CHAPTER 5

 MONSTER, GRINNING FROM THE cockpit, pulled into the driveway.  The sheriff sprung the front boot, and Jan threw in his bag and computer.  Jan climbed into the Porsche and snapped his shoulder harness and seat belt, again wondering at the ample interior.  There was plenty of legroom for Monster to fit—if not easily—at least comfortably.

“You never told me how a tinhorn sheriff drives an $80,000 toy,” Jan said.

“I bought Microsoft stock in March of ‘86 and sold it before the tech crash.”

“Oh yeah?  I heard you confiscated a panel truck loaded with coke.”

“Well, that could be true, too.  But, funny thing, no one ever pressed me on that.”

“No kidding?  By the way, how fast will this thing go?”

“It’s spec’d at 174.  I put her at 150 on the 310 north of Greybull.”

“Let’s not do that today.”

“Not unless Hansen’s hit squad is on our tail,” Monster grinned.

“You mean you’d outrun them?  I thought you’d just pull over, rip the hood off their Jeep and beat them to death with it.”

“See, that’s the trouble with legends.  What I’d really do is get a two-mile lead on them, pull over and blow their wheels off as they went by.  By the way, we have plenty of time; I need to stop at the office on our way through town.”

“You’re the driver.  I’m in good hands.  And…thanks for this,” Jan said as he settled back into the seat for the ride through Basin and then on to Billings to catch his flight to see Deck Edwards in Seattle.

“No problem, boy.  I don’t want to have you on my conscience, that’s all.  If the Hansen disciples are watching you—and I think they are—I don’t want you on that lonely stretch of 310 with nothing but wild mustangs between you and the bad guys.”

They drove in silence until they hit Orchard Bench Road.  Monster broke the ice.  “How’s your love life, boy?”

“John, I have no love life.  I have no interest in a love life, I…”

“OK, OK, I’m out of line.”

“I know you worry about me.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.  And it’s none of my business.”

“You know, John, right now I have bigger things to worry about.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?  I worry all the time, but I try not to let it affect my love life.”

Jan chewed his lip and then cleared his throat.  “John, you ever been afraid of anything?  I mean really afraid?”

“Sure, lots of stuff.  Afraid I’ll wake up some morning and my masculine charm will have disappeared.”

“No, come on.  Everybody walks in fear of you.  Even Hansen, I suppose.  But, you, what do you fear?”

“I’ve been scared.”

“When?”

“Vietnam.”

“Well, sure…”

The sheriff was quiet, and then said, “Want to hear a story about Monster’s fear?”

“Sure.”

Monster was in a pensive mode, something Jan had never seen.

 “I arrived in ‘Nam in March of 1966,” Monster said.  “You missed all the fun.”

“Yeah,” Jan said, “I enlisted in the Navy in 1959.  I never thought of myself as a Vietnam vet.”

“No shame in that.  If I’d been smarter I would have enlisted before I went to college, like you did.  By postponing college, you wound up missing the war.  The luck of the draw.”

“Yeah,” Jan said, “the Navy actually took me at the end of my junior year of high school.  They sent me to electronics school and gave me a chance to grow up.  I didn’t go to college until 1969.  I was a late bloomer.”

Monster paused as if to consider that.

“Well, in May of ’66 the largest battle of the war to that date broke out near Dong Ha.  Most of the 3^rd Marine Division, 5,000 men—boys I should say—headed north in five battalions.  We backed up the South Vietnamese in Operation Hastings.  Along with the Army and a flotilla of Navy warships shelling from offshore—not to mention naval air power—we drove the North Vietnamese Army over the so-called DMZ in three weeks.  Some Washington genius called it a victory.

“At any rate, I hadn’t been in ‘Nam long, and I was on patrol in that stinking jungle.  I took the midwatch while my platoon was hunkered down for the night.  I’m green as grass and scared to death.  About 2:00 a.m. it’s real quiet.  Hot and wet and…anyway…”

Monster was silent.  Jan looked at him.

“You all right, John?”

“Anyway, like I’m saying, I been on watch for two hours.  The night was still as a San Francisco bath house at noon.  Suddenly this gook surfaces about six feet in front of me.  Little kid, sixteen or seventeen years old.  With a huge AK-47.  I mean, it was as big as he was.”

“My God!”  Jan couldn’t help himself.

“We both freeze.  My mouth hanging open, his eyes the size of coffee cups.  We stare at each other for twenty seconds, both of us afraid to move.  We just stare at each other.  Pretty soon he starts backing away.  Keeps staring at me.  Just backs out of my vision.

