Perfume River Nights Read online

  Perfume River Nights

  Perfume River Nights

  A Novel

  by

  Michael P. Maurer

  Copyright © 2016 Michael P. Maurer

  Cover art © Aoshi VN/Shutterstock

  Cover design by Danny Bowes

  Quotation from The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, copyright © 2008; used with permission of Joseph Campbell Foundation (jcf.org).

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-68201-021-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  First edition: May 2016

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, MN 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  All royalities from sales of this book are dedicated to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

  For those unable to tell their stories.

  Where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

  Joseph Campbell

  The Hero With A Thousand Faces

  1

  January 25, 1968

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

  In the predawn at Pope Air Force Base next to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Rhymes helped Singer pack his M16, strap on his parachutes, and hang his kit bag with his combat field equipment. Nearby, the other men of Charlie Company’s fourth platoon were getting ready for the parachute assault that would involve more than six hundred paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.

  Rhymes circled Singer, tugging at the gear, white teeth gleaming from his coal-black face. “Looks good.” Rhymes came around to face him. “You okay, Singer?”

  “Yeah,” Singer said, even though he wasn’t sure. He was still getting used to everything, including his name. They all had their nicknames, carryovers from past units or their Nam days. While he hadn’t been to Vietnam yet like most of them, he felt a measure of acceptance and was pleased when everyone started calling him by a unit name. Singer. That’s how Jimmy thought of himself now.

  “It’s just like jump school,” Rhymes said. “Just remember to drop your kit bag before you hit the ground.”

  Singer patted his kit bag. “Got it.”

  “I’m right behind you. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not, except I never jumped with equipment before. The rifle pack’s awkward.”

  “We’re going to bust some Cherries today,” Shooter said. He slapped Singer’s helmet as he moved past, striding as though he wasn’t carrying any gear, showing the slight catch in his left leg that was always there.

  Rhymes waited until Shooter was some distance away. “Just get out of the plane. After that it won’t matter. We’ll probably get separated on the jump, but you know the rally point, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Stick with me.”

  “Airborne.” Singer’s affirmation was softer than he intended.

  “All the way.”

  They assembled at the order of Sergeant Edwards, the acting platoon leader, and shuffled up the ramp of a plane more than halfway back in a long line of C-130s, feeling the airstream of idling engines. The ramp raised slowly, shutting out the growing dawn and dampening the engine noise as it clamped shut and locked in place. Even before they lifted off, Rhymes took a book from inside his shirt, caught the bookmark in his left hand, and held the open pages up near his face.

  Climbing, the plane lurched. Singer’s nervous stomach rose in his throat and he clenched his teeth and swallowed down his fear. He touched the pack that encased his M16. His other hand clutched his reserve parachute, which he hoped he wouldn’t need. He tried to steady his breathing, not think about what was coming.

  His kit bag rested heavily on his lap. His main parachute pushed against his back as he sat on a fold-down jump seat along the plane’s wall, tightly packed with the rest of the men of fourth platoon. The droning noise of the C-130’s four wing-mounted prop engines filled the fuselage, making it difficult to hear, so most of them stayed silent.

  The ninety-minute flight to their Florida drop zone allowed plenty of time to worry. Besides being his first combat equipment jump, it would be Singer’s first combat field exercise. He checked his watch and was surprised how little time had passed since he last looked. With some difficulty, he leaned forward and looked up and down the plane. Bear’s head was slumped to the side, his eyes closed. His snoring competed with the engine noise. His large black hands hung relaxed atop his kit bag, long fingers dangling like huge worms. Beside him, Red sat with his freckles and choirboy face, placid-looking. His lips were pursed as though he might be humming. Singer had seen him sitting perfectly still, cross-legged on his bunk, hands cupped in his lap repeating the same tone again and again. Ghost, the guy with caramel skin and features that reminded Singer of a mouse, sat dwarfed by Bear, his head bowed and small hands folded as if in prayer.

  Singer sat back and kneaded his hands, pulling at each finger. On his left, Trip held the blade of a small knife in rough hands scarred by past labors, working at his fingernails, the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth. On his right, Rhymes turned a page and pressed his face inches from the text. Singer studied his watch again, tapping on the dial.

  The butterflies were there as they’d been each jump before, maybe a little worse. He was new to the unit, to these guys, and he wanted to show them they could count on him. Mostly, he didn’t want to fuck up. Once more he thought about the details of the briefing and what he needed to do once he was on the ground. He knew the others would be watching, judging him.

  Just a few weeks before, two months after his eighteenth birthday, he’d finished jump school, drew his orders, and reported to Fort Bragg. His high school days in Minnesota and life before already seemed far in the distance. His brother’s indictment of his enlistment and the war were almost forgotten, along with his mother’s distress at his not going to college. Times he chased through the woods below the house with his dog, Duke, seemed a lifetime ago. Abandoning Duke had been harder than he expected, but the ache had faded. Only leaving his girlfriend, Susan, was still recent and raw. Once she stopped crying, she promised she would wait. Right now, this was more important. His ex-girlfriend, Kathy, was the one person who understood his desire to be a paratrooper and his need to prove himself in combat. She’d even cheered him on, telling him how good he’d look coming home a hero. He never remembered why they broke up.

