Sympathy for the Devil

by Kent Anderson

  The audience began to cheer and make the peace sign, jumping up, thrusting their fingers into the air like crippled Nazi salutes, shouting, “All right!” “There it is.” “We owe it to ourselves!”

  “Fuck you,” Quinn shouted, and held up a “fuck peace” sign, the index, middle, and ring finger.

  Hanson grinned. If they didn’t like the war, what were they doing here? He began to laugh at the stupid peace sign. It was good to be back in a world that made some sense, with Quinn and Silver.

  He was back home. He could do anything he wanted to now that he was home.

  “What a bunch of fucking fairies,” Quinn said. “Let’s get outta here and go find a bar.” When he stood and pushed his chair back, people around him gave him room. He spotted a fat, pale soldier wearing a drip-dry PX sportshirt who was crouched in the aisle taking photos with a Polaroid camera.

  “Hey, doofus,” he yelled at him. “Hey,” he shouted, prodding him in the back with the toe of his boot. The soldier looked around, annoyed, then looked up and almost fell over.

  “Hey,” Quinn said, “take our picture,” jabbing his finger at his own chest and nodding at Hanson and Silver.

  “Uh, jeeze, Sarge, I’m really short on film.”

  “Take the picture or I’ll kill you. I’ll fuckin’ kill you, okay? I’ll beat you to death.”

  Hanson and Silver nodded, agreeing. “Uh-huh.”

  They posed for the picture, standing with their arms around each other.

  “Now take the fucker,” Quinn said.

  He snapped the picture, peeled it off, and gave it to Quinn, then started to walk away.

  “Wait one, bud,” Quinn said. “I want to be sure this one came out okay. These goddamn Polaroids fuck up half the time.”

  They watched the image float onto the film, then sharpen. The three of them standing close, with boozy smiles, captured as they had been thirty seconds before. It had that quality of having happened long ago to three people Hanson didn’t know. Quinn, the biggest, in the middle, his chin thrust toward the camera. Silver, his glasses flashing, laughing like a blind man. And Hanson, slightly out of focus, looking at something over the photographer’s shoulder, wearing civilian clothes, blue jeans, and a green Hawaiian shirt.

  The three of them found their way to the 3rd Mech NCO club and started drinking boilermakers, shots of Chivas and Budweiser. Silver sat studying the photo of the three of them.

  “You guys want this picture?” he asked.

  Hanson shook his head, and Quinn said, “Naw, it’s fucked-up looking.”

  Silver held a corner of the photo over the red candle on the table, watched it burn, then dropped the last bit of it in an ashtray.

  “There were days back home,” Hanson said, breaking the silence, “when I wouldn’t go outside. I was afraid to go outside. Afraid I’d kill somebody and go to jail. Somebody would break in front of me in line at the grocery store, or bump into me, and I was ready to kill ’em. And nobody even noticed.

  “Sometimes I’d get out the door and down the steps, and think, Huh-uh, no, not today, and kind of ease my way back up into the house. I mean, some goddamn dog could bark at me and I’d be pissed off the rest of the day, wanting to kill the dog. If I got drunk enough, I could go out after dark, but I stayed inside during the day.”

  Quinn had turned even gloomier and sat staring from the table toward the crowded bar. “Fuck ’em,” he said. “You shoulda just kicked all their asses.”

  Quinn slumped there in silence, then said, “You know what I fuckin’ hate back there? You know? I hate it when some motherfucker you don’t even know says hello. You’re walking along and some dipshit you never even saw before walks past and says ‘hello.’ Hello my ass. What am I supposed to do? Say hello, nice weather, or some bullshit like that? If you don’t know me, you got nothing to say that I want to fuckin’ hear. Right? Shit!”

  Silver and Hanson looked at each other, and Silver rolled his eyes.

  “Who do you want me to punch out?” Quinn said, looking at Hanson, then back to the bar.

  “Nobody.”

  “Come on. For a coming-home present. Pick one.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Hey. Don’t tell me, ‘forget it.’ Am I supposed to just go ‘Hu, click, buzz, oops, okay, boss, I’ll just forget whatever the fuck I was thinking’ because you told me to? Nobody tells me, ‘forget it,’ when…”

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I apologize. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “And don’t be interrupting me like that, either,” Quinn said.

