A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam Read online

  “What the hell is your problem?” Sergeant Russell yelled, leaning over Scotty, his hands on his hips, chin jutted out.

  Scotty looked up at the face only inches from his own. “I, uh. I just tripped.”

  “Tripped? You tripped?” The sergeant pointed back at the building. “What the hell’s so hard about double-timing from the door to the barracks across the street? Are you some kind of fucking spastic, boy?”

  Scotty felt a sudden flush of panic in his chest as his heart pounded and he checked the urge to jump up and run. “I’m sorry.”

  “‘Sorry?’ You’re sorry as hell. You’re the sorriest piece of shit I have in this platoon, boy.” The sergeant looked up at the others and yelled, “We can all get some sleep sometime tonight if this young lady here can get off her ass and get with her platoon.”

  Embarrassment and angry with himself for getting singled out propelled Scotty to his feet. He scooped up the rolled mattress, sheets, pillow, mattress cover and blankets from the street and stared through the sergeant.

  “You gonna’ be a wiseass now, son?”

  “I’m not your son,” Scotty blurted out. As soon as the words left his lips he knew he’d made a mistake. He knew he’d pay for it. He hadn’t meant to confront the man. He was confused, out of his element and completely rattled by it all.

  “We’ll see just whose son you are, boy. I’ll deal with you later. Now, fall in with the others and quit holdin’ all of us up. Move!”

  Scotty ran and stumbled to catch up with the others in the formation. But he couldn’t miss the look of disdain on the faces of the others. He could not avoid hearing the grumbling. From within the ranks a voice said something about Hayes causing trouble for them all.

  Even though it was nearly two in the morning, the World War II barracks was still abuzz. The forty new recruits were making bunks, shining boots, folding newly issued clothing and stuffing everything into cramped lockers while all talking at once.

  The door at the end of the platoon bay opened with a bang and Sergeant Russell stepped onto the waxed linoleum. Scotty saw him before he had even cleared the doorway.

  “Where’s Mister Stumble Dick?” Russell yelled.

  With Russell’s arrival everything stopped. And except for the sounds of Russell’s voice and his combat boots on the floor it was suddenly silent. There was no doubt, he was looking for Hayes.

  Scotty stood up and stared at the blank wall across the center aisle of the platoon bay—not at Russell, unsure of how to calm his situation.

  “You don’t answer when an NCO is looking for you, asshole?”

  Still staring at the wall, not looking at Russell, Scotty said nothing thinking it would be better to play dumb than to antagonize the sergeant.

  Russell walked into Hayes’ line of sight and got nose to nose with him. “You know, boy, every new cycle of trainees has one problem child in it just like you. And every time I have to square his ass away. You see, it’s my job to handle these little episodes where dickheads like you just don’t get it and I have to make sure you understand who runs things around here and how this man’s army works.”

  Hayes broke his stare and looked Russell in the eyes. He tried to send some kind of signal he was listening and not trying to piss the sergeant off, but it wasn’t working.

  “What? You want to tell me something? You feelin’ froggy? ’Cause if you are you can go ahead and jump now. And I’ll put you on your ass so fast you’ll wonder if it was a truck or a bolt of lightning. You got me?”

  Hayes unsure of what Russell expected of him, didn’t answer. He felt his face begin to flush.

  Russell got closer, his nose two inches from Scotty’s and deliberately raised his voice, “You got me?!”

  Still unsure, Scotty tried to think of an appropriate reply.

  Before he could pick one Russell started in on him again. “Looks to me like you need some extra training, boy.” He turned and grabbed a rifle from one of the arms racks straddling the centerline of the aisle between the rows of double bunks and threw it at Hayes.

  Hayes saw it coming out of the corner of his eye and awkwardly caught it. Unsure of what to do with it, he waited for Russell to make the next move. Sweat formed at his neck and trickled down his back between his shoulder blades. His breathing became labored as his chest tightened. He was getting rattled. More rattled than he’d ever been.

