“So Towel was just imaginary?” Ella asked. “Like Mr. Peanuts?”
I didn’t know how to answer that one. I met Tao when I was rogue in the jungle. I hadn’t spoken to another American soldier for weeks. They say that after so many days in combat, every man is considered legally insane. That’s when I met Tao. After so many days in combat. No breaks. Very little sleep. Constant danger. Ceaseless uncertainty for days and days.
I don’t even really remember the first time Tao and I bumped into each other. I only remember spending a few weeks with him on the hunt. All he wanted to do was kill Vietnamese people to avenge the murder of his family and the destruction of his village. He killed Vietnamese by the dozens and with an unending supply of rage in his heart. Soldiers had raped his sisters and mother and made his father watch before they rounded everyone up and burned them all alive—everyone Tao had ever known went up in smoke. He saw the horror show from a tree he had climbed. The Vietcong never looked up, and that’s why he was alive, or so the story went.
By the time we met, we were both all-stars when it came to killing Vietcong, so we were a fucking dream team. We killed dozens a day. And we collected gold for him, killing those who had it, because I knew Tao would sure as hell need it. I was leaving after my tour. Going back to the USA. He was stuck there in the shit and would have to bribe his way into a peaceful existence down the line, especially if the commies won.
The funny thing was that Tao only knew a limited amount of English, and I knew absolutely no Cambodian. Most of the time it was like we communicated telepathically, or maybe akin to a two-man pack of lions using pheromones. When a man is reduced to hunting and killing, words become useless—maybe even dangerous. Sometimes I felt as though we weren’t even human anymore. Like we had evolved—or devolved, maybe.
Or maybe it was like when they bring in a Cuban or Dominican or a Jap or a Korean to play American baseball. The foreigner can’t speak with his teammates so well, but they all know the rules of the game, so it doesn’t matter once they’re on the field.
When I really think about it, I remember Tao drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick to explain what happened to his village. It wasn’t too hard for me to guess what the pictures meant. War is predictable in the absolute worst possible ways.
Our killing spree lasted maybe three or so weeks, and then one day I woke up in a tree and Tao was gone, along with the gold we had tied to high branches like goddamn monkey pirates.
A stateside military shrink who debriefed me confidentially—or so he said—back in Kansas in 1967 suggested that I made up Tao as a sort of alter ego, and while that sounded like a load of shit, I couldn’t honestly argue that I was in my right mind during those three weeks. I can’t even remember everything that happened. It was like a long, long, fucking long nightmare. When I try to conjure pictures and movies in my mind now, everything is blurry, like I’m trying to peer through a window that’s been smeared with Vaseline.
“I had a dog in Vietnam for a time too. His name was Bullshit,” I said to Ella, trying to change the subject, and that’s when my son barged in and said the tea party was over.
“Why did you name your dog Bullshit?” Ella asked.
“Are you happy now?” Hank said to me. Nice little rich girls aren’t supposed to say “bullshit,” I guess. But I hadn’t told Ella to say that word, I just told her the name of my dog in Vietnam. His name really was Bullshit. We even made him dog tags with bullshit stamped into the metal.
“I’m tired,” I said to Hank, and it was true. I was fucking exhausted after only a few hours walking around in civilization free again. “These meds have me feeling dizzy. I think I oughta lie down in my room.”
“You do that,” Hank said. As I made my way down the hall to the guest room, I overheard him telling Ella that I wasn’t thinking straight and she couldn’t believe everything I said. That they had to let my brain heal. And until that happened, she was supposed to think of my quote-unquote “stories” as “make-believe.” My ignorant son actually said my Vietnam experience was like a fucking fairy tale.
I shook my head, because I began to realize that my brain surgery was going to be a convenient eraser for Hank. Anything cerebral I said from then on would be easily discredited because the government had cracked open my skull and taken a piece of my brain out. But what the fuck could I do about that? Nothing. So I laid myself down on the guest bed and thought about Bullshit.
I found Bullshit in the jungle. He was a high-spirited little mutt, and he ran right up to me, barking and jumping and wagging his tail. When I bent down, he licked my face all over, which is when I knew we were going to be buddies. I’ve always loved dogs. More than I like most people, even. And so I named the little guy Bullshit and took him back to the base with me.
Bullshit was a big hit. Everyone loved him. He got fat because so many of us were feeding him scraps. It was like the little guy died and went to USA heaven right there in Vietnam.
I had a lot of trouble sleeping in ’Nam, but when Bullshit was snuggled up with me I slept soundly through the night, maybe because he’d bark if anything came close, so I didn’t have to keep one eye open all the fucking time. In the jungle you learn how to do that, by the way. You sleep, but you never really sleep. With Bullshit, I’d sleep on my side in the fetal position, and he’d curl up in the V between my shoulders and my knees. That was the best rest I ever got in Vietnam—maybe in my entire life.
I tried taking him on patrol with me in the jungle, but he barked too much and was always giving away our position, so that was no good. I had to leave him behind whenever I went out killing gooks. He didn’t like that and would come looking for me, so I had to start locking him up or keeping him tied to a rope. I’d ask guys to feed him when I was gone, and that wasn’t a problem at all, but it was hard to get anyone to keep him in a tent because he would eventually shit and piss in there, and no one wanted that. No one was about to walk a dog on a leash in the middle of a fucking war, and so eventually someone would untie Bullshit and let him out to do his business. A few times he’d dart off and find me in the jungle, which was never good.
The last time I left Bullshit alone, someone finally let him out to take a dump and he took off looking for me, but I never did see him alive again.
When I returned to the base, I called for him and he didn’t come. I asked around, and the guys said they hadn’t seen him for half a day or so.