Paul Levine - Night vision

"For attacking Mr. Carruthers. Just as you attacked poor Clive and Francis. I'm beginning to think your hostility has its basis in a true psychosis, Jake."

Carruthers sat on the sofa, smiling, if that's what it was, under a towel of ice cubes fastened to his mouth. I surveyed the damage. Shards of ceramic pottery covered the floor, ink prints dangled at crazy angles on the living-room wall, and the tearoom was a shambles of splintered wood and ripped walls. In about three minutes, we had transformed Cindy's townhouse from Oriental Moderne to post-Apocalypse.

"I was trying to save your life. I thought Davy Crockett here-"

"You thought! You might have killed him."

"Sorry, I'm not used to seeing strange men brandish knives at my lady friends."

"Humghfeeldauhdeer," came a sound from under the icy towel.

"What?"

"He was showing me how to field-dress a deer," Pam explained helpfully.

"Is that different than city-dressing one?" I asked.

Carruthers dropped the towel. His face was not a pretty sight. "I was advising against making the incision between the hind legs. Cut into the sternum and go back toward the pelvis. It's not a bad job if you don't mind being up to your ears in blood and offal." His voice was thickened by a swollen tongue.

Pam said, "And I told him how barbarous and cruel it was, hunting those fine animals. And then you came in and…and pounced."

I turned to Carruthers. "What the hell were you doing here?"

"I was in town and stopped over to see Cindy. The door was open, so I-"

"You know Cindy?"

"Sure. Barely Legal. We don't go out that often, what with her import-export friend and my living so far away. But she's the first down-to-earth woman I've met in Mia-muh town."

"Cindy? My Cindy?"

My foot was propped on the phone directory and swaddled in ice. Elevation and cold. Every team trainer worth his smelling salts knows that.

My ribs were swathed in Ace wrap. They only hurt when I breathed.

My head was bobbing on ocean swells. Two Darvons and a grapefruit juice with Finlandia, a linebacker's Sunday-night beddy-bye cocktail.

I was dreaming of sunny days and force-four winds, watching a nine-foot sliver of fiberglass jumping three-foot chop. I looked around inside the dream and couldn't find Pam Maxson or anyone else. A lousy, no-bikini dream. I looked at the sailboard, but I wasn't there. It was a board without a sailor, skimming the waves, darting on a broad reach along a rocky coast. The board jibed, its inside rail digging hard, the tail shooting a plume of water. Then, like a riderless horse, it sped toward open sea.

Someone called my name.

It didn't sound like Pam.

I reached across the bed. Empty. The sheets cool.

"She ain't here, Jake."

Funny how dreams can seem so real. I smelled a cigarette and I don't smoke.

I opened my eyes. The paddle fan clocked its slow turns above my head. A toxic green glow filled the room, my neighbor's mercury-vapor, anticrime light, seeping through open shutters, mixing with the smoke. So I was in my bed in my house. All alone. Except for the voice.

"Got trouble keeping them in bed, do you, Jakie?"

I tried lifting my head. It weighed a ton. Someone was standing by the window, looking out, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in silhouette, a strong, bulky shadow in the noxious haze. "Nick?"

"Who'd you expect? Felix Frankfurter?"

I lifted myself to an elbow. "What'd you do to her, Nick?"

"Her?"

"Pam. She doesn't know anything. You didn't have to-"

"Easy, Jake. You've had a hard night." He exhaled a trail of smoke, iridescent and willowy in the gaseous light. "You know, I made a real mistake appointing you."

"Yeah. I saw right through you."

He inhaled and the red ash of cigarette flared. "No. You fucked everything up."

I tried to sit up straight, but the pain kept me stretched out. "What do you want?"

"To take back something of mine. Something you stole. Breaking and entering, Jake. Trespassing. Larceny. Maybe obstruction of justice, too. I got good neighbors, Jake. One of them spots a guy get out of an old convertible and go into my garage the hard way."

I kept quiet. He could be wired.

Nick continued. "When I get to the house, only thing missing is an old memory." He watched me, waiting for a response.

Despite my better judgment, I opened my mouth. "Why not cut the bullshit? You're not going to press charges. You can't stand the heat. If the papers got hold of what's in the log, you'd-"

"What is in the log?"

I knew the important stuff by heart:

1330-VC ambush on dike. Gallardi, Boyer, dogwood 6.

Rosen, Williams, Colgan, Miciak, dogwood 8.

1800-Dak Sut. Firefight. 3 VC greased. Zippo approx.

20 hooches. Phuong MIA. Lt. E. Ferguson. Rest in peace.

May the Lord have mercy.

"Evan Ferguson wasn't killed on the dike. He was killed in the village after the sniper attack. In your own words, Nick."

"So what? What's it prove?"

I didn't know so what, and he knew I didn't know so what.

He dropped the stub of his cigarette into the neck of a half-empty beer bottle on the dresser. "Do you want me to tell you what happened on a rainy, shit-eating, bloodsucking day in-country in 1968?"

Not if it's going to get me killed, I thought. "Sure, Nick, tell me all-"

"I was fighting for my country, Jakie. What were you doing that day-getting a hand job from some pom-pom girl under the bleachers?"

"Most likely a majorette," I said. "Great hands."

"My men were exhausted, wet, cold, hungry, and scared of being scared. Some of them were popping pills and smoking weed like there was no tomorrow. 'Cause maybe there wasn't. But most of all they were mean and angry. There were two ways to get to our objective, Dak Sut, where there was supposed to be VC activity. They didn't want to go either way. They didn't want to meet the enemy or do anything but go home. The long way was through forest. Some danger of snipers, but there was cover, too. Evan wanted to go that route with his platoon, but I talked him out of it."

WHO GAVE THE ORDERS TO WALK ALONG THE DIKE PRIOR TO ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF DAK SUT?

"We went across the paddies, the men sinking into the mud, cursing the war, cursing LBJ, cursing me. Some of them were sick, three later came down with malaria. We took the men onto the dikes that run through the paddies, Evan's platoon and ours, moving parallel. Evan didn't like it, out in the open like that. There was cover maybe three hundred meters away. Evan thought Charley could be laying low there, waiting for us to come up on the dikes."

"Was he right?"

"Yeah. But first, just like I told you, some naked kid comes up out of the mud with an AK-47 on Evan's dike. At the same time, an RPD opens up from the cover. I lose Gallardi and Boyer, plus four wounded. Evan's men kill the sniper. The machine-gun fire stops, probably a fifteen-year-old with a hundred rounds total, and we're lying there, facedown in the mud, pissing our pants."

"So Evan wasn't killed?"

He lit another cigarette, inhaled once, then dropped it in the beer bottle. "No. Never touched. We radio for a dust-off, evacuation of the dead and wounded by slick. By the time we gather and get to Dak Sut, it's just after dark, and the men are jumpy, mean, and trigger-happy."

AFTER THE MEDIC AND RADIOMAN WERE KILLED, WHAT WAS THE STATE OF DISCIPLINE OF YOUR MEN?

"Like I told you before, Charley owns the night. The place is deserted except for three old ladies, some babies, and a few water buffalo. There's no moon and it's the blackest night you've ever seen. It's raining and it's cold. People in the world didn't realize how cold it got there. The men, both Evan's and mine, are near mutiny. They get Phuong, our translator, to interrogate the old women. 'Yankees numbah one, VC numbah ten.' The usual bullshit. So one of my men hits the old lady with his rifle butt. Really bashed her. Opened a gash in her forehead that bled like a son of a bitch."