Dirty Work

by Larry Brown

  “Well they found em a tunnel. Snuck around there and looked and looked and found where it come out. About two hundred yards away. They had em a good rat so they carried me back and give me a.45 and set me down and said Now we fixing to go see if anybody’s home and you set here and watch and if he comes out you blow his ass off. Then they just left me. I got down next to this tree and leaned back against it, had that pistol in both hands. Hadn’t shot one since basic training. Had the safety off, had it aimed out there. Setting there shaking. Thinking Lord what am I gonna do? Didn’t know how long it would take. Hell. I was eighteen years old. I bet they hadn’t been gone ten minutes. I heard something bump down there in the ground. And I said Oh shit. I took my helmet off. The hole wasn’t but about twenty feet away. Well, this door come up, had grass and dirt and shit all over it, and I saw this black hair stick out. Just a little. Just had his eyes stuck up. Looking to see if anybody was waiting on him. But it opened away from me, see. Just luck I set down where I did. Behind him. And I knew he’d have to turn his whole head around and look behind him before he’d come on out. But I don’t know why, he didn’t do it. He kept that door pushed up for about a minute. Then there it come on up. And he come out. I guess he was in a hurry. Didn’t know we’d found his exit. Thought it was all right, I guess. And I knew I was fixing to kill him. Had it right on him. He come out and set on the edge of that hole, had his legs hanging down in it. He looked up and seen me. Didn’t try to do nothing. Just quit. I shot him one time in the chest and he just fell back. Just laid there. Dead as a hammer. It was just as quiet. Wasn’t a sound. Like I killed everything when I killed him. I kept telling myself he wasn’t gonna put his hands up and was fixing to reach for his weapon. What it was, I didn’t give him a chance to do nothing. I was so scared I killed him before he could move.

  “I felt bad about the first one. But it didn’t last long. Not after I had been out there for about a month. We had a guy got lost one night out with us. Got separated from us during a firefight. We found him about three days later, wired to a tree. Yeah. I quit feeling bad then. That was the first time I saw what they did to us if they caught us. I made up my mind they wouldn’t catch me alive. Always had me one round in my pocket for me. Yes sir.”

  “Would you have used it, though? Could you? Well. You can’t ever tell. All the guys who were shot down, look how many of them were captured. Aw hell, I know they executed some of them. Maybe a lot of them. You oughta heard my daddy talk about that in the war. He wouldn’t tell it unless he was drunk. But I’ve heard him tell it over and over and cry over it.

  “He said they had this one guy in their platoon who liked to do it. Hell yeah. Kill em. Way he told it, when the push was on, they didn’t have time to take any prisoners. They didn’t hardly have time to eat. Hell, man, they did worse stuff than that to us. To the Jews. Look at the Japanese. They liked to chop heads off.

  “Aw, he just said they had this guy in their platoon. He just told about this one day. The Germans were freezing, they didn’t have any clothes. We’d broken all their supply lines. I guess this was near the end, when the German army was in rout. They had more prisoners than they could take care of. I guess he knew they had to do it. Your values are not the same then. You want to live, right? Sometimes for you to live, somebody else has got to die. But his life’s not the same as yours then, is it? His life is less than yours, isn’t it?

  “I know where you been, man. I’ve decided it’s all the same. It’s just the places and the reasons that change. Or maybe just the enemy. Hell. Let’s open us another beer.

  “He knew about Leningrad, about them baking bread out of sawdust. They laid siege to it for over two years, the Germans did. It was something like a million starved to death. He knew the things that had gone on. But I guess he couldn’t help but feel sorry for human beings. He said a lot of their prisoners didn’t even have toes, man, they’d froze them off. Nothing to eat. And they would get down on their knees and hold out their hands asking for bread. But they couldn’t keep them. They had to go on.

