Hooligans

RAINES GETS TOUGH

It was a bizarre sight: Disaway was spread out on an enormous metal table, three legs askew, his head

dangling awkwardly over one side, his bulging eyes terrified in death, his foreleg split wide open and

its muscles and tendons clamped back, revealing the shattered bone. The vet, whose name was

Shuster and who was younger than I had pictured him, a short man in his mid-thirties who had lost

most of his hair, was leaning over the leg with a magnifying glass, and Callahan, dressed in a white

gown, was leaning right along with him. Both gowns were amply bloodstained. I walked to within

three or four feet and watched and listened, keeping my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open.

So far, two horses were dead, a third might have to be destroyed, and two jockeys were in the

hospital, Scoot Impastato with a fractured skull and a broken leg.

“I‟ve never seen a break quite this bad,” Shuster was saying.

“The other horses could‟ve done some damage when they ran over him,” Callahan answered.

“1 think not. The pastern bone broke inward here... and here. No chips or other evidence of impact.

This is what interests me. See? Right here and then down here, at the bottom of the break.”

Callahan leaned closer and nodded.

“Yeah. Maybe it splintered when the bone broke.”

“Maybe..

Shuster took a pair of micrometers and leaned back over the carcass.

“Less than half a millimetre,” he said. He took a scalpel and scraped something from the edge of the

fractured bone into a test tube.

“Calcium?” Callahan said.

“We‟ll see.”

“Butes did this,” Callahan said.

“I‟d have to agree. The horse was coming up lame. He should have been scratched.”

“What was the trainer‟s excuse for dosing him?”

“Runny nose.”

“Yeah, ran all the way down his leg.”

“I couldn‟t argue,” Shuster said apologetically. “It‟s a perfectly legitimate excuse.”

“Nobody‟s blaming you. This isn‟t the first time a pony with a bad leg has been Buted up.”

The door opened behind me and Harry Raines came in. His kelly-green steward‟s jacket seemed out

of place in the sterile white room, but my rumpled sports jacket didn‟t add anything either.

A barrage of emotions hit me the instant he entered the room. In forty-one years I had never made

love to another man‟s wife, and suddenly I was standing ten feet away from a man whom I had

dishonoured and toward whom I felt resentment and anger. I wanted to disappear, I felt that

uncomfortable when he entered.

I had a fleeting thought that perhaps he knew about Doe and me, that maybe one of the Tagliani gang

had anonymously informed on us. Too many people either knew or had guessed about us, Harry

Nesbitt had made that clear to me. I almost expected Raines to point an accusing finger at me, perhaps

draw an “A” on my forehead with his fountain pen. I could feel sweat popping out of my neck around

my collar and for an instant I blamed Doe for my discomfort, transferring my anger and jealously to

her because she had married him.

All that in just a moment, and then the feelings vanished when I got a good look at him. I was shocked

at what I saw. He seemed not as tall as when I had seen him at the track two days earlier, as if he were

being crushed by an invisible weight. His face was drawn and haggard, his office pallor had changed

to a pasty gray. Dark circles underlined his eyes. The man seemed to have aged a dozen years in two

days.

Is he really the success-driven robot others have made him out to be? I wondered. He looked more

like a man hanging over a cliff, waiting for the rope to break.

Quite suddenly he no longer threatened me.

My fears were unfounded. He didn‟t pay any attention to me at first. He was more concerned with the

dead horse. When he did notice me, he was simply annoyed and somewhat perplexed by my presence.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, looking at Callahan as he said it, as if he didn‟t think I knew the

answer.

“That‟s Jake Kilmer. We‟re working on this thing together” was all the big cop told him.

“Jake, this is Harry Raines.” That seemed to satisfy Raines who dismissed it from his mind, If he

recognized my name he didn‟t show it. He turned his attention back to the business at hand. “I don‟t

mean to push you, Doc. Did he just break a leg?”

“Two places. He was also on Butes.”

“What!”

“He had a cold.”

“According to who?”

“Thibideau.”

“Damn it!” Raines snapped, and his vehemence startled me.

“Uh, there could be something else,” Callahan said. He came over to us and took off the gown.

“There‟s a crack in the pastern leading out of the fracture. It appears to be slightly calcified, which

means it‟s been there a while. A few days, at least.”

“So it wasn‟t a cold.”

