The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  At long last a dusty car with a gook corporal at the wheel pulled up beside me. Fierman and Witcover were in back, and Witcover’s eye was discolored, swollen shut. I went around to the passenger side, opened the front door, and heard behind me a spit-filled explosive sound. Turning, I saw that a kid of about eight or nine had jumped out of hiding to ambush me. He had a dirt-smeared belly that popped from the waist of his ragged shorts, and he was aiming a toy rifle made of sticks. He shot me again, jiggling the gun to simulate automatic fire. Little monster with slit black eyes. Staring daggers at me, thinking I’d killed his daddy. He probably would have loved it if I had keeled over, clutching my chest: but I wasn’t in the mood. I pointed my finger, cocked the thumb, and shot him down like a dog.

  He stared meanly and fired a third time: this was serious business, and he wanted me to die. “Row-nal Ray-gun,” he said, and pretended to spit.

  I just laughed and climbed into the car. The gook corporal engaged the gears, and we sped off into a boil of dust and light, as if—like Stoner—we were passing through a metaphysical barrier between worlds. My head bounced against the back of the seat, and with each impact I felt that my thoughts were clearing, that a poisonous sediment was being jolted loose and flushed from my bloodstream. Thick silence welled from the rear of the car, and not wanting to ride with hostiles all the way to Saigon, I turned to Witcover and apologized for having hit him. Pressure had done it to me, I told him. That, and bad memories of a bad time. His features tightened into a sour knot and he looked out the window, wholly unforgiving. But I refused to allow his response to disturb me—let him have his petty hate, his grudge, for whatever good it would do him—and I turned away to face the violent green sweep of the jungle, the great troubled rush of the world ahead, with a heart that seemed lighter by an ounce of anger, by one bitterness removed. To the end of that passion, at least, I had become reconciled.

  Delta Sly Honey

  There was this guy I knew at Noc Linh, worked the corpse detail, guy name of Randall J. Willingham, a skinny red-haired Southern boy with a plague of freckles and eyes blue as poker chips, and sometimes when he got high, he’d wander up to the operations bunker and start spouting all kinds of shit over the radio, telling about his hometown and his dog, his opinion of the war (he was against it), and what it was like making love to his girlfriend, talking real pretty and wistful about her ways, the things she’d whisper and how she’d draw her knees up tight to her chest to let him go in deep. There was something pure and peaceful in his voice, his phrasing and listening to him, you could feel the war draining out of you, and soon you’d be remembering your own girl, your own dog and hometown, not with heartsick longing but with joy in knowing you’d had at least that much sweetness of life. For many of us, his voice came to be the oracle of our luck, our survival, and even the brass who tried to stop his broadcasts finally realized he was doing a damn sight more good than any morale officer, and it got to where anytime the war was going slow and there was some free air, they’d call Randall up and ask if he felt in the mood to do a little talking.

  The funny thing was that except for when he had a mike in his hand—you could hardly drag a word out of Randall. He had been a loner from day one of his tour, limiting his conversation to “Hey” and “How you?” and such, and his celebrity status caused him to become even less talkative. This was best explained by what he told us once over the air: “You meet ol’ Randall J. on the street, and you gonna say, ‘Why, that can’t be Randall J.! That dumb-lookin’ hillbilly couldn’t recite the swearin’-in-oath, let alone be the hottest damn radio personality in South Vietnam!’ And you’d be right on the money, ’cause Randall J. don’t go more’n double figures for IQ, and he ain’t got the imagination of a stump, and if you stopped him to say ‘Howdy,’ chances are he’d be stuck for a response. But lemme tell ya, when he puts his voice into a mike, ol’ Randall J. becomes one with the airwaves, and the light that’s been dark inside him goes bright, and his spirit streams out along Thunder Road and past the Napalm Coast, mixin’ with the ozone and changin’ into Randall J. Willingham, the High Priest of the Soulful Truth and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.”

