They delivered the news of his death with a sharply creased flag. She was nursing their two-week-old girl-child on the worn couch, lulled by the glow of the television then the hard rap on the door snapped her awake. She yanked her breast back into the nursing bra and bounced the squalling baby in the crook of her arm. The NCO stood at the door haloed by the morning sun. He was wearing dress blues. The golden buttons and white gloves beamed against the terrible sameness of this cul-de-sac. Her mouth was dry.

We regret to inform you. Killed in action. Your husband. In service to this nation and the beloved Corps. His beloved Corps. Regret. Taking fire.

She felt the officer’s fingertips as he pressed the triangle of the flag into her left hand.

Identification

She named the girl child Jonathan Rene after her dead father, whose remains were so damaged the Interment Officer touched her wrist and shook his head when she asked him to open the black bag.

“We have DNA testing now.”

She smiled, all teeth, and stroked Baby Jonathan’s arched lips. “Open it.”

The officer pulled the zipper and she peered into the dark slit. A pile of teeth heaped in the middle of a stubbled jaw. An arm with a tattoo of a skull in a top hat nestled against part of a rib cage. She couldn’t stop grinning. Her breath puffed in front of her and the skull peered at her through a monocle.

“Where is his heart?”

“Ma’am?”

“His heart? His blood? His tongue? Where did it all go? Where is his cock?”

“We were unable to recover all of the remains, ma’am.”

She pressed closer to the officer and pulled the baby blanket away from Jonathan’s face.

“This is our child. Do you think she looks like him?”

He flicked his green eyes to the door and put his arm around her. She could smell formaldehyde and deodorant and sweat and Big Red gum.

“His personal items will be sent within 5-7 days after they are processed, inventoried, and cleaned. His weapon will be issued to another soldier. You will receive his uniform. You will also receive a lump sum of one hundred thousand dollars.”

His voice hung around her as she stepped into the light of the waiting room. Jonathan yawned pink and settled into the creases of her own neck. She never cried. She just opened and closed those fat fists and pulled on her momma’s scabbed tit like a calf with that cruel little mouth.

Interment

Lance Corporal Jonathan Selzer’s funeral was brief.

She sat between framed photos of their dead parents and watched some NCO lift the flag from the fiberglass box and snap it in half with another glassy-eyed officer.

She always killed the catfish they caught. He was too softhearted and couldn’t stand the way they gaped at him from the cooler. He said it sounded like they were talking to him.

She remembered him whole. She remembered him when she was young and he was young, deep in the woods that ran along the river where they fished for yellow mudcats. Before he became a pile of teeth, before he pulled his laces tight, before her pussy stretched and a creature turned inside her, they pinched worms in half and threaded them onto golden hooks. Coors Light nestled in the dirty ice of her daddy’s Styrofoam cooler on the bank of some forgotten inlet of the Mississippi. It was always too warm and the perch nibbled the worms off the hooks, flashing their yellow bellies as they flipped away from her bobber. A couple of times she fucked him out there when the fish weren’t biting, but the deer flies were. They specked his pale thighs with tiny dots of blood. She liked his resolve. He was a born leader.

She always killed the catfish they caught. He was too softhearted and couldn’t stand the way they gaped at him from the cooler. He said it sounded like they were talking to him.

She hauled them out onto a cinder block that they dragged up from the bank, and rubbed her thumb over the soft spot on their heads. She stabbed a straightened wire hanger through the weak skin and wiggled it until they quit flopping. She hacked off their tails and bled them in the cooler until the ice was pink and gray. She couldn’t let things smaller than her suffer in a crowded bucket, better to kill than to let die slowly.

Now her husband wasn’t. Mist beaded on the Class A casket paid for by the United States Marine Corps. Seven more Marines stood to the left, gripping their rifles in the fog. Twenty-one reports and the brass drone of “Taps.” People coughing. The rustle of fabric and a General Brigadier kneeling in front of her pressing another flag against her chest. His MO: sympathy, empathy, candor, and grief. He let a single tear trail down his nose, mapped with broken capillaries from nights in foreign bars where he smashed glasses and had his money stolen by laughing whores. She twisted a damp napkin from the Waffle House around her pointer finger and looked at a single stray hair in his right nostril. She leaned into him and wondered if he thought about her breasts touching his shoulder. They put some of Lance Corporal Jonathan Selzer in the ground.

Housing

Weeks passed. Their lease was up. She sat in her gray manufactured house and listened to an odd bubbling rendition of “Für Elise” coming from the sticker-dotted ice cream truck. Baby Jonathan jerked her pink hands around, batting at her mother’s chest.

The music from the ice cream truck had always made a hard lump stick in her throat. From the time she was six or seven, the tinkling from a music box or the odd mechanical notes drifting through the air made her pull at her eyebrows and bite her thumbnail. She knew it happened on her uncle’s dairy farm. Whatever it was. There was a burn barrel and the neighbor boys throwing chicken bones in the air. They chased her to the shed. It was something, something to do with thrown out dish soap in her eyes and hard hands gripping her shoulders. Something to do with a pink porcelain ballerina balanced on one toe, crushed under mildewed magazines ready for the fire, and the mechanical plinks of a sad song. Something.

