“By then I’m pumped up, completely wired. She’s crying…pleading with me in Pidgin English, in Vietnamese. You’re moaning like the wind. Abe, you may have thought you were screaming at me to save her. But I swear to God, you were just moaning—”

“You saying you didn’t hear me begging?”

“I’m saying I saw a dying boy spitting up blood…babbling something I couldn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.” Decker swallowed dryly. “Man, I looked Song squarely in the eye, and at that moment, I just saw…enemy. So, I plugged her. I…plugged her.”

Decker covered his mouth with his fist. He felt winded, as if sucker-punched. Twenty years of repression surfacing as hideously as a bloated body. The heat of the room had become oppressive. He went over to the window, threw it open, and stuck his head outside. Street sounds filled his ears, obliterating the repulsive cries of memory.

But not totally. Decker had shocked himself. The clarity of the images, the details. A camera rolling at high speed but still capturing every moment. His brain wanting to forget, begging to forget an amoebic splotch of exploding flesh. But his memory was unforgiving. He gazed out the window for redemption, but all he saw was his guilt.

Five minutes later, he heard Abel hobble up behind him.

“Wanna beer?” Abel asked.

“Yeah.”

Abel popped open two cans of Bud and placed them on his kitchen table. Decker sat down and emptied the can in four gulps. Abel gave him another, then joined him, sipping suds off the surface of the can.

“You didn’t like her, did you?” he said.

“Wasn’t her personally,” Decker said. “I mean, she was nice enough. And she was beautiful. But she was a gook. Atwater, they were all gooks to me—the friendlies as well as the Cong. I couldn’t get past the slanted eyes, not because I was prejudiced, but because out there I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad.”

“I always thought you were jealous.”

“Jealous of her, not you.” Decker gained enough courage to look Abel in the eyes. “We were tight, then you met her and went all moony-eyed. That was bad enough—me being crapped out in paddyland and you walking on cloud nine. Then you stopped doing stuff for the kids. Well, who am I to talk, I never did a damn thing for any of them. So I kept my opinions to myself. What really got me and everyone else pissed as hell was your sudden conscientious-objector attitude. I remember once Tony the Wolf talking about gooks, saying something nasty, I don’t recall his exact words. Then you piped in, ‘You know the Vietnamese are people, too,’ and stalked out of the hooch. Man, Tony was ready to waste you on the spot. I remember physically holding him back, and that was no easy task, ’cause Tony was built.