  Russell grabbed the collar on Hayes’ fatigue shirt and pulled him to one of the windows. He tapped the glass and pointed out at a grassy field next to the barracks. “See that?”

  Before Hayes could reply Russell continued. “That’s a parade field. It is one point seven three miles around it. Most days you’ll use it for physical training and you’ll get plenty. But you’re getting a head start tonight, boy. I want you to go out there and find the beaten path that runs ’round the whole field and start double-timing around it with your rifle held over your head. You got it? Double-timing, that’s running for a dumb-ass civilian like you.”

  “For how long?” Hayes asked.

  “‘For how long?’” Russell mocked Hayes’ nerve for even asking. “Until I get tired. That’s how goddamn long.”

  Sweat poured down Scotty’s face from under his helmet and burned his eyes. His new boots rubbed blisters in several places on his feet and his arms felt as though they were made of wet sand.

  He regretted having started smoking before leaving Belton. His lungs burned and he was exhausted from lack of sleep. Rage, confusion and something resembling depression boiled up inside him as he staggered along the worn path, holding the eight pound M-1 rifle over his head.

  His pain wasn’t anything like he’d experienced in football or track. The sensation wasn’t like the pain from a muscle pull or a sprain. It was bone deep in his feet, shoulders and his knees. In school he could bounce back in minutes. But in the hours since starting Basic Training, pain seemed to stack up on pain. Even the joints in his hands were stiff with swelling and becoming tender. It didn’t feel like pain from training alone. It felt like it was deliberate. To punish him.

  His skin was on fire in several places where his sweat soaked fatigues constantly rubbed into his neck, ankles, crotch and waistline. His eyes burned from sweat running down his face during the unending hours of two days of crawling, running and pushups.

  What had he done to cause Russell to single him out? Why was he suddenly the pariah of his platoon? Everyone in his platoon looked at him like he was wrong, not the sergeant. He knew Russell owned him for the next eight weeks and could make his life even more miserable for him. Scotty knew for sure he had to get out of Russell’s gun sights. And it wasn’t going to be anything like pacifying his former high school vice principal.

  As Scotty continued to struggle around the parade field’s beaten path he caught sight of Sergeant Russell standing on the porch of his barracks, arms crossed, watching. From somewhere deep he summoned up the strength. He stiffened his arms to support the rifle and raised his head. He found the reserve to pick up his pace and steady his gait as he ran on into the dark Georgia night. He might drop; je might die out there, but he wouldn’t quit.

  In the dark of the platoon bay all he could make out was the deep shadows hugging the corners of the cavities between the floor beams holding up the second floor. The recesses were unlit by the promise of dawn soon to spill through the rows of windows running along the long walls of the open platoon bay.

  Unable to quickly fall sleep, Scotty stared up at the exposed joists just over arm’s length from his upper bunk. How many others had slept in the same bunk and how many of them stared at the very same beams.

  He wondered if anyone else in his platoon was suffering as much as he was. And with each day they seemed more and more like strangers than comrades in arms.

  Fatigue tugged at him and his problem with Russell dogging him and singling him out for ridicule weighed down his mood and begged for a solution. He had never been so exhausted or felt so alone. In the midd
le of a room filled with almost two dozen other soldiers, he felt like an outsider.

  Gone was the support he counted on from high school classmates when he was singled out by teachers. Gone was the chance to talk his way out of trouble with a smile and a promise. The others were getting along okay and he seemed to be the only one Russell just wouldn’t let up on.

  He tried to laugh it off in front of the others when Russell wasn’t around, but it didn’t work. He tried to solicit sympathy and got no response. He even tried a few handy excuses. Nothing was working for him. None of his well-honed skills at getting out of work or excuses for not being prepared from his high school days worked in G Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Training Regiment.

