Title: Merry Christmas, John Wayne
Author: emmastark
Copyright:  2002
Rating: NC-17
Warnings:  Language, violence, war situations, slash
Archive:  Yes, please.
Disclaimer: All original TAT characters belong to Stephen J. Cannell and Universal.  No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: December 24, 1968.  The Team’s first Christmas together in Vietnam.

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Merry Christmas, John Wayne
Part 1 - Silent Night
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Silent night, holy night --
All is calm, all is bright...

-Josef Mohr and Franz Gruber

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It wasn’t a silent night.  Rain fell on the fire base in sheets and torrents.  Red mud swallowed jeeps whole and sucked at the men’s jungle boots as they walked from the EMC to guard duty on the perimeter.  Pop up flares streaked through the darkness like falling stars and every once in awhile Laraby fired the 60 into the underbrush.  A couple of sappers had climbed through the wire a little after dark, tossed grenades into the out buildings and got themselves zapped, so the guard was doubled.  No one was sleeping.  Who could sleep?

Murdock sat alone in the team’s empty hootch, staring at their Christmas tree.

It was a damn nice tree.  A noble fir.

Noble.  Hell, it even sounded like a nice tree.

Neither he (Texas) nor Face (California) had known there were different kinds of Christmas trees, but Scap, one of the mess hall cooks, was from Washington state, and had enlightened them.  Said noble firs were the best.  So of course, that’s what Face got.  Had it hauled in under a Huey from some damn place.  Then smiled that cool, elliptical smile of his when everybody’s eyes widened, seeing that little bit of back home ease down out of the sky.

He’d got a big tree for the camp, too, but this one was just for them.  It filled up the end of the hootch and smelled like a forest.  They’d decorated it the night before with ammo casings (all gold and pretty) strung on comm wire and any other old thing they could find.  Pocket knives.  Condoms, in their little plastic packages.  Stray forks from the mess hall, bent into pretty shapes by BA.  They’d drunk 33 and sang dirty renditions of carols.  Ray had carved them a nativity scene out of some monkey pod wood he’d brought back with him one day, and Murdock moved the pieces of it around the manger as he sat there on the floor.

Sheep and shepherd.

Camels and kings.

The little family.

The guys were a couple hours late.

Didn’t mean anything.  Probably didn’t mean anything.

He lit another cigarette.  Rearranged Mary and the baby.  Tucked a sheep in next to them.  Picked up Joseph and stared at him for awhile.

“Where are they?” he asked.

Joseph didn’t say anything.

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“I’m going,” Face said.  “Give me that light, Ray.”

Ray glanced at Hannibal.

“Fuck.”  Face stripped off his flack jacket and let it drop to the ground.  He locked and cocked his pistol and held out his hand to Ray.

His hand still had John’s blood on it.

Rain ran down Face’s arms and darkened his t-shirt.  Poured down on all of them, had all day.  Heavy, blinding rain.  His face was painted with green paint (all of their faces were painted) and his cammies were streaked with mud.  Red mud of Vietnam.  Christmas colors.  But he looked all jungle.

Hannibal stared at his XO for a long moment, then nodded.  “Do it,” he said.

Ray laid his light in Face’s hand.

Face crouched down by the hole.

BA had been silent till then.  But now he stepped up.  Put a hand on Face’s shoulder.

Face glanced up.  His eyes were cold.  Glitter in the dark cold.

“Lower you down, L-T,” BA said.

Face frowned.  Nodded.

Face held the flash down, but it gave enough light for BA to see him in the wet blackness.

Face had a bandana tied around his head to keep his hair back and the rain out of his eyes.  Guilt flashed across his eyes, under the coldness.  Guilt and sorrow.  And anger.  And everything they all were feeling.

Murdock was the one who had told him to look at Face’s eyes.

Ray called BA a mother, but he couldn’t help himself.  He had his own good Mama’s influence working in him.  Plus he was a sergeant.

“You be careful down there, L-T,” he said.  “You watch out.”

“Somebody better be fucking careful,” Face said.  His eyes kept going back to the hole in the ground.  It was drawing him.

Hannibal moved closer in.  “Cool it, Lieutenant.  Or I’ll send Ray.”

“Ray won’t fit.”  Face grinned darkly.  He nudged BA’s arm.  “Job security,” he said.

Hannibal grabbed a handful of Face’s t-shirt and pulled him close.

Looked into Face’s eyes.

They stared a little.  Face didn’t look away.  But BA thought he settled a little.  Got hold of everything that was roiling around in his gut.

“Yes, sir,” Face said.

Hannibal slapped him on the back.  “Get the fuckers,” Hannibal said.  He turned and raised his M-16 and disappeared back into the jungle with Ray to watch their backs.

BA pulled a length of rope out of his pack and tied the end onto Face’s belt.

Face tested the knot.  “Let’s go,” he said.  He sat down in the mud and dangled his legs down.

He’d been focused since the ambush.  Totally focused on following the trail of rain-filled footprints that led through the underbrush.  Focused and angry.  But now he paused.  Looked up at BA.

He didn’t need to say it out loud for BA to know what he was thinking.  ~Who~ he was thinking.

BA would know what to do if it came to...

If it came.

Face turned away again.

Focused.

The hole went down about six feet before it turned.

BA belayed Face down with the rope, feeling it draw tight across his shoulders and holding Face’s weight, heavy and solid and sure, in his hands.  He lowered Face slow.  VC liked to put punji pits right down at the bottom of shaft entrances as discouragement.

BA wanted to go down himself.  Red kept flashing across his eyes and his fists kept clenching.  But he didn’t fit so well in the narrow tunnels.

It was okay, though.  Face would do what had to be done.

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There was a case of 33 in the corner, and some bottles, ready to be turned into holiday cheer, but Murdock didn’t drink.  He smoked though.  Okay to smoke.  He smoked until the hootch was hazy inside.  Blew smoke rings up through the tree boughs.

He’d been running dust-offs all day.  Picking up guys from the Big Red One, who’d been trying to take some hill out west of the base.

Merry Christmas to them.

He’d had to wash the blood out of his chopper bay between runs.

The guys were late.  That probably didn’t mean shit, things came up, things happened, but...

Murdock didn’t drink.  Just in case something came over the radio.

Just in case he had to run one more dust-off.

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Hannibal watched the elephant grass move in the wind (in the dark) and listened (over the sound of rain on his poncho) for the whisper of enemy voices.

John was dead.

Tranh Le, actually.  But the Kit Carson scout hadn’t let any of them call him that.

“Kit Carson, hell,” he’d said, grinning, when Figert had introduced him to his new CO.  “I John Wayne.”

He’d been with them for four months.  Made Face laugh.  Taught Murdock Vietnamese.  Kept BA from stepping on a mine that day they’d caught duty over by the Song Toh River.  Kept losing arm wrestling competitions to Ray over and over, but wouldn’t stop challenging him.

Hannibal breathed out slowly.

And kept watching.

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Ray kept his M-16 sheltered under his poncho.  But ready.  Real ready.

He wasn’t glad it was Faceman going down in those goddamn tunnels, but he was glad it wasn’t him.  He’d gone before.  They were a small unit, so it came up.  But it spooked him.  The air was too thin.  He’d kept feeling on the edge of hyperventilating.  Gaspy.

And there were things down there.  Creepy crawlies.  While he’d been down, he’d kept thinking of the song his brother Bobby had sung when they played in the back field.  “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out.  The worms play pinochle on your snout.”  He couldn’t remember the rest of the words, so those two lines, just those two, kept running through his head over and over.  “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out.  The worms play pinochle on your snout.”  The dirt in the tunnel had been kind of slick.  Slimy.  Clay in it, Colonel said.  He’d cut a centipede, great big fucking thing, in two with his knife.  Coming straight toward him.  Guided fucking centipede.  Jesus H.

Water tickled as it slid down his nose.  Rain.  It had rained all day.  He’d complained about it earlier, and John had said...

Ray swiped the rain off his nose viciously.

John had said it was Mother, crying for her children.  And she had lots of children to cry for, so it would rain a long time.

But then he’d belched and then he’d laughed and then he’d stole a can of C-rats out of L-T’s pack.  You could never tell with John Wayne how serious he was about anything.

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BA pulled the rope back up.  Watched as the glow from Faceman’s flashlight, down at the bottom of the hole, grew fainter and fainter.  Turned into darkness.

He looked up at the sky for a moment.

No stars.  Just rain in his eyes.

They were all so wet and tired.  They’d been carrying John’s body along with them.  Should have left it, but none of them wanted to, so they hadn’t.

It shouldn’t have happened.  They were on their way home.  All done for the day, and going back to have Christmas.  Whatever cold kind of Christmas they could make here.

L-T was in the lead.  That was part of what had to be hurting him now.  He’d been on point, but it could have been any of them.

He’d held up his fist, stopping them.  Dropped to a crouch.  Looked around.

John had crept up toward him, probably to find out what was going on.

A single shot had ripped out his throat.

BA remembered both the gurgling sound of John’s last breath and Face’s eyes as he watched John fall.

They’d killed three.  But two had disappeared through the trees.

They’d followed them here.

BA pulled his poncho hood back and let the rain run down his smooth, shaved head.  It seeped into the neck of his flack jacket and shirt, but that didn’t matter now.

It was almost over with.  Almost over, then they could go home.

“You be careful down there, L-T,” he thought.  “You be careful.”

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Face inched through the narrow black tunnel on his hands and knees.  It was wet down there.  He kept his .38 in his right hand and used his left hand to feel his way along through the mud.  Inch the flashlight forward a little at a time.

His mind kept going back and forth between John and Murdock.

They were alike in a lot of ways.  Both funny.  Both generous.  They’d liked each other.  John had been teaching Murdock Vietnamese in their off hours, and Murdock had been acting out the stories of all the westerns John hadn’t seen for him (which was most all of them), complete with drawling western accents (“Howdy, ma’am”) and gunfights and bucking broncos and rescues of womenfolk.

No more Vietnamese lessons, now.  Dirty words first, of course.

No more John Wayne.

The air in the tunnel smelled like rotting meat.  It was hard to breathe.

Breathe shallow, Hannibal always said.  Keep your head.  If they can breathe, you can breathe.  Go slow.  Listen.

He listened.  You could hear a lot.  Hear your own heart, hear the earth groan as the tree roots pulled at her.

John had said that.

But John was dead now.  D-E-A-D.

He kept going over what had happened in his mind.  Trying to remember what he’d seen, but he hadn’t seen anything.  Just felt eyes on them, or something, so he’d hunkered down.

He kept trying to figure out what he could have done different.

After the last two VC ran, Hannibal had knelt down by John.  Laid him out properly and closed his eyes.  Covered him up with his poncho.  Not his face.  But covered up the place where the bullets had gone through.

The rain had already washed away most of the blood.  Washed it into the red dirt.

He’d felt like he should go over to Hannibal (to John), but he didn’t.  Just stood there, feeling cold.

Hannibal had got up and come over to him.  Put his hands on his pack and straightened it.  Colonel was always doing things like that for them, but it had seemed wrong, suddenly.  To have that comfort.  He’d moved away.

