“The diplomat was at his rear. He struck me as a good guy, too. He was warm too and shook our hands.
“Four-Eyes was another story altogether. He was sweating like crazy. He shook no hands. We had a great view of dense green hills inland a few
klicks
. There were booming noises in and to the immediate rear that had him nearly shitting his britches. The cocksucker couldn’t get out of the ward too fast. That almost made their visit worth it.
Almost.
“Four-Star asked us who’d been at the attack. All of us had. Four-Star proceeded to whip Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars on us. The Purple Hearts, fine. You’re awarded one if you get a hangnail or if it’s posthumous, no distinction. Bronze Stars are supposed to be for heroism, not being at the wrong place at the wrong time, snoring in the sack. My buddies who were blown apart, they were not alive to receive Bronze Stars and their Purple Hearts were given to their mothers and wives.
“Just our ward got the Bronze Stars. The trio had limited time before they moved on. It was public relations bullshit. If Bronze Stars are for heroism, why did we deserve them if we didn’t at least have the balls to tell Four-Star we didn’t deserve them? I have pondered my cowardice every day and have dreamt my cowardice every night.
“I’ve worn the decoration on my uniform. As you know, medals have currency in this man’s army. NCOs and officers don’t harass you. The medals made life easier for me. If I had stateside duty left, I’d pin the motherfucker on my forehead.
“I didn’t want to smoke an opium pipe so I’ll have a beatnik war story. I wanted to know if opium will make what I told you go away, if only for a few hours. If a pipe or two will make my dead hootch mates leave me alone.
For any amount of time.
Booze does not do the trick. Sleeping pills I steal from the dispensary do not do the trick. Opium is my last shot, my music like perfume.”
Stone-cold sober now, Larry was sobbing, tears streaming. He was ramrod stiff, fists white-knuckled at his sides. Ziggy and I didn’t say or do anything. Years in the future, men could hug men. Not in 1965, not unless you were queer and/or were behind closed doors.
I hoped the unburdening was a relief to Larry, though. Poor bastard, his skull was jam-packed with demons. We exchanged addresses and vowed to stay in touch, and Larry got back in the taxi.
We didn’t stay in touch. That was typical of buddies in the service reentering the World and living hundreds and thousands of miles apart.
I’ve been searching for him in my The Great Beyond phone directory. He is not listed. Good. No hurry, Larry. If he is indeed leading a long and unconventional life, I hope it’s been a good one. I do hope he is still ready, willing, and able to bang lady poets. Larry was far too hard on himself that long-ago night. He’s had decades to shake those demons. I am cautiously hopeful that he has.
I led Ziggy to our music-like-perfumery and rapped on the door like they did at speakeasies on
The Untouchables.
It opened promptly. A man of a certain age greeted us with a nod and in we went. It was dark and ratty, smaller than I thought it’d be. Built-in cribs lined a narrow hallway, similar to mama-san’s arrangement. They were
uncurtained
, possibly for the fire hazard, possibly because in the state of euphoria we were purchasing, privacy was of no consequence. Three or four of the cribs were occupied by bony Vietnamese geezers in undershirts, eyes at half-mast, lost in space. I didn’t see much smoke, but could smell it hanging sweetly in the moist, stale air.
Everybody was too wasted to notice that we weren’t your basic opium den clientele. We paid our money, a measly three hundred piasters each. A little kid who might’ve been the grandson of one of the old boys in the cribs prepared our pipes.
The pipes were bamboo, two feet long, with ivory bowls stained brown. The youngster kneaded a thumbnail-sized wad of chocolate-brown opium gum and pressed it into the bowl. He inverted the bowl over a lamp until the gum bubbled, then handed it to Ziggy. He repeated the process for me with assembly-line efficiency.
We took ours standing up, leaning against a wall.
The drug hit home fast, but not with the punch I’d expected. I did become light on my feet and feel carefree. I was no expert, but I theorized that the beer beforehand may’ve semi-neutralized the opium.
