Arizona Moon

by J. M. Graham

  Pham stepped out of line, letting the trailing unit push past until the recoilless rifle crew went by. He knew the big machine gun was at the tail of the column, but now there was nothing but empty jungle behind him.

  Nguyen shouldered his load and followed after his unit, each step he took away from those behind lying on his mind like an accusation. Pushing through some overhanging branches, he was surprised to see Pham just ahead, the extra pack board thrust on him earlier hanging from one hand by the shoulder straps. The comfort he felt at being joined in the empty jungle, where the trees now felt too tall, the shadows too dark, and the silence deafening, was overmatched by anger at having his orders disobeyed.

  Pham looked past Nguyen as though he wasn’t there, searching as far as sight could reach. “Co?” He gulped. “Truong?”

  “Keep moving,” Nguyen said, not looking back to emphasize that there was nothing back there that should concern him.

  “But Truong,” Pham said. He let the extra pack board roll into the foliage beside the path. With a hop, he adjusted the position of the pack digging into his shoulders and started back over ground that smelled of cremated humus, ozone, and scorched trees.

  Nguyen slipped the AK sling from his shoulder and tucked the butt into one arm. “Pham,” he said, louder than he intended. Pham continued to move away as though Nguyen’s words were not reaching the world he occupied. Nguyen raised the weapon. The sight ring on the barrel wavered over the pack roll partially concealing Pham’s head. He drew a bead. “My word is law here, con trai,” he said, testing the label “boy” for impact, but finding none. Nguyen held his aim on the spot until Pham moved out of sight, then let the weight of the weapon pull it down. Pham wasn’t a boy. He was a soldier. He could go and drag the boy back, but not the soldier. He turned and headed after the column. He expected the mountain to explode again at any second, but the lull stretched on. He tried to will his worn legs to trot, but the weight on his back held him to a barely controlled stagger. Maybe Pham would survive. He himself might survive. Maybe they would all survive.

  Truong pushed himself into a sitting position, letting his head hang forward as though the gyroscope whirling in his skull couldn’t find a way to balance it on his neck. He tried to marshal his thoughts but found it impossible. His body felt bruised inside. He wanted to put his hands over his ears to block the screams but knew it was useless because they were coming from inside.

  When he raised his head and was able to focus he saw nothing but empty path before him. He looked behind and saw the barrel of the heavy machine gun spanning the path like a tipped hurdle and a sandaled foot protruding from the bushes nearby, as though a runner had missed his leap. A rhythmic whisper and a weak drone that might have been the jungle finding its breath for a feeble protest caught his attention. He tried to stand, but searing pain gripped his left thigh and he crumpled back to earth, grabbing his leg. Blood squeezed between his fingers. He realized he could taste it, too, and spit a red glob onto the path. He explored the inside of his mouth with his tongue and felt a sharp foreign edge invading the familiar interior landscape. Reaching up, he discovered a shard of splintered tree piercing his cheek, feeding blood into his mouth that oozed out as pink bubbles on his lips. He struggled to his feet again, squeezing his thigh, desperate not to make a sound that would seem unwelcome in this mute wilderness.

  He reached the solitary foot extended into the path and let his eyes follow the leg up to where the other twisted at an odd angle, tucked behind in a runner’s pose, then further up to Sau’s staring eyes, unblinking, specks of debris lying on the whites and irises to no effect. A chunk of Sau’s neck was gone, and the ground underneath him was soaked, the black soil taking back blood for blood. Truong had to tear his eyes away from Sau’s face. There were hardships to be endured and forgotten, and then there were shocks and horrors to be absorbed and carried away like a malignancy to grow in the memory. The difference was in the seeing.

  “Co,” he called, weakly, leaving Sau and stepping over the tilted barrel. Making his way through the remains of a tree ripped apart by a ballistic force nature had never equipped it to resist, he found Co lying in a bundle just off the path. Scratch marks on the ground showed where Co’s feet had searched for footholds as he pushed himself into the cover he sought with the instincts of a wounded animal. His pinched respirations were the jungle whispers Truong had heard. Co’s breaths came short and forced, as though they were losing a competition with his heart for which would end first, and the back of his black tunic was soaked by a spreading stain.

