Bombs Over Hanoi

Bombs explode over Hanoi in the distance. Someone's getting the shit. People were dying. With a certain sense of disassociation, Richie could almost pretend it was the 4th of July, and he was wrapped in a thick wool blanket on a lawn chair with Betty’s leg coiled around his. I hope you’re not too tired, soldier, she whispers, because there are gonna be more fireworks upstairs. He can taste the cherry cola on her breath, and the tiny fragments of the lisp she had when she was a kid, hanging on the syllables like the hang-in-there-baby kitten on the poster dangling from a rope. The glands above his eyes would push out tears of longing if there were any tears to push out and he would heave the contents of his stomach, if there were any contents to heave.

The darkness is unforgiving and it plays tricks on the mind. Richie is on watch outside of a small makeshift firebase. He hears voices from behind him, but they’re familiar, not haunted. It’s Jacobs, and Reynolds playing cards, and it’s Jim Rockway with a Playboy magazine, singing Paint it Black by The Stones and Under My Thumb. They’re disassociating.

Rockway’s eyes are closed and he’s pretending that he’s playing with his bar band The Troubadours as a pretty thing in the front row dances and sways in perfect harmony with the rhythm of the band. Jacobs is pretending he’s Paul Newman from The Hustler. When he wins a hand, he does a Newman impression saying I just hadda show ’im. Just hadda show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it’s great. When it’s REALLY great. And the guys laugh, no matter how many times he does it. Jacobs saw that movie as a kid in the theater a dozen times, sneaking in through the back alley and giving the usher a pack of cigarettes that he’d nicked from his old man’s underwear drawer as a rascal form of currency.

And Reynolds is talking to himself like he’s on the Johnny Carson show. He wants to be a comedian, and he smiles because when his eyes are closed, Carson is bent over his desk pounding at the mahogany with his right fist, his eyes with more than enough moisture to excrete tears stemming from belly laughter.

But Richie continues to be viciously shaken out of his fantasy with each howl of the wind coming from deep within the haunted forests of Da Nang, and each sound of crushing leaves on the valley floor. He rubs his eyes and they sting, he aims his rifle unsteadily like he’s standing on a small boat in a rocky sea, and calls out in a voice barely audible, just above a whisper, “w-w-who’s there?”

The leaves crumple again, another bomb goes off in Hanoi. Richie wipes his eyes again, and it feels like the back of his hands are doused in vinegar and the irritation is causing inflammation, and his eyes are red and swollen. He slaps at the mosquitos on his neck, and again calls out, “Who’s there?” This time without the stutter but with not much more authority. He isn’t asking from deep in his sternum like his father did when Richie stayed out too late, and he asked where he was as he sipped a beer in the darkness of their kitchen. He was asking because he demanded an answer, whereas Richie was asking in desperation, praying that there was no answer. I hope you’re not tired, soldier. Another bomb in Hanoi. Because there are gonna be more fireworks upstairs.

“Is there anyone out there?” He wipes his eyes again. Now the stinging is making him angry. He grinds his teeth back and forth like he’s sharpening them and this time screams. “Listen you gook fucks! If you’re out there you better show yourselves right now, or I’m going to open fire. You hear me? You fucking hear me?”

Another Bomb goes off in Hanoi.