“I‟m telling you this because Doe here can‟t say anything until he finishes his tests. But I‟d say this

animal was on Butazolidin because he was gimpy after the race on Sunday.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“The jock, Impastato. But he didn‟t have anything to do with this I don‟t think. He quit Thibideau

Sunday because he‟d been made to break the horse out at the five-eighths and the horse was strictly a

stretch runner, which is another reason he lost Sunday.”

“The trainer‟s Smokey Barton, right?”

Callahan nodded.

“He‟ll go to the wall for this.”

“It‟s done a lot,” Callahan said.

“Not at this track,” Raines growled. “Not anymore.”

Shuster went back to work and Callahan nodded for me to follow him out of the room. We went

outside and leaned against the side of the building in the hot afternoon sun. Callahan didn‟t say

anything. A few moments later Raines came out.

Callahan said, “Mr. Raines, I think we need to talk.”

Raines cocked his head to one side for a beat or two and then said, “Here?”

“Preferably not.”

“My office then. We‟ll go in my car.”

He drove around the track without saying a word and parked in his marked stall. We took the elevator

to the top floor of the stadium, then headed down a broad, cool hallway to his office.

It was a large room, dark-panelled and decorated completely in antiques, down to the leather-bound

volumes in its recessed bookcases. Ordinarily the room would have been dark and rather oppressive,

except that the entire wall facing us as we walked in was of tinted glass and overlooked the track. The

effect was both startling and elegant.

His desk was genuine something-or-other and was big enough to play basketball on. Executives in

Doomstown seemed to have a penchant for big desks. This one was covered with memorabilia. It sat

to one side and was angled so that Raines could see the track and conduct business at the same time.

The view was breathtaking.

There were three paintings on the walls, two Remingtons and a Degas, all originals. There were only

two photographs in the room, both on his desk. One was a black-and-white snapshot of an older

couple I guessed were his mother and father. The other one was a colour photograph of Doe, cheek to

cheek with a black horse who must have been Firefoot.

I had a hard time keeping my eyes off her.

“Is this going to call for a drink?” Raines asked.

Callahan hesitated for a moment or two and then said, “I could do with a bit of brandy, thanks”

“Khmer?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

The wet bar was hidden behind mahogany shutters that swung away with a touch. Raines took down

three snifters that looked as fragile as dewdrops and poured generous shots from a bottle that was old

enough to have served the czar. The brandy burned the toes off my socks.

“Have a seat and tell me what‟s on your mind,” he said in a flat, no-nonsense voice.

The leather sofa was softer than any bed I‟d been in lately. He sat behind his desk with a sigh and

rubbed his eyes.

I was beginning to like him in spite of myself. I had remembered him as just another football jock, but

Raines had about him the charisma of authority, even as weary as he seemed to be. He dominated the

office, not an easy thing to do considering the view.

“This thing with Disaway,” said Callahan, “it goes a little deeper than splitting a foreleg because of

Butes.”

Raines swirled his brandy around, took a whiff, then a sip, and waited.

“Disaway was favoured to win a race this past Sunday—”

“He dragged in eighth,” Raines said, cutting him off.

“Yeah, right, well, we have what I would call very reliable information that the race was fixed for

Disaway to lose. Would you say the information is good, Jake?”

“I‟d say it‟s irrefutable,” I said.

The muscles in Raines‟ jaws got the jitters.

“I can‟t tell you exactly how it was done,” Callahan went on. “Probably cut back his feed for a couple

of days and overworked him a little, raced him a little too much, then probably gave him a bag of oats

and a bucket of water a couple of hours before the race and he was lucky to make the finish line. But

there‟s no doubt that he was meant to lose. Money was made on it,”

“By who?” Raines demanded.

Callahan hesitated for several moments. He was in a tight spot. To tell Raines about the recording was

to admit that there was an illegal tape in Tagliani‟s house.

“I‟m sorry, sir,” Callahan said, firmly but pleasantly, “1 can‟t tell you that. Not right now. The thing

is, it worked as a double. He lost so big Sunday, his odds were way up for today‟s race.”

“He went off at about fifteen to one,” Raines said. He took another sip of brandy but his dark eyes

never left Callahan‟s face.

“That‟s right, but he was posting $33.05 until a few minutes before post time. According to your man

at the hundred-dollar window, a bundle was laid off on him just before the bell and his odds dipped to

$26.00 and change.”

