Tree of Smoke (46 page)

He got up to start the air conditioner, but there wasn’t one. A jukebox downstairs thumped under his feet. A mosquito net hung from nails over the open window. He’d thought it was day, but it was only the yellow bulbs of a sign outside. He found his blue-black loafers and went down the stairs on the side of the building for a beer. This was a cul-de-sac, unpaved, and he had to watch the mud. The Bar Jolly Blue. He sat with some guys, also from the Twenty-fifth, also Recon, but bad boys, Lurps. They gave him some speed and he woke right up. There weren’t any women with them. Their eyes shone like animals’. These guys took acid, things that kinked up their nerves, turned their brains inside out. “Come with us. We just go. We run the night. We take speed. We fuck. We kill. We destroy.” He wanted to make things happen but he couldn’t. He realized he would just have to go with these guys, go LRRP, transfer over. And his eyes would be transformed like theirs. He said, Do you know Black Man? “Yeah,” they said, “we know Black Man, he runs with us.” He can show me how to transfer, James said. “Then do it, do it, haven’t you done everything else but this?” Yeah, sure, he said, it’s time to get it on with the monsters.

“You got some time to go?”

“I’m in my second tour.”

“They give you home leave?”

“I don’t want home leave.”

“Don’t you want to see home?”

“This war is my home.”

“Good. Go home you end up playing Solitary till you wear the faces off. Deck after deck. Sitting in the window doing it.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the shit that goes through my head on a daily basis is against the law,” one said. “But not here. Here the shit in my head
is
the law and nothing
but
the law.”

“They got theories of war, man. Theories. We can’t have that. Can’t have that here. We got a mission. Ain’t no war.
Mission
.”

“Moving and killing, right?”

“You got it. This motherfucker has got it.”

“Fucking A.”

“So keep it.”

“You know what a double veteran is? You fuck a woman and then you X her.”

“Everybody here is double veterans.”

“Yeah?”

“Here’s to every dead motherfucker.”

They left, and he drank his beer and watched a go-go girl with bruises on her legs. Couple of mosquitoes bumping stupidly along the wall beside his head. Otherwise he had the moment to himself. The music pounded, country stuff, psychedelic stuff, the Rolling Stones. On the bar, and behind the bar—the slow humping dance of a lava lamp, a scintillating waterfall in a Hamm’s Beer sign, a kaleidoscopic clock face broadcasting the minutes, the little lit shrines to the religion.

I can’t figure out is it too real, or not real enough, said James to someone…or someone to James…

Then in comes the colonel, the civilian, the good-as-CO of Company D, the more or less stepdad of Echo Recon.

He filled the doorway, shirt open, breathing convulsively. Arms flung around two small whores who smiled showing gold bridgework. He didn’t look at all squared away. “Help me, sojer.”

“Sit him over here.”

They helped him into the mashed seat of the only booth—everything else was tables. He signaled for a drink. Insofar as the somber light allowed, his face looked purple and then very pale. One of the girls squeezed in beside him and opened his shirt wider and wiped at his pale sweaty chest, covered with silvery hair.

“I’m in a coronary medical situation.”

“Should I get some help?”

“Sit down, sit down. I’m having a medical situation but mostly I’m overheated and poisoned by this goddamn rice brandy. You ask for Bushmills, they hand you Coke full of rice brandy. That concoction ain’t for drinking. It’ll sure kill warts, though.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m old army air force, but I respect the infantry.”

“I know you, sir. I’m with Echo Recon.”

“It’s honorable to be a foot soldier.”

“I gotta believe you.”

“If you ever get a wart, nick it with a razor and soak it ten minutes in rice brandy.”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

“Yes, indeed. Echo. Sure thing. You’re my tunnel man since I lost the Kootchy Kooties.”

“Well, I went down in a couple tunnels is all, seems like. Three tunnels.”

“That counts. Three’s a good number.”

“It ain’t much.”

“Jesus, you’re the biggest tunnel man I’ve ever seen.”

“I ain’t that big.”

“For tunnels you are.”

“Sir, do you know about Sergeant Harmon?”

“He’s been hurt, I understand.”

“Yes, sir, paralyzed clear up to his neck.”