There was a body in the tunnel.

His mind focused again (focus, goddamn it).  The tunnel had turned north and down and narrowed and the body was what smelled like rotting meat.  The smell settled at the back of his throat.

VC dragged their dead into the tunnels whenever they could.  Obscuring the body count, because they knew Westmoreland wanted body counts.  Body counts made good press.

Sometimes Charlie jury-rigged tripwires to the bodies.  Tripwires hooked to grenades or to small bombs made out of old Coke cans.

Face lifted himself carefully over the body and crab-walked over it, shoving the flashlight ahead of him.  Trying not to touch it.  Her.  Maggots crawled through her eye sockets.

“Murdock would hate that,” he thought.  The maggots.  He thought of maggots crawling on John.  He shivered.  He felt angry.  Murdock would hate that.  Maggots crawling on John.

He heard something (listen, Hannibal said).  He heard something and lifted his .38 and then something burst out of the darkness and tackled him.

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The night had gone all misty.

Murdock shrugged on his flack jacket and shoved back his hair (which was getting long again) and walked down toward the commo bunker.

Rain still fell, but not so heavy now.  Mist rose up out of the ground to meet it.  Murdock’s boots sunk down into the mud and made a glucking sound at every step.

The air felt good on his face.  He didn’t like being closed in lately.  In the cockpit of a Huey, okay, but nowhere else.  That wasn’t like being closed in.  That was like having wings.

The commo bunker smelled like rum.  Figert would have a fit if he found out, but it was Christmas.  Hell.  If you gotta be in Vietnam on Christmas, you should at least get rum.  And a tree.

“Hey, Captain,” Sturretski said.  “You want some rum and Coke?”

“Drink outta your bottle, Stu?  No fuckin’ way.  How do I know where you been?”

Sturretski grinned.  “What can I do you for?”

Murdock leaned on the edge of the desk.  “Anything from my guys yet, Stu?”

Sturretski frowned.  Fiddled with his log book.  “No,” he said.  “I mean, not yet.”

Murdock nodded.  They would have sent somebody to tell him if... if they had to.

He made himself smile at Stu.  Stu was looking a little nervous.  “Pockets full o’ dimes, an’ don’t one o’ them assholes call home.  What kind of deal is that, eh?”

Stu shook his head.  “Um... yeah,” he said.  “I mean...”

“Don’ you worry your head about ‘em, Stu,” Murdock said.  “Hey, gimme some of that Coke.”

Sturretski handed a bottle over.  The radio stuttered on.

Murdock’s hand closed tightly around the bottle’s neck.

Larraby’s voice.  “You still awake in there, Stu?  Man, it’s quiet out here.”

Sturretski grabbed the mike.  “Um... yeah.  I’m here.”

“I hate this fog,” Larraby said.  “I keep thinking I’m seeing stuff.”

“Well, just shoot it,” Sturretski said.  He glanced over at Murdock.  “Um, unless it’s friendlies.”

“Well, duh, Stu,” Larraby said.  “Over and out.”

Murdock leaned back a little farther.  Rested his shoulders against the cold cement wall.  Lit up another cigarette.

Turned the Coca Cola bottle around in his hands.

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The .38 slipped out of Face’s hand and he grappled with the man who’d plowed into him.  He knocked into the side of the tunnel and his elbow hit the wall above, knocking loose more muddy dirt, and then he didn’t know where he was.

He couldn’t get his arm back far enough to swing.  The air (fetid, dank) pressed in on them, and the earth above.  The sound of their rasping breaths was loud.

The man was all hard muscled hands (God, hands) in the black shadows.  Face hit him in the jaw, but not hard enough (couldn’t), then saw the glint of a knife in the faint glow of the flashlight.

He grabbed the man’s knife hand with both of his hands and smashed it into the mud, forcing the man down, pinning him with his body.

He didn’t think of John, but that anger was in him, that desperation and fury.  And guilt.  He hit the man again and again.

It was Hannibal’s voice in his head that stopped him, finally.  (When had the Colonel taken up residence there?  In his head?  Reassuring and solid, compared to the other voices that he tried so hard not to hear.  He wondered if the other guys heard Hannibal, too.)  “Listen,” Hannibal’s voice said, and he ~did~ hear something.  Something moving, deeper in.

Face stared down at Charlie’s battered face.  Charlie wasn’t moving.  Face crawled over the top of the man, toward the sound.

His .38 was on the tunnel floor.  In.  Sunk down into the mud.  He stuck it back into the holster on his hip and grabbed the battered bayonet blade the VC had been carrying for a knife.

The flashlight had sunk into the mud, too, and disappeared, but he could see some kind of faint, yellow light now, down where the tunnel turned again.

It was hard to make his breath quiet.  He couldn’t get enough air.  He held himself real still, there, kneeling in the mud.  Shoved down everything inside himself.  Tamped it down.

He could do that.

John came into his mind again, but he tamped John down, too.

He kept the knife in front of him and crawled forward.  Deeper in.

Mud pulled at his boots.  Made them feel heavy.

Quiet.

He kept his breath quiet.  Moved soft.

The tunnel turned into a little room.  He could see that now.  Couldn’t see into it though, couldn’t see the second one (the one who killed John?).  Couldn’t see the second one.

Quiet, he thought.

Shh.

He pressed himself against the wall of the tunnel.  Made himself part of the mud and darkness.  Part of the tangled roots that groaned softly around him.

Should go back.  His piece was all fucked up.  But he gripped the knife tightly and scrabbled forward instead.  Fast and low.

His eyes took in

room

no exit

nowhere to go

medicine bottle candle

black truck tire sandals

black silk pajamas

black eyes glittering with resolve

strange, hopeless, mirthless grin

grenade.

The pin was pulled and Face jerked back, out, away, scrambling, fingernails grasping for purchase, knees sliding out from under...

One thousand one

...no time, grabbing onto roots, pulling himself out, out, out, have to get...

one thousand two

...out, have to, hands and knees, forward, fuck, over Charlie’s body, go, fucking go, fucking...

one thousand three.

The earth imploded.

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Merry Christmas, John Wayne
Part 2 - White Rabbit
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When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead,

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen's off with her head,

Remember what the Dormouse said...

- Jefferson Airplane

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The ground trembled under BA.  He heard a heavy, muffled, rumbling explosion come from the hole, and saw a drift of smoke rise up out of it into the misty, rainy night.

“No,” he said.  He dropped to his knees and shoved his pack off his back.  But then Hannibal was beside him, with a hand on his shoulder.

“You stay here, Sergeant,” Hannibal said.  He pulled his poncho over his head and dropped it on the ground, then his vest.

It struck BA, suddenly, how much Hannibal looked like Face.  How much Faceman looked like Hannibal.  Both with blond heads and painted faces, that night, and rain soaking into green t-shirts.

He couldn’t bear to lose any of them.  He had no practice in losing people.  Not like Hannibal must.  Not losing DEAD losing.  The others all seemed to have come to this war knowing how that part of it worked.  The first time, back when it was just him and Ray, before Hannibal, when Tigger bought it over on Hill 418, Ray had said, “People look just like deer inside.”  He’d already known what death looked like.  Like deer inside.

But BA didn’t.  Hadn’t.  Didn’t want to get to that place, like some guys did, where it didn’t seem strange anymore.  Where it didn’t seem wrong.

He didn’t want to see Faceman’s insides, all gutted out like some poor deer.

“Ah’ll do it,” he said.

Hannibal shook his head.  Stuck his feet down the hole and grabbed BA’s arms so the Sergeant could lower him down.  His pale blue eyes were fierce.  “I’ll do it,” he said.

BA paused, then nodded.

Hannibal didn’t want Faceman to be dead either.

BA braced his feet against a tree root and eased Hannibal down into the hole.  Slow and careful.  His hands felt empty when Hannibal let go of them.  The hole was dark.

Ray appeared, melting out of the dark foliage.

“Hannibal’s bringin’ ‘im out,” BA said.  It came out of his mouth angry.

“Sure,” Ray said.  “Yeah.”  He glanced down at the hole like the ground itself was some VC, against them all.  Then he nodded at BA and disappeared again.

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Smoke hung in the air.  Caught in the beam of the flashlight.  Hannibal coughed as he crawled forward.

He made himself move slowly.  Carefully.  Looking around him, at the floor, at the roof of the narrow passage.  Looking for booby traps and trying to judge whether the walls were going to hold.  They probably would.  Simple as they were, tunnels of dirt, they’d been built well.  Walls reinforced with pieces of two-by-four, direction changes to contain explosions.

Explosions.

His shoulders scraped the wall on both sides as he moved deeper in.  It was hard to breathe.  Stale air.  Smelled like death and mud mixed together.  He crawled carefully over the decomposing body of a woman.  Black silk had melded with her skin.  Low drone of flies inside her.

He could see where the tunnel had collapsed in on itself.  He moved faster.

“Face!”  He holstered his .45 and pawed at the loose dirt.  “Talk to me, kid.”

He shoved wet, slick dirt down and away, shoveling it with his cupped hands.

He wouldn’t lose another one.  Wouldn’t.  His mind x’d the possibility.  Negated it.  Refused it.  And his mind was strong.

Not the kid.

He uncovered a naked foot that was not Face’s foot, then a hand that ~was~ Face’s hand.  He pulled on that hand and dug out around it.  When he’d uncovered Face’s head and torso, he put his arms around Face and dragged him out of the pile of dirt.  Half onto his lap.  Put one hand on the kid’s chest and the other on the vein at his throat.

Face was breathing.

Hannibal pulled out his handkerchief (green, Army-issue) and wiped some of the dirt away from the kid’s nose and mouth.

All his parts were there.  No blood poured out from any place (like John’s had) in the flashlight’s dim glow.

He patted the kid’s cheek.  “’ten, hut, Lieutenant,” he said.  “You in there, kid?”

Face didn’t stir.

Hannibal tied Face’s hands together with his handkerchief, then turned (awkwardly in the narrow place) and pulled Face’s tied arms over his head into a tunnel piggy back.

He crawled out with Face draped down over his back.  Supported their combined weight as he crab-walked over the dead woman’s body.

When he reached the tunnel entrance, hands reached down and took Face from him.  By the time he climbed up out of the tunnel himself, BA had taken Face in hand and was fussing over him, wiping the dirt off him with a rag and checking him over.

Sergeant’s prerogative.  Fussing over the guys.  Holding everybody together, while he and Face led them forward.

The army wasn’t perfect, but there were some things it got right.

BA glanced over at Hannibal.  “He ain’t wakin’ up.”

“Blast rattled his cage.  He isn’t bleeding, though.”

BA growled.

“We’re about six klicks out,” Hannibal said.  He looked down at Face.  “Let’s get them home.”

“Chopper?” Ray asked.

Hannibal shook his head.  “It’ll just draw fire.  We’re close.  Grab the sixty, and we’ll hump it.”  He picked up Face’s flack jacket, from where Face had laid it when he went in the tunnel, and handed it to his Sergeant.  “You got him?”

