Extra Indians. Eric Gansworth

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      We pulled bunker guard duty on Firebase Tomahawk, so it was just us around. This could be the most boring part. Toward cycle’s end, some guys would get antsy, looking for any kind of distraction they could find. You went crazy sometimes looking into the thick brush, seeing nothing, but trying just the same. You could see movement where there wasn’t any, or watch plants change into men in the right wind. By the few seconds it took you to get your M-16 up, the potential sniper had become an elephant’s ear plant again. You could not watch passionately for that long and not start inventing something to see.

      “Howkowski,” Reggie Hughes said, leaning against some sandbags and lighting a cigarette, “you must feel pretty at home, here on Tomahawk, huh? I mean, being an Indian and all, right? What kind of Indian name is Howkowski, anyway?” Hughes knew the answer but some guys liked to break up the boredom with hassling other guys, forcing them to be the entertainment. Donut Dollies, USO, and EM clubs being so scarce out this far, we had to make our own entertainment. That day was Fred’s day to provide it.

      “It ain’t,” he said. “My dad’s white. Doesn’t matter, though, nobody from home has those ridiculous names you hear in the movies. Mounter, Page, Waterson, Boans, Natcha, Gunderson, Tunny, Martin, those are the kinds of names we have.”

      “Don’t sound very Indian. I bet you’re making that whole Indian stuff up,” Hughes continued. More guys gradually drifted over, hoping for a fight. It was a slow day. “Show me one thing that’s Indian.”

      “Go get that propellant over there and let’s see who’s gonna donate some rags,” Fred said, sitting up.

      “Here, use these,” someone said, tossing Fred a bunch of old sandbags that had seen better days. They were supposed to go back for repair the next time I radioed Romeo Sierra, but these bags would not be making resupply. Fred knotted and tied a few in a bundle and then tossed it and other bags to someone else, who had to add to it.

      “What are we doing?” Hughes asked as he added to the wad.

      “You’ve got eyes. Use them. Join in or step aside,” Fred said, taking Hughes’s wind out. We were being introduced to the game called Fireball that Fred tried to save us with. It was funny to see him get more involved in the squad. Usually, sharing was limited to one or two buddies, and in our case, it was the two of us.

      We had an exchange, kept each other alive. There are all kinds of ways of doing that. Splitting C rations, sharing anything that might come from home, one keeping an eye out while the other slept, all through the night, knowing that sometimes guys pulling night patrol duty got a little lazy on the job. Fred and me, while we did all those things, we also had something else. Neither could take charity but we knew exchange really well.

      At the rear, you got your fatigues washed and cleaned, nice and neat, they were yours, and my shirt had McMorsey embroidered onto a patch sewn on the right breast pocket, but in the jungle, on patrol, you just took whatever was dropped from the chopper. When we’d get the call, we’d run to the closest spot that resembled a clearing, given the day’s firing patterns. They would fly in, dump for our squad, and in the twenty minutes after they resupplied the other squads, they swung back to pick up whatever we sent.

      The drops were clean clothes, ammunition, C rations, big rubber jugs of fresh water that we had to chase down the hillsides so they wouldn’t bounce beyond our reach, and firearms replacements if we had asked for some. In the time before the chopper got back, we’d strip down and stuff every stitch of dirty clothes into those bags we’d just pulled the clean ones from. I pitied whoever was washing those things. Sometimes we’d been wearing a set for two weeks straight. Then we’d grab whatever clothes might fit us okay and put them on. You don’t want to be standing naked on a hilltop all pink-skinned and sweating, glistening in the sun, begging a sniper to pick you off. Some weeks your clothes fit better than others.

      We’d send back misfiring machine guns, anything that weighed us down, and if we’d caught the good company clerk, we’d be sending money back too. In that drop we’d just gotten, there would have been a case of cold Coca-Colas that he’d fronted us if we promised him the money. You might think he would have been stiffed a lot, but he never was. He let you know, he’d do it for any squad if he got the call when you made it. If you ever shorted him, though, your squad was never getting even one bottle dropped from that point on, and he’d let you know why. Everyone always paid up. There is nothing like a chilled Coca-Cola in a 110-degree jungle.

      We would hold those icy bottles to our cheeks for a few seconds, snap those caps off, and guzzle them down as fast as they’d pour from the neck. A warm Coca-Cola is nobody’s friend. Cold this way, it was a brief taste of home. For that moment it slid down your throat, you might have been sitting at the picnic tables under a drive-in restaurant’s neon, sharing a frosted glass with your girl, listening to the crickets ticking off the hours until you had to take her home. That company clerk never got stiffed, as far as I know, the whole time I was in country.

      As sacred as a Coca-Cola out there was, it compared not at all to mail from home. Everything else was flat-out ignored when it came to mail. It didn’t matter how hungry we were, there wasn’t a man among us who opened C rations before he opened a letter with the red, white, and blue striping along the envelope edges. And if there was some news from home, your best friend heard it before anyone else. You might eventually show pictures and whatnot and maybe even read selected passages to everyone, if you were feeling generous, but you shared the whole thing with your best friend first. And that was how Fred Howkowski came to find out that Liza Jean, the woman who all these years later sat beside me before the cameras, left me for a while, ditched me for that flat-footed nitwit in Big Antler.

      “‘Best to you, Liza Jean.’ Best to you, how do you like that? Best to you,” I said, and folded up the letter.

      “Coke?” СКАЧАТЬ