ay in my John Wayne voice: "Viet Nam is giving war a bad name." Daddy D.A., who's walking tail-end Charlie, calls out: "HEY, MR. VIET NAM WAR, WE HOMESTEADING?" Cowboy says, "Everybody shut the fuck up." Alice shrugs, mumbles, takes another step forward. "Cowboy, m'man, maybe old soldiers never die, but young ones do. It ain't easy being the black Errol Flynn, you know. I mean, if I don't get the Congressional Medal of Honor for all the crazy shit I do, I am going to send Mr. L.B.J. an eight-by-ten photo of my black bee-hind with a caption on the back, telling him what it is..." Alice, the point man, moves out. He ditty-bops into a little clearing. "I mean--" Bang. The crack of an SKS sniper's carbine jolts Alice into a rigid position of attention. His mouth opens. He turns to speak to us. His eyes cry out. Alice falls. "HIT IT!" Falling forward--now... "Oh, no..." Black earth. Dead leaves. "ALICE!" "What...?" Damp. Bleeding elbows. "MIDNIGHT!" Looking, not seeing, looking... "Oh-oh...Shit City..." Waiting. Waiting. "Hey, man..." Silence. My guts melt. "ALICE!" Alice doesn't move and I curl up and try to make myself small and my asshole feels like it has been turned inside out and I think how wonderful it would be if Chaplain Charlie had taught me magic and then I could crawl up into my own asshole and just disappear and I think: I'm glad it's him and not me. "ALICE!" Alice, the point man, is down. His big black hands are locked around his right thigh. On the deck all around him are a dozen decayed gook feet. Blood. "FACE OUTBOARD!" Cowboy says, "Damn." He shoves his Stetson to the back of his head and jabs at his glasses with his index finger. "CORPSMAN UP!" Cowboy's command is echoed back down the trail. Doc Jay comes scrambling up on all fours like a bear in a hurry. Cowboy waves his hand, "Come on, Doc." Donlon grabs Cowboy's ankle, tries to hand Cowboy the radio handset. "Colonel Travis is on the horn." "Fuck off, Tom. I'm busy." Cowboy and Doc Jay start crawling. Donlon says into the handset: "Uh, Sudden Death Six, Sudden Death Six, this is Baby Bayonet. Do you copy? Over." Cowboy stops crawling, calls back: "Gunships. And a med-evac." Donlon talks into the handset, talks to the old man. Static. The handset hangs on a wire hook attached to Donlon's helmet strap. Donlon's singsong words are like a prayer he has known for a long time. Donlon stops talking, listens to an insect inside the handset, then shouts: "The old man says, 'Only you can prevent forest fires.'" Cowboy looks back. "What? What the hell does that mean?" The radio crackles. Static. "Uh...say again, say again. Over." Static. Donlon listens, nodding. Then: "I roger that. Stand by, one." Donlon yells: "The old man keeps saying, 'Only you can prevent forest fires.'..." Cowboy crawls back to our position. "Donlon, boy, if you're fucking with me..." Donlon shrugs. "Scouts honor." I say, "Cowboy, are you absolutely sure that the colonel is on our side?" Animal Mother spits. "There it is. He's a lifer, ain't he?" Donlon shakes his head. "No slack. The old man is dinky-dow, crazy." I grunt. "Sanity is overrated." Cowboy says, "Just tell that lifer son-of-a-bitch that I need a dustoff for--" Bang. A rifle bullet snaps through Donlon's radio. The impact of the bullet flips Donlon onto his back. Donlon struggles like an overturned turtle. I crawl on my hands and knees. I grab Donlon's rifle belt. I drag him behind a boulder. Donlon swallows air. "Beaucoup thanks, bro..." Cowboy and Doc Jay are arguing. Cowboy says, "Alice is in the open. We can't reach him." The New Guy says, "Is it just one enemy soldier?" "Shut your mouth." Animal Mother sets up his M-60 machine gun on a rotten log and adjusts a golden ammo belt over a C's can he has attached to the gun so that the rounds feed in smoothly. Cowboy says, "I got to send back a runner--" Bang. Cowboy rolls over. "I'm okay. I'm okay." "He hit Alice again!" Alice moves, groans. "It hurts...it hurts..." There's a dark hole through the canvas jungle boot on Alice's left foot. Alice laughs, grins, grits his teeth. "I'm short..." Animal Mother kicks the rotten log and opens fire. High-velocity machine-gun bullets clip, chop, and ricochet through the canopy, snapping into tree trunks with rhythmic precision, cutting leaves from twigs and killing birds. The New Guy opens up with his M-16. Lance Corporal Stutten fires an M-79 and the grenade bursts, invisible in the darkness. I see a strange shadow on a limb so I throw a few rounds in there with my grease gun. But it's Maggie's drawers. There's nothing to shoot at. The New Guy pops a frag and lobs it in. Cowboy screams into the jarring thud: "OKAY, OKAY, EVERYBODY FUCKING COOL IT." Everyone stops firing--everyone except Animal Mother. I put my hand on Mother's shoulder but his weapon continues to spill hot brass and black