Bats (Recovery Part 2)

As I sprinted through the jungle, I mused terribly on things. Painful things. Horrible things. I failed. I failed, I told myself, spiking the statement with a fiercely self-accusatory tone. Memories of our base burning to the ground floated like particles in my mind, unable to be flushed away, too flighty and fast to be captured or contained. They were programmed to eventually latch onto the walls of my brain and infect me. It was going to happen. What can you do when you are poisoned, and there is no cure? The more you struggle against the toxicity of it, with its grabby needlelike spines, the more frantic you get. And the more the poison pieces evade your grip. And land. And multiply. It's madness, forming in your mind.

My knees struck the soft earth and my chest heaved, and I wept into the humid mosquito-infested tropicana. For a while I sat there, unconcerned about invaders or hunters or beasts. I turned my attention to the excruciating agony that throbbed in my heart. If I had just done [something] differently, my friends might have survived. All those plans we made, all those acts of the future that we regaled each other with around the commissary, all the laughter we shared in the barracks about lifetimes still to come, all of it. Erased. Again.

"Damn this war," I managed to mumble, choking. It was living hell, to drift through this life with the awareness of mortality and sensitivity of thought. Why, why, why, are we allowed to surf? To dance on the heavens of our primal playground, only to be punished for our delight with subsequent beatings? Each second thrusts upon our unguarded hearts the staggering vulnerability of flesh. In a second - less to a mind - we experience euphoria.... and then abject torture. How do we plan for that? How can we enjoy the enjoyable parts when we know how much it's going to hurt any minute? Or, worse, if we can't know how much it's going to hurt any minute?

Following the siege of our home base - the one we swore to protect - I had fled into the hills and lost the attackers, feeling a sick relief at hearing their celebratory singing because at least I knew then that they weren't pursuing me. As I gathered my breath and squinted away moisture, there was no thinking. Just running. In times like these it was standard protocol to fetch the map and compass from our knapsack and plot a course to the nearest outpost, but in the immediate presence of hot death there is no thought, nor is there a sense of direction. There is only speed, and running, and possibly prayer.

After some distance and a great deal of sobbing I managed to collect myself enough to follow the sound of trickling water. A lucky initial direction set me up near where I could hear it. And although I wasn't able to find the river and the fresh water it represented, the act of tracking it brought me to within a clearing where, in the fading twilight, I noticed bats in the air. The bats were emanating from a nearby cavern, and it was this cavern in which I hid for as long as I dared before there was no other choice but to try to sleep upon the cold rock as each echo of a disturbed pebble rocked and ricocheted like mortarfire.

Sleep didn't visit me. However, after many hours of hoarse shivering, a voice did. A voice from the radio.

"This is Rooster, calling from FOP Khe Sanh. Anybody there? Come in, over."

I did not recognize the voice. And I certainly didn't know a Rooster. Yet, the human spoke again, his voice a warm ring in the icy cavern air.

"This is Rooster. Anyone out there? Come in, over?"

Desperate, bewildered, and probably hoping it was a trap that would lead them to me and end my suffering, I grabbed the radio and responded. "This is Otimbeaux. Over."

After a questionable pause, Rooster spoke again. "Otimbeaux? I don't know you. Where's your post? Over."

"I don't have a post. It's gone. Everything is gone." This was the only reply I could manage, and with that - another failure, this time a complete failure of my identity as a soldier - I dropped the radio. I was alone, I was useless, and the agonizing knowledge of authentic hopelessness was unbearable. Thoughts of drawing my Bowie knife across my own throat flew about, jittery, beautiful, like the bats. I want to be done with this life. I don't want to live anymore.

"You from Khe Sanh? Thank the Goddess. I'm Tony. I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I'm so scared."

I swallowed and clasped the knife back in its sheath, instinctively, a small sense of purpose forming.