The Best of Lucius Shepard

Delta Sly Honey

There was this guy I knew at Noc Linh, worked the corpse detail, guy name of Randall J. Willingham, a skinny red-haired Southern boy with a plague of freckles and eyes blue as poker chips, and sometimes when he high, he’d wander up to the operations bunker and start spouting all kinds of shit over the radio, telling about his hometown and his dog, his opinion of the war (he was against it), and what it was like making love to his girlfriend, talking real pretty and wistful about her ways, the things she whisper and how she’d draw her knees up tight to her chest to let him in deep. There was something pure and peaceful in his voice, his phrasing and listening to him, you could feel the war draining out of you, and soon you’d be remembering your own girl, your own dog and hometown, no: with heartsick longing but with joy in knowing you’d had at least that much sweetness of life. For many of us, his voice came to be the oracle of our luck, our survival, and even the brass who tried to stop his broadcasts finally realized he was doing a damn sight more good than any morale officer, and it got to where anytime the war was going slow and there was some free air, they’d call Randall up and ask if he felt in the mood to do a little talking.

The funny thing was that except for when he had a mike in his hand—you could hardly drag a word out of Randall. He had been a loner from day one of his tour, limiting his conversation to “Hey” and “How you?’ and such, and his celebrity status caused him to become even less talkative This was best explained by what he told us once over the air: “You meet ol’ Randall J. on the street, and you gonna say, ‘Why that can’t be Randall J.! That dumb-lookin’ hillbilly couldn’t recite the swearin’-in oath, let alone be the hottest damn radio personality in South Vietnam!’ And you’d right on the money, ’cause Randall J. don’t go more’n double figure IQ, and he ain’t got the imagination of a stump, and if you stopped to say ‘Howdy,’ chances are he’d be stuck for a response. But lemme tell ya, when he puts his voice into a mike, ol’ Randall J. becomes one the airwaves, and the light that’s been dark inside him goes bright. his spirit streams out along Thunder Road and past the Napalm Coast, mixin’ with the ozone and changin’ into Randall J. Willingham, the High Priest of the Soulful Truth and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.” The base was situated on a gently inclined hill set among other hills, all of which had once been part of the Michelin rubber plantation, but now was almost completely defoliated, transformed into dusty brown lumps. Nearly seven thousand men were stationed there, living in bunkers and tens dotting the slopes, and the only building with any degree of permanence was an outsized Quonset hut, but that that housed the PX; it stood just inside

the wire at the base of the hill. I was part of the MP contingent, and I guess I was the closest thing Randall had to a friend. We weren’t really tight, but being from a small Southern town myself, the son of gentry, I was familiar with his type—fey, quiet farmboys whose vulnerabilities run deep—and I felt both sympathy and responsibility for him. My sympathy wasn’t misplaced: nobody could have had a worse job, especially when you took into account the fact that his top sergeant, a beady-eyed, brush-cut, tackle-sized Army lifer named Andrew Moon, had chosen him for his whipping boy. Every morning I’d pass the tin-roofed shed where the corpses were off-loaded (it, too, was just inside the wire, but on the opposite side of the hill from the PX), and there Randall would be, laboring among body bags that were piled around like huge black fruit, with Moon hovering in the background and scowling. I always made it a point to stop and talk to Randall in order to give him a break from Moon’s tyranny, and though he never expressed his gratitude or said very much about anything, soon he begn to call me by my Christian name, Curt, instead of by my rank. Each time I made to leave, I would see the strain come back into his face, and before I had gone beyond earshot, I would hear Moon reviling him. I believe it was those days of staring into stomach cavities, into charred hearts and brains and Moon all the while screaming at him… I believe that was what had squeezed the poetry out of Randall and birthed his radio soul.

I tried to get Moon to lighten up. One afternoon I bearded him in his tent and asked why he was mistreating Randall. Of course I knew the answer. Men like Moon, men who have secured a little power and grown bloated from its use, they don’t need an excuse for brutality; there’s so much meanness inside them, it’s bound to slop over onto somebody. But—thinking I could handle him better than Randall—I planned to divert his meanness, set myself up as his target, and this seemed a good way to open.

He didn’t bite, however; he just lay on his cot, squinting up at me and nodding sagely, as if he saw through my charade. His jowls were speckled with a few days’ growth of stubble, hairs sparse and black as pig bristles. “Y’know,” he said, “I couldn’t figure why you were buddyin’ up to that fool, so I had a look at your records.” He grunted laughter. “Now I got it.”“

“Oh?” I said, maintaining my cool.

