D.E. Bartley Scifi sunday's with the Hipriestess

Archive for September 26th, 2011

I’d been out solo a few times before, but this mission was totally different. When the chopper dropped me off three days back, I’d stood at the edge of a clearing and watched as it took off and left me standing in the swirling dust feeling like I’d made a terrible mistake. Unfortunately I was the only sharp shooter in my platoon.

It was April, just a few days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, a tragic event that had cast a long shadow on the war in a way that no outside event ever had. Scattered riots broke out and there were fights and stabbings all of it officially denied. So the timing for this mission could not have been worse. On this assignment, I would not be gunning for NVA or VC, I had orders to track down and eliminate one of our own a black Recon Sergeant named Malcolm Lee Washington, better known as the brother  Blood fighter. There were some who said he was a mind reader knew what you were gonna do, as soon as you thought about it, and his dog would track men down and chew them up.

After his partner had been shot dead by one of our own helicopter gun ships in another friendly fire fuckup on hill 285, he had determined that no one was, or ever had been… on his side, and that every swingin’ dick, no matter the color of their skin or uniform, was out to get him. The only way to survive was to start his own game, and God help anybody who passed within his sight. He was now a one man show representing nobody but himself, and he didn’t give a shit if you were Jesus H. Christ, to him, you were just another moving target in his free-fire zone.

Although Washington had a history of trouble with the law, stateside, his combat record was impeccable. A recent photo showed a guy who looked nothing like a Marine Force-Recon scout gold bead in his nose, a bandanna made from a piece of camouflage, a mean black moustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth, and a long scar down the right side of his face that looked like a river marking on a map a bad hallucination. Looking into those dark eyes, was like staring into the abyss. This was a man who had spent too many nights sleeping with his eyes open. And now he’d been pushed over an invisible line into a world of absolute moral indifference.
__________

The highlands of Vietnam you don’t know real fear unless you’ve been there. Its kind of like a jungle, except its up in the clouds and there’s always this fog like rain, except its not raining. Everything is wet and tangled and the angles of vision are always slightly skewed. Up here sound carries forever, and its damn near impossible to maintain strict field discipline and absolute silence. Sometimes at night, you could even hear the rocks talking. Seriously scary, especially when you are all alone.

Earlier today, the sun had broken through for a couple of hours, and from my position I was able to see most of a small valley and along the opposite slope. For the first hour nothing at all had happened then I got lucky. I don’t know what made the grass sway just enough to direct my eyes toward a spot about halfway down the slope, but when I looked through my scope, there he was tiger suit completely woven into the terrain. Suddenly, my heart was racing and a trickle of sweat found its way down the center of my back. I mentally kicked myself in the ass for taking those goddamn Dexedrine tabs earlier, but I was sure I could nail this guy with one shot from where I was set up. It seemed almost too fucking easy. I clicked the safety on the Remington to the off position, and lined up the target in the crosshairs of my scope. Every nerve-end in my body was pointed toward the tip of my trigger finger.

Then it hit me like a ten-ton brick my whole body started to shake. I lowered my rifle and rolled onto my back. What the fuck was I doing? This was not a North Vietnamese regular or Viet Cong; this was an American soldier, a black man –a marine just like me, with a family back in the world — waiting. Did anyone have the right to give me orders to kill this man? Did any of the old rules still hold? Had all order spilled over into chaos? The dark was coming on fast and I decided to shut it down and wait for morning. Maybe things would make more sense after a little rest.

__________

I spent the first part of the night slipping in and out of a half-sleep of bizarre Technicolor dream sequences

a huge open field — it was pouring rain. I was walking across the field with a friend, who was also acting as guide. There was a gigantic wooden stage, and on the stage stood Jimi Hendrix in a blue spotlight all alone bobbing up and down, wrenching the tremolo bar on his Stratocaster almost to the breaking point. He was plugged into a wall of black amplifiers tall as the New York City skyline, and he was pulling impossible sounds out of his guitar whistling rockets bombs bursting in air, The Star-Spangled Banner from hell. As we moved closer to the stage, we came upon a huge lake of shit-brown mud covered with dead bodies. My friend waded right in and motioned for me to follow. I hesitated for a second, and he reached out, grabbed my arm and yanked me into the muck. The corpses were lying on their backs, arms straight out from their shoulders, feet together, as if they’d been posed. I was trying to tell him I didn’t want to see anymore, but he’d just point out another body, and move along without saying a word. It was when he asked me to get down on my knees and take a closer look, that I finally got what he had been trying to show me. The dead men were all American soldiers with their faces blown away. Their dog tags were missing only the empty, blood-spattered chains remained around their necks

faltering dreams:

I was back home in church where a military funeral was in progress. I was standing in line, waiting my turn to file by an open casket, but I couldn’t remember who the funeral was for. I was about to turn and ask the person behind me, when a familiar sound jolted me wide awake

metal on metal a rifle bolt closing

When I opened my eyes the spectral figure of Malcolm Lee Washington was standing over me with the barrel of my Winchester pointed at my head. One look into those dead eyes and I knew I had made a fatal mistake by not pulling the trigger when I had the chance. I’d been a fool to take this man as a member of the human community. He was a dark angel, a basic element of the metaphysical soul of these mountains.

I didn’t think it would do any good, but I had to try and explain some things try to make this guy understand reason. “Hey man, its not fair my dying like this. I pleaded. “Can’t you see we’re brothers both the same? I could have killed you this afternoon, I had you dead to rights, in the crosshairs, but I didn’t because there’s got to be some rules, some way to stamp order on this crazy breakdown there’s got to be a line you can’t cross even here. What about the rules of engagement?”

Blood Lee looked down at me for a few seconds, sighed, like he was talking to a child, and said, You just don’t get it, do you. Don’t you know why they picked your ass to come up here? Its because of the one fucking thing you just said that’s right. You and me yeah, we’re the same,… two more expendable motherfuckers. Both of us dead men, always have been, right from the start dead as doornails, cannon fodder. Believe me man, its better to die here and now for nothing, than to die later for this fucked-up cause. Either goddamn way, it ain’t gonna mean jack. He paused for a second, shook his head as if he were remembering something, then added, “As for the rules my brother, ain’t none, not here. That’s the one thing you’ve got to love and respect about this place, everybody’s got a license to kill, equal rights….Means I’m free at last, and it’s right here that I will die in my freedom, now you gonna die in your’s!”