The Opium incident.

When the captain asked for volunteers to take a recon mission two clicks up the Mekong river and didn’t get any forthcoming hands in the air, he noticed Eddie Brown trying to hide behind the pack of soldiers at the back of the platoon. Head and eyes down, shoulders dropped low, he pulled his helmet over his brow in the hope he wouldn’t be noticed. It did exactly the opposite. The captain, a square jawed, enthusiastic war veteran took Browns game of hide and seek as a selfish act of cowardliness and put him on point at the front of the gunboat, prime sniper bate for any insurgents camped out in the sand banks watching for easy targets floating up the river. Truth was no-one wanted that mission, and Eddie Brown just found himself stood in the wrong place with a wrong look on his face in the firing line of an asshole, macho captain with a chip on his shoulder looking to throw down on boots not enjoying the war as much as he was. 

It was a surprise to everyone when Eddie Brown came back two days later with a massive grin on his face. Brown had the largest teeth of anyone Id ever seen. His lips rolled back over the gums when he smiled, exposing teeth that looked like a row of white gemstones embedded into a rock face. That earned him the nickname Eddie Bitesize Brown. Vincente locked eyes on him first, weaving through the camp with intent, cutting through each of the foxholes that had been dug up facing the north side of the river.

“Yo, check it out. Bitesize looks wired,” said Vincente, drawing our attention to him. I was laying in the hammock, reading some communist manifesto Id found in Vicente’s bag. The tent pole was pulled over me to shade me from the stifling midday sun, not understanding a word of what I was reading, I put it to the side and watched for Brown.

“Captain must have taken a bullet for him to be so happy,” said Cain, joking. Cain was the squad commander and stoic elder leader of our compact unit. He stood shaving his chest in a small pocket mirror with a hunting knife that was the size of his forearm. He was smooth as a swimwear model. The ticks would nest in the hair, he said, burrow in the skin and infect the blood. Said he had seen men’s dicks fall off in the jungle because they hadn’t shaved clean. Who was I to doubt his experience, but I hadn’t seen or heard of any dicks falling off yet. Cain could have been fifty years old for all I could tell. His thin wiry frame was sun-drenched a deep, unnatural copper. I imagine he’s what the tin man in Wizard of Oz would have looked liked if left out in the rain to rust. He had been in country the longest of anyone in the platoon and had reluctantly taken a senior position, as most other experienced guys had been KIA. 

Five of us were dug into two positions at the top of the hill, a row of sandbags sitting three feet tall surrounded our makeshift camp.. Our home for the last ninety days, we were positioned to stop a reported movement of enemy battalions moving up the river towards American base camps near Saigon. 

So far the deterrent had worked and the most action we had seen was a yak floating down the river, standing on a makeshift raft around ten days ago. Maybe it had drifted away from a handler as he had tried to cross upstream and the yak had suddenly found itself on an exotic jungle cruise. We had taken pop shots at it for target practise. Not a single shot hit the mark and we wasted close to 100 rounds. It was the first time I had fired my gun in anger since arriving in the country on my maiden tour six months ago. There was a fallacy that Vietnam was all action. Most of the time we sat around waiting to be told what to do.

As Bitesize Brown entered our small compound, he had his hand tucked under his vest, trying to hide something. He had an uncharacteristic, giddy demeanour around him we all noticed right away. His whole life he was surrounded by concrete in central Atlanta. Brown had a deep-rooted hatred for the natural world and in particular the unendurable jungle. Unemployable and somewhat helpless at home, he signed up on the promise of three square meals a day without the understanding it wasn’t exactly a fair trade against the consequences of going to war. The recruiter had sold him on the lie that hardest it would get tramping around Vietnam would be the equivalent of camping in Florida. He spent most of his nights complaining about the humidity, the insects and planning how was going to kill that motherfucker recruiter when he got back to Atlanta. 

“Yo Cain, call me Santa Claus cause I about to deliver some snow,” said Brown, his eyes wide with excitement. He held Cain’s gaze until something clicked between them. Cain got serious, wiped the excess shaving cream from his chest and pointed to the small table in the centre of the area we had dug out, where Taft was sitting boiling an egg. Taft and I had flown into the country at the same time. A round headed Arkansas boy, he was equally green as I but twice as stupid. He was easily one of the dumbest kids Id ever met. A suitable target for a recruiter, he enlisted without reading the small print, having never heard of the Vietnam or its war until he laced his boots up at basic training. He cried himself to sleep for the first two weeks. 

Brown dropped a tightly wrapped block of white powder onto the table and I jumped up from the hammock and walked over to see what had given the squad this new sense of urgency. 

