Dirty Work by Larry Brown

down beside him. He had a little whiskey on him. He was sipping on it. I could tell he had something on his mind. Something he wanted to tell me. He never would talk very loud in the woods. And he didn’t ever talk much anyway. He was one of those people. The ones you don’t want to fuck with.
    Finally he looked at me and said I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. He said two or three hundred Americans were dying every week, and none of them thought it would be him. He said in war you’ve got to kill all the people you can to try and keep yourself alive. The less of them, he said, the better the chances for you. He said to keep my eyes open, look and listen and learn all I could. Trust nobody. Depend on nobody.
    He said what he’d done was something he’d had to do. He said he’d known what it would cost before he did it, but he went on and did it anyway because it was what he had to do, that he didn’t have any choice. He said now that he finally had us back, he was losing me. And he’d thought about me every day. He said all he wanted me to do was take care of myself. Listen to what they taught me. Because he wanted me to come back home to him. And not in some goddamn coffin.

M an can go crazy laying around a place like this. That’s the truth. Take me early this morning when he first got here. Sun come up like it always do. Yeah, sun also rise for Braiden Chaney. Me in my bed. Window frame start getting lighter, the floor, sheets on my bed. The morning always the quietest time in this place. Nobody stirring. Everybody sleeping. Television’s off. Which I don’t watch them fools no way. Nurses are all drinking coffee, getting ready to go home. Diva too. In the mornings I always know it will be a long time before I’ll see her again. Know I can’t wait that long for her. Why I have to go somewhere. Go somewhere yesterday, go somewhere today, another place tomorrow. Can’t stay here.
    But people out there in that city coming to life. Waking up, cooking breakfast, hating to get out of the bed. They’d been in one long enough, they wouldn’t. But hold on. Wasn’t bitter. Just tired. Lots of them getting their kids ready for school. They drive by here, they ain’t thinking about who’s in here. They watching for the red lights. I hear them come by. I hear their horns. I know what they do. They go to their jobs and do things with their hands, legs carry them from one place to another.
    World’s too big. People don’t know what other people doing. Ain’t no way to keep up with everything that’s happening. Too much stuff, and too many people. Only thing you can know of the world’s your little bitty piece of it.
    I guess the Lord knows it all. He made it. But I never could see how He kept up with it.
    I am wishing they’d hurry up with my breakfast. Want to go on and get that out of the way. I’m wondering how much he gonna talk to me anyway. I got lions to kill, and tribes to fight off. Got maidens. Many of them. Many beautiful ones I can touch with my hands.

“I was wounded three times before this happened. I was shot twice one day and then another day I got hit with some shrapnel. Nothing major. I think I got three weeks sick leave altogether for that. Went to the Philippines for R and R one time. I started to not even go back. If I’d had any sense I wouldn’t’ve. But I was just a kid, I didn’t know any better. The whole world was out there, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia. I went back. I was back in country four days when I got hit.
    “Damn that beer’s good and cold. I wish somebody’d come in here and tell me something. I don’t even know what the hell happened. I guess I had another one of myfits. Spells. That’s why I’m here, I know. They’re scared to operate on me. My speech might be affected. Something about my brain, and scar tissue. They did plastic surgery on me and I went through all that. They’d do some more if I’d let them. I just said fuck it. I can