Taste of Tenderloin
Taste of Tenderloin
By Gene O'Neill
Winner of the 2009 Stoker Award for Excellence in a Collection
Apex Publications
www.apexbookcompany.com
Published by Apex Publications at Smashwords.
This collection is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
Taste of Tenderloin
Copyright © 2009 by Gene O'Neill
Cover art © 2009 by Steven Gilberts
Introduction © 2009 by Gavin O'Neill
Cover design by Justin Stewart
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce the book, or portions thereof, in any form.
"Lost Tribe," "Bushido," and "Bruised Soul" original to this Collection; "Magic Words" first appeared in Dark Wisdom #10, 2007; "Balance" first appeared in Cemetery Dance #55, 2006;"Tombstones in His Eyes" first appeared in The Grand Struggle, 2004; "The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee" first appeared in Unnatural Selection, 2001; "5150" first appeared in Horrors Beyond 2, 2007
Apex Publications, LLC
PO Box 24323
Lexington, KY 40524
www.apexbookcompany.com
www.stevengilberts.com
This collection is for my friend and colleague, Brian Keene.
He has championed my cause as a writer. This blows his public persona: Brian Keene is a good guy, deserving of his success!
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lost Patrol
Magic Words
Tombstones in His Eyes
Bushido
Balance
The Apotheosis of Nathan McKee
Bruised Soul
5150
Afterword
Bios
Acknowledgments
A special thanks to Jason Sizemore and all the staff at Apex for their complete professionalism and dedication to putting out the best book possible. Also a tip of the hat to Steve Gilbert, an artist who is able to catch the spirit of a book without giving anything away. And last I'd like to thank all the readers who buy my books, enabling me to continue pursuing my obsessions.
Introduction
I miss you. When I wanted the city, you gave it to me in blood and history. You were much, much bigger than I was. To walk your streets takes courage. To live in your belly takes a reverent respect like all good surfers have for the ocean; they know she can pound them into submission at any moment. In the veins of your alleys we are only a heart pump away from terror. In your rich heart, anything can happen. And happen fast. I've seen your young Asian armies kick a black man into unconsciousness in the middle of a busy street, busses held up to watch. I've stepped over your chalk murder outlines on the way to work, disorienting at six in the morning. I've loved your peripheral motion, your androgynous hunters, and your sad cherubs on the building faces, missing an eye, or some teeth, or both wings. I left you and your abusive pinwheel of violence and glitter...but I miss you.
I miss your juxtaposition of tenements and tourist hotels, the homeless rubbing up against the Financial District, your 60 liquor stores and swarming population of children in their little uniforms, your drugs, prostitutes, and strip clubs constantly taunting the patrons of the Theater District, your Little Saigon and abandoned banks, your methadone and public library, your transsexuals, transgenders, transvestites and museums, your bars and your bars and your bars, your dive bars and your merchant seamen that loved them, your broken wheelchairs and cable cars, your studios crammed with Asian refugees and your gay riots, your impossible parking and police bribery, your bohemians and religious rescue missions, your drug shootings and those fantastic Vietnamese sandwiches. And I love the true lies about your beautiful name; that bent tiara.
My dad doesn't drink or smoke or gamble. As far as I know, he doesn't frequent massage parlors. He's a guy who generally doesn't have a lot of patience for bullshit. And the Tenderloin has more bullshit per capita than any neighborhood in the city. So what is it about this fifteen- by seven-block radius that makes him set eight short stories inside its perimeter?
I think it has something to do with the living past of the hard-boiled 1920s that hangs around the Tenderloin, refusing to slip quietly into the annals of history. The neighborhood is still very much alive with the ghosts of the gambling dens, billiard halls, boxing gyms, and speakeasies of Dashiell Hammett, who lived at 891 Post Street--the apartment he gave to Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Walking the streets of the Tenderloin, it's easy to feel Walter Tevis on your right and Nelson Algren on your left.
My father likes faces with character. He likes soulful, damaged people---at least on paper. In real life, he doesn't like anyone. Which is, perhaps, another reason why he likes the Tenderloin. It really is the most anonymous place on earth. You could bust into the corner store in a gorilla suit and pink tutu, riding a unicycle, and no one is going to look up from their shoplifting. You don't really have to engage with anyone; just bear witness to the spectacle of hard life. Also, and maybe most significantly, my father respects endurance, something the residents of the Tenderloin have in spades. You don't really understand this, what this means, until you see it for yourself. Strap your wallet to your thigh and come on down.
---Gavin O'Neill, San Francisco, 2009
Lost Patrol
Dense fog crashes down on the Tenderloin like a wounded cloud.
Wet, penetrating, chilling.
On your knees, you scramble into the shelter of the cardboard tent at the dark end of the alley around the corner from Jones and O'Farrell. You hug yourself and listen intently. Nothing unusual about the night noises of the city around you, the foghorn out in San Francisco Bay a recurring mournful bellow.
Still, you're unconvinced that something hasn't followed you back here again and is lurking somewhere in the thick mist.
A trash can rattles at the end of the alley, and you hear a cat screech. A moment later, a furry blur streaks by the front of your tent.
