A wisp of ash from his Lucky Strike fell onto his olive drab undershirt. Macomber flicked it off and sat up. His cot stank of monsoon. Fungus between his toes, congo creeping crud, itched damnation. "Fuck it," he said. Dousing the immolation with Jack Daniel's: "I baptize thee in the name of unholy revelation."
The jungle sat upon his hootch. He could hear the beating of its green heart. Words from the Rig Veda: there was neither non-existence nor existence; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
The sky above the rain throbbed with the bruising of the air: chopper blades. The Huey, gray as a dragon's foreskin, its snout daubed with a huge Day-Glo vagina, clambered down Jacob's Ladder with Intel that could not wait.
Macomber tried to meditate. His mind closed in on a flamingo lily, or boy flower, hermaphrodite and poisonous to eat. Penis on a platter, the botonist from Hue had called it. Her name was Nuyen, and it had been a month since they kissed behind the bamboo in a small garden where she worshipped her ancestors. Beneath the shade of a green papaya he kissed her almond eyes and then, lifting the gauzy blouse slightly, her brown belly-button.
"Wake up, Macomber." Erskine Brown, the cowboy from Flatbush smirked. Floral boxers and dogtags.
"I wasn't sleeping."
"Whatever. Your eyes were closed."
"The hell you want?"
"Peace and Love."
*
Dusky slats of light fell from French Colonial shutters across Nuyen's belly, guiding his hands and then, slowly, his lips. She had bleached her hair platinum. The thatch excited him. Her inspiration came from either a Japanese art film or a whore she had seen in Saigon. Either way, he didn't care. She rolled over upon her breasts and began to croon his favorite song. By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising--
"Play with me," she commanded.
Macomber stroked his guitar and it sang. Just like Glen Campbell.
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