The Human Stain

Whatever moves. Death and destruction, that is what door gunning is all about. With the added attraction that you don't have to be down in the jungle the whole time. But then he comes home and it's not better than the first time, it's worse. Not like the guys in World War II: they had the ship, they got to relax, someone took care of them, asked them how they were. There's no transition. One day he's door gunning in Vietnam, seeing choppers explode, in midair seeing his buddies explode, down so low he smells skin cooking, hears the cries, sees whole villages going up in flames, and the next day he's back in the Berkshires. And now he really doesn't belong, and, besides, he's got fears now about things going over his head. He doesn't want to be around other people, he can't laugh or joke, he feels that he is no longer a part of their world, that he has seen and done things so outside what these people know about that he cannot connect to them and they cannot connect to him. They told him he could go home? How could he go home? He doesn't have a helicopter at home. He stays by himself and he drinks, and when he tries the VA they tell him he is just there to get the money while he knows he is there to get the help. Early on, he tried to get government help and all they gave him was some sleeping pills, so fuck the government. Treated him like garbage. You're young, they told him, you'll get over it. So he tries to get over it. Can't deal with the government, so he'll have to do it on his own. Only it isn't easy after two tours to come back and get settled all on his own. He's not calm. He's agitated. He's restless. He's drinking. It doesn't take much to put him into a rage. There are these things going over his head. Still he tries: eventually gets the wife, the home, the kids, the farm. He wants to be alone, but she wants to settle down and farm with him, so he tries to want to settle down too. Stuff he remembers easygoing Les wanting ten, fifteen years back, before Vietnam, he tries to want again. The trouble is, he can't really feel for these folks.

He's sitting in the kitchen and he's eating with them and there's nothing. No way he can go from that to this. Yet still he tries. A couple times in the middle of the night he wakes up choking her, but it isn't his fault—it's the government's fault. The government did that to him. He thought she was the fucking enemy. What did she think he was going to do? She knew he was going to come out of it. He never hurt her and he never hurt the kids. That was all lies. She never cared about anything except herself. He should have known never to let her go off with those kids. She waited until he was in rehab—that was why she wanted to get him into rehab. She said she wanted him to be better so that they could be together again, and instead she used the whole thing against him to get the kids away from him. The bitch. The cunt. She tricked him. He should have known never to let her go off with those kids. It was partly his own fault because he was so drunk and they could get him to rehab by force, but it would have been better if he'd taken them all out when he said he would. Should have killed her, should have killed the kids, and would have if it hadn't been for rehab. And she knew it, knew he'd have killed them like that if she'd ever tried to take them away. He was the father—if anybody was going to raise his kids it was him. If he couldn't take care of them, the kids would be better off dead. She'd had no right to steal his kids. Steals them, then she kills them. The payback for what he did in Vietnam. They all said that at rehab—payback this and payback that, but because everyone said it, didn't make it not so. It was payback, all payback, the death of the kids was payback and the carpenter she was fucking was payback. He didn't know why he hadn't killed him. At first he just smelled the smoke. He was in the bushes down the road watching the two of them in the carpenter's pickup. They were parked in her driveway. She comes downstairs—the apartment she's renting is over a garage back of some bungalow—and she gets in the pickup and there's no light and there's no moon but he knows what's going on. Then he smelled the smoke. The only way he'd survived in Vietnam was that any change, a noise, the smell of an animal, any movement at all in the jungle, and he could detect it before anyone else—alert in the jungle like he was born there.

Couldn't see the smoke, couldn't see the flames, couldn't see anything it was so dark, but all of a sudden he could smell the smoke and these things are flying over his head and he began running.

They see him coming and they think he is going to steal the kids.

They don't know the building is on fire. They think he's gone nuts.