Every drop of torrid dew, every inaudible rustle, every throaty trill of a tropical bird sent his nerves tightening like guitar strings, warping his persona with each turn of the peg. Turn, turn, turn, familiar melodies plucked on thinning strings, in tune but out of key. Any day now, it was going to snap. Any minute, now.

The M-60 rested in his arm like a slumbering child. He breathed. It breathed. Fingers trembled at the feel of cool metal heavy with beads of sultry dew. The heat hung like wet velvet, oppressive and dank, wrapped in folds in each of the faces peering helplessly through the heavy foliage, watching. Waiting.

Sterling sat, quivering slightly, in the cover of the lush tropical jungle. The torrid air stifled his lungs, making him wish more than ever for the taste of fresh New England sky upon his lips. What would he have given at that moment to be able to see his breath hang in the crisp ginger air in cool, dewy drops instead of being absorbed into a dank atmospheric sponge?

Lieutenant Brigham and the other olive drab-clad men sat tensely in the dense ferns, cautiously eyeing the premises. A cigarette smoldered arrogantly at the corner of Brigham’s mouth, clouding his cold eyes with the pungent smoke. He batted irritably at a mosquito.

Sterling warily retreated to the comfort of his camouflaged helmet. He had discovered this technique during his first week in Vietnam, when the bitter odor of napalm and burning flesh had been new to him. If he positioned his helmet at just the right angle, he discovered, it would cover his ears just enough to drown out the melancholic sounds of war. Not completely, of course, but enough to let him have some time alone in his mind, to himself.

As his muscles relaxed slightly and he heard the sound of Lt. Brigham begin to chat quietly with the man next to him, Sterling’s helmet settled comfortably over his eyes and ears, and he disappeared completely.

The little boy, clad in a pair of ebony pantaloons, stared at him questioningly. About five or six, Sterling thought to himself as he approached the small figure sitting on the earthy bank. His hands were playing contentedly with the rippling water, but his thin black eyes watched Sterling with a mixture of amusement and concern.

Carefully slinging the rifle behind his back, Sterling wiped his hands on his grimy surplus pants and took a step towards the child.

The little boy responded with a monkey-like hoot, and leapt backwards into the warm water, sending ripples on their long journey towards the patrol boat stationed on the other side of the river. His eyes widened for a quick second before he leapt back onto the bank on all fours, snatched something lying on the pebbly ground, and clutched the thing to his thin, bare chest.

For the first time in weeks, Sterling found himself smiling.

This boy was the Vietnam he had wanted to come to– earthy, aromatic, and exotic. He had associated the word Vietnam with a sort of alien innocence in the beginning. Maybe it’s not as bad as they say it is back home, he had thought. There had been rumors of atrocities and misconduct, but those were simply rumors, weren’t they? Each and every government decision brought with it a contingent of protesters and rabble-rousers who found something wrong with it. His friends were passionate people– it would have been more than easy for them to become almost fanatic over an insignificant issue. He was certain of it.

He was wrong— and how terribly.

The innocence emanated by the boy provided a painful and stark contrast to the realities of Vietnam. His memories reeked of cheap hotels and cheap liquor, of the bitter smell of Saigon in the dark, of the sickly-sweet fragrance of a girl whose name he couldn’t even pronounce. Pictures of lush green tropics being set ablaze with napalm, with flames eagerly devouring anything in their path, remnants of villages ravaged and burned to the ground all flooded his mind from time to time. Sterling vividly remembered the first time he had seen bombs explode over Vietnam, watching as the plane drifted almost nonchalantly away from the mushrooming clouds of smoke and fire billowing out below them. One after the other, they fell. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. Etcetera, etcetera. This is what war smelled like, tasted like, looked like. It revolted him.

The boy carefully stood up, still eyeing the olive-clad man with the gun standing in front of him and smiling slightly. Sterling cautiously stepped forward again. They boy replied with his own step forward. Step by step, Sterling and the boy continued their game until the two were practically face to face- face to thigh, in the case of the two.

Sterling stared into the tiny eyes gazing into his. They were unwavering. He lost himself in them.

Before he knew it, a small yellow hand was clutching the leg of his pants, tugging slightly. The boy raised his arms in the universal sign of wanting to be picked up. Sterling turned and stared into the opaque depths of the jungle to see if any of his fellow men were in sight, then carefully wrapped his arms around the tiny figure of the boy and hoisted him into his arms.

The little boy squealed in delight, loosely murmured something in Vietnamese that only could have been a sign of pleasure. He reached towards Sterling’s face, which flinched slightly at the sudden approach. The boy grasped his perfectly circular glasses in one hand and poked at the lenses with something he was holding in the other. Sterling blew a gust of warm air into the charming, round face in front of him, sending the boy into a fit of shy giggles.

