Free Fatal Light by Richard Currey Page B

boys,” Weldon said from behind closed eyes. “I’ll worry about you.”
    Perelli edged the jeep from the garage and I got in on the passenger side. He drove out of the lot saying, “So anyway they don’t know what the fuck. They open a goddam broom closet, he’s in there lookin’ dead.”

    â€œThat’s it?”
    Perelli said, “You want more?”
    We went in the front door of the barracks, Perelli carrying the aid bag while I pulled the stretcher. The corridor linoleum stroked back to the dim light of a rear exit, a high buffed shine. Nobody in sight. Silence.
    â€œChrist,” Perelli said. He shouted. No answer.
    â€œYou sure you got the right building?” I said.
    â€œOf course I’m goddam sure,” Perelli said.
    He shouted again.
    â€œTake it easy.”
    â€œI am taking it easy.” Perelli said, opening the first door along the corridor. Paper towels, toilet paper, bars of soap.
    Perelli pushed at the next door. A day room, beer and soda cans spread around the floor, overflowing ashtrays, Sports Illustrated and pornography slicks on a Naugahyde sofa. A radio was on, turned low, Saigon Armed Forces programming.
    I opened the next door, not really expecting to see him folded on the floor of the closet with the brooms and mops, blue face and eyes half closed in lethal heroin nod, lower lip bloated and sagging.
    His left arm was still tied off, violet stain at the crook of his elbow, needle on the floor beside his hand.
    Perelli knelt to find a pulse. After a moment he looked up at me. “Nada,” he said.
    We stood together in the doorway. “Shit,” Perelli said, whispering, “where is anybody? ”
    â€œLet’s get him out of here.”
    â€œChrist,” Perelli mumbled, “what is this, a fucking murder? I mean, where’s the guy that called?”
    â€œProbably eating dinner. Let’s just get this guy over to the hospital, Perelli.”
    â€œYeah, off-load him over there, forget this ever happened.” Perelli pulled the body out of the broom closet feet first. The skull thumped against the floor.
    â€œNow he’s got a broken head too,” I said.

    â€œShut the fuck up, will ya?” Perelli looked down at the corpse, and said, “Think we’ll be in trouble for this? Shit, dead junkie, it’s gotta be on our watch. Who is this asshole fucking up my dinner anyway?”
    I looked at Perelli, my hands under the body’s shoulders, and said, “He’s my cousin from Milwaukee and you better give me a little help here.”
    Perelli grabbed the ankles. “You’re a genuine smartass, you know that?”
    We wrestled the weight onto the stretcher, belted the body down. In the corridor we could still hear the low murmur of the radio, the only sound beyond our labored breathing. The corpse’s right arm kept falling as we wheeled toward the door. Finally we let it drag, down the steps, into the back of the jeep.
    We delivered the body to the hospital emergency room loading dock. Two medics in white suits transferred the corpse from our stretcher to theirs, banged through swinging doors, and were gone. Perelli watched the doors, saying, “They’ll probably try to blow him back up in there. Shit for brains in this man’s army.”
    Back at our watch post Perelli slumped into a chair. “Jesus,” he said. “Everybody dies here. Ain’t one fuckin’ thing, it’s another. Everybody buyin’ the farm. You notice that?”
    I glanced at him, then away. “I noticed that,” I said.
    In his office Master Sergeant Weldon was reading the Playboy . “File a report,” he said flatly from behind the centerfold.
    Perelli got up and went into Weldon’s office, sat down in front of the sergeant’s desk, talking to the cover of the magazine. “You hear the latest, Sarge? Dead junkies in broom closets. No shit.”
    The