I Am the River Page 8

  “And I’m a fucking dragon.”

  I open my mouth to breath fire, and Black Shuck opens jaws of its own. We run at each other, but my mouth can’t open wide enough, and its maw gets so much bigger. So, so much bigger. An eternity of black opening up in front of me. Things swirl inside that mouth, twisting down its throat. Galaxies, nebulae, all sucked into a slowly spinning black hole that roars in reverse, so slow and low it means to rip apart every tiny building block inside me.

  Black Shuck snaps shut its jaws and all goes black. I am either asleep, or I am dead. Unmade. Stardust once more.

  I’m diving into the swimming hole, the water taking my ten-year-old body in and hugging me tight as I glide through the murk, bringing me back to the surface before I even need to take a breath. Treading water, I wipe water from my eyes and turn back to the dock, where my brother stands, uncertain, bones quivering inside his skinny frame. Knees turning in on each other. I mock him. Me, the brave boy not afraid of the water. The hero who knows how to float.

  He turns to leave, to get his towel and his shoes and head home, but I say something that turns him back around, to face me and the water. I say it again, because we’re alone, and I know exactly where to go inside him to find what I need.

  His bones are no longer quivering, and his knees are straight. With an expression on his face that I’d never seen before, he steps off the dock and knifes into the water, feet-first. He sinks like a stone, and just like a stone, he doesn’t float back to the surface. Not until much, much later.

  I wake up in darkness with a bag over my head, drawstring cinched tight around my neck. The inside of the bag is olive-green and is trying to eat through my scalp, chewing through hair and licking at my skin. Black Shuck is inside the bag, shrunk down but with the same teeth and rotten breath smelling like an east Texas feedlot.

  My fingers claw at the strings around my neck and find that they aren’t there anymore, then rip off the olive-green boonie hat and throw it across the room. Black Shuck roars from inside the bush hat, its wrinkled green dog house, and I push open the door and flee the cave, needing to move my spider limbs, put some blood back into my extremities and get away from the River where my brother sank, that keeps pulling me back into its waters where I once floated like I invented the whole world. And I don’t want to sit in the chair and look at the wall anymore and feel the presence of the boonie hat and think about what’s inside of it, hidden by one fold that no one ever thought to open.

  And I need a drink.

  I’m strung out, worse than ever, the opium dragging me to sleep in the chair while the Dexedrine waits to fry my nerves when I wake up, if I can even tell the difference between the two. Waking or asleep. Live or dead. All too real or just one big fucking fake. I can’t take it anymore. I’m near the edge, and that’s a dangerous place. I could fall, right down the million-mile throat into the black hole belly of a hound.

  I’m awake now, I think, and on the move, slicing through crowds that part before my blade. Have to walk off the shakes, and get a drink or two or seven in me to keep my mind together and move me back from the cliff.

  Human contact. I despise it, fear it, but I know that I need it right now. Right now, after nights or days or days of nights like these, when the hound finds its way in while my eyes are still open and some of those doors threaten to open wide. I need to get away from the River. All of them, and everything that waits for me under the water, accusing me with wide open eyes.

  Cut this crowd, feet moving like a fly to dead flesh. Had to get out of the cave. The water. Sleep is strongest in an empty room. So is madness, and so is Black Shuck. It wouldn’t dare touch me in a crowd. At least it hadn’t yet. Times can and do change. The gaping hole in my wall was testament to that.

  The floor was wet when I left, and I needed dry land.

  16. The Last Chance Saloon

  I readjust my hips in the booth, sore from the chair and getting eaten. I sip my drink, Irish whiskey with a splash of good Javan coffee. No ice cubes, because Bangkok doesn’t do ice cubes, not even in the upscale hotels. Fuck what the tourists want because what they want rarely involves ice cubes.

