Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

Th e Screwy Loot took a squad on patrol, and the first thing his bad luck did for them was to run them across a spider-hole with two dead VC down in it. Screwy found it all by himself when, leaving the trail to get around a fallen tree, he plunged his foot through the thatch and onto the head of a corpse. Several of Echo pushed the tree trunk aside and pried up the broken lid of bamboo and grass to find the dead men, one on top of the other, waterlogged and stinking, their eye sockets swarming with ants. The tree had toppled over to trap them inside and the groundwater had come up during the night, had risen so fast, apparently, they’d hardly begun digging their way out before they were drowned. Screwy Loot wanted to question everybody in the area. The first man they approached, coming back from the field with a bundle of kindling on his shoulder, threw down his load and took off running with two of Echo on his heels. The others squatted on their own heels and waited. “This mountain is taking a shit on us,” Screwy Loot said. Most of them hadn’t been around long enough to appreciate the changes in the air. With Flatt and Jollet gone and people transferring in and out, the platoon’s oldest were Specialist Fourth Class Houston, known as Cowboy, and Black Man, the nameless sergeant. By now there was another black guy too, Everett, a PFC, who answered to his name, but who spoke only to Black Man, and very softly, so nobody else could hear. “Speaking of taking a shit,” said Screwy Loot, and headed off behind a bush and was coming out buckling up when the two runners returned, without the local.

“No luck?”

He s gone.

“He’s underground, sir.”

“We think he is.”

“There’s a tunnel, sir.”

“Fuck. Don’t tell the colonel,” the Loot said.

“It’s right over here.”

The whole squad stood around what certainly looked like a two-bytwo-foot opening to the world beneath. Screwy Loot got on his knees and poked his flashlight down into it and got up quickly. “Yeah, that’s how they are. They go three feet, four feet down and take a header. Back off,” he told them, and unpinned a grenade, rolled it into the hole, and ran like hell. The bang sounded small and muffled. Dirt erupted and rained down. “Fuck if I know,” he said. He put two men on the hole, and he and the others returned to the corpses.

Here on the mountain’s south side they patrolled what amounted to a roadway. For five kilometers a D6 bulldozer had been able to widen the trail out of Echo Base. After that it was cliff and ravine, impassable by vehicle. Screwy Loot radioed for Sergeant Harmon, who drove out in a jeep. “I don’t want these dead fuckers here,” he told Harmon. “Drag them away. If there’s Charlie on my mountain, I want him to wonder did we take these guys alive. See,” he told the others, “that’s Psy Ops: fuck with Charlie’s brain.”

He and the sergeant sat in the jeep eating Crations until the others hit on the notion of blowing the local man out of the tunnel —if he was in there—with gasoline.

Three men hoisted a fifty-five-gallon drum, half full, from the rear of the vehicle and rolled it off the trail and over to the tunnel’s entrance, the barrel zigging and zagging, the men swearing and hacking at vegetation. All the others came to observe. Two men tipped the container over the hole and the third rapped on the bung with the butt of his M16 to loosen it.

Screwy Loot marched over quickly as soon as he saw this. Let his

mouth drop open slightly and jutted his head, chastising without speaking. “We are in a process of elimination,” the man explained. “Wayne, your weapon is not a sledgehammer.” “Sorry, sir. But I just mean we’re gonna blow that Gook fucker out of

there.”

They unscrewed the bung and emptied the acrid contents into the hole, and PFC Wayne, a big, empty-headed boy from Iowa, straddled the darkness, struck a match, and dropped it in. The force of the blast shot him into the air, over their heads, and down through the treetops, howling like artillery.

“Who’s next?” Sergeant Harmon said. PFC Wayne’s two partners rushed to find him. He came limping

back between them. “You forgot to say, Tire in the hole!’ ” He didn’t seem seriously hurt. “I’m famous now,” was all he said. “The colonel won’t like it you fucked up his tunnel,” Black Man said

to Screwy Loot. Screwy Loot put his arm around Black Man’s shoulders, while the

sarge came around facing his front. “Somebody should check on the status of that hole.” “Why don’t you go down, Black Man?” “Me?” “Yeah. Nip down there, take a look-see.” “See is it the one you don’t come out of.” “Ain’t no tunnel left, Lieutenant, sir.” Screwy Loot drew Black Man close by his shoulders and said, “All

god’s chillun got tunnels.”

Cowboy spoke up: “I guess I’ll go on down.” The squad looked at him—all heads turning. Then all looked else

where. Up, down, over there somewhere. “Got us a volunteer,” the sergeant said. Screwy Loot told Cowboy, “We’ll make the colonel happy.” These days Echo didn’t see much of the colonel. The new ones had

only glimpsed him from a distance. Cowboy asked Harmon, “Is he a real

colonel?” “Well, he ain’t just a figment of my mind.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “I guess that means he’s real, sojer. I guess if he stepped on your fin

gers, you’d yell out.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cowboy said. “I’ve sat on Santa Claus’s lap more times than I’ve laid eyes on that colonel. So to me he ain’t as real as Santa Claus, now, is he?”

“Here.” Harmon handed him his own flashlight. “Take an extra along.” Cowboy turned on the light and went down headfirst, the way some of them had seen the Kootchie Kooties do it.

When he’d gone all the way in, when there was nothing left of him to see, the others stood around and waited. Going down into that worldwide mystery had to produce some respect, if not for his prudence, at least for the level of his insanity.

There were stories that the tunnels went for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, piles of the offal from VC atrocities, dead babies, assassinated priests.

“Get my feet,” he shouted from down in the mouth. They pulled him out by the ankles. He hadn’t been able to turn

around. “It’s caved in about twenty yards along,” he told the Loot. “Nobody in there?” “Not since I came out,” Cowboy said.

Sh e woke about five in her room in the back of the house. The windows were closed but she heard coyotes yipping and weeping in the distance, to the east, toward the Superstitions. No work today. She lay in bed and prayed. May Burris start the New Year with better intentions toward school, and may he find the Lord in his heart. May Bill find joy in his duties, and may he find the Lord in his heart. May James be kept safe in war, and may he find the Lord in his heart. The coyotes sounded like hurt dogs. They agitated plainly for Christ’s return. May they not be heard. May Christ stay his feet till the last soul on earth be saved. The last soul saved might be one of her boys. Of that there was every indication.

She put her feet on the floor and put on a flannel shirt over her nightgown. Still well dark. She lay back down and a bit later realized she’d slept again. No extra dreams. The clock ticked. Its radium dials said not quite six. She rose and found her slippers.

In the kitchen she put down a few drops of Carnation milk in a saucer for the cat. May the coyotes not get her. Or the toms. They didn’t need kittens around here … Still dark. Burris had been up half the night watching fright shows on the television. There was nothing she could do to keep him from the snares.