  “Yes sir, your honor.”

  “How about that college boy up there in the pretty blue shirt?”

  “How do you know he’s a college boy?”

  “Come on. I know. I know. He talks too much. He thinks he’s hot shit when he don’t know zip. Because he’s got that pretty peaches-and-cream complexion.”

  Hanson dimpled his cheeks with his forefingers.

  “That’s right,” Quinn said, patting his own cheeks with his huge hands, a gesture that made Hanson think of a crowded cattle pen. “Sensitive-looking, just like you. Except something went right with you. You got rehabilitated over here or something.

  “You ever notice how, in the paper, when somebody gets arrested, or kills somebody, the paper always says, ‘So-and-so, high school dropout.’ What does that have to do with anything? Huh? Tell me that? They never say, ‘So-and-so, college boy.’ Always the same old bullshit, ‘High school dropout arrested for senseless murder.’ It’s the college boys who must commit the sensible fucking murders, I guess, ’cause they do it with a college degree.

  “That guy up there’s the kind of fuck that used to come and watch me play football, then talk to his fraternity buddies about what I did wrong, after the game’s over. When he don’t know shit. That fuckin’ pisses me off,” he said, crushing his beer can.

  “Jesus,” Hanson said, “go ahead then, before you jump on me and I have to stomp you.”

  Quinn stood up, grinned, and said, “Never happen, little buddy. You know you don’t have enough sand in your pockets.”

  He strolled over to the bar where the “college boy,” a Specialist Four, was talking to two other radio technicians, his back to Quinn. Quinn jabbed him in the back, said, “Hey, fraternity boy,” and braced himself.

  The Spec Four turned, and Quinn hit him square in the face. Spit and snot sprayed his friends as he fell against the bar and then down on the floor, where he began to moan and bleed.

  “What have you got to say about that, then, Mister College,” Quinn shouted, kicking him. “Try this on.”

  Then Hanson and Silver were there.

  “He’s just drunk, just drunk,” Silver said to the Spec Four’s friends. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Come on, man,” Hanson said. “That’s enough.”

  Quinn straight-armed Hanson against the bar and kicked the Spec Four again.

  Hanson jumped on Quinn’s back and wrapped his right arm around Quinn’s neck, catching his throat in the V of his elbow. He grabbed his own right wrist with his other hand and began to squeeze, cutting off the blood going to Quinn’s brain. Quinn bucked like a horse and swung backward with hammer blows to Hanson’s kidneys, but he began to weaken, then fell over on top of Hanson.

  Hanson and Silver picked Quinn up and walked him out of the bar, where he began to straighten up, then swing wildly at both of them. He shook his head and said, “What happened?”

  “You almost killed him, man,” Silver said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here before they call an MP or some goddamn thing.”

  “Fuck him,” Quinn shouted. “Fuck him. Good. Pretty little college prick knows what it feels like to be scared now. He asked for it and he fuckin’ got it.”

  He walked a few steps, then said, “Did you see that little doofus’s nose when I connected? It exploded. Like a fuckin’ tomato.”

  As they passed the mess hall, a shadow detached from the building and
followed them, then raced past Silver, snarling and barking. Silver spun and kicked at the dog as it ran back into the dark.

  “Goddamn,” Silver shouted. “Scared the shit out of me. Goddamn mess sergeant’s dog. Eats better than the troops in the field do. Lard-ass mess sergeant keeps it ’cause it’s the only thing in the world that could love him. A dog lover. You can be ugly and stupid, lazy and a liar. You can be a goddamn child molester and if you feed a dog, it loves you. Blackie, that’s his name. Lot of imagination. If it was white, he’d be Whitey. Old Blue. Old Yeller. Blaze. Red.”

  They heard the dog growling in the dark.

  “I mean, what is the dumb mother growling at, man? Fucker always growls at me. I’m gonna kill him one of these days, man. And he can see it in my eyes!

  “Who you growling at,” Silver screamed, then ran into the dark toward the sound of the growling, waving his skinny arms and shrieking, vanishing into the sound of his own footsteps and the softer, quicker rhythm of the running dog.

