Strays Read online

  “What do we do?” said Billy. “We can’t get the table unless Ajax is tied up.”

  “I know that,” said Double O. “Let me think.”

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” said Billy. “I knew he wouldn’t fall for it. I mean, the man’s on his fourth tour of duty in Vietnam. He volunteered to come back, you know. Who does that? Who would choose to come back to the war in Vietnam when it ain’t his turn? He’s crazy. You can’t mess with someone who’s crazy.”

  “Calm down, Billy.” Double O shook his head. “Chuck may be crazy, but he doesn’t read minds. If Doc keeps his cool, we’ll be in the clear.”

  Double O looked back at the ping-pong table, where Doc was not keeping his cool. He was talking fast and flapping his hands in the air like a bird, and then he looked over at the sandbags and pointed, and Chuck looked their way.

  “Shoot.” Double O ducked down next to Billy, pressing himself against the sandbags. His heart beat against his rib cage. He held his breath.

  “Did he see us?” Billy asked, chewing his lower lip. “Did he see? What’s happening?”

  “Quiet,” Double O snapped, waiting. He listened to the breeze passing through the trees around the base. Somewhere in the distance, a monkey screeched. Double O had to ask himself what the heck he was up to. He should be at home in Brooklyn, not over here in Vietnam fighting someone else’s war. Shoot, he wasn’t even fighting. He was hiding behind some sandbags so that he could get control of a ping-pong table on a tiny base in the middle of the jungle. He shook his head and pushed himself off the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Billy whispered, frantic.

  “This is stupid,” said Double O.

  “But it was your idea!”

  Double O stood up, ready to swallow his pride and ask Chuck for a rematch, fair and square. But instead, he found himself staring right into the slobbering jaws of Ajax. A few feet behind the dog, Chuck smiled widely.

  “You surrender?” said Chuck, laughing.

  “I’m sorry!” Doc Malloy called from behind Chuck. “He traded me two cans of peaches to give you up!”

  “Traitor!” Billy Beans called without standing up, although he knew that he too would have betrayed them for two extra cans of peaches. They were the only decent rations the army gave out and they were worth more on this little base than anything.

  Double O didn’t make a sound. He didn’t dare even move. Ajax rumbled, a low-belly growl.

  “I’d stay still if I were you,” Chuck told Double O.

  “I ain’t moving,” Double O whispered. He remembered the junkyard dog by his grandmother’s house that had terrorized him and his cousins whenever they’d lost a ball over the fence.

  “You gotta admit,” said Chuck. “You didn’t even hear Ajax coming.”

  “I admit. He a heck of a dog. Just call him off, Chuck.”

  “Ajax!” Chuck called. Ajax’s ears perked up. All his muscles tensed. Double O closed his eyes. “Kiss!” said Chuck, and Double O felt a big wet tongue crash into his face and douse him with doggy drool.

  “Gah!” He fell backward and Ajax jumped right on top of him, licking his face like a popsicle. “This ain’t right, Chuck! Get him off me!”

  Billy Beans and Doc Malloy were laughing like madmen.

  “I taught him that a few days ago,” said Chuck. “Been dying to see if he’d do it.”

  Double O pushed and struggled, but the German shepherd would not let him out from underneath his paws. Ajax had him pinned, and Double O was soaked with drool when Chuck finally called the dog off. Then Chuck helped Double O to his feet.

  “You crazy, you know that?” said Double O.

  “I’ve heard it before.” Chuck smiled.

  Double O shook his head and spat on the ground. Ajax knocked at his hand with his nose, demanding to be petted.

  “I think Ajax might be in love with you,” laughed Billy Beans.

  “Oh, shut your mouth, Beans,” Double O snapped at him. He knew it was all in fun — he’d been ready to tie Chuck up a few minutes ago — but his pride was hurt and he wasn’t about to be mocked by Billy Beans. What kind of a name was Beans, anyway? If he let Billy Beans get away with making fun of him now, he’d get away with making fun of him forever.

  “You kiss so good,” Billy cackled.

  “I said shut it!” Double O yelled and gave Billy a shove. Billy tripped over his own heel and went sprawling backward into the mud.

