2. Saint

People movin’ out, people movin’ in
Why, because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run, but you sure can’t hide

--The Temptations, “Ball of Confusion”

Think about it, a chuck called Motown.  Man, I tell you, I loved that white boy.  I mean, I wasn’t too hip on being moved into that unit, like I was moving into Green Acres, you know, all those white folks.  There were a couple a brothers in first squad, but they were already tight with each other and I was the new splib.  Hey, no sweat for me, I just stay together, be cool, do my own thing, see how things slide.  I was about survival, man, my own survival, and I don’t care if you black, white, purple, or striped I was gonna hang with you if I thought you would cover my ass for a few extra seconds a life.

And that’s how I got to know old Motown, Mr. A.P., A-ram Pehl-i-vanian, the Armenian Assassin, the crazy white boy from the city of brotherly hate.  The first week, I didn’t know if this cat was like retarded or what.  He was always hanging with the boys but he didn’t say anything, just got this bad-ass I’ll-fuck-you-up look on his face all the time, but later on I figured out he was just listening real close, you know, taking it all in.  So one day I’m rackin’ it, layin’ back, drawing because that’s what I do, what I want to do for a career, draw and paint and just live the art, you know.  I can draw anything, but mostly people, any kind of people, any size, any color, you name it.

So I’m just layin’ chilly on my bunk with my pencil and paper and I don’t even remember what I’m drawing, I think maybe it was one of the guys that went down that first time in the shit, Jack, yeah, it was Jack.  And A.P. come rollin’ up in just his skivvies and he’s not even lookin’ at me, he just goes right for my sketch pad, standing next to me and bending over to look.

“Fuckin’ eh.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that.  I mean, those were the first words out of his mouth that I ever heard directed at me.  I wasn’t gonna ask him what he meant, either.  This cat, he looks like a miniature photo negative of Jim Brown, you know what I’m sayin’?  He’s built like a brother but with those freaky ass crazy blue eyes.

“That’s fuckin’ Jack, man.  Goddamn.”

“You like it?”

“Oh, hell yes.  Outstanding.  Damn, you’re good, man.  Fuckin’ good.”

And then he just walks off and disappears for a while.  When he comes back, he’s all excited and giddy, holdin’ his steel pot with some newspaper in it.

“Saint, man, you gotta help me.  I need you to draw me somthin’.”

He pulls out this newspaper article from the sports page of a Detroit paper, and it’s got a picture of some ballplayers on it.  A.P., he’s looking at me all excited, like I understand what he’s gettin’ at.  No more a that serious look, like he wants to tear your heart out and eat it.  No, it’s like he found someone to play marbles with.

“I’d do it myself but, you know, I can’t draw, man.”

“Do what?  Whatcha thinking about?”

“Here, on my pot.  I wanna customize my cover.  See, lemme see  your pencil, thanks.  Okay, I can’t draw, but see this fancy ‘D,’ man?  That goes in the center, hmmm, like this, shit, I said I couldn’t draw.  Okay, you get the idea, close enough.  But above it, across the top, the word ‘Motown,’ M-O-, hell, you know how to spell it.  And then on the bottom, here, put the letters K-P-, no, shit, lemme think, K-O-J, no, wait, yeah-yeah, K-O-T-J-yeah, lemme see, M-F.  Yeah, that’s it, K-O-T-J-M-F….”

And he was all excited and erasing stuff and trying to put little special flourishes here and there and he’s right, he can’t draw worth a shit and he sure as hell can’t spell, but he’s funny, man, like he’s in his own little world and this little design is the most important thing in the universe, his Mona Lisa.

“Hey, Motown, now why you want me to go and fuck up United States government property by puttin’ a lame-ass Dee-troit Tiger Old English ‘D’ on it?  Lemme huss you up tight, man, and fix you with a little Yankee ‘NY’ and maybe some bad-ass pinstripes.”

Oh boy, he’s looking at me like maybe now he wants to pull my heart out my chest and stomp on it before he eats it.

“Saint, man, we’re talkin’ ‘bout the future 1968 champions a the world.  You think the Yankees’re the shit, you got Mickey Mantle, but, bro, we got two Mickeys, Mickey Lolich, the best lefthanded pitcher in the American League and Mickey Stanley, who puts up the numbers at the plate, plus Denny McClain, who’s gonna be the shit, and Al Kaline, and most of all, Saint, we got brothers playin’ on our team.  Oh yeah, Saint, brothers.  Earl Wilson won 22 fuckin’ games last year, the Gator, Gates Brown, he’s a bitch, best fuckin’ pinch hitter in the entire major leagues, and Willie Horton, the strongest man in the city a Detroit period.  And look at your Yankees.  ‘Whitey’ Ford and Roy ‘White’….”

“Hold on, Motown, Roy White’s a brother, baby.”

“Huh?  Yeah, okay, so maybe he is, but you got my drift, man.  You gotta hook me up on this design, Saint.”

He didn’t say shit for I don’t know how long and now you couldn’t shut him up, gettin’ all doped up on baseball.  If he wasn’t so crazy-ass serious about this, I mean, there’s veins sticking out his neck.

“Okay, man, let’s talk terms.  How about some koon sa?  You got any bowl-food for a brother you can barter with?”

“Negatory, Saint, sorry, don’t got weed.  Hey, how ‘bout some chow, man, some quality class one?  We got that gig tomorrow to Cu Chi. Griggs says the best slopchute in country right there onna side a the road maybe five clicks from the ranch.  Guaranteed no shits, no sweats, no cramps.  C’mon, Saint, my treat onna way back, all you can eat.  Whattaya say?”

Seeing how I had to sit for a couple of hours with him in a truck, what the hell, half hour with a permanent marker and he’s the happiest white man in the land of the little people.  No big deal, I’d take a chance with a free meal.

“Okay, okay, gimme your cover.  You’re gonna be the baddest Motown mutha’ in country.  The dinks gonna see that Old English ‘D’ and just shit enough to fill a rice paddy.  Oh yeah, the Dee-troit Destroyer gonna be in the house!”

