A story by William L. Smutko

The gas lantern glows brightly, but the thick canvas of the squad tent sucks up most of the light and traps the heat, adding it to the already oppressive Mekong Delta air. Creedence Clearwater Revival singing “Down on the Corner” drifts in from the next tent. 

Two seats to the left of Justin Seidel sweat drips off the player’s nose and on to his cards as he adds a five-dollar military payment certificate to the pot and says, “Raise you five.”

Justin notices that the guy avoided direct eye contact and that the pitch of his voice raised slightly as he spoke. “Call,” Justin responds, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve and putting five dollars into the pot. “I’m calling your bluff.”

“Two deuces,” his opponent says, laying the limp cards on the table.

“Here are your other deuces . . . and two fives.” Justin rakes in his pot. “Time for me to leave, y’all,” he says in his thick Georgia accent. “I’m on duty at the FDC in fifteen. They need me to tell those cannons how to shoot at their target. And Sergeant Preston, that black son-of-a-bitch, is riding my ass. He says my lack of discipline pushes the limits of his patience. A bit uppity for a nigger.”

* * *

A piece of manilla folder sticks out of Sergeant First Class Isiah Preston’s in-box. A flaming cross has been drawn on it. “That racist cracker Seidel,” he says to himself, shredding the picture with his bare hands. “Ten years, hell five years ago, I’d have found a way to pound his ass. Good thing for him he’s such a whiz at calculating gun elevation and powder charge.” 

* * *

It seems even hotter in the fire direction center as Justin lifts the flap and enters the tent.

“Seidel, you’re late,” roars Sergeant Preston. “Get to your station.”

The radio in the FDC cackles out. “Rapid Runner four, this is Socket Wrench, fire mission!” The maintenance company at Ben Luc is calling in an order to fire the artillery pieces.

“Runner, fire mission. Over,” replies the FDC’s radio operator, acknowledging the request.

“Fire mission!” Justin announces to the FDC as he grabs his mission sheets and slip stick (graphical firing table).

“Victor Charlie in the open,” continues the voice on the radio, giving the target’s coordinates. “Grid six-three-one, four-niner-three, one round.”

“Runner to Wrench. Grid six-three-one, four-niner-three,” says the RTO, repeating the coordinates for confirmation.

“Runner, this is Purple Cow.” The radio operator from Battalion’s fire direction center interjects. Battalion will confirm the math and make sure the trajectory is clear. “Copy six-three-one, four-niner-three.”

“Grid!” Justin yells as he repeats the grid to Ted Church, his tent mate and the chart operator, who says the grid back and plots the range and azimuth. 

“Range ten-thousand-two-seven-zero. Deflection three-four-zero,” replies Church.

“Range ten-thousand-two-seven-zero. Deflection three-four-zero,” repeats Justin, confirming the range and deflection. He uses his slipstick to compute the howitzer barrel’s angle of elevation and the powder charge needed to get the shell to its target.

The radio operator hands Justin the mic. “Cow, this is Runner. Deflection three-four-zero. Elevation four-four-niner. Charge six green bag. One round Hotel Echo, fuse quick.”

“Runner, this is Cow,” Battalion says. “Data checks. Grid cleared.”

“Data checks. Grid cleared,” Justin announces.

The FDC is rocked by the blast from a nearby howitzer. 

“Wrench to Runner, fire for effect.” The muzzle blasts from six 105s make the ground shake.

* * *

Their shift in the FDC over, Justin and his tent mate unwind, a cold Pabst in hand. 

“These 105s sure are loud. I’d hate to be with an 8-inch unit,” Church says, taking a swig from the weeping can.

“I hear they make the trays in the mess tent rattle. Figure I’ll need hearing aids when I get back anyway,” Justin says. 

 “How’d you end up in the army?” 

“I was on a math scholarship at Georgia Tech, but I was making so much money playing poker, hell, I could figure the odds of my winning a pot as soon as the cards were dealt. So, I quit school. That eliminated my 2S draft status and bumped me to 1A and I got drafted six weeks later. How about you?”

“The Monday after my high school graduation, I drove over to the army recruiter in Gulfport and enlisted. I wanted to kill some VC.” 

* * *

The complexion of the guy sitting across from Justin reddens and a scowl begins to redefine his face while Justin pulls the pot to himself and starts sorting the MPC by denominations. 

The fellow to Justin’s right shuffles the cards and says, “Five card draw, dollar ante.” He slides the deck to his left. Justin cuts the cards, then slides the deck back. The dealer checks to see if the pot’s right, then deals five cards to each man at the table. The complexion of the blusher across from Justin has returned to normal.

Justin opens with a dollar. The player two down raises fifty cents. Everyone else matches. Most change out three cards. Blusher takes only one, and Justin doesn’t take any. The betting starts at a dollar and stays there until it gets to the blusher. He raises it to five. Everyone but Justin folds. Justin raises blusher another five. 

“You’re bluffing,” blusher says and raises ten. Justin calls. Blusher grins and shows his hand: four queens. Justin lays down his cards and fans them out: the four, five, six, seven, and eight of hearts. 

