hike into Laos the next day. Tchepone, thirty klicks into Indian territory. Intelligence says there’s a major convoy moving down the trail. We’re gonna stop it.”
Ben is too excited to eat. The major has over one hundred missions into enemy territory under his belt. One hundred! And Ben Brice will be on the next one. The great adventure begins.
“That’s the war you’ve come ten thousand miles to fight.” He smiles, as if he’s made a joke. “What do you say, Lieutenant-last chance to change your mind, stay here in Saigon and enjoy the amenities?”
The major reaches out and grabs a beautiful young Viet girl as she walks by their table and pulls her onto his lap.
“Like Ling here. Most beautiful women in the world, Viets. You want one? I’m buying.”
The bar’s proprietress, Madame Le, elegantly dressed and beautiful and preceded by perfume more intoxicating than the bourbon, arrives at their table for the second time that evening, rests her dainty hand with its manicured red fingernails on Ben’s shoulder, and says in the English she learned at the finest finishing schools in France:
“Ain’t never seen you cowboys in here before.”
Ben blinked hard several times to clear his head of the major and the American Bar and Asian dolls and Saigon; when his eyes focused again, he was looking at a woman’s hand on his shoulder, anything but dainty with fingernails that had been chewed down to the nub. He turned his eyes up to the woman’s face; she had an alcoholic’s complexion with a wrinkle for every year of her life. She reeked of tobacco and cheap whiskey. She was no Madame Le.
“You boys want some company?” She jutted a hefty hip their way-“I got a Saturday night two-fer special”-and smiled as demurely as one could without a front tooth.
“No thanks,” Ben said. The woman seemed offended. So he forced a smile and added, “Nothing personal.”
Her eyes narrowed and moved from Ben to John and back.
“We’re gay,” John blurted out. “Yeah, we’re, uh, we’re in the movie business.”
“Oh,” the woman said. She seemed satisfied and left.
Ben turned to John. “We’re gay? ”
John shrugged. “Hey, it got rid of her.”
They had been sitting on bar stools in Rusty’s for more than an hour. The place was a dive. Country music played on the juke box. The floors were wood and sprinkled with sawdust. Neon lights glowed above the bar and a small TV played silently behind the bar. Pool tables crowded one corner. A few hard looking men and harder looking women populated the place.
Ben saw in the mirror behind the bar that the woman had tried her luck with a table of four brutes. She gestured back at Ben and John and said something to the men. They laughed. His eyes moved to the front door. A burly man, white, maybe a few years younger than Ben, wearing fatigues, boots, and an old green military jacket, entered, stumbled over to the bar, and sat down hard two stools away from Ben. His face was battered.
“The hell happened to you, Bubba?” the bartender asked him.
“Junior hit me with a goddamn shovel.”
Bubba spoke in a Southern accent. He removed his jacket. He was wearing a short-sleeve tee shirt, exposing part of a tattoo you could only get in Saigon. The bartender placed a beer and three shots of tequila in front of Bubba without being asked.
Bubba downed the first shot, shuddered as the tequila hit his system, and said, “Al, Junior done kicked me outta camp.”
Al the bartender laughed. “What’d you do this time?”
Bubba swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “The Viet dolls wasn’t no older, don’t see why he’s so pissed off. She’s on the rag, she’s old enough to fuck.”
Ben grabbed John’s knee to keep him from reacting. Bubba swallowed the second shot.
“The hell I’m supposed to sleep tonight?”
“Go on back out there,” Al said.
The third shot and a shake of his head. “Can’t. Mountain is booby trapped.”
“Okay, Bubba,” Al the bartender said, “you can sleep here, but not on the goddamned pool table like last time.” Al turned and walked away, shaking his head. “Booby traps.” As he passed Ben and John he said, “Those boys don’t know the war’s been over thirty years.”
Ben was plotting out a strategy with Bubba when he heard a drunken voice: “Hey, girlfriend, how about a blow job?”
Ben turned. One of the brutes, the biggest of the bunch, was standing there; his hand was resting on John’s shoulder. John’s face was frozen.
Little Johnny Brice had gotten the crap beat out of him at least once a week, sometimes twice. But the closest John R. Brice had ever come to a fistfight was a couple of years ago after a brain-damaged bagbiter driving a black Beemer had rear-ended him on the tollway, trashing John’s new Corvette, then offloaded his big self and called John a moron. Without considering the possible consequences, John had retorted: “I’m a moron? I’ve got a 190 IQ, a Ph. D. from MIT, and my own Internet company I’m gonna take public! What advanced degrees do you have, dude?” That had shut the dude up.
But it occurred to John now that informing this oversized meatbot standing over him of his IQ, advanced degrees, and highly successful IPO might not have the same effect in rural Idaho as it did in suburban Dallas. As a result, he was suddenly paralyzed by the familiar feeling of masculine inferiority. Little Johnny Brice looked to Ben.
“Walk away,” Ben said to the man.
John saw none of his fear in Ben’s eyes. But the cretin was too drunk to notice. He took a single step toward Ben; John knew that was a mistake. The man’s eyes suddenly bugged and he let out a guttural groan. John looked down. Ben’s boot was embedded in the man’s groin. The man crouched over, like an old man with a bad back, his hands cupped his genitals, and his face contorted with that particularly excruciating pain associated with having your balls busted. Ben stood, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around, and gently pushed him toward his table. The man stumbled over; his giggling buddies helped him sit down.
Little Johnny Brice wanted to be a man like Ben.
Ben sat down and nodded at Bubba. “Can’t abide a rude drunk,” he said.
Bubba drained his beer, belched, and said, “Me either.”
“Your tattoo,” Ben said. “Highlands or Delta?”
“Delta. You?”
“Highlands,” Ben said.
“Green Beret?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, kiss my ass. How long was you in-country?”
“Seven years.”
Bubba shook his head. “I only got two tours. Would’ve stayed the whole damn war, but I got into a little trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Killing the wrong people kind of trouble.” Bubba paused. “Seventy-one, night op south of Cao Lanh, free-fire zone. We rocked ‘n’ rolled.”
Free-fire zone meant anything that moved was fair game, man, woman, or beast. Rock ‘n’ roll meant putting your weapon on full auto and firing indiscriminately.
“Sun come up, we see we didn’t kill no VC, only women and kids.” He shrugged. “Shit happens, man, it was a shooting war. Army discharged my ass ’cause of all the bad publicity over Quang Tri and My Lai.” Bubba sighed heavily and said, “Best years of my life.”
“What’d you do after the Army?” Ben asked.
“Went back home to Mississippi, but it weren’t the same, all that civil rights bullshit, niggers acting like they owned the goddamned place, Feds fuckin’ with us. So I come out west, hooked up with these boys, been here ever since. We got us a camp out on Red Ridge. Full squad. All Green Beret except Junior.”
Twelve men. “That the Junior kicked you out of the camp?”