“You got quite a heritage, son! All that noble Southern blood, all them dead generals and senators. When I seen that, I said to myself, ‘Don’t get on this boy’s case too heavy, Andy. He’s just tryin’ to be like his greatgrandaddy, doin’ a kindness now and then for the darkies and the poor white trash.’ Ain’t that right?”

I couldn’t deny that a shadow of the truth attached to what he had said, but I refused to let him rankle me. “My motives aren’t in question here,” told him.

“Well, neither are mine… ‘least not by anyone who counts.” He swung his legs off the cot and sat up, glowering at me. “You got some nice duty here, son. But you go fuckin’ with me, I’ll have your ass walkin’ point in Quanh Tri ‘fore you can blink. Understand?”

I felt as if I had been dipped in ice water. I knew he could do as he threatened—any man who’s made top sergeant has also made some powerful friends—and I wanted no part of Quanh Tri.

He saw my fear and laughed. “Go on, get out!” he said, and as I stepped through the door, he added, “Come round the shed anytime, son. I ain’t got nothin’ against noblesse oblige. Fact is, I love to watch.”

And I walked away, knowing that Randall was lost.

In retrospect, it’s clear that Randall had broken under Moon’s whip early on, that his drifty radio spiels were symptomatic of his dissolution. another time and place, someone might have noticed his condition; but in—Vietnam everything he did seemed a normal reaction to the craziness of war, perhaps even a bit more restrained than normal, and we would have thought him really nuts if he hadn’t acted weird. As it was, we considered him a flake, but not wrapped so tight that you couldn’t poke fun at him, and I believe it was this misconception that brought matters to a head.

Yet I’m not absolutely certain of that.

Several nights after my talk with Moon, I was on duty in the operation bunker when Randall did his broadcast. He always signed off in the same distinctive distinctive fashion, trying to contact the patrols of ghosts he claimed were haunting the free-fire zones. Instead of using ordinary call signs like Charlie Baker Able, he would invent others that suited the country lyricism of his style, names such as Lobo Angel Silver and Prairie Dawn Omega.

“Delta Sly Honey,” he said that night. “Do you read? Over.”

He sat a moment, listening to static filling in from nowhere.

“I know you’re out there, Delta Sly Honey,” he went on. “I can see you clear, walkin’ the high country near Black Virgin Mountain, movin’ through twists of fog like battle smoke and feelin’ a little afraid, ’cause though you gone from the world, there’s a world of fear ‘tween here and the hereafter.

Come back at me, Delta Sly Honey, and tell me how it’s goin’.” He stopped sending for a bit, and when he received no reply, he spoke again. “Maybe you don’t think I’d understand your troubles, brothers. But I truly do. I know your hopes and fears, and how the spell of too much poison and fire and flyin’ steel warped the chemistry of fate and made you wander off into the wars of the spirit ‘stead of findin’ rest beyond the grave. My soul’s trackin’ you as you move higher and higher toward the peace at the end of everything, passin’ through mortar bursts throwin’ up thick gouts of silence, with angels like tracers leadin’ you on, listenin’ to the cold white song of incoming stars… . Come on back at me, Delta Sly Honey. This here’s your good buddy Randall J., earthbound at Noc Linh. Do you read?”

There was a wild burst of static, and then a voice answered, saying, Randall J., Randall J.! This is Delta Sly Honey. Readin’ you loud and clear.”

I let out a laugh, and the officers sitting at the far end of the bunker turned their heads, grinning. But Randall stared in horror at the radio, as if it were leaking blood, not static. He thumbed the switch and said shakily, “What’s your position, Delta Sly Honey? I repeat. What’s your position?”

“Guess you might say our position’s kinda relative,” came the reply. But far as you concerned, man, we just down the road. There’s a place for you with us, Randall J. We waitin’ for you.”

Randall’s Adam’s apple worked, and he wet his lips. Under the hot bunker lights, his freckles stood out sharply.

“Y’know how it is when you’re pinned down by fire?” the voice continued. “Lyin’ flat with the flow of bullets passin’ inches over your head? And you start thinkin’ how easy it’d be just to raise up and get it over with… You ever feel like that, Randall J.? Most times you keep flat, ’cause things ain’t bad enough to make you go that route. But the way things been goin’ for you, man, what with stickin’ your hands into dead meat night and day—”

“Shut up,” said Randall, his voice tight and small.

