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blond hair. He also seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.
    “Ask me where I was from and stuff like that,” Peewee said. “I thought he was a friendly, you know.”
    “You tell him where you were from?”
    “Yeah, and he told me he used to go to the flicks down on State Street and even asked me if I knew some chick named Thelma.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “Then he asked me for a cigarette, and we was sitting there smoking when the captain come in. That’s when all hell broke loose. The fool jumped on me and tried to get my pistol, and the captain run up to him and punched him in the face.”
    Then they had tied the VC up and threw him in the back of a jeep to take to an intelligence unit, and the captain gave Peewee hell for giving information to the enemy.
    Peewee said he was glad he gave him some information.
    “How come?” Monaco was cleaning his rifle again. “’Cause if the Cong ever get to State Street, I want to be on their side,” Peewee said.
    Walowick, a Polish kid with dimples who looked like he had more teeth than he needed, looked up from his magazine, flashed a smile, and went back to reading.
    “By the time we get out of here there won’t be any Cong left,” Brunner said.
    “We’d get out of here a lot faster if we took them all to Hollywood.” Lobel was tall and a little pudgy. His hair looked as if he had given himself a perm or something. He was almost as tall as me but soft-looking. He didn’t look feminine or anything, just soft.
    “What are you going to do with the Vietcong in Hollywood?” I asked.
    “Look what they did after World War II,” he said, getting up on one elbow. “We made a hundred war movies, and we brought all the Germans over and gave them nice little bit parts, and they were very happy. We brought the Japanese over and gave them little bit parts, and they were happy. Now all we have to do is to stop this silly war and start making the movies right away. We take all these little slant-eyes over to Universal, give them SAG cards, and put them to work.”
    “That is a fag solution, only capable of coming from the mind of a fag,” Brunner said.
    “Hey, Corporal,” Lobel got up on one elbow. “Just because I don’t have my serial number tattoed on my genitals does not mean I’m a fag.”
    “You wouldn’t have enough room for more than three numbers, anyway,” Brunner said. He looked around to see who was laughing. Nobody was.
    We got mail call and I didn’t get anything. I had to find somebody to write to beside Mama so I would get mail. I couldn’t depend on Kenny to write.
    There was something happening up north the next morning. For about an hour we heard artillery. Simpson was in our hooch, talking about squirrel hunting outside of Petersburg, Virginia, and Monaco was getting on his case.
    “You call that sport?” Monaco asked. “I mean, there you are, you gotta weigh two hundred pounds, and you got a rifle, and you’re against a squirrel that weighs maybe two or three pounds, and he ain’t got nothing.”
    “Man, it’s a damn sport!” Simpson protested. “You know what a sport is?”
    “Do I know what a sport is?” Monaco pointed to himself. “I played football and baseball for Marist High School in Bayonne. I made All-County. That’s sport. I don’t have to shoot no little animals.”
    “You had you a rifle,” Peewee said. “You could have made All-World.”
    “The way I figure it,” Monaco went on, “if you hunt a squirrel with a rifle, what do you hunt a bear with? Artillery?”
    “Call in some white phosphorus on him,” Brew said. “That’ll get his attention until the jets zero in.” White phosphorus, or Willy Peter as they called it, was an artillery round that burned the crap out of anything it touched.
    “You don’t know nothing about no hunting!” Simpson was getting pissed. “You don’t know what hunting is!”
    “What he’s trying to say,” — Lobel was flat on his back; there was a can of Coke on his