Two nights later while returning to my hooch, I spotted a couple of men wearing tiger shorts dragging a large and apparently unconscious someone toward the barrier of concertina wire beside the PX—I knew it had to be Moon. I drew my pistol, sneaked along the back wall of the PX, and when they came abreast I stepped out and told them to put their burden down. They stopped but didn’t turn loose of Moon. Both had blackened their faces with greasepaint, and to this had added fanciful designs in crimson, blue, and yellow that gave them the look of savages. They carried combat knives, and their eyes were pointed with the reflected brilliance of the perimeter lights. It was a hot night, but it seemed hotter there beside them, as if their craziness had a radiant value. “This ain’t none of your affair, Curt,” said the taller of the two; despite his bad grammar, he had a soft, well-modulated voice, and I thought I heard a trace of amusement in it.
I peered at him, but was unable to recognize him beneath the paint. Again I told them to put Moon down.
“Sorry,” said the tall guy. “Man’s gotta pay for his crimes.”
“He didn’t do anything,” I said. “You know damn well Randall’s just AWOL.”
The tall guy chuckled, and the other guy said, “Naw, we don’t know that a-tall.”
Moon groaned, tried to lift his head, then slumped back.
“No matter what he did or didn’t do,” said the tall guy, “the man deserves what’s comin’.”
“Yeah,” said his pal. “And if it ain’t us what does it, it’ll be somebody else.”
I knew he was right, and the idea of killing two men to save a third who was doomed in any event just didn’t stack up. But though my sense of duty was weak where Moon was concerned, it hadn’t entirely dissipated. “Let him go,” I said.
The tall guy grinned, and the other one shook his head as if dismayed by my stubbornness. They appeared wholly untroubled by the pistol, possessed of an irrational confidence. “Be reasonable, Curt,” said the tall guy. “This ain’t gettin’ you nowhere.”
I couldn’t believe his foolhardiness. “You see this?” I said, flourishing the pistol. “Gun, y’know? I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you with it, you don’t let him go.”
Moon let out another groan, and the tall guy rapped him hard on the back of the head with the hilt of his knife.
“Hey!” I said, training the pistol on his chest.
“Look here, Curt—” he began.
“Who the hell are you?” I stepped closer, but was still unable to identify him. “I don’t know you.”
“Randall told us ’bout you, Curt. He’s a buddy of ours, ol’ Randall is. We’re with Delta Sly Honey.”
I believed him for that first split second. My mouth grew cottony, and my hand trembled. But then I essayed a laugh. “Sure you are! Now put his ass down!”
“That’s what you really want, huh?”
“Damn right!” I said. “Now!”
“Okay,” he said. “You got it.” And with a fluid stroke, he cut Moon’s throat.
Moon’s eyes popped open as the knife sliced through his tissues, and that—not the blood spilling onto the dust—was the thing that froze me: those bugged eyes in which an awful realization dawned and faded. They let him fall facedownward. His legs spasmed, his right hand jittered. For a long moment, stunned, I stared at him, at the blood puddling beneath his head, and when I looked up I found that the two men were sprinting away, about to round the curve of the hill. I couldn’t bring myself to fire. Mixed in my thoughts were the knowledge that killing them served no purpose and the fear that my bullets would have no effect. I glanced left and right, behind me, making sure that no one was watching, and then ran up the slope to my hooch.
Under my cot was a bottle of sour mash. I pulled it out and had a couple of drinks to steady myself; but steadiness was beyond me. I switched on a battery lamp and sat cross-legged, listening to the snores of my bunkmate. Lying on my duffel bag was an unfinished letter home, one I had begun nearly two weeks before; I doubted now I’d ever finish it. What would I tell my folks? That I had more or less sanctioned an execution? That I was losing my fucking mind? Usually I told them everything was fine, but after the scene I had just witnessed, I felt I was forever past that sort of blithe invention. I switched off the lamp and lay in the dark, the bottle resting on my chest. I had a third drink, a fourth, and gradually lost both count and consciousness.
