Robert Mayette is a writer of literary fiction, historical fiction and fantasy residing in Brookfield, CT. He has
recently obtained his MA in English Literature from Western Connecticut State University, where his studies
focused on medieval and early American literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ESC! Magazine,
MiPOesias and Word Riot. www.myspace.com/robmayette
recently obtained his MA in English Literature from Western Connecticut State University, where his studies
focused on medieval and early American literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ESC! Magazine,
MiPOesias and Word Riot. www.myspace.com/robmayette
Agent Orange
Gonzalez pisses courage, but he's nastier than my old man. He broke the shooting-hand thumb of some prick from Alpha
company who welched on a cigarette bet.
We're sitting on my bunk back in the tent at the firebase. It's the only place that doesn't always smell like piss. He's gone all
fatherly on me since I told the lieutenant that I'd go into the tunnels here in Cu Chi.
"This," he says, picking up my standard issue M1911. "Basura. Fire this, and your ears." He shakes his head. He hands me
a Smith and Wesson .38, something I could have gotten stateside.
But I'm not as crazy as he is. "I'm not going into tunnels with any kid gun."
"That," he says, pointing at the M1911, "loud." He makes an explosion sound while flicking his hands near his ears.
He would know. I nod. Yeah, it'd deafen a grunt if fired in the close quarters of the mud tunnels. I remove the clip and toss
it in my foot chest. I holster the smaller weapon. Loose fit, but it will work. "So. How do we start this?"
He smiles. "The first one me, then you after all clear. The next you. Solo."
***
Faces in the dark. Just reflections from my flashlight. Written in the cracks of red clay, I see Charlie's eyes, small nose, and
rotting jagged teeth, which a roach crawls over. I inch along. Gonzalez told me, when the roots don't feel right, then you
might have a tripwire. Cut it. Take two hours, but cut it. One slip, and the blast would either rip me in two or burn the rope
off of me. Either way, he'll have to come drag my legs and torso back for a letter writing.
Hell's black and has a long echo. The Viet Cong chatter like demons. When I hear them, and I swear I do - gibbering,
laughing - they can be miles away or whispering in my ear. It's always not them, though. Water drips. Sounds like indigie-
talk to me. Everything does. But sometimes I swear I hear them for real.
I watched Gonzalez from the light side a dozen times. When he was about to climb out of the tunnels, he'd sing Yankee
Doodle. Code for GI. "Soy un Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle, do you die?" I was going to tell him the real words,
but I think he already knew.
They say after my fifth time down that I'm brave. First four didn't count, apparently. If you make it after three, they're not
going to be dragging you back on your rope with you crying for your momma because it got too dark. The angry eyes of my
old man - so brown they're dark as sin - those are what I see down there. They keep me from screaming. Scarier than the
VC.
Or so I tell myself.
Eighth time down. Seven crimped holes - this one should be just as clear. I cut a tripwire, and then I hear them. Behind
me. Breathing. Moaning. A knife thrusts into my side. I fire at one, and see his twisted pock face in the flash. His sour
body falls on me. The knife strikes again - my leg. I cry out, and the rope tugs me off my feet. My gun falls from my hand
and splashes into water. I get the flashlight on. He's dressed in death, his eyes are knifepoints, his yellow teeth glow in the
light. He switches his blade down, bears down. I hit his hand with the mag light. Another gun fires, and his hateful face is
wiped from his head in a flow of red. I see the demon beneath laughing at me before falling down.
I pass out. When I wake up in a hospital tent, Gonzalez is sleeping at the foot of my bed.
***
When I make it back to New England, I make Gonzalez come home with me. He has no family in Baton Rouge anymore --
they weren't legal and America did her duty. He writes to relatives in Ecuador, but someone writes back saying they hadn't
heard from his folks.
While I was overseas, my old man had to sell the farm I grew up on so that he and my mother could retire to New Mexico.
The farmhouse is standing empty. It carries a lot of bad memories, but a few good ones, too, and not one of them is of
Vietnam. Gonzalez and I buy it from a real estate developer who wants to turn the cornfield into new houses. My old man
would have cried to have seen them start tearing up the field, if he's capable of crying. I'm sure he did when he grumbled his
signature onto the contract. But that's nothing compared to witnessing someone else unravel your dreams to fulfill theirs.
Rather go back to the tunnels than have that happen to me. Good thing I don't got any.
I tell Gonzalez I don't want to put a whole house in my name using some of his money. He says it'd be easier. Well, I'd be
paranoid, too. Lady Liberty's got nice legs, but a shitty memory to go with them. A regular blonde.
