Page 51 of Shifting Years
***
My hands froze into claws as I dug into cold, wet soil. Images of perfectly cut lawns came to mind—maybe that's where Donna, or was it Stacy, lived.
What did she have? A boy, girl, twins?
***
I won… in a way. The commander had us make sharp bamboo traps to use against our boys on patrol. I made sure they'd break easily. So easy, I heard it backfired on an enemy soldier. Now it's been over one month in a small cage… I think. It couldn't be longer, could it?
***
How much time has passed? They let us have beards or they didn't want to waste time on us. There was something so right about it. Stroking dark 'fur' brought dim memories of a big dog or maybe two, but I don't think I had one.
I don't remember much of anything anymore. What happened?
***
A new prisoner, a thin black kid named Bobby, managed to swipe a pencil. It was too short to use as a weapon, but he was nice enough to draw my big dream dogs on the back of my still-hidden letter from Stacy. He said my description was more of a wolf than a dog but sketched them anyway. He also drew my wife and possible kid, but for some reason,theyand not the giant animals were unbelievable.
***
The camp commander was a tiny, nasty man, thick with muscle and the agility of a housecat. Over the years, he kept me around while other men left… or died. His familiar accented words hissed out. "Turn American." He sniffed and poked my chest with a long, bamboo stick.
"We have news. Our glorious fighters have bombed your San Diego. Millions of your countrymen are dead."
I don't think he expected me to believe it, but the images were in my mind. It was common torture, like sticking me in the box. Sometimes, he'd tell me of fellow soldiers who died, and how Vietnam and the Soviets won.
Did they? Why else would we still be here?
Over the years, I've tried sneaking out, but he always found me… like he was part bloodhound.
He called in more soldiers who poked the ground in our hut. Men got real floors, but we were nothing but animals who slept on dirt. I think I did that before the war, back in America.I don't think it bothered me there.
He pointed at slightly raised soil, and they soon discovered Bobby's drawings, a pencil reduced to a nub, and a caricature of our commander as a short, squat troll.
He shouted foreign orders, and his man dragged Bobby toward the hut's exit. The kid was a soldier but had the look of a child terrified by a monster. My plans never worked; every time I tried, I got shut down. There's one thing I never did.
Act and see what happens. No more planning.
The shortened pencil isn't a great weapon for stabbing combat muscle but works for jabbing a grunt's eyes. Red and white goo blew over my face. If they had guns, I could have grabbed one, but they weren't fools. Men outside were armed, but inside they had knives.
It was Bobby and myself against two Vietcong, but my brother had a commander's knife against his throat. The grunt I fought didn't step toward me, even with a bleeding eye.
"You and me fight," I said in basic Vietnamese I had picked up over the years.
There was no reason for the commander to do it. His underling stared at me with hate, but also at his commanding officer. Barked orders would bring outside guards in. After, we'd be hung by our thumbs, beaten with bamboo again, and this time we wouldn't wake up.
Images came not of my girl, child, red-brick houses, or beating up the commander. Isawmyself with teeth and claws tearing into him, before eating him.
What am I not getting?
"Kill him," I gestured to my friend. "I'm done with threats."
A lie, but it gave us a second's hesitation and an opportunity for Bobby to elbow our enemy in the ribs. It should have taken the wind out of him, but the commander smiled and shoved Bobby so hard heflewacross the hut.
The commander's eyes grew yellow and feline—tiger-like—as he leapt toward me. Before I got captured, I heard of squads finding tigers in the jungle. At least according to my Swiss-cheese memory. Now oneturning into onelay on me, crushing my chest bones.
Memories of a tiny man's voice I barely remembered rang in my head. Something about me always having to plan. Without thought, I picked up a knife human hands could hold, but not a tiger.