“Paralyzed? Jesus God.”

“Clear up to his neck. He’s tore up from the floor up.”

“It’s a goddamn shame.”

“I’m going to shift over to the Lurps. I mean to hurt these bastards.”

“There’s no shame in hating, son, not in a war.”

“I ain’t your son.”

“Forgive the presumption.”

“I’m drinking too hard tonight.”

“I feel for your loss. The sergeant’s a fine man.”

“Where’d the Kooties get to, sir?”

“I’m denied the use of them. A couple rotated out. The whole LZ is gonna go. No more Kooties. No more chopper.”

“I thought so. I wasn’t seeing you awhile.”

“It’s all collapsing. At home and abroad. At home I believe my wife and my little girl are banging the same mulatto activist beatnik peacenik.”

“I’d just as soon hang around this mess.”

“I’m sorry. I’m drunk and sick and embarrassing.—I was saying…hatred. Yessiree. It’s love of country that sends us forth, but sooner or later vengeance is the core motive.”

James assumed the colonel knew his subject. Here was a fat-ass civilian discussing warts, and here also a living legend—a life of blood and war and pussy.

“Did you go to tunnel school?”

“No.”

“You want us to send you?”

“I want Lurp training.”

“How long have you been around?”

“I’m one month into my second tour. Into number two.”

“If you take the training, they’ll probably want you for a third tour.”

“That’s fine. And can you fix this AWOL thing?”

“AWOL?”

“I’m three weeks missing, is the truth of it.”

“You go back to your platoon tomorrow, first thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get cleaned up and go back.”

“First thing tomorrow. Yes, sir.”

“We’ll fix it and put you on the LRRP training.”

T
he summer rains had held off. But today it rained.

Skip walked several kilometers alone from a village he’d visited with Père Patrice. Not quite 10:00 a.m. now by his air force wrist watch, a gift from the colonel in his boyhood…Martin Luther King had been killed. Robert Kennedy had been killed. The North Koreans still held hostage an American naval vessel and her crew. The Marines besieged at Khe Sanh, the infantry slaughtering the whole village of My Lai, hirsute, self-righteous idiots marching in the streets of Chicago. Among the hairy ones the bloody failure of January’s Tet Offensive had resounded as a spiritual victory. And then in May a second countrywide push, feebler, but nearly as resonant. He devoured
Time
and
Newsweek
and found it all written down there, yet these events seemed improbable, fictitious. In six or seven months the homeland from which he was exiled had sunk in the ocean of its future history. Clements, Kansas, remained as it had been, of that he could be confident; to Clements, Kansas, only one summer could come, with its noisy locusts and blackbirds, and the drifting fragrances of baking and soap suds and mown alfalfa, and the brilliant actuality of childhood. Gone, stupidly gone—not the summer, but himself. Departed, exposed, transfigured. Overridden and converted, if it came to that. He loved and fought for a memory. The world inheriting this memory had a right, he couldn’t help seeing, to make its way unbeholden to assassinated ideals. Meanwhile, the air around him glittered with an invasion of delicate insects. Closer to the ground the population thickened—ducks and chickens, children, dogs, cats, tiny potbellied pigs. He’d ridden out on the back of the priest’s motor scooter after stories and sayings among the scattered parishioners. He’d collected a single tale from an old woman, a Catholic, a friend of the priest. Père Patrice had continued west while Skip headed home on foot.

A half hour along the rain caught him and he sheltered under the awning of a tiny store whose leather-faced papasan smoked a cigarette with exquisite languor and had nothing to say. When Skip smiled at him the old man’s face broke open in an exalted smile quite full of healthy-looking teeth. The storm was a harmless roaring downpour interrupted, however, by startling gusts that tore at the vegetation and furrowed the large puddles in the roadway. Skip bought a “Number One” soft drink in one of its several unidentifiable flavors and drank it rapidly. He addressed the old man in English: “Do you know what I think? I think maybe I think too much.” The rain stopped. Across the road in front of a small house a young woman played peekaboo with a child just walking, who lurched on tiptoes while a slightly older sister danced a solitary improvisation, with sweeping, parallel gestures of her arms, all three of them smiling as if the world went no farther than their happiness.