  Truong knelt at his back. “Co?” he said with a question in his voice, unwilling to accept that a man who exuded such invincibility was down. If men like Co and Sau could be broken, what chance did he have? Truong gently lifted one shoulder until Co rolled onto his back, leaning against his pack in a semi-sitting position. The front of his tunic was as wet as the back and sagged with the weight of a thickened mass pushing under the hem in bluish-purple convolutions. When he realized that he was seeing Co’s spilled intestines Truong was transfixed by the image. He reached out and touched Co’s shoulder lightly. “Co,” he said, his voice equally light, afraid that any stimulus might add to the pain.

  Co met Truong’s look with tired eyes that registered recognition. When he tried to speak, he coughed a spray of blood droplets and then smiled, his teeth stained red as though he had been chewing betel nut.

  “I’m here, Co,” Truong said, hoping his attempt at giving comfort would conceal the panic he felt.

  Co looked down at himself and smiled ruefully, as though this was some cosmic joke. He gave Truong a weary look that begged him to make everything right again, or at least to verify that it was all a dream to be brushed away when they both awakened.

  Truong ducked his head under the strap on his canvas satchel and fumbled with the ties, his hands shaking, then dumped the contents onto the blood-soaked ground. The white cloth that protected his beloved books was safely sealed inside a cocoon of plastic, and he tore at the folds with manic intensity. “I’m here, Co,” he said again, not knowing what else to say, the solitary sound of it catching in his throat. He looked past the fallen machine gun to the empty path beyond and felt lost and abandoned. Holding a tail of the cloth, he dumped the precious books unceremoniously into an eclectic pile of East and West.

  Co noticed Truong’s interest in the empty path. “You think they will return for us?” he whispered. “No. Nguyen has a responsibility to the assignment, to the weapons.”

  Truong pushed an end of the cloth under Co’s back and draped the rest over the twisted blue bulges escaping the confines of torn muscle and flesh. The pristine white expanse grew spreading red bouquets while he concentrated on tying the ends with just the right tension for support. “Well, maybe he’ll come back for the gun.”

  Co nodded. “He will do only what he thinks he must.”

  Truong studied the older man’s face, the skin stretched tight by the sun, tired eyes slipping into resignation, an expression of acceptance ushering in serenity. “Then we must go to him,” he said, slipping his pack from his shoulders. He worked at the buckles on Co’s pack, and the man drooped when its grip was released.

  Truong slipped an arm behind Co’s shoulders and started to lift, all the while wondering why the mountain wasn’t being ripped apart by the American artillery. “We should go now, while we can.”

  Co stiffened and gasped for air as though the sudden pain had stolen his breath. “Stop, stop,” he said, grabbing at Truong’s arm. Truong let him settle against the pack again. Co struggled to breathe, and his skin had a clammy pallor that made Truong afraid. He looked at the empty path. “Maybe I can go and get help,” he swallowed hard, “and come back for you.”

  Co relaxed against the pack under his shoulders as if it were a favorite old chair molded to his contours where he could happily spend the rest of his days. He waved a hand, the wrist weak and loose. “You go . . . and don’t come back.”

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nbsp; Truong lifted his pack and balanced it on top of Co’s, making a pillow. “I cannot . . .” He let his words fade. A battle waged in Truong’s mind, a conflict between self-preservation and loyalty. The allegiance nurtured in the last weeks made thoughts of self-interest as distasteful as treachery. Before his pangs of patriotic fervor sent him south, he wouldn’t have given a man like Co a second thought, and now he was fighting his own instincts, putting his own life in peril for a dying peasant in some nameless patch of wilderness. And he knew it was the only thing he could do.

  The dilemma held him frozen in place, unable to go, unable to stay, unable to help. It occurred to him that the pragmatic thing to do would be to shoot Co, gather up everything he could carry, and go after the unit with all the speed he could muster. But pragmatism was the purview of a commander, and he was not in command of anything—not even, he was surprised to discover, the shaking of his own hands. He was a slave to an affinity he would not have thought possible before. All he could do now was wait. Wait for Co to die. Wait for the artillery to begin again. Wait for the Americans to come. Wait for some external force to take the decision from his hands. He hung his head, pitying himself, a victim of circumstance, and wondered what name he would be assigned to enter the next world, and who would be there to assign it.