  Scotty was coming to realize his two problems, Russell and the platoon, were going to continue for the rest of basic training—almost two more months. He didn’t know if he could take it for much longer. And he couldn’t see any way to appease Russell or divert his attention to allow Scotty to quietly slip back into the obscurity of just being one of the trainees in the platoon. He was certainly Russell’s pet project. And it made no difference whether Scotty was screwing up or doing okay, Russell watched his every move, stayed on his back and made his life miserable.

  Problem solving wasn’t one of Scotty’s talents. His whole life had been ad hoc, on the fly and without deliberate actions on his part. He’d never been a planner or even a plotter; never worried about trying to get out ahead of problems. He’d always been able to disappear into the crowd, but he no longer enjoyed the luxury and it frightened him. He had to come up with something. But what?

  While everyone else was sleeping, Scotty had been cleaning the latrine. Punishment for something he had done earlier in the day. He’d even forgotten what it was. What looked like an hour’s job turned into four and he didn’t finish until nearly three a.m.

  He was so drained he couldn’t find the strength to take off his boots or uniform before climbing into his rack to steal some sack time before the next training day officially started. For him the days were beginning to feel as if they were all braided together into one long, unending ordeal dedicated to breaking him.

  He tried to get comfortable atop a three-inch mattress supported by a wire mesh grid looking more like garden fencing than bedsprings. He still hadn’t adjusted to sleeping less than five feet from overhead beams layered with many coats of paint. He knew he wasn’t going to get completely comfortable, so he settled for what he could get.

  He thought of home and Kitty. He couldn’t even quit. There he was in Georgia—on his own and missing Belton and even high school. And another day of it was about to start all over again. He felt the pressure to hurry up and get some rest because it was just minutes before the platoon would have to fall out of the barracks for the morning’s scheduled run and physical training. And he had no plan.

  “Hayes,” an angry voice whispered from above his head, behind Scotty’s bunk.

  Drifting, Scotty wasn’t even sure if he heard his name being called or if he dreamed it.

  “Hayes!” He heard it again and started to get up on one elbow to look around in the darkened platoon bay when the voice cautioned, “Don’t move. Just keep looking at the ceiling, asshole. Don’t even think about looking back at me.”

  Unsure of whose voice it was or if there was a threat attached to the whispered words, Scotty tried to decide what to do. He opted to lie still and listen.

  “We’re already tired of you being a fuck-up, Hayes.”

  “Who’s we?” Scotty asked, now sure it was another trainee.

  “Don’t be cute—the whole goddamn platoon. We don’t want Sergeant Russell or any of the other cadre on our asses because of you. You’re making us look bad and we’re tellin’ you if you don’t shape up we’re going to kick your ass. All of us.

  “Every time you fuck up we end up getting shit for it. We’re tired of doing pushups because you screw up. We’re tired of being the last platoon in the chow line because we have to wait for Russell to quit tearing your ass up. We’re tired of being the last for Mail Call because of you and we’re tired of being thought of as a bunch of fuck-ups around the battalion because of you!”

  Scotty could feel others standing near his bunk. They were all there. What could he do? Who could help? Russell. Maybe he could help. The same Russell who had been busting Scotty’s hump was the Russell he needed right then. No. Russell couldn’t really protect him from them. If they wanted to get him, they’d find a time and place. “You can’t —”

  “Shut up. We’re gonna’ have a blanket party. You keep it up and you’ll be the guest of honor.”

  Scotty had heard about blanket parties coming through the Reception Station his first two days in the Army. They jump you, throw a blanket over your head so you can’t identify anyone and then pummel you.

  He could feel his stomach tighten as he gripped the metal rails of his bunk and tried to calm his racing heartbeat.

  “We’ll just tell the NCOs you tripped and fell on the stairs comin’ down from the second floor. And you know they’ll buy it because they’re fucking sick of your sorry-ass attitude too.

  “Then we’ll be through with you, Hayes. You’ll end up in the Post Hospital and you ain’t our problem no more. They’ll recycle your ass. But we’ll be rid of you, you fuck-up. We’ll be graduated and you’ll just be startin’ Basic all over again.”

