Bang.
     The steel buttplate slams into Leonard's shoulder.
     One   7.62-millimeter  high-velocity  copper-jacketed  bullet   punches
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim back.
     He falls.
     We all stare at Sergeant Gerheim. Nobody moves.
     Sergeant  Gerheim sits  up  as  though  nothing has  happened.  For one
second, we relax. Leonard has missed. Then dark  blood squirts from a little
hole in Sergeant  Gerheim's  chest.  The  red blood blossoms  into his white
skivvy  shirt  like a beautiful  flower.  Sergeant  Gerheim's  bug eyes  are
focused  upon the  blood  rose  on  his chest, fascinated.  He  looks  up at
Leonard. He squints.  Then he relaxes. The werewolf  smile is frozen on  his
lips.
     My menial  position of authority as the fire watch on duty forces me to
act. "Now,  uh,  Leonard, we're all  your bros, man, your brothers. I'm your
bunkmate, right? I--"
     "Sure," says Cowboy. "Go easy, Leonard. We don't want to hurt you."
     "Affirmative," says Private Barnard.
     Leonard doesn't hear. "Did you see the way he looked at her? Did you? I
knew what he was thinking. I knew. That fag pig and his dirty--"
     "Leonard..."
     "We can  kill you. You know  that."  Leonard caresses his rifle. "Don't
you know that Charlene and I can kill you all?"
     Leonard aims his rifle at my face.
     I don't look at the rifle. I look into Leonard's eyes.
     I know that Leonard is too weak to  control his instrument of death. It
is  a  hard  heart  that  kills, not  the  weapon.  Leonard is  a  defective
instrument for the  power that  is flowing through him.  Sergeant  Gerheim's
mistake was in not  seeing that Leonard was like a glass rifle  which  would
shatter  when fired. Leonard is not  hard enough to harness the power of  an
interior explosion to propel the cold black bullet of his will.
     Leonard is grinning at us, the final grin that is on the face of death,
the terrible grin of the skull.
     The grin changes to a look of  surprise and then  to confusion and then
to  terror as Leonard's weapon moves  up and back and then Leonard takes the
black metal barrel into his mouth. "NO! Not--"
     Bang.
     Leonard is dead on the deck. His head is now an awful lump of blood and
facial bones and sinus fluids and uprooted teeth and jagged, torn flesh. The
skin looks plastic and unreal.
     The  civilians  will demand yet another investigation,  of  course. But
during  the investigation the recruits of Platoon 30-92  will  testify  that
Private Pratt, while highly motivated, was  a ten percenter who did not pack
the gear to be a Marine in our beloved Corps.
     Sergeant  Gerheim  is  still  smiling. He was a fine drill  instructor.
Dying, that's what we're here for, he would have said--blood makes the grass
grow. If  he could speak, Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim would explain to  Leonard
why the guns that we love don't love back. And he would say, "Well done."
     I turn off the overhead lights.
     I say, "Prepare to mount." Then: "MOUNT!"
     The platoon falls into a hundred racks.
     I feel cold and alone. I am not alone. All over Parris Island there are
thousands  and  thousands of  us.  And,  all around  the world, hundreds  of
thousands.
     I try to sleep...
     In my rack, I  pull my rifle  into my arms. She talks to me. Words come
out of the wood and metal and flow into my hands. She tells me what to do.
     My rifle is a solid instrument  of death. My  rifle is black steel. Our
human bodies are bags of blood, easy to puncture and quick to drain, but our
hard tools of death cannot be broken.
     I hold by weapon at port arms, gently, as though she were a holy relic,
a  magic wand  wrought with interlocking  pieces of silver  and iron, with a
teakwood  stock,  golden bullets,  a crystal bolt,  jewels to sight with. My
weapon  obeys me. I'll hold Vanessa, my rifle. I'll hold her. I'll just hold
her for a little while. I will hide in this dark dream for as long as I can.
     Blood pours out of the barrel  of my rifle and flows up on to my hands.
The blood moves. The blood breaks up into living fragments. Each fragment is
a spider. Millions and millions of tiny red spiders of blood are crawling up
my arms, across my face, into my mouth...


     Silence. In the dark, a hundred men are breaking in unison.
     I look at Cowboy,  then at Private Barnard. They understand. Cold grins
of death are frozen on their faces. They nod.
     The newly minted Marines in my platoon  stand to  attention, horizontal
in their racks, their weapons at port arms.
     The Marines wait, a hundred young werewolves with guns in their hands.
     I lead:

     This is my rifle.
     There are many like it, but this one is mine...


