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The Point Man ©2004 Jon L. Adams
Click here to download the Acrobat PDF or read the story below:

A black guy was at the trash dump shooting a forty-five at rubber tires. He was whittling them down as if he was taking a penknife to a stick of wood. It was outside the south wire, where the old road used to be before the creek cut it when the Monsoon rains began. He was just standing there, blowing away at them dumb tires and I climbed over the concertina wire and walked down to see who he was and why he was doing it.

“Stay the fuck away!” he said, so I stopped. He had a weird twist to his face. Tortured and angry. Sweat dripped off his chin. He shoved a knee at me, so I jumped back. Then he watched me go inside the wire behind the sandbags. He started doing it again, wasting all that ammunition, and nobody came to stop him.

“Who was shooting tires in the dump?”

“Davis. Leave him alone,” said Teena. “He crazy.”

Somebody said he was from down in the Ninth and he got thrown into Long Binh Jail for cold-cocking a Lieutenant. They sent him to our unit a few days ago.

We walked patrol next morning at eight. Our Lieutenant took two squads, sixteen strong. I had the point till we reached the turn and Teena came up and took it. I waited while the file went by and settled in between the radioman and Doc. About a half a click further along we heard some noise and played dead. It went away and we decided it was an animal. I looked up front and saw the Lieutenant on the radio. He was talking to the firebase. They shot a round over us toward the sounds. It was a one-five-five and it made a hell of a racket. Then we went on.

We walked back to the wire. About two that afternoon, the rain pelted down and the mud turned to peanut butter.

We spent the next two days bailing out the hooch, cleaning up and oiling our weapons. I wondered why I hadn’t seen the crazy black guy on the patrol, but I didn’t ask anyone.

Next day we went out again. The Lieutenant said we had another two clicks to go on the patrol. We would be turning back after that, on the very same path we took outbound. It pissed us off, because that was suicide if Charlie was around. We would have to look real careful for wires and booby traps, and Charlie might lay out an ambush. We were ready to frag the officer.

“Lieutenant, we can’t go back the same way. You know . . .”

“Shut your mouth, or you’ll get the stockade. Smart-ass me one more time and I guarantee it!”

The Lieutenant had only been with us for a month. He was too green to understand our concern. We never followed routines on patrol. We didn’t like to walk the trails, and when we turned around, we went back by another track. Always.

On the way back we ran into four traps and a stolen Claymore mine that went off but blew in the wrong direction. It scared the living crap out of us. The Lieutenant made us get off the compass track and we went around a little hill and back to the firebase. By the time we came inside the wire we were ready to shoot the bastard. He made us walk an extra six clicks. On the way in, the Lieutenant himself took the point to show us all what a fearless leader he was.

We sat that night and watched the Monsoon. I recall how sad everything looked with the trees sagging under the weight of the rainwater. I wondered if Charlie was getting wet under those trees.

Two days later we patrolled the south side again and went over to Hill 338. The Lieutenant made the crazy guy take the point. We all sort of looked at each other and then we walked on. He made Davis take the point all the way back to the firebase.

When we were having chow that night, Davis came over and said to Teena, “That Lieutenant’s bad news. He goin’ walk right into Charlie someday, and I want to be behind his ass when that happens.”

That’s all he said. He walked away and we just looked at each other.

“Wonder why God don’t stop this shit,” I said later.

Higgins rapped, “God ain’t dead, but he ain’t on our side, either.”

Next morning we went out along the main road and walked in two files, off the side of the open area that had been plowed flat. Later, the thicket was bad and we had to cut our way with machetes. The Lieutenant made Davis take the point, first on one side of the road, then on the other. The whole platoon wondered what the heck was up between them.

We came back the same way, and I thought we would find lots of traps. We didn’t. We were just lucky. When we got inside the wire I saw Davis standing to one side with his M-16 hanging barrel-down in the mud, looking at the Lieutenant like he could kill him. Rain dripped off his nose like blood.

That night, on the pallet pile, we talked some more. I asked Higgins what he thought the platoon leader was up to, hassling Davis like he was.

“He’s trying to get him zipped in a bag,” Macaroni said.

“He didn’t do anything to the Lieutenant, did he?”

“The Lieutenant. He trying to get the man’s ass killed. He hates him cause he nothin’ but a bad nigger. That Lieutenant is from the Citadel. He a ‘suth-ren’ gentleman. He wants Davis to walk the line, hoe cotton.”

It was easy to understand how they felt. They were all northern city kids and they had a perspective different from mine. I was a Georgian, but I knew all about those things. When I tried to show them they had it wrong, they told me I was full of fried chicken shit.

“We all gonna die here,” somebody said.

“God IS on our side,” I claimed.

“He don’t give a shit ‘bout you, honky.”

“It don’t mean nothin’.” Ripper quoted the most common phrase spoken in-country.

We patrolled over to Hill 414 a couple days later. The Lieutenant put Davis on point all day. He found three wires, all tied to grenades. I was beginning to appreciate his skills up front. We were just about out of the woods and a kilometer from the wire when I walked in file past Davis. He was waiting for his place in line. Someone else had taken the point. His eyes found mine and I saw nothing but rage.

I looked back and saw he was in line, four guys behind me. We went up a little slope and then all hell broke loose.

Shooting tore at us from the front. I went to the right like I was supposed to and dug my elbows in the mud under a bush. I couldn’t see anything up ahead. It was pouring rain and bullets. Death whizzed over my head and most of the fire was coming at us, not going away. Everything smelled like burning matches, piss and sweat.
I crawled forward and saw some guys had begun to return fire. The Lieutenant was down. His radioman was calling for support and the platoon Sergeant was shouting for everyone to spread out.

Somebody dropped next to me and said, “Davis turned his ankle and the Lieutenant said that since we were so close to the base he would take the point himself. Asshole. He took one in the first burst.”

It was Macaroni. He was covered in mud. We tried to see where the enemy was but it was a wild melee. In a minute the firing stopped and the front crept forward. Charlie had left and the way was open, but we checked around for a while before we picked up the Lieutenant’s body and went in.

They gathered up all our M-16s and took them away on a Huey. A Colonel from the Judge Advocate’s Division came in on the same chopper. He got us all together by the T.O.C. bunker and read us the deal. We were all suspects until the ballistics were done on our weapons; we were not to be involved in any actions, patrols or perimeter duty. The army didn’t trust us anymore.

The next day I found out that Davis had told the lieutenant that his ankle hurt and he couldn’t stay out on the point. Teena said Davis smelled the ambush up ahead and wanted the Lieutenant to walk into it. The Lieutenant always took the point for the last “safe” half-kilometer to the firebase. Julius said Davis set him up.

Someone else said the army thought one of us had fragged him, shot him in the back. Higgins said that the Lieutenant got those wounds after he caught the first round in the chest and it spun him around. No sweat, he said. They won’t find any of our ammo in his dead ass.

The day after that they returned our weapons. It was raining just like it always did during Monsoon season. The rifles were real dirty and had been fired for ballistic tests, but nothing ever came of it.

Davis disappeared and we never found out what happened to him. Higgins got snake bit and went off to Tuy Hoa Evacuation Hospital. He caught pneumonia there and went home. Teena got wounded in the right leg about a month later and they sent him back to the real world, too. Julius I didn’t know about, because I went home before him. Twenty years later I found his name on the wall in Washington. Ripper and Macaroni are there, too.

So is that Lieutenant, but I forgot his name.

Anyway, it don’t mean nothin’.

©2004 Jon L. Adams