Jim C, treating the fascinating subject of the International Ford
and like brethren, demonstrates that immortality is the least of
corporate attributes. So war - with some thanks and certainly
no apologies to von Clausewitz - is the continuation of business
by other means, right. If you go to Frankfurt today, you might
notice, at least subconsciously, that the main railway station
is the same old hunk of Biedermeier gingerbread that Kaiser
Wilhelm knew, while all around it are only post-war buildings.
Interesting. How did Allied pilots and bombardiers interpret
the peculiar lacunae in their orders?
Were there similar peculiarities in Vietnam, and did they simply
contribute to the "1000-yard stare" of some of today's alienated
ex-grunts?
"Out here _your skin listens_," Pete said.
"Your skin?" Sal said.
"Yeah, your skin," Pete said.
Li came back so silently that she startled them, and she said,
"This is a good place. They will be back here tonight," and they
asked her where they'd be, and she said, ten feet, perhaps twenty
down the bank, but first she had something wonderful to show them.
Oh, they would enjoy it. Truly, they would appreciate it. They
had more than enough time to go and see it and come back before
the Viet Cong came back to their camp on the river, and they said,
What camp? and she sighed and said she'd found the water tree and
look: she opened her hand and in it were four or five grains of
cooked rice. "So you see," she said, "they were here."
"Follow me," she said, and she wove through what looked like
impenetrable jungle and not once did they have to use their
machetes, and then she paused, putting her hand over her mouth.
She was laughing and she said, "Just over there," and she crouched
down and they looked past her, and there in front of them, on the
other side of the bushes, was a large clearing and a huge blue and
white Esso sign, a gasoline station right smack in the middle of
the jungle, and on the other side of it, a path big enough for
trucks.
They stayed there staring at the Esso sign until they lost track
of time, and Li tapped them on the shoulder and they followed her
back, sat down in their little clearing, and looked at one another.
Each knew the other's thoughts. _They_ were American soldiers,
and they couldn't travel at night, but one night, on ambush, they'd
seen a truck with its headlights coming down the road, its lights
flickering up and down the trunks of the rubber trees, dancing
along the trunks like pale yellow moths, and over the radio came
the orders not to stop the truck, just to stay quiet. It was a
gasoline truck and if it was free to travel at night with its
lights on that meant the VC knew all about it. They'd be getting
eighty percent of the gasoline while the United States would get
twenty, but would pay for all of it, and that truck could go
wherever it wanted at night, but they couldn't move. At night,
they had to hole up in fire bases or spend the night rigid and
silent in tiny clearings, like terrified animals in their dens.
This was some war. And now they'd found an Esso station in the
middle of the jungle. Who was that for, exactly? American troops
wouldn't come in here at night. Hell, American troops would never
find it. the canopy was so dense no one could spot it from the air,
and if they found it, they'd never come out alive. This was some
fucked-up war.
Li laughed and asked, "Wasn't it funny?" and they looked at her.
It wasn't fucking funny. Li asked them if they were sorry they'd
seen it. They looked at one another and looked at Li, and said No,
they weren't sorry they'd seen it. It was a little bit of truth,
that Esso sign, and here you needed all the truth you could get.
-- "Buffalo Afternoon" - Susan Fromberg Schaeffer,
pp. 237-8 (New York, 1989).
valis
-- The highest honor the US government
can bestow is a charge of sedition --
