Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

weight and one hundred fifty-two centimeters tall, and I’ll fight all four of you all at once, or one at a time. Let’s start with the toughest. Who’s the toughest? Come on. You the toughest?”

“I don’t think so,” said James.

“You don’t want to be taking me on, if you’re the toughest or not,” the Aussie said. To Fisher he said, “How about you, big fella? Think you can just throw me up on the roof, big fella?”

“You’re a ornery li’l shit, but I’ll throw you up on the roof,” Fisher said, laughing.

Little Walsh was outraged. “You’ll throw me up on the roof? Get out here. Get out here. Come and throw me up on the roof, come on outside.” He wheeled and headed for the door.

Fisher followed him, somewhat baffled. “Oh, shit,” he said, “I’m going to get beat on by a midget wrestler.”

Houston and Evans went too. Outside in the muddy street, where they got no light except what fell through the doorway, Walsh primed himself for battle by working his shoulders, flexing his hands, arching himself backward, bending over forward, touching his palms to the dirt. “Come on.” Fisher stooped with his arms outstretched, as if preparing to lift a child. His opponent weaved left and right, bobbed his head, dropped his left shoulder in a quick feint, shot out his right hand, and apparently threw dirt in Fisher’s eyes. Fisher stood upright, blinking, squinting, openmouthed. The Aussie kicked him in the groin, ran around behind him, and lashed out with the bottom of his foot twice, rapidly, first at the crook of Fisher’s knee and then at his spine, and sent the big boy sprawling on his face with his hands wrapped around his crotch.

The Aussie bent over him and shouted, “Wake up, ya lazy bastid!” By this time the French sailors and their girls had come out to watch, but it was already over.

Walsh helped Fisher to his feet. James and Evans lent a hand. “Come on, get up, get up. Enough of our shenanigans, it’s time for a hefty lager amongst us boys.”

Inside, he joined the youths at their table, pulling his fat whore onto his lap. “Don’t fight the little fella. Never fight the little fella. We’re here amongst you giants because we’ve survived, and we’ve survived because we’re tougher than God. All right, then! Beers for everyone! Christ!” he suddenly shouted. “I smell cherry! Who’s cherry here?” He looked around among their blank faces. “Have none of ya never had a fuck? That’s all right. The beer’s on me, boys. I bullied you, I snookered on ya shamefully, and I’m a bastid of the low degree. But Christ, I only weigh nine stone. And I’m hung like a hummingbird. Right, honey? Tiny-tiny!”

His girl said, “I like tiny-tiny. I don’t like bick dick.”

Girls surrounded them. A girl sat in Fisher’s lap. A girl stood beside James’s chair, playing with his ear. She leaned down and whispered, “Let’s go fuck.” The one in Fisher’s lap said to him, “I like bick dick.” Her zoris dangled from her toes above the floor. She had a funny face. Huge slanted cheekbones. She looked like an elf. He told her, “Get off me. My balls hurt. I don’t love you.”

“I’m fifty-nine and three-quarter inches tall. Survival is my chiefest consideration at this altitude. I’ve got to be aggressive.” Walsh pushed at his woman’s rump and said, “I want beers all around for these brave lads of the American Army. Did you brave lads see the sign out front? In the days of yesteryear this place was called Lou’s, and there was a big Coca-Cola sign that said ‘Lou’s,’ and the small sign out front said ‘Floor Show Any Time.’ But one night a drunken Aussie of the merchant marine karate-chopped the sign and broke it off. Me. Yeah! That was me gave this place the famous name. Where’s your home, big fella?”

“Pittsburgh. And I wish I was there.”

“You’re a game lad, Pittsburgh. Here’s my hand in friendship. Never fight the little man. He’s learnt to bring you down. I’ve been around the world in ships, and I’ve learnt to bring the victory home. I’m one hundred fifty-two centimeters in height, and shall never grow another. And the floor show’s on me.”

James tried dancing with his woman. She came close against him, soft and hot, and her hair was stiff and she smelled like baby powder. When he asked her name she said, “I make my name for you”—her ripe, sassy lips. The rhythm was driving, but they slow-danced together in the ruby light of the jukebox. Walsh paid for the beers. They sang songs with the French sailors, one of whom danced on the table in his underpants while the others shook up their beers and sprayed him with foam. Walsh arm-wrestled the table and beat them, every last one. He paid for the floor show, but they had to pay a man in a striped gangster suit two dollars extra, he said, “for the jukebox.” They went to a bedroom in the back of the establishment and sat on the floor and a woman came in, shut the door, pulled her dress off over her head without taking her cigarette from her mouth, and stood before them naked in red high-heeled shoes, puffing on her smoke. Her body was utterly perfect in every part. “What what WHAT is your name?” Evans cried out, and she said, “My name is Virgin.” Out in the bar the jukebox again struck up “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” and the naked Virgin began to move. “I’m horny tonight, so horny, so horny,” she wailed. James couldn’t feel his hands, feet, lips, or tongue. Standing less than one meter from his face she danced for a minute to the music, then sat on the bed, parted wide her knees, and inserted her cigarette’s filter tip between the lips of her vagina and puffed away, blowing smoke from her crotch while the jukebox in the next room played “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. Now James felt as if his head had been chopped off and thrown in boiling water. Virgin lay back, the bed supporting only her head and shoulders, her high heels planted on the floor, her torso gyrating to the rhythms of “Barbara Ann,” and they all sang along … God almighty, some part of him prayed, if this is war let peace never come.

Th e three Kootchy Kooties came around for one of their consultations. They kept to themselves and hogged the shade beside Bunker One this sunny morning, and none of Echo Recon thought of crowding them. The black guy was especially scary. He’d done a tour with a Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol squad who traveled the nights completely jazzed on uppers taking the life of any man, woman, or child they encountered.

His hair grew out in an explosion of savage curlicues and he painted his face like an Indian and went around with the sleeves of his uniform torn off. In comparison, the actual Indian among them, diminutive, wiry, bowlegged, from somewhere in the Southwest, appeared quite sane. The third guy was of Italian or even more foreign extraction, Greek maybe, Armenian. He never talked, not even to his operational superior, the colonel.

Meanwhile, at the moment, Colonel Sands wouldn’t shut up. And he wasn’t a real colonel, he was more like a Southern honorary fat-boy colonel, and the men called him “Colonel Sanders” behind his back and referred to these rare morning assemblies in the encampment on the west side of Good Luck Mountain as the “Hour of Power.”

But the colonel wasn’t a fool. He had an eerie sense for what you were thinking: “You men realize I’m a civilian. I confer with your lieutenant; I don’t pass orders to him. But I do direct our operations in a general sense.” He stood right in the crashing-down light of the tropical morning with his hands on his hips. “Twelve weeks ago, last November nineteenth, my alma mater, Notre Dame, played what should have been the bloodiest game in its history against Michigan State. Both superb teams. Both undefeated. Both raring for a fight.” The colonel wore canvas boots like their own, stiff new Levi’s, a fisherman’s vest with a lot of pockets. White T-shirt. Aviator sunglasses. From his back pocket jutted the blue bill of a baseball cap. “A week before the game the Michigan State students leafleted the Notre Dame campus from an airplane. The leaflets were addressed to the ‘peace-loving villagers of Notre Dame.’ They asked, ‘Why do you struggle against us? Why do you persist in the mistaken belief that you can win, freely and openly, against us? Your leaders have lied to you. They have led you to believe you can win. They have given you false hopes.’ “