Traveling Soldier

The air thrumbed. If the unit chaplain had been here he would have said that Satan’s legions were marching up from Perdition to deliver a judgment upon all mankind. Sergeant Wright didn’t know about that. To him it sounded more like a squadron of Apache gunships warming up.

Sergeant Tom Wright had been up since “O’dark-hundred” getting the platoon ready, but he had a moment to himself now and he leaned against the UH-1H ‘Huey’ chopper and watched the sun rise in flames against the dust-filled sky.

A wicked black shape detached itself from the ground, rose some twenty feet into the air and then hovered there, silhouetted against the dawn. A moment later, five more insectoid shapes joined the first, and the whole unit hovered and bobbed for a few seconds in the crimson sky like a swarm of dragonflies from Hell before flying off into the sunrise.

Sergeant Wright, who was fond of reading Civil War histories, remembered his favorite quote from Robert E. Lee; “It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.”

Reaching into the breast pocket on his flack vest he extracted a faded and cracked photo and looked at it. A pretty blonde high-school girl in butterfly braids smiled back at him.

The milling blades from the idling choppers blew dust into Tommy’s eyes causing them to tear up.

From three choppers away the outfit’s brand-spanking-new Lieutenant cupped his hands and bellowed:

“All right people, saddle up!”

------------------------------

The girl had been watching the boy for the best part of a half an hour. It wasn’t as though he was all that good looking. He was painfully young, and all rough edges and elbows in his baggy green Army Class A’s. He had a pair of ears like the handles on a 4-H trophy, but there was something about his eyes.

Tommy had been sitting out by the bus stop, watching her through the plate glass window of the diner, and pretending not to, for most of the same half hour. Finally he got up the nerve and walked in.

The head waitress, Mrs. Denny, who was old and fat and never saw anything at all, met the boy near the cash register and, taking a menu out of the hopper, led him straight back to the girl’s section. She seated him in a booth near the back. For just a second the girl could have sworn that Mrs. Denny had given her a quick wink, but that was impossible. She was old, and fat and never saw anything. There was no way she could know.

The girl busied herself rolling silverware into paper napkins until she saw that the boy had finish looking over his menu and laid it aside. Pulling her order book out of the pocket on her apron the girl approached the boy’s table with a bright smile.

“Hi! My name’s Donna-Sue. May I take your order?”

------------------------------------------

Sunlight glinted off the water in flooded rice paddies scattered here and there in isolated clearings as the company’s choppers flew low and fast over the jungle canopy. As far as he could see in every direction Sgt. Wright could make out boo-coo choppers, all racing in the same direction. Higher-higher had said that it was going to be an ‘eagle flight,’ a battalion-sized op and it looked it.

Leading the formation, a half dozen loaches were fanned out line-abreast, the tiny egg-shaped choppers jinking and bobbing, hoping to spot Charlie before Charlie spotted them. When Charlie was spotted the scout choppers popped smoke on his ass and a pair of Cobras would streak in to fire up the A.O.

Sgt. Wright, sitting in the door of the slick, wondered how things were back in the World.

-----------------------------------------

Donna-Sue was beginning to worry about the young soldier, afraid he was going to drown in coffee. She had topped off his cup five times, but every time she came to his table with the pot and offered him a refill he had looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes, smiled sweetly and bobbed his head in affirmation.

It wasn’t as though there was anyone else in the place at this hour, Donna-Sue thought as she strolled towards his booth again.

“I’m just going to see if he wants any more,” she told herself.

He looked up at her in bright anticipation as she approached with the pot for a sixth time. There was something about his eager smile that tore at her heart. He looked so damned lonely! She favored him with a big smile.

“Can I git you anything else Private?”

The Private thought she had the sweetest Southern drawl. His big ears burned red with embarrassment.

He returned her smile with a lopsided grin. “I am afraid that if I drink any more coffee I am going to float out of here.”

They both smiled awkwardly at each other for a moment and then the Private dropped his eyes to the table.

“I was wondering,” he mumbled, “if you would mind sitting down for a while and talking to me? I’m feeling a little low.”

The Private sat, eyes down, waiting for her to laugh at him but after a moment, when she didn’t laugh, he risked a glance in her direction and was greeted by a warm smile.

“I can’t sit with customers.” she said, “Its against the rules.”

The Private felt his heart sink into his stomach. His eyes fell back to the table in embarrassment, but then he felt a delicate touch on his shoulder and looked up again. He was greeted with a radiant smile.

“I git off in an hour,” she whispered. “I know a place we can go.”

------------------------------------------------

Rainbows danced in the spray off the paddies, thrown up by the blades of a half dozen choppers. From the tree line on the right and a small village on the far side of the clearing white tracers stitched the air, crisscrossing in an L shaped ambush.

“Great!” thought Sgt. Wright. “Just what I need when I am so short. Another fucking hot L.Z..”

“Lock and load people,” he yelled to his squad.

He stood on the runners of the slick as the chopper hovered low over the paddy. When they were close enough to jump, Sgt. Wright yelled to his men, “Alright ladies, un-ass this chopper, didi mau!”

He jumped with his M79 held over his head to keep from smacking himself in the face with it when he landed..

Tommy came to rest knee deep in the paddy and immediately crouched down. Bullets hummed like angry hornets close overhead.

Sgt. Wright saw the El-T and his R.T.O. about ten feet away on his left and called to him.

“Sir! We need some air support A-SAP!”

The butter-bar smiled vacantly at him and bobbed his head.

---------------------------------------------

Donna-Sue had run home and changed into a pretty little pink and white gingham dress and dabbed perfume behind her ears before meeting Tommy in Princess Park. She had tied up her butterfly braids with matching pink bows and was carrying a wicker picnic basket.

She found him with his elbows on his knees and his head down sitting on a bench next to the Confederate Memorial. Donna-Sue called his name and his head popped up, a look of happiness and relief washing over his features.

“Hi there,” she said as she came up to where he was sitting. “Been waiting long?”

Tommy jumped to his feet.

“Oh no, not long at all.” He swallowed hard, “Actually I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

She gave a little laugh, “I said I was coming, silly.”

Tommy thought she had the sweetest laugh he had ever heard.

“Its just that I am stationed at Fort Polk and I have been up here to Shreveport a couple of times on leave and most of the nice girls in town cross to the other side of the street when they see me coming.”

He suddenly realized what he had said and shot her a worried glance. He felt all warm inside when he saw that she was still smiling at him.

“Maybe I am not a nice girl,” she said.

“Oh no!” said Tommy a little too emphatically. “You’re the nicest girl I have ever met.”

He looked down at his spit-shined shoes.

“I guess it’s the uniform and the haircut. I tried wearing civvies, but most folks would take one look at my haircut and know what I was.”

“And what are you?” asked Donna-Sue. She reached out and took his left hand and held it in both of hers.

“I’m a soldier,” Tommy stammered.

“Oh I think you are a whole lot more than that,” said Donna-Sue. “Why don’t we go for a walk and you can tell me about all the other things you are.”

Tommy looked in her china-blue eyes and wished he could drown in them.

