Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“Later that day the two children found the old woman hanging by her neck from the tree outside. Beneath her the blood pooled, dripping from the place where she was missing her left arm. Earlier, as she poured the tea, she had kept from them beneath her robe the sight of her severed arm, dripping her life’s blood, the poisonous blood of the aswang.

“It’s an old story,” Eddie said. “I’ve heard it many times. But the people believe it will happen, and now they believe it happened here, yesterday, this week. My God,” he said, pouring himself more Chardonnay, shaking the bottle upside down over his glass while his small audience applauded, “have I sat here talking and drinking an entire bottle?”

The colonel was already turning the screw in another cork. “You’ve got Irish in you, fella.” He raised a toast: “Today is the birthday of Commodore Anders Pitchfork. Salud!”

“Commodore?” Eddie said. “You’re joking!”

“I’m joking about the rank. But not about the birthday. Pitchfork: Can you remember where you were on your birthday twenty-four years ago?”

Pitchfork said, “Exactly twenty-four years ago I was swinging under a parachute on a very dark night, dropping into China. I didn’t even know the name of the province. And who was flying that plane I’d just jumped out of? Who was it gave me a half dozen candy bars and kicked me out into the sky? And headed back to a comfy bunk!”

“And who never made it because the bastards shot me down? And who was it you gave a hard-boiled egg in a POW camp twenty days later?”

Pitchfork pointed at the colonel. “Not because I’m generous. Because it was the poor feller’s birthday.”

Eddie’s mouth was open. “You survived the Jap camp?”

The colonel shoved his chair back and wiped at his face with his napkin. He perspired, he blinked. “Having been a dishonored guest of the Japanese … how to put it… I know what it means to be a prisoner. Let me rephrase that—let me rephrase that—give me a minute and let me rephrase that …” He stared dully from under, at Skip in particular, while Skip developed the uncomfortable notion that the colonel had forgotten himself and would now deliriously change the subject.

“The Japanese,” Sands prompted him, lacking the strength not to.

The colonel sat shoved away from his dinner, his knees splayed, his right hand gripping his drink and set on his thigh, his back absolutely straight, and the sweat charging down his crimson face. This is a great man, Sands announced to himself. Distinctly but silently he said it: A person of tortured greatness. At such a moment he couldn’t help dramatizing because it was all too wonderful.

“They were short on cigars,” the colonel said. His rigid forbearing demeanor inspired awe, but not necessarily confidence. He was drunk, after all. And so sweaty they might have been viewing him through broken glass. But a warrior.

Sands found himself speaking inwardly again: Wherever this journey takes us, I will follow. Pitchfork said, “In that war, I knew precisely who to hate. We were the guerrillas. We were the Huks. And that’s who we need to be to

beat the bastards in Vietnam. Lansdale proves it, if you ask me. We need to be the guerrillas.”

“I’ll tell you who I think we need to be,” the colonel said. “I’ll tell you what Ed Lansdale’s learned to become: aswang. That’s what Ed Lansdale is. Aswang. Yes. I’m going to take two breaths, get sober, and tell you.” He did draw a breath, but cut it short to tell Pitchfork, “No, no—don’t go hollering hear, hear.”

Eddie shouted. “Hear, hear!”

“All right, this is my aswang story: In the hills there above Angeles, up there above Clark Air Base, Lansdale had the Filipino commandos he worked with kidnap two Huk guerrillas right off one of their patrols, took the two boys at the tail end of the group. Strangled them, strung them up by the legs, drained the blood out of each one”—the colonel put two fingers to his own neck—”through two punctures in the jugular. Left the corpses on the path for the comrades to find the next day. Which they did … And the day after that, the Huks cleared out of there entirely.”

“Hear, hear!” said Pitchfork.

“Now. Just let’s consider for a minute,” the colonel suggested. “Didn’t these Huks live in the shadow of death anyhow? Lansdale and his strike force were killing them off in small engagements at the rate of half a dozen per month, let’s say. If the threat of their daily pursuers couldn’t impress them, what was it about the death of these two boys that ran them out of Angeles?”

“Well, it’s superstitious fear. Fear of the unknown,” Eddie said.

“Unknown what? I say we look at it in terms we can utilize,” the colonel said. “I say they found themselves engaged at the level of myth. War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter. I think we need to be much more conscious of that. I think we need to be invoking the other fellow’s gods too. And his devils, his aswang. He’s more scared of his gods and his devils and his aswang than he’ll ever be of us.”

“I think that’s your cue to say, ‘Hear, hear!’ ” Eddie said to Pitchfork. But Pitchfork only finished his wine.

“Colonel, did you just come from Saigon?” Eddie asked.

“Nope. Mindanao. I was down in Davao City. And Zamboanga. And over by this place Damulog, little jungle town—you’ve been there,

haven’t you?” “A couple of times, yes. To Mindanao.” “Damulog?” “No. It doesn’t sound familiar.” “I’m surprised to hear that,” the colonel said. Eddie said, “Why would you be surprised?” “When it comes to certain aspects of Mindanao, I was told you were

the man to talk to.” Eddie said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” The colonel swiped at Skip’s face with his napkin—”What’s this?” Eddie said, “Ah! The first to mention the mustache! Yes, he’s turning

himself into Wyatt Earp.” Eddie himself sported one, the young Filipino’s kind, widely spaced black hairs sketching where a mustache might go were one possible.

“A man with a mustache has to have some special talent,” the colonel said, “a special skill, something to exonerate his vanity. Archery, card tricks, what—”

“Palindromes,” said Anders Pitchfork. Sebastian appeared, with an announcement: “Ice cream for dessert.

We must eat it all, or it’s melting without any power.” “We?” The colonel said. “Perhaps if you don’t finish, we will have to finish in the kitchen.” “No dessert for me. I’m feeding my vices,” the colonel said. “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Eddie said. “For a minute I forgot what is a

palindrome. Palindromes! Yes!”

The lights came on, the air conditioners labored to life here and there in the building. “Eat that ice cream anyway,” the colonel told Sebastian.

Following dinner they adjourned to the patio for brandy and cigars and listened to the electronic bug-destroyer and talked about the thing they’d avoided talking about all through dinner, the thing everybody talked about eventually, every day.

“My God, I tell you,” Eddie said, “in Manila we got the news around three in the morning. By dawn everybody knew. Not even by radio, but from heart to heart. Filipinos poured into the streets of Manila and wept.”

The colonel said, “Our President. The President of the United States. It’s bad stuff. It’s just bad stuff.”

“They wept as for a great saint.”

“He was a beautiful man,” the colonel said. “That’s why we killed him.” “We?” “The dividing line between light and dark goes through the center of