You are unable to suppress a shudder of relief.
Carefully, you slip the recently purchased half pint of Wild Irish Rose from the pocket of your field jacket and unscrew the cap. In three long pulls, the bottle is emptied. The cheap whisky burns all the way down, bringing tears to your eyes. After a moment, you slump down on your grimy blanket, reaching inside your shirt and squeezing the medallion on the chain around your neck for comfort. In a few minutes, the medicine begins working, the warm, euphoric feeling slowly spreading out from your gut to your extremities, washing away the dread and tension.
Relaxed, you are able to slip off to sleep.
After PFC Shane McConnell had been at 3rd Platoon Base Camp on the Pokey River for a little over four months, he made his first real patrol mission with Second Squad. He'd been out a half dozen times the past month and a half on day-long search and destroy sweeps this side of the river, but there were never any NVA units or VC in the surrounding area east and north along the river. It had been kind of like Advanced Infantry Training Regiment back in the states at Camp Pendleton. The S & D training had been just about as mind-numbingly dull.
But this present patrol was the real deal; it was why they were stationed there.
They had first picked up supplies at the airfield. Then, loaded down like Himalayan sherpas, they had crossed the river on a bobbing pontoon bridge near the tiny village of Duck Soup. From there they had humped along a steep, winding trail on the other side, and soon disappeared from airfield view into the thick jungle. Second Squad's primary mission was to hump various supplies and ammunition to a special operations unit across the river. The unit contained a never-specified number of detach
ed 3rd Force Recon personnel who reportedly lived with and led three or four clans of fierce Hmong tribesmen, marauding from a secluded sanctuary high up in the jungle-covered mountains.
They met at pre-arranged drop sites, the location and route changing with each patrol. The longest ones kept them out three nights, but each at least required an overnighter. Half the squad carried extra small arms ammunition, medical supplies, and grenades in their backpacks; the other half packed 60mm mortar rounds wrapped in old used socks with the bore-riding arming pins safely double-taped down.
At their first break, Shane plopped down next to a guy named Ward, a college dropout who everyone called Psycho because of his rambling, emotional, complicated, and often bizarre beliefs and theories about almost everything. Shane felt the guy's convoluted intellectual opinions sometimes had a kind of compelling relevance to the craziness of everyday life in the Crotch, as the grunts called the corps. It was from Psycho that Shane had first heard the DOD-sanctioned explanation for why U.S. forces were even being deployed in Vietnam: the so-called Domino Theory, indicating that if South Vietnam fell to the communists, other countries of Southeast Asia would soon topple, too. Psycho thought it a visually dramatic but "damned flawed theory," not well supported by the socio-political or historical background of the region. "No way, man," he explained. "Thailand, known as Siam for most of its history, has been an independent kingdom for over a thousand years. Most of Burma was independent and unoccupied for just as long." He talked a lot about U.S. forces really being in Vietnam to protect long-term colonial interests established by the French across Indochina, a complicated and rambling geo-political argument that he apparently supported, although Shane was never positive about that.
"Hey, man," Shane asked Psycho after catching his breath, "how come they don't just fly this shit in by 'copters?" They were both resting on their packs, cams damp with sweat. "Seems better, more efficient, than using us ground-pounders. And for sure much easier on our frigging backs."
Psycho grinned cynically. "Yeah, you got that right, Mac. But Captain Van Zant says that there isn't enough good level and cleared ground for a drop zone where we're headed up in the mountains. Which is complete bullshit. It doesn't take much to clear away growth for a small 'copter pad. But I think the real reason is that we cross too far west, beyond where we're actually supposed to be, you know." He added in a much lower voice, "Brass doesn't want any choppers over there dropping supplies to Force Recon advisors who aren't even over there. You get my drift?"
"You think we're actually crossing over the border of 'nam?" Shane asked, unable to mask his doubt.
Psycho shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah, I definitely do. We've got to be slipping into Laos, maybe sometimes even the northern tip of Cambodia, when we hump just a couple of days farther south from here." He paused, studying Shane's skeptical scowl. "What? You never looked at any of those maps pinned up in headquarters? Checked the scale? Got curious about the estimated location of our drop points?"
Shane thought about that for a moment. Before this patrol, he hadn't really been too interested in reading maps or visualizing scale, drop points, and such. But he conjured up the image of the big map with their approximate base camp location on the river, the actual short distance---as a bird flew---to the border, and the current mission's drop point. Jesus Christ! He realized it might be true. Psycho could be right. They were most likely headed across the border into Laos.
"Then who are Force Recon hitting with this shit?" he asked, tapping his pack. "They must be doing more than just training. Are there North Vietnamese Army over there in Laos and Cambodia? Or maybe Viet Cong? Or what?"
"Who knows, man?" Psycho said, shrugging again. "Must be someone there to shoot at. They're using up a hell of a lot of ammo and grenades for something, or maybe just stockpiling a shitpot of stuff for something else that's coming down the line." He paused again for a moment, then added with a grim expression, "But I'm not so sure the guys we're supplying are even Third Force Recon advisors, man. They never have any Hmong tribesmen with them on the drop pickups, and---"
"Who are they, then?" Shane cut in.
