Tyrone

David Darnel Tyrone drew on a Lucky Strike, slowly inhaled, held it a second and then exhaled as he returned the pack to the pocket of his fatigues. He sat on the ground with his left knee drawn up and the other flat out at an angle, paralleled by his M1, He rested his huge hand lightly on the stock, his index finger outside the trigger guard but not far outside.  He leaned against the deflated front tire of a wrecked jeep.  The mine had destroyed the tie rod along with a lot of other stuff and the wheel jutted out to the left an almost a right angle.

“Lordy Tyrone, I’m ready for this war to be over.” Sammy squatted on one haunch in front of him and eyed the bloodstains running down both seats of the jeep.

“DDT” as a few, (very few) called him, pulled on the Lucky again.  When he inhaled, it made a hollow resonant sound, like something huge.  David Darnel Tyrone was huge.  He exhaled through huge, slack lips.

“What’s your hurry—–.  You not enjoyin this war?”

He had a huge, soft, black voice.

“Hell no Tyrone.  Whad’ya mean?  Are you?”

“They’re payin me to kill white men.  If it wasn’t for gittin shot at, I’d’a done it fer nothin”.

“Jesus Tyrone!  Please don’t say that so loud.  Whad if somebody heard you sayin’ a thing like that?”

David Darnel Tyrone didn’t say anything—just reached behind his neck and stubbed the Lucky out on the side of the deflated tire.

There was a long silence except for the normal sounds in the lull of battle, jeep trannies whining, the roar of the fan blades on a deuce and a half, competing with the low rumble of its exhaust:  somewhere, a sergeant bellowing at some poor corporal.   David Darnel Tyrone looked neither left nor right, up or down.  What would have been the whites of his eyes were yellow and bloodshot.

“Tyrone, did you kill that white boy in basic?”  It was almost a whisper.

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“They sure noticed he was dead.”

“You notice they didn’t notice who done it.”

“They talk about it though.  They mention your name.  They talk about how you always take a souvenir off the dead krauts when you know fer sure it wus you that killed ‘em—then throw it away a couple days later.”

“They begin to rot.”

“You know what I mean though Tyrone.”

“Ummhmm.”

“I think a bunch of them’d like to ketch you alone sometime. Don’t you ever worry?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

David Darnel Tyrone fished the pack of Luckys back out of the fatigue pocket, shook a single Lucky out of the pack with his left hand and with the same hand flipped open his Zippo and lit it.  His right hand never relinquished its loose grip on the M1.

“Galatians 6:7.”

Sammy heard a sound up close like fluffing a large pillow and, an instant later, the distant crack of a rifle.

Sammy heard David Darnel Tyrone inhaled deeply, hold it a moment and then exhale as he leaned his head against the tire of a wrecked jeep and closed his eyes.

David Darnel Tyrone didn’t hear anything.