“Sir, isn’t there a law or something about cowards under fire?”
“Cowardice in the face of the enemy,” Kirkwood said, jotting notes. “A serious charge, especially against an officer.”
“I want to burn that little queer bastard, then,” Wilson said, turning from the cell door, streaks from tears glistening on his dark tan cheeks.
“So you called him a coward in front of the company commander, I gather, reading from your charge sheet,” Kirkwood said, taking the paper from the manila folder he carried.
“What they wrote down on that charge sheet,” Wilson grumbled, “I said every word, and meant it. They got that part right.”
“You’re guilty of that charge then?” Kirkwood asked, looking up at the sergeant.
“Yes, I am,” Wilson replied, looking down at the lawyer, “if it’s wrong to be disrespectful of a certified coward.”
“What about all this grenade business?” Kirkwood asked, turning a page in his notepad.
“I guess I know as much as anyone,” Wilson said, coming back to the bunk and sitting down. “Sir, I never rolled any grenade off the roof of the officers’ hooch. I never put one under the lieutenant’s rack either. I never even threw a rock on the roof. Anytime I saw a troop picking up anything to throw up there, I chewed his ass. I don’t go for that kind of crap. I’m a good Marine.”
Jon Kirkwood sat for a moment and then let out a deep breath. Then he stood up. Sergeant Wilson followed him to his feet.
“Thank you for talking with me,” he said to the sergeant, and put out his hand.
The sergeant took it and then hugged the captain. When he stepped back, tears rolled down the man’s face.
“Sir, I am a good Marine,” Wilson repeated. “I love the Corps. I love my men. That’s why I got so pissed off when we started losing people, getting boys wounded, because our platoon leader runs from any fight.”
“To be honest with you, Sergeant Wilson,” Kirkwood said, tucking the notebook in the pocket on the leg of his trousers, “I don’t know how much of this cowardice business we will be able to use for defense. The judge may prohibit us from saying anything unless the lieutenant is charged.
“I do promise you one thing, though, I will do everything in my power to see that none of this fragging business is brought into the court either. If they open that door, then we may use that same shallow reasoning to introduce the cowardice as evidence, too.”
AT STRAIGHT UP one o’clock, Terry O’Connor stepped out of the shuttle van at China Beach recreation area, carrying a white and blue, six-ounce Dixie cup with a paper lid held on it by a rubber band. He walked to a group of six men dressed in T-shirts and Bermuda shorts, but had the telltale sign of being officers from the white socks they all wore with their tire-tread-sole sandals.
“Hey, guys,” he said as he drew near the sock-clad crew seated around a picnic table on the gedunk patio, drinking beer.
“What’s up, Skipper?” one of the men answered, and stood, putting out his hand. “First Lieutenant Frank Alexander, Seventh Marines.”
“Captain Terry O’Connor, First MAW Law,” O’Connor said, shaking hands with the fellow Marine.
The older gentleman who sat with a slight stoop in his shoulders wagged his finger at the lawyer.
“Your friend has the cabana next to ours,” Rabbi Zimmerman said, then stood and put out his hand. “Lieutenant Commander Arthur Zimmerman, chaplains’ corps.”
“Glad to know you, chaplain,” O’Connor said. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for my friend Wayne Ebberhardt and his pretty wife, Gwen.”
“Oy vey!”
the rabbi exclaimed, slapping his hands on the sides of his cheeks and rolling his eyes. “Such a beautiful woman indeed! This lieutenant friend of yours, such a lucky man.”
“Yeah, that’s right, Captain,” Joel Stein said, laughing. “Tarzan and Jane, they’re just down there by the beach on that big red blanket. Tarzan and Jane, that is.”
“Joel!” the rabbi snapped, scolding the mischievous officer and then turning back to O’Connor. “Please forget this Tarzan and Jane business. It will only embarrass your friend and his wife. I beg of you, Captain.”
“Oh, I’ll forget all about it, chaplain,” O’Connor said, a twinkle flashing in his eyes as he lied. “I won’t embarrass them. Relax.”
“Thank you,” the rabbi said, shaking his head. “We overheard some things from their room last night that left a lasting impression with all of us, and I would not want your friend to feel mortified any more about it than he already is.”
“Rabbi,” Eric Jacobs said, smiling at the other officers and the chaplain, “I think that Captain O’Connor understands perfectly well now.”