“Do you know who placed the bundle?” Raines asked.

Callahan shook his head. “It was several people, spread across both windows.”

“Who was responsible?”

“Could‟ve been anybody from the groom to the owner. Thing is, sir, we can‟t prove any of this.

Except we know the loss on Sunday was fixed.”

“We can prove the horse was dosed with Butes,” Raines said angrily.

“Yeah,” said Callahan, “except it isn‟t against the law in this state.”

“Well, it‟s going to be,” stormed Raines. “I‟ve always been against the use of Butazolidin on any

horse up to forty-eight hours before a race. I know horses, Callahan.”

“I know that,” the big man answered.

“But I don‟t know the kind of people that fix horse races and you do. I need some proof to use on

Thibideau so this won‟t happen again.”

I decided to break in at this point. Callahan was playing it too close to the vest.

“Mr. Raines, Pancho here‟s reluctant to discuss this because it involves some illegal evidencegathering. I trust you‟ll keep this confidential, but the fact is, we know the race was fixed, but we are

powerless to say anything about it. The proof is on a tape which is non-admissible.”

He stared at both of us for a few moments, toyed with a pipe on his desk, finally scratched his chin

with the stem.

“Can you tell me who was involved?”

“A man named Tagliani,” I said. If he knew the name, he had either forgotten it or was one of the

better actors I had ever seen in action. There was not a hint of recognition.

“I don‟t think I‟m familiar with—”

“How about Frank Turner?” I said. “That‟s the name he was using here.”

I could see Callahan‟s startled look from the side of my eye but I ignored it.

The question brought a verbal response from Raines.

“Good God!” he said. “Is this fix tied up in some way with the homicides in town?”

It was obvious that he had bought the soft-pedal from the press just as everyone else in town had. Just

as obviously, he was totally in the dark about who Tagliani really was and the ramifications of the

assassinations.

“Not exactly,” Callahan answered, still trying to be cautious.

I decided it was time to let the skeleton out of the closet. I told him the whole Tagliani story, starting

in Ohio and ending in the Dunetown morgue. I told him about Chevos, the friendly dope runner, his

assassin, Nance, and their front man, Bronicata. I told him about the Cherry McGee—Longnose

Graves war, a harbinger of what was to come. The more I talked, the more surprised Callahan looked.

Surprised was hardly the word to describe Raines. He was appalled.

I was like a crap shooter on a roll. The more aghast they got, the more I unloaded. I watched Raines‟

every muscle, trying to decide whether he had truly been misled by Titan and the others, or whether

he was one of the greatest actors of all time. I decided he had been duped. Whatever had been

weighing on his mind earlier in the day probably seemed insignificant compared to what I was telling

him. I saved my best shot until last.

“I‟m surprised Titan, Seaborn, Donleavy, or the fellow who owns the newspaper and TV station—

what‟s his name.. . ?“

“Sutter,” he said hoarsely.

“Yeah. He‟s handling the cover-up. I‟m surprised one of your associates didn‟t tell you before this,” I

said.

Pause.

“They‟ve known about it for several weeks.”

Callahan looked like he had swallowed his tongue.

Raines got another five years older in ten seconds.

I‟m not sure to this day whether I was venting my anger toward the Committee, Chief, and the rest of

the Dunetown crowd, or telling the man something he should know, whether it was a petty move on

my part because I wanted his wife, or a keen piece of strategy. That‟s what I wrote it off as, even

though it was still a reckless thing to do. Whatever my motives were, I knew one thing for sure: A lot

of hell was going to be raised. Some rocks would certainly be overturned. I was anxious to see who

came running out.

By the time I was finished, he knew I knew who was on the Committee and the extent of its power,

and I did it all by innuendo, a casual mention of Titan here, of Seaborn there, none of it incriminating.

I stopped short of that.

I was having a hell of a time. It was the Irish in me: don‟t get mad, get even. I was doing both.

“Anyway,” I said, summing it all up, “the fix wasn‟t part of this other mess, it‟s just indicative of what

was happening here. Uh I tried to think of a delicate way of putting it.

A change of values in the city since the old days.”

His cold dark eyes shifted to me and he stared at me for several seconds although his mind still

seemed to be wandering. Then he nodded very slowly.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “That‟s well put, Kilmer. A change of values.”