So, we get jobs. Gonzalez goes back to dishwashing and drives down to Danbury every weekend. I tell him it's cool if he
wants me to buy him out of his half so he could move in with someone not so waspy.
"Someday. Tal vez."
I know what he means. You don't just crawl around in tunnels, stabbing snakes, cutting tripwires, shooting Charlie, get
knifed back and then say to some college grad with upward mobility, "Hey kid. I'm your new roomie."
But everything is supposed to go back to normal. I take night classes at a local state college - free ones. I guess that was a
plus. But I don't recall the guy at the recruitment office telling me that people - at the school, elsewhere - would treat me like
a baby-eater when I came home. Must have missed that part. A first-year accounting class is enough to get me a
bookkeeping job, and it pays the bills.
I take my parents' old bedroom. It feels good sleeping there, some nights. Now it took me a long time to get the word
"gooks" out of my mouth - even longer to get them out of my mind. But even after living with Gonzalez for two years, I still
can't get them out of my dreams. They're in the darkness, breathing, smelling of opium, chattering about how many GIs
they killed today. I'd invaded their home, and I'd never see daylight again. They make rat stew out of my innards and invite
Pol Pot over. He and the ghost of Ho Chi Minh get the prime cuts.
***
When I get through the "common core" stuff, sitting next to kids four years younger and a hell of a lot happier than me, I
get a chance to take something for fun. An art class.
"What are you doing, jefe?"
A drawing class, specifically. I sit at the kitchen table with my pad and pencils.
"I'm not your boss. And you're the higher officer, anyway."
"Just something I say."
I know this - it's just something I say, too. I blow on the charcoal dust. It reminds me of a nighttime dustoff.
"You shouldn't draw them."
All over my pad are faces. VC. GI. Some villagers my platoon came across. All dead. Sickeningly dead, faces as twisted as
when I saw them. Yeah, a few had comfort in that final moment. But that was rarer than a pretty-smelling whore. How can
someone be smiling when they die? For them, death was either peaceful or absurd. Maybe both.
"Why not?" I say.
"Bah." He waves his hand in dismissal as he cracks a Michelob. He used to say he hated American beer, but now he loves the
shit. "You make them stronger like that. Forget them. That was far away and long ago."
I say nothing, continue to draw.
"You been doing that for three weeks? How much longer?"
I see that he's dressed in white. "You off to work now?"
"Don't be an ass. How much longer?"
"Until they go away." I blow on the paper again. That one was from a hut in Binh Phuoc. Father of three daughters that we
all found disemboweled because they gave us a trail to follow on our last time through. I'm saving the girls for another day.
"They'll do that when you stop."
I turn the page and start on a new face. "I'll stop when they do."
***
It's October in New Milford. All along Second Hill the trees have turned into a red and golden hump. The pumpkins are out at
Larson's, and so is the Indian Head.
The farmhouse is first on the street. My boss put my hours down to part time, so I don't go in until ten. The kids in the
neighborhood meet at a bus stop in front of our house. I like watching them, playing tag and the like. There's one with a toy
machine gun who reminds me of myself at that age. Blonde, blue-eyed, a bit too trusting, shy of the older kids. He's got a
mouth, though, and it's fun to watch.
Until one day when his mother notices me sitting on my front step with my coffee and paper. She gives me a bitter look.
She's there every day from then on, always looking back at me. The kids don't seem happy about it, especially the younger
me, and I can't blame them. After four days of that, I read the paper at my kitchen table.
Gives me a chance to do more drawing, though. One day, I don't know, I just get into a zone. The phone rings a few times,
but I don't pick it up. They are everywhere – down every tunnel is a set of eyes and a twisted grin that keeps coming and
coming. I rush through flood waters and get bitten by a snake in the dark; when I pull its fangs out of my forearm, they
glow with an unearthly light. I have to go to the bathroom, but you're too scared to piss in the dark. Voices in the distance.
Don't run, jefe. They kill you more if you run. And the tripwires. I freeze – there's something on my foot – a root? I
reach down slowly. Yeah, I feel bark. But Charlie's getting trickier. I take out my knife and begin to cut through.
"Jefe?"
I look up at Gonzalez. It's no longer light out. I'm starving. My coffee cup is half full, cold, sitting on the table. My pad is in
my hand. I had bought a new one yesterday. Now all but the last page - the one I'm on - is full with their charcoal faces.
The last is just vague shadows. I've worn the point on my pencil down to a nub.
