Jungle Rules Page 7

  “Picture this very black Marine private sitting in the witness box, wearing a khaki uniform, which is a sharp contrast to his skin color. The eyes of all six jurors fixate on him. His presence quite literally mesmerized the whole court after Heyster had him state his name for a third time, right after my objection. A disgusting racial trick, and I know that even Private White did not like it.”

  “So the jury is hypnotized on Private White,” O’Connor said. “What did he have to say?”

  “Heyster asks him, ‘Do you know the accused, Lance Corporal Raymond Zelinski?’ ” Carter said, mimicking the prosecutor, putting his hands backward on his hips as he spoke. “Poor Private White cannot even say Zelinski, and stutters and stumbles trying to repeat the name.

  “Then I see it. I see Heyster smile that dirty, I-got-you-now smile of his. He looked at me, looked at the jury, all of whom sat transfixed on White, and then with his back to the jury, I see Heyster raise his eyebrows and give PFC White the nod to now finish his statement.

  “White looks right at the jury, just the way Charlie told him to do, and says, ‘I don’t rightly know him as Lance Corporal Zuh, whatever you said his last name was. All us guys down on the flight line, we just calls him Raymond the Weasel!’

  “At that moment, White looked at Zelinski and smiled, and every eye in the court then followed White’s cue and looked at my client, sitting there with his pointed little face, bug eyes, pencil-thin mustache, slicked-down black hair, and poor posture. It was as though the whole trial focused on that moment. That name. At that instant he became guilty. He turned to slime. In their minds he was no longer Lance Corporal Zelinski, but a street item named Raymond the Weasel.”

  Carter then screamed, standing on his tiptoes and swinging his arms as he now ranted nearly uncontrollably, “Raymond the Weasel! My God! Everyone in the courtroom, including the jury and the judge himself, laughed out loud!

  “The jurors’ eyes immediately shifted from the very black Private White to my client, who could only slink down in his chair with his ratty little paws curled under his chin, looking very much like Raymond the Weasel! They convicted that boy purely on his looks!”

  “That and a joint of marijuana that he held in his hand, planted or not,” Kirkwood added, sitting on the side of his bunk.

  “Well, yes,” Carter said, standing with his arms folded at the end of Kirkwood’s rack. “But he was set up, and everyone knew it.”

  “Possession is possession,” O’Connor said, now sitting, too.

  “The judge, no doubt duly influenced by my client’s weasel looks, sentenced Raymond to, you guys just guess what,” Carter said.

  “Oh, crap, how should I know?” O’Connor said. “Thirty days in the brig. A little harsh, but for a weasel, a month in the cooler.”

  “Typically, a guy would get some restriction, a fine, but you said Raymond was no longer a lance corporal, so he must have gotten a bust,” Kirkwood said.

  “Wrong on nearly all counts,” Carter said. “The three others who were charged with possession, who the military police caught red-handed smoking the pot in the hangar, each got off with a fine and thirty days’ confinement. For having a single marijuana joint in his hands, not smoking it, nor having even a match with which to light it, and not even time to put it in his pocket, Lance Corporal Raymond the Weasel got busted to private, received six months in the brig, a fine of six months’ pay, and a bad-conduct discharge. For possession of one stinking joint, he’s ruined for life.”

  “Six, six, and a kick,” O’Connor said, “That is harsh.”

  “Get used to it, gentlemen,” Carter said, walking back to his bunk. “Dicky Doo believes in harshness. He even told me once that every enlisted Marine is guilty of something, and should be lashed at the mast. He claims that a little brig time for them just balances the scales of justice.”

  “Oh, he is definitely a flogging kind of a guy,” O’Connor said. “I got that right off.”

  “Gentlemen,” Kirkwood said, looking at his wristwatch and sliding his toes between the thong straps of his green rubber shower shoes, “I am off to clean up before the big hail-and-farewell bash tonight. Just a couple of hours away. No time to snooze, but a long shower and a shave might restore my soul at least for a little while anyway.”

  “I’m with you, my man,” O’Connor said, rolling off the bunk, and grabbing a towel and toiletry kit, and trotting barefooted after Kirkwood.

  JAPANESE LANTERNS TIED on communications line stretched between tent poles decorated the lawn behind the Officers’ Club that night. Vietnamese chefs stood in front of flaming grills, turning giant prawns and porterhouse steaks over the fires and dropping the surf ’n’ turf fare on the plates of First MAW Law’s attorneys, staff, and their many guests, who outnumbered the lawyers three to one.

