The Best of Lucius Shepard (43 page)

It
wasn’t until someone tried to pull me back that I realized I was moving toward
Stoner. I shook off whoever it was, walked to the edge of the village, and
called Stoner’s name. I didn’t really expect him to acknowledge me, and I’m not
clear as to what my motivations were: maybe it was just that since I had come
this far with him I didn’t want my efforts wasted. But I think it was something
more, some old loyalty resurrected, one I had denied while he was alive.

“Get
outta here!” I shouted. “Go on! Get out!”

He
turned that blind, fiery face toward me and despite its featurelessness, I
could read therein the record of his solitude, his fears concerning its
resolution. It was, I knew, a final sending. I sensed again his emptiness, but
it wasn’t so harrowing and hopeless as before; in it there was a measure of
determination, of purpose, and, too, a kind of...I’m tempted to say gratitude,
but in truth it was more a simple acknowledgment, like the wave of a hand given
by one workman to another after the completion of a difficult task.

“Go.”
I said it softly, the way you’d speak when urging a child to take his first
step, and Stoner walked away.

For
a few moments, though his legs moved, he didn’t appear to be making any
headway; his figure remained undiminished by distance. There was a tension in
the air, an almost impalpable disturbance that quickly evolved into a heated
pulse. One of the banana trees burst into flames, its leaves shriveling; a
second tree ignited, a third, and soon all those trees close to the demarcation
of that other world were burning like green ceremonial candles. The heat
intensified, and the veils of dust that blew toward me carried a stinging
residue of that heat; the sky for hundreds of feet above rippled as with the
effects of an immense conflagration.

I
stumbled back, tripped, and fell heavily. When I recovered I saw that Stoner
was receding, that the world into which he was traveling was receding with him,
or rather seeming to fold, to bisect and collapse around him: it looked as if
that plain dotted with fires were painted on a curtain, and as he pushed
forward, the fabric was drawn with him, its painted distances becoming
foreshortened, its perspectives exaggerated and surreal, molding into a tunnel
that conformed to his shape. His figure shrank to half its previous size, and
then—some limit reached, some barrier penetrated—the heat died away, its
dissipation accompanied by a seething hiss, and Stoner’s white fire began to
shine brighter and brighter, his form eroding in brightness. I had to shield my
eyes, then shut them; but even so, I could see the soundless explosion that
followed through my lids, and for several minutes I could make out its vague afterimage.
A blast of wind pressed me flat, hot at first, but blowing colder and colder,
setting my teeth to chattering. At last this subsided, and on opening my eyes I
found that Stoner had vanished, and where the plain had been now lay a wreckage
of yellow stone and seared banana trees, ringed by a few undamaged houses on
the perimeter.

The
only sound was the crackle of flames from the tin-roofed building. Moments
later, however, I heard a patter of applause. I looked behind me: the gooks
were all applauding Tuu, who was smiling and bowing like the author of a
successful play. I was shocked at their reaction. How could they be concerned
with accolades? Hadn’t they been dazzled, as I had, their humanity diminished
by the mystery and power of Stoner’s metamorphosis? I went over to them, and
drawing near, I overheard an officer congratulate Tuu on “another triumph.” It
took me a while to register the significance of those words, and when I did I
pushed through the group and confronted Tuu.

“Another
triumph’?” I said.

He
met my eyes, imperturbable. “I wasn’t aware you spoke our language, Mr. Puleo.”

“You’ve
done this before,” I said, getting angry. “Haven’t you?”

“Twice
before.” He tapped a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros; an officer rushed to
light it. “But never with an American spirit.”

“You
coulda killed me!” I shouted, lunging for him. Two soldiers came between us,
menacing me with their rifles.

Tuu
blew out a plume of smoke that seemed to give visible evidence of his self-satisfaction.
“I told you it was a risk,” he said. “Does it matter that I knew the extent of
the risk and you did not? You were in no greater danger because of that. We
were prepared to take steps if the situation warranted.”

