The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

physically (e.g., sleeplessness, nightmares, inability to concentrate, anxiety, depression, uncontrollable rages, suicidal thoughts, drug abuse).” 
    It took us six hours and six tapes. 
    We finished after dark. 
     
    I did what I was supposed to do. I hung around Golf Team. There were six guys, this lieutenant named Pagano, who was in charge, and this demo sergeant named Christabel, who was their “talent.” He was, I found out, an “OBE clairvoyant with EEG anomalies,” which meant that in a firefight he could leave his body just like Steve could. He could leave his body, look back at himself—that’s what it felt like—and see how everyone else was doing and maybe save someone’s ass. They were a good team. They hadn’t lost anybody yet, and they loved to tease this sergeant every chance they got. 
    We talked about Saigon and what you could get on the black market. We talked about missions, even though we weren’t supposed to. The three guys from the slick even got me to talk about the dreams, I was feeling that good, and when I heard they were going out on another mission at 0300 hours the next morning, without the sergeant—some little mission they didn’t need him on—I didn’t think anything about it. 
    I woke up in my bunker that night screaming because two of the guys from the slick were dead. I saw them dying out in the jungle, I saw how they died, and suddenly I knew what it was all about, why Bucannon wanted me here. 
    He came by the bunker at first light. I was still crying. He knelt down beside me and put his hand on my forehead. He made his voice gentle. He said, “What was your dream about, Mary?” 
    I wouldn’t tell him. “You’ve got to call them back,” I said. 
    “I can’t, Mary,” he said. “We’ve lost contact.” 
    He was lying I found out later: he could have called them back—no one was dead yet—but I didn’t know that then. So I went ahead and told him about the two I’d dreamed about, the one from Mississippi and the one who’d thought I was a Donut Dolly. He took notes. I was a mess, crying and sweaty, and he pushed the hair away from my forehead and said he would do what he could. 
    I didn’t want him to touch me, but I didn’t stop him. I didn’t stop him. 
    I didn’t leave the bunker for a long time. I couldn’t. 
     
    No one told me the two guys were dead. No one had to. It was the right kind of dream, just like before. But this time I’d known them. I’d met them. I’d laughed with them in the daylight and when they died I wasn’t there, it wasn’t on some gurney in a room somewhere. It was different. 
    It was starting up again, I told myself. 
    I didn’t get out of the cot until noon. I was thinking about needles, that was all. 
     
    He comes by again at about 1900 hours, just walks in and says, “Why don’t you have some dinner, Mary. You must be hungry.” 
    I go to the mess they’ve thrown together in one of the big bunkers. I think the guys are going to know about the screaming, but all they do is look at me like I’m the only woman in the camp, that’s all, and that’s okay. 
    Suddenly I see Steve. He’s sitting with three other guys and I get this feeling he doesn’t want to see me, that if he did he’d have come looking for me already, and I should turn around and leave. But one of the guys is saying something to him and Steve is turning and I know I’m wrong. He’s been waiting for me. He’s wearing cammies and they’re dirty—he hasn’t been back long—and I can tell by the way he gets up and comes toward me he wants to see me. 
    We go outside and stand where no one can hear us. He says, “Jesus, I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what he means. 
    “Are you okay?” I say, but he doesn’t answer. 
    He’s saying, “I wasn’t the one who told him about the dreams, Mary, I swear it. All I did was ask for a couple hours layover to see you, but he doesn’t like that—he doesn’t like ‘variables.’ When