Once, when Jonathan was deployed, she sat rubbing her pregnant belly in the same little off-base house and waited for the ice cream truck to come. She stumbled outside when she heard the music, waving bills at the ice cream man, and begged him, “please please please, turn off your music, I’ll buy everyone here ice cream, but please, no more.” The children from the neighborhood pressed their hot little bodies all around her and put their sticky hands on her arms. She looked down at the crusted nostrils and red Kool-Aid stained skin around flaked lips and handed them Tweety Birds with blue bubblegum eyes and Chocolate Rockets and orange Creamsicles. The smells of fake fruit and vanilla and sun-warmed chlorine drifted around her. She gave the ice cream man her phone number and hoped he’d call her even when he wasn’t coming into the neighborhood. He was so young and pretty, with a thick-lipped gap-toothed grin, his fingers brushing hers as she reached for confection after confection.

Now, she pressed her scabbed nipple against the side of Jonathan’s face, praying for a latch this time. Toys and blankets, all in primary colors, were sprinkled over the worn carpet. Unfolded moving boxes leaned against the refrigerator. A straightened coat hanger with threads of hair still clinging to it, from when she tried to unclog the bathroom sink, teetered on the back of the reclining couch. The mail was heaped on the counters and his smell had disappeared before he had even died. She picked up her breast again and squeezed from the base, just like the nurse told her. A pearl of milk grew and dropped on Jonathan’s wrinkled forehead.

“I hate you,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Just fucking eat, God damn you.” She wrenched Jonathan up and gripped the limp child under the arms, looking straight into her hazy gray eyes. “Do you want to die?” Her sore tit hung from the unclasped nursing bra. “Your daddy wanted to die. He wanted to die the moment he was born. Maybe you got that sickness, too.”

She twisted down beside her now sleeping baby on the faux velvet couch, only to be awakened by her now intact husband crouching in his desert fatigues beside her, holding a catfish by the gills.

Custom and Tradition

She had been sitting on the broken recliner couch for two hours. The baby still wouldn’t eat. Jonathan cried and crinkled her forehead specked with scaly cradle cap. The truck was circling the block again. “All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel, the monkey thought it was all in good fun, pop goes the weasel!” The low rattle of the cicadas reminded her of her grandmother’s story about seeing the devil in the Mississippi woods. The same woods where she and her husband had fucked and caught catfish and hooked their fingers trying to impale grasshoppers. She put the baby down on a pillow with a snoozing puppy printed on it, and pressed her forefinger to Jonathan’s rose petal lips.

“Shhhh, Jonathan, I’ma tell you a story about the time that The Son of The Morning came and told Meemaw just what she needed to do. She was only a little girl, just a few years older than you. She was playing in the woods by the river because the grownups in the house told her that her momma needed privacy. They didn’t know Meemaw had scarlet fever, so they sent her into the bright sun with her rag doll and told her to be back for dinner. Meemaw felt so warm and tired that she sat down by the creek and started to cry. She was so very hot and her knees and elbows were just hurting from the fever. Then, from the other side of the creek, she heard someone crying. She saw a tall man with hair so red and skin so pure, sitting, sitting just like she was, crying. She asked him why was he crying and he said his momma was with the angels just like hers was. She told him that he must think she was someone else because her momma just needed privacy, because Santa Claus was bringing her a little sister for an early Christmas present. The red-headed man said he’d show her where her momma was, and that all she needed to do was come with him to the deeper water. When she asked who he was, he laughed and his laugh sounded just like a tinkling music box, it was so clear and pretty. The man came across the creek to her and offered his hand like a fancy gentleman, and his hand was as soft and creamy as a lady’s. He even had perfect, filed fingernails. Meemaw said she don’t remember where they went, but that his hand was as cool and smooth as magnolia petals. They found her half-asleep on the bank of the Mississippi, nestled in the cold mud. Only thing that had kept her from burning alive from the fever, they said. And guess what? Her momma, my great-grandma, was with the angels. She had died from giving birth to my Great Uncle Eustace. He died in World War II. Isn’t that something?”

Absent Without Leave

She twisted down beside her now sleeping baby on the faux velvet couch, only to be awakened by her now intact husband crouching in his desert fatigues beside her, holding a catfish by the gills. He smelled like gunpowder and dirt, like little boys do when they’ve come out of the sun. His black hair was dusted with pale, powdery sand. He put his finger to her lips and raised the catfish up with his other hand. It spoke in the static silence of the room.

“I am,” it said.

Blood soaked her husband’s sleeve. The catfish’s tail had been hacked off and a crimson bead formed on the soft spot on the top of its gray head. Jonathan grinned. His nicotine-stained teeth gleamed.

“See? They sound like they’re talking.”

