Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War Read online

  Pat collapsed, his legs quivering with exhaustion. Arran draped the dog on the back of his neck, holding Pat’s legs over his shoulders, asking every hour or two for an emergency medevac. “You don’t understand. Dogs don’t have the same stamina as people. They just don’t.” It was the third full day without food.

  Pallack wondered if dogs were smarter than people.

  By the next day, some kids started eating the pulpy insides of various plants, not really certain what they were consuming. Others peeled bark from trees and chewed the inside. By early afternoon many were puking as they walked, fouling their own clothes or leaving sour-smelling patches of bile for those behind to avoid. Nothing helped.

  Hippy kept thinking of the girl who had first told him about meditating one night when he was on liberty from Camp Pendleton. He tried to concentrate on the now of the pain. She had told him that if he was uncomfortable on his knees in meditation, it was only because he was thinking about the time stretching before him. “Are you able to stand it now?” she had asked him. “Yes,” he replied. “And now?” “Yes” he had replied again. And now, the pain of putting his foot down hit him, but he could stand it. And now, on the other foot, but again he could survive. And now. And now. The hunger was nothing.

  Mallory suddenly threw his heavy M-60 machine gun into the brush and flung himself down, holding his temples. He screamed for someone to help him. “My fucking head hurts,” he sobbed. “Jesus Christ, my fucking head. Won’t someone believe me?”

  Mellas found him writhing on the ground. “It fucking hurts me, Lieutenant,” Mallory sobbed.

  A cry of “Corpsman up!” passed along the column. Doc Fredrickson came running, panting with the effort. Steam rose from his sodden clothing. “Oh, it’s Mallory,” he said, barely concealing his disgust.

  “Well?” Mellas said.

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. You got the same word I did. He’s got a head problem. There’s nothing physically wrong with him.”

  “You can’t help him?”

  “Do I look like Sigmund fucking Freud?”

  Mellas took the handset from Hamilton’s flak jacket and radioed for Sheller, the senior squid. “It’s my character Mike with the bad head,” Mellas said. The column kept moving. Everyone looked numbly at Mallory while stepping over him. The two Marines carrying Williams’s body stopped when they saw him, the body swaying slightly between them. One of them spat, and they struggled off.

  The radio hissed and Fitch came up. “Look, Bravo One, I can’t stop this column for anything today. I’ll send the senior squid back, but you be prepared to provide security. You’ll have to catch up with us best you can, even if you have to drag the son of a bitch.”

  Bass arrived before Sheller. He toed Mallory. Mallory responded with a moan.

  Mellas squatted down beside him. “Mallory, you’ve got to understand. We’ve got to keep moving. If you don’t move, the whole company is in danger. I know it hurts, but just try and move. You’ve got to try.”

  “You don’t understand, it fucking hurts me.” Mallory sounded like a bewildered two-year-old.

  Bass threw his rifle to the ground and grabbed Mallory by the front of his shirt, pulling him up to eye level. Mallory hung limp in his hands. Bass was screaming at him. “Goddamn it, Mallory, you fucking crybaby. We get left with shit like you and people like Williams die. You fucking coward. Walk!”

  Mallory moaned, “I can’t.”

  Bass, his face contorted, smashed his fist into Mallory’s face. Mallory moaned and dropped to the ground.

  “That’s e-fucking-nough,” Mellas said, furiously. “Goddamn it, Bass.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just fucking chickenshit.”

  “I’ll decide that.”

  The two of them stared at each other. Bass reached down, picked up his rifle, and humped off down the trail. Skosh looked at Mallory, puzzled, then scurried after Bass.

  “I’ll talk to Bass, Lieutenant,” Fredrickson said.

  “I can’t really blame him,” Mellas said. “Look, tell Bass to take the platoon. I’ll drop off with the last fire team while the senior squid checks him out.”

