1968. Part 9

He hadn't read much about psychology, which he now regretted, but he was pretty sure that crazy people thought they were sane.

Fourth week

Chat

January 21st.

Dear Mom and Dad, Well, I never thought I'd be gladto be out in the field rather than in base camp. But nothing's been happening out here at all, and the base camps are getting kicked. Pleiku was. .h.i.t last night, the airfield and the hospital. We could barely see the light, over the horizon from the hill here. Lotsa fireworks. Too far away to hear anything.

I think maybe the last letter you got from me was when I was in Pleiku. Camp Enari, which is where the hospital is that got hit. Don't worry, in case you read about this attack in the papers. I'm not there anymore. But I guess you'll read about it before you get this letter, duh.

I finished the Heinlein book you sent. It was really fine. Any other Heinlein would be appreciated, even if I've read it before. I traded it for a Philip K. d.i.c.k book, which is also science fiction but pretty weird.Also, could you try to find a paperback introduction to psychology? Think I'll take a few courses in it when I go back to school.

Lumberjacking is the first thing I've learned in the army that's actually kind of fun. These rubber trees, you really have to work on them. Even with a chain saw it can take an hour to drop one. It's a real feeling of power. But I don't think it's something I would want to go into, peacetime. They say the pay's pretty high, but chain saws aren't the safest things to work with. And I almost got hit by a tree yesterday. Moses was working uphill from me, he yelled TIMBER! but I couldn't hear him because I had a chain saw roaring in front of me, natch. So this big rubber tree comes cras.h.i.+ng down about ten feet away, scared the bejesus out of me!

So maybe I should look for a line of work where you use a pencil instead of a chain saw.

You know what the lumberjack stuff reminds me of, though? Pancakes. One of the first books I can remember Morn reading to me from was about lumberjacks and the big stacks of pancakes they ate.

Then she taught me how to make pancakes on the griddle. I remember standing on the piano bench, turning them.

I think about food a lot for some reason.

Linda wrote me about Uncle Terry killing himself. That's awful. But I guess he's always been a little crazy, even before Aunt Phyllis left. The note he sent with the Christmas present knife was about how he'd left his own knife in a Korean "gook." From what Dad said that couldn't be true, he was never actually in the war zone. But he was crazy by the time he got out of the army anyhow. (That goes along with what people here say, though, and my own impressions, too. The guys back in the base camp are a lot crazier than us out here.) Beverly's writing me almost every day. I miss her so much.

Love, John P.S. Supposed to be a big truce next week, for the Vietnamese Tet holiday. I'll believe it when I see it.

January 24th Dear Spider, I'm sorry it's been so long since I last wrote you. Beginning of school and all. Every professor piles on the reading like you didn't have any other courses.

G.o.d, the world is going crazy! You don't get any news, you say, so maybe you don't know about the H-Bombs and the Pueblo.

The H-Bombs were yesterday. A B-52 bomber crashed in the ocean off Greenland yesterday with four live H-Bombs aboard! What was it doing over Greenland anyhow?

The Pueblo was this morning. That's the name of a Navy s.h.i.+p, evidently a spy s.h.i.+p, that cruised into North Korean territory and the Communists seized it. The government says it was in neutral territory, and they want to send troops in to get it back. My friend Lee says it was a setup, an excuse to broaden the war. I usually think stuff like that is paranoid, but this time maybe it's true.I wonder whether your mail gets opened, speaking of paranoid. In WWII they censored mail with a razor blade. If you don't get this letter, write and tell me!

Let's see, what other subversive stuff in the paper. Lyndon Johnson is as good an art collector as he is a president. One of the paintings he brought to the White House has been hanging upside down all this time.

I'm glad you're not farther north. It looks like the Marines are in for a hard time up by the DMZ, in a place called Khe Sanh. They're surrounded by 11,000 NVA soldiers. It's just a few days till the New Years truce, but someone on TV said that the NVA would probably use that time to sneak more people and supplies in.

I guess the only good news is that they orbited that lunar module, the thing that the astronauts are going to use to go back and forth between the moon and their capsule. That's going to be exciting!

I'd better get back to my exciting history. It'sso relevant.

Love, Beverly Tet 1968 The 1968 Tet Offensive had a lot in common with j.a.pan's World War II surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Both attacks were expected by the Americans, sooner or later, but nevertheless caught the Americans unprepared; both were the most significant turning points of their wars. But Pearl Harbor was an unqualified success for the j.a.panese, which ultimately led to their defeat; Tet was a total disaster for the Vietnamese, which ultimately led to their victory.

In both cases, this was because of changing civilian att.i.tudes rather than strictly military factors. Pearl Harbor galvanized an America most of whom were already spoiling for a fight. Tet further demoralized an America that was getting ready to quit.

