Strays Page 7

  “You cared about him,” said Chuck. “Nothing to forgive in that.”

  “I didn’t do what you’re doing,” said Griffin. “I buried two dogs in Vietnam. Two.” He sobbed into his helmet, whole body sobs that Chuck could see shaking him, even in the dark.

  Ajax shoved his face forward, sliding it along the ground until it was level with Griffin’s, and then he didn’t need Chuck to give the command — he just let loose with wet dog kisses, licking the salty tears off the weeping soldier’s cheeks.

  Griffin laughed and gently pushed Ajax back. “Where will you go?” he asked, his voice scratchy with sadness.

  “Some Frenchman,” said Chuck. “It’s a long story.”

  “I hope so,” Griffin answered. “All the stories I’ve got from this war are short ones.”

  Chuck squeezed his shoulder.

  “Nights so dark like this,” said Griffin, “a man can’t see a thing.” He looked at Chuck and repeated himself. “I can’t see a thing.”

  Chuck nodded.

  “There’s a trip flare about eight feet in front of you,” Griffin added.

  “Ajax’ll tell us,” said Chuck

  “Right,” said Griffin. “Send me a postcard when you get there.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be postcards where we’re going. It ain’t Paris,” whispered Chuck, as he crawled ahead with Ajax at his side. Billy and Double O and Doc followed, each of them nodding their thanks at Griffin as they passed. Griffin didn’t look them in the eyes.

  They crawled hard through the underbrush until they were far enough away to stand up. Chuck checked his compass and compared it to a map he’d swiped. He knew Laos was the country due west of them. But beyond that, once they were near the border, they’d need more than Billy’s cousin’s letter to guide them to the Frenchman. If there was a Frenchman to be found, they’d have to ask someone. They’d have to find someone local willing to talk to them.

  Chuck didn’t know how they’d find someone who would help them, or how they’d communicate without speaking the language. He couldn’t believe he’d spent over two years in Vietnam and all he knew how to say in their language was “Hands up!” and “Stop!” He pushed the worries from his mind. He could only take on one impossible task at a time, and right now he was focused on getting them as far from the American base as possible.

  Chuck let Ajax do his business on a tree, and then they looked up to the first touches of pink in the sky. It was their first sunrise as deserters from the United States Army. They were criminals now.

  Chuck grabbed the chain around his neck and pulled off the small metal dog tags every soldier wore. He looked at the dull metal stamped with his name and serial number. He bent down and dug a small hole in the jungle floor and stuffed his dog tags and their chain into it, then filled it again. The other guys watched him without saying a word. Billy absently rubbed at the spot on his chest where his own dog tags hung, but he didn’t move to take them off.

  “Too bad I can’t take the tattoo off Ajax’s ear,” said Chuck.

  “I’m sure it doesn’t bother him,” said Doc.

  “Bothers me, though,” said Chuck. He checked the compass again, nodded once, and pointed the way west. Ajax, as always, took the lead.

  The farther they stayed from the roads and the trails that cut through the countryside, the easier it was to avoid discovery. There would also be fewer booby traps.

  But cutting through the brush had its own challenges. It was a harder and a slower way to go. They had to hack vines from their path, cut through razor-sharp elephant grass that jabbed at them through their fatigues, and keep their eyes out for snakes and scorpions. The air was hot and heavy, but the thick brush gave them a kind of safety. It was easy to hide in the jungle.

  Suddenly, as they cut through a high hedgerow, hacking away at a tangle of thorny vines, they found themselves staring across an open stretch of rice paddies, a quilt of flooded fields with stalks of rice poking from ankle- and knee-deep water. The morning sun sliced down across the fields, and weary peasant farmers in conical grass hats waded through the water, tending their crops.

  The ones nearest the hedge stood up in alarm, staring at the small band of soldiers who had appeared from the jungle without warning. Neither soldiers nor farmers dared to move. Ajax sniffed at the air, his hackles raised, his tail rigid.

