This chapter continues where "Welcome to Vietnam" left off. For the unfamiliar, Soda and his crew faced a small ambush and although no one was injured, the village from which the ambush was laid is being destroyed in retaliation. Usual warnings apply.

I'm sitting here, overlooking a rice paddy still puffing away on my cancer stick.

Because what the hell am I supposed to do?

Out of the corner of my eye I can see the red and orange flames turn black and grey and then sorta disappear; but not before making a huge explosion that looks like a 4th of July display on speed.

Trippy, huh?

See what I mean when I say you don't gotta be high to be HIGH in Vietnam?

I'm on my fifth cigarette, and I'm thinking of whom I'm going to bum some more sticks from this evening, and what I'm gonna have to barter with them in exchange. Chocolate? C-Rations?

The four cigarettes I've already smoked form a cross on the ground. I didn't do it on purpose, they just fell out of my hands that way.

And, I'm not saying that they're a sign, or a symbol, or they mean anything other than I've developed quite a little habit in the course of a month; but I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit that it gave me the shivers.

Dad never had much use for God and even less for religion, while Mom had a deep, but quiet faith. The last time I was in church was their funeral; which is probably why the place gives me the heebie-jeebies to this day.

I'd be a lyin' SOB if I didn't admit that since I got here I've prayed. Don't know who or what I'm praying for, or to, but I pray.

I glance up at Irish, I mean, Phil; still smoking the same damn cigarette, taking long, slow puffs.

"Hey Philly, how do ya know about the elephants and all about Vietnam, they didn't teach us that stuff in Boot, did they?"

Boot camp by the way was a blast, and by that I mean a total bitch of a time. Not that I was expecting a picnic or nothing.

I did real good at combat practice and marksmanship. In fact, I got the highest score on the marksmanship test. Who woulda thought that all those huntin' trips Dad took us on would have paid off?

I did pretty good with all of the strength test, I mean, I'm not Darry, but I've never been lacking when it comes to muscles.

I did okay running all of those marathons, but let's just say Ponyboy is the track star of my family.

I did shit on the written tests-but hey, what else is new?

Hell, if I ever aced a test you know the end of the world is coming.

Thing is, when I was in those classes I really paid attention. I mean, I tried in school, but not like this. I buckled down, because shit, this wasn't like algebra or history; this could mean the difference between life and death. So there I am leaning towards the Sargent who's teaching the class, pencil in my hand, getting ready to take notes like I've never taken notes in my life.

And what do I get?

A two hour class. Eight weeks, two hours. They taught us a few phases of Vietnamese, and man, is it a hard language! The Sarge was this guy from Kentucky and his accent was so thick and laid on I felt like I was in the middle of hillbilly jamboree. I mean I know I got a twang, but that guy, Jeez.

They showed us some maps and they told us we "gotta be careful of them Orientals because they were sneaky." That was the entire class.

Phil was in the class with me and he looked dead ahead at the Sarge, no emotion on his face, but I looked down at his hands and they were gripping the desk with such anger. I don't think I've ever seen Irish angry before.

I just snuck a yawn and tried to give him a smirk, but he looked straight ahead, still gripping that desk.

I thought about calling Pony and asking him to share all he knew about Vietnam, but I didn't want to scare him and I didn't want to scare myself so I ended up here green as grass and blind as a bat.

But a bat who can shoot real well.

So there's that.

Phil talks about his dad, the former professor who lost seven fingers, and I'm tryin' to imagine what that would be like. I mean, how do you deal with having part of your body one moment and have it go missing the next?

I think about Johnny, my buddy, who would have been crippled for life had he survived. How do you deal with that? How do you handle looking at your fingers, or your hands or your legs and know that they are not there, or that they don't work anymore?

I wonder what would be worse, to lose part of your body-like Phil's dad, or to still have your legs and arms, but to know that they don't work anymore?