  Country music from a Filipino group with a Japanese lead singer blared from two batteries of six-foot-tall loudspeaker cabinets that flanked the foot-high riser of plywood laid on concrete blocks that served as a stage. Electric cords buried between two-by-fours stretched to the back of the club, where an octopus of outlets fed the band’s amplifiers and microphones.

  “How’d ya like ole Yamaguchi Ritter and his Angeles City Cowboys?” a Marine nearly a size too large for his tiger-stripe pattern jungle-camouflage utility uniform said to Terry O’Connor, slapping a paw the size of a beef chuck roast on the lawyer’s shoulder, knocking him off balance, and causing beer to slosh out of his glass.

  “Not bad at all,” the five-foot, ten-inch O’Connor said, looking up at the Marine, who towered a foot above his head.

  “He kind of fucks up the L sounds, but after a while, over here, a guy stops noticing it,” the gigantic Marine said, craning his neck over his shoulder, looking at the band playing at the opposite end of the lawn, where much of the crowd had gathered, near the bar and the barbecue grills.

  “Terry O’Connor,” the lawyer said, and extended his hand to the huge man.

  “Archie Gunn,” the hulk said, returning the shake, wrapping his mitt around O’Connor’s almost like a man taking a child by the hand. “Just call me Lobo. My old Basic School roommate over yonder, T. D. McKay, is in your outfit, and always invites me to your cross burnings and beefsteak sacrifices.”

  O’Connor glanced past Lobo, and noticed Jon Kirkwood walking toward him, a half smile on his face.

  “Here comes my TBS roommate,” O’Connor said, “Jonathan Kirkwood.”

  “Oh, yeah, I met him a while ago,” Gunn said, letting go of O’Connor’s hand and offering Kirkwood a wave. “He was cornered by old Stanley the shithead Tufts and the Brothers B.”

  “I know who Tufts is; I met his brother Manley at staging on Okinawa. He came on our plane today, and I think he got assigned to one of the grunt battalions for a couple of months before he goes to work at First Marine Division Legal, but the Brothers B? I haven’t met them,” O’Connor said.

  “Phillip Edward Bailey-Brown and Miles Christopher Bushwick. Charming fellows from New England,” Jon Kirkwood said as he joined Lobo and O’Connor.

  “Yeah, that’s the names,” Gunn said and grinned. “Their shit don’t stink, either. I don’t think they even fart.”

  “They’re not related I gather from the different names,” O’Connor said, seeing the two men talking and laughing with Major Dickinson, Stanley Tufts, and Charlie Heyster.

  “Naw, they just call them the Brothers B because of the same initial on their last names, which also stands for Boondoggle, which we have assigned them as their unofficial last name. Plus, those two are joined at the hip most of the time,” Lobo said. “You don’t see one without the other. From up in New England someplace.”

  “Old money, and well connected,” Kirkwood added. “According to Mike Carter, our noble Mojo, Dicky Doo, cannot kiss their asses enough. He’s always worming around that pair, and ironically, they treat him like a poor relation.”

  “Dicky Doo takes it up the ass,” Lobo said, and gulped down a mouthfu
l of beer from a can that he crushed with his hand as he sucked it empty. “Speaking of taking it up the ass, I’ve gotta get a closer look at this crew of L-B-F-Ms that Yamaguchi Ritter has dancing on the sidelines. See you gents later.”

  “What did he call those Filipino go-go girls?” O’Connor asked, laughing while watching Lobo walk through the crowd of cocktail-sipping officers clustered across the lawn, parting them as he pushed through like Moses did with the Red Sea.

  “L-B-F-Ms,” a major now standing by Kirkwood said. “Little brown fucking machines.”

  The dark-haired and olive-complected Marine stood an inch or two shorter than O’Connor. He wore a khaki garrison cap cocked to one side, and a dark green flight suit with zippered pockets and vents on his legs and sleeves, and a white with red and blue embroidered, circular McDonald-Douglas F4 Phantom patch on his left shoulder. He had a brown leather rectangle attached to the flight suit on his left breast, above a slanted zipper-closed pocket. In gold letters it said “Buck Taylor, Major, USMCR.”

