6

The room was in soft focus, diffused, pleasantly warm. He remembered being in triage and hearing the corpsman say something and another guy looking at his face and going “Holy shit."

Raymond Meara had wanted to make a joke about the guy's bedside manner needing some work, but he couldn't move his mouth, and they were hooking up a glass thing and he caught his image in a random reflection, a bloody mess of meat that was no face at all and as he passed out he thought, Yeah, well, more great news. I was hit in the face, too ... but the important thing is...

He'd blacked out before he could remember his other wounds.

“That red-haired little whitey never done nothing but brag on hisself and talk about buyin’ a new ‘vette when he got back and we—"

“—twenty-second and he comes back with this short-timer stick and they tried to get him to go down to battalion—"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“—met her in the geisha house. She's buying this good Thai stuff and we're goin’ over to get—"

“—listening to the ball game and I hear somebody yell incoming!"

“—says thirty and a wake-up and you boys can wave goodbye. He says, my man, I'm a double-deuce goose, and I—",^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“—got a sump in there. Check that drain every—"

“—IVs, and we've got the dextrose and the blood—"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“—with the Fifth Special Forces Group. So these Airborne dudes come in and—"

He hears their harsh phrases in a blurring cacophony of snatches. Snatches of dialogue. Snatches of conversation. Dark and hairy and mysterious snatches. Strange^^^^^^^^^^^^^s of blunted pain, swimming in the finest dope.

“You alive or what?"

“Huh?"

“Say, Monk, you coming to the party, man?"

“Say what?"

“Are you alive, my man?"

The face is foreign, distorted. The voice is slope.

“Are you VC?"

“Are you kidding me or what? If I was VC you think I'd be layin’ in this bed next to you, Monk, my man? VC! Shee-it!” Laughter. Two faceless forms seen through blurry fog.

“How come you call me a monkey?” he asked, but his voice, which seemed to resound out of a deep cistern, came out distorted, like hah nah nu naw ne ungy?

“I didn't say you was funny, bro.” He tried to make himself understood and felt the surge of something coursing through his veins, heady and powerful like smack or morphine.

“We been callin’ you Monk, cause your head is shaved, dig? One of them little round places like a monk but over on the side.” They'd shaved a kind of tonsure on him to operate, a bald spot like a monk's shaven patch. Patch ... snatch ... words sat still and the room revolved slowly around them.

“I tell you about them monkeys?” The two men nearby resumed their conversation.

“I dunno, man, what monkeys is that?"

“North of Dau Tieng.” He saw Iron Triangle on a field map. But the combination of words was meaningless. Just more useless information. Dau Tieng. Iron Triangle. Parrot's Beak. Plain of Jars. Death Valley. Just words to sit in the midst of a dark, revolving room.

“—jungle and there was so much noise. All of a sudden man, it's going RRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOO-OOWWWWWWWWW and we figured Charlie. Big assault force. We was overrun and this was their psy-ops, dig? You ain't never heard such a racket, and you know what it was? It was monkeys."

Another word. A word like bananas. Rubber Trees. The Monkees. Another useless piece of information to spin the room around.

“No lie, blood. Howler monkeys dukin’ it out. Scared me half to death, bro."

Then the voice came in so clearly, and he was totally coherent. Meara in harmony again with meaning—for only this moment. He sensed a logical consistency fastened to a congruous unity of thought as the words fused, adhered, penetrated:

“That's where we found the big piece of cement up in the tree. They had about a four-hundred-pound chunk blasted off a pagoda or whatever. Big steel rods in that mother and, you know, way, way up there, man. Trigger was a tree bent over and tripwire running to it. And this white boy we call Red, he goes—"

But then the glue came loose and the meaning began to disintegrate on him again, the room finally slowing to a tippy stop. He felt himself sinking down through the incredible softness of the bed, submerging right into the mattress, unable to hear the voices, so he never did learn what the white boy called Red had to say there in the jungle of the mad howler monkeys.