  Fredrickson hurried after Skosh and Bass just as Sheller arrived with Cassidy. Mellas briefed Cassidy while Sheller bent over Mallory, talking with him. The column disappeared ahead, leaving the small group alone. The Marines chosen for security nervously covered the trail around them. Sheller stood up, shrugging his shoulders. “I can give him a bunch more of Darvon, but he’s been eating that shit like popcorn.”

  “Well, what in fuck do we do with him?” Mellas asked. “We’re in no condition to carry him.”

  “Leave him,” Cassidy said, putting his hand on Mellas’s shoulder. Sheller looked at Cassidy in surprise.

  “I can’t leave him here,” Mellas said. Cassidy winked and squeezed Mellas’s shoulder. “You’ve got to, Lieutenant. We’ve got an entire company being jeopardized by this one individual. I ain’t seeing any good Marines die because one chickenshit fucking coward refuses to hump.”

  “Well,” Mellas said slowly.

  “Grab his gun,” Cassidy said to one of the Marines standing watch. “Get his ammunition too.” They stripped Mallory of his machine-gun gear, leaving him his .45 pistol and pack.

  “You can’t leave me,” Mallory moaned.

  “Try me,” Cassidy said. “I can leave a piece of shit like you any day of the week.” He nodded his head up the trail. “Let’s go before we get into trouble,” he said.

  The small group set off, a couple of the Marines looking back nervously. Cassidy grimly walked forward. After about fifty meters he stopped and nodded them into the brush. Everyone lay down. They waited about five minutes. Mallory came running wildly around the bend in the trail. Cassidy stuck the machine gun out, tripping him, and Mallory fell forward with a cry of fear.

  Cassidy stood over him and Mallory looked up, only to have the heavy machine gun thrown at him full in the face. It chipped his tooth. Mellas winced.

  “Get up, you coward,” Cassidy said quietly.

  Mallory, his lips and gums bleeding, whimpered like a dog. He picked up the machine gun and, in a strange shuffling half trot, headed up the trail toward the rest of the company.

  “What’re you waiting for,” Cassidy growled at the other Marines, “a fucking skoshi cab?” Everyone hurried back up the trail to catch the company, fearful of being separated.

  Nightfall found them halfway up the side of a deep valley with no room to form a perimeter. They dug in, looping the company in an oval over a protruding finger. If they were hit like this, they would probably be overrun.

  They dug holes just sufficient to lie in horizontally. The fields of fire were cleared only a few feet beyond their holes. Mellas dragged himself from hole to hole, cajoling, joking, pointing out the danger, trying to encourage everyone to hack just a little more brush, dig just a little bit deeper.

  When Mellas returned later to check on progress, he found most of the brothers gathered around Jackson’s record player. Mole was there, as well as Broyer and Cortell. Mallory’s machine gun had been positioned to cover an approach route up a small gulley, but Mallory was gone. So was Parker.

  “Hey, Lieutenant, come on and have some supper,” Cortell called out, “we’re servin’ a little Memphis soul stew.”

  Mellas laughed and walked up to the group, happy to be invited to listen. His heart swelled with pride at their good humor in the face of all the misery. They were listening to King Curtis doing “Memphis Soul Stew,” the record moving unevenly as the tone arm jerked up and down with the warps.

  Mellas was too tired to push the platoon to dig deeper. He joined with them and the music.

  “Man, I’ll never turn my nose up at a can of ham and moms again,” Mole said, his body swaying slightly to the music. Mellas felt uncomfortable, not knowing what to say.

  “Yeah,” Cortell said softly, “and sprinkle it with a dash of”—he paused for effect, bringing his shoulders up—“canned ham and eggs. Oooh, man.”

  Mellas laughed. “And a full course of Tabasco sauce to kill the taste,
” he said.

  There were murmers of “O-kay, Lieutenant” and “You got it,” soft voices overcoming misery.

  “I know Jesus said man does not live by bread alone, Lieutenant,” Cortell went on, “but I never expected to have to prove it, man.”

