Matterhorn Read online

  Hawke didn’t answer right away. He was watching the small bubbles forming at the bottom of the cup and wiping at the slight tears caused by the heat tab. “This isn’t the Air Force, Mellas.”

  “No shit it isn’t. We did a hell of a job out there today.” As soon as he said it, Mellas knew he’d slipped. He felt his face starting to redden. “I didn’t mean—”

  “The fuck you didn’t mean.” Hawke looked up quickly at Mellas, eyes flashing for a moment. He resumed watching the can. Mellas knew that Hawke was letting him squirm. Then, without looking up, Hawke said, “Look, Mellas, in the Navy or Air Force they give you a medal for what the Marines consider just doing their job. In the Marines you only get a medal for being braver than just doing your job.” Then he looked at Mellas. “You get in fixes where medals are handed out because you were unlucky and had to fix things or because you were stupid and had to fix things. Be careful about what you’re wishing for.”

  “I don’t want to get on your bad side,” Mellas said. “I was just—”

  “Stow it, huh?” Hawke turned to Mellas. In a very even voice he said, “Mellas, I don’t give a fuck which side of me you’re on. I just want to find out whether you’re going to kill any of my friends or not, and right now I’m not too fucking sure.”

  The hissing of the heat tab in the stove seemed very loud.

  Mellas was the first to break. “OK, I wanted a medal. That doesn’t mean Rider and Conman shouldn’t have one.”

  Hawke eased a little in response to this honesty. “Well, you don’t lack for persistence.” He sighed. “Look. Everyone wants a medal. That’s no sin. When I first got here, I wanted one, too. It’s just that after you’ve been out here long enough to see what they cost, they don’t seem so fucking shiny.” He looked up briefly, to see if Mellas got the point. Then he poured two packages of instant coffee and two packages of sugar into the boiling water. He stirred it with a stick.

  “Sorry,” Mellas said.

  Hawke visibly softened. He handed up the steaming cup and smiled. “Shit, Mellas, drink this. It cures all ills, even vainglory and ambition. The only thing that hurts about a rebuke is the truth.”

  Mellas took the coffee and smiled. “Benjamin Franklin.”

  “Fuck no. My uncle Art, the poet.”

  “Benjamin Franklin. Art copped a lick.”

  “Yeah? Typical. You can never tell with Uncle Arthur. We’re not even certain Grandma had him with Grandpa.”

  The two were silent while Mellas took a sip.

  “Maybe we can get Rider a meritorious promotion to lance corporal,” Hawke said. “That will at least get him some more money. Of course you’ll have to write it up like it was fucking Chapultepec and Belleau Wood combined and Rider’s a potential Chesty Puller.”

  “How long should it be?”

  “Do I look like a fucking English teacher?”

  “Can’t I ask you a serious question?”

  “Why are you so fucking serious?” Hawke asked.

  “I’m not all the time.”

  “Neither am I.”

  The two of them stood there, looking at each other, suddenly seeing through their formal relationship.

  “Goodwin said you went to Harvard,” Hawke said.

  “I went to Princeton.”

  “They’re all the fucking same. Same guys with tassels on their fucking loafers, same communist fucking courses.” He passed the coffee back to Mellas.

  Mellas took two sips, trying not to burn his lips on the hot metal. He handed the cup back to Hawke. “Where did you go to college?” Mellas asked, feeling uncertain of how to proceed.

  Hawke took a careful sip and licked his upper lip. “C to the Fourth.”

  “Huh?”

  “Cape Cod Community College. I finished my last two years at U Mass.”

  Mellas nodded, squatting on his haunches, unconsciously imitating all the other bush Marines who did this to avoid getting their trouser seat wet.

  “What the fuck you doing in the Crotch anyway?” Hawke asked. “All you fucking Ivy Leaguers got enough money to get out. Doctors, psychiatrists, graduate schools, homosexual tendencies. Jesus.” He looked at Mellas suspiciously. “Are you and Goodwin shitting me about where you went to school?”

  Mellas paused for his usual careful weighing of answers. “I joined when I was eighteen, before I went to college. I grew up in a little logging town in Oregon and any guy worth a shit does his time in the service. That’s what everyone called it—the service. There wasn’t any war then and I got to go to college on a scholarship and got paid in the summers. They made me a lance corporal in the reserves and I didn’t have to do Navy ROTC.”