It was then that I realized how deeply hurt he was. Bad enough to find out you have been lied to by

your best friends, but to get the information from your wife‟s old boyfriend went a little beyond

insulting. I stopped having a good time and started feeling sorry for him. A lot of Harry Raines‟

dreams had been destroyed in a very few minutes.

Pancho Callahan stared out the window at the racetrack. He had less to say than usual—nothing.

Raines got up, poured another round of brandy, and slumped on the corner of his desk.

“1 appreciate your candor,” he said, stopping to clear his voice halfway through the sentence. “I

understand about your... previous ties to Dunetown. All this is probably difficult for you, too.”

He wasn‟t doing bad at the innuendo himself. A lot of information was bouncing back and forth

between us, a lot of it tacitly. I almost asked him what had been troubling him.

Instead, I dug it in a little deeper.

“It hasn‟t got anything to do with old ties, Mr. Raines,” I said. “I‟m an investigator for the

government. I came to help clean up your town. I‟ve been here five days arid I only know one thing

for sure. Everybody of importance I turn to for help, kicks me in the shins instead. Callahan wouldn‟t

have told you all this. He wouldn‟t be that inconsiderate. I, on the other hand, have never scored too

well in diplomacy. It doesn‟t work in my job.”

I stopped talking. The dialogue was beginning to sound defensive.

Raines looked at Callahan. “Can you confirm this?” he asked quietly.

Callahan nodded slowly.

“My God,” Raines said again. And then suddenly he turned his attention back to Pancho Callahan.

“The blame rests squarely with the trainer,” Raines snapped, almost as if he had forgotten the

conversation moments before. It was as if it had given him some inner strength. The weight seemed to

be gone. Fire and steel slowly replaced it, as if he‟d made a final judgment and it was time to move

on. “I‟ll have Barton‟s ass. I‟ll get him out of here along with that damn Butazolidin.”

Callahan chimed in: “Seems to me, sir, we‟re talking about two different things here. Buting up the

horse today and fixing the race on Sunday. They‟re connected this time, but they‟re two different

problems.”

“Yes, I understand that,” he said. He braced his shoulders like a marine on parade and ground his fist

into the palm of his other hand.

“We talked to the jockey. .

“Impastato,” Raines said, letting us know he knew his track.

“Right. Impastato got chewed out by Smokey Barton for letting Disaway out at the five-furlong

post—he usually goes at the three-quarter. Anyway, it was Thibideau who told him to run the race

that way.”

“That happens; it‟s not uncommon,” Raines said, attempting to be fair.

“No. But it‟s usually not done in a race where the horse is favoured and the track is right for him.”

“1 agree,” said Raines, who was turning out to be nobody‟s fool, “but it‟s not enough to prove the

race was a fix.”

“No, but there‟s something else. „The last race Disaway ran, Impastato says the horse was shying to

the left going out of the backstretch. Started running wide.”

“Look, I‟m sorry, Callahan,” Raines said impatiently, “but I need to know where you got this thing

about the race being fixed. I can‟t go to the stewards and tell them I heard it around the track.”

“You can‟t take it to the stewards at all . . . or the Jockey Club,” Callahan said, looking to me for

support.

“And why not?”

“We can‟t prove any of it,” I said. “You‟re a lawyer. All of this is expert conjecture. You could get

your tail in as big a crack as ours would be.”

“My tail‟s already in a crack,” he growled.

Callahan said, “What Jake means is, we can‟t prove the horse was burned out so he wouldn‟t run well.

We can‟t prove Thibideau put the final touch on it by opening him up too early. We can‟t even prove

it was Thibideau. Fact is, we can‟t even prove for sure the horse has been running with a hairline

crack in his foreleg.”

Raines‟ anger was turning to frustration.

“Why don‟t you just spell it out for me,” he said.

“Okay,” said Callahan. “The way I see it, they couldn‟t Bute him on Sunday because there‟s a little

kick to Butes; the horse might just have done the job anyway, and he was favoured. The fix was for

Disaway to lose. They had to Bute him today because he was going lame after the workouts, and

today was his day to win. So Disaway ran like a cheetah, couldn‟t feel the pain in his foreleg until he

went down. What I think is that Thibideau set up the loss on Sunday. Smokey‟s only sin was not

pulling the pony because he was going lame. Hell, you could run a lot of trainers off the track for

doing that.”