metal links until the belt runs out. "We gotta kill that cocksucker!" says Animal Mother. "Payback is a motherfucker!" "Yeah." "Yeah." "The law of the jungle, man." Animal Mother punches the rotten log with his fist. "I'll punch his fucking heart out!" "Yeah." "Kill that cocksucker!" Alice is trying to crawl to cover. "Cowboy? Bro?" Alice extends his gloved right hand. Bang. Alice's hand is knocked down. He lifts it again slowly. Ragged leather. And Alice's right forefinger is missing. "Oh, no...not..." Alice screams. Doc Jay stands up. Cowboy grabs him and pulls him down. "You crazy?" But Doc Jay wrestles free. He unhooks the Unit One medical kit from his web belt and drops the rest of his gear. Cowboy looks sick. "Don't try it, bro. That sniper does not miss..." "I'm the corpsman," says Doc Jay." Not you." And before Cowboy can react, Doc Jay is on his feet and running. He runs at a crouch, zigzagging. Bang. Doc Jay stumbles, falls. The Doc's left thigh has been torn open. Jagged bone protrudes. The Doc tries to push himself forward with his good leg. Cowboy pops a smoke grenade, lobs it in. "We've got to do something...." The squad bunches up behind the boulder. "Spread out," I say, halfheartedly. The New Guy is watching with wild eyes, his weapon at port arms. Animal Mother's bloodshot eyes scan the canopy for muzzle flashes, movement, any sign of life. Lance Corporal Stutten and the rest of the squad watch silently--they are waiting for orders. Donlon is hugging his dead radio. Doc Jay stands up, balances himself on his good leg. He bends over and hooks Alice under the armpit with his forearm, tries to lift him. Bang. Doc Jay collapses. Now his left foot is a bloody lump. He waits for the last bullet. When the last bullet doesn't come he sits up, pulls Alice across his lap. The Doc fumbles in his Unit One, takes out a Syrette, gives Alice a hit of morphine. Using his teeth, Doc Jay tears the waxy brown wrappers off three compress bandages. The Doc ties the bandages around Alice's wound. Alice groans, says something we can't hear. Doc Jay uses his shirttail to wipe the sweat from Alice's forehead, then pulls out a piece of rubber tubing he uses to tie tourniquets. Bang. Doc Jay's right hand is shattered. The Doc tries to move his fingers. He can't. Green smoke pours from Cowboy's smoke grenade, obscuring the clearing. Cowboy starts to tell us what to do. But he can't make up his mind. Then: "We're pulling out. That's a shitty thing to do, but we can't refuse to accept the situation. We saw this in Hue. That sniper is just sucking us in. Wants the whole squad, one at a time. You know that. Doc and Midnight are wasted; we're not. Saddle up." Nobody moves. Cowboy stands up. "Do it." We all know that Cowboy is right. He's hard, but he's right. "GET SOME!" Without warning, the New Guy charges for the clearing. He fires blind. He lopes along with the fluid grace of a meat eater, a predator attacking. His chin is dripping saliva. The New Guy wants warm blood to drink. The New Guy wants human flesh to tear apart and devour. The New Guy's eyes are red: the New Guy's eyes glow in the shadow world around us. He fires blind. The New Guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He thinks he's John Wayne. He hasn't been born yet. Cowboy tries to trip the New Guy as he double-times up the trail, but the New Guy catches his balance and runs faster, a werewolf charging into the house of death. He stumbles up to Doc Jay. He spins around. His red eyes probe the canopy. "Com'on, Doc. I'll help you. I'll carry--" Bang. For a breath or two we think maybe the sniper has missed for the first time. Then the New Guy drops to his knees, praying, clutching his throat. Cowboy says, "Let's move." "Move, my ass," says Animal Mother. "You move, motherfucker." Cowboy takes a step toward Animal Mother, puts his face up close to Animal Mother's face, looks Animal Mother right in the eye. "Mother, take the point." Animal Mother stands up, pulls his machine gun off the log and sets the butt into his hip so that the black barrel slants up at a forty-five degree angle. "Marines never abandon their dead or wounded, Mr. Squad Leader, sir." Cowboy glares at Animal Mother for several deep breaths, then pulls me aside. "Joker, you're in charge. Move these people out," Cowboy sees that Animal Mother is listening so he adds, "Order Mother to walk the point." Animal Mother spits. Cowboy says in a low voice: "Never turn your back on Mother. Never cut him any slack. He fragged Mr. Shortround." I say, "What about you, Cowboy? I mean, if you get yourself wasted who will introduce me to your sister?" Cowboy looks at me. His face is without expression. "I don't have a sister. I thought you knew that." Cowboy looks at Doc and Alice and the New Guy. "Mother's right. I've got to try. The sniper will see you pulling