  Like a jack-in-the-box, Billy popped up again, all the heat and boredom of the days with nothing to do boiling over in a red-faced rage. He clenched his fist and took a swing at Double O, who ducked out of the way and elbowed him in the side. Ajax barked, but Chuck caught him by the collar and held him tight as Billy scrambled around to take another swing at Double O: a wide right that missed. Double O caught him with another quick jab in the ribs. Billy elbowed him in the jaw and tried to get him in a headlock.

  “What is wrong with you?” Billy grunted. “You crazy —”

  “Cut it out right now!” A yell tore through their fight. They let go of each other and stood rigid at attention. Doc Malloy and Chuck also snapped to attention, with Ajax sitting alert at Chuck’s feet. Lieutenant Maxwell, the platoon commander and the most senior officer on the base, came rushing over. “What’s the problem here, Doc?” He addressed Doc Malloy, who was the oldest of the group.

  “Just a friendly misunderstanding, sir,” said Doc, following another of those unspoken rules. You don’t rat out other enlisted men to an officer.

  “That right?” said the lieutenant, looking Billy and Double O up and down.

  “Yes, sir!” Double O and Billy said in unison, staring forward.

  “I know it’s dull as dirt out here,” said the lieutenant. “But I need you guys to keep your cool. You’re my fifth fight today. We’ll get a mission soon, I promise.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said again.

  The lieutenant nodded and walked away, muttering to himself. He probably never thought when he became an officer in the United States Army that he’d have to break up fights between his own men like a teacher on a playground. He was only twenty-two years old, after all — barely old enough to be a teacher, let alone a leader of men at war. But so it goes.

  After he was gone, Double O turned to Billy. “You stay the hell away from me,” he said, and walked past him, knocking him hard with his shoulder.

  “What’s his problem?” Billy muttered.

  Chuck picked up the ping-pong paddles, clipped Ajax to his leash, and walked off to practice Ajax’s commands. If they did get a mission into the jungle, Chuck wanted them to be at their best. All this drama between people didn’t really interest him.

  Chuck wished people could be more like Ajax. Ajax didn’t care about the color of your skin or if you made fun of him or called him names. Ajax didn’t hold a grudge. Ajax just liked to play. Chuck liked to play too. Why’d everything have to get so serious all the time? Didn’t these guys know that life was too short for that kind of nonsense?

  Maybe they didn’t.

  They hadn’t seen fighting like Chuck had. This was his fourth tour of duty in Vietnam, after all. The guys were on their first, probably their only. They hadn’t been in the bush as deep or as long as Chuck. They hadn’t watched friends die, blown to bits by land mines, shot to pieces by enemy guns, skewered like roast pigs on the end of sharpened bamboo sticks buried in the dirt.

  They hadn’t walked point — that position at the front of a patrol — and known with every step that the enemy could be watching, ready, waiting to cut their lives off before they’d really even begun.

  Chuck had.

  Chuck knew.

  Chuck had seen it all and done it all, and he’d keep doing it until the war was over.

  The mission came.

  Second platoon was ordered to fly into the valley to the north and cut across the jungle toward the river, clearing out the enemy as they went. They were told to pack enough food and water for th
ree days. For Chuck, that meant enough for himself and for Ajax.

  He started packing the supplies into his backpack as neatly as he could so he could get what he needed quickly. Ajax was curled up just outside their tent, tied to a stake in the ground. When Sergeant Cody came in to tell them to pack as much ammunition as they could carry, Chuck smiled the whole time. The sergeant, whose bright blond hair made Chuck think of the Beach Boys, had been afraid of Ajax since they met. Ajax let out a low growl until the sergeant left.

  “What’s the point of all this?” Double O wondered, taking a few ration cans out of his bag — beef and beans, spaghetti with meatballs, sliced peaches, and enough Tabasco sauce to burn down the whole jungle — and rearranging them to make more room for bullets. “They ain’t heard the news? The war’s about over. Why we gotta go hunt for VC when we outta here soon?”

  Chuck kept working on his own backpack. He didn’t turn around, but he listened closely, wondering if what Double O said was true. Hoping.