“Then I‟ll run „em off,” Raines said angrily. He finished his second brandy and stood with his back to

us, staring down at the track. “An owner‟s greed, a trainer‟s stupidity, and two horses are dead. One

jockey may never ride again, and another is lying in pain in the hospital.” He turned back to face us.

“To my knowledge, there‟s never been a fix at this track, not in almost three years.”

“Well,” Callahan said, “it was well thought out and impossible to prove. Would‟ve worked like a

Turkish charm, too, except the leg was weaker than they thought, which is always the case when a

horse breaks a leg in a race.”

“Then just what the hell can I do?” Raines roared, and for a moment he sounded like Chief Findley.

Callahan finished his drink and stood up.

“About this one? Nothing. Thibideau lost his horse; he‟s paid a price. The other two horses and

jockeys? Don‟t know what to say. It‟ll go down in the books, just another accident. I don‟t think—see,

the reason we told you this, it isn‟t the last time it‟s going to be tried. I know how you feel about the

track and the horses. It‟s something you needed to know.”

Raines sighed and sat back in his chair and pinched his lower

“I appreciate it, thanks,” he said. But he was distracted. His gaze once again was focused somewhere

far away.

“Mr. Raines, it wouldn‟t help us—Callahan here, myself, and the rest of Morehead‟s people—for you

to talk about this fix business. Not for just now. Maybe in a day or two, okay?”

He could hardly refuse the request and didn‟t.

“I respect your confidence,” he said, without looking at either of us. “Will forty-eight hours be

enough?”

Callahan looked at me and I shrugged. “Sure,” I said, “that‟ll be fine. We‟ll be checking with you.”

We left him sitting there, staring out at the track he had created and which he obviously loved and

cherished and felt protective of, the same way Chief felt about Dunetown. I felt sorry for him; he was

like a schoolboy who had just discovered some ugly fact of life. Callahan didn‟t say anything until we

were outside the building and walking back around the infield to the car.

“You were pretty tough in there,” he said.

“Callahan, do you ever get tired of dealing with pussyfooters?” I asked with a sigh.

“All the time,” he said, looking down the track, where they were repairing the infield fence.

“That‟s what just happened to me. I got the feeling Raines is anything but. But he‟s surrounded by a

bunch of pussies.”

“It‟s your business to tell him?”

“Nobody else was going to do it. Time somebody played honest with the man.”

“Did that all right,” he said. “Just wonder what Dutch is going to say.”

“I wouldn‟t worry about Dutch,” I replied. “I‟d worry about Stoney Titan.”

After a moment Callahan said, “Yeah and seemed awed at the prospect.

I didn‟t tell him what else had happened, that I was measuring the man to see what kind of stuff he

was made of.

I wasn‟t sure I liked the answer.

58

FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE SECOND SIX

The 182nd day: We know this village is a VC hideout. We go by the place, there‟s this pot of rice

crooking, enough for maybe a hundred people, and there‟s some old folks around, a dozen kids, two

or three younger women, that‟s all.

„They sure are skinny, to eat that much,” Jesse Hatch says as we walk by.

Flagler‟s replacement is this kid from Pennsylvania, handles a .60 caliber like it was part of his arm.

He learns fast too. We call him Gunner. He says he used to hunt all the time, poaching and

everything, summer and winter, since he was maybe eight, nine years old. Nothing scares him. He

achieved “aw fuck it” status before he ever got to Nam.

Anyway, we go back tonight to see if maybe the village is a gook shelter and there was activity all

over the place. What we got is Cook City. We flare the place and hit it from both sides, only there‟s a

stream on the back side of the village and they get on the other side and we are pinned down. There

are green tracers going all over the place, rounds bouncing off shit, kicking around us.

We‟re pouring stuff into the hooches, just shooting the shit out of them, and all of a sudden one of

them goes off. They must‟ve had all their ammo stored inside because it was the Fourth of July—

squared. Grenades, mortars, tracers, mines. Everybody‟s freaking out, running around. Then Hatch

catches one in the leg from the other side of the stream and he goes over the side into the water and

he panics and starts yelling that he can‟t swim and Carmody is yelling, “Shut up, for Christ sakes”

only it‟s too late and Jesse catches a couple in the head. Carmody and me, we go over the side and

drag him back. But I knew he was finished, It was like trying to lift a house.

