Mile Zero (27 page)

“What’s up with you, bubba?” Bubba-Bob quickly released his grip on Brogan’s shoulder. “Who in hell is spookin what?”

“MK.” Angelica whispered the initials as if expecting to be arrested for simply uttering them. “Brogan’s in one of those MK moods again, off about his brother.”

“Well I’m not St. Cloud.” Bubba-Bob sucked sullenly at his rum, disturbed the current of conversation had moved off comic blowfish. “I don’t want to sit around till dawn like St. Cloud listening to this crap. I know MK. I’ve worked for MK. Half the guys in the Keys have worked for MK. What the hell is MK to me? Doesn’t scare me. I’m not Karl Dean.” Bubba-Bob finished off his rum and smacked his lips. “Blowfish. Now that’s funny.”

“How about one on the house?” Angelica had the rum flowing into Bubba-Bob’s glass before he could answer. She wanted to change the subject, the whole thing made her nervous, it wasn’t her business. She sympathized with the boys whose business it was, but she wanted no part of it. Karl Dean was dead and that was that. Hard to figure who was right and who was wrong in these matters, really made no difference in the end. Something got done or it didn’t. Someone lived or died, seemed to make no difference since things continued on as
before. Things unlearned were as good as untaught. “Why don’t you tell me what’s so funny about blowfish?” Angelica dabbed her bar rag at a trickle of rum left in the corner of Bubba-Bob’s mouth after he belted down her latest offering.

Brogan ignored Angelica’s attempt to spring him from his complex circles of thought. “MK says there are only two things in life you need to learn. First, how to get along with people. Second, how to get around them. Did I ever tell you how MK got his name?”

“Thousand fucking times you’ve told me!” Bubba-Bob shouted in Brogan’s face. “I hear it one more time I’m going to bash—”

