Everywhere soldiers lay rigor mortised, arms and legs grotesquely akimbo like storm-assaulted branches of dark trees. Sharing death, they all looked the same. Above them a vermillion sky mirrored the bloody terrain. How it happened he didn't know, but he was not one of them. He was alive. Alone, but alive. Donovan had drummed into them: "Name, rank, and serial number. You don't say no more than that. Far as it goes, that's all you know." But looking around, he saw at least for now there was no one he'd have to tell it to. Sergeant Donovan, the entire squad, and the Viet Cong snipers--all of them resting dead to the world now, the hill of contention still standing flagless.

Day was ticking towards late afternoon. Soon enough the cold night would bristle around him; darkness and the stench of blood would empower hungry packs of wolves and dogs to stray from safe dens in search of human flesh. Benedict was alive but there was no guarantee he would remain so. The last thing he remembered thinking to himself, "Don't fall asleep," was the first thing he remembered when he finally woke up. He could not believe it was daylight again. The back-home dream from which he had awakened--refreshingly erotic--seemed so real he half-expected Nadine to be here panting naked beside him. It had been a long time. For a year now he had been making war, not love. For a year all he could think of was staying alive so eventually he could go back to Nadine. Feel safe, alive again. Leave all this war shit behind him as if it had never happened.

Lying on his back, he listened to the silence around him. It was quieter than the sound in his chest, pounding away like a timebomb. When he tried to sit up, pain shot up both his legs. He could not bend them--not the left nor the right. Then he saw the blood caked along the length of his two legs like red-clay splints. He hadn't noticed them in the dark night, not even the pain that now pulsed and hammered beyond his wounded legs, stabbed as high as his chest. "Jesus!" he said out loud. "What next?"

His father's face, not Jesus's, appeared behind his open eyes. His father. It made sense, he told himself. "This is war. War is hell. Life is tough and you gotta be tougher. Hey, whimp. Get your ass in gear! Move it!" Funny how it all comes back, he thought. Bury it deep as you care to but nothing stays buried: not pain, not bad memories, not even the dead.

The torture in his legs dizzied him. He tried to move, pulled at the trouser leg but it was a steel beam or it was a tree stump rooted to the ground. It was no use. Swiveling his hips would not force his body sideways. He was trapped. Benedict had beaten the enemy and now the enemy was his own wounds.

#

"What's the matter, kid? You can't squeeze the trigger? You gonna stand there peeing in your pants? Get your ass in gear, Son. Squeeze the goddamn trigger!"

He stood there trembling in his hunting boots. No matter how he tried to calm himself, nothing worked. He was afraid. Not of the rifle. He had fired it before, back of the house, in the yard, at some tin cans Father had set up for him. Shooting was easy. Father had even forgotten himself and praised his marksmanship, though he called it "Irish luck"; he was never one for praising, especially his son, the son he referred to, straight-faced and serious, as "boy-ass loser."

"What's holding you up?" Father wanted to know, gripping those huge, rough hands against his shoulders, egging him on, trying hard to thaw him free of cold fear.

"A fuckin' rabbit, Crissake! Shoot it now! You hear me?"

But he couldn't, even though it could've been so easy. Father had caught the rabbit with his snare; it could not run from him, but the way the gray thing fixed its frightened beady eyes on him as if to plead for its life made Benedict tremble in shame.

"Boy Ass," said Father, "shoot it or I get pissed off and shoot you!" Which decided it. Somehow it was easy to believe his father was capable of killing him. He envisioned his bloody boy-body face down, roped to the roof of the car like a prized kill. Maybe he'd end up on the prey wall of Father's club house deep in the woods, next to the deer's head or the boar's.

Benedict took the deepest breath he could manage in the cold morning air and exhaled autumn smoke from down in his lungs. He pretended it was a final breath, a dying and a rebirth, a transition from innocent twelve-year-old Benedict who loved all living things to this new Benedict who followed orders and killed when he was told. He took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

"Take a look at this," Father said, walking back with what remained of the rabbit. He was holding it high in the air like a trophy, shreds of gray fur that dripped blood on Father's boots. He forced it under Benedict's nose.

"You did it, Kid. Look it here," but Benedict had drawn the line: he would not gloat now in this senseless killing. He would not look at what he could not save. Father laughed, cut the bloody noose from the rabbit's leg and let the mess fall at his feet.

#

Do I die out here? It was all he could think, looking upwards past the tall trees into the dotted sky. Was the sky falling, he wondered, or were the black crow dots growing larger as they descended closer to where he lay? Soon enough the warm wind would catch the smell of his blood and carry it to the hungry--the birds, the dogs. He will have reached this far for nothing.