  “Terry, here is a guy you have to meet,” Kirkwood said as O’Connor made eye contact with the major.

  “Monahan S. Taylor,” the Marine said, extending his hand to O’Connor, “but call me Buck. Everyone does. I drive Fox-Four Phantoms when I’m not acting as my aircraft group’s legal officer.”

  “Major Taylor is a Yale Law School graduate,” Kirkwood said.

  “And you fly Phantoms?” O’Connor asked, surprised. “I thought a Yale Law degree guaranteed you body and soul to the Staff Judge Advocate Corps.”

  “Usually it does,” Taylor said, pulling two cans of beer from a six-pack he held under his arm, and handed one each to Kirkwood and O’Connor, along with a fold-up beer-can-opener he pulled from his pocket. “However, I graduated first in my class at the Basic School. So I had my pick of where I wanted to go. Most dive into the ought-three profession, commanding grunts on the charge, but I had my head in the clouds. I wanted to fly jets. Always did, ever since I saw the Blue Angels perform at South Weymouth when I was a kid. So I went to flight school, down at Beeville, Texas. Got my wings, and here I am.”

  “A naval aviator who graduated TBS,” O’Connor chirped. “That’s pretty rare. Most, I hear, miss that evolution.”

  “There are a few of us with some ground training. Captain Archie Gunn, over there, is another TBS graduate pilot,” Taylor said. “I expect the crotch to eventually get away from the Marine Corps option out of the navy’s flight officers’ candidate school, and make all their pilots go to Quantico for both Officer Candidates’ School and the Basic School. I think it’s a good idea. It certainly helps my perspective when laying snake and nape for a gaggle of grunts under fire.”

  “I’m sorry. Snake and nape?” Kirkwood said, popping a triangular hole in his beer can with the opener and handing it to O’Connor.

  “Snake eyes, your standard five-hundred-pound, mark-eighty-two general-purpose bomb, and nape is napalm,” Taylor said.

  “Lobo’s a pilot?” O’Connor said, taking a sip from his beer and handing the opener back to Major Taylor.

  The three men then turned and watched as the massive Marine in the camouflage uniform now grabbed the asses of two Filipino dancing girls.

  “Observation planes,” Taylor answered, dropping the opener back in his pocket and turning toward O’Connor and Kirkwood. “He came to Beeville a month or so before I graduated there and went on to Yuma, where I got my follow-on, F-4 fighter pilot training. Damned good pilot, but way too big. A Martin-Baker seat in a Fox-Four is just not that accommodating, plus if he ever managed to get strapped in he’d rip off his kneecaps if he had to punch out. Never had a prayer to fly jets, so they trained him in Broncos, which is still a mighty tight fit for his big ass. I think that’s why he prefers to fly that J-2 Cub. He’s got room for his butt, and he can throw a friend in the backseat, too. Not that I would ever want to go riding with that crazy son of a bitch.”

  “Why’s that?” Kirkwood asked, finishing his beer as the major handed him another one.

  Buck Taylor looked at the two lawyers and laughed.

  “That fucking monster killer over there wrestling with those girls,” Taylor said, pointing to Lobo who now had a Filipino go-go dancer kicking and screaming under each of his arms, “he has a genuine death wish. He keeps a case of hand grenades on the floor of his plane, in the space behind his feet, some other odds and ends explosives stashed here and there, an M79 grenade launcher and a sackful of blooper rounds hanging on the right-hand door, and an arsenal of assorted small arms and ammo in the backseat. The boy spends entirely too much time trimming treetops with his landing gear hunting Charlie. Gentlemen, I get pretty ice-cold up there flying my Phantom, but to be honest with you, Lobo scares the shit out of me. I do like living.”

  “No shit,” O’Connor said, looking at the hulk tossing around the girls like rag dolls.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Taylor added. “I love that goon like my own flesh and blood. He, Tommy McKay, Wayne Ebberhardt, and me, we’re asshole tight as family. I just won’t fly with that insane Doctor Death because I would spend all my time talking to God instead of enjoying the ride. McKay and Ebberhardt, on the other hand, they go with Lobo all the time. But then they don’t know any better, because they’re both nearly as crazy as he is, even if they are lawyers.”

  “I’ve only just met First Lieutenant McKay, and have not yet met First Lieutenant Ebberhardt,” Kirkwood admitted to the major. “I don’t believe that Terry has yet met either gentleman.”

