| » Poem: Children Of Saigon (Short Story) |
Children Of Saigon (Short Story)
written by Mars_Phoenix11:01 PM 10/20/04Private Anthony James Edwards was the same as all the kids who came before him. At least, that's the first impression that hit me the moment he stumbled off the chopper or 'huey' as we called it. The boy looked as though he had barely made it through puberty alive. His ghostly complexion made him stand out from the tanned veterans.
Sand, picked up by the swirling blades, was tossed about in the air as the pilot made a swift take off. The huey hovered above him, its thick blades cutting through the air with a screeching metallic drone. In the centre of a dusty landscape, emphasised in the midst of a foreign sun, he picked up his M16 and gazed into the faces of the men who waited.
Under the shade of a medical tent I surveyed the surroundings and cracked open another beer. Though the taste was warm and bitter, I gulped it down. That was the thing with Nam; you never got anything like it was back home. Everything flown in from the U.S was second rate. That somehow it was to fake for us now; that it was all just another mass produced commercial rubbed in our faces. I tossed my empty beer can away and wandered over to the gathering crowd of men.
As the roll call began and his name was mentioned, he shuffled forward towards our squad. He was our new radio operator, green as hell, but he made up the numbers. He flashed me a smile as he walked past. Now that surprised me because he seemed so unsure of himself. Still I didn't have the luxury of contemplating whether or not he was up to the task because we were being sent back into the field that day.
"Your OK man, you'll be outta' here any second now."
The voice was muffled, as if I was underwater, yet it was familiar.
My eyes wouldn't focus properly. The rain fell on my head like soft beads and trickled slowly down my face, mixing with the filth, creating an oozy texture. Inches away from me a pebble lying in the muck caught my attention. Its shiny hard surface was slipping further down into the mud as the rain continued its relentless slow beating. I tried to move my hand to touch it, but nothing happened. The pebble did not fight against the earth - it could not. Even as it slipped further into oblivion it did not move. The entire world was sucking it down into a grave and it let it happen. It just gave up. I lay paralysed in the mucky waste and watched helplessly as the pebble was swallowed up in front of my eyes.
I awoke later and was greeted by silence. Was it moments or hours? I couldn't say. My body refused to move. My will alone was not enough to regain control. I urged myself to relax and force my hand into the air. Raise your hand; raise your hand. These words echoed inside my head. Yet nothing came. Sharp vibrations etched there way down my spine as a hand fell on my chest. Suddenly I was moving. I was somewhat conscious of being dragged away from that grave yard i thought was destined to be my tomb. I gazed up at the sky and let the dark night wrap itself around me like a blanket as I passed out.
I sat inside a medical tent and looked out as yet another fresh batch of new recruits was flown in. I walked over to a bunch of guys in my platoon. Three of them sat huddled together as if they were telling each other some big secret.
"Man, what he did took guts." A guy called Jay said.
"Climbin a tree to rescue a little girl's lost kitten takes guts Jay. Stealing from your fathers wallet takes guts. Nah, that kid is a hard ass."
"Was a hard ass. He's just gone and screwed it up though hasn't he?" Jay replied.
I stepped forward and popped open a can of beer. It fizzed up; spraying a little over my chest and some ran through my fingers. I sat down beside them, not really looking at anything.
One of them called Kyle said, "What he did took balls."
Jay looked up at him with a confused expression on his face, like he didn't know what the hell he meant.
"Do you remember balls Jay? It’s what we had before guns."
"Yeah man."
He said he understood what Kyle meant, but he really didn’t have a clue.
"Its everything now a'days," the third murmured.
Jay looked up at him and asked, "Everything? What’s everything?"
"Guts, balls, and guns."
"Oh. But he's dead man."
I stood up.
"Shut up."
"Man, he's dead; they blew that fuckers head to pieces. Brains and everything."
"Quit it OK?"
"OK, but you could see inside his head man. Like inside his head."
"Will you shut the hell up?"
I turned my back on them and walked into my tent, away from the relentless heat of the sun. I lay on my side in bed, pretending to read a magazine. As I flicked through the pages and glanced at the pictures I thought about home.
I was twenty-one years old and about to finish my last year of college. I was on the football team and making good grades. I was going to be a maths teacher when I got out. Then the draft came. Since that day I’ve been shot twice. I've killed people. My best friend is dead. My best friend is dead.
He was flown out on a huey, wrapped up in his own poncho. I never saw his body. I found out two days later when I woke up practically delirious in the hospital in Saigon. He'd dragged me back to safety after I’d been hit by an enemy sniper. He saved my life. He exchanged his own for mine. Nam needed a soul. It demanded it. It was my turn to face him, he singled me out. After getting me out, Anthony took a bullet from in the back of the head from friendly fire. He was dead before he crashed to the ground.
I was reborn in Nam as a child of twenty-one; a child of Saigon, born from horror and force fed on death, it ripped and tore my innocence from within, leaving behind scars that could not be healed. And now I see his smile when they send me out to kill Vietnamese babies, the same age as me; and I see him when i look at recruits who have yet to step up and face Nam. I see his eyes whenever I look into the dank deep river that runs through the jungles of Nam. So blue and pure, unaware of the horrors that fill the land around it. But then you force it all back down into that pit of your stomach reserved for memories that best serve the dead. Keep your mind on Nam; keep your mind on the enemy; forget the dead. This place it consumes you; once you go in you never really come out. At least when I came out I wasn’t the Anthony that went in, I was different. Maybe it was the look in my eyes was a little less kind, or perhaps the roughness of my skin made me look a little older. Or maybe it was something unexplainable, that feeling we desperately struggle to remove ourselves from as children but then when we are old we yearn for the innocence of youth. But you still carry on, marching deep into the jungles of Nam – searching. Searching for something you lost a long time ago, something that can never be replaced. |
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Author's footnotes and comments on this Poem:
This is a short story I wrote about 11 or 12 months ago. let me not what you think please...
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| » Comments / Feedback | by bloodyfairy (10-21-2004 - 10:12 PM)
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