The World Played Chess (8)

But there it was.

As we descended, escort fighter jets strafed the jungle canopy of a mountain to the north of the airstrip. Marines crowded the windows to watch. An instant later the trees went up in a whoosh of black-and-orange balls of flames.

Napalm.

We erupted in cheers, and I felt a rush of adrenaline and excitement, but the smile on my face was hesitant, and similar to the smiles on most of the other faces. We were all wondering why the F-4 Phantoms were strafing the bush and dropping napalm so close to our base.

The plane landed at Da Nang with a hard jolt that would get a private pilot fired and a combat pilot a medal. Get in quick. Get out quicker. The doors opened the second the plane stopped rolling. Marines boarded and ordered us to quickly deplane, though not in such polite terms. It was just like boot camp all over, except I wasn’t called “shit bird” or “numb nuts.” I was called “marine.” “Marines, grab your gear and haul ass. Saddle up and move out.”

Apparently the airport had been under mortar attack most of the morning. Charlie was hiding on Monkey Mountain, which I assumed to be the mountain to the north of the airstrip. “We’re sending out kill patrols,” said a sergeant who greeted us.

I stepped to the door and the first thing to hit me was the heat, like the heat in South Carolina, but on steroids—felt like a hundred and change, with 100 percent humidity. The only time I ever felt heat like this was during a summer visit to relatives in Dallas. The airport doors slid apart, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The heat just sucks the air from your lungs, and you feel like you’re burning from the inside out. Beads of sweat popped from every pore and rolled down my face and my forearms, making my hands slick. The uniform clung to my skin, and I realized why they gave me salt tablets and told me to take two a day, every day, no matter what.

The second thing that hit me was the smell.

My first whiff of the Nam, and it smelled like shit.

Think about it. You’ve got five hundred thousand men and no sewage system. The army collects the human waste in these metal barrels, soaks it in diesel and gasoline, then lights the barrels on fire. The marines who made it home called it shit detail. They said somebody has to stir the shit to ensure it burns, and when the wind shifts direction, the smell of burning shit blows right into camp, which gives all new meaning to the phrase “We’re in the shit now.”





Chapter 3


June 4, 1979

I awoke the following morning, morning being relative, with a nasty hangover. My brother had long since departed to work his summer job at the hospital, making so much noise it had to have been payback for waking him at two a.m. My father and my mother had also left for work, though I did not hear them leave. I awoke to the sound of the television in the family room down the hall. A soap opera. My three older sisters were big-time followers of All My Children with Susan Lucci. Summers, they alternated working as cashiers at my father’s pharmacy to help pay their college tuition and updating each other about that day’s episode.

I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, then made my way into the kitchen to grab a tall glass of water. Mike, my sister Maureen’s boyfriend, sat on the couch in the family room eating a sandwich. He wore headphones, the cord attached to a Walkman, a portable cassette player I had heard about but never seen. Maureen was at work, but my sister Bethany sat in a chair close to the television. My younger siblings were still in school.

Mike had become a part of the family since moving to California from New York during his junior year in high school. He spent holidays with us, often sleeping on the couch, and endured endless ribbing from me and my five brothers for his thick Long Island accent and shoulder-length blond hair. He looked like a guitarist in a rock band. I gave him a bad time, but Mike had become a big brother to me, one I looked up to. Mike never treated me like a kid. He taught me how to snow-ski in Tahoe and water-ski in the Foster City lagoons.

“Big Vinny.” He removed the earphones and chuckled at my obvious condition. “Rough night? Little graduation party?”

“Shh,” Bethany said.

I smiled, more interested in the portable cassette player. “Is that a Walkman?”

“I just bought it yesterday,” he said.

A Walkman was two hundred dollars, which was almost the average monthly rent for an apartment in Burlingame, but Mike always had the newest things, clothes, shoes, gadgets. “What are you listening to?”

“Tom Petty,” he said through a mouth full of sandwich. He handed the headphones to me.

I set down my glass of water and slipped the foam pads over my ears. Mike hit the play button and watched me for a reaction. I’d never heard music so clear—like the band was playing in the room.

“Wow,” I said, a few decibels too loud.

“Shh,” Bethany said again and turned up the television volume.

Mike laughed, and I handed back the headphones. “What are you doing here? I thought you were interviewing for jobs.”

“Lunch break. William got me a job working on a remodel just down the hill while I interview. The foreman said they’re still looking for a laborer. You interested?”

I knew William Goodman only tangentially, having watched him and Mike play softball together that spring. They played with a group of East Coast transplants living at the Northpark apartments in Burlingame. The Northpark Yankees.