"Joe Haldeman - 1968" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Religious holidays

ChristianityThe week before, the fire base had been temporarily transformed with red and green bunting
and a plastic Christmas tree. Doughnut Dollies, Red Cross workers, came out in a helicopter with a
carefully wrapped and perfectly random gift for each soldier. Spider got a 250-piece jigsaw puzzle of a
snow scene in Vermont.

A Methodist chaplain in clean starched fatigues offered some prayers and a sermon that put Spider to
sleep. He woke up when the Doughnut Dollies turned on a tape recorder, loud and tinny, and led the
boys in a ragged half-hour of Christmas carols. The man whose code name was Moses knew all the
words and sang with a clear, strong voice. Nobody else was very good, and the excruciation was cut
short when the 8-incher behind the Dollies started a sudden fire mission, the shells about as loud as
Hiroshima, blasting every twenty seconds or so.

Spider was deeply depressed by the travesty; Christmas had always been the big family get-together, a
warm and loving time. He would have cried if he could have had some privacy. Some men and boys did,
the tears making temporary mud streaks on their permanently dirty faces.

(Spider had opened his presents from home early. A book of poetry,Palgrave's Golden Treasury, from
Beverly; a cross on a chain and a tin box of moldy Rice Krispies cookies from his mother, and from his
father, a Swiss Army knife that had everything, including a magnifying glass and a toothpick.)

JudaismMoses had grown up Reform, and hadn't been noticeably devout since he started high school.
But like a lot of men, he suddenly became Orthodox when he arrived in Vietnam. Every Jewish holiday,
the army sent out a helicopter to take him to the nearest synagogue, 150 miles away. He would come
back with a bag of Hebrew National salamis and Mogen David wine from the kosher PX, and share
them with his less fortunate gentile brethren.

BuddhismThe Vietnamese lunar holiday of Tet was sort of a combination of Christmas and New Year,
and throughout the war it was customary to declare a cease-fire for that day. 1968 was no exception.

Whys and wherefores

"Flat. that mother." Spider rocked the little P-38 can opener around the soft-metal lip of the green can,
Peaches, Cling. Aggressively.

"Stupid asshole thing to do." The other guy, Tonto, was half writing a letter, half listening to Spider. He'd
heard the story before, secondhand, slightly different.

Spider drank off part of the juice and crumbled a piece of pound cake into the peaches. "Oh, man. You
shoulda been there. Take just so much shit off a lifer."

Tonto set down his pencil and looked at Spider. "I could take a lot."

"You don't know, man. Drive you outa your fuckin' gourd."

"I was a clerk stateside. Wasn't so bad."

"Shit, stateside." Spider slurped at his peaches-and-pound-cake mixture. "It's another world over here.
Screw up one form, they put a pack on your back. Wise-ass lifers. They're safe."