“Hey,” Rowe said, “we’ve got another eight inches to dig.”

  Paez lit a cigarette and exhaled. “Hole’s fine with me. You’ve got four inches to dig, meat. And four inches of sandbag to fill.” He smiled, drew on the cigarette, and gazed off at Nui Ba Dan.

  Shaking his head, Rowe bent over and plunged his entrenching tool into the clay.

  A platoon of engineers came in with the next wave of choppers and encircled the camp with concertina. The air was still and hot, but the troops kept at their tasks. There was no respite from the sun until holes were dug. Before the engineers finished stringing the last of three aprons of wire, the company had dug in, and one at a time tent halves and ponchos blossomed above the foxholes. The camp looked like a landfill covered with olive-green rags.

  Paez and Rowe, legs dangling over loosely, sat on the parapet. “You got a girl, Hobbes?” Paez asked.

  Rowe started to say yes, but let that lie go. “No.”

  Paez considered this and said, “You look like the kind who gets dumped.”

  Rowe looked at the hole. “Hole looks pretty lame if you ask me.”

  Paez said, “I’ve been in tunnels a quarter that size.” He said it took a special mind to appreciate tunneling, that before being drafted he’d studied mining engineering at the University of Texas, El Paso, which, in part, accounted for his interest in tunnels. He described them as small engineering marvels and said no one could possibly understand his interest, especially someone obviously stupid enough to carry an M-60.

  Rowe nodded. He thought Paez was a bit too brash for a man so small. Then he recalled the helicopter crewman whom he’d met at the club in Cu Chi, the one who’d been so unabashed one minute when he claimed to have shot Vietnamese soldiers, then so contrite the next as he denied it. Paez seemed far too brash. Rowe looked about and wondered what transformed men like Paez into swaggering pretenders, wondered how he himself would change and how soon change would come. Rowe fumbled in his pocket for some gum.

  “You’re stupid enough to hang around me,” he said.

  “Ah,” Paez answered and let the conversation die there.

  Choppers from Cu Chi landed hot food and free beer. Mess kits suspended by their thighs, the men formed a chow line. Paez kidded with others and ignored Rowe, who by listening learned that Apple was from West Virginia and had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians his senior year in high school and drafted by the Army after playing one season in the minors, that Johnson was from Montana and had never been out of the state until the Army claimed him, that Rains was deeply religious, and Leonards equally superstitious.

  Forks scraping their aluminum pans, the two of them sat on their helmets and ate beef stew, creamed spinach, and pasty peach cobbler cooked from canned peaches.

  To make conversation Rowe asked about Paez’s girl. Paez swallowed. “Since you brought it up, I’ll marry her and raise a dozen kids.” He aimed his fork and glanced about. “When I get out of this fucking place.”

  Rowe took a bite and stared off.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Paez said. “ ‘Does Paez always talk like this?’ I get on people’s nerves.”

  Cox, the platoon sergeant, came around with a second ration of beer. “Get your smoking done now,” he said.

  “Sarge, the Stars and Stripes. Does the Army expect us to live without scores?” Paez asked.

  “Paez, does the Army ever forget the Stars and Stripes?”

  “Could be. The mail’s sometimes a little lost.”

  Cox asked if Rowe was getting along okay. Paez answered for him, saying he was fine.

  “What next?” Rowe asked when Cox had left.

  “Nothing, and a lot of it. Get used to it, meat.”

  “Name’s Rowe.”

  Paez shrugged and looked west where the sun bled into the horizon and a halo of red capped the tip of Nui Ba Dan. He nodded, something feral lurking in his eyes. He swallowed his beer, crushed the can on his helmet, and said in a near-whisper, “Civilization underground, hospitals, fueling stations, whorehouses. I am not a little crazy.”

  That night Rowe slept fitfully, partly from fear, mostly from sunburn and visions of Betty. He thought to write her a letter saying she’d ruined two lives. In the morning he reconsidered that idea.

  The fire base was in Tay Ninh Province east of War Zone C, fourteen klicks from the Cambodian border. It was the dry season and hot. A shovelful at a time, holes expanded into bunkers connected by intricate trenches linked like lacework. Dust abounded, a fine, choking dust that hung over the camp. It infiltrated their pores, their noses and lungs; it pursued them into their sleep and greeted them at dawn.

