The driver’s voice was carried on a cloud of cigarette smoke, and ripped Broussard from the bottom of the ocean and placed him squarely inside a stinking U.S. Army-issue jeep on little more than a game trail in an unnamed hillside in Quang Tri Province. He turned back to the window, and now saw everything differently. Just mud, just jungle.
“Yeah, I have,” Broussard said, because he had in Louisiana and eight other places down south, and because not saying anything would only lead to more questions.
“Well, I ain’t. Not even here.”
Broussard wondered why anyone felt the need to ruin an illusion to say something so stupid, so pointless. The back of the man’s head looked like a giant thumb with the nail pulled out at the neck.
“Something weird in the air,” the driver said.
Yeah, bullets, Broussard thought, but didn’t say it aloud because he wasn’t like this guy at all.
Up ahead, only partially visible through the wheezing windshield wipers and the torrent of rainwater that was once an ocean, three Muong women with woven baskets strapped high on their backs led an elephant out of the bush and crossed the road. The huge beast progressed across the muddy track with such delicate grace that it looked as if it moved in slow motion. Sitting on top of the elephant was a man in a low, crow-beaked turban, a World War II-era German MP submachine gun resting in the crook of his arm. He watched the idling American vehicle through the rain as the elephant passed and melted into the green wall of jungle. Neither jeep nor man wanted to know if the other were the enemy. That would save for another day. A drier one, perhaps.
“Goddamn gook tanks,” the driver muttered. “We should shoot ’em on sight.”
Broussard exhaled as he sat back and closed his eyes. Just minutes ago, before the cloud of smoke and the human thumb’s meaningless words, before the crash and recede of the ocean into rain and jungle, Broussard would have seen a sperm whale escorted by three dark haired mermaids and a triumphant Poseidon, trident resting easily across his lap. Elephants were impressive, but whales and mermaids and water gods always took the prize.
“Lord fucking help us if we get stuck out here,” the man said, lighting up another cigarette. “Don’t let them maps fool ya. This is dink fucking central.” His eyes squinted into the jungle on either side of the vehicle. “They’re everywhere, even when they’re not. Know what I mean, champ?”
The jeep continued up the rough track, packed hard as concrete by five thousand years of bare feet and unshod hooves. No one was getting stuck here unless the jungle commanded it. So far, it hadn’t wanted their jeep, or these two fish inside of it. Like the people and the animals born of this land, the jungle wanted them to pass on through and leave everything alone. But like a jilted suitor, the United States military just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Back inside his body again, every bone ached from the six-hour trip out from Quang Tri Combat Base to meet up with his new posting at Con Thien Fire Base, which was the westernmost outpost of American influence in the province. Broussard still had no idea why he was being driven this far out away from his platoon that was getting resupplied at Camp Carroll. No one would tell him anything other than he was being transferred away from his company. Broussard had expected this, after what had happened at Hill 407. He also expected to be sent home for a reckoning after sitting in a cell for three days, ignored and barely fed. But he was released without ceremony and sent back into the bush on verbal orders. Nothing in writing. This had made him nervous, but seemed a better alternative than a military trial, so he shut his mouth and headed out into the jungle again, hoping for shit duty hauling sand or driving trucks and a quiet end to his unspectacular service in Vietnam.
Broussard wasn’t cut out for any of this. Even after the shrieked indoctrination of boot camp, which he managed to weather without incident nor much distinction, he felt the violation of this country by his own. By him. Something didn’t click about the American mission here, but he did what he was told. What other choice did he have? Swallowed by dead ends and ignoring the nightly news and the voices in the streets, he’d voluntarily placed his fate into the hands of the U.S. Army, and he’d do what he had to do to see this relationship through ‘til the end. He wished he was stronger, but knew that he wasn’t. He feared death. Feared killing even worse. They were the twin horrors. Monstrous and final, and totally unknown in their outcome. The M-16 by his side, the .45 in his holster, seemed like strangers to him, even though he was trained to see them as lovers, saviors. They just felt like cold metal, pieces of something forced and unnatural. He shouldn’t be out here. He shouldn’t be here at all. Hill 407 had made that all too clear. Sooner or later, he’d either get someone else or himself killed. Worse, he’d kill somebody, paying off all that training, with bloody interest. Broussard wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle that, and his uncertainty at his reaction terrified him. What would he do? What was he capable of doing?
The rain slackened, then completely shut off, leaving the inside of the jeep deafeningly quiet. The driver leaned forward against the wheel and looked up through the windshield. The world turned green again, the sky a mash of angry smoke.
“God must’ve pissed himself out,” he said.
“God don’t live out here,” Broussard said, more to himself.
“You best hope he does, champ, or else we’re all going to hell.”
3. Black Shuck
I brought a dog back from the jungle. A great big hound, five foot at the shoulder, shaggy black fur, built like a German shepherd but the size of a grizzly bear. Jaws always dripping wet, working those teeth, holding back the tongue. Yellow eyes sitting high on a skull the size of a bull heifer’s. I’ve never seen the dog, not face to face, because I can’t open my eyes when it comes near, but I know it looks like this because my mind tells me that it does, when my brain is the only thing free and my body is wrapped tight with chains. The antennae curled up inside my head sketch out the shape, and the details are filled in by the weight of its paws. It sits on my chest at night and does a downbeat match to the rhythm of my breathing, in for out and out for in. The dog breathes corruption into my face, pushing out all the rot it has inside it, everything it’s eaten, and then sucks away all of the good, clean air in the room, leaving me with nothing when it’s my turn to breathe. It’s heavy, this beast, and my lungs can’t expand much at all, so they do double-time, triple, in tiny heaves and grabs, looking for just a little bit of air to keep me from drowning in the River that has taken my bed, underneath the weight of that dog sitting on my chest, pushing me down into the water. That burning River, surface littered with flame.
Black Shuck is its name. It didn’t tell me this, because I can’t get enough air to make a sound when it’s sitting on my chest. Someone else told me this name a long time ago, a swamp witch named Arceneaux with wide-set eyes and hair that looked like fireworks frozen in mud. I didn’t believe that Black Shuck was real, because everyone knew that the swamp witch told lies to scare all the good Christians and get coins from the devil for each bit of badness she let loose into the world. But I believe her now. Black Shuck is real and he comes to see me at night and he’s sitting on my chest right now.
I brought a dog back from the jungle, and that dog wasn’t Death but something older, meaner. And right this very second, this old mean thing is trying to kill me.
The panic of drowning detaches what’s left of my soul and I float above the situation, letting me size it up just one more time for posterity, because I know this is it. It has to be, because I can’t take any more.