You couldn't ignore the pictures. Pearl Harbor's mighty s.h.i.+ps helplessly sinking in billows of smoke; the Army Air Corps destroyed on the tarmac while j.a.p Zeros buzzed at treetop level, strafing civilians and military alike. American MPs cowering inside Saigon's American emba.s.sy, American boys dead at their feet; the televised offhand execution of a handcuffed prisoner-byour side! The realtime interviews with confused, dog-tired GIs. All the American blood, in living color.

Tet became a symbol, in some quarters, for the hopelessness of continuing the war. But the NVA and Viet Cong had been soundly defeated in a desperate all-out attack, with thirty-three thousand dead before the campaign slowly fizzled out. The fifteen hundred American dead would have a greater political impact.

Strategy "What youmean," Batman said, "is that we get to spend this truce settin' in some ambush out in the boonies." Spider had the sinking feeling that he would be part of the "we."

Sarge had come over to collect three engineers. "No, not really, not all of us. We just quietly set up a position and if Charles breaks the truce, we send out two squads to watch over the trails headed here."

He sat down on the edge of the engineers' bunker and opened a beer. "I volunteered for it, Home," hesaid softly.

Batman squinted at him. "No s.h.i.+t."

"Look around." He gestured with the can. "This place ain't got s.h.i.+t. We got no fifties, no recoilless, and you know we been watched from day one. Charlie wants to break the truce, he gonna hit here first, take out the one-five-fives. He gonna wipe our a.s.s."

"Jus' hold it," Batman said. "Don't Charlie have to come by your ambush on the way up? I mean, he wipe your a.s.sfirst. Then he come up here and finish the job."

"You ain't thinkin' it through, bro'." He took a drink and displayed about a hundred white teeth. "They ain't gonna f.u.c.k with no little ambush. Gonna know where we are andavoid us!"

Moses was sitting next to Spider. "Sounds screwy to me, Sarge. What you're saying is you make a lot of noise setting up the ambush-"

"A little more than usual, maybe."

"Okay. Why doesn't he hit you then, though?"

"We set it up early, before it gets dark. Charlie ain't gonna f.u.c.k with us in the daytime." He pointed at the ground. "Gonna hit here after midnight. Midnight tomorrow."

"During the truce?"

"f.u.c.kin' A. Truce don't mean s.h.i.+t to Charlie."

"I don't know," Batman said. "I guess one place just as bad as the other, Charlie decide to fight."

"Up here, they'd give you more air support," Spider said. "Wouldn't they? Protect the guns."

"Of course they would, my man," Sarge said. "And more artillery support. But that's what I'm sayin'. I don't wanta be here when they need all that s.h.i.+t! Be in some little p.i.s.sant ambush a couple miles away."

"But if they hit the ambush-"

"They got no reason to, like I say."

"Ah, you fulla s.h.i.+t, Sarge," Batman said good-naturedly. "I'll go along with it, though."

"What, you fulla s.h.i.+t, too?"

"Yeah. This place too quiet, been too quiet too long. 'Bout time it got hit."

"I'll go along with you too," Moses said. They all looked at Spider.

He had a bad feeling about it. The eight layers of sandbags on top of that bunker felt like a secure investment. "Think I'll wait till Killer gets back." He was on a sump detail on the other side of the hill, digging a garbage pit. "Flip him for it."Sarge looked at his watch. "Better go settle with him now. Wanta hump in about an hour."

Spider considered it for a second. "Aw h.e.l.l. Count me in." He figured he'd just lose the toss anyhow.

Love Letter Beverly and Lee came back from their volunteer work exhausted but happy. They'd been called in early that Sunday morning, the 28th of January, because of King's "go-for-broke" speech in Atlanta. He said he intended for the April Drive for the Poor to "escalate nonviolence to the level of civil disobedience."

Poor people camping on the Mall, on the White House lawn unless Johnson kicked them off. The office wanted all hands on deck to deal with the press. Lee's strong and undeniably Caucasian telephone voice was an a.s.set with certain kinds of callers.

Her old roommate Sherry had come by earlier but couldn't stay. She left behind a stack of mail, mostly junk but also a dirt-stained letter from Spider. The last one, from Pleiku, had been clean. "Well, he's out in the boonies again," she said. He'd known he would only be in base camp for a couple of days, though.

They said h.e.l.lo to a foursome of people they vaguely knew, who were sitting on the couch smoking dope, and went into the kitchen for a snack. They were alone with a half-eaten pizza. Lee picked up a guitar and strummed quietly.

