"Thwack"
By Robert Bletcher
Thwack. Thwack.
The sounds of exploding heads and shredded chest cavities brought waves of nausea, even after almost a full tour in the bush. The hot metal of an M-16 burrowed into Sgt. Steven Tennenbaum's cheek like a blood thirsty parasite, but there was no target.
Thwack.
An artery slasher seared into Billy Fagan's chest and he fell, squirming on the ground like a hooked worm.
Thwack.
The invisible little bastard sent a second round into Billy's medulla oblongata, and the squirming stopped. A sniper was shredding the platoon. Steven raised his field glasses to his eyes, searching frantically, but he saw no murderer. There was only the thwack, followed by screams and then chaos.
The thwack was a horrible, airy noise of machine operating as designed, followed by the dull thud of contact with something wet and solid. The sound tormented Steven twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days per year. All the time that existed.
Thwack.
Jerry Grayheart's brain matter rocketed towards God, then fell to the earth soft as snow, clinging to the surrounding plant life. Steven lagged behind the front per his orders. His job was to locate, then obliterate any VC dug into the side of Dong Ap Bia, a stinking hump of meaningless dirt in the A Shau Valley. At least the objectives at Hamburger Hill were clear, get to the top. Small doses of clarity was enough when you were in country. But the price of getting to the top of Hill 937 was going to be much steeper than the hill. This was no booby trapped laden patch of jungle, this was no tension laced night patrol within a half-mile of a VC line, this was pockets of dug in rice eaters trying to keep the Marines from clearing the western approach of Hill 937 for the 187th infantry. Christ they hadn't even reached the base of the hill yet, they were still in the valley.
Charlie had melted into the valley canopy like a yellow reptile. Holed up in bunkers leading to underground tunnels, he scurried from hole to hole, like a colony of groundhogs. Worst part was, you had to dig those fuckers out one at a time.
Steven's field glasses felt like a pair of led pipes in his hands as he raised them to his eyes. Where was this mother fucker? All Steven needed was a glimpse, and he'd send this gook to Nirvana.
The acrid smells of rotting flesh and humidity burned Steven's nose. The air didn't move and there was no escaping how heavy everything felt. He lay flat on his belly like a maggot, trying in vain to get parallel with the ground. He desperately scanned the terrain, waiting for this one to make his mistake. But the whole mountain was alive with scurrying soldiers and the chaos of friendly air support. How in the hell was he supposed to find one VC poking his head up for a split second?
Thwack.
That one missed everybody. At least the bastard wasn't perfect. There was only one, he thought. One mother fucking, shit-eating gook splattering the guts of his platoon as they charged up Ap Bia, May 12, 1969.
It had been May of `69 every night for the past six months. Steven thrashed in his bed, and jungle sweat saturated his skin. He was close enough to being awake he knew he was asleep, but he had to finish. There was no weekend pass from the dream.
Lt. Barker took off, just like he had last night and the night before. He ran, screaming blindly, discharging his weapon in a hail of machismo and pointlessness. He looked like something out of a fucking movie, but his wounds were real.
Thwack.
His left arm broke in two at the elbow and blood erupted and cascaded down his arm like champaigne at a rich man's party. But Barker kept moving, firing with his good arm.
Thwack.
A gut shot. Barker fell to his knees screaming, clawing at his exposed intestines. Another grunt stopped and whispered something in Barker's ear. It was Twister from Kansas. Steven never knew his real name.
“You’re fine” Steven could read Twister's lips through his field glasses. "You're fine."
“Don’t leave,” Barker wailed, reaching for Twister. “Don’t leave.”
Finder tore away and dove behind a napalmed tree as a hail of friendly fire pounded down on Ap Bia. At least there was air support this time.
In his sleep, Steven put his hands to his ears and writhed against the headboard. The roar of the air support never muffled Barker's death wail. Steven looked around Hamburger Hill. He’d been in the shit ten months but had never seen anything like this. This was a fucking slaughter. It was only his second day in the valley, but he was starting to fry.
He’d learned about frying in Parris. He knew the signs. Steven’s lip quivered, and a hot tear threatened to run down his cheek. Feeling weakness was a sign of frying. He knew the signs. Steven stood straight up and dropped his weapon to his side. He took a few steps forward, he was ready to go. Steven was frying.
