A story by William L. Smutko
A copy of Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher lay on the polished plywood bar in front of me, open to page one hundred twenty-four, where Sam comes home to find a Crowe raiding party has killed his wife and unborn child. A whiskey on the rocks sits within reach.
The sound of activity and the smell of a woman’s perfume drift in from the entrance behind me.
“Sid, Sid Galloway?” a female voice announces and asks at the same time.
The sound of my name pulls my head around. A petite, auburn-haired woman wearing a volunteer shirt stands there smiling at me. “Amy Strong. What are you doing in Tân An?”
“I could ask you the same thing. As the uniform shouts among all this olive drab, I’m a Doughnut Dollie. How long have you been here? And you’re a captain.”
“I was transferred down here about three weeks ago. I’m an assistant S-4. Amazed we haven’t run into each other before now.”
“I’ve been out in the bush entertaining the boys in the firebases and too tired to do anything but crash when I get back.”
“Let me buy you a drink, and we can catch up. You don’t run into friends from home here.”
“Are you still tight with Susan Whitcomb?” Amy asks as she collects the gin and tonic I ordered for her.
“No, broke up before my last year at VMI Our long-distance relationship didn’t work. How about you and Rich Andreasen?”
“He’s still waiting for me. He’ll be back in the states in thirty days. I leave here in sixty. Then we’ll decide about the wedding. My dad writes that the corn is coming up nicely and the beans are planted.”
“Three drinks is my limit, and it’s past my bedtime. Have an early flight out tomorrow. Walk me back to my hooch, will you? Not safe for a woman to walk alone, especially after dark.”
“Glad to,” I say grabbing Mountain Man. “I was sorry to hear about Tommy Nelson. And Carl Walton’s lucky to still be alive.”
At the door to Amy’s room, she turns to face me and asks, “Would you escort me and Ellinore, my partner in crime, to the movie Wednesday evening? The guys stay under control if we’re with someone, especially an officer.”
“Be my pleasure. What’s playing?”
“Does it matter?”
“See you and Ellinore at 6:30 pm, Wednesday evening.”
* * *
Amy opens the door and invites me in. A young woman with sable hair, green eyes and light, creamy skin sits on the bed. “Ellie, Sid Galloway. Sid, Ellinore, Ellie Doherty.”
“An Irishman. Nice to meet you, Sid.”
“Your black hair says your Irish blood has a little bit of Spanish Armada in it. Nice to meet you too, Ellie. I brought three sodas and some popcorn my mother sent. All we need is some candy to feel like we’re back home.”
* * *
The credits for McKenna’s Gold crawl up the screen.
“The action was good,” says Ellie. “But predictable.”
At Amy’s door I ask, “Ellie can I walk you to your room?”
“I’m just nextdoor thanks.”
“How about next Wednesday?” Amy asks. “Want to do it again.”
“My pleasure,” I reply.
* * *
“How do you rate sitting with the girls in blue at the movie last night?” Jim Futa, my friend in the S-4 office asks. “I went to high school with Amy, the petite one. She asked if I would be their escort. They wanted to see the movie, but the guys pester them if they are unaccompanied.”
“You going to do anything about it?”
“Amy’s engaged and going home in a couple of months. Now Ellie on the other hand, That sable hair and creamy complexion. She has my attention. But, getting involved over here is awkward at best. The major in yet?”
“No, he’s in a meeting with the C. O.”
* * *
This time Amy has the sodas and Ellie carries a box of snickerdoodles her mom sent. We drop our inflated vinyl chairs on the dirt. Each of us has a soda and Ellie, sitting in the middle, has the snickerdoodles, as we prepare for Bullitt.
Ellie grabs my hand during the car chase. Startled, I almost spill my drink. Her hand is soft and warm and doesn’t move when the scene changes.
My right hand occupied, I set my drink in the dirt and reach across my body to get a cookie. I know it’s going to be awkward. But right away?
At the door to her room Ellie says, “Why don’t you join Amy and me in the mess hall for breakfast tomorrow at o-seven hundred. It’ll be less suspicious if you’re seen with the two of us.”
“They’ll just think I’ve got a harem.”
She grins and gives me a peck on the cheek. “You’re growing on me,”
The scent of her perfume ramps up my libido.
* * *
“Having breakfast with them now, huh?” Jim says as I walk into the office.
I just grin back at him.
“The major wants to see you in his office.”
“Sid, a special cargo is going by Mike Boat to a base camp near the Cambodian border. You’re escorting it. Be at the boat dock at zero-eight-thirty. Helmet and flak jacket.”
* * *
The smell of diesel exhaust saturates the air around the dock. An LCM-8 landing craft floats there heavily, the twin V-12 diesel engines loud even at idle. Five large, olive-drab plastic containers sit on the lower deck near the ramp, an M-2 fifty caliber machine gun mounted near the wheelhouse.
A buck sergeant salutes as I board. “You know how to use that thing, sir?” Pointing to the machine gun.