And I tell you, this guy is smiling from ear to ear, first time I ever saw him like that.  And every two minutes he’s coming back to look at what I’m doing but I tell him, C’mon, Motown, give the ar-teest a little space here, but it’s like he’s looking at his first stroke book.  Finally, I finish it up, and I must say, it was damn good.  You couldn’t have silk screened that bitch any better’n that.  And I call Motown over, and I’m wearing the cover when he walks over.  I swear, it was like he just saw the Lord Jesus himself risen from the dead.

“Ohhhh.  Oh-ho-ho-ho, fuckin’ eh, man!”

That was one ecstatic fucking white boy.  I give’m the cover and he just holds it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Okay, Saint, some 33’s, a little Tiger piss?  How ‘bout it, bro?”

“Shit, man, that’s evil stuff.  What about that Australian brew?  Any a that around?”

“No, all out.  Wait, damn, I got it, wait right here.”

And that boy, he’s diddy boppin’ around in his skivvies and that steel pot on his gourd and he’s loving life.  Five minutes later he comes back with a dozen cold 33’s, nasty ass gook beer, but he’s got a bottle of Jim Beam, too.

“Here, good stuff.  I forgot I had this in my lock.  From my uncle’s bar.”

“Oh, that’s kinda harsh, man.  I’m more into a little dew, you know, some mellow grass medicine.”  But you know what, he just looks at me like I just shot his dog, and, after I thought about it for a second, I hadn’t been shitfaced in a while.  “Alright, though, A.P., you got a deal.  Let’s do it, what the hell.  Hooch tonight, a feast tomorrow.  Now, two questions for you.”

“Shoot.”

“First, how we gonna keep these beers cold?”

“Drink’m fast.”

“Okay, good answer.  Second, what the fuck is ‘KOTJMF’?  I think I can guess the MF part, but what’s the other shit?”

“Kick Out the Jams, bro.  Kick out the jams, mutha’ fuckahs!”

And this boy, he’s about singin’ now, and he looks totally fucking ridiculous still wearing that dumb-ass lid and his underwear.

“Hey, Saint, you gotta tape player?  I got some tapes but no player, man.  I’ll show you how we kick out the jams in Detroit .”

I had a cassette player, the batteries were fine, what the hell I thought, long as it wasn’t country and western, I could stand it.  He disappears again and then came back with some tapes.

“My girl…, my friend, she’s got a crazy cousin, Mary Jo, she can get any tape out there.  These’re all bootleg.  Recorded right on the spot, man.  Only way to listen to Detroit music, but these tapes’ll do.  But you gotta imagine, man, you’re in the Grande Ballroom, the bossest hangout in the city, there’s three thousand fuckin’ kids and they’re sick a their parents and the cops kickin’ their asses for no reason and they just want to hear some fuckin’ music.”

He went into his own little world again, fiddling with the tape player.  When he gets it working, out comes some serious ass noise man, bang-bang-bang, smash-smash-smash.  Not my first choice in sounds, but after two beers went down and we’d punched a hole in the Jim Beam, it sounded better.  And there sat Motown, his head bobbing up and down.  It was like he was back in his home and it felt good to him, like he was in that ballroom place he was talkin’ about.

“That’s some raw shit, man.  Kinda like Hendrix in a napalm storm.  Anyway, A.P., so tell me about your ‘friend.’  What’s this lady like?”

“Who?”

“C’mon, you already said you had you a girlfriend.  You shy about that shit?  What’s this hot mama’s name?”

“Ah, her name, her name is Katie.”

“Katie?!?  You shittin’ me.  No way you making time with nobody named Katie.  You, Motown, I see you with a girl named, I don’t know, Roxanne or Rosie or Carmen or something.  Y’know, some hard-ass bitch with tattoos and a heroin habit and shit.  So, Katie, she fine?”

“Katie?  She’s, she’s a nice girl, Saint.”

“Nice?  Get off it, man.  That sounds boring, A.P.  How nice?  What kinda ass she got?  That’s my personal favorite part, my specialty, you could say.”

“What?  What kinda ass?  C’mon, Saint, she ain’t that kinda girl, man.  She’s gotta great…behind.  But she got long brown hair.  Big brown eyes.  She’s a runner, great shape, man, slim and firm but soft, too, you know, in the right places.”

“Hey, sounds good, man, don’t be bashful.  Just two men talking about the finer things in life, you know.”

“So what about you?  You gotta girlfriend?”

“Oh, brother, how many girlfriends I got!  What side a the street you talkin’ ‘bout?  What part a town?  North side?  South?  East or West?  Manhattan , Harlem, the Queens, the Bronx ?  Black, white, Puerto Rican, I’m not down with just one special one.  No sir, I’m young and the world is wide, my friend.  Variety, it’s the spice of life.”

“Wow.  One’s enough for me.  This one, Katie, that’s all I want.”

“To each his own.”

Now I knew this cat from being out in the bush with him and passing time here on the ranch, but I had to get to the bottom of something Sergeant Griggs told me when I first came aboard and was trying to get the lowdown on everyone.

“Now, A.P., lemme get some stuff clear. Me, I’m here in the land a the little people cause I got to be.  Uncle Sam got my number.  But word has it you volunteered.  I don’t see you as the flag wavin’ type.  What the fuck’s up with that?”

“I had to volunteer,” he said, as if he made complete sense.

“Naw, naw, naw, bro, don’t work that way.  Either you drafted and had to come, or you volunteer.  It can’t be both.”

“I had to volunteer or, you know, go to, you know, prison.”  He’s gettin' all embarrassed and all so I knew I was onto something.  We’re just killin’ time so I decide to push my man a little more.

“What the fuck?!?  What you mean, volunteer or go to prison?  You some kinda ax murderer or like that cat, what’s his name, Richard Speck or something?”

“I don’t know that guy but, no, no, ain’t nothing like that.”

“Well, c’mon, blood, you can’t leave me hanging.”  For the life a me I couldn’t understand what all the secrecy was about but I had to keep pushing him.

“I, you know, I got in a little trouble.  You remember hearing about the riots in Detroit ?  How the whole place just went apeshit crazy and everybody was killing everybody?”

