THE RULES BY D.B.COX

February, 2005

        I’d been out solo a few times before but this mission was totally different. When the chopper dropped me off three days back, I’d stood at the edge of a clearing and watched as it took off and left me standing in the swirling dust – feeling like I’d made a terrible mistake.

        It was April, 1968 just a few days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, a tragic incident that had cast a long shadow on the war in a way that no outside event ever had. Scattered riots broke out and there were fights and stabbings – all of it officially denied. So the timing for this particular hunt could not have been worse. On this assignment, I wouldn’t be gunning for NVA or VC, I had orders to track down and eliminate one of our own – a black Recon Sergeant named Bobby Lee Dixon, better known as “Blood” – night fighter extraordinaire. There were some who said he was a mind reader – knew what you were gonna do, as soon as you thought about it.

        After his partner had been shot dead by one of our own helicopter gunships in another “friendly fire” fuckup, he had determined that no one was, or ever had been on his side, and that every “swingin’ dick”, no matter the color of their skin or uniform, was out to get him. The only way to survive was to start his own game, and God help anybody who passed within in his sight. He was now a one man show representing nobody but himself, and he didn’t give a shit if you were Jesus H. Christ, to him, you were just another moving target in his free-fire zone.

        Although Dixon had a history of trouble with the military-machine stateside, his combat record was exceptional. A recent photo showed a guy who looked nothing like a Marine Force- Recon scout – gold bead in his nose, a bandanna made from a piece of camouflage with “Pray For War” scrawled across the front, a mean black moustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth, and a long scar down the right side of his face that looked like a river marking on a map – a bad hallucination. Looking into those dark eyes, was like staring at the floor of an ocean. This was a man who had spent too many nights sleeping with his eyes open. And now he’d been pushed across an invisible line into a world of absolute moral indifference.

        The highlands of Vietnam – you don’t know “spooky” unless you’ve been there. It’s kind of like a jungle, except it’s up in the clouds and there’s always this fog – like rain, except it’s not raining. Everything is wet and tangled and the angles of vision are always slightly skewed. Up here sound carries forever, and it’s damn near impossible to maintain strict field discipline and absolute silence. Sometimes at night, you could even hear the rocks talking. Serious “spooky”.

        Earlier today, the sun had actually broken through for a couple of hours, and from my position I was able to see most of a small valley and all along the opposite slope. For the first hour nothing at all had happened – then I got lucky. I don’t know what made the grass sway just enough to direct my eyes toward a spot about halfway down the slope, but when I looked through my scope, there he was – his tiger suit completely woven into the terrain. Suddenly, my heart was racing and a trickle of sweat found it’s way down the center of my back. I mentally kicked myself in the ass for taking those goddamn Dexedrine tabs earlier, but I was sure I could nail this guy with one shot from where I was set up. It seemed almost too fucking easy. I clicked the safety on the Remington to the off position, and lined up the target in the crosshairs of my scope. Every nerve-end in my body was pointed toward the tip of my trigger finger.

        Then it hit me like a ten-ton monkey – my whole body started to shake. I lowered my rifle and rolled over onto my back. What the fuck was I doing? This was not a North Vietnamese regular or Viet Cong; this was an American soldier, a black man just like me, with a family back in the “world” -- waiting. Did anyone have the right to give me orders to kill this man? Didn’t any of the old rules still hold? Had all order finally spilled over into chaos? The dark was coming on fast and I decided to shut it down and wait for morning. Maybe things would make more sense after a little rest.

        I spent the first part of the night slipping in and out of a half-sleep made up of bizarre Technicolor dream sequences…

        …I was in a huge field and it was pouring rain. I was walking across the field with a friend, who was also acting as guide. There was a gigantic wooden stage, and on that stage stood Jimi Hendrix in a blue spotlight – all alone – bobbing up and down, wrenching the tremolo bar on his Stratocaster almost to the breaking point. He was plugged into a wall of black amplifiers tall as the New York City skyline, and he was pulling impossible sounds out of his guitar – whistling rockets – bombs bursting in air, “The Star- Spangled Banner”, like it’s never been played before. As we moved closer to the stage, we came upon a huge lake of shit-brown mud covered with dead bodies. My friend waded right in and motioned for me to follow. I hesitated for a second, and he reached out, grabbed my arm and yanked me into the muck. The corpses were all lying on their backs, arms stretched straight out from their shoulders and feet together, as if they’d been posed. I was trying to tell him I didn’t want to see anymore, but he’d just point out the next body, and move along without saying a word. It was when he asked me to get down on my knees and take a closer look, that I finally got what he had been trying to show me. The dead men were all black soldiers with their faces blown away. Their dog tags were missing – only the empty, blood-spattered chains remained around their necks…

        click – Fade to Wacross, Georgia…

        …I was back home in church where a military funeral was in progress. I was standing in line, waiting my turn to file by an open casket, and I couldn’t remember who the funeral was for. I was about to turn and ask the person behind me, when a familiar sound jolted me wide awake…

        metal on metal – a rifle bolt closing…

        When I opened my eyes the spectral figure of Bobby Lee Dixon was standing over me with the barrel of a Winchester pointed at my head. One look into those dead eyes and I knew I had made a fatal mistake by not pulling the trigger when I had the chance. I’d been a fool to take this man as a member of the human community. He was a dark angel, a basic element of the metaphysical soul of these mystical mountains.

        I didn’t think it would do any good, but I had to try and explain some things – try to make this guy understand reason. “Hey man, it’s not fair – my dying like this.” I pleaded. “Can’t you see we’re brothers – both the same? I could have killed you this afternoon, but I didn’t – because there’s got to be some rules, some way to stamp some order on this crazy breakdown – there’s got to be a line you can’t cross – even here.”

        “Blood” Dixon looked down at me for a few seconds, sighed, like he was talking to a child, and said, “ You just don’t get it, do you. Don’t you know why they picked your ass to come up here? It’s because of the one fucking thing you just said that’s right. You and me – yeah, we’re the same – two more expendable black motherfuckers. Both of us dead men, always have been, right from the start – dead as King in Memphis. Believe me man, it’s better to die here and now for nothing, than to die later for the white man’s fucked-up cause. Either goddamn way, it ain’t gonna mean jack.” He paused for a second, shook his head as if he were remembering something, then added, “As for the rules my brother, ain’t none – can’t be – not here. That’s the one thing you’ve got to love and respect about this place, everybody’s got a license to kill – equal rights – free at last…”

        The wind moving through the mountains seemed to sound a sigh of satisfied accord. For a split-second, time stopped. In that instant, I looked up into “Blood” Dixon's eyes and watched, mesmerized, as one tear rolled down that sad river of a scar on the side of his face, and dropped onto the back of his right hand… just as his index finger curled inward, pulling against the blue- metal trigger.

D.B. Cox is a blues musician/poet, originally from South Carolina. After graduating from high school in 1966, he did a four year stint with the U.S. Marines, then moved to Boston to attend the Berklee School of Music, where he eventually found the blues circuit. He loves writing for the same reason he loves playing the guitar-a way to communicate how he feels at a given time, on a given day. He now resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. His writing has been published online in Zygote In My Coffee, Remark, Underground Voices, Dubliner Quarterly and others, and in print in Aesthetica, Snow Monkey, My Favorite Bullet and Open Wide Magazine.