“What are we going to call you, eh, little man?” Sterling mused quietly, tousling the ebony mop of hair in front of him.

The child held up what he had been holding in the first place, what he had so passionately thrown himself at while on the banks.

It was a monkey. A small, plush monkey stared at Sterling with its button eyes.

“Douc,” the boy gurgled.

Douc— that's monkey in Vietnamese, isn’t it, Sterling wondered. He eyed the tiny figure nestled in his arms, clutching the miniature gray monkey in his plump fingers and babbling in Vietnamese. Well, he thought, it would be appropriate enough. Douc… Duke. Duke it would be.

“Duke?” he repeated, and the boy murmured in delight. “Duke it is then,” Sterling laughed quietly to himself. Duke bounced up and down in his grasp. “Douc, douc, douc!” he chortled, shaking his black mop and crinkling his eyes so much in delight that they might have completely disappeared from his face.

Chopchopchopchop.

The approaching helicopter indicated its arrival with its signature sound as the blades cut mercilessly through the air. Duke froze in terror in Sterling’s arms, then wriggled out of his grasp, dropped to the ground, and raced towards the dense shelter of the jungle as fast as his thin little legs could carry him.

“Duke!” Sterling called after him, “It’s alright! Duke! Come here, boy!” He began to jog towards the line where the jungle meets the riverbank, but stopped midway at the sight of something tiny and gray lying on the ground near his feet. He picked up the stuffed monkey and made his way to the jungle edge.

“Duke?”

A tiny hand reached out from behind a vivid lime fern, snatched the monkey from Sterling’s hand, and was accompanied by a round beaming face before it disappeared back into the forested depths with a slight rustle and the sound of pattering feet.

The helicopter emerged from behind the trees heavy with humidity on the bank. The aviator threw a quick salute in the direction of Sterling, who returned it with a more than slightly roguish smile to complement his wind-swept exterior and giddy spirit. The faintest of laughs could be heard coming from somewhere in the green abyss.

At that moment, with Sterling dozing comfortably under his helmet, all Hell broke loose.

He had dropped the chalice once, as an altar boy. It was because of his shoes, really— those white patent-leather shoes his grandmother had so insisted on him wearing on his first day of service at Saint Stephen’s. They were so big, those ivory shoes with the crisp cream lining. The catching of an empty toe on coarse burgundy carpet was inevitable. Cup of silver, cup of Christ, sailing neatly over the altar, onto the frozen marble. Clang, clang, clang down the cold steps, four, five, six. The sacred wine and the sacred cup, parted in folly, darkening the floor of already sacred red. A murky stain had blossomed on Sterling’s chest, and the wine pattered onto the ivory shoes in miniscule drips. The blood rushed to his cheeks as Father gawked in horror, as the cup continued to roll on its holy path.

Clang, clang, clang. Clang. Clang.

Bullets ricocheted off the solid body of the hummer, tore through the ferns like tiny winged gods, screaming and trilling in delight. Instinctively, Sterling threw himself onto the pungent earth, listening to the heady cries of his comrades as they scattered into the bush. This is not my war, he thought feverishly, not mine at all. It’s theirs, not mine. They want to fight? Let them. Fight them. Not me. God, please, not me. Clang. Clang, clang. The sounds of bullets, the sounds of war reverberated through his metal helmet a thousand times per second and forced him to acknowledge them. Listen, they told him. Listen to us. Come closer, come closer to us.

Something grasped Sterling firmly by the shoulders and flung him backwards onto the damp soil. He thrashed fitfully only to find a pair of colossal hands heaving him up by the armpits. Lieutenant Brigham spun him around violently, cringing as a slug glanced off his helmet.

“Idiot!” Brigham howled. “Get moving!”

Sterling’s mind reeled. He weaved like a drunken sparrow through the torpid greenery, collapsing in a heap at the head of the derelict hummer. Brigham joined him within a few moments, cigarette still clenched between his teeth. The two men leaned against the grille like schoolboys in the heat of a game of Cowboys and Indians, holding their guns up to their faces in fearful anticipation of the enemy emerging from the dense mass. The shots continued to tear through the stifling foliage with relentless ferocity. Shudders of defeat would heave through the frame of the hummer as it was pummeled by bullets.

And then— silence.

Complete and utter silence.

Not a single bird warbled. Not a single leaf twitched. Not a single muscle shifted in the painfully tense expressions of the two men. Sterling scoured the area with his eyes, without moving any other part of his body, and after a minute that seemed to have lasted an hour, slowly lowered his gun to the ground. He leaned his entire weight on the grille, overcome with the sudden exhaustion of shock. Brigham let out a slow, deep whistle before relaxing his grip on the ever-ready M-60. Sterling took a rattling breath before attempting to speak.

“My God, Brigham, I ca–"

Brigham shot up and threw a hand at Sterling’s face. The two froze in blind terror as the plants trembled about ten feet in front of them.