“Oh yeah, I heard all about it.”  And he just takes a long toke a Jim Beam like he just explained everything. “Well?  I still don’t know what the fuck you did, man.  You start the riot?  C’mon, bro, you can tell me what happened.”

“I told you, I got, I got in a little trouble.”  Now I’m gettin’ the idea he might just like stringing this story out so I keep pushin’.

“Keep going.”

“Well, I kinda got involved, you know, in the riot.  I kinda got in the middle of everything, but not on purpose like.  And then, then there was some trouble when I went to meet Katie’s parents the first time.”

“So?  You kill somebody?”

“No, no, nothing like that.  The one guy lived.  A little messed up, but he lived.”

“‘The one guy lived’?  What the fuck you do?  Sure sound like you tried to kill somebody.”  This guy cracked me up.  He could make World War III out to be a neighborhood touch football game.

“No, they just got me on Assault with Intent to Commit Murder and I already, you know, had a couple Aggravated Assaults in my file, bullshit stuff, so I had to choose.  No, nothing like straight up Murder.  Nothing serious like that.”

“Oh, shit, here I’m thinking I got a fucking homicidal maniac in my hooch and it’s just a lowly aggravated assaulter who intended to commit murder but didn’t quite get the job done.  Shit, here I was worrying.”

“Yeah, see, that’s it.  Don’t worry, I didn’t kill nobody.  A whole bunch a people tried to kick my ass in Katie’s hometown.  Most of ‘em, I just kinda, you know, hurt ‘em, you know, just with my hands, but the one guy, he took some cheapshots at me, so, I don’t know, I just kinda lost it and hit him with one of those fireplace shovel thingies.  Ends up his dad was some bigshit in the car business.  I was straight up fucked.”

“So what happened here, Al Capone?  I still don’t get why you here.” 

“Simple.  The judge said I could volunteer to go to Vietnam or volunteer for prison.  I didn’t want no prison, no way.  I knowed some people gone to prison and they all come out fucked up.  No way I’m doing time.”

Well, I got my answers and I felt good that I kept on A.P.’s safe side.  We drank and laughed and listened to his music.  He had one tape of Motown classics, the Temps, Smokey, Aretha, Stevie, you know.  I turned him on to some Hendrix and Sly.  It was good just to set and sham a bit.  We’d already seen people die, lost people we knew.  Listening to music, we didn’t think about anything but home and who and what we wanted to see.  I got more than a payback for my drawing.

*     *     *     *     *

The next morning, at oh-dark-thirty we had to be up and it was ugly.  Oh, hung over ain’t do how I felt justice.  Shit, I was hurtin’, man, just nasty ass hurtin’.  Motown was already up, back to his usual self, not saying anything, but sure as hell wearing the new cover.  My head was going to implode, man, and some coffee helped but I couldn’t stomach anything in the mess feeling like that.  A.P., he sees I’m hurtin’ and he offers to drive and I ain’t gonna fight him on that.  We were supposed to bring in a Rome plow from the corps HQ so we could start to clear away more jungle around the ranch.  Lately we’d been taking some rounds from out in the bush, so we were gonna move the bush line back.  Made sense to me.  I didn’t like being in a truck, you know, kind of like a target, but it would be good to change the scenery, maybe take a little time in the city and see what I could find, you know, maybe some female company or something.

We head on out that morning and the next thing I know, Motown’s shaking me to wake up.

“Saint, we’re here, man.  Chow time.”

Now I’m thinking we’re at the corps motor pool or something and I look around and, shit, we’re at this little ville.  I’m real stiff, man, I mean my back is all fucked up.  I musta slept right through the whole trip because I check out the rear view mirror and we got us a dragon wagon with the plow on board.  I’m getting’ my senses together and I look all around this scene.  Now, if I hadn’t already talked myself into hatin’ every damn square inch of this country I might have said this place was almost pretty.  We were right in front of a little shop with an awning covering over six or eight tables out in the open air.  Off in the distance to the rear of a paddy there was a little church or temple and some young kids walking from it.  The houses, they were nice for this neighborhood, some with tile roofs and real cement walls, although I could already see where a couple of them had started to take some rounds and the people tried to patch them up.  Across the redball there was a little school building the Engineers had put up before we got here, you know, making the little people love us.  And damn, I was hungry now and the smell coming from the little diner here was bringing me back to life.

“This is it, pogue, chow time.  Get your lazy ass up.”

Before yesterday, I woulda thought old A.P. was some kind of psycho killer to keep my space with, but he was okay, good people, maybe not the brightest but a good heart.  So I climb out the truck and it feels good to stretch out and feel the ground under my boots.  There’s an old man at one little wicker table and a mother and two babies at another.  And I can smell some real nice smells, some kind of sauces and spices and smoke off a grill.  A.P. is already over where the cooks are working away, and he’s pointing at this and that and babbling away in Vietnamese, man.  I mean, this guy hardly talks English, right?  What the fuck, I ain’t that hung over, but this stupid fuckin’ white boy is speaking slant.

“What you doing speaking Vietnamese, man?  That the official language a Detroit or something?”

“Saint, bro, I been studying.  You know that little DOD booklet?  I study that every day and now I get to try it out.”

“DOD booklet?  Shit, I don’t trust nothing the Department of Defense give us.  Anyways, what kind of grades you get in high school?”

“Oh, well, kinda not bad.  Not all that really bad.  I mostly passed most things.”

“Okay, so let’s see you work here.  I’ll tell you what I want and let’s see if you can get it done.”

“Well, if that’s the deal, then we start with two beers.”

“Shit man, you trying to kill me?  I still ain’t got last night out my system yet.”

“No sweat, man, this will make you feel better.  Okay, okay, now here goes.  Maybe I wasn’t the smartest in school, but I can do this. Nobody back at my fucking high school could do this, what I’m gonna do, not even the brainiest fucks in the whole school.  Okay, here goes.  Sin loi um, co, toi muon hai ba moi ba bia.  Lam on.”

