The Human Stain

But he can smell the smoke and he knows it's coming from the second story and he knows the kids are in there. He knows his wife, stupid bitch cunt, isn't going to do anything because she's in the truck blowing the carpenter. He runs right by them. He doesn't know where he is now, forgets where he is, all he knows is that he's got to get in there and up the stairs, and so he bashes in the side door and he's running up to where the fire is, and that's when he sees the kids on the stairs, huddled there at the top of the stairs, and they're gasping, and that's when he picks them up. They're crumpled together on the stairs and he picks them up and tears out the door. They're alive, he's sure. He doesn't think there's a chance that they're not alive. He just thinks they're scared. Then he looks up and who does he see outside the door, standing there looking, but the carpenter. That's when he lost it. Didn't know what he was doing.

That's when he went straight for his throat. Started choking him, and that bitch, instead of going to the kids, worries about him choking the fucking boyfriend. Fucking bitch worries about him killing her boyfriend instead of about her own goddamn kids. And they would have made it. That's why they died. Because she didn't give two shits about the kids. She never did. They weren't dead when he picked them up. They were warm. He knows what dead is.

Two tours in Vietnam you're not going to tell him what dead is. He can smell death when he needs to. He can taste death. He knows what death is. They—were—not—dead. It was the boyfriend who was going to be fucking dead, until the police, in cahoots with the government, came with their guns, and that's when they put him away. The bitch kills the kids, it's her neglect, and they put him away. Jesus Christ, let me be right for a minute! The bitch wasn't paying attention! She never does. Like when he had the hunch they were headed for an ambush. Couldn't say why but he knew they were being set up, and nobody believed him, and he was right.

Some new dumb officer comes into the company, won't listen to him, and that's how people get killed. That's how people get burned to hell! That's how assholes cause the death of your two best buddies!

They don't listen to him! They don't give him credit! He came back alive, didn't he? He came back with all his limbs, he came back with his dick—you know what that took? But she won't listen!

Never! She turned her back on him and she turned her back on his kids. He's just a crazy Vietnam vet. But he knows things, goddamnit.

And she knows nothing. But do they put away the stupid bitch?

They put him away. They shoot him up with stuff. Again they put him in restraints, and they won't let him out of the Northampton VA. And all he did was what they had trained him to do: you see the enemy, you kill the enemy. They train you for a year, then they try to kill you for a year, and when you're just doing what they trained you to do, that is when they fucking put the leather restraints on you and shoot you full of shit. He did what they were training him to do, and while he was doing that, his fucking wife is turning her back on his kids. He should have killed them all when he could.

Him especially. The boyfriend. He should have cut their fucking heads off. He doesn't know why he didn't. Better not come fucking near him. If he knows where the fucking boyfriend is, he'll kill him so fast he won't know what hit him, and they won't know he did it because he knows how to do it so no one can hear it. Because that's what the government trained him to do. He is a trained killer thanks to the government of the United States. He did his job. He did what he was told to do. And this is how he fucking gets treated?

They get him down in the lockup ward, they put him in the bubble, they send him to the fucking bubble! And they won't even cut him a check. For all this he gets fucking twenty percent. Twenty percent.

He put his whole family through hell for twenty percent. And even for that he has to grovel. "So, tell me what happened," they say, the little social workers, the little psychologists with their college degrees.