“—and that asshole Moon fuckin’ with your mind, maybe it’s time to consider your options.”

“Shut up!” Randall screamed it, and I grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Take it easy,” I told him. “It’s just some jerk-off puttin’ you on.” He shook me off; the vein in his temple was throbbing.

“I ain’t tryin’ to mess with you, man,” said the voice. “I’m just layin’ out, showin’ you there ain’t no real options here. I know all them crazy thoughts that been flappin’ round in your head, and I know how hard you been tryin’ to control ’em. Ain’t no point in controllin’ ’em anymore, Randall J. You belong to us now. All you gotta do is to take a little walk down the road, and we be waitin’. We got some serious humpin’ ahead of us, man. Out past the Napalm Coast, up beyond the high country…” Randall bolted for the door, but I caught him and spun him around. He was breathing rapidly through his mouth, and his eyes seemed to be shining too brightly—like the way an old light bulb will flare up right before goes dark for good. “Lemme go!” he said. “I gotta find ’em! I gotta tell ’em it ain’t my time!”

“It’s just someone playin’ a goddamn joke,” I said, and then it dawned on me. “It’s Moon, Randall! You know it’s him puttin’ somebody up to this.”

“I gotta find ’em!” he repeated, and with more strength than I would have given him credit for, he pushed me away and ran off into the dark.

He didn’t return, not that night, not the next morning, and we reported him AWOL. We searched the base and the nearby villes to no avail, and since the countryside was rife with NLF patrols and VC, it was logical to assume he had been killed or captured. Over the next couple of days, Moon made frequent public denials of his complicity in the joke, but no-one bought it. He took to walking around with his holster unlatched, a wary expression on his face. Though Randall hadn’t had any real friends, many of us had been devoted to his broadcasts, and among those devotees were a number of men who… well, a civilian psychiatrist might have called them unstable, but in truth they were men who had chosen to exalt instability, to ritualize insanity as a means of maintaining their equilibrium in an unstable medium: it was likely some of them would attempt reprisals. Moon’s best hope was that something would divert their attention, three days after Randall’s disappearance, a peculiar transmission came into operations; like all Randall’s broadcasts, it was piped over the PA, and Moon’s fate was sealed.

“Howdy, Noc Linh,” said Randall or someone who sounded identical to him. “This here’s Randall J. Willingham on patrol with Delta Sly Honey speakin’ to you from beyond the Napalm Coast. We been humpin’ though rain and fog most of the day, with no sign of the enemy, just a few demons twistin’ up from the gray and fadin’ when we come near, and now we all hunkered down by the radio, restin’ for tomorrow. Y’know, brothers, I used to be scared shitless of wakin’ up here in the big nothin’, but now it’s gone and happened, I’m findin’ it ain’t so bad. ‘Least I got the feelin’ I’m ‘someplace, whereas back at Noc Linh I was just spinnin’ round and and close to losin’ my mind. I hated ol’ Sergeant Moon, and I hated him worse after he put someone up to hasslin’ me on the radio. But now, though, I reckon he’s still pretty hateful, I can see he was actin’ under the influence of a higher agency, one who was tryin’ to help me get clear of Noc Linh… which was somethin’ that had to be, no matter if I had to die to do it. Seems to me that’s the nature of war, that all the violence has the effect of lettin’ a little magic seep into the world by way of compensation. To most of us, this broadcast signaled that Randall was alive, but also knew what it portended for Moon. And therefore I wasn’t terribly suprised when he summoned me to his tent the next morning. At first he to play sergeant, ordering me to ally myself with him; but seeing that this didn’t work, he begged for my help. He was a mess: red-eyed, unshaven, an eyelid twitching.

“I can’t do a thing,” I told him.

“You’re his friend!” he said. “If you tell ’em I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, they’ll believe you.”

“The hell they will! They’ll think I helped you.” I studied him a second, enjoying his anxiety. “Who did help you?”

“I didn’t do it, goddammit!” His voice had risen to a shout, and he had to struggle to keep calm. “I swear! It wasn’t me!”

It was strange, my mental set at that moment. I found I believed him—I didn’t think him capable of manufacturing sincerity—and yet I suddenly believed everything: that Randall was somehow both dead and alive, that Delta Sly Honey both did and did not exist, that whatever was happening was an event in which all possibility was manifest, in which truth and falsity had the same valence, in which the real and the illusory were undifferentiated. And at the center of this complex circumstance—a bulky, sweating monster—stood Moon. Innocent, perhaps. But guilty of a seminal crime.

