Tree of Smoke (27 page)

“Then it’s good he’s on our side.”

“Whose side? In a liquid situation, the sides get stirred together.”

“He’s quoting Attila the Hun, or Julius Caesar.”

“Who? Voss?—Oh.”

“The colonel.”

“Right. So those files, man. Is that the whole kaboodle? The whole Tree of Smoke?”

“Oh, a little of everything.”

Skip let him eat. Storm was having the crab, and thin, delicate fries, which he ate with his fingers. He broke a small silence by saying, “Do you think the guys who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, did they ever feel bad about it later?”

“No, they didn’t,” Skip said quite confidently.

“Here comes the chief.”

As the colonel rejoined them Skip said, “Jimmy tells me he’s interested in tunnels.”

The colonel held a can of Budweiser and an empty glass. He carefully poured one into the other and sucked the foam away and took a long draught before saying, “Right-o. Now for the skinny. Sergeant Storm is the Psy Ops liaison with CDCIA, and I am the CDCIA liaison with Psy Ops. Together the sergeant and I run a very small, tight program called Labyrinth. Mapping tunnels. I’m sure you know about the VC tunnels.”

“Sure.”

“Today they’re VC tunnels. When we have them mapped, their status changes.”

“Mapping. That sounds more like Intelligence. Or Recon.”

“Well, now,” the colonel said. “I describe Labyrinth as tight, but our mission parameters are very elastic. I’d say we’re operating without benefit of any clear parameters at all.”

“But—Psy Ops?”

“Matter of fact, we do have a Recon platoon. And a permanent LZ, which we’re not allowed to call a base.”

“Who does?”

“I do. And a real nice bunch of infantry looking after it.”

Skip’s blood leapt. “Naturally I’m at your service.” His hands tingled, and suddenly he wasn’t sweating at all.

“William, I believe we have something in process now that you’ll be a very important part of. A crucial part of. But your part doesn’t begin anytime soon. I’m afraid what I’m going to ask you to do right now involves a whole lot of waiting.”

“Waiting where?”

“We’ve got a little villa in the boonies.”

Skip’s joy died in his heart. “A villa.”

“This is something I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do.”

Skip forced himself to say, “I’ll go where you put me.”

“I think we like this guy,” Jimmy said.

“We’ll have you all set up within the month. In the meantime, if any of our bunch want you here in Five Corps, you’re at their service, too.”

“Very good.”

Jimmy said, “We want to turn those tunnels into a region of hell.”

“Jimmy went to mining school.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s all part of a master plan,” Jimmy assured him.

“Did you graduate?”

“Fuck no,” Jimmy said. “Do I look like a graduate of anything?”

After coffee, during which Skip had his lunch—a sweet roll as pallid and lumpy as his spirits—Storm drove them in the black Chevrolet to the Continental Hotel, where the colonel kept a room on the ground floor, in the back, removed from the noisy lobby. Evidently he kept it permanently—boxes of books and record albums, a typewriter, a phonograph, a desk for working, another desk that served as a bar. The colonel set a record spinning. “This is
Peter Paul and Mary in Concert.
Listen to this one.” And he bent over the player and squinted and with his thick fingers set its arm down on the trio’s rendering of “Three Ravens,” the melancholy ballad of a fallen knight and his doomed lover. They sat in silence, Skip and Jimmy each at one of the desks, while the song played and the colonel changed his pants and shirt. His mood, the mood Skip had put him in, had passed. He sat on his bed and slipped his feet into a pair of loafers while saying, “That Mindanao mission. That was a good report. Do you know what I liked most about it?”

Then he paused.

“No,” Skip said, “I don’t.” It annoyed him, the colonel’s habit of waiting for answers to rhetorical questions.

“What I liked about it was you didn’t mention me.”

“I think I had legitimate reasons for being less than complete.”

“I think you have an instinct for discretion,” the colonel said.

“I assumed you’d be the first to read the report.”

“The first and last, my boy. That was the intention, anyhow.”

“I assumed you’d let me know if you required more detail.”

“This guy has his jive down,” Jimmy said, resting his arm on the back of Skip’s chair. “He knows how to skate.”

The colonel looked very directly at Jimmy and said, “This man is family in every sense of the word.”

“Message received,” Jimmy assured him.

“All right, then.” The colonel stood and said, “Guess who flew over with me from Cao Phuc? Our good lieutenant.”

“Screwy Louie,” Jimmy said.

“Now, now. Disrespect.”

“That’s how his tag should read. The grunts call him ‘Screwy Loot.’”

“He’s probably downstairs.”

“Screwy Louie went blooey.”

