The World Played Chess (59)

We do not occupy the villages, or even the hills. We do not stay in one place long. Our mission is not to win terrain or seize positions. Our mission is to kill as many communists as possible. Each day this is reinforced, and with each marine we lose, I can feel something stirring deep inside me, an awakening of something dark that I have managed to keep caged, a malevolent force that seeks only to kill, that seeks revenge for the horrific conditions I must endure and the constant harassment that has taken so many of my brothers.

We have lost thirty-two men, eight per week, to booby traps and ambush mines. We’ve lost another three to heatstroke. Sniper fire harasses us. It can take us five hours to travel a mile. The sniper fire comes from the unbroken expanse of green that stretches from one mountain to the next, but we have yet to see the fabled NVA.

We hump through thick bush, climb rocks, wade waist deep through the boot-sucking mud of the rice paddies, and pull leeches from our bodies as we move from one checkpoint to the next so headquarters can keep track of us. Every so often you leave the bush and someone spots Charlie in a straw hat and black pajamas running in the distance. Probably the sniper who has been taking shots at us all day, but he’s too far to hit. He disappears into the tree line and lives to snipe another day.

Late afternoon we hump to the top of a mountain. Our checkpoint. Some trails are so steep you look up at the boot soles of the marine in front of you. When the ground is wet, your feet slide and you grab at the undergrowth—vines and bamboo—to pull yourself up, but the weight of your pack makes you off balance. Guys fall, taking out marines below them, like dominoes.

Some marines don’t get up. They just sit there with their gear, too tired, too mentally defeated. Cruz and the other squad leaders yell at them to motivate them, but it’s like Cruz is telling them to lift a two-thousand-pound boulder, an impossible act. They don’t even bother to try. You walk by them on your way up the hill. They stare into nothingness, like zombies, alive but without a soul. A half hour to an hour after we dig in atop our hill, the stragglers wander into camp, because nothing is more terrifying than being alone in the bush at night.

Once on high ground, the squad leaders set their perimeter. They direct us where to dig our foxholes for the night. I set trip flares and claymores and tie the cans with my marbles to the concertina wire. Then I dig my foxhole with my entrenching tool and fill the sandbags that will surround me. The ground can be like picking at cement, or it crumbles like sandstone. Everywhere, red ants and flies bite, and the relentless mosquitos fly up your nose and into your ears, searching for blood. Marines digging foxholes unearth nests of scorpions and spiders as big as hockey pucks. I don’t even look for the snakes anymore, unless I’m hungry.

Every time we stop for the night, Cruz instructs us to pull off our boots and socks to let our feet air out. So far, I do not have the jungle rot, though the rains will come, and when they do, Cruz says the rot is inevitable. We got another taste of the rain yesterday afternoon. The winds blew down from the mountains and clouds rolled in so fast I almost didn’t have time to slip on my poncho. Within minutes Vietnam pissed all over us, a wicked downpour of such intensity you could hear only the water pinging against our ponchos and helmets. Just as quickly as they came, the clouds blew past, and the temperature is pleasant for the first time in weeks. It won’t last.

I am often so tired I can’t find the strength to chew, let alone take pictures, but Cruz also makes me eat. He won’t let me sleep until I have eaten. He jabbers at me as the stragglers come in. “We aren’t going to be like them, Shutter. We aren’t going to quit. We aren’t going to give up. Not here. Not in this shithole. We’re going to hump. We’re going to be grunts. We’re going to be marines. Then we’re going home.”

“Don’t talk about home.”

“You’re going to come to Spanish Harlem, Shutter. You’re going to come to my house. My mother is going to cook empanadillas and pasteles and we’re going to eat until we’re sick and throw up. Then we’re going to eat more, just like the Romans.” He cackles. “No more of these fucking C-rats, Shutter. We’re going to eat real food. Then we’re going to go out to the clubs and I’m going to find you a Puerto Rican girl. You have never seen women so beautiful.”

“You think a Puerto Rican girl is going to want a gringo like me?” I say, humoring him. I no longer look like a gringo. My skin has gone from white to red to dark brown. I remember my first day at the firebase when Cruz said none of us were senators’ sons, that we were all men of color. He was right.

“When you’re with me, you are no gringo,” Cruz says. “You are mi hermano. My brother. We’ll drink and dance until the sun comes up. You wait. You’ll see.”

“Don’t talk about home,” I say again.

I sleep two hours. The third hour I’m on guard duty. I’m lucky to get four or five hours of sleep a night. When awake, I stare into a darkness so complete it is as if someone has taken a brush and painted everything black—the stars and the moon, the bush, the ground. But I no longer fear the darkness. I welcome it. In the darkness I, too, am hidden. I crave a cigarette, a nicotine perk to keep me awake, but in this painting, Charlie will see the flare of the match and the glow of the cigarette for miles.

So I paint it black. I paint it black and I stay hidden. And I wait.

I wait for Charlie.