The catfish sounded just like Jesus in those church films they watched in Sunday school sometimes, when Ms. May was sick and couldn’t teach. “Let the little children come unto me.” The catfish flopped out of Daddy Jonathan’s hand and shivered on the floor, its gills working open and closed until her husband pushed her eyelids closed with his warm palm and pried her mouth open with his tongue. She wasn’t asleep. This was not a dream. He was here again.

Until he wasn’t, and she was holding Baby Jonathan to her stretch-marked breast trying to force her to eat again in the dirty living room. Jonathan’s silky baby skin was very cold and almost slick. A diamond pool of blood on her baby’s head streamed in long ribbons and pooled in the crevices of her elbows. A straightened coat hanger was caught in the fabric of the couch and dangled over the stained carpet. It was coated in blood. The setting sun filled the room with strange light and long slotted shadows from the blinds.

Separation

She felt a warm calm and knew where to take her child. There would be no caskets or paperwork. No flags or death-quelling Lilies of the Valley. She would not sit in a plastic chair in a glinting forest of framed dead faces. No. She would take Baby Jonathan to the mighty river and let her tiny body feed the turtles and the fish, and maybe get swallowed whole by a great mudcat. And when that fish was wrenched from the water and eaten by some family by the delta, they would drink beer and play cards in the front yard, until the night closed over and the warm fat raindrops drove everyone inside hollering. Mommas hushing the drunk men and the teenagers with their fat titties, eyeing their daddy’s friends with that wetness. “Don’t y’all wake them babies. You hear me?” The frogs burping love songs and the patter of rain on the tin roof of some trailer. Maybe her blood, mixed with that catfish blood and sweetish, malty Coors would make some girl dream about the devil and forget that boy with resolve.

R. Peralez is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at the University of New Orleans, where she teaches Freshmen Composition. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in English. She is from DeRidder, Louisiana. She is also the fiction editor for Quaint Magazine. She writes short stories about the South and the characters who inhabit it.

I stood angry. I entered the waters of the Xepon in a wild and arrogant gait. Meiet, the tallest of all the village teenage girls, quieted my sloppy entry with a stare. It did not register with my tortured mind her appearance. She stood in the river up to her knees. Long braids on each side of her head remained tight, twirling around her hips as she scanned the river surface and the tree line. This behavior was not unusual, but the purple sarong cinched tight on her waist was inappropriate. She was promised to the son of a neighboring village chieftain. Her body no longer belonged to nature, but her future husband. Yet, her style of dress at the shoreline was inappropriate. Why was she covered in front of women and children?

The men of the village were guarding against the marauding spirits that were attacking several villages. The spirits covered with clothing, carrying weapons of great power, kidnapped many children from helpless villages located around Ai Lao Pass. This was not the case with our encampment. The lodges were strong. Our Chiefs sat in the middle surrounded by eight smaller, but still foreboding long houses. Other homes rimmed the central encampment. We were strong.

Bamboo columns held the sturdy grass paneled structure several feet off the ground. Wind, water, or even evil spirits from the dark realm of emptiness could not penetrate our defenses.

She should have been nude as the rest of us. But who was I to argue with her? I was happy she turned her gaze as my behavior improved. A betrothed teen handed me a toddler. With an annoyed expression, I began the loathsome task of washing another’s infant. I wanted my own.

My mother sent me to the shore to help with the bathing of the children. To me it was penance for too many tantrums and too much sobbing. The sun was setting. This seemed an unusual time to do this. But again, I lost the desire to ask or make a fuss. Only minutes before, my father and older brother left the two females of the family yelling and crying. Me crying, my mother yelling.

It was all due to my refusal to act my age. My friend Blata was promised to someone. She entered womanhood the moon before. Her dripping blood signaled a time of maturity and respect. I wanted that. Refusing to be treated as a child, I put my mother’s sarong around my waist, ripping the loincloth from my body. Men and boys, not a grown woman, wore this garment. Young immature girls would stroll with this cover. I am almost a woman, two months older than Blata. This garment is no longer for me. I should be treated as I deserved.

Why be so treated? This is a punishment, due to my body’s inability to bleed. No one could tell me different. My mother’s disgust at the gesture led to the tirade of emotions and my father and brother’s escape.

As the sun began to set, a beautiful array of white light danced on the surface of the Xepon. Mesmerized by the sight, I found myself alone as the mild waves lapped at my hips. At the shoreline stood beautiful Meiet, the majestic young woman whispered something to the crippled daughter of my father’s friend. Ngit was cute of face, but limped due to a shortened left leg. Meiet’s whisper brought a giggle to the oft-pained girl. I observed more after handing the infant to an older girl, and returning to the water. My workday was done.

The striking young woman talked to this lame girl as any friend would. I marveled at the beauty that stood a head above the others. Her authority did not come from height or age. This eldest at the shore possessed a spirit that was for all to see. Though wrapped tight with cloth, stunning braids showed the sparkle that such hair gives off when damp. Breasts pointed as if held up by string. I envied such beauty. I hated such beauty.

Moving toward the shore, I froze at the sight.

