Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

grenade into a small garden, and after the bang two VC had dragged a man out of the place and into the bush, and he hadn’t looked too alive. James had been so shocked he hadn’t fired at the two rescuers. Who may or may not have been VC.

He’d been in possession of five twenty-round magazines and the lieutenant had brought twenty-eight more. He’d fired over three hundred rounds and thrown two grenades and traveled ten kilometers and killed one possible VC.

The others watched while Tommy took a cigarette and a Zippo from his breast pocket. He lit up and blew smoke with a certain authoritative air and said to his friend, “Did you kill any of them?”

“I think I did.” “Which one?” “I don’t know which one. How the fuck would I know that?” James had done a whole tour without injuring a single person, and

here he’d just said yes to his second trip around and already people were dead—and this guy, Tommy, singing a happy song about it. The medic went into the trees with a couple guys and pretty soon the

smell of green reefer came wafting over, but that was all right, let them wreck their minds, this was war.

The sun, falling farther to the west, came from behind a mountain and shone down the valley. Beyond the paddies the jungle boiled with soft colors. From far below came the squeals of a pig being slaughtered in preparation for Tet. One boy sang new words to a Beatles melody:

Close your eyes, spread your legs, And I’ll fertilize your eggs —

Another boy said, “Shit, you guys were fighting? We patrolled halfway down the mountain and back up again and never saw fuck-all, never pulled the trigger. We heard rockets, man, jets, choppers, bombs—never saw shit. We heard mortars, man. Never saw shit.”

A youngster came among them saying, “Hanson enters the area bringing good cheer to all,” and breaking up a six-pack of Budweiser among the nearest, who came at him like wild dogs.

“Who’s Hanson?” James asked.

“Me! I’m Hanson!”

He pictured Hanson’s head blowing apart. In basic he’d heard about people just dropping dead of a random bullet or hidden enemy sniper: thinking a thought, saying a word, dropping dead. Bending to tie your shoe, your head flying apart. He didn’t want to drop dead and he didn’t want to be around anyone else who dropped dead.

Black Man addressed them all. “You got to watch your karma in a time of war. You don’t rape the women or kill any of the animals, lest you get fucked around by the karma. Karma is like a wheel. You turn a wheel below you, it turns a wheel above you. And I’m beside you. Your karma touches mine. You must not, no never, disturb any of the karma.”

“What is that, a Black Muslim thing?”

“I am not a Muslim. I just been around and seen.”

He was talking complete shit that he would never have applied to himself. But it made James’s skin crawl all over to hear these warnings.

As soon as dark came to hide them from their superiors, the three from Echo found unoccupied hammocks in some trees on the perimeter’s east side, as far as they could get from where the enemy had come that afternoon, and fell out still wearing their boots and web belts. Until the owners came to turn them out, this was home. The night came down. If he lay on his side and looked at ground level, James made out bits of phosphorescence in the foliage; otherwise he’d have thought he’d gone blind. Mosquitoes whined at the netting. He positioned his repellent-soaked bandannas wherever his arms or cheek might touch it as he slept. Things crawled in the underbrush. Night was always like this. He’d killed someone today. Less than eight hours ago. During basic he hadn’t thought about killing anyone, only about getting killed, about cars he wouldn’t race and women he wouldn’t conquer, because he was dead. He heard a couple of guys talking over there. Too jazzed to sleep. When death was around, you got right down to your soul. These others had felt it too. He could hear it in their voices.

In the night James unzipped the netting and rolled out thinking it was because he had to pee, but then realized the mortars had started somewhere down the mountain again. He heard voices saying Fuck, Shit, saying, Go, go, go. Flares dangled in the night to the east, and in their dim amber illumination down the hill he saw the nude crags made by herbicides dancing with their own shadows. He saw muzzle-flash and heard the pop-pop-pop of AKs and the racket of M 16s. He heard jets. He heard choppers. He heard rockets. He froze beside his hammock with his weapon in his hands, scared and weepy, stupid and alone. Now he saw what a mortar explosion looked like—a red-orange splash as big as a house, and one second later the boom so loud it hurt his sinuses. And another hit him, and another, and one more, coming closer. Weapons fired all around him. A round ricocheted off his helmet and rifle.

“HEY HEY HEY!” Something had him by the belt and yanked him backward. It was Black Man. “What you doing?”

“Oh, no. Goddamm, goddamn, goddamn.”

“You running right at them! Get down, get down!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Oh, shit! He’s signaling.”

James said, “What?”

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

Black Man moved, and James tried to grab him by the back of his shirt, but he was gone, moving back. The whole perimeter was moving back. Nash was beside him, a ghost in the light of flares. “Stop shooting! That’s us! That’s us!” Was I shooting? James asked, but heard nothing. It was all mental telepathy. He moved without touching the ground. To where? To here, right here. Still with Nash and Black Man. Nash said, “Who are these people?”

“They’s a spotter on that other peak,” Black Man said. “They stairstepping those mortars on us.”

Voices: “Where’s my RTO! RADIO RADIO RADIO!”

“Here here here!”

“Tell them up there we’re hot. Nobody comes down!”

“Say again say again!”

“Stay off that bull’s-eye! We’re hot! We’re hot!”

James lay on his belly clutching at dirt. The earth bounced beneath him. He couldn’t stay on it. He could hardly breathe. “What do these motherfuckers want!” James asked, am I moving? The dark was thick enough to drink and

streaked with the afterimages of tracers and muzzle-flash. Now it was quiet. Not even a bug droning. In such unprecedented silence James could tell just from the tiny sound his clip made as the sling ticked against it that the clip was empty, whereas only two minutes ago the surrounding noise had been so magnificent he couldn’t hear his own screaming. In this new silence he didn’t want to replace the clip for fear all the senses of the enemy would lock on to the sound and he’d be shredded, shredded, shredded.

Two kilometers east across the darkness lay another mountain, he didn’t know its name, he’d never thought about it, but now there was gunfire over there, a rippling, insignificant sound. More on a hillside below, still not in his world, but closer, crisp and distinct. His hearing was clear as long as he didn’t have to fire himself.

From the west came jets. “These fuckers are dead fuckers now,” somebody said. Rockets lit up the whole mountainside beneath them and the ceiling of foliage above their heads.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” somebody yelled, thumping over the ground. “It’s just Hanson!” This person flopped out next to James and said, “Hanson says fuck this shit.”

As far as James could tell there were six of them, counting this Hanson, laid out on their bellies in the bush, just above a drop. In the silence between air strikes below on the mountain he spoke

quietly, like a golf-game announcer during a tense moment on the putting green: “Hanson keeps low. Hanson feels the sweat running down his backbone. Hanson’s thumb is on the safe, his finger’s on the trigger. If it comes, the enemy will feel sincerely fucked with. Hanson will explode their faces. Hanson’s finger licks the trigger like a clit. Hanson loves his weapon like a pussy. Hanson wants to go home. Hanson wants to smell clean sheets. Clean sheets in Alabama. Not them stinky sour ones in Vietnam.”