Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“You mean, both of them?” “Yeah, asshole, both of them, both of them.” The cowboy said, “Hey, now, listen: I am not your asshole.” There was a pause. Then they all burst out laughing, the cowboy too. He said, “Okay. Who are you?” “Bloodgutter.” “Bullshit.” “Nope. Bloodgutter.” “He is. That’s his real name.” “Bloodgutter? What a cool fucking name, man. That is the coolest

name in the world.” “It’s not as cool as this guy’s name.” “What’s his name?” “Firegod.” “Fzregod?” “Yep. Joseph Wilson Firegod.” “Wow.” “And his name is Bloodgutter,” Firegod said. “Wow.” “So we are asshole buddies,” Bloodgutter said, “we hang around to

gether. It just stands to reason.” Private Getty came in and sat by himself. “Gettys-bird, where’s your big old forty-five?” “Sarge took it,” Private Getty said. “Where’d you get a forty-five, Private Getty?” “Traded for it.” “Traded, fuck. You stole it.” Private Getty went into one of his trances where he acted deaf and

talked to himself. “I don’t know why I’m remembering so hard about

home.” “Pay no attention to Gettys-bird. He crazy. He dinky dau.” Everybody, including Getty, stopped talking when the three Kootchy

Kooties came in. The three pulled chairs around the table and sat down, and one belched loudly. It was best not to talk until they talked, but Flatt seemed driven to ask, “Hey, is the sarge back down the hill?” “Sarge still up there,” the black savage said. “You still safe.”

Flatt couldn’t shut up. “You’re a Indian,” he told the Indian tunnel

rat, “and this motherfucker Houston right here is a cowboy.” “You’re a cowboy?” “Not back home I ain’t. Just here.” Off by himself Private Getty was still trancing—”I’m on the wrong

ride. I’m on the wrong ride. The—wrong—ride”—expressing this thought over and over and nothing else.

The other two just drank their beers, but the black Kootchy glowered at Private Getty. “Busting me down with his jive. Busting cracks inside me.”

Flatt said, “Aw, he don’t mean nuthin.” “I know he don’t mean nuthin. I won’t hurt him. Do I look like I’ll

hurt somebody?” “No.” “No? I feel like I’ll hurt somebody.” A second jeep stopped out front. One of the new guys said, “Shit

Lieutenant Perry.” “Sarge ain’t with him, so fuck him.” They insulted the lieutenant wholesale as he breezed through with a

false, wise smile saying, “I suggest you discontinue fucking with me,” and tossing out plastic dosers of talc that turned to sludge all over you in four minutes if you used it, but all of them used it.

He got himself a bottle of Coke and sat by himself, the same way Private Getty did. From time to time he fed rum out of a chromed flask into the mouth of his Coke. At one point he turned to them all, trying to look like a man of the world, and pointed at the cowboy and said, “You. Do you know what reality is?”

“What?” “Wrong answer.” He was like that, that’s all, mostly when he drank, which was most of

the time; otherwise he was just mostly young and mostly stupid, like most of the rest of them. Later he said, looking at no one at all, “I will fuck the Reaper. But I

won’t kiss my sister.” Nobody answered him. Cowboy said, “He’s goofy, ain’t he?” “What is he?” “He’s goofy.”

“What is he?” “I said he’s goofy, he’s all screwed up.” “That’s it! You got it! That’s the Screwy Loot!” When Screwy Loot stood up to leave he looked over at the replace

ments, in particular Fisher, the tall one with a front tooth chipped from playing basketball, and said, “The movie’s not over till everybody’s dead.” He walked out with an uncoordinated, bouncing step.

And then they sat around letting the new ones in on things little by

little: “Do we work for the CIA?” “You’re working for Psy Ops.” “Does Psy Ops work for the CIA?” One of the new ones, Evans, was very plastered, saying over and over

again only, “Let’s face it. Let’s face it. Let’s face it.” “Do you understand what’s happening? The rest of the Third are get

ting chewed up alive. The rest of the whole Twenty-fifth Infantry.” “In fact, when they get chewed up alive, they’re dead.” “Shut up. But that’s right. They’re dead, like I would hate to be.” The Purple Bar was made of bamboo poles and thatch. A layer of

some kind of straw covered the floor. Underneath that, dirt. It didn’t have walls, only bead curtains painted with various faded tropical scenes— palm trees and mountain ranges. A deep ditch on three sides protected the Purple Bar from flooding when the rain poured down on the town. It was really just a large hooch furnished with collapsible tables and chairs, all U.S. government-issue. A loud MASH generator outside ran the juice for the Purple Bar. Three table fans along the west side turned their faces left and right as if following the conversations.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s face it.” “Here’s to the Lucky Fucks.” “Who’s the Lucky Fucks?” “We’re all the Lucky Fucks because we pull about five patrols a

month in a totally friendly zone.” “About once a week, yeah, and the rest of the time we just stay out of

everybody’s way.” “That is our sacred duty. Gimme a toke.” “A what?” “A token? A cigarillo? Of the smoking variety? So I can smoke it?”

“Okay. You call them a token?”

“The trouble is, when you don’t pull duty, you spend your pay—that’s actually a horrible drawback.” “Because—I mean—let’s face it.” A table by the freezer served as the bar. On it were a portable record

player, a stack of albums, and a bar toy called a lava lamp, an amber jug in which you could observe the unfathomable almost cyclical but unrepeating lit-up movements of liquid wax in warm oil. The girl with red toenails controlled all the records. No requests allowed. If you asked her name, she said, “What name you like? I make my name for you.”

Blackflies and mosquitoes clouded the air. The papasan chased after them with a swatter and a can of Raid.

The tunnel rats got drunk and bought a few rounds in a friendly manner that made them no less scary. Only one was black, but they all talked like spades. They had eerie stuff to say. Philosophers. All God’s chillun got tunnels. Everybody got a tunnel to be motorvating. They drank and drank, drank until their eyes went completely flat and blind-looking, but they didn’t appear drunk otherwise, except that one of them when he had to piss just unzipped and did so right there at the table, in fact right on his own boots … You didn’t often see blacks and whites hanging around together … People kept to the categories …

Rflinh understood Skip’s disappointment, but life came as a storm, and the colonel, Skip’s uncle, was the landscape’s dominant figure. It made sense to take shelter in him. If the colonel wished his nephew out of the way, well and good. Thanks to the colonel, Minh himself no longer flew jets and had reason to hope he might survive this war. Nowadays he flew only helicopters, and only for the colonel. He went about often in civilian dress and spent many days free in Saigon. He had a girlfriend there, Miss Cam, a Catholic, and he went to Mass with Miss Cam on Sunday mornings and spent Sunday afternoons at her home in the company of her large family.

Flying took concentration, it wore on the mind. He enjoyed this ride as a passenger in the black Chevrolet. Nothing to do but look out at the murdered landscape off Route Twenty-two and wonder about Miss Cam.

Uncle Hao had warned Minh that Mr. Skip spoke Vietnamese. While driving the American to his new quarters in the region of Forgotten Mountain, therefore, he and his uncle didn’t speak much. Minh sat up front, Skip in the back with one of his footlockers. Uncle drove the car, both hands at the wheel, head forward, concentrating deeply, his mouth open like a child’s. The rain clattered on the Chevy’s black roof, a storm out of nowhere, a bit early this year. Uncle Hao tried speaking English, but Mr. Skip didn’t answer much. “Perhaps we shouldn’t talk.”