Most people do. Not that it's a name I particularly like, but it's just one that sticks with me like ticks do with hounds. Nothing I can do about it. Can't even remember when people first started calling me that damned name, just always seems to have been mine. And hell, there's so many rumours and lies about how I got named Spanky that I don't even remember which is true. My favorite is the one about getting caught spanking a VC to death in 'Nam. According to one variation, she actually died choking on my come. But that's a bit raw.
'Nam ended for me in '72 when I got shipped state-side: had grenade frags in my ass and legs. I'm lucky I didn't lose them both. Still can't walk right; I got a rolling, bow-legged gait that people who don't know me attribute to being a cowboy and riding horses. Wrong. I've never touched a horse, much less ridden one. Would've liked to, but never got a chance before 'Nam and no way I could after. Screw my legs up real bad if I tried that. Nowadays I mostly sit around and try not to think about things. Some stuff a man oughtn't to ever see or hear. Too bad it has to happen...
It's really nobody's fault, you know. The VC had to do what they did, and so did we. I guess our boys kind of started it, but with the top dogs wanting some kind of proof for their casualty counts, we had to bring something back from each kill. It was that Indian, Hiawatha or Pocahantus or whatever-the-fuck, that first started scalping. Reviving some ancient tradition, he said. When the VC started doing the same, I guess we sort of figured it to be a contest. So we started taking ears, fingers, whole hands, even plucking eyeballs-although those didn't transport well. What the hell, they were almost the funnest to get.
It was Harrington, not me, that got the idea of castration. Damn Mexican half-breed had a twisted mean streak wider than the Rio Grande, which he always denied swimming across. Sure. His real name was Perez or Gomez or some other spic name, but he hunted down and killed his real father at age 15, getting rid of the name at the same time. Kind of symbolic, I guess. Don't know why we went along with his idea, but nobody was in their right mind then, anyway.
I guess losing your dick is a big deal to the VC, cause we started finding our boys tied to trees in all kinds of weird ways, flayed and dismembered. Some were still living when we found them. One boy was just barely eighteen and fresh from boot. Never saw an eye with so much pain in it. Guess they left him that one so he could watch the world fade to black. It looked relieved after the head shot.
Some of the guys kind of snapped. We started doing similar shit to the enemy. It's amazing how much a man can take before screaming. And hell, if you do it right he can keep going for hours after he starts in. One gook's larynx gave out a whole day before he did. That one was a masterpiece. After that one I guess it got blabbed to the brass, cause we ended up on the carpet soon afterward. Esprit went to hell real quick. I don't know who arranged it, but somehow I ended up being responsible for every damn thing that happened. Whatever. It made the brass happy to pin the blame on one dog and send the rest back to the line. Not that I didn't get sent back, too. Just not right away.
I spent a month seeing a shrink on a daily basis. By the end of the first week, he thought I was a dumb hick. By the end of the month he submitted that he thought there was a miscarriage of justice because I was incapable of doing such acts, much less able to plan them out. Fool.
Back on the line with a different unit, I was still treated like a deranged criminal. Hard to make friends anyway, when you're always on solo missions to recon the enemy positions. They were trying to get rid of me. Not a chance. When the boys in our area started showing up on trees, we figured my old VC compadres had changed locale but kept up their same signature work. Reports showed it wasn't happening anymore around my old unit. So the games began again. Thing is, rumours started that I was doing it all—theirs and ours. They confined me for a week before deciding I wasn't responsible. It kept happening anyway. The worst was the boy from the village. No way I could've done that from inside the brig, though. I'd never have thought of putting his hands and feet up inside him there anyway. Hell, even Harrington wasn't that twisted.
But I do have to admit some partial blame for what happened later. Maybe I should have interrupted them, but what two men do in the middle of the jungle seems to me pretty much their own business. Still, maybe they'd be alive and I could be riding horses if I'd said something, stead of going on my way. I heard the screams from at least a mile away, I'd say. Seems strange to hear something from that far away through the thick jungle, I know, but then you gotta consider the kind of pain they must have been in.
I ran back, but the screams had long stopped by the time I found them. Had to be one of the quickest jobs ever. Even had time to booby-trap it. They found me barely alive from loss of blood not much later. Some thought it funny that the psycho finally got it in the ass. The rest thought I was tired of it and staged the whole thing to end it. Doesn't matter, I went home with a court martial and most of my left butt-cheek gone. Sometimes shit happens. I never will figure out how they had time to do all that, though. Specially the arrangement of the skins and the way the heads were shoved up inside them with each other's dicks in their mouths. You could tell cause one was black.
Some things you shouldn't think about...