#

McPherson's kid. That's what they called him. Not Ben, not even Benedict. McPherson's kid because Patrick McPherson was not a man to fool with. Just as sure as the sun was out, he'd kill you with his bare hands. Or at least they said as much. But to Benedict it wasn't empty talk. His father was a killer all right. In Korea wasting lives for him was a rush: a kind of mean drug he didn't care to shake. It was a game, what he liked most about the war, a game no different than shooting practice at the carnival: a parade of slowly bobbing wooden ducks.

"Once I carved out a Slanty-Eye's heart with my knife," he said to Benedict, enjoying the pink draining from his son's face. It was a horror story he'd told many times before, though Benedict reacted as if it were the first time: His belly would rumble with queasiness, his throat click open and shut, threatening to let loose the torrent within him. Somehow he'd learned the art of letting himself float with the dizziness, become a feather, become deaf and blind, so that the fainting buzz in his head droned louder than his father's voice. He would be spared the gory details, how his sergeant father sknned the screaming North Korean soldier--a boy!--then finished him by cutting out his heart.

This was what it meant to grow up in McPherson's house, to be the brunt of a bully father, to be ridiculed and abused. And what of his mother? Where was she in that house? What trick had she mastered that allowed her to go through the motions of doing the expected and at the same time be invisible in their company? He could not imagine the two of them ever being in love. No wonder he envied his friends! Not for the kindness their parents showed them, not for anything except that their parents loved one another. He was sure his own parents never did. How else to explain his mother crying during the night--muffled sounds in her pillow?--And his father's harsh, intimidating voice ordering her to put out and shut up or he would give her something to cry about. His mother, fragile, pale as a wax doll, seemed to be melting away. He hated himself for the tricks his mind played: superimposing her face upon the frightened rabbit's, the way both flared their nostrils open and closed, sniffing impending doom.

#

In the groggy haze of pained sleep, Benedict heard twigs snap behind him. Not animals. Instinctually animals side-step whatever would give them away. It had to be soldiers or villagers. He prayed villagers, helpful villagers, who would somehow recognize he was an American but not an enemy at all. The footsteps grew louder, more careless. He kept his eyes closed, his body still. Maybe whoever found him would believe him dead and walk away. Death was not so far from truth: it was just a question of time.

#

"Open your eyes, goddamnit! You hear me? Look at it!" his father yelled, waving the dead rabbit in his face, pulling it sharply back and forth so that the hot blood splattered against Benedict's face. He could feel the wetness sting his cheeks like pounding hot rain. Though his lips quivered, he did not dare to cry or speak for fear the rabbit's blood would seep inside and, choking him, avenge the rabbit's death. He could see the justice in that. But why was his father punishing him now? He had killed the rabbit just as he had ordered. Why couldn't he leave bad enough alone?

McPherson finally swung the rabbit across his son's face. The boy screamed, backed himself deeper into the bushes, driving McPherson in after him. "You faggot! You little sissy boy! Get up and be a man. Pick up that rabbit or I swear to Christ I'll shove it down your throat!" If I can just die, thought Benedict. Die like the rabbit. Die, not day by day like Mamma, but die once and for all. Be free of him.

"No! No!" he screamed, wriggling free of his father's hands clawing through the bramble like some bad-dream beast. But this was no bad dream. "Leave me alone!" He could hardly believe it was his voice screaming. Even McPherson could hardly believe it; he backed away, joked about how Benedict had done good. Next time the kid would kill a deer and he'd be ready then to skin it with his own hands. "Right now, Kid, come out of there. Time to head back home." Through the zigzag of the branches Benedict tried to detect in his father's eyes what to expect when he moved free of the bushes, but he saw nothing there.

Neither one spoke on the ride home. It was the last time McPherson took Benedict hunting, fishing--anywhere!

#

When he finally opened his eyes, it was because the imposing shadow of someone or something had blocked the daylight that shone against his closed eyelids. He looked up to find trouble: a Viet Cong soldier, standing tall and foreboding, leveled his rifle at him. Before the soldier spoke, they held each other's stare for a long while.

"Are you wounded?" asked the Viet Cong, unslinging the rifle. Huh? Benedict thought. Then hope sparked: he's one of us! From another patrol. A survivor like me. Somebody to help get me out of here. Despite the pain in his legs, Benedict forced a smile.

"Your legs?"

"Yeah. Both of them. Broken. Heavy as--" He winced the smile away.

"Where are the rest of you?" asked the soldier, running his eyes over the terrain, his helmeted head swiveling like a gunner's. "They leave you behind?"

