Going After Cacciato Read Free

wet enough, cold enough, he’ll see how ridiculous it is. He’ll come back.”
    “Sure.”
    “So why not?” Doc turned to the lieutenant. “Why not pack it up, sir? Head back and call it a bummer.”
    Stink Harris made a light tittering sound, not quite mocking.
    “Seriously,” Doc kept on. “Let him go … MIA, strayed in battle. Sooner or later he’ll wake up, you know, and he’ll see how nutty it is and he’ll—”
    The lieutenant stared into the rain. His face was yellow except for webs of shattered veins.
    “So what say you, sir? Let him go?”
    “Dumber than marbles,” Stink giggled. “Dumber than Friar Tuck.”
    “And smarter than Stink Harris.”
    “You know what, Murph?”
    “Pickle it.”
    “Ha! Who’s saying to pickle it?”
    “Just stick it in vinegar,” said Harold Murphy. “That’s what.”
    Stink giggled again but he shut up. Murphy was a big man.
    “So what’s the verdict, sir? Turn around?”
    The lieutenant was quiet. At last he shivered and crawled out into the rain with a wad of toilet paper. Paul Berlin sat alone, playing solitaire in the style of Las Vegas. Pretending ways to spend his earnings. Travel, expensive hotels, tips for everyone. Wine and song on white terraces, fountains blowing colored water. Pretending was his best trick to forget the war.
    When the lieutenant returned he told them to saddle up.
    “Turning back?” Murphy said.
    The lieutenant shook his head. He looked sick.
    “I knew it,” Stink crowed. “Can’t just waddle away from a war, ain’t that right, sir? Dummy’s got to be taught you can’t hump your way home.” Stink grinned and flicked his eyebrows at Harold Murphy. “Damn straight, I knew it.”
       Cacciato had reached the top of the second mountain. Bareheaded, hands loosely at his sides, he looked down on them through a mix of fog and drizzle. Lieutenant Corson had the binoculars on him.
    “Maybe he don’t see us,” Oscar said. “Maybe he’s lost.”
    The old man made a vague, dismissive gesture. “He sees us. Sees us real fine.”
    “Pop smoke, sir?”
    “Why not? Sure, why not throw out some pretty smoke?” The lieutenant watched through the glasses while Oscar took out the smoke and pulled the pin and tossed it onto a level ledge along the trail. The smoke fizzled for a moment and then puffed up in a heavy cloud of lavender. “Oh, yes, he sees us. Sees us fine.”
    “Bastard’s
waving.
”
    “Isn’t he? Yes, I can see that, thank you.”
    “Will you—?”
    “Mother of Mercy.”
    High up on the mountain, partly lost in the drizzle, Cacciato was waving at them with both arms. Not quite waving. The arms were flapping.
    “Sick,” the lieutenant murmured. He sat down, handed the glasses to Paul Berlin, then began to rock himself as the purple smoke climbed the face of the mountain. “I tell you, I’m a sick, sick man.”
    “Should I shout up to him?”
    “Sick,” the lieutenant moaned. He kept rocking.
    Oscar cupped his hands and hollered, and Paul Berlin watched through the glasses. Cacciato stopped waving. His head was huge through the binoculars. He was smiling. Very slowly, deliberately, Cacciato was spreading his arms out as if to show them empty, opening them up like wings, palms down. The kid’s face was fuzzy, bobbing in and out of mist, but it was a happy face. Then his mouth opened, and in the mountains there was thunder.
    “What’d he say?” The lieutenant rocked on his haunches. He was clutching himself and shivering. “Tell me, what’d he say?”
    “Can’t hear, sir. Oscar—?”
    And there was more thunder, long-lasting thunder that came in waves.
    “What’s he saying?”
    “Sir, I—”
    “Just tell me.”
    Paul Berlin watched through the glasses as Cacciato’s mouth opened and closed and opened, but there was only more thunder. And the arms kept flapping, faster now and less deliberate, wide-spanning winging motions—flying, Paul Berlin suddenly realized. Awkward, unpracticed, but