  “You still could have gotten out when the war started. Your kind must have all sorts of fucking pull with draft boards and congressmen.”

  “Not really.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Mellas hesitated. Most of his friends from Princeton did indeed have the kind of pull Hawke was talking about. He and his friends from Neawanna Union High School did not. He wanted to tell Hawke that going to Princeton was different from having a father who went to Princeton, but he didn’t. “I don’t know. It just seemed that all the other guys were going.”

  “And the president doesn’t lie. He must know something we don’t.”

  “Right,” Mellas said.

  “You still could have switched to the Navy. All the rest of your hoity-toity buddies joined the Navy, didn’t they? At least the ones that weren’t screwing their brains out and smoking dope at some peace rally.”

  “Yeah. Mostly. The ones who joined anything. A couple joined the CIA,” he added, feeling somewhat defensive about his friends. Hawke handed Mellas the steaming pear can. Mellas, smiling at the ribbing he was getting, juggled the can from hand to hand. “Maybe I’m just a fool for wanting to be different. There are so many guys trying to get into Navy OCS, the Navy’ll have fucking ensigns scraping paint pretty soon.”

  “Yeah. Real happy ensigns.”

  Mellas laughed, took another sip, and then handed the cup back to Hawke.

  Hawke took a sip of coffee and eyed Mellas shrewdly over the brim of the tin can cup. “You know, I bet you’re thinking you’re going to run for fucking Congress as an ex-Marine.”

  At the actuals meeting that night, Fitch told everyone about the plan to move the battalion headquarters group to Matterhorn as soon as possible. Bravo Company’s part of the plan was nailing the NVA machine gun.

  Goodwin spoke voluntarily for the first time. “Hey, Jack. I got this hunch I want to try out tomorrow.”

  “Have at it,” Fitch said. He handed Goodwin his map.

  “This fucking gook machine-gun team,” Goodwin said. “Both times they fire from the east side, right? And when Mellas runs into them, they dee-dee south. But south is downhill and nothing but bamboo and elephant grass. North is cliffs and shit. That means they work around the south side of the hill and are over there.” Goodwin pointed west. “Between us and Laos, but not too far, because they’d lose too much altitude. They ain’t no dumber than we are and I sure as shit wouldn’t want to hump a machine gun up this fucking mountain every day just to get a chance to shoot at a chopper. But I wouldn’t be so high I had to hump for water either.”

  Mellas envied Goodwin’s practical logic.

  “OK, Goodwin,” Fitch said, “turn in your route and we’ll prep it for you just before you go.”

  “No prep, Jack.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I don’t want no tip-offs. I’m going right where they are, Jack.” Goodwin pulled Fitch’s map over a little. He squinted at it, then his large finger pointed to a small offshoot of a larger ridge. “Right here.”

  Everyone looked at the spot. Mellas looked questioningly at Hawke. Hawke shrugged.

  Goodwin left before dawn with one of his three squads, heading west toward Laos. Mellas went south with Jacobs and Second Squad from his platoon, down a long finger that led onto the valley floor below them.

  They were moving slowly in thick jungle along the crest of the finger when they heard the firefight start. Even though they were a good two kilome
ters south of Goodwin, the noise of the M-16s was so loud that everyone hit the dirt.

  Mellas grabbed the hook from Hamilton and listened.

  “. . . Goddamn it, I don’t know how many there are, Jack. I’m busy.”

  “Bravo Two, Bravo Two, this is Bravo Six. Big John’s got to have your position report. Over.”

  Nobody answered. Suddenly there was complete silence.

  “Bravo Two, you get back on this fucking net. Over.”

  Firing erupted again, and the sound rolling over them was now intermingled with the thump of hand grenades.

  Mellas pulled out his compass and took a bearing on the sound. It was an endless ear-shattering explosion that set his heart racing. Mellas keyed the handset. “Bravo Six, this is One Actual. I’ve got a bearing on the sound of three four zero. My pos is six seven one five one niner. Over.” Mellas and Fitch both knew that Mellas had just risked exposing his own unit to NVA mortar or artillery fire by revealing his position over the radio in order to give Fitch the second compass bearing that would pinpoint Goodwin’s location.