BA nodded.  Gently, he threaded Face’s arms through the arms of his flack jacket and hoisted Face up over his shoulders.

Hannibal picked John up from where they’d laid him.  He would have preferred to carry the living weight of his lieutenant, but he carried John instead.  The body hung across his shoulders, limp and still.  Heavy.

Ray kept the radio and took the 60 from BA.

They carried their dead and wounded back toward the fire base, toward Murdock and the hootch they currently called home.  Toward Christmas.

They left the bodies of the enemy behind them.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

It was a long six klicks.

Ray kept glancing behind him, making sure the guys were there, as he led the way through the darkness.  A mist was rising around them in the rain.  Made the jungle look pretty.  There were times when Vietnam looked just like Louisiana.

Wasn’t, though.  Definitely wasn’t.

He moved steady, but not too fast.  Have to move careful in the dark, and the others had a lot to carry.

They were close, now.  Finally.  One more rise and they’d be back at ol’ Blossom.

Not good to scare the boys on the wire.

He turned and waited for Hannibal to catch up.  “Better radio ahead, Colonel,” he said.

Hannibal nodded.

Ray laid down the 60 and let the radio slide off his shoulders.  Wound it up a little.  Pressed one of the earphones to the side of his head.  “Hey, LZB, the reindeer are done playin’ and we’re coming home.  Don’t shoot, over.”

Sturretski’s voice stuttered softly out of the dark.  “C-come on home, over.”

Ray picked up his gear again.  Glanced back at BA, still carrying the L-T over his shoulders, Faceman’s muddy, booted feet dangling.  Hannibal with John.

They’d taken them out.  The guys who’d wasted John.  But that kind of made it bad, somehow.  He still felt bad.  But there was nobody left to take it out on.

He moved back into the lead and took them over the hill.

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Murdock walked fast, down toward the wire.  He stopped when he saw Ray step out of the jungle and start up the road toward the gate.  He saw when Hannibal stepped out with a body on his shoulders and when BA stepped out.  With a body on his shoulders.

If anybody’d ever asked him how he thought it would go, he would have said something totally different than how it did go.  And he ~had~ thought about it.  A person does.  Knock on wood and say your prayers, but everybody imagines how it would be if the worst thing happened.  And he’d been born with the power to imagine the most terrible things with a most terrible clarity.  See them in his mind.

He’d imagined rushing forward and taking Face in his arms, Face’s body, in that most inconceivable moment (that he could nonetheless conceive of), but he didn’t rush forward.  He just stood there, watching, still as stone, as they walked up the hill and through the gate.  His feet felt rooted in the red-black mud of the road.  He felt cold.  He could feel every drop of rain that fell on his skin from the black sky above him.

They all stopped in front of him.  Hannibal was carrying John.  He stepped close, and Murdock could see that John’s blood had soaked into the shoulders of Hannibal’s jacket.  “John’s dead,” Hannibal said.  “Face is alive.”

Murdock looked at BA, who was carrying Face.

There wasn’t any blood on BA’s shoulders.

“Come with us, Captain,” Hannibal said.

Murdock followed Hannibal to the small building the base used for storage and graves registration.  They left John there.  Then they moved on to the med tent.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

The base medic was asleep on a cot in the med tent when they shoved their way through the door.  He struggled against his blanket for a minute, then blinked awake.  Stood.  “What is it?” he said.

BA laid Face down on the narrow table.

“Tunnel explosion caught him,” Hannibal said.

Murdock glanced at Hannibal, taking that in.  He watched as the medic cut Face’s mud-covered shirt off him with a scalpel.

“Plug in that light, man,” the medic said.

Ray hooked up the light.  All of them winced when it came on.  Blindingly bright white light.

“What’s your name?” Ray said to the medic.

BA scowled at Ray.  “Don’t distract ‘im.”

Ray’s eyes narrowed a little.  “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know ‘im.  Gonna mess with Faceman, we oughtta know who he is, BA.”

“Poppy,” the medic said.  “Jeremiah Pepper, Private, First Class.  But people call me Poppy.”  His hands traced Face’s limbs, checking for broken bones.  He lifted Face’s knee and, with a hand on knee and shoulder, eased Face over onto his side.  His hands were long and narrow and gentle.  He checked out Face’s back and the back of his head, then turned him onto his back again.

“How long’s he been out?” Poppy asked.  His eyes didn’t leave his patient.

“About an hour,” Hannibal said.

Poppy nodded.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Murdock asked quietly.

BA’s hand closed over Murdock’s shoulder, but Murdock shook it off.  Hannibal moved closer to Murdock, but didn’t touch him.

“Be easy, brotha.”  Poppy looked behind Face’s closed eyelids.  “Looks like he’s wakin’ up now.  Mus’ be the lights.  Just give ‘im a little.”

Poppy watched the guys watching their L-T wake up.

He knew who they were, now that he was awake himself.  That crazy Green Beret Colonel that was always getting into it with Colonel Figert.  And his team.  And the crazy pilot who went around with them.

They were all crazy, hear tell.  Dangerous crazy, if you got on the wrong side of any one of them, but decent.

They brought guys back.  That was one thing they did, anyhow.  He’d heard of two times when they’d rescued POW’s, and been there for a third.  Juice was that the last batch (a group of eight guys they’d bullied, dragged and carried, half-dead, into camp about a month before) was from a place across the border.  A mean place.

They were arrogant SOBs.  But anybody who brought guys back alive was okay.

The Lieutenant blinked a little, then lifted his arm up over his eyes.

The Colonel stepped forward and grasped the Lieutenant’s hand.  “About time you caught up with us, Lieutenant,” he said.

Poppy stepped into the Lieutenant’s field of vision.  “You’re back at the base now,” he said.  “It’s safe here.”  He always said that to the guys when they woke up.  “What’s your name?”

The Lieutenant glanced at his Colonel, then around at the other guys.  He pulled his hand out of the Colonel’s hand and touched the side of his head.  “Peck,” he said, finally.  “Templeton Arthur.  Lieutenant.”

“You feelin’ all right, Lieutenant?”

Piercing blue eyes swung around like a search light and glared into Poppy’s eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said.  He put his hands up in front of him.  No threat.  “I’m a medic, man.  How’s your head feelin’?”

The Lieutenant rubbed his forehead with one hand.

“How you think, numb nuts?” Ray muttered.

“I’m okay...  My ears...”

“They ringin’?”

The Lieutenant winced, then kind of pulled himself together, all at once.  “I’m okay,” he said.  More firmly.  He caught his Colonel’s eye.  Asking.

“He okay to go?” the Sergeant asked.

Poppy nodded.  “If you want.”  He said it to the Lieutenant, who sat up, then, swinging his legs over the side of the table.

The Sergeant steadied his L-T when he swayed.

“I’ll help him get cleaned up, if you’d like,” Poppy said.

The Sergeant scowled menacingly.

“We take care of our own,” the Colonel said.  He’d been standing back, leaning against the wall, watching.  But now he jerked his head toward the door.  The others responded automatically, gathering themselves and moving toward the door.  Like the musicians in an orchestra who were tuned in to their conductor, watching him, even when they didn’t look like they were watching him.

Poppy nodded.  He moved over where the Lieutenant could see him and pressed some pain pills into his hand.  “Take these now.  You hurtin’ later, you know where I’m at,” he said.

Peck nodded carefully and swallowed the pills dry.  He glanced at the Captain, who kept clenching and unclenching his fist, and at his Colonel.  Then he eased himself off the table.

The Sergeant pulled the Lieutenant’s arm across his shoulders and supported his weight.

The Colonel paused in the doorway a moment.  “I’d appreciate your coming to check him over in the morning,” he said.

Poppy nodded.  “Yes, sir.  I usually do.  Check back.  Kind of like ‘em to stay together after I patch ‘em up.”

“Thank you, Private,” the Colonel said.  “It’s appreciated.

His eyes were real intense, when he looked at a person, Poppy thought.

When they’d all gone, the med tent seemed very empty.  Muddy, but empty.

Poppy laid back down on his cot and thought about greenies and thought about grenades, then tried to push those thoughts away with thoughts of home.  Four-eleven Green Street, Maria de la Garza Pepper in that one red dress he’d bought her, baked chicken and scalloped potatoes... home.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

BA leaned Face up against the wall of the shower and Face stayed where he’d been put.  His eyes were closed.  He rubbed his hands over his ears.

Murdock turned on the water and closed himself into the shower stall with Face.  Closed everybody else out.  BA, Hannibal, Ray.  John.  He closed the door on the fire base and I Corp and Vietnam.  He closed the door and hooked the lock into its little eyebolt.  Made it just the two of them again.

Falling water and rising steam made a cocoon of warmth around them.

Murdock closed his eyes (seeing Face’s boots, dangling against BA’s back).  Opened them again.  Closed them (seeing Face’s body on the white table in the med tent).  Opened them.

He made himself see the Face that was in front of him.  Cheeks smeared with paint and mud.  Bloody lip.  Eyes staring blankly at the rough, plywood wall of the shower stall.

Murdock took a deep breath.  “You there?” he asked.

“I can’t hear you,” Face said wearily.  He rubbed his ears again.  “My ears keep ringing.” He looked up at Murdock.  His eyes were the color of water where it’s much too deep to swim.  “I never knew John Wayne could die,” he said.  Then he laughed.  A terrible, unhappy laugh.

“Face,” Murdock said.

“This same line keeps running through my head,” Face said, in horrible parody of his own usual banter.  “He’s really most sincerely dead.”

Murdock tried to pull Face to him, but Face put up his arms and warded Murdock away.  He couldn’t bear Murdock’s gentleness, not gentleness, not now.

Not after he’d let John die.

(What the fuck could he have done differently?  What?  What?  He wished to God someone, Hannibal, fucking anyone would tell him.)

Murdock swung his fist against the side of the shower stall.

Face threw his arms around Murdock’s back and shoved them both against the wall, bodies pressed tightly together, Murdock’s clenched fists grasped in his hands.

Murdock leaned forward (in Face’s arms) and let his forehead rest against the wall.  Felt the hot water rain down on the two of them.  Felt Face’s hands around his hands.  “I fucking loved him,” he said.  Soft enough so only Face could hear over the sound of water falling.  “He was one of us, an’ I loved him.  But I’m so fucking glad...”

Face let go of Murdock’s fist and clapped his hand over Murdock’s mouth.

Murdock tore Face’s hand away.  “...die without you,” he said harshly.  “You hear me, goddamnit?  I would...”

Face spun Murdock around and Murdock thought Face would hit him, but Face leaned in and ground his lips against Murdock’s lips.  Fiercely.

Face pinned Murdock against the wall with his body (pressing) and buried his hands in Murdock’s hair, pulling Murdock’s head back, kissing his lips, his cheek, his long, white throat.  He ripped Murdock’s shirt open and kissed his chest, ribs, belly.  Ran his hands down Murdock’s sides and grabbed onto the waistband of Murdock’s cammie pants.  He was going to go further, going to...  but suddenly, down there on his knees on the floor of the shower stall, he sagged against Murdock.  Let his cheek rest against Murdock’s hip.  Murdock was brushing Face’s hair back with his hands, now, and Face grabbed Murdock’s hands again.  Murdock’s knuckles were bloody from hitting the wall of the shower, but Face let those long, narrow fingers rest against his lips.  Tasted the coppery salt of Murdock’s blood on his tongue and stared up at the man who was everything, every goddamn thing in the world to him.