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Sgt. Wright felt as though he were drowning. Although the water was only knee deep, his unit was still crouched in the L.Z. with the paddy water up to their noses while they waited for air support to arrive. The choppers were gone and Charlie was keeping up a steady fire on their position.

Finally a couple of ‘Flying Dumptrucks’ arrived.

“Thank God it’s the Navy,” thought the Sergeant. He knew that the Air Force’s idea of close air support was to drop two 500 pound bombs and then fly home with a feeling of accomplishment, but the Squids came strapped, packing enough ordinance to fuck up Charlie’s whole day.

Tommy fed a 40mm smoke grenade into the chamber of his M79 launcher and fired. A plume of bright red smoke appeared right next to the Charlie M.G. that had them pinned down.

The Navy A-1 Skyraiders must have seen the smoke because one of them broke off and maneuvered to line up on the signal. The big single-prop plane lumbered in low over the treetops and let loose a cigar shaped canister which ruptured on impact, painting a swath of flaming napalm across the village. A half dozen hootchs burst into flames.

----------------------------------------

The boy and girl walked down Texas street to where it ended at the Red River. Turning right they strolled down to the rusty old Kansas City Southern Railroad bridge.

Donna-Sue led the way out onto the bridge, skipping from one cross tie to another as nimbly as a goat. Tommy followed along behind trying not to look down to where the Red River flowed thirty feet below them.

“Won’t we get into trouble being out here?” asked Tommy?

“Oh I come out here all the time,” said Donna-Sue happily. “Nobody cares. Trains haven’t used this bridge in years.”

Reaching the midway point she produced a terrycloth bath towel from her basket and spread it on the grimy railroad ties.

“Now we can sit down without getting soot on our clothes,” she announced. Taking off her shoes she sat on the towel with her slim legs dangling over the edge of the bridge.

Tommy sat beside her. The towel was barely big enough for two and he sat with his hands firmly in his lap afraid that an accidental touch might be misinterpreted. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the river until Tommy found his voice.

“Not many girls can tell Army ranks. Do you have any brothers or a…” he paused and started again. “Do you have any brothers in the Army?”

Donna-Sue looked at him sideways and smiled. “Why don’t you just ask me if I have a boyfriend.”

Tommy went scarlet and cleared his throat nervously. “A pretty girl like you? I’ll bet you got a boyfriend, but I don’t care. I am shipping out for California day after tomorrow for Advanced Infantry Training.”

He stopped talking and stared at the river for a while. Without turning his head or looking at her he said, “I got no one to send a letter to. Would you mind if I sent one back here to you?”

Without a word Donna-Sue took Tommy’s hand and the two sat in silence watching the sun set over the Red River.

---------------------------------------------

Sgt. Wright watched the sun rising behind the burning village. It seemed like an eternity but really it had only been about a half hour since his unit had hit the L.Z. The Navy had finished its bomb runs and the El-T gave the signal to advance.

The unit waded ashore and spread out in open order to search what was left of the village, which was not very much. The whole first row of buildings nearest the paddies had been leveled and a few grizzly corpses of indeterminate gender smoldered in the blackened remains of the burned out hootchs. Behind the ruins of one building the scorched remains of a pig lay, the smell of burning Barbeque filling the air.

------------------------------

Donna-Sue opened her basket and produced a roll of paper towels and a baggy filled with cold Barbeque ribs. Smiling, she passed the bag to Tommy.

“I swiped these from the fridge,” she said. “Don’t worry, momma don’t mind. They’re leftovers from the church social yesterday. I thought you might be hungry. You didn’t eat very much at the diner but you sure drank a lot of coffee.”

They both looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

“Well it was mighty good coffee,” said Tommy

They both laughed again and then Donna-Sue grew pensive.

“So Private. Tell me tell me all those other things you are that are not a soldier.”

---------------------------------------

Sgt. Wright was a very good soldier. He had made corporal just out of A.I.T. and had received a battlefield promotion to Sergeant after only six months in country. He was conscientious and careful, very careful.

The ten men of his squad were deployed into a pair of four-man fire-teams with the cherry Lieutenant and his radio-man diddy-bopping along in the rear. Twenty paces behind them the second squad followed along to police up the prisoners, should there be any. Weapons squad had set up in the rear to guard the back door.

Each fire-team advanced through the smoking ruins of the village in bounding over-watch, two men rushing forward a few yards while the other two stayed put, ready to provide covering fire, should it be needed. When the first pair had finished their bound they would freeze in place, ready to provide cover for the other two as they bounded past them a few yards.

Each time the leading pair of soldiers approached a hootch they would shout “Chieu Hoi, Chieu Hoi,” informing any possible residents that their surrender would be welcomed with “open arms.” If they got no reply they would toss a grenade through a door or window, wait for the blast, and then step through the door to see what was left.

From time to time an elderly man or woman, or a very young child, would creep out of a hootch waving their hands frantically in the air and shouting, ‘Chieu Hoi.’ The pair of soldiers in the lead would frisk them and then force them to sit on the ground with their hands on their heads until second squad could come up and take charge of them. Soon a small knot of prisoners began to collect at the edge of the village nearest the L.Z.

Sgt. Wright was beginning to think that there was no one left in the village except the very young or the very old. Just before the platoon finished its sweep of the village a lovely young Vietnamese girl calmly stepped out of the door of a hootch and advanced steadily towards him with her hands held at shoulder height, a sweet smile on her face, calmly declaring ‘Chieu Hoi.’

As she approached she slowly brought her hands down to the sash that held together the crossover front of her short black jacket. Removing the sash she opened the jacket to reveal delicate pale skin and lovely breasts.

Tommy thought, “she can’t be any older than Donna-Sue.”

In a sultry voice the young woman murmured, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

---------------

Donna-Sue shivered slightly. Her pretty pink dress was demure enough to wear to a church picnic but it had been designed for muggy Louisiana summer afternoons and so it featured an open back and bare shoulders. The couple had been talking for hours and the torrid heat of the day had given way to the chill of evening.

Tommy noticed the shiver and was immediately filled with remorse for so failing in the gallantry department. He had been so lost in their conversation that he had completely failed to notice the night growing cold. Removing his heavy wool Class A jacket he draped it solicitously over Donna-Sue’s shoulders.

With firm self-control Tommy declined to take the opportunity to drape his arm over her shoulder along with the jacket. Politely returning his hands to his lap he contemplated the galaxy of electric lights reflected in the smooth surface of the Red River. Donna-Sue quietly took Tommy’s hand and draped it over her shoulder. Resting her cheek on his shoulder she whispered, “Tommy, tell me about your dreams.”

---------------

“Dung lai, dung lai!” Sgt. Wright yelled, ordering the young woman to stop.

Smiling sweetly and exposing her beautiful body the young woman continued to advance.

In a voice like crimson and cinnamon she murmured, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

---------------

The glare of the squad car’s searchlight blinded the young couple. An amplified voice announced, “This is the police! You are trespassing on private property.”

