I Am the River Page 7

More laughter.

  “Hey, for that third one, I was framed.”

  “But I’m also a pragmatist,” Chapel continued, “and I’m selfish, and I want to execute this mission, on my terms, with no outside interference. To do so, I needed good soldiers who stumbled and were cast aside, declared unfit for combat, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

  Broussard thought about that night, the two a.m. perimeter rush by the VC at Hill 407 when he didn’t take the shot from the lip of his foxhole, his muscle memory of how to pull the trigger when he was commanded failing him utterly, the ignorant flesh seizing up and shutting down, leaving his brain in charge. His brain told him to close his eyes, curl up and not draw attention with a muzzle flash. The brain decided to protect the body, to keep it going to accomplish its genetic imperative of replicating itself instead of this secondary mission of killing another human or many humans, denying them their right to endow their genetic code to the greater species. His brain hoped they’d all pass right over him, each sandaled foot and grunting body; that it all would go away and the world would return to normal. That somehow he’d be back in the bayou, lying in tall, hot grass of his grandmother’s back yard, the wet blades itching his skin, listening to the insects whisper secrets to each other. He wasn’t a killer, and didn’t know how to be. There was no light switch on the back of his head to flip from one who was embarrassed to hit a boy on the playground to one who could kill a complete stranger in the pitch blackness of two a.m. He didn’t know how to negotiate that in his mind, didn’t have enough time to travel to that new destination in his soul. The muscle training and mental reprogramming of boot camp didn’t get him there, nor did humping uniform and rifle and his terror through the jungle, being eaten alive by mosquitoes and leeches and jumping at every sound that didn’t seem to come from the sky or the trees, knowing that each moment could be his last. And the insects sounded different here. Alien. The birds, too. All of it was wrong, and he had wanted it to just go away but it didn’t, even when the gunfire ended and he was dragged from his foxhole by his lieutenant, screaming into his face and spitting on the ground. No one in his platoon would look at him. He hadn’t even be in-country long enough to learn anyone’s name.

  No one died for what he did, or more rightly, what he didn’t do, but they could have. After pulling him from the ground, his lieutenant had kicked him out of the bush and sent his ass back to Quang Tri to await a transfer and possible charges. He’d sat in a chair then, too, but his eyes hadn’t changed. Not yet. They were the same ones he always had, weak and half blind and in need of correction. He sat with himself and those memories of Hill 407, wishing he could do it all over but afraid that it would turn out the same way. It was the first time since he was ten that he wanted to kill himself, and set his brain to that while his muscles claimed amnesia regarding that last night in the jungle. That was when the note came, the doors swung open, a jeep waiting for him outside. His bootlaces were in his hand, the pipe above him already picked out.

  “Each of you became an ‘issue’ to your commanding officers,” Chapel continued, “and were removed from your platoons or squads and set up to disappear inside the belly of the United States military, which is where I came in. I found you all, and brought all here, for that last shot at honor. In this theater, anyway.”

  Broussard looked at Chapel, the man who had saved his life. Chapel returned his gaze with those shiny gray eyes, the slightest hint of a wry grin twisting itself across his face again. Broussard wondered if he knew. Somehow, he was confident that he did, but also didn’t consider it worthy of any special notice. He probably did things like that all the time. Habitual heroism.

  “How?” Medrano asked. “How’d you come in? I mean—” he gestured around the bunker—“this don’t exactly look like it’s on the books, know what I mean?” The men were loosening up, realizing that this wasn’t a normal military situation, and that communication was more of a two-way affair.

  “Never ask a girl her secrets, Private Medrano.” Chapel said, eyes winking without the lids ever closing. The soldiers laughed, loosening up. Some men were just born with that natural way.

  Chapel opened up a leather case from the table and took from it a worn corncob pipe that was surely made a century or two prior. He held onto the pipe as he addressed the group.

