Lights were coming on all over the base.
Inside the club, Marines were jockeying for position along the bar and crowding the tables packed into the narrow room. A ceiling fan turned slow circles with just enough speed to swirl the clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke. Behind the bar, two Marines were serving cans of Budweiser from large stainless steel coolers, keeping to the daily allotment of two beers per Marine. The first sergeant who ran the club oversaw the distribution and called anyone out who tried to come back for seconds, although it was common knowledge he didn’t subscribe to those restrictions with his own consumption. Above the door, a bare lightbulb illuminated a hand-lettered sign: THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE MEANEST SONS OF BITCHES TO EVER SHIT BEHIND A PAIR OF BOONDOCKERS.
Strader pushed his way in and, when a spot opened up, made his way to the bar. The harried bartender plunked down two Buds and levered them open with a hook-nosed church key that sent a spray of foam into the air. There was no saving one to open later. Strader took his beers and made a hole for other Marines to shoulder their way in. Three of the four men at the table closest to the door got up to leave, and the group at the next table immediately requisitioned two of their chairs. Strader moved in quickly to the one open chair remaining. “Okay if I sit here?” he said to the lone Marine left at the table.
The Marine waved a welcoming hand. “Take a load off,” he said.
Strader leaned his rifle against the wall and drained half of the first beer. He sat with a beer in each hand, looking at the Marine across from him. “First Platoon, Golf Company,” Strader said.
The Marine had three chevrons on each collar and a crushed empty on the table in front of him. “Fox Company, 3rd,” he said, taking a gulp from his uncrushed can. Strader noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and that getting the opening in the beer can aligned with the opening in his face took a concentrated effort.
“Is Fox here?” Strader asked, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
“No. We’re at Nong Son. I’ve been in three days for dental work.” He stuck a finger in his mouth and pulled his cheek aside, revealing nothing but a slack tongue. “Abscess,” he slurred around a wet finger.
Strader nodded in sympathy.
The Marine drained his beer, then lowered it into the shadows beside him. When he set it back on the table it was full again. He noticed that Strader noticed. “I bought enough Tiger Piss from the mama-sans to keep my canteen full for a week. Let me know if you need to be topped off.”
Strader shook his head. “No, thanks. I plan to be asleep in about an hour.”
“I plan to be unconscious soon myself,” the sergeant said, taking a long pull on his refill. He followed Strader’s gaze to a mimeographed sheet tacked to the wall by the table. The ink in the machine was low, and the sergeant had to lean closer to make out the faint letters. The sweet perfume of mimeograph ink still clung to the paper, which offered such useful information as the times of reveille and retreat, the hours for mess and sick call, the uniform of the day, and chaplain’s hours. At the bottom it announced the movie scheduled for tonight: A Thousand Clowns, starring Jason Robards. He tapped his finger on the sheet. “There’s irony for you,” he said.
Strader emptied his first can and started on the second. “What do you mean?”
The sergeant pressed his finger hard into the sheet. “It’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with this damn war.”
Strader had to take a closer look at the posting to see what he might have missed. “A thousand clowns?” he said with a confused look.
“No. Here,” the sergeant said, and stabbed the paper with a dirty fingernail. “Jason Robards.”
Strader was lost but tried hard not to show it. He’d had many senseless conversations with fellow Marines when they were drunk, and he suspected this was going to be another one.
The sergeant gave Strader a conspiratorial glance and lowered his voice. “I heard Jason Robards got torpedoed twice in the Pacific during World War II.”
“Okay, so?” Strader said.
The sergeant reached into his pocket and slapped a little P-38 can opener on the table. “Well, can you explain this?” he said.
“It’s a C-rat opener,” Strader said, sure now that drunken blathering was about to be raised to a new level.
“Not just an opener, a John Wayne can opener.”
“So it’s a John Wayne, so what?” Strader said.
“John Wayne never served in the military. Lots of movie stars served in World War II. Some were in combat, too, but not John Wayne.”
Strader finished most of his remaining beer in anticipation of a quick departure.
“For Christ’s sake, Captain Kangaroo was a Marine during the war.” The sergeant held the can opener up and shook it so the blade flapped back and forth. “This shouldn’t be called a John Wayne. It should be a Jason Robards.”
Strader finished the rest of his beer. “Or a Captain Kangaroo,” he said.
“Right,” the sergeant said, looking at the opener with a new appreciation.
Strader stood and hefted his rifle from its spot against the wall. “I get your point,” he said. “For a minute I thought you were just talking bullshit.”
The sergeant tossed the opener onto the table. “I was,” he said. “That was the point. If we can’t recognize a little piece of obvious bullshit, what chance do we have with the big sneaky ones?”
Strader gave the sergeant his best impersonation of John Wayne’s casual, one-fingered salute and pushed through the door into the night before he could be subjected to slurred theories about life preservers and Mae West never being in the Navy.
Just beyond the EM Club, light flickered on the makeshift movie screen as the opening credits of A Thousand Clowns scrolled up. Strader followed some Marine-shaped shadows past the projection hut to the rows of upended crates and ammo boxes. The glowing tips of cigarettes pinpointed the positions of the small group of viewers, further accentuated by sharp smacks directed at attacking insects. He stood in the back and watched Jason Robards cross a rubble-strewn lot to a New York tenement and climb the stoop to the front door.
“Who the hell is that?” came from the shadow standing next to him. Strader turned away from the screen. “John Wayne,” he said and moved off into the night.
When the sun dropped below the ridge, the eastern slope of the Ong Thu slipped into a tableau of opaque shadows. Under the jungle canopy, sundown was a short and merciless process. While the open fields and paddies were still bathed in gray twilight, under the trees, patches of blackness swam together like spilled ink, and the comfort of the visible world vanished.
The NVA cadre shed their burdens and settled in for a night of rest. They could not risk cooking fires, so they peeled the banana-leaf wrapping from their tam thom rice balls and ate them cold. All down the line tired, dirty fingers picked out clumps of the sticky rice, compacted them into balls, and slipped them into mouths, savoring each bite as though it were the rarest of delicacies.
Truong and Pham shared a spot against the sprawling roots of a dipterocarp tree with foliage finally reaching the sky more than forty meters above their heads. They sat in silence, hungrily devouring their portions of rice. Pham paused to drink from his canteen. “I’ve been having dreams,” he said, watching Truong lick the rice from his fingers.
“About home?”
“No,” Pham said, holding up a large pinch of rice. “About food.”
Truong smiled. “You dream of dry banh chung without the mung paste or meat?”
“That’s not funny. I dream of ban cuon.”