I look at Phil, and he's still puffing away, but his eyes have a far away look to them. His voice is stilted and I can tell he don't want to talk about his folks, even as I see the tiniest bit of a wistful smile sneak up on his lips.

So, I drop the subject.

And I think of his dad, who spent years teaching kids about Vietnam and the Orient, only to lose his job and end up with a kid who gets drafted to fight in Vietnam as a soldier.

I take another puff on my cigarette because, what the hell am I supposed to do?

And maybe I look down at my fingers and count my blessings.

Our job is to go into the village, count the dead Cong bodies, interrogate the survivors and take their weapons.

Easy-Peasy. You know, just another day in Vietnam.

When I was a little kid I use spin around and make myself real dizzy.

I can still hear Darry, "Soda! You bump into me one more time and I'm gonna clobber you."

And he would.

And I would still continue to twirl around, laughing, even though I felt like I was going to throw up.

That's what Vietnam is like.

It can make you dizzy.

So, there are times when we go into these villages to win hearts and minds, or at least prevent Charlie from winning their men, food and weapons. We go into these villages and help them fix a well, or find a runaway water buffalo. We give their kids their immunizations and play with them, and I kinda like that. Playing with the kids, I mean.

I like kids. I know I ain't exactly a winning number: poor, dumb and no prospects, but I want to have a wife and house full of kids when I'm a bit older. And it's fun playing with the kids.

There was one village we visited last week...

For a second I almost forget I'm in a war zone. It doesn't matter that they don't speak any English and my Vietnamese is limited to a few words, we play with each other and I give one of them a horsey ride on my back.

The little girl, maybe 18 months or so, grips my shoulder and she's only a baby, but man, does she hold on tight.

And she laughs and there's snot coming down her nose and I wipe it clean with my handkerchief.

Parker mummers that I'm "Florence fuckin' Nightingale"; and when the kid ain't looking, I give T.P. the finger.

And the whole scene is sweet, I mean, gag me sweet. Too sweet. But, this is Vietnam. Ain't nothing nice about this place.

And to prove it, the cute little girl goes to the bathroom right on me.

You better believe Parker thought that was a riot.

Next time I check to make sure the kid it toilet trained before I let her use my body as her personal jungle gym.

Because all while I'm playing with those kids someone else is pressing a gun to their daddy's head, asking him if any Charlie has been sneaking up their villages at night; someone is interrogating their big brothers and going through their rice-making sure there ain't enough to feed an army.

And sometimes, that person is me.

And I'm good at that part of my job too.

I don't know what to feel about that. All my life it bummed me that people thought I was a softy because of the way I look, or because I'm friendly to people; but now I get a chance to take charge and yell at people and worse; and I don't know what to make of it.

And it makes me so dizzy because friendly village, enemy village, they all spin around in my head.

This village is flattened, but there are a few hooches that are still standing. Randomness of luck, I guess. We go through the village, and I'm hoping we don't see any dead kids or dead women. I know that the women can be Cong too, but I don't like the idea of killing women unless we have no choice.

Heck, I don't even like the idea of killing anyone unless we don't have a choice.

Three dead. All men.

They don't look like much, wan thin and maybe middle aged or so; although one looks like he's in his early thirties.

Part of me is disappointed that these are the guys that tried to ambush us.

One of the dead has his brains slowly dripping out of his head, like a slow waterfall. Dark red and brown blood seeps out of the bodies. One guy is missing half his torso.

"Three V.C. down," Cooper calls in on the radio.

"That's gonna be thirty V.C. down by this evening," I mutter to Cooper. He gives me a wry grin. He knows the score.

All men are considered V.C. regardless if they're armed or not and let's just say we use some creative math to count the number of dead.

Out of all of the guys in the unit, Charlie Cooper is the one who I just can't make sense of. After a clean-up operation he'll go through the field and with surgical precision cut off the fingers of them Vietcong and turn them into necklaces and bracelets. He would organize the fingers by color, shape and size. The necklace he wore today was called "fat Dink" since it consisted of the thumbs from chubbier Vietcong soldiers.

