The Night In Question Read Online Free Page A

something. He was on guard in the rear of the company when a man came out of the trees into an expanse of overgrown paddies. The man had a stick that he swung in front of him as he made his way with slow, halting steps toward the opposite tree line. B.D. kept still and watched him. The sun was warm on his back. The breeze blew across the paddies, bending the grass, rippling the water. Finally he raised his rifle and drew a bead on the man. He held him in his sights. He could have dropped him, easy as pie, but he decided that the man was blind. He let him go and said nothing about it. But later he wondered: What if he wasn’t blind? What if he was just a guy with a stick, taking his time? Either way, he had no business being there. B.D. felt funny about the whole thing. What if he was actually VC, what if he killed a bunch of Americans afterward? He could be VC even if he
was
blind; he could be cadre, infrastructure, some high official …
    Blind people could do all kinds of things.
    Once it got dark B.D. walked across the compound to one of the guard bunkers and palmed a grenade from an open crate while pretending to look for a man named Walcott.
    He was about to leave when pumpkin-headed Captain Kroll appeared wheezing in the doorway. He had a normal enough body, maybe a little plump but nothing freakish, and then this incredible head. His head was so big that everyone in camp knew who he was and generally treated him with a tolerance he might not have enjoyed if his headhad been a little smaller. “Captain Head,” they called him, or just “The Head.” He worked in battalion intelligence, which was good for a few laughs, and didn’t seem to realize just how big his head really was.
    Captain Kroll crouched on the floor and had everyone bunch up around him; it was like a football huddle. B.D. saw no choice but to join in. Captain Kroll looked into each of their faces, and in a hushed voice he said that their reconnaissance patrols were reporting
beaucoup
troop movements all through the valley. They should maintain an extreme degree of alertness, he said. Mister Charles needed some scalps to show off in Paris. Mister Charles was looking for a party.
    “Rock and roll!” said the guy behind B.D.
    It was a dumbfuck thing to say. Nobody else said a word.
    “Any questions?”
    No questions.
    Captain Kroll rolled his big head from side to side. “Get some,” he said.
    Everyone broke out laughing.
    Captain Kroll rocked back as if he’d been slapped, then stood and left the bunker. B.D. followed him outside and struck off in the opposite direction. The grenade knocked against his hip as he wandered, dull and thoughtless, across the compound. He didn’t know where he was going until he got there.
    Lieutenant Puchinsky was drinking beer with a couple of other officers. B.D. stood in the doorway of the hooch. “Sir, it’s Biddy,” he said. “Biddy Sears.”
    “Biddy?” Lieutenant Puchinsky leaned forward and squinted at him. “Christ. Biddy.” He put his can down.
    They walked a little ways. Lieutenant Puchinsky gave off a certain ripeness, distinct but not rank, that B.D. had forgotten and now remembered and breathed in, takingcomfort from it as he took comfort from the man’s bulk, the great looming mass of him.
    Lieutenant Puchinsky stopped beside a cyclone fence enclosing a pit filled with crates. “You must be getting pretty short,” he said.
    “Thirty-four and a wake-up.”
    “I’m down to twenty.”
    “Twenty. Jesus, sir. That’s all right. I could handle twenty.”
    A flare burst over the dead space outside the wire. Both men shrank from the sudden brightness. The flare drifted slowly down, hissing as it fell, covering the camp with a cold green light in which everything took on a helpless, cringing aspect. They didn’t speak until it came to ground.
    “Ours,” Lieutenant Puchinsky said.
    “Yes, sir,” B.D. said, though he knew this might not be true.
    Lieutenant Puchinsky shifted from foot to