Meiet pushed the lame Ngit to the ground, while whipping her sarong into the air. As the garment fluttered its way to the sand, a glint from her hand caused my stumble backward. The blade was hidden in the waistband of her skirt. Now I knew why it was worn. The young guardian looked with intent never seen by my eyes. The other young women, including Blata, stopped any movement, their sarongs already circling their waists.

I fell to my knees due to the clumsy reaction. The water rose to my lips. Attempting to stand, I saw Meiet raise the hand with the blade. She slid the other arm around her stomach, an extended finger pointing to her rear. The path to the village her target. At no time did her gaze lose sight of the jungle.

My father lived as a hunter, or to be more specific, a tracker for the parties that roam the forest for our daily meals. Many times regaling stories of brilliant maneuvers to catch the wild boar and deer that roam our land, he would talk of the silence of the jungle. This seemed strange. The jungle being a cauldron of noise. Sounds of birds, screeching monkeys, and the occasional bellowing of a tiger all joined in the familiar chorus. How could the jungle be silent? The never-ending drone of bugs hummed through the air giving the other lyrical bursts a bass line to follow.

Now, I thought my ears blocked. Silence became so intense my head rang from the muted air. Around me little ripples of water increased as I trembled with fear. Something is going to happen. Something did.

Meiet screamed for the others to run. Her stance remained fixed. With the rising moon’s light I could see the evil spirits that wore clothes.

Another approached Meiet but stopped by the fierceness of her stare, she looked magnificent.

They were the Vietnamese, the people from the east. They came for slaves. Failure after failure to capture our men, costing many the life of a Viet caused enterprising traders to concentrate on children. The girls were to be given to the Court of their Emperor as concubines. Those that did not please the royal selection committee would be sold at auction. The boys would be castrated and given to the Royal House. Eunuchs were prized as potential gifts for the Chinese Emperor.

Screams continued as the evils spirits grabbed the children. Blata stumbled in her attempt at a quick movement. She fell to the ground, only to be pulled up by her hair and thrust into a circle of vine. In a flash, three of the girls were also connected as prisoners held submissively by this long leash.

None of the group at the shore escaped. But the deed would not come without a price. In my preoccupation with the speed of the capture, I did not see Meiet and her blade.

A Viet lay at her feet. Standing with no loss of pride, the nude girl spit at the body of the Viet she had slain. Another approached Meiet but stopped by the fierceness of her stare, she looked magnificent. From the water I saw the leer aimed at her beauty. Would he be willing to pay the price for such pleasure?

All through this standoff, muffled screams from Ngit serenaded the attack. The men realized she could never make the trip to Huế, the Imperial City. They decided to enjoy her fruits on the beach. I saw one man on top of her, then replaced by another. It looked as if a line was forming behind her bobbing head. Her screams muted by a monstrous hand.

The other teenager fumbled with her weapon, also hid in a sarong. It spun from her trembling hand, wilting on the sand. They motioned to Meiet to put down the crimson blade still dripping from its taste of Viet flesh. Her friend whose name I did not know found her knees thrust to the ground as the Viets kept her in a kneeling position. The Viets showed fear of Meiet. Not one would approach her. They wanted this female warrior; as to me she will always be remembered as such, to surrender. She would fetch a good price. Though I could see the other men, as now I knew these were no spirits, possessed the look of a predator eyeing their next meal.

The other teen resigned to her fate remained silent. A kick to her breasts crumpled her further. A Viet with a long blade held it over the semi-conscious young woman. It was obvious; Meiet’s continued fight would lead to her beheading.

It is here where I understood a statement made by my mother.

My father told her, as he looked at the results of another tantrum. “This devil would drive the evil spirits crazy, should they have the misfortune to capture her.”

My mother’s quick response, “Do not joke of such things.” She looked at me with eyes ready to water. “I will slit her throat and then mine before such a thing occurs.”

Meiet held the same opinion. Or so her actions would show. In a move worthy of our noblest warrior she put the knife to her neck, calling to the heavens as the blade sliced through her skin. From my watery seat, I saw her once coconut milk-like skin covered in a tide of blood. Her breasts, that I envied, drenched in seconds.

In disgust, the Viet brought the gleaming blade down on the other teenager. A smack greeted the cheek of the executioner, this being a poor business decision. His leader reacted with another slap. The teenage friend of Meiet squirmed as her head rolled a few inches.

Finally, the cries of Ngit ended. My body felt as if a shrinking of my skin began to take place. I feared the trembling would cause the Viets to notice the stirring at the surface. It was a needless worry. The water became alive with those too young to walk the distance to their Emperor’s Palace. Two infants were flung into the surf as I once saw boys of our village fling rocks into the Xepon, their splashes too far from me to aid. I felt gratitude for this fact. I knew due to my cowardice, my legs would not budge. Amid this scene, I spat at my own soul, for should an infant land by my side, my reaction would be the same.

Hideous laughter circled the beach as the eldest of the young boys, a soft faced eight-year old violated by the fat Viet with long hair, cried out in a wail of pain. Future eunuchs, unlike concubines, fetched the same price, pure or spoiled. An aroma of horror coupled with the sobbing of the captured hung about my head. The only smell worse was my shame at a girl’s cowardice.

