|
Lt. Steve Sharp 1969 |
We’re in Song Be. How long has
it been? Two weeks? Three? In
1999 the
Lieutenant said we
once spent over a hundred days straight in the bush. I said, "Are
you sure, LT?" He said, "Oh, I remember that all right." Anyway, I
give the camera to gunner
Jim Lamb, or rifleman
Jean Locklear, or point man Larry Roy, or rifleman Glenn Williams (a
handsome man later shot by Bill Williams who reflexively pulled the
trigger as he fell; an enemy round had bored into his helmet and
sliced open the back of his head. “Bill... Bill. It’s me, Doc. Bill,
you’re gonna be all right.” But his eyes are wide open and lifeless,
as if he can see everything). Or RTO
Mike Wilson who
followed
Six over the berm on
LZ Ranch, blowing the female sapper away; or brave squad leader
Jerry Bieck. I don’t remember. I loved them all. Take the picture
for Christ sake. Just take it. After the shutter clicks we have
movement, but it's a false alarm. Getting up I stuff the camera into
a waterproof bag, stuff that into my pack. Ten minutes later we move
out.
It’s the same
picture I hallucinated
in the rain forest in Sumatra while walking with Mr. Mohammed, my
guide. For three days we trek hard, morning to dusk, and I love
every mud slick minute. It’s just like the jungle in Song Be: a
great green curtain of wait-a-minute vines, dense thick scrub,
thrown down or exotic spiraling trees, the bright light filtering
through the triple layers, filling the silence with heat. In the
steam hot day we sweat buckets and march: Mr. Mohammed cuts a trail
just like Larry Roy, raising the machete's blade up, slicing it
down, whack, whack, whack. There is the returning beat of bend and
sway, of stepping or crawling under, over, or around rocks, trees or
bodies; there is the pulling of branches behind oneself so as not to
snap them or whip the man behind you. My body is hunched forward, my
trigger finger extends over an unseen trigger guard, like on patrol.
We are awash in rivers of sweat and breathing hard. The soft dirt of
the hill grows heavy and we are caked with it but when we stop we
smile. Mr. Mohammed says, “You wait here,” and goes to cut and carve
walking sticks. Without thinking
I lean forward, brace my hands
on my knees, the way we grunts did when taking five.
Beads of salty sweat roll down my face and sting my eyes but I’m too
tired to move. For no reason I look up. The life size apparition is
fifteen meters ahead. It's vivid and solid and three dimensional.
Seconds later it begins to sparkle and shimmer, then melts away.
I hear Mr. Mohammed returning. “For you,” he says, handing me a long
pointed stick. His black mustache accentuates his wide grin. I’m
drenched with my tears and the tears of my sweat so he cannot tell
I’ve been weeping. We move out.
Later, at close range we see a male orangutan and its mate, the baby
riding her back. We find a tigers lair but the animal is long gone.
Later, back at camp we see the crazy woman who lives with chickens
and ducks in her rickety hut. And later, at Mr. Mohammed's house,
his wife falls to the floor convulsing and he treats her with herbs
and incense while his toddlers play, her legs kick, her eyes roll
back, she feints and goes limp. Later, much later, after truck
rides, checkpoints, fruit bats, a rat eaten hole in my pack, visits
to the
American embassy,
visits to temples, villas, cockfights, after the blessed horseback
ride on the long white beach at
Parangtritis. After
telling the pock faced Javanese massage woman who forced her
knuckles deep into my back, “No, it's not good. 'No bagus,' ” I
said. After sitting in decrepit chairs in high domed thatched huts
in Yogyakarta's sprawling bird market, enchanted by the stink and
song and squalor. After the wretched strip malls of industrial
Surabaya; after having my fortune read by a friends sister in a six
hundred year old stone house in Beaujolais, France, “You are my
suicide man,” she said, handing me the cards. Much, much later,
after declining cocaine in London from a doctor befriended in
Mexico; after sipping red wine with friends while overlooking azure
Lake Geneva, trying my best to appear sane but knowing they knew
that I knew that I did not fool them. Later, in Amsterdam, after
visiting Rembrandt's house, Ann Frank's house, the red light
district, paying thirty guilders to a Colombian woman, “Hold me,
please hold me,” I said after we did not have sex. At last, after
hiding out in the cramped Dutch pension where I did not know who or
when or where I was: a short flight home where I arrived one day
before my DEROS twenty-six years after the event and moved sixteen
times from '96 to 2002 before finally settling down. |
Sheriff Steve Sharp 1999 |
