Search and destroy, p.3
Search and Destroy, page 3
Sergeant Cavanaugh hesitated and watched Rick, and Rick did his best not to blink. The idea of getting killed had seemed remote as Rick had thought about it on Renny’s floor last night, but with this man staring at him—a soldier still carrying shrapnel in his body-Rick felt his breath catch in his chest. But there was a certain thrill in the idea too. Dad was always saying that Rick wasn’t a man. What would he say when he came home with a badge like that?
“I’m a professional soldier,” Sergeant Cavanaugh said. “I’m proud of what I do, but some of these protesters who come around here tell me I entice you boys with lies. So I want to be straight with you. Army training is hard, and Vietnam is the closest thing to hell I’ve ever experienced. If you’re looking for adventure, this is the wrong way to find it. You’re not signing up for summer camp with the Boy Scouts. Vietnam is a job for a man, and you’d better be a man if you want to go.”
“I can handle it.”
Cavanaugh nodded with his eyes set hard, still focused on Rick. “Ward, let me tell you something. Politicians think up wars and soldiers fight them. But soldiers in Vietnam don’t like the way we’re fighting this war. Give us full firepower—nukes or whatever it takes—and we’ll kill gooks until the streets run with blood. We’ll have this thing over in a few weeks. But that’s not what’s happening over there. We’re fighting a war without the will to win, and now the president is starting to pull us out before we’ve done the job we went there to do. What I’m telling you is, if you die in Vietnam, it may be for nothing.” He sat for a time and let that sink in, and then he added, “So you need to think about your decision.”
“I have thought about it.” Rick looked down at the table. “I feel like I need what the army can give me.”
“What’s that?”
Rick couldn’t talk about Hemingway or about learning things he could use as a writer, so he told the other truth. “I want to grow up. I want to be a man. I think the army can help me.”
Cavanaugh didn’t smile, but Rick saw, without question, that the man thought he was an idiot—a kid. It was the look Darrell had given him; the look he had been getting from his dad all his life. But the look steeled Rick’s desire. He couldn’t stay here. He needed to know the blackest truths the world could show him: hatred, despair, and all the rest. He couldn’t write about playing sports in high school or hanging out at the beach. He needed to see what else there was. Vietnam was hell. Maybe so, but Rick was feeling more confident. That’s just what he wanted to have a look at.
“The army can help you grow up,” the sergeant said, “but most of that will have to come from inside. If I were you, I’d give the whole thing some careful thought. Maybe you’d like to read some of our brochures and—”
“No. I want to sign up. And I want to leave as soon as I can.”
“You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“All right. If that’s your decision, I’m proud of you. But before you enlist, go home and talk things over with your parents. We’ll get your paperwork all set up now, and then you can sleep on it and come back tomorrow if you still want to sign. That’s always the best way to go.”
So they filled out the papers, and then Rick went home and talked to his mother. She didn’t like the idea at all, but when Dad came in, he approved. “That’s just exactly what you need, Rick,” he said. “You’re out of high school and still acting like a baby. The army won’t put up with that.”
Rick didn’t argue. He even told his dad he was sorry about quitting his job, and then Dad said it was all right for him to stick around home until his induction. But Rick wasn’t actually sorry that he had quit that stupid job. He mostly just wanted things smoothed over before he left, so his mother wouldn’t be too upset. The worst thing was, he still felt like he was running out on her. And no matter what he had said about wanting to be a man, he was scared. He had been since he had walked out of the recruiting office. After he talked to his dad, he went to his bedroom and sat on his bed.
He hated this house. His old iron bed creaked, and the ceiling and one wall were stained yellow from a leak in the roof. He wanted out, but he was also having second thoughts about the army. How could he fight in a war that few people even believed in anymore? But if he didn’t enlist, he was right back in his old trap. He lay back and looked at that stained ceiling. He could hear his dad down the hall, his voice a distant rumble. Dad was telling Mom, no doubt, what a smart thing he had done when he had told Rick to get out. It had brought some sense to him. The thought reminded Rick that he was at least sure of one thing: He did have to get out of here.
CHAPTER 3
RICK PASSED HIS PHYSICAL WITHOUT a problem, and then got word that he’d be heading to Fort Ord in the Monterey Bay area, three hundred miles north of Los Angeles on the California coast. He spent the next two weeks working out every day, running hard and doing push-ups and chin-ups. Cavanaugh had said that boot camp would be tough, and Rick wanted to be ready.
On Rick’s last night home, Renny threw a party at his house, out by the pool. Almost everyone came, all his old high school friends except Judy. Rick hadn’t talked to her since they’d broken up. Renny had managed to get some beer and drank too much of it. Rick had never learned to like beer. He’d seen what it had done to his dad. It was Renny’s business if he wanted to act like an idiot, but Rick liked knowing he was in control of himself.
Renny was shooting off his mouth, telling Rick how dumb he was to go into the army. “I don’t get this. They’re going to ship you straight to Vietnam.”
Rick knew better than to respond, but about the fourth time Renny said the same thing, Rick told him, “I don’t care if I do go to Vietnam.”