  Boom-boom girls from nearby villages posed around the perimeter, ready to trade themselves for money or cigarettes, all the while charting the company’s defenses. Dressed in colorful silk, they looked delicate at a distance but up close were sun-darkened country girls with brown teeth that showed when they giggled. It wouldn’t have mattered to the soldiers if the boom-boom ladies had carried spiked clubs and looked like Russian potato farmers. Johnson expressed the prevailing opinion when he said, “It’s hard to find red-blooded American gals willing to do the same.” Lonely and hyper-hormoned, the soldiers sought comfort and sex. If one wanted a girl, he went over the berm with a vc boom-boom girl, but took rifle and buddies along to stand guard, for in Tay Ninh Province everyone not American was vc.

  Idle moments led to talk about home, shared experiences, growing up, girlfriends. It was talk that made Rowe long for home. He never mentioned Betty. When talk made him lonely enough, he went to the berm, where he fantasized that she was the brown-toothed woman under him. When finished, he felt a terrible sense of shame. He didn’t want to feel that way but did. He’d say no more indulging. But what else was there?

  He tried writing letters, but knowing that some REMF clerk would be reading the words inhibited him. So he wrote the mundane, and everything sounded plastic. He’d write a letter and tear it up. He decided on a log, passed time jotting down observations, thinking someday it would come in handy.

  “Five shovelfuls of clay fills one sandbag. The tip of Nui Ba Dan is often circled by doughnut clouds. Belcher must masturbate at night or he can’t sleep. Paez wakes up whenever he snores. The sound of bombs dumped by a B-52 on the far side of the mountain reaches us four seconds after the initial blast.”

  He stored the journal in his backpack and allowed no one to see it.

  When they came out of the rubber plantation, they realized it was a bad spot. Open paddies spread before them, and there was no cover. Leonards spat on his hands for luck. The platoon formed a column and moved out. On point some twenty-five paces ahead was Elsworth from the Fourth Squad. Belcher advanced, then Paez. Fifteen feet behind, Rowe carried the M-60.

  Elsworth’s trousers were black from wading through the rice fields. His jaw had a three-day stubble, and his eyes a nine-month hunger. He knew signs and could smell and hear like an animal. He motioned for the platoon to stop and climbed the berm of a paddy to see the other side. Atop it, he crouched, his head swiveling, nose turned up as if sniffing the wind. He motioned that it was okay.

  As they stood, Paez muttered something that distracted Rowe. Then, hard and sudden as an unexpected uppercut, an invisible force knocked Elsworth off the dike. A distinct pop came from the far wood line. The platoon belly-dived to the ground. Shaking, Rowe jammed the butt of the pig into his shoulder.

  Paez crawled over. “Welcome to the show, meat.”

  They fished Elsworth out of the shallow water, zipped him into a body bag, and secured an LZ for a dust off. The chopper came, Elsworth went out, and the platoon started all over as if Elsworth’s death had been nothing but an interruption. Paez winked at Rowe as he stood. A spotter plane hovered overhead, the pilot ready to call in an air strike on the sniper, who according to Paez was taking R&R in Cambodia by now.

  It was Pham Cua on some maps, Bui Cua on others, a village, nothing, seven huts, a dozen women and children, brown-spotted chickens bobbing heads, the smell of Vietnam all over it. The squad had called on Pham Cua before, seen the inviolable expressions on the villagers’ faces, stares that communicated scorn. They searched huts for caches, found nothing, and left, taking a well-worn trail to the west. At a rocky clearing overlooking the rice paddies, Belcher raised a hand. “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” he said as he knelt down and clamped his own lips on a cigarette.

  The men scattered among the boulders, all but Paez, who was taking in the sights. Happy to unload it, Rowe lowered the M-60 and propped it against a boulder. He’d lugged it too long already. It was a sweat-maker, a ball-buster, a cross, and he had yet to fire it. Diaphanous thermals shimmered where the sun bore down on the emerald paddies in the lowlands, and the glassy pools mirrored the blue sky and the scattered clouds that floated overhead. To the west the verdant land spooled into rocky hills where the vegetation congealed into a dark-green curtain too intense for the intellect to grasp. It was fairy-tale land.

  “Find a rock, Paez,” Belcher said.

