The Time Keepers

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19 Vietnam, 1969

A T NIGHT, WHEN HE WAS BACK AT BASE CAMP WITH A TORCH lamp beside him, while the others smoked cigarettes and Stanley prayed, he would reread Becky’s latest letter.

Dear Jack,

We had our first snowfall yesterday, and the streets look like they’re covered in powdered sugar. How are you? I hope you’re not in too much danger. I worry a lot about you and it’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like over there. Is it still as hot as you said in your last letter? When I look at the snow outside my window, I think of you and wish I could scoop up a snowball and send it to you! I bet a cold snowball in the jungle would feel so good right now.

Did you get the candy I sent you? I chose hard candies so they wouldn’t melt. There isn’t that much new here. I checked on your mom, and she was a bit down knowing you’d be away for Easter this year. She has a little cough, but don’t worry! I was sick after finals, too. Classes here are so much harder than high school, and I don’t have much time to do anything else except study. There’s been a lot of protests on campus about the war. The other day police were called because people started throwing rocks at some men from the ROTC who were walking through campus. I wonder what you’re doing every day and try to imagine you here beside me, listening to records and playing with my hair.

Love,

Becky

Jack was not that good at writing letters back. As much as he missed her, loved her, even, he couldn’t just pull out a sheet of paper and tell her casually what he had to endure. ’Nam was like being in hell, and he knew if he opened up all the emotions he pushed down each day, he’d go out of his mind.

Jack found himself starting to numb. He knew almost nothing except hunger, exhaustion, and fear. He’d become almost robotic in his movements. He dug trenches and filled sandbags. He did all the grunt work he was ordered to do. But that was the easy part. It was when his platoon was ordered to go to the bush, that was when the misery began, the adrenaline pumping through his body telling him that any second, a hidden Vietcong could open fire and ambush them all.

He didn’t want Becky to know that his job as a radio man made him a walking human target or that his body was in a state of constant exhaustion and pain. So he only wrote to her about the banal. He asked Becky to check up on his mother, who he knew wasn’t good at taking care of herself. Too many cigarettes. Never much of a cook. He knew she was probably spending too much time in front of the television instead of getting outside. She had mentioned she had a bit of a nagging cough.

Tell her I love her , he wrote to Becky. It felt harder to write those words than when he wrote the same sentiment to Becky. That always just came floating off his pen. He would write to his mother separately, but somehow he felt Becky was an easier conduit for his feelings. She was so soft and lovely. He could close his eyes and almost feel the sensation of her skin beneath his hands.

In the Vietnamese jungle, twenty-five miles north of Da Nang, they walk through a maze of bamboo and thick vines, thwacking away the leafy coverage with their knives and rifles. It has been several days that Jack has been out on patrol, and as he pushes up the ridge, he can hear his own heavy breathing rising and falling in his chest.

He takes a cigarette from his flak jacket and lights it.

He is bone-tired. Every step brings with it the threat of a land mine or a punji trap underfoot. He hasn’t yet seen a man getting blown up in front of him, but back at the camp, he’s seen men pulled off the medivac copters looking like they’re missing more pieces than they have left.

After two hours of walking uphill in the jungle’s oppressive heat with his twenty-five-pound radio, his body is soaked with perspiration. He keeps the latest letter from Becky folded in the mesh liner of his helmet.

How is my love? she has written. Do you think of me as much as I think of you?

She does not know, because he cannot convey it in words, how often he actually does think of her. When he’s not thinking about keeping out of enemy crossfire or stepping into a leg trap, when he’s not thinking of how damn hungry he is, Becky Dougherty is the first thing that comes into his head and soothes him. He keeps a vivid image of her in his mind at all times, like a snapshot. She is sitting on his bed wearing his old T-shirt. A few wisps of auburn hair fall over her face. He imagines his finger moving that curtain of hair. A smile on her face that lights up a room. He wants to tell her, but he is unsure how to write it in a letter, that she is his beacon. His sunshine at midnight.

When he takes his helmet off, the ink from her envelope has bled from his sweat.

He hates that he has ruined something she sent. He tells himself he will wrap her next letter in some foraged plastic.

He wonders what she does with his letters, whether she saves them and then reads them over and over as he does hers.

He imagines her in class. He sees her laughing with her head tilted upward, a knapsack on her back as she walks through campus. In it, she carries her books and maybe a pencil case filled with a gum eraser and a highlighter. Maybe even a small transistor radio for when she and her friends have a break and are able to sit outside.

He, too, carries a backpack. But he will not reveal to Becky that the radio on his back, with its four-foot antenna, makes him a bull’s-eye target for the Vietcong. In his harness he has a pistol, a knife. An M16 strung across his chest. A belt of ammunition.

How could he write and tell her that?

They had now been up on Hill 35 for two days. A squad of twelve men had been taken out, led by Wes Sandoval, their point man. Sandoval was a six-foot-four Native American man from Sioux City who they affectionately called “Chief.” Since they left base, they hadn’t seen a single Vietcong. But after several hours scouting, there was a slight rustle in the trees. Stanley was the first to fire a burst, and immediately, down fell a VC.

When they felt secure enough that there were no other VC in the vicinity, the men went over to examine the dead man. Larini took his rifle and poked the body.

Lying on the earthen floor, the young man looked to be about Stanley’s age, no older than seventeen. He’d been shot through the chest, the blood soaking the front of his shirt. His eyes were staring straight ahead, vacant and without judgment. There was simply no longer any life behind them.

“Damn, Coates, you’re a good shot,” Flannery said as he poked his rifle at the man’s heart. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Stanley stood away from the dead man. His pale skin had now turned a sickly shade of green.

“You’re a fucking Kong Killer, Coates,” said Flannery, beating his chest to mimic King Kong.

Stanley didn’t answer to the name, even as some of the men began to chant, “Kong Killer! Kong Killer!”

That evening, when Stanley was sitting outside his tent, his head bowed toward his Bible and holding a flashlight over the open pages, one of the men leaned in to the others.

“I’ve got an idea,” Flannery announced proudly. “Anybody got a marker on them?”

Some of the men searched their pockets while others reached into their packs. Larini was the first to find one and give it to him.

“Jesus, Flannery, what are you planning?” Mike Djiokonski, the platoon’s medic, who they all called “Doc,” couldn’t hide his skepticism.

“Just leave him alone, for God’s sake,” Jack muttered.

“Yeah,” Doc agreed. “It’s not easy seeing your first corpse. Especially if you’re the one who iced him.”

No one but Jack or maybe Chief thought about the fact that Stanley had broken one of the Ten Commandments that afternoon and how hard that must be for him.

Still, some of his squad couldn’t resist what they thought would be at least a good diversion from the drudgery and their exhaustion. Flannery took the marker and snuck off to find Stanley’s helmet. Once he had it in hand, he boldly wrote the words Kong Killer on the fabric cover.

Hours later, when Stanley went to retrieve his helmet for night patrol, he discovered it defiled with the words of his new nickname.

The others watched as he placed it solemnly on his head and buckled the strap beneath his chin.

He remained silent, not condemning those who wrote the words he despised on his own equipment. Rather, without incident, without anger, he adjusted the helmet and walked over to his post. But Jack could see how Stanley had lowered his eyes toward his boots and shuffled quietly over the muddy terrain, that he wore it with a deep sense of shame.