Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

The dog was in the yard now lifting a leg at one of three papaya trees. Nearby Mr. Tho supported himself with the handle of a rake as he crouched to put a match to a pile of household rubbish. Skip admired the papayas with their slender forms and tufted crowns and the fruit clustered around their throats … The old papasan stepped back and watched, making sure of the flame while his reconstituted employer, curled tightly as a doughnut, bit at vermin around the base of his tail.

“Excuse me, Mr. Skip.” Mrs. Diu was still at his shoulder. “You want supper?”

“Let me think about it. I’ll be there in a minute.”

One thing at a time. Maybe he’d send for Pčre Patrice, have him to supper. As a kind of penance, in the presence of the priest, he would force down a sickening meal. But he’d nodded off, and reached this decision while dreaming. He woke at 9:00 p.m. by his air force wristwatch. Dark like a velvet gauze, the burn pile’s embers, the canine Bouquet snoring at his feet. He was hungry, but life was ludicrous. He went to bed.

Th e Cherry Loot was a tight, muscular, earnest youth with the shirt of his fatigues tucked and the waist pulled up too high. He didn’t smoke, and he drank very frugally, with suspicion. He talked a lot about microbes. Tropical diseases occupied his mind. Apparently he’d read a book about swift, horrific things they couldn’t vaccinate against. As for the enemy, he hardly believed in their existence. They didn’t frighten him at all.

Cherry Loot told Sergeant Burke, “I’m gonna make the best of this fuck-a-monkey show. Don’t mean fuck to me if it’s illegal, unjustified, and sinful. Today we’re heroes, tomorrow we’re the Nazis. You never know. Nobody on this ball knows shit.” It was an attitude refreshing if not outright inspiring. Everybody else was headed the other way. “I was dating Darlene Taylor until this hippie named Michael Cook took her to a party and gave her drugs and fucked her and turned her into a hippie, and if Michael the evil hippie is against this war, then I am goddamn for it. That’s all I have to know.” The Cherry Loot didn’t seem the least bit cherry. He didn’t know what country he was in, but he was at home in the universe.

He was fast, precise, devoted. It took him two days to catch up to the time zone, and on the morning of the third he sprang awake, looked around with clear eyes, and demanded to have brought before him any material and personnel that might enlarge his understanding of the local VC tunnels. This came down to a few of the guys and a couple of wrinkled drawings the Cowboy Corporal had made for the old, the previous, the former, the Screwy Loot.

Screwy Loot, it was said, had gone to Tan Son Nhut, hitched a ride on a MAC flight to Honolulu, and melted away into the gigantic heaven of stateside.

Cherry Loot spent a morning in his Quonset hut with the Cowboy Corporal’s drawings spread out on the collapsible table serving as his desk. He demanded creative input from his sergeant. “Isn’t there some radar or sonar we can use to deal effectively with this shit? I mean, we only want to know where these tunnels are located. We don’t have to crawl around inside to figure that out, do we? Are we bugs or snakes or some shit like that? Or are we upright rational humans on two legs with brains so we can attack this problem?”

“I don’t think we really have to do this, sir.”

“What?”

“I don’t think we actually have to map these holes.”

“I’m under express orders to accomplish this. It’s our whole purpose for being here. Otherwise you know what we do? We get down along Route One and breathe some stuff s gonna kill us. That’s the alternative assignment. Clouds of God-knows-what that’s gonna fuse up your lungs and no doubt sterilize your balls.”

“Express orders, sir, I mean, sir, do you mean written?”

“I mean they are clearly expressed inside my mind as I interpret them. Do you want me to hassle somebody to clarify in writing? Because ROTC didn’t teach me fiick-your-mother about how to survive one day in this shit but they did teach me not to go yanking the coat of my superiors or catch their attention in any way.”

“I encourage you to make that policy, sir,” Burke said. “But there’s squads they call them tunnel rats will go down in there for you. I can check if they can get assigned over here.”

“We’re under Psy Ops-CIA till September first, then there’s a chance we all go home. I’m saying a chance.”

“Sir. Consensus is that Colonel F.X. has ripped his stitches.” “Leave it alone. You don’t know the history of this thing.” Cherry Loot paced the camp hatless under the smoldering clouds of

noon. He seemed profoundly afraid, but not of the war or of his responsibilities in it. Of something bigger. Cosmically worried.

Echo found very irritating the difference in the way litter was handled by Screwy Loot and by Cherry Loot. Screwy had just let the trash scatter itself around until the sergeant, at first Harmon and then Ames and finally Sergeant Burke, hustled them to police the area, but Cherry wants it done by the clock, everything tick-tock, wants it all relentlessly squared away. In a number of ways the Cherry Loot was screwier than the Screwy Loot. Screwy Loot hadn’t been entirely irrational about garbage. Just extremely twitchy about all else.

Blac k Man was snapping his fingers, wrinkling his face, squinting his eyes, then popping them wide—all ripped up over whatever he was trying to get across even as James was still approaching the Cherry Loot’s Quonset hut—saying to James:

“And you go up against Mr. Charlie, right into him, right through each other, and you swap yourselves and it ain’t you coming up here with us, man, with your buddies. It’s him. And it ain’t him coming up over there and getting with the other Charlies, squatting down and shovel that sticky rice up into their face, man, it ain’t him. It’s you. Oh, they just mickey mousing us every which goddamn way.”

“Black Man.” “Yeah, baby.” “It’s me.” “Oh. Oh. Shit, yes. Yes, it is. You going in to see the new boy?” “Looks like it.” Black Man chewed his lips nonstop today. “He’s cherry but he act

like he don’t know it.” James said, “How’s it going?” “Okay. Okay. One or two demons have quit eating me.” James hadn’t seen Black Man in a long time. Since Tet. “I thought you were gone.”

“It wasn’t nothing. All that blood turned out to be from one little vein

or something. Shit. Didn’t you hear I was dead almost?” “You got hit?” “No. I got cut over there at the Tu Do Bar. Nigger followed me in the

John.” “You got in a knife fight?” “Muhfucker broke a bottle and jabbed my shoulder right here while

I was pissing.” “You get a Purple Heart for that shit?” “Almost ate it for my muhfucking country, now I’m back here

smelling you. And you stink.” “I didn’t know nothing about it.” Black Man’s eyeballs were shaking in his head. James said, “I saw the sarge. Remember Sergeant Harmon? Staff

Sergeant Harmon?” “Yeah. Harmon. Sarge. Yeah. You saw him? Just now?” “No. Right after.” “Right after the bad thing?” “Yeah,” James said. They stood in the parallelogram of shade on the Quonset hut’s east

ern side. James sat down and leaned back against the wall, but Black

Man couldn’t sit. “Hey, man. Tell me your name.” “You dreamin’!” “Please tell me at least your first name.” “Charles. Charles Blackman.” “Blackman?” “That’s what I mean. That shit right there. Name like that.” “Gah-damn. Name like that.” “You going in to see the New Loot?”

ŤT yy

1 guess. “He got some moves, baby.” “Yeah, he’s a little ball of fire.” “Yeah. Ball of fire.” “Charles Blackman.” “See?” “I guess there’s white guys named Whiteman.”