For Bobby, it was the mud.
Everyone had something that they hated most about Vietnam. The mosquitoes that would cluster like black wool on your exposed skin. Sweat that made rivers down the small of your back. The overpowering smell of fungus and gunpowder all mixed together in hundred-degree heat.
For Bobby, it was the mud.
There wasn't enough clean water for washing, and even if there was it didn't make no difference--you were filthy ten minutes later anyhow. Bobby lived with mud caked in his boots, mud in his hair, mud down his goddam shorts. When I get back to the States, he thought, I'm going to take a long, hot bath, and I'm never going to touch mud again.
It was quiet, except for rain on canvas and boards. A few of the guys huddled at the end of the room, passing around joints and giggling, but for a wonder they left Bobby alone with his pad and pencil.
He'd been about to start another letter to home, but now he crumpled the top sheet and started another letter, this one to his buddy Kevin Fitzpatrick.
He hadn't thought about Kevin for months. Maybe it was the mud that did it--memories of the rainy summers, two ten-year-olds playing army in the pretend swamps of the gravel pit near their homes. Except Bobby wasn't playing anymore ... and Kevin was safe at home, clean and dry.
"Dear Kevin," he wrote. "Bet you didn't expect to be hearing from me. There's nothing to do right now, and I'm sick and tired of writing to Mom, and I guess you're the only other one I can write to." He chewed on the end of the pencil for a moment. "I hope everything is going well for you in school." He'd forgotten what Kevin was majoring in--Poly Sci or some dumb-ass thing like that. Better to skip that part. "I guess I'm getting along all right here, if you can call it all right when there's bullets flying all over the place, and bombs going off, and even people dying. Not just gooks, but our own people." He frowned. Kevin didn't want to hear about all the death. Kevin was safe, in a place where the greatest threat to life was crossing the highway against the lights.
Bobby chuckled to himself. "One thing you can do for me," he wrote, "is to remember me the next time you take a shower. I'm filthy all the time, and I wish there was a way for you to send over some of your clean."
Bobby shivered, and Kevin's face swam before him with a wave of homesickness like he hadn't felt since his first days in 'Nam. Blond-haired, easy-going Kevin, with the happy eyes and the quick smile. He remembered the way Kevin smelled--Lifebuoy soap and good clean sweat--and Kevin's light cheerful laugh.
"Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you." Bobby felt a blush, but knew that the other guys couldn't see it in the dim light. Besides, they were all too stoned to notice.
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