Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

better than five feet in length, and the darts looked seven or eight inches long—white, tapered; like overlong golf tees, as a matter of fact. The German sent them deftly into his target’s hide, pausing often to mop at his face with a hankie.

     

    Skip had an appointment down in the village with his friend, Philippine Army Major Eddie Aguinaldo.
    Skip and the German assassin, who may not have been an assassin, or even a German, rode together halfway down the mountain to the market. They took the air-conditioned staff car, gazing out the closed windows of the backseat at the thatched homes of warped, rough-cut lumber, at tethered goats, wandering chickens, staggering dogs. As they passed the grannies who squatted on the dusty stoops, spitting red betel nut, squads of tiny children detached themselves from the old crones and ran alongside the car.
    “What is that? They’re saying something.”
    “‘Chez,’” Sands told the German.
    “What is that? Did you say ‘chez’? It means? What does it mean?”
    “Their parents used to ask the GIs for matches. ‘Matches! Matches!’ Now they just shout, ‘Chez, chez, chez.’ They don’t know what it means. There aren’t any GIs around anymore, and if they want a match they say ‘posporo.’”
    But the old women grappled after the children angrily, in a way he hadn’t seen before. “What is the matter with these people?” he asked the German.
    “They need a better diet. The protein is too little.”
    “Do you sense it? Something’s up.”
    “It’s too little fish high up in the mountain. The protein is too little.”
    “Ernest,” Skip said, leaning forward and talking to the driver, “is something going on in the village today?”
    “Maybe something, I don’t know,” Ernest said. “I can ask around for you.” He came from Manila, and his English was excellent.
    Major Eduardo Aguinaldo, in crisp fatigues, waited in the rear seat of a black Mercedes outside the Monte Mayon, a restaurant run by an Italian and his Filipino family. Pavese, the Italian, served whatever people would buy, which wasn’t much. For visitors Pavese made a quite delicious spaghetti Bolognese with a lot of goat’s liver in it. The major welcomed the German and insisted he call him “Eddie” and insisted he join them for lunch.
    To Skip’s surprise, the German accepted. Their guest ate robustly, voluptuously. He wasn’t fat, but food seemed his passion. Skip hadn’t seen him so happy. He was a bearish, bearded character with thick brown rims for his glasses and skin that burned rather than tanned, and big soft lips that got wet when he talked.
    “Let’s get some of Pavese’s espresso, because it’s full of life,” Aguinaldo said. “Skip was up all night. He’s tired.”
    “Never! I’m never tired.”
    “Were my men good to you?”
    “Most respectful. Thanks.”
    “But you didn’t locate any Huks.”
    “Not unless they were hiding by the road and we never saw them.”
    “What about the PC boys?”
    “The PC?” These were the Philippine Constabulary. “The PC were fine. They kept pretty much to themselves.”
    “They don’t care for the army’s assistance. I won’t say I can blame them. It’s not a war. These Huks are only renegades. They’ve been reduced to the status of bandits.”
    “Correct.” But these excursions amounted to Sands’s only strategy for gaining points and landing a reassignment to Manila or, even better, to Saigon. Above all, these jungle patrols relieved him of the uneasy feeling that he’d undergone rigorous training, swung by ropes along the faces of cliffs, parachuted into thunderclouds, sweated while following recipes for highly explosive materials, clambered over barbed wire, traversed rushing streams in the dark of night, been interrogated for hours while tied to a chair, all in order to become a clerk, nothing more than a clerk. To compile. To sort. To accomplish what any spinster librarian could accomplish. “And what did