GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER or The Cavalry of Ten Thousand Horses - I: The Green Hell / 6: Drink This . . . It'll Put Hair On Your Chest

Zev had said that inside every FuPeg there was an American fighting to get out and it was the duty of every American, already on the outside, fit to fight, to help every fighting FuPeg he can or kill him if he can’t be helped for his own goddamn good. Presumably Zev had abandoned the squadron for his own goddamn good. Left and gone where? Gone west to a secret getaway with a secret harbor in which to anchor the MISS KEARNEY? Anchors ahead! Gone to a Pacific hideaway west by northwest of Fusaichi? Or somewhere north of Eden? Gone with the wind? Just gone, baby, gone. Major Treat believed Zev was dead. Dead somewhere or alive nowhere. Maybe he would follow his lead and perform his own vanishing trick. Wouldn’t have to be a clever trick either. For days on end the troopers would presume he was on his cot, at his desk, holed up and hermited, smoking and mourning his existence. Cleverness is not necessary against presumption. Probably even now one trooper was daring another to sneak in and put some kind of explodent under his chair, do that and the darer would lite the fuse. See if he so much as flutters his eyelashes.

He struck a matchlite, lit another Pall Mall. Never a drinker, the major, but he could smoke anyone under the table. Last time he’d had a drink had been a couple days after Zev’s disappearing act. Had taken his share of swallows from a canteen of jungle juice19 being passed around at the Atabrine20 Juke Joint. He’d been advised to close his eyes and think of someplace far, far away. The spinning world had become a hard spun world, his head in a spin and he’d been abandoned to spin away after his final swift swallow. All of which would have suited his father just fine. Father: what was that in the lips and hearts of children?

After a couple of months it’d been figured out that “little Mike” was a father of a handful of (dust) children, even their epicanthic folds matched the severity of his own. These kids were innocently vulgar, “Mistah, mistah, I fuck off, mistah,” oh, how precious. Some troopers picked them up like they would a stray mongrel puppy, “Hey, little fucker, ain’t you cute?” Other troopers wouldn’t touch them but gave them treats, sweets, let themselves be touched and the kiddy FuPegs touched them as if they were fetishes.

As if they were the colonel.

* * * * *

Lef-rye-lef past the church wherein Papa Clem was surely writing, rewriting, writing again his sermon. Poor bastard. The captain stopped to acknowledge, revere internally, not expecting a postive assertion of the day’s scheduled serivce later. Lef-rye-lef hada lef-rye-lef, mornin’, cap’n, mornin’, trooper. Popularity has its price. No one is pricelessly popular . . . well . . . except the colonel with his priceless fame. The captain’s price was lonership. Always being approached, asked for advice. Anything problematical and the troopers came to him, the popular problem solver. Always when he wanted to be alone with his books, thoughts. Hadn’t been approached yet, but the day was still young, infantile and Papa Clem was probably already drinking. A long look at the church. Capt. Shuvee had a private feeling that it was going to be a long day. And the stink would be stronger, the heat hotter, the humidity thicker – an eruption of premium thunder – unless a storm washed everything away.

* * * * *

Finally, after Fusaichi had shown them something different from either their shadows at morning striding behind them or their shadows at evening rising to meet them21, they’d raised the American flag up the flagpole and named their fort “Marcy” because heaven knows why and heaven ain’t telling. Some secrets should be shared only with a fellow secret sharer within the secret circle. Say, trooper, I know a secret. Well, hell, trooper, I’m already in on the secret. Dirty secret safely kept, they’d explored Fusaichi in all its intense greenery and unending stink and come across many a running stream without a multitude of stream colors: only green. A favorite of Capt. Shuvee’s was a winding stream in the wood. Stream had an oxbow in its winding ways and it had a stream line to its winding and in it he saw fish and crustaceans dance up stream (these being the primary source of the FuPegs’ protein) and though it was a shallow stream it reminded him of the Gulf stream that flows through the Straits of Florida, up the Eastern coastline of America and this reminded him of the squadron’s home fort, Larned where a river, stream, any source of water was dearly precious. Chapped, hot, exhausted, languid and numb, dry, goddamnit, that’s how they’d felt at their PDY in the Lone Star State, just West of East Texas. But, after more than two years of a TDY at Fort Marcy they’d rather bleed Texas red than Fusaichian green.

Bonafide Yankee that he was, Capt. Shuvee had found the country below the Mason-Dixon interesting, somehow more American. Yankeefied. Their fort, located between a river line to its East and one to its West, was as brown as Fusaichi was green though both forts, Larned and Marcy, could win the fight over dustiness. Only the texture was different: wet dust vs dry dust. Wet, not muddy and dry, not evaporated. The natives didn’t speak with one syllable words. They did not resurrect, but hitched themselves to the country, the earth, its flora and fauna, especially its horses.