  “Hey, how many records you got, Jackson?” Mellas asked.

  “All depends on the table of organization, sir,” Jackson said. “We got Second Fire Team with Cortell carrying the hard core, some Otis, a little James Brown.” Jackson stopped and gave a pretty good imitation of James Brown doing an “eehhh” at the end of one of his lines.

  “Whoa, bro.” Mole laughed and touched his fist to Jackson’s.

  “And he got Wilson Pickett too,” Jackson continued, “with yours truly packing the Marvin Gaye. Parker and Broyer now, they got the rest of the Motown. And Mallory, he’s packing, uh . . .” Jackson noticed Mellas looking at Mallory’s unattended machine gun. “Uh, he carries the instrumentals like King Curtis and Junior Walker.”

  “Memphis Soul Stew” died out, and the needle began rubbing back and forth against the paper record label, making a scratching sound. Broyer quickly lifted the tone arm, stopping the turntable.

  “How’s Mallory?” Mellas asked.

  “How do you think, Lieutenant?” Jackson said. “He got his fucking mouth smashed in with a machine gun and his head hurts.”

  “And he ain’t eaten for a week,” Mole put in.

  “I don’t think Cassidy hit him in the face on purpose,” Mellas said.

  “Sheeit,” Mole spat out.

  “Well, I don’t think he did it on purpose.”

  “Thing is, Lieutenant, it happened,” Jackson said.

  “Do you think there’s going to be trouble?”

  “Trouble?” Jackson looked around him, indicating their situation by opening his hands to the jungle and clouds. “What’s trouble? It’s just a different form of shit, Lieutenant.” Faces that had been cheerful a moment before turned sullen. Mellas knew his presence had become inconvenient.

  “I say waste the motherfucker,” Parker said. It was almost dark and he was leaning back against the dirt of a shallow hole. China was sitting on Parker’s left, looking into the forest, chewing on a stick, trying to ease his body’s cry for carbohydrates. A light drizzle collected on his poncho and ran off in tiny streams. Mallory was on Parker’s right, elbows on his knees, holding his head and staring blankly at the ground.

  “We ain’t wastin’ nobody, Parker,” said China.

  “How you let a fucking pig like that live, huh?”

  “I don’t let him live. I got nothin’ to do with him livin’. Or dyin’,” he added pointedly.

  “Henry’d kill the mother.”

  China noted the threat but said nothing. Henry might very well kill Cassidy, but that was where Henry was stupid. The knowledge that Henry would kill somebody if he was crossed, however, was also what kept him in command. China knew that if he got a reputation for being soft, he’d never take over when Henry rotated back home. Still, he couldn’t just kill somebody. It was also too easy to figure out who had the motive in the company. It had to be done so it meant something. Either that or make it look like an accident. Ultimately, though, he didn’t want to risk his weapons-smuggling operation.

  “How you doing, bro?” China asked Mallory, changing the subject. He leaned over and looked across Parker’s chest.

  “It fucking hurts, China. You got to help me get out of the bush.”

  “We got to get all the brothers out the bush,” China said, his voice rising. He despised Mallory and wanted to jerk him up by the collar and tell him to act like a man, but he also knew a good cause when he saw one. You just keep on moaning, Mallory, my man, he thought.

  “You ain’t going to do nothing about Cassidy beating on Mallory?” Parker asked. He was looking at a mosquito that was sucking blood from his arm.

  “Course I’m gonna do something. But when the time be right.” China slapped at a mosquito on his face.

  Parker put his thumb on the bloated mosquito on his arm and burst it, spreading blood on his skin. “Blood, China.”

  “When the time be right.”

  “Tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, man,” Parker said angrily to Mallory. He stood up and slapped at a few more mosquitoes that were hovering around his face. “We better get back before Bass or College Boy finds us gone.”

