Tomcat in Love by Tim O’Brien

chuckled and promptly returned to my books.
    Imagine my surprise, therefore, when our country’s claim upon my person turned out to be in earnest.
    Passively, inert to the end, I capitulated with scarcely a snarl. I watched myself plod through the humiliations of a physical examination, then basic training, then clerk’s school at a dismal installation in rural Kentucky. (My sole fond memory from this period is of a rubbery little Appalachian number by the name of June. Acrobatic tongue. Tooth decay. Illiterate in everything but love.)
    Then off to war.
    Vietnam itself came as a relatively minor insult to prior injury, almost entirely uneventful. Only a single episode deserves attention, yet this incident goes far to explain the human being I have since become.
    To wit: Near the end of my tour, not a month before rotating back to the States, I was called upon to join six compatriots * in manning a listening post several kilometers outside the firebase. Our orders were to move by foot into the mountains, position ourselves along a designated trail, dig in deep, then spend the next four days (and nights) lying low, listening for enemy movement.
    None of this was my cup of tea.
    Though it is awkward to acknowledge personal inadequacies, I must concede that I was not cut out for the grim business of soldiering. I am a tall, somewhat gawky man. Athletically disinclined. A distinctive stride—pelvis forward, elbows sideward—an intellectual’s abstract tilt to the jaw.
    So, yes, with all this, the new assignment came as a shock.
    I received my orders at noon. Thirty minutes later I was reporting to a young, dull-faced captain at the front gate, who issued me a military radio, rations, ammunition for my thoroughly rusted M-16. “Won’t be too bad,” the captain said, and gestured at the mountains. “Like Cub Scouts. Pretend it’s a weenie roast.”
    My comrades waited outside the gate: six tough, tired, soiled faces. They spoke not a word to me, just exchanged glances and moved out single file toward the mountains.
    For more than five hours we plodded straight west, then briefly northward, then began climbing through deep, dripping rain forest. The greenery was massive. Triple canopy, foliage stacked upon foliage. This was machete country. Snake country, too, and creatures I dared not imagine. Although I had ridded myself of unessential burdens—a
Webster’s Collegiate
, a complete Chaucer—I soon passed into a state far beyond exhaustion. I could smell death in my bones.
    At last, in late afternoon, we halted at a trail junction overlooking a wide river below. Immediately, I collapsed beneath a tree. The universe had gone limp along its margins—no definition, therefore no meaning—and it was all I could do to watch the others set up a perimeter and clear fields of fire. Even then, my six ghostly comrades spoke not a word. Soberly, as dusk came on, they ate their rations and rolled out their ponchos for the night. I was aware, of course, that field discipline was critical, yet the muteness of these sour gentlemen seemed extreme.
    When dark threatened, I saw no alternative but to approach one of these savage mutes. I chose the smallest, a wiry kid with bad breath and bad posture. Politely, even sheepishly, I tapped his arm and requested information regarding the evening’s activities.
    The boy stared over my shoulder. Hard to be certain, for his lips did not move, but I believe he eventually murmured the word
shit
.
    “My own thought,” said I. (Here was progress.) “So look, if you don’t mind, I’m new at this. What do I
do
?”
    “Do?”
    “You know. Do.”
    There was a pause that lasted half the night. The boy spat,closed his eyes, chewed thoughtfully on a wad of gum, then repeated his almost inaudible ventriloquist’s act. “The usual,” he seemed to whisper.
    I nodded vigorously. “The usual. Very good.”
    “Same-same.”
    “Got it,” I said. “Same-same. Many thanks.”
    I began to edge away,