back and--" "Hey, never happen. Fuck it. You can't do anything." "Move them out, Joker. By the numbers." "But Cowboy, I--" "It's my job," Cowboy says. "It's my job...." Cowboy says, as though his guts are choking him. Then: "Okay?" I hesitate. "Okay, bro?" "Sure, Cowboy. I'll get them all back to the hill in one piece. I promise." Cowboy relaxes. "Thanks, Joker." He grins. "You piece of shit." Donlon yells: "LOOK!" Doc Jay has the New Guy across his lap. The New Guy's face is purple. Doc Jay is kissing the New Guy's purple lips in an attempt to breathe life back into the limp body. The New Guy squirms, claws for air. Doc Jay holds the New Guy down, zips out his K-bar, cuts the New Guy's throat. Air whistles in through the crude incision, blows pink bubbles in the New Guy's blood. The New Guy bucks, wheezes, coughs. Doc Jay spills his Unit One, paws through splints, compress bandages, white tape. Then, frantic, he empties his pockets. The Doc throws everything away until he finds a ball-point pen. He stares at the ball-point pen, draws his hand back to throw the pen away, stops, looks again, unscrews the pen, inserts the biggest piece into the hole in the New Guy's throat. The New Guy sucks in air, breathes irregularly through the small plastic tube. Doc Jay puts the New Guy down on the deck, gently. Bang. Doc Jay's right ear is split. Cautiously, the Doc touches the side of his head, feels wet, jagged meat. Bang. A bullet cuts off Doc Jay's nose. Bang. A bullet passes through Doc Jay's cheeks. He coughs, spits up uprooted teeth and pieces of his gums. Animal Mother snarls, fires his machine gun into the canopy. "Get them back," Cowboy says. He drops his Stetson and Mr. Shortround's shotgun. He pops another smoke grenade, lobs it in. He jerks Mr. Shortround's pistol from his shoulder holster. And before I can tell Cowboy that a pistol is useless in the jungle he punches me on the shoulder like a kid and runs, feinting as wildly as the narrow trail allows. We wait. I know that I should be getting the squad on its feet, but I too am hypnotized. From nowhere and from everywhere comes the sound of something laughing. We all rubberneck to see who aming us is so stone-cold hard that he is enjoying a world of shit like this. The sniper is laughing at us. We try to pinpoint the sniper's position. But the source of the laughter is all around us. The laughter seems to radiate from the jungle floor, from the jade trees, from the monster plants, from within our own bodies. As the dark laughter draws the blood from my veins I see something. My eyes try to focus on a shadow. Sweat stings my eyes, blurs my vision. And I see Sorry Charlie, a black skull, perched on a branch, and then I understand that only a sniper that does not fear death would reveal his position by laughing.... I squint. I strain my eyes. The laughing skull fades into a shadow. Today I am a sergeant of Marines. I laugh and laugh. The squad freezes with fear because the sniper is laughing with me. The sniper and I are laughing together and we know that sooner or later the squad will be laughing, too. Sooner or later the squad will surrender to the black design of the jungle. We live by the law of the jungle, which is that more Marines go in than come out. There it is. Nobody asks us why we're smiling because nobody wants to know. The ugly that civilians choose to see in war focuses on spilled guts. To see human beings clearly, that is ugly. To carry death in your smile, that is ugly. War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere. Ugly is the face of Victor Charlie, the shapeless black face of death touching each of your brothers with the clean stroke of justice. Those of us who survive to be short-timers will fly the Freedom Bird back to hometown America. But home won't be there anymore and we won't be there either. Upon each of our brains the war has lodged itself, a black crab feeding. The jungle is quiet now. The sniper has stopped laughing. The squad is silent, waiting for orders. Soon they will understand. Soon they won't be afraid. The dark side will surface and they'll be like me; they'll be Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Cowboy stumbles into the clearing. "We're moving," I say, more to Mother than anyone. Mother ignores me, watches Cowboy. Bang. Right leg. Bang. Left leg. Cowboy falls. Bang. The bullet rips open Cowboy's trousers at the crotch. "No...." Cowboy feels for his balls. He shits on himself. Animal Mother takes a step. Before I can make a move to stop Animal Mother a pistol pops in the clearing. Bang. Then: Bang. Donlon: "HE KILLED DOC JAY AND THE NEW GUY!" Cowboy shakes himself to stay conscious. Then he shoots Alice through the back of the head. Bang. Alice's face is blown off by the forty-five caliber bullet. Alice flops as though electrocuted. Cowboy raises the pistol