God Gives Wayne Trout The Finger By Removing Two Of Them In Vietnam
Dildo O'Thomas Lost Both His Legs There When He Jumped Into The 4th Infantry's Mess Tent Meat Grinder
Chapter 10
Wayne was the kind of guy who couldn’t take no for an answer, but he couldn’t take yes for an answer either. It was as if Wayne never doubted whoever he asked his eight questions could take hours to answer each one. One day, Wayne was convinced, someone would give him the ultimate answers to the eight questions, but he couldn’t explain how he would be able to recognize them. Especially since it took at least 72 hours for even the simplest concept to crystallize in his mind. Whatever you said about Wayne was pure paradox.
***
Trout lost two fingers in Vietnam, and they were replaced with two purple hearts. Wayne and his left index finger parted company outside Khe Sahn when the upper torso of Master Sergeant Major General crashed down on the back of Wayne’s helmet during an artillery barrage designed to drive the enemy from the camp perimeter so the Americans could see and shoot it.
Wayne was nibbling hairs just below the knuckle when schlock, he had a mouthful of bloody appendage. Wayne was so embarrassed he probably wouldn’t have reported the injury at all if it hadn’t been so difficult to hide. Still, it was the following afternoon before Corporal Adam Senior, Jr. said: “Looky here Trout, let me see that hand. I can feel the hurt.”
“Not really,” said Wayne Trout.
***
Wayne lost his second finger in a strikingly similar fashion, this time the Rockefeller-saluting finger, also on the left hand. Wayne had begun gnawing on it after he and the index finger parted company. This time, however, the back of Wayne’s battered helmet withstood the full impact of the pelvis and right thigh which once belonged to Private Satchel Adair, the man who put the Bo in Wayne Trout’s name.
***
“What’s the matter with you jerk-offs? Tired of living?!” Captain Woodrow “Woody” Woodson was yelling at Privates Adair and Trout during the first formation after their arrival in Vietnam. “What bull trots you got volunteering for something you ain’t heard what it is? What you splashing around in there boy?” the Captain demanded, tapping his fist against Private Adair’s helmet.
“You asked for volunteers sir,” Satchel shouted.
“Now don’t that beat all manner of hog jowls? These boys wouldn’t know a joke it was chawing on their nuts,” Captain Woodson shouted at the sky. “Well, Private Adair and Private Trout,” Captain Woodson barked in their faces, “Let’s see what you damn fools got yourself into.”
“Not really,” said Wayne.
***
One night Wayne was sitting at the bar not talking to anyone while the bar filled and emptied and filled. During one of the empty periods, Wanda sat down beside him and said. “Wayne? Don’t you think you’ve had enough? You should go home and get to bed.”
“You know what I think Wanda Japan?” Wayne driveled. “I think I had enough a long time ago. That’s what I think. You know I used to have a telescope? I used to go up that hill where the C-House is to watch the stars and act like I was talking on the telephone. ‘Hey! Guys? It’s me. Wayne. I’m down here. I’m still waiting. Mind if I sit here?’” If one could say such a thing, one might say Wayne was crying. His pupils looked like cloves stuck in Crystalmint Lifesavers. Each Lifesaver bobbed and reeled in a hurricane of blood.
“You’re drunk, Wayne.” said Wanda Japan.
“So?” Wayne replied. “Lots of people get drunk. Getting drunk makes me feel like I’m one of them.”
***
Instead of five days orientation in Saigon before heading to the Highlands, Privates Wayne Trout and Satchel Adair drew eight days of search and destroy in the Mekong Delta, replacing Privates Austin Neeley and Bainbridge “Pisan” Kews. With Wayne on radio and Satchel on point, nine men were taken under cover of the endless Vietnamese darkness, to attack a suspected Viet Cong position. The patrol boat Richard M. Nixon (affectionately dubbed “Swamp Scag”) would carry them to within six hundred yards of their target. While the Scag waited, they would wade ashore and burn the enemy out.
Each member was armed to the teeth, and over the teeth, between the gum and the lip, each was supposed to carry a small capsule with which, by striking his mouth sharply with his fist, he could abort his mission if it appeared capture was imminent.