Donna-Sue peeked out from behind Tommy’s back. “Is that you Carl?” she called.

To Tommy she whispered, “Its O.K. That’s Carl. He dates my sister Daisy.”

“Donna-Sue?” Carl’s amplified voice echoed across the water. “Girl what in the Sam-Hill are you doing out here on a school night? Yo momma and daddy are beside themselves with worry. Girl you better git on home!”

Holding her shoes in one hand and clutching the uniform jacket closed in front with the other, Donna-Sue followed Tommy off the bridge.

When they got to the squad car Carl turned out to be a nice looking young man in his early twenties. He was wearing a well fitting brown police uniform and looked like he had probably lettered in football.

Donna-Sue met Carl’s stern look with quite self-confidence. “Don’t worry Carl, we were just talking.”

Carl eyed Tommy suspiciously. “You want me to give you a ride home Donna-Sue?”

“That won’t be necessary officer,” said Tommy in a firm voice. “I will walk the young lady home.”

Carl shook his head. “Either you got a lot of guts soldier boy or your plum crazy. Donna-Sue’s daddy’s the football coach over to the high school. He played tackle in college and he will take you apart if you’ve laid a finger on his baby girl.”

---------------

“What’s going on sergeant?”

“Stay back sir,” called Sgt. Wright to the young lieutenant who was approaching from his rear. “I’ll handle this.”

Slipping a flechette round into his blooper he brought the weapon to his shoulder and sighted on the young woman.

“Dung lai!” he screamed.

The young woman stopped and stood motionless, still exposing herself.

---------------

There had been quite a scene when they got to Donna-Sue’s home. The young people had been escorted to the parlor and seated in separate chairs. Donna-Sue’s daddy turned out to be a large, balding man in dark trousers held up by a dark leather belt and flowered suspenders. His white shirt had the long sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing ham-like hands attached to powerful forearms.

He conducted the interrogation in a voice like a sonic boom.

Donna-Sue’s mother brought hot-chocolate. Tommy could see where Donna-Sue got her looks from.

Finally, the ordeal was over and Tommy was escorted to the door. Donna-Sue’s mother had packed a small bag lunch “for the bus ride back to base.” Although he continued to eye him suspiciously, her daddy shook Tommy’s hand at the door.

Tommy had reached the foot of the porch when he heard Donna-Sue’s mother, in a voice that carried a warning to daddy not to interfere, say “Donna-Sue, you go tell your young man good night but I want you back in here in five minutes. Ya hear?”

“Yes momma.”

A moment later the front door opened and Donna-Sue appeared. With delicate grace she ran down the steps and stopped a foot away from Tommy looking at him with upturned, smiling face.

“Promise you will write me every week?” she said pressing a slip of paper into hand.

Tommy felt his throat grow thick but managed to say, “I promise.”

Looking down at her upturned face in the moonlight he thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

Reaching up and wrapping her arms around his neck she pulled his face down to hers and gave him a long, slow, sweet, awkward, kiss. Tommy returned the kiss, awkwardly, but with all his soul. Neither had ever kissed before but both young lovers were prepared to swear than no kiss in the world could ever have been better.

---------------

“Sergeant lower your weapon!” the El-T commanded. Can’t you see you are frightening the young lady?”

“With all due respect sir,” said Sgt Wright with not the slightest trace of respect, “I think you had better let me handle this.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see the dumb butter-bar advancing on the woman with a big grin on his face and his hands out to his sides in a non-threatening manner.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the El-T. “It is plain to see she is unarmed.”

---------------

Tommy had written Donna-Sue twice a week for the three months he had been in California before shipping out for Nam After that he always carried pen and paper in his butt-pack and had worked on letters to her every chance he got, pouring out his heart, his soul, his fears and his dreams to her.

Donna-Sue had been just as diligent. Every mail-call had brought Tommy a small pile of pink, scented envelopes, each one carrying the precious cargo of a young girl’s dreams. After about the third week in California she had sent him her high school yearbook picture and since then he had never been without it.

---------------

The young woman stood smiling, her open jacket revealing delicate flesh and lovely breasts, their dark nipples hardening slightly. She met the young lieutenant’s hungry stare with a bold, knowing stare of her own.

Cocking her head to one side she whispered, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

The El-T walked as though in a trance, his unblinking eyes never leaving her exquisite body.

“Sir!” roared Sgt. Wright, “Get your fucking ass back here.”

The El-T had just turned his head to admonish his N.C.O. when the woman drew a small pistol from the waistband of her trousers and shot him through the temple. She then turned to face the sergeant, pistol in hand and body bare to the waist. The smile never left her lips.

Tommy’s finger tightened on the trigger of his grenade launcher and forty-five steel needles slashed through creamy flesh and left ground meat where a lovely young woman had been only a moment before.

---------------

Donna-Sue could hardly contain her excitement. Tommy’s last letter had announced the end of his tour. He would be home in little more than a week.

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Someone in the squad yelled for the medic but Tommy could see that it was pointless. The El-T’s West Point-trained brains lay scattered all over the ground.

“Dinky dau motherfucker.”

He waved the R.T.O. to his side. “I guess that leaves me in command,” he told the radioman. “We’re done here. Call for an evac.”

--------------

Donna-Sue had been carrying Tommy’s last letter around with her for weeks. In it he told her how much he loved her and how he couldn’t wait to see her again. He had warned her that he would be out of touch for a little while as he went through the mustering out procedure so she wasn’t worried, but she did miss his constant stream of letters.

Well it wouldn’t be long now, she told herself, and in the meantime there was the big game Friday night to look forward to.

--------------

The sun was setting behind the palm trees by the time the evac choppers arrived. The sergeant was overseeing the loading of the El-T’s body when Corporal Williams came up to him. “What should we do with the prisoners sarge?”

Sergeant Wright looked at the forlorn knot of old people and children. “Let them go,” he ordered. “This whole op has gone totally FUBAR. Get everyone aboard.”

Tommy climbed into the chopper and called up to the pilot. “Let’s un-ass this A.O.” He smiled at the pilot, “The next flight I am on will be a Freedom Bird carrying me back to the World!” he announced.

He took out Donna-Sue’s picture and sat smiling at it as the chopper left the ground.

A small girl, maybe nine or ten, ran up to the chopper and tossed something through the open door.

--------------

Everyone had told her she was pretty enough to be a cheerleader but Donna-Sue didn’t like the idea of dancing around in a short skirt in front of a bunch of strangers. Besides she liked playing the piccolo and was proud to march in the school band.

--------------

Tommy looked down at the object that had fallen at his feet.

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Pastor Robertson had finished leading the audience in the Lord’s Prayer and the Band had finished playing the National Anthem. The teams were preparing to take the field when the announcer’s voice called for silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you kindly bow your heads and join us in a prayer as I read this week’s list of our local Vietnam dead.”

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A small green ball rolled past Tommy’s feet and his eyes went wide with terror when he saw what it was.

“Grenade!”

--------------

Donna-Sue’s mother went looking for her daughter the moment she heard the news. She found her under the bleachers holding Tommy’s letter and sobbing.