"What's your company, soldier?" asked Benedict. The soldier laughed, then brought his tall frame down to a near genuflection, balancing himself effortlessly. "I'm the enemy," he said.

"In whose army? Your English is--"

"Princeton University. Can you believe it? I lived in a quaint little New Jersey town called Lawrenceville. A scholarship, no less. We Orientals know how to achieve, don't we?" Benedict remembered the rabbit of so long ago. He saw it now in his memory, the pathetic way it sat petrified in the iron snare that had crushed the bones of its hind feet. He remembered those sad, beady eyes asking--no! begging--for mercy.

"What's the story?" asked Benedict.

"The story? You mean what happens now? Does the plot thicken? The hero--is he going to make it in the end or is this your basic black tragedy?"

"Don't jerk me around, Princeton boy!" The soldier pretended he was insulted. He let his eyes roll heavenward. "And they say Americans beat around the bush, never quite come out and say what they mean. But you, General--" "Corporal Benedict McPherson, seven-four-four--"

"Cut the crap. We can forget about formalities out here. We're the last of the Mohicans, General. The boys on your side and the boys on my side are all dead. We can reminisce about how life was sweet and kind before the war. Where you from?"

Benedict turned his face away, screwed his eyes tightly shut as the pain burned up and down his legs.

"That bad, huh? Now whoever said war was healthy. You Americans can make all the mega-million-dollar war movies you want, but it comes down to this: what we do out here is not very safe: Boys and girls, do not attempt to perform these war tricks at home."

"You study comedy over there at Princeton?" He took his helmet off and brushed the dirt on his forehead up into the black sheen of his thick hair. "No, not comedy, General.

I studied medicine. This is your lucky day." He shuffled closer to Benedict, then reached out and touched his bloody legs. Benedict gritted his teeth. "If this good doctor doesn't do something real soon," said the soldier, "the patient will die. So you still want to discuss What's the story? You got that kind of time, General? You want to live or you want to join the ranks on both sides of this brutal war--dead meat dinners for the wolves? You call it."

"Why help me?"

"Why not? I'm sentimental, okay? Uncle Sam was good to me, gave a poor Vietnam kid a chance to make a dream come true."

"A sentimental Viet Cong. Don't make me laugh. My legs can't stand it."

From the corner of his eye Benedict could see the Viet Cong's face turn dark and sad. More like anger, he thought, because suddenly the enemy was up on his feet again. "What the hell do you know?" he said. "My father called me home. This fucking war's been going on since he was a kid, but now with the French pulling out, Americans moving in, and finally we got ourselves a bigger problem than keeping the South Vietnamese in line. We got one American President after another, from Ike to JFK to LBJ and now Tricky Dickie, on our doorstep. I came home, okay? To do my duty for my country. To protect my family from you! It's war. Each side with an idea; each side thinking the other side is wrong. But right now, in case you haven't noticed, fate has smiled down on both of us. We're alive. I don't know why but we are not dead. Let me rephrase that: I am not dead; you are dying."

He knelt down again, drew himself down onto the balls of his feet.

"We have no time for war games, General. It's survival now. Unattended, your legs will say hello to gangrene and before you can say Ho Chi Minh we'll be saying goodbye. You tell me. What'll it be?"

Benedict allowed himself to beg. "I need help."

The soldier walked away to retrieve from his canvas gear what looked like a medic's tin box. Benedict tried to keep his eyes alert but the pain was unbearable. He let his eyelids fall like bricks too heavy to hold.

"You relax, General," he heard the Viet Cong say in a kind of underwater voice that seesawed between loud and faint until at last he gave himself to unconsciousness.

#

McPherson was drunk again. All the neighbors knew it. They could hear the old man cursing his wife at the top of his lungs, the same as he had been doing for years. But this night was different. He had gone too far. Always able at the nick of time to subdue the raging beast inside him, McPherson would throw his hands up and walk away from whatever or whoever set him off. He'd stagger through the rooms like a blind man and collapse onto the couch, falling almost immediately into a deep, snoring sleep. Taking the cue, his wife would feel safe enough to go to bed. So would Benedict, now sixteen.

This was usually the scenario until the night McPherson put it into his head that his wife was sleeping with one of his drinking pals, a man Kathleen McPherson had never met.

"You lying bitch!" he screamed.

"Please, Pat, you're hurting me!"

"I'll kill you, Whore! I'll rip out your heart!" Kathleen lay beneath the weight of her husband, pinned down on the floor, her shoulders riveted by his knees. Face bruised and swollen, she tried to protect herself, but his hands were too quick and heavy. If he did not call off the madness soon, she knew this time she'd die.