As something lurched out from behind the foliage, Sterling instinctively retreated into the safety of his helmet while Brigham threw himself back with a violent snarl, braced himself for the recoil of the gun, and pulled the trigger of his waiting pet.

Nothing happened.

Practically whimpering with fear, Sterling and Brigham opened their eyes, stared at the ammunition-less gun, and looked up into the face of a small, dark-haired boy with laughing eyes hiding behind a luxuriant palm about ten feet away.

Sterling, still in ‘attack’ mode, pushed aside the images of crazed, homicidal Vietcong and stared at the little shape of Duke and his monkey hiding among the leaves. He slowly realized that he had his gun poised and pointed at the boy’s chest, and lowered it with a trembling sigh.

Brigham caught the gun before it was halfway to the ground with a mechanical, violent movement and pushed it back against Sterling’s chest.

“Kill it,” he breathed. “Just— just shoot it.”

“…but, he’s— Brigham, it’s a chi—“

“I can see that it’s a child. A— a Vietcong child. An enemy child,” Brigham murmured venomously. “Sterling, kill it.”

Sterling turned his face to the man crouching in the soil next to him. This was not a man— it was a crazed animal, paralyzed with hatred and terror, eyes shot with venomous blood. The cigarette, almost to its end, still hung out of the corner of a mouth twisted with revulsion. Just the sight of the beast made Sterling want to retch.

“Kill it,” the animal repeated.

Sterling turned his throbbing eyes to Duke’s happy slits. Duke smiled his little-boy smile from the cover of the leaves, almost shyly. Slowly, unsteadily, Sterling shook his head. The M-60 shuddered in his arms, its nozzle pointed eagerly towards the small figure in the trees.

“Free fire zone,” Brigham breathed mercilessly. “Anything and everything. Is a target.”

He turned to Sterling.

“Shoot it.” Smoke curled from the animal’s mouth in serpentine coils.

You can’t fumigate the demons, Sterling breathed to himself. No matter how much you smoke.

Quavering, he shook his head once again. The breaths came from his lungs almost painfully, in short, troubled gasps.

“No— no.”

The beast’s eyes narrowed.

“I said, shoot it.”

“No.”

“Now.”

“No.”

“Kill it, Sterling.”

“NO.”

“I SAID, KILL IT.”

Duke smiled.

“NO!”

With a primal shriek, Brigham threw himself at Sterling, sending the two men toppling over each other into the dank green blanket covering the earth. Sterling kicked fitfully at the man pinning him down, trying to push him off with the live gun still shuddering in his arms. In a flurry of fists and mud-spattered combat boots, the two soldiers fought each other. The absurdity of the situation struck Sterling almost as hard as Brigham’s fist against his jaw. Here they were, the freedom fighters, the liberators, pummeling each other over the life of one unknown child.

Sterling felt a hand loosen from around his neck— he hadn’t even noticed it there— and Brigham rolling onto the pungent earth. He clutched the M-60 protectively to his chest. He breathed. It breathed. The jungle breathed.

Or so it sounded. What Sterling had believed to be an intake of breath by tropical trees themselves was actually the rush of air brought about by Brigham’s empty semiautomatic flying towards his head.

The jungle exploded. Sterling’s metal helmet reverberated with the shock of the gun butt connecting solidly against his head. A tortured wail escaped his lips as his only comfort zone was defiled with the ugly sounds and metallic tastes of war. The helmet hung over his ears and eyes, but there was no consolation to be found, only fear, only horrors, only hallucinations of untimely deaths and dreams cracked like Cape Cod ice. He opened his eyes, and he understood. He was there. There was no escape. He could never escape.

A wave of bullets tore through the jungle from the gun now in Brigham’s foul hands, their screams cutting through Sterling’s fading consciousness as they did through the leaves concealing a single Vietnamese child.

The strings snapped.

After a flurry of color and heat and confusion, Sterling found himself standing over the prone figure of Lieutenant Brigham. A steady stream of black began to flow from underneath his skewed helmet and mixed with the damp earth. A cigarette smoldered quietly in the dank soil. The gun dropped lifelessly from Sterling’s hands, its bullets untouched. A thin crack ran down its length. The broken gun and the broken man laid side by side in silence.

A fresh wave of torpid shock ran over him, and Sterling fell helplessly to his knees.

And a child emerged from the trees.

Duke pattered quietly towards the man prostrated wretchedly at the heart of the jungle. Not a single blemish graced his perfectly round face. He playfully pushed the dented helmet off of Sterling’s head and happily waved a stuffed monkey now ridden with bullet holes in front of his weary eyes.

Sterling shuddered as he felt the tiny fingers wrap around his neck and silken black hair graze his swollen face.

My God. I’ve been saved. Truly saved. By a child.

And then he did something he hadn’t done in years.

He cried.