The Village by Bing West Read Free Book Online Page A

in,” Beebe said. “But don’t go farther than we can support you.”

4
    The patrollers straggled off to sleep. Ordinarily most of the Americans and Vietnamese slept outdoors on cots, air mattresses and sandbags, with the light breezes keeping away the bugs. But the rain had driven everyone indoors and the men were sleeping side by side in a hall about the size of a small living room. The air was dank and smelled of wet, dirty clothes and too many bodies.
    Lummis found a niche by the door, shrugged out of his wet gear, took off his shirt and boots, lay down and fell asleep. At four, the Marine sentry came in search, tripping over men and shining his flashlight into several cursing faces before finding Lummis, who in turn woke Brannon. They put back on their sopping shirts and boots, struggled into their web gear heavy with magazines and grenades, threw two LAWs apiece over their shoulders, picked up their automatic rifles and walked out of the fort.
    â€œWe’ll be in the cemetery, Theilepape,” Lummis called to the sentry. “You’ll hear if we get into it.”
    Cold, sullen, in ugly temper, Lummis walked down the trail toward a cemetery a quarter of a mile away. Brannon lagged several yards behind, watching their rear. The clouds had passed and the stars were shining down, bringing a brightness to the night and promising a brilliant dawn. They reached the cemetery and turned right, passing cautiously between the mounds of earth until they neared the bank of the stream where they had fought six hours earlier. Then they sat down some yards apart with their backs against tombstones and, with a clear view over the calm stream, waited to add to the dead.
    For an hour they sat and no boats came by. Gradually it grew light, and in the hamlet to their left the fishermen stirred and emerged from their houses and began pushing their boats on wooden rollers toward the empty waters. They stopped momentarily when they saw the two ambushers looking at them, but then proceeded again, their bustle disturbing a huge rat who scurried along the high-tide mark in the mud past the ambushers. Brannon thought of shooting the rodent, but let it go lest the fort go on alert at the burst. They stayed past six in the morning, not from any hope that some bemused Viet Cong would paddle by in the light, but to watch the dawn come.
    At the start of another day, Lummis rose to his knees, picked up his rifle and flipped the bipods back alongside the barrel. Seeing that, Brannon followed suit, and together they walked back out to the trail, bearing with them the stink of the muck and the bites of mosquitoes and chiggers. Lightheaded from lack of sleep, their movements were sluggish as they trudged back.
    Just outside the fort’s fence, they met Gerald Sueter, the squad’s Navy corpsman. Since he had medical duties in the Binh Yen Noi hamlets each morning, he was not assigned any late-night patrols. Sueter’s day started when many of the Marines were going to sleep.
    â€œSince you two are up,” he said, “why not come down to the market with me? You might be able to grab a hot bowl of soup for breakfast.”
    â€œThat beats C-ration coffee,” Lummis replied. “Let’s go.”
    All three were fond of the early morning, before the heat. Since first light lifted the village curfew, they passed dozens of people, some going to work in the fields, others driving cows, some getting an early start to the district market. The Marines exchanged courteous morning greetings with the men. They said fewer words to the women, who always seemed in a great hurry, quick-shuffling along the trail with shoulders hunched under the weight of water cans or bundled firewood balanced on stubby poles. They refused to look directly at the Americans, although Brannon, in complimenting a few good-looking girls, set up a titter among some older women.
    Clean-shirted children, happily forgetting they were on their way