"You been sitting there all day?"
I set down the pad. "No. Not really, no. They didn't need me at work, so…"
"You're a bad liar, jefe." He shakes his head. "This table brings out bad things in you." He goes to the fridge, cracks a
Michelob. "Pilar and I are going to that new club in Norwalk that she's been talking about. Come with us."
"You know that white guys aren't welcome there."
"Hey, it's a free country. No comms there or anywhere else."
"And you deserve time alone with her."
"She has a friend." He cants an eyebrow. "Single."
"Yeah? You'd invite her, too?"
"Not if you come."
I snort, stand, empty the coffee cup down the sink.
"Your head's not on right, jefe. Stop with these pictures and I'll introduce you."
"It's not my doing. Pull out one of those for me too?"
He pops the cap on a beer and hands it to me. I take a sip. He's become a fan of the Knicks, thanks to my influence, and he
takes a jump shot at the garbage can with the cap.
"Two points," I say.
He points at my drawing pad. "Just as easy."
***
I'm lying in my bed at night. Gonzalez is a prick about it, but he's right. Sort of. Those faces are always there, sitting in the
back of my mind. I could burn my pads tomorrow. Won't change a damn thing.
I need someone else to look at them, tell me that I'm not the problem. See something in them other than my sick old mind,
which is all Gonzalez sees.
At three in the morning, I get an idea.
***
I drive my pickup down to Larson's. I usually buy corn from the old lady behind the counter – Shirley's her name – and
she starts picking out ears for me the moment she sees me.
She goes all dumb-looking when I tell her that I want to fill up my truck bed with pumpkins.
"What for? You always hated those, ever since you were a kid."
"Times change," I say. I pay her for four dozen. My arms hurt when I'm done loading them into the truck. I used to march
with forty pounds of gear.
Gonzalez helps me unload them into the garage. He says nothing. Back inside, I get out a piece of paper and write on it with
a black marker.
SPOOK HOUSE
COME TO THE OLD FARMHOUSE ON THE CORNER ON HALLOWEEN. 7PM. SCARE OF YOUR LIFE.
I think about it.
PARENTS WELCOME, TOO.
"Gone a little loco, jefe?"
"Yeah, just a little. And you'd better help."
"Wouldn't miss it."
It takes us a week working every night to black out the downstairs floor with spray-painted burlap wheat sacks, a whole stack
of which my old man left in the garage. Gonzalez takes a strand of Christmas lights and makes individual strings, one bulb a
piece. For the pumpkins. I take out my old Army knife to do the cutting. My kitchen table and floor goes all orange
everywhere. It gets into my skin and on my pads as I turn the pages.
Nothing will ever scare the shit out of me like Cu Chi, but when we're done it's as close as you could get.
There's a hell of a lot of kids in this neighborhood, and I guess all the banging gets some attention. I walk out onto the
porch on Halloween night at ten of. I prop open the door.
"Right this way, folks." I hang up another sign.
NO MORE THAN FIVE (5) AT A TIME.
WAIT TWO (2) MINUTES BEFORE FOLLOWING PREVIOUS VICTIMS.
Four dozen pumpkins, each one wearing a carved face that had screamed its way onto my pad, greet our guests. Nah, it's
not too scary. Not so much you can do when it's you and one other guy trying to do it all. But Gonzalez can be a mind trip,
and so can I. We get off some good screams. Lieutenant Clinch (mortar strike, NE of Saigon) gets the earliest scare, mostly
from the girls that come through. 4-cake, a doughboy grunt from Memphis (sappers, firebase Bravo Four) gets lots of
attention - he's the biggest one from Shirley's stack. I save the three farm girls for the end, and some people get pretty
quiet by then.
When the line stops, Gonzalez and I go outside to check for stragglers. I think they all would've gone on to trick-or-treat,
but they're there, the whole neighborhood, ready to give us a round of applause.
That woman at the bus stop taps me on the shoulder. "Mister...?"
"Henderson."
"Mr. Henderson. My son wants to say something to you."
There's younger me, behind her. Dressed in Army fatigues, holding his toy gun with the plastic bayonet.
What he doesn't know.
"That was really cool! You should do that again next year!"
I smile. "I might do that."
I watch him leave, happy, shooting at imaginary foes in the shadows. When they all clear out, Gonzalez helps me take it all
down. We leave the jack-o-lanterns where they are, though. They'd last a few days more. And I think I'd enjoy watching
them rot away.
