Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve. His itinerary would have him taking off on New Year’s Day from Clark Field for the airport at Tan Son Nhut, outside Saigon.

At last! Feeling as if he’d already taken to the air, he sat in the staff car on Dewey Boulevard watching the sun quiver on Manila Bay, and by its glorious light, in order to calm himself, he glanced through his mail. An alumni newsletter from Bloomington. Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, both many weeks old. In a large manila envelope he found his final batch of California mail, forwarded from there through his APO address. These letters had chased him for two months. From his Aunt Grace and Uncle Ray—the eldest of his father’s four siblings—came a greeting card envelope with something whacking around inside it, one of the new John F. Kennedy half dollars, it turned out, and a Hallmark card, to which the coin had evidently been taped before coming loose on its ten-thousand-mile journey. Skip had turned thirty on October twenty-eighth, and in commemoration of this milestone here came fifty cents, double the usual, no more quarters for such a big boy.

Also, quite a rare thing: a letter from the widow Beatrice Sands, Skip’s mother. It felt thick. He didn’t open it.

And here was a letter from Kathy Jones. He’d received several in the last year, each one crazier than the last, had saved them all, had ceased answering.

Are you finally here in Vietnam? Maybe in the next village? I wel

come you to the Bible in Panavision and Technicolor. But here it’s

good not to be from your United States of America. Too many re

sentments. They don’t mind the French so much, though. They

beat the French.

Do you remember Damulog?

From the next paragraph the word “affair” leapt up at him, and he stopped reading.

Nothing further from the colonel.

He hadn’t seen his uncle in over fourteen months, had concluded that one or both of them had been sidelined owing to the questionable business on Mindanao. Something, anyway, had kept them both from the action. He’d taken his course in Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute, and what started by looking like the sensible prelude to a Saigon posting turned into eleven baffling months spent with a crew of three other translators, not one Vietnamese national among them, working on a project of doubtful utility, that is, pursuing a patent folly—to extract an encyclopedia of mythological references from over seven hundred volumes of Vietnamese literature, an endeavor waged mostly in three basement-level offices of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and consisting mainly of the listing, categorization, and cataloging of fairy-tale figures.

This he understood to be his uncle’s contribution to the Psychological Operations Group of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, for which the colonel now served, Skip further understood, as chief CIA liaison. In fact, all but officially the colonel ran Psy Ops for MAC–V, according to an Agency officer from Langley named Showalter, who checked in with Skip’s translation team on a more or less monthly basis; and before long Skip would help the colonel run it. “When does he want me there?” “January or so.” “Outstanding,” Skip said, completely infuriated by the delay. This conversation took place in June.

The fanciful project ended with sudden postings to other places for all the participants, who boxed and shipped to Langley the useless material.

He opened the letter from his mother.

“Dear Son Skipper”—her hand rounded, slanting, large, covering several pages of six-by-eight-inch stationery bond:

I’m sure not much for writing, so first thing, nothing’s wrong. Wouldn’t want you to think it’s only bad news would get me to sit down and send a greeting to you. It’s really the opposite, a really fine day of Indian summer. The bluest sky, not a dab of a cloud anywhere up there. The trains go by with a different sound due to leaves turning on the trees, it’s a happy greeting now, pretty soon we’ll hear that lonely sound of a whistle in bare winter. This afternoon it’s warm enough you want a breeze through the house. Open the windows and hear the redwing blackbirds calling. And the grass is still coming on, you can see where it needs one more cutting before the fall is really official. When I saw how pretty the day was I thought, “I think I’ll write a letter!”

Thank you for the money. I bought a new drier to go with the washer. Got it full of clothes right now and going round and round. But in fine weather like this I like to put the big things like the sheets and bedding out on the line and dry them in the world, and that’s just what I’ve done. Got the sheets on the line like in the old days. Yes, I ordered a drier, I didn’t get a TV. You said get one, but I didn’t. When I feel like I need entertainment I go to the shelves and take down The Old Curiosity Shop or Emma or Silas Marner and read just any old part and nine out of ten times I have to go back to the beginning and read it all. I just have to. Those are good old friends.

I told you about old Rev. Pierce retiring. There’s a new man at the church, Pastor Paul. Pretty young. His last name is Conniff, but he goes by Pastor Paul. He puts his new slant on things. He kept me interested, I went every Sunday all last winter, then the weather relents, the sun shines, things get busy, and I haven’t been since early April probably. No TV, but I try to keep up with the news. Isn’t it terrible news? I don’t know what to think. Sometimes I wish I could talk to somebody about what I think, then I think I better not. I know you joined the government to be of service to the world, but our leaders are sending good boys to wreck another country and maybe lose their lives without any sound explanation.

Well, a half hour’s gone by since that last sentence. That new drier ding-donged and got me running to do the folding while it was still hot. Excuse me for the things I say. Maybe I’ll just say what I want and go back and write this letter over, cross out the bad parts and just send the nice parts. No, I better not. War means something different to me than it does to generals and soldiers. As of next December 7 twenty-six years will be gone since we lost your father, and every day I still miss how it was. After a while I had boyfriends after your father, and really spent some time with Kenneth Brooke before he took a job with Northwest Airlines, but it was a little too soon for us before we’d gotten it all sorted out what we’d do, Ken and I, so when he moved to Minneapolis, that was that. Otherwise I think we would have gotten engaged, which means you would have had a stepdad. But that’s off the subject. What was the subject? Goodness, I better not send this letter! I don’t know if you even knew it was a little serious between me and Ken Brooke. Do you even remember Ken at all? Every other Christmas he and his family come back home to visit his folks and his sister. The other Christmases they go back to his wife’s home town, I don’t know where that is. Boy, am I having one of those days.

I’d better get out that old push-mower and do the yard one last time for this year. I’ll have to oil it up. Had it done by the kids all summer, one or other of the Strauss kids, Thomas or Daniel, but they’re in school now. They took turns with their Dad’s big noisy gas-powered monster. Made two dollars each time. That old push-mower is an old friend of mine. Remember how I used to do the yard—”And stay away from those blades with your fingers!”—that’s what I hollered, like those blades would jump up and bite your fingers off, even with nobody pushing. Then one day I hear those blades whirring and look out the window and here comes Skipper in his teeshirt with his skinny arms, pushing past the window like The Little Engine That Could. Did the whole yard on your first try. I hope you remember, because I remember so clearly. I hope you remember how good you felt, and I will too.