Jackson walked slowly through the rain to the bunker. He tried to make himself breathe slowly but found it impossible.
Go back to sleep. Why’re you going to look for something that’s not there? he thought.
Then a voice sang, “If I don’t need you no more in this world/I’ll meet you in the next one and don’t be late. ’Cause I’m a Voodoo Child/Lord knows, I’m a Voodoo Child.”
Reynolds & Raymond, Jackson thought. Some of their crazy shit.
Jackson went into the candlelit bunker. Reynolds was playing his M-16. A monkey sat on Raymond’s shoulder, the outline of a skeleton painted on his body with fluorescent paint. The monkey could not sit still, jumping about and waving its arms and legs. Then Jackson noticed the frag in the monkey’s hand, one of the new kind shaped like a baseball.
“Sappers! Short-timer!” Raymond yelled.
Jackson watched the monkey pull the pin. The handle flew off with a clank, and the monkey tossed the grenade, the frag hitting the dirt floor with a thump and rolling toward him. Jackson started to run but tripped and fell, the clay wet and slick against his hands. Instead of the explosion, he heard Reynolds & Raymond laughing.
Raymond helped him to his feet. Reynolds replaced the handle and pin of the dummy frag. He gave it back to the monkey.
“Short-timer’s a smart little fucker,” Raymond said. “He’ll scare the shit out of the dinks.”
Short-timer jumped around the bunker, turning flips.
“Fucker’s speeding,” Raymond explained. “Loves the shit. Have to shoot him up twice a day.”
“What happens when he gets hold of some live frags?” Jackson asked.
“Oh, he’s been practicing with them too. Out on the perimeter. Needs to keep sharp. So we let him use one we took the detonator out of.”
Jackson picked up the starlight scope. Reynolds quit playing his M-16.
“Let me look at that,” Raymond said, stepping forward.
Jackson put the scope back under his poncho.
“That’s Light’s, ain’t it?” Raymond asked.
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. Alabama, you don’t pull observation duty on the perimeter,” Raymond said. “Don’t need a starlight.”
“Light wouldn’t give up his starlight,” Jackson said.
“You give it to us,” Raymond said.
“Get your own.”
“Alabama, we need the starlight to bring back Jimi.”
“You are fucking crazy. I promised Light I’d keep it for him.”
“Just let us borrow it.”
“He didn’t say anything about lending it out. You got to talk to Light. Ask him.”
Reynolds had begun to play his M-16 again, Short-timer on his shoulder.
“How come you’re still alive?” Raymond asked. “Other guys go out in the bush. They get wasted. Does it with the starlight. Fucking magic.”
“Lucky,” Jackson said.
Raymond stepped forward and put his hand on Jackson’s poncho.
“Get the fuck away,” Jackson said, shoving Raymond’s hand away, holding onto the starlight tightly with the other.
Jackson started to back out of the bunker.
“We’ll have that starlight,” Raymond said. “Go ahead. Hide it. Sleep with it. Put it in the money man’s locker. We’ll find it.”
Reynolds began to play his M-16 behind his back. Short-timer became excited and, jumping off his shoulder, began to turn flips.
Jackson left the bunker and ran toward the TOC, wondering where he could hide the starlight so Reynolds & Raymond could never find it.
After Jackson got back to the TOC, he wrapped the starlight scope in plastic to protect it from the water that had already begun to seep into the TOC and hid it under his cot. Hale had set a triple guard on the entrance and had threatened the guards with permanent duty on the fence if anyone, especially Leander, entered the TOC without his permission.
At least once a day Jackson checked to see if the scope was there. Then one night Jackson found the scope was gone, but no one had seen Reynolds & Raymond in the TOC. Jackson wondered if Labouf had discovered it. As he went to look for Labouf, he was met at the tower by Reynolds & Raymond. Light rain blew against his face.
“You take it back,” Raymond said, handing the starlight scope to Jackson.
Reynolds played his M-16, and Short-timer sat on his shoulder with a frag in his hand.
“It’s got the fucking strange shit in it,” Raymond said.
Reynolds sang, “Well she’s walking through the clouds/With a circus mind that’s running wild.”
“What strange shit?” Jackson asked.
“You seen it. That green light,” Raymond said.
They walked away, leaving Jackson standing in the darkness with the starlight scope.
Jackson looked through the scope, sweeping it slowly across the camp. Everything appeared normal, bunkers, gunpits, and wire — all with that green undersea look to them, sparkles of light flashing around their edges. He lowered the scope and turned it over in his hands.
Reynolds & Raymond are fucking crazy, he thought.
Then the big end of the scope began to glow like a TV screen. Holding the scope in both hands, his back to the wind and rain, he bent over the starlight.
The screen grew brighter, but the green glow did not hurt his eyes. An image took shape. A soldier was in a small bunker, but who he was and what he was doing there was not clear. Swirls of green light flickered across the screen. Suddenly the soldier and the bunker disappeared in the flash of an explosion. The scope went dark. Then another image took shape and Jackson watched it all over again, this time looking closely, trying to identify the soldier and what he was doing. He decided it was someone manning one of the big starlight scopes or a radar machine. There were only a few of these, all facing the ridge.
Jackson returned the scope to its hiding place in the TOC and went to the perimeter.
The man operating the big starlight scope told him to get the fuck away and would not talk to him. Jackson hoped that he was going to be the one. The other starlight operator laughed at him when Jackson suggested that he might be safer out in the open. And the radar operator was up on speed, claimed he heard someone beating on a drum out in the scrub. Finally Jackson reached Alfred Ten-Deer’s observation bunker.
“Alabama, you want me to put my radar on Tom Light?” Alfred asked and laughed.
No one called Alfred “Indian” or “Chief.” Alfred seemed to be exactly the right name for him. He was quiet and polite and a good radar operator. He had been to college. Alfred was responsible for having given the firebase warning for several probes and one sapper attack.
“Alfred, you need to move your machine. I’ll help you do it,” Jackson said.
“Why? I got a bunker here. Good overhead cover. Don’t leak much. It’s fucking wet out there.”
“This place is going to take incoming.”
“The firebase? Light tell you that?”
“No, this bunker. Tonight, I think. Soon.”
“Don’t you know for sure?”
Jackson paused before he spoke, “I saw a man die in Light’s starlight. You stay, you’re gonna die.”
“You see me?” Alfred asked.
“I couldn’t tell for sure. You could move your machine.”
“Alabama, you sound just like my grandfather with all that goddamn mystical shit. Old man thought he could talk to the spirits. Went out in the desert alone. Had visions. I think he was taking peyote.”
“Alfred, I saw it in the scope.”
“I heard all that shit about Light. He’s a good sniper. Nothing more. You believe he can raise the dead with that scope?”