“Is that what I think it is?” said Taft.

“What do you think it is?” I asked him. 

“I don't know but I’m excited to find out,” said Taft. 

“Move yourself Taft, the grown ups need the table. Go over and keep watch for anyone coming up the hill,” said Cain. Taft, not one to question Cain's seniority, lifted his pot with the egg and walked over to the entrance to keep watch, but kept within earshot as not to miss out. 

Cain took the seat in front of the white parcel, ran his hands around it, inspecting it, feeling its weight, twisting and turning it, looking at every corner. The package was about 20 cm square, just larger than one of the meal tins the army provided us and just as deep, tightly packed in some sort of see through paper and thick tape wrapped around the top and bottom to hold it together. I did not know what we were looking at. There was no such thing as drugs in my world back in farmland, Ohio. It could have been some fresh rice for all I knew when I first looked at, but I could tell from the closely guarded approach by the others this contraband was more explosive than just an extra portion at lunch. 

Certainly to the rest of us it looked like Cain knew what was looking for, like an experienced Narco. Vincente jumped over the table, took the seat opposite. Brown stood aside the table, hands on his knees, bobbing his head up and down slightly, a menacing grin like a mental patient, already high on the prospect of the package that was holding all our attention. They sat for a moment in silence, each waiting for the other to speak. 

“So? What we got?” said Cain. Brown looked bemused. 

“I don't know. I thought you would know. Guy said it was premium powder,” said Brown. I could tell that Brown was waiting on Cain’s assessment, and going through his head, he looked worried he may have been taking for a ride down the river in more ways than one. 

“How did you get it?” I asked.

“I swapped my M-16 for it,” said Brown.

“You swapped your rifle for it?” said Cain. There was disbelief in his questioning.

“Yeah,” said Brown, hesitantly. 

“You swapped your M-16, American issue weapon for it?” said Vincente. I could see Cain and Vincente making eyes at each other. Surely he didn’t?

“The guy said it was premium powder,” said Brown. 

“I hope you didn’t swap your rifle with no VC man?” said Cain.

“He wasn’t no god damn Charlie,” said Brown.

“Did he tell you he wasn’t Charlie?” I asked.

“He wasn’t no god damn Charlie,” said Brown, emphasising each word, his eyes as wide as he could make them staring in my direction. He was as intimidating as a toddler. 

“Was he American?” said Vincente.

“Guy wasn’t no American, wasn’t no Charlie. He said it was premium white, and that was good enough for me. That makes it ten times the price of an M16. I ain't fired that thing in six months, what do I need it for?” said Brown. He was far less assured, agitated, sensing were mocking him. Which we were. 

“Did you get some magic beans with it,” I asked and it set Cain and Vincente into a wild laughter. Vincente started banging the table with his hand. Cain had cupped his hands over his face. Taft, expertly de shelling the boiled egg and filling his mouth with half, joined in, not wanting to be left out after hearing the others laughing, but hadn’t caught the punchline. Id heard some crazy war stories in my short time in our governments finest outfit, but none more outrageous than swapping your military issued weapon and primary source of self defence for a bag of unknown powder in the middle of a shooting war. 

“That is just about the single, dumbest thing I ever heard,” said Vincente.

“Fuck you guys, I’ll take my shit elsewhere,” said Brown. His ego trashed at what he was thinking was a sound deal. He reached down on to the table to snatch away his cargo. Cain blocked him, composed himself, and pushed Brown’s hands to the side.

“Alright, alright. Chill for second, I'll get you another rifle. Let's see what we got here. A real drug test requires an experienced drug tester,” said Cain. He grabbed his shaving knife, wiped it down with a rag and pierced its tip through the package and balanced a small amount of the white powder on its blunt edge, lifted it to his nose and shot it back. We all watched him intently, Taft stretching his neck over our shoulders from the watch position, Vincente still with the disbelieving smirk on his face. He had already added Brown’s transaction to the collection of unbelievable war stories he’d tell when he got back to New Jersey.

None watched more intently than Brown. He was poised like a gambler on the finish line at the horse track, holding a 10/1 slip on an outsider leading the pack by a powdered nose. Brown went through emotions of loss through to the elation of winning as he started see to the powder hit Cain between the eyes. 

“Its premium, ain't it?” said Brown. Cain tilted his head back, his lower jaw locked up for a moment as the powder paralysed his senses, his eyes flickering behind closed eyelids in what looked like a moment of serenity. I had a flash of why they do this. 

“Oh, it's good. That pure opium,” said Cain. 