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Twelve thousand miles away the cracked and faded picture of a pretty blonde girl in butterfly braids floated on the water of a rice paddy near the burnt out carcass of a Huey.

As the sun sat the waterlogged picture slowly sank out of sight.

Guardians of the Palace

Burt stood to the right of the door with his back flat against the grubby wall and waited until his heart stopped pounding. The nearest working light on the open balcony of the housing project was a cracked florescent fixture ten feet away that flickered and buzzed weakly, casting an evil greenish light.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, he held his breath for a count of three and then exhaled slowly through his mouth, mentally commanding himself to relax as he did so. Finally he was ready. Reaching out cautiously he knocked on the apartment door with the butt of his nightstick. He was proud to see that his hand wasn’t trembling a bit.

Instantly the door was flung open and a hulking giant of a man stood wedged in the opening, silhouetted against the room light. He was wearing stained and rumpled khaki trousers and a dingy T-shirt. Burt noticed that the wan light of the living room, combined with the flickering florescent, rendered the black slabs of the giant’s face in sinister chiaroscuro. Yellow eyes regarded him balefully.

It was at times like this that Burt wished he had stayed in art school instead of joining the police force to “learn about life.”

“Sir, would you please step out into the hall? I would like to ask you a few questions.”

Without warning the giant began blubbering like a naughty boy caught in the act. “I should’na done that to that por’ little girl,” he sobbed.

Jerking his pistol from its holster Burt pointed at the monster.

“Sir! You have the right to remain silent! You have the right to an attorney. If…”

“Is this the fucker?”

Out of the corner of his eye Burt could see the head of a small black woman appear in the stairwell and grow into the uniformed figure of his partner, Violet. From two floors below the sound of women wailing came floating up the stairwell.

“…you can not afford one…” Burt doggedly continued reciting, determined not to give some shyster lawyer a loophole to get this bastard off because he had not followed proper procedure.

The giant wasn’t listening. He kept crying and detailing just exactly what he “should’na done” to that little girl with gut-twisting specificity.

“So much detail!” Burt thought, suppressing a shudder.

Locked away in a tiny garret in the back of Burt’s mind the artist in him noticed how the long streams of tears glittered in the flickering light against the ebony backdrop of the giant’s face. “What in the hell am I doing here?” the artist wailed.

From a long way off Burt heard his voice finish the Miranda warning and announce, “You are now under arrest.”

Looking like a tiny tugboat trying to maneuver an ocean liner, Violet turned the giant to face the graffiti-daubed wall and, taking care not to step between the prisoner and Burt’s gun, cuffed the monster’s hands behind his back, and then began frisking him.

“The ambulance driver said the girl is probably going to live, what’s left of her.,” said Violet. “More is the pity. I’ve radioed it in and dispatch says that city detectives are going to meet her and her momma at the hospital. As usual, they left it for the Housing Police to take out the garbage.”

More to distract himself from the lurid details the giant kept spewing than for any concern for the monster’s rights, Burt started reciting the Miranda warning again.

“So many horrible details!” he thought.

He’d gotten to the third recital by the time Violet finished her frisk and turned the cuffed giant around to face her. Stretching up to the limit of her reach, the tiny woman grabbed the monster’s ear and pulled his face down to within inches of her own.

“You good for nothing nigger,” the little black lady hissed, “If yo momma knew what you been doing she would turn over in her grave.”

“My momma ain’t dead,” sniffled the giant.

Whack! The giant’s head snapped back from the recoil of Violet’s openhanded slap.

“This’ll kill her!”

Violet radioed in the arrest on her shoulder mike and then, with wordless agreement, the two officers started walking their prisoner towards the stairwell. Although it was thirteen floors to the parking lot they didn’t even consider taking one of the project’s two antique elevators.

Reeking of every effluent the human body was capable of, the elevators were moving death traps. His first week on the job Violet had explained to Burt how children of the project would often pry the doors of the shafts open one story above the elevator and then ride up and down between the floors on top of the cars.

It was also a favorite haunt of the more daring young hoodlums in the neighborhood who would jump back and forth between the moving cars as they passed each other and watched through cracks in the ceilings until a lone victim got in. They would then trigger the emergency stop between floors, open the escape hatch and jump into the car to rob or rape the occupant.

By now the whole housing project was buzzing like an angry beehive with the news of what had happened to the little girl The Yerba Buena Plaza Annex, or “Pink Palace” as the residents called it, was a huge squared-off horseshoe of a building, and the nameless architects who had designed it had decreed that instead of hallways their masterpiece of urban planning would have open balconies.

From where the two officers were standing, on the topmost story of the side facing the inner courtyard, they could see sullen knots of muttering residents gathered on every floor. Although most of the residents would rob their neighbor’s apartment in a heart beat or club a friend in a dark stairwell for their welfare check, there were some crimes that even they would not tolerate and the giant had committed one of them. Burt and Violet knew that they, and their prisoner, were safer out in the open.

Holstering his gun, Burt took hold of the chain linking the cuffs with his left hand and placed his right hand on the prisoner’s shoulder to him steer with.

“Let’s go.”

As they approached the rusting, paint-flecked iron pipe-railing of the balcony Violet turned a wild look on Burt. “Let’s throw him over,” she said.

Burt forced a chuckle. “That would be a quick way to get him to the parking lot but the paper work would be hell.”

“All you have to do is say that he tried to make a run for it and tripped.”

Startled, Burt looked his partner full in the face. “Surely you are kidding.”

Burt waited, a forced grin on his lips, for Violet to finish the lame joke with their traditional, “Don’t call me Shirley,” line, but instead he felt ice slide down his spine as he looked into her eyes and realized that she most definitely was not kidding.

Still trying to keep things light, Burt nailed the fake grin firmly in place but his eyes knew he was lying and refused to play along.

“I don’t know if you have noticed these nifty blue suits we have on, Violet” he quipped, “but we are police officers. You know--the good guys? We can’t go around flinging people off buildings simply because we don’t like them. Before you know it people would start to talk.”

Little happy-go-lucky Violet, the only officer on the force who wore pink butterfly berets in her hair while on duty and carried a bottle of soap bubbles complete with bubble wand on her gun belt to entertain the neighborhood children, gave the giant the sort of look a mongoose gives a cobra just before the two step outside and finish things.

With a voice that could etch steel, the single mother of three girls said, “This nigger is a complete waste of skin. He’s got no business breathing the same air as decent folks. We would be doing him a mercy to put him down like the rabid dog that he is.”

Burt’s grin faded in horror. “You are out of your fucking mind,” he whispered. “I don’t plan on going to jail just because you are feeling maternal.”

Violet rounded on him like a rabid Chihuahua.

“Who in the hell do you think you are you fucking goody-two-shoes white boy? This is all just a game to you ain’t it? You come up in here with your suburban values and your fucking artistic soul thinking you are going to play tourist in the ghetto for a few years, see life in the raw for a while, and then go back to the ’real’ world with a bunch of interesting stories for your artistic friends and inspirations for your paintings. Well, I got news for you motherfucker! This ain’t Tahiti and you ain’t Van Gogh! This is my real world and these are my people and we ain’t playing.”