  “He said there were fifteen or twenty that day. They’d held them since morning. And they were going to move out the next morning. They couldn’t take anybody with them. So he said the guy with the machine gun told them all to stand up, that they were taking them to get fed. I guess some of them knew enough German to talk to them. And he marched them off into the woods. He said some of them threw down things. Cigarette lighters, pictures of their kids. Medals. They were jabbering, he said, he didn’t know what they said. But they knew where they were going. He said not a one tried to run. Just kept their hands on their heads and went off with that guy. Off in the snow. He could still hear their feet. Crunching in the snow. Everybody was listening. He said it was quiet for a long time.

  “Then the machine gun cut loose. He could hear them screaming.

  “The war ruined my daddy as much as anything else. I mean his drinking and all. Mama never could figure that shit out. She always said it looked like after I’d seen what it did to him I wouldn’t do it.

  “Hell, I’m pretty bad to drink. I guess you can see that. I’m pretty bad to smoke that old shit, too. Life’s so easy then, though. Just for little periods. Smoovo, you know? Smoove everything over. You got another joint in that drawer? Did she leave us another one? Well let’s smoke that son of a bitch.

  “Here. Hold on. I got a light right here. Just let me get this. That window still open? Okay. Here. Go to it, man. Get all you want. Cause we need to talk. You know how long it’s been since I talked to anybody like this? I don’t know where I’m gonna be tomorrow, right? My little brother was just a kid when I went off. And everything was so fucked up in the world.

  “I’ll smoke a little of it. Not much. I got to be straight when she calls. I got to get my shit together and get out of here. I’ve got to get ahold of Beth, man. I got to see her. You dig where I’m coming from, man? I know you do. I know you do.”

  Now he’s in there, Bwana, and he’s packing some American lead in his ass and not in too good a humor so which one do you want, the .475 Roberts-Schnauzer or the 82/40 Shootmaster with the double ivory grips? I’m telling you, Bwana, he’s pissed off. Now you can get your white ass up a tree and let us beat the bushes and run him out or you can play the cool fool and come out needing about 967 stitches in your ass. Either way we fixing to bind him over cause we needing us some advance money. Now we having to put up tents which ain’t even in our contract and I thought I’d speak to you personally but I didn’t mean to pick a time like this. I mean, think about it, Bwana. We out here every day, we up before breakfast cooking impala liver and scrambling eggs and stuff and then we got to have all the dishes washed at night before we can even get us a rice beer. Now watch out there’s a bent piece of grass right there. And see that blood right there? Look.

  You got him, Bwana, come on.

  What I was saying. See, we even having to tote luggage and shit. We all… did you hear something? Whole lotta blood right here. He probably done gone. Or behind us one. And man we working some late hours. I mean … look here. See that bright red? Lung blood. Ain’t nothing to worry about, man, come on. You got the whole Remington Gunpowder Factory behind you. My daddy used to kill these things with a spear. Shit, he didn’t get no pussy till he was like twenty-nine. They kept him out there in the tall grass. Made him watch the cows. Shit, man, he knowed Hemingway when he was over here. Aw, yeah, Papa and my papa was like this close. They used to go lion hunting every day. He said Hemingway thought they ought not shoot so many lions cause they had so many cows. Something he said about rich folks the same the world over. I never did understand all of it. I think they used to set around the fire at night and talk.

  Was that twig moving just then?

  You smell something?

  Okay, Bwana. I see him. There he is. Damned if you didn’t make a lousy shot on him. You don’t see him? Shit, I see him. Hope he don’t see us. There he is, right there. Right there. Naaaaaaw, shit. Right t
here. See his leg laid out behind him? Now hell be quiet. You don’t see him? Hell. Right there. Man when you been to your ophthalmologist? Shit. Look right at that bush there. Now look down at the bottom of that bush. Now run your eyes sideways till you see that little tree root right there and you can see his toe. That’s what I’m looking at’s his toe. You see that little tree root? And you don’t see that toe? Bwana, I think I’m fixing to call me up a gunbearer with a little bit of smarts. Look, man. Put your nose right beside my finger and look down it. You don’t see him? Bwana, you making me nervous. You supposed to be able to take care of this shit.

