Going After Cacciato

  Praise for Tim O’Brien and Going After Cacciato

  “A luminescent piece of writing and, assuming we last that long, it will still be read in a hundred years from now.”

  —Miami Herald

  “As a fictional portrait of this war, Going After Cacciato is hard to fault, and will be hard to better.… The scenes are so carefully mortised, and the whole so firmly fitted and tightened and polished, that each efficient page carries the heft of importance this material has for the author.”

  —John Updike, The New Yorker

  “The finest piece of American fiction to emerge from the Vietnam War … Going After Cacciato has the depth and resonance of classic fiction of war”

  —Sun (Baltimore)

  “A splendid book … In Going After Cacciato, O’Brien moves into the first rank.”

  —New Republic

  “A strong and convincing novel that deserves its National Book Award … goes well beyond mere disillusionment about the war and national policy. It is a book about the imagination itself.”

  —New York Review of Books

  “A superior accomplishment … stands with any war novel written in this century by an American.”

  —America

  “O’Brien’s skill and vision make anything possible.… The author was a foot soldier in Vietnam, and knows his material. He needs to succeed, and does. Brilliantly.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Excellent!… The reader is carried along by a flawless narrative.”

  —Associated Press

  “Harrowing … No novel I have read in the past year has surpassed Going After Cacciato in artistry and imaginative power.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  Books by Tim O’Brien

  If I Die in a Combat Zone

  Northern Lights

  Going After Cacciato

  The Nuclear Age

  The Things They Carried

  In the Lake of the Woods

  Tomcat in Love

  A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1978 by Delacorte Press. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte.

  GOING AFTER CACCIATO. Copyright © 1978 by Tim O’Brien. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

  BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 1999.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Brien, Tim, 1946–

  Going after Cacciato / Tim O’Brien.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-48550-2

  1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975 Fiction.

  2. War stories. I. Title.

  PS3565.B75G6 1999

  813′.54—dc21 99-29275

  v3.1_r1

  For Erik Hansen

  Soldiers are dreamers

  —SIEGFRIED SASSOON

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One - Going After Cacciato

  Two - The Observation Post

  Three - The Road to Paris

  Four - How They Were Organized

  Five - The Observation Post

  Six - Detours on the Road to Paris

  Seven - Riding the Road to Paris

  Eight - The Observation Post

  Nine - How Bernie Lynn Died After Frenchie Tucker

  Ten - A Hole in the Road to Paris

  Eleven - Fire in the Hole

  Twelve - The Observation Post

  Thirteen - Falling Through a Hole in the Road to Paris

  Fourteen - Upon Almost Winning the Silver Star

  Fifteen - Tunneling Toward Paris

  Sixteen - Pickup Games

  Seventeen - Light at the End of the Tunnel to Paris

  Eighteen - Prayers on the Road to Paris

  Nineteen - The Observation Post

  Twenty - Landing Zone Bravo

  Twenty-one - The Railroad to Paris

  Twenty-two - Who They Were, or Claimed to Be

  Twenty-three - Asylum on the Road to Paris

  Twenty-four - Calling Home

  Twenty-five - The Way It Mostly Was

  Twenty-six - Repose on the Road to Paris

  Twenty-seven - Flights of Imagination

  Twenty-eight - The Observation Post

  Twenty-nine - Atrocities on the Road to Paris

  Thirty - The Observation Post

  Thirty-one - Night March

  Thirty-two - The Observation Post

  Thirty-three - Outlawed on the Road to Paris

  Thirty-four - Lake Country

  Thirty-five - World’s Greatest Lake Country

  Thirty-six - Flights of Imagination

  Thirty-seven - How the Land Was

  Thirty-eight - On the Lam to Paris

  Thirty-nine - The Things They Didn’t Know

  Forty - By a Stretch of the Imagination

  Forty-one - Getting Shot

  Forty-two - The Observation Post

  Forty-three - The Peace of Paris

  Forty-four - The End of the Road to Paris

  Forty-five - The Observation Post

  Forty-six - Going After Cacciato

  One

  Going After Cacciato

  It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead. The rain fed fungus that grew in the men’s boots and socks, and their socks rotted, and their feet turned white and soft so that the skin could be scraped off with a fingernail, and Stink Harris woke up screaming one night with a leech on his tongue. When it was not raining, a low mist moved across the paddies, blending the elements into a single gray element, and the war was cold and pasty and rotten. Lieutenant Corson, who came to replace Lieutenant Sidney Martin, contracted the dysentery. The tripflares were useless. The ammunition corroded and the foxholes filled with mud and water during the nights, and in the mornings there was always the next village, and the war was always the same. The monsoons were part of the war. In early September Vaught caught an infection. He’d been showing Oscar Johnson the sharp edge on his bayonet, drawing it swiftly along his forearm to peel off a layer of mushy skin. “Like a Gillette Blue Blade,” Vaught had said proudly. There was no blood, but in two days the bacteria soaked in and the arm turned yellow, so they bundled him up and called in a dustoff, and Vaught left the war. He never came back. Later they had a letter from him that described Japan as smoky and full of slopes, but in the enclosed snapshot Vaught looked happy enough, posing with two sightly nurses, a wine bottle rising from between his thighs. It was a shock to learn he’d lost the arm. Soon afterward Ben Nystrom shot himself through the foot, but he did not die, and he wrote no letters. These were all things to joke about. The rain, too. And the cold. Oscar Johnson said it made him think of Detroit in the month of May. “Lootin’ weather,” he liked to say. “The dark an’ gloom, just right for rape an’ lootin’.” Then someone would say that Oscar had a swell imagination for a darkie.