“Now, Skip, we are dealing with the American infantry. Let me suggest that we take our allies as we find them.”

“He’s talking about the lieutenant,” Storm said, “not about me.”

“I’ve got nothing against the army. I’m an old army air force man. But the infantry isn’t what it used to be.”

“At least he didn’t burn up one six-month ticket and leave,” Storm said.

“It’s true, he’s been with us. Screwy Loot, is that what they call him?”

“He’s a psychological operation all by himself.”

“Now, young William,” the colonel said, rummaging in his desk drawer, “I’ve got your document.” He tossed his nephew a maroon passport.

Skip opened it to find his own face looking out at him over the name William French Benét. “Canadian!”

“Your rent’s paid by the Canadian Ecumenical Council.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They don’t exist. You’re out here on a grant from the council. Translating the Bible or something.”

“Benét!”

The colonel said, “Come on, Benét, let’s get some coffee.”

In the large, frantic lobby they sat in rattan chairs under one of a multitude of whirling fans. Around them beggars and urchins crawled at the feet of exiles and campaigners—at last, a wartime capital, a posh lobby full of sagas, busy with spies and cheats, people cut loose and no longer accountable to their former selves. Deals struck in a half dozen languages, sinister rendezvous, false smiles, eyes measuring the chances. Psychos, wanderers, heroes. Lies, scars, masks, greedy schemes. This was what he wanted—not some villa in the bush.

Sadly he asked the colonel, “Will I be seeing you out in the boonies?”

“Sure thing. We’re getting you all set up. Anything special you’ll need?”

“Just the usual. Pens, some paper, that sort of thing. The usual.”

“Paper cutter. Rubber cement.”

“Very good. Wonderful.”

“I’ll get you a typewriter too. I want you to have a typewriter. And lots of ribbons.”

“I’ll write your memoirs for you.”

The colonel said, “The heat’s got you all prickly.”

“Can I be disappointed for a half hour or so?”

“Come on, it would be worse if you stayed in Saigon and worked for our bunch. They’ve got fifty interrogation stations in the South. That’s one mighty mountain after another of reports to go through. It all stays in-country. They’ll put you in a hole and have you cross-indexing references till you’re shitting five-by-eight cards. You’d rather be out there in the villes getting to know the people—the land we’re at war in. We’re getting you squared away someplace nice, never fear. And eventually you’ll do important work for us.”

“I believe you, sir.”

“Any questions at this point?”

“In the files.”

“Shoot.”

“What is the significance of the phrase ‘Tree of Smoke’?”

“So you’ve come to the
T
’s in the files.”

“No. I just heard the phrase today.”

“Jesus,” Storm said. “I mentioned it, but I thought we were all kind of sharing our germs and diseases here, you know?”

“He’s family,” the colonel reminded him.

“So what’s the meaning?” Jimmy said. “‘Tree of Smoke.’”

“Oh, God, I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s embarrasingly poetic. It’s grandiose.”

Skip said, “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“To be poetic and grandiose?”

“To be embarrassed.”

Jimmy said, “Here’s a question: Who said, ‘Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer’?”

“Is this an interrogation?” the colonel said. “Then let’s have cocktails.”

Cocktails were served in a succession of louder and danker establishments mostly on Thi Sach Street, tavern darknesses where during a single play on the jukebox whole eras passed before the vision like scarves. In each one Skip nursed a beer and tried to stay alert, taking it in, though there was nothing to take in but pop tunes and small joyless go-go dancers. He felt dazed, didn’t know why he didn’t go home. At some point, he hadn’t noticed when, the lieutenant had joined them, the one they called Screwy. He certainly seemed it—his tense face, his eyes deliberately widened, as if his message to the world were, Look at me, you’ve made me a frightened child—certainly inviting no conversation. Meanwhile, “I’ll tell you what tells me about Voss,” the colonel was saying. “First time I met Voss we sat down for San Miguels in Manila. He ordered one and he never once touched it. It sat at his feet like a prize.”

Skip said, “In my presence he drank half a beer,” making sure he followed this statement by taking a sip of his own.

The Screwy Loot seemed hypnotized by the knees of a go-go girl skipping, four feet away, to the Caribbean rhythms of Desmond Dekker while Sergeant Storm shouted in his ear, “Ain’t no big shit whether we win or lose this thing. We live in the post-trash, man. It’ll be a real short eon. Down in the ectoplasmic circuitry where humanity’s leaders are all linked up unconsciously with each other and with the masses, man, there’s been this unanimous worldwide decision to trash the planet and get on to a new one. If we let this door close, another will open.” The lieutenant paid no mind.