  Come on, now. Anybody could see him.

  Rufus, bring me that damn.458 up here. Gonna have to shoot the son of a bitch myself I reckon. Man. Johnny Weissmuller would roll over in his grave.

  Come on, Bwana. All you got to do is aim about seven or eight feet in front of that toe. Candy ass. Gimme that damn gun. Go set your ass down over there on one of them damn anthills. Sheeit.

  Don’t know what I was doing that shit for. Couldn’t stand to hear him talk about that girl no more, I guess. I knew he was gonna wind up telling me they legged down. That stuff hard to take. And it wasn’t much time left anyway. I know how long a night is. Laid through enough of them. Wide awake. You sleep all day, you sleep enough, it do something to you. Don’t want to sleep then. And no place to run to but a place in your head.

  I know it would have been fine over there. Make you a little house out of sticks and don’t have no light bill, catch fish in the river, hunt for your food. That old sun looking about ten miles wide going down over the plains. And maybe be just standing out there with your spear in the late evening watching it go down.

  You’d be so happy. So happy in your own place.

  Something came over him, and I could tell that he’d left me. He turned his head away but he didn’t close his eyes. I knew he was tired. And if he didn’t want me to talk, I didn’t want to. I had my own thoughts. I couldn’t do anything for him. I wished there was something I could do for him, but there was nothing. There was too much in my head. The dope had started that. I could have talked nonstop to him, but he wasn’t listening anymore. The whole thing was depressing the shit out of me anyway. I didn’t want to be on a downer. I felt like I was starting to come out of a long dry spell where there had been nothing but that, and I didn’t want to go back to it. All I had to do was get back home, and everything would be all right. I knew that.

  I kept looking at him, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was looking at something else. I don’t think he was even seeing the place he was in. Not right then.

  I felt bad. I was pretty sure I was going home in the morning, and he was staying right where he was. For who knew how long? I could see him as an old man, with gray in his hair. And then I said, no, it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be right. I thought about what he had been leading up to earlier. And his voice, when it came, came in a whisper, but one in which I could hear every word.

  “What if a horse broke its leg? You’d shoot it, wouldn’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I might not. I might carry it to the goddamn vet if it was a good horse.”

  I could tell that pissed him off. “All right, then. A old broke-down horse thirty year old, blind, lame, not no good for nothing.”

  “Don’t start,” I said. “Don’t start on that again. I’m gonna drink a couple more beers and wait on my mama to call. Then I’m gonna tell her to send my brother up here after me. And if you want to talk, we’ll talk. But not about that.” I looked at him. “It’s murder anyway.”

  “It ain’t.”

  “Look, man, it’s murder. Any way you look at it. I’ve seen all that shit on TV. The law sees it as murder.”

  “I seen that shit on TV, too. I seen that shit on that TV till I’m sick of it. Law ain’t in here anyway. Ain’t no body gonna see you. What, you think somebody gonna see you?”

  I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. He made me feel so fucking guilty. “I ain’t doing it. Find somebody else. Cause I don’t want to hear no more of it. Nothing else. Crazy motherfucker. I ain’t it.”

  “Yeah you is,” he said. “I done been told. You it. I done had me a vision. Jesus done come to see me.”

  “What?” I said. “Jesus? You been talking to Jesus?”

  “Damn right.”

  Now I know you can talk to Jesus. You can talk to Him all day long. But I’ve always sort of figured it would be kind of hard to get Him to answer back.

  “That must be nice,” I said.

  “It is.”

  “Talk to Him regular, do you?”

  “When I get ready to.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Different stuff.”

  “You ever talk about murder any? What does He think about murder? Did you ask Him about that? About murder?”

  He took his time before he answered. “He knows what murder is. He was murdered Himself. He done been through a murder. He knows about suffering. He done been through that, too.”