  In the silence China could hear Jackson’s record player. Jackson. If he could team up with Jackson, letting him organize the brothers in the bush, then he’d go back to the rear and start finding more Jacksons for the other companies. Man, an organization like that and they’d get fucking tanks to the brothers back home.

  When full dark ended the 100 percent alert, Jackson was working on organizing his pack. He watched China walk up to Parker and Broyer and go through the handshake. Then he saw China coming for him.

  China squatted down next to him. Jackson pulled a strap into place. “All we do, man, is pack and fuckin’ unpack,” China said. “I do that much packin’ back home I be a real travelin’ man.”

  Jackson smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “Where is back home for you, man?”

  “Cleveland.”

  “O-hi-oh.”

  “Yep. Oh-hi-oh.”

  “You ever get high?”

  “Once. In San Diego. This sister had marijuana.”

  “That shit be bad for the black man.”

  “I’m told it bad for ever’one.” Jackson sighed, looking back six months into the past, seeing nothing but the small dark apartment, the funky red lava lamp, a black light making the fuzz picture of a girl in a paisley sari glow chartreuse—and Kyella. My God. Sweet Kyella Weed. He came back to the war. “Kinda fun, though.”

  “Yeah. That be its problem. The fucking British enslave millions of the yellow man with opium.”

  “I didn’t get the shit from no Brit. I got it from a brother.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But that brother ain’t doin’ us no good, man. He doin’ us no good. The Muslims, they don’t like drugs. And they right. Drugs, they enslave millions of yellow people and the red man, too.”

  “China, I don’t want be talkin’ politics. I’m tired and I gotta fight a war on a empty stomach.”

  “That’s right. A war against brown people. James Rado say the draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. No black man should be forced to fight to defend a racist government. That be Article Six of the Black Panther Ten-Point Program.”

  “What good you terrorist friends in Oakland doin’ ’cept makin’ money writin’ books? Soul on Ice. Sheeit. I don’t see no brave-ass Panthers over here.”

  “That’s the point. They ain’t over here fightin’ the white man’s war.”

  Jackson’s anger at being placed in positions he didn’t like and from which he couldn’t escape spilled out of him. “They ain’t fightin’ the black man’s war. That’s what they ain’t fightin’. They just stirrin’ up trouble. Just like you. I don’t need you fuckin’ shit, China. I don’t need it.” Jackson paused. “You know who the real people fightin’ the black man’s war are? I’m gonna tell you who. It that little girl go to school in Little Rock, wear a nice dress, scared shitless. She don’t pack no heat, but that picture a her walkin’ to school between federal marshals turned hearts. It those college boys gettin’ murdered for registerin’ voters. Yeah, white college boys. It people like Mose Wright.” He paused. “I bet chew don’t have a fuckin’ idea ’bout Mose Wright do you, Mr. Black History?”

  China threw his hands open in disgust. “OK. You be the preacher man. You tell me. Who Mose Wright?”

  “You ever hear of Emmett Till?”

  “Wha’chew think?”

  “Yeah. I be seven and I see that puffy face with the eye hanging out in Ebony magazine and I never, never, forget that face. But I don’t live in Mississippi. You don’t live in Mississippi. Mose Wright, he Emmett Till’s uncle, and he live in Mississippi where they hang you from a tree with you nuts cut off and throw you in the river with iron fan blades wrap ’roun’ you b
lack dead-ass neck. You speak up against that shit in Mississippi, you as good as dead. But Mose Wright, no education, no money, no nothin’ except heart, he goes to the trial a those motherfuckers killed Emmett Till, rigged like it was, and he says ‘D’ere!’ And he point his fingers at the killers. Right there in that all-white courthouse. ‘D’ere!’ Right there, knowin’ they’d be after him next, all alone, no help from the law.”

  “Yeah, shit man.” China was momentarily stopped. Then he launched back. “Only those two chucks, they got off. They runnin’ ’round loose today. They even make money tellin’ ’bout it. They tell some white magazine that they done the killin’ and that printed all over the country and they still get off.”