  Then he came walking back, out of breath, muttering, “We’ll see, man. We’ll see.” He was shivering, though the temperature was in the nineties. “I’m gonna get that goddamn dog,” he said, a slight quiver in his voice.

  They walked the rest of the way to the cadre barracks, and Silver unlocked the door of one of the bungalows. “Dawson’s gone on a little R&R,” he told Hanson. “Left us the key to his place.”

  It was a small, pleasant room with a bed instead of a bunk and comfortable rattan furniture. There was a Japanese stereo, a Japanese TV, and a small Japanese refrigerator stocked with Budweiser beer. Silver put on an album, an eerie electronic blend of harmonica and violin and a woman’s voice singing of hot summer days. As he listened, Hanson imagined he could hear the swish and hiss of elephant grass moving around him on patrol.

  Silver stood for a moment, playing an imaginary bass guitar, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. He stopped and walked over to the door, where he stood looking out.

  The room smelled of incense. An M-16 hung from one wall, three red Christmas tree bulbs dangling, one from the stock, one from the muzzle, and one from the receiver. Above the weapon, Che Guevara stared down at them from a popular poster, a red star set in his beret.

  “Que paso, Che?” Hanson said to him.

  “You know,” Silver said, “I miss old Dawson. But after two tours I guess he got a little tired of getting shot at. He lost a couple of teams out there, and that bothers him. Sergeant Major got him a skatin’ job here. He does some courier work for Sergeant Major. Goes on R&R a lot.”

  Silver opened the little refrigerator and a blue-white light came on inside, lighting up dozens of red, white, and blue Budweisers. He threw beers to Quinn and Hanson and passed them a yellow and green fifth of Cutty Sark.

  “Wait one,” he said. “Give me a taste of that,” and he swallowed a couple of times from the green bottle of Scotch.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it, man. Good-bye Blackie and adios motherfucker. He’s gone, man. Fini. He’s dog meat.”

  He walked over to a big teak chest and unlocked it. It was full of weapons. There was a Thompson sub-machine gun, a Swedish “K,” a folding-stock AK-47, an Army .45, a Colt Python, claymore mines, and trip flares. He took a grenade out and held it in his hand, then put it back in the box. “Dawson likes to be prepared,” he said, banging guns and ammo boxes against each other. “He’s almost a little paranoid,” he said, holding up a fourteen-pound satchel charge of C-4 explosive.

  “Dog meat,” Quinn muttered, standing up and walking over to the chest. He handed the Scotch to Silver, who took another long swallow.

  “This,” Silver said. “Yes!” and held up A LAW.

  “Piece of shit,” Quinn said. “You remember Lang Vei.”

  “Might not kill a tank,” Silver said, “but it’ll kill a dog,” he said, looking at the three-foot-long metal tube.

  The LAW, a light antitank weapon, fired a 66-millimeter rocket. The tube telescoped open to five feet, and was thrown away after it fired the single rocket packed inside. During the NVA tank attack on the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei, they proved almost useless, failing, again and again, to detonate when they hit the tanks’ armor.

  “Dog meat,” Silver said, pulling the LAW open to its full length, the clear plastic sight popping up. He went out the door and the dark swallowed him up.

  Quinn and Hanson looked at each other. “He’s too drunk to be firing LAWs,” Quinn said, and the two of them went out after him.

  Hanson was having trouble with his vision. At times it was like looking through a tunnel. Everything in the tunnel was clear while everything around it was dis-torted. He took a capsule of speed out of the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and swallowed it.

  “Here, Blackie. Heeeere, Blackie.” They could hear Silver calling for the dog. “That’s a good puppy. Come on, pup-pup, I got a doggie treat here…”

  Hanson tripped and fell, catching himself with his hands. He heard Silver moving slowly toward the 3rd Mech compound, singing, “ ‘Walkin’ the dog, I’m walkin’ the dog…’ ”

  Quinn stumbled over Hanson and fell down on top of him. “Shit,” he said. “We’re all gonna die drunk in Da Nang.”

  “Heeeere, puppy, come on, puppy. Got a surprise for you…”

  “Let’s get him,” Hanson said. “We gotta help each other up.”

