The Man who Burned

Willie Joe yelled at Tom for shooting the man who was on fire.

“What the fuck you want to go and do that for, huh?” Willie Joe waved his arms. The M-16 in his right hand went up and down when he waved his arms. “The fucker was gonna die, Man. What you want to go and shoot him for?”

“He was on fire,” Tom said.

The answer didn’t do anything for Willie Joe’s anger.

“Exactly what I’m talkin about, Man.” Willie Joe got close to Tom’s face. “Why d’you think we called in air support, huh? Why?”

“Because we couldn’t get them out with what we had. Our own fire, I mean.”

“Riight,” Willie Joe said, and his head went up and down in fast nods. “We couldn’t get the motherfuckers out. So we call in air support, they drop napalm, and the gooks fry.”

“He was on fire,” Tom said.

“He was well on his way to being a crispy critter, Man.”

Tom looked across the open space between the rice paddies and to the clump of trees, where there were bunkers and trenches and the black thing lying not fifty meters away. The thing that was the man Tom shot looked like a line drawn in the grass, small and insignificant.

Tom said, “He’s a crispy critter now. What difference does it make, whether I shot him or not?”

Willie Joe got closer to Tom’s face. “The difference is, he was supposed to suffer. The difference is, he’s supposed to be a fuckin example. Anybody fucks with us, he gets fried. He doesn’t get shot, he doesn’t get put out of his misery. He fries.”

Tom looked at the black line. Small wisps of smoke rose from the body. “In New Guinea,” he said, watching the smoke rise and diffuse in the hot air, “they call it long pig.”

Willie Joe was no longer in Tom’s face. “Do what?” he asked. “What you talkin about?”

“People,” Tom said. “People cooked for eating. In New Guinea, they call it long pig.”

Willie Joe’s face squinched up. “That’s fuckin disgusting, Man. That’s -- ” He waved his arms. “That’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard.” He turned then, and walked away.

From When I Went to Vietnam