Title: TAFFY PULL
Author: R Schultz ( cousindream@aol.com )
Rating: R, for some language
Code: Very Alt. Univ. ENT./Über Hoshi Sato
Pairing: f/f (remembering only)
Summary: It's May, 1969, and it's twenty klicks south of the North Vietnamese border, the DMZ, in Leatherneck Square.
Disclaimer: Not Trek so the vignette is completely mine.
Warning: Warfare situation, and some language.
Written for the Femme Fuh-Q Fest, June 2003, will be archived in the ASCEM.
For more FFF stories, visit http://www.oocities.org/femme_fuhq_fest/
by R Schultz
Once we got over the little bump in the ground, we broke out of the brush and into Purgatory. That's what it
looked like. The entrance to hell.
Battalion halted as Archer did a binocular search of Do Lan Forest. Or what was a forest according to our
wonderfully fucking inaccurate maps. Maybe last week it had been a forest. Another fucking triple-canopy
green nightmare. Now it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
"Don't you wish now that Johnson had won?" I turned my head slightly, eyeballing what I supposed I should
term my girlfriend. My neck was chafing again, so I kept my towel rolled over my collar and tried not to
move my head too much.
I guess she'd be my girlfriend if we ever got out of this horseshit and we had a little in-country R&R. We've
finger-fucked each other half a dozen times and I've yet to stick my tongue in that wonderfully rank crotch of
hers. I know it's rank because we're all rank after ten days in the brush.
"Tepol, Doll," I said in a low voice, "it was just a campaign promise, and we all know about politican's
promises."
"Yeah," the big breasted girl said, "but I for one wish Goldwater had been stomped on. Maybe Johnson
would have kept the women home. This woman in particular."
We carefully eyed the terrain in front, not liking the prospect of another fucking exciting adventure in
Gook-land. First came by and stopped to jaw us up. Tucker was a lifer, but not an asshole like the fat-bellied
ones back at Da Nang.
"Keep your spacing, guys, and remember the wires. Kopasetic?"
"Gee, and here I was trying to forget the fucking wires, Sarge." He glared at me but decided to take it as a
joke.
"You ladies should also remember to take your Mickey Mouse's off safety too. And if you decide to throw
one of those metal stones at Mister Charles, it's called a lemon grenade and I especially want you to
remember to pull the pin first. Got it? Good." Then he moved to the next one in my fire team.
"I'm short," I prayed my mantra automatically. Tepol smiled bitterly. Her tour was going to last thirty days
after mine. She also knew I had five months to go yet on my thirteen, so I wasn't really short yet. But I
needed to think, somehow, that I was going to get out of Veet-nam alive. My mantra was a confirmation of
my belief in a hereafter. Some day this skinny Nisei bitch was going to make it back to Little Tokyo. Where
I'm going to eat six plates of Tempura, get roaring drunk, eat fresh bean cake and then eat my babe when she
shows up at my family home.
They shouldn't put big busted Polak women in the Infantry. Those issue bras leave bleeding scars on the
shoulders and back. What the fuck ever prompted Lincoln to okay women in the Army anyways? I know, I
remember from history class, Davis did it first, blah, blah.
Politicans. Now it's time for me to do my job.
Tepol managed to squeeze my hand for a second and then we went into the portals of Hell.
They'd given Leatherneck Square lots and lots of Agent Orange, and Agent White, and every goddamned
agent they could come up with. As we got closer the smells got worse.
This had once been thick jungle. Now it was a terrible fairyland. I could smell cyanide too, so I knew they'd
used Agent Blue on the area. All the defoliant chemicals had killed the forest. I'd watched the 123's dumping
that crap around Camp Carroll and we made snowballs out of the shitty snow and threw them at each other.
Anything that made life harder for Charlie we enjoyed.
The next step was the B-52's and the napalm.
Napalm is a mixture like our Foo bombs. Fill a 55-gallon drum a third full of gasoline. A half full of diesel.
Then fill it up with millions of tiny white plastic pellets. When the pellets melted on ignition, they clung to
everything they touched.
Now we were in Fairyland. Loops like dirty salt-water taffy were strung from tree to tree, and dull waves of it
were everywhere. You had to be careful around it, because it'd break and leave this goddamned sharp edge or
spear. That'd be all we needed. Get cut, jungle rot set in, and you lose an arm or leg or something.
But it had a hideous beauty. A forest covered with soft-looking loops and puddles and coatings and draped
over the still stiff and standing carbonized remains of bushes and elephant grass.
It had a sickening fascination, because no vista was like the other. Lines of dirty taffy ran from a tree branch
to the ground, or across a path, or circling the crowns of trees like Christmas lights that hadn't been plugged
in yet.
The presents we looke for under the trees, though, were trip wires for claymore mines and grenades and
anything Mister Charles could do damage with.
We didn't think they'd set up booby traps here, not yet. The taffy was unbroken before us. But we still looked.
I also realized my bladder was getting full. I could do it in my pants, but I always got another case of rot on
my thighs when I did so. To make it worse I got another problem.
I kept thinking of a taffy pull machine I'd seen on the pier at Santa Monica, and how great the fresh taffy was.
I was getting hungry for good fresh taffy.
The nearest taffy was probably in Manila. Maybe. That or Honolulu.
Damndamndamndamn!
END