Murdock let himself slide down the wall of the shower until he and Face were wrapped up in each others’ arms on the shower floor.  Arms and legs entwined.

Water soaked their cammies.  Face felt heavy in Murdock’s arms.

Slowly, by feel more than by sight in the dark shower stall, the two men stripped off each others’ clothes, buttons and clasps, boots, shirts, pants, socks, until they were naked.

The water felt warm on their skin.  Face picked a bar of rough, white soap up off the floor and rubbed it between his palms.  When his hands were slick with lather, he touched Murdock’s face with them.  Traced Murdock’s brow and the lids of his closed eyes and his temples and the sharp, jutting bones of his cheeks.  He traced fingers down Murdock’s nose and over his lips and under his chin.  Then he rinsed the soap away, catching water in his cupped hands and pouring it carefully over Murdock’s head.

Murdock understood (the way he understood so much, just knowing, without ever having to say) and washed ~him~ then.  Washed off the mud and jungle and darkness and blood.  Washed his hair.  Washed his feet.

Explosions still rang in Face’s ears, and suddenly, sitting there, he was dead tired.  There were a million things he needed to be doing (Christmas, was it really...), but all he wanted (selfishly, selfishly) was Murdock’s arms around him.

“Fuck me,” he said softly, and Murdock didn’t pause.

Murdock pulled Face to his feet and Face braced himself against the door of the shower.  He pushed back until his ass rubbed against Murdock’s cock and Murdock made a small, strangled sound in his throat.

Murdock reached around Face and took Face’s cock in his hands, holding it, stroking it, and rubbing his own cock gently against the cleft of Face’s ass.  He moved gently, because the soap and water had uncovered bruises on Face’s body (from the explosion), and a bruise on his jaw and a cut beside his eye that looked like they were from a fight.  He moved gently, but he could feel the possessive ecstasy building inside him, the desire that started in his groin and went all the way up, through his heart, through his head.

“Now, goddamn it,” Face hissed, thrusting forward against Murdock’s hand and back against his cock, and Murdock used his hand to guide his cock (gently) into Face.

Face made the sound, then, inarticulate and indefinably sweet, the sound of lovemaking.

He turned a little, to look at Murdock, and Murdock was staring at him with eyes so large and luminous he almost came right then.  Murdock’s love frightened him with its intensity and sureness.  All he’d ever wanted was an anchor in this world, one sure thing, but he hadn’t understood that sure things could be as terrifying as the chaos which he’d always known.

Murdock looped an arm under Face’s arm and around his chest.  He plunged himself deep into Face, all the way into Face, into the hot, deep, tight center of him, and put his mouth close to Face’s ear.  “Get outta your head, baby,” he whispered, and fucked Face hard and sweet, stroking him.  “Hang onto us, darlin’, us, us, us, there ain’t nothin’ else right now but you an’ me, just us.”

Face wanted to believe that and he let himself believe right then.  He let himself be nothing but feeling, swept away by glowy exhaustion.  His pulse pounded in his head with something like pain, but there was no room for pain in him when Murdock was in him.  Only the heart-stopping gush of orgasm that rushed through him as Murdock came inside him and he came, spurting white against the rough plywood of the shower wall.  His fingers clenched against the shower door, and he let out something like a sob.

While they stood there gasping softly, still linked together, there was a tap on the wall and BA leaned over, looking in.

Face looked up into the Sergeant’s dark, startled eyes, then back at Murdock, who was grinning a little at BA, a small, defiant twitch-of-the-lip grin.

BA’s eyes were wide, but he just scowled more, because that usually worked on most people and even if it didn’t work on these two, it would cover up whatever might come out of his mouth if he wasn’t scowling.  He couldn’t help but look down, at the place where the two of them were hooked together, but then he got control of his eyes and everything else and looked at Faceman again.

“This ain’ no place, L-T, an’ you know it,” he said.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Face said.  Softly, but distinctly.

“Them towels for us, big guy?” Murdock asked.  He pulled himself carefully out of Face and rinsed off his cock and reached for one of the towels that BA had carried in under his arm.

Face closed his eyes and put his head under the water for a moment, rinsing himself, and took a deep breath.  He turned off the water and took the other towel.  “We’re coming, BA,” he said.

“Again?” Murdock asked.

Face threw Murdock a look over his shoulder, but was glad when Murdock dried his legs for him, because he wasn’t sure he could bend over again without falling.

The two of them wrapped the towels around their waists.  Murdock unlocked the door.

“Ain’ gonna be hot water for nobody else’s shower tomorrow,” BA muttered.

“’s got hours t’ warm up,” Murdock said.  “Dark of the night, now.”

It was.  Rain had stopped falling on the fire base, but clouds obscured all stars, and it was black out.  It wasn’t cold; cool, but not cold, but neither Murdock nor BA missed the shiver that ran through Face when they passed graves registration, or the way he clenched his jaw after.

Face stumbled as he stepped into the tent they all shared, but caught himself.  Looked up at Hannibal and Ray and the incongruous Christmas tree that filled the place, with its strange, makeshift, military decorations.

Hannibal was sitting on his bunk, drinking whiskey from a near-empty glass.  Ray got up and filled the glasses that were sitting ready on the table as Face and Murdock grabbed shorts out of their lockers and pulled them on under the towels.

Murdock ran his hands through his hair, slicking it back, then tossed down the whiskey that Ray handed him.  Face combed his hair carefully in the mirror by his bunk, and Ray rolled his eyes a little and nudged Face’s arm until he took his glass.

Murdock refilled his own and Hannibal’s, and they all paused for a moment.

No one said anything.  Not then.  There would be words later, but not yet.  Now there was only silence and Hannibal’s good whiskey, from the stash he kept in his footlocker.

Usually it would have been Hannibal who drank first, then the rest of them.  Some sort of ritual that had sprung up without speaking between them.  But this time Hannibal let it be Face who drank first, and then him, and then the others.

Face put his hand back on the bottle, then, and Hannibal thought that maybe he would keep it, but Face just poured himself one more, drank it down, and crawled into his bunk.

Ray climbed up to his bunk and BA laid down heavily in the bunk underneath him.  Hannibal put out the light and laid down.

Murdock poured himself a third drink, and a fourth, and swallowed them in single draughts.  He crouched down by the Christmas tree (their Christmas tree) and ran his hands over the family in their small, stable sanctuary.  He lit a cigarette, ignoring BA’s hiss of annoyance, and smoked it down until he was holding only the burning filter.  Then he climbed into Face’s bunk with him, easing his arms around Face’s back.
 

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Merry Christmas, John Wayne
Part 3 - I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Close your eyes, close the door,
You don't have to worry any more.
I'll be your baby tonight.

Shut the light, shut the shade,
You don't have to be afraid.
I'll be your baby tonight.

Well, that mockingbird's gonna sail away,
We're gonna forget it.
That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon,
But we're gonna let it.
You won't regret it.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear,
Bring that bottle over here.
I'll be your baby tonight.

-Bob Dylan

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

In the dream, Murdock watched John Wayne die.  Because he hadn’t been there when it happened, his mind filled in its own details.

John stood alone in the middle of an empty, dusty street.  Horses were tethered outside a saloon, because Murdock’s dreams always had horses in them.  Horses or dogs or flying.  Sometimes the dogs and horses flew.

Nothing else moved.

John was dressed in chaps and silver-tipped boots and a dusty, white shirt that contrasted sharply with his dark skin in the noonday sun.  He held a Winchester rifle, just like Jimmy Stewart carried in Winchester ’73.

John moved down the street warily, like the street was jungle.  He held the rifle like an M-16, cradled in his arms.

One of the horses whinneyed and reared, and a shot rang out from the church bell tower.

John crumpled.  Blood bloomed red on his white shirt, but then it wasn’t John anymore, lying there, crumpled there, bleeding there, dead.

It was Face.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Murdock woke with a gasp and reached for Face instinctively before he remembered that Face had gone at some point during the night.  He reached for his cigarettes, which were buried underneath his pillow, and lit one with shaky hands.  Then he willed his hands to stop shaking.

They did, but the test was inconclusive.  Could have been the nicotine, which sang comfortingly through his veins from the very first puff, instead of will power that stilled them.

The glow of the cigarette was comforting.  The tent was dim.

Comforting.  The smell of smoke, the smell of Christmas tree, the vague, but persistent, smell of sweat that made Face wrinkle his nose fastidiously whenever he came inside.

Face.

He was probably out setting up more Christmas.  Face took great pride in being able to get them what they wanted, and all the signs were there that Christmas would be the piece de resistance.  Thanksgiving had been pretty damn wonderful, and he’d been singing random bars of “Santa Claus is Coming to Vietnam” ever since.  Spending a lot of time in the comm tent, too.

Face and Hannibal were alike that way.  Both always plotting something.  Grand schemes in their heads all the time.  Maybe that’s what made them right for being in charge.  For leading guys.  Bigger pictures were built into both of them.

He was content being captain of his own ship.

He scooted back a little and mashed out his cigarette.  Hannibal was snoring softly in his bunk.  His boots stood, neat and straight, beside him.

Ray had flung an arm out, up in his rack.  BA’s covers were pulled up to his chin, and he looked like a kid.  A really big kid.  A really big bald kid.  A really mean-looking big bald... okay, maybe he didn’t look like a kid.

Murdock focused on the end of his own bunk.

A box was tipped up against the foot of it.  Wrapped in dark blue tissue paper and tied with silver ribbon.

He reached down and picked it up.

No card.  No “from.”  But written on the delicate tissue paper, in Face’s careful script, were the words, “O Captain, my Captain.”

Murdock ran his fingers over the words.  Wondered if Face knew where they were from, but then he thought Face probably did.  Wondered what Face meant.

O Captain, my Captain.

He ripped the package open.

A black silk robe.  And one in midnight blue.

The fabric slipped smoothly through his fingers.  Good silk.

Black and blue.

A robe for each of them to wear when they could be together.

Love the color of bruises.

He gathered the silk up in his hands and rested his cheek against it and fell asleep hoping that he wouldn’t dream any more, and that Face would be back before he woke up again.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Ray followed BA through the jungle.  Trees reached dark fingers toward each other, over their heads.  Elephant grass cut at their hands as they pushed through it.

He could see the back of BA’s head.  Black skin gleaming with sweat.  He could see the butt of the 60, sticking out from under BA’s arm.

They walked for a long time.  Walked and walked and walked.

His guts stayed clenched and tight, like they always did when he was out in it.

He realized, after a while, that no one had told him what the MO was.  Where they were going.  All he had was BA.  Following BA.  Walking and walking and walking and...

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Ray woke up.

He rubbed his hands over his face.