“Jackpot!”, said Brown. He turned to Vincente, Cain and I in turn, with his middle fingers extended. “Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.”

Cain was numb to the war, he’d been here so long for him any drug taking was purely recreational, he’d enjoy the high. The others each had their anxieties that came along with a battle zone and for them the white powder was more than just a release. Sometimes, it was medicinal.

Since I first arrived, Brown would sit up all night, twitching at every bush rustle and every bird call within a hundred yards. He had talked little to me about his tour so far, but Id heard an old unit of his got ambushed and wiped out. He spent two days running through enemy jungle by himself until he stumbled across another US recon mission. Most guys believed he had run from the fight. He had already been prescribed some sedatives to help him with the building paranoia. He’d trade the other soldiers, clean socks or rations for as many pills as he could get his hands on. He had built up a decent immunity that no matter how many he took, he couldn’t shake the fear. 

Vincente always came across with a sound mind during operations, a reliable soldier. When alone he would bunker down in a hole he dug for himself, away from the rest of us, deep enough that we could only see the tip of his helmet. He would sit with a notepad and scribble away relentlessly, whispering quietly and transcribing to himself in Italian without realising we could hear him. I had never heard the Italian language before meeting Vincente. There was a wildness around the way he spoke and madness expression in his eyes only visible when he would occasionally pop them above the hole like a burrowing animal searching for prey. 

“Italians are crazy. In Sicily, this is normal behaviour,” Cain had said one night we both sat quietly watching him, trying to normalise Vincente’s growing insanity. I wasn’t so sure. Cain had clearly seen it before. He watched Vincente more intensely during those quiet hours than anyone else, as if he knew something was about to kick off.

Taft, for his initial baptism when he first came to Vietnam, he remained peaceful at night. He had found a way to fall asleep anywhere at anytime and so deep it would take a kick or punch in the leg or arm to wake him for his duty. Neither of us had seen action so far, and I still assumed he hadn’t still fully understood the concept of what he had signed up for. Ignorance is bliss. It would probably be broken with a literal bang. He missed home, the sights and smell of middle America, his mother’s cooking and his father’s love. 

I offered to take duty the night Brown had brought the Opium back into camp. I was less interested in losing my mind and I was still naïve around the opium and Id see how it panned out before getting involved. 

We were positioned high on the bank away from the main camp so we seldom got visitors from the rest of the platoon. As far as the intel we were getting there was no VC in the area with most of the fighting still taking place about a hundred miles North of our position. 

Cain, Brown, Vincente and Taft all huddled down deep into the foxhole that night. Cain always had a stash of weed. He rolled and couple of joints and passed them around. Id dip in and take a draw, then head back up to a mound that sat overlooking the river. The rest were dipping their heads regularly in the opium, snorting up white lines off the small mirror Cain carried. 

For a while they sat around, joking, giggling, teasing each other, telling stories from home, but none from their time at war, keeping it quiet. The mood was playful. For an hour they were four friends around a campfire getting wasted, then for a couple of hours they went silent as the opium kicked in. Both Cain and Taft tapped out. Taft, his mind blown by his first experience of powder, dropped into one of his deep sleeps, unlikely to remember anything in the morning. Cain opted out, lay back with hands behind his head, a wide smile across his lips. He was floating in some ethereal plain, enjoying the buzz.

Vincente and Brown kept at it, passing the mirror between them with regularity. The moaning and complaining got more vicious as they spoke about the war, the commanders, the American politics, the Vietnam people, and as they got more heated and angry they got louder. Vincente had started speaking only in Italian. As far as I knew, Brown couldn’t speak the language but continued agreeing with him. I could see a few raised heads looking in our direction from the other foxholes in the camp.

I crawled over to them, put my hand on Vincente’s forearm.

“Maybe you should slow it down a bit, keep some for later,” I said. Vincente snapped his head around in my direction. His eyes were fully bloodshot, his pupils were the size of saucepans. He snarled a little, gritted teeth with patches of white froth forming in the corners of the mouth. I could see blood on his gums trickling between the teeth, and I suspected he had been rubbing the opium directly on them.

“Non mi stained ascoltano” he said. I was oblivious to its meaning. “It was not my fault,” he said as he pulled me closer until our noses were touching. The remnants of white powder coated the tip of his nose. I could smell the cold sweat that had rinsed his head and I could see the torture in his eyes. "It was not my fault".

His eyes averted upward as a white shimmer lit up the area. Brown stood shirtless, holding Cain’s hunting knife and climbed atop the sandbags with his arm raised.

“Happy fourth of July motherfuckers!” said Brown, mistaking the incoming mortar fire as a celebration firework.