  The place is crowded, but it could be just me unable to mentally navigate groups of people until I get this first drink down. I don’t stand out here as much, sometimes being mistaken for a tourist by the new bar girls and some of the freshly deposited expats. Burned-out hippies, most of them, a few Australians on holiday, but also some real hard chargers, who want to burn their candle down to ash in the new Old West buried in one of the oldest spots in the east. They all hit me up for drugs and tips on the best brothels or sex clubs or places where men can rent village boys by the hour. One look from my eyes so new and different from theirs, that have seen the jungle and what lies beyond, usually sends them down the bar, but some of them stick around long enough to buy me a drink and endure ten minutes of strained silence. Either way, it’s a free drink for a man perpetually on a budget.

  I look around the room, getting a temperature reading for the crowd tonight, looking for shadows in the corners. Nothing but the usual scene, for the most part. A bit of an edge in the air, or maybe that’s just my veins bulging under my skin, locked in the confused struggle of needing to purge narcotics while at the same time trying to conserve every bit of them.

  A loud voice erupts from the front of the bar, the place with the most visibility, and vulnerability. I can’t understand what he’s saying, but the gibberish is most definitely English, mashed flat by the landscape of the Middle West.

  Now that I know the score, my ears can’t help but comb through the background noise and braid his voice into words.

  “…greased three gooners all by myself. Sure as shit did.”

  He’s the right age, but isn’t the right type. He’s wearing a black beret, checkered black and white VC scarf around his neck, and a khaki safari shirt, all of them props from entirely different plays. New combat boots on his feet without a scuff on them, down below shorts held up by a brown dress belt. Fat legs. A face that hasn’t seen anything but the inside of a cheeseburger bag and too many matinees. No one who did what we did would talk this way, not in mixed company, in that tone of voice. Maybe I’ll let him wear my boonie hat for a while and see how he makes out with that.

  “Four shots, three stuffed body bags,” this cheeseburger went on. “If those dirty bastards used them, which they didn’t. Just dragged them back into the jungle or God knows where else.”

  The Vietnamese in the bar, and there aren’t many but enough, cast their glares on the man and his entourage of imports and locals of several genders. Bar girls, lady boys, sleaze tourists, and a Eurotrash couple ogling the king shit of Ugly America.

  “You ever see the insides of a man? No, no… No women. What do you think I am, an animal? Warrior’s code, ladies and gentlemen and lady gentlemen.”

  Laughter. Some applause. Fucking applause. Could be a diplomat or a businessman, special attaché or some shit like that, but I smell the stink of the long con all the way across the room.

  “War is hell, know what I’m saying? And it was a hell of a party. Can we drink to that? I think it’s only right.”

  They do, because apparently it is.

  This man is embarrassing me, playing the part of one of my own but he most certainly is not. He’s shaming those slow dying deep roots, trained for drought and stubborn as weeds.

  My feet move before my brain can tell them not to. The transplant Vietnamese, a lot of them veterans, won’t say anything. They have too much class. But I will. I’m a veteran, too, and I lost my class a long time ago.

  I stand behind the guy and look down at him, see the shoe polish collecting around the fat behind his neck. Unless he was a general, this turkey is too old to have been there with us kids. No way in hell is this turkey a general.

  “Hey there, cherry.”

  Everyone seated leans to get a look at the new voice at the party. King shitbird squints up at me, annoyed, b
ut not yet sure how much heat he should put behind that look. You run into all types in Bangkok.

  “What did you call me?” he says.

  “You the FNG, right?” I say with a chummy laugh. “I mean, around here. You definitely the FNG.”

  “The fuck does that mean?”

  I smile. It means I’m right, and it means that it’s on.

  “You gonna ask me to sit down, cherry? We brothers, right? Yeah, we brothers. Come on, gimme them DAPs.”

  “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, friend, but you best keep right on steppin’.”

  I squat down with my sore spider legs, speak softly into his ear. “I ain’t your friend, and I ain’t steppin’ for nobody.”