There were maybe twenty people at the party, some with dates and some single. Renny and Phil Ford—known mostly as “Flipper”—and another guy, Wayne Rossi, were sitting in deck chairs around a little table by the pool. “Wait a minute. You want to go to Vietnam?” Renny said, loud enough for almost everyone to hear.
The girl who had come with Flipper leaned over as if she wanted to look at a freak. Rick stared back. She seemed baffled.
“You heard me,” Rick said.
“Why?” Renny demanded. “My brother’s waiting to see whether he gets Conscientious Objector status or not. If he doesn’t, he’s going to Canada. He says he’s not going to kill babies for anyone—and certainly not for Dick Nixon.”
“There’s no way the government’s going to get me,” Wayne said. “My lottery number is right on the border, but if it comes up, I’m saying, ‘Hell no, I won’t go.’ They can put me in jail if that’s what they want to do.”
Rick didn’t say anything, but he knew there was no way Rossi would have the guts to go to jail. And the whole “killing babies” thing was such a cliché. Renny and Wayne didn’t know as much about Vietnam as Rick did. They just knew it was cool to be opposed to the war.
“Come on, man,” Renny said. “This is your life! Explain this to me.”
Rick tried. “I’ve been doing the same stuff all my life, Renny. I want to do something else.”
It sounded lame. Everyone at the table laughed. Wayne said, “You’ll get yourself killed, man. That’s the only new experience you’ll have over there.”
“Come clean, man,” Renny said. “Your old man kicked you out of the house and you didn’t have a job. Joining the army was the only thing you could think of. That’s all.”
Rick probably should have left it at that, but he couldn’t. Renny was wrong about him. “A guy doesn’t know what he’s made of until he gets put to the test. You guys are going to hang out here doing nothing, and I’m going to find out what kind of a man I am.”
“I know what kind of man I am,” Flipper said. “I’m a coward. But that’s better than being dead.”
“Yeah, Rick,” Renny said. “You’ll find out you have guts. You’ll know when you look down and see them spilling on the ground.”
Rick decided not to say anything else, but Flipper’s girl asked, “Do you believe in the war?”
Rick didn’t answer. A couple of guys had grabbed Jill Rush and were threatening to throw her into the water. She was screaming and giggling and loving every minute of the attention. It was all so superficial, just as Judy had said it was. He had the feeling that twenty years from now Renny and his gang would all be pretty much the same as they were tonight. Well, not him. Rick looked up, gave the girl a long stare—tried, in fact, to look like Sergeant Cavanaugh—and said, “Soldiers don’t think up wars. Governments do. I’ll do what I’m paid to do, and I’ll let the army worry about whether it’s right or wrong.” The words were all wrong, but he liked the tone he was taking. He wanted to sound independent, gutsy—a man among boys.
“You’re going to trust the government?” Renny was asking, but at the same time the girl said, “I personally don’t think we have any right to be in Vietnam.” It was what every high school kid said these days, but most of them knew hardly anything about the politics of the war. Rick knew some of the history, some of the issues, and the war was wrong as far as he was concerned. The Vietnamese had a right to decide for themselves what kind of government they wanted. The United States was actually interfering with that. But Rick wasn’t going to admit that, and he wasn’t about to say, “I want to find the heart of darkness so I can write like Conrad.”
“Rick’s not a warrior,” Renny said. “He doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants to get away from his old man. You don’t know what he has to put up with.”
That was the last thing Rick wanted this crowd to know about. Most of their fathers were professionals. They drove nice cars, dressed well, showed up at ball games when their kids were playing. “Look, Renny,” Rick said, “I’ve got to catch a train early in the morning and I still haven’t finished packing. I think I’ll-”
“Hey, no. Don’t leave like this. We were just giving you a hard time. You’re one of us, man—friends forever. You need to get drunk. Come on, I’ve still got lots of beer left.”
“Naw. You know me. I don’t like beer.” Rick stood up. Jill was out of the pool now. Her long hair hung wet and straight. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she looked good. Rick wished he had a girl to say goodbye to. He thought of asking Jill to go for a ride with him. But he would have to talk to her, and he couldn’t stand that.
Jill had apparently heard that he was leaving. “Oh, Rick, you’re going to wish you’d never joined,” she said. “You’re too sweet for the army.” She touched his arm. She was flirting again. It was probably romantic to her, a soldier going off to war.
“Actually, I’m a born killer,” he said. He flexed his biceps and laughed. “Well, I’ll see you guys. I’ll try to write once in a while.”
“How long are you in for?” Flipper asked. He’d taken hold of his girl around the waist.
“It depends. I’m in for two years for sure. But I can put in for Special Forces. If I get in, I’d have to stay an extra year.”
“You mean the Green Berets?” Renny asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding. Those guys are insane.”
Rick shrugged. He loved the way everyone was looking at him now, especially the girls. “Well, stay loose. I’ll look you guys up when I get back from boot camp—if they let me come through here.”
“Hey, you gotta say good-bye to everyone,” Renny said. “They want to—”
“I sort of did.”