Body Count



     I saw the  best  minds of my  generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked...
     --Allen Ginsberg, Howl



     A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.
     --William S. Burroughs




     Tet: The Year of the Monkey.
     Rafter  Man and I spend the  Vietnamese lunar New  Year's Eve, 1968, at
the  Freedom  Hill PX near  Da Nang.  I've  been ordered to  write a feature
article on  the Freedom  Hill Recreation Center on  Hill 327 for Leatherneck
magazine.  I'm a combat correspondent assigned to the First Marine Division.
My job is to write upbeat news features  which are distributed to the highly
paid civilian news  correspondents who shack up with their Eurasian maids in
big hotels  in Da Nang.  The  ten  correspondents in  the  First  Division's
Informational Services Office are reluctant public relations men for the war
in  general  and  for  the  Marine  Corps  in particular.  This  morning  my
commanding officer decided that  a  really  inspiring piece could be written
about  Hill 327,  an  angle being  the  fact that  Hill  327 was  the  first
permanent  position occupied by American  forces. Major  Lynch thinks I rate
some slack before I return to the ISO office in Phu Bai. My last three field
operations were real shit-kickers;  in the field,  a Marine correspondent is
just another  rifleman.  Rafter Man tags along  behind me like a kid. Rafter
Man  is a combat photographer. He has  never been in the shit. He thinks I'm
one hard field Marine.
     We go into a movie theater  that looks like  a  warehouse  and we watch
John  Wayne in The  Green Berets, a  Hollywood soap opera about the love  of
guns. We  sit way  down front,  near some  grunts. The  grunts are  sprawled
across their seats and they've  propped muddy jungle boots onto the seats in
front of them. They  are bearded,  dirty, out  of uniform, and look lean and
mean, the way human  beings  look after they've survived  a long hump in the
jungle, the boonies, the bad bush.
     I prop my boots on the seats and we  watch John Wayne leading the Green
Beanies. John Wayne is a beautiful soldier, clean-shaven, sharply attired in
tailored tiger-stripe jungle utilities, wearing boots that shine  like black
glass.  Inspired  by  John Wayne,  the  fighting  soldiers  from the sky  go
hand-to-hand with all of the Victor Charlies in Southeast Asia. He snaps out
an order to an Oriental actor  who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek." Mr. Sulu,
now playing an Arvin  officer, delivers a line with great conviction: "First
kill...all stinking Cong...then go home." The audience of Marines roars with
laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time.
     Later,  at the  end of the movie,  John Wayne walks off into the sunset
with a spunky little orphan.  The  grunts laugh and whistle and  threaten to
pee all  over themselves. The sun is setting  in the South China Sea--in the
East--which makes the end of the movie as accurate as the rest of it.
     Most of the zoomies in the audience are clean-shaven office  poges  who
never  go  into the field.  The  poges wear  spit-shined  boots and starched
utilities and  Air Force sunglasses. The poges stare at the grunts as though
the grunts were Hell's Angels at the ballet.
     After the screen loses it color and the overhead lights come on, one of
the poges says, "Fucking grunts...they're nothing but animals..."
     The grunts turn around. One grunt stands up. He walks over to where the
poges are sitting.
     The poges laugh and  punch each other and mock the grunt's  angry face.
Then they are silent. They stare at the grunt's face. He's smiling now. He's
smiling like a man who knows a terrible secret.
     The zoomie poges  do not ask the  grunt to  explain why  he is smiling.
They don't want to know.
     Another grunt jumps up,  punches  the smiling  grunt on  the arm, says,
"Hey, fuck it, Mother. It  ain't no big thing. We  don't want to waste these
assholes."
     The smiling Marine takes a step  forward, but the smaller man stands in
his path.
     The  poges take  advantage  of  the  smiling  grunt's delay.  They walk
backwards  up  the  aisle until they reach the  door, then  stumble out into
sunlight.
     I say, "Well, no  shit. And  they say grunts are killers. You ladies do
not look like killers to me."
     The  smiling  grunt  is  not  smiling  anymore.  He  says,  "Okay,  you
son-of-a-bitch..."
     "Stand by, Mother," says the small Marine. "I know this shitbird."
     Cowboy and I grab each other and wrestle and punch and pound each other
on  the back.  We say,  "Hey, you  old mother-fucker.  How you  been? What's
happening? Been getting any? Only your sister. Well,  better my sister  than
my mom, although mom's not bad."
     "Hey, Joker, I was hoping I'd never see you again, you piece of shit. I
was  hoping  that Gunny  Gerheim's ghost would  keep  you on  Parris  Island
for-ev-er and that he would give you motivation."
     I laugh. "Cowboy, you shitbird. You look real  mean.  If I  didn't know
that you're a born poge I'd be scared."
     Cowboy grunts. "This is Animal Mother. He is mean."
     The  big Marine is picking his nose. "You  better motherfucking believe
it." A belt of machine-gun bullets crisscross the Marine's chest so  that he
looks like a big Mexican bandit.
     I say, "This is Rafter  Man.  He's not a walking  camera store. He's  a
photographer."
     "You a photographer?"
     I shake my head. "I'm a combat correspondent."
     Animal  Mother  sneers,  exposing rotten canine teeth.  "You seen  much
'combat'?"
     "Hey,  don't give me any shit, asshole. My payback is a motherfucker. I
got twice as many operations as any grunt in Eye Corps. I'm just scarfing up
some bennies. My office is up in Phu Bai."
     "Yeah?"  Cowboy punches  me in the chest. "That's our  area.  One-Five.
Delta Company--the baddest of the bad, the leanest of the lean,  the meanest
of the  mean. We hitched  down here this morning. We  rate some slack 'cause
our squad wasted  beaucoup  Victor  Charlies.  Man, we are  life takers  and
heartbreakers. Just ask for the  Lusthog Squad, first platoon. We shoot them
full of holes, bro. We fill them full of lead."
     I grin. "Sergeant Gerheim would be proud to hear it."
     "Yeah,"  Cowboy says, nodding his  head. "Yeah,  I guess so." He  looks
away.  "I hate Viet Nam. They don't even have  horses here. Why, there's not
one horse in all of Viet Nam."
     Cowboy turns away and introduces us to his squad: Alice, a black man as
big as Animal Mother; Donlon,  the radioman; Lance  Corporal Stutten, honcho
of the third fire team; Doc Jay, the squad's Navy corpsman; T.H.E. Rock; and
the leader of the Lusthog Squad, Crazy Earl.
     Crazy Earl  is  carrying an  M-16 Colt automatic  rifle  slung  on  his
shoulder, but in  his  hands is  a Red  Ryder BB gun.  He's as skinny  as  a
death-camp survivor, and his face consists of  a  long, pointed  nose with a
hollow cheek  on each side.  His  eyes are magnified by thick lenses and one
arm of his gray Marine-issue eyeglasses has been wired back on with too much
wire. He says, "Saddle  up," and the  grunts  start picking up  their  gear,
their M-16's and M-79 grenade  launchers  and captured AK-47 assault rifles,
their ruck-sacks, flak jackets, and helmets. Animal Mother picks up  an M-60
machine gun and  sets the butt into his hip so that the  black barrel slants
up at  a forty-five-degree angle. Animal Mother  grunts. Crazy Earl turns to
Cowboy and  says, "We  better be  moving, bro. Mr. Shortround will punch our
hearts out if we're late."
     Cowboy is picking up his gear. "That's affirmative, Craze. But  you got
to talk to Joker,  man. We  were on  the island together. He'll write you up
and make you famous."
     Crazy Earl looks at me. There  is no expression on his face.  "There it
is. They call me Crazy Earl. Gooks love me until I blow them away. Then they
don't love me anymore."
     I grin. "There it is."
     Crazy Earl  grins, gives me a  thumbs-up,  says,  "Moving, Cowboy," and
then leads his squad out of the theater.
     Cowboy punches me on the shoulder. "That's my fearless leader, bro. I'm
the first fire-team leader. I'll  be squad leader soon. I'm just waiting for
Craze to  get wasted. Or maybe he'll just go plain fucking crazy. That's how
Craze got  to  be  honcho.  Ol' Stoke,  he was our honcho  before Craze. Ol'
Supergrunt. Went stark raving. Pretty soon it'll be my turn."
     "Hey, you keep your shit together, Cowboy. You know you're  a fool. You
know you can't take care of yourself. Remember how easy it was for me to zap
you when  Sergeant Gerheim made  me play sniper? I mean, the Crotch ought to
fly your mom over here so that she can go into the bush with you."
     Cowboy takes a few steps toward the door, turns, waves goodbye, grins.
     I give him the finger.