“I can make it good for you,” he said. “Hawaii… you want duty in Hawaii, I can arrange it. Hell, I can get you shipped Stateside.”

He struck me then as a hideous genie offering three wishes, and the fact that he had the power to make his offer infuriated me. “If you can do all that,” I said, “you ain’t got a worry in the world.” And I strode off, feeling righteous in my judgment.

Two nights later while returning to my hooch, I spotted a couple of men wearing tiger shorts dragging a large and apparently unconscious someone toward the barrier of concertina wire beside the PX—I knew it had to be Moon. I drew my pistol, sneaked along the back wall of the PX, and when they came abreast I stepped out and told them to put their burden down. They stopped but didn’t turn loose of Moon. Both had blackened their faces with greasepaint, and to this had added fanciful designs in crimson, blue, and yellow that gave them the look of savages. They carried combat knives, and their eyes were pointed with the reflected brilliance of the perimeter lights. It was a hot night, but it seemed hotter there beside them, as if their craziness had a radiant value. “This ain’t none of your affair, Curt,” said the tallest of the two; despite his bad grammar, he had a soft, well-modulated voice, and I thought I heard a trace of amusement in it.

I peered at him, but was unable to recognize him beneath the paint. Again I told them to put Moon down.

“Sorry,” said the tall guy. “Man’s gotta pay for his crimes.”

“He didn’t do anything,” I said. “You know damn well Randall’s just AWOL.”

The tall guy chuckled, and the other guy said, “Naw, we don’t know that a-tall.”

Moon groaned, tried to lift his head, then slumped back.

“No matter what he did or didn’t do,” said the tall guy, “the man deserves what’s comin’.”

“Yeah,” said his pal. “And if it ain’t us what does it, it’ll be somebody else.”

I knew he was right, and the idea of killing two men to save a third who was doomed in any event just didn’t stack up. But though my sense of duty was weak where Moon was concerned, it hadn’t entirely dissipated. “Let him go,” I said.

The tall guy grinned, and the other one shook his head as if dismayed by my stubbornness. They appeared wholly untroubled by the pistol, possessed of an irrational confidence. “Be reasonable, Curt,” said the tall guy. “This ain’t gettin’ you nowhere.”

I couldn’t believe his foolhardiness. “You see this?” I said, flourishing the pistol. “Gun, y’know? I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you with it, you don’t let him go.”

Moon let out another groan, and the tall guy rapped him hard on the back of the head with the hilt of his knife.

“Hey!” I said, training the pistol on his chest.

“Look here, Curt…” he began.

“Who the hell are you?” I stepped closer, but was still unable to identify him. “I don’t know you.”

“Randall told us ’bout you, Curt. He’s a buddy of ours, ol’ Randall is. We’re with Delta Sly Honey.”

I believed him for that first split second. My mouth grew cottony, and my hand trembled. But then I essayed a laugh. “Sure you are! Now put his ass down!”

“That’s what you really want, huh?”

“Damn right!” I said. “Now!”

“Okay,” he said. “You got it.” And with a fluid stroke, he cut Moon’s throat.

Moon’s eyes popped open as the knife sliced through his tissues, and that—not the blood spilling onto the dust—was the thing that froze me: those bugged eyes in which an awful realization dawned and faded.

They let him fall face downward. His legs spasmed, his right hand jittered. Far a long moment, stunned, I stared at him, at the blood puddling beneath his head, and when I looked up I found that the two men were sprinting away, about to round the curve of the hill. I couldn’t bring myself to fire. Mixed in my thoughts were the knowledge that killing them served no purpose and the fear that my bullets would have no effect. I glanced left and right, behind me, making sure that no one was watching, and then ran up the slope to my hooch.

Under my cot was a bottle of sour mash. I pulled it out and had a couple drinks to steady myself; but steadiness was beyond me. I switched on my lamp and sat crosslegged, listening to the snores of my bunkmate. Lying on my duffel bag was an unfinished letter home, one I had begun nearly two weeks before; I doubted now I’d ever finish it. What would I tell my folks? That I had more or less sanctioned an execution? That I was losing my fucking mind? Usually I told them everything was fine, but after the scene I had just witnessed, I felt I was forever past that sort of blithe invention. I switched off the lamp and lay in the dark, the bottle resting on my chest. I had a third drink, a fourth, and gradually lost both count an dconsciousness.

