Koko Read Free

in?”
    Poole named his division and his battalion.
    “What year?” The man cocked his head to check out Poole’s face.
    “ ‘Sixty-eight,’ sixty-nine.”
    “Ia Thuc,” the boonie-rat said immediately. “I remember that. That was you guys, right?
Time
magazine and all that shit?”
    Poole nodded.
    “Fuckin’-A. They shoulda give that Lieutenant Beevers a fuckin’ Medal of Honor for
     what he done, and then took it away again for shootin’ off his mouth in front of fuckin’
     journalists,” the boonie-rat said, sidling away with an easy fluid motion that would
     have been noiseless if they had been walking over brittle twigs.
    Two fat women with short fluffy hair, pastel pantsuits, and placid church-picnic faces
     were rhythmically waving between them a red banner with the stark black letters POW-MIA. A few paces behind marched two youngish ex-soldiers bearing another banner: COMPENSATE FOR AGENT ORANGE . Agent Orange—
    Victor Spitalny had tilted his head and stuck out his tongue, claiming that the stuff
     tasted good.
You motherfuckers, drink it down! This shit’s boo-koo good for your insides!
Washington and Spanky Burrage and Trotman, the black soldiers on the detail, cracked
     up, falling into the thick jungly growth beside the trail, slapping each other on
     the back and sides, repeating “boo-koo good for your insides” and enraging Spitalny,
     whom they knew had only been trying, in his stupid way, to be funny. The smell of
     Agent Orange, halfway between gasoline and industrial solvent, stuck to all of them
     until sweat and insect repellent and trail grime either covered it up or washed it
     off.
    Poole caught himself wiping the palms of his hands together, but it was too late to
     wash away the Agent Orange.
    How does it feel to kill somebody? I can’t tell you because Ican’t tell you. I think maybe I got killed myself, but not before I killed my son.
     You shit in your pants, man, you laugh so hard.
3
    By the time Michael Poole reached the park, the parade had melted down into a wandering
     crowd, marchers and onlookers moving together across the grass. Loose, ragged groups
     streamed over the entire landscape, walking through the sparse trees, filling the
     whole scene. Though he could not see the Memorial, Michael knew where it was. About
     a hundred yards before him, the crowds were moving down a grade into a natural bowl
     from which came the psychic flare of too many people. The Memorial stood at the bottom
     of all those people. Michael’s scalp tingled.
    A phalanx of men in wheelchairs were pushing themselves across the long stretch of
     grass before the bowl. One of the chairs tilted over sideways and a gaunt, black-haired,
     legless man with a shockingly familiar face spilled out. Michael’s heart froze—the
     man was Harry Beevers. Michael started to run forward to help. Then he checked himself.
     The fallen man was surrounded by friends, and in any case he could not be Poole’s
     old lieutenant. Two others righted the chair. They held it steady as the man braced
     himself on his stumps. Then he pushed himself up onto the metal footrests. The man
     reached up, grasped the armrests, and with neat gymnastic skill deposited himself
     in his own seat.
    The men in wheelchairs were gradually overtaken by the crowd. Michael looked around
     him. All about were familiar faces which at second glance resolved into the faces
     of strangers. Various large bearded versions of Tim Underhill were moving toward the
     grassy bowl, also several wiry Denglers and Spitalnys. A beaming, round-faced Spanky
     Burrage slapped the palm of a black man in a Special Forces hat. Poole wondered what
     had happened to the dap, the complicated series of handgrips that blacks in Vietnam
     used to greet one another. There had been a wonderful mixture of seriousness and poker-faced
     hilarity about daps.
    People streamed down into the bowl. Old women and babies clutched tiny flags. To Michael’s
     right, two