The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

9: The Surgeon of An Khe

His name was Gerard Karnowski, and he hailed from Hoboken, New York. Legend held that some of the guys in the platoon tried to drop the nickname Carney — as in carnival sideshow freak — on him, but that happened before he was dubbed The Surgeon. Before he earned the name. I met The Surgeon during my time in-country, stationed with D Company, 1st Infantry, 22nd Regiment outside of An Khe, Republic of Vietnam. Regulars, by God.

During my first few weeks in the bush, we walked. We walked in the rain, in mud, orange creeping mud that sucked at your boots as a reminder that you walked on a foreign planet. The insects, especially the mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds, swarmed and buzzed, harassing us day and night. We sometimes walked in the thick, humid night to set up an ambush, waiting for the invisible enemy. When we weren’t walking, we dug into that red-orange mud, trying to create a small pocket of security in an alien jungle. While on patrol one day, I unexpectedly stumbled on The Surgeon at work.

He hunched over the body of a lone Viet Cong, a sniper killed by a foreword unit in our column. Our platoon commander, Lt. Terry Wucker, this scared twenty-two year old fresh out of ROTC, squatted under a tree with the radio operator, calling in the enemy KIA by the book. A few of the men fanned out to keep watch on the perimeter, some whispered low, maintaining noise discipline, but I watched The Surgeon as he sliced into the dead flesh, removing the left eye from the body with the fluid motion of his bowie knife.

“What the hell is he doing,” I whispered to Tallman, a short-timer who had humped the boonies with The Surgeon for almost ten months. Tallman once said that ten months was long enough to sweat in Vietnamese for the rest of your life.

“Cutting the fucker’s eye out,” he said. “What the hell does it look like?” Curiosity, like strange but powerful gravity, pulled my eyes back to the body. The Surgeon’s hands worked quickly. His wide, flashing knife didn’t have the precision of a scalpel, but his fingers carried a swift and special skill.

“Why?”

“He collects them.” Tallman spat on the ground and rubbed his saliva into the dirt with the toe of his boot. “He fucking collects them,” he repeated, shaking his head.

I watched in silence as The Surgeon pulled a glass jam jar from his rucksack, a jar filled with clear fluid and a few floating horrible things — other eyes with small bits of flesh clinging to them, bobbing like bleached olives. After unscrewing the lid, he held the new eye in his palm, rinsed it with a splash of water from his canteen, and dropped it into the jar.

“Rumor is, they help him see,” Tallman said, laughing.

The Surgeon looked up and smiled at me as he rubbed the thick blood from his knife on a tuft of elephant grass. After he slipped the clean, glinting knife back into its scabbard and stood, I thought the man was a giant. He looked at me, and his mouth fell open in a wide grin.

When The Surgeon walked point, he wore the jar on a small leather cord around his neck like a special charm, and we never made contact with the enemy. He led us through dense underbrush, often hacking our way through the humming thickness of the jungle, but none of the grunts complained. He kept us safe.

One day, the lieutenant lost it. His college education blocked common sense — wisdom that even I, a straw-headed farm kid from Kansas — could comprehend. After stopping the column, the thin line of green men snaking through the leaves, Lt. Wucker steamed past me and moved forward, approaching The Surgeon as he knelt at the front of our unit.

“What the hell are we doing?” he asked in a near-whisper, his voice quavering enough to belie his frustration and insecurity.

“Avoiding traps.” The Surgeon didn’t speak often, but his voice was low, grinding like slabs of concrete rubbed together. He looked forward, into the jungle ahead, not really speaking to the lieutenant at all.

“Like hell. We’re heading the wrong direction.” Lt. Wucker squirmed a bit as he spoke, an effect of the jar of swimming eyes hanging around The Surgeon’s neck.

“Your mistake,” said The Surgeon.

“I’m in command. Decker, on point. Karnowski, you head to the rear of the column.”

We didn’t march long before we all realized Lt. Wucker’s error. While walking point, Nick Decker, nineteen-year-old high school dropout from Alabama, stepped into a small hole filled with sharpened bamboo shafts — a hole in the ground like the maw of some awful, prehistoric shark. The point of one stake punctured the bottom of his boot, slicing through his foot, and punching through the leather upper. Nick released a sharp yelp of pain and dropped to his knees. We spent an hour sorting out a medivac.

“Fucking Lieutenant,” Tallman muttered as we sat on the orange earth and smoked.

When we weren’t walking and digging holes in the dirt, we waited in the rear. The rear — sounds like we actually had a front line — only a newbie called it the rear for long. But short stints at base camp brought better sleep, quick showers, and nights of poker under a corrugated steel roof that amplified the rainy season.

“Linder, stop fucking around and deal,” Tallman said after biting the tip off of his cigar and spitting the brown plug onto the dirt floor of the hootch. I quickly tossed five cards to each of the guys around the table, Tallman, Dave Rowe, Mickey Hernandez, Cliff Manalo, and myself.

“Did you guys hear about Decker?” Rowe, a pale kid from Minnesota, asked in his slow northern drawl while the rest of us scrutinized and organized our cards.

