Utah Saints (pt 11).

I never knew what set Dixie against Harper – ol’ Dixieland was like a rooster in that he didn’t like no other guys at all and if he thought they was looking at him funny they’d be his enemy for life. All the more reason I felt so fucking honored that he picked me, me over all them other guys he coulda made his buddy. There’s lots of dudes who wouldn’t even give a shit about something like that, but I sure did. See, when you hang around Dixie it’s like a movie or something, like anything you used to pretend is true – when I was a little kid I always wanted to be one of them tough Army dudes everybody kind of looks like when they come in the room, and fucking Dixie was one of them dudes, and when I was walking next to him I was one of them dudes; when it came to Harper the movie Dixie was making was all about being a god damned man and things you just don’t fucking do, and kicking that faggot’s ass; I was Dixie’s right hand in all that, too.

So we roughed Harper up a couple times and then didn’t see him no more, and by then Dixie was on to new stuff – but I saw Harper when I was by myself at the PX going into that wayback latrine nobody goes to and there’s a hole between the stalls. I don’t even know if he ever saw whose spunk he was eating, but god damn that kid knew what he was doing. I’d of gone back for seconds, but I saw Delco, this motherfucker I worked with in the motor pool, when I came out and I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, and by the time I got back to barracks I was pretty sure Delco had figured the whole thing out someways and was gonna tell all the other guys, and that scared the fuck out of me something bad. The fast way to make it go was to get after Harper again. He took these walks after chow and Dixie and me caught him in the woods at the south end of base. Dixie tied him to a tree and we went to work on him, beating the fuck out of him and pulling his hair out and shit. Dixie cut him a couple of times and hit him in the nuts until he puked – I never seen Dixie that wild before and it was like I was breathing it in because I was just as, and ready to do whatever came into my head. I’d have bit that kid’s head off with my bare teeth if Dixie’d said it was time.

Fucking Harper lost it somewhere while we was fucking around with him: you know in movies when people go crazy they just start yelling real loud but the real thing is so scary I never want to see it again. It was like the lights got knocked out of his eyes and he was smiling like it was gonna tear his face in half and he started kicking his feet and spitting and laughing and shit himself, and he started talking like he was about to just bust his ass laughing at the funniest thing in the god damned world. Harper’s voice was like flies, I think, that’s what I always see when I hear him, and I never stop hearing him, is flies. Thousands of flies in his throat. Hail mary full of grace, help us win this stock car race! The saints have names! Nevada! California! Utah! The saints are coming! To my dying day, to my last breath I’m gonna hear those words. Every bad dream I ever had since was of monsters made out of flies and when I’m dreaming I know that they are coming for me.