from my forebodings while I killed time until packing hour struck. Someone knocked on the door. I opened it to find Sarge Wallace beaming at me, a big paper bag nestled in the crook of his arm. “Sarge! What brings you by at this hour?”
“Evening, Jake. I had this batch of stuff kicking around my place you know, was going to chuck it, then I thought, hey wait a minute, maybe old Jake can find some use for it.”
“Come on in. I appreciate the thought, but I think I’ve already got more food on hand than I can finish.” Beers around, of course. While I fetched them out of my mini-fridge, he sat down on one of the rattan chairs, picked up my fifty-pound weight in his hand and absently began curling it, his elbow braced on his knee.
“No, this ain’t no food, just stuff and things,” he explained as I brought the beers. He put down the weight and hoisted his bag onto his lap. “You know how it is, you get stuff and set in on the shelf, or you stick it in the corner, one thing and another, and pretty soon your place starts lookin’ like a New York City junkyard.”
Sarge’s apartment always looked regulation spit-and-polish to me, but who knows? “Okay, let’s see what you got there.”
He reached in and pulled up a small box. “Like these water purifyin’ tablets. You know I’m not gettin’ any use out of them here in Saigon, but lots of places the water will damn kill a man, if he ain’t careful. So, if you was ever going to visit one of those places, why, you’d want to have these along.” He put the box on my bed. “Now, what would I be wanting with a extra first aid kit?” he asked rhetorically, dredging one out of the bag. “Do me no good at all. But you don’t have one, I bet. No harm to bringing it over.” He put it beside the tablets. “And lookie here!” he exclaimed. He pulled a long combat knife out and slipped it out of its sheath. I hadn’t seen one of those since my LRRP days. He applied the blade to the edge of a page from the newspaper, slowly shaving a long, one-sixteenth inch ribbon along the top of it. “They do put some sharpness on these, do they not?”
And so it went. A stack of lurp meals (“How many times have you woke up in the middle of the night, and you’re dyin’ for a bite to eat, and there’s nothin’ in the fridge?”). A field flashlight. (“We get these power blackouts, you know—this’ll he’p you find your way to the crapper.”). By the time he’d reached the bottom of his bag there was enough gear sitting on my bed to outfit an A-team. “Just stuff from cleaning up your pad?” I said.
“Oh, you know how things piles up as the weeks go by. Anyhow, I thought maybe you could find a use for it. Say, did I ever tell you about the Daniel Boones?”
“That Kentucky woodsman? I think I read about him in grade school.”
“No, not him. Some other Daniel Boones. A while back, mebbe 1968, they used to go on a few missions into that Cambodia. Heard about one of those missions one time. The Congs had a staging area over there, tunnels and roads and such. The B-52s came in from Guam and carpet-bombed it. Then a team of them Daniel Boones, disguised up in VC black pajamas and totin’ AK-47s, went in to see if they could find survivors to bring in for interrogatin’. They’d be all softened up, don’t you see? Easy pickings, just take their hand and lead them on home. Now, supposing you was to soften up a hornet’s nest by poking a stick into it? They’d be all riled up. Same with them Cambodians. Choppers set those Daniel Boones down amongst the bomb craters. Hadn’t been on the ground more than a few minutes when automatic weapons opened up from three sides. Half those Daniel Boones are still there, listed as, quotes, ‘killed in a border area’. The other half was grateful to get away alive. Interesting little guys, them Cambodians. They be smiling all the time, but they’re tough, they don’t take no prisoners, and I believe some
“Evening, Jake. I had this batch of stuff kicking around my place you know, was going to chuck it, then I thought, hey wait a minute, maybe old Jake can find some use for it.”
“Come on in. I appreciate the thought, but I think I’ve already got more food on hand than I can finish.” Beers around, of course. While I fetched them out of my mini-fridge, he sat down on one of the rattan chairs, picked up my fifty-pound weight in his hand and absently began curling it, his elbow braced on his knee.
“No, this ain’t no food, just stuff and things,” he explained as I brought the beers. He put down the weight and hoisted his bag onto his lap. “You know how it is, you get stuff and set in on the shelf, or you stick it in the corner, one thing and another, and pretty soon your place starts lookin’ like a New York City junkyard.”
Sarge’s apartment always looked regulation spit-and-polish to me, but who knows? “Okay, let’s see what you got there.”
He reached in and pulled up a small box. “Like these water purifyin’ tablets. You know I’m not gettin’ any use out of them here in Saigon, but lots of places the water will damn kill a man, if he ain’t careful. So, if you was ever going to visit one of those places, why, you’d want to have these along.” He put the box on my bed. “Now, what would I be wanting with a extra first aid kit?” he asked rhetorically, dredging one out of the bag. “Do me no good at all. But you don’t have one, I bet. No harm to bringing it over.” He put it beside the tablets. “And lookie here!” he exclaimed. He pulled a long combat knife out and slipped it out of its sheath. I hadn’t seen one of those since my LRRP days. He applied the blade to the edge of a page from the newspaper, slowly shaving a long, one-sixteenth inch ribbon along the top of it. “They do put some sharpness on these, do they not?”
And so it went. A stack of lurp meals (“How many times have you woke up in the middle of the night, and you’re dyin’ for a bite to eat, and there’s nothin’ in the fridge?”). A field flashlight. (“We get these power blackouts, you know—this’ll he’p you find your way to the crapper.”). By the time he’d reached the bottom of his bag there was enough gear sitting on my bed to outfit an A-team. “Just stuff from cleaning up your pad?” I said.
“Oh, you know how things piles up as the weeks go by. Anyhow, I thought maybe you could find a use for it. Say, did I ever tell you about the Daniel Boones?”
“That Kentucky woodsman? I think I read about him in grade school.”
“No, not him. Some other Daniel Boones. A while back, mebbe 1968, they used to go on a few missions into that Cambodia. Heard about one of those missions one time. The Congs had a staging area over there, tunnels and roads and such. The B-52s came in from Guam and carpet-bombed it. Then a team of them Daniel Boones, disguised up in VC black pajamas and totin’ AK-47s, went in to see if they could find survivors to bring in for interrogatin’. They’d be all softened up, don’t you see? Easy pickings, just take their hand and lead them on home. Now, supposing you was to soften up a hornet’s nest by poking a stick into it? They’d be all riled up. Same with them Cambodians. Choppers set those Daniel Boones down amongst the bomb craters. Hadn’t been on the ground more than a few minutes when automatic weapons opened up from three sides. Half those Daniel Boones are still there, listed as, quotes, ‘killed in a border area’. The other half was grateful to get away alive. Interesting little guys, them Cambodians. They be smiling all the time, but they’re tough, they don’t take no prisoners, and I believe some
Similar Books