Local history, ratified and locally constitutionalized by the city council (suspect word, city), officialized the founding of the city– as much a “city” as the radiotelegraph room was a “room” – as having been made by a despondent forty niner who’d failed to strike the gold in California and, after the gold rush, determined to strike oil in Texas. Strike right and you will strike it rich. He had made a rich strike and set out to make his place of striking the oil capitol of the region. Turned out that the region had no more promise of a richly deserved future in oil than California had a promise of gold. So he’d taken the rich find he’d found, kept it as a rich reserve and founded the “city” that’d eventually become the site of Fort Larned. Dusty site. Devoid and dusty. Even the whores have a hard time making a living, not for lack of customers, but lack of being able to pay a living price. Gonna pay me what for sucking the cum outta you? But at least it was only the cash that was green and at least the sucker wasn’t a crooked yellow color and a man could make a cash run, at least his cock was cashable. You’d think a trooper would be pleased that a FuPeg female would suck it for free, but that was just cold comfort in hot humid Fusaichi. Poor female FuPeg ended up with a burnt throat. Fusawhere, Fusawho, Fusawhat, yes. Never: Fusafemale spit or swallow? Always they swallowed. As if they were eating a hot supper.

Not many of those for the FuPegs. Tragic, ain’t it? Their food had the temperature of their world. Luke warm and soggy, air hot and tough. Whatever. Still chowed and shitted it out like the diners at the most popular diner in the “city” marked by Fort Larned. The food their could certainly give the mess hall chow a run for its money. “Tex-mex” it was called. Any trooper would gladly be a glutton for it if that were the price to never eat another meal at Fort Marcy.

* * * * *

Can a vice administer needed relief? Major Treat didn’t care to know. He smoked another.

* * * * *

Lef-rye-lef hada lef-rye-lef.

* * * * *

With Zev gone they would most likely never know why they’d been ordered to Fusaichi. During the war the powers that be hadn’t so much as given it a passing glance. Some had tried to involve it in the war, like a bomber who’d requested to use it for target practice or to bomb it just on principle. He’d almost been obliged, “Sure, how’s about seein’ iffen you can score a precise strike on that there Fusaichian fuck all?” It’d be harder not to precisely strike the Fusaichian fuck all, “Consider it done, hell, I’m bound to score,” but a higher power had over ruled the action and the Fusaichian fuck all had fuck all to do with the overall war plan to achieve absolute glory over all of fucking Japan.

The mass media had questioned the P.O.T.U.S. about which cities in the war plan had made the top ten list for devastation. He’d directed them to “Ask my secretary of war” and that man, duly asked, had refused to reveal the list but had admitted that “that goddamn Foo-say-itchy22” hadn’t even broken the top one thousand. Why not? The peace mongers had asked, thrusting their signs, flashing their armpits, blocking traffic. Because it lacked indoor plumbing, bricks and mortar infrastructure? Or because it was populated by poor savages (suspect word, savages) who only covered their privvy parts and could offer nothing in return for the effort it would take to rebuild their home after its devastation? The only thing America does better than devastate is rebuild. “Devastate! Don’t discriminate!” the mongers had demanded even while none among them could identify Fusaichi on a map of the world, “Fire the secretary of war!” The secretary of war hadn’t flinched. That which wasn’t worth the cost of the weapons needed to achieve devastation would not be devastated: that’d been the American standard since dirt and he’d be damned if he’d either lower or raise the standard because that power was beyond his pay grade and he didn’t have the time to do it even if he had the authority and besides . . . fuck you. Foo-say-itchy would never be marked on the map: devastate over X. Another mark, yes, but never a devastating X and not before the cessation of the fantastic bombastic days. Before curtains are drawn on the war there’d not be a single American lion in olive drab deployed to where his never say die roar would be an echo in eterntiy, his lion hearted military courage a wasted commodity. In Fusaichi you’d no more find a pillbox or a trench than you would a lion cavern. That’s what the secretary of war had promised and he’d goddamn meant it because Fusaichi was many things: bold and nasty as a jealous woman, unrelenting and unforgiving as a wild boar. Victim of war it was not. Its peaks and valleys weren’t pockmarked by pillboxes or scarred with trenches; its greenness wasn’t burnt brown. All its natural glory remained just as it must’ve been since creation. Not a war wound in sight. A shit ton of FuPeg turds, though.

19Moonshine liquor made from dried fruits contained in J- or K-rations.

20Synthetic antimalarial drug used in lieu of quinine.

21From The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot.

22A bastardized pronunciation by an American: eclipse forthcoming during the “Veet-nam” War when P.O.T.U.S. LBY infroms his military commanders that he does not want the defense of Khe Sanh to turn into “another damn Din Bin Foo” – Dien Bien Phu.