as best he could, through a literature some twenty-five hundred years old. It was the time to yield, to let this simple craving be his guide. Beyond their accusation. Beyond their indictment. Beyond their judgment. Learn, he told himself, before you die, to live beyond the jurisdiction of their enraging, loathsome, stupid blame.
The encounter with Farley. The encounter that night with Farley, the confrontation with a dairy farmer who had not meant to fail but did, a road crew employee who gave his all to the town no matter how lowly and degrading the task assigned him, a loyal American who'd served his country with not one tour but two, who'd gone back a second time to finish the goddamn job. Re-upped and went back because when he comes home the first time everybody says that he isn't the same person and that they don't recognize him, and he sees that it's true: they're all afraid of him. He comes home to them from jungle warfare and not only is he not appreciated but he is feared, so he might as well go back. He wasn't expecting the hero treatment, but everybody looking at him like that? So he goes back for the second tour, and this time he is geared up. Pissed off. Pumped up. A very aggressive warrior. The first time he wasn't all that gung ho. The first time he was easygoing Les, who didn't know what it meant to feel hopeless. The first time he was the boy from the Berkshires who put a lot of trust in people and had no idea how cheap life could be, didn't know what medication was, didn't feel inferior to anyone, happy-go-lucky Les, no threat to society, tons of friends, fast cars, all that stuff. The first time he'd cut off ears because he was there and it was being done, but that was it. He wasn't one of those who once they were in all that lawlessness couldn't wait to get going, the ones who weren't too well put together or were pretty aggressive to start off with and only needed the slightest opportunity to go ape-shit. One guy in his unit, guy they called Big Man, he wasn't there one or two days when he'd slashed some pregnant woman's belly open. Farley was himself only beginning to get good at it at the end of his first tour. But the second time, in this unit where there are a lot of other guys who'd also come back and who hadn't come back just to kill time or to make a couple extra bucks, this second time, in with these guys who are always looking to be put out in front, ape-shit guys who recognize the horror but know it is the very best moment of their lives, he is ape-shit too. In a firefight, running from danger, blasting with guns, you can't not be frightened, but you can go berserk and get the rush, and so the second time he goes berserk. The second time he fucking wreaks havoc. Living right out there on the edge, full throttle, the excitement and the fear, and there's nothing in civilian life that can match it. Door gunning. They're losing helicopters and they need door gunners. They ask at some point for door gunners and he jumps at it, he volunteers. Up there above the action, and everything looks small from above, and he just guns down huge. Whatever moves. Death and destruction, that is what door gunning is all about. With the added attraction that you don't have to be down in the jungle the whole time. But then he comes home and it's not better than the first time, it's worse. Not like the guys in World War II: they had the ship, they got to relax, someone took care of them, asked them how they were. There's no transition. One day he's door gunning in Vietnam, seeing choppers explode, in midair seeing his buddies explode, down so low he smells skin cooking, hears the cries, sees whole villages going up in flames, and the next day he's back in the Berkshires. And now he really doesn't belong, and, besides, he's got fears now about things going over his head. He doesn't want to be around other people, he can't laugh or joke, he feels that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has seen and done things so outside what these people know about that he cannot connect to them and they cannot connect to him. They told him he could go home? How could he go home? He doesn't have a helicopter at home. He stays by himself and he drinks, and when he tries the VA they tell him he is just there to get the money while he knows he is there to get the help. Early on, he tried to get government help and all they gave him was some sleeping pills, so fuck the government. Treated him like garbage. You're young, they told him, you'll get over it. So he tries to get over it. Can't deal with the government, so he'll have to do it on his own. Only it isn't easy after two tours to come back and get settled all on his own. He's not calm. He's agitated. He's restless. He's drinking. It doesn't take much to put him into a rage. There are these things going over his head. Still he tries: eventually gets the wife, the home, the kids, the farm. He wants to be alone, but she wants to settle down and farm with him, so he tries to want to settle down too. Stuff he remembers easygoing Les wanting ten, fifteen years back, before Vietnam, he tries to want again. The trouble is, he can't really feel for these folks. He's sitting in the kitchen and he's eating with them and there's nothing. No way he can go from