     After Cowboy and his squad  are  gone, Rafter Man  and I  watch a "Pink
Panther"  cartoon. Then we  pick up our  weapons and head for the PX,  which
looks like another warehouse. We buy junk food; pogey bait.
     As  we   wait  to   pay  for  our  pogey  bait  with  military  payment
certificates, Rafter Man tries  to find some words.  "Joker, I want...I want
to go  out. I want to go  out into  the  field. I been in country for almost
three months.  Three  months. All I do  is take  hand-shake  shots  at award
ceremonies. That's  number ten, the worst. I'm  bored.  A  high-school  girl
could do my job." He gives MPC's to a pretty Vietnamese cashier.

     Outside, an apprentice Viet Cong forces me to  submit to  a  boot shine
while his older sister exhibits her breasts to Rafter Man.
     "Relax,  Rafter. You owe  it to yourself.  You'll be in  the field soon
enough."
     "Come on, Joker, cut  me a  huss. How can I teach geography  if I never
see the world? Take me to Phu Bai. Okay?"
     "Right," I say.  "And then you'll get  yourself  wasted  the  first day
you're in the field and  it'll be  my fault.  Your mom will  find me after I
rotate back to the  World. Your mom will beat the shit  out of  me. That's a
negative,  Rafter.  I'm  not  a sergeant,  I'm  only  a  corporal.  I'm  not
responsible for your scrawny little ass."
     "Yes you are. I'm only a lance corporal."


