The Best of Lucius Shepard (45 page)

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 tallest 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 face downward. His legs spasmed, his right hand jittered. Far 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 drinks to steady
myself; but steadiness was beyond me. I switched on my lamp and sat
crosslegged, 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 an dconsciousness.

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.

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 suggested—a
little magic had seeped into the world. In Vietnam, with 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 e
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 seem 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, 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 aft: Randall, he was in big trouble. “Let’s get you patched
up,” I said. “We 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 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’ wtih 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.”