Ziggy had a coughing fit that would have woken up a normal household.
We finished our pipes, declined a second, and went out into fresh air. I was feeling a bit too drowsy for comfort in this unfamiliar neighborhood, but we found a taxi and got out of there safely.
In our room, the opium remained with me. The room spun in the opposite direction as the ceiling fan. I saw countless, imaginary geckos on the ceiling. I must have slept, for all night long I dreamt of Martians. They floated along the sky on pinkish-red clouds as if riding on the tops of blimps. My Dragon Lady was curiously absent.
In the morning, I told Ziggy about my Martians.
He asked me to describe them.
I couldn’t. All that stuck with me were the pinkish-red clouds.
The Zigster said he hadn’t dreamt about a solitary thing.
SMITTY IS going to become a pest. I am conflicted on how I feel about this, me and my melodramatic loneliness. The day after the food swap, he’s at my door, already filled out a little from (presumably) gorging himself on the mac and cheese.
“Joe, please help me. I am required to pray on my knees to Mecca five times a day.”
“So?”
“I do not know which direction Mecca is.”
Who the hell am I, his ayatollah?
Nevertheless, I can’t resist the challenge. I go out into the yard and look upward at our non-weather. It’s noontime, so the sun should be high in the sky. Except that we don’t have a sun. We have blue skies during the day, sometimes with a scattering of puffy clouds. At nighttime, the sky gradually darkens, as if controlled by a rheostat. It never is completely dark; there is an illusion of twilight. In the early morning, the process begins again. Outside temperature is always room temperature. Never in my tenure has there been a drop of
precip
.
I squint into a sky the color of blue topaz. I breathe deeply, breathing in no smells of humanity or inhumanity. I smell nothing. I find myself missing 1965 Saigon’s nasal goulash.
I say, “That’s a tough one, Smitty. Without a sun, we can’t even compute north, south, east, or west. Then even if we do, where’s Mecca from us, since we don’t really know where we are?”
Smitty spreads his hands in despair.
Listen, I really and truly believe that the average Muslim, the vast majority of them,
are
good people. They’re as appalled by the Smittys of The Land of the Living and The Great Beyond as I am. Those fanatics who made Smitty what he was and is are reprehensible to the extreme, but that’s no excuse for the kid strapping on a cordite T-shirt, his mind on unsullied wall-to-wall pussy.
“Tell you
what,
let’s establish where we
hope
Mecca is.”
“I do not understand.”
“I’ll arbitrarily aim in a random direction. So long as you pray in that direction each and every time, it’ll be a de facto Mecca that nobody can quibble with. Okay?”
“I think so,” he says, puzzled, but too eager for a solution to debate my logic.
I extend my arms, press palms together, and point toward the strip mall’s teriyaki shop.
“Okay?”
He beams. “Yes, thank you, Joe.”
I go inside, wondering if their hologram teriyaki is made with chicken, beef or pork.
***
We did have weather in 1965 Saigon, plenty of it.
Next morning, while Ziggy and I breakfasted on sweet rolls and coffee at a café near the 803rd, the sky blackened as if a bucket had been placed over the sun. A spectacular lightning display accompanied horizontal rain. Streams and puddles formed on the street. Whitecaps formed on the puddles.
Just as quickly, it was over. The sky cleared and pavement steamed, smelling like laundry.
Saigon
weather could change as rapidly as weather does these days on television news when the talking haircuts speed up satellite images for effect.
Despite humping
a hefty
poundage of mail and paper and punch cards to the Annex door, the day dragged. Hands on the 803rd’s wall clock moved as if cast of lead. The only saving grace was that Colonel Lanyard and General Whipple were away, and that Captain Papersmith had no special assignments for us.
Behaving like a child whose parents had left him home alone, the captain disappeared for long absences, returning with alcohol on his breath.
When in, he spent as much time in the colonel’s office as his own.
You’d have to be deaf not to hear drawers slamming. I believed I knew what he was doing in there. He had finally noticed that the Polaroid was missing from his all-American-family picture frame.