“A straight flush beats four-of-a-kind,” says Justin. 

Blusher’s face is so red it looks as if it could explode. “You’ve won eight hands in a row. You’re cheating,” he spits out along with the saliva collected in his mouth.

“How could I cheat this hand? I cut the deck and after that the only cards I touched were my own. In this case, my luck was better. But I also play better than you,” Justin says, letting his syrupy Georgia accent express his disdain.

* * *

A piece of paper with two lines of typing on it lies on Preston’s desk chair. It reads:

What will they say when the first black astronaut goes into space?

The Jig is up.

Again, Preston thinks.

* * *

Justin and Church are working on firing data for the night’s harassment and interdiction fire missions on the Plain of Reeds and the area around Nhon Hoa, both known VC strongholds.

The plan is to not let Charlie get a good night’s sleep. The 105s will fire intermittently during the night. Church is running the plot board and Justin the slipstick.

The radio comes alive again. “Rapid Runner four, this is Blue Cat six. Fire mission.”

“Cat, this is Runner. Fire mission.”

“Runner, this is Cat. November Victor Alpha in the open. We are being overrun. Coordinates six-three-one-four-niner, three-niner-two-niner-niner, danger close. Fire for effect.”

* * *

“Those coordinates Blue Cat gave us are for the center of their compound,” says Church. “They must have been desperate to call artillery in on their own position.”

Preston interjects, “They’re probably thinking, we’re dug in, the NVA aren’t. If we call in artillery on our position, some of us may die, if we don’t call it in, all of us will die. If they survive, the company commander will probably be put in for the Medal of Honor.”

How does a nigger like him get off lecturing on tactics? It feels like three quarters of the sergeants in the army are spear chuckers, thinks Justin.

* * *

Justin looks at the five cards he’s holding: two of clubs, five of hearts, six of diamonds, king of hearts, and the ace of spades. Two players before him each bet one dollar. “Fold,” he says, throwing his cards onto the table.

They play eight more hands. Justin wins only three of them.

* * *

Justin and the other members of the Fire Direction Section file completed mission sheets from their shift and take out the trash to burn.

“Specialist Seidel, you and I are going to division headquarters,” says Preston as he walks into the FDC. “We’re going to learn to use the new Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer for fire direction calculations. A chopper is coming to pick us up tomorrow morning at zero eight hundred. Pack for three days.”

* * *

One-and-a-half hours after arriving at Division Artillery at Dong Tam, Justin finds a poker game for that night. The players are new to him, and all of them – one sergeant first class and the rest staff sergeants – outrank him by at least two pay grades.

“I apologize for the coffee stains on the cards,” the SFC says as he pulls out the deck of cards. “I was counting them out, making sure I had a full deck, and knocked over my cup and didn’t have time to go to the PX and get a replacement.”

Three hands in, Justin realizes that most of the cards are stained but a few of the stained ones have a pattern to the stains that is visible no matter which end of the card is up. He realizes the deck is marked. The SFC is cheating. 

A siren goes off and the local guys all yell, “Incoming!” They leave the cards and money on the table, grab Justin, and head for the bunker while mortar shells explode in the compound. 

In the bunker Sergeant Preston finds him and asks, “How do you like being on the receiving end?”

“I prefer sending it out.”

“Where have you been?”

“Playing cards in SFC Johnson’s hooch, a couple of buildings over.”

The siren wails the all-clear from the mortar attack, and Justin joins the other players as they pick their way back to the barracks in the dark—the mortar attack took out the generators. Just shy of the building that holds Johnson’s room, suddenly there’s light. “The generators must have come on,” says Justin. A split-second later, flying debris and the pressure wave from the main ammunition dump exploding hit Justin and the others. A flying two-by-four thumps, Justin breaking his right arm and he is laid flat on the hot ground like butter being spread on a piece of toast.

Preston finds Justin with a jagged piece of bone protruding from his arm and the wound bleeding heavily. The flying debris killed Johnson and the other four players. Preston uses a belt from one of the dead guys to make a tourniquet to stop Justin’s bleeding, then picks him up and carries him to an aid station.

* * *

“You saved my life!” Justin exclaims when Preston visits him at the 3rd Surgical Hospital.

“I didn’t save your cracker ass. I saved the life of the best damned fire direction specialist in the army. If you couldn’t do what you do with a pencil and slipstick, I’d have walked on by and let your racist ass bleed to death.”

“You think I’m happy to be beholden to your black ass?”

The doctor who saved Justin’s arm, and who also happens to be black, walks up. “You’re bordering on insubordination, specialist,” he says. “Maybe I should have just amputated your arm instead of repairing it.”

* * *

“Three jacks,” Justin drawls as he reaches to collect the pot, the cast on his arm making the movement more difficult.

“What’s it like, workin’ for a nigga?” the new guy sitting across from him asks in a thick Boston patois.

At the sound of the word nigger, Justin’s ears turn red, and his eyes scan the room as if looking for an exit. “It’s OK,” Justin replies. “He knows what he’s doing.”

This work was featured in issue #15a