  Recycle. One of the other dreaded words he had heard. Rumor had it any trainee who was recycled to another training company to start all over again was in for harder treatment and was certain to be an outcast in a group he hadn’t started with, no matter how popular he’d been in his old training company. Scotty already knew how bad it was, he couldn’t imagine it getting worse in another company.

  The voice asked, “You got it?” Then he kicked the metal frame of the double-bunk for emphasis.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I got it,” Scotty said.

  He didn’t move. He just stared up and listened. The voice went silent and his sense of the others standing around his bunk disappeared too. Scotty strained to hear something, anything. Only the sounds of the Army broke the silence. From the windows, open three inches top and bottom by regulation, First Call played over a tinny loudspeaker, the bugle call provided by a scratchy record player at regimental headquarters. But it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the pounding of his own heart he felt deep in his throat and could hear pulsing in his ears.

  In what seemed like only a few minutes First Call was followed by Reveille. Another day at Fort Benning had begun.

  The sun pressed down on Scotty, as he sat with the forty other basic trainees in the bleachers tucked into the slash pine and scrub oak woods on the north side of the Sand Hill training area. Sweat from under his helmet collected on his shaved head and trickled down the back of his neck and down his forehead into his eyes. He tried to fight off sleep and hold his focus on the instructor standing in front of the bleachers, but he kept drifting in and out of the netherworld between awake and asleep. As quickly as he felt alert and winning his battle he would feel his head fall backwards only to snap back forward by some reflexive muscle response to the loss of consciousness. It was a special hell. The more he fought to stay awake, the more unsure he was if he was awake or dreaming.

  He’d picked his place in the bleachers because he thought he could hide among the others. The classes and the constant smothering of supervision by sergeant after sergeant from one training area to another was becoming a blur for Scotty. But he was getting a little better at ducking the cadre NCOs in his own company. His new problem was the instructors who came and went with each new class on weapons and first aid and dismounted drill and physical training were all unknowns to him. One was as likely as another to leap on Scotty for any number of infractions for technique, not following instructions, safety violations, uniform problems or just not paying attention. All of which he seemed to be able to commit with frightening regularity.

  Sleeping in class was
one of the cardinal sins, especially if the subject had to do with life and death on the battlefield. He soon recognized every class was about the same central theme somewhere at its core. Even so, he kept nodding off and recovering, slipping deeper. Losing control.

  Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain as something smacked him in the back of the head. His helmet flew forward, off his head and into his lap.

  Russell! He was standing right behind the bleachers. The tap on the helmet was a warning to Hayes. Either he had to stay awake or deal with Russell after the instructor lecturing on rifle marksmanship finished his class.

  “Sergeant Russell?” the instructor called out in a forceful military voice a form of handoff of the class to its own cadre.

  “On your feet!” Russell yelled as he walked around the bleachers to the gravel apron in front and stopped facing the instructor.

  Responding to Russell’s command, the entire platoon of trainees leaped to a rigid position of attention in the bleachers.

  The instructor waited for Russell to position himself in front of him. “This concludes the instruction. You can take ’em home.” He then saluted.

  Russell returned the salute. “Thank you,” he said and then turned to face the standing trainees. “Where’s Hayes?” he hollered out.

  At the sound of his name, Scotty was shocked to discover he’d been singled out again. For what? He was just standing there with the others, hidden in the mass of bodies. He blurted out, “Here… Sergeant,” without thinking about it.

  “Get your ass down here. Now!”

  Hayes snatched up his rifle and threaded his way down the rows of the bleachers to Russell. He slipped and caught himself, then nearly tripped over another trainee’s rifle butt as he bumped and stumbled to the bottom of the bleachers.

  What was it? What could he want? What was Russell upset about—this time? At the bottom row he finally leaped awkwardly from the bleachers and landed in front of Russell. He wasn’t sure if he should say anything.