But why the colonel’s office?
Did he think Lanyard appropriated the photo as a fetish? I could not visualize the colonel playing with himself unless there was an army regulation (AR-658B, subheading 47) on Authorized Masturbation Procedure.
Any and all possibilities were irrelevant. The Polaroid had a permanent home in my shirt pocket, bonded to my bosom.
Ziggy took advantage of slack periods by curling up on the supply room desk, a woolly mammoth in hibernation. I considered writing a letter home, but had a nasty dose of writer’s block. I had much too much on my mind.
I took advantage of my free time by badgering PFC Ambrose Bierce into joining me for lunch. I said I’d buy. My unenthusiastic guest and I went to a nearby
phỡ
café. I’d eaten there often. It was good and cost practically zilch.
Phỡ
was a noodle soup. While we watched, the cook dipped a strainer of cooked rice noodles into a vat of boiling water to heat, yanked it out, and with a snap of the wrist, sprayed off excess water. Then he emptied the steaming noodles into a bowl and added broth, mystery meat and vegetables.
We foreigners regarded
phỡ
preparation as a theatrical meal, a minor floorshow. In my later career as a chef, as dishes became more and more complex and silly (i.e. food shows on TV), I increasingly admired
phỡ’s
unpretentious
simplicity.
The company clerk impatiently spiraled noodles around chopsticks. “I have a morning report to finish.”
The army’s morning reports are probably generated nowadays on wireless laptops, but back then it was on a painstakingly typewritten form completed by company clerks, few errors or strikeovers permitted. The morning report was the daily Sermon on the Mount, detailing any change in the organization’s status―promotions, transfers in and out, discharges, AWOL. I was convinced that a crackerjack and corrupt company clerk could make an individual administratively vanish. I wondered what PFC Bierce’s price was to do so. Hypothetically, mind you.
“Relax, Bierce. Papersmith isn’t here to sign it anyway.”
“Get to it, will you, Joe?”
“Get to what?” I asked innocently.
“Why we’re here.
To grill me on my claim that I’m Ambrose Bierce’s illegitimate grandson.”
I snapped my fingers. “Hey, since you mentioned it.”
“The draft freed me of grad students wanting to use my background as a thesis topic. Now you come out of nowhere.
In the army, of all places.
”
“I’m buying lunch, Bierce. Be nice.”
“I am not Ambrose the Trey,” he began. “My father was Gwinnett Bierce, after Ambrose’s middle name. Ambrose was thought to have had three kids. Gwinnett was the fourth. Ambrose was traveling with the Villistas during the Revolution, a freelance reporter seeking lively stories. There is no dispute about that. He became a favorite of Pancho Villa.
“The standard version of their falling-out, Villa having him taken for a stroll amongst the cacti, was because Ambrose was disillusioned with Villa’s role in the Revolution. Ambrose shot off his mouth once too often, saying that Villa and his followers were no better than bandits.
“The truth behind the friction is that Ambrose knocked up my grandmother, one of
Pancho’s
favorite girls. She had to escape or she’d share her lover’s fate and be left in the desert for the vultures. She fled across the border to
Nogales
, where my father was born.”
“Bierce was over seventy. Not the worst way to check out,” I said.
“He made his living as a wise-ass and died as one,” PFC Bierce said, nodding reverently. “There are worse epitaphs. Satisfied?”
“Yep.
So how’s
Jesus of Capri
coming?”
“A little further along than yesterday.
Yesterday a little further along than the day before,” he replied vaguely.
“I had an idea, an inspiration I’ll whip on you for no charge.”
“I’m listening.”
“To spice up the plot, how about a triangle on the Isle of Capri?”
He looked at me.
“A swarthy Carthaginian slave and a ménage à trois.”
Bierce made a face and returned to his lunch. “That’s smut, Joe.
Pornography.
It is anything but literary.”