Rick left. A few more of his friends stopped him on the way out, but he didn’t say much. What was left to say? Nothing would ever be the same. No more of the rah-rah stuff from high school. No more beach parties. Until this instant he’d been telling himself that this was exactly what he wanted to leave behind, but as he got into his car, he felt as though he’d fallen off the planet. In the morning everything he knew would be gone, and he had no idea what to expect from the army.
His Chevy didn’t want to start the first time he turned it over. That was all he needed, to run his battery down and have to go back to the party to get someone to give him a jump. He sat and waited for a couple of minutes to make sure he hadn’t flooded the carburetor, and this time the engine caught, sputtered, then kicked in. The car had duel pipes, chromed, that put out a gurgling sound. He’d lived for that rumble once, but that time was over now. He’d asked his dad to put the car up for sale and then to bank the money for him.
He knew he ought to head home while his parents were still up. His mom would want to have some time to talk to him. But it was depressing to think about going back there. Besides, there was something else he really wanted to do. It was stupid, but what difference did it make? There was no way to make things any worse. He drove to Judy’s house.
When he parked out in front of her place, he almost lost his nerve. But he couldn’t bring himself to drive away. He hated the idea of leaving without even saying good-bye. He made himself walk to the door and ring the doorbell. She lived in a nice place, a stretched-out ranch-style house with a Spanish look to it. He’d spent a lot of time there, but he’d almost never taken Judy to his own little house. His dad was too embarrassing, sitting in front of the TV in his threadbare chair, drinking a beer, thinking he was funny when he tried to tease the two of them.
Judy’s mom came to the door. She was wearing shorts and a casual shirt, but as usual her makeup was perfect and her hair was stiff with hairspray. She looked surprised to see Rick. “Oh . . . hello, Ricky,” she said.
“Is Judy around?”
“Yes.” She hesitated.
“I’m leaving town in the morning. I’ve joined the army. I just wanted to say good-bye.”
“The army?”
“Yes.”
He was getting that funny look again, as if she wondered what had possessed him to do something so insane. At least she invited him in. Then she went looking for Judy, who finally appeared in the living room, where he was still standing.
“You joined the army?” Judy said, almost before she had entered the room. She stood with her hands on her hips, an exaggerated look of disbelief on her face. She was wearing jeans that were torn out in the knees. Rick knew she’d bought them not long ago, washed them a dozen times, and torn the holes herself.
“Yeah. I’m heading for Fort Ord in the morning—up by Monterey. But it’s a long story. I don’t want to get into all that. I just didn’t want to leave without at least letting you know.”
He saw the stiffness, the disdain, in her face, and he wished he hadn’t come. But maybe it was better for him to experience this. If he’d gone off to basic training—or to Vietnam—just thinking of the good days they’d enjoyed together, he would have missed her. Now he would remember this side of her.
“This makes me sick, Rick. You’ll end up in Vietnam, and I hate to think what that will do to you.”
This was a discussion he didn’t want to have. He looked away. “One thing about it, I can use the G. I. Bill to go to college when I get back.”
She looked at him as though he’d spoken a foreign language. “Rick, you’re a sweet guy. You’ll have to make yourself hard as rock. They’ll train you to kill. That’s the only thing the army knows.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Lately he’d tried to imagine himself killing someone. In the movies it was always a great moment when an enemy soldier fell, but he wondered what it might be like to aim at an actual person and pull the trigger. He’d fired a rifle at a shooting range one time—just for target practice-but in truth, he had never killed anything bigger than an insect.
“What about your writing?” Judy asked.
At least he could say something about that. “A lot of writers have gone to war.”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? This is your way to get out of here and have some new experiences.”
“That’s part of it. Most of it, maybe.”
She finally walked toward him, but she didn’t ask him to sit down. She stood in front of him, still at arm’s length, and said, “I can’t believe this. Do you really want to fight a war that’s morally wrong-—just to see what you can learn from it?”
Rick shook his head. “If it’s morally wrong, that’s not my fault. I’m just going into the army.”
“But so many guys are refusing to go! Don’t you know what’s happening over there?”
He hated the way she was making him feel, so he admitted the truth. “My dad kicked me out of the house. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Judy studied his face for a long time. Finally she said, “This breaks my heart, Rick. This just isn’t you.”
But Rick was a little tired of hearing from others about who he supposedly was or wasn’t. There was nothing he could say that would change Judy’s mind, and nothing he knew strengthened his argument. “Anyway, I just wanted to say good-bye,” he said.
“You leave tomorrow?”
“Yeah. So I wanted to tell you thanks for . . . you know . . . everything. I was thinking tonight about some of the things we did together.” He looked down at the tile floor. “I guess I’ll always be in love with you. Maybe just because you were my first girlfriend.”
He couldn’t look at her, but he heard her breathe and take a step forward. She touched his arm. “You’re so beautiful, Rick. It’s the thing I never could resist. You look powerful, but you’re soft, really. I don’t think many people know that.”
“Do you remember that first time we kissed, after my football game?”
“Oh, yes. You were a big hero that night. I can’t believe how important football seemed back then.”
“I remember the way you looked in that blue sweater you were wearing, with your hair down on your shoulders. I was scared to kiss you, but you made the first move.”
