
“Jeez!”
They were quiet awhile. And the night was quiet, no crickets or birds, and it was hard to imagine it was really a war. He searched again for the soldier’s face, but there was just a soft fullness under the helmet. The white teeth: chewing, smiling. But it did not matter. Even if he saw the kid’s face, he would not know the name; and if he knew the name, it would still not matter.
“Haven’t got the time?”
“No.”
“Rats.” The boy popped the gum on his teeth, a sharp smacking sound. “Don’t matter.”
“How about—”
“Time goes faster when you don’t know the time. That’s why I never bought no watch. Oscar’s got one, an’ Billy … Billy, he’s got two of ’em. Two watches, you believe that? I never bought none, though. Goes fast when you don’t know the time.”
And again they were quiet. They lay side by side in the grass. The moon was very high now, and very bright, and they were waiting fo
r cloud cover. After a time there was a crinkling of tinfoil, then the sound of heavy chewing. A moist, loud sound.
“I hate it when the sugar’s gone,” the boy said. “You want more?”
“I’m okay.”
“Just ask. I got about a zillion packs. Pretty weird, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“Today. It was pretty weird what Doc said. About Billy Boy.”
“Yes, pretty weird.”
The boy smiled his big smile. “You like that gum? I got other kinds if you don’t like it. I got—”
“I like it.”
“I got Black Jack here. You like Black Jack? Jeez, I love it! Juicy Fruit’s second, but Black Jack’s first. I save it up for rainy days, so to speak. Know what I mean? What you got there is Doublemint.”
“I like it.”
“Sure,” the round-faced soldier said, the child. “Except for Black Jack and Juicy Fruit, it’s my favorite. You like Black Jack gum?”
Paul Berlin said he’d never tried it. It scared him, the way the boy kept talking, too loud. He sat up and looked behind him. Everything was dark.
“Weird,” the boy said.
“I guess so. Why don’t we be a little quiet?”
“Weird. You never even tried it?”
“What?”
“Black Jack. You never even chewed it once?”
Someone up the trail hissed at them to shut up. The boy shook his head, put a finger to his lips, smiled, and lay back. Then a long blank silence. It lasted for perhaps an hour, maybe more, and then the boy was whistling again, softly at first but then louder, and Paul Berlin nudged him.
“Really weird,” the soldier whispered. “About Billy Boy. What Doc said, wasn’t that the weirdest thing you ever heard? You ever hear of such a thing?”
“What?”
“What Doc said.”
“No, I never did.”
“Me neither.” The boy was chewing again, and the smell was licorice. The moon was a bit lower. “Me neither. I never heard once of no such thing. But Doc, he’s a pretty smart cookie. Pretty darned smart.”
“Is he?”
“You bet he is. When he says something, man, you know he’s tellin’ the truth. You know it.” The soldier turned, rolling onto his stomach, and began to whistle, drumming with his fingers. Then he caught himself. “Dang it!” He gave his cheek a sharp whack. “Whistling again! I got to stop that dang whistling.” He smiled and thumped his mouth. “But, sure enough, Doc’s a smart one. He knows stuff. You wouldn’t believe the stuff Doc knows. A lot. He knows a lot.”
Paul Berlin nodded.
“Well, you’ll find out yourself. Doc knows his stuff.” Sitting up, the boy shook his head. “A heart attack!” He made a funny face, filling his cheeks like balloons, then letting them deflate. “A heart attack! You hear Doc say that? A heart attack on the field of battle, isn’t that what Doc said?”
“Yes,” Paul Berlin whispered. He felt a tight pressure in his lungs.
“Can you believe it? Billy Boy getting heart attacked? Scared to death?”
Paul Berlin giggled, he couldn’t help it.
“Can you imagine it?”
Paul Berlin imagined it clearly. He imagined the medic’s report. He imagined Billy’s father opening the telegram: SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON BILLY BOY WAS YESTERDAY SCARED TO DEATH IN ACTION IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.
He rolled onto his belly and pressed his face in the wet grass.
“Not so loud,” the boy said. But Paul Berlin was shaking with the giggles: scared to death on the field of battle.
“Not so loud.”
But he was coughing with the giggles, he couldn’t stop. Giggling and remembering the hot afternoon, and poor Billy, how they’d been drinking Coke from bright aluminum cans, and how the men lined the cans up in a row and shot them full of practice holes, how funny it was and how dumb and how hot the day, and how they’d started on the march and how the war hadn’t seemed so bad, and how a little while later Billy tripped the mine, and how it made a tiny little sound, unimportant, poof, that was all, just poof, and how Billy Boy stood there with his mouth open and grinning, sort of embarrassed and dumb-looking, how he just stood and stood there, looking down at where his foot had been, and then how he finally sat down, still grinning, not saying a word, his boot lying there with his foot still in it, just poof, nothing big or dramatic, and how hot and fine and clear the day had been.
“Hey,” he heard the boy saying in the dark, “not so loud, okay?” But Paul Berlin kept giggling and bit his arm and tried to stifle it, but still remembering—”War’s over, Billy,” Doc Peret said, “that’s a million-dollar wound.”
“Hey, not so loud.”