He hated dreams.  Fucking pissed him off, but especially the ones where what he dreamed was exactly what he did every fucking day.  Working on the boat that one summer, down on the Gulf, had done it to him, too, but then it was fish that you couldn’t see the end of.  That you couldn’t get out of your head.

He turned in his bunk and looked over the side at BA, asleep below him, then rolled back onto his back again.

BA would be okay.  He was always okay.  He had the luck.  And he was careful.  A goddamn Sergeant, not some fuckin’ pussy-ass dope, not knowin’ which hand to wipe his ass with, like you got forty million of, out here.

He had the luck.

‘Course, John Wayne wasn’t a dope.

But he hadn’t had the luck.  Not like BA.

Ray closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw a piece of comm wire snaking its way through a small tear in the tent fabric, in the corner of the hootch, right by his feet.  He thought it ~was~ a snake for half a second, there ~were~ snakes, Copser had one in his goddamn hootch (and if that fucker had got out and was comin’ in), but this was comm wire.  He could see it was comm wire.

He thought of the sappers, who’d been caught earlier, crawling naked through the razor wire barriers around the camp.

The comm wire inched closer.

“BA,” he said.

He pulled the .45 out from under his pillow and aimed it at the comm wire, aimed it past the comm wire, and felt BA rise up beside him.  Hannibal and Murdock were moving, too.  They all knew the sound of danger in each other’s voices, even when they were asleep.  (Where was Faceman?)

Murdock and Hannibal slipped out the door, but BA stayed close.

Ray’s grip on the .45 stayed steady.  Fuck, yeah.

Voices outside.

Voices.

“Clear,” Hannibal called out.

Ray uncocked his weapon and laid his head back on his pillow.  His breath whistled through his teeth.

Hannibal and Murdock came back into the hootch, and Face came with them.

“...just a little piece of comm wire,” Face was saying.  Complaining.

Hannibal gave Face a shove.  “Know better, Lieutenant.”

“Try to do something nice, and see what it...”

BA grabbed Face’s shirt and hauled Face up against him.  “What you doin’, fool?  I was sleepin’.  An’ now ah ain’t.”

“Is that any way to speak to an officer?”

Face made a small sound in his throat as BA hauled him up higher.

“Don’t kill him until he’s told us what the present is, big guy,” Murdock said, lighting a cigarette.

BA dropped Face, but then steadied him with a hand as he stumbled.

None of them said anything to that, Ray noticed.  Even though it wasn’t like Face to stumble.  Ever.  He and Murdock were like cats.

Or to look so pale.

Face’s cheek was coloring up with bruise, too.  They didn’t talk about that, either.

It was Christmas day.

Face disappeared out the door of the hootch for a moment, then came back in carrying a roll of comm wire and a knapsack.  He set the comm wire down beside the door and shoved the knapsack into BA’s hands.

“Wire this up,” he said.

BA growled and turned the knapsack upside down.  A field telephone tumbled out of it.

Hannibal sat down in his chair at the back of the hootch and lit up a cigar.  Murdock poured himself and Hannibal and Face each a finger of whiskey to start the day on.

Hannibal lifted his glass.  “Christmas, gentlemen,” he said.

Murdock downed his whiskey.  “Can’t argue with that.”

Face picked up his glass, then set it down again.  He rubbed his hand over his ear.

“You hearin’ okay this mornin’, muchacho?” Murdock asked.

Face nodded curtly.  “Everybody be back at five, okay?”

“You have a plan, Face?” Hannibal asked.

“I’ve got... a plan,” Face said.  “So don’t be late.”

“This plan involve presents?” Ray asked.

“Ah dearly love presents,” Murdock drawled.

“Just don’t be late,” Face said.

Someone knocked.  They all looked at the door, as if there were some possibility of John coming back.  Of it all being a mistake.

Face opened the door.

Poppy was standing there.

Face looked at Poppy blankly, but then he recognized him.  He didn’t move.

“PFC Jeremiah Pepper,” Hannibal said.

“Yessir.”

“I never forget,” Hannibal said.  “Let the man in, Face.”

Face opened the door a little.  Poppy looked at him.

“I came to see how you were doin’ this mornin’, Lieutenant.”

Face glared at Poppy.

“You’ll have to forgive ‘im, Private,” Murdock said.  “He hasn’t had his coffee yet this mornin’.  And Ray, there, almost shot ‘im about ten minutes ago, on account of there was this comm wire, see, which may or may not be connecting us with Father Christmas a little later on today.”

“Shuttup, foo’,” BA said.  “Ah was asleep, an’ now you talkin’, people here, where’s mah tools?”  BA laid the field telephone he’d been working on on his bunk and started poking around his locker, looking for needlenosed pliers.

“I wanted to take a look at you, see if...” Poppy said.

“You’ve looked,” Face said flatly.  He glanced back at the others.  “I’ll see you guys at...”

“Private Pepper wants to look you over, Face,” Hannibal said.

Face frowned.

Murdock tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

Poppy looked from Face to Hannibal, then back at Face again.  “Colonel Smith told me to stop by,” he said.

“I’m fine,” Face said.

“We’ll both go,” Hannibal said.  “Come on, Lieutenant.”

Face glared at Poppy and Hannibal both.

Poppy looked at Hannibal, and opened his mouth, but then shut it again.  It never helped matters to argue with officers.  Go around them, sometimes, but never to argue with them.  He went out the door of the hootch, and Face and Hannibal followed him.

Ray scooted over closer to where BA was working.  “What was that all about?” he asked.

“Hmmph,” BA said.  He reached up and pulled on the comm wire that was stuck through the wall of the hootch and pulled it down to the field telephone, then began stripping the end of the wire with his knife.

Murdock slid back under his blankets and put his cheek against the blue silk robe and tried to go back to sleep.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Hannibal took up the rear as he and Poppy and Face walked across the camp to the med tent.  Partly to head Face off if he decided to pull a runner, and partly to give himself room enough to think over what to do for the boy.

It wasn’t the first time Face had seen someone killed, but it was the first time it had been one of their own.

And Face had been on point.

The first time it happened to him, in Korea, his CO had gotten him drunk on cheap whiskey, and never mentioned the dead man’s name again.  Of course, getting drunk on cheap whiskey was Captain Shaver’s method for dealing with most everything.

He’d tried Shaver’s method himself for awhile, but it was too easy to lose yourself in alcohol, and he’d had too many responsibilities by then.  And, unlike Shaver, took those responsibilities too seriously.

Which brought him around to his Lieutenant again.

He wiped sweat off his face with a green bandana, then stuffed the bandana back in his pocket.

The heat made it seem much later than 0900.  The air by the LZ shimmered.  Ground almost cooked dry again already, even after the torrents of the night before.

Face’s hair looked very gold in the morning light.  ‘Golden boy,’ he thought.  But he pushed that thought back.

Face was pissed off as hell at being dragged off for a look-over, but that was all right.  Good, actually.  When the enemy is off balance, a soft wind will blow him over.

Face wasn’t the enemy, of course, but you always had to think tactics.  With everybody, all the time.  Definitely with the team.  They were all difficult as hell, but part of what made them so good was that they fit into no boxes and made their own way in the world.  Because they had to.  Because they’d always had to.  There wasn’t anybody to do it for them.

He couldn’t do it for them.  Even if he wanted to.  But hell if he was going to go off and leave the boy to drink himself into oblivion on Chu Lai rot-gut, not knowing anything else to do.

Hell with that.

He watched Face scowl at the medic as he followed him into the med tent.  Then he followed the two boys in.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Face stood with his back to the wall of the med tent, his arms folded across his chest.  Poppy frowned at him.

Hannibal grinned and stood by the door so neither of them could get away.

They stood like that for a while, but finally Poppy turned and rummaged around in a box.  He put the box back again, then held out some pills to Face.

“I don’t need those,” Face said.  Then, after a moment, “What are they?”

“Saw you las’ night, Lieutenant.  Blast of that thing knocked you around a piece.”

“I’m all right,” Face said.  He glanced over at Hannibal, then back at Poppy.  He reached over and grabbed the pills off Poppy’s hand and swallowed them dry.

“It’s just somethin’ to make you feel better, that’s all.”

“I have things to do.”

“This’ll jus’ take a minute, Lieutenant.  Take your shirt off, so I can look at those ribs.  Your ears still ringin’?”

Face moved over to the examining table and leaned against it with careful nonchalance, as if he could have stood anywhere, but that spot would do.  Hannibal looked on with approval.  That kind of attitude drove Figert crazy, but he had great appreciation for it.  And, of course, complete confidence in his own ability to keep his boys in line when he needed to.

Poppy went over to Face and waited while Face unbuttoned his uniform shirt.

The bruises were dark against the Lieutenant’s tanned skin.

Face’s lips pressed together as Poppy ran hands over his ribs.  “Yes,” he said softly.

Poppy looked up at him quizzically.  They were very close together, and Poppy stepped back a little to give the Lieutenant room.

“They’re still ringing,” Face said.

“Ribs seem okay, but come back tomorrow, a’right?  Ringin’ should go, but tell me if it doesn’t.”  He handed the Lieutenant another little packet of pills.  “These are for tonight.”

Face nodded.  “Am I done?”

“Sure,” Poppy said.

Face pulled his shirt back over his shoulders and buttoned it up.

“You’re welcome,” Poppy said, as the Lieutenant went out the door.

Colonel Smith winked at Poppy, and followed the Lieutenant out.

Poppy rolled his eyes up to heaven and decided against ever doing any housecalls again.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“We need a jeep, Lieutenant.”  Hannibal lit a cigar and watched Face spin around stiffly.  The Beach Boys were playing somewhere, and he could hear the refrain, “’round, ‘round, ‘round, ‘round, I get around,” as he watched his lieutenant’s jaw tighten.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

‘Don’t ask why,’ Face said to himself.  ‘Don’t fucking give him the...’

“Why?” he asked.

Hannibal puffed out cigar smoke and put his boot up on a sandbag.  “We’re going for a ride.”

“BA can drive you.”

“You can drive me.  Move it, Lieutenant.”

Face’s salute had a German tinge to it.  A little bit of heil.  Fuck Hannibal.  And the tank he rode in on.  Didn’t he see he had things to do?

He climbed the hill toward the motor pool cursing colonels under his breath.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

James Brown was trying to drown out the Beatles outside the team’s hootch, and doing a pretty damn good job at it.  Murdock gave up on sleep.  He rolled out of his bunk, pulled on the shirt he’d gotten from Hawaii last leave and his sunglasses, ran a hand through his hair and went outside.

A bunch of guys were playing half-tackle mud football between their hootch and the team’s.  BA and Ray were sitting on sandbags, right outside the door.  BA was still playing with the field telephone that Face had given him.  Ray was reading the letter from his mother again.

“What time is it in Louisiana?” Ray asked.

“Shut up, foo’.”

“Hey, Cap’n, what time is it in Louisiana right now?”

Murdock pulled a sandbag out from the pile that braced the side of their hootch and sat down heavily.  “Nine o’clock las’ night.”

“Mom’s makin’ late supper right now.”