The colonel also seemed deaf to Jimmy’s nonsense. He drank deeply of his zillionth highball and announced, “The land is their myth. We penetrate the land, we penetrate their national soul. This is real infiltration. It may be tunnels, but it’s in the realm of Psy Ops most definitely.”

Skip couldn’t tell if they were being serious, or just having fun with the lieutenant.

“Hey,” Jimmy said, “I want to get into sounds. People can be allergic to sounds. Can’t a whole genetic substratum be allergic to one set of vibrations?”

“Excuse me,” Skip said, “‘substratum’?”

The colonel said, “I myself am allergic to gunfire in certain calibers. Helicopter blades at certain rpm’s.”

The lieutenant suddenly actually spoke: “Do you know what makes me bitter above all? The heretofore unattainable level of bullshit we’re now all forced to engage, and I do mean non-fucking-stop.”

“Excuse me,” Skip said, “‘heretofore’?”

“Something’s warping you,” Jimmy told the lieutenant. “Maybe it’s your perception of how the brass will see you—but they’re not seeing you at all right now, so it’s a perception of a nonperception, man, which is a perception of nothing, which is nothing, man.”

The colonel complained of marital problems. “She calls our fighting ‘domestic disputes.’ It’s obscene—isn’t it obscene?—to take something that reaches down and rips at your heart, and call it a ‘domestic dispute.’ What do you think, Will?”

Never had he seen the colonel so drunk.

At some point in the zigzag procession of events a woman gripped his arm high above the elbow and said, “Strong! Strong! Let’s go fuck, okay?”

What about that? How much did she charge? But he imagined her sad thinness, her genial kiss-ass terror, or her bitter terror, depending on how she cared to mask her terror…Another danced slowly beside the jukebox, hands hanging, chin dropping to her chest, not even trying to sell herself.

“No, thanks,” he said.

The colonel’s face arose before him like a diseased moon. “Skip.”

“Yes.”

“Did I promise you a shot?”

“Yes.”

“Are you getting a shot?”

“Yes.”

“Cheers, then, sir.”

“Cheers.”

A flashbulb popped in a corner. The colonel seemed to recognize the photographer and went in his direction. They were in a semi-elegant, air-conditioned place. The lieutenant took notes on wet cocktail coasters with a ballpoint pen while Jimmy spoke earnestly at his ear. The colonel returned with a camera in his hands. “He’ll give us copies when he gets the film back. Sit up, Skip. Up straight, now. Young lady, move out of my frame, please. This is for the family.” The flash, the moon drifting. “I’ll send it to the family. Your Aunt Grace was asking for a photo. They’re all very proud of you. We all loved your father very much,” he said, and Skip replied by asking, “What was my father like?” and suddenly they were having one of the most important conversations of his life. “Your father had honor, he had courage,” his uncle said, “and if he’d lived long enough he would have added wisdom to those. If he’d lived I think he would’ve gone back to the Midwest, because that’s the place your mother loves. I think if he’d lived he’d have become a businessman, a good one, a driving wheel in his community. I think he would definitely have stayed out of government.” Yes, yes, Skip wished he could say, but did he love me, did he love me?

While the jukebox played something with trumpets by Herb Alpert, the colonel ignored its music and raised a song in a whiskey baritone further roughened by his cigars:

She buried him before his prime,

Down a down, hey down, a down

She was dead herself ere evening time,

With a down.

God send every gentleman

Fine hawks, fine hounds, and such a lovely one,

With a down, derry, derry, derry down.

Skip stepped from the evening’s perhaps eleventh tavern and ended his first day in Vietnam walking away from Thi Sach with only a general idea where he lived, amid the swarming throng, through the gritty diesel smoke, past the breath of bars and their throbbing interiors—what songs? He couldn’t tell. There—a recent hit stateside—“When a Man Loves a Woman”—then the music twisted around on itself as he passed the anonymous doorway and it might have been anything. He bartered with a cyclo driver who took him across the river and dropped him on Chi Lang Street. Here among the quieter lanes he breathed the fumes of blossoms and rot, smoldering charcoal, frying food, and heard the distant roar of jets and the drumming of helicopter gunships, and even the thousand-pound bombs exploding thirty kilometers away, not so much a sound as an intestinal fact—it was there, he felt it, it thudded in his soul. What must it be like under those bombs—or above them, letting them loose? To the west, red tracers streaked the sky. This was what he’d wanted. He’d come for this. To be shoved into the forge, an emphatically new order—so to speak a “different administration”—where theories burned to cinders, where questions of morality became matters of fact.