  The two of them locked arms and got to their knees, then to their feet. They lost their balance for a moment, staggering around in a circle, holding hands like square dancers. They steadied themselves and walked toward the sound of Silver’s voice.

  “Heeeere, Blackie. Come on, boy…”

  Hanson heard the dog bark, then growl.

  “That way,” he said, and the two of them ran clumsily toward the sound.

  “That’s a boy…”

  The dog growled, then began whining.

  “That’s a boy…”

  The back-blast from the rocket almost knocked Hanson down. He hadn’t realized that he was so close to Silver. It came at him like a red-orange funnel, and he covered his eyes with his arms. Quinn stumbled into him just as the rocket caught the rear wheel of a jeep, and a black and orange explosion sent it cartwheeling in the air. Hanson thought he saw a furry shadow racing toward the beach.

  Just as they got to Silver, the sirens started wailing. Silver was laughing and shouting, “Body count, body count!” The jeep was upside down, its tires aflame, the rear ones spinning and throwing demonic shadows. Hanson grabbed Silver, and the three of them ran from the jeep. They threw themselves behind a Conex container just as the gas tank blew up. The sirens continued wailing and spotlights flashed on as the three of them grabbed each other and began laughing.

  “They think it’s incoming,” Silver said between laughs.

  “Whose jeep was that?”

  “Third Mech’s. We’re on their compound.”

  Then, as they laughed, they were rocked by more explosions, real incoming, as North Vietnamese 122-millimeter rockets hit the airstrip. A soldier ran past them shouting, “Incoming, incoming,” and Quinn slammed a forearm into his stomach, knocking him down, his helmet flying off.

  Quinn put the helmet on backward and ran in a tight little circle shouting, “Incoming, incoming, we’re all gonna die in Vietnam,” until he fell down laughing, still shouting, “Oh no, oh, my goodness, incoming.” He was shirtless, his heavily muscled shoulders and arms rippling in the flame and moonlight as he pounded the ground with his forearms, laughing, shouting, “Isn’t this a great fucking movie? Incoming, oh, it’s incoming…”

  The rockets walked down the airstrip and into the civilian quarter of Da Nang City, roaring and gnashing overhead, exploding flame and shrapnel through the tin and cardboard hootches of the town.

  “All right,” Quinn shouted, shaking both fists over his head. “Get some, rockets! Get you some slant-eye, gook, Vi-et-namese motherfuckers,” cheering at every explosion.

  Hanson couldn�
�t remember how they’d gotten to the 3rd Mech hootch. It was adjacent to the Special Forces compound. It seemed to be the only place left where anyone was still awake. An E-5 was celebrating his last weekend before going home, but most of his friends had left.

  The big E-5 was standing behind the homemade plywood bar, talking to a pair of E-4s who were sitting on the floor.

  “. . . five more days and I’m on the freedom bird and back to the world. I’m glad to go, but I don’t regret a minute I’ve spent here in the ’Nam. Not a minute. We’ve done a hell of a job here. I watch those demonstrators, and I can respect their right to protest, but they don’t know what it’s all about. We had a job to do…”

  “That’s right,” one of the E-4s said, slurring his words. “Freedom of speech is one thing, but impersonating the rights of others is another.”

  At a glance, Hanson looked harmless enough, sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, in his jeans and Hawaiian shirt, but a bad smile had begun to take over his eyes and mouth. He felt the speed beginning to work. The air was cool, but he was sweating slightly, a faint tremor in his hands, all the high-octane liquor he’d drunk burning away. He could smell it in his sweat, and he felt good and mean.

  “Well, yeah,” the E-5 said. “Irregardless of what those demonstrators think, we’ve done a damn fine job here, something I, personally, believe in, and when I see my wife again…”

  Hanson had to squint, concentrate to hear him over the acid rock coming from the stereo. The music and the speed made him shiver pleasantly in the warm night air.

  Silver was playing an imaginary guitar to the music, feeling better since firing the antitank rocket at Blackie.

  “. . . and when I get back,” the E-5 went on, “when I leave mortar alley here…”

  Silver looked at Hanson and rolled his eyes. He pumped his fist up and down by his crotch and silently mouthed the words, “Mortar alley.”

  Jimi Hendrix’s guitar was sneering and cursing from the speakers.