Over in the football game, the ball got thrown high and three guys tackled the guy who caught it.  The sun was bright, but the mud hadn’t dried yet, and they splashed when they fell.

James Brown turned into Marvin Gaye.

“Don’t you think it’s kinda strange that it can be yesterday at the same time as it’s today?” Ray asked.

“No,” BA said.

An image of his grandparents shot into Murdock’s head, and he squeezed his eyes shut behind his sunglasses against the bright vision.  At nine o’clock at night (and somehow his mind always converted back to real time, instead of military time, when he thought about home), they’d be finishing up the milking.  He remembered the rhythmic sound of milk squirting against the side of the metal pail as his Grandpa’s large hands moved against the cow’s pale pink teats, his wrists pressing up into the udder as it emptied.  He remembered the smell of fresh, warm milk over the smell of hay as he’d mucked out the stalls.  He remembered the smell of mucking out the stalls.  He remembered the steer Grandma had named Merry and the year they’d had Merry for Christmas.  Grandma hadn’t been too sentimental about things you shouldn’t be sentimental about.

He opened his eyes.  “Where’s Face?”

Ray chuckled.  “Off with Hannibal somewhere, mad as a wet hen.”

BA screwed the wire he was holding into the radio, then set the radio down on the ground.  “You let L-T be t’day, Ray.”

Ray frowned at him.  “I ain’t forgot anything.”

“Hmmph.”

Suddenly, a shot whizzed over their heads.

“Sniper’s back!” Ray yelled, as the three of them hit the dirt.

Whoever was on duty on the wire let loose into the underbrush.

The football players dropped to the ground as two more shots thwapped into the sandbags.  Like the day before, the shots were from too far away to be accurate, but... close enough.

After a moment, everybody started to get up again.  The football players and the team and the four grunts who’d been walking by in flipflops on their way to the showers.

Murdock ripped off his sunglasses and leapt to his feet, then up on top of the sandbags, and put up his fists in mock menace.  “You don’t scare me!” he growled.  “Put ‘em up!  Put ‘em uuuhhppp!”

One more shot rang out from the tree line (from the Merry-fucking-Christmas sniper, as he [or she] had been dubbed), and Murdock let out a screech, threw up his hands, jumped down from the sandbags and dove behind BA.  All the football players laughed.  BA took a swipe at Murdock’s head.

“Santa’s bringin’ ~you~ napalm for Christmas, motherfuckers,” somebody called out toward the treeline, and a ripple of dark laughter ran over the assembled men.

Murdock sat down on his sandbag again and lit up a cigarette.  “Napalm ain’t from Santa Claus,” he drawled.  Real southern, all of a sudden.  “Tha’s from their good ol’ Uncle Sam.”

“What kinda assholes attack people on Christmas anyhow?” someone else asked.

“George Washington?” Murdock said.

There was a little more laughter, then.  It was a kind of uncomfortable laughter, though.

“Shuddup,” BA said softly.

Murdock looked over at him.

“Suh,” BA said.

Murdock turned away.

The football players drifted away from their game.  It got quiet again, but it was never peaceful here, Ray thought.  Even on Christmas.  Not with snipers and sappers and VC around.

Murdock’s door gunner, Robbie, came running up.

“We got the call, Cap, they want us down over Thu Phen ASA fuckin’ P pickin’ up a buncha humps, no offense to your buddies there, outta some hot LZ they’re runnin’ for.  Don’ even ask me about Rogers.”

Murdock unfolded himself from his sandbag.  “I didn’t,” he said.

“Rogers took a dive into the big green with that sweet new 47.  Dumped ‘er right in the treetops this mornin’.  Seven or eight...”

“Where’s Max?” Murdock asked.

“Warmin’ up our bird, Cap.  He’s all pissy, ‘cause we weren’t s’posed to go out today, but...”

Ray picked Murdock’s shades up out of the dirt and handed them to him.  “How do you stand workin’ with that hype all the time, Cap’n?”

“Robbie’s okay.  An’ I warned him last week, I’d give ‘im flying lessons if he once failed to discriminate between the good guys and the bad guys when he’s shootin’ out my door.  Right, Rob, ol’ son?”

“He ain’ right in the head,” BA muttered.

“That could be said about us all,” Murdock answered.  He started up toward the landing field.  Robbie led the way.

“Back by 1700 hours,” Ray called out.

Murdock glanced behind him, sketched a loose salute at Ray and BA, and strode up the hill.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

“Which way?” Face asked.

Hannibal gestured magnanimously toward the right, and Road 138.

Face turned the jeep that way and roared past an ox cart and and a couple dusters that were lumbering their way toward Chu Lai.  The road was rutted and full of holes, but he drove fast.  The concentration it took felt good to him.  Distracted him from thinking about anything else.  The driving, and his anger at Hannibal.  Was that what Hannibal up to?  Trying to distract him?

Hard to know with Hannibal.

Hannibal looked out over the rice fields as they went past.  You had to keep your eyes open all the time.  First thing you learned in a war.  Never close your eyes.

The sun was getting hot, now.  Light glimmered off the standing water that surrounded the small, green rice shoots.

Face drove well.  Too fast, but well.

They drove through a village.  Children ran out toward them, at the sound of the jeep, hands extended, but Face didn’t stop.

As he drove, Face listed off in his head the things he still had to do to make Christmas happen.  Check the comm router in Saigon, first off.  Benny was good, but the whole thing was going to be complicated, and it had to come out right.  Then make sure Sturretski was ready.  And keeping his mouth shut.  Make sure nobody had found the stash of booze that Sturretski would get afterwards.  Put the small stuff under the tree.

That was about it.  It wouldn’t take long, just a few hours.  He almost wished it would take longer, because he really didn’t want to stop moving today.  His body ached, and if he stopped moving, sat down somewhere, he wouldn’t want to get up again.  If he stopped moving, the ringing sound in his head would be replaced with thinking, and thinking would lead to John and John Wayne was dead and it was his fault and there was fuck all he could do about it and goddamn it, he was back thinking about it again and that wouldn’t change anything.  Not a thing.

He pushed his foot down harder on the gas.  If he drove faster, the driving would take more concentration and he wouldn’t see John’s eyes in his head.  Because there was nothing he could do for John now.  Nothing at all.

“Pull it over, Lieutenant,” Hannibal said suddenly.

Face frowned, but pulled over.  They were halfway between nothing and nowhere.  Untended fields stretched out on either side of them.  The spot felt uncomfortably exposed.  “This isn’t a good place to stop, Hannibal.”

“Sure it is.”

“You can piss in Cholon.”

“Jewel of the Orient.”

“So can we...?”

“I don’t have to take a piss.”

“Then what the fuck are we stopping here for?  Colonel?”

Hannibal ignored the question.  He took a notepad out of his shirt pocket.  There were rings of sweat under his arms.  The sun beat down on them both.  He took out his pen and began to write.

‘He wants us to be his, but not his,’ Face thought as he sat there in the sun, not asking Hannibal what the fuck he was writing.  ‘He wants us to think when we need to be able to think, think for ourselves, but when he opens his mouth he wants to be God, and for us to be Abraham and Isaac all rolled into one.  Ready to kill, ready to die, in the Army we don’t ask why.  But I don’t trust God that much, or anybody, and I always thought Abraham was a fucking asshole for what he did.  What the fuck is he...’

“What the fuck are you writing?”

“A letter,” Hannibal said.  He leaned back in his seat a little, making the stiff springs under the jeep seat groan, then pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his forehead.  Then he wrote some more.

The writing was too small for Face to read.  Hannibal’s handwriting was all careful swirls of black ink on the cheap, cream-colored paper.

Sometimes (say the fucking truth), sometimes it was hard ~not~ to trust Hannibal for everything.  He didn’t trust much, but Hannibal made it easy to trust him, easy, like falling, and he had to brace himself against it.  God was who-knew-where, not here, but Hannibal took care of them every day.

Hannibal had carried John home.

He needed a drink.  The place where they were stopped was out in the open too much.  He could see a plane streaking across the sky, but it was too high to hear or identify.  He could see three white birds riding some current of air that wasn’t reaching all the way down to the ground.  The air below, where they were, was very hot and very still and heavy with moisture.

Hannibal kept a flask of good whiskey with him most of the time, and cigars, but he wouldn’t ask Hannibal for anything right now.  Not whiskey or who he was writing the letter to.  Not anything.  He had to brace himself against it.

Hannibal screwed the top back on his pen and pulled a battered, blank envelope out of his pocket.  He folded the pages he’d written and stuffed them in the envelope and licked the edge and pressed the edge down to seal it.  He wrote his name on it (Lt. Col. JSmith, A-Team 2-9, stationed FireBase Blossom, I Corps, Vietnam), then addressed it.  The writing was larger on the envelope.  To: Capt. FSmith, 12 Hopper Street, New Bedsford, New Hampshire, 80566.

But then he didn’t have to look (without seeming like he was looking) at the letter, because Hannibal was handing it to him.

“Mail that for me, would you, Lieutenant?”

Face looked at Hannibal, then at the letter.

“I’d like it to go out today.”

“Yes, sir.”  He took it.

“Let’s head back.  I’ve got to nail Figert down on that intel from Boshun’s team.”

Face slipped Hannibal’s letter in his own pocket and started up the jeep.  He turned it around and roared back toward the base.

Hannibal lit up a cigar.  It felt cooler to him, now that they were moving.

Face kept shooting little glances at him, trying to figure out what he was up to.

It was all up to Face now.  He knew Face would steam open the letter and read it.  The boy made it his business to poke into everyone else’s.

He also knew that Face knew that he knew he’d steam it open.

God, he loved triple think.

Would Face understand, though?  That was the question.  Would he understand and would it help?

Hannibal threw his cigar down and ground it into the floor by his feet.

He’d done what he could.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

In the team’s hootch, BA and Ray were doing push-ups and sit-ups.  Lots of push-ups and sit-ups.  Ray’s breath came in little gusts of air, now, as he pressed his weight off the floor for the hundredth time.

He collapsed onto his belly.  ‘Like a fish on the deck,’ he thought.  When he had some of his breath back, he moved over a little and put his hands on BA’s ankles.

BA didn’t count his sit-ups out loud, but he let his lips move as he counted them in his head.  Two-three-seven.  Two-three-eight.  Two-three-nine.  The muscles in his gut burned and sweat stung his eyes.  Even with the door open, the air in the hootch felt hot and still, and smelled of sweat and Christmas tree.

Every time he lifted himself up, he saw the tree, and every time he saw the tree, he wished it wasn’t Christmas.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Christmas.  It was just that everything was so wrong.  ‘Nam wasn’t a place for Christmas.  War and heat and what happened to John made it feel all wrong to him.  Being away from his mama made it feel all wrong.

She wasn’t alone.  She’d sing “Joy to the World” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Little Town of Bethlehem” at the top of her lungs all Christmas morning with the three hundred other people who belonged to her church.  Everybody came on Christmas, even if they’d been up to no good all year long.  She’d cook all afternoon.  Her brothers were coming this year, she’d said in her last letter, and she always made room for the bachelors from church and the young girls who didn’t have any family in town and any neighbors who didn’t have anyplace to go.  That was how Christmas always was with Mama.  She wouldn’t be alone.  But he would be real lonely without her.