“Good. I’ll tell you again.” Brogan assumed the air of a man pursuing a meandering trail with no guideposts to offer a way out. “In the jungle there are trails where the hunter has not been, traps are waiting to be sprung. No matter what politics a man carries in his heart, the reality of all revolutions advertises one true message:
This bullet is for you
. In the jungle of Vietnam MK forgot what he looked like, forgot where he came from, from a youth filled to the horizon with broad fields far as the eye could see, a straightforward youth, uncomplicated, unlike the jungle that transformed him, a jungle screaming green with intrigue of life’s highest inevitability, death. MK was balanced in the Vietnam jungle at first because he came from the flat, cold land of Minnesota. In the beginning he weighed events with the clear eye of an idealist. This blinded him to the jungle’s natural conspiracy, discarded him in the cleavage of evil and good as his comrades’ bodies were bagged in rubber sacks, sent away home to be counted, then covered up with dirt. MK waited in the green hell with the living. The living would say to each other every day: You gonna get outta this jungle, man, freedom bird’s a’comin, freedom bird’s gonna fly you way home. When the freedom bird came it most often was not a great bellied troop transport plane like MK was brought to the jungle in, but a commercial flight routed through Thailand or Singapore to pick up tourists and businessmen. MK was ordered to dress in his civvies for his freedom bird flight home through Singapore, he was not supposed to look like what he was. Even in civvies MK reeked of jungle rot, he could not scrub it from his skin. He would get up and scrub himself with soap every fifteen minutes on the plane. He knew he stank to the other passengers. When MK’s freedom bird left Vietnam the United States was a country still counting its daily toll from the jungle. When MK landed in Hawaii, they were still counting. When he landed in San Francisco, they were still counting.
He kept heading east, through numbers adding up bodies, two hundred of them killed today, twenty of us, numb numbers adding up to spiritual novocaine. When he reached Minneapolis MK knew it was impossible to return to the beginning of the flat fields far as the eye could see. He no longer knew what the fields held, who might be waiting for him there, what traps. He knew only where the jungle was, it had become his true center.
MK
, the initials marked the end to his life. He flew across the United States to get as far from the flat fields as he could, but when he got off the plane they were still counting, and he was questioned immediately about the initials at the airport. The smell of the jungle was on him in the airport, he could not scrub it off, everyone knew, so he stood by himself, far from the plane’s passengers crowded around a spinning baggage carousel. Finally, the jostling was finished, the crowd gone, only his leather luggage was left on the stopped carousel, each of his bags identified with tags stamped
MK
. A woman approached. She was the age MK was then, twenty-two. MK was light-years from the woman, he was stuck between jungles, he was ancient and stank. She was encased in a crisp uniform, airport personnel, a smile of forgiving authority softened her lips. This was someone MK would have married had he stayed on after high school in the far flat land where roads and lives were straight as arrows. She would have been the wife who birthed twins if he had not gone to the jungle, her crisp body in his arms would have cried out with longing on her lips, unaware he had been nowhere and did not stink, whispering she could not live without him, their souls flying swift as arrows toward a ripe old age across the flat fields. ‘Sir, is that your luggage?’ The words of the woman in uniform interrupted MK’s thoughts of what might have been, her words filled the void where whisperings of eternal love might have been, had she greeted him as her long-lost hero husband who did not stink. ‘Yes,’ MK answered. ‘It’s mine.’ ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to claim it then.’ Her smile became more forgiving. MK moved toward the carousel to claim what was his. The leather luggage was still supple and new, still animal pungent. He had bought it on his way through Singapore, chose it specially, the harder you are, the softer your luggage. He pulled the bags carefully from the carousel and handed over his claim tickets. ‘I was in Vietnam.’ The words came from him of their own accord, flinging from the tip of his tongue in a bursting existence of their own, like clouds of smoke lifting from burning bodies he left behind in the jungle, bodies quickly dead from automatic
rifle fire, strewn in mud between thatched huts, the acrid reek of an exploded phosphorus grenade he tossed on them stinging his nostrils, orange flames becoming white clouds, changing shapes until escaping into thin air, but not before imprinting an indelible mark on the earthbound. MK expected the woman to turn away from his stench. She gave him a brief smile, unaware his telling her he was in Vietnam was not a confession but a declaration, unaware she could have been the mother of his children, unaware there was something dangerous and unseen in him, unaware he was offering her his exploding heart on a platter. She raised her fingers absentmindedly to the
DEBBIE
stamped into an enameled nameplate pinned above her right breast. Her eyes went to the luggage, not in search of explanation, but friendly diversion. ‘That’s beautiful leather. What does the
MK
on the tags stand for?’ MK had wanted the initials to travel with him back from the jungle, marked on everything he owned, so those who paid to make him what he was by disowning his actions would see his brand everywhere, yet not know the assassin was among them. When he first came to the jungle from the flat land his body was so cool and collected his finger held remarkably true on a rifle trigger, so they put him across the border from where the war officially was, masked with a tar-black face and black canvas pajamas, dressed to kill smooth shaven-headed men in saffron-colored robes, and he did. He did not officially exist, there was to be no killing in the part of the jungle he preyed in, for no one there had declared war on him or his country. He was an invisible man regarded with fear and suspicion by regular soldiers who fought the irregular war, soldiers who knew not to ask him the number of enemy killed, for he employed his skills where there was no declared enemy. The regular soldiers noticed ribbons and medals of battle stretched across the chest of his uniform when he was on leave in Saigon, so inquired, ‘How many monkeys did you bag over there?’ His team of surreptitious travelers was known as Monkey Killers. The euphemism accumulated in time an eerie reality, the team thought of themselves as killers of animals, not village leaders and religious elders. Each man of the team sang a private song silently as his rifle stock butted into his shoulder, spraying a metallic clap of bullets to dance and riddle through saffron robes. MK could not get his song out of his mind, its chorus chanted over and over as he saw men fall before him:
Hellooo I looove yooou, woon’t yooou tell me yooour name?
Orange robes going red. MK did not know the past of the men he aimed true at, simply that their names were
cleared from command above to be eradicated, names indicated on aerial topo maps as targets located in villages and towns. Fewer monkeys for the jungle to feed. A monkey doesn’t need a weapon to become a guerrilla, intentions precede weapons. A Monkey Killer forgets which side of the border he is on, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, makes no difference, no longer matters, the borders of countries, patriotism and demonism erased. The Monkey Killers were good soldiers, skilled hunters. A good soldier did not think beyond the thick leeches sucking at his neck, explosive trip wires at his booted feet, flash of sniper fire in the leaves. To the skilled hunter, the man marching directly before and after him marked his orbit, defined his final purpose. MK heard Debbie’s words coming through the tangled jungle of his mind: ‘You boys from Nam sure got a strange sense of humor.’ Debbie was standing before him with the smile of forgiveness on her lips, but MK was still in the steaming jungle, he didn’t understand, he looked for a way out, he asked her guidance. ‘What? What strange sense of humor?’ Debbie’s lips kept up their smile. ‘I asked what’s the
MK
stand for and you said Monkey Killer. You guys pick up strange nicknames over there.’ MK was no longer in the jungle, but he could not declare to those who made him the assassin what his purpose was as he moved among them. Intentions precede actions, invisibility needs no name, a simple initial is more than enough. At the far end of the airport’s subterranean carpeted tunnel a neon sign pointed the way:
ALL TRANSPORTATION TO DOWNTOWN MIAMI
. MK heard himself saying to Debbie, ‘No no, you misunderstood. I didn’t say Monkey Killer, I said Miami. Yes, the initials stand for Miami Kid.’ Debbie handed back the claim tickets to MK’s bags, her lips offering all the sympathy of a war widow. ‘Welcome home, Kid.’ ”

