"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

Alice shrugs, lowers his weapon, gives us his usual thumbs-up, all
clear; as if to say, I'm so cool that even my errors are correct.
Cowboy's right hand slices the air again, and we all shift our gear to
less painful positions and move out, grumbling, bitching. Our thoughts drift
back into erect-nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great
Homecoming Fuck Fantasy, back into blinking black and white home movies of
events that did not happen quite the way we choose to remember them, back
into bright watercolor visions of that glorious rotation date circled in red
on all of our short-timer's calendars-different dates-but with the same
significance: Home.
Alice hesitates. His gloved hand reaches out and plucks an oversized
yellow orchid from a swirl of vines. Standing to attention, Alice inserts
the thick, juicy stem into a leather loop on his ammo vest, the skin of a
Bengal tiger. In rows of loops across the front of the vest hang two dozen
M-79 grenade rounds.
Alice's blue canvas shopping bag is slung over his shoulder. The bag is
tattooed with graffiti, autographs, obscene doodles, and a scoreboard of
stick men recording Alice's seventeen confirmed kills. On the blue canvas
shopping bag are fading black block letters: Lusthogs Delta 1/5 We Deal in
Death and Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no
evil, for I am the evil and, in crisp new letters: DON'T SHOOT-I'M SHORT and
a helmet on a pair of boots.
As he humps down the narrow trail, Alice hums, You can get anything you
want...at Alice's Restaurant...
Cowboys stops, turns around, sweeps a muddy pearl-gray Stetson off his
head.
"Break," he says.
Green Marines in the green machine, we sit beside the trail.
"I got to souvenir me an NVA belt buckle," says Donlon, our radioman.
"The silver kind with a star. Go home with something decent or the civilians
will think I was a poge, punching a typewriter. I mean, I'm
short-thirty-nine days and a wake-up."
I say, "That's not short. Twenty-two days and a wake-up. Count them."
"That ain't short," says Animal Mother. "Alice is short."
Alice brags: "Twelve days and a wake-up left in country, ladies. Count
'em. I am a short-timers, no doubt about it. Why, I'm so short that every
time I put on my socks I blindfold myself."
I grunt, "That's not short-enough, Jungle Bunny. The Doc is beaucoup
short. Nine days and a wake-up. Right, Doc? You a single-digit midget?"
Doc Jay is chewing a mouthful of canned peaches. "I got to extend
again."
Nobody says anything. Doc Jay won't be allowed to extend again. Doc Jay
has been in Viet Nam for two years, treating major wounds with minor medical
training. Doc Jay wants to save all of the wounded, even those killed in
action and buried months ago. Every night dead Marines beg him to come into
their graves. A week ago, our company commander picked up a football that
was lying on the trail. The football blew him in half. Doc Jay tried to tie
the captain back together with compress bandages. It didn't work. Doc Jay
started giggling like a kid watching cartoons.
"I'm going to extend, too!" says the New Guy as he shoves his Italian