  “We’ll fix that,” Buck Taylor said, and then he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled an ear-splitting call to the two men, who stood across the crowded lawn, laughing at Lobo now with a go-go girl riding atop his shoulders and her miniskirt bunched over the top of his partially bald head. Archie Gunn immediately wheeled toward the signal, and offered a wide grin while pointing to the girl’s legs wrapped around his neck. Then he turned and pulled up the back of the girl’s miniskirt to reveal that she no longer wore any panties. McKay and Ebberhardt waved, and the major then motioned with his hand for them to come to him.

  “I think that Archie is terminal as a captain,” Taylor said, opening the last beer in the six-pack after handing O’Connor one, and then dropping the opener in the lawyer’s palm. “He doesn’t give a shit about it, either. Great entertainment, but then look over there with Dicky Doo and Colonel Prunella, along with the Wing chief of staff. I’ll bet that those three have their assholes puckered equally as tight as they have their jaws locked right now, watching ole Lobo having fun with these girls. You couldn’t get a broom straw up any of them.”

  “He burned out or what?” O’Connor said, punching a triangular hole in his beer can and handing the opener back to Major Taylor.

  “Probably, burned to his boot laces, but nearly anyone who sees a lot of the enemy has that syndrome going on,” Taylor said, swigging beer and dropping the opener back in his pocket. “I think his shit-bird attitude comes from the Miss Goody Two Shoes he married and then discovered she was a slut.”

  Terry O’Connor laughed. “I should have guessed it. Behind the misery of every good man lurks some form of skanky psycho bitch ready to perform a hose job on his ass.”

  “Archie got hosed pretty good by this one,” Taylor said. “During his senior year at the University of New Mexico, where he played noseguard for the Lobos, hence the nickname, he ran into this girl one night sitting on the tailgate of some cowboy’s pickup truck outside a bloody bucket, rod and gun club honky-tonk on the north side of Albuquerque, crying her eyes out. Melted ole Archie’s gigantic heart right off. Her boyfriend was inside dancing with another girl, and she needed a ride home.

  “Leave it to Archie Gunn to quickly oblige. When he dropped her off at her mother’s front door, she invited him to go to church with her the next morning. A good Baptist girl, just like big boy’s mama. Lobo fell in love. One thing leads to another, and he is head over heels, kissing his little buttercup’s as
s, eating the peanuts out of her turds. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, she and her dear whore of a mother can’t get over their luck, having mister big-time New Mexico football star dangling by his sweet testicles on their little puppet strings.

  “Right after graduation, Archie and this hog get married. Lobo gets his draft notice and joins the Marines, like about half of the people here tonight did. All during OCS and TBS, and all the while he is off at Naval Flight School, our little Baptist princess, named Bunny, and her mother, Mandy, are painting Albuquerque and Santa Fe red, white, and blue in Lobo’s little tricked-out Pontiac GTO, spending Archie’s money and fucking every truck driver and cowboy with a hard dick.

  “I was still at Beeville when Archie got the letter from no less than his defensive line coach at UNM. Somebody had to finally tell him. The coach loves Lobo to this day like his own son, so he did the dirty job. Devastated the poor guy.

  “Archie started to file for divorce, but then changed his mind. He decided on cold revenge. Then he couldn’t get to Vietnam fast enough. While he was still at El Toro, though, he started trying to fuck every skanky hole that looked like it could breed the clap or anything worse. He seriously wanted to catch every kind of VD known to man so he could go home on leave, before he shipped out to ’Nam, and give the creeping crud to Bunny. To this day, he still wants to give her the worst shit that he can catch, so that she can pass it around to these assholes fucking her behind his back.”

  “He’s never gotten divorced from her?” Kirkwood said, surprised.

  “Fuck no, because he found out that as long as he is in Vietnam, the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act prohibits her from taking any sort of legal action against him, like divorce. So he keeps extending over here, just to fuck with her,” T. D. McKay said, slapping Buck Taylor across the shoulder and putting out his hand to Terry O’Connor.

  “You’re McKay?” O’Connor said, shaking the hand. “Right, and this skinny degenerate in my hip pocket here, helping me carry all these fresh beers for you lowlives, is Wayne Carolina Ebberhardt. He’s out of Duke University School of Law, and I am a University of Texas lawyer, through and through. Born in Dalhart, raised in Dumas, educated in Austin.”