Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Later he sat on the porch in a canvas chair, leaning forward, forearms on his knees, smoking—he actually did possess a pack of Luckies—when the colonel returned from the club with his arms around both the girls. Minh’s escort had a pack in her hand and waved it happily.

“So you explored the briny deeps today.” Minh wasn’t sure what he meant. He said, “Yes.” “Ever been down there in any of those tunnels?” the colonel asked. “What is it?—tunnels.”

“Tunnels,” the colonel said. “Tunnels all under Vietnam. You been down inside those things?”

“Not yet. I don’t think so.”

“Nor have I, son,” the colonel said. “I wonder what’s down there.”

“I don’t know.”

“Nobody does,” the colonel said.

“The cadres use the tunnels,” Minh said. “The Vietminh.”

Now the colonel seemed to grieve for his President again, because he said, “This world spits out a beautiful man like he was poison.”

Minh had noticed you could talk to the colonel for a long time without recognizing he was drunk.

He’d met the colonel only a few mornings back, out front of the helicopter maintenance yard at the Subie base, and they’d sought each other out continually ever since. The colonel had not been introduced to him—the colonel had introduced himself—and didn’t appear to be linked to him in any official way. They were housed together with dozens of other transient officers in a barracks in a compound originally constructed and then quickly abandoned, according to the colonel, by the American Central Intelligence Agency.

Minh knew the colonel was one to stick with. Minh had a custom of picking out situations, people, as good luck, bad luck. He drank Lucky Lager, he smoked Lucky Strikes. The colonel called him “Lucky.”

“John F. Kennedy was a beautiful man,” the colonel said. “That’s what killed him.”

1964

N guyen Hao arrived safely at the New Star Temple on his Japanese Honda 30 motorbike, in dress pants and a box-cut shirt, wearing sunglasses, the pomade melting in his hair. It was his sad errand to serve as his family’s only representative at the funeral service for his wife’s nephew. Hao’s wife was down with chills. The boy’s parents were deceased, and the boy’s only brother was flying missions for the air force.

Hao looked back to where he’d dropped off a friend from his youth named Trung Than, whom everybody had always called the Monk and who’d gone north when the country had been partitioned. Hao hadn’t seen the Monk for a decade, not until this afternoon, and now he was gone: he’d hopped backward off the bike, removed his sandals, and padded off barefoot down the path.

Hao made sure to take the motorbike slowly over anything looking like a puddle, and when he reached the rice paddies he walked the machine most carefully along the dikes. He had to keep his clothes clean; he’d be overnighting here, probably in the schoolroom adjacent to the temple. The village wasn’t far from Saigon, and in better times he might have motored back in the dusk, but the critical areas had expanded such that nowadays after three in the afternoon the back roads over to Route Twenty-two would be hazardous.

He set his straw bedroll on the earthen floor just inside the schoolroom’s doorway, so as to be able to find his bed later in the night.

No life showed itself among the string of huts other than foraging chickens and stationary old women visible in the doorways. He pulled aside the wooden lid of the concrete well and lowered the bucket and drew himself a drink and a wash from out of the dark. The well was deep, drilled by a machine. The water came clear and cool into his hand and onto his face.

No sound from the temple. The master probably napped. Hao rolled his motorbike into the interior—rough lumber, with a roof of ceramic shingles and a dirt floor, about fifteen by fifteen meters, not much bigger in area than the downstairs of Hao’s own house in Saigon. Rather than disturb the master, he turned and went out even before his eyes adjusted to the dimness, but already the must of the floor and the aroma of joss sticks had wakened his boyhood, when he’d served here at the temple for a couple of years. He felt something tugging at him from that era, a thread connected to a sadness which was generally inert and which quickly forgot itself. So much of this had been laid over by the rest of his life.

Also he felt a confused sadness over his nephew’s preposterous death. Inconceivable. On first hearing of it Hao had assumed the boy had perished in an accidental fire. But in fact he’d burned himself alive—as had two or three elder monks in recent times. But those others had killed themselves spectacularly in the Saigon streets in order to cry out against chaos. And they were old men. Thu was only twenty, and he’d set himself afire out in the bush beyond the village in a solitary ceremony. Incomprehensible, crazy.

When Master woke he came out not in his robe, but dressed for the fields. Hao stood up and bowed his head, and the master bowed very deeply, a small man with a large rib cage and stick-limbs, his head covered with stubble —it occurred to Hao that Thu had probably been the one who’d shaved him. Poor dead Thu. “I was going to take up a hoe this afternoon,” the master said. “I’m glad you’ve stopped me.”

They sat on the porch and made a start at polite conversation, moving into the doorway while a loud rain came over. The master apparently chose to let the chatter of this downpour serve the purposes of small talk, because when it was over he spoke immediately of the death of Thu, saying it mystified him. “But it brings you back to see us. Every fist grips

calling.” “That’s not quite the way to phrase it.” “Those were the words you used.” “No. I said you must allow your doubt to become your calling, you

must permit it. I don’t suggest that you make it so, only that you let it be so. Let your doubt be your calling. Then your doubt will be invisible. You’ll inhabit it like an atmosphere.”

The master offered a bit of champooy, which Hao declined. He put the spicy dried fruit in his own mouth and sucked on it vigorously, frowning. “A certain American is coming to the service.”

“I know him,” Hao said. “Colonel Sands.” The master said nothing, and Hao felt forced to go on: “The colonel

knows my nephew Minh. They met in the Philippines.” “He told me so.” “Have you met him personally?” “He’s come several times,” the master said. “He cultivated an ac

quaintance with Thu. I think he’s a kind man. Or at least a careful man.” “He’s interested in the practice. He wants to study the breath.” “His breath smells of the meat of cattle and cigars and liquor. And

what about you? Have you continued with the breath?” Hao didn’t answer. “Have you continued your practice?” “No.” The master spat out the pit of his champooy. A skeletal puppy darted

from under the porch and gobbled it quickly, trembling, and then dematerialized. “In their dreams,” the old man said, “dogs travel back and forth between this world and the other world. In their dreams they visit the before-life, and they visit the afterlife.”

Hao said, “The Americans are going to become somewhat active here, somewhat destructive.” “How do you know?” The question was very indiscreet, yet even in

the face of Hao’s silence he persisted: “Did this American tell you?” “Thu’s brother told me.” “Minh?” “Our air force will participate.” “Will young Minh bomb his own country?” “Minh doesn’t fly a bomber.” “But will the air force destroy us?” “Minh told me to get you out of here. I can’t tell you more than that,

because it’s all I know.” Because to traffic in information any more specific than that terrified him. Would have terrified anyone. Should have terrified the master.