that to this. Yet still he tries. A couple times in the middle of the night he wakes up choking her, but it isn't his fault — it's the government's fault. The government did that to him. He thought she was the fucking enemy. What did she think he was going to do? She knew he was going to come out of it. He never hurt her and he never hurt the kids. That was all lies. She never cared about anything except herself. He should have known never to let her go off with those kids. She waited until he was in rehab — that was why she wanted to get him into rehab. She said she wanted him to be better so that they could be together again, and instead she used the whole thing against him to get the kids away from him. The bitch. The cunt. She tricked him. He should have known never to let her go off with those kids. It was partly his own fault because he was so drunk and they could get him to rehab by force, but it would have been better if he'd taken them all out when he said he would. Should have killed her, should have killed the kids, and would have if it hadn't been for rehab. And she knew it, knew he'd have killed them like that if she'd ever tried to take them away. He was the father — if anybody was going to raise his kids it was him. If he couldn't take care of them, the kids would be better off dead. She'd had no right to steal his kids. Steals them, then she kills them. The payback for what he did in Vietnam. They all said that at rehab — payback this and payback that, but because everyone said it, didn't make it not so. It was payback, all payback, the death of the kids was payback and the carpenter she was fucking was payback. He didn't know why he hadn't killed him. At first he just smelled the smoke. He was in the bushes down the road watching the two of them in the carpenter's pickup. They were parked in her driveway. She comes downstairs — the apartment she's renting is over a garage back of some bungalow — and she gets in the pickup and there's no light and there's no moon but he knows what's going on. Then he smelled the smoke. The only way he'd survived in Vietnam was that any change, a noise, the smell of an animal, any movement at all in the jungle, and he could detect it before anyone else — alert in the jungle like he was born there. Couldn't see the smoke, couldn't see the flames, couldn't see anything it was so dark, but all of a sudden he could smell the smoke and these things are flying over his head and he began running. They see him coming and they think he is going to steal the kids. They don't know the building is on fire. They think he's gone nuts. But he can smell the smoke and he knows it's coming from the second story and he knows the kids are in there. He knows his wife, stupid bitch cunt, isn't going to do anything because she's in the truck blowing the carpenter. He runs right by them. He doesn't know where he is now, forgets where he is, all he knows is that he's got to get in there and up the stairs, and so he bashes in the side door and he's running up to where the fire is, and that's when he sees the kids on the stairs, huddled there at the top of the stairs, and they're gasping, and that's when he picks them up. They're crumpled together on the stairs and he picks them up and tears out the door. They're alive, he's sure. He doesn't think there's a chance that they're not alive. He just thinks they're scared. Then he looks up and who does he see outside the door, standing there looking, but the carpenter. That's when he lost it. Didn't know what he was doing. That's when he went straight for his throat. Started choking him, and that bitch, instead of going to the kids, worries about him choking the fucking boyfriend. Fucking bitch worries about him killing her boyfriend instead of about her own goddamn kids. And they would have made it. That's why they died. Because she didn't give two shits about the kids. She never did. They weren't dead when he picked them up. They were warm. He knows what dead is. Two tours in Vietnam you're not going to tell him what dead is. He can smell death when he needs to. He can taste death. He knows what death is. They — were — not — dead. It was the boyfriend who was going to be fucking dead, until the police, in cahoots with the government, came with their guns, and that's when they put him away. The bitch kills the kids, it's her neglect, and they put him away. Jesus Christ, let me be right for a minute! The bitch wasn't paying attention! She never does. Like when he had the hunch they were headed for an ambush. Couldn't say why but he knew they were being set up, and nobody believed him, and he was right. Some new dumb officer comes into the company, won't listen to him, and that's how people get killed. That's how people get burned to hell! That's how assholes cause the death of your two best buddies! They don't listen to him! They don't give him credit! He came back alive, didn't he? He came back with all his limbs, he came back with his dick — you know what that took? But she won't listen! Never! She turned her back on him and she turned her back on his kids. He's just a crazy Vietnam vet. But he knows things, goddamnit. And she knows nothing. But do they put away the stupid bitch? They put him away. They shoot him up with stuff. Again they