I had a week’s R & R coming and I took it, hoping debauch would shore me up. But I spent much of that week attempting to justify my inaction in terms of the inevitable and the supernatural, and failing in that attempt.

See, now as then, if pressed for an opinion, I would tell you that what happened at Noc Linh was the sad consequence of a joke gone sour, of a war twisted into a demonic exercise. Everything was explicable in that wise. And yet it’s conceivable that the supernatural was involved, that—as Randall suggested—a little magic had seeped into the world. In Vietnam, with its horror and strangeness, it was difficult to distinguish between the magical and the mundane, and it’s possible that thousands of supernatural events went unnoticed as such, obscured by the poignancies of death and fear, becoming quirky memories that years later might pass through your mind while you were washing the dishes or walking the dog, and give you a moment’s pause, an eerie feeling that would almost instantly be ground away by the mills of the ordinary. But I’m certain that my qualification is due to the fact that I want there to have been some magic involved, anything to lessen my culpability, to shed a less damning light on the perversity and viciousness of my brothers-in-arms.

On returning to Noc Linh, I found that Randall had also returned. He claimed to be suffering from amnesia and would not admit to having made the broadcast that had triggered Moon’s murder. The shrinks had decided that he was bucking for a Section Eight, had ordered him put back on the corpse detail, and as before, Randall could be seen laboring beneath the tin-roofed shed, transferring the contents of body bags into aluminum coffins. On the surface, little appeared to have changed. But Randall had become a pariah. He was insulted and whispered about and shunned. Whenever he came near, necks would stiffen and conversations die. If he had offed Moon himself, he would have been cheered; but the notion that he had used his influence to have his dirty work jobbed out didn’t accord with the prevailing concept of honorable vengeance. Though I tried not to, I couldn’t help feeling badly toward him myself. It was weird. I would approach with e best of intentions, but by the time I reached him, my hackles would

have risen and I would walk on in hostile silence, as if he were exuding a chemical that had evoked my contempt. I did get close enough to him, however, to see that the mad brightness was missing from his eyes; I had the feeling that all his brightness was missing, that whatever quality had enabled him to do his broadcasts had been sucked dry.

One morning as I was passing the PX, whose shiny surfaces reflected a dynamited white glare of sun, I noticed a crowd of men pressing through the front door, apparently trying to catch sight of something inside. I pushed through them and found one of the canteen clerks—a lean kid with black hair and a wolfish face—engaged in beating Randall to a pulp. I pulled him off, threw him into a table, and kneeled beside Randall, who had collapsed to the floor. His cheekbones were lumped and discolored; blood poured from his nose, trickled from his mouth. His eyes met mine, and I felt nothing from him: he seemed muffled, vibeless, as if heavily sedated.

“They out to get me, Curt,” he mumbled.

All my sympathy for him was suddenly resurrected. “It’s okay, man,” I said. “Sooner or later, it’ll blow over.” I handed him my bandanna, and he dabbed ineffectually at the flow from his nose. Watching him, I recalled Moon’s categorization of my motives for befriending him, and I understood now that my true motives had less to do with our relative social status than with my belief that he could be saved, that—after months of standing by helplessly while the unsalvageable marched to their fates—I thought I might be able to effect some small good work. This may seem altruistic to the point of naïveté, and perhaps it was, perhaps the brimstone oppressiveness of the war had from the residue of old sermons heard and disregarded provoked some vain Christian reflex; but the need was strong in me, nonetheless, and I realized that I had fixed on it as a prerequisite to my own salvation.

Randall handed back the bandanna. “Ain’t gonna blow over,” he said “Not with these guys.”

I grabbed his elbow and hauled him to his feet. “What guys?”

He looked around as if afraid of eavesdroppers. “Delta Sly Honey!” “Christ, Randall! Come on.” I tried to guide him toward the door, he wrenched free.

“They out to get me! They say I crossed over and they took care of Moon for me… and then I got away from ’em.” He dug his fingers into my arm. “But I can’t remember, Curt! I can’t remember nothin’!” My first impulse was to tell him to drop the amnesia act, but then I thought about the painted men who had scragged Moon: if they were aft: Randall, he was in big trouble. “Let’s get you patched up,” I said. “We talk about this later.”

