The Odd Angry Shot (6 page)

‘Jesus, out of all the bastards in the Task Force, how did I land you two?' I grinned at both of them. They grinned back at me. Remember.

WE stood outside the Washington Bar, just down from the market place, and the Flags—a huge sign board with the flags of all the participating nations in the war painted on it.

Past us flow a continuous stream of Vietnamese, Americans and paunchy European civilians, all sweating, all smelling. A mother is wiping her child's behind in the gutter across the street from us.

‘How's that for an ad for Johnson's Baby Powder?' laughs Harry.

‘You want eat?' A hand tugs at the leg of my trousers. I turn to see a toothless old crone hovering over a street cooker on which is frying the most inedible mess I've ever seen.

‘You want eat? You want eat, soldier?'

‘No, he doesn't want to eat a soldier,' snaps Rogers. ‘Now piss off, will ya.'

‘You want eat, soldier?' she whines again, ignoring Rogers and looking now at Harry.

‘No! Piss off for Christ's sake. We don't want to eat, understand? No eat. PISS OFF.'

The old crone bows her head and shuffles away under her load. We go back to weighing the merits of the bars arrayed in front of us. ‘Hey soldier.' We turn around. ‘You get fuck, soldier,' she yells, and at the same time achieves one of the most incredible feats I have ever seen. From twenty feet away she puckers her toothless mouth and spits straight into Harry's right eye.

‘Good shot, madam,' gurgles Rogers. I collapse onto the footpath shrieking with laughter.

‘You fucking bitch,' screams Harry, ‘and you can shut up too,' he says, looking at me. ‘You've got nothing to laugh about.'

‘Why?' I grin, sitting up.

‘You just rolled in some dog shit,' says Rogers slowly raising his eyes towards heaven.

‘Oh hell,' I moan, wiping frantically at the brown smear on my trouser leg.

And cousin Ming won the Concours d'Elegance.

REMEMBER the day when—Harry and I sat in the bar with our knees resting against the table edge. Harry raises his hand.

‘Garcon,' he says, waving his hand and adopting an elegant air. ‘Garcon.'

A Vietnamese teenager dressed in a Hawaiian shirt approaches us.

‘Two beers, please.'

We've come a long way from the pub down by the water in Watsons Bay I think.

The teenager returns within ten seconds, carrying a tray on which rest two cans of Foster's Lager.

‘Two hundred pee,' demands the teenager.

Harry peels two one-hundred pee notes from the roll in his hand. ‘Bloody Foster's Lager! How come the nogs can get it and we can't?' asks Harry, a tone of amazement in his voice.

‘Black market, I suppose,' is my reply, in between mouthfuls of beer.

‘You like buy me Saigon tea?'

I look up from the cold top of the can, my nineteenyear-old eyes travelling and undressing the shape before me. I stare like an idiot.

‘You like buy me Saigon tea?'

‘Too bloody right,' I answer. The bar girl sits down squarely on my lap.

‘You like buy me Saigon tea now?' I fumble like a schoolboy looking for his lunch money, for the roll of notes in my shirt pocket.

‘Yeah, how much,' I ask, my face buried in the female breast in front of me. My eyes devouring, my nose smelling a woman, any woman.

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. Or so the song goes…Whatever.

‘You like have fun with me later?' she asks, biting my ear.

‘How about now?'

‘Not now.'

‘Why not?'

‘You buy me drink first, you show you love me.'

‘I love you already,' I say pushing her back and waving the roll of notes under her nose.

A few words with the bartender.

‘OK. We go now,' she says, coming back and taking my hand.

‘Meet you back here in an hour,' says Harry.

We walk towards the door.

‘We get cab, we go to my house and have fun. I make you happy.'

We ride down the main street, past the flags, past the market. How simple, I think, no pretence here. No please where are you taking me tonight or what sort of car do you drive or where did you go to school. Just sex—alien sex without the trappings.

We sit on the edge of her bed. I feel ungainly. My boots, worn down at the heels, stare at me from the floor. The black shoulder holster illegally worn under my shirt, sweat stains in white salty patches on the leather.

‘I like you,' she says, ‘one thousand pee short time, you pay now?'