  He pulls away and turns, finding my eyes. All of my eyes. What he sees there pushes the shiny skin back on his face. He hides it with a smile, closing the furnace doors. He raises his hand, offered up to the growling dog. You let it get your scent, and it maybe won’t rip out your throat, right? “Pull up a seat, son,” he says.

  “Oh, you my daddy now?”

  He laughs. “Oh, I ain’t your daddy, boy,” he says, emphasizing the “boy” like guys like him always did. I dealt with that shit for years up north, until I dropped the bayou just long enough to get the fuck out of there for good, trading insults in English for taunts across the wire in Vietnamese. “But I do have manners.”

  “Nah, you don’t. You’re a swine, rolling in the mud and showing your ass.”

  “You looking for trouble?”

  “Wasn’t. But I think I found some.”

  “War’s over, soldier.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not for any of us who were there. It’ll never be over. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? You’re an actor. A clown in a costume.” I’m getting heated. His group is getting nervous.

  “Let me buy you a drink,” he said, holding up a finger.

  “Let me buy you one,” I say, slapping down a few bills. “At the hotel up the street. This place ain’t for you.”

  He’s backed into a corner. Fight or flight, and the latter would kill the party and his rep, whatever that may be with whomever these people are. The former? Well, we’d just have to see. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” he says.

  “Because what you’re talking about, in this place, is my business. We’re guests here. Act accordingly.”

  “You’re an uppity one, ain’t you?”

  I lean in close, smelling his sweat and everything he ate and drank for the last hour. “I’m as uppity as they come.”

  He sizes me up, looking for angles. Bloodshot eyes narrow. “You ain’t military.”

  “Not currently. Not anymore.”

  “Probably went AWOL,” he says with a snort, bringing his drink to his mouth like a canteen. “No steel in the spine.”

  Now my blood’s up, bubbling atop of that heat. I’d pull some Military Occupation Specialties and see where it takes us. Shit, I already know where it’d take us, and I can’t wait for us to arrive.

  “What company were you in?” I ask.

  “Special Forces.”

  “Like hell. What station?”

  “You think I’m going to tell you?”

  “What’s your MOS?”

  “I ain’t telling you that, neither.”

  He’s not even good at the lie. Too lazy. Clown in a costume.

  “Where’d you do basic?” I continue.

  “Nothing basic about anything I did,” he says with a self-satisfied sniff, taking a drink.

  “I’d say everything about you is basic.”

  Somehow, that gets to him. Touches too close to trailer-park siding. Dogshit in a dirt backyard. “Maybe I’ll start asking you questions,” he says, face flushing a deeper shade of rose. “How’d you like that, smart ass?”

  “No, just one more from me, then the floor is yours.”

  “Shoot,” he says, leaning back and throwing out his crotch.

  “What does the inside of a man look like?”

  This takes him by surprise, slides his groin back into the folds of his chair. He stumbles backward through the booze-soaked chemicals of his brain, looking for any movie, book, or science text to come up with the proper answer, to shut this crazy motherfucker down.

  “Red,” he says finally in a low voice. He hopes it has the effect of past pain, but I know it’s the whimper of defeat.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s black.”

  Less than two minutes later, the table is empty, his beret left on the table.

  I regard that hat, sitting among the empty glasses. Dead soldiers, the civs call them. We wouldn’t dare. Maybe I’ll trade this hat for mine back in the cave. Maybe I’ll move what’s inside that bush hat into this new cover, if it’ll fit. If it’ll stay. Maybe I’ll just keep drinking right here and never go back to the cave again, because something in there is eventually going to eat me.

  There’s something behind me now, watching me. Maybe I never left the cave, and I’m still sitting in that chair. Maybe it followed me here, but it never has before.

  No, what’s behind me isn’t a thing, my new eyes tell me. It’s just a man. Which means I am where I think I am, I did drive a table full of playtime assholes into the street, and I am sitting at that same table with a man watching me. I’ve had enough of men tonight. Let me watch, then move the fuck one. Petting zoo is close.

