Read Online If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tim O’Brien
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truth is, I didn’t think you’d want to go. But maybe you know somebody.”
“Sorry. But it’s just before Christmas break. We’re having finals, you know, and all my friends are at the books.” She smiled. “Besides, this is no way to conduct human relations.”
So I left, embarrassed, and went to downtown Seattle. I walked around in the simmering red and gold neon light, past a theater showing Finian’s Rainbow —“… if I’m not near the girl that I love, I love the girl I’m near!”—and past another theater showing The Graduate , which made me think about my college sweetheart. I walked along, whistling “Old Devil Moon” until my headache started again.
Farther up the street, toward the harbor, the lights faded. A prostitute hooked me with her umbrella and asked if I needed a date.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I feel kind of sick tonight.”
“Well, then, can you spare a buck or two?” she asked.
“Sorry. I really need the money. You don’t know how much I need it.”
I vomited in my hotel room. I fell asleep, awakened, slept again, awakened to hear it raining. I looked down at the street, and the snow was gone and it was all gray slush. I sat at the desk. The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn’t. I slept some more, dreaming, and when I awakened I vomited and saw it was getting light. I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn’t bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run. I went into the hallway and bought a Coke. When I finished it I felt better, clearer-headed, and burned the plans. I was a coward. I was sick.
All day Saturday I was sick. And restless and hopeless. On Sunday morning I caught a bus to the fort. I went to the library and read, ate a doughnut in the doughnut shop, and went on back to the barracks. The rest of the men were loud coming in from pass, drunk and squabbling and howling and talking about Christmas. There was just no place to be alone.
Seven
Arrival
F irst there is some mist. Then, when the plane begins its descent, there are pale gray mountains. The plane slides down, and the mountains darken and take on a sinister cragginess. You see the outlines of crevices, and you consider whether, of all the places opening up below, you might finally walk to that spot and die. Or that spot, or that spot. In the far distance are green patches, the sea is below, a stretch of sand winds along the coast. Two hundred men draw their breath. You feel dread. But it is senseless to let it go too far, so you joke: There are only 365 days to go. The stewardess wishes you luck over the loudspeaker. At the door she gives out some kisses, mainly to the extroverts.
From Cam Ranh Bay another plane takes you to Chu Lai, a big base to the south of Danang, headquarters for the Americal Division. You spend a week there, in a place called the Combat Center. It’s a resortlike place, tucked in alongside the South China Sea, complete with sand and native girls and a miniature golf course and floor shows with every variety of the grinding female pelvis. There beside the sea you get your now-or-never training. You pitch hand grenades, practice walking through mine fields, learn to use a minesweeper. Mostly, though, you wonder about dying. You wonder how it feels, what it looks like inside you. Sometimes you stop, and your body tingles. You feel your blood and nerves working. At night you sit on the beach and watch fire fights off where the war is being fought. There are movies at night, and a place to buy beer. Carefully, you mark six days off your pocket calendar; you start a journal, vaguely hoping it will never be read.
Arriving in Vietnam as a foot soldier is much like arriving at boot camp as a recruit. Things are new, and you ascribe evil to the simplest physical objects: You see red in the sand, swarms of angels and avatars in the sky, pity
“Sorry. But it’s just before Christmas break. We’re having finals, you know, and all my friends are at the books.” She smiled. “Besides, this is no way to conduct human relations.”
So I left, embarrassed, and went to downtown Seattle. I walked around in the simmering red and gold neon light, past a theater showing Finian’s Rainbow —“… if I’m not near the girl that I love, I love the girl I’m near!”—and past another theater showing The Graduate , which made me think about my college sweetheart. I walked along, whistling “Old Devil Moon” until my headache started again.
Farther up the street, toward the harbor, the lights faded. A prostitute hooked me with her umbrella and asked if I needed a date.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I feel kind of sick tonight.”
“Well, then, can you spare a buck or two?” she asked.
“Sorry. I really need the money. You don’t know how much I need it.”
I vomited in my hotel room. I fell asleep, awakened, slept again, awakened to hear it raining. I looked down at the street, and the snow was gone and it was all gray slush. I sat at the desk. The AWOL bag was ready to go, but I wasn’t. I slept some more, dreaming, and when I awakened I vomited and saw it was getting light. I burned the letters to my family. I read the others and burned them, too. It was over. I simply couldn’t bring myself to flee. Family, the home town, friends, history, tradition, fear, confusion, exile: I could not run. I went into the hallway and bought a Coke. When I finished it I felt better, clearer-headed, and burned the plans. I was a coward. I was sick.
All day Saturday I was sick. And restless and hopeless. On Sunday morning I caught a bus to the fort. I went to the library and read, ate a doughnut in the doughnut shop, and went on back to the barracks. The rest of the men were loud coming in from pass, drunk and squabbling and howling and talking about Christmas. There was just no place to be alone.
Seven
Arrival
F irst there is some mist. Then, when the plane begins its descent, there are pale gray mountains. The plane slides down, and the mountains darken and take on a sinister cragginess. You see the outlines of crevices, and you consider whether, of all the places opening up below, you might finally walk to that spot and die. Or that spot, or that spot. In the far distance are green patches, the sea is below, a stretch of sand winds along the coast. Two hundred men draw their breath. You feel dread. But it is senseless to let it go too far, so you joke: There are only 365 days to go. The stewardess wishes you luck over the loudspeaker. At the door she gives out some kisses, mainly to the extroverts.
From Cam Ranh Bay another plane takes you to Chu Lai, a big base to the south of Danang, headquarters for the Americal Division. You spend a week there, in a place called the Combat Center. It’s a resortlike place, tucked in alongside the South China Sea, complete with sand and native girls and a miniature golf course and floor shows with every variety of the grinding female pelvis. There beside the sea you get your now-or-never training. You pitch hand grenades, practice walking through mine fields, learn to use a minesweeper. Mostly, though, you wonder about dying. You wonder how it feels, what it looks like inside you. Sometimes you stop, and your body tingles. You feel your blood and nerves working. At night you sit on the beach and watch fire fights off where the war is being fought. There are movies at night, and a place to buy beer. Carefully, you mark six days off your pocket calendar; you start a journal, vaguely hoping it will never be read.
Arriving in Vietnam as a foot soldier is much like arriving at boot camp as a recruit. Things are new, and you ascribe evil to the simplest physical objects: You see red in the sand, swarms of angels and avatars in the sky, pity
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