Death in the Jungle by Gary Smith (most inspirational books .txt) 📕

teeth. The teeth were stained reddish brown, which was common among the Vietnamese who chewed betel nut.

There! I thought. I had gotten a smile. Of course, I had paid for it, but what the hell.

I decided to walk back to the PX on the opposite side of the street, so as I reached the next intersection, I started across the roadway. I dodged a boy on a bicycle and moved around a slow-moving old man wearing a black Chinese Mandarin robe. While passing the man, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had a yellow, wrinkled face with a long, thin, white goatee. His eyes were bloodshot, and overall he looked sickly.

Not wanting to stare and thereby give insult to the fellow, I looked away and kept walking. But after a few steps, I heard a “thud” behind me. I took a peek over my shoulder and saw that the old man had collapsed onto the street. The sight caused me to stop in my tracks.

I tried to move back toward the stricken man, but the steady stream of people walking by bumped into me and pushed me back. I couldn’t believe it. Everyone was ignoring the crumpled body, walking around it and even showing some displeasure at the inconvenience. One man stepped right over the top of his fallen countryman without so much as a break in his stride. Seeing that, I spun around and went with the flow until I found a place where I could watch from afar.

What I saw was baffling. The old man received no attention or assistance. Perhaps he was dead. In that case, it appeared to me that he’d lie there until some street sweeper scooped him up later in the day. Until then, the only interested party may be a party of flies. Under the strange circumstances, I chose to protect myself from a possible sticky situation and walked back to the PX.

As I approached the entrance to the big French building, my teammates were filing out. Their hands were full of booze and gifts.

“Where you been, Smitty?” asked Flynn, sounding as if he had a right to know. His question irritated me since he was the one I had told I was going for a walk. It was obvious to me he was setting me up for some teasing from the others. Sure enough, they let me have it.

“He’s prob’ly been with some red-hot, sexy lady,” piped up McCollum. The others chuckled and murmured their approval.

“That’s right,” I spouted without hesitation, “your wife was good.” The chuckles became cackles as we walked to our pickup truck.

“Actually,” chimed in Funkhouser, “I think the Hawk set up a rendezvous with Nga. She’s let it be known that she’s interested in more of Smitty than just his laundry.”

Above the howls and catcalls, I shouted playfully at Funkhouser, “You traitor!” Then I laughed with the others.

We climbed into our truck and Pearson drove through Saigon until he found a bar advertising strip shows. He parked close, then bailed out of the cab with a grin on his face. Flynn and Brown crawled out the passenger-side door.

“Flynn asked me to stop!” Pearson announced to the rest of us. “He needs a pick-me-up before we go back to the base.”

The five of us in the box jumped out and joined our teammates on the sidewalk.

“We need one of us to stand watch over our booze and other items,” Pearson reminded us. “Do we have a volunteer?”

“I’ll stay with the truck if someone will bring me a beer,” I answered.

“All right, Smitty,” replied Pearson as he turned to go into the bar. He saw several Vietnamese children running along the sidewalk toward our group. Knowing what a nuisance the street urchins could be, Pearson and the others hurried inside the bar, leaving me to deal with the mischievous kids.

“Shoe shine, GI, shoe shine?” barked the first little boy to reach me. His almond-shaped brown eyes glowed with expectancy.

I looked down at my gray coral shoes, which were made of canvas. Pointing at them, I replied, “Da, go ahead.” The boy stared at my coral shoes for a moment, then looked up at me with a sudden grin. He shook his head.

“Funny, GI,” he said as four more boys brought their running to a halt right next to me. They were a ragtag bunch.

“Give me American cigarette,” said the tiniest one, holding out a hand. This was a common request of Vietnamese city children, as they sold all they could get on the black market.

“No cigarettes today,” I stated.

The little hand remained outstretched. “Buy me gum,” the boy persisted.

I noticed two of the older boys slipping behind me. Wise to their pickpocketing abilities, I moved a couple of steps closer to the pickup truck. When I turned to face the boys again, my backside was flush against the truck door, thereby protecting my wallet.

“Buy me gum,” repeated the small boy with his hand still out. I dug into a pants pocket and found a fresh pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint. I tore open the pack and distributed one piece of gum to each of the five boys. While the other boys wasted no time in getting the gum into their mouths, the oldest-looking boy held his piece in his hand and stepped right in front of me.

“American cigarette?” he asked curtly. I stared into his eyes, looking for a sign of hostility. There was none to see; rather, I sensed sportiveness.

“American cigarette bad for lungs,” I stated, then I coughed twice in the boy’s face. He stepped back from me, then opened his gum wrapper and popped the gum into his mouth.

As the boy began chewing, he looked at me and said, “American gum bad for teeth.” He smiled big, showing me his crooked and decayed set. Then he spun around and ran away, with the other boys in hot pursuit of him.

Five minutes later, as I waited in the oppressive heat and wondered which