I looked through them and gave them back. “Hard travel,” I said.
“From now on, everything is easy,” Hamnet said. He seemed rigid and constrained as he zipped the precious tickets back into the bag. By this time his wife’s letter was a rag held together with scotch tape. I could picture him reading and rereading it, for the thousandth or two thousandth time, on the long flight over the Pacific.
“They need your help,” I said. “I'm glad they’re going to get it.”
“That’s right.” Hamnet waited for me to leave him alone.
Because his bag seemed heavy, I asked about the length of his leave. He wanted to get the tickets back out of the bag rather than answer me directly, but he forced himself to speak. “They gave me seven days. Plus travel time.”
“Good,” I said, meaninglessly, and then there was nothing left to say, and we both knew it. Hamnet hoisted his bag off his bunk and turned to the door without any of the usual farewells and embraces. Some of the other men called to him, but he seemed to hear nothing but his own thoughts. I followed him outside and stood beside him in the heat. Hamnet was wearing a tie and his boots had a high polish. He was already sweating through his stiff khaki shirt. He would not meet my eyes. In a minute a jeep pulled up before us. The Lutheran chaplain had surpassed himself.
“Goodbye, Leonard,” I said, and Hamnet tossed his bag in back and got into the jeep. He sat up straight as a statue. The private driving the jeep said something to him as they drove off, but Hamnet did not reply. I bet he did not say a word to the stewardesses, either, or to the cab drivers or baggage handlers or anyone else who witnessed his long journey home.
On the day after Leonard Hamnet was scheduled to return, Lieutenant Joys called Michael Poole and myself into his quarters to tell us what had happened back in Tennessee. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand, and he seemed both angry and embarrassed. Hamnet would not be returning to the platoon. It was a little funny. Well, of course it wasn t funny at all. The whole thing was terrible—that was what it was. Someone was to blame, too. Irresponsible decisions had been made, and we d all be lucky if there wasn’t an investigation. We were closest to the man, hadn’t we seen what was likely to happen? If not, what the hell was our excuse?
Didn’t we have any inkling of what the man was planning to do?
Well, yes, at the beginning, Poole and I said. But he seemed to have adjusted.
We have stupidity and incompetence all the way down the line here, said Lieutenant Elijah Joys. Here is a man who manages to carry a semi-automatic weapon through security at three different airports, bring it into a courthouse, and carry out threats he made months before, without anybody stopping him.
I remembered the bag Hamnet had tossed into the back of the jeep; I remembered the reluctance with which he had zipped it open to show me his tickets. Hamnet had not carried his weapon through airport security. He had just shipped it home in his bag and walked straight through customs in his clean uniform and shiny boots.
As soon as the foreman had announced the guilty verdict, Leonard Hamnet had gotten to his feet, pulled the semi-automatic pistol from inside his jacket, and executed Mr. Brewster where he was sitting at the defense table. While people shouted and screamed and dove for cover, while the courthouse officer tried to unsnap his gun, Hamnet killed his wife and his son. By the time he raised the pistol to his own head, the security officer had shot him twice in the chest. He died on the operating table at Lookout Mountain Lutheran Hospital, and his mother had requested that his remains receive burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
His mother. Arlington. I ask you.
That was what the Lieutenant said. His mother. Arlington. I ask you.
A private from Indianapolis named E. W. Burroughs won the six hundred and twenty dollars in the Elijah Fund when Lieutenant Joys was killed by a fragmentation bomb thirty-two days before the end of his tour. After that we were delivered unsuspecting into the hands of Harry Beevers, the Lost Boss, the worst lieutenant in the world. Private Burroughs died a week later, down in Dragon Valley along with Tiano and Calvin Hill and lots of others, when Lieutenant Beevers walked us into a mined field where we spent forty-eight hours under fire between two companies of NVA. I suppose Burroughs' mother back in Indianapolis got the six hundred and twenty dollars.
Honorable Mentions: 1992
Aiken, Joan, “A Nasty, Muddy Ghost Dog,” Short Circuits.
Akagawa, Jiro, “Beat Your Neighbor Out of Doors,” Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, March.
Alcala, Kathleen, “Gypsy Lover,” Mrs. Vargas & the Dead Naturalist.
———, “Reading the Road,” Ibid.
Alcock, Vivien, “Save the Elephant, the Ant, and Billikins,” Short Circuits.
Aldiss, Brian W., “Common Clay,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec.
———, “Horse Meat,” Interzone 65.
Aldridge, Ray, “Winedark,” F&SF, Aug.
Ames, John Edward, “Cisisbeo,” Bizarre Sex & Other Crimes of Passion.
Amies, Christopher, “Rain,” The Weerde.
Andelman, Joan, “A Sunday in December,” Lovers & Other Monsters.
Ansary, Mir Tamin, ‘The Cooper Junction Loop,” Jabberwocky, spring/summer.
Anton, Karl, “The Dying God,” Weirdbook Encores 12.
Aquino, John T., “The Sad Wizard,” The Camelot Chronicles.
Arnzen, Michael A., “Spring Ahead, Fall Back,” Palace Corbie 2.
Arthurs, Bruce, “Shadows Do Not Bleed,” Sword & Sorceresses IX.
Atwood, Margaret, “Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women,” This Magazine, Sept.
———, “There Was Once,” Ibid.
Baker, Scott, “The Lurking Duck,” (novella) Foundations of Fear.
Ballentine, Lee and Boston, Bruce, Gulling South,” New Pathways, winter.
Bannister, Jo, “A Poisoned Chalice,” EQMM, May.
———, “Howler,” EQMM, Oct.
———, “The Witness,” EQMM, March.
Barnham, Chris, “Barrowpath,” Darklands 2.
Barrett, Neal, Jr., “Uteropolis II,” Slightly Off Center.
Baudino, Gael, ‘ Tidings of Comfort and Joy,” The Magic of Christmas.
Baxter, Stephen, “In the Manner of Trees,” Interzone 62.
Beagle, Peter S., “The Naga,” After the King.
Beechcroft, William, “Turkey Durkin and the Catfish,” EQMM, Oct.
Begamudre, Ven, “Vishnu’s Navel,” A Planet of Eccentrics.
Behunin, Judith R., “Sometimes (Mood of June Morning)” (poem), Eldritch Tales 27.
Berman, Ruth, “Alder-Woman,” Fantasy Macabre 15.
Blanchard, Stephen, “The Fat People,” Interzone 61.
Blumenthal, Jay, “Parallel Universe” (poem), The South Carolina Review, spring.