  He slipped his hand inside his harness straps and touched the jump wings sown to his fatigues just above the left pocket. After he graduated from jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, he had them sewn on all his fatigues. A paratrooper’s badge. You had to volunteer to be a paratrooper and he believed that created a bond stronger than in other units. He turned his head to see the patch on his left shoulder, running his fingers over it, feeling the stitching. Airborne above double “A”s for All-American. The insignia of the 82nd Airborne Division. He was one of them now. Like his father had been. His father, he was sure, would be proud of him, if he were still alive.

  Trip looked up at Singer, gave a tight-lipped smile, and shook his head.

  Across the aisle from Singer some men dozed, their heads bobbing. Others gazed at the ceiling and the cables that ran the length of the plane. Would he ever be able to relax enough that he could sleep en route to a jump? He doubted it. Shooter smiled, perhaps knowing what he was thinking. Or it might have been a growl. Shooter touched his reserve and rolled his head back, mouth ope
n in a laugh that Singer couldn’t hear. A joke he didn’t understand. Near Shooter, Stick, another new guy who reported the same day as he had, sat looking pale, shifting in his seat.

  At the end of the line was Sergeant Milner, the acting platoon sergeant who Rhymes had told him to avoid and who Bear had said to just ignore. Though that was hard to do with the man’s voice like a faulty siren, somewhere between a scream and a wail. The first time Singer heard it, he figured it could set dogs to howling. Bear said the man was a clerk who got sent to the infantry after an administrative fuck-up. What kind of screw-up could send an overweight staff sergeant to the infantry? Rhymes was kinder in saying Sergeant Milner transferred in to advance a stagnant career. Both agreed the man was dangerous. Sergeant Milner looked alone even in a line of men. His black face shiny with sweat. His eyes blinking. White strobes.

  “Ten minutes!” Sergeant Edwards yelled.

  “Ten minutes,” men repeated.

  Rhymes closed his book and shoved it down inside his shirt. Trip folded his knife and slid it into his pocket. One long nasal groan came from Bear, then his snoring stopped. Men lifted their heads and brought their feet square under them. A few rubbed their eyes and some checked their helmet straps. Singer touched his reserve with both hands, then his kit bag and rifle pack. He just had to follow Trip out. Rhymes would be right behind. Spanish words, a litany in Ghost’s voice, grew in volume and then went silent.

  Every face was turned to the back, where Sergeant Edwards stood between the still-closed doors. His feet were braced, making him look taller than he was. His eyes showed a hardness Singer hadn’t noticed at the barracks or parade ground. Another sergeant, white and taller, stood behind him, closer to the right-hand door.

  When Rhymes’s feet shifted, Singer leaned, pushing against his load.

  “Not yet,” Rhymes said. Then he grinned. He looked like he was having fun.

  Singer settled back, swallowed, and grit his teeth together hard. He hadn’t been sick on any training jump and he wasn’t starting now.

  “Stand up,” Sergeant Edwards yelled while raising his hands in the “stand-up” command.

  “Stand up,” men repeated.

  The lines rose on both sides of the plane and faced back toward the doors. Singer struggled to his feet, wedged between Trip and Rhymes.

  “Just a few more of these,” Trip said, then looked at Singer and laughed.

  Behind him, Singer could feel Rhymes’s reserve and the pressure of the line of men each pushing against the next, but there was nowhere to go until the doors opened. Events and the men behind him would carry him forward despite the weakness in his stomach and the knot growing in his throat.

  “Hookup,” Sergeant Edwards yelled, pumping his fist with a hooked finger above it.

  “Hookup,” Singer said in one voice with the men around him, snapping his static line that would deploy his chute to the cable overhead. On command, he checked his static line and the parachute and the lines on Trip’s back as Rhymes inspected his. Shouts of “okay” rolled forward from the back of the line.

  The engine pitch changed, the roar softening as the plane throttled back to a slower jump speed. The decent to the 800-foot jump height was nearly imperceptible. Still, Singer felt it and his stomach went with it. The low-altitude jump meant less time suspended from a chute exposed to enemy fire. It also meant little time to react if anything went wrong. Singer touched his free hand to his reserve chute, said a silent prayer.

  Air rushed through the cabin with the opening of the doors, filling the world with a roar that made it hard to even think. A red light glowed beside each door. Blue filled the newly opened space, but in the absence of clouds or a horizon it was a constant blue with no hint of speed or even of movement. Sergeant Edwards, as jumpmaster, and the Safety at the other door leaned out into the slipstream to check to see the rear was clear.

  Singer squinted at the rush of air that would come and tugged a finger in his chin strap. The line of men tightened, pushing harder at Singer’s back. He shuffled his feet to hold his balance. He wished he could turn and see Rhymes’s reassuring smile.

  The line shuffled forward, Singer swept up in the tide, not even sure his feet were moving. The door light was green. He hadn’t seen the light change or the first man go, though he was sure he had been watching.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Sergeant Edwards was yelling.