The small girl had her back to us working at the grill but now turned around and I was quite woken up by what I saw.  She had real nice features, sharp and clear and great cheekbones, real pure skin, like fine china.  Her hair, oh Lord, straight and raven black with a glossy shimmer, like pulling out a beautiful new record album out of its cover.  She was tiny, petite, real fine figure.  Oh, she was a stunner, but just a little too young, you know?  I might be called a skivvies-honcho, but I ain’t no pedophile, you know, a child molester and all?  Give this sweet missy two more years and I’d fly her home with me to the Big Apple.  She gives us the beers real polite and gentle like.

“Ga mug, ga mug.  Um noy tyen Ahn khong?”

“Oh, lettul bit speak, lettul bit.  Toi noi chut dinh.  Ti-ti speak Ingwish.”

“Oh, man, you speak great.  Okay, let me try some more.  Ten cua chi la gi?”

“You good speak.  Good speak.  I name Qua Tang.”

“Qua Tang.  Qua Tang, that’s pretty.  A real pretty name.  Your name, chi ten xihn xan .  In Ahn, chi ten KAY-TEE.  Katie.  Chi ten Katie.”

“Oh, Ka-dee. Ten cua anh la gi?”

“My name is…wait, shit…ten cua toi la A.P.  Toi ten, A.P.  Him, my friend, his name is Saint.”

A.P. points at me and I just kind of wave and smile my best Harlem grin.  I’m just lost in all this talk and I’m getting real hungry now.

“A.P., bro, this is all great man, real impressive, but what about the meal you promised?  All this talk ain’t filling my belly.  Chow chow?  Let’s get to ordering, man.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right, I’m just liking this, you know, I feel really, you know, smart.”

“So what’s good here?”

“Well, looks like they got some chicken on the grill there, and that there, hmm, smells like it might be fish.”

“Only two things in the world smell like fish and I like the one that’s not fish, blood.  Get us some a that chicken.”

“Lam on, toi muon an hai thit ga.  Bow-coo com, lam on.  Hai ba moi ba.  Cam on.”

“Khong co chi.”

We take a seat and A.P. is looking in his little manual and writing stuff down.  He’s all into this speaking another language.  I also see he likes this sweet little Asian flower, calling her “Katie” and all.  I just got to pick on him about that.

“So, A.P., you gotta tell me something.  What was all this talk about one girl in the world bein’ enough for you?  Looks like you and the sweet little one gonna be in for some boom-boom before too long.  Yeah, little du-du for the Armenian Valentino!”

“Saint, come off it, man.  How can you say that?  What’s that girl, fourteen maybe?”

“Old enough she got you actin’ all like you gonna go on a little search and destroy mission in the poontang valley with her.  Oh Lord, gonna get that K-bar all slippery and bloody!  Lordy be!”

“Hey, come on with that.  Actin’ how?  What I been doing?  I ain’t done nothing with her.”

“No, but you headin’ in the right direction.  Look at her, A.P., she looking over here smiling at you.  This is a match made in Motown, brother.”

And the sweet little one looks over and sure enough she looking over at A.P. and she’s smiling real shy and pretty like.

“Saint, that’s a sweet innocent kid right there.  I can tell these things.  That kid, a kid like that, you look after a kid like that, you know, keep the perverts away.  If that was my sister, I’d fucking kill anybody who come near her before she turned eighteen.”

If that was a warning to stay away from little sweetie, I was listenin’ but I still wanted to pry my man here.

“Yeah, but A.P., she not your sister, bro, and she sure enough a cutie.  Wouldn’t hurt you to kick back a little, get some a that stress off you.  You can’t just be doin’ push-ups and sit-ups until you get back to the world, man.  And you calling her Katie, slick, just like your girlfriend.”

He just sat there like he was thinking over things.  I admit, sometimes I like to mess with people, not bad like, you know, to be cruel, just to tease them a little, keep ‘em off guard.  Soon the girl come over with our food and A.P., he gets real quiet like and serious.  I think I got him thinking a little too much, you know, which ain’t too good.  We got to keep it free and loose over here when we got some time to kick it.  We get us some more beers and the girl, she’s so cute and she likes this fucking man-child who’s all screwed up in the head.

“You like, Apie?”

“Toke lahm, Katie.  Bow-coo toke lahm.”

“Apie?  You hear what she call you?  That’s fucking perfect, man, the portable pocket vanilla gorilla from the jungles of Dee-troit, my man, Apie ‘The Apeman’ Pehli-vanian.  Right on, Katie, tell her she done good.”

“Dinky dau,” he says and points to me and this girl covers her mouth and starts laughing.

“What you say, man?  That ain’t no fair, you memorizing that stupid book and all.  Hey, Katie sister, your man Apie, this is what he is, Apie.”  I know I risk looking like a stupid stereotype Nee-gro, but what the hell, I got to help this guy, maybe he can score with this young thing.   I make some monkey noises and scratch under my arms and point to old Apie.

“Oh, cong khi!  Sane, you funny man!”

And I tell you, seeing this young beautiful girl laughing, it did me good.  I could get me a boom-boom girl on my next I & I leave, you know, a little Intoxication and Intercourse break, but this was different.  And to see old A.P. light up when he watched her, well, sometimes you just take the high road and let someone else score the winning basket, you know.

“Khong, khong, khong.  Toi khong cong khi,” he says, and she just keeps laughing.  We eat until we can’t eat anymore and we drink some more beers and talk and just sham for an hour or so.  We got to be careful they don’t come down on us with a Article 15 for unauthorized absence.  It was time to grab a hat and move on with the Rome plow, but it was good to stop there and feel for a few minutes like we weren’t in another country for the sole purpose of killing the shit out of other human beings.