“Don’t
bullshit me! You couldn’t have done nothin’ with Stoner!”

He
let a smile nick the corners of his mouth.

“You
had no right,” I said. “You—”

Tuu’s
face hardened. “We had no right to mislead you? Please, Mr. Puleo. Between our
peoples, deception is a tradition.”

I
fumed, wanting to get at him. Frustrated, I slugged my thigh with my fist, spun
on my heel, and walked off. The two soldiers caught up with me and blocked my
path. Furious, I swatted at their rifles; they disengaged their safeties and
aimed at my stomach.

“If
you wish to be alone,” Tuu called, “I have no objection to you taking a walk.
We have tests to complete. But please keep to the road. A car will come for
you.”

Before
the soldiers could step aside, I pushed past them.

“Keep
to the road, Mr. Puleo!” In Tuu’s voice was more than a touch of amusement. “If
you recall, we’re quite adept at tracking.”

*
* * *

Anger was good for me; it kept
my mind off what I had seen. I wasn’t ready to deal with Stoner’s evolution. I
wanted to consider things in simple terms: a man I had hated had died to the
world a second time and I had played a part in his release, a part in which I
had no reason to take pride or bear shame, because I had been manipulated every
step of the way. I was so full of anger, I must have done the first mile in
under fifteen minutes, the next in not much more. By then the sun had risen
above the treeline and I had worked up a sweat. Insects buzzed; monkeys
screamed. I slowed my pace and turned my head from side to side as I went, as
if I were walking point again. I had the idea my own ghost was walking with me,
shifting around inside and burning to get out on its own.

After
an hour or so I came to the temporary housing that had been erected for the
populace of Cam Le: thatched huts; scrawny dogs slinking and chickens pecking;
orange peels, palm litter, and piles of shit in the streets. Some old men
smoking pipes by a cookfire blinked at me. Three girls carrying plastic jugs
giggled, ran off behind a hut, and peeked back around the corner.

Vietnam.

I
thought about the way I’d used to sneer the word. ‘Nam, I’d say.
Viet-fucking-nam! Now it was spoken proudly, printed in Twentieth Century-Fox
monolithic capitals, brazen with hype. Perhaps between those two extremes was a
mode of expression that captured the ordinary reality of the place, the poverty
and peacefulness of this village; but if so, it wasn’t accessible to me.

Some
of the villagers were coming out of their doors to have a look at the stranger.
I wondered if any of them recognized me. Maybe, I thought, chuckling madly,
maybe if I bashed a couple on the head and screamed “Number Ten VC!” maybe then
they’d remember. I suddenly felt tired and empty, and I sat down by the road to
wait. I was so distracted, I didn’t notice at first that a number of flies had
mistaken me for a new and bigger piece of shit and were orbiting me, crawling
over my knuckles. I flicked them away, watched them spiral off and land on
other parts of my body. I got into controlling their patterns of flight, seeing
if I could make them all congregate on my left hand, which I kept still. Weird
shudders began passing through my chest, and the vacuum inside my head filled
with memories of Stoner, his bizarre dream, his terrible Valhalla. I tried to
banish them, but they stuck there, replaying themselves over and over. I
couldn’t order them, couldn’t derive any satisfaction from them. Like the
passage of a comet, Stoner’s escape from Cam Le had been a trivial cosmic
event, causing momentary awe and providing a few more worthless clues to the
nature of the absolute, but offering no human solutions. Nothing consequential
had changed for me: I was as fucked up as ever, as hard-core disoriented. The
buzzing sunlight grew hotter and hotter; the flies’ dance quickened in the rippling
air.

At
long last a dusty car with a gook corporal at the wheel pulled up beside me.
Fierman and Witcover were in back, and Witcover’s eye was discolored, swollen
shut. I went around to the passenger side, opened the front door, and heard
behind me a spit-filled explosive sound. Turning. I saw that a kid of about
eight or nine had jumped out of hiding to ambush me. He had a dirt-smeared
belly that popped from the waist of his ragged shorts, and he was aiming a toy
rifle made of sticks. He shot me again, jiggling the gun to simulate automatic
fire. Little monster with slit black eyes. Staring daggers at me, thinking I’d
killed his daddy. He probably would have loved it if I had keeled over,
clutching my chest: but I wasn’t in the mood. I pointed my finger, cocked the
thumb, and shot him down like a dog.

