Winston
By Charles Jacobson
My life as a company clerk may not have been sexy, but it was the most sought after job in Vietnam (Killer wanted it bad, but never got his chance). I was many things. Besides the full-time job of taking care of company business, I was mother confessor and personal vending machine.
“Can you get me a Swiss knife?”
“A Rolex?”
“Any rings?”
“Camera?”
“A pipe?”
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
“I’ll give you a gook ear for an SKS.”
“A TV?”
“Chocolate covered cherries?”
After a busy day at the office, I put away the typewriter and turned off the TV. I hit the sheets and began to dream almost at the same time that I passed out:
It was raining. My wife offered a ride in our Impala. I said, “I’ve been expecting you,” and got in. We drove on and smoked. Someone was in the back seat. The face was blank. My wife stopped outside our apartment. She grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull away. She tightened her grip and sobbed, “Borgo!”
My bunk mate Bob and the supply sergeant shook me awake. Dogs were barking.
“Get up! Get up! Get up!”
“Shut those stupid dogs up!”
“Look out!” they said.
“Look out, yourself!”
They led me outside in my underwear, half-awake. I shook the sleep out of my eyes and saw a line of frags (fragmentation grenades) lying atop the four-foot pile of sandbags that formed a bulwark around the lower half of the wooden barracks. Enough force to blow the barracks to kingdom come, six feet from my bunk!
The tops of the rogue grenades had been carefully unscrewed, the blasting caps and fuses removed, daisy-chained together with detonating cord. Wily Coyote lit the det, not knowing that it had to be set-off with a blasting cap. We stared at the blackened end where it had stopped burning, and looked at each other. Then back at the contraption. A half-inch away! Sheer luck. My heart beat and blood rushed to my brain. “Who ordered anchovies? All Looney Tunes had to do is roll a frag down the hall.”
A Maalox Moment waited at the back door—a Claymore mine perched on its spindly legs, aimed squarely at anyone exiting that way. The perp hadn't hooked this up right, either.
I retreated into the friendly confines of the barracks with my comrades, and turned to them for an explanation and assurance. “I can't believe this shit.” Bob filled me in. “You know what a light sleeper I am. When the dogs woke me up, I went to take a piss. I stepped outside the front door in my bare feet and froze. There was a shadowy figure crouching next to our building. I couldn't tell if it was U.S. or Vietnamese. It ran off in the dark after the supply sergeant peered out.”
My brain was trying to figure out was was going on here. A pack of wild dogs—led by a female answering to ‘Bitch’—roamed freely throughout the base day and night. Battalion fed and looked after them, but I paid them no mind until the curious incident of the dogs in the night-time saved us!
We collected ourselves, cataloged the objects and rang up the base CID (Criminal Investigation Division). I posted a guard over the whatsis and stumbled back to my bunk to catch some Z’s on my rumpled poncho liner.
The CID showed up early and took us through a bunch of rigmarole while he dusted for fingerprints and collected evidence. The rough surface of the pineapples (grenades) made fingerprint identification impossible.
No matter. I had a bad feeling about PFC Winston. The first time I laid eyes on him was late the previous afternoon, while I was absorbed in the day’s news. He came out of nowhere and stood before me in a bushy Afro, squinting out of his fiery eyes. “Hey, man, wassup?”
I replied, “Not much.”
“I need a form.”
“What form?”
“I gotta get back to Chicago.”
“See if you can get emergency leave.”
“Aren’t you the one that types up orders?”
“Yeah.”
“Whose ass do I have to kiss?”
“Find a higher rank, and I'll type up the orders.”
“C’mon, man. You can fake ‘em.”
“No chance.”
“You got a girl?”
“A wife.”
“You understand, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jody’s fuck’n my wife.”
“Why don’t you see the chaplain?”
He laughed. “What can that cocksucker do? I'm stuck here.”
“You could write a letter.”
He waved his arms, “You gotta listen to me. She’s cheatin’ on me, messin’ around.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Make a deal. What are you doing here if you don’t make deals?”
The gears in his head were cranking overtime, but his logic wasn’t. I had the winning hand and slammed on the brakes. “I don’t make deals.”
He stormed out. “They’ll be a death in the family if I don’t make it home.”
Strange and kinda pathetic, it all came together. I had put Winston’s willful denial of what we call reality far from my mind that afternoon. That was that, as they say, but it wasn’t. He sacrificed everything to his passion, aimed his fury at me in my little bed, and laid himself open to the charge of attempted murder.
Until they took him into custody, I retrieved my trusty Colt .45 from the arms room and loaded it with a full clip. I kept it near and dear. It was on my desk at work, on the mess hall table, beside me in the shitter or shower, under my pillow or in my holster. Let the weapon decide.
Winston went too far too fast, but he got to go home after all. Rather than a trial, they gave him a dishonorable and dumped him back into society. A win for him and the army, but not for me—one spark and my story ends here.
****
Charles Jacobson is an army veteran with an abiding interest in philosophy and the arts and a cat who doesn't like him. He is published in Proud to Be, Pure Slush Books, Fleas on the Dog, Military Experience and the Arts, Poets Choice, Drunk Monkeys, Wingless Dreamer and The Yard.