  His books were strewn beyond where his knees pushed wet dents in the jungle carpet, and the sight of them exposed to the elements made him mourn their loss as though they were already being deconstructed by nature, reduced to nutrients for plants and little sharp-jawed beetles. He grabbed the plastic wrap and reached for the discarded volumes. Saving them was something he could do.

  The love tale of Kieu, with its worn leather binding, brought his mother’s face to mind, and he held it to his nose hoping for her scent. Knowing it was her favorite and often caressed by her hands made it special. He laid it gently on the plastic as though its existence was fragile. The well-thumbed westerns had collected more stains on their thirsty pulp pages, and their dust covers looked more worn than before. He held one up, examining the cover art. A hot, dry mesa. Wide open spaces. A wild red man riding bareback on a spotted horse, free—and so far away from this place. He always imagined that one day he would visit the dry, hot land and the men in feathers and skins who lived there. His shoulders sagged a little more. Of all the things he felt he was about to lose, his lost dreams stung worst of all.

  Co drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling incoherently, moving his feet as though he was walking, and then lying still again. He groaned and tried to push himself up. Truong picked up the next novel and looked fleetingly at Co, afraid to see his own future in the man’s face. But Co wasn’t looking his way. He was staring at the bush beside Truong, and the blood vessels in his face and neck seemed about to burst under the strain. Truong looked up and his own blood stopped pumping.

  A huge, bronzed man who looked like he belonged on the cover of Truong’s Zane Gray western had risen from the plants a meter away. A leather sheath with brass rivets at his waist held a large knife. Truong watched as the long blade slipped free of its confinement. He couldn’t take his eyes from the honed edge and the dark hand pulling it out. The blood of the man’s Indian ancestors was expressed in the broad face and short black hair bound tightly in a bloodstained dressing. The red streaks on his face and the dark red eye peering from under the bandage accentuated the fierceness of the image. Truong looked down at the ragged books in his hands and then back at the man, who surely was a figment of his own mind. But the clear eye, the one not swollen and clouded with pain, was looking only at the leather bag around Truong’s neck, and in an instant Truong knew who he was. An involuntary flood of relief swept through him like a sudden chill. The conflict he felt over the Indian’s death was resolved, only to be replaced with the very real danger of his living presence.

  Co reached for his AK, pulling it to him by the butt. He raised it with feeble hands and clawed for the trigger. The figment suddenly moved, snatching the weapon away by the barrel and tossing it across the path to land with a crash out of sight. The misshapen face turned so the good eye could assess this enemy’s condition, then turned away, satisfied. Co dropped back against the packs, spent.

  The hallucination, if such he was, was real enough to plant a boot in the middle of Truong’s chest and knock him backward, away from his AK lying in the mud. Before he could kick his feet in defense, the western nightmare was upon him like a hungry predator. A bent knee pinned him to the ground. Truong still clutched the pulp novels, and he held them up like charms that could ward off evil spirits, though the authority of Brand and Grey seemed far less than what was needed at the moment. The red-streaked face loomed over him, a ceremonial mask of war. Something cold touched the side of his neck, and he froze. The flat side of the big knife blade pressing against his skin made him shiver. How could something be so cold in this heat, he thought? And how strange that the last thing he would feel while bathed in sweat would be cold, a cool release from the heat of life. He forced himself to look into the last face he would ever see. The man was looking not at him, though, but at the books in Truong’s hands.

  For Truong, the world seemed to stop. The air stopped moving. The trees stopped growing. The planets stopped spinning. The only movement in the universe was his heart, and that was beating like a drum. The specter’s good eye wandered from the books to Truong’s face, as though the sound of his beating heart had attracted its attention. Truong tried to put everything he was into his aspect, everything he thought, everything he felt, everything he dreamed, sending it spiritually into the eye, which seemed to have all the compassion of a shark’s.

