The Odd Angry Shot by William Nagle Read Free Book Online Page A

Remember.
    WE stood outside the Washington Bar, just down from the market place, and the Flags—a huge sign board with the flags of all the participating nations in the war painted on it.
    Past us flow a continuous stream of Vietnamese, Americans and paunchy European civilians, all sweating, all smelling. A mother is wiping her child’s behind in the gutter across the street from us.
    â€˜How’s that for an ad for Johnson’s Baby Powder?’ laughs Harry.
    â€˜You want eat?’ A hand tugs at the leg of my trousers. I turn to see a toothless old crone hovering over a street cooker on which is frying the most inedible mess I’ve ever seen.
    â€˜You want eat? You want eat, soldier?’
    â€˜No, he doesn’t want to eat a soldier,’ snaps Rogers. ‘Now piss off, will ya.’
    â€˜You want eat, soldier?’ she whines again, ignoring Rogers and looking now at Harry.
    â€˜No! Piss off for Christ’s sake. We don’t want to eat, understand? No eat. PISS OFF.’
    The old crone bows her head and shuffles away under her load. We go back to weighing the merits of the bars arrayed in front of us. ‘Hey soldier.’ We turn around. ‘You get fuck, soldier,’ she yells, and at the same time achieves one of the most incredible feats I have ever seen. From twenty feet away she puckers her toothless mouth and spits straight into Harry’s right eye.
    â€˜Good shot, madam,’ gurgles Rogers. I collapse onto the footpath shrieking with laughter.
    â€˜You fucking bitch,’ screams Harry, ‘and you can shut up too,’ he says, looking at me. ‘You’ve got nothing to laugh about.’
    â€˜Why?’ I grin, sitting up.
    â€˜You just rolled in some dog shit,’ says Rogers slowly raising his eyes towards heaven.
    â€˜Oh hell,’ I moan, wiping frantically at the brown smear on my trouser leg.
    And cousin Ming won the Concours d’Elegance.
    REMEMBER the day when—Harry and I sat in the bar with our knees resting against the table edge. Harry raises his hand.
    â€˜Garcon,’ he says, waving his hand and adopting an elegant air. ‘Garcon.’
    A Vietnamese teenager dressed in a Hawaiian shirt approaches us.
    â€˜Two beers, please.’
    We’ve come a long way from the pub down by the water in Watsons Bay I think.
    The teenager returns within ten seconds, carrying a tray on which rest two cans of Foster’s Lager.
    â€˜Two hundred pee,’ demands the teenager.
    Harry peels two one-hundred pee notes from the roll in his hand. ‘Bloody Foster’s Lager! How come the nogs can get it and we can’t?’ asks Harry, a tone of amazement in his voice.
    â€˜Black market, I suppose,’ is my reply, in between mouthfuls of beer.
    â€˜You like buy me Saigon tea?’
    I look up from the cold top of the can, my nineteenyear-old eyes travelling and undressing the shape before me. I stare like an idiot.
    â€˜You like buy me Saigon tea?’
    â€˜Too bloody right,’ I answer. The bar girl sits down squarely on my lap.
    â€˜You like buy me Saigon tea now?’ I fumble like a schoolboy looking for his lunch money, for the roll of notes in my shirt pocket.
    â€˜Yeah, how much,’ I ask, my face buried in the female breast in front of me. My eyes devouring, my nose smelling a woman, any woman.
    If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Or so the song goes…Whatever.
    â€˜You like have fun with me later?’ she asks, biting my ear.
    â€˜How about now?’
    â€˜Not now.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜You buy me drink first, you show you love me.’
    â€˜I love you already,’ I say pushing her back and waving the roll of notes under her nose.
    A few words with the bartender.
    â€˜OK. We go now,’ she says, coming back and taking my hand.
    â€˜Meet you back here in an hour,’ says Harry.
    We walk towards the