Going After Cacciato (24 page)

The dancers and the music made Paul Berlin think of home. He took Sarkin Aung Wan’s hand under the table, squeezed it, and tried not to think.

“It is good to discuss these matters with the American soldier,” said Captain Rhallon when the music ended. “One soldier can always learn from other soldiers, yes? But alas, sometimes I talk so much that I learn nothing. I must listen now. I will listen while you tell me things.”

“What things?” Eddie said. “Rain and lice?”

“No, no! The war. I will listen while you tell me about your war.”

Eddie laughed. “It was swell.”

“You are fooling me.”

“Honest. It was such a wonderful war they should make it a movie.”

“A wonderful, wet war,” Stink Harris said.

“I am being fooled. I see that.”

“Just a war,” Doc said. “There’s nothing new to tell.”

Captain Fahyi Rhallon smiled. “Not to contradict, but I must disagree.”

“An honor.”

“Each soldier, he has a different war. Even if it is the same war, it is a different war. Do you see this?”

“Perceptual set,” Doc Peret said.

The captain nodded. He was leaning forward over the table. His eyes were brilliant black. “Perceptual set! Yes, that is it. In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a war is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”

Doc Peret waited a moment. He glanced at Paul Berlin, then arranged his face in an expression of sober reflection. It was the way he looked before engaging in debate with Jim Pederson or Frenchie Tucker.

“I’ll buy most of it,” Doc said. “We’re made differently, we see differently, we remember differently.”

“Precisely.”

“Right, and I guess I can accept most of that. Except for this: The war itself has an identity separate from perception.”

“You are a realist.” Captain Rhallon smiled. “An unpopular position.”

Doc made a modest gesture with his hand. “Unpopularity is
the price a good analyst pays. But anyway. The point is that war is war no matter how it’s perceived. War has its own reality. War kills and maims and rips up the land and makes orphans and widows. These are the things of war. Any war. So when I say that there’s nothing new to tell about Nam, I’m saying it was just a war like every war. Politics be damned. Sociology be damned. It pisses me off to hear everybody say how special Nam is, how it’s a big aberration in the history of American wars—how for the soldier it’s somehow different from Korea or World War Two. Follow me? I’m saying that the
feel
of war is the same in Nam or Okinawa—the emotions are the same, the same fundamental stuff is seen and remembered. That’s what I’m saying.”

“And what about purpose?” the captain said.

“Purpose? Same-same. The purposes are always the same.”

“But … but I understand that one difficulty for you has been a lack of purpose. Is that not the case? An absence of aim and purpose, so that, the foot soldier is left without the moral imperatives to fight hard and winningly. Am I mistaken in this understanding?”

Doc Peret picked up his empty mug and filled it from the pitcher. The musicians were moving back to the stage now. Students were getting up and moving to the dance floor.

“You’re right,” Doc said slowly, “and you’re wrong. True, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what the hell’s going on, but I’ll wager that troops at Hastings or the Bulge had the same problem. I mean, if they stopped to think about it—what the fuck am I fighting for?—if they did that, I’ll bet they came up as confused and muddleheaded as anybody in Nam. And what about all the millions of soldiers who have fought bravely on behalf of bad purposes, evil aims? The Nazis, the Japs. They fought damned well.”

“And they lost,” said Captain Rhallon.

The lieutenant suddenly sat erect. “Tell him!” he said.

“You are feeling better, sir?”

“Better! Just tell him.”

The noise was building again. Doc Peret turned and glared at the musicians.

“Okay,” Doc said. “Sure, they lost. But was it because they fought poorly? Hell, no. They lost because they couldn’t build enough planes and trains and bullets and bombs. It wasn’t
purpose
that lost it for them, it was
matériel
. They couldn’t produce enough matériel.”

Captain Rhallon considered this. “Yes. But in war one nation is able to make up for production insufficiencies by calling on the industrial capacity of allied nations. Is that not so? By citing a great moral purpose, Britain was able to generate American industrial aid to defeat the Germans. In comparison, Germany and Japan were left virtually without allies. Unable to summon other nations to their cause, because, in fact, they
had
no just cause. So in the end it was an absence of clear moral purpose that produced defeat.”

