Elephant's Trunk

Darjeeling got a clean fatigue shirt down from his clothes locker and walked to the back of the hooch where the rest of the guys were. He had just come in from taking a shower and was ready to get down. Louie and Gross were there and Hector, too. Some of the others were hanging around the open screen door that went out to the piss tube. The piss tube was a piece of pipe driven in the ground and covered with a piece of screen wire. Darjeeling could never figure out why the screen was there. "To screen out what?" He thought as he stood there thinking that there were very few solids in piss. But there was stuff on the screen: a roach and some pot seeds. The platoon sargeant had warned them repeatedly to "hide your roaches or the old man will send the CID down here." Guru, as Darjeeling was known walked past the piss tube and over to where Skank was throwing his bayonet and sticking it in a piece of plywood. That's all Skank did. For several hours a night he would throw the bayonet and stick it in the plywood. "Hey Skank, man you can stick that knife," he said as he passed by. Skank didn't even look at Guru, he just twisted the bayonet in the wood, turned around and paced off about fifteen feet, then wheeled and threw the knife. Thuk! He stuck it every time and Darjeeling figured this was one dude you didn't want to go psycho. Skank was a juicer and a pill head and that was a deadly combo for losing your cool. Darjeeling thought it would be cool to get Skank stoned on some good Cambodian Red so he would mellow out a little. Then he thought better of it. "Fuck it, man, let old Skank do what he wants," and Guru walked on down to the EM club to grab a Cuba Libre, his favorite drink. On the return trip he matched his steps to the increasing sound of Skank's knife throw. Three steps. Thuk! Three more steps. Thuk! Three more steps. No sound. That meant that Skank was done for the night and had worked out whatever frustrations he had needed to work out. Guru walked back past the smelly piss tube and into the back of the hooch. He polished off his Cuba Libre and sat down on Hector's footlocker. "Hey Heck, what's happenin' man?"
"Guru! Man you are just in time for the elephant's trunk."
"The what?"
"The elephant's trunk, man, it's the latest innovation for getting down." Hector reached up and put some pot seeds in the feeding tray for his pet, a bright red parrot that cocked his head at Hector and said, "Hmmmm pot seeds." The parrot said that every time he got fed. The only other thing he said was "Fuck you, sir." Hector finished feeding the bird who was thoroughly stoned all of the time from eating the seeds. He got beer to drink.
"I suppose you are going to tell me that we need to get an elephant to get high?"
Gross came over and chucked Guru on the shoulder, laughing. Gross was a died-in-the-wool California lowrider and was the only soldier anyone knew who had a beard. It was cool because he had a shaving profile and none of the officers or lifers could do anything about him not shaving. To top it off, he wore a white pith helmet safari hat while he herded the little people around the platoon area. It was the only job they would let him have. "Guru, man you are wierd," Gross said and chucked Guru again.
Guru had gotten his nickname because of the Buddhist literature he was always getting in the mail. And then when he got stoned, he always ended up in the sitting lotus position with eyes half closed. Everybody knew it was useless to talk to him when he was in that state. "Gross, why don't you go shave."
Gross pushed his face right up in Guru's face and put his hand on Guru's shoulder. "You got a problem with me, man?"
"Uh, no, Gross, man I was just kidding, mellow out, man." Guru pushed Gross's hand off his shoulder and smiled up at the man. "It's ok, Gross, I didn't mean to break foul on you." Gross walked off muttering to himself and ended up talking to Skank, his roomate. The hooch was divided into eight by ten foot rooms on either side of the single story building with a four foot walkway down the center.
"Guru, quit fucking with Gross or he might have Skank mistake you for a piece of plywood," Louie, a chicano from Oakland, came by laughing. "Hey let's try out Hector's elephant trunk.
"OK, Louie, what do we do?" Louie was Guru's best friend except maybe for Hector. They couldn't believe that he was from Kansas and they asked him about tornadoes and rattlesnakes all the time. So Guru obliged them with as many tall tales as they could handle. "There'd be a lot more rattlesnakes if it weren't for the Indians," he would tell them and they would look at him in disbelief.
Hector chimed in, "Give me your fatigue shirt, Guru, and sit back down on the footlocker. "Now stick your face in the inside of the shirt in the armhole and hold on to the end of the sleeve like it's an elephant trunk sticking out. Guru started laughing and did as Hector said.
"Now what?"
"Louie's firing up a bowl, Guru, and he is going to shotgun through the sleeve after we button up the shirt around you and seal it off. You stay in there as long as you can take it." Louie stuck the mouth end of the tobacco pipe into the end of the sleeve and putting his mouth around the bowl, began to slowly blow smoke out the mouthpiece. Guru was laughing so hard he couldn't stand it but he kept breathing as the smoke kept on filling the whole shirt.
"Hector, we better get him out of there, man," Louie was worried that Guru didn't have any oxygen. Guru heard Louie and waved him off telling him he was ok. He had to yell from inside the shirt because it muffled his voice. They all laughed.
Unbeknownst to Guru, the Company Commanding Officer, one Stanley Walker, had decided to grace the hooch with his presence just before lights out at ten o'clock. He rarely came down there at that time of night. Too risky. Not from the VC point of view but from the GI point of view. He knew about Skank and Gross and stayed clear for the most part. But tonight he thought different and made his way down the center walkway as the guys at the end of the hooch broke up.
Louie ditched the bowl and hid the dew. Hector scooted over and put on some tunes. He leaned over and told Guru to go outside and take the shirt off. Guru didn't hear him. Hector tapped him on the shoulder. "Guru! Man the CO is here!" Guru laughed and pushed Hector's hand away. Just then Walker walked up and, seeing Guru sitting there holding the shirt sleeve, poked him on the shoulder.
"Fuck off, Hector, this is cool!" Guru pushed the CO's hand away. The CO grabbed the collar of the fatigue shirt and yanked. A cloud of blue smoke erupted from all around Guru. He looked like he was on fire and man was he ever stoned. The cloud looked like a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb.
"PFC Darjeeling, what is the meaning of this?" the captain asked. And just then Hector's parrot woke up from his parrot dreams.
"Fuck you, Sir!" the bird chirped and everybody, including the CO laughed. The CO shook his head and walked out, laughing as he went.
Guru looked at Hector and laughed. "Man, that was heavy, let's fire it up again." Hector just shook his head and reached for the bowl.