  “What does He say about you?”

  “That I ain’t gone be here much longer.”

  “You talked to Him about me?”

  “A little.”

  “What does He say about me?”

  “You wasn’t the main subject we was talking about. Your name just come up in conversation. So don’t get the big head. We wasn’t mainly talking about you. We was mainly talking about me. You ain’t the one He come to see anyway. I’m the one He come to see.”

  “Did you ask Him about murder, though?”

  He was quiet for a long time. But finally, he said, “Yeah.”

  “And what did He say?”

  “He said I was treading on shaky ground.”

  I leaned back and got a sip of my beer. “All right, then. There’s your answer. Jesus don’t condone that kind of stuff. Hell, Braiden. You know that.”

  “This is different, though.”

  “How? How’s it different?”

  He turned and looked at me. “You pissing me off, man, you know that? Why you got to piss me off? Why don’t you just listen?”

  “I’ve been listening all night.”

  “Naw you ain’t. You been mostly talking. And when you wasn’t talking you wasn’t listening. Cause you ain’t heard a damn thing I been saying.”

  I started to laugh. But something inside me said, No, don’t do that. If you do that, you won’t hear what he’s wanting to tell you.

  “Then tell me,” I said.

  “All right. I will. First thing you got to realize is people can have things happen to them that ain’t their fault. Ain’t their fault but they got to pay for it anyway. You got a man out here goes and buys him a bottle of whiskey and gets out on the road drinking it and gets drunk. Now while this man doing this, this lady’s got her kids in the car bringing them home from the zoo or somewhere. They ain’t even touched a drop. Don’t even drink. They ain’t done nothing wrong. Go to church every Sunday. And this dude over here, he just getting drunker and drunker while they looking at the lions and stuff. Maybe he got some kind of problem, woman done left him or something, don’t matter. Maybe he ain’t got nothing wrong. Maybe he just wanting to get drunk cause he like to. All right. He runs head on into them cutting seventy miles an hour. Breaks his neck. Kills all the kids and cuts the lady’s legs off. Paralyzes him for the rest of his life. She in a wheelchair for the rest of her life and all her younguns dead. Who’s in the worst shape? She’d knowed that motherfucker was coming, she’da stayed home. Or took a different road. And you know he wishing for the rest of his life that he’d either not bought that whiskey or if he did buy it drink it at home or if he was gonna kill somebody then just drive his car into a big oak tree and kill himself and not fuck nobody else up. But it too late then. He got to live with it. The lady got to live with it. One little mistake. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she’da missed one red light it wouldn’t’ve happened. You see what I’m saying
? There is things you ain’t got no control over. And everybody want to blame it on God. Or say God done it. Say Oh God made that happen. It’s for the best. He got a plan in the scheme of everything. I’ve heard preachers get up and tell it. Stand up in church and say it. Listen, Walter. God don’t cause no shit like that to happen. You think He’d let some kid burn up in a house? When He could pick that house up and blow the fire away? He does it sometimes. They showed on TV other night a baby fell off a balcony in a hotel in Georgia, seventeen stories. A little old bitty baby. Now that baby was dead, by all rights, soon as he fell off. But naw. He hits in a palm tree, one hundred seventy feet down, bruises him up a little, falls down through the limbs, and lands in some nice soft grass. Now what does that say to the parents of that baby who wasn’t watching him when he crawled out on that balcony? That say The Lord watching you. That say Now I done give you back this baby that you shoulda lost. But I ain’t gonna do it again. It say I cain’t stop every bad thing that happens all over the world, cause that’s y’all. But I stepped in this one time for you. And don’t you forget it.

  “Now what you think them parents gonna be like with that baby from now on? Shit. They ain’t gonna let it out of their sight. When it gets sixteen or seventeen years old they’ll be trying to think of some excuse to make him stay at home. Cause they done seen what coulda been.