The Staked Goat Page 15

  Two MPs, a young blond PFC and an older black sergeant, lying dead next to a overturned, burning jeep at a street corner. Both still held their .45s, jacked open and empty. Nine Viet Cong, some with automatic weapons, sprawled in a staggered attack formation in front of them. An incredible stand.

  Four National Police officers stopping a vegetable truck. They pulled the driver out and shot him to death, rumor being that the VC had infiltrated their weapons and explosives for Tet in such vehicles.

  A farmer, elderly with arthritic, stained fingers and a few long strands of chin beard. He wore a broad, peaked coolie hat and clutched a copy of Chinh Luan, the Vietnamese-language newspaper. He was sitting motionless in a corner of a blown-out building, staring at another corner. God knows how he came to be there or what happened to him afterwards.

  A red-haired trooper, who had spent the entire night of the attack with a B-girl, being dragged between two MPs into the station. He looked so young, a ninth-grader being taken to the principal’s office for detention.

  Viet Cong prisoners, the men in cheap white dress shirts, the women wearing white kerchiefs. All kneeling in gaggles of five or six, arms bound behind them. The National Police would snug the rope just above the elbows, tugging back so hard that the elbows nearly touched, creating an image of supplicant, unisexual Venus de Milos.

  Two of my men, hit by an AK-47 in the hands of a skinny Vietnamese hiding in a dark doorway. They went down all akimbo, as if they were marionettes and someone had cut their strings. I fired three rounds into the shooter, who spun and belly-whopped on the pavement. A shadow in the next doorway moved, and I fired three more times at it. The shadow slammed back against the door, landing so that the feet were in the light. A child’s feet.

  An American nurse, blond and thin with terrible acne, stroking the face of a head-bandaged sergeant and assuring him that his eyes weren’t gone forever.

  A GI, screaming in Spanish and shooing a scrawny cat away from a dead body. The cat had been going after the corpse’s eyes. The GI started throwing up.

  A mother lying face down in the street, her eyes open, snot and blood and broken teeth all around her. Her daughter, maybe four years old, howling and beating her fists bloody on the pavement while two National Policemen stripped and looted the Viet Cong bodies in the alleyway.

  Standing in a gutter, I look down and see an arm. A black left arm. With a faded gold high school ring on the fourth finger. A blue stone.

  Two B-girls, still in their slit-sided hostess dresses, crucified on a side wall of a Tu Do Street bar for fraternizing with us, the enemy. They had been raped and slashed repeatedly. One was still alive when my sergeant put a bullet through her head. If you had seen her, you wouldn’t be asking yourself that question right now.

  An explosion that ripped through a convent school. Intentionally set, no mistaken bomb dropped randomly from above. Thirty-nine girls, aged seven through eleven, blown into a thousand once-human fragments.

  Tet. The joyous lunar new year. Auld Lang Syne.

  I rubbed my eyes. I got up and opened the conference room door. Ricker swiveled around and stood. It was 18:10. Christ, where had the time gone?

  “More water, sir?” he asked.

  “No thanks, Sergeant. Just stretching.”

  “Yessir. Anything else I can get for you?”

  “Yeah, a new set of memories.”

  He laughed respectfully. I closed the door and went back to my reading.

  Al was in the hospital until mid-February. I slowed down when I saw his name reappearing prominently.

  Al and a Sergeant Kearns brought in an acid freak named Farrell who had fragged his platoon leader. Farrell swore he would get Al, swore to God, Timothy Leary, and his mother. Farrell, Wiley N. I remembered him. One more for the list.

  Al busted a French national named Giles LeClerc who was drawing young GIs into a homosexual prostitution ring. LeClerc had a Vietnamese boyfriend and partner named Tran Dai Dinh who hadn’t been caught. The method was consistent, but a long way and a long time for a lover’s vengeance. I wrote LeClerc and Dinh down anyway.

  Al turned in an American captain of intelligence who had taken too enthusiastically to NP methods of interrogation. Bradley D. Collier. Disgraced, court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced. I fingered a photo of him. Sullen, a look of betrayal. A strong contender.

