Veil

Chapter 8

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Veil dreams.

Dawn will break in two hours; Veil's plane will leave at three. Through the night Veil has walked the streets of Saigon, fording garish rainbow rivers of neon, flinching at the sound of disembodied groans, screams, sighs, grunts, and whispered invitations that reverberate in his ears like gunshots.

Veil does not rest like other men, whom sleep renews through dream-discharge of terror, rage, frustration, and forbidden desire; dreams do not flash across the surface of his consciousness to cleanse his mind. Like now, Veil hangs suspended in dreams like a diver in a clear sea roiled by things that sometimes soothe, but more often rend. He is still more than a year away from learning how to control, to roll away from, his night journeys, and physical exhaustion is the only thing he has found that will sink him to the bottom of the sea and give him peace; violence is his most potent narcotic.

It has been this way all his life, and there has never been anyone to understand. The fever that burned his brain made him irrevocably different from other children, as it now sets him apart from other men. Bright, a fast learner who excelled at athletics, Veil was also tormented and hyperactive; filled with rage and terror, he was unpredictable, often uncontrollable, dangerous. Peers and adults feared him, for good reason. It was inevitable that he would come to the attention of the police and the courts.

The Army, to which he escaped and which accepted him at seventeen, was his salvation. In the service of his country, Veil found redemption—for, with the acquisition of discipline, precisely those qualities of fierceness and physical strength that made him a threat to others outside the armed forces, became a valuable asset to those in command inside. He was first in his basic training group, first in advanced armored training, first in Officer Candidate School, first in his training group with Special Forces, where he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. Within six months he was fighting in Vietnam, where he discovered that combat left in its wake welcome, renewing oblivion.

With the meeting in the jungle clearing, all this has changed. His period of indoctrination in Tokyo has left him increasingly disturbed at night, and no amount of exercise seems to help. He is fearful of the future, does not know if he can carry out his new assignment, does not know if he can remain sane without war.

"Hey, soldier. Want girl? Clean girl. Virgin. Twenty dollar."

The pimp's voice has come out of the shadows of a doorway. Veil keeps walking, stiffens as someone grabs his arm.

"How about boy, soldier? Clean boy. Also twenty dollar."

Veil looks down at the cowering, trembling children the Vietnamese has dragged in front of him. He feels short of breath, as if he is plunging into a vacuum, hears an agonized groan that he realizes comes from his own throat. Veil knows this boy and girl, knows their names, has played with them and told them stories about America. They are Hmong children, members of the tribe he left six weeks before.

"What you say, soldier? You be sport. You take both. Thirty dollar for thirty minutes."

Veil stabs at the eyes of the Vietnamese, then rolls away from the dream.