*     *     *     *     *

Things went along for a while.  The boonies were the same, believe that, just as fubar fucked up beyond all recognition as ever and probably worse.  We used the Rome Plow and drove the canopy back, but shit, a sniper can be a damn mile away and make your life miserable.  We started to take mortar rounds and then a couple weeks later some heavy artillery, followed by the Congs coming right up to the concertina wire around the compound, crazy ass sappers, some real scary shit.  You think you’re safe once you’re inside the ranch, but it didn’t work that way anymore.  You know, to be honest, sometimes I got so scared I just wanna drop my piece and run, but you realize there ain’t nowhere to run to.  You stay on the ranch, you trapped inside, like a rat in a corner.  You leave the ranch, and you might as well just invite Mr. Victor Charlie to slit your throat somewhere out in the bush.  It was no win.   We’d go out in the day, in the night, and we’d get in some mean-ass bak-bak with the VC and then later NVA regulars, but we could never do enough to make Charlie give it up and call it quits.  Shit, we lost people, one of the brothers in first squad, Gans, Spec and Horton, the guys who replaced Jack and Mowgli, and Opie got so shot up he got a hot drop back to the world.  What good did it do?  We wasn’t winnin’ and we wasn’t gonna win no matter how many people got wasted.

But in all them bad times, I hung with Motown.  He was a crazy fuck in the shit, not takin’ no chances, you know, like he wanna die, but when he get down to wasting people, he was a bad mutha no question.  He had like an instinct about him, about how to survive, and I was hip to that.  Some a these other dumbasses, they talk and smoke and play their radios, wander around lookin’ for a place to shit, tromping through the jungle like they was out on a nature hike, telling every damn Cong in a ten mile area where we are, but A.P. was all about business, the business of stayin’ alive.  But no matter how bad it got, whenever we’d make runs to pick shit up we’d always stop by the ville and visit Qua Tang, or Katie V as I like to call her, Katie Vietnam.  I kid A.P. all the time ‘bout Katie V and Katie D, Katies Vietnam and Detroit , how the one better not find out ‘bout the other or he gonna be in a whole lotta trouble.  He lightened up about me kiddin’ him and he just laughed.  I remember Motown got two days pass to Vung Tau and he comes back with this real nice picture frame, and he puts a picture I drew of Katie V in it, and on the next trip he gives it to her.  And I’d tease A.P., tell him Katie V was growin’ up right before us, gettin’ real close to creepin’ out the jailbait stage, ‘bout time he took her back behind the grill and showed her the Motown Missile.  But he’d get real serious like, like he was really having a hard time with what was in his head.  He drank a lot, who the fuck didn’t do something to keep your head somewhere else, but I thought I needed to have a good long chat with him.

“A.P., man, you got to try some weed.  Let a soul brother hook you up.  You ain’t gonna have no liver left you keep drinkin’ like that.”

He just looks at me, real deep into me, holdin’ a bottle a bourbon.  I take a deep toke a my joint, let myself just feel the relaxation come over me.

“Saint, I dunno.  I dunno.  Koon sa…it makes you mellow.  I don’t wanna be mellow.  I need to feel, I don’t know, on edge.  Just on edge or something.”

“Well, how long you think you can take bein’ on edge?  You gotta get laid or something, man.  You just can’t do push-ups and pull-ups all day and drink your insides away.  You just look like you gonna explode, man, and that ain’t good.  You need some weed or some boom-boom, bro.”

And again, he just gets that knotted up look on him, like something’s bothering him.

“Maybe this sounds crazy, man, but, you know, I don’t wanna, you know, get my thing dirty over here.”

“Your thing dirty?  Shit, brother, wear a goddamn condom.  We got boxes of’m.”

“No, no, no, that ain’t it.  I wanna stay…I dunno…good.  I gotta stay good, you know?  You know what I mean?  Clean.  I gotta be clean over here.”

“What?  You a fucking virgin, man?  Here I thought you been pushing the plow from Detroit to Saigon .”                     

“No, no, nothing like that.  I ain’t no fuckin’ virgin, man, no fuckin’ way.  That ain’t it, not it at all, bro.  But, you know, when I met, when I met Katie, back in the world, I dunno, I, I changed somehow.  I needed to change.  I had to get straight, Saint.  I couldn’t be how I was before.”

“You been laid over here?”

He just kept lookin’ down, rubbin’ his hands together, like he was tryin’ to think a the right thing to say.

“No way, not here.  No, ain’t been laid.  Hand jobs don’t count, right?”

“No.”

“Good.  Then I’m cool.  I’m straight.  Nobody’s mouth and nobody’s pussy touched me here.”

Motown grabbed his crotch for effect.  He was talkin’ some weird shit, but he was serious so I had to hear him out.  He wasn’t no faggot, but I just wasn’t getting’ why he was torturin’ hisself when he didn’t have to.

“Wait, wait, wait just one minute here, Mr. Motown.  What about the two day pass we got to Dai Song?  We hit every ass factory we could.  Don’t tell me you didn’t dip the stick there.”

“Hand jobs.  Just hand jobs.”

“C’mon, bro, a man gotta be a man.  Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.  Just nature.  A man got to chase the ladies no matter where he’s at.  You could give yourself a handjob and it wouldn’t cost you nothin’.  I know you paid those boom-boom girls.”

“Hey, I paid.  Didn’t nobody get ripped off.  I don’t rip nobody off.   I just didn’t, you know, take the full package.  I couldn’t.  Man, I, I just couldn’t.  I got my rock off with the least, you know, amount of, you know what I mean.  I stayed as clean as I could.”

“Goddamn, man, you gonna make yourself crazy.  It’s just nature, man.  Ain’t no harm done you get a little poontang.”

“Maybe.  It’s alright for you, I got no problem with that.  But for me, man, I just can’t.  It’s, it’s different for me.  I mean, what if Katie, while I’m here, she’s banging somebody back in the world?  And what if I’m here pumping everything that’ll take five dollars?  What’s that make me?”

“One happy Armenian, bro.”

“No, c’mon, Saint, I’m serious here.  This shit eats me, dude.  I’m trying to do right here.  I don’t wanna be no dirty bag a shit when I get back.”

“You just be who you are, man, nothing else.  Don’t matter who you poked over here.  Ain’t nobody gonna tell.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I’ll know.  I’ll know what I did.  Listen.  This, this is how I see things.  As long as I stay clean, you know, keep my pecker dry, keep myself clean, then I gotta chance.  Then there’s a reason I can go back.  I proved something, that I deserve to make it.  That I’m a good person.  But if I go crotch hoppin’…I don’t know, if I do that, Saint, I’m dead.  Sure as shit, I’m tellin’ you I’m a dead man.”

