Jackson raised one hand while keeping the other on his stomach.
“No, don’t,” Jackson said.
Someone yelled in Vietnamese to the soldier who looked over his shoulder. Then the man ran, not bothering to look at Jackson again.
Jackson saw another figure appear at the edge of the pit. It was Light, standing there with the rifle cradled in his arms. Light started down into the pit.
“You bastard, you lied to me,” Jackson said.
As Light bent over him, Jackson tried to speak, to curse Light, but could not. And then the rain and the clouds and the stink of his bowels and Light disappeared.
CHAPTER
24
Jackson opened his eyes. The sun was shining. He lay on the grass beneath a banyan tree, the grass smelling like his father’s pasture in the spring, fresh and clean and new. The grass, waist-high, stretched away with clumps of trees and bamboo scattered here and there. Above the trees rose stone temples with trees and vines growing out of the crevices between the weathered stones. Beyond the city were green mountains covered with clouds, and the sun was setting behind them, the light shining on the temples.
Tom Light, cradling the rifle in his arms, walked into Jackson’s field of vision. Jackson felt dizzy and weak, barely able to focus his eyes on Light.
“Where am I?” Jackson asked.
“My city,” Light said.
Jackson felt his belly, the skin warm and smooth beneath his fingertips.
“Come,” Light said.
Jackson touched the scars again expecting to wake from this dream to find his intestines in his hands, blue and slick and full of shrapnel holes. Light’s figure went out of focus again. When Jackson opened his eyes, he expected to find himself with Light in some jungle clearing. Instead he saw the ruined temples and Light squatting gook-style with the rifle across his knees.
“Where’s Labouf? Where are the men?” Jackson asked, looking at his belly now, the skin wrinkled from the rain but unbroken. It was all too real to be a dream. He remembered the feel of the intestines beneath his hands.
“I ain’t raising no more. You’re the last one. I kept my word,” Light said.
“If I’m a ghost, how come I can feel my heart beating?” Jackson asked.
“You ain’t a ghost,” Light said.
They entered the city at twilight, the sun disappearing behind the mountains. Monkeys climbed about over the stone temples, most of the carvings of animals and humans so worn and faded that Jackson had no idea what they represented. But he did recognize the carving of an elephant carrying men into battle and a human figure with six arms.
Light stopped at a plaza paved with stones. He took the starlight off the rifle and turned it on, placing it in Jackson’s hands. Then Light walked away, Jackson hearing the pat of Light’s sandals on the stones. Jackson felt cold and traced his scars with his fingertips. The starlight glowed with green light and an image took shape.
“Loretta,” Jackson said.
She was walking across the big yard toward his parents’ house. Jackson could smell his mother’s roses. Loretta stopped and turned to face him. He reached out for her and pulled her away from the porch, out onto the grass beneath the pecans.
“Loretta, Loretta,” he said, pulling her close to him, unbuttoning her clothes but at the same time knowing she could not be real, that all this was a dream, and when he woke it would be to the terrible pain of a belly wound. Perhaps Light had given him morphine, all this nothing more than a morphine dream.
He felt her close around him soft and wet, and he did not care if it was a dream. The cicadas whined above their heads in the pecans.
“Loretta, I’m home,” he said.
“Don’t leave me again,” she said.
He shuddered atop her, and it went on and on, the warmth draining out of him, Jackson thinking that if he held onto her tight enough, he would never have to leave her. But he felt her slipping away. The green light was fading.
Trying to hold her was like trying to embrace a pool of green water. “Loretta!” he cried.
Jackson found himself on the plaza again. Light stood watching him. He gave Light the starlight.
“You can stay here,” Light said.
“We had a deal. You said you’d get me home.”
“I raised you.”
“Should’ve kept me alive.”
“Nobody leaves this place.”
Jackson started to gasp for breath but managed to control himself and speak.
“Don’t want to spend my time looking at spooks in the starlight!”
“You leave and you’re on your own.”
“Better than staying here.”
Light paused before he spoke.
“All right. I’ll take you to Firebase Mary Lou. You live. You die. It’s up to you.”
“You look in the scope. Tell me what’s gonna happen.”
“You ain’t in there now, but you could be later.”
“Leave. Come with me.”
“Can’t. I’m staying here.”
“I’m leaving. I’m going home. You take me to the firebase.”
“We can be there by morning if we move fast.”
He followed Light out of the city into the jungle, wondering what it would be like to spend the rest of the war without Tom Light but most of all dreading the moment when the morphine would wear off and the dream would end. Light had given him an M-16 and two bundles of Labouf’s money still wrapped in plastic. Jackson wished Light had raised Labouf. As they walked through the rain and clouds, Jackson considered all the ways he could die and at the same time thought of life in the temple city. Maybe that was what Light was offering, a permanent morphine dream. All night they walked, mostly along the ridges. From time to time Jackson stuck his hand under his fatigue jacket to make sure the wound had really disappeared. He still kept expecting to wake up and die.
“We’re close now,” Light said as he called a halt in a narrow valley.
“Come with me,” Jackson said.
“Can’t leave. I belong at the city.”
“Your parents?”
“I’m MIA. I’m dead.”
Jackson took Light by the shoulders, Light’s body wet but warm through the sweater, that rotting leaf stink on Light again. Light was no ghost either.
“Go home to Loretta,” Light said. Then he continued, “Mary Lou is over the next ridge. You can find it easy.”
Light walked off into the jungle. Jackson wanted to call out after him. He shivered from the cold and took a deep breath before climbing back up into the mountains.
Instead of walking to Firebase Mary Lou, Jackson planned to follow the mountains to coastal plain. Walking for real or in a dream, it didn’t matter.
He might not see another person until he came down from the mountains. No Vietnamese lived in the mountains, only the Yards. The Vietnamese were smart, left the malaria and the tigers and the leeches and the snakes to the Yards. Jackson moved easily though the jungle, the leaves wet against his face, the constant drip from the huge, vine-covered trees rattling against the leaves. He looked up, the drip wet against his face, the tops of the trees lost in the low clouds which hung over the mountain. And he was afraid, the trees and vines forming a green net over him. Not the gasping, choking, “fish on the bank” panic this time, but something worse, deep within him, chilling his bones. Not the fear of death, but the fear of being alone, lost in the green sea of the jungle. He ran a hand over his belly — still smooth and warm and alive.
Don’t let me wake up, he thought, wondering if he was pleading with God, Tom Light, or the jungle itself. Please don’t let me wake up. Let me keep dreaming if this is a dream.