  “How do you know the war’s ending?” Doc Malloy asked him.

  “Friend back in New York wrote me a letter,” said Double O. “Peace talks in Paris, France.”

  “Why they do the peace talks in France?” Billy wondered.

  Double O ignored him.

  “Vietnam used to be a French colony,” Doc Malloy explained. “The Vietnamese fought the French out, and then the communists came in. When the communists came in, the United States came in to fight them out. Now Double O says we’re being shown the exit door, although I think the communists still have some fight in them.”

  Billy nodded like he understood, but he didn’t understand. Politics didn’t really matter to him and he didn’t try to learn much about them. He just wanted to see some action and get back to Minnesota to tell the tale to Nancy Werner. Maybe get a medal on his chest before he left. But if Double O was right, if the war was about over, this mission might be his last chance.

  “See, Doc,” said Double O, “I got no quarrel with the communists. This is a problem between the Vietnamese themselves. Let them sort it out. I got no reason to kill Vietnamese folks. It’s not my war. My war’s back home in places like Selma, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee. No Vietnamese ever made me sit at the back of no bus.”

  “Could you knock it off with the politics?” Billy cut him off. “None of that stuff matters. We’re here, we fight like we’re told.”

  “Shoot, these mosquitoes be buzzing loud today,” Double O said, without turning to look at Billy Beans.

  Billy looked at Doc for some help.

  “Billy’s got a point, you know,” Doc said. “We’re here. We fight until they tell us to stop. That’s the job.”

  “Hey, man, I didn’t sign up to be here. I was drafted.”

  “We were all drafted,” said Billy. “But you don’t hear us griping about it every five minutes.”

  “Chuck wasn’t drafted,” said Doc. “Chuck volunteered.”

  “I was drafted the first time,” Chuck corrected him.

  “Now, I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would get drafted, do their time for Uncle Sam, and then come back and do it again four times,” said Double O.

  Chuck stopped packing his rucksack and turned to face Doc and Billy and Double O.

  “Ajax,” he said. “I got Ajax in ’68 and I reenlisted to stay with him.” He went back to shoving gear into his bag. “I just hope you’re right about the war ending. Because if this isn’t your war, it’s not my war either, and it sure isn’t Ajax’s war. He was drafted just like the rest of you.”

  “Well, we’re all in it now,” said Doc, turning to Double O. “And before it’s over, we’re going into the bush, and I’d like us all to come back in one piece. That means we’ve got to stay focused, and whatever you and Billy have going on needs to be left in the past. Forget history. Put it behind you. You ready to do that?”

  “I am,” said Billy eagerly.

  “In the past, huh?” Double O looked Billy up and down. Billy tensed, clenching his jaw as if expecting to take a punch. Double O sighed. “Shoot, seems like it’s always brothers bein’ told to forget history. Guess I’m a pro at it by now.”

  He put his hand out and gave Billy a fist bump.

  “We good?” said Billy.

  Double O shrugged. “Good enough.”

  “Good,” said Doc. “No more griping from either of you. It’s time to shoot straight.”

  “I can gripe and shoot straight,” said Double O. “Two things I learned best in basic training: guns and complaining.”

  Doc chuckled.

  “Yeah,” Double O laughed. “Sounds like one of Billy’s redneck songs.”

  “Uncle Sam don’t care if you’re complain-ing, long as you shoot straight in basic train-ing!” sang Billy with an exaggerated twang, tapping his foot and moving his arm back and forth like he was playing a fiddle. The guys all laughed.

  As the hour got closer, the men of second platoon got quieter. A few wrote emotional letters home. Others just stared off into the jungle, trying to read it like a fortune-teller reads a crystal ball. Although, if the jungle had secrets to tell about the future, it wasn’t telling it to them.

  Chuck walked with Ajax to the ping-pong table and pulled his utility knife from his belt. The dog panted up at him, his ears pointed to the sky and his nose twitching at the air.

  “You ready to go out again, pal?” Chuck asked.

  Chuck led him to the tree next to the table, where Ajax lifted his leg and peed.