     Rafter  Man and  I stop  by the USO and  exchange a few off-color jokes
with  the  round-eyed  Red Cross girls, who give us  donuts. We ask  the Red
Cross  girls if they  expect us to satisfy our lust  with a donut  and  they
explain that a donut hole is all we rate.
     In  the USO there  are barrels and barrels  of letters which  have been
written to us by children back in the World:

     Dear Soldiers in Red Alert:
     We have learned that men in Vietnam alive or dead  are  the bravest. We
are all trying to help you all
     to come  home to  your house. We'll buy bonds. We help the Red Cross to
help soldiers. We'll help
     you and your allies to come back. If possible, we'll send you gifts.
     From Your Country,
     Cheri
     Dear Friend in Battle:
     I am eight years old. I have one brother. I have one sister. It must be
sad over there.
     Sincerely,
     Jeff


     Dear American:
     I wish I could see you instead of talking on this Card.  We have a dog,
and it is so cute. It is black
     and has long  hair. My name  is Lori.  I will always remember you in my
prayers. Tell everyone I love
     them and I love you too, so good-bye.
     Your Friend,
     Lori


     Rafter Man reads the letters out loud. He can still be touched by them.
     To me, the letters are like shoes for the dead, who do not walk.


     As dusk approaches, Rafter Man and I  hitchhike back  to the ISO hootch
in the First Marine Division HQ area.
     Rafter Man writes a letter to his mother.
     I take my black Magic Marker and I make a thick X over the number 59 on
the shapely thigh of a  the life-sized nude woman  I've drawn on the plywood
partition behind my  rack. There is a smaller version of the  same woman  on
the back of my flak jacket.
     Almost every Marine in Viet Nam carries a short-timer's calendar of his
tour  of duty--the  usual  365 days--plus  a  bonus of  20  days for being a
Marine. Some are drawn on flak jackets with Magic Markers. Some are drawn on
helmets.  Some are tattoos. Others are  mimeographed drawings of Snoopy, his
beagle  body cut up by  pale blue ink, or a  helmet on a pair of boots--"The
Short-Timer." The  designs vary, but the most popular design is a big-busted
woman-child cut up into pieces  like a puzzle. Each day  another fragment of
her delicious anatomy is inked  out, her crotch being  reserved, of  course,
for those last few days in country.
     Sitting  on  my  rack,  I  type  out  my  story  about  Hill  327,  the
serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured
our daily  ration of pogey  bait and  about how those of us  who  are  lucky
enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne  karate-chop Victor
Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam.
     The  article I actually  write  is a  masterpiece.  It takes talent  to
convince people that war is  a beautiful experience.  Come one, come all  to
exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast  Asia, meet interesting, stimulating
people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block
to get a confirmed kill.
     I fall into my rack. I try to sleep.
     The setting sun pours orange across the rice paddies beyond our wire.


     Midnight.  Down in Dogpatch, in the  ville, the gooks are shooting  off
fireworks to celebrate  the Vietnamese New Year. Rafter Man and I sit on the
tin roof of our hootch so that we can watch the more impressive fireworks on
the  Da Nang  airfield.  One  hundred-and-twenty-two-millimeter rockets  are
falling from the dark sky. I open a  B-3 unit and we eat John Wayne cookies,
dipping them in pineapple jam.
     Chewing. Rafter Man says, "I thought this was supposed to be a truce on
account of Tet is their big holiday."
     I  shrug. "Well, I  guess it's  hard not to  shoot somebody you've been
trying to shoot for a long time just because it's a holiday."
     A sudden swooosssh...
     Incoming.
     I jump off the roof.
     Rafter Man  stands up, his mouth  open.  He  looks down at me like  I'm
crazy. "What--"
     A rocket hits the deck fifty yards away.
     Rafter Man falls off the roof.
     I jerk Rafter Man to his  feet. I shove him. He falls into a sandbagged
bunker.
     All  around the hill orange  machine-gun tracers flash up into the sky.
Outgoing mortars. Outgoing artillery. Incoming rockets.  All kinds of noise.
Illumination rounds  pop high above the rice paddies. The flares  sway down,
glowing, suspended beneath little parachutes.
     I listen for a few moments  and then I grab  Rafter Man  and I pull him
into our hootch. "Get your piece."
     I pick up my M-16. I  snap in  a magazine. I  throw a bandolier of full
magazines to Rafter Man. "Lock and load, recruit. Lock and load."
     "But that's against regulations."
     "Do it."
     Outside,  headquarters  personnel from  the  surrounding  hootches  are
stumbling  into rifle  pits on the  perimeter. They crouch down  in the damp
holes in their skivvies. They stare out through the wire.
     Down on the airfield  in Da  Nang Victor Charlie's rockets  are raining
down on the concrete corrals where the Marine Air Wing parks its F-4 Phantom
fighter bombers. The rockets blink like flashbulbs. The flashbulbs  pop. And
then the sound of drums.