  I stumbled on a reference to one of Al’s combat assignments. When the infantry came up short on platoon leaders, the bush colonels would dip into the MP officer pool for fresh blood.

  I remembered vividly one combat mission with Al. It was a three-day, company-strength sweep maneuver skirting the jungle. The company commander was a gung-ho jerk, with a Kit Carson scout (a “reformed” North Vietnamese regular) leading the way. I hated the jungle. I preferred anything, even the rice paddies, to it.

  The first day was uneventful. Instead of returning to base camp, of course, we bivouacked in the bush. The second day was as quiet as the first. The second night, one of our perimeter guards led Al up to my foxhole.

  “Boy,” said Al, hunkering down when the sentry left us, “have I got a great deal set up.”

  I looked up at him blearily. “A deal?”

  Al checked right and left, then whispered, “A tiger hunt!”

  “A what?” I said, well above a whisper.

  “Shush.” He looked around again. “A tiger hunt. No shit, John. There used to be a lot of them around here before the war.”

  “Al,” I said, “there has always been a war in this country.”

  “No, no. I mean a long time ago. Before the Second World War. But there are still some tigers. And an old guy in that last village said he was a guide. I was there when the scout was questioning him. Honest.”

  “So?” I said.

  “So,” said Al, looking crafty, “for fifty dollars American, we can get ourselves a shot at a tiger.”

  I closed my eyes and hung my head. “Why,” I said to the ground, “in the name of God, do you want to shoot a tiger?”

  “Aw, c’mon, John. When are you ever gonna get another chance like this. A big game safari for fifty bucks!”

  “Al, we are pulling out at zero-five-thirty hours tomorrow.”

  “Tonight, John, tonight. We’ll be gone and back by midnight.”

  “Man, do you have any idea how much a tiger weighs, or do you already have bearers signed up to carry it out?”

  He sulked. “Ah, c’mon John. We’ll probably never even see a tiger. It’s the thrill. A once in a lifetime chance to have some sport in this godforsaken, stinkhole of a country.”

  I held up my hand. “Al, I am not going stalking through a jungle at night after a tiger.”

  “But that’s the beauty of it, John. The guide’ll take care of that. He knows a watering hole that the cats use. It’s close by. He’ll lead us there, then bring a goat and stake it out for us. It’ll be like sitting in your living room.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  Al sighed. “Because I’m not about to go after a tiger with just a scout and an old man as back-up. I want a friend I can rely on.”

  I thought back to the BOQ brawl when Al jumped in to help me. “O.K.,” I said.

  Al clenched his fist, shook it into the air. He rose up and danced a little jig.

  Al convinced the company commander that Al and I wanted the experience of setting up a night ambush with the scout. The commander thought our attitude was “outstanding.” We slipped through our perimeter, advising the guards of our likely direction and return time.

  In the bright moonlight, we moved quickly back up the trail to the village, a little less than a kilometer. The scout, whose name was Van, connected us with the guide, who was called Chúa te’, or simply “master” in Vietnamese. Master had a scraggly, dung-encrusted goat on a rope. I didn’t catch the goat’s name.

  Through Van, Master asked us for his money. I always carried real cash, not MPC (Military Payment Certificates), in the boonies. I on
ce heard that a Finance Corps lieutenant was killed when he tried to buy his way out of a tight situation with MPC. The locals wanted real currency, not monopoly money.

  After the exchange of cash, Master produced two large-bore antique rifles. He demonstrated how the breech-loading mechanism functioned, then doled out four bullets each to Al and me. I gave Al a murderous glare. He pretended not to notice. There were the sounds of a dog barking and a child crying from somewhere in the village as we struck off.

  The path was narrow, but well worn. I asked the scout about it. Master explained in Vietnamese, translated by Van, that the villagers occasionally used the watering hole in daylight hours. We continued on in silence.

