ISBN 1-59201-022-9
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
http://www.booksunbound.com
Publication November, 2003
Cover Art by Margaret Seeley
Enfilade
James Seeley
Copyright December, 2002
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences
are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental and not the goal of the author or Books Unbound.
I
Morning
1
"Now why do you suppose he's standing out in the sun like that?" Specialist Nicely asked, as he rolled a sheet of stationery into his antique typewriter.
"He might be waiting for his batman." First Sergeant Quarles smirked. The first sergeant had little use for any officer beneath the rank of captain. Captains could sign things. Captains could be useful. Lieutenants were an annoyance, at best, and the one standing outside in the slanting rays of a rising sun, like some misplaced tourist, wasn't likely to prove the exception.
Specialist Dickens looked up from the chart he had been creating with wide felt markers. "Want me to bring him in?"
"No," the first sergeant mumbled. "Let him bake a little longer. It's good training. Besides, the old man hasn't finished his morning nap."
Lieutenant Bernard Stanford Hope stood beside his duffle bag as the dense red cloud created by his arrival billowed, expanded, and then settled around him.
"So, you okay now, Lieutenant?" The jeep driver's mirrored sunglasses flashed briefly as he swung back into his vehicle. "If that's all the stuff you have, then I may as well get on up the road."
Before the lieutenant could answer, one of the two radios in the back seat of the jeep crackled with one side of a transmission: "Uncle Will, this is Friar Tuck, over... Roger, Mickey Mantle, over... Roger, Yankee Stadium, over... I need three choppers on the LZ ASAP... Holy Mothers of Mercy... Negative your last, I said ASAP... Well, I'll tell you something dog breath, it's not nearly as hot now as it was when you put us down... You just get them on the ground, you dinky motherfucker, and I'll get them out again. You copy?"
"Who's Uncle Will?" the lieutenant asked, pointing at the radios.
"Ninth, maybe. Could be the First," the driver said with a wave of his hand. "They're all pretty much the same."
"Oh, I see. Okay, then. Thanks for the lift."
"No problem. See you in the morgue."
One long crunching of gears, the smell of burning rubber, a shower of dirt, gravel, and dust, and the jeep was gone.
And he was on his own, left to survey his new home. The orderly room, he noticed, was little more than a primitive aluminum shed, sixty feet long by thirty feet wide. Four similar buildings occupied a substantial berm just ahead, but they were much larger, and had been numbered one through four. Barracks, he guessed. Wooden sidewalks raised about three inches above the ground were everywhere.
Periodically, a soldier wearing olive-drab boxer shorts, dog tags, and flip flops emerged from one of the buildings, proceeded to the edge of one of the walkways, paused, and urinated. The more energetic accompanied this ritual with the parting toss of a cigarette butt. That explains the unbearable stench of urine, he thought, snorting to clear the dust and the smell from his nose.
Vietnamese women wandered in, around, and through the area, entering and leaving the various barracks with apparent indifference to this lack of strict toilette etiquette. One particular woman burst from the third building while rapidly buttoning her blouse and adjusting her slacks. She then calmly reentered the building. A few seconds later the same woman, naked from the waist down and shouting a deluge of Vietnamese expletives, bounded from the door. Cheers, whistles, cat calls, and assorted hoots accompanied this bit of frivolous horseplay. The good-natured commotion subsided somewhat, however, when a pair of black silk trousers came sailing out the door to land at the woman's feet.
The lady stooped to pick them up and brushed them off. With her slacks over her shoulder, she quietly strode away from the ruckus with all the dignity the situation would allow.
Lieutenant Hope observed the lady's movement out of the company area, unable to remove his eyes from her. He felt ashamed and elated, the way a child feels when he anticipates breaking a taboo for which no punishment or retribution has been apportioned.
Three helicopters flying in loose formation passed overhead, red crosses prominently emblazoned on their bellies. To the south could be seen the faint arc of a red flare, then another. A dark green truck sped along the main road below, heading in the direction from which the lieutenant had just come. The truck was stacked with olive-drab boxes the size of coffins. A red and white Coca Cola truck, with "It's The Real Thing" stenciled on its sides, passed the semi-trailer going in the opposite direction. Their separate streams of dust roiled upward in the center of the road, merged, and then softly settled in the lush vegetation that lined the thoroughfare.
Smaller dust storms spewed from the wheels of other vehicles competing for space along this well-traveled route. One, an overloaded Vietnamese taxi sitting low on its rear wheels, swerved precariously in and out of a never-ending procession of jeeps, trucks, and motorcycles.