  That was one of the jokes. There wa
s a joke about Oscar. There were many jokes about Billy Boy Watkins, the way he’d collapsed of fright on the field of battle. Another joke was about the lieutenant’s dysentery, and another was about Paul Berlin’s purple biles. There were jokes about the postcard pictures of Christ that Jim Pederson used to carry, and Stink’s ringworm, and the way Buff’s helmet filled with life after death. Some of the jokes were about Cacciato. Dumb as a bullet, Stink said. Dumb as a month-old oyster fart, said Harold Murphy.

  In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war.

  “He’s gone away,” said Doc Peret. “Split, departed.”

  Lieutenant Corson did not seem to hear. He was too old to be a lieutenant. The veins in his nose and cheeks were broken. His back was weak. Once he had been a captain on the way to becoming a major, but whiskey and the fourteen dull years between Korea and Vietnam had ended all that, and now he was just an old lieutenant with the dysentery.

  He lay on his back in the pagoda, naked except for green socks and green undershorts.

  “Cacciato,” Doc repeated. “The kid’s left us. Split for parts unknown.”

  The lieutenant did not sit up. With one hand he cupped his belly, with the other he guarded a red glow. The surfaces of his eyes were moist.

  “Gone to Paris,” Doc said.

  The lieutenant put the glow to his lips. Inhaling, his chest did not move. There were no vital signs in the wrists or thick stomach.

  “Paris,” Doc Peret repeated. “That’s what he tells Paul Berlin, and that’s what Berlin tells me, and that’s what I’m telling you. The chain of command, a truly splendid instrument. Anyhow, the guy’s definitely gone. Packed up and retired.”

  The lieutenant exhaled.

  Blue gunpowder haze produced musical sighs in the gloom, a stirring at the base of Buddha’s clay feet. “Lovely,” a voice said. Someone else sighed. The lieutenant blinked, coughed, and handed the spent roach to Oscar Johnson, who extinguished it against his toenail.

  “Paree?” the lieutenant said softly. “Gay Paree?”

  Doc nodded. “That’s what he told Paul Berlin and that’s what I’m telling you. Ought to cover up, sir.”

  Sighing, swallowing hard, Lieutenant Corson pushed himself up and sat stiffly before a can of Sterno. He lit the Sterno and placed his hands behind the flame and bent forward to draw in heat. Outside, the rain was steady. “So,” the old man said. “Let’s figure this out.” He gazed at the flame. “Trick is to think things clear. Step by step. You said Paree?”

  “Affirm, sir. That’s what he told Paul Berlin, and that’s—”

  “Berlin?”

  “Right here, sir. This one.”

  The lieutenant looked up. His eyes were bright blue and wet.

  Paul Berlin pretended to smile.

  “Jeez.”

  “Sir?”

  “Jeez,” the old man said, shaking his head. “I thought you were Vaught.”

  “No.”

  “I thought he was you. How … how do you like that? Mixed up, I guess. How do you like that?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  The lieutenant shook his head sadly. He held a boot to dry over the burning Sterno. Behind him in shadows was the crosslegged Buddha, smiling from its elevated stone perch. The pagoda was cold. Dank from a month of rain, the place smelled of clays and silicates and dope and old incense. It was a single square room built like a pillbox with stone walls and a flat ceiling that forced the men to stoop or kneel. Once it might have been a fine house of worship, neatly tiled and painted, but now it was junk. Sandbags blocked the windows. Bits of broken pottery lay under chipped pedestals. The Buddha’s right arm was missing but the smile was intact. Head cocked, the statue seemed interested in the lieutenant’s long sigh. “So. Cacciato, he’s gone. Is that it?”

  “There it is,” Doc said. “You’ve got it.”

  Paul Berlin nodded.

  “Gone to gay Paree. Am I right? Cacciato’s left us in favor of Paree in France.” The lieutenant seemed to consider this gravely. Then he giggled. “Still raining?”

  “A bitch, sir.”

  “I never seen rain like this. You ever? I mean, ever?”

  “No,” Paul Berlin said. “Not since yesterday.”

  “And I guess you’re Cacciato’s buddy. Is that the story?”

  “No, sir,” Paul Berlin said. “Sometimes he’d tag along. Not really.”

  “Who’s his buddy?”

  “Nobody. Maybe Vaught. I guess Vaught was, sometimes.”

  “Well,” the lieutenant murmured. He paused, dropping his nose inside the boot to sniff the sweating leather. “Well, I reckon we better get Mister Vaught in here. Maybe he can straighten this shit out.”