  “Yeah,” whispered Chuck. “I could have used a warning before we cut through the hedge into the middle of these people’s farmland.”

  “What do we do now?” whispered Billy.

  “We keep going,” said Double O. “Longer we stand here, the more time word has to spread that there are Americans walking through the area. We don’t need anybody knowing we’re here. Let’s go.”

  Double O waved at the farmers, flashing a toothy grin, and stepped past Chuck and Ajax into the rice paddy. His boots made a sucking sound with each step, but he walked forward confidently, holding his gun at the ready just in case. A raised red dirt path cut through the wet fields about one hundred yards to their east, where a boy on a blue bicycle rode by. He turned his head when he saw the Americans with their big dog, and he followed them with his eyes even as his bike kept going forward. He rode right off the path and into the water with a splash.

  Billy laughed and Ajax barked at the sudden noise. Several of the farmers ducked and covered their heads.

  The boy climbed out of the water and hauled his bike up onto the path again. He hopped on and pumped his legs furiously, racing for the small village in the distance.

  “They must have run into American patrols before,” noted Doc Malloy. “Otherwise, why would they be so nervous?”

  “I guess that boy’ll have a story to tell when he gets home,” said Billy.

  “Well, we should be worried about who he tells his story to,” said Double O. “Could be VC in that village.”

  “Keep your rifles on safety,” said Chuck. “But stay alert. VC loves to hide traps in rice paddies.” He moved in front of Double O so that Ajax could sniff out any threats better. The smell of the fields was strong — stale water and an earthy animal stench. Chuck worried Ajax wouldn’t be able to smell hidden explosives through it. But they didn’t have time to slow down. The boy was almost back at the village in the distance. Word of the Americans was going to spread fast.

  “Better pick up the pace,” said Chuck. He urged Ajax forward faster. The water in the flooded rice paddies came halfway up Ajax’s belly, and the dog had to do an odd sort of bounding leap to make any progress. The mud pulled on his paws, and some of his steps were uncertain. He vanished under the surface every few yards so that Chuck had to haul him back out, soaked. Ajax sneezed and shook the filthy water off his fur. He gave Chuck a look of dismay.

  “Don’t worry buddy,” Chuck told the dog. “Not too much farther.” When he looked up after forty minutes, though, it seemed like they still had a long way to go before they reached the jungle-covered mountains again. They’d be safer when they got there.

  As they walked through the marshy farmland, they were totally exposed to view from all sides, the four AWOL soldiers and their stolen dog. They could be seen from all the fields and from the raised dirt paths that crisscrossed among them, from the far mountains they were walking toward, and from the small village they had to walk past to get there. The farmers watched them nervously. No one spoke to them.

  “I hope they don’t know we’re on our own out here,” said Billy.

  “Just walk with confidence,” said Doc. “They’ll assume we’re part of a larger unit. Let’s do nothing to make them think otherwise.”

  The high grass along the edge of the fields made Doc nervous. An entire enemy battalion could be hiding in that grass, and they wouldn’t know it until too late. An entire American battalion could be hiding there too. Doc wasn’t sure which was worse — to be shot by the enemy because they were Americans, or to be shot by the Americans because they were deserters.

  After a few minutes pushing
through a deep field, Ajax stopped. Billy didn’t notice. He kept going, taking a few steps ahead of Chuck.

  “Come on, Ajax,” Chuck pulled the leash. “We’ve got to keep going.” Ajax pressed himself lower in the water, his jaw resting just above the scummy surface. Chuck cocked his head at him, studied the hairs on his back, the point of his ears and tail. He raised his arm and the other guys stopped. “Don’t move!” he called. “Ajax alerted to something.”

  “What? What is it? A trap?” Billy’s eyes got wide. He saw he was in front, ahead of the scout dog, and he cursed himself for having taken the lead. He remembered Chuck’s warning about traps hidden in the rice paddies, and it made his skin tingle.