I hoped for my father and the other men to save the children. To save me. Though, I knew that would not be. My mother sent me to the river, not for punishment, but for protection. The elders expected an attack from the direction of Ai Lao Pass. They were tricked into believing that. The Viets appeared smarter than the Bru.

There I stayed, a lone survivor of this horrific attack. As the last of the Viets walked, following the neck-bound captives into the jungle, I cursed myself. My shame was of such a magnitude, I thought of wading to the shore and using the knife of Meiet to rip my neck open. Then, as a catfish brushed my leg, I remembered my mother’s expression as she told my father of her zeal.

I would follow the children till I could get close enough to free them, or as my mother would prefer, cut all their throats. It was the only thing that could wash away my shame.

Entrance into the jungle was not without fear. I was Bru, and though schooled in girlish necessities needed for my advance into womanhood, I knew a trail. This fact did not quell the uncertain feeling racing through my body. Holding one blade, I brushed the other hidden in the sarong of Meiet. Walking one foot over the other, I marveled at how well I cut the bottom of the skirt till it fit me as the woman I was. The moonlight pierced through the canopy of the jungle just long enough to show me the clustered tracks of the Vietnamese. Their sandals left scarred marks in the soft jungle bottom. How weak they must be? Being stalked by a woman of the Bru.

My older brother Renko could track a boar, mother, and her piglets before the ninth year of his life. My father took him on the hunt as soon as he could walk. Or so it was told to me. While the boy learned the skill of bow and knife throwing, my hands were used for washing babies and preparing dinner. My mother would take little strolls into the jungle, showing me the area where guavas, pineapple, and mango grow in abundance. As I would reach for my favorite, the slightly toothed leaves of peppermint herbs that would explode with coolness in my mouth, she would explain the importance of using the gifts of the land to liven up a boring meal. Mother would laugh at the thought of my father’s face, when his excitement would show due to the right amount of basil or dill added to a too tough meat.

I recalled words from my father as he tried to end another of my tantrums. I  wanted to know how to read the sky, as he was teaching Renko. My father pulled me to his lap and pointed to the big star and told me where it would be as the night would become day. He whispered that I was his child. The blood of a tracker flowed through my veins. I needn’t worry about such things. My mother would just yell that I was lazy, and would never get a husband.

I never believed what he whispered to me, but now I did. Their trail became a mural that grew larger with each few step. I knew the blood in me. I knew I was my father’s child.

Thump! Thoughts of destiny and greatness shot from me into the darkness of the jungle. The quick tumble showed a lack of agility. The fright at the unexpected obstacle brought my eyes close to tears. Shamed again, as at the water’s edge. I was afraid.

Looking at what I thought was the moist bark of a rotted log my heart skipped a beat. It was the soft-faced boy violated by the fat Viet with long hair. Naked, the boy looked ready to float away on the river of blood that surrounded the bloated body. The tortured face of the boy did not bring the horror I expected. I knelt in the blood of the child. The poor boy must have been too injured to make the trip to slavery; his neck was sliced open. I swore the vengeance needed to wash away the shame of the fat Viet’s act; my muscles grew with the desire fostered by the hunt. My soft stomach hardened as my muscular brother’s, my vow complete. Hate grew in my eyes, as I felt them strain. The bitterness at my cowardice as the babies scrambled for breath a few feet from my safe watery seat turned to anger. My father and the men were nowhere in sight. I heard not a branch stir, hoping for the glimpse of one of my tribe. The decision became my pledge to the spirits of the jungle. I would free the children, or die trying. The sarong was soaked with the blood of the soft-faced boy. My bath of death brought me power. I would kill until all were free. Or all were dead. I advanced.

The Vietnamese were fearful of the jungle. They turned toward the beach, a safe route to the beaten path that would lead to freedom. The fools did not know of their folly. The Bru could easily overtake them. The beach offered no obstacle.

And we feared them as evil spirits?

The group stopped at the tree line. I almost walked into their camp, as they argued and looked everywhere. Their fear was consuming them.

Moving back into the heavy flora of the forest, I sat with full view of the cluster. I needed only to wait. Our men must have discovered the treachery at the water’s edge. I need only sit and wait.

Time passed and I felt my eyes grow heavy. No doubt the blunder of camping at the beach would lead to their undoing. The noise and wail of the children alerted me to the difference.

A boat was in the distance. I could see the cloth that caught the wind. The breezes would bring it close to shore, and my captured people to slavery. Grabbing the naked children, the Viets forced the captives into the river. I did not know what to do.

The wailing prisoners were standing in knee high water. The boat approached, the rushing tide tossing it in the air. That part of the Xepon grew sand bars and collected, rotted tree trunks of the pine that littered the shoreline. I still waited for a plan. Though I knew what must be done.

Standing, I knew I looked as majestic as Meiet when she halted the Viets with a stare. My steps began. I intended to attack, and then it happened.

I whipped the sarong from me and held the two blades as I have seen men do when they practice killing blows.

