Read Online Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

of fangs glowed red in the night, the hiss of an aswang was heard, then the cry, and as a horrible visage leapt at his throat, the boy loosed an arrow and heard a thump when the creature fell back, and then a strangled moaning came, and then he heard the claws scraping as the wounded fiend dragged itself to protection somewhere. Surveying the scene, the young hero found the severed leg of a giant cat with deadly claws, the left foreleg, and his arrow was lodged through and through it.
    “The young hero returned home, and his ugly old guardian scolded him. His sister was also awake. Great-Aunt served them tea and some rice. ‘Where did you go, brother?’ ‘I fought the aswang, sister, and I think I wounded it.’ And sister said, ‘Beloved Aunt, you too were absent in the night. Where were you?’
    “‘I?’ said the beloved aunt. ‘No, I was here with you all night.’ But she served the tea quickly, and made her excuses to go lie down.
    “Later that day the two children found the old woman hanging by her neck from the tree outside. Beneath her the blood pooled, dripping from the place where she was missing her left arm. Earlier, as she poured the tea, she had kept from them beneath her robe the sight of her severed arm, dripping her life’s blood, the poisonous blood of the aswang.
    “It’s an old story,” Eddie said. “I’ve heard it many times. But the people believe it will happen, and now they believe it happened here, yesterday, this week. My God,” he said, pouring himself more Chardonnay, shaking the bottle upside down over his glass while his small audience applauded, “have I sat here talking and drinking an entire bottle?”
    The colonel was already turning the screw in another cork. “You’ve got Irish in you, fella.” He raised a toast: “Today is the birthday of Commodore Anders Pitchfork. Salud!”
    “Commodore?” Eddie said. “You’re joking!”
    “I’m joking about the rank. But not about the birthday. Pitchfork: Can you remember where you were on your birthday twenty-four years ago?”
    Pitchfork said, “Exactly twenty-four years ago I was swinging under a parachute on a very dark night, dropping into China. I didn’t even know the name of the province. And who was flying that plane I’d just jumped out of? Who was it gave me a half dozen candy bars and kicked me out into the sky? And headed back to a comfy bunk!”
    “And who never made it because the bastards shot me down? And who was it you gave a hard-boiled egg in a POW camp twenty days later?”
    Pitchfork pointed at the colonel. “Not because I’m generous. Because it was the poor feller’s birthday.”
    Eddie’s mouth was open. “You survived the Jap camp?”
    The colonel shoved his chair back and wiped at his face with his napkin. He perspired, he blinked. “Having been a dishonored guest of the Japanese…how to put it…I know what it means to be a prisoner. Let me rephrase that—let me rephrase that—give me a minute and let me rephrase that…” He stared dully from under, at Skip in particular, while Skip developed the uncomfortable notion that the colonel had forgotten himself and would now deliriously change the subject.
    “The Japanese,” Sands prompted him, lacking the strength not to.
    The colonel sat shoved away from his dinner, his knees splayed, his right hand gripping his drink and set on his thigh, his back absolutely straight, and the sweat charging down his crimson face. This is a great man, Sands announced to himself. Distinctly but silently he said it: A person of tortured greatness. At such a moment he couldn’t help dramatizing because it was all too wonderful.
    “They were short on cigars,” the colonel said. His rigid forbearing demeanor inspired awe, but not necessarily confidence. He was drunk, after all. And so sweaty they might have been viewing him through broken glass. But a warrior.
    Sands found himself speaking inwardly again: Wherever this journey takes us, I will