“I do, chaplain,” O’Connor said, fighting back his urge to laugh. “You said they were on the beach, right?”
“Yes, just down there. See? On the red blanket,” Joel Stein said, pointing and grinning, noticing the sly sparkle in the Marine captain’s eyes.
“YOU KNOW, THERE’S a damned chimpanzee running around, back up there by the cabanas,” Terry O’Connor said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder as he walked to the blanket where Gwen Ebberhardt lay on her stomach, sunning her bare back, next to a portable radio, turned down low, and Wayne Ebberhardt sat with black plastic sunglasses riding the bridge of his nose and his back propped against a mound of sand, reading Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece novel
Nostromo
.
“Excuse me?” the lieutenant said, laying the book in his lap and looking up to see his colleague standing above him. “What the fuck are you talking about, Terry? What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I returned those two M14 rifles that Jon and I had stashed in our wall lockers since last fall, and because the helicopter crew had moved to Marble Mountain and I landed in your neighborhood, I caught the shuttle over here to see if you guys wanted to grab a late lunch,” O’Connor answered and took a deep breath.
“There’s a chimpanzee where?” Gwen Ebberhardt said, rolling onto her back and as she sat up, scooping her unfastened pink bikini top under her breasts, clutching it in place with her hand and forearm. Wayne reached behind her and latched the clasp, allowing his wife to release her grip.
“Oh, yes, that must be Cheetah,” O’Connor said, and laughed. “They say that Tarzan and Jane have come here for the weekend, you know.”
Wayne Ebberhardt shut his eyes and fell backward, holding his head and moaning.
“Oh, fuck, that’s all I need,” he groaned, pulling off his sunglasses and looking up at the smiling captain. “Why don’t we call AFVN and have them broadcast it to all the American forces serving in Vietnam. How the fuck did you? Oh, never mind.”
“Yeah, I met your next-door neighbors and asked directions,” O’Connor said, still laughing.
“I know it’s a waste of breath to ask you, but could you please keep it to yourself?” the lieutenant begged.
“You kidding me?” the captain chirped. “Now, as your lawyer, once you told me all the steamy details, the attorney-client privilege would then prevent me from disclosing any specifics of our conversation to anyone you did not approve.”
“Oh, come on, you guys, it’s no big deal, we’re married. You’re acting like schoolboys at a peephole to the girls’ locker room,” Gwen said, standing up from the blanket and brushing sand off her legs. As she bent over, Terry O’Connor widened his eyes, exaggerating his facial expressions as he leered at her jiggling breasts and then at the four rows of pink fringe sewn across the back of the bathing suit, dancing across the seat of her bikini bottoms.
“Don’t fuck with me like that, Terry,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, standing from the blanket, too, and dusting the sand off his legs. “I’m not some pervert who gets his kicks watching other guys groping my wife. I have my limits, you know.”
“Captain O’Connor,” Gwen said, shaking her finger at him, “you need to know that Wayne likes to get naked, jump on the bed, and beat his chest like Tarzan. In fact, the bed is still flat on the floor from his romping last night. Now, you can imagine the pictures to fill in the blanks, I’m not telling you those parts. But you have the general idea. The six Jewish gentlemen had apparently rented the duplex apartment next to ours for their weekend religious retreat, and Wayne thought it was empty, so he felt free to play Tarzan with all the sound effects. There, you have it. No more questions. Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starved.”
Then, without waiting for a response from either man, Gwen Ebberhardt started up the slope of sand toward the gedunk and cascade of rainbow-colored parasols.
“You see! Do you see?” Rabbi Zimmerman said, wringing his hands and walking from the picnic table where he and his colleagues sat. The chaplain hurried through the sand to intercept the woman who stomped toward him.
“I am so sorry, I asked him to not say anything,” the rabbi pled to Gwen Ebberhardt as she approached.
“Chaplain, forget about it,” the redhead snapped, and walked straight past the anxious clergyman.
When she came abreast of the table where the five others sat, snickering, and Joel Stein laughed out loud, she turned at them and put her hands on her hips.
“You little boys need your butts warmed up,” she snapped at the men. “Didn’t your mothers teach you any manners at all? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
Then she stomped inside the gedunk, where she met the burly old chief named Sparky standing by the double glass doors.
“Those men bothering you, ma’am?” he growled.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said with a smile. “You see that Marine captain there, with my husband?”
