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get yer stuff? No, you ain’t. You gonna carry it with you all the time.
    â€œAnd soljer, get them sleeves rolled down. Ev’y day at 1700 you gotta roll yer sleeves down cuz that’s when the skeeters come out. One o’ them malaria skeeters bites you and yer gonna wish you had that sleeve down.
    â€œThem comic books ain’t gonna keep the frags outa yer head, soljer. Go on back and getcher stuff.”
    I went back to the billet, feeling kind of stupid, and got out my stuff. I fastened the first-aid packet and the canteen to the pistol belt, rolled it all up and stuffed it in the steel pot. After all, he didn’t say we had to wear the junk.
    The beer was fairly cool. Somebody had managed to get some ice. The club was just a shack, but they actually had a juke box. I listened to the music for a while, reading my comics. Then a guy sat down across from me, dropping his helmet on the concrete floor with a loud clatter. “You’re a new guy too, aren’t ya?” he asked.
    â€œSure… how can you tell?”
    â€œTake a look around. We’re the only ones in here carryin’ this shit around.” He gave the helmet a kick. “They say this is the safest place in the whole fuckin’ Central Highlands.”
    â€œWell, that’s good to hear.”
    â€œYeah.” He stuck out his hand. “Willy Horowitz.”
    â€œFarmer, John Farmer. Just come in today?”
    â€œYeah, same plane as you, I think.” He sucked down about half the can of beer. “What you do, back in the world?”
    â€œNothin’ much. Just got out of school last June. Pumped gas for a few months, then got a job typing at the courthouse in Enid, Oklahoma.”
    â€œDidn’t wanta go to college?”
    â€œThought about it—didn’t have the grades to get a scholarship, though. Said the hell with it. How ’bout you?”
    â€œI went for a year. City College, New York—guess I partied too much, flunked chemistry and got kicked out, for half a year, anyhow. Plenty of time to get drafted—you didn’t join up, did you?”
    â€œHell, no. All I did was turn nineteen.”
    â€œWhere’d you do Basic?”
    â€œFort Leonard Wood. That’s in—”
    â€œYeah, I know, Missouri. Asshole of the world. I got my Engineer training there.”
    â€œMe, too,” I said. “Bet we were there about the same time.”
    â€œOur cycle got out the end of December.”
    â€œSame here—what company?”
    â€œBravo.”
    â€œHow ’bout that—I was in Charlie. We were practically next-door neighbors.”
    â€œI’ll drink to that… hell, I’ll drink to anything.” He crunched the beer can double and stood up. “Ready for another?”
    â€œYeah—here.” I pushed a dollar at him.
    â€œShit, keep it. I been playin’ poker, got more damn MPC’s than I know what to do with.”
    MPC’s, Military Payment Certificates, were what everybody used for money in Vietnam. They had different colored bills for tens, fives, and ones, then little bills like Monopoly money instead of coins. You could buy slugs at the bar, to operate the juke box.
    â€œBudweiser OK?” He had two cans in each hand, set them down in the middle of the table.
    â€œSure.” I slid one over and sipped it. “How do you like it so far?”
    â€œLike it?”
    â€œThe war, Vietnam.”
    â€œShit.” He took out a cigarette and tapped it on his thumbnail. “It wouldn’t be so bad … you know, army-wise. They don’t hassle you like they did Stateside—but God, that rocket attack—were you in Cam Ranh Bay when—”
    â€œYeah, that was bad.”
    â€œBad … scared me shitless. Wonder how often, how much of that shit we’re gonna get.”
    â€œDon’t know,” I said. “Guy told me that was just a picnic compared to the real