Burt stepped back from Violet’s fury as though he had been slapped. Despite himself, he felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. He had always considered Violet more than a partner. He thought she was his friend.

When he had started in the projects all the residents treated him with naked hostility and fear, but Violet had quietly had a word with some of the more important women in the building and soon hostility changed to wary acceptance. Burt knew better than to relax his vigilance, but he at least felt he was making progress.

He and Violet had spent many long, cold hours of the night in conversation as they patrolled the filthy corridors and reeking stairwells. Burt had tried to talk of art, and books and the world of ideas while Violet had tried to teach him the difference between “book smart” and “street smart.” Although she would have, as she put it “slapped the taste out of his mouth” if she knew he was thinking, it he had always considered her his Virgil, his “native guide” to the various rings of hell that were the projects.

“You ain’t seen what this fucker done or maybe you would grow some balls and act like a man,” Violet screamed. “You don’t gotta’ live in a place like this neither. When you’re done playing at being a cop you can chuck this job and go back to you nice, safe, white neighborhood in the suburbs with nothing but a few memories of the quaint colored folks you met.”

Violet’s angry words poured in a searing torrent over him. After a while she ran out of breath and just stood with her fists on her hips glaring at him.

Burt turned the giant around and, pointing him in the direction of the stairwell, started walking him towards it. The giant obediently shuffled along in the direction he was pointed, chin on chest, muttering lurid details of his crime to himself. His huge, callused bare feet made slapping sounds on the damp concrete of the balcony.

“Gauguin,” Burt muttered.

“What?” screamed Violet. “What the fuck did you say?”

“Gauguin. The painter that went to Tahiti was Gauguin, not Van Gogh.”

The frosty night air grew colder. For a moment Burt was afraid of what Violet might do in her current state of mind. Looking over his shoulder to where she stood he could see her hand had drifted to rest on the butt of her nine millimeter service pistol. The skin between his shoulder blades itched in anticipation, but nothing happened. Violet just stood there with her mouth half open, staring at him in utter disbelief. Finally she heaved a disgusted sigh.

“You’re fucking unbelievable. You know that?”

Taking his right hand off the giant’s shoulder Burt opened the door leading to the stairwell and held it with his foot as he steered the giant through the opening. Like most of the light bulbs in all the stairwells of the building this one was missing, no doubt removed by some enterprising mugger in order to help stimulate business.

It was standard procedure for the other officer to go ahead of the one in charge of a prisoner and light the way with a flashlight, but, given Violet’s mood, Burt didn’t think reminding her of this was such a good idea. Pausing halfway through the doorway, Burt called back over his shoulder to his partner.

“I know you are upset Violet, but I am serious. We can’t just take the law into our own hands. What kind of a world would it be if people went around taking the law in their own hands? Everybody his own judge, jury and executioner? It would be chaos!”

Silence!--He waited a minute for Violet’s reply but she just stood where she was, glaring at Burt as though he was something nasty she had just discovered on the bottom of her shoe.

The giant kept adding gruesome details to his confession but Burt tried not to listen. It wasn’t as though the City Detectives would even look at any “evidence” collected by a Housing Authority cop. The City and County of San Francisco boasted fourteen separate police departments, each with its own structure and chain of command. They ranged from the exalted heights of the State Police and S.F.P.D. down the line through Sheriff’s Department, Transit and Park Police down and down to the lowly officers of the Housing Authority.

“Taking out the garbage,” thought Burt angrily. “That is all they think we are good for.”

He knew that the S.F.P.D. thought of their “brother” officers in the Housing Police as little better than glorified security guards and contemptuously dismissed any efforts they made at “solving” crimes. Burt grew angry as he thought about it.

“We are up to our necks in the shit every day, sudden death waiting for us around every corner, and they come in here and look at us as though we were cockroaches!”

Violet still hadn’t said anything. Burt sighed and pushed the giant towards the stairs letting the battered, paint-flecked-metal door swing shut behind him.

Instantly, the stairwell was plunged in darkness. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, Burt could see a gibbous moon peeking out from behind the gilded splendor of City Hall’s dome that reared in massive splendor only a few blocks from the forlorn squalor of the Pink Palace.

“Gibbous moon,” thought Burt. “That’s just the sort of thing Violet would dismiss as ‘artsy fartsy bullshit.”

Not for the first time, Burt felt anger at having to hide his education, not only from the residents of the housing project but even from his own partner!

“I shouldn’t have to apologize for my education! It isn’t as though she couldn’t pick up a fucking book if she wanted to!”

The watery moonlight didn’t so much illuminate the stairwell as to simply give the darkness a little form and texture. Like a blind man trying to navigate a strange room without his cane, Burt groped his way forward through the blackness towards the deeper blackness of the stairwell. The giant’s bare feet had no trouble finding the steps and he started down them without hesitation, Burt inching along behind him.

The door behind him was flung open. The faint glow of the damaged florescent cast a wedge of illumination that seared as bright as a searchlight in the darkened stairwell.

“It would be a world a whole lot like the one you’re in right now,” Violet called down the steps towards Burt’s receding back. “My world!”

“What did you say?” called Burt over his shoulder.

Violet flicked on her MAGLite and followed her partner down the stairs. The huge police issue flashlight was heavy enough to serve as a truncheon and bright enough to pinion a suspect in its beam from a block away.

“You asked what sort of world it would be if people went around taking the law into their own hands, and my answer is that it would be a whole lot like the one you are in right now. It would be the sort of world where people are crammed into giant housing projects like cattle in a pen to stew in their own misery. It would be a world where the cops don’t come until you got a dead body on the ground and even when they do arrive all they do is clean up the mess and mutter to themselves about ‘the projects.’”

“That’s not true Violet.,” Burt protested. “After all; we are here.”

“That fucking proves it!” snapped Violet. “You can tell what kind of justice Black folk get by fact that it is only you and me here to deal with this monster. If it had been a white girl he hurt we would have S.W.A.T. on the roof plus five patrol cars and three news-crews in the parking lot down below and you fuck’n know it!

Look at that white college girl that gone missing on that island. She was on the news for a goddamn year! A black girl her same age went missing from this fucking building about the same time and it didn’t even make the local papers! Black folk don‘t get justice unless they take it for themselves.”

Burt stopped and turned his head to look at his partner but kept a firm hold on the giant‘s cuffs.

“You know something Violet? I have had a bellyful of your whining and blaming other people for the plight of Black folks! You might think I am some sort of artistic dilettante playing at being a policeman, but I have spent almost every night of the last year risking my life patrolling the hallways of this stinking dump so that the residents could be safe and you know it! How many nights have I patrolled this place alone because you wanted to stay by the heater in the guard-shack and keep warm?”

“You’re always whining about the white man this and the white man that but it’s not the white man that makes this project the stinking hell hole that it is. The people who live here do that all by themselves!”

“You can blame a man for knocking you down but you can’t blame him if you choose to stay down,” Burt said with the triumphant air of a Poker player slamming down four Aces.

