Numma-One Joe

Numma-One Joe1

It will be out there tonight, and I must let It in.2

It’s been plotting this night for weeks, sending out Its’ green witches and grey spirits and orange demons to watch me through the windows of the library, from the grocery market, from the gas station and pizza joint on the corner, from the homes on my block. I try to convince myself that Its’ spies are only paper and paint, unseeing counterfeits of the supernatural, but there is no conviction in my thoughts. Everywhere I look, they follow me with their cat’s-eyes, a thousand pairs of divided moons shining in mustard-yellow trepidation and despair. They beckon the nauseating and explosive death that lurks in the grainy darkness outside my front door, the death I somehow elude time and time again. I welcome death: I know exactly how it will arrive. I don’t why I survive Hell’s visits each year. Maybe It finds pleasure in denying death to me.3

I welcome death.4

Later, when the night comes, and the autumn chill begins to pierce my soul, I will lock the doors and windows and draw the curtains. I’ll invite the darkness to engulf me as I tremble on the floor of the closet. Neither bulb nor wick will burn within the walls of my fortress, and I will cloak myself in the horrible memory of a long, long day, thirty-five short years ago. Then, when the sweat freezes to my torso, turning my trembling to shivering, transforming the illusion of death into the anticipation of volcanic movement, the door-chimes will sound their death-knell. As the reverberation of the bells fade into the cavern of my fears, followed by that icy choir of fabricated innocence, those cunning agents of Hell, I’ll shrink even further into the deepest corner. Soon they’ll assault the window, those diabolically-disguised gargoyles, knowing that I crouch and whimper like that pitiful skeleton of a dog who defecated all over his hindquarters at the approach of our backfiring armored personnel carried when we arrived at Kyen-Fong, Viet-Nam.5

“Sonovabitch! Looked over dere! Dat mutt just shit hisself at the sight of us! Lookit dat, Petey, woodcha?”6

“Where?” I asked in dusty agitation. I wasn’t concerned about some stupid, scared puppy. I just wanted to find the nearest whorehouse. But Greenie had become my friend overnight; I had to humor him.7

Two days earlier, while en route to this isolated village about 50 klicks south of the DMZ, our convoy was attacked in broad daylight. The point was instantly destroyed when it arrogantly tripped a mine. One moment there were four whole, living men in that jeep. The next moment there were shreds of their mangled anatomy raining down on us like hail. Before the first APC behind the jeep could stop, it struck another stolen Claymore, killing the driver and the Lieutenant, tipping the whole truck to the right. Tracers began to erupt from the bramble in the gully. I was driving the third vehicle. The first thing I heard my shotgun, Sergeant Jack Greene, Microwave Radio Technician, say was, “Well, lookee dere. Da luttenen just got wasted. Dat .45 is mine!” In an instant the door was open and Greene had gone after the prized semi-automatic. I swerved to the left, avoiding all but one of the fallen grunts in front of me, and ran my truck into the jungle foliage. Hell had yawned, Its’ knuckles cracking with the familiar pops and flashes of Viet-Cong presence, Its’ voice speaking the language of incoming mortar. I couldn’t find my M-16, wouldn’t have known where to shoot anyway. I looked for Greene. He found what was left of the Lieutenant, and, not happy with just the .45, was wrestling with the belt and holster. Two locked-and-loaded Cong suddenly appeared from the gully, their muzzles pointed at Greene. A warm and porous, peace-sign-decorated helmet, lazily tumbling along before me, became a desperate opportunity. I picked it up and hurled it at the enemy. This distracted them for the split-second necessary for me to tackle Greene, grab the .45, fire blindly in the direction of the gully, and by some miracle, graze one of the targets. He and his buddy quickly sank back into the cover of the jungle. While Hell paused to rub the sleep from Its’ eyes, Greene and I dashed for a retreating APC. Twenty minutes and ten klicks later, we listened to Hell bellowing at our artillery fire in resonant, shaking ruptures from the deepest crevices of Its’ abdomen.8

The next day the road to Kyen Fong was secured. I found myself following a new convoy, led by a new Lieutenant, shadowed by a new friend. We established the radio outpost in three days without tragic occurrence.9

The gook villagers, in their own way, appeared to be glad to have us. They offered their undesirable women, their indigestible food, their crude, but slightly effective, rice wine, and inevitably, their nursery.10

Vietnamese children are among the most angelic in Southeast Asia. Their innocent smiles radiated a charm that would have softened the heart of even the late Lieutenant. Within two days, our ration of Hershey bars was depleted, there were no more condoms to be found, and the children intuitively knew that their older sisters would come home tonight. Most of the little dust-balls became bored with the novelty of the tall, jungle-dressed men, and went about their lives. But there was one six-year-old who lingered.11