  Paez turned ninety degrees and framed a picture with his hands, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Wish I had a camera.”

  “Goddamn it, Paez,” Belcher said.

  Apple stood to shrug out of the straps that held the radio. The round, sounding more like a ping than a shot, struck the PRC-25 and slammed Apple to the ground. Belcher shouted at Paez to get down, but as if deaf, Paez held the cigarette to his lips and gazed nonchalantly at the woods.

  A second shot whistled off a boulder, but Paez didn’t move, just kept smoking until a third sprayed dust near his feet. Then he pointed his finger where the jungle tapered to a crest. Taking a final draw, he flipped the cigarette aside and headed toward the woods, strolling like a sightseer.

  “He on drugs, Hobbes?” Rains asked.

  “Just crazy,” Rowe said.

  Belcher hollered for Apple to get a spotter plane up. Apple shouted that the sniper had killed the radio.

  “Tell the goddamn world,” Belcher said.

  Paez pointed to his crotch. “Hit this, you slit-eyed motherfucker,” he said, raised his middle finger to the sniper and began singing “La Cucaracha.”

  “Get ’im, Paez!” Leonards shouted.

  Belcher ordered full rock ’n’ and roll. The squad unloaded on the woods for thirty seconds, pulverized leaves and branches, chiseled stone and chewed roots and scattered nearby animal life halfway to Thailand, after which the quiet that followed seemed holy. Paez walked back, flopped down behind a rock, and lit another cigarette. Closing his eyes, he took a long, deep draw. Belcher grabbed him by the collar and lifted him to his feet.

  “Can’t a guy just enjoy a damned smoke?” Paez asked. “I mean, can’t he without someone trying to shoot him or someone yanking him by the collar?”

  The sniper fired another round just to let them know.

  Rowe was reading The Pastures of Heaven. Paez slouched down and peered at the open pages. He asked if the book was any good. Rowe nodded. Paez claimed Steinbeck was a liberal of convenience, not to be placed on a pedestal.

  “Why care?” Rowe asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re not getting this one,” Rowe said.

  “Don’t want it.”

  Rowe had to hide books or they disappeared. “Yes, you do.”

  “Dos Passos,” Paez said. “There’s a writer with his fingers on the pulse. He’d tell us to throw down our arms and walk away.”

  “So?”

  “So, Steinbeck’s a fucking hawk.”

  “So are we.”

  “Who’s Betty?” Paez asked. “You talk in your sleep.”

  “A cartoon,” Rowe said. “What would Dos Passos say about tunnels?”

  Paez winked. “Look for the light at the other end. All will lead to Rome. Some shit like that.”

  A Chicom 7.63 ripped a perfect round hole in Johnson’s helmet, and until the medic removed it, no one could tell he’d been hit. Simpson, a new guy, walked two steps away and puked in a rice paddy. Later they swept a village where the indigies looked at the soldiers as if they knew all about Johnson, where he’d come from, the color of his mother’s hair, every detail including the name of the doctor who gave him his first swat.

  Monks, a guy in the First Squad who hung with Johnson, lifted up an old man’s chin and said, “Nice day. How’d you like your old dick shot off?” His eyes puffed full of hate, he stuffed the sight blade down the front of the ong’s pajama bottoms and stared. But the old man didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  Belcher sat on a log and propped up his leg, making himself comfortable. He lit a cigarette. He told Monks to make sure the M-16 wasn’t on full auto because it would make a terrible mess, then he blew a stream of smoke up at the sky. He puffed on his cigarette and dreamed of fields of corn and pumpkins in October, or whatever, on such occasions, went through the mind of a Kansas farm boy.

  Monks flicked the selector switch. He intended to emasculate the old man, and no one in the platoon moved to prevent it, until a kid named Benjamin laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Be easy, be sound, man. Ain’t worth it. Come on, now, think about what your mama would think if you was to harm this ol’ fella.”

  Benjamin was right—it wasn’t worth it. The platoon took body count, the Viet Cong kept score.

  As he drew away, Monks stared over his shoulder at the old man. “Got ‘vc’ goddamn tattooed on his ass. I know,” he said. “Hell, we all know.” He ran a thumb up and down the barrel of his M-16, shouting that he’d remember that old man, that one day he’d see him again.