Violet’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Nice line Professor. Who wrote it for you, some candy-assed white philosopher who learned about life out of books?”

“It was Malcom-X, which you would have known if you had read that book I gave you.”

The giant had been standing, sunk in a dull stupor, his chin on his chest, still mumbling lurid details of his crime. Without waiting for Violet to reply Burt gave his prisoner a little shove to get him going and continued down the stairs.

He was burning with anger at the blatant unfairness of Violet’s remarks. She never gave him credit for anything! He may have had other motives when he had joined the force but he had seen and done plenty since then.

Night after night he had stood alone for hours in some murky stairwells that reeked of urine and vomit just so he could bust a drug dealer. He had waited in the stygian tunnel leading from the front parking lot to the inner courtyard so that he could catch the purse snatchers who had mugged tourists up the hill in Japan Town and then streaked down here on stolen bicycles to dispose of the evidence.

Once he had been severely injured trying to break up a domestic spat when the woman he was trying to save had jumped up off the floor where her boyfriend had been kicking her in the stomach, grabbed a knitting needle and stabbed him through the hand.

How dare Violet say this was all just a game! He wasn’t playing at being a policeman. Once he had faced down a knife-wielding junky who had been crazed on P.C.P. and he had broken up more fist fights than he could remember.

He had walked for hours in the icy rain whipped off the bay by chill winds or stood in the gloom of some upper floor balcony watching tendrils of pearlescent fog coiling around the Beaux Arts dome of city hall. He had patrolled on nights when the moisture from the damp air condensed into little ice crystals on the rusty, paint-chipped railings to the balconies as the moonlight trapped in their facets had made the smelly old building blaze as though it had been powdered with diamond dust.

He had..He had…He had just noticed that Violet was speaking again.

“You know as well as I do that this nigger ain’t never go’na be worth shit. If we’re lucky and they put him straight away he will do a few years in the can and then he’ll be back on the streets looking for another little girl. Animals like him don’t never change.”

Burt and his prisoner reached the bottom of the first flight of steps and turned right to start down the next one. As they did so the shadow cast by Burt’s body shifted and the beam from the MAGLite blazed silver on the cuffs pinning the prisoner’s enormous ebony paws. Was that dried blood under his nails?

The giant remained oblivious to Violet’s tirade. He dully shuffled along in which ever direction he was pointed, lost in his own world, mumbling his confession.

“The chances are that if we take him in tonight he will be out on bail before we come on shift tomorrow. And then what? He ain’t coming back here--them ‘men’ in the neighborhood would kill him…”

Burt couldn’t fail to notice the way Violet emphasized the word ‘men,’ and suppressed an angry retort.

“…but he will hole up somewhere. He’ll lie up in some alley or sewer or break into some abandoned warehouse. He don’t care. He can sleep in a hole in the ground and eat garbage or rats, and not give a damn cauz there’s only one thing he’s living for. And in a day or two he’s gona go hunt’in again. He’s a sick, twisted motherfucking animal and he has got to feed his hunger, just like any other junky--only thing is, this scumbag’s ‘fix’ is little girls.”

“You don’t know that,” Burt snapped. “You have never seen this man before in your life and yet you talk about him as though you knew him personally. Hell, we don’t even know if he’s guilty! All we have is circumstantial evidence.”

“Circumstantial evidence!” Violet screamed. “Circumstantial evidence! The motherfucker ain’t stopped confessing since we arrested him! Shit, he’s still confessing right now!”

“That only proves he attacked this one girl; your just making all the rest of that shit up so you can feel self-righteous about wanting to kill him.”

Burt and his prisoner reached the landing of the twelfth floor, turned to face the next flight of steps, and stopped to wait for Violet to catch up.

“You know something college boy? You’re plum et up with dumb ass! You think just because you survived in the ghetto for a year you know the ghetto, but you don’t know shit! You is only alive because I got your back.” Violet was working herself into a fury.

“You think you seen some shit but you ain’t seen nothing! You didn’t have a sister snatched out her room at night or seen what was left of her after some animal had his way with her for three whole days! If you had you wouldn’t let an monster like this live any longer than it took to put a bullet to him.”

Suddenly the beam of Violet’s flashlight stopped moving and Burt looked up to see his partner holding the big MAGLite backhanded in her left hand with her right wrist crossed over the top in the regulation combat shooter’s stance. In her right hand nestled the blue-grey bulk of her service automatic--pointed at his prisoner.

Burt felt his blood go cold. The giant stood, dully oblivious of his surroundings, between Violet and himself, partially covering Burt with his huge bulk. Burt’s gun-hand was blocked from Violet’s view by the giant. He released his hold on his prisoner’s cuffs and gripped the butt of his pistol, loosening in its holster.

It was only then that he realized what Violet must have worked out for herself. Although the stairwell they were in was open to the outside it was blocked from the view of the people in the inner courtyard. The three of them were alone. There were no witnesses! Burt fought to keep his voice steady.

“Violet.” he said, speaking very slowly, in a non-challenging tone, as though talking to a crazy person he didn’t want to spook. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, college boy. You ain’t gotta do nothing. Just step away from him and let me do what’s gotta be done. We’ll just say he tried to make a run for it.”

“I can’t do that Violet.”

“Sure you can. You don’t need this Burt. You ain’t a for real cop, you’re just playing at being a cop so that you can go back to the suburbs with your stories to impress your brainy friends and acting all worldly. You don’t want to die in some dark and stinking stairwell protecting some lowlife nigger. You just want to be legend in your own mind, back in your studio painting pictures and fucking college girls. Now step away from that animal so I can put him down.”

There was ice in Violet’s voice. The glare of the flashlight hid her eyes, but he could feel them boring into him. He fixed a steady stare where he thought they ought to be. “Not going to happen, Violet. If you want to shoot him you’re going to have to shoot me too.”

Burt’s heart stopped as he heard the metallic rasp of Violet thumbing back the hammer. Burt could not believe that Violet would really shoot him but he realized that he had pushed her into a corner and there was no way her pride would let her back down now. The problem was that Burt was in a corner too. He had meant what he had said. Violet might call him “artsy fartsy” or a “ghetto tourist” looking for experience, but what she was doing violated every principal he believed in. Who said artists were cowards?

The two officers stood frozen for what seemed an eternity. Burt had all but forgotten about his prisoner in his concentration on his partner, but suddenly the giant broke into a shambling run.

There was the crunch of glass as the giant’s bare foot came down hard on the shards of a broken beer bottle. His body convulsed in pain and he staggered sideways, hitting the rusted iron pipe railing with his full weight.

The pipe tore loose and, with his hands cuffed behind his back and no way to catch his balance, the giant tottered on the brink and started to roll over the side of the balcony. Wide yellow eyes stared back at Burt in frozen terror.

Without pausing to think about it Burt’s hand snaked out and caught the giant by his grubby trousers. With a grunt he heaved the big man to safety.