  “Handy work with our friend,” the man says, his voice bemused. He was closer than I thought.

  “He ain’t my friend.” I look at the man standing just behind me to the right, note his pale skin, the dark circles under his black eyes that seem like they’re all pupil, so dilated they eat up the light. I’ve seen him before, and he’s obviously seen me. Somehow I knew he’d talk to me some day, and I’d just given him the perfect in. “He isn’t my friend, either.”

  “May I?”

  I shrug. I honestly don’t care, and now I have to catch up on my buzz before the money runs out.

  He sits and smiles at me, almost with pride. “American, just like I thought.”

  “What else would I be?”

  “African. Yemeni. Hell, you could have been Haitian.”

  “Maybe I’m all those. Haitian-born African who grew up in Yemen.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re an American through and through. Hard to place your accent, though.”

  I don’t know how to take this, nor do I know how to take him. He’s coming on like he knows me, and that he might is what scares me. I don’t want anyone to know me anymore, especially not here, and especially not someone on Uncle Sam’s payroll, which this dude obviously is.

  “I’ve seen you around,” he says.

  “I kind of stick out.” I motion to the bartender for another drink.

  “What brings you to Bangkok?”

  “I was born here.”

  “Reborn, maybe,” he says with a plastic grin, proud of himself. He’s probably proud of himself a lot.

  “Nah, I was reborn out in the jungle.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “Sure wasn’t the Congo.”

  “So what brings you to Bangkok?”

  “Are we going to have a problem?” I shoot him a look, almost daring him to answer the question a certain way. I’m still pissed from the jive-ass turkey in the hat.

  “I certainly hope not,” he says, not the least bit worried. “That’s not why I sat down.”

  “Then why did you? Reminisce about the red, white, and blue? Talk some Yankees? Cleveland Browns?”

  “No, no. I don’t need that. Not from you, certainly.”

  The drink arrives. The bartender looks at the man, who pays for my drink and ignores the offer of change.

  “I don’t trust nobody who doesn’t drink,” I say.

  “I don’t trust anyone, period.”

  “Smart move.”

  “The only move.”

  I gulp my drink, faster than normal, because I want to get out of here, a
way from this self-satisfied cadaver and his weird eyes who keeps looking at me like he knows me, or has a secret. Maybe some combination of both.

  “I’m going to ask you for a favor,” the man says. “You don’t have to do it, but I’m going to ask anyway, because that’s what I do, and I’ve been wanting to for a while. Is that okay?”

  “No harm in asking, I guess.”

  “That’s not always the case, but I hope in this one it is.”

  I finish my drink and push the glass to the center of the table, joining the rest of the empties. Only one dead solider here.

  “I know who you work for,” he says.

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

  I look him in the eyes. “No, you really don’t, and it would be better for you if you didn’t, you dig?”

  “Okay, let’s do it that way if you’d like.”

  I get up, looking around to see who is watching me. Everyone is and isn’t. Same old. Blind eyes watching you everywhere, shadows in every corner, waiting inside spider webs. “I gotta go.”

  “But I haven’t asked my favor yet.”

  “I don’t do favors.”

  “Maybe for me you will. I’m a very appreciative person, with lots of friends. Doing a favor for someone like me could be quite beneficial to a stranger in a strange land without many friends of his own.”

  “I don’t need friends.”

  “Everyone needs friends, Mr. Broussard.”

  I drop back into my seat. “How do you know my name?” I know how he does, but in the moment, I can’t help but ask.

  “How does anyone know anything?” The reflections of the bar lights in his flat black eyes flash like midnight quartz. He’s now deep in his game, and loving every move of it.

  I stare at him, noting his smile, his stiff posture, the way his hands don’t move as they rest palm down on the table. He could be a ventriloquist dummy. Might be. The bartender is watching me, and I signal for another drink. However this goes, I know I’m going to need it.