"Don't kill me! Please!"

In his drunken rage McPherson was back in Korea: Sergeant McPherson cleaning up. "I know what I know!" he screamed. "I'll kill you!" Then from his back pocket he took out his hunting knife. One-handedly he snapped out the blade and played it across Kathleen's neck. She followed the gleam of the blade, afraid her crying would send the knife point into her throat. She whispered, "Patrick, Patrick," but McPherson was back in Korea with his squad. He was Sergeant McFearsome once more, the meanest NCO in all Korea. He was not the man to mess with. He was a killer. All-powerful. The stench of prey blood excited him.

"Patrick, please don't kill me." Angry that her familiar voice would drag him back here, far from where he was everything, he let the knife draw blood and Kathleen McPherson screamed.

#

"I think you'll make it," the Viet Cong soldier doctor said.

Benedict felt a numbness in his legs but not pain. Whatever had been done while he was out had helped. He watched his enemy wrap gauze or surgical tape around the splints with which he had sandwiched his bloody legs.

"There's my jeep a short distance from here," said the Viet Cong. "You'll recover once I get you to a hospital."

"Why all this?" Benedict asked.

"I'm a doctor from Princeton, remember? I don't like to see lives lost."

"Why?" Benedict insisted.

"You Americans can see through everything, can't you? Just like your Superman hero with his X-ray vision." The soldier laughed as he gathered up his tape and scissors, placed them neatly into the medic tin. 'Why?' is such a profound question, isn't it? Something we ask from the moment the doctor pulls us out of the womb and slaps our little backsides. Do we cry 'Wa Wa Wa' or is our cry really 'Why? Why? Why?'"

#

Benedict stood trembling on the other side of the bedroom door. He kept the rifle balanced in his hands trained on his father's chest. At first he intended to warn him, say whatever he could to move him away from her. He thought better of it. What's the use! It would happen again; it would always happen again until he and his mother were finally dead. Reason with a madman? Too late for that.

In the bedroom a tiny nightlight illuminated the figure of his father kneeling on top of his mother. He could see his face, those eyes that confessed nothing. He stared at his father intent on memorizing that face forever. Then he squinted to see his mother's bruised face, barely visible in the near dark. He could hear her crying softly: the abused woman who even this close to death tries hard not to offend.

#

"I can't carry you, General, and without my help, you're not going anywhere. Lie back and enjoy a few more minutes in the sun while I get the jeep." He turned to walk away but Benedict called to him.

"What else, Doctor?"

"What else?"

"Now that you've saved a life like a good doctor, what else do you want from me?"

Suddenly he was the enemy again, his smile gone, his back militarily straight. "You are a wise man. Or you are by nature quite cynical. I saved your life."

Benedict shook his head as if to clear it. Somehow what he had suspected all along was true. "Now you want something from me."

"Precisely!"

"You send me the bill, Doctor, and I'll see what I can do."

"Not quite that simple. This is war after all. We have obligations. There is such a thing as duty to country."

It was clear now. Luckily Benedict could move his right hand without the soldier noticing. Slowly he maneuvered it to the pistol in the holster he had strapped to his chest in order to ward off attacking wolves. He kept the soldier distracted with questions he already knew the answers to.

"What do you want from me?"

"Your commanding officer and all of his men, except for you, are dead."

"That's right. You and I are the only survivors."

He laughed. "I was not in this battle. I'm the fellow they send in after the fireworks. I look for guys like you who need somebody to talk to."

"We talked," said Benedict, holding the pistol close to his chest and moving it down so slowly his arm hardly moved at all.

"We have ways of making you talk, General," he called out to him.

#

Taking careful aim--his father had insisted he learn how to fire like marksmen do--Benedict squeezed the trigger that lifted Patrick McPherson into the bedroom air and brought him crashing against the far wall. Not certain one bullet could really kill so brutal a man, Benedict kept firing the rifle, emptying shells until the final click of the hammer was a click and nothing else. He stood and watched his mother, only moments before begging for the life Benedict had saved, now on the floor, embracing and kissing the bloody corpse that was his father.

#

"You have information we need, General. Whatever you can tell us we would certainly appreciate. What you know, what you heard."

"I'm a corporal. We know next to nothing. The less we know, the better."

Benedict gripped the pistol, slowly lifted it from its holster. Now the soldier was moving further away which was good, thought Benedict. It would give him enough time to bring the pistol down where he could take aim and fire it.

Benedict waited for him to turn away towards the jeep, then raised the pistol and fired three shots that brought the enemy down.