"You just wait and see for yourself," Psycho answered in a conspiratorial whisper. "Hell, I'm not so sure these dudes are even alive. I think they might be elements from that scary-ass Lost Patrol bunch. You heard 'bout them?"
Shane nodded and sat up, frowning. He took a long draw from his canteen, not sure Psycho wasn't trying to pull his leg, take advantage of the gullible new guy. Of course he'd heard of the legendary Lost Patrol. It was one of the major Vietnam myths. Supposedly, they were ghostly, zombie-like remnants of a USMC infantry platoon ambushed somewhere farther north. Stories said they roamed the deep jungle in tattered, rotting camouflage, striking fear into the hearts and minds of friend and foe. There was scuttlebutt of the raggedy ghosts everywhere across South Vietnam, distant sightings often on the same day. Maybe there was more than one patrol. Some private on mess duty from Third Squad had told Shane that it was true, the dings really did believe the ghostly scuttlebutt and were scared shitless of the Lost Patrol. Charlie prisoners often swore to actual sightings and hostile contact.
But there? At their drop zone? So far south up in the mountains? Shane shook his head. Man, that was some kind of spooky, crazy shit to even remotely consider.
Growing up, he had never believed in ghosts or any other supernatural stuff, but he had never thought too much about it, really---not until coming to 'nam. Now he wasn't so sure. Everyone was blatantly superstitious. Half the platoon wore St. Christopher medals, even though only a few were actually Catholic. Others carried rabbits' feet, lucky coins, or different kinds of Asian good fortune charms, including magical tattoos they brought back from R and R in Bangkok or Hong Kong. There were more tics and odd ritualistic behaviors happening before going on a patrol than on a baseball team coming up to bat in the bigs---a few guys even wore their same "lucky" shorts, socks, or whatever, regardless of whether they were clean or not. Shane grinned sheepishly because he'd recently bought the famed Tibetan Buddhist chant from a Navy corpsman returning home---om mani padme hum---etched in elegant Sanskrit on a tiny silver medallion he wore around his neck. He figured the good luck mantra couldn't hurt. But the Lost Patrol, so far out? That was just too squirrelly. Still, he couldn't keep himself from shuddering slightly.
"Saddle up," Sergeant Owens ordered, coming down the line of resting grunts.
Reluctantly, the squad slipped back into their heavy packs, picked up their weapons, and began climbing the narrow trails again. Up, always uphill; the muggy heat trapped under the low-hanging jungle canopy seemed not to cool down even a degree after they had climbed hundreds of feet higher in elevation. Soon, their cams were soaked, and everyone was huffing and puffing and dying of thirst.
Late that afternoon they made camp and immediately set up a defensive perimeter, a tight circle of seven two-man posts---half on guard, half supposedly sleeping. Big O and the Navy corpsman assigned to the patrol shared a position.
No one really slept, of course. Shane was lucky to even doze off for a few minutes. It had rained heavily a day before the patrol's mission, and the dense forest overhang was like a grand drip system, creating a kind of clinging, thick mist that hovered near ground level around dusk. The jungle grew dark early, and despite what he might have believed back home about tropical forests being quiet at night, there was a teeth-jarring cacophony of strange sounds: coughing growls, deep-throated howling, sharp barking, high-pitched squeaks, deep croaking and chirruping. Beneath that, in the distance, just at the threshold of hearing, lay a humanlike whispering, the words indistinct, foreign. The latter sound was perhaps only imagined, a kind of group paranoid delusion. Over it all sounded the very real and steady resonating hum of thousands of insects, making the hair on Shane's neck prickle as if it were the dry, irritating sound of a piece of chalk scratching against a blackboard. He knew in his heart that every one of those fucking bugs would visit him personally sometim
e during the night, each heavily armed with a probe, sting, bite, poke, or scratch, some highly venomous and others perhaps bearing some horrible exotic disease. His helmet net provided no defense against being bit or stung on the hands, wrists, ankles, or any other briefly exposed skin. Shane tried to rest, keeping everything covered up as best he could, but he was only able to lie there dozing, listening and scratching frantically.
The risks and dangers of meeting an enemy patrol were real enough to Shane, but he pushed them to the back of his mind. The creepy-crawly hazards, lurking right near them in the tropical forest, were more immediate and attacked relentlessly throughout the early night. And they were noisy. Tex, his fire team leader and perimeter post partner, had explained to Shane the first night out in the deep jungle that the din was a preferable state, really their best friend. If the jungle went suddenly quiet, that was the time to worry---abrupt silence tightened up every experienced grunt's sphincter muscle in a hurry. It meant something unusual was happening out there, just beyond their view, something---or perhaps someone---dangerous moving about quietly in the darkness with evil intentions.
The next morning they ate cold K-rations, no fires.
The heavily laden squad struggled along through the thick upland forest, finally reaching the coordinates of the meeting point in the early evening. No one was there to meet them. Not yet.
They made camp and waited.