That morning he’d been very moved by the tale he’d learned, which began: Once upon a time there was a war; a soldier left his wife and baby son behind and went off in defense of the country. The young wife looked after their house and their garden and their child. Each evening at sunset she stood by the river behind their home and looked for her beloved husband to come sailing on it back into their lives…

One night a storm burst over their little home and snatched at the roof and battered the walls. It blew out the lamp, and the little boy wept in terror. The mother held him close and relit the lantern. As she did so, her shadow leapt up on the wall by the doorway, and she comforted her son by pointing at it and saying, “We have nothing to fear tonight—see? Daddy stands by the door.” Immediately the child was comforted by the shadow. Every evening after that, when she came back into the house after standing by the river and longing for her husband to return out of the last rays of the sun, her little boy called for his daddy, and she lit the lamp, and every evening he bowed to the shadow on the wall and said, “Goodnight, Daddy!” and slept in peace.

When the soldier returned to his little family, his wife’s heart nearly burst with joy, and she wept. “We must give thanks to our ancestors,” she said to him. “Please prepare the altar and look after your son,” she said, “while I get food for a thanksgiving meal.”

Alone with his child, the man said, “Come to me, I am your father.” But the child said, “Daddy’s not here now. Every night I say goodnight to Daddy. You’re not Daddy.” As he heard these words, the soldier’s love perished in his heart.

When his wife returned from the market, she felt a cloud of death in their home. Her husband refused to give her even a word. He folded up the prayer mat and refused her the use of it. He knelt in silence before the meal she prepared, and when the food was cold and no longer worth eating, he walked from the house.

His wife waited many days for his return, standing by the river as she’d done when he was a soldier. One day her despair overcame her, and she took her child to a neighbor’s house, kissed and embraced him one last time, and ran to the river and drowned herself.

Word of her death reached her husband in a village down the river. The shock broke the ice in his heart. He returned home to look after his son. One evening, as he sat beside his son’s pallet and lit the oil lamp, his shadow leapt up on the wall beside the door. His son clapped his small hands together, bowed to the shadow, and said, “Goodnight, Daddy!” At once he realized what he’d done. That night as his child slept he built an altar by the river and knelt by it for hours, making it known to his ancestors how deeply he regretted his failure. Just before dawn he took his sleeping son to the riverside, and together they followed his faithful wife into the waters of death.

The old woman had relayed the tale without any expression or detectable interest. It gripped his heart. The child and the mother alone in their life. The man and the woman who misunderstood one another, the shadow who was a father. The river that washed away their histories.

He entered a valley with a wide flat creek running down its middle, and this time was caught in the downpour. He walked through it under a black umbrella. The creek foamed under the battering rain. Afterward it rolled along swiftly, brown and muscular, with scummy whorls. He came again onto the level ground, carpeted with paddies, that predominated the landscape around Cao Quyen.

He passed the dwellings, not peasant hooches but small homes with gardens out front, and behind them the rectilinear tombstones over the family graves with their half hoods, like large stone bassinets. Here and there along the road ahead people had set fire to small wet neighborhood trash piles that sent up a smoke disorientingly reminiscent of the autumnal perfumes of his childhood.

The old woman had added a coda to the tale: After the tragic deaths, the sky rained among the mountains. The river that had drowned the family swelled, its waters grew angry, even the biggest stones in it wobbled from side to side, and the noise of its outrage never again abated. Even in the dry months, when its water moves along calmly, the river still roars. A bit of sand scooped from it and held in the hand makes a loud noise. Drop the sand in a pot and fill the pot with water; in a minute it boils.

When he got back to the villa the black Chevy sat out front, and his uncle lay inside on the divan in the living room, while beside him, on the floor, lay a dog who’d been around the place lately. The colonel lifted his hand from the dog’s head and waved at Skip and said, “I’m being digested by your couch.” Skip helped him sit upright. “By these pillows.” He appeared flushed, and yet, beneath that, pale. “Your silken pillows.”

Nguyen Hao occupied a rattan chair beside the low black lacquer coffee table. Sitting right there but managing to seem much farther away, he said nothing, only nodded and smiled.