Everything incredibly green. Even the skies could look green in Vietnam. The color of vomit. The color of mold. Vertiginous rot. He shifted his pack. The guy up ahead of him—bare shoulders rippling and gleaming in the heat—had a boil like a burgeoning tomato on his neck. He looked at his feet. His father’d been in Paris in August ’44. He’d liberated seven Parisian virgins. He’d learned how to say “couchez avec moi,” and sometimes he’d whisper it to Catlin’s mother—“couchez avec moi,” and she’d giggle in the kitchen, flushing, hit him with an elbow in the ribs. But that had been, Christ, maybe ten, twelve years ago. Before things had changed. It was ancient history. Like World War Two. Like Liberating Armies and Paris champagne. He wondered, just briefly, what his father would’ve thought, from his high-point in France, of this particular army, this particular platoon that was marching into glory. Hair to their shoulders; headbands ripped out of camouflage parachutes; earrings; beads; transistor radios that dangled like ornaments from bandoliers of ammo that were strapped across roiling bugbitten chests; passing off a lighted joint down the line.