  One man disappeared, then another. And another. Trip was gone. He saw the open door, let go of his static line, expansive blue, blur of the horizon, his mouth too tight to allow a smile, barely slapped his fingers against the fuselage before he was swept away in a powerful blast of air, tumbling.

  “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand . . .” Singer began the count as soon as he was out the door, measuring time, waiting for his static line to deploy his chute and the chute to catch. If his main chute failed to deploy, he would have a second, maybe two, to cut it away and deploy his reserve. At “four thousand” his main chute was out, ballooned, and caught air. It ripped him violently upward by his harness as though some giant hand was trying to tear him from the sky. Singer quickly looked up. Only after he saw the full, intact canopy did he relax and smile. But jumping from so low, there was no time to enjoy the scene or the sense of floating.

  There was no gunfire, only the drone of planes still passing through and then away from the landing zone. He swiveled his head, thinking to find Rhymes or Trip or anyone he knew, but in the sea of white canopies around him it was impossible to identify anyone.

  The ground was close and rushing toward him. He saw a blur of activity of men gathering chutes and equipment, running in all directions from the tree-rimmed field. He let out a breath and set his eyes to the horizon to prepare. He could feel the ground coming more than see it. At the last second he remembered to release his kit bag. It dropped, pulling heavily when it hit the end of its line. Then the line went slack as the ground and kit bag met. Singer quickly grabbed his downwind risers, pulling down strong, dumping air. He hit hard and rolled even before he thought to keep his legs together and curl his body. His left side and shoulder slammed into the ground. He was dragged a short way on his back before he could slap the releases and cut loose his chute, and it was whipped away in the strong breeze.

  He was down. It wasn’t pretty, but there was nothing broken. He stood up, grinning. For a moment he couldn’t help but stand there and take in the scene of planes and chutes, men coming into the drop zone under white canopies. It was an impressive sight beyond any jump school scene, one that until now he had only imagined.

  In the distant treeline he made out fourth platoon’s rallying point and men already running in that direction. Still no ground fire from enemy forces, played by another Fort Bragg unit. Apparently they were going to let them get on the ground and organized before the action started. After he hurried out of his harness, he put on his gear from his kit bag, grabbed his M16, and was off running. He ran hard, his rifle in both hands and carried high across his chest, swinging back and forth with each step. It felt almost effortless.

  Something slapped his back. He stumbled forward, nearly losing his balance.

  “Good shit. Huh?”

  Bear ran beside him. In his hands his M16 looked like a toy.

  “Great. That was cool, jumping with my rifle and—”

  “New guys.” Bear gave a deep booming laugh like thunder. “This is just a game, man. Pretend shit. Just wait.” He clasped Singer’s shoulder. “Just wait.”

  Bear slowed to a walk. Singer slowed beside him, held back by Bear’s hand. “No need to hurry. It’s just playacting.” Bear’s face tightened and he spoke through nearly closed lips, “I done the real thing, and it ain’t nothing like this.”

  “Get moving, soldiers!” That grating voice. “Get moving!”

  Singer started jogging before looking back to see Sergeant Milner catching up to Bear, who was still strolling casually.

  “Shiiit, Sarge,” Bear said, drawing o
ut “shit” like a groan. “I’m going home soon.”

  “You and most of the unit, but you ain’t home yet. So move it.”

  “When you go home, Sarge?” Bear asked as he started to jog.

  “Move it, goddamn it!”

  Bear snorted. “Man, I’ll be home before this exercise is over, while you just going to the Nam.”

  Singer stretched his legs, gaining speed, leaving Bear loping and laughing behind him. He looked down at the wings on his chest and pushed harder, his grin widening with each stride. His pack and web gear bounced, and he rowed the air with his M16. When he reached the trees where the guys were gathered, he eased up as though crossing a finish line.

  The sky was clear of chutes, the drop zone growing quiet with the last C-130 barely visible. A few soldiers still ran from the drop zone while others were chasing down and gathering the last of the chutes. Bear looked to be the last coming their way, taking his time, Sergeant Milner snapping at his heels.

  “Still alive, Singer?” Shooter pointed deeper into the forest. “Your man’s over there.”

  Singer walked past trees the size of pillars with deep green foliage that seemed too full for January, though he knew nothing of Florida and its vegetation. Tall grass grew under the trees and in scattered openings bathed in intense sunlight. He was already sweating. The men were spread around in a loose perimeter. Some knelt, while others stood against trees catching their breath. Only Stick, his face bent down over his rifle, holding tight to a tree, looked serious about the exercise. Most of the others, Nam vets, seemed to have attitudes like Bear’s.

  Singer found Rhymes standing next to a tree, his M79 hanging in his right hand, pointed at the ground. To his right, Trip stood, weight heavy on one leg, leaning on his M16, the stock butt on the ground, his hand atop the front sight like it was a cane. Further right, Ghost sat his back to a tree, his M16 across his outstretched legs, hands resting on the ground. His head leaned back, mouth slightly agape, eyelids all but closed.