  The base was situated on a gently inclined hill set among other hills, all of which had once been part of the Michelin rubber plantation, but now were almost completely defoliated, transformed into dusty brown lumps. Nearly seven thousand men were stationed there, living in bunkers and tents dotting the slopes, and the only building with any degree of permanence was an outsized Quonset hut that housed the PX; it stood just inside the wire at the base of the hill. I was part of the MP contingent, and I guess I was the closest thing Randall had to a friend. We weren’t really tight, but being from a small Southern town myself, the son of gentry, I was familiar with his type—fey, quiet farmboys whose vulnerabilities run deep—and I felt both sympathy and responsibility for him. My sympathy wasn’t misplaced: nobody could have had a worse job, especially when you took into account the fact that his top sergeant, a beady-eyed, brush-cut, tackle-sized Army lifer named Andrew Moon, had chosen him for his whipping boy. Every morning I’d pass the tin-roofed shed where the corpses were off-loaded (it, too, was just inside the wire, but on the opposite side of the hill from the PX), and there Randall would be, laboring among body bags that were piled around like huge black fruit, with Moon hovering in the background and scowling. I always made it a point to stop and talk to Randall in order to give him a break from Moon’s tyranny, and though he never expressed his gratitude or said very much about anything, soon he began to call me by my Christian name, Curt, instead of by my rank. Each time I made to leave, I would see the strain come back into his face, and before I had gone beyond earshot I would hear Moon reviling him. I believe it was those days of staring into stomach cavities, into charred hearts and brains and Moon all the while screaming at him…I believe that was what had squeezed the poetry out of Randall and birthed his radio soul.

  I tried to get Moon to lighten up. One afternoon I bearded him in his tent and asked why he was mistreating Randall. Of course I knew the answer. Men like Moon, men who have secured a little power and grown bloated from its use, they don’t need an excuse for brutality; there’s so much meanness inside them, it’s bound to slop over onto somebody. But—thinking I could handle him better than Randall—I planned to divert his meanness, set myself up as his target, and this seemed a good way to open.

  He didn’t bite, however; he just lay on his cot, squinting up at me and nodding sagely, as if he saw through my charade. His jowls were speckled with a few days’ growth of stubble, hairs sparse and black as pig bristles. “Y’know,” he said, “I couldn’t figure why you were buddyin’ up to that fool, so I had a look at your records.” He grunted laughter. “Now I got it.”

  “Oh?” I said, maintaining my cool.

  “You got quite a heritage, son! All that noble Southern blood, all them dead generals and senators. When I seen that, I said to myself, ‘Don’t get on this boy’s case too heavy, Andy. He’s just tryin’ to be like his great-grandaddy, doin’ a kindness now and then for the darkies and the poor white trash.’ Ain’t that right?”

  I couldn’t deny that a shadow of the truth attached to what he had said, but I refused to let him rankle me. “My motives aren’t in question here,” I told him.

  “Well, neither are mine…’least not by anyone who counts.” He swung his legs off the cot and sat up, glowering at me. “You got some nice duty here, son. But you go fuckin’ with me, I’ll have your ass walkin’ point in Quanh Tri ’fore you can blink. Understand?”

  I felt as if I had been dipped in ice water. I knew he could do as he threatened—any man who’s made top sergeant has also made some powerful friends—and I wanted no part of Quanh Tri.

  He saw my fear and laughed. “Go on, get out!” he said, and as I stepped through the door, he added, “Come round the shed anytime, son. I ain’t got nothin’ against noblesse oblige. Fact is, I love to watch.”

  An
d I walked away, knowing that Randall was lost.

  In retrospect, it’s clear that Randall had broken under Moon’s whip early on, that his drifty radio spiels were symptomatic of his dissolution. In another time and place, someone might have noticed his condition; but in Vietnam everything he did seemed a normal reaction to the craziness of the war, perhaps even a bit more restrained than normal, and we would have thought him really nuts if he hadn’t acted weird. As it was, we considered him a flake, but not wrapped so tight that you couldn’t poke fun at him, and I believe it was this misconception that brought matters to a head…

  Yet I’m not absolutely certain of that.