‘Two-ninety-eight,’ he breathed.  Two-ninety-nine.  Three hundred.

He sad there for a moment and stared at the Christmas tree.  Then he turned around and braced Ray’s feet for him.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Small arms fire tapped into the sides of the chopper as Murdock lowered it down toward the landing zone.

It was a good thing they’d called him.  The LZ was too narrow.  Rogers or Steiney would have dumped it or scrammed on a good day.  And this was not a good day.  He could see guys down below, running, but they were spread out over a mile and under fire.  One of them was hurt, and being dragged along by two of the others.  Charlie was on their tail.

They were regular Army, not greenies like his guys, but he thought about the night before anyhow.  Wished he could go out with them always, so he’d know what was going on with them (always), so if something happened to them he’d know.  His mother had gone out the door one day and never come back.  That tore his heart, and it would tear what was left of it to pieces if Face died.  Or if he didn’t come back one time, because that happened too, guys went in the green and never came back again and unless you were there you’d never know if they were dead, or not dead, but captured, or just separated from their unit and lost out there somewhere, maybe hurt.  You’d never know.

He had no contingency plan for losing Face.  He’d imagined what the moment of finding out would be like, but he couldn’t picture after.  It was like there couldn’t be an after, after that.

He set the slick down softly.  He listened to Robbie firing the sixty (selectively, hopefully) out the door, laying cover, and to the occasional ting of incoming fire finding its mark.  Judging, in the back of his head, how long they could afford to wait.

At the same time, he thought about forty other things.  The way the light fell on the ground here, between the trees.  The Vietnamese word for funeral, which he didn’t remember and could no longer ask John about, because it was John’s funeral he was thinking about.  He thought about what the Colonel was up to, and how soon the bird would need a complete overhaul.  Soon.  He thought about Face.

Face wasn’t the only one who could die here.

He could buy the farm first himself, pretty easy.  Between flying and when he wasn’t flying, going out with the guys, he was working right in the shit all the time.  And (no illusions here, baby) somebody could always find out about him and Face and frag their asses to kingdom come, despite their having BA as their look out and all-around guardian angel.

He wondered how Face would feel if he got zapped.

But then, with a crash, the grunts had thrown themselves into the chopper bay and all forty things he was thinking about had to do with flying again.  A bullet cracked the windshield as he lifted them up and away, and he watched the sky for the rest of the way home to Blossom through the jagged lines in the glass.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Face cut Hannibal’s letter open carefully with his knife, easing the blade under the flap.

He read mail all the time.  Anybody’s and everybody’s.  Part of his job, he figured.  How else would he know what the guys needed?  Men don’t talk much about what they need.  O’Reilly would never have gotten leave to go to Saigon if he hadn’t steamed open that letter from his girl, saying she was ‘có mang.’  And having O’Reilly owe a favor had come in handy already.

It was nice, too.  Reading the letters.  Not just useful for knowing what he needed to requisition.  You learned a lot about families in them.  How mothers were, and fathers.  Girlfriends and wives.  Even children.

Leslie leapt into his mind, suddenly (long, soft blonde hair, the blue dress she always wore to Mass, her lips).

It would have been nice to have a Leslie.  Picture in your wallet to share with the guys when you were sitting around, talking.  Letters in the mail that smelled like perfume.  Someone to go back to.

He had Murdock, though.

Not quite your traditional wife.

He grinned a little, imagining all the guys who would be flying back after their tours to small towns with Vietnamese wives who served rice instead of baked potatoes and wore pants under their dresses.  He imagined himself flying back with Murdock, and how the hell would that work?  There wasn’t any place for them back in the world.

Not quite your traditional wife.

He rubbed his hand over his ears.  He wished they would stop ringing.  It was distracting.  He kept getting distracted.

He slid the notepaper out of the envelope.

He’d almost decided not to read it, just because Hannibal clearly wanted him ~to~ read it.  But he couldn’t not.  Knowledge is protection.

That was one rule he’d learned early that still stood.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

25 Dec 1968

Frank,

Hope you’re well.  Dee, too.  Tell her I said thanks for the package.  She put your name on the box, but I know who bakes the cookies.  I’m sharing them with the boys at our Christmas dinner tonight, and they’ll be glad to get them.

Hard to believe this is my fifteenth Christmas away.  I missed home when Mother and Dad were alive, but now it seems right for me to be here.  Our way of celebrating would seem strange to most people back in the world, but like everything, it is how you make it.  We even have a tree this year.

Not all is Christmas spirit.  We lost John Wayne last night.  The VN scout I told you about.

I know it brings it back to you when I tell you about the boys I lose.  But it’s hard to think of anyone else who would understand my need for them to not be forgotten.

John was a good scout.  Knew the terrain better than we ever will; whoever wins this war, this will never be our country.  He taught Capt Murdock a great deal more VN than he knew before, mostly the dirty words, of course.  They all seem very young sometimes.  He got along with Brenner and Baracas and Peck.  He was a good man.

All my boys are.  And I guess, more than marksmanship or even combat experience, that’s what I’m looking for.  Skills can be taught, but I want men who will stand with each other, come hell or high water.  Because it always does come, especially with my mission here being what it is.

Well.  My XO’s getting fussy on me.  Put John’s name in the book for me, Frank.  Tranh Le, known as John Wayne, from Bu Dai village.  Kit Carson Scout for A-Team 2-9, stationed Fort Blossom, I Corp, Vietnam.  24 Dec 1968 - he died with honor.

-J

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

At 1400 hours, BA went down to the mess tent.

Somebody had pushed back all the tables.  The benches were arranged in crooked rows and were nearly full of guys.  The sky pilot from Saigon stood at the front.

It was hard to tell what he was, as far as religion went.  He was wearing a flack jacket over a sweat-soaked t-shirt and his hair was buzzed short and he looked pretty much like everybody else there.  His helmet sat on one of the tables, and it had a white cross painted on it.

“Come in!” he said.  “Merry Christmas!”  He picked up a stack of mimeographed pages and gave them to the first guy in line.  “Pass these out, will you, Private?”

BA moved to the back row.  Room was made.  He took a stapled bunch of pages when they came around.  “O Come All Ye Faithful” was on top, all the verses, in smudged blue ink.

As they sang the chorus (O come let us adore him), he saw Face come in.  Face went right up to the front row, as usual, but he didn’t sing.  He usually sang.  He kept his head bowed.

BA left before they were done singing “Joy to the World.”  He needed the words of the service more now, more here, than ever.  The words ~did~ comfort him, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.  He hadn’t realized how much he thought of God as being in that big church on Halstead Street until he couldn’t go to that church anymore.

He wondered if Face thought God seemed farther away now, too.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Hannibal strolled through the screen door of the hootch at 1700 hours exactly.  Ray and BA were already there, stretched out on their bunks, showered ready and waiting.  They were always on time for meals.

“Where’s Face?” Hannibal said.

Ray shrugged and kept carving on the piece of wood in his hands with his pocket knife.  “I’m hungry.”

Hannibal sat down at the small table they’d moved to the center of the hootch, to make room for the tree.  “How about the Captain?”

“Called up,” Ray said.  “That gunner of his is all fucked up, Colonel.”

“Both of ‘em messed up,” BA said.  “In the head.  Go flyin’ around all the time.  Ain’t got no sense.”

“His team, his call,” Hannibal said.  He tipped back his chair and looked at the Christmas tree.

It was nice, having a tree.  The shell casings and strung-up cigarettes and condoms looked better than a person would think.  Murdock had tied all their extra shoelaces into little bows on the branches.  John’s Swiss Army knife hung by a high branch.  They’d all hung bits and pieces on it, and that, more than what it was they hung on the tree, made it feel like home.  They’d been like kids, decorating it.

He thought about the trees he’d had when he was a kid.  Stamping through the snow with Dad and Jimmy and Donny and Frank, through Killim’s woods.  The sound of the axe chopping through the trunk of the tree, and the feel of the sap-sticky limbs in his hands as they all grabbed on and hauled it home to show Mother.

Suddenly he ~did~ miss home.  But it was a home that no longer existed.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

At 1720, Face roared up to the hootch in a borrowed jeep and shoved his way through the door with his arms loaded with boxes of food.

Ray was lying under the tree, shaking everybody’s presents.

“You break it, and you aren’t getting another one,” Face told him.

“These are cookies, right?  These sound like cookies, man.”

“Crumbs now,” BA muttered.  He sat up in his bunk and set his feet on the floor.

“Where’s Murdock?” Face asked.  “I ~told~ him to be...”

“There ~is~ a war on, Lieutenant,” Hannibal said.  “He’ll be along.”

Face set his box on the table.

Something in the box smelled wonderful.  Amazing.  Ray set down the present he was rattling and got up to look inside it.  He stuck his hand in.

“Get your hand out of there, Ray,” Face said.  “Help me get the rest of it.”

BA helped, too.  They hauled in six boxes from the jeep and set them down on Hannibal’s bunk.  Then Face set the table.

White linen table cloth.  White bone china plates.  Silver knives and forks and spoons and cystal wine glasses.

Ray wiped his hands on his cammie pants without noticing what he was doing.

BA watched from his chair, beside Hannibal’s, as Face began to set out the food.  It was all in fancy dishes.  The table looked like a table in a magazine.  Some rich people’s table.  “Where you get this?”

“I’m taking it back tomorrow,” Face said.  He lifted the lid to reveal a roasted turkey.  There was mashed potatoes and gravy, too, and cranberry sauce and green beans and rolls.

Face poured wine in the glasses, then looked up at Hannibal.

BA was expecting Face to look at Hannibal, make sure Hannibal was properly impressed with everything, but the look Face gave was more complicated than that.  Hard to read.  Hannibal didn’t seem to know how to read it either, but he reached out, after a moment, and put his hand on Face’s shoulder anyway.

“This is nice, Face,” he said.  He grinned at all of them, and patted BA’s shoulder.  “Damn sight better than ham in a can.  You did good, Lieutenant.”

Face nodded.  He glanced at the door, then back at Hannibal.  “It won’t stay warm.”

“Then let’s eat.  Sergeant?”

“Yeah?”

“Some words?”

BA frowned.  They all drug their chairs close to the table carefully, so they wouldn’t break anything or spill anything.  BA looked at his hands, folded in his lap.  He thought about Christmas in the church on Halstead Street, and his mother.  “God,” he said, “thank you for the food on this table.  Thank you for the men at this table.  We ain’t home today, but...”  He was quiet a minute.  “Thank you anyhow.  Amen,” he said.

“Amen,” Face said softly.

Hannibal picked up his wine glass and raised it.  The four of them touched their glasses together and drank.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

They’d all pushed their chairs back from the table and Hannibal was smoking a cigar and Face was checking his watch for the thirtieth time when Murdock, tired, dust-covered and loaded down with haphazardly wrapped presents, shouldered his way through the door of the hootch.

“Where have you been?”  Face demanded.