“I can load and fire it if the need arises. It was my favorite weapon during training.”
* * *
Positioned next to the wheelhouse and the machine gun, my eyes are wide open as the sergeant pilots the boat up the narrow Vàm Cỏ Tây. Ellie attempts to invade my thoughts, but the possibility of being shot at brings my attention back to the reeds and grasses covering the riverbanks.
Two hours in, the sour smelling, humid air wraps around me like a soaking wet army blanket. Even the breeze generated by the boat moving upriver doesn’t help.
The pilot noses into the bank and drops the ramp. “What’s in them,” I ask the company commander as his men unload the containers.
“You don’t have a need to know,” he replies.
I wander to the mini fort made of a couple of conexes, sandbags, and tents on the black, Mekong Delta dirt-mud. I have fifty dollars in my pocket, and I’d give all of it for a swallow of cold beer. Then feel guilty because I can have a cold beer in a few hours. These guys won’t see a cold beer for weeks.
* * *
An hour downstream, an RPG roars by the wheelhouse. I man the fifty, pull back the charging handle, loading a round into the chamber and start firing bursts of three at the riverbank where the grenade came from. I keep firing for fifteen minutes as the Mike Boat rumbles downriver.
“They know that what goes upriver must come down, saw us on the way up, wait’n for us on the way down.” Hollers, the sergeant from the wheelhouse. “Looks like it was just one VC. you either got him or scared him so bad he didi maued.”
* * *
Ellie gives me a hug and a warm kiss. “Understand you had some excitement on the river.”
“It definitely got my adrenaline pumping. But it was nothing to write home about.”
“Be careful out there please.” She says, her left hand caressing my chest. “I just found you. I don’t want to lose you. Let’s go get some supper.”
* * *
“Do you play cribbage?” I ask Ellie and Amy over breakfast a couple days later. “You two could join Jim Futa and me in the evenings after dinner in the O Club and we could play cards. I really want to spend more time with this woman.”
“Sound like fun,” says Ellie.
“Is it hard to learn?” Asks Amy.
“It’s really a pretty simple game. It’s adding up the points that can get confusing.
“Beats sitting in the room reading. See you in the club after supper.
* * *
Amy plays the two of hearts. “I heard George Owens was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor.”
“Fidget!?” I reply, questioning the validity of the statement. “Awarded a medal for valor?”
“Apparently he saved someone’s life while exposing himself to heavy mortar fire.”
Ellie sits across from me. She’s close enough I can smell her perfume and see the perspiration lightly beading up on her throat and sliding into her cleavage. I envy her sweat being that close to her.
“Fidget! You never know.” I say playing the six of spades. “Eight.” My eyes and thoughts right back to Ellie.
Jim Futa plays the seven of spades. “Fifteen for two.”
“Twenty-two and a pair for two.” Ellie pegs her two.
Amy lays down a seven of diamonds. “Twenty-nine and three-of-a-kind for six.”
I’m still thinking about where those droplets of perspiration are going.
“Sid it’s your turn” Jim interjects.
I move my eyes to my cards. “Go.”
* * *
Ellie turns to me at her door. I lean in and kiss her. She puts her arms around my neck and kisses me back. “You better go,” she says after a few minutes. Too few for me.
* * *
The major sticks his head out of his office. “Sid, I want you to start accompanying me to the brigade commander’s morning briefing. Meet me in the operations tent zero-six-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“Attention!” the adjutant commands as the colonel enters.
“Take your seats gentlemen,” the C.O. says. “And start the briefing.”
The S-1 moves to the center of the tent and faces the Brigade Commander. “In the last twenty-four hours the brigade lost seven K.I.A. and sixteen wounded. Twenty replacements are due here today from the replacement depot in Saigon. And a sergeant-E5 from the 6th of the 31st has been nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross.”
“End evening nautical twilight will be at nineteen-fifty-one hours this evening,” states the S-2. “Begin morning nautical twilight will be at zero-five-fourteen hours tomorrow morning. We have no intel on any V. C. movement in the last twenty-four hours. No heavy rain predicted for the next two days.”
The S-3 replaces the S-2. “Operation Woven Reeds with the 6th of the 31st division is ongoing.
“The 2nd of the 60th is standing down for three days. The 3rd of the 39th will join with units of the 25th at zero-nine hundred this morning.
“A one-o-five howitzer from the 2nd of the 4th is down for a new tube, a three-quarter-ton ammo carrier from the 2nd of the 60th is deadlined for a water pump.
“My boss, the S-4, says in his turn. “We have a shipment of tires for two-and-a-half-ton trucks due this afternoon.”
* * *
Two movies later.
“Come in for a night cap? I scored a bottle of scotch.”
“Thanks, I’d love to.” Any reason to spend time with this woman.
“I hope you like it neat. Ice and club soda are hard to come by.”
Her bed is the only place to sit. Her scent rises up as I sit down, tightening my body as my gaze wanders around the room aimlessly.