I go to the kitchen and pick up my pumpkin-stained drawing pads. Gonzalez watches me as I stand over the open garbage
can, about to toss them in.
"You know," he says, opening the fridge door and handing me a Michelob. I set the pads on the table and take the beer.
"Might be some good ideas in there for next year."
Gonzalez pisses courage, but he's nastier than my old man. He broke the shooting-hand thumb of some prick from Alpha
company who welched on a cigarette bet.
We're sitting on my bunk back in the tent at the firebase. It's the only place that doesn't always smell like piss. He's gone all
fatherly on me since I told the lieutenant that I'd go into the tunnels here in Cu Chi.
"This," he says, picking up my standard issue M1911. "Basura. Fire this, and your ears." He shakes his head. He hands me
a Smith and Wesson .38, something I could have gotten stateside.
But I'm not as crazy as he is. "I'm not going into tunnels with any kid gun."
"That," he says, pointing at the M1911, "loud." He makes an explosion sound while flicking his hands near his ears.
He would know. I nod. Yeah, it'd deafen a grunt if fired in the close quarters of the mud tunnels. I remove the clip and toss
it in my foot chest. I holster the smaller weapon. Loose fit, but it will work. "So. How do we start this?"
He smiles. "The first one me, then you after all clear. The next you. Solo."
***
Faces in the dark. Just reflections from my flashlight. Written in the cracks of red clay, I see Charlie's eyes, small nose, and
rotting jagged teeth, which a roach crawls over. I inch along. Gonzalez told me, when the roots don't feel right, then you
might have a tripwire. Cut it. Take two hours, but cut it. One slip, and the blast would either rip me in two or burn the rope
off of me. Either way, he'll have to come drag my legs and torso back for a letter writing.
Hell's black and has a long echo. The Viet Cong chatter like demons. When I hear them, and I swear I do - gibbering,
laughing - they can be miles away or whispering in my ear. It's always not them, though. Water drips. Sounds like indigie-
talk to me. Everything does. But sometimes I swear I hear them for real.
I watched Gonzalez from the light side a dozen times. When he was about to climb out of the tunnels, he'd sing Yankee
Doodle. Code for GI. "Soy un Yankee Doodle Dandy. Yankee Doodle, do you die?" I was going to tell him the real words,
but I think he already knew.
They say after my fifth time down that I'm brave. First four didn't count, apparently. If you make it after three, they're not
going to be dragging you back on your rope with you crying for your momma because it got too dark. The angry eyes of my
old man - so brown they're dark as sin - those are what I see down there. They keep me from screaming. Scarier than the
VC.
Or so I tell myself.
Eighth time down. Seven crimped holes - this one should be just as clear. I cut a tripwire, and then I hear them. Behind
me. Breathing. Moaning. A knife thrusts into my side. I fire at one, and see his twisted pock face in the flash. His sour
body falls on me. The knife strikes again - my leg. I cry out, and the rope tugs me off my feet. My gun falls from my hand
and splashes into water. I get the flashlight on. He's dressed in death, his eyes are knifepoints, his yellow teeth glow in the
light. He switches his blade down, bears down. I hit his hand with the mag light. Another gun fires, and his hateful face is
wiped from his head in a flow of red. I see the demon beneath laughing at me before falling down.
I pass out. When I wake up in a hospital tent, Gonzalez is sleeping at the foot of my bed.
***
When I make it back to New England, I make Gonzalez come home with me. He has no family in Baton Rouge anymore --
they weren't legal and America did her duty. He writes to relatives in Ecuador, but someone writes back saying they hadn't
heard from his folks.
While I was overseas, my old man had to sell the farm I grew up on so that he and my mother could retire to New Mexico.
The farmhouse is standing empty. It carries a lot of bad memories, but a few good ones, too, and not one of them is of
Vietnam. Gonzalez and I buy it from a real estate developer who wants to turn the cornfield into new houses. My old man
would have cried to have seen them start tearing up the field, if he's capable of crying. I'm sure he did when he grumbled his
signature onto the contract. But that's nothing compared to witnessing someone else unravel your dreams to fulfill theirs.
Rather go back to the tunnels than have that happen to me. Good thing I don't got any.
I tell Gonzalez I don't want to put a whole house in my name using some of his money. He says it'd be easier. Well, I'd be
paranoid, too. Lady Liberty's got nice legs, but a shitty memory to go with them. A regular blonde.
So, we get jobs. Gonzalez goes back to dishwashing and drives down to Danbury every weekend. I tell him it's cool if he
wants me to buy him out of his half so he could move in with someone not so waspy.