“Damn it Burt,” Violet roared “all you had to do was not catch the bastard. You didn’t even have to stain your lily white soul by acting like a man, you just fucking didn’t have to catch him and you even fucked that up!”

With a disgusted sigh Violet shoved her pistol back into her holster. “Fine, have it your own damned way, but mark my words, the next little girl this monster hurts is on your conscience!”

Burt took hold of the giant’s cuffs with a trembling hand and they started down the stairs again. Violet trailed behind, keeping a disgusted silence but lighting the way with her flashlight.

Flight after flight as they wound their way into the stinking darkness the giant kept up his droning catalogue of his crime. Burt tried not to listen, but now that Violet was maintaining a stony silence he could not avoid hearing what his prisoner was saying and he was starting to feel sick at all the details. Maybe Violet was right and the world would be a better place if they had just tossed this piece of garbage off the top floor.

It was all just too much.

“Too much,” thought Bert, “That’s it! There is just too much detail!”

How could one person possibly do that many horrible things to another person? It would have taken days to do all that!

Burt was so excited at his epiphany that he turned to say something to Violet but the words froze on his lips when he saw her sullen glare.

In the parking lot they found the “Mobil Assistance Patrol” van waiting for them.

The driver, a middle-aged black man with iron gray hair and the uniform of an S.F.P.D. sergeant took one look at Burt’s prisoner and snorted with disgust.

“You again!”

Burt could feel Violet’s icy stare on his back.

“You mean he’s attacked little girls before?” Violet said triumphantly.

The driver laughed.

“Shit no! Old Billy here wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Burt carefully avoided showing his partner even the hint of triumph.

“But he confessed!” sputtered Violet. “All the way down the fucking stairs he wouldn’t shut up, he just kept confessing!”

“Yeh, he does that,” said the sergeant removing Billy’s cuffs, “don’t ya, big fellow?”

He slapped Billy affectionately on the back.

“You see Billy here is what they call ’special.’ You know, a little short in the brains department? Well, some twenty years ago the city scraped some money together and sent Billy and a bunch of kids like him up to Yosemite for one of them special-ed nature camps. A bunch of retards and a couple of counselors ‘communing’ with nature for a week. Billy must have been about twelve at the time.”

Billy looked around at his surroundings dully, wiped his nose on the back of his arm and then stood with his chin on his chest and his arms hanging limply at his side.

“While he was gone some sick bastard raped, tortured, and murdered his little sister. Billy took it real hard. You see he figured that it was all his fault because he should have been there to protect her. That’s crazy of course, but ever since that, whenever he hears of some little girl getting attacked he immediately confesses to the crime. I don’t know where he comes up with all the details he throws in. I think he must watch cop shows on T.V.”

Gently raising the big man’s chin with his thumb the driver looked him in the eyes and said, “Now Billy, I want you to go on home and wait till your momma gets back. Do you hear me?” Billy nodded dumbly and shuffled off towards the stairs trailing a streak of blood behind him from his injured foot.

“And Billy you show that cut on your foot to your momma when she gets home so she can put a dressing on it, you hear?”

Billy didn’t look back but he waved his hand to show that he had heard.

“Billy’s momma owns that little barbecue joint over on Kearney. Works late most nights. Mrs. Russell’s a real nice lady. Always feeds cops half price so they will look out for her boy. You ought to check it out sometime.”

With another toothy grin he climbed into the van and drove away, leaving Burt and Violet alone in the darkened parking lot. They stood in awkward silence for a while and then Violet looked up sheepishly.

“You want to go 10/20M and grab some coffee?”

Burt looked his partner square in the eye for a long moment.

“You’re buying.”

So Cold!

It was almost midnight. The shift would be ending soon. Burt and Violet had finished a sweep of the building and were kicked back in the tiny watch shack when a frantic young girl ran up and started pounding on the bullet-pocked safety glass window near the front door.

Violet opened the door a crack, reluctant to let the feeble warmth of the space heater out. “What you pounding like that for girl?”

“My sister said you gotta come quick, her baby’s sick.”

There was a wild look in the little girl’s eyes which caused Burt and Violet to jump to their feet and sprint after the child who had run up a nearby flight of stairs. By the time they got to the third floor, both officers were panting for breath, but the little girl ran with frenzied energy to door a about half way down the dingy corridor.

The officers followed the child through a shabby living room into a small bedroom in back. A black teenage girl was cradling a tiny blanket wrapped bundle in her arms and crying hysterically.

“She ain’t breathing,” she wailed. “My baby ain’t breathing!”

Burt recognized the chemical stench in the air the moment he entered the room. Flashes of cold bivouacs in the Army came back to him. Sterno! The girl had been trying to warm the small bedroom by burning cans of Sterno.

Snatching the child from the mother’s arms Burt unwrapped it from its soiled pink blanket. He had seen this before in pictures in the training manual. Lips, nose, ears and cheeks, all bright cherry red.

Asphyxiation!

Burt sprinted out into the cold air of the balcony. As he ran he shouted and tapped the child on the shoulder, not out of any conviction that it would do any good, but simply because it was the first step in the procedure he had practiced at the academy, and in a crisis he always fell back on the automatic actions of his training.

He was always proud of himself at times like this. Steady as a rock! The world could be going to Hell-in-a-hand-basket, but at times like this everything seemed to slow down and become very quiet as he sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.

Reaching the balcony he lifted the baby’s chin slightly to clear the airway and blew two gentle breaths into infant’s open mouth. He followed this with 30 rapid, but gentle, chest compressions using two fingers in the center of the child’s chest. Repeat.

Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.

Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.

Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.

The tiny warm bundle in his arms stopped its feeble squirming and grew cold.

Repeat.

Part of Burt’s mind was startled at how quickly the child’s body had turned cold but the thought was firmly suppressed as he doggedly continued to apply C.P.R. to the icy little girl in his hands.

Repeat.

Burt stayed calm.

Repeat.

Completely calm.

Repeat, Repeat! REPEAT!

---------------

When the Paramedics arrived Burt was still vainly trying to apply C.P.R. to the child. They had to pry the corpse from his hands.

The teenager’s mother, summoned from work, arrived, still in her waitress uniform, and Burt could hear Violet in the Apartment, giving what comfort she could to the hysterical women.

Burt stayed calm, he didn’t feel a thing. Taking out his notebook he jotted down the details getting all the necessary names for his report from the neighbors who had congregated on the balcony near the apartment.

He didn’t feel a thing.

Steady as a rock.

No worries.

He didn’t feel a god-damned thing.

-------------------------

When he got home, Susan was still up.

She followed him down the long hallway saying important things to him.

She always had important things to say to him, but at this moment Burt could not tell you what they were. Her lips moved and sound came out, but Burt heard nothing.

As he walked, Burt peeled off bits of his uniform and dropped them in the hall. Presumably, Susan said something important about this as well, but Burt didn’t hear. He also didn’t feel anything, anything at all.

He was naked by the time he reached the bathroom and he walked in, locking the door behind him. He turned on the shower and calmly waited for the water to grow warm.

Completely in control.

He stepped into the big, claw-footed, bathtub pulling the vinyl curtains closed behind him.

