The Night In Question Read Online Free

“Don’t answer,” he whispered.
    “It’s just great!” Ryan said. “Nothing like it, sir. You’ve got your stars twinkling up there in God’s heaven—”
    “Thanks,” Lieutenant Dixon said.
    “The trees for company—”
    “Shut up,” B.D. said.
    But Ryan kept at it until Lieutenant Dixon got impatient and cut him off. “That’s fine,” he said, then added, “I’m glad to hear you like it so much.”
    “Can’t get enough of it, sir.”
    Lieutenant Dixon slapped the clipboard against his leg. He did it again. “So I guess you wouldn’t mind having another crack at it.”
    “Really, sir? Can I?”
    “I think it can be arranged.”
    B.D. followed Ryan to their quarters after lunch. Ryan was laying out his gear. “I know, I know,” he said. “I just can’t help it.”
    “You can keep your mouth shut. You can stop hard-assing the little fuck.”
    “The thing is, I can’t. I try to but I can’t.”
    “Bullshit,” B.D. said, but he saw that Ryan meant it, and the knowledge made him tired. He lowered himself onto his bunk and lay back and stared up at the canvas roof. Sunlight spangled in a thousand little holes.
    “He’s such an asshole,” Ryan said. “Somebody’s got to brief him on that, because he just doesn’t get the picture. He doesn’t have
any
hard intelligence on what an asshole he is. Somebody around here’s got to take responsibility.”
    “Nobody assigned you,” B.D. said.
    “Individual initiative,” Ryan said. He sat down on his footlocker and began tinkering with the straps of his helmet.
    B.D. closed his eyes. The air was hot and pressing and smelled of the canvas overhead, a smell that reminded him of summer camp.
    “But that’s not really it,” Ryan said. “I’d just as soon let it drop. I think I’ve made my point.”
    “Affirmative. Rest assured.”
    “It’s like I’m allergic—you know, like some people are with cats? I get near him and boom! my heart starts pumping like crazy and all this stuff starts coming out. I’m just standing there, watching it happen. Strange, huh? Strange but true.”
    “All you have to do,” B.D. said hopelessly, “is keep quiet.”
    The power of an M-26 fragmentation grenade, sufficient by itself to lift the roof off a small house, could be “exponentially enhanced,” according to a leaflet issued by the base commander, “by detonating it in the context of volatile substances.” This absurdly overwritten leaflet, intended as a warning against the enemy practice of slipping delay-rigged grenades into the gas tanks of unattended jeeps and trucks, was incomprehensible to half the men in the division. But B.D. had understood it, and he’d kept it in mind.
    His idea was to pick up a five-gallon can of gasoline from one of the generators and leave it beside the tent where Lieutenant Dixon did his paperwork at night. He would tape down the handle of a grenade, pull the pin, and drop the grenade in the can. By the time the gas ate through the tape he’d be in his bunk.
    B.D. didn’t think he had killed anyone yet. His company had been ambushed three times and B.D. had fired back with everyone else, but always hysterically and in a kind of fog. Something happened to his vision; it turned yellow and blurry and he saw everything in a series of stuttering frames that he could never afterward remember clearly. He couldn’t be sure what had happened. But he thought he’d know if he had killed somebody, even if it was in darkness or behind cover where he couldn’t see the man go down. He was sure that he would know.
    Only once did he remember having someone actually inhis sights. This was during a sweep through an area that had been cleared of its population and declared a free-fire zone. Nobody was supposed to be there. All morning they worked their way upriver, searching empty hamlets along the bank. Nothing. Negative booby traps, negative snipers, negative mines. Zilch. But then, while they were eating lunch, B.D. saw