Going After Cacciato

Paul tries to tell Cacciato that there aren’t any fish, that the name Lake Country is just a joke. But Cacciato has created a fishing pole out of a paperclip, string, and an empty aerosol can for a bobber, and he just holds his finger to his lips when Paul speaks. Cacciato has been out there all day, and the other soldiers are worried he’ll get ill.

In between comments about fish, Paul tells him about the plan to kill Lieutenant Martin. Cacciato says Martin isn’t that bad because he let Cacciato carry the radio one time. But Paul says he has to touch the grenade; that it will happen regardless. He pulls Cacciato’s hand off the fishing line and presses the grenade into it.

Paul returns to camp and puts the grenade in front of Oscar, Eddie, and Doc. He tells them, “You know how it is with fishermen…Mind’s a million miles away” (241). Oscar puts the grenade back on his belt and says, “That’s everyone” (241).

In Tehran, the men are shaved once more, photographed, fed, and put in a cell. Paul wishes for a miracle; as he sits in the observation tower, he contemplates “a cartoon of the mind” (242). Then Cacciato’s face appears at the window, and he slides an M16 through the bars. The door shatters in an explosion, and the men run as Cacciato leads them through the streets. “It was the soldier’s greatest dream—fierce, hard, desperate full-out running” (243).

Cacciato points out a getaway car and disappears; the soldiers climb in. Oscar drives the 1964 Impala. They drive through the streets, Doc navigating, but when Eisenhower Avenue turns into a traffic circle, they discover the ambush. Soldiers and a dozen tanks begin to fire at the car. Stink’s door is open, and he’s crying and screaming. Oscar reverses past the roadblock and makes it on to the expressway. They close Stink’s door and drive out of the city.

Paul drives through the night and thinks about pressing the grenade to Cacciato’s hand. “A sad thing” (247), Cacciato said after Lieutenant Sidney Martin died. Paul crosses the border into Turkey, a land that looks like Old Mexico, and keeps driving. They stop in Salihli for breakfast and gas, and then continue to Izmir.

Paul parks by the harbor, and they walk out onto the longest pier. Everyone is laughing and happy; they’re surrounded by the smell of salt and fish. Paul points to the west and says, “It can be done” (249). 

Paul knows the land of Vietnam—Quang Ngai in particular—better than the people. It’s primarily farm country with farms run communally by villages. They grow rice in the paddies, which have a smell that’s alive, if not lovely. Paul has drunk the paddy water and peed in it, despite the warnings.

Aside from the paddies, there are hedgerows twice as tall as a man that surround and shield the villages. “So where the paddies represented ripeness and age and depth, the hedgerows expressed the land’s secret qualities: cut up, twisting, covert, chopped and mangled, blind corner’s leading to dead ends, short horizons always changing” (252).

The earth is red—from high iron content, Doc explains—and coats everything. The trails, also red, are dangerous; they come with the risk of ambush or land mines. But they’re faster and sometimes necessary. Paul notices details: the outward growth of trees and the lack of birds.

Paul had seen pictures and movies depicting poverty—diseases, hunger, death—so when he sees it in person, he isn’t shocked or amazed. He likes the sea best. Quang Ngai moves from beach to paddies to meadows to foothills to mountains, and past the mountains lies Paris.