“Half the time they came running out melting. We’d just stand back, let ’em pass till they dropped. What are we supposed to do, huh? What? They don’t want to give up.”

“Nothing you can do,” Lett said.

A silence crept in, their knees bumping as they rode along. Eventually, Jock told Lett that some of the more certifiable grunts had stripped the dead of medals and guns and gold teeth while they were still smoking, still bleeding out. Jock was shaking his head.

“Only tell me if you want to,” Lett said.

Jock’s eyes screwed up. After another half mile or so he said, his voice clogging in his throat, “Babies. Babies . . . On one island, Saipan, it was all just caves and tunnels. Some of them opened onto high cliffs. Well, then the civilians come out. Apparently the Emperor told them we Yankees were coming to kill them all, better off going to their kind of heaven after going out with a big bang . . .” He was glaring at his knuckles as if checking for shaking. “So you had civilians running out, Japanese, women, elderly. Some of the younger women clutching babies. Screaming at us. Some had explosives rigged on ’em, see. Some didn’t go off. Others only partly. Bad powder, my guess? I don’t know. Ah, fuck, Lett, I don’t know. Some of us started picking them off, but most of us just took cover till they passed by and on they went, here they come, no one wanting to touch them. Or their babies. I tried. I tried, Lett. Goddamn it, I done tried. She . . . She . . .”

“It’s okay. You’re all right.”

“I thought I had her. She slipped by me anyways. What was she supposed to do, huh? Here I was this Yankee killer carrying a big ole fugging Thompson gun, probably had blood on my face or teeth for all I know. I thought maybe I’d grab the baby from her, little thing, little white face, big eyes. She . . . She was just saving her little girl, you know? So, on she went. Well, right at the edge of the cliff, one of her shoes came off. Looked like a slipper. I kept that little slipper for a good long while. It was all chewed up from all the lava rock on that goddamn fugging rock of an island.” Jock shook his head again. After another half mile he said, “It was only the staff at camp who convinced me to get rid of it finally.”

“Lansdale?” Lett said.

“Very same.” Jock kept shaking his head. His hands had retreated to under his thighs.

Lett glanced around. The ex-paratrooper had wet eyes and the gooney bird dogface was burying his hands the same as Jock. They rode a while in silence.

“That’s what their leaders done to those people,” he said. “What they put in their heads.”

“What they do to all of us,” Lett said.