Fatal Light by Richard Currey Page B

gun.”
    The chaplain looked at me, and I knew he would not pretend to understand. I had read most of the mysteries in the hospital library and the tremors were subsiding and the cast was due to be removed the next day. I would be pronounced healthy, recovered, able-bodied, fit for duty. I would be returned to my unit. They would be in the bush, I had been told, out on a a search-and-destroy. I could fly out to join them on the supply chopper. Everyone would be happy to see me.

8
    Tropical rain, the rain that begins suddenly in downpour, drilled across the face of palm fronds and gushed out of trees, vibrated across my helmet. The firefight ended as suddenly as the rain began and I had given the man I was with two Syrettes of morphine, one in each arm, and laced two battle dressings over his thigh wound, one on top of the other. The blood was still soaking through.
    He motioned me closer and I took my helmet off so I could hear him. The rain slowed to a whisper and ran out of my hair and he spoke into my ear: That’s bone blood down there.
    I turned my head to look at him. “You mean did you get hit in the bone?”
    â€œI mean that’s marrow blood running out of me now,” he said. “You get that kind of bleeding you done for.”
    â€œYou’re going straight out of here,” I said. “We’re going straight out of here together.”
    â€œWe may get out of here,” he said, “but a man draws bone blood he be bleeding forever.” He looked at me, lips drawn tight over his teeth, and said, “He be bleeding forever, you hear me?”
    The rain stopped and the forest clicked as water fell into groundcover and we stared at each other, his eyes flickering in
disappearing light. Mist filtered, smoke and constant drip. In the distance, the hoarse choke of approaching helicopters.
    â€œChoppers coming,” I said. “We’re on the way.”
    â€œGonna bleed the rest of my life,” he hissed. “Gonna be coming right out of my bones all the rest of my life. You hear what I’m saying?”
    I looked at him and the sound of the helicopters grew closer. “I hear what you’re saying,” I whispered.

9
    Waiting for sun. Rain coming. The top sergeant who lost six toes to frostbite and three fingers to a grenade at Cochin Reservoir in Korea said, “Go on out there, fellas, make sure there’s none of our guys left out there.”
    Linderman and I looked out at the hillside from the bunker porthole.
    Top said, “We ain’t leaving none of our guys out there.”
    Linderman glanced at me and said, “Yeah, what if we go out there and end up like some of those dudes laying on the ground? You thought of that, Top? I ain’t going out there for no goddam stroll.”
    The Top sat down on a sandbag, sighed, said, “That’s what’s wrong these days. No goddam cooperation. Trying to run a war with assholes like you. I must really be too old for this shit. Times’ve changed too much on me.”
    â€œChrist,” Linderman said, “here we go.”
    â€œWhen I joined the army things were different,” the Top said. “Yes sir.”
    â€œTop,” Linderman said. “You’re breaking my heart. You know that?”

    The Top reflected. “Probably all you guys on dope,” he said. “Can’t run a war on dope.”
    â€œShit,” Linderman said, “give me a break.”
    â€œSo we just gonna leave our boys out there? That coulda been you out there, Linderman. Tomorrow it probably will be. So I can just write to your mother, Hey, no sweat, your boy don’t care if his body turns to shit out there in no-man’s-land.”
    Linderman moved to the porthole, not responding, looking at the corpses on the hillside.
    â€œWe can just let the rats chew on your worthless bones,” the Top said, standing up. “So give me a fucking break, Linderman. I’ll go out