He was a little boy
playing with a garden hose
as little boys do
but what little boys didnt do
was when an adult asked them to
please stop what their were doing
that they wouldnt
that they would keep on and on
until an adult finally came over and stopped them
had to stop them with violence
exceeding their raised voice or an explicit threat
he wouldnt stop
until an adult stopped him
he was a little boy playing
with a garden hose
the water always so cold
and he always so unmerciful
when the other kids cried STOP
he wouldnt
hed go so far as to push the
younger or smaller children down a latent fist or with his foot
and continue his torment his cruel glee beyond their helpless pleads and tears
hed laugh as they gargled and choked on the
water
gasped for air
over their sobs he taunted
Baby!
then an adult
always too late
would enter the yard out through
the houses back door demanding what was going on
as if his actions were new
or a surprise
they would have to wrestle the
hose out of his unremitting hands
it did no good or helped to
slap him upside the head
no sooner had the adult
stopped the dowsing
reprimanded the boy
and left
hed go around and slap the kids
he just tormented
leaving his handprint on their
mottled backs or flushed cheeks
their welt and scarlet camouflaged
by the welts and scarlets children always sported when having played outdoors
the last he saw that peckerwood
that miserable sonofabitch was in-country
and no one was more surprised --
when he thought the war had stripped SURPRISE
from him -- than
he
almost immediately he
recognized him
some fuckin things never changed
it wasnt hard to recognize a
sadist
if
youd grown up with him from boyhood
what were the chances
he was at some luckless
villagers caught in a crossfire between VC and Army with a flamethrower
they were hard luck bastards just trying
to get the hell out of Dodge
and he wasnt gonna let em
from behind he could hear him
screaming above the jet and gout of twisting flame
Ya fuckin gooks! fuckin gooks! worthless pieces of shit!
he could almost have wished he
had a dollar for every time he heard that in-country
snarled at either North or South
over the roaring
accelerant and androgynous flames
he screamed
STAND DOWN SOLDIER
then
by the shift the attitude of his head
he knew he had been heard
there was a POP in the
flamethrower as he stopped . . . and
slowly he turned
towards him . . . the flickering blue
nozzle gasping
hesitantly
pointed down . . .
and then . . . that . . . smile
. . . slowly breaking on his blackened sweaty face
as it did
years passed
in the sodden yard
the cold clear water flowing
from the hose into the long green Midwestern grass
that . . . smile
a long
eerie silence stretched out between them
over the snake
hiss of the flamethrower
over the lazy floating flutter of thin bamboo ashes
like
those of Fall leaves he burnt in the street gutter when he was a boy
over the whimpers
and unearthly sounds
death
rattles and choking moans
over the pungent smell of petrol burned flesh
that long-toothed white smile
over it
the dull eyes crinkling honeyed
by his cruel glee
as the flamethrower came up and
began to spout
his bullets slapped him in the
chest and belly he
exploded into a rage an inferno
whose
concussion threw him onto his back
the tanks creased and penetrated blew
an abject fit and fire
which seemed always
to have burn unquenched inside him
nineteen years old
half-a-world away from home
doing a thing that should have been taken in hand then
so that now
it might never have had to happen
he felt real bad
and then he didnt
2356, Sunday,
27 7. 14