He gazed at me, dull and uncomprehending. “You gonna help me?” he asked in a tone of disbelief.

I doubted anyone could help him now, and maybe, I thought, that was also part of my motivation—the desire to know the good sin of honest failure. “Sure,” I told him. “We’ll figure out somethin’.”

We started for the door, but on seeing the men gathered there, Randall balked.

“What you want from me?” he shouted, giving a flailing, awkward wave with his left arm as if to make them vanish. “What the fuck you want?”

They stared coldly at him, and those stares were like bad answers. He hung his head and kept it hung all the way to the infirmary.

That night I set out to visit Randall, intending to advise him to confess, a tactic I perceived as his one hope of survival. I’d planned to see him early in the evening, but was called back on duty and didn’t get clear until well after midnight. The base was quiet and deserted-feeling. Only a few lights picked out the darkened slopes, and had it not been for the heat and stench, it would have been easy to believe that the hill with its illuminated caves was a place of mild enchantment, inhabited by elves and not frightened men, The moon was almost full, and beneath it the PX shone like an immense silver lozenge. Though it had closed an hour before, its windows were lit,and—MP instincts engaged—I peered inside. Randall was backed against the bar, holding a knife to the neck of the wolfish clerk who had beaten him, and ranged in a loose circle around him, standing among the tables, were five men wearing tiger shorts, their faces painted with savage designs. I drew my pistol, eased around to the front and—wanting my entrance to have shock value—kicked the door open.

The five men turned their heads to me, but appeared not at all disconcerted. ““How’s she goin’, Curt?” said one, and by his soft voice I recognized the tall guy who had slit Moon’s throat.

“Tell ’em to leave me be!” Randall shrilled.

“I fixed my gaze on the tall guy and with gunslinger menace said, “I’m messin’ with you tonight. Get out now or I’ll take you down.” You can’t hurt me, Curt,” he said.

“Don’t gimme that ghost shit! Fuck with me, and you’ll be humpin’ wtih Delta Sly Honey for real.”

“Even if you were right ’bout me, Curt, I wouldn’t be scared of dyin’. I was dead where it counts halfway through my tour.”

A scuffling at the bar, and I saw that Randall had wrestled the clerk to the floor. He wrapped his legs around the clerk’s waist in a scissors and yanked his head back by the hair to expose his throat. “Leave me be,” he said. Every nerve in his face was jumping.

“Let him go, Randall,” said the tall guy. “We ain’t after no innocent blood. We just want you to take a little walk… to cross back over.”

“Get out!” I told him.

“You’re workin’ yourself in real deep, man,” he said.

“This ain’t no bullshit!” I said. “I will shoot.”

“Look here, Curt,” he said. “S’pose we’re just plain ol’ ordinary grunts. You gonna shoot us all? And if you do, don’t you think we’d have friends who’d take it hard? Any way you slice it, you bookin’ yourself a silver box and air freight home.”

He came a step toward me, and I said, “Watch it, man!” He came another step, his devil mask split by a fierce grin. My heart felt hot and solid in my chest, no beats, and I thought, He’s a ghost, his flesh is smoke, the paint a color in my eye. “Keep back!” I warned.

“Gonna kill me?” Again he grinned. “Go ahead.” He lunged, a feint only, and I squeezed the trigger.

The gun jammed.

When I think now how this astounded me, I wonder at my idiocy. The gun jammed frequently. It was an absolute piece of shit, that weapon. But at the time its failure seemed a magical coincidence, a denial of the laws of chance. And adding to my astonishment was the reaction of the other men: they made no move toward Randall, as if no opportunity had been provided, no danger passed. Yet the tall guy looked somewhat shaken to me.

Randall let out a mewling noise, and that sound enlisted my competence I edged between the tables and took a stand next to him. “Let me get the knife from him,” I said. “No point in both of ’em dyin’.”

The tall guy drew a deep breath as if to settle himself. “You reckon you can do that, Curt?”

“Maybe. If you guys wait outside, he won’t be as scared and maybe I can get it.”

They stared at me, unreadable.

“Gimme a chance.”

“We ain’t after no innocent blood.” The tall guy’s tone was firm, as if this were policy. “But…”

“Just a coupla minutes,” I said. “That’s all I’m askin’.”

I could almost hear the tick of the tall guy’s judgment. “Okay,” he said at last. “But don’t you go tryin’ nothin’ hinkey, Curt.” Then, to Randall. “We be waitin’, Randall J.”