Carmody keeps saying, over and over, “Why did he yell, why the fuck did he yell. Fuckin‟ stream was

only three feet deep.”

But it was dark and everything had gone wrong and Jesse couldn‟t swim. Hell, I don‟t know why I‟m

apologizing for old Hatch, look what it cost him.

The 198th day: The lieutenant‟s beginning to act weird. It started a couple of weeks ago when we

lost Jesse Hatch. It‟s like he has a hard time making up his mind about anything.

Last night I go by his hooch and I say, “C‟mon, Lieutenant, let‟s have a beer.” And he just sits there,

looking at me, and then he says, “Let me think about it.” Think about having a beer?

Today he says, “My luck‟s going bad. I shouldn‟t have lost Flagler and Hatch.”

“You can‟t blame yourself,” I say to him.

“Who‟m I going to blame, Nixon?” he says, only he says it with bitterness. He‟s lost his sense of

humor, too.

The 215th day: We got separated from our outfit and we were two days out in the boonies. We come

up on this handful of gooks. Ten of them, maybe. We just break through some brush and there they

are, twenty feet away plus change.

Everybody goes to the deck but the lieutenant. I don‟t know what happened. He just pulls a short

circuit and stands there. This one VC has his AK-47 over his shoulder, he rolls backward and gets

one burst off. Carmody takes three hits. He‟s lying there, a few feet away from me, jerking real hard

in the dirt.

It‟s the shortest firefight lever saw. It‟s over in about ten seconds. Everybody is shooting at once. We

are on top of these people and Carmody is the only one gets hit. One of the gooks jumps in the river

and Gunner just goes right in after him, takes him out with his K-bar. Just keeps stabbing him until

he‟s too tired to stab anymore.

I take the lieutenant in my arms and hold him as tight as I can and keep telling him it‟s going to be all

right. I hold him that way until he stops shaking and I feel him go stiff on me.

it doesn‟t seem possible. A month to go, that‟s all he had. I don‟t know why I thought the lieutenant

was invincible. You‟d think I‟d know better after six months out here.

The 254th day: It‟s almost six weeks since Carmody took it. I wish the hell I would have time to thank

the lieutenant. If he had just come around for a minute or two. Shit, you just take too much for granted

out here.

I‟ve been acting squad leader ever since. They made me a sergeant. Doe, Gunner, me, we‟re the only

old-timers left. Jordan beat the rap and rotated back to the World. The night before he left we got him

so drunk, shit, he was out cold. So we tie him to the back of this PT-boat and drag him back up to the

base, which is about eight or nine kliks. He almost drowned. By the time we got to the base, he was

sober. So we got him drunk all over again. He was a wreck when he got on the chopper to Cam Ranh.

I‟ll bet he‟s still got a hangover. Something to remember us by.

Can you beat that, six months and I‟m an old-timer. I never even told the lieutenant I liked him.

The 268th day: I got called down to Dau Tieng today, which is division HQ, and I talked with this

captain who seems to run the whole show in this sector. He tells rue I‟m recommended for a Silver

Star for this thing up at Hi Pien. It was a rescue mission and I guess I looked pretty good that day.

He asks me how I feel about the war. Can you imagine? How does anybody feel about the war, for

Christ sakes.

“I‟ve had better times,” I said. “Like the time I had my appendix out.”

The captain has real dark eyes, like he needs sleep and could use a week or two in the sun, and he got

a kick out of that.

“I mean, how do you feel about the war politically,” he says.

“I don‟t know about that,” I say to him. “I‟m not interested in political bullshit. I‟m here because I

was sent here. I don‟t even know what the hell we‟re doing over here, Captain. Right now it looks like

all we‟re doing is getting our ass kicked.”

“Does that concern you? I mean, that we seem to be getting our ass whipped?”

“You some kind of shrink or something?” I ask him.

He laughs again and says no, he‟s not a shrink.

So I say to him, “Nobody‟s over here to lose.”

Then he asks me how old I am and I tell him I‟m twenty-one and he says to me, “You‟re a damn good

line soldier.”

“I‟ll tell you, Captain, I‟m almost a short-timer. I got six months left to pull and I got two objectives

in life. Get me back whole, get my men back whole. I don‟t think about anything past that. There isn‟t

anything past that. You start thinking about what‟s past that and you‟re a dead man.”

