Free Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

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    Pitchfork said, “In that war, I knew precisely who to hate. We were the guerrillas. We were the Huks. And that’s who we need to be to beat the bastards in Vietnam. Lansdale proves it, if you ask me. We need to be the guerrillas.”
    “I’ll tell you who I think we need to be,” the colonel said. “I’ll tell you what Ed Lansdale’s learned to become: aswang. That’s what Ed Lansdale is. Aswang. Yes. I’m going to take two breaths, get sober, and tell you.” He did draw a breath, but cut it short to tell Pitchfork, “No, no—don’t go hollering hear, hear.”
    Eddie shouted. “Hear, hear!”
    “All right, this is my aswang story: In the hills there above Angeles, up there above Clark Air Base, Lansdale had the Filipino commandos he worked with kidnap two Huk guerrillas right off one of their patrols, took the two boys at the tail end of the group. Strangled them, strung them up by the legs, drained the blood out of each one”—the colonel put two fingers to his own neck—“through two punctures in the jugular. Left the corpses on the path for the comrades to find the next day. Which they did…And the day after that, the Huks cleared out of there entirely.”
    “Hear, hear!” said Pitchfork.
    “Now. Just let’s consider for a minute,” the colonel suggested. “Didn’t these Huks live in the shadow of death anyhow? Lansdale and his strike force were killing them off in small engagements at the rate of half a dozen per month, let’s say. If the threat of their daily pursuers couldn’t impress them, what was it about the death of these two boys that ran them out of Angeles?”
    “Well, it’s superstitious fear. Fear of the unknown,” Eddie said.
    “Unknown what? I say we look at it in terms we can utilize,” the colonel said. “I say they found themselves engaged at the level of myth. War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter. I think we need to be much more conscious of that. I think we need to be invoking the other fellow’s gods too. And his devils, his aswang. He’s more scared of his gods and his devils and his aswang than he’ll ever be of us.”
    “I think that’s your cue to say, ‘Hear, hear!’” Eddie said to Pitchfork. But Pitchfork only finished his wine.
    “Colonel, did you just come from Saigon?” Eddie asked.
    “Nope. Mindanao. I was down in Davao City. And Zamboanga. And over by this place Damulog, little jungle town—you’ve been there, haven’t you?”
    “A couple of times, yes. To Mindanao.”
    “Damulog?”
    “No. It doesn’t sound familiar.”
    “I’m surprised to hear that,” the colonel said.
    Eddie said, “Why would you be surprised?”
    “When it comes to certain aspects of Mindanao, I was told you were the man to talk to.”
    Eddie said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
    The colonel swiped at Skip’s face with his napkin—“What’s this?”
    Eddie said, “Ah! The first to mention the mustache! Yes, he’s turning himself into Wyatt Earp.” Eddie himself sported one, the young Filipino’s kind, widely spaced black hairs sketching where a mustache might go were one possible.
    “A man with a mustache has to have some special talent,” the colonel said, “a special skill, something to exonerate his vanity. Archery, card tricks, what—”
    “Palindromes,” said Anders Pitchfork.
    Sebastian appeared, with an announcement: “Ice cream for dessert. We must eat it all, or it’s melting without any power.”
    “We?” The colonel said.
    “Perhaps if you don’t finish, we will have to finish in the kitchen.”
    “No dessert for me. I’m feeding my vices,” the colonel said.
    “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Eddie said. “For a minute I forgot what is a palindrome. Palindromes! Yes!”
    The lights came on, the air