  He scanned the water around his knees. Tiny bubbles broke the surface, but the water was too murky to see through. Could he have stepped on a trip wire somewhere down below? Could he be on a booby trap right now, caught in that time before it went off, still alive, but beyond help? Was this how he’d die? He swallowed hard. He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley,” he said.

  “Chill out,” said Double O.

  Billy opened his eyes and desperately looked back at Chuck and Ajax.

  “If it were a booby trap, you’d be dead already,” said Chuck. “It’s something else.”

  Chuck looked at his dog and then looked around. The sun had vanished. The sky was a pale green soup. The rain was holding off, but it wouldn’t for long. The earth was red, the rice paddies a mix of greens and browns, like a sloppy finger-painting done by a child who couldn’t draw people.

  Chuck’s heart skipped a beat.

  There were no people.

  The farmers had gone, vanished, nowhere in sight. He hadn’t seen them go. The wind waved through the tall grass. Time unstitched itself again, moving too slow, moving too fast. Something was about to happen. You didn’t need a dog’s powerful senses to feel it.

  “Where are all the people?” Double O spoke Chuck’s worry out loud.

  Billy flipped the safety off on his rifle and rested his finger over the trigger. So did Double O. So did Chuck.

  There was no real cover. They were still at least three hundred yards from the jungle on the mountains and they were maybe one hundred yards from the quiet village.

  Ajax whimpered.

  “What does he — ?” Billy started, but Chuck held his hand up for silence, and his face strained with listening. And then Chuck heard what Ajax had heard.

  Helicopters.

  The other guys heard it too. They all looked up.

  The unmistakable drumming of American helicopters beating their way across the sky.

  “They looking for us?” Billy asked, shifting on his feet, making squishing sounds in the mud below the water.

  “Not a chance,” said Doc. “They wouldn’t send choppers out for some deserters. Probably just routine flights. Moving soldiers here or there. Moving supplies. Anything, really.”

  “If they see us, we’re done. They’ll call it in,” said Chuck.

  “Are they coming this way?”

  “One sound I know for sure is the sound of a helicopter coming my way,” said Chuck.

  “How long do we have?” asked Doc.

  “Not long enough to make it to cover,” said Chuck.

  The thumping of the helicopter blades grew louder.

  “Everyone down!” Chuck commanded, and they all dove for the edge of the rice paddy and slid low into the dirty water. Chuck pulled Ajax on his lap and held him tightly, keeping the dog’s head above water, but keeping him still.

  The helicopters appeared over the treetops, blades beating the air, engines roaring. There were two of them, flying low over the trees.

  “Stay perfectly still,” whispered Double O, who had his eyes and nose just above the water line, peering up. He could see the barrels of the big machine guns poking from the open sides of the helicopters. He knew that the door gunners were itching to rain fire on anything that moved below.

  If the helicopters thought they were VC and opened fire, there would be nothing they could do about it. They’d be torn apart by bullets, killed by their own side, and they’d sink into the dirty water and maybe never be heard of again. Double O shivered. This was how the farmers must feel every time the American choppers flew over their fields and their villages: helpless. And afraid.

  The helicopters buzzed above, circling the village, making ripples in the shallow water, but they must not have found what they were looking for, because after about ten minutes they flew off again, continuing on their way and disappearing over the treetops. Double O exhaled, but no one moved until long after the sound of the helicopters had faded.

  “We have to get out of the open,” said Chuck. He let go of Ajax and stood. The dog scampered up on the red, dirty path above the rice paddies and shook himself off, splattering mud and stinking water all over the soldiers. Only Chuck had managed to turn his face away in time. The rest of them found themselves spitting and wiping muck from their eyes.

  “Leeches,” said Doc, reaching over to pull one of the thin, black, bloodsucking slugs from Billy’s neck.

  “Ow!” said Billy.

  “Check yourselves for leeches,” warned Doc.

  “No time,” said Chuck. “We’ll do it when we’ve got some cover.”

  “To the mountains?” Billy asked.

  “No,” said Chuck. “The village.”

  The others looked at him like he was crazy.