That was some serious shit, man.  I mean, he totally believed he would die if he literally fucked up over here.  Hard gig to put on yourself, in my opinion, but hey, he had my back in the shit and never let me down, so I got to respect that.  But I got to thinking, how can he be so sure of what he’s going home to.  You know, they say you can only trust your family in life, and until that cunt back home take his last name and be his wife she wasn’t no family to him.

“A.P., blood, how you know your Katie-san, your Katie D, is waitin’ on you?  How you know old Jody ain’t makin’ time with your lady?”

“She writes me.  I can tell, man.”

And then he looks all knotted up again, takes a big toke off his bourbon.  The boy was thinkin’, man, thinkin’ real hard.  I fired up another joint.  Here, I was ready to be a friend, you know, just set back and listen, maybe get a little philosophical if need be.

“Saint, I need your help again.  I can’t, I can’t write worth a shit.  I just can’t.  My handwriting sucks and I sound like a fucking five year old.  I don’t know, I just can’t say what I want to say.  I, I don’t know, I just don’t know how you fucking do it.”  And then he goes to his lock and digs out some papers.  He’s kind of shitfaced now, now really walkin’ real straight.  God have mercy we get hit by sappers now, or maybe he had the right idea.  “Here, read this, man.  This is as best as I can do.  See if you can figure out what I’m saying.  I mean, it says things, but they don’t sound…I don’t fucking know, it just don’t sound like I know what I’m saying, like I’m some kinda fuckin’ idiot or something.”

I take his letter and I give it a read:

Dear Katie,

      I thik I can say this now, I love you.  I never say that to nobody before, but you are the most imporant person in the world to me, you are why I want to get home.  The only reson.

      Maybe you dont fell the same way, maybe its along time to be gone, I understand, time is a hard thing to dealing with.  But I can not stop thiking about you how you are the kindest person who dosnt jugde nobody.

      Katie, I now I have not done the righte thing all the time, I now I have fight to many time.  But I can tell you now I am no that way, I have chainge.  I am done fight people.  I am done with hurting.  I will do what I have to do to get home but then I am done.  No more vilense, I mean that.

      I dont now what I want to do when I get back I only know I have to beleve I will get there. You are what make me want to get home, you are what I have.

      If you will wate for me I will do what ever you want to make you the happyist person.  I will be a better person I promiss you that.  You are the sweatest girl, the most perfect kind person I ever met.

      God I never write so much, I now my writting sucks but like I say, I hope you can feel what im trieing to say.  If you will have me I will love you forever and make yu happy.

      A.P.

Man, I just read the letter over and over.  Like I said before, he couldn’t spell worth a shit and I don’t think I ever wrote that bad in my whole life, but here was a man pouring his heart out as best he could.  What bitch couldn’t cut the man a break on his spelling?

“Blood, don’t change a thing.  Send it to her.”

“C’mon, don’t fuck with me on this.  Look at this shit.  It’s, it’s, I mean, just read it, Saint.  I can’t fucking send that home.  I sent a couple letters home already, but this one, I gotta show some improvement, man, like, I don’t know, like I’m getting somewhere.”

“Motown, Motown, this is what we’ll do.  I want you to put that in an envelope and mail it.  Just trust me.  You do that, and we’ll sit down and write another letter together.  Okay?  But I want you to send that letter.  Trust me, bro, she’s gonna love that letter.”

He looked at me like he couldn’t understand a fucking thing I just said, but he went and got an envelope, folded the letter and put it inside.

*    *   *   *   *

 On that last day the shit was really hittin’ the fan. Even the rear echelon mother fuckers realized that Camp Bohica was a lost cause, man, like General Custer out on his last stroll in Indian country.   The Cong were always fucking with us, and the NVA had full units in the countryside around us, too big for us to alpha bravo.  It was like we were trapped.  So the idea was we would abandon the ranch, or engage in a “strategic withdrawal,” which was another way of sayin’ get our asses the fuck outta there pronto.  But before we did we would try to get the enemy to reveal some of their positions for some final carpet bombings, a little nape, whatever else the cook could throw in the pot.  We weren’t told this, but I kinda figured it out.  They would use some of us to act like we were hauling supplies out, you know, important equipment, and maybe we’d draw fire or an ambush.  That was the only reason to put us in trucks out onto the main redball outta Bohica.  They coulda lifted anything they needed on choppers and everything else, hell, we were booby-trapping anything we weren’t taking with us.  But the excuse we were given was that two choppers had been hit leaving on recon in the last week, and the pilots were just kinda nervous, lookin’ back and forth every time they headed to their rigs, not those same hard chargers, assholes and elbows they had been a couple months before, so we’d have to take the overland route.   No, I didn’t buy that line a shit for a minute.  Trucks out on the open road spaced out every hour would draw some kinda fire.  Plus I knew some of the squads were goin’ out the night before, so we were definitely goin’ to try to bushwhack the bushwhackers.

That sounded good, but things were bad now.  Everybody, even Griggs, wanted to get the fuck out of that place any way they could.  Even Katie V’s village wasn’t like it used to be.  The school, hell, that was the first thing the gomers made sure wasn’t standin’, just leveled that mutha.  Some of the houses had been totally smashed down by the fighting, and few people went to the restaurant, which was how her family survived.  I felt bad for them people.  Weren’t they what the fighting was supposed to be about?  All that securing-a-better-life-for-the-common-people shit?  Bringing freedom and liberty to the people of South Vietnam ?  Things were more fucked up than they ever been.

We were on our way back and we had a jeep with a heavy gun up ahead of us as escort.  It had been raining all morning and the sky just looked dark and it would be hard to stop at the ville with the escort leading and everything being so uptight.  The rain was just enough to piss you off and it was hot and the air was just hangin’ on us and pretty soon the fog just starts layin’ down on toppa everywhere.  And that’s when the human bait did its job.  When we were within a hundred meters of Katie’s place, I could hear the whistle you get right before a round lands, and by the time I looked to where I thought the sound was coming from, I could barely make the jeep out in fronna us just flippin’ backwards and wheelyin’ from the shock of the round. 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” shouts A.P. and he swerves the deuce and half out the way and we just about roll.  Before we recover, the rounds are landing everywhere in the road, like a giant 60 was bustin’ caps on the red ball.  A.P.’s trying to keep the beast right but the shit is way too hot and the road is just a mud slide and we can’t see shit for the fog.