  After perhaps two hundred meters, we started downhill and quickly reached a pool of stagnant, bug-covered water, a quarter acre at most in size. Master looped the goat’s lead around a branch, chattering in Vietnamese and gesturing at a large tree. Through the moonlight I could make out a crude platform in a limb crotch halfway up the trunk. I thought about asking why, if I could see the blind, the tiger couldn’t also. However, Master was already up the tree, and Al on his way, so I didn’t bother. I followed the first two climbers. After Van handed heavenward all our gear, he joined us.

  The blind, sturdy enough in a hand-hewn way, faced the pond. There were some newer branches and fronds camouflaging the front. Master explained through Van how the tigers would appear at the far side of the pond, and where to aim, and so forth. Al was to have the first shot.

  Master scrambled back down the tree and led the goat around the pond to a point directly across from us, perhaps forty meters line-of-sight. He tied the goat’s lead to a downed limb and then lightly stepped back around to us. The goat, who I assume by now was getting the general drift of what was happening, began to bleat. Incessantly.

  Master returned to our platform, a big smile on his face. He said something to Van, and Van said, “Master say we wait now.”

  It took nearly an hour for the goat to cry itself hoarse, straining against the leash. It took another hour for me to lose a pint of blood to the mosquitoes. Nothing moved in the bush.

  I started to say something humorous. Master hissed and Van said, “All quiet now.”

  Another half an hour of nothing. I closed my eyes and thought of back home: summer Sundays on Carson’s Beach in Southie or Crane Beach in Ipswich, the Yankees against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the (back-then-realistic) rivalry between Boston College and Holy Cross in football.

  A stand of high grass rustled off to our right. Four heads whipped over there, five counting the goat’s. The bait had no more voice, but resumed hopping and tugging against the lead for all it was worth.

  “Cop,” whispered Master. No need for translation now. Tiger.

  More rustling, then a pause, then more rustling, then a pause. The unseen creature moved around the perimeter of the pond. Al tensed and eyed his weapon. I was to have the second shot, but I had no intention of firing unless the cat was coming straight at …

  A stumble and crunch in the bush as the creature neared the virtually hysterical goat. Al seated the rifle butt against his shoulder. The creature cried out, not a roar, not a growl, just a simple word.

  A seven- or eight-year-old girl, yelping what was probably the goat’s name, rushed up to it and began hugging it.

  Master cursed. Van said, “That is the girl from father that Master buy goat.” I remembered the child’s voice crying back at the village. The girl started trying to untie the goat’s lead.

  Al said, “Jesus,” and lowered his rifle. Master, still muttering curses, drew a knife and put it between his teeth. He started down the trunk.

  “Van,” I said. “Tell Master that if he touches the girl I will kill him.”

  Master, who had probably heard the English word “kill” often enough, nodded vigorously as if to confirm that was the goat’s, and possibly the girl’s, immediate destiny.

  Al said, “John …”

  “Tell him,” I snapped at Van.

  Master had started around the pond. Van spoke to him in Vietnamese. Master stopped, turned, and protested. Van said to me, “American pay for tiger hunt, American get tiger hunt.”

  I said, “Tell Master he can keep the money. The girl keeps her goat, and the Americans go back. Now.”

  Van translated. Master shrugged, sheathed his knife.

  I said, “Now tell the girl. Call to her. Tell her the Americans give her back her goat.”

  Al said, “John, for chrissakes, there may be VC within earshot.”

  “Tell her,” I repeated.

  Van called over to the girl. She succeeded in untying the goat, then bowed down to us as she led it off around the way she came.

  She got maybe five meters when a mine exploded. The top half of her somersaulted through the air toward us. Head, arms, trunk to her waist. It splashed into the pond, scattering a roomful of insects. A few branches and clumps of grass and goat followed her trajectory into the water.

  Al bit his lower lip, then lowered and shook his head. Van showed a tear. Master, who had hit the deck at the explosion, was standing up, brushing himself off.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and climbed down out of the treehouse.

  As we walked back to our perimeter, I wondered what kind of funeral the little girl would have. Not a military one. No flag-covered coffin, surely, the Stars and Stripes whipped down and tucked securely around the base.