She was Cry-Baby, as we affectionately, and appropriately, named her. From what we could gather, her mother was killed two months ago (by our own artillery fire, it was implied), and her father was a soldier. She always came to us in tears.12

“Numma-One Joe! Numma-One Joe! I come you home now, okay?”13

She looked like one of those orphan children in a Sally Struthers commercial. Her short, black hair was unwashed and lice-ridden. She never smiled. Her threadbare, striped dress loosely covered her fragile torso and dragged along the ground. When she looked at you with her large, brown, slanted eyes, your heart poured out for her. She wore a thick grimace and an empty look of longing. She would whine for food, socks, anything she could bring home to whomever it was saving a place for her. I suspected she slept in a different bed each night. She would wait for the chiming of the mess sergeant’s steel triangle, then she’d run to the chow line set up in the shadow of the radar dish. She’d cry for and receive our C-rations, bury our garbage after she looted it, and always brought along her single possession – a woven, straw basket. Sometimes it was filled with raw rice that she hoped to exchange for canned pudding. The other grunts liked Cry-Baby, and soon she became a regular fixture during mess call.14

By the fourth day, the relay transmitter was in full operation. We were waiting to eat a quick lunch before preparing to leave the next morning. A group of children followed Cry-Baby this time, each with a little basketful of rice. Somehow they knew this was their last chance for handouts.15

“Numma-One Joe! Numma-One Joe. Come looksee!” Full of tears, she held out her basket, brimming to the top with rice. “You eat now. I eat now. Then I come you home, okay?”16

“Sure, Cry-Baby. I come you home, too. You take rice to Vincent the cook, by the radio hut. You say Petey-san tell him give you pudding for friends, understand?”17

“Okay! You Numma-One Joe. Vincent-san Numma-One Joe. Papa-san come, too, okay?”18

“Good. Now you go eat.”19

She ran off, and the adorable little chorus of angelic sirens skipped along behind her, chanting some Vietnamese nursery rhyme, soothing any remnants of hyper-vigilance among the grunts.20

That was the first time she had ever mentioned her father. How long had he been in the village? We were sure he was a soldier, but we made the fatal of assuming that he was fighting against the Cong, not for them. It may have been Cry-Baby’s basket, I don’t know, that contained the plastic explosives. Somebody, hopefully not the dad, completed the necessary connection that transmitted the detonation signal.21

Hell was jerked suddenly from Its’ slumbers. It opened Its' eyes and limbs wide and roared Its’ foul breath unto the heavens. In response, Heaven received Vincent and Greene and Murphy and Carlos and Crammer and Williams and Scoggins and the new Lieutenant and a dozen little children in an instant. I was struck down by the upper half of Cry-Baby. I recognized the scrap of her striped dress, now covered in blood. I stared into her eyeless sockets as Hell entered my groin and began Its’ long, uphill journey. I stood up and looked over to the blackened spot where no grunt would ever bounce a microwave signal or eat C-rations again. Portions of flesh and skull and clothes and radio and letters from home and rice floated down in slow motion, like a light snow. Although my ears seemed to chime in multiple high-pitched tones, I was deaf from the impact, and I was strangely fascinated by the phenomenon of a rising scream resonating in my head, while not really hearing it. Hell made Its’ way up to my sternum as I looked at the remains of the faceless Greene, the shiny, broken flesh of his tanned exterior curiously contrasting against the reds and greens and yellows within. I detected a slight movement beneath his ribs, and watched it collapse into motionlessness. Hell had taken absolute control of my esophagus, and with diabolical cleverness, retched away my consciousness moments before I was to experience the relief of Its’ pressure on my thorax, moments before the ecstacy of regurgitation. This was the choking sensation, the asphyxiating souvenir smuggled into the folds of my memory for all time.22

This is the same feeling that will return later, as it has this night of the year for thirty-five years since that day in Kyen Fong. I will hide in my closet as the little village children sing their nursery songs of death outside. I will sweat and freeze and try to blot out the ringing of the chimes. I will try to prevent the ascent of Hell from my abdomen. Failing, I’ll futilely attempt to allow It full passageway through my body. But It will stop and fill my throat, suffocating me, making me flee in panic from the darkness of the closet. I will dash to the window, screaming, and bury my face in the draperies. I will hear the children’s laughter coming closer, closer. Then they will ring the deafening chimes. Lurching in agonizing dolor and despair, I will rush to the door that leads to the vault of Hell Itself. I will fling it open upon the Devil’s kindergarten while they laugh and sing, dressed in their tattered, striped masks, holding out their baskets filled with rice and blood, chanting their homecoming chorus of death:23

“Trick or treat!”24

Gazzelle