“End it,” Steven muttered. “End it.”
Steven stood tall, king of the bullshit around him. He walked straight as an arrow, his best girl dangling at his side, for maybe fifty yards, but no bullets came.
He collapsed, sobbing, behind a tiny natural redoubt then felt his weapon wriggling in his hands like an angry serpent. One shot to the kneecap would shatter it like a bowling ball through glass. He might lose a leg, but fuck it.
In a few minutes he'd be carried to an ambulance chopper bombed on morphine, dreaming of banging Terry in the backseat of his Dad's Buick. He pointed the weapon at his right knee. Nobody would know. There were no forensic investigators in the shit. His ticket home was right in his hands. What hadn't he figured this out before? His finger rested on the trigger. Steven was frying. He knew the signs His vision tunneled, then he saw the kaleidoscope, then...
Thwack.
Steven looked up. Thresher, from a small town in southern Indiana, Steven never knew his real name, just had his nose blown clean off the front of him. He was bleeding through a hole where his sniffer used to be. And Goddamn he was screaming, howling like a stuck animal. The ungodly screaming snapped Steven correct.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Steven barked at himself . “What the fuck are you doing Marine? Semper Fi, Semper Fi.” he shouted.
“Back to Parris, back to Parris,” Steven whispered, as he pressed his eyeballs to the field glasses.
Holy shit. A glimpse. There he was, just like that. Some chicken shit, five foot two inch rice eating mother fucker, killing highly trained members of the USMC, making Steven look like he couldn’t do his job.
Steven saw just the tip of a Soviet made weapon, then a two inch square patch of yellow forehead almost parallel with the ground. That’s all he needed. He took steady aim at the sliver of head. His vision tunneled, then he saw the kaleidoscope, then...
Thwack.
The VC sniper fell backward in a torrent of brain mess. One click of the finger and this kill zone was dead.
“Clear,” Steven screamed, his voice cracking. “Clear.”
About fifteen men rose from their bellies and moved forward. They got another thirty feet, maybe forty. Then...
Thwack.
You had to dig those fuckers out one at a time.
Steven awoke, shouting nonsense and cuss words, his T-shirt and shorts wetter than a Cambodian rice patty.
Thwack. Thwack.
The nail gun blasted its first rounds of the morning. Steven sat up in bed, took a deep breath, and slicked a tuff of graying hair back against his balding scalp. He looked at his alarm clock on the nightstand. Deck man was at it earlier than usual today. 0730 on a Sunday. Steven was starting to fry. He knew the signs.
It had taken him almost thirty years to get his shit together after coming home. Last year he'd finally saved enough from his third-shift job and a VA psych disability to buy a little house in the suburbs. Post traumatic stress wasn't exactly a vocation, but it had allowed him this tiny piece of what America owed him.
Six months into his ideal existence, a fat, hairy-backed bastard, living in the house behind his, had started with the saws, the hammers and the nail gun. All day on the weekends, and every weeknight from 1800 to 2100. It all started as a simple ten by fifteen deck, but the project grew like a cancerous tumor, encroaching ever closer toward Steven's property like a VC patrol in the dead of night.
Steven had called the zoning commission once. They had granted the variance, but he wondered if those suits really knew what was going on here. Certainly the government would not authorize this disturbance of the peace. When the clatter did stop, Steven could only sit and wait for it to begin again. He didn't trust the silence.
Once, three months ago, Steven had heard deck man. say to a neighbor, “Only got a week or so more of work to go.”
And to Steven's eye, the deck did indeed look about finished. But about a week later, the shell of an enclosed porch began to jut outward from the man's shitty little house like a tank through the side of a grass hut.
The lots in Steven's subdivision were a quarter-acre at best, probably smaller. The houses were literally ten or twelve feet apart. Rows of houses back to front, as far as the eye could see. Why were the other neighbors seemingly oblivious to deck man's hideous clamor?
Only a thin tree line separated Steven's property from deck man's never ending project. There was no escape.
Steven walked to the window of his bedroom, fumbled in a nightstand for his lighter. He lit a big Jamaican doobie and took a stupefying toke. He'd learned some things in the jungle he wished he hadn't, but there was no turning away from the lessons of the shit. The morning sun was hot and his tiny bedroom window was acting as magnifying glass.