I had a week’s R & R coming and I took it, hoping debauch would shore me up. But I spent much of that week attempting to justify my inaction in terms of the inevitable and the supernatural, and failing in that attempt. You see, now as then, if pressed for an opinion, I would tell you that what happened at Noc Linh was the sad consequence of a joke gone sour, of a war twisted into a demonic exercise. Everything was explicable in that wise. And yet it’s conceivable that the supernatural was involved, that—as Randall had suggested—a little magic had seeped into the world. In Vietnam, with all its horror and strangeness, it was difficult to distinguish between the magical and the mundane, and it’s possible that thousands of supernatural events went unnoticed as such, obscured by the poignancies of death and fear, becoming quirky memories that years later might pass through your mind while you were washing the dishes or walking the dog, and give you a moment’s pause, an eerie feeling that would almost instantly be ground away by the mills of the ordinary. But I’m certain that my qualification is due to the fact that I want there to have been some magic involved, anything to lessen my culpability, to shed a less damning light on the perversity and viciousness of my brothers-in-arms.
On returning to Noc Linh, I found that Randall had also returned. He claimed to be suffering from amnesia and would not admit to having made the broadcast that had triggered Moon’s murder. The shrinks had decided that he was bucking for a Section Eight, had ordered him put back on the corpse detail, and as before, Randall could be seen laboring beneath the tin-roofed shed, transferring the contents of body bags into aluminum coffins. On the surface, little appeared to have changed. But Randall had become a pariah. He was insulted and whispered about and shunned. Whenever he came near, necks would stiffen and conversations die. If he had offed Moon himself, he would have been cheered; but the notion that he had used his influence to have his dirty work jobbed out didn’t accord with the prevailing concept of honorable vengeance. Though I tried not to, I couldn’t help feeling badly toward him myself. It was weird. I would approach with the best of intentions, but by the time I reached him, my hackles would have risen and I would walk on in hostile silence, as if he were exuding a chemical that had evoked my contempt. I did get close enough to him, however, to see that the mad brightness was missing from his eyes; I had the feeling that all his brightness was missing, that whatever quality had enabled him to do his broadcasts had been sucked dry.
One morning as I was passing the PX, whose shiny surfaces reflected a dynamited white glare of sun, I noticed a crowd of men pressing through the front door, apparently trying to catch sight of something inside. I pushed through them and found one of the canteen clerks—a lean kid with black hair and a wolfish face—engaged in beating Randall to a pulp. I pulled him off, threw him into a table, and kneeled beside Randall, who had collapsed to the floor. His cheekbones were lumped and discolored; blood poured from his nose, trickled from his mouth. His eyes met mine, and I felt nothing from him: he seemed muffled, vibeless, as if heavily sedated.
“They out to get me, Curt,” he mumbled.
All my sympathy for him was suddenly resurrected. “It’s okay, man,” I said. “Sooner or later, it’ll blow over.” I handed him my bandanna, and he dabbed ineffectually at the flow from his nose. Watching him, I recalled Moon’s categorization of my motives for befriending him, and I understood now that my true motives had less to do with our relative social status than with my belief that he could be saved, that—after months of standing by helplessly while the unsalvageable marched to their fates—I thought I might be able to effect some small good work. This may se
em altruistic to the point of naïveté, and perhaps it was, perhaps the brimstone oppressiveness of the war had from the residue of old sermons heard and disregarded provoked some vain Christian reflex; but the need was strong in me, nonetheless, and I realized that I had fixed on it as a prerequisite to my own salvation.
Randall handed back the bandanna. “Ain’t gonna blow over,” he said “Not with these guys.”
I grabbed his elbow and hauled him to his feet. “What guys?”
He looked around as if afraid of eavesdroppers. “Delta Sly Honey!”
“Christ, Randall! Come on.” I tried to guide him toward the door, but he wrenched free.
“They out to get me! They say I crossed over and they took care of Moon for me…and then I got away from ’em.” He dug his fingers into my arm. “But I can’t remember, Curt! I can’t remember nothin’!”