  Fitch’s voice returned. “I copy three four zero.” There was a brief pause. “He’s just where he said they’d be. You know the spot? Over.”

  “I’m on my way.” Mellas suddenly felt useful, important, rushing to help his friend.

  The rush soon turned to frustration as the Marines cursed and hacked at the indifferent jungle. Mellas pushed them, swinging the machete himself when his turn came. The firing died down. Then it stopped altogether.

  They linked up about an hour later. Both squads were exhausted, but Goodwin’s squad was carrying one SKS rifle, an AK-47, and a longbarreled Russian DShKM .51-caliber machine gun, plus several steel boxes of linked cartridges and a heavy, spider-legged tripod. They also had the usual belt buckles, water pipes, helmets, and military insignia and buttons, useful for trading. One of the kids had been hit seriously enough to have to hobble between two friends, but he wasn’t in any real danger. Goodwin himself had been creased across the right ear with a bullet. It had taken out a small piece of flesh and cartilage and left a thin bloody track down his neck.

  “Hey, Jack,” he boomed out to Mellas, pulling on his ear. His voice was unnaturally loud because of the temporary hearing loss. He was tugging on his bloody earlobe. “Look at this. A fucking Purple Heart.” He laughed with delight and adrenaline. “Two more and I’m out of this fucking hole.”

  Mellas forced a smile. It was well known that after three wounds the Marine Corps considered the recipient too nervous, too unlucky, or too stupid to remain effective in combat. The kids in both squads laughed. Those from Second Platoon couldn’t stop talking about how Goodwin had taken the small machine-gun team by surprise, crawling up on their position, firing, throwing grenades over their crude log barrier. They’d killed three. The rest had fled.

  By the time they reached the perimeter all the kids were calling Goodwin Scar.

  Mellas was aware of how plain and ordinary, perhaps even hesitant, he must look next to Goodwin. He couldn’t quite use the word chickenshit, but deep down inside, unnamed, the fear of it was there.

  The next day, the battalion staff flew into Matterhorn.

  Lieutenant Hawke stood outside Fitch’s hooch, his hands in the pockets of his field jacket. He felt invaded. Bravo had walked to Matterhorn through virgin jungle and had pushed the jungle back to form a crown of open space around Matterhorn’s crest, all under the constant harassment of the machine-gun team. Now the battalion CP group was flying in on choppers, trundling in bag after bag of gear, canned goods, radios, alcohol, and magazines. Hawke wanted to believe it was coincidental that they came the day after Goodwin had bagged the gook machine gun.

  The enlisted men, mostly radio operators and supply clerks, were digging out large bunkers and filling sandbags. Hawke knew that they were all just doing what they were told, but he resented them. Even more, he resented the way Fitch had combed his hair and shaved a second time that day to meet the colonel and the Three, Blakely.

  “Shit,” he said out loud and crawled back inside the hooch to find a cigar. Relsnik and Pallack were both there, playing gin and monitoring the radios.

  “Anything new on our red dogs?” Hawke asked, automatically shifting his frame of reference to the map in his head, where he constantly knew the positions of the company’s security patrols.

  “Naw,” Pallack answered. “Except fucking Lieutenant Kendall turned in a pos rep that was about a klick off d’ one Daniels turned in just after him, so I put ’em where Daniels said.” He turned back to his hand.

  This wasn’t the first time that Kendall had made a mistake reading a map, and Hawke knew as well as Pallack that Daniels was probably right. He also knew that Daniels had probably turned in the position report to show Kendall up. He decided not to pursue the discrepancy on the radio. He’d talk to Kendall and Daniels about it separately. He crawled back outside into the gray afternoon and lit his second-to-last cigar. He took a long slow puff, savoring every sensation, especially the warm dryness of the smoke. “Shit,” he said again, thinking of the constant rain. Then it occurred to him that with the battalion moving in, there ought to be someone up there he could buy cigars from. He smiled, his eyes roving over the lines, taking in the terrain and thinking about the positions of the patrols at the same time.

