Lumber Yard

Chapter Three I carried an M-60 in Vietnam. Big, heavy, bulky gun, course I'm a big, bulky guy. I loved having that thing by my side though. I stay down low, set up on the ground, bullet's echoing whizzzs by my head, my buddy Tanner would drop next to me, load her up and I'd just shoot away. I remember the little gooks, they were like little weasels, they'd pop up, then disappear, then pop up ten yards closer, up down, up down. I'd wait, shoot a couple tracers over their heads now and then to let am know I was still there, then when they'd be just about on us I'd lay it down back and fourth, scatter their little asses; that's why they called it the 'saw'. It was a beautiful gun. I remember the sping of '68, one of the gnarliest fuckin' days I ever had. We were pinned up in the corner of this hillside, cliff line on one side, heavy wet jungle on the other, a small rice patty just below in front of it. It was full of lurkin' VC. They knew we were pinned, fuckers, they knew that jungle like the back of their little penises. I was high up, and the VC like ants, moved slow in the muddy patty below. I could take down two at a time as I shot across. There were just so many though, just kept coming, as if from some giant ant hole in the ground somewhere. They had little cover when they made it into that patty, and I'd been shooting so much that the metal glowed red metal hot, steam rising as the heavy rain drops disintegrated into steam in my face. We'd have to wait to reload it, gun metal so hot pieces of it would chip away in steaming orange chunks (I'd seen fuckers ruin a gun in a day of shooting without lettin' it cool). Before I knew it there were five or six just over the hump from me, popped up just like that yelling their war cry, guns shooting from hips. Tanner slammed that top down over the heavy brass just in time, and I rang the saw across their bodies, their stringy intestines red blood splattered into the wet trees and bushes, the top halves of their bodies falling one way, the bottom halves the other. Now days, every now and then, I might be watching TV, and out of nowhere the echoes of VC guns rings in my ears, 'Get down, get down,' I scream, dropping on the floor, 'Load it Tan, Load that shit...' then, 'BAM, BAM, BAM' I yell, the gun shots echoing loud in my skull, my wife and three kids looking on.