“Lost his foot.” Tallman flipped open his Zippo and ignited the end of his cigar.

“No shit.” I looked past Tallman to where The Surgeon sat on his bunk, casually flipping through the pages of Hot Rod. The dim light of the barracks cast a pall over his face, graying his features like a silver gelatin print of some grim-faced old salt from one of my high school history books. The jar sat on a small shelf next to him, covered with a green towel.

“Fucking gangrene. Had to amputate.” The cigar tip glowed as Tallman inhaled.

“Fucking Lieutenant,” Manalo said, laying his cards face down on the table. He was a solid and square man with a dark face and smudged jaw.

“Should have listened to The Surgeon.” Tallman tossed five cigarettes in the center of the table. “Ante up, boys.”

I didn’t find much sleep at night, any night, but I spent that particular night stretched on my bunk, staring at the dark ceiling of the bunkhouse, thinking about Nick Decker’s missing foot and The Surgeon’s jar of eyes, eventually dreaming about one-eyed men marching toward me, each extending one hand. The next morning, as we saddled up for a return to the bush and our hide-and-seek game with a phantom enemy, curiosity ate at my stomach like I’d swallowed a fist full of nails.

“I don’t get it,” I said, clutching my M-16 like a lifeline.

“What don’t you get?” Tallman tightened the straps on his rucksack.

“Does he always just cut out one eye?”

“Yeah, since I’ve known him.”

“I don’t get it…”

“What’s there to get?” Tallman shrugged and shouldered his pack while the deafening thump of helicopter blades devoured us.

In the field, our lives resumed the predictable pattern of walk, dig, sleep for two, three hours, and repeat. Lt. Wucker received word from the CO that elements of D Company drew the job of flushing out a contingent of North Vietnamese regulars massing north of An Khe. To us grunts, all this meant was more walking with the chance that some violence would break up the tedium of routine. We were bait.

I sat on my helmet, cleaning my M-16 for the second time that morning. Around me, other members of the platoon milled around, smoking, flashing quick glances at each other without speaking. While reassembling my weapon, my roving eyes caught The Surgeon, standing alone, dissecting the pile of forest in front of him. The jar rested in the palm of his right hand, and I thought his lips moved a little, like he was talking to someone I couldn’t see. He turned and strolled toward the Lieutenant. I stood, snagging my pot and dropping back on my head as I meandered in the same direction.

“Lieutenant,” said The Surgeon.

Lt. Wucker looked at him, folded the map he studied a moment before, and stuffed it inside a plastic bag before speaking. “Yeah Karnowski?”

“Bad vibes today.” The Surgeon’s eyes wandered past Wucker.

“We have orders, Karnowski.” The Lieutenant tried to meet his gaze. “I don’t give a shit about your goddamn vibes, understand?”

The Surgeon thrust his thumb over one shoulder toward the thick trees behind him. “Sniper. Thought you should know.” With this, he turned and marched away from Lt. Wucker and over to a small group of grunts — Tallman and Manalo among them. Wucker stood like a whitewashed statue for a moment before turning back to the radio and digging his map out of the plastic bag.

Fifteen minutes into the thick canopy and a VC sniper split Private First Class Matthew Tallman’s head with one well placed shot. He walked only ten feet in front of me, and with one quick snap, his body dropped to the ground like an abandoned marionette. I instantly burrowed, clutching my helmet to my head, terror slashing and burning through my prone body. I inhaled the pungent mud and dropped my weapon. I scratched at the ground while some members of the platoon returned fire; the popping reports of M-16s sounded like little firecrackers lit under a Folgers can, seeming so far away.

After a few moments of fear, I scrambled for my gun. My eyes caught The Surgeon boring straight into me with an infrared glare. He pointed at me and then pushed toward me with his hand. Without thinking, I obeyed, rolling to the other side of a jagged tree stump. A small geyser of earth erupted where I’d been. I swallowed hard while my eyes were drawn by that small smoking crater.

Members of our platoon sprayed the treetops with gunfire until a slight man in black dropped like poisoned fruit. He hung in space, tied to a rope attached to the top of the tree, dangling in front of the tree trunk just feet off the ground.

Lt. Wucker sent a few men on perimeter watch while the medic attended Manalo, his right side ripped into a jagged, crimson wound by the sniper. Hernandez and Rowe zipped PFC Matthew Tallman’s nearly headless body into a black bag. Only then did the chattering jungle sound return. That was the odd thing, the quiet, listening jungle followed by the slow rise of distant monkeys, birds, and buzzing insects.

The Surgeon stood alone next to the sniper, rolling a toothpick in his mouth. He pulled the knife from its hilt, sawed the rope, and dropped the body to the ground. Kneeling then, with deftness and precision, he carved out another eye for his jar as the heavy beating of a medivac helicopter closed around us.

Somebody should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernandez scowled as we hunched outside our tents and smoked the last cigarettes of the day. I looked from him to Dave Rowe, and then The Surgeon.

“Yeah, fuck him. He should listen to The Surgeon.” Rowe looked at me, and my stomach squirmed.