  Several nights after my talk with Moon, I was on duty in the operations bunker when Randall did his broadcast. He always signed off in the same distinctive fashion, trying to contact the patrols of ghosts he claimed were haunting the free-fire zones. Instead of using ordinary call signs like Charlie Baker Able, he would invent others that suited the country lyricism of his style, names such as Lobo Angel Silver and Prairie Dawn Omega.

  “Delta Sly Honey,” he said that night. “Do you read? Over.”

  He sat a moment, listening to static filling in from nowhere.

  “I know you’re out there, Delta Sly Honey,” he went on. “I can see you clear, walkin’ the high country near Black Virgin Mountain, movin’ through twists of fog like battle smoke and feelin’ a little afraid, ’cause though you gone from the world, there’s a world of fear ’tween here and the hereafter. Come back at me, Delta Sly Honey, and tell me how it’s goin’.” He stopped sending for a bit, and when he received no reply, he spoke again. “Maybe you don’t think I’d understand your troubles, brothers. But I truly do. I know your hopes and fears, and how the spell of too much poison and fire and flyin’ steel warped the chemistry of fate and made you wander off into the wars of the spirit ‘stead of findin’ rest beyond the grave. My soul’s trackin’ you as you move higher and higher toward the peace at the end of everything, passin’ through mortar bursts throwin’ up thick gouts of silence, with angels like tracers leadin’ you on, listenin’ to the cold white song of incoming stars…Come on back at me, Delta Sly Honey. This here’s your good buddy Randall J., earthbound at Noc Linh. Do you read?”

  There was a wild burst of static, and then a voice answered, saying, “Randall J., Randall J.! This is Delta Sly Honey. Readin’ you loud and clear.”

  I let out a laugh, and the officers sitting at the far end of the bunker turned their heads, grinning. But Randall stared in horror at the radio, as if it were leaking blood, not static. He thumbed the switch and said shakily, “What’s your position, Delta Sly Honey? I repeat. What’s your position?”

  “Guess you might say our position’s kinda relative,” came the reply. “But far as you concerned, man, we just down the road. There’s a place for you with us, Randall J. We waitin’ for you.”

  Randall’s Adam’s apple worked, and he wetted his lips. Under the hot bunker lights, his freckles stood out sharply.

  “Y’know how it is when you’re pinned down by fire?” the voice continued. “Lyin’ flat with the flow of bullets passin’ inches over your head? And you start thinkin’ how easy it’d be just to raise up and get it over with…You ever feel like that, Randall J.? Most times you keep flat, ’cause things ain’t bad enough to make you go that route. But the way things been goin’ for you, man, what with stickin’ your hands into dead meat night and day—”

  “Shut up,” said Randall, his voice tight and small.

  “—and that asshole Moon fuckin’ with your mind, maybe it’s time to consider your options.”

  “Shut up!” Randall screamed it, and I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Take it easy,” I told him. “It’s just some jerkoff puttin’ you on.” He shook me off; the vein in his temple was throbbing.

  “I ain’t tryin’ to mess with you, man,” said the voice. “I’m just layin’ it out, showin’ you there ain’t no real options here. I know all them crazy thoughts that been flappin’ round in your head, and I know how hard you been tryin’ to control ’em. Ain’t no point in controllin’ ’em anymore, Randall J. You belong to us now. All you gotta do is to take a little walk down the road, and we be waitin’. We got some serious humpin’ ahead of us, man. Out past the Napalm Coast, up beyond the high country…”

  Randall bolted for the door, but I caught him and spun him around. He was breathing rapidly through his mouth, and his eyes seemed to be shining too brightly—like the way an old light bulb will flare up right before it goes dark for good. “Lemme go!” he said. “I gotta find ’em! I gotta tell ’em it ain’t my time!”