A fat, walleyed French girl in a tennis outfit walked by us, presumably en route to the
Cercle Sportif,
the snooty French club that was open selectively to Americans of higher ranks. I’d seen her occasionally. After
months
in-country, many GIs came to idealize that rare species, the round-eyed woman. This one was blonde and freckled, which qualified her for deification. But I was immune. I had Mai, my Dragon Lady.
I watched the European goddess lumber by, she and her cottage-cheese thighs. I doubted if she played tennis in
Saigon
’s heat. Nor would Lee Harvey
Oswaldesque
R. Tracy, whom I saw her pass two blocks hence. Chief Warrant Officer Tracy saw me seeing him and scooted, blending into the
camo
of crowded Saigon sidewalks.
“Bierce, that shit-eating grin of yours when I speculated on the fifty-first state rumor.
What’s the deal?”
He sighed and dropped his chopsticks into his bowl. “You know my other secrets, Joe, so why not this one? I started the rumor.”
I answered with a skeptical smile.
“Prior to stepping off the plane at Tan Son Nhat, I started by telling all the stews. They were highly dubious, but the concept appealed to them compellingly. They’ll tell it to all the officers they date while on layover.”
“Assuming your nose shouldn’t be growing, how come?”
“To end this abortion of a war.
What state are you from, Joe?”
“
Washington
.”
“What’s
Washington
’s capital?”
“
Olympia
. Ziggy knows them all.”
“If Victor Charles tossed a satchel charge into an Olympia, Washington bar and killed a dozen state employees having a few after
work
, wouldn’t our righteous wrath be upon him and everybody up the line of his chain of command, all the way to the top?”
“True. Go on.”
“Same in Saigon, if it were capital of the American State of South Vietnam.
An attack in
Saigon
is an assault on mom and apple pie. No difference. Toss a bomb into a public
market,
it’d be like hitting the Safeway in
Elm City
,
USA
.
“The Vietnamese have been beating off foreign invaders for two thousand years. If we make the South part of
our
country, we’re no longer invaders, the North Vietnamese are. Curtis Le May and his Strategic Air Command would have carte blanche to drop his eggs if they misbehaved.”
“I don’t question your rationale, Bierce. I do question your ability to spread the rumor as fast as it’s spreading.”
“It’s a hopeful rumor isn’t it? If it’s legit, most of us go home.”
“Granted.”
“Did you take a lot of math in school?”
I said, “I majored in it for one disastrous quarter.”
“Did you cover exponents?”
“I don’t remember what we covered.”
“In the most basic definition, an exponent is a number raised to a power.” He scribbled on a napkin: 2², 2³,
2
ⁿ. “Two
squared,
two cubed, two to the fourth power.
And the fifth.
Two, four, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred twenty-eight, two hundred fifty-six, five hundred twelve.
That’s where the word ‘exponential’ comes from. Get the picture?”
Him and Ziggy, a pair of polymaths who sure did know their math.
I said, “Every person you tell tells two people, and
awayyy
we go.”
“Right.
If you’re asked if you could have one million dollars or a penny doubled every day for a month, most people will grab the obvious, the one million. In fact, if you choose the doubling penny, you’ll have over ten million dollars in a month.
“Same principle.
I pass the rumor on to everyone I can. It doesn’t hurt that the bulk intensely wishes it to be true.
To get the hell out of here ASAP and in one piece.
They eagerly pass it along. If nothing else, it’s a pleasant fantasy. Then it grows into something more. The ubiquitousness gives it currency.”
“I’d like to volunteer Ziggy and myself to assist in this patriotic and mathematical endeavor.”
“Welcome aboard,” PFC Bierce said, shaking my hand. “This conversation never happened, you know.”
“Top Secret Crypto is my middle name. The State of South Vietnam should have a state flower, though. If it’s been picked already, it’ll add texture to the rumor.”
“Good idea, Joe. What flower?”
“Easy,” I said.
“The opium poppy.”
PFC Bierce smiled.
“State bird?”
“Whirlybird, the gunship species.”