  “Gentlemen, I’ve brought all of you to this place for what I see as a very important reason. The United States government might not necessarily agree with me, but I felt the need to call an audible here, and check down into a new play after surveying the defensive alignment. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes sir,” four of the men said in unison.

  Medrano looked puzzled. McNulty cuffed his arm. “Football, dummy.”

  “That’s good,” Chapel said. “We need to understand each other, now and for the duration of this specialized commission, and even afterwards. An understanding, and a trust, will be important to successfully see this through. Can I count on you?”

  “Yes sir,” all of them said.

  Chapel nodded and leaned forward, hands gripping the edges of the table, like a professor in lecture. “The situation is this: We’re only officially fighting Charlie on one side of a border that is invisible to our enemy, allowing the Ho Chi Minh Trail cut through the mountains of Laos to act as a greased conduit to move farm-fresh troops, extract casualties, and resupply all manner of warm and fuzzy weaponry gifted by our friends the Chinese. These weapons are killing our brothers in record numbers up and down this confused nation we have pledged our lives to cleanse of the insidious virus of Communism. We cannot allow this to go on.”

  “No sir,” McNulty said, a weird grin on his face. The true believer, zealot of any religion that allowed him to wage war against the Other. Chapel was just the latest prophet. Lord willing, there’d be more.

  “No sir, indeed.” Chapel carefully unwrapped a cloth covering a tightly wound braid of tobacco, its spicy musk cutting through the humid air. “In a war, if the enemy leaves the battlefield and retreats to the village, you chase him to the village. If the enemy runs to a church, you pursue him into that church. If the enemy runs across borders, we cross those borders to defeat our enemy, politicians and gold stars be damned.”

  “Goddamn them anyway,” Render said.

  Chapel opened a bowie knife, its long, fat blade catching the lantern light. “We will chase our enemy to their village, to their church. We will go where they go to hide, to heal, and to rest, and we will roust them from their beds.” He lowered the knife to the table and carefully cut the tobacco. “That is what brings us here, away from the politicians and the gold stars, and the platoon commanders who follow them like good soldiers. I don’t blame them, but I also don’t cut smoke for them, for they’re not the brothers I need.” He picked up a plug of tobacco and brought it to his nose, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. Chapel opened his eyes and held up the moist brown leaf. “But you are the brothers I need.”

  The men stared up at him. He was speaking a language that they never knew existed, but always craved. It was nourishment to a group of souls that had been starved of respect since their first day in the service and much further back than that, and they ate it up.

  Chapel placed the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe and slowly packed it with a pewter tamper. “All of our best efforts at fighting this enemy with one arm tied behind our backs have failed. We kill them in one country, and they reconstitute in another, like some goddamn supernatural entity. So I’ve decided to take the fight to them, where they rise again from the dead. I know where they do this, as I have many eyes that see many things, and we will hit them one by one, in this country that’s older than time, that’s laughed at a hundred armies throughout history, and lately at a thousand tons of American ordnance. Uncle Sam will not be laughed at. Our ego cannot take it. As such, creative measures must be taken. That’s where we come in. We are the creative measure.”

  The older man looked at the younger o
nes sitting in front of him, hearts as open as their mouths. He understood humanity, even if he didn’t like it much anymore. But that keen understanding of how it ticked was why he was so good at what he did, and why what he was about to do would certainly work.

  Chapel held up the loaded pipe. “In this pipe I have placed the best Carolina tobacco ever grown. It was first planted by slaves for their white masters. Out here, in this new world we’ve ripped apart by the seams, there are no slaves and no masters. We are all both. Slaves to fire and to death. Masters of fire and of death. We serve and command both. That is the nature of what we do, this business of war.”

  Chapel struck a wooden match with his thumbnail, put the flame to the pipe and inhaled deeply as the bowl glowed orange. He blew out a small cloud of pure white smoke.