“I‟m going to field-commission you,” he says, just like that.

“Shit no,” I says. “Don‟t do that to me, Captain. Gimme a break. What do you want from me?”

“I need a lieutenant on that squad and you‟re the best man for the job”

“Look, gimme six stripes, okay, that way I outrank anybody else on the squad. I‟ll stay right there, do

the same shit I been doing, but I don‟t want a goddamn bar, man. Bars get you killed. I‟m walking

away from this, Captain. I‟m not dying in this swamp. You hand a bar to me, it‟s like a fuckin‟ hex.”

So he gives me six stripes and a night on the town, which is kind of a joke, and the next day I‟m back

at Hi Pien and nothing is changed. It‟s the same old shit.

The 287th day: We had this nut colonel who came up on the line. He was an old campaigner, you

could tell. He knew all the tricks and he just ignored them. He didn‟t even make a lot of sense when he

talked. I don‟t think he was wrapped real tight anymore.

Later in the day he was going to grab a medevac out and we‟re standing on the LZ on top of this knoll

and he takes a leak right down the side of the hill, and just like that the VC start popping away at us. I

don‟t know where they came from, and he‟s laughing, and I‟m telling him, “Colonel, you better watch

out, we seem to have Charlie all over the place.”

“Piss on „em,” he says.

All of a sudden 9-millimeters were busting all around us. They must‟ve busted fifty caps and the

ground around his feet was churning up like little fountains. He finished, zipped up, and shot them a

bird. Then the Huey comes in and he climbs aboard and they dust off. I thought, There‟s a guy needs

to get off the line, bad.

“That crazy son of a bitch‟ll get somebody killed,” Doe says. “He doesn‟t give a shit anymore.”

“What the hell‟re they gonna do with him?” I say. “He‟s too crazy to send back to the World.”

“I don‟t know, send him to the crazy colonel place,” Doe says, and we all laugh about that.

The 306th day: Gunner was over in Saigon for a week off. and F. and he meets this ordnance guy

and they hang out and get drunk and raise some hell. Anyway, the ordnance guy shows Gunner how

to take the timer out of a hand grenade and when Gunner comes back, he sits around every night,

taking the timers out of M-4‟s and then loading them into ammo packs. He puts five or six to each

bag.

A couple of nights later we‟re sitting on this LZ and the VC jump us. Gunner says follow him. He

leaves the bags behind, we give them about thirty meters, hole in, and when they take the position we

start a counter. Next thing I know there‟s hand grenades going off all over the place, gooks

screaming, all this chaos. Then we went back and jumped them and took the position back. We wasted

about twenty. Half of them only had one arm.

We did this a couple of times, moving off LZ‟s and what have you. Gunner keeps a couple of bags of

these grenades around all the time now. Every time we move out we leave a couple behind. It‟s like

our trademark. Fuckin‟ monkeys never learn. It works like a charm every time.

The 332nd day: We had this ARVN assigned to us. I don‟t trust Vietnamese, not even the southerners.

They have a tendency to run when things get hot. I know that‟s a generalization, but over here,

sometimes generalizing keeps you alive. Anyway, this ARVN scout was on point and he runs into a

sniper. One lousy sniper but this crud leaves the point arid comes running back to report. What it

was, he didn‟t have the guts to cream the fucking gook.

So he comes running back and the sniper pops off three men, one, two, three, just like that. We get up

there and I get around behind the sniper and I empty halfa clip into him.

When we get back to base I radio it upriver and tell them I‟m sending this creep ARVN back to them, I

can‟t use him.

“Keep him,” they say. “It‟s politics.”

Poli-fuckin‟ -tics. Jesus! Politics my ass.

Tonight we‟re camped out in the bush, he heads back into town to see his lady friend. I take off my

shoes and follow him. He‟s going to the river to hop a ride and I jump him before he gets to the dock

and slit him ear to ear with my K-bar, just drop him in the fucking river.

That‟s one son of a bitch isn‟t getting any more of my people killed.

The 338th day: This time when I went down to Dau Tieng, it was the captain and this lieutenant

named Harris, who looked like he didn‟t take shit from anybody, and we met in this bar which

everybody jokingly calls the Café Society. 1 figure it‟s about the ARVN. They probably found him,

he‟s some asshole‟s brother or something. It doesn‟t even come up.