As soon as they were out the door, I kneeled beside Randall. Spittle flecked the clerk’s lips, and when Randall shifted the knife a tad, his eyes rolled up into heaven. “Leave me be,” said Randall. He might have been talking to the air, the walls, the world.

“Give it up,” I said.

He just blinked.

“Let him go and I’ll help you,” I said. “But if you cut him, you on your own. That how you want it?”

“Un-unh.”

Well, turn him loose.”

“I can’t,” he said, a catch in his voice. “I’m all froze up. If I move, I’ll cut him.” Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he blinked some more.

How ’bout I take it from you? If you keep real still, if you lemme ease outta your hand, maybe we can work it that way.”

“I don’t know… I might mess up.”

The clerk gave a long shuddery sigh and squeezed his eyes shut.

“You gonna be fine,” I said to Randall. “Just keep your eyes on me, and you gonna be fine.”

I stretched out my hand. The clerk was trembling, Randall was trembling, and when I touched the blade it was so full of vibration, it felt alive, as if 11 the energy in the room had been concentrated there. I tried pulling it away from the clerk’s neck, but it wouldn’t budge.

“You gotta loosen up, Randall,” I said.

I tried again and, gripping the blade between my forefinger and thumb, managed to pry it an inch or so away from the line of blood it had drawn. My fingers were sweaty, the metal slick, and the blade felt like it was connected to a spring, that any second it would snap back and bite deep.

“My fingers are slippin’,” I said, and the clerk whimpered.

“Ain’t my fault if they do.” Randall said this pleadingly, as if testing the waters, the potentials of his guilt and innocence, and I realized he was setting me up the way he had Moon’s killers. It was a childlike attempt compared to the other, but I knew to his mind it would work out the same. “The hell it ain’t!” I said. “Don’t do it, man!”

“It ain’t my fault!” he insisted.

“Randall!”

I could feel his intent in the quiver of the blade. With my free hand, I grabbed the clerk’s upper arm, and as the knife slipped, I jerked him to side. The blade sliced his jaw, and he screeched; but the wound wasn’t mortal.

I plucked the knife from Randall’s hand, wanting to kill him myself. But I had invested too much in his salvation. I hauled him erect and over to the window; I smashed out the glass with a chair and pushed him through.

Then I jumped after him. As I came to my feet, I saw the painted men closing in from the front of the PX and—still towing Randall along—I sprinted around the corner of the building and up the slope, calling for help. Lights flicked on, and heads popped from tent flaps. But when they spotted Randall, they ducked back inside.

I was afraid, but Randall’s abject helplessness—his eyes rolling like a freaked calf’s, his hands clawing at me for support—helped to steady me. The painted men seemed to be everywhere. They would materialize from behiind tents, out of bunker mouths, grinning madly and waving moonstruck knives, and send us veering off in another direction, back and forth across the hill. Time and again, I thought they had us, and on several occasions, it was only by a hairsbreadth that I eluded the slash of a blade that looked to be bearing a charge of winking silver energy on its tip. I was wearing down, stumbling, gasping, and I was certain we couldn’t last much longer. But we continued to evade them, and I began to sense that they were in no hurry to conclude the hunt; their pursuit had less an air of frenzy than of a ritual harassment, and eventually, as we staggered up to the mouth of the operations bunker and—I believed—safety, I realized that they had been herding us. I pushed Randall inside and glanced back from the sandbagged entrance. The five men stood motionless a second, perhaps fifty feet away, then melted into the darkness.

I explained what had happened to the MP on duty in the bunker—a heavyset guy named Cousins—and though he had no love for Randall, he was a dutiful sort and gave us permission to wait out the night inside. Randall slumped down against the wall, resting his head on his knees, the picture of despair. But I believed that his survival was assured. With the testimony of the clerk, I thought the shrinks would have no choice but to send him elsewhere for examination and possible institutionalization. I felt good, accomplished, and passed the night chain-smoking, bullshitting with Cousins.

Then, toward dawn, a voice issued from the radio. It was greatly distorted, but it sounded very much like Randall’s.

“Randall J.,” it said. “This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Do you read? Over.”“ Randall looked up, hearkening to the spit and fizzle of the static. “I know you out there, Randall J.,” the voice went on. “I can see you clear, sitting with the shadows of the bars upon your soul and blood on your hands. Ain’t no virtuous blood, that’s true. But it stains you alla same. Come back at me, Randall J. We gotta talk, you and me.”

