7
Once they skirted a sleeping village. The smells again—straw, cattle, mildew. The men were quiet. On the far side of the village, buried in the dark smells, a dog barked. The column stopped until the barking died away; then they marched fast away from the village, through a graveyard filled with conical-shaped burial mounds and tiny altars made of clay and stone. The graveyard had a perfumy smell. A nice place to spend the night, he thought. The mounds would make fine battlements, and the smell was nice and the place was quiet. But they went on, passing through a hedgerow and across another paddy and east toward the sea.
He walked carefully. He remembered what he’d been taught: Stay off the center of the path, for that was where the land mines and booby traps were planted, where stupid and lazy soldiers like to walk. Stay alert, he’d been taught. Better alert than inert. Ag-ile, mo-bile, hos-tile. He wished he’d paid better attention to the training. He could not remember what they’d said about how to stop being afraid; they hadn’t given any lessons in courage—not that he could remember—and they hadn’t mentioned how Billy Boy Watkins would die of a heart attack, his face turning pale and the veins popping out.
8
Private First Class Paul Berlin walked carefully.
Stretching ahead of him like dark beads on an invisible chain, the string of shadow soldiers whose names he did not yet know moved with the silence and slow grace of smoke. Now and again moonlight was reflected off a machine gun or a wristwatch. But mostly the soldiers were quiet and hidden and faraway-seeming in a peaceful night, strangers on a long street, and he felt quite separate from them, as if trailing behind like the caboose on a night train, pulled along by
inertia, sleepwalking, an afterthought to the war.
So he walked carefully, counting his steps. When he had counted to 3,485, the column stopped.
One by one the soldiers knelt or squatted down.
The grass along the path was wet. Private First Class Paul Berlin lay back and turned his head so that he could lick at the dew with his eyes closed, another trick to forget the war. He might have slept. “I wasn’t afraid,” he was screaming or dreaming, facing his father’s stern eyes. “I wasn’t afraid,” he was saying. When he opened his eyes, a soldier was sitting beside him, quietly chewing a stick of Doublemint gum.
9
“You sleepin’ again?” the soldier whispered.
“No,” said Private First Class Paul Berlin. “Hell, no.”
The soldier grunted, chewing his gum. Then he twisted the cap off his canteen, took a swallow, and handed it through the dark.
“Take some,” he whispered.
“Thanks.”
“You’re the new guy?”
“Yes.” He did not want to admit it, being new to the war.
The soldier grunted and handed him a stick of gum. “Chew it quiet—OK? Don’t blow no bubbles or nothing.”
“Thanks. I won’t.” He could not make out the man’s face in the shadows.
They sat still and Private First Class Paul Berlin chewed the gum until all the sugars were gone; then the soldier said, “Bad day today, buddy.”
10
Private First Class Paul Berlin nodded wisely, but he did not speak.
“Don’t think it’s always so bad,” the soldier whispered. “I don’t wanna scare you. You’ll get used to it soon enough. . . . They been fighting wars a long time, and you get used to it.”
“Yeah.”
“You will.”
They were quiet awhile. And the night was quiet, no crickets or birds, and it was hard to imagine it was truly a war. He searched for the soldier’s face but could not find it. It did not matter much. Even if he saw the fellow’s face, he would not know the name; and even if he knew the name, it would not matter much.
“Haven’t got the time?” the soldier whispered.
“No.”
“Rats. . . . Don’t matter, really. Goes faster if you don’t know the time, anyhow.”
“Sure.”
11
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“Paul.”
“Nice to meet ya,” he said, and in the dark beside the path, they shook hands. “Mine’s Toby. Everybody calls me Buffalo, though.” The soldier’s hand was strangely warm and soft. But it was a very big hand. “Sometimes they just call me Buff,” he said.
And again they were quiet. They lay in the grass and waited. The moon was very high now and very bright, and they were waiting for cloud cover. The soldier suddenly snorted.
“What is it?”
“Nothin’,” he said, but then he snorted again. “A bloody heart attack!” the soldier said. “Can’t get over it—old Billy Boy croaking from a lousy heart attack. . . . A heart attack—can you believe it?”
The idea of it made Private First Class Paul Berlin smile. He couldn’t help it.
“Ever hear of such a thing?”
“Not till now,” said Private First Class Paul Berlin, still smiling.
12
“Me neither,” said the soldier in the dark. “Gawd, dying of a heart attack. Didn’t know him, did you.”
“No.”
“Tough as nails.”
“Yeah.”
“And what happens? A heart attack. Can you imagine it?”
“Yes,” said Private First Class Paul Berlin. He wanted to laugh. “I can imagine it.” And he imagined it clearly. He giggled—he couldn’t help it. He imagined Billy’s father opening the telegram: SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON BILLY BOY WAS YESTERDAY SCARED TO DEATH IN AC TION IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, VALIANTLY SUCCUMBING TO A HEART ATTACK SUFFERED WHILE UNDER ENORMOUS STRESS, AND IT IS WITH GREATEST SYMPATHY THAT . . . He giggled again. He rolled onto his belly and pressed his face into his arms. His body was shaking with giggles.