‘I've got nothing but time,' I reply and peel off two thousand five hundred.

HARRY sits on the sandbags, taking five-round clips from the cotton bandolier.

‘Three months to go.'

‘Three months to go where?' I ask stupidly. My face is buried in the pillow.

‘Three months and our time's up. All you have to do is stay alive for the next three months, and home you go.'

‘Anyone want some mail?' asks Rogers, coming in and sitting on my stretcher.

‘Any for me?' I ask hopefully.

‘Yeah, one. One for you too, Harry.'

‘Thanks.'

Tear envelope as per instructions:

My Darling
Just a short note to let you know…

I recognise the handwriting. Thanks a million.

‘Not a bad average is it, eh?'

‘What,' says Harry, ‘don't tell me she's finally written?'

‘You wouldn't credit it, would you. After nine months, one letter,' I answer.

I don't even bother to read any further.

‘Anyone going near the orderly room?' I ask.

‘In about five minutes. Why?' says Harry.

‘Do me a favour and pin this on the notice board, will you?'

‘Ain't love grand?' laughs Rogers from behind his letter.

THE dry season has arrived. Nothing rots now. In place of the green mould there is a layer of fine red dust, churned up by the never ceasing traffic. Trucks, APCs, choppers, land rovers and feet. It mixes into a fine paste as it settles on the sweat-stained, faded clothes that we all wear. Red dust is fast becoming the colour of the Task Force coat of arms. Tinea and body odour on a field of red dust rising.

Most of us have ringworm or ringtinea as it's more correctly termed. You wash it ten times a day if you can, then you start to sweat and it starts to itch again, so you wash it again and so on and on.

‘Watcha doing?' I ask.

‘I'm making a present,' says Rogers.

‘Who for?'

‘The padre.'

The padre appears now and again, come to spread the good word and save all our souls. Your ticket to Valhalla is a padre, oh Viking warrior.

‘Why?' I ask, leaning over his shoulder.

Rogers turns and faces me. ‘Well, the last time he came around, he asked Harry and me why we never came to church, and super-mouth Harry, instead of coming out and saying we thought it was all bullshit…'

‘Where was I?' I interrupt.

‘You disappeared somewhere. You know you'd do anything to avoid the padre and his bloody free jubes. Why does he always give out jubes? If he really had our welfare at heart, he'd arrive with a case of scotch and a harlot under each arm.'

‘Right,' I laugh.

‘Too bloody right,' says Rogers, ‘it'd go a bloody damn sight further than bless you and jubes, I can tell you now.'

‘Anyway, go on.'

‘Well, like I said, instead of coming out and telling him that we don't give two stuffs for his church, Harry says that we've been spending time making something for his chapel.'

‘He's got a chapel?' I ask in amazement. ‘Here?'

‘Too right,' answers Rogers, ‘the engineers built it for him.'

‘I'll be stuffed. So anyway, what are you making?'

‘Well, this, as you know, is a shoe box. What I've done is cut a hole in one end, and in the other I've put this little handle that I've made from a coat hanger. Now, attached to the handle is a bunch of feathers…'

‘Feathers?'

‘Yeah, feathers,' replies Rogers, smiling.

‘Now what you do with it is, you wait until you get an erection and then you insert it into the hole…'

‘Go on,' I reply, moving closer.

‘Then you start to turn the handle, the feathers do the rest, and there you have it; one fully operational wanking machine, padres, for the use of.'

‘So what are we going to do with it?' I ask.

‘We're going to present it to him, next time he comes to visit us.'

‘This I've got to see,' I say as I walk back into the tent. I sit on my bed and am just about to lie down when I hear Rogers' voice.

‘Hey, Bung me old mate, have we still got any of that blue paint?'

‘A blue wanking machine for the padre?' I start to laugh, and almost make myself sick as I imagine the padre, bent double in a back corner of his chapel with his baggy shorts around his ankles and a blue-painted shoe box impaled on his erect member.

Bless me father for I have sinned—turn the handle—Hail Mary—gasp, gasp. I'm sure we're all starting to go mad. Remember.

