A Clean Kill in Tokyo

buddy to a booby trap. Believe me, someone is going to pay.”
    I took two deep breaths. “Tell me to stop, or I’m going to keep going.”
    Midori was silent.
    “The village was called Cu Lai. We herded all the people together, maybe forty or fifty people, including women and children. We burned their homes down right in front of them. We shot all their farm animals, massacred the pigs and cows. Effigy, you know? Catharsis. But it wasn’t cathartic enough.
    “Now what are we supposed to do with these people? I used the radio, even though you’re not supposed to because the enemy can triangulate, they can find your position. But what were we supposed to do with these people? We had just destroyed their village.
    “The guy on the other end of the radio, I still don’t know who, says, ‘Waste ’em.’ This was the way we described killing back then—so and so got wasted, we wasted ten VC
    “I’m quiet, and the guy says again, ‘Waste ’em.’ Now this is unnerving. It’s one thing to be on the brink of hot-blooded murder. It’s another to have the impulse coolly sanctioned higher up the chain of command. Suddenly I’m scared, realizing how close we had been. I say, ‘Waste who?’ He says, ‘All of ’em. Everybody.’ I say, ‘We’re talking about forty, fifty people here, some women and children, too. Do you understand that?’ The guy says again, ‘Just waste ’em.’ ‘Can I have your name and rank?’ I say, because suddenly I’m not going to kill all these people just because a voice over the radio tells me to. ‘Son,’ the voice says, ‘I assure you if I told you my rank you’d shit your pants for me. You are in a declared free-fire zone. Now do as I say.’
    “I told him I wouldn’t do it without being able to verify his authority. Then two more people, who claimed to be this guy’s superiors, got on the radio. One of them told me, ‘You have been given a direct order under the authority of the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Obey this order or suffer the consequences.’
    “So I went back to the rest of the unit to talk this over. They were guarding the villagers. I told them what I had just heard. For most of the guys, it had the same effect it had on me—it cooled them down, scared them. But some of them it excited. ‘No fucking way,’ they were saying. ‘They’re
telling
us to waste ’em? Far out.’ Still, everyone was hesitating.
    “I had a friend, Jimmy Calhoun, who everyone called Crazy Jake. He hadn’t been contributing much to the conversation. All of a sudden he says, ‘Fucking pussies. Waste ’em means waste ’em.’ He starts yelling at the villagers in Vietnamese. ‘Get down, everybody on the ground!
Num suyn!’
And the villagers complied. We were watching like we were hypnotized, wondering what he was going to do. Jimmy doesn’t even slow down, he just steps back, shoulders his rifle, then
ka-pop! ka-pop!
he starts shooting them. It was weird, no one tried to run away. Then one of the other guys yells ‘Crazy fuckin’ Jake!’ and shoulders his rifle, too. The next thing I knew we were all unloading our magazines into these people, just blowing them apart. Magazine runs out, press, slide, click, you put in a new one and fire some more.”
    My voice was still steady, my eyes fixed straight ahead, remembering. “If I could go back in time, I would try to stop it. I really would. I wouldn’t participate. And the memories dog me. I’ve been running for twenty-five years, but in the end, it’s like trying to lose a shadow.”
    There was a protracted silence, and I imagined her thinking,
I slept with a monster.
    “I wish you hadn’t told me,” she said, confirming my suspicions.
    I shrugged, feeling empty. “Maybe it’s better you know.”
    She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. It’s an upsetting story. Upsetting to hear what you’ve been through. I never thought of war as so… personal.”
    “Oh, it was personal. On both sides. There were special medals for NVA soldiers who killed an American. A severed head was the proof. If it was a SOG man you killed, you’d get an extra ten thousand piastres—several months’ pay.”
    She touched my face again, and I saw a deep sympathy in her eyes. “You were right. You’ve been through horrors. I didn’t know.”
    I took her hands and gently moved them away. “Hey, I didn’t even tell you the best part. The intel on the village being a VC stronghold? Bogus.