“Nobody can be mad at me.  I got presents.”  Murdock grinned unrepentantly.  “Pour me a drink, Ray-baby, I am positively parched.”  He sprawled his armload of presents across the floor near the tree, then paused in front of the table.  His eyes widened.

Ray and Hannibal laughed.  “Never thought I’d see ~you~ speechless, Captain,” Hannibal said.

“It’s like an oasis,” Murdock said.  “Somebody gimme a plate.”

“No,” Face said.

“Don’t be mad I was late, Faceyman.  You know I can’t say no to flyin’ them birds around.”

“I’m not mad,” Face said.  “There just isn’t time before...”

The field phone’s ring cut off what Face was saying.  They all looked at it.  Face looked at his watch, then at Murdock.  He looked a little nervous, suddenly.

“It’s... for you,” he said.

Murdock’s eyebrows rose.  The phone rang again, an odd double-briing.  Murdock stepped between BA and Ray and picked up the handset.  “Hello?” he said.  Then he blinked.  Then he turned his back to the others.  “Grandma?” he said.

Ray let out a breath.

“What you do, Faceman?” BA said.

“It’s only five minutes,” Face said.

Murdock hunkered down over the field phone, talking animatedly and listening carefully.  At one point he put his hand over the ear that wasn’t pressed against the handset so he could hear better.

Face kept an eye on his watch.  After five minutes had passed, he went over to Murdock and put his hand on Murdock’s shoulder.

Murdock looked up at Face with wistful eyes, then down to the floor again.  “I gotta go,” he said, “gotta go, I love you, Grandpa.  Put Grandma on.  Love you, Grandma!”

The others could hear a whisper of voices (love you’s) come through the earpiece from 5,000 miles away as Murdock set the phone down in its cradle.

Murdock rubbed his hands through his hair, then stood up.  He walked to the door of the hootch, then back to where Face was standing.  “I jus’ got you socks,” he said to Face.

The others started to laugh.  The corner of Face’s mouth turned up a little.  Murdock slid his arms under Face’s and lifted him into a hug, spinning them both around.  Face smelled warm, like red wine and cranberry sauce.

“Hey!” Face said.  He pushed himself out of Murdock’s arms with another small grin, straightened his white shirt, then looked at his watch.

The field phone rang again.

“Ray,” Face said, and Ray leapt out of his chair so fast he knocked it over.  He whooped into the phone and talked to his folks and his brother and his little sister a mile a minute, his voice sounding more and more like Louisiana as he told them about the tree they had and their dinner and asked about everybody back home.

“I was hopin’,” he said, after his turn was up.  “Man, I’ve been hoping all day, ever since you had BA wire up that phone, but I didn’t want to say anything an’ jinx it.  Oh, man.  You know it’s been four months?  What time is it in Louisiana anyhow?  Man, L-T.  Mom was out of her head, she was so happy.”

BA talked to his Mama, but he listened more than he talked.  At the end she sang a little bit of Silent Night to him.  She got cut off part way through, but it was enough.  After he set the phone down, BA went outside the hootch for a while.

When the field phone rang a fourth time, Face gestured at Hannibal.  Hannibal cocked his head, but answered it.  It was his brother, Frank, and Frank’s wife, Dee.  It was mostly Dee who kept the conversation going, but it was good.  Very good, to hear that voice, a family voice, on that day.  When his five minutes were up, he set down the phone and stood.

He went over toward Face, but Face moved away from him, to the table again, and poured himself more wine.  He drank that down, then emptied the bottle into his glass and drank again.

The phone rang.

Face didn’t have any folks.  Or grandparents, or brothers, or sisters.  Hannibal wondered if it was one of the priests at the orphanage, that Face had arranged to talk to.  Murdock wondered if it was that Leslie bitch who had broke Face’s heart and all hope of picket fences back in California.

The phone rang again.  Face pulled a carefully folded piece of paper out of his pocket, smoothed it out with his fingers, then reached for the phone.

“Xin loi,” he said into the handset.  “Toi Templeton Peck.  Trung uý Templeton Peck.  Viec gi?i t? Tranh Le.  Con trai c?a b? m? Tranh Le.”  Face paused.  His back was to the other men in the hootch.  His shoulders were pulled back tight.

Hannibal closed his eyes.

“Xin loi,” Face said, in his too-careful Vietnamese.  “I’m sorry...”

“Oh, fuck,” Ray said.  He sat down on his bunk heavily.

“Ch?t,” Face said.  “Il est mort.  Xin loi... parlez-vous français?”

He went on in French.  Murdock listened to him explain what had happened, that they were on their way home, back to base, and it had been very sudden.  The mission had been very important.  It had been very sudden.  He said he was sorry again (xin loi).  Then he paused for a moment.  “Il mort avec honneur,” he said.  Then he hung up the phone.

Face looked at Hannibal when he turned around.

Hannibal met his eyes.  “I would have done that,” he said.

“My French is better than yours,” Face said.  “We should open presents now.”  He looked at his watch.  “I have to get the last one,” he said.  “I’ll be right back.”  Without looking like he was hurrying at all, he slipped out the door of the hootch.

Murdock moved to go after him, but Hannibal stopped him.  “Just let him be.  He’ll come back.”

“You sure?” Murdock asked.

“Yes,” Hannibal said.  “He’s my lieutenant.”

Murdock thought about going after Face anyway, but there wasn’t anything to say.  When someone’s dead and you’re responsible (not guilty, even, but responsible), you have all kinds of choices of how to be (crazy or mad or drunk or hell with it all).  He’d been there himself.  He’d been in Vietnam longer than Face.  A lot longer.  And he hadn’t been sitting around playing parcheesi.  When you’re at that point you hope somebody will tell you what the hell to do.  But even when you’ve been there, and are looking at it from the outside, it’s impossible to know what that might be.

~He~ didn’t know, anyhow.  He wished Face hadn’t had to have somebody die on him.  But that was stupid, because Face was in the shit like everybody else.

He sat down at the table and made himself eat.  Turkey and cold mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.  Then he went and took a shower and changed into civvies.

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He got back before Face, but not by much.

When Face came back, he ~did~ have more presents, just like he’d said.  He was smiling, as though the phone hadn’t rang that last time.  A carefully carefree grin.  He shoved a package into Murdock’s hands -- a large, heavy square package.

“Open it,” Face said.

It was a hi-fi record player and twenty of the latest greatest hit records of 1968.

Murdock stacked the records high, and played them loud -- the very latest from Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, Aretha Franklin and James Brown (“Say it loud!  I’m black an’ I’m proud!), Buffalo Springfield and the Beatles and Otis Redding.  Then everybody ripped into the presents, paper flying everywhere.  The Christmas cookies that Hannibal’s brother’s wife sent got passed around, and so did a bottle of very good whiskey.

The presents were everything from new tiger-stripe khakis all around (from Hannibal) to fireworks and a box of “Feel-Real-Good” condoms (from Murdock to Ray).  Ray got Hannibal a Bettie Page pin-up calendar from 1942 that he’d won in a poker game and Face got Hannibal a box of Havanas.  BA got Ray a big bowie knife, just like his, and Ray got BA a gold chain with a cross on it.  Ray gave Murdock half a dozen more sheep he’d carved for the nativity, and four camels and something he claimed was a cow.  There were boxes from family, too.  Everything was opened and shared.

They’d chipped in together to get Face a new watch, a really good Swiss watch that had a compass built into it.  He opened that last (careful with the paper, even though it was just brown wrapping), and Murdock grabbed it out of his hands and strapped it on his wrist.

Bob Dylan clunked down onto the turntable just then, and Murdock pulled Face up into his arms.  “Dance with me, L-T,” he said.  “C’mon an’ dance a piece.”

Face glanced at the others, but they were all busy not minding (and maybe that was another present from them to Murdock, from them to Face).

“Close your eyes, close the door,” Bob Dylan sang, in that wailing croon of his, “you don't have to worry any more.  I'll be your baby tonight.”

Face sighed.  His arms fit easily around Murdock’s waist, and he let them.

“Shut the light, shut the shade,” Bob sang, “you don't have to be afraid.  I'll be your baby tonight.”

They moved slowly to the music.  Redding followed Dylan, and he was easier to dance to.  Sweet, crooning voice.

Otis was dead, too.

They danced through the rest of that side of the record and then to Smokey Robinson.  BA fell asleep on top of his blankets, with his boots on.  Hannibal and Ray played poker on the back table, and looked to go on awhile.

Smokey Robinson was the last record in the stack.  The arm of the record player lifted and turned and settled back into place, and the hi-fi switched itself off.

Face pulled away from Murdock and lay down under the Christmas tree.  Murdock pushed some of his sheep aside and joined Face, laying his head on Face’s shoulder.  It was cool, now, finally.  The heat had broken.

“Every year I’d sneak into the church,” Face whispered, “and lie down under the Christmas tree.”

“Better with lights,” Murdock said.  “Grandma’s got these little glass bubble lights she puts on.”

“Better than condoms and spare ordinance?” Face asked.

Murdock laughed.  “Prettier, darlin’, but not as practical ‘round these parts.”

“We had candles on our tree,” Face said.  “Hundreds of candles.  I got to help light them one year, before midnight Mass.”

Murdock pictured that in his head.  Face up on a ladder, lighting candle after candle on the dark fir boughs, in the dark church.

“Let’s sleep down here,” Murdock said.

“I get enough of sleeping on the ground,” Face said, but he didn’t move to get up.

Murdock snagged a blanket off Face’s bed and spread it over the two of them.  He stuffed a pillow under his head.  Face moved over a little and rested his head on Murdock’s shoulder.  Murdock closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of Christmas tree.  Face was warm against his side.

‘Never gonna let you down,’ Murdock thought suddenly.  Fiercely.

John had died, but he wouldn’t die on Face.  Leslie, whoever the hell she was, had gone away from Face, deserted him, but he wouldn’t go away.

“Love you, Faceman,” he whispered.

Face opened his eyes and smiled.  Then he looked over Murdock’s shoulder and pulled something off the lowest bough of the tree.  “What’s this?” he said, and held out his hand.

There was a small, dry clump of mistletoe on his palm.

Murdock squeezed his eyes shut and Face lifted the mistletoe over their heads and kissed him.

“Merry Christmas, Murdock,” Face said.  He tucked his head into Murdock’s shoulder.  Realizing that his ears had stopped ringing at last.

‘Merry Christmas, BA,’ he thought.  He could hear BA’s soft snores behind him.  ‘Goodnight, Hannibal.  Goodnight, Ray.’  He could hear Hannibal and Ray laying cards on the table, talking softly.

‘Merry Christmas, John Wayne,’ he thought.  He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and slid his hand up under Murdock’s shirt, through the soft hair there, over his heart.  Murdock’s arm tightened around him.

The two of them slept under the Christmas tree all night.  Together.

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~fin~
 
 
 

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AFTERWORD

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Father Maghill took one of the long wooden matches and lit it off a burning candle.  He touched the flame to the wick of a small white candle in a red votive, and knelt down.

As the letter he’d received requested, he prayed for the repose of the soul of John Wayne.

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