“You know the trouble with this war,” the captain says. “We get these people for a year. Just when

they‟re getting good enough to stay alive and take a few tricks, they go home.”

And I says to myself, Uh-oh.

The lieutenant says to me, “You got a real handle on what it‟s all about, Sergeant.”

And I laugh. I don‟t know what‟s happening two miles away and I say so.

“I mean out on the line,” the lieutenant says.

“Oh, that,” I says.

“Ever hear of CRIP?” he asks me.

I had heard some vague stories about a mixed outfit made up of North Viets who had defected to our

side and called themselves Kit Carson scouts, plus infantry guys, some leftover French Legionnaires,

and, some said, even some CIA, although you could hear that about anything. What I heard was that

they were pretty much assassination squads. Our own guerrillas, like the Green Berets and the

SEALS, which is like the Navy berets. Anyway I said no, because what I heard was mostly scuttlebutt.

“It‟s Combined Recon and Intelligence Platoons. Special teams. We keep them small, four or five

people. You know how that goes, everybody gets so they think like one person. You move around

pretty much on your own, targets of opportunity, that sort of thing. I think it would be just up your

alley.”

“I got ten weeks left,” I said, and I said it like You must be nuts.

But it was funny, I was interested in what he was saying. I mean, this lieutenant was recruiting me,

asking me to do another tour, and I was listening to the son of a bitch. And he went right

“We have a low casualty rate because everybody knows what they‟re doing. You go out, you do your

thing, you come back, everybody leaves you alone.”

“That‟s about what I‟m doing now,” I said.

“That‟s what I mean, you‟re perfect for CRIP. We need people like you.”

I‟m getting a little pissed. “What‟s in this for me, Lieutenant? Just sticking my ass out there to get

whacked off for twelve more months? Shitt”

He says, “So what‟s back home? You work eight hours, sleep eight hours. Shit, Sergeant, all you got

left is eight hours a day to live. Tell me this isn‟t better than bowling.”

I told him I‟d think about it and I got shacked up for two days and went back down to the squad.

The 347th day: We had this kid, a replacement, his first time on the line. I don‟t even remember his

name. Anyway, we‟re rushing this hooch and there‟s a lot of caps going off and the kid twists his

ankle and down he goes and he starts screaming. We all just stay down and all I‟m thinking, as many

times as I told this kid, “You go down, keep your mouth shut no matter how bad you‟re hurt,” and

he‟s losing it all.

They zero in on him but Doc gets to him first and he‟s dragging this kid by the feet, trying to get him

behind something, away from the fire.

I hear the round hit. It goes phunk, like that.

I was hoping it was the kid but no such hick. Doc took one round, dead center.

Then the kid freaks out and runs for it and they just cut him to pieces too.

What a waste, what a goddamn awful fucking waste.

Later on, the GE‟s come in with their body bags. Doc is lying beside a tree. He looks like he‟s taking

a nap and I‟m sitting beside him and this guy comes up with the bag and plops it down beside Doc

and zips it open.

God, how I hate that sound. I hate zippers.

“Don‟t put that on him,” I say, and I grab that goddamn green garbage bag. “Don‟t put that fuckin‟

bag on him.”

“Hey, easy, pal, okay,” the Gunner says. “He‟s gone. We lost him. Let them take him back.”

You can‟t cry, you know. Nobody cries up here. You cry, everybody thinks you‟re losing it. Doc had

eight days. Eight fucking days to go. All that time, all that experience. All stuffed in a fucking garbage

bag.

The 353rd day: Ever since, I been thinking a lot about Carmody and Flagler and Jesse Hatch. Doc

Ziegler. Some of the others. The lieu-tenant‟s right; it is kind of a waste, spending a year on the line

and then leaving it just when you really get so you know what you‟re doing. I‟ve never been a pro

before at anything. But I know how to fight these motherfuckers. I feel like I‟m doing something

positive, accomplishing something. You know, in my own way, doing something to turn this thing

around, getting even for Jesse and Doc and the lieutenant, all the rest of them.

And one more thing. I wouldn‟t want to tell them this, or anybody else. I like it. I‟m going to miss it. . .

getting a gook in my sights, squeezing off, watching the fucker go down. Shit, man, that‟s a jolt. That‟s

a real jolt. There‟s not another jolt in the world like it.

59