“Tell it loud,” the lieutenant said. “You got him by the balls—now
squeeze.
”

Music was playing. It was fierce, loud music. Colored lights were flashing, and the students were dancing in groups and pairs. The soldiers along the walls were singing.

“A nice trick,” Doc said. “But you changed the subject. We’re not talking about winning and losing. We’re talking about how it
feels
. How it feels on the ground. And I’m saying the common grunt doesn’t give a damn about purposes and justice. He doesn’t even
think
about that shit. Not when he’s out humping, getting his tail shot off. Purposes—bullshit! He’s thinking about how to keep breathing. Or he wonders what it’ll feel like when he hits that booby trap. Will he go nuts? Will he puke all over himself, or will he cry, or pass out, or scream? What’ll it look like—all bone and meat and pus? That’s the stuff he thinks about, not purposes.”

“And about running,” the officer said softly, so softly he had to repeat it.

“What?”

“Running,” Fahyi Rhallon said. “The soldier, he thinks about running. Will he run or will he stay and fight?”

Paul Berlin looked away. He watched the dancing students.

“Yes,” the captain said, “running is also what the soldier thinks
of, yes? He thinks of it often. He imagines himself running from battle. Dropping his weapon and turning and running and running and running, and never looking back, just running and running. Soldiers think of this. I know it. Yes? It is the soldier’s thought above other thoughts.”

“And?”

The man touched his moustache and smiled. “And purpose is what keeps him from running. Without purpose men will run. They will act out their dreams, and they will run and run, like animals in stampede. It is
purpose
that keeps men at their posts to fight. Only purpose.”

The lieutenant cheered. Oscar Johnson muttered something, got up, and moved to a nearby table. He asked four girls to dance before one shrugged and followed him out onto the floor. She wore blue jeans and a polo shirt. She danced with her nose at the ceiling.

“Maybe so,” Doc was saying. “Maybe purpose is part of it. But a bigger part is self-respect. And fear.”

“For not running?”

“You bet. Self-respect and fear, that’s why soldiers don’t run.”

“Fear?”

“Right on. We stick it out because we’re afraid of what’ll happen to our reputations. Our own egos. Self-respect, that’s what keeps us on the line.”

“But does not purpose reflect on self-respect?” the captain said. “Does not the absence of good purpose jeopardize the soldier’s own ego, thus making him less likely to fight well and bravely? If a war is without justice, the soldier knows that the sacrifice of life, his own valued life, is demeaned, and therefore his self-respect must likewise be demeaned. Is that not so?”

Eddie and Stink were now up and dancing. The clatter of drums and glasses made it hard to hear. The music kept making Paul Berlin think of home—dancing in the high school gym, Louise Wiertsma on his arm, and later going out to a big barn outside Fort Dodge, where there was more dancing and kids drinking, and the smell of hay in the lofts and cattle long butchered and sold and
eaten, and Louise Wiertsma’s hair, and home. He held tight to Sarkin Aung Wan’s hand. She was young. They were all so young. Cacciato, for instance. And Eddie and Stink and Oscar, they too were young, and so were Pederson and Frenchie Tucker and Buff and Vaught and Bernie Lynn and Rudy Chassler and Ready Mix and Sidney Martin. Everyone was so incredibly goddamned young.

Briefly Paul Berlin slipped back to his observation tower along the South China Sea. Partly here, partly there. Hard to tell which was real.

Concentrating, he took a deep breath and let himself go. Yes, music and flashing lights and people dancing, and it was neither real nor unreal, it was simply
there
.

Fahyi Rhallon was asking now about their touring, and Doc said it was a magnificent tour. Tours of Laos and Burma and India and the highlands of Afghanistan, and now they were touring Tehran, and soon they would be touring all the way to Paris.

“Paris!” the captain cried. “You are fortunate. My best tour was to Damascus, but compared to Paris it was nothing. Paris! Is it a guided tour?”

“Yes,” Doc said. “You might say that.”