“Can’t be helped,” said The Surgeon as he tossed the smoldering butt of his cigarette into a stand of damp grass and ducked inside his tent.

“I still say we should frag that son-of-a-bitch.” Mickey Hernadez puffed out his chest and sucked in a long drag. Through the shadows just inside his tent, I could see The Surgeon’s face, eyes open and staring beyond the green canvas.

After a few weeks of intense search and destroy, the company returned to the rear for a week of rest, part of the constant cycle. During that month of combat, The Surgeon continued to collect eyes until a full school like little fish swam inside that small jar. After Tallman’s death he withdrew, talking little to anyone, not even the Lieutenant. Tension in the platoon mounted with causalities, and we would never wash the orange earth from under our fingernails.

The Surgeon approached the officers’ hootch the night before we were scheduled to ship out again. While sucking on a cigarette and enjoying the night sky in relative safety, I watched him knock on the door, say something to the man that answered, and wait. Wucker came to the door when summoned, and The Surgeon seemed to be explaining something to him, gesturing with his arms more than I’d seen in the past. The Lieutenant shook his head, returned inside, leaving The Surgeon to turn and wander away. He walked toward the perimeter, and my legs started in that direction without conscious thought.

“Hey Linder.”

“Hey,” I said, sidling next to him, “how’d you know…”

“…it was you? Easy.” He held the glass jar toward me, white orbs dancing as the liquid jostled inside. “Take it. Give it a try.”

I moved my left arm to take the jar, but hesitated, a vice squeezing my lungs.

“They won’t bite.” He dropped the jar in my hand, and I felt it as a small electric pop — like static electricity but moving through my arm and chest. The eyes bounced and jumped. I looked at him, his rectangular face, washed with an even pallor in the twilight, and then his face faded, the sharp coil of concertina wire in front of us faded, even the night faded like so much color washed down a drain.

I glimpsed snatches of jungle, trail, rice paddy, and even here in the camp through dozens of eyes at once. I reeled for a moment, spinning and lost with no solid substance beneath my feet, then, looking down, realizing I had no feet. My skull burned, but I heard his voice saying, “focus, focus” inside my brain. The ground rushed at me, and I fell to my knees, my perception suddenly thrust back behind my eyes as I doubled over, retching, on the hard ground.

“It gets easier Linder.” He held the jar again, and offered a hand to help me stand. “Focus on where we are right now.”

I took the jar again, cold and heavy in my hand, and concentrated. Again, the world faded, but this time the colors melted together again in an eerie, not quite daylight glow. My eyes seemed to stretch their scope and vision into the jungle, reaching out almost like fingertips. In the strange space, people — soldiers — walked from between the trees. The whole scene vibrated inside-out, like a shimmering photo negative.

Some of these shadow soldiers approached me and reached out with black fingers. The jar vibrated in my hands, almost dancing as the figures approached. Each had one eye, the other just a space, and empty circle of white. I didn’t really feel anything — no fear, no repulsion.

One of the shadows stepped in front of the others. He touched the side of his face, the space next to his intact eye, and I suddenly stretched like a thin filament through space, drawing into his vision. Daylight burst in normal colors. Our company lined up outside the bunk houses, and an unfamiliar officer paced in front of the line of ragged grunts. I saw faces I knew, but no Gerard Karnowski or Lt. Terry Wucker.

Suddenly, blackness and stars leapt at me while The Surgeon chuckled at my side. “You’ll learn.” Then a pop, a nearby but muffled sound. I hugged the earth, fearing sappers — a surprise attack. As I hunched to the ground, my eyes were parallel to his boots, black but caked with too much of the red-orange dirt. The Surgeon hadn’t even flinched.

“That’ll be the Lieutenant.” He knelt down next to me as I pushed myself into a sitting position. His eyes flashed for a moment, almost fading to bright red before dissolving into his usual brown. “I tried to warn him.” I looked into camp and saw dark forms rushing about in the night as the raid sirens began to crank.

“What?”

“Look. You keep this.” He set the jar on the ground next to me. “I’m tired. It’s gotten too heavy.” He strolled back toward the hootches, tumult, and commotion, vanishing in shadow and movement. I sat on the ground next to the jar, just studying the eyes for a short while before scooping it up and heading for shelter.

Gerard Kowalski was gone the next morning. In his bunk lay his clothes and bowie knife, but nothing else, no letter, no clues to his disappearance. Lt. Wucker died, officially, at the hands of a VC sapper. Most of the members of D Company knew the truth. One of us — hell, all of us — fragged him for not following The Surgeon’s advice.

In time, I learned to rely on those shadow-soldiers. I learned to “see” like The Surgeon: avoiding mines, snipers, and helping to make the platoon one of the most efficient in the 1st Infantry. Our new Lieutenant learned to value the gift The Surgeon left behind. At the end of June, 1970, I boarded a Freedom Bird and came back to The World. The jar, wrapped in brown paper, rested in my lap on the plane. Disconnected from war, its power faded, but it sits, my one souvenir, on a shelf in my basement, next to old Christmas ornaments and board games — still wrapped in plain brown paper.