  “Vaught’s gone, sir. He’s the one—”

  “Mother of Mercy.”

  Doc draped a poncho over Lieutenant Corson’s shoulders. The rain was steady and thunderless and undramatic. It was midmorning, but the feeling was of endless dusk.

  The lieutenant picked up the second boot and began drying it. For a time he did not speak. Then, as if amused by something he saw in the flame, he giggled again and blinked. “Paree,” he said. “So Cacciato’s gone off to gay Paree—bare ass and Frogs everywhere, the Follies Brassiere.” He glanced up at Doc Peret. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Just dumb. He’s just awful dumb, that’s all.”

  “And he’s walking. You say he’s walking to gay Paree?”

  “That’s what he claims, sir, but you can’t trust—”

  “Paree! Jesus Christ, does he know how far it is? I mean, does he know?”

  Paul Berlin tried not to smile. “Eight thousand six hundred statute miles, sir. That’s what he told me—eight thousand six hundred on the nose. He had it down pretty good. Rations, fresh water, a compass, and maps and stuff.”

  “Maps,” the lieutenant said. “Maps, flaps, schnaps.” He coughed and spat, then grinned. “And I guess he’ll just float himself across the ocean on his maps, right? Am I right?”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Paul Berlin. He looked at Doc Peret, who shrugged. “No, sir. He showed me how … See, he says he’s going up through Laos, then into Burma, and then some other country, I forget, and then India and Iran and Turkey, and then Greece, and the rest is easy. That’s what he said. The rest is easy, he said. He had it all doped out.”

  “In other words,” the lieutenant said, and hesitated. “In other words, fuckin AWOL.”

  “There it is,” said Doc Peret. “There it is.”

  The lieutenant rubbed his eyes. His face was sweating and he needed a shave. For a time he lay very still, listening to the rain, hands on his belly, then he shook his head and laughed. “What for? Just tell me: What the hell for?”

  “Easy,” Doc said. “Really, you got to stay covered up, I told you that.”

  “What for? Answer me one thing. What for?”

  “Shhhh. He’s dumb, that’s all.”

  The lieutenant’s face was yellow. He rolled onto his side and dropped the boot. “I mean, why? What sort of silly crap is this—walking to gay Paree? What’s happening? Just tell me, what’s wrong with you people? All of you, what’s wrong?”

  “Relax.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Easy does it,” Doc said. He picked up the fallen poncho and shook it out and then arranged it around the old man’s shoulders.

  “Answer me. What for? What’s wrong with you shits? Walking to gay Paree, what’s wrong?”

  “Not a thing, sir. We’re all wonderful. Aren’t we wonderful?”

  From the gloom came half-hearted applause.

  “There, you see? We’re all wonderful. It’s just that ding-dong, Cacciato. That’s the whole of it.”

  The lieutenant laughed. Without rising, he pulled on his pants and boots and a shirt, then rocked miserably before the blue Sterno flame. The pagoda smelled of the earth. The rain was unending. “Shoot,” the lieutenant sighed. He kept shaking his head, wearily, grinning, then at last he lo
oked up at Paul Berlin. “What squad you in?”

  “Third, sir.”

  “That’s Cacciato’s squad?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who else?”

  “Me and Doc and Eddie Lazzutti and Stink and Oscar and Harold Murphy. That’s it, except for Cacciato.”

  “What about Pederson?”

  “Pederson’s no longer with us, sir.”

  The lieutenant kept rocking. He did not look well. When the flame was gone, he pushed himself to his feet, coughed, spat, and touched his toes. “All right,” he sighed. “Third Squad goes after Cacciato.”

  Leading to the mountains were four klicks of level paddy. The mountains jerked straight out of the rice; beyond those mountains and other mountains was Paris. The tops of the mountains could not be seen for the mist and clouds. Everywhere the war was wet.

  They spent the first night in laager at the base of the mountains, a long miserable night, then at dawn they began the ascent.

  At midday Paul Berlin spotted Cacciato. He was half a mile up, bent low and moving patiently against the steep grade. A smudged, lonely looking figure. It was Cacciato, no question. Legs much too short for the broad back, a shiny pink spot at the crown of the skull. Paul Berlin spotted him, but it was Stink Harris who spoke up.

  Lieutenant Corson took out the binoculars.

  “Him, sir?”

  The lieutenant watched Cacciato climb toward the clouds.

  “That him?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  Stink laughed. “Dumb-dumb. Right, sir? Dumb as a dink.”

  The lieutenant shrugged. He watched until Cacciato was lost in the higher clouds, then he mumbled something and put the glasses away and motioned for them to move out.

  “It’s folly,” Oscar said. “That’s all it is. Foolish folly.”

  Staying in the old order, they climbed slowly: Stink at point, then the lieutenant, then Eddie and Oscar, then Harold Murphy, then Doc Peret. At the rear of the column, Spec Four Paul Berlin walked with his head down. He had nothing against Cacciato. The whole thing was silly, of course, immature and dumb, but even so, he had nothing against the kid. It was just too bad. A waste among infinitely wider wastes.