Steady as a rock.

He stood there, the hot water drumming on the top of his head and running down his body.

And then he felt something.

He felt all of it.

Every god-damned bit of it.

Every god-damned, stinking, mother-fucking bit of it!

Excruciating sobs racked his body and he crouched down on his hands and knees on the floor of the big old fashioned bathtub like a wounded animal. The hot water pattered on his back.

“So cold! he sobbed. So god-damned cold!”

He must have thrown up because he could see vomit swirling down the drain in front of him.

After a while he found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bath-tub with his arms on his knees and his head down, still sobbing.

Vaguely, in the background, he could hear Susan pounding on the door and yelling.

---------------

He ran out of tears sometime around the time the shower ran out of hot water.

Crawling out of the tub Burt opened the bathroom door and shambled across the hallway to his bedroom dripping water as he went.

Sometime during his shower Susan had apparently grown tired and left because she wasn’t there. He and Susan no longer shared a bed and tonight he was profoundly grateful for the fact.

Stopping at the battered, Salvation-Army-special-sale-chest-of-drawers he picked up the heavy, lead-crystal, Captain’s Decanter and poured a very large dram of Scotch into a matching lead-crystal tumbler.

He poured himself another Scotch and, lumbering over to the bed with it in his hand, flopped down, the last drops of shower-water drying on his naked body.

He lay there for a while nursing his second Scotch.

The sliding door that connected his bedroom with the living room slid open and Susan came in wearing a big terrycloth bathrobe and carrying a huge steaming mug in her hand. Absently he noticed that it was the “Marvin the Martian” mug that Tom had given him for his birthday.

His special private mug.

He didn’t give a fuck.

She talked at him for a while as he lay naked on the bed savoring his Scotch. It tasted like a burnt, tarred rope. The extra money he had spent on buying the finest Scotch he could afford was worth every penny.

Susan continued talking, but warm, fuzzy waves were coursing through Burt’s blood and he felt fine.

He felt great. He took another sip of his Scotch.

He was amazed at how quickly that tiny bundle of life had turned cold in his hands.

Warm tears welled in his eyes and rolled unnoticed down his cheeks.

Susan blew on the contents of her steaming mug to cool it and continued talking.

He couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t feel a thing. Things were fine.

Some primal instinct that men had acquired back in the days when they had traded the relative safety of chasing saber-toothed tigers for the far more dangerous habit of sharing a cave with a woman kicked in.

When in doubt always agree.

You don’t have to know what they are saying you simply have to agree with them and apologize for whatever cruel, insensitive, beastly, man-thing that you had done.

Didn’t matter what it was. It was your fault and the sooner you took responsibility for that fact the sooner she would leave you alone.

Susan’s words washed over him.

Burt smiled and nodded in agreement. The good-old Scotch was fully on the job by now and he felt just fine, thank you very much.

“Yes dear.”

“Absolutely dear.”

“You are right dear. I am sorry.”

Scalding hot soup poured over Burt’s naked genitals. He roared in pain and confusion.

“What the fuck!”

Burt blundered to his feet, arms flailing wildly in pain, anger and confusion his mind frantically trying to replay the last few seconds of conversation.

The words came back all blurred and jumbled by pain and Scotch.

“I-don’t-think-you-love-me-yes-dear-you-wish-I-was-gone-absolutely-dear-I don’t-think-you-ever-loved me-you-are-right-dear-I-am-sorry.”

Susan staggered backward in terror avoiding Burt’s flailing arms but managing to trip over a chair and went sprawling to the floor.

She lay there, crying.

“I knew it was only a mater of time before you hit me,” she sobbed. “Does it make you feel like a big tough man to hit a defenseless woman?” She eyed Burt with triumph.

Burt staggered out into the hallway and returned with his service automatic. He jerked back the slide, chambering a round, but didn’t point it at the creature on the floor. Instead he kept the muzzle pointed firmly at the ceiling. Even drunk and in pain he kept it pointed firmly at the ceiling.

“Get out!” he roared. “Get the fuck out!” He was sobbing. “Leave me the fuck alone you blood-sucking bitch!”

Susan scrambled to her feet and fled to her room

When she was gone, with warm tears still running down his cheeks, Burt carefully lowered the pistol’s hammer. Pressing the release he dropped the magazine and then pulled back the slide, ejecting the chambered round.

Hobbling down the long hallway to his studio he opened the heavy steel locker in which he stored his cameras, placed the pistol, magazine and loose round on the top shelf and then closed and padlocked the cabinet.

Taking the key, he went back down the long hall, opened the front door and walked, naked, out into the cold night air on the front porch. The cool air felt soothing on his burns. With all his might he threw the key down Capp street. It landed somewhere in the tall weeds of the neighbor’s yard.

Burt closed the door and hobbled back to his room. Closing the bedroom door behind him he threw himself face down on his bed and cried himself to sleep.

------------------------------------------------

Next morning, soon after dawn, Burt was sitting on the sidewalk at the corner of Mission and Sixth Street, dressed in faded jeans and a dark blue Pi Kappa Alpha sweatshirt, cradling a paper- bag-covered bottle of beer in his hand. He was waiting for Fort Help, the low-cost or no-cost “Free” mental health clinic, to open.

He had left his car at home and walked the twelve blocks.

From time to time he took a sip of the beer, purely for medicinal purposes. He had learned in the Army that the sovereign cure for a hangover was one, or at most two, beers and a couple of aspirins, in the morning.

A passing City Police cruiser slowed, eyeing him, but drove off when he pulled out his shield case and flashed his badge.

Professional courtesy. Cops don’t bust cops. Not unless you get caught with a smoking gun in your hand and a dead body on the ground at your feet, and even then they would most likely ask what the deceased had done to deserve it.

The rule even covered shit-ass Housing Police cops.

Cops is cops. Period!

A tall, extremely fat woman with a crew-cut, wearing black Keds high-topped sneakers, black trousers and shirt and a white necktie, stalked down Van Ness eyeing Burt with disgust. Through her septum she wore stainless steel nose ring large enough to tether a bull with.

Stepping over his legs, which sprawled across the sidewalk, the lady fished in a massive carpet bag and produced a big steel ring covered with keys.

Selecting the appropriate key she unlocked the front door to Fort Help and stepped in, closing the door in Burt’s face. Turning the sign in the window from closed to open the woman stalked off towards the reception desk.

Opening the door, Burt entered the big, linoleum-tiled, reception room and told the receptionist that he was there to apply for counseling. Dusty light filtered through large, unwashed, plate glass windows, ringing the woman’s massive black clad body with a golden halo.

With an air of smug self-satisfaction the receptionist told him that the councilors didn’t get in until nine. She pointed a sausage-like finger at a mismatched collection of dilapidated overstuffed chairs ringing a faded oriental throw-rug and commanded him to have a seat.

As Burt sat leafing through back issues of Mother Jones Magazine he noticed the hand lettered sign painted onto the wall next to the waiting area. It read: “Congratulations! You have taken the first step on your journey of recovery and self-discovery.”