The Accident (i) and Free Fire Zone (vi)

From Information Specialist James R. Dorris and First Casualty Press

Accident. Means things falling together. Not in a nice way, but the way things are. First syllable means towards and the second also means chance.

Things fall, swerve, and hit each other. Lucretius’ physics, De rerum natura, teaches not to care in the first place rather than fall yourself into accidie, where that first syllable means without and the second means care.

Acedia, a medical term. Apathy, depression, even hate. Don’t do that. It was an accident. What wasn’t?

Temple finished pulling a maintenance check on the Major’s jeep, and left the motor pool just as the sun was starting to rise.

Temple is the first word of The Accident. It is the family name of the focal character, what he wore in big block capitals on the chest of his uniform. A temple is a place set apart for ritual purity.

Beneath your two temples the temporal lobes feel and listen and remember and speak. James R. Dorris, Information Specialist 4, has promoted his alter ego to Sergeant. Temple goes for breakfast through the non-commissioned officer’s door and a young Vietnamese girl takes his order.

Our allies in The Accident thereafter appear as baby-san, a province chief, mama-san, kids, and one old man. Right now the career sergeants are talking over breakfast about whores.

The mess and supply sergeants rail at Temple’s stand-offishness. They accuse him of fucking only round-eyed broads who want to fuck him because he is good-looking, not a career Army trait.

The staff sergeants want the sergeant to come along whoring but his body is a Temple, a quality of his deliberate, determined, and reflective nature which scored on the Army Qualifying Exam such that on arrival in country at processing other bright clerks changed his orders from duty in the field.

The author and his 79th Engineering Group rather served at least 3 quarters of his 12-month tour at Long Binh, the administrative center for the United States Military Advisory Command Vietnam. Many bullets dodged, to be sure.

But our dioxin flights dumped their excess in the watershed there every evening. Everyone I know who worked there is dead.

This week I have not found any trace of James. Temple is a buck sergeant come in with the draft, whether he volunteered or not.

He is not a leader of men like the asshole foremen in the mess who want to be friends. It’s how they lead a gang.

Everyone sins together. Back up to that first sentence.

Temple finished pulling a maintenance check on the Major’s jeep, and left the motor pool just as the sun was starting to rise.

The Major is the second person James tells us about. We hear Temple thinking him over for a paragraph two pages later, as Adams.

One of those English names more common in the diaspora than in the home counties. Bland.

Just another West Point man striving for promotion towards general. Unless you are a Jew then Adam is the name of the first man, made of dirt.

Unless you are a Christian and know whose first disobedience brought death into the world. It was an accident.

This is the first Viet Nam letter of 2 addressing The Accident by James R. Dorris. The second posted on December 6, 2022.

The Rabbi, by Barney Currer, was on March 21, 2022 the topic of the first of 8 Viet Nam letters on those which Wayne Karlin, Basil T. Paquet, and Larry Rottmann present in Free Fire Zone.

Next came a letter each on a story from Loyd Little on April 20, 2022, about Wayne’s own sketch on May 23, 2022, then 2 about Free Fire Zone in general on July 4 and on September 17, 2022,

then after the 2 on this story from James R. Dorris, a letter on May 25, 2023 about a story from James Aitken.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.