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Recon-Intelligence platoon, working with mostly a bunch of ARVNs. You know what I mean? South Vietnamese, supposedly the good guys. One of my jobs was to interrogate prisoners they’d bring in and then recommend their disposition.”
    “Meaning how to dispose of them?”
    “Meaning what to do with them. Let ’em go, send ’em back to Brigade . . . but that’s not what I’m talking about. Well, it is and it isn’t.”
    There was a silence. Chris tried to think of the right words, ways to begin. One sunny day I was sitting in the R and I hootch at Khiem Hanh . . . .
    “The day I’m talking about, I was sent out to question a guy the ARVNs believed was working for the Vietcong. An informer with a sack over his head had fingered the guy and they pulled him out of his village. I got there, they have this old man standing barefoot on a grenade with the pin pulled, his toes curled around to hold the lever in place and his hands tied behind his back. I never saw anybody so scared in my life. They have him behind a mud wall that used to be part of a house, in case his foot slipped off and the grenade blew. I had to talk to the guy across the wall with my interpreter hunched down behind it; he refused to stand up.The rest of them, the ARVNs, they’re off about thirty meters or so having a smoke. Anyway, I ask the old guy a few questions. He doesn’t know anything about the VC, he’s a farmer. He’s crying, he’s shaking he’s so scared, trying to keep his foot on the grenade. He can’t even name his own kids. I tell the ARVNs the guy’s
clean, come on put the pin back in and let him go. By the time I cut him loose I look up, the fucking ARVNs are walking off, going home. I go after ’em partway, I’m yelling, ‘Where’s the goddamn pin? ’ They don’t know. They point, it’s over there somewhere, on the ground. I yell some more. ‘Well, help me find the goddamn thing. We can’t leave the guy like that.’ One of them says, ‘Tell him to pick it up and throw it away.’ They didn’t care. They walk off laughing, think it’s funny. Some of those guys, they even knew the old man. They knew he wasn’t VC, but they didn’t care. They walked away.” Chris paused. Man, just thinking about it . . .
    “I crawled around looking for the pin, finally gave up. The old man’s crying—there was no way he could handle that grenade. The only thing I could think of, have him step off, I’d pick it up quick and throw it. But I couldn’t tell him what I wanted to do, my fucking interpreter was gone. I did try, I went through the motions; but you could see he didn’t understand. The poor guy couldn’t think straight. The only thing I could do was walkup to him, push him aside and grab it. But I had to keep him calm. I walk up to him, I’m going, ‘Don’t worry, Papa. Nothing to get excited about.’ I’m about as far as that door from him he can’t do it anymore. He comes running at me, lunges and grabs hold, and in the five seconds we had I couldn’t get the guy off me. I could not get him off. I tried to drag him out of there. . . .” Chris stared at the doctor’s diploma hanging on the bare institutional wall.
    “The grenade blew with the old man hanging onto me. It killed him and tore up both of my legs. I was in-country fifteen weeks and out of the army.”
    There was a long silence followed by faint sounds, the serious young doctor tapping his ballpoint pen on the desk, clearing his throat.
    “As you approached the old man, Sergeant Mankowski, were you aware of being afraid?”
    “Was I afraid? Of course I was afraid, I was scared to death.”
    “All right, but you also felt, I believe, a deep hostility toward the ARVN soldiers.”
    I have to get out of here, Chris thought.
    “So that, in effect, it was your intense anger that enabled you to overcome your fear.”
    “That must’ve been it,” Chris said, “my hostility.”
    “But now, in comparable high-risk situations, your fear is no