Gone South Read Free Page B

to talk about it?”
    “He’s got a voice,” Steve replied. “He can say if he wants to talk about it or not.”
    Dan could sense Joe was about to stand up from his chair. When Joe stood up, it was either to go after a ticket or knock the ugly out of somebody. “I didn’t keep a body count,” Dan said before Joe could leave the folding chair. “I just did my job.”
    “But you can kinda figure out how many, right?” Curtis wasn’t about to give up until he’d gnawed all the meat off this particular bone. “Like more or less than twenty?”
    A slow pinwheel of memories had begun to turn in Dan’s mind. These memories were never far from him, even on the best of days. In that slow pinwheel were fragments of scenes and events: mortar shells blasting dirt showers in a jungle where the sunlight was cut to a murky gloom; rice paddies shimmering in the noonday heat; helicopters circling overhead while soldiers screamed for help over their radios and sniper bullets ripped the air; the false neon joy of Saigon’s streets and bars; dark shapes unseen yet felt, and human excrement lying within the perimeter wire to mark the contempt the Cong had for Uncle Sam’s young men; rockets scrawling white and red across the twilight sky; Ann-Margret in thigh-high boots and pink hot pants, dancing the frug at a USO show; the body of a Cong soldier, a boy maybe fifteen years old, who had stepped on a mine and been blown apart and flies forming a black mask on his bloody face; a firefight in a muddy clearing, and a terrified voice yelling motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker like a strange mantra; the silver rain, drenching the trees and vines and grass, the hair and skin and eyes and not one drop of it clean; and the village.
    Oh, yes. The village.
    Dan’s mouth was very dry. He took another swallow of tea. The ice was almost gone. He could feel the men waiting for him to speak, and he knew they wouldn’t leave him alone until he did. “More than twenty.”
    “Hot damn, I knew it!” Grinning, Curtis elbowed Steve in the ribs and held out his palm. “Cough it up, friend!”
    “Okay, okay.” Steve brought out a battered wallet, opened it, and slapped a five-dollar bill into Curtis Nowell’s hand. “I’ll get it back sooner or later.”
    “You boys ain’t got trouble enough, you gotta gamble your money away?” Joe sneered.
    Dan set his cup down. A hot pulse had begun beating at his temples. “You laid a bet,” he said as he lifted a wintry gaze to the two men, “on how many corpses I left in ’Nam?”
    “Yeah, I bet it’d be more than twenty,” Curtis said, “and Steve bet it’d be —”
    “I get the drift.” Dan stood up. It was a slow, easy movement though it hurt his knees. “You used me and what I did to win you some cash, Curtis?”
    “Sure did.” It was said proudly. Curtis started to push the fiver into his pocket.
    “Let me see the money.”
    Still grinning. Curtis held the bill out.
    Dan didn’t smile. His hand whipped forward, took the money, and had it in his grip before Curtis’s grin could drop. “Whoa!” Curtis said. “Give it here, man!”
    “You used me and what I did? What I lived through? I think I deserve half of this, don’t you?” Without hesitation, Dan tore the bill in two.
    “Hey, man! It’s against the fuckin’ law to tear up money!”
    “Sue me. Here’s your half.”
    Curtis’s face had reddened. “I oughta bust your fuckin’ head is what I oughta do!”
    “Maybe you ought to. Try, at least.”
    Sensing trouble, a few of the other men had started edging closer. Curtis’s grin returned, only this time it was mean. “I could take you with one hand, you skinny old bastard.”
    “You might be right about that.” Dan watched the younger man’s eyes, knowing that in them he would see the punch coming before Curtis’s arm was cocked for the strike. “Might be. But before you try, I want you to know that I haven’t raised my hand in anger to a man since I left