Deep breaths fortified my resolve. I would run to the water and kill as many of the children as possible. It was the only way to save them.

“No!” My scream tore at my mind. The shame is already too great for I will free all their bodies from the future the Viet’s planned. Then, as a woman, I will join them in paradise. My father and the rest of the Bru men will do the rest.

Standing, I knew I looked as majestic as Meiet when she halted the Viets with a stare. My steps began. I intended to attack, and then it happened.

The fat Viet, finishing an argument with the leader threw a pouch that jingled as it was caught. The man looked the opposite of the sweaty blob, slim with short hair; he waved the fat Viet toward the jungle. Blata followed him by her gripped hair. She did not need to stand as she bounced upon the sand, accompanied by hearty laughter from the other Viets.

My eyes widened as the fat one moved past me deeper into the jungle. Blata looked resigned to her fate. Her movements were non-existent.

Scanning the area, he used a free hand to move the vines that blocked the path. A smile appeared as he saw the rotted tree trunk flat to the ground. Throwing Blata toward the clear area to its front, the fat Viet ripped his pants from his body. The laughter was as a roaring tiger. Though I feel this man possessed none of the spirit or character of the beast. The obnoxious and sinister chuckles covered my movements. I was to his back and delighted in what I saw. His vulnerability was increasing. Standing with legs spread, he picked up my friend. I then decided she was my friend, no matter how her body bled, or the size of her breasts. Throwing Blata over the trunk, he moved over the lifeless body. As so did I. I wanted to thank him for the laughter and belches of noise that allowed me to get even closer. I was behind him, he never knew. As a bloated hand grabbed the part of him that so humiliated the soft-faced boy, my arm moved backward. Bending over Blata, my friend, he gave off a deep moan. I could see the sides of his belly shake. I took a breath, inhaling a foul odor from his body. Before his entrance into her, my blade entered him.

The scream woke the sleeping animals of the jungle. A family of spotted monkeys awakened by the screeching cries flooded the area to our front. It was his last vision before death. Blata revived by the howling cry looked at the shimmering blubber of the half-naked man. His fall to the floor caused a rumble at our feet, Meiet’s blade sticking from his scrotum.

“Quickly girl!” I grabbed the stunned friend and took her by the shoulder as an adult woman might. The men on the beach would be upon us. We ran until the pine trees and thorny vines and rotted dead vegetation all looked the same.

It was impossible, but it was also true. My ignorance led us back to the beach.

The hands of men grabbed us. I am now a captive. The shame I hoped to purge from my soul, would be tripled. I lunged with the other blade, hoping to slice my throat on the blades return. A monstrous hand ripped it from me. I began to cry. I wanted to die.

I wanted my mommy.

Dragged to the sand, the grips of the men were not hurtful. Blata realized, and with no resistance, she would be let go. Hair in front of my face covered my vision. I could only look down; my shame too heavy to hold.

On the ground laid the leader of the Viets. His eyes wide open. But where was his body? Using both hands, I cleared the wild mop of hair from my eyes. The children were free, and crying. The joyful cry of innocence restored. Before me stood my father, holding the blood soaked sarong. Beside him stood my brother, a Viet’s head atop his spear.

The men used my trail to lead them to the Viets. The two that piloted the boat were taken at the shore. Their misfortune being taken alive, a condition that would last for two days.

Seeing my father brought my emotions to a swell. I ran the short distance to his arms and buried my head and body into his grasp. My crying matched or surpassed any that the captives endured. Hands pulled me upward as my father hoisted me to his chest, and then the air above his head. I looked down; frightened as the coward I am, not noticing the smile on my oft-serious father’s face. The men yelled in chants. The chants reserved for warriors. I did not want to hear anything. The sand shook as the men jumped and smacked the ground with their weapons. My hysteria did not ebb, as my father spun me in the air, beaming with pride. What pride could I be? A naked child acting the infant she was.

The screaming became united with one simple mantra. I saw my brother in a matching state of hysteria howling with the warriors of the tribe. My father’s voice was loudest of all. They repeated it over and over again.

YOU ARE A WOMAN! YOU ARE A WOMAN!

A month passed from that fateful night. Upon my return to my mother, not one second would be spent from her side. I often would cling to her bare breast as if a suckling child satisfied with nourishment. She relished my behavior and was with me at nature’s call. For a month to the day of my father’s proclamation, my body chose to act the part.

As I quaked with the preparation for motherhood, my clinging personality only continued. Stomachache and nausea spun about my head, along with the obvious colored discharge. Mother held me, and whispered in my ear. The tone of her words eased my body’s strain.

Her strokes continued as I rested at her chest. She whispered once more. You are a woman. My eyes closed knowing when I awoke, I would be so.

Joseph Allan’s tales profess one agenda. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Homebound as a child due to illness, loneliness liberated imagination. Poe’s influence runs through his work. Trained as a Counterintelligence Agent by the US Army, J Allan used his unusual mind’s eye developing strategies protecting Americans abroad. The only non-Vietnam Veteran in his airborne unit, he memorized accounts of special operations in Southeast Asia. Coupled with interviews of North Vietnamese veterans and Montagnards his expertise increased. He submitted a screenplay while in China, and a Vietnam War novel thought too controversial for publication.

