Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

It was the best he’d ever tasted. The worst and the best.

James dreamed he couldn’t find his car. The parking lot changed into a village of narrow curving streets. He didn’t want to ask for help, because he carried his M16, and these people might arrest him. Time was running out. That’s what he remembered when he woke on the mat in his saturated civvies, though the dream had held a million peripherals, avenues of twisted events and unspoken complications. He dreamed a great deal each night. It felt like work. Sleeping made him tired.

He got up to start the air conditioner, but there wasn’t one. A jukebox downstairs thumped under his feet. A mosquito net hung from nails over the open window. He’d thought it was day, but it was only the yellow bulbs of a sign outside. He found his blue-black loafers and went down the stairs on the side of the building for a beer. This was a cul-de-sac, unpaved, and he had to watch the mud. The Bar Jolly Blue. He sat with some guys, also from the Twenty-fifth, also Recon, but bad boys, Lurps. They gave him some speed and he woke right up. There weren’t any women with them. Their eyes shone like animals’. These guys took acid, things that kinked up their nerves, turned their brains inside out. “Come with us. We just go. We run the night. We take speed. We fuck. We kill. We destroy.” He wanted to make things happen but he couldn’t. He realized he would just have to go with these guys, go LRRP, transfer over. And his eyes would be transformed like theirs. He said, Do you know Black Man? “Yeah,” they said, “we know Black Man, he runs with us.” He can show me how to transfer, James said. “Then do it, do it, haven’t you done everything else but this?” Yeah, sure, he said, it’s time to get it on with the monsters.

“You got some time to go?”

“I’m in my second tour.”

“They give you home leave?”

“I don’t want home leave.”

“Don’t you want to see home?”

“This war is my home.”

“Good. Go home you end up playing Solitary till you wear the faces off. Deck after deck. Sitting in the window doing it.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the shit that goes through my head on a daily basis is against the law,” one said. “But not here. Here the shit in my head is the law and nothing but the law.”

“They got theories of war, man. Theories. We can’t have that. Can’t have that here. We got a mission. Ain’t no war. Mission.”

“Moving and killing, right?”

“You got it. This motherfucker has got it.”

“Fucking A.” “So keep it.” “You know what a double veteran is? You fuck a woman and then you

X her.” “Everybody here is double veterans.” “Yeah?” “Here’s to every dead motherfucker.” They left, and he drank his beer and watched a go-go girl with bruises

on her legs. Couple of mosquitoes bumping stupidly along the wall beside his head. Otherwise he had the moment to himself. The music pounded, country stuff, psychedelic stuff, the Rolling Stones. On the bar, and behind the bar—the slow humping dance of a lava lamp, a scintillating waterfall in a Hamm’s Beer sign, a kaleidoscopic clock face broadcasting the minutes, the little lit shrines to the religion.

I can’t figure out is it too real, or not real enough, said James to someone … or someone to James… Then in comes the colonel, the civilian, the good-as-CO of Company D, the more or less stepdad of Echo Recon.

He filled the doorway, shirt open, breathing convulsively. Arms flung around two small whores who smiled showing gold bridgework. He didn’t look at all squared away. “Help me, sojer.”

“Sit him over here.”

They helped him into the mashed seat of the only booth—everything else was tables. He signaled for a drink. Insofar as the somber light allowed, his face looked purple and then very pale. One of the girls squeezed in beside him and opened his shirt wider and wiped at his pale sweaty chest, covered with silvery hair.

“I’m in a coronary medical situation.” “Should I get some help?” “Sit down, sit down. I’m having a medical situation but mostly I’m

overheated and poisoned by this goddamn rice brandy. You ask for Bushmills, they hand you Coke full of rice brandy. That concoction ain’t for drinking. It’ll sure kill warts, though.”

“Yes, sir.” “I’m old army air force, but I respect the infantry.” “I know you, sir. I’m with Echo Recon.” “It’s honorable to be a foot soldier.”