and presses the huge barrel to his right temple. Bang. The pistol falls. The sniper has put a bullet through the center of Cowboy's right hand. The squad bunches up behind the boulder again. I study the dirty faces of all my bearded children: Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Berny, Harris, Rick Berg, Hand-Job, Thunder, The Kid from Brooklyn, Hardy, Liccardi, and Daddy D.A. "Stutten, take your people back." Lance Corporal Stutten looks at Animal Mother, takes a step toward him. The squad is going to follow Mother and commit suicide for a tradition. Mother checks his M-60. His face is wet with tears, Viking-wild, red with rage. "We'll go for Cowboy, give the sniper too many targets. We can save him." I take a step into Animal Mother's path. Animal Mother raises his weapon. He holds the M-60 waist high. His eyes are red. He growls deep in his throat. "This ain't no Hollywood movie, Joker. Stand down or I will cut you in half..." I look into Animal Mother's eyes. I look into the eyes of a killer. He means it. I know that he means it. I turn my back on him. Animal Mother is going to waste me. The barrel of the M-60 probes my back. The squad is silent, waiting for orders. I raise my grease gun and I aim it at Cowboy's face. Cowboy looks pitiful and he's terrified. Cowboy is paralyzed by the shock that is setting in and by the helplessness. I hardly know him. I remember the first time I saw Cowboy, on Parris Island, laughing, beating his Stetson on his thigh. I look at him. He looks at the grease gun. He calls out: "I NEVER LIKED YOU, JOKER. I NEVER THOUGHT YOU WERE FUNNY--" Bang. I sight down the short metal tube and I watch my bullet enter Cowboy's left eye. My bullet passes through his eye socket, punches through fluid-filled sinus cavities, through membranes, nerves, arteries, muscle tissue, through the tiny blood vessels that feed three pounds of gray butter-soft high protein meat where brain cells arranged like jewels in a clock hold every thought and memory and dream of one adult male Homo sapiens. My bullet exits through the occipital bone, knocks out hairy, brain-wet clods of jagged meat, then buries itself in the roots of a tree. Silence. Animal Mother lowers his M-60. Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Harris, and the other guys in the squad do not speak. Everyone relaxes, glad to be alive. Everyone hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me again; I'll be invisible. "Saddle up," I say, and the squad responds. Packs are hefted up. The flap and rattle of equipment. A grunt, a growl, and the Lusthog Squad is ready to move. I study their faces. Then I say, "Man-oh-man, Cowboy looks like a bag of leftovers from a V.F.W. barbecue. Of course, I've got nothing against dead people. Why, some of my best friends are dead!" Silence. They all look at me. I have never felt so alive. Semper Fi, Mom and Dad, Semper Fi, my werewolf children. Payback is a motherfucker. They shift their gear to more comfortable positions. They wait for an order. I pick up Cowboy's muddy Stetson. I wave my hand and the squad moves out, moves back down the trail. Nobody talks. We're all too tired to talk, to joke, to call each other names. The day has been too hot, the hump too long. We've shot up our share of Victor Charlie jungle plants and we are wasted. We wrap ourselves in pastel fantasies of varied designs and "X" another day off our short-timer's calendars. We look forward to imaginary bennies: hot showers, cold beer, a fix of Coke (because things go better with Coke), juicy steaks, mail from hone, and a moment of privacy in which to massage our wands, inspired by fading photographs of loving wives and girlfriends back in the World. The showers will be cold, the beer, if there is any, will be hot. No steak. No Cokes. The mail, if there is any, will not be from sweethearts. The mail from hometown America, like the half dozen letters I carry unopened in my rucksack, will say: Write more often be careful if you think it's tough there bought this used car what a report card mother is taking shots nothing good on TV don't write depressing letters so maybe send me fifty bucks new furniture in the dining room for a ring quick buddy she's pregnant be real careful write more often and so on and so on until you feel like you just got a Dear John letter from the whole damned world. We hump back down the trail. Back on the hill, Sorry Charlie, our bro, will laugh at us one more time; Sorry Charlie, at least, will greet us with a smile. Putting our minds back into our feet, we concentrate all our energy into taking that next step, that one more step, just one more step.... We try very hard not to think about anything important, try very hard not to think that there's no slack and that it's a long walk home. There it is. I wave my hand and Mother takes the point.