Now you’re on the barstool across from me. You’re mouthing off about re-enlisting. You can hardly sit still until you go off and get tested again. Dumb fuck. Doesn’t even occur to you that the second test is but another chance to fail.

My first bid was a hold back. It’s my go-to game. Don’t approach the crush, don’t tell him he’s beautiful. Look away. God forbid eyes should lock and a cool fire of embarrassment stiffen my jaw. Too young, too cocksure, too likely to break a heart. That’s you. Delighted with yourself. Each move a flexed muscle. You knew people were watching.

But subtlety was lost on you, and the night got shorter, and the drinks stronger, and praise God, we mortals need the fierce foot soldiers so fucking bad. Taking my cue, I matched you shot for shot over a game of pool that was all straight lines and sharp cracks.

I murmured, “Badass, tell me stories of war. Remind me of how it used to be.”

“You serve?” you asked. Your eyes sparked. Your skin gave off a whiff of burnt cordite.

“My father,” I explained. “Vietnam.”

New respect opened a spigot. Closest thing to a comrade you had in weeks, and you talked until you set down your pool stick.

“What are you doing later?” I asked.

You looked at me like I was plain stupid.

“Fucking,” you said.

“I’ve still got his medals. My father’s. Back at my apartment. You want to see ‘em?”

You nodded, we left, and as I put the key in the lock, I asked, “What are you into?”

“Bareback,” you said.

I didn’t refuse.

Sure, there was a moment of clench and fear, but having won your attention, I couldn’t not go through with it. Instead, I made a mental note to put a reminder in the calendar: on this date six weeks hence, get tested. (For whose sake?)

“I’m not afraid of anything,” you said with neither pride nor defiance, but only a haunting resignation that was older than you were or I would ever be.

Then I wondered: was six weeks the state of the science? For antibodies to arise, it sounded long and yet short at the same time. Younger people would know, but—I’m told, not personal experience—the young go ahead barebacking on the least assurances of purity, and fuck the bug that took down my generation.

Gratifyingly indifferent, you grunted and came in my ass. I licked my wounds and brought myself to completion, proud you’d done nothing to get me off. I was beside the point. I owed you no debts.

In the morning, you did calisthenics in my kitchen. You trolled the ‘Net to see what else there was to conquer. You traced the spines of certain books on my shelf (Calvino, Heaney, Solzhenitsyn) and delivered an ad hominem coffee-fueled disquisition on the efficacy of microloans in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa the likes of which that I would never would have thought to hear from your filthy mouth. Your erudition briefly shrank you to the size of twice-a-man, almost accessible, before you again resumed being a goddamn hero going home to Mom to tell her you’re heading back to war.

“How old are you anyhow?” I asked.

“What’s it matter?”

“Are you afraid to know how old I am?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” you said with neither pride nor defiance, but only a haunting resignation that was older than you were or I would ever be.

You prowled the apartment. Observed sightlines from the windows. Measured distance to places where the enemy might take shelter. You opened cupboards. Tried on my clothes. Snacked on raw oats and yoghurt and wolfed down an entire cold chicken.

For an hour, you stared at the cyclids in their tank, their dodge and weave, their fucking, their eating their young. I never knew a man could sit so still. Could cease breathing. The cyclids rushed to and fro and forgot you were there. I never forgot. Not for a second.

You set a mobile in perpetual motion. You flipped an hourglass and let the sand run out. You tested the weight of a cast iron trivet and the hardness of the tile and the looseness of the one floorboard near the stairs. You fixed what needed an extra screw. You drew the shades. You folded blankets with precise corners as if they were a flag from a vet’s casket.

I snuggled deeper in bed. Confident you had secured the perimeter. My house had never been so safe. You can see in the dark. Hear like a dog. You were at the peak of your game. You were born yesterday.

Me? 1968 and glad of it. A decade earlier, and I’d have been the good boy, the closet kill-myself of a prior age. A priest, maybe. A schemer. Maybe not so much predator on little boys or the seminarian in my charge, but who knows? I’ve abandoned all pretensions to superiority, which makes it harder to condemn.

Born after 1968, then what? I might have forgotten I’m controversial. I might have forgotten I’m fierce. Still standing. A warrior like you. A defiant queen of a persecution, backhanding jizz dangling from my chin.

No, complacency won’t do. We gays must always remember to be cock-angry and vicious, gun-toting and axe-wielding. Never forget. I may well have skirted the HIV that cut down my generation, but I pay the price in foreshortened gestures of tenderness like an angry T-Rex with half-sized forelimbs. This is me in San Juan with my former lover. This is me in Miami with a trick. We only ever held hands for these pics after scoping the scene for safety, and by then, the romantic impulse is DOA.

A crash shattered my comfort.

I padded to the living room where you had smashed a side table you had used as a stool to access the top shelf.