  The first time I remember seeing an American flag around a coffin was President Kennedy’s funeral. On television. A cold, blustery November Saturday. The riderless black horse, John-John saluting, the older males in the family walking solemnly uphill in mourning coats, their path lined by Green Berets with weapons at “present arms,” bagpipes skirling.

  My strongest memories, however, are of other military funerals. Or wakes, if you will; I guess the funerals took place back home. The wakes were in Vietnam, though. Three filthy, stinking GIs, standing over a sealed green body bag at some impromptu Graves Registration Point, alternately dragging on a joint and saying, “Shit, man.”

  It is, I think, the greatest irony of our time, at least of mine. A President I thought I understood and would have died for dropped us into a war in a country which none of us understood and where nobody should have died.

  Seventeen

  I REACHED THE POINT where Al shipped home. We had a short-timer’s party for him at the Officers’ Club, and I could barely walk for two days afterward. Al promised he would stay in touch. And he had.

  I closed the last file. I tossed down the last of the ice water and reviewed my list.

  Twenty-three names. Most Americans, some French and Vietnamese. Maybe one of them lives in Boston, maybe not. Maybe he’s still using his real name, maybe not. Maybe he killed Al, maybe not. Maybe something to show for the afternoon, maybe not.

  I stood up, folded the list like a business letter and slid it into my jacket pocket. I wedged all the files back into the drawers of the cabinet. I stiffly donned my jacket, thinking I could call J.T. tomorrow and ask him to put the names through the computer to see if there was anything current on them.

  I opened the door. Ricker stood up. I didn’t see his L’Amour novel. The clock said 19:15, 7:15 p.m. real time.

  “Yessir?”

  “I’m all finished, Sergeant. Colonel Kivens said I’d need you to lead me out of here.”

  Ricker grinned broadly. “Yessir. It’s a real maze out there. Me, I was lost for weeks when I first drew duty here.”

  He went to a coat rack and got a regulation, olive-drab trench.

  “Sir, you got transportation here?”

  “No. Thought I’d just grab a cab.”

  Ricker chuckled. “These cabs, sir, they’re tough to get out here sometimes. Where’re you headin’?”

  “Marriott, Key Bridge.”

  “Aw, hell, sir,” said Ricker as he turned out the lights and closed the door. “That’s right on my way. Let me give you a lift.”
>
  “Thanks, Sergeant, but I’ve already held you—”

  “Please, sir, my pleasure, I insist.”

  I yielded gratefully. We threaded our way out down corridors dark and deep.

  Ricker’s vehicle was a spotless customized Ford pick-up, shiny even in the dark. We maneuvered through the vestiges of rush-hour traffic.

  “Have you spent much time in Washington, sir?”

  “No, not much. Weekend here or there.”

  “Fine city. Proud and powerful. But I’m a country boy myself. Four more years and out.”

  “That’ll make twenty?”

  “No, sir, thirty.” He turned and smiled. “Thirty years with the Big Green Machine. Then a nice spread in Looziana, northeast corner.”

  He really looked familiar when he smiled. “You ever stationed in Saigon, Sergeant?”

  The smile died, then rekindled. “Yessir. I had two tours in-country. First one in Saigon.”

  “When were you there?”

  “Let’s see,” he said, rubbing his chin, “December ’66 to October ’67.”

  “Just before my time,” I said.

  “You were there with the Colonel, sir?”

  I nodded. “For a time.”

  “Colonel’s a good commander and a fair man.”

  “Then he hasn’t changed.”

  Ricker smiled again. So familiar.

  “Sergeant, are you sure we didn’t serve somewhere together?”

  “Well, sir, no I’m … uh-uh, what’s this?”

  I looked ahead and saw nothing. Ricker decelerated and began edging onto the shoulder.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Felt a shimmy from that left front wheel again.”

  “I didn’t notice anything.”

  “Ach,” said Ricker as we pulled to a stop, “truck ain’t got four thousand miles on ’er and this is the second time she’s done this.” He looked at me. “Mind reachin’ into the glove box there and gettin’ me the flashlight?”