  “We will smoke this tobacco, all of us, as this is a pipe of war, carved by my grandfather just before he went into battle against his own countrymen.” He took another drag, and the smoke billowed, slow and coiling, pulling the words out of his mouth. “The First Tribes smoked pipes as symbols of peace, but we are a different breed. We are dogs of war.”

  He passed the pipe to Medrano, who inhaled deeply, expecting a cough as he blew out. Instead, he raised his eyebrows and smiled, passing the pipe to Render.

  “I’ve read all of your files, from cover to cover,” Chapel continued. “But even then, I don’t know you. And lord knows you don’t know me, where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and I’m okay with that. But know that whatever you see, and whatever you hear, out in the jungle once we’re activated, trust me that I’ll see you through. I’ll bring you back in one piece, sound of body, and sound of mind, even if things get weird, and they will get weird.”

  The pipe had moved on through Render and McNulty to Darby, who took an extra hit, and then to Broussard, who wiped off the stem and put it to his lips, sucking in air and bringing red life to the packed leaf under the ash. His lungs filled with hot, spicy smoke, making him dizzy as he passed it back to Chapel.

  “We are messengers, gentleman, and we will deliver a message of strange vengeance to a very determined enemy that does not respect us, but is more that capable of fearing us.” Chapel inhaled deeply from the pipe, smoke billowing out from his lungs as he spoke like a pale dragon. “We will deliver to them the Fear, upon wings of sharpened steel. We have not earned his respect, this enemy in the jungle, and never will, but we will give him the Fear, pulled from the deepest part of his soul.”

  Chapel stretched out his arms, indicating the bunker, filled with odd equipment and lined with radar and that strange audio equipment. “Witness the nightmare factory, gentleman. You are all now part of Operation Algernon.”

  14. Sleeping in the Temple of Mars

  That night, the five bedded down in a high-ceilinged tent next to the bunker, lying in sturdy cots with thick, clean blankets that smelled of pine crates instead of sweat, mud, and shit. There were no mosquitoes here, as if they feared disturbing this incongruous sanctity of secrets. The war sounded far away, coming to them as muffled thuds of heavy bombs far in the distance, with none of the close-by chatter of machine guns. In the relative silence, none of them slept, except for Darby, who snored to the ceiling, mouth wide enough to let in all manner of spider, if they were more heretical than the mosquitoes. One mission was the same as another to Darby. He was there to kill people as directed, and would do so when called up, and sometimes when he wasn’t, which was what brought him into the group.

  “What was he talking about, the Fear?” Medrano whispered, mostly to himself, but loud enough the rest of the men could hear. “Nightmares and stuff. Operation Ala-non.”

  “Algernon,” Broussard said. “Like the writer.”

  “Which one?” Medrano said.

  “Can you talk in your sleep with your mouth shut?” McNulty said, fighting with his pillow, the quiet creeping into his brain and waking up things the noise usually kept down.

  “What do you think we’re doing out here?” Medrano said, eyes darting back and forth in agitated thought.

  “Does it matter?” Render said.

  “Of course it matters, man,” McNulty said, sitting up. “This guy could be fucking crazy.”

  “All white people are crazy,” Render said, sounding tired.

  “Hey!” said McNulty. “Present company included?”

  “Most definitely,” Render said. He didn’t want to explain his entire conscious life to a guy who would never understand it anyway.

  “Well, fuck you too,” McNulty said, jamming his head back onto his pillow.

  “He ain’t crazy,” Broussard said.

  Everyone waited for Broussard to continue, but he didn’t.

  “How do you know?” Medrano said.

  “His eyes.”

  Broussard rolled over.

  “What kind of fucking answer is that?” McNulty said.

  He received no reply.

  Now it was McNulty’s turn to sigh and roll over, which he did with big, frustrated moves. “Man, you fucking people.”

  In the dark, Broussard and Render opened their eyes, sharing a look without even seeing each other. Medrano closed his and groaned. Darby snored through it all.