Randall let his head fall; with a finger, he traced a line in the dust. “What’s the point in keepin’ this up, Randall J.?” said the voice. “You left the best part of you over here, the soulful part, and you can’t go on much longer without it. Time to take that little walk for real, man. Time to get clear of what you done and pass on to what must be. We waitin’ for you just north of base, Randall J. Don’t make us come for you.” It was in my mind to say something to Randall, to break the disconsolate spell the voice appeared to be casting over him; but I found I had nothing left to give him, that I had spent my fund of altruism and was mostly weary of the whole business… as he must have been.

“Ain’t nothin’ to be ‘fraid of out here,” said the voice. “Only the wind and the gray whispers of phantom Charlie and the trail leadin’ away from the world. There’s good company for you, Randall J. Gotta man here used to be a poet, and he’ll tell you stories ’bout the Wild North King and the Woman of Crystal. Got another fella, guy used to live in Indonesia, and he’s fulla tales ’bout watchin’ tigers come out on the highways to shit and cities of men dressed like women and islands where dragons still live. Then there’s this kid from Opelika, claims to know some of your people down that way, and when he talks, you can just see that ol’ farmboy moon heavin’ up big and yellow over the barns, shinin’ the blacktop so it looks like polished jet, and you can hear crazy music leakin’ from the Dixieland café and smell the perfumed heat steamin’ off the young girls’ breasts. Don’t make us wait no more, Randall J. We got work to do. Maybe it ain’t much, breakin’ trail and walkin’ point and keepin’ a sharp eye out for demons…but it sure as hell beats shepherdin’ the dead, now don’t it?” A long pause. “You come on and take that walk, Randall J. We’ll make you welcome, I promise. This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Over and out.”

Randall pulled himself to his feet and took a faltering few steps toward the mouth of the bunker. I blocked his path and he said, “Lemme go.”

“Look here, Randall,” I said. “I might can get you home if you just hang…”

“Home.” The concept seemed to amuse him, as if it were something with the dubious reality of heaven or hell. “Lemme go.”

In his eyes, then, I thought I could see all his broken parts, a disjointed miring of lights and darks, and when I spoke I felt I was giving tongue a vast consensus, one arrived at without either ballots or reasonable discourse. “If I let you go,” I said, “be best you don’t come back this time.” He stared at me, his face gone slack, and nodded.

Hardly anybody was outside, yet I had the idea everyone was watching us as we walked down the hill; under a leaden overcast, the base had a muted atmosphere such as must have attended rainy dawns beneath the guillotine. The sentries at the main gate passed Randall through without question. He went a few paces along the road, then turned back, his face pale as a star in the half-light, and I wondered if he thought we were driving him off or if he believed he was being called to a better world. In my heart I knew which was the case. At last he set out again, quickly becoming a shadow, then the rumor of a shadow, then gone.

Walking back up the hill, I tried to sort out my thoughts, to determine what I was feeling, and it may be a testament to how crazy I was, how crazy we all were, that I felt less regret for a man lost than satisfaction in knowing that some perverted justice had been served, that the world of the war—tipped off-center by this unmilitary engagement and our focus upon it—could now go back to spinning true.

That night there was fried chicken in the mess, and vanilla ice cream, and afterward a movie about a more reasonable war, full of villainous Germans with Dracula accents and heroic grunts who took nothing but flesh wounds. When it was done, I walked back to my hooch and stood out front and had a smoke. In the northern sky was a flickering orange glow, one accompanied by the rumble of artillery. It was, I realized, just about this time of night that Randall had customarily begun his broadcasts. Somebody else must have realized this, because at that moment the PA was switched on. I half expected to hear Randall giving the news of Delta Sly Honey. but there was only static, sounding like the crackling of enormous flames. Listening to it, I felt disoriented, completely vulnerable, as if some huge black presence were on the verge of swallowing me up. And then a voice did speak. It wasn’t Randall’s, yet it had a similar countrified accent, and though the words weren’t quite as fluent, they were redolent of his old raps, lending a folksy comprehensibility to the vastness of the cosmos, the strangeness of the war. I had no idea whether or not it was the voice that had summoned Randall to take his walk, no longer affecting an imitation, and I thought I recognized its soft well-modulated tones. But none of that mattered. I was so grateful, so relieved by this end to silence, that I went into my hooch and—armed with lies—sat down to finish my interrupted letter home.