Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

“I’d make it into a real jungle scene.”
    “It is a real jungle scene,” I said.
    “No, to make it real you have to have one side of the huts open so you can shoot inside,” Lobel said. “Then you have to get some artificial grass so it stays the same color throughout the whole picture, and finally you have to get a wind machine so you can make the grass sway.”
    “Why not just shoot it naturally and save the money?” I asked.
    “Aren’t you from New York?” Lobel squinted at me.
    “Yeah.”
    “I thought black guys from New York were supposed to be smart?” he said. “Nobody pays to see anything natural. You pay to see unnatural things look almost natural.”
    “Oh.”
    “Would you want to see Doris Day or some natural-looking girl with pimples on her forehead and heat rash on her chest?”
    The Vietnamese woman who had brought us rice squatted at the edge of the bush to take a leak.
    “See, you couldn’t have any of that,” Lobel said. “People in Hollywood don’t pee.”
    We gave An Linh as much of our C rations as she could carry, and Lobel gave her a new name. “She’ll never do anything in Hollywood with her name,” he said.
    We decided to call her Arielle. Lobel said that as soon as we got her to Santa Monica we had it made.
    Peewee spent most of the time sitting down in a hut until Lieutenant Carroll made him walk around the village. He found a bottle of wine in one of the huts and tried to buy it for four American dollars. The people in the hut said that he could take it for nothing, but Lieutenant Carroll said not to. He finally paid two dollars for it.
    “Suppose it’s poisoned or something?” I asked.
    “Then I’m gonna die,” Peewee said.
    “You taking it back to the base?”
    “Nope.”
    He borrowed a corkscrew from the woman he had bought the wine from and opened the wine and drank some of it. He made an awful face, then drank some more.
    “That bad?”
    “Yep, but that’s one thing I got done.”
    “What is?”
    “That’s the first time I ever drank wine from a bottle with a cork in it,” he said. “Now all I got to do is to make love with a foreign woman and smoke a cigar.”
    We stayed around the village for the rest of the day, and then it was time to leave. The choppers came in and lifted us out, and we were back at the base before we knew it.
    “Those gooks will probably be having supper with the VC by the time we sit down to chow,” Brunner said.
    “How come when you say ‘gooks’ it sounds like ‘nigger’ to me?” Johnson asked.
    “You hear what you want to hear,” Brunner said.
    “What I’m hearing is what you saying,” Johnson said.
    “Y’all shut that shit up,” Sergeant Simpson looked from Brunner to Johnson and back again.
    We had roast beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, carrot cake, and milk for supper. I sat under a tree with Peewee, eating. A bug crawled over his leg, and he put some mashed potatoes on his knee in the bug’s path, but the bug turned and went the other way.
    “You think he’s saying something about the chow?” I asked.
    “He probably want some of the roast beef,” Peewee said. “He know it Sunday and everything. But he ain’t getting none.”
    “Sunday? It’s not Sunday, it’s Wednesday.” “Bugs is four days behind people,” he said matter-of-factly.
    Sergeant Simpson saw us and came over. He sat down and asked us how we were enjoying ourselves.
    “I’ve seen places I’d rather be,” I said. “Times Square, Lenox Avenue, Fifth Avenue, you name it.”
    “I loves it here,” Peewee said. “I ain’t never seen no place in the world better than this place right here. You know what I love the most?”
    “What’s that?” Sergeant Simpson was amused by Peewee.
    “The bugs,” Peewee said. “You go to sleep at night they right there. You wake up in the morning, they right there. They better than a damn dog.” “So what you guys think about this outfit?” Sergeant Simpson asked.
    “It looks okay to