  15. Beast at Bay

  Another chair.

  My life, this life, now,

  spent in a series of chairs.

  Waiting.

  To kill or be killed.

  To be told that you’re sick or that you’re a coward or that you’re going to be locked in a cage as a sick fucking coward.

  Throw away the key.

  Throw away the chairs.

  Sitting here, sitting there, sitting and waiting in a fucking chair.

  Becoming the chair.

  Stiff, unwieldy.

  Four legs and two arms.

  One back.

  Body of a beast with the arms of a man.

  Fucking werewolf caught in transformation and stuffed and stuck in a museum of horrors.

  Or a rich man’s den.

  Same thing, sometimes.

  Sometimes.

  I’m not going to move from this chair.

  Something heavy impacts the inside of the wall.

  For eighteen hours I’ve sat in this chair. It’s the only one I own, the only piece of furniture in the cave aside from that gruesome bed. That coffin floating on water.

  I found the chair broken and rotting in the back alley of a shooting gallery, just like I was when they found my busted ass, broke ass, and knew it had to go home with me.

  I sit in this chair because it isn’t comfortable, and is a place to fix up and then rest between hours of pacing. It’s not conducive to sleep, or anything other than sitting uncomfortably and keeping watch.

  Two arms and four legs. Those four legs.

  Black Shuck has been waiting behind the wall for eighteen hours, patient as a dead moon, looking for its way in.

  I’m not letting it, and I can feel its rage.

  A huge snout sniffs frantically in the corner of the room where the wall meets the ceiling like a panting dog on the spoor.

  I remembered my Zora like others do Sunday school lessons, worming its way through all those shut doors and broken hallways to sit with me on the front porch. “Whut’s de mattah, ol’ Satan, you ain’t kickin’ up yo’ racket?” My God, was she my religion.

  A whine comes from behind the wall. It’s a strange sound coming from what it comes from, filled with frustration.

  “Fuck that old hound,” I say aloud, just to make sure I’m still real, that the room is the cave and isn’t a prison or the box inside my mind that closes on top of me. I repeat it, my voice sounding strange to my own ears.

  “Fuck that old hound… Fuck that old hound…”

  I keep this up for hours, until my voice goes hoarse.

  Something heavy impacts the inside of the wall.

  “Why do we scrap?” I say, tongue brittle as paper. “Why do we scrap, old hound?”

  A small scratc
hing sound comes from inside the wall. Slow and deliberate. Bits of metal pulled from brutalized bodies. Claws from an impossible beast.

  “I don’t need your land, and you don’t need mine.”

  The scratching stops.

  “You stay where you are, and I’ll stay where I am. Everything’ll be cool.”

  Something shifts inside the wall, pushing it outward, cracking the plaster from ceiling to floor.

  “Put away your claws, and I’ll put away mine.”

  Silence.

  “We’ll leave each other alone.”

  Silence.

  “We were born to breed, to eat, and to run free. Each and all of us.”

  The scratching sounds begin again, this time forceful, frenzied. Determined.

  “We weren’t born to war, but war is what we made.”

  The wall plaster buckles, pieces falling to the clean cement floor.

  “Why do we scrap, old hound?”

  A furred black paw pushes through the wall. I get to my feet as the chair splits and falls behind me. My hands ball into fists, my own claws dig into my palms, dripping blood onto the tops of my bare feet.

  “Because we’re all fucking animals,” I sneer behind clenched teeth. “Me and you and you and me.”

  The wall explodes outward into the room, chunks of moldering plaster and cheap lath skittering across the floor, pushed by a cloud of dust that billows like smoke.

  “Fuck you, old hound. You ain’t nothing but a goddamn dog.”

  The dust clears and Black Shuck stands before me, an obsidian boulder parting the cloud of dust swirling around bunched muscles and corded sinew. I can see it now. Now, I see the hound, and it’s terrible. But not as terrible as me.