     The  Informational Services Office on the hill is a carnival with green
performers--many, many of them. The lifers  are  all being fearless leaders.
The New Guys are about to wet  their pants. Everyone is talking. Everyone is
pacing and looking, pacing  and looking. Most  of these guys have never been
in the shit. Violence doesn't excite them the way it excites me because they
don't understand it the way I do.  They're  afraid.  Death is  not yet their
friend. So they  don't know what  they're supposed  to  say. They don't know
what they're expected to do.
     Major Lynch, our commanding officer, marches in and squares us away. He
tells us that Victor Charlie has used the Tet holiday to launch an offensive
all over Viet Nam. Every major military target in Viet Nam has been  hit. In
Saigon,  the United States Embassy  has been overrun by suicide  squads. Khe
Sanh is standing by to be  overrun, a second Dien Bien Phu. The term "secure
area" no  longer  has any  meaning.  Only fifty yards up the hill,  near the
commanding general's  private quarters, a Viet Cong  sapper squad  has blown
apart a communications center with a satchel charge. Our "defeated" enemy is
lashing out with a power that is shocking.
     Everybody starts talking at once.
     Major Lynch is calm. He stands in the center of chaos and tries to give
us orders. Nobody  listens.  He  makes us listen. His  words  snap out  like
bullets from a machine gun. "Zip up those flak jackets. Put on that  helmet,
Marine. Load your weapons  but do  not put a round in the chamber. Everybody
will shut the fuck up. Joker!"
     "Aye-aye, sir."
     Major Lynch  stands in front of the Marine  Corps flag--blood red, with
an eagle, globe, and anchor of gold, U.S.M.C. and Semper Fidelis. He taps my
chest with his finger. "Joker, you will take off  that damned button. How is
it going to look if you get killed wearing a peace symbol?"
     "Aye-aye, sir!"
     "Get up to Phu Bai. Captain January will need all his people."
     Rafter Man steps forward. "Sir? Could I go with Joker?"
     "What? Sound off."
     "I'm Compton, sir. Lance  Corporal Compton.  From Photo. I want  to get
into the shit."
     "Permission  granted. And welcome  aboard."  The  major  turns,  starts
yelling at the New Guys.
     I say, "Sir, I don't think that--"
     Major Lynch  turns back to  me,  irritated.  "You  still here?  Vanish,
Joker, most  ricky-tick. And take the  New Guy with  you. You're responsible
for him." The major turns and starts snapping out orders for the defense  of
the First Marine Division's Informational Services Office.


     Chaos  at  the Da Nang airfield; enemy  rockets have  wasted  hootches,
Marines,  and  Phantom jets. I talk to a poge  in thick glasses. The poge is
reading  a comic book.  By using my  voice  as  an instrument  of  command I
convince the  poge that I'm an officer and that I'm on a personal errand for
the Commandant  of the Marine Corps.  Rafter Man and I are  given a priority
rating  and have  to wait  only nine hours  before we're  stuffed  into  the
cavernous belly of a C-130 Hercules cargo  plane with a hundred Marine Corps
lifers.
     Thousands  of feet below, Viet Nam is a narrow  stripe of  dried dragon
shit upon  which God  has sprinkled toy tanks  and airplanes  and  a  lot of
trees, flies, and Marines.
     As we descend for a landing at Phu Bai Combat Base, Rafter Man hugs his
three black-body Nikons like metal babies.
     I  laugh.  "When the grunts  see  that  the famous Rafter Man  is here,
they'll just know that the war must be over."
     Rafter Man grins.