You laughed at what you’d done. You blamed the side table for its weakness. The world had unfolded no doubt exactly as it ought to. The strong are strong. The weak, weak.

“Now you’re up,” you said, “get on your shoes/shorts.”

You challenged me to a race to Worcestor Park and gave me two blocks lead.

“Loser bottoms,” you said.

You kicked my ass.

Taken prisoner, I was bodysore and content. Grateful. Overrun. Ransacked. Embarrassed by my fascination with your swagger.

Is there anything worse or more sinful than being obvious? The former most popular kid in the class, the once-upon-a-time rising star, the king of the world in another lifetime, I always wanted to be different.

“You never showed me his medals,” you accused.

“That was just a gambit to get you in the sack,” I admitted.

“Show me his medals.”

I delivered the case of medals and ribbons into your hands as if I was handing you my head on a platter. You scooted down under the covers, pointed at each decoration in turn, and explained what type of service or valor each indicated.

Hope sank. Fear gripped. From the start, your destiny had been to ask exactly the set of unholy questions that would estrange us. There was no such thing as happiness. You were going to war. I never had a chance.

“Tell me about your father,” you urged. “What kind of man was he?”

“Man of habits,” I said mechanically. “Home precisely at 5:20 p.m. Sat at table alone. My mother didn’t presume to ask how his day was. She didn’t presume to ask his needs. We assumed she read his mind. He ate his fill while the rest of us waited. When done, he nodded, and my sister and I scrambled to our places at the table, at attention, wide-eyed, trembling, stiff as pencils.

“Mother served and sat. We all bowed our heads. He never prayed, but instead looked on benevolently as if he were prayer’s object. Before we were done, he retired to the porch for a smoke. We knew better to join him until summoned. When summoned, we roughhoused, indoors or out, according to the season.

“Later still, he’d eye my mother and they’d disappear behind closed doors.”

“You must have loved him.”

“I was afraid of him.”

Your brow furrowed. You couldn’t imagine disobeying the fifth commandment. You wanted unicorns and heroes.

“Don’t you miss him?” you asked. “Aren’t you proud of him? Did he ever tell you stories about how he won these?”

“He hated the word won. He said he didn’t win shit. He said he earned them.”

“Earned, of course, earned,” you acknowledged impatiently.

You looked expectant. I resisted your bullying. I knew how to wait until the table’s cleared.

You wrapped me in an affectionate, intolerable headlock.

“Don’t fuck with me,” you said. “Come on. Never? Really? You never once sat down and ate at the same time as him and talked about what happened over…?”

“The man of the family gets his fill first, because the others depend on him,” I said stiffly, acutely aware I wasn’t the man and you and I were no family.

We were twenty-four into this solitary confinement I ought to have known would be a mistake. Should have gone home and jerked off alone.

“He sounds like a tough old bastard.”

“I never once spoke to him in all my thirty-five years about being gay, but he left me his army duds from Vietnam.”

You said, “He must have thought you earned them.”

You meant it.

Your earnestness was as unsexy as your erudition. I wanted to destroy it.

“When I was a boy,” I said, “I wanted to feel heroic, so I accompanied girls to the dance. I did what I was supposed to. I danced. I told them they were beautiful, but I never could give them what they wanted: to be desired, not just treated with kindness. To be mortified, not simply loved. To be defiled. I could only file their nails and help them choose matching pumps. I was kindness itself.”

I looked you in the eye.

“My father hated me,” I said.

My words punched a hole in that easy confidence. Kicked the stool from beneath you. Struggling for breath and words like a hanged man, you slipped from bed as quickly if I was infected.

I snatched at your wrist, seeking salvation.

“He did say, once, if ever someone knocks on your door and he’s got a black helmet and says he’s from SpecOps Delta, give him a place to sleep. Promise me this.”

“That’s my unit,” you murmured as if in a dream.

“Promise me this,” I said.

You touched my shoulder. You saluted my father’s medals. No more.

“Why would you lie about a thing like that?” you asked. You, who had seen everything. The absolute worst. The nerve of asking me about lies, as if I’d killed Bambi.

You looked as if you’d be happier back in the theater of war, where you knew what was up.

You dressed swiftly in the clothes you came in. I offered you a loan of mine, because I knew they’d fit and this fact seemed like a triumph, an important parting shot.

You touched my shoulder. You saluted my father’s medals. No more. Just name, rank, serial number. Maybe blood type.

What an amazing husband you would have made if you’d just come back to the living and measured your mettle in alternative ways! But then you’d be something other than what you were: undomesticated, savage, a bully, a stiff.

Me? I’m a warm mouth. I swallow them all. I’m capacious. I’m generosity itself.

Your leave is short. Anything is possible. I love you. Warriors like us play by different rules. Test our blood.

Scott David has published novels, a memoir, a guide to wine and cocktails, and numerous short stories under various pseudonyms, most recently in Evening Street Review, Apple Valley Review, Ampersand Review, Entasis, Ray’s Roadhouse Review, St. Sebastian Review, Glitterwolf, Blue Penny Quarterly, and Fiction Fix. He lives in Boston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.