But Billy was holding the boot now. Unlacing it, trying to force it back on, except it was already on, and he kept trying to tie the boot and foot on, working with the laces, but it wouldn’t go, and how everyone kept saying, “The war’s over, man, be cool.” And Billy couldn’t get the boot on, because it was already on: He kept trying but it wouldn’t go. Then he got scared. “Fuckin boot won’t go on,” he said. And he got scared. His face went pale and the veins in his arms and neck popped out, and he was yanking at the boot to get it on, and then he was crying. “Bullshit,” the medic said, Doc Peret, but Billy Boy kept bawling, tightening up, saying he was going to die, but the medic said, “Bullshit, that’s a million-dollar wound you got there,” but Billy went crazy, pulling at the boot with his foot still in it, crying, saying he was going to die. And even when Doc Peret stuck him with morphine, even then Billy kept crying and working at the boot.
“Shut up!” the soldier hissed, or seemed to, and the smell of licorice was all over him, and the smell made Paul Berlin giggle harder. His eyes stung. Giggling in the wet grass in the dark, he couldn’t shut it down.
“Come on, man, be quiet.”
But he couldn’t stop. He heard the sound in his stomach and tried to keep it there, but it was hard and hurting and he couldn’t make it quit, and he couldn’t stop remembering how it was when Billy Boy Watkins died of fright on the field of battle.
Billy tugging away at the boot, rocking, and Doc Peret and two others holding him. “You’re okay, man,” Doc Peret said, but Billy wasn’t hearing it, and he kept getting tighter, making fists, squeezing his eyes shut and teeth scraping, everything tight and squeezing.
Afterward Doc Peret explained that Billy Boy really died of a heart attack, scared to death. “No lie,” Doc said, “I seen it before. The wound wasn’t what killed him, it was the heart attack. No lie.” So they wrapped Billy in a plastic poncho, his eyes still squeezed shut to make wrinkles in his cheeks, and they carried him over the meadow to a dried-up paddy, and they threw out yellow smoke for the chopper, and they put him aboard, and then Doc wrapped the boot in a towel and placed it next to Billy, and that was how it happened. The chopper took Billy away. Later, Eddie Lazzutti, who loved to sing, remembered the song, and the jokes started, and Eddie sang where have you gone, Billy Boy, Billy Boy, oh, where have you gone, charming Billy? They sang until dark, marching to the sea.
Giggling, lying now on his back, Paul Berlin saw the moon move. Was it the moon? Or the clouds moving, making the moon seem to move? Or the round-faced boy who leaned over him, pressing down on his chest, forcing out the giggles. But even then Paul Berlin could not make it stop. “It wasn’t so bad,” he would tell his father. “I was a man. I saw it the first day, the very first day at the war, I saw all of it from the start, I learned it, and it wasn’t so bad, and later on, later on it got better, later on, once I learned the tricks, later on it wasn’t so bad.” He couldn’t stop.
The soldier was on top of him. “Okay, man, okay.”
He saw the face then, clearly, for the first time.
“It’s okay.”
The face of the moon, and later the moon went under clouds, and the column was moving.
The boy helped him up.
“Okay?”
“Sure, ok
ay.”
The boy gave him a stick of gum. It was Black Jack, the precious stuff. “You’ll do fine,” Cacciato said. “You will. You got a terrific sense of humor.”
Thirty-two
The Observation Post
Steady now, and unmoving.
Paul Berlin’s eye came unstuck from the starlight scope.
His vision squared itself. Steady now, and unmoving, the night was again held firmly by the eye. Solid things. The beach, the wire to the front, the moon and the brightest stars, the smooth line where Quang Ngai met the world, the physical place. Tips of waves flashed. Dark pigments separated from lighter pigments. Four-thirty, he thought. No reason to check the wristwatch: He saw the first gleamings, and it was now four-thirty.
He turned off the scope’s power. He replaced the lens cap, returned the machine to its aluminum carrying case, then opened a can of pears. He ate slowly. Dawn, of course, would be a dangerous time, but he trusted his eyes, which now saw only steadiness and calm.
Billy Boy was dead.
Billy Boy Watkins, like the others, was among the dead. It was the simple truth. It was not especially terrible, or hard to think about, or even sad. It was a fact. It was the first fact, and leading from it were other facts. Now it was merely a matter of following the facts to where they ended.
He ate the pears. When he was finished he dropped the can to the beach.
Thirty-three
Outlawed on the Road to Paris
They were arrested again on the tenth day of February. Roused from sleep, handcuffed to a broomstick, herded out of the boardinghouse to a waiting cattle truck. Swiftly, the truck took them through the streets of Tehran to a gray-stone jail where they were searched, fingerprinted, photographed, shaved, and then led to separate cells. For eight days, which Paul Berlin counted off on a pocket calendar, he saw nothing of Doc or Eddie or the others. He saw no one. There were no voices, no echoes, no doors opening or closing. His meals, delivered through a sliding panel, appeared as if wished for, when wished for, and the smell of dungeons made him blink with wonder. So he slept, and wondered, and listened to the sounds of stone on steel. Then deep in sleep he was awakened and blindfolded and led down a narrow corridor. He felt moistness on his neck; he felt a hand touch him, his head was pressed forward, then there was a sharpness against his neck, a swift scraping followed by the chill of melting snow. Razor, he thought. Eyes open beneath the blindfold, he shivered with each stroke. He swallowed and dreamed of the many things he had swallowed. The pleasure of swallowing.