It creeps me out, not just the whole grossness of wearing a shriveled up finger around your neck, but the grossness of taking someone's body like that. I think about them sometimes, the Vietcong guys whose fingers Cooper wears around his neck, what were they like? Do they cut off the fingers of our guys after a fight?

I think of Phil and his dad and his dad's missing fingers.

I know it ain't the same, but I think of someone wearing Mr. Mihailovich's fingers around their neck like a wreath.

The thing about Cooper though, he is a damn good soldier. I mean it. He's calm, methodical and meticulous, he never loses his temper and he has lightning fast reflexes. I ain't never heard anything about him messin' up while in the field.

He's whip smart, strong and a real leader; he just likes collecting dead body parts.

He's like the perfect soldier during the battle and then turns into a weirdo after the battle is done.

He's always sent out for the most difficult missions and there's something almost soothing about his presence, I mean, if you ain't V.C.

There's one survivor. An old lady. Phil is talking to her and I'm standing guard over her, even though she ain't much of a threat. Heck, would just be my luck if this Mamasan takes me out.

Phil is interrogating her, only it's more a conversation than an interrogation. He's the only one of us who really speaks and understands Vietnamese. The old lady, she's chubby and I'm kinda surprised because most of the Vietnamese we meet are real small. But this lady, she's fat with a double chin and puffed up cheeks. She has on old sandals made from strips of tires, and I think of Steve back home at the DX.

It's amazing how the most random things can get me thinking of home.

"Ol' Mama over there didn't miss any breakfast, heck we just need to cut her up to find the missing gooks, she probably swallowed them whole," Parker says to me, and I laugh even if part of me feels bad for making fun of an old lady.

What's up with me?

I fucking shoot people, but here I am feeling guilty cause we're making fun of a old fat lady.

But that's Vietnam. You can look over at the bodies of three dead guys and feel this sense of strange detachment, but you don't want to hurt some old lady's feelings.

Chavez is trying to wrestle a pig to the ground. He hoovers his body over the pig and just as he's about to grab it, the fucker gets away from him and part of me is rootin' for the pig.

Chavez imitates the pig's squeal and he looks like he having a good ol' time and I kinda want to join him.

"Suuey! Suuey! come here you muthafuckin' pig!" We can hear him yell from inside the hooch.

But that old woman, she glares at me. It's a hard set glare with no softness or flexibility. It's hate manifested. But it's not raw, it's controlled. It reminds me of how Tim controls his boys-just real tight, harsh and controlled.

She continues to glare at me, and I shiver. Not Parker, not Phil, not even Chavez, just me. Part of me wants to get in her face and ask her what the fuck her problem is?

And this lady, she ain't my enemy, but she ain't my friend either; but I hate, I just hate that she don't like me.

Because deep down I want her to like me, even as I'm with an Army that blew up her village, I want her to still like me. Why? Because I'm Soda Curtis, and I ain't got much going for me, but people like me. That's who I am. These little kids, they jump up on me and play with me and even their mamas and their grandmas and grandpas smile at me.

I don't rough up the women or the old people. I just don't do it. I can't do it. I don't know if that makes me a pansy or a good guy, maybe a bit of both. Guys, yeah I'm rough with them-ain't got much of problem being rough with a bunch of guys, hell, I've been doing it most of my life. But old people and kids? I try my best to be polite and nice.

But this cooze, she wants to take that away from me.

She's sitting on a stool and I notice that her teeth are black. I cringe.

"What's up with her teeth?" I whisper to Phil, "they look real rotten."

And maybe there's the little part of me that thinks that if we fix up her teeth she would like me. Which is stupid and dumb and selfish.

I can be a real selfish asshole sometimes, and I hate that part of myself.

"They're not rotten, it is because she chews betel nut, it's supposed to stop tooth aches."

I nod. Feeling for the first time that I can understand this woman, "I hate the dentist too," I say softly. She scowls.

So much for my new friend.

