David A. Poulsen's Young Adult Fiction 3-Book Bundle. David A. Poulsen
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said some other stuff too, but I can’t remember what exactly it was. I still couldn’t tell what was wrong with him. But even through all the mud and stuff, I saw that his face was all changed. There was a look, no, not a look, not an expression, something more than that — it was like his face was all out of shape. Like he was in pain.
He wasn’t the only one. He still hadn’t let go of my shoulder. And it was starting to hurt like hell.
“It’s okay. It’s just me, Nate. Your son.”
It felt weird to hear those last words coming out of my mouth. I managed to get hold of one of the canteens, got the top of off, held it toward him. “Here,” I said.
I wasn’t sure he understood at first. But finally he let go of my shoulder and took the canteen. He twisted over on his side. Drank like he was someone in the desert. Like people you see in movies, the water rolling down the sides of their mouths.
5
After that he started to look more normal, breathe more normal. He passed the canteen back to me, and I took a drink, then twisted the top back on.
“You okay?” I asked again.
He didn’t answer, but I thought maybe he nodded his head, just a small nod, but something, I was pretty sure.
He took some deep breaths, trying to get himself back. He pulled himself off his belly and sat up, still looking around, but his eyes looked more like they usually did. Intense but not crazy. Not like they’d been a couple of minutes before.
“Over there,” he pointed. “Work our way over there.”
I looked where he was pointing. Up a little ways and to the right. The jungle growth did seem a little less there. There was nowhere for him to get by me, so I led the way this time. We slid our way up and over to where he’d indicated, to a bit of a clearing. Not as much mud there. It was steep, but there were a couple of trees, not nipa palms. I sat down in a small depression right next to one of the trees. I could kind of brace myself against the up-slope side to keep from sliding. It was grassy and fairly dry. Better. Almost comfortable.
We sat there close together, both still breathing heavy, sweating. Looking up the slope.
I was too tired to talk. I just wanted to breathe, but each breath hurt my chest. It was quite awhile before the old man said anything. When he spoke, it wasn’t much more than a whisper.
And he wasn’t talking to me. Not really. He was just talking.
“I was so scared here. So scared. I never knew a person could be as scared as I was that day. I’d been in firefights before, been shelled before, even wounded once, not much more than a scratch, but still I’d been in the heat of battle. I knew what it was like to have people shooting at me, trying to kill me. And I’d been afraid before, being afraid in a battle isn’t being a coward … but nothing like this. Nothing like here.”
He shifted his weight, leaned back against a tree trunk.
“It was an alpha-bravo, that’s the term we used for ambush. Bo Doi, Uniformed North Vietnamese Army regulars. Tough, well-trained fighters. Used to fighting in the jungle, and damn good at it.
“We were Delta Company, two platoons. Ninety men. Our platoon, we called ourselves The Fighting Ninth. Hadn’t really done all that much fighting. A few firefights, not big ones. But this was different, this was something not even the cowboys in our group, the guys who craved action — not even those guys wanted this. I figured Kiner, he was our sergeant, and maybe our lieutenant, maybe those guys had seen this kind of combat before. For the rest of us, this was a whole new ball game. We were scared, and we were fighting for our lives.”
He spoke slowly, his voice still barely more than a whisper. And it was flat, no emotion. Not like his eyes. His words were telling the story, but it seemed like his eyes were living it.
“I don’t know how many died in the first minutes. Fifteen, twenty, maybe more. We tried to fight back. Do what we were trained to do. Couldn’t see shit for the dust, the smoke, sure as hell couldn’t see Charlie. But he was out there, above us, on both sides of us. Maybe below us. We didn’t know.”
The old man stopped talking. Reached for the canteen, took another drink. Poured some over his face. He set the canteen down on the ground between us.
“The noise is the worst … what I hated most. One minute it’s so quiet you can hear the sweat running down your chest and the next minute you can’t think for the noise. That’s not some bullshit statement. You can not think. Guns, mortars. Guys on both sides yelling. Some screaming. The worst was ‘help me.’ Wounded guys yelled, ‘Medic,’ or ‘I’m hit.’ Dying guys yelled, or they whispered, ‘Help me.’
“I remember the lieutenant and a radio guy next to me, both of them yelling as loud as they could. Trying to be heard over the noise. Trying to get help. I remember some of it. Blue Water One … This is Blue Water Five … Blue Water One, this is Blue Water Five … Delta Company, Delta Company … Hill 453 south slope, alpha bravo, alpha bravo. Boo koo Bo Doi. Deep serious. Need close air support. Immediate. Repeat. Deep serious … deep shit. Need close air support and dustoff. Can’t give zulu. Need dustoff.
“But it didn’t matter how much shit we were in. The weather had closed in over us. Low cloud. Nothing that flew could even see the hill, let alone see us, or get our wounded men out. That’s called dustoff. Couldn’t even give a zulu … casualty report. Nobody knew who was dead and who was alive. All we knew was there was a lot fewer of us now than when we started.
“We got spread out … too far apart. Couldn’t communicate with each other. I saw a guy. Charlie. There were maybe a few hundred of them, and I finally saw one. Bet I fired forty rounds at the son of a bitch. No idea if I hit him.
“I was sure I was going to die that day. Right here where we are. This is where we dug in, tried to hold on. Still calling for help.
“I’d been in country for nine months. Lots of search and destroy patrols. That’s what they called it when you went looking for Charlie, so you could shoot his ass. Got wounded on one of those. I was point — the guy at the front.”
“Is that the scar on your neck?”
He nodded. “Trouble was the only time you found Charlie was when he wanted you to find him. When he was hidden and ready. Like he was that day. Here. I remember looking back down the hill, and the lieutenant and the radio guy, Cletis, they were both dead.”
He stopped talking again, took a couple of breaths, had a fit of coughing, then recovered.
I looked around again. All I could see was jungle. I tried to imagine what it must have been like that day. But I couldn’t, not really. All the movies I’d seen, it had to be like that, right?
But I knew that what the old man was talking about wasn’t like any movie I’d ever seen. I closed my eyes, but I still couldn’t see it. Scrunched my eyes tighter. And there was … something. So weird. I couldn’t see anything … but it was like I could hear it. Shooting, stuff exploding, people screaming. It scared me and I opened my eyes quick.
Silence.
“We’ll rest here.” The old man’s voice. “Let me see the rucksack.”
I pulled the backpack off my shoulders and passed it to him. He pulled a couple of oranges out of it and handed me one.
For a few minutes we didn’t say anything, just ate the oranges. When we’d finished, he pulled out a camera and took some pictures of the area around where we were sitting. He didn’t take any pictures of me and didn’t ask me to take any of him. This wasn’t a family holiday at the Grand Canyon.
He put the camera back in the backpack, pulled out a little folding shovel, and handed it to me.
“You’re sitting in a foxhole.”
“Foxhole, that’s what you dug and got down into, right?”
I