My first impulse was to tell him to drop the amnesia act, but then I thought about the painted men who had scragged Moon: if they were after Randall, he was in big trouble. “Let’s get you patched up,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
He gazed at me, dull and uncomprehending. “You gonna help me?” he asked in a tone of disbelief.
I doubted anyone could help him now, and maybe, I thought, that was also part of my motivation—the desire to know the good sin of honest failure. “Sure,” I told him. “We’ll figure out somethin’.”
We started for the door, but on seeing the men gathered there, Randall balked. “What you want from me?” he shouted, giving a flailing, awkward wave with his left arm as if to make them vanish. “What the fuck you want?”
They stared coldly at him, and those stares were like bad answers. He hung his head and kept it hung all the way to the infirmary.
That night I set out to visit Randall, intending to advise him to confess, a tactic I perceived as his one hope of survival. I’d planned to see him early in the evening, but was called back on duty and didn’t get clear until well after midnight. The base was quiet and deserted-feeling. Only a few lights picked out the darkened slopes, and had it not been for the heat and stench, it would have been easy to believe that the hill with its illuminated caves was a place of mild enchantment, inhabited by elves and not frightened men, The moon was almost full, and beneath it the PX shone like an immense silver lozenge. Though it had closed an hour before, its windows were lit, and—MP instincts engaged—I peered inside. Randall was backed against the bar, holding a knife to the neck of the wolfish clerk who had beaten him, and ranged in a loose circle around him, standing among the tables, were five men wearing tiger shorts, their faces painted with savage designs. I drew my pistol, eased around to the front, and—wanting my entrance to have shock value—kicked the door open.
The five men turned their heads to me, but appeared not at all disconcerted. “How’s she goin’, Curt?” said one, and by his soft voice I recognized the tall guy who had slit Moon’s throat.
“Tell ’em to leave me be!” Randall shrilled.
I fixed my gaze on the tall guy and with gunslinger menace said, “I’m not messin’ with you tonight. Get out now or I’ll take you down.”
“You can’t hurt me, Curt,” he said.
“Don’t gimme that ghost shit! Fuck with me, and you’ll be humpin’ with Delta Sly Honey for real.”
“Even if you were right ’bout me, Curt, I wouldn’t be scared of dyin’. I was dead where it counts halfway through my tour.”
A scuffling at the bar, and I saw that Randall had wrestled the clerk to the floor. He wrapped his legs around the clerk’s waist in a scissors and yanked his head back by the hair to expose his throat. “Leave me be,” he said. Every nerve in his face was jumping.
“Let him go, Randall,” said the tall guy. “We ain’t after no innocent blood. We just want you to take a little walk…to cross back over.”
“Get out!” I told him.
“You’re workin’ yourself in real deep, man,” he said.
“This ain’t no bullshit!” I said. “I will shoot.”
“Look here, Curt,” he said. “S’pose we’re just plain ol’ ordinary grunts. You gonna shoot us all? And if you do, don’t you think we’d have friends who’d take it hard? Any way you slice it, you bookin’ yourself a silver box and air freight home.”
He came a step toward me, and I said, “Watch it, man!” He came another step, his devil mask split by a fierce grin. My heart felt hot and solid in my chest, no beats, and I thought, He’s a ghost, his flesh is smoke, the paint a color in my eye. “Keep back!” I warned.
“Gonna kill me?” Again he grinned. “Go ahead.” He lunged, a feint only, and I squeezed the trigger.
The gun jammed.
When I think now how this astounded me, I wonder at my idiocy. The gun jammed frequently. It was an absolute piece of shit, that weapon. But at the time its failure seemed a magical coincidence, a denial of the laws of chance. And adding to my astonishment was the reaction of the other men: they made no move toward Randall, as if no opportunity had been provided, no danger passed. Yet the tall guy looked somewhat shaken to me.
Randall let out a mewling noise, and that sound enlisted my competence I edged between the tables and took a stand next to him. “Let me get the knife from him,” I said. “No point in both of ’em dyin’.”
The tall guy drew a deep breath as if to settle himself. “You reckon you can do that, Curt?”
