Winston

My life as a company clerk may not have been sexy, but it was the most sought after job in Vietnam. (Killer wanted it bad, but never got his chance.) Besides the full-time job of taking care of company business, I was mother confessor and personal vending machine.

“Can you get me a Swiss knife?”

“How about a Rolex?”

“Any rings?”

“Camera?”

“A pipe?”

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

“I’ll give you a gook ear for an SKS.”

“A TV?”

“Chocolate covered cherries?”

I’d been running in a thousand different directions when I put away the typewriter and hit the sheets. I was asleep in seconds. Sometime later, I had that dream again:

 It was raining. My wife offered a ride in our Impala. I said, “I’ve been expecting you,” and got in. Her hair was mussed and she was wearing clothes she wore the day I left for Vietnam. We drove on and smoked cigarettes. Someone was in the back sleeping. My wife stopped outside our apartment and grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull away. She tightened her ice-cold grip and sobbed, “Borgo!”

 My bunk mate Bob and the supply sergeant woke me yelling, “Get up! Get up!”

Dogs were barking.

“C’mon. Move!” they said.

“Damn dogs!”

They led me outside in my underwear, half-awake. “Have a look.” I shook the sleep from my eyes and saw a line of frags (fragmentation grenades) lying atop a four-foot pile of sandbags that formed the bulwark around the lower half of the wooden barracks. Enough force to blow the barracks to kingdom come, six feet from my bunk!

It gave my nerves a shock. I strained my eyes to take in every detail. This was no random act of violence. The grenades were daisy-chained together with detonating cord. Wily Coyote lit the det cord, not knowing that it had to be set-off with a blasting cap. A fuse could have burned out. We stared at the blackened end where it had stopped burning, and looked at each other. Then back at the contraption. A half-inch away! Sheer luck. My heart beat; blood rushed to my brain. “I hate to sound philosophical, but who ordered anchovies? A frag rolled down the hall would’ve done us in,” said the supply sergeant.

A Maalox Moment waited at the back door—a Claymore mine perched on its spindly legs, aimed squarely at anyone gettin’ out that way. It, too, wasn’t hooked up right.

I retreated to the friendly confines of the barracks with my comrades, and turned to them for an explanation and assurance. “I can't believe this shit.” Bob filled me in. “When the dogs woke me up, I went to take a piss and stepped outside. I froze. There was a shadowy figure crouching next to our building. It ran off in the dark. I couldn't tell if it was U.S. or Vietnamese.”

My brain was trying to figure out was going on here. A pack of wild dogs—led by a female answering to ‘Bitch’—roamed freely throughout the base day and night. Battalion fed and looked after them, but I paid them no mind until the curious incident of the dogs in the night-time saved us!

We collected ourselves, cataloged the objects and rang up the base CID (Criminal Investigation Division). I posted a guard over the whatsis and stumbled back to my bunk to catch some Z’s on my rumpled poncho liner.

The CID showed up early and took us through a bunch of rigmarole while he dusted for fingerprints and collected evidence. The rough surface of the pineapples (grenades) made fingerprint identification impossible. No matter. I recalled the bad feeling I had about the shape standing before me in a bushy Afro the previous afternoon:

“Hey, man, wassup?”

I replied, “Not much.”

“I need a form.”

“What form?”

“I gotta get back to Chicago.”

“See if you can get emergency leave.”

“Aren’t you the one that types up orders?”

“Yeah.”

“Whose ass do I have to kiss?”

“Find a higher rank, and I'll type up the orders.”

“C’mon, man. You can fake ‘em,” he insisted, squinting out of his fiery eyes.

“No chance.”

His voice cracked, “You got a girl?”

“A wife.”

“You understand, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jody’s fuck’n my wife.”

“Why don’t you see the chaplain?”

He laughed. “What can that cocksucker do? I'm stuck here.”

“You could write a letter.”

He waved his arms, “You gotta listen to me. She’s cheatin’ on me, messin’ around.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Make a deal. What are you doing here if you don’t make deals?”

The gears in his head were cranking overtime, but his logic wasn’t. I had the winning hand and slammed on the brakes. “I don’t make deals.”

He stormed out. “They’ll be a death in the family if I don’t make it home.”

I put PFC Winston’s frustration and willful denial of what we call reality far from my mind that afternoon. That was that, as they say, but it wasn’t—he sacrificed everything to his passion and aimed his fury at me in my little bed.

He wasn’t going to find me under a desk. I retrieved my trusty Colt .45 from the arms room and loaded it with a full clip, and until they took him into custody, kept it near and dear. There’d be no point in trying to outsmart a .45. It was on my desk at work, on the mess hall table, beside me in the shitter, the shower, under my pillow or in my holster. Let the weapon decide.

Winston went too far too fast and laid himself open to the charge of attempted murder. You’d think it’s more murdering to kill someone who’s asleep, but Looney Tunes got to go home after all. Rather than a trial, he pulled a DD (dishonorable discharge) and got dumped back in the world. A win for him and the army, but not for me and my nerves. I don’t care if he wanted to see his fuckin’ mother—one spark and my story ends here.