Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Crodelle seemed, by the pattern of his agitated breath, to attempt some commentary on the process, which Sands repeated with two more rolls in order to bind each of Crodelle’s legs to a chair leg, providing the commentary himself: What are you doing? What comes next? How do you tie a Green Beret to a chair with gauze and no tape? You’ll have to tie a knot. Don’t you need two hands to tie a knot?

“I’m putting the gun on the dresser while I get you tied down tight,” he said. “You can try something and see how it all turns out, or you can sit still.” Crodelle made no movement while Sands used two rolls to tie his wrists together and secure his arms to the back of the chair with a proper trucker’s-hitch knot. Sands knelt in front of him with the four remaining rolls and tied each leg firmly in place as tightly as he could without concern for his prisoner’s circulation.

Without speaking to Crodelle he left the room to find some packing tape across the hall. When he returned Crodelle hadn’t, as far as was discernible, made any movement to escape. Sands wound several yards of tape around his mouth, chest, and legs, covering the knots he’d made. “I’m taking the files downstairs. I’m going to be up and down the stairs and I’ll be checking on you. If I think you’ve been fooling around here trying to get loose —I swear to God, that’s it. I’ll kill you.”

On his last trip up the stairs he leaned close to Crodelle’s ear, breathing hard from his exertions, and said, “I’m going to burn the colonel’s files. Do you know why?” He paused, as if the redhead might answer through a suffocating inch of gauze. Crodelle only kept his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing through his nostrils. “No? Well, think about it.” The speech disappointed him. He left the room feeling embarrassed and went out back of the house to Tho’s burn pile, where he’d assembled a mound of cards and papers five feet in circumference, perhaps, and a couple of feet high at its peak, a paltry monument, he thought, to the work of two of his years and God knew how much of the life of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands. The breeze blew strongly, and some of the note cards fluttered away to land in the creek.

He was out of matches before the pile had caught. He went into the kitchen for something more incendiary and heard Crodelle upstairs thumping around on the floor overhead, progressing over it, perhaps, in the manner of a monkey hopping on its ass. It didn’t matter.

He carried a full box of matches outside and went past the burn pile and shouted for Tho, who came from his house barefoot, in long pants and a T-shirt. “Mr. Tho, where’s the kerosene?”

“Kerosene? Yes. I have.”

“Get the kerosene, please, and burn those papers.”

“Now?”

“Please, yes, now.”

Tho went to the side of the house and came back with his battered

two-gallon can of kerosene and doused the pile while Skip knelt and struck matches at its base. The fire blazed up, and he stepped back. He stood with Tho and watched a minute. Across the creek and downstream a ways, above the coconut palms and papayas, gray and brown smoke also rose from some neighbor’s pile of trash.

Jesus, he thought, what a fool that old man was.

Tho went for his rake. Skip returned to the house.

He was astounded to find Crodelle in the kitchen, still in the chair,

bent forward, his hands free, cutting away with a bread knife at the windings that still bound his left leg. Sands dug in his pocket for his Beretta and pointed it as Crodelle stood up. Immediately he sat down. “You don’t have to shoot me! You don’t have to shoot me!” “Do you know what I’m doing? Can you smell that smoke? I’m burning the files.” “This isn’t about the files! Goddamn, man. You don’t have to shoot anybody.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“I can pretty well assure you that’s the end of it. I want to move my hands. I want to rub my legs. They’re dead, you cut off the blood. Jesus. What a fucking asshole you are. Go ahead and shoot me. I’ve got six thousand dollars for you. Fuck you.”

“You’ve got what?”

Crodelle leaned forward and spat bloody drool onto the floor. “A really fucked-up thing has happened, Skip. A BND operative got X’d the other day in Saigon. A man named Fest.”

“For God’s sake,” Sands said. “I know that guy.” “Dietrich Fest?” “Not by name, but I met him in the Philippines. And I’m pretty sure

I saw him at the Green Parrot—the same day I met you.”

“Well,” Crodelle said, “it’s a screwy deal. It blew up. We should have stopped it, but things develop a momentum. And it was a legitimate VC target.”

“Oh, shit. Trung Than?” No answer. “Trung killed the German?” “Your unauthorized double.” “So where is he now?” “Who.” “Trung Than, goddammit.” “Wandering the earth.” “Alive.” “That’s the assumption.” “Jesus. A man without a country. How must he feel?” “You tell me. About like you do.” “And going after Trung was your affair? Your responsibility? Who ran

the operation?” “That will never be known. All that will ever be known is—you

caused it.” “Where did the authorization come from?” “Authorization is a concept. Not always concrete.” “So it’s about renegade ops after all. Yours and mine and everybody’s.” “We all messed this thing up. But you’re the one looking at prison.

Prison and disgrace. Have no doubt of that, Sands. When somebody starts an investigation, you’re the one guy we’re all willing to point to. So how’s this for an idea?—go away.”

From behind the house there came the sound of an animal yelping. Sands tried to ignore it and get the situation in his grasp by jabbing the gun in Crodelle’s direction, but he felt helpless. “Are you bastards going to get me out?”

“No. You have a passport. I give you the cash. Hop a plane.” “Jesus Christ! A plane where?” “The money’s in my briefcase.”

The yelping out back had become a screech, drawing nearer. Through the frame of the screen door Pčre Patrice came into view dragging the dog Docteur Bouquet by the ear and calling out above the dog’s protests. “Skip! Your dog! Your dog, please!” He opened the door and dragged the animal inside with him.

“Give him to Tho.”

“Tho says to put him in the house.” Taking in the kitchen festooned with streamers of white gauze and the two Americans, one gripping a pistol, the priest took a deep breath. “Tho says to put him inside the house.” He let the dog loose and it ran off and scrabbled up the stairs. The little priest had not released his breath. He reached backward as if to push open the screen door behind him, but his hand didn’t actually contact its object, and he stood holding his arm out as if it provided him balance. “He is not a problem, but he might attack my chickens there. It’s better to keep him here.” Perhaps because his voice seemed to have stopped the progress of a tragedy, he continued. “I had a dream about you, Skip. You were not in the dream, but it was a dream about the President of the United States. Usually the French, the Americans, the Communists—they don’t come to the world of dreams. They go there, but they don’t believe in it so they are just only ghosts.” A form of hysteria seemed to rise in him as he spoke. “I will tell you what happened to a man of my home village named Chinh. He left our village when his father died and creditors took his land. Chinh became poor at that time, he became destitute. He had to go away to travel on the coastline and if possible learn to fish. It was a desperate journey because he had no money. He slept in the bush as he traveled. One night Chinh had a dream telling him to sleep in the Catholic churchyard of a certain town. The French were there. The outpost commander found him and turned him out. But Chinh says, I am asleep here because a dream told me to come. You are a fool believing in a dream, this is what the French commander says, don’t you know we all dream each night? Last night a dream told me in fact that seven pieces of gold are buried beneath the biggest banyan along the river—do you think I went digging? Don’t make me laugh. And he drove Chinh from the town. On his way downriver Chinh found the biggest banyan, dug all day around the base of it, and found seven gold coins exactly. He returned to my village and lived prosperously. This is a true story. I told it to a French priest. He said it was a lie. He said Chinh stole the money and explained it with a dream. But, however, I pointed out that Chinh lived long and prospered. A thief who lies and steals cannot prosper from the money he stole. The story is quite true. A few years ago Chinh died, incidentally. Sick people come to his grave to be healed, especially people with some malaria.”