***
The Hall of Records lists only one case during the entire Vietnamese War where a member’s mission was aborted by capsule. Corpsman Howard Eakes lost his balance trying to pull up his pants in an artillery barrage and landed on a rock concealed by his own thin shit. Most GI’s chose never to put the capsule in their mouths.
Should “the shit hit the fan,” as the Captain put it, and it looked like the whole unit might be forced to smack itself in the mouth, each member was to follow the Plan of Orderly Retreat which had been issued that morning, along with a small stroboscopic signal light. “If the shit hits the fan,” the Captain said, “Get your ass back in the goddamn river. Swim out mid-channel and give your flicker a hit. The Scag will fish you out.”
Wayne struggled with his equipment as he waded ashore. Counting his rifle, ammunition, grenades, radio, battery pack, and assorted supplies, Private Trout was humping 130 pounds.
“Well, shit,” Private Adair said as they climbed out of the river, “It do be seeming we has found ourselfs in some real heavy shit, don’t it, bro?”
“Don’t call me ‘bro’,” Wayne huffed.
Just then, as the Captain says, “the shit hit the fan.” The demolitions man and the medic caught the first two rounds, calf and forearm respectively. In less than 130 seconds of the first round, eight of the team were safely aboard the Swamp Scag.
***
It was suddenly so quiet that each of the men thought he was the one who didn’t make it.
***
“There he is,” said Private Satchel Adair, pointing ahead starboard at the blip, blip, blip of light in the endless Vietnamese dark.
“There he is,” said Spec 4 Happy Feller, pointing full astern at the blip, blip, blip of light in the endless Vietnamese dark.
This went on until everyone got at least one turn to say There he is and several of the men had said it three or four times. Dawn was less than an hour away, and the skipper was about to abandon the search when Satchel yelled: “Look motherfuckers, down there,” he said, pointing deep in the river, where a blip, blip, blip was slowly making its way sternward.
The skipper eased the Swamp Scag in reverse to keep pace with the blinking light, until at last it grew brighter and brighter and burst through the surface beside the boat. The flicker was firmly in the fully-fingered grasp of Wayne Trout. Besides having all his fingers, Wayne still had his pack, his rifle, the radio, its battery, and all his assorted supplies.
What he had been doing for more than an hour was swimming as furiously as he could until he made the surface and thrust the flicker high over his head. And then Wayne took a deep breath and sank as his gear dragged him back to the mud where he rested and walked, hoping to spot the bottom of the Swamp Scag while mustering enough strength to claw to the surface again. It never entered his mind to ditch his equipment.
That’s the kind of guy Wayne was.
***
“Bro,” said Satchel as he helped haul Wayne aboard, “You are one crazy dude. What you still got this shit for? What you think you be, bro, some fish?”
“Really, Satchel.” Wayne wheezed, trying to catch his breath, “I really wish you wouldn’t call me ‘bro’.”
“Well shit,” said Private Adair. “Seeing as how much you love the water, seems we has to call you ‘Bo,’ bro.”
“Bo?” Wayne coughed.
“That’s right. Bo,” Satchel grinned. “As in Wayne Bo Trout.”
That was the funniest thing ever happened on the Swamp Scag. In fact, Captain Noah Vale stated when recounting the incident, “If I never draw another breath, I can honestly say I’ve had a good laugh.”
The same month, according to the Hall of Records, the Scag took a direct hit to its fuel tanks by a captured American missile. All hands were lost.
***
You could spot Wayne three blocks off, which was more than the length of downtown Clemson. Wayne in his weejuns and canvas hat. Wayne in his overshoes, rain hat, and London Fog, carrying a sheathed umbrella in one hand, his briefcase in the other. Wayne in his orange cardigan sweater with the tiger’s paw over his heart. Wayne in his seersucker. Wayne in his green gabardine. Wayne in his tweed, a gold watch chain drooping between vest pocket and belt loop. Wayne in his short-sleeve Arrow shirts.
It was quite simple, therefore, to avoid him on the street, although there was no reason to do so because when Wayne was in motion, he didn’t have a question in the world.
***
Materex’s Description Of Wayne Trout
Do you mean the insurance salesman?
—30—
Epilog In Media Res
It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?
Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.
Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.
Trout’s Tale thus far…
Frontal Matter And Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33
