Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

anger. “What, please?” “Who can’t touch you?” “What?” “Everything that’s got its shitty fingerprints which I can see smeared

all over you and glowing like a motherfucking, Bozo-the-Clown goddamn target. Every bad fucking thing. So suck up from the zone, Agent 99. Shit’s about to rain.”

He sensed fear and bravado.

“And—the colonel—the process, okay, dig—you’re a participant. You’re a contributor. This is a thing. We’re part of it. The colonel, man. The colonel.”

“Colonel Sand.” “Very much boo-coo Colonel-san. He’s jerking the strings, and we are

dancing like one-legged women.” “Okay,” Trung said hopelessly. The sergeant made his hand resemble a mouth opening and closing

rapidly. He placed it to his ear. “Hao told me. Hao. A man will kill

Trung. Un homme. Assassiner.” If Hao said it, it could be trusted. “Tonight?” The sergeant stood and thrust his wrist at Trung’s face and pointed at

the dials of his watch. “Two a.m.” “Two o’clock.” “Oh two hundred.” “Two o’clock morning.” “Unless the little double-fucker’s set us both up to get DX’d by a whole

team or something. But I’m not gonna run around nowhere like a squirrel on a wheel about it—or—fuck yes, yes, I am, let’s not bullshit each other. But I’m not leaving. I do not intend to boogie. What comes is the coming thing. I just look on it like whatever madness takes a dump on me, it must be a lesson, man, a lesson some random-ass sadistic Hitler-God wants me to learn. That’s why I don’t like it. Because I don’t like learning, I don’t like school, I don’t like lessons. The idea of discipline scares the crap out of me and pisses me the fuck off. But Hao said he’d meet me here at four p.m. with money, and Hao lied in his teeth. Hao is one absent motherfucker. Hao is nobody’s friend. That little Gook is a straight-out demon. I would’ve snapped his neck and fucked his corpse if

his wife hadn’t been home. And he knew it. But it was a semi-public situation. Fuck, I should’ve done her too … Yeah. So this is a weapon.” He lifted the hem of his shirt and took an automatic pistol from his belt. “Special delivery for Senor Mister Trung.”

Trung stepped back and raised his hands slightly.

“No, man, no. Fuck! Learn English, will you?” He held the weapon out sideways, turning it this way and that. A Vz 50, of Eastern European make.

He went to stick his head out the window again. He jammed the gun in his belt and lit another cigarette and tossed the match over the sill. “All right, fuck, yes, okay,” the sergeant said, “look. I’d like to ambush this fucker down in the street, but I don’t know who the fuck he is. We don’t know shit till he knocks on the door. We’re dealing through the dark. Situation normal.” He smoked and looked around the room at nothing in particular. “No fucking pillow. I envisioned a pillow. Fuck! Don’t you have any pillows?”

“Mr. Jimmy. Please speak slowly.”

“We have to make this thing quiet. Pillows. Quiet.” He mimed the gun jerking in his hands while he placed a finger to his lips and made a sound: “Ssshhhh.”

A knife, then. Trung clenched a fist and thrust it at him.

“Where’s your dagger, man? Show me your stuff.”

Trung shrugged.

The sergeant dug in his pocket to produce a clasp knife. “This is maybe a three-inch blade.” He opened it. “It’s got a spoon and fork too, man. Afterward we can eat him.”

Trung held out his hand for it.

Trung laid the open knife beside him on the mattress. He held out his hand. “Weapon.”

The sergeant drew the gun from his belt and handed it over with a certain air of relief. Trung ejected the clip, cleared the chamber, and thumbed out the bullets onto his mattress: nine 7.65-millimeter rounds, counting the one from the chamber.

“That’s a reliable Communist weapon. VC-type weapon. Boo-coo bucks.” Did he indicate he wanted money for it? Trung determined any statement less than clear was best ignored. Sitting on the bed, he reloaded

and inserted the magazine, cocked a round into the chamber, and depressed the safety. When the hammer fell, the little sergeant jumped and said, “Fuck me!”—apparently he didn’t know about a decocker safety. The gun, therefore, didn’t belong to him.

Trung ejected the magazine and placed the gun, magazine, and chamber round on the table.

“Excellent. The secrets of the machine.”

“Quiet,” Trung said, and tried French: “Silence.”

“You got it. We’re fucking bilingual here.”

He handed the sergeant the empty Coke bottle.

“That’s not the kind of deal I make. Way too lopsided.”

Trung laid the gun on the mattress and picked up the knife and ripped a half-meter-long gash in the mattress. Setting the knife aside, he plucked tufts of kapok from the tear and pushed them down the Coke bottle’s neck with his fingers while the sergeant held it. “Silence.”

They spent forty-five minutes rigging a muffler for the pistol, attaching the stuffed bottle to the muzzle of the gun using four small bamboo splints from the bedstead and strips of bedsheet and mosquito netting. The young sergeant sweated a great deal. He removed his flower-print shirt. A large incredible tattooed illustration of a woman in a grass skirt covered his bare chest.

They laid the muffled weapon on the mattress. It resembled a great cocoon from which emerged, backward, a small pistol rather than a moth. Trung tried in many ways to get the idea across: “One silence. One. Seulement. Only one.”

“I get it.”

Trung determined how he’d deploy the weapon, supporting the muffler by one hand mittened with his own T-shirt. He would have to do this left-handed. He positioned himself to the left of the door with his back to the wall and practiced his movements.

“You are a nasty little fucker. Jesus Christ.” Mr. Jimmy seemed excited and happy. Trung knew the feeling, had experienced it strongly before operations in the early days. Even at this moment a little of it sparked in him.

Trung stood to the left of the door with his back against the wall and his left hand raised and its forefinger pointing. “I. Me.” He stepped forward, brought the finger down to the level where the man’s head should be, jerked it once, and stepped back three paces. He repeated the motions, pointing at his feet and making particularly sure the sergeant understood exactly where his movements would take him.

“You. Mr. Jimmy.” Trung moved to stand with his back to the wall at the right of the door, reached out with his left hand, and pulled it open, stepping once to his right in the process; then stood frozen: “Arrętez. Stop.”

He put the sergeant against the wall in the same position and had him go through the movements to open the door wide and get out of the way of fire and stop cold.

“Gah-damn,” the sergeant said. “I’m gonna need to get fucked-up

drunk after this shit.” Trung shrugged. “I’m a thinker, man. I’m not an assassin.” Before Trung began the drilling in tandem, he made sure one more

time: “I …” He put a fingertip to his temple. “La tęte. One.” “Yeah. La tęte. One shot.” “You …” He opened the door. “C’est si bon.” It seemed possible to Trung that if they crosscut the head of the bul

let it might not exit the skull and make a lot of mess. Did the sergeant want no trace afterward? The question was too complicated to ask in grunts and signs. If their fortunes permitted, they’d deal with the mess when the time came.

Can I depend on this man?

At bottom, Trung doubted the sergeant. If he failed to control his movements, there was no small chance Trung might put a bullet in the man who’d come here to save him. He made certain the sergeant knew he must take one step when opening the door and move no more.