“Saint, we gotta ditch!  Woods, 200 meters, 4 o’clock!”

He opens the driver’s door and then he’s gone and now I’m in this fucking blind rolling metal coffin without a driver.  Shit, instinct kicks in, and I get the door open and roll out onto the road.  I feel my shoulder or arm break when I hit, but I see the truck gunnin’ ahead and bam, it takes a round in the cabin and rolls off the road onto its side and skids like some crazy, injured dinosaur.  My arm is all fucked up but I ain’t gonna stay in the road.  I look behind me and the jeep is just wasted and I can make out a body on the ground that ain’t moving.  Then I see a fellow grunt from the jeep and he’s movin’ and headin’ toward the brush.  A.P. said 4 o’clock, off to the right and just to the rear, 200 meters.  I didn’t have my piece.  I was as good as naked out there with a busted arm.

“This way!  This way!” I yell to the grunt from the jeep and he sees me and we’re off.

I can’t hardly get my footing on the road it’s so muddy but I hightail it into the brush, running like some African mummy with his arm all trapped to his side.  In the thick, I take a minute to catch myself.  The other guy, a white guy, he finds me.  His nametag says “Taylor” but I don’t really have a fucking clue who he is.

“This is some shit, man,” he says, and that’s what we called understatement back in high school English.  Like I didn’t learn nothing.  My arm is fubar up but I got enough adrenaline pumping to keep it from hurtin’ too bad.

“Help me up, man.  We got to head this way.  We got a rendezvous site set up.”

I’ll find A.P., I think, he’ll be in his it’s-me-against-the-fucking-world state a craziness, which was good because this was as crazy a shit as I been in.  I make my way through the underbrush, and it seems that everything hits my arm.  I should be really quiet because my balls are up in my throat and the sweat is stinging my eyes but I’m just like feeling like death is right behind me, man, just smiling and breathin’ loud enough for me to know he’s there.  The rounds are still comin’ hot and heavy behind me, and I stop to catch my breath about a hundred and twenty-five meters in and, shit, I can’t see nothing.  I listen but I don’t move a fucking red cunt hair.  I zone out the mortar shells and I can feel it.  I grab Taylor and he stops too.  Movement.  Voices.  Gook to gook chatter and screechin’ and yellin’.  I know the sound, man, I’ve heard the one voice before.  Katie V.

Then it’s like two pit bulls scrappin’ in the yard, a tooth to tooth throw down.  I get up and run to it in time to see A.P. just strangling this gomer, I mean he got this guy so tight around the neck his eyes are bulging out.  And right there on the ground next to them is Katie V.

“A.P., A.P., you got’m, man.  He’s done.”

He looks up at me and he’s got those evil white eyes a going.  He lets go and the gomer is finished.

“He fucked her up, man.  He fucked her up.”

And Katie V looks bad.  This dink musta broke her legs and her face was bashed to shit.  Goddamn, it’s hard to not let yourself feel something, it’s damn hard.

“Blood, we gotta E & E.  We’re five k’s from base and we got no weapons.  We gotta grab a hat.”

“I’m takin’ her.”

“A.P., we can’t help her now.  Look at her.  She’s like my little girl, too, man, but she’s gone.”

“Your bro’s right, man, that dink ain’t gonna do nothing but slow us down,” says Taylor, and I thought right then he was gonna be next on A.P.’s strangulation list.

“Dink?  Ain’t no dinks here, asshole.  I’m takin’ her, so shut the fuck up.”

Right then, Katie V started to talk, not really talk but whimper.

“Lam on…toi can…bac si…”

“She ain’t dead yet.  I can’t leave her, Saint.  It ain’t right.”

“…chan tihn tu…lay Chua…curu…”

“A.P., you wanna live?  You wanna see your other Katie?  There ain’t no right and wrong right now, just livin’ and dyin’, brother.  We can’t do nothing for her.”

“…A.P…lai dai…mihn oi…curu toi…A.P…lai troi…”

“Your man’s right, we got to grab a hat here and move it,” says Taylor .

“I said shut the fuck up.”

“Suit yourself, hero.  You take mama-san there and do whatever the fuck you want, but I’m makin’ tracks.” 

“I ain’t stayin’ here, muthafucker.  I just ain’t leavin’ her.  Let’s go.”

Taylor picked up the AK-47 that belonged to the gomer and he’s off, beatin’ the trail hard.  A.P. picked up Katie V and she moaned, but he was movin’ out double time just behind Taylor .  At one point we stopped so A.P. could comfort Katie V a bit, and I was glad to take a blow.  I tried to keep up but the pain was starting to kick in and the canopy was thick.  I swear I just couldn’t hardly breath for nothing in that fog.  Damn, I was tired.

“Here’s a trail.”  Taylor was moving through the fog rapidlike and we were a ways behind him by now, and he’s shoutin’.

“Stay off the trail, man.”  A.P. had good instincts about shit like this.  If the bad guys were ready, they’d waste anybody dumb enough to stay on the main paths out here.  Plus, smart mother fuckers booby-trapped every little twig and blade a grass you could imagine.

“Do what the fuck you want, asshole.  I had enough a your shit.  You and the gook and the jigaboo can…”

And then one shot comes from who the hell knows where and a mad minute just opens up the bush everywhere.  We hit the deck on the far side a the trail and the ground is low enough that all the rounds pass over our heads, but not by much.  I can feel the whizzing of every round singin’ right in my ear.  So what do we do now?  The bad guys just found us and here we were, a cripple and a madman carryin’ a dead girl.  We wouldn’t put up much fight.  We could hope they didn’t see us or we could try to make a break once the firin’ stopped but, honestly, we were goners.

“Cease fire!  Cease fire!”

I knew the fuckin’ voice, man.  Lt. Curtis.  It was us.  Our own boys.  You could say it was good luck, but we had been lit up by our own boys.