“I gotta believe you.” “If you ever get a wart, nick it with a razor and soak it ten minutes in

rice brandy.” “Yes, sir, I will.” “Yes, indeed. Echo. Sure thing. You’re my tunnel man since I lost the

Kootchy Kooties.” “Well, I went down in a couple tunnels is all, seems like. Three tun

nels.” “That counts. Three’s a good number.” “It ain’t much.” “Jesus, you’re the biggest tunnel man I’ve ever seen.” “I ain’t that big.” “For tunnels you are.” “Sir, do you know about Sergeant Harmon?” “He’s been hurt, I understand.” “Yes, sir, paralyzed clear up to his neck.” “Paralyzed? Jesus God.” “Clear up to his neck. He’s tore up from the floor up.” “It’s a goddamn shame.” “I’m going to shift over to the Lurps. I mean to hurt these bastards.” “There’s no shame in hating, son, not in a war.” “I ain’t your son.” “Forgive the presumption.” “I’m drinking too hard tonight.” “I feel for your loss. The sergeant’s a fine man.” “Where’d the Kooties get to, sir?” “I’m denied the use of them. A couple rotated out. The whole LZ is

gonna go. No more Kooties. No more chopper.” “I thought so. I wasn’t seeing you awhile.” “It’s all collapsing. At home and abroad. At home I believe my wife

and my little girl are banging the same mulatto activist beatnik peace

nik.” “I’d just as soon hang around this mess.” “I’m sorry. I’m drunk and sick and embarrassing. —I was saying …

hatred. Yessiree. It’s love of country that sends us forth, but sooner or

later vengeance is the core motive.” James assumed the colonel knew his subject. Here was a fat-ass civilian discussing warts, and here also a living legend—a life of blood and

war and pussy. “Did you go to tunnel school?” “No.” “You want us to send you?” “I want Lurp training.” “How long have you been around?” “I’m one month into my second tour. Into number two.” “If you take the training, they’ll probably want you for a third tour.” “That’s fine. And can you fix this AWOL thing?” “AWOL?” “I’m three weeks missing, is the truth of it.” “You go back to your platoon tomorrow, first thing.” “Yes, sir.” “Get cleaned up and go back.” “First thing tomorrow. Yes, sir.” “We’ll fix it and put you on the LRRP training.”

Th e summer rains had held off. But today it rained.

Skip walked several kilometers alone from a village he’d visited with Pčre Patrice. Not quite 10:00 a.m. now by his air force wrist watch, a gift from the colonel in his boyhood … Martin Luther King had been killed. Robert Kennedy had been killed. The North Koreans still held hostage an American naval vessel and her crew. The Marines besieged at Khe Sanh, the infantry slaughtering the whole village of My Lai, hirsute, self-righteous idiots marching in the streets of Chicago. Among the hairy ones the bloody failure of January’s Tet Offensive had resounded as a spiritual victory. And then in May a second countrywide push, feebler, but nearly as resonant. He devoured Time and Newsweek and found it all written down there, yet these events seemed improbable, fictitious. In six or seven months the homeland from which he was exiled had sunk in the ocean of its future history. Clements, Kansas, remained as it had been, of that he could be confident; to Clements, Kansas, only one summer could come, with its noisy locusts and blackbirds, and the drifting fragrances of baking and soap suds and mown alfalfa, and the brilliant actuality of childhood. Gone, stupidly gone —not the summer, but himself. Departed, exposed, transfigured. Overridden and converted, if it came to that. He loved and fought for a memory. The world inheriting this memory had a right, he couldn’t help seeing, to make its way unbeholden to assassinated ideals. Meanwhile, the air around him glittered with an invasion of delicate insects. Closer to the ground the population thickened—ducks and chickens, children, dogs, cats, tiny potbellied pigs. He’d ridden out on the back of the priest’s motor scooter after stories and sayings among the scattered parishioners. He’d collected a single tale from an old woman, a Catholic, a friend of the priest. Pčre Patrice had continued west while Skip headed home on foot.