Going After Cacciato Read Free Page B

a few minutes maybe.”
    “No,” the lieutenant said. “It’s still a war, isn’t it?”
    “I guess.”
    “There you have it. It’s still a lousy war.”
    There was thunder. Then lightning lighted the valley deep below, then more thunder, then the rain resumed.
    They lay quietly and listened.
    Where was it going, where would it end? Paul Berlin was suddenly struck between the eyes by a vision of murder. Butchery, no less: Cacciato’s right temple caving inward, silence, then an enormous explosion of outward-going brains. It scared him. He sat up,searched for his cigarettes. He wondered where the image had come from. Cacciato’s skull exploding like a bag of helium: boom. So simple, the logical circuit-stopper. No one gets away with gross stupidity forever. Not in a war. Boom, and that always ended it.
    What could you do? It was sad. It was sad, and it was still a war. The old man was right about that.
    Pitying Cacciato with wee-hour tenderness, pitying himself, Paul Berlin couldn’t help hoping for a miracle. The whole idea was crazy, of course, but that didn’t make it impossible. A lot of crazy things were possible. Billy Boy, for example. Dead of fright. Billy and Sidney Martin and Buff and Pederson. He was tired of it. Not scared—not just then—and not awed or overcome or crushed or defeated, just tired. He smiled, thinking of some of the nutty things Cacciato used to do. Dumb things. But brave things, too.
    “Yes, He did,” he whispered. It was true. Yes … then he realized that Doc was listening. “He did. He did some pretty brave stuff. The time he dragged that dink out of her bunker, remember that?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And the time he shot that kid. All those teeth.”
    “I remember.”
    “You can’t call him a coward. You can’t say he ran out because he was scared.”
    “You can say a lot of other shit, though.”
    “True. But you can’t say he wasn’t brave. You can’t say that.”
    Doc yawned. He sat up, unlaced his boots, threw them off, and lay back on his belly. Beside him the lieutenant slept heavily.
    Paul Berlin felt himself grinning. “I wonder … You think maybe he talks French? The language, I mean. You think he knows it?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Yeah. But, jeez, it’s something to think about, isn’t it? Old Cacciato marching off to Paris. It’s something.”
    “Go to sleep,” Doc said. “Don’t forget, cowboy, you got your own health to think about. You’re not exactly a well man.”

    They were in the high country.
    Clean, high, unpolluted country. Quiet country. Complex country, mountains growing out of hills, valleys dropping from mountains and then sharply climbing to higher mountains. It was country far from the war, rich and peaceful country with trees and thick grass, no people and no villages and no lowland drudgery. Lush, shaggy country: huge palms and banana trees, wildflowers, waist-high grasses, vines and wet thickets and clean air. Tarzan country, Eddie Lazzutti called it. Grinning, thumping his bare chest, Eddie would howl and yodel.
    They climbed with their heads down.
    Two days, three days, and a single clay trail kept taking them up. The rain had mostly ended. The days were sultry and overcast, humidity bending the branches of trees, but now and again the clouds to the west showed a new brightness. So they climbed steadily, stopping when the old man needed rest, waiting out the muggiest hours of the afternoon. At times the trail would seem to end, tapering off in a tangle of weeds or rock, and they would be forced to fan out in a broad rank, picking their way forward until the trail reappeared.
    For Paul Berlin, who marched last in the column, it was hard work but not unpleasant. He liked the silence. He liked the feel of motion, one leg then the next. No fears of ambush, no tapping sounds in the brush. The sky was empty. He liked this. Walking away, it was something fine to think about. Even if it had to end, there was still the pleasure