Standing devil
I liked the idea of standing down.
And waving both of his arms over his head.
just the idea
He was sitting in his shorts. He was drinking
from a bottle of Jack Daniels.
I watched him. He peered above the dirt mound
he was behind.
He came over and told
me everything was going to be cool.
I flinched
“Where you from?”
“New York,” I said. “Harlem.”
“You have any questions, you ask
me, okay?”
I smiled. My mind shot ahead
Two jets streaked across the sky. Beautiful. Dark
birds in a sweeping arc across a silver sky.
I crisscrossed two bandoliers of ammunition
over my chest and grabbed a boxful. It was
heavy as hell.
Scotty was leveling
the legs of the tripod, and I jerked open the metal
ammo case.
I wasn’t scared. For the first time I wasn’t scared.
One of our machine guns started chattering on
our right, and Scotty opened up again.
The smell of it was terrible. Terrible and scary.
I kept looking for the wounded.
The eyes were what set him apart.
He was going through his pockets looking
for matches to light his cigarette. He found
them, but they were soaked through with his own
blood.
Scotty lit his cigarette.
One kid, the angry stain of blood on his
T-shirt growing with every breath, watched calmly.
I took a drink. It burned like hell going down.
It came up easier.