I see a flash and hear a bang a few pop-pop-pop sounds and Chavez fires his weapon. I run out of the hooch to give Chavez cover. I start spraying bullets in the same direction Chavez sprays them, but no one shoots back at us.

"Muthafucka shot at me," Chavez explains, his voice fast and pressured, "bullet missed me by a centimeter."

On the floor is a kid around 17, blood seeping from his chest and a rifle at his side.

"He musta hid when we were searchin' the hamlet."

Phil interrogates the old lady again, but this time it's a real interrogation and not just a chat. We have her look at the dead boy seeing if there is any emotion on her face, seeing if she knows him. But, her face is blank and passive and empty. It's still tightly controlled though, still closed off.

How the fuck did this happen? How did we miss this kid? Yeah, he didn't hit Chavez, but who knows how many Cong could have been hiding up in this hole while we talked this old lady?

And I'm thinking that her glare at me wasn't directed so much at me, but because I was close to the kid's hiding place outside the house.

I laugh, because you gotta appreciate the irony. Here I am worried that this old lady don't like me, and it turns out she got nothing against me personally, she just wants me and my guys dead.

Ha Ha

We're determined not to make the same mistake twice. Grenades are thrown into the still standing hooches.

The old lady just stands that passively, watching the hooches blow up. I kind of want to tell her to look away, that she shouldn't look at her neighbor's houses being destroyed.

But, I keep quiet.

I look at her real careful, but every time she catches me looking at her, she gives me a dirty look.

I look away.

I look down at the trail of blood from one of the dead Cong guys.

It doesn't spook me as much.

We turn over every corner of the old lady's hut. And boy does she look pissed. I can understand that, but lady, that's what happens when some stupid kid tries to shoot one of my buddies.

But I don't feel good. I know that we are in her house, going through her meager possessions while she watches us with her blackened teeth.

If my mom could see me…

I shiver.

I pick up a plate that's on the floor and neatly dust if off. I place it back real gently on the table. I rub the table with my hand. It's the only piece of solid furniture in this dump. Someone put a lot of effort into making that table. Maybe it was the kid, or one of the men. Maybe the same guy who tried to ambush us also made that table. Maybe in his previous life he was a carpenter, still wanted to be a carpenter, but then the war broke out and he became a soldier.

Maybe he didn't want to shoot at us. Maybe he did. Who knows?

I continue to put the items back where I found them, going through a great show of being careful and respectful with her stuff.

"See, lady" I want to say, "see how much care I take care of your stuff? Some kiddo tried to shoot one of my buds, but I'm still treating your shit with kid gloves. See, I am nice, you bitch."

But I don't say anything of course. I just give her a smile, my patented Sodapop Curtis "you gotta love it" grin.

She glares back at me.

To quote Chavez, "mothafucka!"

We don't find any more Cong. The other villagers musta hightailed it earlier, probably before the ambush. I think of the fat old lady. Her family probably told her to leave before the ambush, knowing what could happen to her. And she, full of piss and vinegar, told them to get lost, that if some foreign devils killed her that was between her and Buddha.

And whether she's Cong or not. Whether she knew about the ambush or not, that's kinda brave.

We're back at base. We're gonna cook up the pig for supper. Chavez says he needs to take a piss.

"Yeah, don't forget to say hi to Mr. Johnson," I tease. I caught Chavez masturbating to Penthouse out in the latrine one night.

Chavez is a good guy. Some guys like Parker, I don't tease because they're assholes. Some guys like Cooper I don't tease cause I respect him and because I'm sorta scared of him. But Chavez, I can tease.

It's nice in the middle of all this shit to laugh and joke with a guy.

"Y'all need a woman," I told him. But Chavez had a girl, a pretty thing named Clara back home. He told me that maybe he'd screw a round eyed woman if one came to him on base, but none did. He's sorta ugly. I'm not trying to be mean, just stating the facts. Besides most of the American women, if they fuck anyone, fuck the higher ups, not us lonely grunts.