  “If there’s an old Frenchman’s plantation on the other side of those mountains, the villagers might know something about it,” he said.

  “How we gonna ask ’em?” said Double O. “Billy barely speaks English, so I don’t think he’s got any Vietnamese, and I sure know I don’t speak a word of it.”

  “And, Chuck,” added Doc. “Even if we can figure out how to ask them a question, they didn’t seem too eager to get to know us. They hid the second they heard those helicopters coming.”

  “We’ve got to try,” said Chuck. “It’s the only way we’re going to find this Frenchman’s mansion.”

  The others looked at him doubtfully.

  “Come on,” said Chuck, thinking of the nobleman in the old paperback he’d been reading. “It’s quixotic, remember?”

  Doc shook his head. “Don Quixote is about a man pretending to be a knight. He’s not a knight, though. He’s crazy.”

  “Crazy,” said Chuck. “But noble too. People help him on his quest; people want to help him.”

  “Does the book have a happy ending?” asked Billy. “Because I don’t think our story will if we walk into that village like pretend knights on a crazy quest.”

  Chuck shrugged. “I never finished the book.”

  “Quixotic isn’t a good thing,” said Doc. “To be like Don Quixote is to be a dreamer. Unrealistic.”

  “Sounds like a good thing to me,” said Billy.

  “We’ve got enough realistic in this war to last a lifetime,” Double O agreed. “Maybe it’s time we give quixotic a chance.”

  Doc sighed and gave in. It was three against one, after all, and Chuck was right: They didn’t have much of a choice.

  Chuck waved them forward and stepped out ahead with Ajax, heading toward the village. He wished he’d finished reading that old book. He could really use a happy ending right about now.

  The village wasn’t much to look at. High hedges ringed it on three sides, and only the moldering ruins of an old Buddhist temple could be seen poking over the top. Its spire was crumbling, its statues long gone.

  The tangle of hedges opened into a central clearing with a long, low concrete building at the far end. It had a front porch with high columns. Other buildings with tin roofs were scattered around the big building, and narrow paths cut between them. The smallest buildings had thatched roofs; they were more like huts, made from the same mud that was caked on the soldiers’ pants and that was packed into the roads. The muddy ground was puddled with footpr
ints, but Chuck and the others couldn’t see any of the people who had made them.

  “They’re here,” said Double O as they fanned out in a line and walked across the clearing. They held their weapons low but ready. “They’re just hiding.”

  Ajax was on high alert, walking close to Chuck’s side, his nose twitching in the air, pulling in all the village smells — wood smoke from cooking fires, rotting garbage and decay, human waste and sweat. It was a poor village, but it smelled lived-in.

  “It’s creepy,” said Billy, “knowing we’re being watched.”

  “Well, Sir Knight,” said Doc. “What now?”

  “Hello!” Chuck called out. “Anybody? We need some help!”

  The dark doorways stayed dark. The village answered with silence.

  “I guess they never read that book of yours,” said Billy.

  Chuck looked down at Ajax. The hair on his back was sticking up. His tail was pointed. He was signaling that there were people there. His low growl told Chuck there were a lot of them. Why wouldn’t they show themselves?

  The Americans were there to help, after all. They were supposed to be the good guys in this part of the country. Of course, the VC had friendly villages all over the south of Vietnam. It was hard to tell who was a good guy and who was a bad guy, when they all dressed the same and spoke the same language and lived in the same villages.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Double O, stopping and letting out a long sigh. He bent down and set his gun carefully on the ground, then stood again and raised his hands in the air, palms open. “We come in peace!” he yelled.

  Doc nodded. He didn’t have a gun to put down, but he held his hands up high too, to show he meant no harm. Chuck looked at Billy, who shook his head slightly, his eyes wide.

  “No way,” he mouthed.

  Chuck nodded slowly and set his own rifle down on the ground. “Sit,” he commanded, and Ajax sat. “Lie down,” he said. Ajax looked up at him, puzzled. “Lie down,” Chuck repeated.