“Now I’m really screwed up in my head.  I don’t know if he is going to open up on me.  I wonder should I start whanging away at him.  So what do I do?  Nothing.  I did nothing!  I sat there sweating and shaking.  I shoulda woke the lieutenant.  I did nothing.”

“What happened?”

Monster’s knuckles were white on the wheel, but his face had turned crimson.  My God, he’s gonna have a heart attack.  “What happened, John?”

Sweat was rolling down Monster’s cheeks.  When he spoke his voice was soft, barely audible over the engine and road noise.

“About twenty minutes later we receive incoming mortar fire.  The little slope went back to his platoon and spotted us for the mortars.  They started pounding us.  I should have known that.  I did know that, but I couldn’t think.  I couldn’t move.”

“Well, John, who could have?”

“We lost two men from our platoon in that raid.”

“John…”

Silence.

“Yeah, boy, I’ve been scared.  Like you are now.  Wasn’t the worst thing I encountered, though.”

Jan could see Monster wanted to talk.  He wondered if he had ever told anyone this before.  Monster looked over at him.

“Wanna know why I’m telling you this?”

“Because you empathize with my fears?” Jan said, attempting to lighten the conversation.

Monster chuckled softly.  “No, boy, because I know you can keep a confidence.”

“Thanks, John.”

“The one story I have never told anybody, but I think about it every day of my life—my rotten, useless life.”

Monster took a deep breath.  “OK, so I was doing chicken coop cleanup.  You know—going through a Vietcong village, checking out their pathetic little huts.  ‘Course all the Vietcong had tunneled halfway to hell before we hit the village.  It was always that way.  Except this one day.”

Silence again.  Jan wondered why John was saying this today, after holding it inside for more than thirty years.

“This one day I’m screaming through a village, kicking in doors, terrorizing the women and old men and kids.  I go through this one door and, no kidding; here is a young kid with another AK-47.  For a minute, I thought it was the same kid.  Anyway, he has this piece pointed at me.  He looks like he just woke up or something.  Then he throws it on the floor of the hut.”  Monster paused.

“He throws the gun down…”  Monster’s teeth clenched as though he was forcing himself to continue talking.  Jan started to interrupt him, but Monster waved him off.

“He throws the gun down…and I…and I shoot him.”  He sighed.  “I shoot him about eight times in the chest.  He’s younger than I am and just as scared.”  Monster paused, shook his head. “Maybe he was the lucky one.  Anyway, try living with that for thirty years, boy.”

Jan was silent for a while.  Then he said, “So are you doing penance now by chasing bad guys—by being in law enforcement?”

Monster knit his brows.  He drew a deep breath through his nose.

“Not so much that.  More like trying to balance the world’s karma, rather than my own.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.  I’m sure it’s all jacked-up irrationality. But it goes something like this.  See, I took a young innocent off the planet, so how can I allow Ronald Hansen to walk around?”

Jan whistled.  “And you accuse me of philosophical speculation!”

Monster laughed.

“Yeah, you’re right.  But let me tell you something else, let me give you something just for you.”

“OK.”

“You are determined that you want to get involved in all this, that you want to get Hansen?”

“It’s about Emma.”

“I mean no disrespect, but we both know that is not true.  It’s about you.  It’s about your failure to protect her, your guilt.”

“Well…”

“But let me give you a warning.  If you can, turn back from this.  Turn back now.  But if you can’t, and you do the deed with Hansen, you will have crossed the Jordan—only backwards.”

Jan felt his stomach tighten.  Crossed.  He wondered where Monster came up with the biblical allusion: the children of Israel crossing the river Jordan after forty years in the desert, crossing into the Promised Land.  Monster was full of surprises.

“What to you mean backwards?”

Monster smiled at him.

“What you mean, I suppose, is that by killing Hansen I will be forced out of the Promised Land to wander the desert?”

“Bingo, tomadachi!”

“Yeah?  There’s only one problem with your analogy.”

“OK…” Monster strung the word out.

“Yeah, John.  That’s because I’m not in the Promised Land right now, I’m in hell.  So why should I be afraid of the desert?”

Monster shook his head and chuckled.

“Wow!  Double bingo.  On second thought, I think you will make a fine killer.”

Monster looked at Jan.  He was laughing out loud now.

“Welcome, buddy,” the sheriff said.  “Welcome!  You have discovered the great secret.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“There is no promised land!  There’s only hell!”

Monster was laughing so hard now that tears came to his eyes.

Jan sat silent for some minutes.  Then he said, “John, sometimes you scare me.”