The moment Brogan stopped talking Angelica jumped in, hoping to head Bubba-Bob off before he said something stupid. “That’s still about the saddest story I ever heard. How about a drink on the house for your brother?”

“Sad!” Bubba-Bob bawled. “You call that shit sad. MK was a goddamn assassin. Whatever he’s got coming he’s got coming.”

“It all happened a million years ago,” Brogan continued, oblivious to the conversation around him. “Now MK’s down in Central America with all the rats running around without heads.”

“MK’s one of the rats!” Bubba-Bob shouted at Brogan, trying to break through. “MK’s been running without a head since Nam.”

“I think it was that perfect girl MK found in Bangkok while on R and R the first time, she changed him.”

“Oh, her again.” Angelica had overheard Brogan telling St. Cloud about a perfect girl in Bangkok. Months would go by while Brogan slipped around in drunken vexation over MK, fragments of information about the perfect girl would appear solid as iceberg tips in his scattered conversations, then melt in the random flow of disconnected thoughts. Angelica knew Brogan received detailed letters from his brother which arrived infrequently, bound by thick twine over brown wrappers with Central American postmarks. Angelica had never read these letters kept locked in a metal chest at the foot of Brogan’s bed. Brogan opened the chest frequently to withdraw substantial rocks of cocaine, exposing the stacked letters, hundreds of well-worn pages which seemed to add up to a book. Angelica thought Brogan trusted her because she never asked about the letters. Sometimes she had the strange idea Brogan wrote the letters and mailed them to himself, for Brogan in other matters was open with her about where he had been and what he was. Brogan had been all over Central and South America, what he was was a little bit of everything. From what Angelica knew Brogan was mostly a gung-ho spun-out Spook who wearied of working for bullets and beans and finally dumped the racket. What Angelica responded to was Brogan’s vision of the world as a sublime heaven or horrific hell. Angelica loved men who interpreted life in black and white. Brogan always seemed visibly agitated by the two choices, on the verge of choosing one, afraid if he didn’t the other would disappear. Brogan told her MK taught him a genius has no moral or monetary debts. Brogan said he had debts because he liked gold, hard currency was his mistress. Cocaine was powder disappearing up the nose of time, paper money could blow away in any political storm, but hard treasure sunk to sea bottom rewarded the man with stamina to find it. Brogan told her he had seen the hurricane of the future in Latin America, it was blowing across the Caribbean to the United States, touching Key West, soon to reach the mainland. Cocaine was the future’s first cloud portending cataclysmic change. Brogan had read the barometer of change, considered himself a dedicated cynic on an island of disbelievers. He had paid his dues in his own share of assassination plots in Marijuana Republics and Cocaine Dictatorships, offered his all-American assets to countries at war with themselves, raising a crop of misery where terror reigned supreme, it turned a hard man harder. Brogan’s history was not a
political parable, only a shortcut to discovery that a smart man bypasses the business of making paper money for the business of finding hard currency other men have lost. This knowledge had its own cost, its consequence placed Brogan in debt, unlike his brother MK, who was a genius.