He went on to explain how it happened that Cacciato left the war in monsoon season, how they were dispatched to retrieve him, how they were determined to bring it to a rightful conclusion.

“Purpose.” The officer smiled. “You have a mission with great purpose.”

The lieutenant made a high scoffing sound.

Captain Rhallon looked concerned. “But he is a deserter, yes? This Cacciato? And your purpose is to stop him. Deserters, they must be pursued to the very ends of the earth. Hunted down like dogs. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise what?” the lieutenant said. “What difference does it make? One less soldier.”

The officer hesitated.

“You are serious?”

“No,” Lieutenant Corson sighed. “No, I’m just a sick old fucker who don’t know what’s happening.”

“But, sir. If this … this Cacciato is allowed to run free, then the consequences—” Again the captain paused, glancing across at Doc Peret. “I can only speak of my own beliefs. My own country. Here, though, desertion is a most serious offense. Only this afternoon a boy was put to death for a similar crime.”

“He was a deserter?”

“Oh, no,” the captain said. “No, the boy had merely gone AWOL. For true deserters the punishment is not so kind.”

“Thank God for mercy.”

A waiter came and mopped up the table and put down three full pitchers. The music was slow now, aching, and the students danced close. Blurred, melancholy music. Listening, watching the dancers, Paul Berlin felt himself sliding away: the high school gym decorated with lanterns and flowers; Louise Wiertsma’s blond hair and curious smile; the way she hummed as she danced. The same song, the same ache. And in Chu Lai once, on stand-down, again it was this same swaying song, slow and powerful and sad, a Korean girl taking off her clothes to the song, and everyone singing and watching her strip, nobody thinking about the coming morning, everyone just singing and feeling sad and happy, Pederson and Bernie Lynn and Frenchie Tucker, everybody.

So the students danced slow, and Fahyi Rhallon was asking how the war went, what the strategies were, and Doc said it went very well on the good days and very badly on the bad days, but that in general it was hard to say, hard to know for sure, and the captain agreed with this, it was always hard to know how a war went. The music was low and loud and sad, and the students danced close. Some of them sang as they danced. And Eddie and Oscar and Stink were back at the table now, showing the captain how various ambush formations were set up, the classic X and L and O, and everyone agreed that the O was the best of the formations because it offered perimeter protection and a 360-degree killing circumference.
Sad, throbbing music, and the students held tight to one another and danced to it,
don’t be afraid, take a sad song and make it better, remember …
and Oscar was diagramming cordon-and-search tactics, showing how they worked in some situations and failed in many others, and the officer nodded and took notes.

The students danced until the song ended.

Then there was a new song, faster and not so melancholy, and the students separated and danced fast.

“Tripflares,” Eddie was saying. “Now there’s a useless—”

Paul Berlin took Sarkin Aung Wan’s hand and led her to the floor. Unreal, he thought. Just a creature of his own making—blink and she was gone—but even so he liked the way she closed her eyes to the music, the way her chrome cross bounced on her sweater, her braided hair swishing so full. She smiled as she danced. He liked that, too. It was the way Louise Wiertsma had once smiled, guarding secrets. And now Sarkin Aung Wan smiled that same guarded smile and danced with her mouth open and her eyes half-shut, her chrome cross swinging.

“You are drunk, Spec Four,” she said as she danced.

“No.”

“Oh, yes. You are a very drunk Spec Four.”

At the table again, Fahyi Rhallon was inquiring about sappers.

“Sleazy sons of bitches,” Stink Harris said. “Up at Chu Lai they had these two converted sappers, Chieu Hoi types, and they were giving this demonstration on how they do it, gettin’ through the wire and all that, and the bastards get all oiled up like fuckin grease, man, like fuckin ball bearings or something, and they just fuckin glide under the wire, glide. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” Eddie said.

“Fuckin-A, it’s right. Unbelievable. Sleazy, oily little runts. Ugly.”

“Stink speaks truth.”

“Sure, it’s the truth. They fuckin carry the charges strapped between their legs, right here, an’ I swear they’re no bigger than—”

“Stink’s size.”

“Eat it, man. No bigger than—”

“Stink, he’d make a swell sapper.”