  Fitch had previous patrols, not current ones, on his mind. As he made his way slowly up the slope he was rehearsing his arguments about why it took so long to get the gook machine gun. He lifted his stateside utility cover from his head, pushed down his hair, and replaced the cover neatly. When he saw Simpson and Blakely conferring over a map and occasionally looking down into the valley, he gave a short sigh and walked across the LZ to join them.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” he asked, saluting both of them.

  “No salutes, Lieutenant,” Simpson said jauntily. “We don’t want Blakely here picked off by another gook machine gun, do we?” Fitch lowered his hand and Blakely laughed. “It’s good to be out in the bush,” Simpson said almost absently. He put his field glasses to his eyes and scanned the valley.

  “You doing OK, Tiger?” Blakely asked.

  “Yes sir,” Fitch said.

  Finally the field glasses came down and Simpson turned toward him. “You know what to do when you kill gooks, Lieutenant?”

  Fitch was at a loss for an answer. “Sir?”

  Enunciating each word as if speaking to a child, Simpson repeated, “What do you do when you kill gooks, Lieutenant?”

  “I, uh, sir?”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Uh, no, sir. I mean, I’m not sure what the colonel is asking.”

  “I’m asking about fucking intelligence, Lieutenant. Fuck-ing in-telli-gence. You know what that is?”

  “Yes sir, I do. Sir.”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like it.” Simpson turned to Blakely as if sharing a secret. Blakely nodded, and Simpson went on: “Let me help you out. You know, you don’t always have Marine Corps photographers to record your after-action reports for you.” He smiled, but apparently not with good humor. Blakely did the same. Fitch smiled back uncertainly. “Intelligence, Lieutenant,” Simpson went on, “is built up by the fastidious collection of minutiae. You understand that, don’t you? It isn’t the result of spectacular finds. It’s the result of hard work, constant attention to detail—to minutiae. Mi-nu-tiae.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “When you get dead gooks, you collect everything. Wallets, shoulder patches, letters, everything. You empty their pockets. You bring in their weapons, their backpacks. You smell their fucking breath to see what they’ve been eating for lunch. You following me, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. I don’t want any more intelligence lapses.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’m glad to see you finally got that fucking gook machine-gun team. How many patrols you running a day?”

  “Three, sir.”

  “Not enough, was it? Two fucking weeks.”

  “Sir. We were trying to put in a fireba
se and build up the lines at the same time.”

  “Everyone has problems, Skipper.”

  “Sir, we did get the machine gun. And didn’t lose anyone doing it. We also brought it in along with an AK and an SKS.”

  “And what unit were they from?”

  Fitch licked his lip. “I don’t know, sir,” he finally answered. He knew that since the battalion had turned in Mellas’s one probable as a confirmed, there would be no sense telling Simpson there was no body to search. On the other hand, Goodwin had definitely killed three, but he’d come back in with weapons and trading material—crowing like a rooster, the kids calling him Scar—and no intelligence. Fitch almost smiled at the memory, in spite of the fact that he was getting dressed down for it now. Fuck, he thought, they’re all from the 312th fucking steel division anyway and everyone knows it, including you, Simpson.

  “You see, Lieutenant, you not only failed to be aggressive in your patrolling, you neglected your defenses.”

  “Sir?”

  “Your lines, Lieutenant. Your lines. They’re totally exposed to artillery attack.”

  “Sir, uh. The closest gook artillery is at Co Roc, as far as we know. That’s even farther than our own was at Eiger.”

  “You’re the one who found all the fucking 122s.”

  “I know, sir. But the gooks don’t usually waste those on small infantry positions. They’re for taking out bigger stuff.”

  “You read Giap’s mind now?”

  “No sir. I wasn’t trying to say—I mean, I know nothing is for sure, but—”

  “Exactly. Nothing is for sure. It takes you fucking forever to find that machine gun that has Bushwhacker Six all over my ass, and I get out here and your fucking lines are a shambles and totally exposed to an artillery attack.”

  “Sir, are you saying we should put covers on the fighting holes?”

  “Well, Blakely,” Simpson said, turning to his Three and smiling. “It appears the Basic School still teaches standard infantry defense tactics.”

  “Yes sir,” Blakely said.