     Rafter Man won his nickname the night he fell out of the rafters at the
Thunderbird Club,  the enlisted men's slop  chute  back in  the First Marine
Division headquarters area. An  Australian comedian and two fat Korean belly
dancers were entertaining an SRO  audience. Rafter  Man was hammered, but so
was I, so I couldn't stop him. We were back near the entrance and Rafter Man
decided that  the only way he was going to get a good  look  at the seminude
belly dancers was to  climb up into the rafters and crawl out above the mass
of green Marines.
     General Motors and his staff had stopped by to catch the show. They did
that sometimes. General Motors liked to keep in touch with his Marines.
     Rafter Man fell off the rafters like a green bomb, crashing through the
general's table, spilling beer,  smashing pretzels, and knocking the general
and four of his staff officers on their brass behinds.
     Hundreds of enlisted men, having  assumed that Rafter Man was some kind
of  unconventional mortar round, were one mass of  green laundry. Then heads
began to pop up.
     The staff officers jerked Rafter Man to  his feet  and  started yelling
for the M.P.'s.
     General  Motors raised  his hand and  there  was silence.  Unlike  many
Marine  Corps generals, General  Motors  looked exactly like  a Marine Corps
general, eyes as gray as  gun metal,  a face that was tough but sensitive--a
Cro-Magnon   holy  man's   face.   His   jungle  utilities  were   starched,
razor-creased, with shirt-sleeves rolled up neatly.
     Rafter Man stood there, staring at the general, grinning like a goddamn
fool. He wobbled. He tried  to  walk  but  he couldn't. He was having enough
trouble just standing in one place.
     General Motors ordered  the broken table cleared away.  Then he offered
Rafter Man his chair.
     Rafter  Man  hesitated,  looked at  the  general,  then  at  the  staff
officers,  who were still  pissed off,  then at me,  then  he looked  at the
general again. He grinned and sat down on the metal folding chair.
     The general nodded, then sat down on the floor next to Rafter Man. With
a wave of his hand he ordered the staff  officers to sit on the floor behind
him, which they did, still pissed off.
     With another wave of his hand the general  ordered the performers to go
on with the show.
     The Australian comedian and the sweating belly dancers hesitated.
     Rafter Man stood up.
     He wobbled, then sank down  to the  deck beside the general. He put his
arm around  the general's shoulders.  General Motors looked at  him  without
expression. Rafter Man  said, "Hey, bro, I  can fly. Did you see me fly?" He
paused. "You think...am I drunk? I mean, am I hammered or am I hammered?" He
looked around. "Joker? Where's Joker?" But I was still stumbling  over angry
poges.  "Joker's  my bro, sir.  We  enlisted personnel  are tight, you know?
Indubitably.  I am in love with those sexy women.  I roger that..." His face
got  serious. "Who'll  take  me  through  the wire? Sir? Where's  Joker?" He
looked around, but didn't see me. "I'll fall in the wire. Or blow myself up.
Sir? SIR?  I'll  step on a mine. I got to find my  bro, sir. I don't want to
fall into the wire, not again. JOKER!"
     General  Motors looked  at Rafter Man  and  smiled.  "Don't worry, son.
Marines never abandon their wounded."
     Rafter Man looked at the  general the way drunks look at people who say
things they don't understand. Then he smiled. He nodded. "Aye-aye, sir."
     The Australian comedian and the meaty belly  dancers resumed their act,
which consisted primarily of  double-takes from the comedian  every time one
of the  belly  dancers slung  a big tender  breast  out  of her tiny  golden
costume. The act was a smashing success.
     By  the time the show was over, Rafter Man could stand only if he had a
wall to hold onto. General Motors took Rafter  Man's arm and put it over his
shoulders and helped Rafter Man out of the E.M. club and,  leaving the staff
officer's  behind,  helped Rafter Man  to stagger down  the  hill, along the
narrow path through the tangle-foot and the concertina wire.
     As  the enlisted men left the Thunderbird Club, they watched this small
event and they smiled and nodded and said, "Decent. Number one."
     And: "There it is."


     Now  the  C-130 Hercules propjet is taxiing to a stop. The  heavy cargo
door drops and slams into the runway. Rafter Man and  I  hop  out  with  our
fellow passengers.
     There are three damaged C-130's pushed together on the port side of the
airfield. On the  starboard side of the  airfield is  the gutted carcass  of
another  C-130,  charred,  still  smoking.  Men  in  tinfoil  spacesuits are
squirting the torn metal with white foam.
     Rafter Man and I ditty-bop off the airfield  and we hump down a freshly
oiled dirt road until we come to the perimeter of Phu Bai Combat Base, about
a mile from the airfield and thirty-four miles from the DMZ.
     Phu Bai  is a vast mud puddle  cut into  sections  by perfectly aligned
rows of frame hootches. The largest structure at Phu Bai is HQ for the Third
Marine Division. The big wooden building stands as a symbol of our power and
as a temple of those who love the power.
     We stop  at the guard bunker. A  big  dumb M.P. orders us to  clear our
weapons. I click  the  magazine out of my M-16. Rafter  Man does the same. I
stare back at the big dumb M.P. to assert my principles. He is scribbling on
a clipboard with a stubby yellow pencil.
     Suddenly  the  M.P. punches Rafter Man  in  the chest  with his  walnut
baton. "You  a New Guy?" Rafter Man  nods. "I got a working  party for  you.
You're  going to  fill sandbags for  my bunkers."  The  M.P. hooks his thumb
toward the guard bunker in the center of the road. A big bite has been taken
out of the bunker.  A mortar shell has blasted through one layer of sandbags
and has split open a second layer, spilling sand.
     I say, "He's with me."
     Sneering, the  sergeant  draws  himself  up  inside  his  crisp,  clean
stateside utilities, his  white helmet liner with Military  Police stenciled
in red, his white rifle  belt with its  gold buckle bearing the eagle, globe
and  anchor,  his shiny  new  forty-five  automatic  pistol,  and his  black
spit-shined stateside shoes. The big  dumb M.P.  is smugly  enthroned in his
power  to exact the trivial. "He'll do what I say, motherfucker. Cor-poral."
He thumps his black metal  collar chevrons with the tip of his walnut baton.
"I'm a sergeant."
     I nod. "Affirmative. That's affirmative,  you fucking  lifer. But  this
man is only a lance corporal. And he takes his orders from me."
     The big  dumb M.P. shrugs. "Okay. Okay, motherfucker. You can  tell him
what to do. You can fill my sandbags, corporal. Many, many of them."
     I look at the deck. An explosion is building up inside me. I experience
fear,  and a terrible  strain, as the  pressure  grows  and grows,  and then
release,  relief. "No, you dumb redneck. Negative,  you fucking pig. No, I'm
not going  to  fall out  for any  Mickey Mouse working party. You know  why?
Huh?" I slam the magazine back into my M-16 and  I snap the bolt, chambering
a round.
     I'm smiling now. I'm smiling as I jam the flash  supressor into the big
dumb  M.P.'s jelly  belly  and then I wait for him  to  make  one sound, any
sound,  or  just the slightest  movement  and  then  I'm  going to  pull the
trigger.
     The big dumb M.P.'s  mouth falls open. He doesn't have anything else to
say. I don't think he wants me to fill his sandbags anymore.
     The clipboard and the pencil fall.
     Then,  walking backward, the big  dumb M.P. retreats into  his  bunker,
mouth open, hands up.


