Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

we’re a new generation, but—what have you got against the old guard?” “Nothing at all. They’re running the show. But not the colonel, right? The colonel’s a show unto himself.”

“Do you know him at all? Aside from the course of his you took?” “I know him. I worked for him.” “Really?” “All last summer and fall. Old F.X. He kidnapped me. Had me doing

research.” “Research on what?” “Anything and everything. He called me his clerk. I think his idea

was if he had to be a prisoner in Langley, he’d better take a prisoner of his own, you know? But I owe the guy. I’ve gone up two grades since then.”

“Wow.”

bince June. “That’s fast.” “Like lightning.” “He did that for you?” “Skip, no. It wasn’t the colonel who got me promoted. But after I’d

been with him, folks took an interest.” “Good. That’s great.” “No, no, no. You’re not picking this up fast enough.” “What. Tell me.” “Folks took an interest in me because folks have taken an interest in

the colonel.” Here was a moment for staying still, betraying nothing. “… An in

terest?” “Now you’re getting it.” “I mean, when you say he was ‘a prisoner’ in Langley …” “Now he gets it.” The next question would have to be whether the colonel had landed

in real trouble, fate-provoking, career-wrecking difficulty. But the question to follow that one was whether the colonel still had trouble, and then, after that: Who else has trouble? Am I, for instance, in trouble?

Therefore he swallowed all questions. And Voss was spitting them out now. “What happened in Mindanao fourteen months ago?” “I guess you must have seen the report.” “I read it. I did the decode. I was sitting right by the telex when it

came in ‘Eyes Only.’ ” “Well, if it came in Eyes Only, why did you decode it?” “Eyes Only is not a legal classification, Fm sure you know. It’s out of

James Bond.” “Well, still—as a courtesy.” “As a courtesy to whom?” “As a courtesy to me, and to the recipient.” “We look at everything directed to the colonel. Or from the colonel.” “Then you know how things went down there.” “Yeah. The colonel botched it.” “That’s not what my report says, Rick. Read it again.” “Can you tell me why he’s wasting valuable time and resources trying

to run down newsreel footage of a ball game?” “No, I can’t. Baseball?” “Football. A football game. He tried to commission a transpacific

flight for some cans of film. Does he think he’s the president?” “The colonel has his reasons for whatever he does.” His blood roared.

He was ready to hit Voss with a bottle. “What football game?” “Notre Dame versus Michigan State. The one last month.” “I have no idea.” “The colonel’s collecting more intelligence on the Notre Dame-Michigan State game than he is on the enemy.” Voss looked at his watch,

signaled the airman. “Are you carrying his football film to him?” “Skip. Skip. Nobody’s giving him any football film.” He stood up and

held out his hand. As firmly as he could, Skip accepted it. “Look,” Voss said, and as he searched for words his eyes broadcast human sympathy. “See you in the war.” His jeep was running. He turned away.

Sands drank two more beers, and when darkness had fallen he wandered away from the fun and ate fish and rice in a café. Through the doorway he watched a minor spectacle in the street, a drunken young man with one burned and bandaged arm in a sling, who nevertheless was able to light a succession of firecrackers and toss them at the feet of leaping, squealing passersby. By 9:00 p.m. the town rattled all over with celebratory explosions. Independence Day in San Marcos had impressed him, but this was wilder and decidedly more dangerous, full of actual gunfire and large booming cadences, as if the entire night were under attack. He thought he’d probably find it more peaceful in South Vietnam.

He strolled into the red-light district—Angeles consisted of little else — the slop, the lurid stink, the thirsty, flatly human, openmouthed stares of the women as he passed dank shacks beating with rocknroll music, as hot and rich with corruption as vampire mausoleums. The wanton mystery of the Southeast Asian night: he loved it as passionately as he loved America, but secretly, with dark lust; and he admitted to himself without evasion that he didn’t care if he never went home.

Beginning two days after Christmas, James ceased calling his friends, stopped taking Stevie’s calls. He spent the days watching cartoons on television with his tenyear-old brother, Burris, sharing as best he could in the serenity of a mindless childhood.

On New Year’s Eve he went to a party. Stevie was there. She was angry, and she left him alone. She stayed out back in the dark with Donna and her other friends, the alternate cheerleaders and future runner-up prom queens, huddled under a cloud of resentment. Good. The one he’d really always wanted was Anne Vandergress, who’d come to Palo Verde High School the same year as James and who stood now in the doorway of the kitchen looking beautiful, talking to a couple of guys he’d never seen before.

He drank rum. He’d never before tasted it. “We call this a three-ohtwo,” somebody said. If he was going somewhere to be blown up by a mortar or something, then he wished he’d never started going around with Stevie Dale. “Well, hell. That three-oh-two goes down easier’n beer does,” he agreed.

“Now put you some in a Coke.”

It was Anne Vandergress talking. She was a honey-blonde who always wore nice makeup, and he’d never approached her because to him she’d seemed too young and pure and elevated, then his last full year in school he’d heard she was dating a football player, a senior, Dan Cordroy, then another one, Cordroy’s buddy Will Webb, then half the goddamn team, all seniors, and he’d heard she was putting out for every last one. “You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that?” he said. “I never told you that,” he said, “did I ever tell you that?”—though it seemed to James she was a littie less beautiful than he remembered, a little heavier, thicker in the face. More grown-up, but not in a good way; instead in a way that reminded him of middle age.

One particular swallow of rum stalled in his throat and nearly gagged him, but then it went down all right, and after that his throat felt numb, and he could have swallowed nails or glass or hot coals.

He rushed through an hour like a physical thing, a hallway. His lips turned to rubber and he drooled while saying, “I’ve never been this drunk in my life.”

People seemed to be circling him, laughing, but he wasn’t sure. The room tilted sideways and the very wall knocked him on his ass. Hands and arms grappling him upright like the tentacles of a monster …

He arrived in his body from some dark place, and he was standing outdoors holding a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.

Donna loomed like a wreck coming at you. Mad as fire. “Why would you say that? Why would anybody talk that way?” Stevie in the background with her head bowed, weeping, girls around her patting her hair and smoothing away the grief.

Rollo held him upright in the yard. Donna dive-bombing him, you couldn’t shake her. “Donna, Donna — ” Rollo was laughing, snorting, barking—”He can’t hear you, Donna. Stop the lecture.”

“Stevie was almost pregnant. Don’t you realize she was just about pregnant? How can you act like this?” “Almost pregnant?” Rollo said. “A/most?” James was on his knees with his arms around Rollo’s legs. “She thought she was pregnant, okay, Rollo? Okay? He can’t just spit her out the last night he’s in town and just go to Vietnam. Okay, Rollo?”