  Belcher finished his smoke and ordered the squad to search. They’d dumped over baskets and were bayoneting piles of straw when the rest of the platoon appeared. The lieutenant ordered them out, claimed the indigies were friendly. Rowe wondered how the hell he knew. Was it indexed on the map?

  About half a klick from the village a group of boys, the oldest probably ten, greeted them. The soldiers craved anything American, especially the mundane—hamburgers, hot showers, ice cream, a girl in tight jeans, the smell of a new-mown lawn. Here they settled for kids with irresistible grinning faces vending over-sweet soft drinks and tasteless rice cakes. “Hey, Joe, numba one sweet, same, same, boom boom. You buy.” Kids being one of their weaknesses, they bought soft drinks and sweets.

  Rowe gazed at Nui Ba Dan, its peak ringed in clouds. He thought of the clouded peaks of the bitterroots, and of Betty and summer in Montana—a night when he’d heard the splash as she urinated in the bathroom, and he’d reached over and had run his hand up and down the sheet where she’d lain. It was warm and smelled of her. Intimate, wonderful.

  Rain pelted the ground and puddled on the floor of the bunker. While the monsoon drummed outside, they sat cross-legged on cots and passed the pipe around. Apple handed it to Paez, who took a long, languorous hit and held the smoke deep in his lungs. He passed the pipe to Rowe. Rowe took a hit and passed it on.

  Everything was damp, the whole camp a mound of mold. Mildew formed on T-shirts overnight. The fire base was a huge fungus. Some acrimonious grunt had named it Green Acres, which became its designation and was decidedly appropriate. They hung a sign that read WELCOME TO GREEN ACRES, HOME OF THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT AND A FEW UGLY ELVES.

  “How come you got no more picture of Gloria, Paez?” Apple asked.

  Paez, who’d lost the picture in a tunnel, exhaled and leaned back, letting the drug take him. “Got her up here,” he said, pointing to his head.

  “Probably the only place she’s ever been.”

  Paez gave Apple a glassy-eyed look. “Don’t mess with her. Fuck with my food or water. Gloria’s off-limits.”

  Rowe took another hit and passed the pipe.

  “Yeah, leave the man alone, Apple,” Rains said. “Man’s girl’s sacred. Scripture say a man and woman be each other’s temple.”

  Apple’s face glowed like a white moon in the thin light of the gas lantern. “Here we go. The Bible. What’s it say about the goddamn monsoon? Tell us a story.”

  Besides the days that rolled one into the next and the ever-present sight of Nui Ba Dan, continuity existed mostly in their stories. C’s had ordered a travel guide to the best inns in Europe and read the itinerary as if leaving the next week; Apple got drunk one night, fell into a foxhole, and slept through a mortar barrage; Belcher had fished a river with a hand grenade.

  “Got no story.”

  The pipe went the circuit again. As Apple reloaded it from his stash, he asked what day of the week it was. No one seemed quite sure. It wasn’t a Friday or Saturday and not a Sunday, for Rains would know. They settled on Tuesday. Apple puffed off the pipe and nudged Belcher’s forearm.

  Apple coughed out the smoke. “Where were we? Days?”

  “Hobbes knows,” Belcher said. “He keeps track of every shit he takes. Puts it in his journal. Thing’s thicker ’an a . . .” He gazed at Rowe, his eyes dope-thick, and asked him what it was thicker than.

  “Thicker than the bullshit in here,” Rowe said.

  They measured days by casualties, for they were operating above the plantation lands. The days had been mostly lucky days after Johnson’s death. Near Chau Thanh the company had lost three on an operation with an ARVN battalion because the Vietnamese didn’t block the retreating vc, and the platoon lost two on a sweep through a village east of Black Virgin Mountain. But Rowe’s squad was charmed.

  Pages in his journal had become frayed and fat, the cover warped. He recorded what he could, though every event seemed part of a continuum—the same villages, same trails in a palling cycle—and wherever they went, if there were holes, Paez checked them out. Any progress in the war had little effect on them. At least they couldn’t tell any difference. Body count didn’t matter. A dozen, a hundred, two hundred dead didn’t stop the war, didn’t slow it, and the only territory they rightfully claimed was in front of their sight blades. They held what they held because of firepower. This was absolute. The platoon could dispense as much havoc as one of Genghis Khan’s entire armies, but all that did was keep some of them alive to the next day.