“Maybe. If you guys wait outside, he won’t be as scared and maybe I can get it.”
They stared at me, unreadable.
“Gimme a chance.”
“We ain’t after no innocent blood.” The tall guy’s tone was firm, as if this were policy. “But—”
“Just a coupla minutes,” I said. “That’s all I’m askin’.”
I could almost hear the tick of the tall guy’s judgment. “Okay,” he said at last. “But don’t you go tryin’ nothin’ hinkey, Curt.” Then, to Randall. “We be waitin’, Randall J.”
As soon as they were out the door, I kneeled beside Randall. Spittle flecked the clerk’s lips, and when Randall shifted the knife a tad, his eyes rolled up into heaven. “Leave me be,” said Randall. He might have been talking to the air, the walls, the world.
“Give it up,” I said.
He just blinked.
“Let him go and I’ll help you,” I said. “But if you cut him, you on your own. That how you want it?”
“Un-unh.”
“Well, turn him loose.”
“I can’t,” he said, a catch in his voice. “I’m all froze up. If I move, I’ll cut him.” Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he blinked some more.
“How ’bout I take it from you? If you keep real still, if you lemme ease it outta your hand, maybe we can work it that way.”
“I don’t know…I might mess up.”
The clerk gave a long shuddery sigh and squeezed his eyes shut.
“You gonna be fine,” I said to Randall. “Just keep your eyes on me, and you gonna be fine.”
I stretched out my hand. The clerk was trembling, Randall was trembling, and when I touched the blade it was so full of vibration, it felt alive, as if all the energy in the room had been concentrated there. I tried pulling it away from the clerk’s neck, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You gotta loosen up, Randall,” I said.
I tried again and, gripping the blade between my forefinger and thumb, managed to pry it an inch or so away from the line of blood it had drawn. My fingers were sweaty, the metal slick, and the blade felt like it was connected to a spring, that any second it would snap back and bite deep.
“My fingers are slippin’,” I said, and the clerk whimpered.
“Ain’t my fault if they do.” Randall said this pleadingly, as if testing the waters, the potentials of his guilt and innocence, and I realized he was setting me up the way he had Moon’s killers. It was a childlike attempt compared to the other, but I knew to his mind it would work out the same.
“The hell
it ain’t!” I said. “Don’t do it, man!”
“It ain’t my fault!” he insisted.
“Randall!”
I could feel his intent in the quiver of the blade. With my free hand, I grabbed the clerk’s upper arm, and as the knife slipped, I jerked him to the side. The blade sliced his jaw, and he screeched; but the wound wasn’t mortal.
I plucked the knife from Randall’s hand, wanting to kill him myself. But I had invested too much in his salvation. I hauled him erect and over to the window; I smashed out the glass with a chair and pushed him through. Then I jumped after him. As I came to my feet, I saw the painted men closing in from the front of the PX and—still towing Randall along—I sprinted around the corner of the building and up the slope, calling for help. Lights flicked on, and heads popped from tent flaps. But when they spotted Randall, they ducked back inside.
I was afraid, but Randall’s abject helplessness—his eyes rolling like a freaked calf’s, his hands clawing at me for support—helped to steady me. The painted men seemed to be everywhere. They would materialize from behind tents, out of bunker mouths, grinning madly and waving moonstruck knives, and send us veering off in another direction, back and forth across the hill. Time and again, I thought they had us, and on several occasions, it was only by a hairsbreadth that I eluded the slash of a blade that looked to be bearing a charge of winking silver energy on its tip. I was wearing down, stumbling, gasping, and I was certain we couldn’t last much longer. But we continued to evade them, and I began to sense that they were in no hurry to conclude the hunt; their pursuit had less an air of frenzy than of a ritual harassment, and eventually, as we staggered up to the mouth of the operations bunker and—I believed—safety, I realized that they had been herding us. I pushed Randall inside and glanced back from the sandbagged entrance. The five men stood motionless a second, perhaps fifty feet away, then melted into the darkness.
The Best of Lucius Shepard Page 31