  The wild man’s free hand snatched one of the books away and studied the cover, holding the knife in place all the while, making sure any movement on Truong’s part would be short-lived. He leaned in closer, as though his next decision would be decided by smell. Truong’s body had turned to stone. He couldn’t even blink. He wondered how much pain there would be when the knife plunged into his throat. How long he would suffer. But the blade lifted from his neck until it stretched the little bag’s rawhide cord taut, then cut it free. The man stood, dangling the bag from the knife blade, admiring it like a trophy, a buckskin scalp.

  Pham pushed one foot ahead of the other, leaning forward against the weight of his pack but not moving too quickly, afraid of what he might find. The ground he was revisiting had changed from just minutes ago, and he concentrated on the path that wormed its way through a landscape scarred and broken. He was going back so he could do something, but he didn’t know what that something might be. He moved forward with tentative steps, clutching his AK as though the feel of it held solutions. The world around him now smelled acrid and burnt, making his nose question the wisdom of taking a breath. Ahead, he could make out something long and dark crossing the path: the straight lines of the big machine-gun barrel. Beyond that, a figure in green blended with the brush, a figure with broad shoulders, a wide back, and a round head wrapped in tan cloth. Pham blinked hard, trying to make the unbelievable real.

  The man in green seemed to be focusing his attention on something in his hand. His big arm rose up and the thing of interest swung free by its rawhide cord: the beaded bag, the prize from Co that Truong had worn about his neck.

  The AK suddenly felt heavy in his hands; the wooden parts slippery to his touch. If Truong had worn the bag the enemy now held, then where was Truong? He heard an unrecognizable voice screaming in rage and brought the rifle up to bear on the enemy. The voice was that of a wild animal, and it was coming from him. He pulled the trigger and the weapon jerked, spitting spent cartridges and invading the dark silence with a string of sharp cracks that joined his own guttural roar in a mad duet.

  Pieces of muddy path jumped into the air—his trigger pull rushing ahead of his aim—and Pham extended his arms, hunched his shoulders, and forced the barrel up and over into the trees, firing until the magazine and his lungs were both empty. His finger still crushe
d the trigger in an emotional cramp he couldn’t release, though all the weapon could do now was send wispy clouds of steam into the humid air.

  The man in green was gone. A high-pitched peal filled his ears, making him want to stretch his jaw muscles to clear the deafness, and he pointed the impotent barrel at every shadow where his fear imagined the enemy could be. His hand shook. He’d never fired a weapon at anyone before. He’d never tried to kill anyone before. He’d never wanted to kill anyone before. The AK-47, once heavy, seemed both weightless and harmless now. He snapped the empty magazine free and fumbled a fresh one from the pouches on his chest. Its curve and fit seemed incomprehensible to his shaking fingers, and he struggled to match the end to the opening on the gun, finally feeling the comforting snap as it locked into place. As the bolt drove a fresh cartridge into the chamber, he felt restored, ready again but not prepared. He looked around at the vast emptiness alive with threats.

  Pham reached the place where the machine gun barrel blocked the path without knowing he was moving. Sau’s crumpled body off to the side captured Pham’s attention, and he tightened his grip on his AK. He straddled the barrel, feeling the hardness of the steel with his knees, not wanting to take his eyes from the shadows. The spot where the enemy had stood was just ahead, ominous in its emptiness, and he kept his rifle trained on the place, expecting a sudden reappearance. His eyes flitted about the trees, but the rifle held to the spot, an involuntary compass unable to point anywhere else.

  He was close now. Close enough for anyone to hear his pounding heart. Close enough to see the slightest movement that would unleash the firepower in his hands. From where he stood he could see Co leaning against the packs, the bloody bulge protruding from his stomach, his skin pale, eyes rolled back. A movement nearby drew his head back with a snap. A blood-encrusted hand rose up from the undergrowth, a tattered book in its grasp, and Pham’s brain battled at synaptic speed to control his trigger finger. Time lost for recognition struggled against a nervous desire to empty his magazine into the bush, but he knew that book—the garish colors, the wild man on horseback, the belching locomotive. “Truong,” he said, hope overriding caution. Wet black hair appeared, followed by eyes opened wide, then the rest of the face. “Pham?” it said, still holding out the book as though it had mystical powers that might be offered in trade for a life.