Thwack.
The nail gun blew ferociously and with malice. The thwack was immediately followed by thunderous echoes of three hammer rounds. Steven's eyelids fluttered as he struggled to stay correct.
He was starting to fry. He'd been going to his shrink, doing his rapid eye movement bullshit, but there was no denying he was starting to fry. He knew the signs.
Thwack. Thwack.
Steven flinched at the sounds, his heart pummeled his chest. This fat son of a bitch had no intention of ever finishing his project, which had transformed itself into a hobby. What really irked Steven was deck man's apparent indifference to the clatter he was generating. Did he think he could not be heard?
“Put your shirt on you fat bastard,” Steven muttered, squinting out the window.
Deck man, Steven never knew his real name, shed his shirt every time the temperature approached sixty degrees, forcing Steven to stare at his hairy pelt covering rolls of fat.
Thwack.
This guy might as well bring the nail gun over here and let it fly into Steven’s temple. Steven was frying. He stood tall, pressed against the window. He was ready to go.
“End it,” he muttered. “End it.”
But no nails came.
Thwack.
The ungodly thwack snapped Steven correct. His thoughts drifted to the bedroom closet where his service weapon leaned harmlessly in the corner like a fishing rod. Just because he was discharged three decades ago, didn't mean he'd ever really stopped thinking about his best girl. She'd been resting peacefully all those years, but he could have her operational in fifteen seconds, twenty tops.
He walked to his closet and grabbed her from the past. He sat on the edge of his bed and held her gently.
Thwack. Thwack.
Steven’s head felt as though a bamboo shoot had been ramrodded into his eye socket. She was operational. He could do that in his sleep. Maybe he just did.
The sweat crawled down Steven's forehead, soaking into his ripped black T-shirt. Steven was frying.
He edged to the foot of his bed, leaned against the wall and put the muzzle in his mouth. For several sweaty seconds he struggled to reach the mechanism with the right big toe. The logistics of the endeavor served as a time machine and suddenly Steven was back in the valley. Barker's death wail snapped him correct.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Steven hissed. “What the fuck are you doing Marine? Semper Fi. Semper Fi.” he shouted.
He gripped his weapon with both hands and slid his bedroom window open about two inches, just enough to fit the muzzle through the opening. Where was this fat mother fucker? He was there, doing his thing, but Steven couldn’t see him through the canopy separating their backyards.
“Where are you gook?” he whispered.
Ah yes, a sliver of forehead, in the newly screened-in porch. That was all he needed. The M-16 would cut that screen like jungle bush.
Thwack.
The nail gun discharged and Steven zeroed in on a two-inch slice of forehead.
“Back to Parris, back to Parris,” Steven whispered.
His vision tunneled, then he saw the kaleidoscope, then...
Thwack.
She discharged with familiar precision.
Thwack.
Deck man looked stunned for a micro second, then fell in a heap. Blood and brains hung from the finished portion of the porch screen. The echo bounced off the homes in the neighborhood, but nobody would recognize it. A car backfiring, a kid with firecrackers, someone building a deck. There were plenty of explanations for a thwack.
“Clear,” Steven yelled, his voice cracking. “Clear.”
There was quiet now. The man had no wife Steven had ever seen. He might start to stink before someone found him. Steven sat back on the edge of the bed, his best girl resting next to him. He was still as a dead man. He didn't blink. He didn't move for thirty minutes, maybe forty, then....
Thwack.
Steven grimaced with pain, but not surprise. He stood and walked slowly to the window. He scanned the row of back yards. Three houses due north of the deck man’s place, a new project had begun. Another man had staked off a portion of his yard directly behind his house. Steven watched as the man repeatedly disappeared to the front of his house, then reappeared a few moments later, carrying tools, lumber and other building materials. It looked as though this man was getting ready to build a deck.
Steven watched as the man happily set about beginning what promised to be a long and detailed home improvement. Steven was frying.
He walked to the window. The hot metal of the M-16 burrowed into Sgt. Steven Tennenbaum’s cheek as he slid the bedroom window open. The warm sun felt good on his face as he took his aim.
“Back to Parris,” he whispered.
You have to dig these fuckers out one at a time.
Thwack.
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