Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

strong, relaxed, very blond, with blond eyebrows, even, and disconcertingly blue eyes, blue from fifteen feet away. A scarred, seasoned lifer, a survivor of Pork Chop Hill, one of the Korean War’s most heroic battles, later a movie starring Gregory Peck.

“Lost your guns,” he said. The three new men kept silent. “Y’all pacifists?” “Sergeant, we got routed all wrong. We went to Edwards instead of

San Diego and we went to Japan someplace instead of Guam.” “They put us on a cargo plane, Sarge.” “Nobody gave us any weapons. Nobody said a word.” “I’m just fooling with you. We have weapons for you. What I don’t

have is time to sit waiting for my truck. Why did it take you fifteen extra

hours to make your way sixty-eight kliks on good roads?” “We got routed completely wrong.” “And the plane was late, real late.” “We spent hours and hours in Japan.” “I think my watch is stopped. Yeah—see? It’s stopped, Sarge.” “We don’t even know what town we’re in.” “Or which province.” “Or even what a province is.” The platoon waited to see how the three would handle this inquiry. It

appeared they couldn’t remember whatever they’d been coached to say

by Jollet and Flatt. But they continued in this way, making nothing clear. “Listen up.” “Yes, Sergeant.” “This is Cao Phuc where you’re currently at, Echo Reconnaissance Platoon of Delta Company. We’re at the southwest corner of the Cu Chi District of South Vietnam —district, not province. You heard of the Iron Triangle? We are not in the Iron Triangle, we are southwest of there in a friendly zone. We keep this region secure for the LZ established on top of the mountain which we are not allowed to call a base for reasons of military protocol. Echo’s down here, the rest of the company’s up top. They give you that whole ‘don’t be no pin-on-no-map sermon? Well, this here’s a pin on the map. We don’t call it a base but this is a permanent base, and we have two types of permanent reconnaissance patrols. Around the mountain then over, or else over the mountain then around.

“We’re good for shares down here. We got fourteen guys and three share-heads, but no chemical latrines. So you dig your own kaibo over in the bush, and keep your business covered. Don’t want no stink up my nose. We got no mess, it’s all rations down here. Mess is up the mountain, two hot meals daily, you rotate one of those, one hot meal per day, you work that out with the guys as to your rotation, and if I get a lot of whining in my ear about people coming up short on the hot meals and I have to work out a complicated schedule, I’ll be pissed off and looking to make life hell. If you’re easy on me, I’m easy on you, that’s the system here. You keep yourselves sorted out and squared away and I will be just no more than a presence. Questions. None. Good. Now.

“There are outfits all over this theater living in open rebellion against their officers. This ain’t one. I am here to carry out the orders of Lieutenant Perry and see to it that y’all do the same. Do you hear my words?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“I come in slow and easy, but I mean what I say.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Now, Private Evans, Private Houston, Private Fisher. You have just received the speech. Do you have any current questions? No? I am available for all questions at all times.”

“What’s shares?”

“Shares? Shares. Look at my mouth—showers. Do you have any further questions?” “What’s a kaibo?” “That’s your to’let-hole, Private. I think it’s Filipino.” “Sarge, we need shut-eye.” “Good deal. Sack out. I want your bodies on stateside time, because I

want you up nights. You gon’ be pulling guard for a while. Stow yourselves in Bunker Four. If you want to sling yourselves a hammock in the trees, that’s fine. Never no Charlie around here. See Corporal Ames for hammocks and weapons.”

They couldn’t find any Corporal Ames. In their new quarters, a tarp-roofed sandbag bunker smelling of dirty socks and bug repellant, they found four cots, three of them free of clutter. Evans brushed dried mud from one and sat down and said, “Only three hundred and sixty-four more days of this shit.”

As they sorted themselves out, their friend Flatt appeared at the entry. “Welcome to World War Three. Hey, I’m sorry about that fucked-up little thing I did with the firecrackers. Come on over to the Purple Bar and I’ll buy you one.”

“The Purple Bar.”

“If it’s purple, I ain’t going.”

“Are you scared of purple people eaters?” Flatt asked.

“I ain’t scared. Fm tired,” Private Houston said.

“Okay. But I owe you one.” Flatt gave them the middle finger and departed. Elongated Fisher, the high school basketball center, rubbed his head back and forth on the plastic ceiling. “This ain’t bad,” he said.

They lay on their cots, not moving. After a while, Houston and Evans discussed how to get a Coca-Cola. An overwhelming sense of embarrassment and selfconsciousness kept them from moving. But they didn’t sleep—they heard Flatt’s voice outside, and all three rose and followed him to the Purple Bar.

The roadway, roughed out by bulldozers and ruined by jeeps, was so rutted they couldn’t walk on it. They kept to the margin. A jeep from the LZ up top passed them by and honked. “Don’t wave, don’t wave them down,” Flatt said. “They never stop.” He kicked at the bumper as the vehicle blew by in a gust of exhaust.

Many of Cao Phuc’s villagers, considered untrustworthy, had been loaded into trucks one day and moved God knew where. The paddies had gone to hell and herbicides had turned the trails into swaths of desolation. Now the ville was a ramshackle camp for displaced Friendlies dominated by the New Star Temple in the southern hamlet, and in the north by the Purple Bar.

“You wait out here/’ Flatt said when they’d reached the Purple Bar. “Why, goddamn it?” “Just kidding!” The sarge had business up the mountain, and half the platoon was

here. They all sat around two tables shoved together. On paydays there were lots of women, but today just one, with black high heels and red toenails, sitting at a table with a newspaper, wearing pants and a shirt. Flatt said, “Four beers, hon,” and she said, “I not your slave,” and the papasan, who was always there, brought them the beers from a freezer full of cakes of yellow-brown ice. Before popping his beer Flatt poured iodized water from his canteen over the top, and the others copied him, muddying the straw beneath their feet. Skinny dogs watched them through the entry.

The replacements tried to ask Flatt what might be the purpose, the mission, of their outfit, and Flatt tried to tell them it was mainly a kind of wide-perimeter security for the landing zone. And somebody else said, “We work for the CIA.”

“I thought this was a Recon unit.” “This is not a Recon unit. We don’t know what we are.” “If I work for the CIA, then where’s my green beret? Them’s the ass

holes work for the CIA. The Green Berets.” And just that quick—probably not yet sober from the night before — the new guys were drunk in the Purple Bar. “One thing about you, Houston, you’re sort of a cowboy, but one

thing about you: You got class. You got style.” “Thanks, pardner.” “No, I mean it. I mean it. I’m drunk, but—you know what I mean.” “I do. I do. I do. You mean you’re a queer and you want to blow me.” “Shut up. Who farted?” “What do you mean? The whole country stinks.” “He who smelt it, dealt it.” “He who detected it, ejected it.” “He who sensed it, dispensed it.” The guys living up the hill around the helicopter bull’s-eye were al

ways covered with dust; they kept their heads nearly shaved rather than deal with filthy hair. Flatt introduced the replacements to a couple of men from the LZ by saying, “Ask them their name.”