"Someday. Tal vez."
I know what he means. You don't just crawl around in tunnels, stabbing snakes, cutting tripwires, shooting Charlie, get
knifed back and then say to some college grad with upward mobility, "Hey kid. I'm your new roomie."
But everything is supposed to go back to normal. I take night classes at a local state college - free ones. I guess that was a
plus. But I don't recall the guy at the recruitment office telling me that people - at the school, elsewhere - would treat me like
a baby-eater when I came home. Must have missed that part. A first-year accounting class is enough to get me a
bookkeeping job, and it pays the bills.
I take my parents' old bedroom. It feels good sleeping there, some nights. Now it took me a long time to get the word
"gooks" out of my mouth - even longer to get them out of my mind. But even after living with Gonzalez for two years, I still
can't get them out of my dreams. They're in the darkness, breathing, smelling of opium, chattering about how many GIs
they killed today. I'd invaded their home, and I'd never see daylight again. They make rat stew out of my innards and invite
Pol Pot over. He and the ghost of Ho Chi Minh get the prime cuts.
***
When I get through the "common core" stuff, sitting next to kids four years younger and a hell of a lot happier than me, I
get a chance to take something for fun. An art class.
"What are you doing, jefe?"
A drawing class, specifically. I sit at the kitchen table with my pad and pencils.
"I'm not your boss. And you're the higher officer, anyway."
"Just something I say."
I know this - it's just something I say, too. I blow on the charcoal dust. It reminds me of a nighttime dustoff.
"You shouldn't draw them."
All over my pad are faces. VC. GI. Some villagers my platoon came across. All dead. Sickeningly dead, faces as twisted as
when I saw them. Yeah, a few had comfort in that final moment. But that was rarer than a pretty-smelling whore. How can
someone be smiling when they die? For them, death was either peaceful or absurd. Maybe both.
"Why not?" I say.
"Bah." He waves his hand in dismissal as he cracks a Michelob. He used to say he hated American beer, but now he loves the
shit. "You make them stronger like that. Forget them. That was far away and long ago."
I say nothing, continue to draw.
"You been doing that for three weeks? How much longer?"
I see that he's dressed in white. "You off to work now?"
"Don't be an ass. How much longer?"
"Until they go away." I blow on the paper again. That one was from a hut in Binh Phuoc. Father of three daughters that we
all found disemboweled because they gave us a trail to follow on our last time through. I'm saving the girls for another day.
"They'll do that when you stop."
I turn the page and start on a new face. "I'll stop when they do."
***
It's October in New Milford. All along Second Hill the trees have turned into a red and golden hump. The pumpkins are out at
Larson's, and so is the Indian Head.
The farmhouse is first on the street. My boss put my hours down to part time, so I don't go in until ten. The kids in the
neighborhood meet at a bus stop in front of our house. I like watching them, playing tag and the like. There's one with a toy
machine gun who reminds me of myself at that age. Blonde, blue-eyed, a bit too trusting, shy of the older kids. He's got a
mouth, though, and it's fun to watch.
Until one day when his mother notices me sitting on my front step with my coffee and paper. She gives me a bitter look.
She's there every day from then on, always looking back at me. The kids don't seem happy about it, especially the younger
me, and I can't blame them. After four days of that, I read the paper at my kitchen table.
Gives me a chance to do more drawing, though. One day, I don't know, I just get into a zone. The phone rings a few times,
but I don't pick it up. They are everywhere – down every tunnel is a set of eyes and a twisted grin that keeps coming and
coming. I rush through flood waters and get bitten by a snake in the dark; when I pull its fangs out of my forearm, they
glow with an unearthly light. I have to go to the bathroom, but you're too scared to piss in the dark. Voices in the distance.
Don't run, jefe. They kill you more if you run. And the tripwires. I freeze – there's something on my foot – a root? I
reach down slowly. Yeah, I feel bark. But Charlie's getting trickier. I take out my knife and begin to cut through.
"Jefe?"
I look up at Gonzalez. It's no longer light out. I'm starving. My coffee cup is half full, cold, sitting on the table. My pad is in
my hand. I had bought a new one yesterday. Now all but the last page - the one I'm on - is full with their charcoal faces.
The last is just vague shadows. I've worn the point on my pencil down to a nub.
"You been sitting there all day?"
I set down the pad. "No. Not really, no. They didn't need me at work, so…"
"You're a bad liar, jefe." He shakes his head. "This table brings out bad things in you." He goes to the fridge, cracks a
Michelob. "Pilar and I are going to that new club in Norwalk that she's been talking about. Come with us."