“Griggs, Griggs, it’s us, man!” I yelled, and then the shit came down again, the rounds closer than I ever felt in my whole time in country.

“Cease fire!  Cease fire!  Identify, identify!”

“It’s Saint and A.P.!  Quit fuckin’ killin’ us!  It’s us, Griggs!”

The fog was everywhere, like if you blew out hard enough from your lungs you could blow a hole in it.  I was sweatin’ and hurtin’ and scared shitless and not movin’.  I couldn’t see A.P. but I could hear Katie V.  I hoped to hell A.P. wasn’t hit.

“You there too, A.P.?  Identify.”

“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ here.  Jesus Christ, it’s A.P., I’m fuckin’ here.”

“We could hear slant voices.  I can still hear one out there.”

“We captured one.  Right here with us.  We got a prisoner,” yelled A.P.

Before I know it I’m lookin’ right up the barrel a Jonesie’s 16.

“That you, Saint?”

“Fuck yeah it’s me.”

“Sorry, brother, I can’t see too well in the fog.”

He helps me up and the pain is now flooding into my shoulder.  Man, I just want the fuck outta this one.  A.P., I find him back on the road and he’s still got Katie V in his arms and we all make for the other side a the road where they had set up for the ambush.  On the ground in the path is a bloody pile all shot to shit.  It’s Taylor .  I can’t say I liked him from the few minutes I was with him but that sure was one nasty ass way to die, shot to shit by his own side.  A couple of the guys grabbed him and dragged what was left to other side of the path.

“Christ almighty, the bastard walked right into the kill zone.  I swear we were takin’ enemy fire.  I swear it,” says Curtis, sounding like he gonna piss himself.  “Shit, it wasn’t anybody’s fault, you got it?  Nobody could know if that was a friendly or not.  It’s nobody’s blame.  It’s over and we got to move on.  Okay, gentlemen, listen up.  We gotta put this behind us.  We still got our orders and we’re gonna carry ‘em out.  Saint, what you got man?  You hit?”

“Arm’s fucked up.”  The new medic was fucking with my arm and it should have been obvious I wasn’t in no condition to be slingin’ a weapon.  Everybody else, I couldn’t really see them, but you could imagine they was bummed about stitchin’ our own guys, but we were way past makin’ a big deal outta shit like that anymore.  And as big a dick as Curtis was, I really couldn’t say it was his fault.  You see a outline in the kill zone, hear some shoutin’, and next thing you know somebody lets a round loose and then it’s trigger time.

“It’s broke, sir.  He’s done for the day.”

“That right?  Okay, Saint, we’ll send you back to the LZ but I don’t know what the fuck’s gonna happen with all this fog.  The shit’s really gonna be goin’ down and they ain’t gonna be sendin’ no eggbeaters out any time soon.”

“No problem, sir.  I gotta note from momma says I can’t do gym class today.  I’ll just lay chilly till my ride come.”

“And A.P., drop the gook and we’ll fix you up with a weapon and some ammo.  We need you on the line with us.”

“I’m goin’ with Saint,” says A.P.  “Then I’ll come back.”

“Excuse me?  You’re gonna do what the sam hell I tell you to do.  The first thing you’re gonna do is drop the gook.  We’ll take care of him right here.  The second thing you’re gonna do is grab a weapon and some ammo.  That’s it.  End of discussion.”

Now let me tell you, this was gonna get ugly.  A.P., I could make him out, and he was just crouched there holdin’ onto Katie V, acting like he ain’t heard nothing the LT said, and the LT standing there like he tryin’ to show everyone who’s in charge here.  He was like every other punk ass kid with a Lieutenant’s bar tryin’ to show everybody how tough he was, and the boys, especially Sgt. Griggs, didn’t want to be wastin’ any more time arguin’. 

“Saint, you ready, man?  Let’s go,” A.P. said, like he never heard the LT.

“Hey, I just gave you an order.  Where you think you’re going?  I been out in this fuckin’ jungle and rain all night long and I’m not in the mood for insubordination, Private Pehlivanian.  Now drop the…what the fuck, it’s a goddamn girl.  What the hell you tryin’ to pull, Private?  You ain’t got no prisoner.  Drop the fuckin’ gook and get ready to move out.”

And A.P., you just see the Motown come out in him right there.  He was set in what he was doin’, ain’t nothing gonna change that, and even in the fog Lt. Curtis took a little step back.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about a submarine, Lieutenant Curtis.  I’m goin’ with Saint to the LZ and drop him and the girl off and then I’m comin’ right back.  You can make me take point or whatever the fuck you want when I get back or you can shoot me inna back when I leave but that’s what I’m doin’.”

“Let’m go,” said Griggs, and even Curtis didn’t argue with Griggs, who turned to A.P.  “Take Saint and the girl and then you get your fuckin’ monkey ass back here pronto.   We got a few minutes but we ain’t got all day.”

And that was it.  Griggs gave us the rough directions to the LZ and handed me a sidearm, and off we went, me, A.P., and Katie V.  She was unconscious by now, not making any more noises, and I was even a little scared she might be dead but I wasn’t gonna say anything to A.P.  We booked it through the brush and fog until we came to a clearing.  At the edge but still concealed, A.P. laid Katie V down and then helped me lay back against a tree right next to her.

“You gonna be fine, man,” he told me, and to tell you the truth I was glad to be where I was.  I could hear artillery dropping and some small arms fire off in the direction of the ville. The shit was still thick but I wasn’t playin’ any more, although it woulda been better if A.P. coulda stayed with me and Katie V.

“Thanks, man.  You be smart.  Stay close to Griggs.”  I put my good arm out and grabbed A.P. by the shoulder, and he placed his hand on my forearm.

“Got to kick me out some jams, brother.  Keep the both a you alive.  We gotta work some shit out when this is over.”

I looked down to my side at Katie V.  She was still a pretty little kid under all the pain and blood on her face.  I saw her chest heave up and I knowed she was alive.  I put my good hand on her forehead and brushed her hair, all I could think to do for her.  I was alive, man.   Alone, helpless, scared as shit, but alive.  When I looked up, A.P. had already disappeared into the fog and jungle.