     Rafter Man is too scared to say anything for a while.
     I  say,  "You'll  get  used  to   this  place.  You'll  change.  You'll
understand."
     Rafter Man  remains quiet.  We  walk. Then, "You weren't bluffing.  You
would have killed that guy. For nothing."
     I say, "There it is."
     Rafter Man  is  looking at me as though he's seeing  something new. "Is
everybody like that? I mean, you were laughing. Like..."
     "It's not  the  kind of  thing you  can  talk  about. There's no way to
explain stuff  like that. After  you've  been  in the shit, after you've got
your first confirmed kill, you'll understand."
     Rafter Man is silent. His questions are silent.
     "At ease," I say. "Don't kid yourself, Rafter Man, this is a slaughter.
In  this world of shit  you won't  have time to understand. What you do, you
become. You better learn to flow with it. You owe it to yourself."
     Rafter Man nods, but he doesn't reply. I know how he feels.


     The Informational Services Office for Task Force X-Ray, a unit assigned
to cover elements of the First Division  temporarily operating in the  Third
Division's  area, is a small frame hootch, constructed with two-by-fours and
slave labor.  Nailed to the screen  door is a red sign with yellow  letters:
TFX-ISO.  Roofed  with sheets  of  galvanized tin and walled  with fine-mesh
screening, the  hootch is designed to  protect us from the heat. The Seabees
have nailed green plastic ponchos along  the side of the hootch. These dusty
flaps  are  rolled up  during the furnace of the day and are  rolled down at
night to keep out the fierce monsoon rain.
     Chili Vendor  and Daytona  Dave are doing fleetniks in front of the ISO
hootch. Chili Vendor is a tough Chicano  from East L.A.  and Daytona Dave is
an easy-going  surf  bum  from  a  wealthy  family  in  Florida.  They  have
absolutely nothing in common. They are the best of friends.
     About  a hundred grunts have  stuffed  themselves into  every available
piece of shade in the area.  Each grunt has been given a fleetnik, a printed
form  with spaces for all the necessary biographical data required to send a
photograph of the grunt to his hometown newspaper.
     Daytona Dave  is  taking the photographs with a black-body  Nikon while
Chili Vendor says, "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
     The grunt next in line kneels down beside a little Vietnamese orphan of
undetermined sex. Chili  Vendor slaps a  rubber Hershey bar into the grunt's
hand. "Smile, scumbag. Say, 'shit.' Next."
     Daytona Dave snaps the picture.
     Chili Vendor snatches the grunt's fleetnik with one hand and the rubber
Hershey bar with the other. "Next!"
     The  orphan  says,  "Her, Marine  number  one! You!  You! You  give  me
chop-chop? You souvenir me?"  The orphan grabs at  the Hershey bar and jerks
it out  of Chili Vendor's hand.  He bites the Hershey  bar; it's  rubber. He
tries to tear off the wrapper; he can't. "Chop-chop number ten!"
     Chili Vendor  snatches the rubber Hershey bar out of the orphan's hands
and tosses  it to  the next grunt in the line. "Keep moving. Don't  you guys
want to be famous? Some  of you dudes probably wasted this kid's family, but
back  in your  hometown you gonna  be the big strong Marine  with a heart of
gold."
     I say in my John Wayne voice: "Listen up, pilgrim. You skating again?"
     Chili Vendor  turns,  sees me  and  grins. "Hey,  Joker, que pasa? This
might  be  skating,  man,  it  fucking  might  be.  These  gook orphans  are
hard-core. I think half of them are Viet Cong Marines."
     The orphan  is  walking  away,  grumbling, kicking  the road.  Then, as
though to prove Chili Vendor's point, the orphan pauses. He turns around and
gives us the finger with both hands. Then he walks on.
     Daytona Dave laughs. "That kid runs an NVA rifle company. Somebody blow
him away."
     I  grin. "You ladies  are  doing an outstanding job. You're  both  born
poges."
     Chili Vendor shrugs.  "Hey, bro, the Crotch don't send beaners into the
field. We're too tough. We make the grunts look bad."
     "You guys getting hit?"
     "That's  affirmative," says Daytona  Dave. "Every night. A  few rounds.
They're just fucking with us. Of  course, I've got so many confirmed kills I
lost count. Nobody believes me because the gooks drag off their  dead.  I do
believe  that  those  little  yellow enemy folks eat their casualties. Blood
trails all over the place, but no confirmed kills. So here I am, a hero, and
Captain  January  has got  me  doing  Mickey  Mouse  shit  with  this uppity
wetback."
     "CORPORAL JOKER!"
     "SIR!" Later, people. Come on, Rafter."
     Chili Vendor punches Daytona Dave in the chest. "Doubletime  up  to the
ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one,
a really skuzzy one."
     "JOKER!"
     "AYE-AYE, SIR!"