"You know that white guys aren't welcome there."
"Hey, it's a free country. No comms there or anywhere else."
"And you deserve time alone with her."
"She has a friend." He cants an eyebrow. "Single."
"Yeah? You'd invite her, too?"
"Not if you come."
I snort, stand, empty the coffee cup down the sink.
"Your head's not on right, jefe. Stop with these pictures and I'll introduce you."
"It's not my doing. Pull out one of those for me too?"
He pops the cap on a beer and hands it to me. I take a sip. He's become a fan of the Knicks, thanks to my influence, and he
takes a jump shot at the garbage can with the cap.
"Two points," I say.
He points at my drawing pad. "Just as easy."
***
I'm lying in my bed at night. Gonzalez is a prick about it, but he's right. Sort of. Those faces are always there, sitting in the
back of my mind. I could burn my pads tomorrow. Won't change a damn thing.
I need someone else to look at them, tell me that I'm not the problem. See something in them other than my sick old mind,
which is all Gonzalez sees.
At three in the morning, I get an idea.
***
I drive my pickup down to Larson's. I usually buy corn from the old lady behind the counter – Shirley's her name – and
she starts picking out ears for me the moment she sees me.
She goes all dumb-looking when I tell her that I want to fill up my truck bed with pumpkins.
"What for? You always hated those, ever since you were a kid."
"Times change," I say. I pay her for four dozen. My arms hurt when I'm done loading them into the truck. I used to march
with forty pounds of gear.
Gonzalez helps me unload them into the garage. He says nothing. Back inside, I get out a piece of paper and write on it with
a black marker.
SPOOK HOUSE
COME TO THE OLD FARMHOUSE ON THE CORNER ON HALLOWEEN. 7PM. SCARE OF YOUR LIFE.
I think about it.
PARENTS WELCOME, TOO.
"Gone a little loco, jefe?"
"Yeah, just a little. And you'd better help."
"Wouldn't miss it."
It takes us a week working every night to black out the downstairs floor with spray-painted burlap wheat sacks, a whole stack
of which my old man left in the garage. Gonzalez takes a strand of Christmas lights and makes individual strings, one bulb a
piece. For the pumpkins. I take out my old Army knife to do the cutting. My kitchen table and floor goes all orange
everywhere. It gets into my skin and on my pads as I turn the pages.
Nothing will ever scare the shit out of me like Cu Chi, but when we're done it's as close as you could get.
There's a hell of a lot of kids in this neighborhood, and I guess all the banging gets some attention. I walk out onto the
porch on Halloween night at ten of. I prop open the door.
"Right this way, folks." I hang up another sign.
NO MORE THAN FIVE (5) AT A TIME.
WAIT TWO (2) MINUTES BEFORE FOLLOWING PREVIOUS VICTIMS.
Four dozen pumpkins, each one wearing a carved face that had screamed its way onto my pad, greet our guests. Nah, it's
not too scary. Not so much you can do when it's you and one other guy trying to do it all. But Gonzalez can be a mind trip,
and so can I. We get off some good screams. Lieutenant Clinch (mortar strike, NE of Saigon) gets the earliest scare, mostly
from the girls that come through. 4-cake, a doughboy grunt from Memphis (sappers, firebase Bravo Four) gets lots of
attention - he's the biggest one from Shirley's stack. I save the three farm girls for the end, and some people get pretty
quiet by then.
When the line stops, Gonzalez and I go outside to check for stragglers. I think they all would've gone on to trick-or-treat,
but they're there, the whole neighborhood, ready to give us a round of applause.
That woman at the bus stop taps me on the shoulder. "Mister...?"
"Henderson."
"Mr. Henderson. My son wants to say something to you."
There's younger me, behind her. Dressed in Army fatigues, holding his toy gun with the plastic bayonet.
What he doesn't know.
"That was really cool! You should do that again next year!"
I smile. "I might do that."
I watch him leave, happy, shooting at imaginary foes in the shadows. When they all clear out, Gonzalez helps me take it all
down. We leave the jack-o-lanterns where they are, though. They'd last a few days more. And I think I'd enjoy watching
them rot away.
I go to the kitchen and pick up my pumpkin-stained drawing pads. Gonzalez watches me as I stand over the open garbage
can, about to toss them in.
"You know," he says, opening the fridge door and handing me a Michelob. I set the pads on the table and take the beer.
"Might be some good ideas in there for next year."
Robert Mayette