THE APC jolts along the dirt road, stopping now and again like a large metal frog caught between jumps, with the snail's eye of its machine gun sniffing the air. I sit on the steel floor with my back against the loading ramp, the muzzle of my rifle resting against my cheek, studying Harry's boots. I feel too hot to even try brushing away the fly that crawls along my lower lip. The one-hundred-degree outside temperature is intensified all the more by the steel enclosure of the tracked vehicle that seems determined to do everything in its power to dislodge us from its belly.

Rogers wipes a droplet of perspiration from the tip of his nose and the red dust on the back of his hand mingles with the sweat, forming a muddy moustache on his top lip. The glamour has gone; no more professional gung-ho here. We have become interested only in trying to stay professionally alive.

I spread my hand over my forehead and drag it slowly down my face as if trying to squeeze every drop of perspiration from my head. My hand stops momentarily and my fingers bunch together, like the feathers in the padre's wanking machine. I gingerly feel around the grit and sweat created pustules in and around the creases at the sides of my nose. One breaks. I examine the white discharge that rests on my fingers, then wipe it on the leg of my sweat drenched trousers.

The now chipped and scarred butt of Harry's rifle is resting in the crease behind the toe of his almost wornout boot. I notice a small rust patch on the metalwork. Rogers is trying to scratch the tinea that has crept from his foot to his ankle by inserting his knife down the inside of his boot.

‘Jesus,' he says, his face screwing up with pain.

‘What now?' asks Harry disinterestedly.

‘I stabbed myself.'

‘Stupid bastard,' says Harry from beneath closed eyelids.

The APC jerks to a halt. My head is snapped forward and then quickly back, and my eyes open as my skull smashes into the steel ramp. A sickening pain creeps down from the back of my head and my nose gushes blood.

Harry lies in an upended tangle of ammunition cases and weapons at the front of the vehicle. Rogers lies beneath him, his face buried in a pile of spent Browning .50 calibre cases.

‘Where'd you learn to drive, you stupid prick?' screams Harry at the black-clad crew commander.

‘Everyone out. QUICK,' screams the black-clad figure, as the Browning starts to thud away over our heads, raining red-hot brass cases into the compartment. The ramp behind me gives way and I roll, half-crawl, slide down into the dust and run for the ditch at the roadside.

Further up the road one of the APCs is burning. I hold my green sweat rag over the end of my nose, then take it away. Still bleeding, I think, as I look down at the crimson patch on the dusty green cloth.

‘Ambush?' questions Rogers.

‘Think it's a mine,' comes a voice from further up the road.

‘If it's a mine, what are the tankies shooting at?' yells Rogers.

‘Fucked if I know,' yells someone in reply.

The shooting stops as quickly as it began. A crew member from one of the vehicles at the rear of the column, his overalls more red than black, comes and lies in the ditch beside us.

‘Hit a mine,' he says blowing his nose on a dirty green rag and then stuffing it back under his pistol belt.

‘Any casualties?' asks Harry, offering the crew member one of my cigarettes.

‘Two dead, one wounded. A whole fucking crew gone,' hisses the crew member in reply, ‘and we're short to buggery of crews.'

‘What was all the shooting about?' asks Rogers.

‘A couple of woodcutters started to run when the mine went up,' replies the crew member. ‘We thought they were Charlies.'

‘Probably were,' says Harry, inspecting the mark on his cigarette where the sweat had dripped from his nose onto the paper, ‘stupid buggers.'

‘Who knows?' says the crew member. ‘Anyway, they're in about two hundred bits now.'

We move past the now stationary line of armoured vehicles. Harry's water bottles slap into the small of his back as he walks. The smoke from the burning vehicle drifts thinly into the air. We can smell the raw flesh of the casualties as we draw closer to the ruined metal mass lying across the road.

Two bodies lie in the red dust of the road surrounded by spreading patches of crimson. Someone throws a camouflage-pattern shelter over one and an oil-stained canvas over the other.

The wounded crew member lies in the dust about twenty feet from them. Two medics are bending over him, working frantically. I notice a crimson trail leading from the burning vehicle to where he lies in the dirt.

‘Shit, he must have dragged himself over there when it went up,' says Rogers.

‘Give us a hand will you, mate?' yells one of the medics, turning his head and nodding at the group of us standing at the roadside. About six of us run forward.