three days they'd had. They got married in Warrenton, Virginia, and drove up to the Skyline Drive and rented a cabin in one of the parks. They spent each day going for long walks. That place had paths that ran along the sides of the mountains, and you could look down into the Shenandoahs or, if you were on the other side, into the Piedmont. It was green, rolling country, checkerboard farms, as far as you could see, beautiful, all right. Maybe it was his imagination, but the weather seemed perfect. It was early May, spring, and life was breaking from the crust of the earth with a vengeance, green buds everywhere. Sometimes it was just them alone in the world, high above the rest of the earth. Or was it just that all soldiers remember their last leave as special and beautiful?
'Here, look,' said Donny.
'It's too dark.'
'Go on, look he commanded, the first time he had ever spoken sharply to his sergeant.
Swagger gave him a sad look, but took the picture.
He looked at Julie, but saw nothing. Still, he knew the picture. It was a snapshot taken in some spring forest, and the wind and the sun played in her hair. She wore a turtleneck and had one of those smiles that made you melt with pain. She seemed clean, somehow, so very, very clean.
Straw blond hair, straight white strong teeth, a tan face, an outdoorsy face. She was a beautiful girl, model or movie-star beautiful. Bob had a brief, broken moment when he contemplated the brute fact that no one nowhere loved him or would miss him or give a shit about his death. He had no one. A middle-aged lawyer in Arkansas might shed a tear or two, but he had his own kids and his own life and the old man would probably still miss Bob's father more than he'd miss Bob. That was the way it went.
'She's a great-looking young woman,' Bob said.
'I can tell she loves you a lot.'
'Our honeymoon. Skyline Drive. My old captain gave me six hundred dollars to take her away when I got my orders cut. Emergency leave. He got me three days. He was a great guy. I tried to pay him back, but the letter came back, and it was stamped, saying he had left the service.'
'That's too bad. He sounds like a good man.'
'They got him too.'
'Yeah, they get everyone in the end.'
'No, I don't just mean 'them, they.' I mean a specific guy, with influence, who set about to purify the world. We were part of the purification process. I'd still like to look that guy up. Commander Bonson. Here's to you, Commander Bonson, and your little victory. You won in the end. Your kind always does.'
Flare. Green, high. Then two or three more green suns descending.
'Git ready,' said Bob.
They could hear the ponk-ponk-ponk as a few hundred yards away, three
81mm mortar shells were dropped down their tubes. The shells climbed into the air behind a faint whistle, then reached apogee and began their downward flight.
'Get down!' screamed Bob. The two flattened into the mud of the shallow hole.
The three shells landed fifty meters away, exploding almost simultaneously. The noise split the air and the two Marines bounced from the ground.
'Ah, Christ!'
A minute passed.
Three more flares opened, green and almost wet, spraying sparks all over the place.
Bob wished he had targets, but what the hell difference did it make now? He lay facedown in the mud, feeling the texture of Vietnam in his face, smelling its smells, knowing he would never see another of its dawns.
Ponkponkponk.
The shells climbed, whispering of death and the end of possibilities, then descended.
Oh, Jesus, Bob prayed, oh, dear Jesus, let me live, please, let me live.
The shells detonated thirty meters away, triple concussions, loud as hell. Something in his shoulder began to sting even before he landed again in Vietnam, having been lifted by the force of the blast. Acrid Chinese smoke filled his eyes and nostrils.
He knew the drill. Somewhere a spotter was calling in corrections. Fifty back, right fifty, that should put you right on it.
Oh, it was so very near.
'I was a bad son,' Donny sobbed.
'I'm so sorry I was a bad son. Oh, please, forgive me, I was a bad son. I couldn't stand to visit my dad in the hospital, he looked so awful, oh. Daddy, I'm so sorry.'
'You were a good son,' Bob whispered fiercely.
'Your daddy understood, don't you worry about it none.'
Ponkponkponk.
Bob thought of his own daddy. He wished he'd been a better son too. He remembered his daddy pulling out in his state trooper cruiser that last night in the twilight.
Who knew it was a last time? His mother wasn't there.
His daddy put his hand out to wave to Bob, then turned left, heading back to Blue Eye, and would there go on