Ellie hands me a water glass with scotch in the bottom and sits next to me. “I’ve become very fond of you, Captain. In fact, I think I might be falling for you.” She scoots a little closer.
A shaky hand lifts a drink to my mouth. Her perfume blends with the scotch creating a hormone boosting fragrance. I turn to face her. She leans in closer. I kiss her and she kisses back. Reaching my arm to pull her closer the glass slips, dumping my drink and breaking the glass. “I think I better go.”
“Breakfast tomorrow?”
“With bells on. I can’t seem to get enough of your company.”
* * *
Sorting through the mail I look over at Jim. “When did you realize you wanted to be married to your wife?”
“Why, are you thinking of proposing to Ellie?”
“It has crossed my mind once or twice. I can’t get enough of her. I want her next to me all the time.”
“When she got pregnant,” Jim says. “Not because I had to be responsible and do the right thing. The thought of being part of a family with her filled me with an intense joy.”
* * *
After the movie, Ellie, Amy and I sit on top of a bunker and watch Puff the Magic Dragon, an AC-47 spew its red tracer fire on a treeline a mile away. “A one-minute burst from those three mini guns will put a bullet in every square inch of a football-field-sized piece of ground,” I say. “There’s no place to hide,”
Amy responds. “It’s barbaric of us to take pleasure in this spectacle. Enemy or not, there are people dying out there. It’s not just fireworks.”
Ellie adds, “Think of all the lead and copper that will contaminate the soil out there and of the trees and wildlife that are being killed. War is not good.”
On the way back to her hooch Ellie asks, “Shall we try the night cap again. I got another glass.”
“OK,” I say, my mind racing, thinking of holding her so close we meld.
The door to her room shuts and Ellie turns, wraps her arms around me and plants a big wet open-mouth kiss on me. “Lock it. I want us to make love tonight. I want to feel your naked body next to mine.”
My body responds to her, but common sense attempts to intervene. “What if you get pregnant?”
“Bearing your child, Sid Galloway, would be a pleasure.”
“Then let’s make it official,” I say working the VMI class ring off my finger and handing it to her. “I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now. Ellinore Doherty, will you marry me? There is no one else I would like to bear those children.”
* * *
The sand on the beach at Pattaya is soft and warm. Lime and chili pepper of Thai street food fill the air, small waves from the Gulf of Bangkok lap against the beach in a soothing rhythm as Ellie and I hold hands resting under the warm sun. We managed to fenagle an R & R together. A week in the sights, sounds and smells of Thailand, like a honeymoon before the wedding.
Beach sand from our bathing suits and sandals sugar coats the tile floor of the lobby as we approach the concierge. “We need transportation to the gemstone market in Bangkok,” I say.
“I’ll call a driver I know who’s very familiar with Bangkok. When would you like to leave?”
“Give us an hour.” I look over, Ellie’s giving me a shameless grin. “Make that two hours.”
* * *
The store is not large, but it overflows with jewelry, beautiful things made with gold, silver and every color gemstone known to man. The store glows as if the gems pull light in from the outside.
“I know diamond is the traditional stone for an engagement ring, but I like green, especially because we’re both of Irish descent,” Ellie tells the salesperson.
“And it matches the color of your eyes,” I respond. “The wedding rings, just plain gold bands inscribed on the inside. Hers, with love forever Sid. Mine, with love forever Ellie. We need to pick them up the day after tomorrow. We have to get back to the war.”
* * *
The bartender at the officers’ club can’t keep up. It’s official, The 3rd Brigade is going home. Three months from now. But there is an end date.
Amy leaves for Tân Sơn Nhứt and home, first thing in the morning, Joan, her replacement, Ellie, wearing her new engagement ring, and I, are sitting at a table near the west wall. Amy says, “You guys will only be three months behind me, but I’m going to miss you, not enough to keep me here but you’re my friends. Sid, take care of Ellie. Joan, Ellie will show you the ropes.”
Ellie and I walk hand-in-hand back to her hooch, partly because of the mutual desire for physical contact and partly to keep me stable. Ellie only drank club soda with a slice of lime at the party. At her door Ellie asks, “Can you get yourself back to your room?”
“I may be unsteady, but I can find my way back.”
“Good. I have some news for you…those children of yours you wanted me to bear, we’ve started.”
A sudden rush of adrenalin sobers me up. I stand there gawking, a huge grin taking control of my face.
“Don’t tell anyone about this, says Ellie, “or they’ll have me on the first plane out of here.”
* * *
“Do you still have to go out to the basecamps and firebases?” I ask Ellie a week later.
“I have to. Joan needs to learn what’s going on and how to handle it. I have to train her before I leave. I’ll see you this evening when we get back. I love you.”
* * *
After lunch the major calls me into his office.
“Sid,” he says. His fists balled up on the top of his desk and his chin quivering. “The chopper Ellie and Joan were on…it was shot down on the way into the first firebase. All six aboard were killed.
this work was featured in issue #15a