“Yes ma’am,” Sparky said, unfolding his thick arms and putting his fists on his hips, glaring through the glass as Terry O’Connor, Dixie cup in hand, smiled his way past the six Jewish officers and headed toward the gedunk entrance, with Wayne Ebberhardt struggling close at his heels, carrying the red blanket, a canvas bag filled with Gwen’s odds and ends, his book, and the portable radio.
“He’s buying us lunch,” the stewardess said, smiling. “I want you to bring out the most expensive setting of food and drink that you can dream up, plus all the trimmings. If you have French wine, serve that, too. In fact, he’s going to buy drinks all round, even for those six guys at that table.”
“You sure, ma’am?” the chief said, raising his bushy white eyebrows.
“Terry, you’re picking up the tab, aren’t you?” Gwen said as the captain came through the doorway.
“Sure, my pleasure,” the captain answered, and gave a thumbs up to the chief.
“You got it, hotshot,” Sparky said, and then disappeared to the kitchen, where he began barking orders in Vietnamese.
“What’s in the Dixie cup, Captain O’Connor?” Gwen asked as she slid in the booth, followed by her husband, and as Terry O’Connor sat down across the table from them. “To be honest with you, it looks like you’re wandering around with a urine specimen in your hand. You are okay, aren’t you?”
Wayne Ebberhardt laughed, and looked at the lawyer captain sliding the white and blue paper cup back and forth between his hands on the marbleized gray and white Formica tabletop.
“Don’t even try to get into a cutting-remarks contest with Gwen,” he said, then glancing at his wife as she lit a cigarette. “You won’t win.”
“I’m fine, Gwen, thanks for asking,” Terry said, and smiled a sly look at them both. “Revenge. That’s what’s in the cup. Revenge.”
“It’s for Major Dickinson, I gather by the way you’re smiling,” Wayne said, raising his eyebrows and looking at the container with blue floral trim printed on the outside of it near the top. “What is it, some kind of itching powder or laxative?”
“Very perceptive,” O’Connor answered, and released the rubber band off the paper lid, uncovering the cup, full to the brim with a granulated substance that looked like pale yellow sugar.
“That’s not cyanide or some other kind of poison, I hope,” the lieutenant said, looking at the powder.
“No, nothing harmful. At least not fatal,” the captain said, taking the slip of notepaper from his pocket and reading what he had written on it. “A compound of electrolytic salts, polyethylene glycol, but primarily sodium phosphate. The doctors at Charlie Med use it to clear a patient’s bowels before they do abdominal surgery. They give him this and half a gallon of water, and his shit chute gets washed squeaky clean.”
“Oh, crap, I hope you’re not planning to spike the hail and farewell punch with that stuff, are you?” Wayne said, rolling his eyes and then shutting them as he shook his head.
Terry O’Connor stopped and tapped his temple with his index finger, frowned, and then looked back at Wayne Ebberhardt.
“Not a bad idea,” he said, arching his eyebrows nonchalantly. “We could take out Dicky Doo and all the prosecution assholes in one fell swoop. But no. All of this is for our favorite mojo, in his private coffee mess.”
“You know, Colonel Prunella drinks out of that pot, too,” the lieutenant reminded the captain.
“I know, but like I said, it’s not fatal,” O’Connor said with a shrug. “If the colonel happens to drink a cup, well, as the great white father Westmoreland says down at the MAC-V five-o’clock follies, sending the B52s out dropping their arc-light tonnage on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, taking out a village full of
mama-sans
here, and
baby-sans
there, we have to accept some negligible collateral damage in order to accomplish the greater mission.”
“What if someone sees you dumping that crap in the major’s coffeepot?” Wayne said, looking at his wife and shaking his head. “Terry, personally, as much as I would love to see Dicky Doo shitting his pants, I think it’s a bad idea. They could put you in jail for something like that, seriously. Colonel Prunella, as nice a guy as he is, would turn the lock, too.”
“Not if you guard Dicky Doo’s door while I do it,” O’Connor said, still smiling.
“No way,” Ebberhardt answered, shaking his head and shutting his eyes. “Besides, in order for you to even attempt it, you have to get in the office at about six o’clock Monday morning, right after the duty makes coffee for the general mess and the one in Dickinson’s office. I won’t be around. The first shuttle Monday leaves here at seven. I had planned on slipping in the back door about eight-thirty or nine.”