"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

pitiful and he's terrified. Cowboy is paralyzed by the shock that is setting
in and by the helplessness. I hardly know him. I remember the first time I
saw Cowboy, on Parris Island, laughing, beating his Stetson on his thigh.
I look at him. He looks at the grease gun. He calls out: "I NEVER LIKED
YOU, JOKER. I NEVER THOUGHT YOU WERE FUNNY-"
Bang. I sight down the short metal tube and I watch my bullet enter
Cowboy's left eye. My bullet passes through his eye socket, punches through
fluid-filled sinus cavities, through membranes, nerves, arteries, muscle
tissue, through the tiny blood vessels that feed three pounds of gray
butter-soft high protein meat where brain cells arranged like jewels in a
clock hold every thought and memory and dream of one adult male Homo
sapiens.
My bullet exits through the occipital bone, knocks out hairy, brain-wet
clods of jagged meat, then buries itself in the roots of a tree.
Silence. Animal Mother lowers his M-60.
Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Harris, and the other
guys in the squad do not speak. Everyone relaxes, glad to be alive. Everyone
hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my
men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me
again; I'll be invisible.
"Saddle up," I say, and the squad responds. Packs are hefted up. The
flap and rattle of equipment. A grunt, a growl, and the Lusthog Squad is
ready to move.
I study their faces. Then I say, "Man-oh-man, Cowboy looks like a bag
of leftovers from a V.F.W. barbecue. Of course, I've got nothing against
dead people. Why, some of my best friends are dead!"
Silence. They all look at me. I have never felt so alive.
Semper Fi, Mom and Dad, Semper Fi, my werewolf children. Payback is a
motherfucker.
They shift their gear to more comfortable positions.
They wait for an order. I pick up Cowboy's muddy Stetson.
I wave my hand and the squad moves out, moves back down the trail.
Nobody talks. We're all too tired to talk, to joke, to call each other
names. The day has been too hot, the hump too long. We've shot up our share
of Victor Charlie jungle plants and we are wasted.
We wrap ourselves in pastel fantasies of varied designs and "X" another
day off our short-timer's calendars. We look forward to imaginary bennies:
hot showers, cold beer, a fix of Coke (because things go better with Coke),
juicy steaks, mail from hone, and a moment of privacy in which to massage
our wands, inspired by fading photographs of loving wives and girlfriends
back in the World.
The showers will be cold, the beer, if there is any, will be hot. No
steak. No Cokes. The mail, if there is any, will not be from sweethearts.
The mail from hometown America, like the half dozen letters I carry unopened
in my rucksack, will say: Write more often be careful if you think it's
tough there bought this used car what a report card mother is taking shots
nothing good on TV don't write depressing letters so maybe send me fifty
bucks new furniture in the dining room for a ring quick buddy she's pregnant
be real careful write more often and so on and so on until you feel like you
just got a Dear John letter from the whole damned world.