She opened the letter and read some of it to Lee, interesting stuff about lumberjacking and the various kinds of ants and mantises he'd observed. She didn't read him romantic or h.o.r.n.y parts, by prior agreement.

"He seems pretty up," she said after the first page. "Maybe it's time I told him about us. At least start hinting."

Lee munched on cold pizza. "I wouldn't. By the time he gets the letter, who knows how he'll feel?"

She scanned the second page. "Oh s.h.i.+t."

"Oh?" He set the pizza down and wiped his fingers. "Bad news."

"He wants me to meet him for R&R. 'Rest and Recreation,' in Hawaii, this spring. For a week."

"Well, h.e.l.l. What's that, five hundred bucks?" He struggled with the cork in a wine bottle, but his fingers were too slippery. "You and I together couldn't buy a ticket to Philadelphia."

"s.h.i.+t. Oh, s.h.i.+t."

"What?"

"He wrote to dear old Dad.My father! He says he'd beglad to pay my way. A no-interest loan until he gets out."

"Oh, now, that's cool. That really sucks." He used a paper napkin for traction and the cork came out with a loud pop. He got up to rinse out a couple of gla.s.ses. "Forces the issue."

"He asked his own family, but they don't have any money. He apologizes for not clearing it with me first.

'But your Dad and I always got along so well.' Jesus! I wonder what the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d told him.""Probably nothing. What's he gonna say? Your girlfriend's f.u.c.king a hippy and I think you ought to try to talk her out of it'?"

She took the tumbler of wine he handed her. "I do have to write him. Write my father, too, about what a big help he is to our boys overseas."

They both watched silently as one of the dopers shuffled, lost in thought, through the kitchen and out the back door, which led to nothing but a fenced-in yard of junk. Probably wanted to take a leak in the rain.

Organic.

"Don't be too quick to tell Spider everything. Blow his mind."

"So what should I tell him?" She set the gla.s.s down without tasting it. "Say I'm having an argument with Dad; you can't borrow money from him? What should I tell him we're arguing about?"

"You could just tell him it sounds like a great idea."

"Go to Hawaii?"

"Tell him that, yeah."

"Maybe I should just go and give him a good f.u.c.king," she said, voice rising, as the doper returned through the door. He looked at them both and walked seriously back into the living room.

"If that's what you want."

"Want? What do you mean by that?"

"I don't own you."

"You mean you don'tlove me."

"I mean it's your body. You have to make your own decisions."

She stood up, gripping the edge of the table. "And what would you decide to do with your body, while I was away? Hmm?" He didn't reply; didn't change expression.

"Jesus!" She yanked her coat off the back of the chair and rushed out of the kitchen, through the sweet smoke, out into the cold drizzle. She walked hatless the mile into town, at first crying and then just furious. She stopped at a drugstore for a box of stationery, and took it into the all-night doughnut shop.

With every version of the letter, she bought a cup of coffee and a different kind of doughnut.

Cream-filled, jelly-filled, glazed, dusted.

Cream-filled: everything, the awful truth. The s.e.x, the lies.

Jelly-filled: Yes, I'll come to Hawaii, I can't wait to see you again.

Glazed: I need time to think; things have become complicated.Dusted: Only if I can raise the money myself; I can't take money from Dad; don't ask me why.

She had a mad impulse to put each letter in an envelope and mail one at random, and then open the others to see what her future would be. Instead, she got a gla.s.s of milk and a fried apple pie and wrote this one: Dear, dear Spider, Your letter about Hawaii comes at a difficult time for me, and for us. I'm not speaking to my father, because of an argument a few weeks ago, and he didn't consult me about his offer.

The argument was over a man I'm seeing, who Dad calls a "hippy." I thought I was falling in love with him, but now I don't know. I'm confused by everything.

So I don't know how I'll feel when your R&R comes. I would love to see you then, but it might be just as a friend rather than your girlfriend.

I would rather raise the money myself, too. I don't want to cost you extra and I don't want anything from my father.

I'm sorry. I've been wanting to write you about this for awhile, but I guess it was just easier to lie a little bit and keep from hurting you, and me. But I don't want you to build up hopes and then have a big disaster happen in Hawaii.

Your very best friend, Beverly She read it over several times and then sealed it and stamped it. She hurried outside, suddenly afraid she was going to throw up, but getting out of the stuffy, smoky atmosphere into the clean cold settled her stomach.

It settled her mind, too. She had thought hard about going back to the dorm. Instead, she would go back to Lee and have it out with him.

So it was with mixed feelings-regret but determination-that she opened the mouth of the mailbox, set the letter inside, and let it slam shut. She had never written a letter before that she knew would actually change her life.

It wouldn't change Spider's life, though. He would never see it.