He
stared meanly and fired a third time: this was serious business, and he wanted
me to die. “Row-nal Ray-gun,” he said, and pretended to spit.

I
just laughed and climbed into the car. The gook corporal engaged the gears, and
we sped off into a boil of dust and light, as if—like Stoner—we were passing
through a metaphysical barrier between worlds. My head bounced against the back
of the seat, and with each impact I felt that my thoughts were clearing, that a
poisonous sediment was being jolted loose and flushed from my bloodstream.
Thick silence welled from the rear of the car, and not wanting to ride with
hostiles all the way to Saigon, I turned to Witcover and apologized for having
hit him. Pressure had done it to me, I told him. That, and bad memories of a
bad time. His features tightened into a sour knot and he looked out the window,
wholly unforgiving. But I refused to allow his response to disturb me—let him
have his petty hate, his grudge, for whatever good it would do him—and I turned
away to face the violent green sweep of the jungle, the great troubled rush of
the world ahead, with a heart that seemed lighter by an ounce of anger, by one
bitterness removed. To the end of that passion, at least, I had become
reconciled.

<>

*
* * *

Delta
Sly Honey

There was this guy I knew at Noc Linh, worked the
corpse detail, guy name of Randall J. Willingham, a skinny red-haired Southern
boy with a plague of freckles and eyes blue as poker chips, and sometimes when
he high, he’d wander up to the operations bunker and start spouting all kinds
of shit over the radio, telling about his hometown and his dog, his opinion of
the war (he was against it), and what it was like making love to his
girlfriend, talking real pretty and wistful about her ways, the things she
whisper and how she’d draw her knees up tight to her chest to let him in deep.
There was something pure and peaceful in his voice, his phrasing and listening
to him, you could feel the war draining out of you, and soon you’d be
remembering your own girl, your own dog and hometown, no: with heartsick
longing but with joy in knowing you’d had at least that much sweetness of life.
For many of us, his voice came to be the oracle of our luck, our survival, and
even the brass who tried to stop his broadcasts finally realized he was doing a
damn sight more good than any morale officer, and it got to where anytime the
war was going slow and there was some free air, they’d call Randall up and ask
if he felt in the mood to do a little talking.

The funny
thing was that except for when he had a mike in his hand--- you could hardly
drag a word out of Randall. He had been a loner from day one of his tour,
limiting his conversation to “Hey” and “How you?’ and such, and his celebrity
status caused him to become even less talkative This was best explained by what
he told us once over the air: “You meet ol’ Randall J. on the street, and you
gonna say, ‘Why that can’t be Randall J.! That dumb-lookin’ hillbilly couldn’t
recite the swearin’-in oath, let alone be the hottest damn radio personality in
South Vietnam!’ And you’d right on the money, ‘cause Randall J. don’t go more’n
double figure IQ, and he ain’t got the imagination of a stump, and if you
stopped to say ‘Howdy,’ chances are he’d be stuck for a response. But lemme
tell ya, when he puts his voice into a mike, ol’ Randall J. becomes one the
airwaves, and the light that’s been dark inside him goes bright. his spirit
streams out along Thunder Road and past the Napalm Coast, mixin’ with the ozone
and changin’ into Randall J. Willingham, the High Priest of the Soulful Truth
and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.” The base was situated on a gently
inclined hill set among other hills, all of which had once been part of the
Michelin rubber plantation, but now was almost completely defoliated,
transformed into dusty brown lumps. Nearly seven thousand men were stationed
there, living in bunkers and tens dotting the slopes, and the only building
with any degree of permanence was an outsized Quonset hut, but that that housed
the PX; it stood just inside