Goose kissed him goodbye, and he kissed Ellen goodbye too but in a different way, then he went on back to bush in the wilds up behind Smashwood. He ain’t wanna whisk off, but he ain’t wanna stay even harder. It was better this way, for him to be gone. He gotsta get a grip on hisself, and a man gotsta do that alone.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man. But it felt like he done jack up every single thing in the world. He was a retard in boot camp, he dropped his rifle, he got scared as a bunny, he was captured, needed rescue, he lost, he failed, he fell, he wailed. He could get done up by the Vietnameys prolly crawly-trawling the countryside anytime. He done develop a sixth sense about ’em, and it been twinging like a siren. Ain’t quit off since Muck Dan Foo. He don’t wanna go look in the woods lest he either get took captive again or see that he imagined phantoms.
He gotsta get a grip on hisself, and a man gotsta do that alone.
The world seemed right before the war, right in a way he couldn’t perceive then or articulate now. Expectations done broke, he thought. Goose went to war, he pulled the appropriate trigger at appropriate times, he followed orders mostly, he came back alive, he got money, he gave it to a woman to spend. He did his part. He completed the minimum requisited of a man.