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embarrassed him in front of his best friends, he’d turned them against him. He could hear the men now, talking and laughing about Righteous Rabid and Freeze. Well, he’d give them something to talk about. When they got out in the bush, he’d frag the son of a bitch. This decision made him feel suddenly calm, even happy, but then he saw Reynolds lying dead on the jungle floor, his eyes open to nothing, his face mottled with shadows cast by the sunlight flickering through the trees, and everything was as confused as a dream again because Reynolds was wearing Freeze’s fatigues and he was smiling. Grinning. Almost laughing. Freeze stood there in the prop wash until his partner yelled from the chopper’s cargo bay for him to hurry up and give him a hand.
    A few minutes later, as he bent to pick up his end of a stretcher, he saw that one of the grunt’s legs had been blown off just below the knee and that the other was terribly mangled. Someone had laid the severed leg on top of him. He had his arms around it, holding it to his chest, and he was staring off somewhere, a slight smile frozen on his lips, as if he’d just heard something mildly funny.
    â€œHeavy fucker, ain’t he?” Freeze’s partner said, as they hoisted the stretcher.
    The next day the stand-down ended and the company was sent back out on line. They stood inspection, marched to the air field, climbed aboard the choppers and flew north over the jungle, finally setting down in the brush and bamboo of Tay Ninh province. Freeze was glad to be in the bush; he’d rather be in the shit, where all you had to worry about was someone greasing you, than in camp, where pogue officers like Reynolds policed your every move. He figured that Reynolds would let up on him now, but if he didn’t, Freeze would pick his moment and frag his ass.
    Reynolds didn’t let up. The first day after they’d finished carving Fire Base Molly out of the jungle, stripping the foliage down to the bare dirt, digging bunkers, and stringing coils of concertina wire around the perimeter, he dispatched Freeze, Konieczny, and Clean to secure a helicopter supply drop for a tank column—three men to defend thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and tons of ammo.
    â€œOne dink with a hand grenade could blow the whole damn drop to Saigon,” Freeze complained, though he didn’t really care.
    Reynolds looked at him. “The tank column is due at 1900 hours. Saddle up.” Then he turned and walked away.
    Freeze raised his hand and sighted down his index finger at the lieutenant’s back. Bang.
    Duckwalk turned to him, his thumbs hooked behind the silver buckle of the NVA belt he’d souvenired from a sniper. “Relax, bro,” he said. “He’s just the Army. What you expect him to do—be your friend?”
    Freeze didn’t say anything. He shouldered his pack and headed out toward the supply drop with Konieczny and Clean. When they got there, Konieczny sat on one of the crates and radioed back to Reynolds. Freeze broke open another crate. “Chocolate milk,” he said, taking out a carton and shaking his head. “Chocolate fucking milk.”
    â€œWhat’s your problem, Freeze?” Clean said. “I’m getting sick of this shit. We’re all getting sick of it.”
    Freeze looked at Clean. Then he opened the carton and took a drink. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t let this milk fall into enemy hands.”
    Then he turned and humped off into a stand of bamboo a couple of hundred meters away and crawled down into a crater left by a mortar shell. He lay there, smoking a Park Lane, and thought about greasing Reynolds. He had to be careful; if he got caught, they’d put him in Long Binh Jail and the only world he’d go back to would be Leavenworth. But even that might be worth it. He imagined