  “It’s just someone playin’ a goddamn joke,” I said, and then it dawned on me. “It’s Moon, Randall! You know it’s him puttin’ somebody up to this.”

  “I gotta find ’em!” he repeated, and with more strength than I would have given him credit for, he pushed me away and ran off into the dark.

  He didn’t return, not that night, not the next morning, and we reported him AWOL. We searched the base and the nearby villes to no avail, and since the countryside was rife with NLF patrols and VC, it was logical to assume he had been killed or captured. Over the next couple of days, Moon made frequent public denials of his complicity in the joke, but no one bought it. He took to walking around with his holster unlatched, a wary expression on his face. Though Randall hadn’t had any real friends, many of us had been devoted to his broadcasts, and among those devotees were a number of men who…well, a civilian psychiatrist might have called them unstable, but in truth they were men who had chosen to exalt instability, to ritualize insanity as a means of maintaining their equilibrium in an unstable medium: it was likely some of them would attempt reprisals. Moon’s best hope was that something would divert their attention, but three days after Randall’s disappearance, a peculiar transmission came into operations; like all Randall’s broadcasts, it was piped over the PA, and thus Moon’s fate was sealed.

  “Howdy, Noc Linh,” said Randall or someone who sounded identical to him. “This here’s Randall J. Willingham on patrol with Delta Sly Honey, speakin’ to you from beyond the Napalm Coast. We been humpin’ through rain and fog most of the day, with no sign of the enemy, just a few demons twistin’ up from the gray and fadin’ when we come near, and now we all hunkered down by the radio, restin’ for tomorrow. Y’know, brothers, I used to be scared shitless of wakin’ up here in the big nothin’, but now it’s gone and happened, I’m findin’ it ain’t so bad. ’Least I got the feelin’ I’m headed someplace, whereas back at Noc Linh I was just spinnin’ round and round, and close to losin’ my mind. I hated ol’ Sergeant Moon, and I hated him worse after he put someone up to hasslin’ me on the radio. But now, though I reckon he’s still pretty hateful, I can see he was actin’ under the influence of a higher agency, one who was tryin’ to help me get clear of Noc Linh…which was somethin’ that had to be, no matter if I had to die to do it. Seems to me that’s the nature of war, that all the violence has the effect of lettin’ a little magic seep into the world by way of compensation…”

  To most of us, this broadcast signaled that Randall was alive, but we also knew what it portended for Moon. And therefore I wasn’t terribly surprised when he summoned me to his tent the next morning. At first he tried to play sergeant, ordering me to ally myself with him; but seeing that this didn’t work, he begged for my help. He was a mess: red-eyed, unshaven, an eyelid twitching.

  “I can’t do a thing,” I told him.

  “You’re his friend!” he said. “If you tell ’em I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, they’ll believe you.”

  “The hell they will! They’ll think I helped you.” I studied him a second, enjoying his anxiety. “Who did help you?”

  “I didn’t do it, goddammit!” His voice had risen to a shout, and he had to struggle to keep calm. “I swear! It wasn’t me!”

  It was strange, my mental set at that moment. I found I believed him—I didn’t think him capa
ble of manufacturing sincerity—and yet I suddenly believed everything: that Randall was somehow both dead and alive, that Delta Sly Honey both did and did not exist, that whatever was happening was an event in which all possibility was manifest, in which truth and falsity had the same valence, in which the real and the illusory were undifferentiated. And at the center of this complex circumstance—a bulky, sweating monster—stood Moon. Innocent, perhaps. But guilty of a seminal crime.

  “I can make it good for you,” he said. “Hawaii…you want duty in Hawaii, I can arrange it. Hell, I can get you shipped Stateside.”

  He struck me then as a hideous genie offering three wishes, and the fact that he had the power to make this offer infuriated me. “If you can do all that,” I said, “you ain’t got a worry in the world.” And I strode off, feeling righteous in my judgment.