  “That’s right, Ajax,” said Chuck. “Mark your spot. We were here.”

  Chuck spent the next fifteen minutes making his own mark, carving it deep into the weeping trunk of the rubber tree:

  Chuck P + Ajax were here. Devil Dogs. Undefeated.

  He stood back and looked at his work, with Ajax sitting at his heels. He rested his hand on his dog’s head and closed his eyes, breathing in the last moments of quiet before he heard the slap of the helicopter blades approaching to take him and his partner back into the war.

  The helicopters had gone and left them and now the only sounds were jungle sounds. The platoon stretched out single-file. Chuck let Ajax sniff at every guy in line to memorize their scents as they went past. Once they stepped out into the jungle, if Ajax picked up the scent of a new person, he’d know it wasn’t one of theirs. Some of the guys shifted nervously as Ajax sniffed them.

  “Don’t you dare let that dog bite me,” Sergeant Cody grumbled. A few of the privates smirked when Ajax nuzzled into their crotches. A few winced. But everyone nodded gratefully at Chuck. No one liked to walk point. It was the most dangerous position, the first in line, and they were all glad it’d be him instead of them.

  Chuck and Ajax got to the front. Double O and his big sixty-caliber machine gun were next in line, and some private whose name Chuck didn’t know was with Double O, hauling the heavy cans of ammo for the belt-fed machine gun. Double O had two bandoliers of bullets over his shoulders. They looped across his chest in an X like on a bad guy in an old Western.

  Chuck looked down the line behind him once more. A column of black and white faces looked back, all of them young faces, all of them grim and thoughtful. Every man was a little lost in his thoughts, clutching his gun. Some of them tapped their fingers nervously on the stocks of their M16s. Some of them shifted their weight from foot to foot. Some were still as statues, waiting for the long slog into the jungle. Chuck had been in Vietnam long enough to know it was likely that not all of them would be walking out again.

  Billy Beans and Doc Malloy were in the second squad back, about fifteen people behind Chuck. The lieutenant and his radioman were back with Billy, and the sergeant was all the way in the rear, keeping his eye on the line to make sure nobody fell behind or talked loud or messed up in any way that put their mission or their lives in danger. Chuck figured it was also the sergeant’s way of staying as far as he could from Ajax. There was no love lost between the sergeant and Chuck’s scout dog.
But if they each did their jobs, maybe they would all walk out of the jungle again, each and every one of them.

  The whole scene made Chuck think about elementary school, when all the kids would line up in the classroom, waiting to go to recess. There was fidgeting and nervous anticipation and excitement about games of dodgeball or Red Rover, the boys all wondering who would get to pick teams, who would get picked first, who would get picked last.

  Thinking about when he was a schoolkid made Chuck’s mouth go chalky and his eyes tear up. He shook the thoughts from his head, like Ajax shaking water from his fur. Chuck knew that if he let memories in, let fears in, let anything in but the job ahead of him, he’d never have the nerve to do what needed to be done.

  He had to walk point through the jungle.

  Walking point meant the front of the line, on his own, only Ajax for company, only Ajax’s senses to warn him of an ambush or a booby trap. The jungle was littered with traps, and all of them were designed to kill American soldiers.

  There were trip wires attached to land mines and hand grenades — tiny strands, almost invisible. The enemy hid them in the thick brush of the jungle. One wrong step and BOOM!

  Then there were the punji stakes. The VC took bamboo sticks and sharpened them into points. They’d bury them in the dirt at an angle and cover them with leaves so that a man wouldn’t see them until he’d impaled himself. Sometimes they buried them in pits and covered the pits with a thin layer of dirt and brush. An unsuspecting soldier would fall right through and get skewered like a suckling pig at a barbecue. They’d often smear the sticks with chili peppers to make the wounds hurt more … or with human waste to make sure the wounds got infected.

  It was disgusting, but effective. The greatest army in the world was being stopped in its tracks by spicy, poop-covered sticks.

  Of course, the VC would try anything to stop the Americans. They were fighting for their own country, after all. Most of the American soldiers didn’t even know what they were fighting for. At least Chuck knew. He was fighting for Ajax.