     Captain  January  is  in  his  plywood cubicle  in the  back of the ISO
hootch.  Captain  January  is the kind  of  officer who chews  an unlit pipe
because he thinks  that a pipe will help to make him a father  figure.  He's
playing  cut-throat  Monopoly   with  Mr.  Payback.  Mr.  Payback  has  more
T.I.--time  in--than  any  other snuffy in our unit.  Captain January  isn't
Captain Queeg, but then  he's not  Humphrey Bogart, either. He picks up  his
little  silver shoe and moves  it  to Baltic  Avenue, tapping  each property
along the way.
     "I'll  buy Baltic. And  two  houses."  Captain January  reaches for the
white and purple deed to Baltic Avenue. "That's another monopoly, Sergeant."
He  positions  tiny green  houses on the  board. "Joker,  you've  scarfed up
beaucoup slack in Da Nang and I am sure that now you are squared away to get
back into the field. Hump up to Hue. The NVA have overrun the  city. One-One
is in the shit."
     I hesitate.  "Sir, would the Captain happen to know who killed my story
on  that  howitzer  crew  who wasted a  whole squad of  NVA with one beehive
round?  In  Da Nang some poges told me that a colonel shit-canned my  story.
Some  colonel  said that  beehive  rounds were  a figment of  my imagination
because the  Geneva Convention  classified them  as 'inhumane'  and American
fighting men are incapable of being inhumane."
     Mr. Payback  grunts.  "Inhumane? That's  a  pretty  word  for  it.  Ten
thousand feathered stainless  steel  darts.  Those  flechette  canisters  do
convert gooks into lumps of shitty rags. There it is."
     "Oh, damn," says Captain  January. He slaps a card onto the field desk.
"Go to jail--go directly to jail--do not pass go--do not collect two hundred
dollars." The  captain puts his little silver  shoe into jail.  "I  know who
killed  your beehive story, Joker. What I don't know is who has been tipping
off hostile reporters every time we get an adverse incident--like that white
Victor  Charlies recon wasted  last  week,  the one  the snuffies call  'The
Phantom Blooper.' General Motors is ready to bust me down to a grunt because
of that leak in our security. You talk; I'll talk. Do we have a deal?"
     "No. No, Captain. It's not important."
     "Number one! Snake eyes! No sweat, Joker. I've got a big piece of slack
for you." Captain  January picks up a manila  guard mail  envelope and pulls
out a  piece of paper with fancy  writing on  it. "Congratulations, Sergeant
Joker." He hands me the paper.

        TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING: KNOW YE THAT REPOSING
     SPECIAL TRUST  AND  CONFIDENCE  IN  THE  FIDELITY OF  JAMES  T.  DAVIS,
2306777/4312, I DO
     APPOINT HIM A SERGEANT IN THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS...

     I stare  at the  piece  of  paper.  Then  I  put  the order on  Captain
January's field desk. "Number ten. I mean, no way, sir."
     Captain January stops his little silver shoe in  mid-stride.  "What did
you say, Sergeant?"
     "Sir, I  rose by sheer military genius to the rank of corporal, as they
say, like Hitler and  Napoleon. But I'm not a sergeant. I guess  I'm just  a
snuffy at heart."
     "Sergeant  Joker, you  will  belay the Mickey  Mouse  shit.  You won  a
meritorious promotion on Parris Island. You've got  an  excellent record  in
country. You've got high enough time-in-grade. You rate this promotion. This
is the only war we've got, Sergeant. Your career as a Marine--"
     "No, sir. We bomb these people, then we photograph them. My stories are
paper bullets fired  into the  fat black  heart of Communism. I've fought to
make the  world safe for hypocrisy. We have  met the enemy and he is us. War
is good business--invest your son. Viet Nam means never having to say you're
sorry. Arbeit Macht Frei--"
     "Sergeant Joker!"
     "Negative, Captain. Number ten. I'm a corporal. You can send me  to the
brig,  sir--I know that. Lock me  up in Portsmouth Naval Prison until I rot,
but  let me rot  as a corporal, sir. You know I do my  job. I write that the
Nam is  an  Asian  Eldorado  populated  by a cute, primitive but  determined
people. War is  a noisy breakfast food.  War is fun to eat. War can give you
better  checkups.  War cures  cancer--permanently.  I don't kill.  I  write.
Grunts kill; I only watch. I'm only young Dr. Goebbels. I'm not a sergeant."
I add: "Sir."
     Captain January's