At one point, a large military truck loaded with soldiers ran over a Vietnamese man on a motorcycle. The truck stopped. The driver dismounted, walked over to the victim, removed his jungle hat, and scratched his head. He then calmly returned to his vehicle and drove away. The Vietnamese taxi also stopped. Its occupants leaned to one side to catch a glimpse of the mangled person in the road. The driver was seen flapping his arms as he exhorted his passengers to return to their places. Once his fares had complied, he placed his three-wheeler in gear and continued on his way. The other vehicles on the road did likewise.
"Jesus," the lieutenant muttered as he pivoted on his left foot, staring first in one direction and then another. "Where in the holy hell am I?"
At seven twenty-six exactly, he heard the sound of a chair overturning. This was followed by a muffled "God damn it all to hell," and a crash that sounded like someone's head bouncing off the inside wall of the aluminum building.
"Sir," someone said from behind a partially opened screen door, "I think the Old Man is ready to see you now."
Having gathered his first impressions, the lieutenant turned and entered without further delay. Had he chosen to study his new home a moment longer, one more thing might have caught his eye. A neatly lettered sign had been placed over the threshold he was crossing: "Abandon Hope All Who Enter Here." In pencil had been added: "except kiss-asses and lifers." Beneath that had been appended in red ink: "same difference."
2
As soon as Hope entered the orderly room, he was overwhelmed by the darkness. He stood helpless, rolling his fingers against his eyes in an attempt to make them aware of their physical obligations, but they merely responded by stabbing his optic nerves with minute bolts of lightning.
The voice of Specialist Fifth Class Bobby Nicely came to him from out of the shadows, apparently introducing the people in the orderly room. "This is First Sergeant Quarles," Nicely said.
Hope gathered himself as best he could, still unable to see more than the vaguest of shapes. Nevertheless, for the sake of civility, he thrust out his hand at the mention of the first sergeant's name.
The first sergeant grunted with pain. "You just clubbed me in the balls you, you ...sir."
"Sorry, Top," Hope apologized. "I can't see a thing in here."
Nicely then quickly introduced Specialist Dickens and himself. Neither seemed overly eager to move within the deadly arc of the lieutenant's hands.
"I'm Lieutenant Hope," the officer announced after the introductions ceased and his vision began to adjust to the indoor light.
The first sergeant sat scowling on a corner of his desk clutching his scrotum, beside a tastefully framed photograph of his smiling wife and two laughing daughters. Specialist Dickens had already returned to his desk, and was absorbed in choosing between impact orange and magenta markers for the chart he had been creating.
"You may have noticed," Hope continued with forced cordiality, "I'm having a little trouble getting adjusted to the environment around here."
The first sergeant snarled. Nicely peered past the officer with an uncommitted expression. Dickens selected a magenta marker, glanced at Hope, then decided the impact orange might be the better choice.
All in all, it was beginning to appear that things had started badly and taken a turn for the worse, when luck shifted in the lieutenant's favor. The commanding officer of the 986th emerged from his office and headed toward the new arrival. "Damn my eyes if it isn't, uh, well now, uh..."
"Hope, sir."
"Exactly. Jesus, are we ever glad to see you. Shit, boy, welcome aboard," the commander went on as he levered Hope's arm. His other hand gestured to indicate two thirds of Southeast Asia, parts of China, Russia, and lower Ellis Island. "You met the gang yet?"
"Yes, sir. Just now."
"Well, you can bet your ass they're every bit as glad to see you as I am. Right boys?"
"The feeling is mutual," the lieutenant volunteered when no one answered. He glanced around the room at his new friends, but they all seemed to be self-consciously avoiding his open, friendly gaze.
"So come on in, shit blast it. Don't stand there like cannon fodder." The captain nudged Hope toward the deeper shadows in the rear of the orderly room. "How about some coffee, Top? And maybe you can charm that two-faced bastard in the mess hall out of a few of the colonel's apple danish," he flung back over his shoulder.
"Consider it done," the first sergeant croaked, as he struggled painfully to his feet.
Author's Bio
Jim Seeley lives with his cat Louis in a small town in Tennessee (two traffic lights). The pace of life is relatively unhurried there and conducive to fishing and gardening, activities he pursues with occasional spasms of intensity. "Setting the scales back to zero," he calls it. He is the father of two grown daughters who regularly check on him to make sure he hasn't completely ossified.
Jim has been writing, off and on, for more than forty years. His pastoral existence is ideal for someone who only writes when the mood strikes. And, too, it allows ample time for rearranging the stacks of poetry, songs, and fiction that have accumulated over the years.
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