Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“Thong Nhat.” “Yes.” “Stop.” There came a silence, the first the room had enjoyed since the priest

had entered. “Skip,” the priest said as if touching on a matter of explosive delicacy,

“something is wrong.” “Jesus H. Christ,” Crodelle said, and began to laugh. “I’m sorry about the excitement, Nhat. Will you do me a favor?” The priest seemed unwilling to answer. “There’s a briefcase on the coffee table in there. Will you bring it to

me, please?” “Of course. But I’m worried about you today.” “Where am I?” Crodelle said. “Where in God’s name am I?” “Nhat, will you get me that briefcase?” Skip watched the priest move cautiously into the parlor to stand be

fore the coffee table touching his hands together at the level of his breast

and wondered if he was praying. Crodelle, still laughing, spat on the floor again. “Are you all right?” “Minimally banged up, just minimally.” “Tell me something. If you’re willing. How did you get down the

stairs without breaking your neck?” “I hopped and hula-ed as far as the staircase and fell over sideways

and slid down. Sort of.” “And not a bruise. No Purple Heart.” “I believe my right shoulder was briefly dislocated.” “Good.” “I need to be sure you understand this business about the BND man’s

murder. Do you get it?” “Sure. I’m the fall guy.” “You’re Lee Harvey Oswald, baby.” Pčre Patrice had found his strength. He stood beside Skip holding out the briefcase with both hands. Skip set it on the counter and thumbed

the button, and the brass clasp snapped open with a shudder. “Whose briefcase is this?” “All yours. Complimentary.” The briefcase held only an empty manila folder and a sheaf of U.S.

currency circled by a red rubber band. Doubt and fear possessed him suddenly. “So you, what—stuck your hand in your pocket and out comes a wad

of getaway money just like that?” ‘Tes, indeed. Chopchop. We’re very efficient.” “Not too often, Crodelle. Mostly you’re incredibly inept. And stupid.

Why didn’t you just come in and say, Here’s the situation, and hand me the cash?”

“Well, you seemed completely in love with this idea that your silly files are the reason for everybody’s breakfast. I kind of hoped we could let it go at that.”

Sands held his hand out. “Give me your car keys.” “Never happen, son. You don’t get a vehicle. I’ll take you.” Leaning toward Crodelle close enough to breathe in his face, Skip

placed the gun’s muzzle against Crodelle’s knee. “Three—two—one—” Crodelle slapped his pants. “Right here.” “Let’s have them.” Crodelle turned over a single ignition key wired to a paper tag from

the embassy motor pool.

With his free hand Sands reached into the briefcase and pinched a half dozen twenties and shook them loose from the stack and laid them on the counter. “This is for Tho and Mrs. Diu,” he told the priest. To Crodelle he said, “I’m going out the door. If I even think you’re moving around in here before I’m down the road, I’ll come back and shoot you. Happily. I mean it, Crodelle. It would make me happy.”

He left by the back door as Crodelle called after him, “I don’t care about your fucking happiness.”

As he started the ignition, Pčre Patrice came out by the front way. Sands reached his left hand out the window and the priest took it and said, “It’s too late for traveling. Near the Route Twenty-two it’s a critical area. You know this.”

“Thon Nhat, it’s been good knowing you.”

“Will you come back?”

“No.”

“Yes. Perhaps. Nobody knows.”

“All right, nobody knows.”

“Mr. Skip, until I see you again, Fm going to pray for you each day.”

“I appreciate it. You’ve been a wonderful friend.”

He engaged the clutch and set off bumping over the rutted road. In the rearview mirror he saw Crodelle join the priest to stand out front of the villa’s gate with his arms crossed on his chest and his legs in the at-ease position, projecting an air of defiance and nonchalance.

Beside him on the seat he found Crodelle’s yellow cardigan sweater. He threw it out of the car, rolled up the windows, and turned on the air conditioner.

Worl d Children’s Services had rules, procedures, requirements, including a bimonthly visit to Saigon for Reports and Recommendations. In the hostel on Dong Du Street if the frolic of the later hours didn’t wake her then the moaning of dawn prayers from the mosque would manage. Tonight the horns and go-go music turned her out of bed.

In these damp nights the temperature of human breath she felt a moldering and sleepy grief born, she was convinced, of self-infatuation— a slow, hot, tropical self-pity. She needed to turn outward, to find others, she needed her duties in the countryside! Or she’d sink. Rot in the underneath. Be devoured by this land. Flower up as new violence and despair.

Here in the city the empty striving compressed itself into a solid thing, and she longed to give herself up to a monstrous suffering, wanted to be torn by every pain.

She started across the street, stepped back for a little Honda pulling an eight-foot-long trailer heaped with cheerful fresh produce. In the city too many of them kept their headlamps switched off. Go-go music boomed from a doorway behind her. She needed a cold drink, but in there it was ten degrees hotter and full of twenty-year-old men on fire in their souls. She went inside anyway. The tavern stank of beer and sweat and bamboo. She clutched her purse tightly and swiveled toward the bar through the crowd of men.

A couple of women danced on a stage hardly bigger than two soap crates. “What’s yours?” a GI said to her at the bar. With the red light of the stage behind him he had no visible face. “You there—pretty lady.” A youngster’s voice, but the crown of his head was bald.

“Pardon?”

“What’s yours? Because I’m buying.”

“I wouldn’t mind a beer. How about a Tiger?”

“Coming at you. Don’t go away.” He moved sideways behind the men at the bar in pursuit of the Tiger. Kathy looked left to see a little harlot resting her elbow on the bamboo bar, her hip cocked, silver smoke rushing from between her lips. But—wasn’t it Lan? But it couldn’t be. But it was. “Lan,” Kathy called, but Lan couldn’t hear.

Kathy walked over. “Hi, Lan.”

Raising her cigarette to her face, Lan moved to a barstool just vacated. She’d assisted Kathy her first year or so in-country, at Sa Dec, then trouble had called her back home, the relocation of her village, and now she sat with a stare and a red mouth and her legs showing up to the crotch of her panties. “How are you, Lan? Do you remember me?”

The girl turned to speak softly to the bartender.

“What you want?” the bartender said. Kathy didn’t know how to answer. The girl—was it somebody else, not Lan?—swung around and leaned her elbows back on the bar and stared at the GIs who danced in the crimson glow with frail women, clutching them tightly to their chests and hardly moving.

Kathy’s own GI was back. “Honey, I’m getting the beers,” he said. “Don’t you believe in me?”

“I’ll be right back.” Holding on to her purse with both hands, she skirted the dancers and went outside. The damp stink of the street felt fresh now. She walked a few paces and entered a café and sat down. Drank two beers one after the other and turned her chair with its back to the wall and asked for a third. From her purse she took her notebook, flopped it down in the stains and grease, and found a pen. Sitting sideways at the table, one hand resting on the page, she wrote:

Dear Skip, Ho-ho-de-ho-ho. That’s what my Dad used to say when he was drunk, or tipsy. He didn’t get drunk. Not even tipsy, just