Yeah, there are greasers and socs even over here in the middle of this malaria booby trapped hell hole.

So poor Chavez was stuck with Penthouse and dreams of Clara.

After about thirty minutes Chavez ain't coming out of the latrine.

Glory, he must be havin' a real good time in there.

Another twenty minutes and Chavez is still in there.

I'm starting to get a bit worried.

I see him. Fallen in a pile of shit, flies above his head, clutching his chest. The shit gets all over my boots as I pull him up. I'm glad he's a small guy and I'm able to hoist him up with relative ease.

I gag, but hold onto him. I'm not letting him stay in a pool of crap. I'm not doing that to him. He deserves better.

My hands are covered in shit.

Chavez had a heart attack. Like that. How the hell does a healthy 19 year old soldier have a fuckin' heart attack? I mean, you can't make that up.

We have a little ceremony for Chavez.

It's my idea that we take some of Chavez's pot and smoke it in honor of him.

"Yeah, right, Curtis just wants to get high," that's Luke speaking.

I shrug and give him a crazy grin. He's kinda got my number, but who the hell wouldn't want to get high after you see a guy dead in pool of runny shit?

"So now Saint Curtis of the Okies wants to smoke weed with us. Just figures, takin' weed from a dead guy."

I glare at Parker, and man, I am this close to punching his lights out.

But instead, I just imitate a smoke ring and blow it his way.

"Well, it coulda been worse, he could have died right before his tour ended." That was from Mr. Sensitivity, Tate Parker.

I roll my eyes.

Glory, it's just gonna be my luck that I die the day before I'm scheduled to leave this place.

I've been here a month and I've seen more than my fair share of bodies and that changes you. Not in the obvious ways though. Like before I got here, death was sacred and nothing to joke about. Now we laugh about Chavez dying in a pool of shit. We laugh till it hurts and laugh again to take away the hurt.

And I feel guilty, remembering Chavez lying in a latrine, holding his heart; so every time a feeling of guilt crosses my mind, I take another hit.

And I laugh again.

I try to tell myself that Chavez would be laughing himself, and you know what? I like to think that's true.

I'm giggling but I'm sure as hell glad that my folks and my brothers can't see me, because I'm ashamed of myself.

But, I can't help but laugh.

It's funny, don't you see? Some guy survives an ambush and some kid shooting at him in one day, only to have a fucking heart attack in a literal shit hole.

That's Vietnam for you. No matter what you survive you end up covered in shit anyway.

Ha, ha, ha. You laughing?

Muthafucka.

So there we are, getting high talking about our buddy and making jokes about him, for him, and at his expense.

We laugh, but it's not a gentle laugh or a comfortable laugh, it's all of us hooting and hollering and going crazy with giggles.

And let me tell you something, Vietnamese pot is fucking strong. I mean, man alive.

"No wonder this place is so weird," I tell Phil, "this weed is something else."

"No shit," he says. And I laugh and I'm almost on the ground laughing, because hell, it's funny and it's the first time Phil has shown a sense of humor.

"You think we should tell Chavez's family where he died?"

I crock my head and look at Phil. I may be high and stupid, but I ain't that high and stupid.

"Nope," I grin, "we'll just tell him that he was battling a bunch of real shitty soldiers, but his heart just wasn't in it."

That started another round of laughter.

I look at Cooper and he's fingering one of the fat fingers he keeps in his personal collection.

He thrusts the shriveled up finger upwards so it seems like the finger is giving us all "the finger". And I know it's bad, and I know it's gross, but it's funny. It's fucking gross and hilarious at the same time-like dying in a pile of crap.

I try not to think of the guy whose hand the finger once belonged to.

That night I dream about Chavez, I dream about how I found him covered in shit and piss, clutching his heart.

And maybe it's because I'm still high, or maybe it's because this entire country is one big acid trip; but I swear to you I can still hear him, "muthafucka, muthafucka."

And he's giving me the finger.

S.E. Hinton owns.