He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.

"That's why I suggest you might have approached it as a test, a challenge."

Chris said, "You don't stay on a job six years to prove something. You have to like it. There's risk, sure. You accept that going in and you handle it, or you get out."

Chris waited. The young doctor was hiding back there writing again, drawing conclusions, making judgments about him. Chris said, "I don't know what attracted me… There was something I've wondered about that happened in Vietnam, if it had anything to do with it. You know, like in my subconscious mind."

The voice said, "You were in Vietnam?"

"It doesn't seem to have a direct connection, though."

"What doesn't?"

"See, when I was over there I was assigned to a Recon Intelligence platoon, working with mostly a bunch of ARVNs. You know what I mean?

South Vietnamese, supposedly the good guys. One of my jobs was to interrogate prisoners they'd bring in and then recommend their disposition."

"Meaning how to dispose of them?"

"Meaning what to do with them. Let 'em go, send 'em back to Brigade..

. but that's not what I'm talking about.

Well, it is and it isn't."

There was a silence. Chris tried to think of the right words, ways to begin. One sunny day I was sitting in the R and I hootch at Khiem Hanh…

"The day I'm talking about, I was sent out to question a guy the ARVNs believed was working for the Vietcong.

An informer with a sack over his head had fingered the guy and they pulled him out of his village. I got there, they have this old man standing barefoot on a grenade with the pin pulled, his toes curled around to hold the lever in place and his hands tied behind his back. I never saw anybody so scared in my life. They have him behind a mud wall that used to be part of a house, in case his foot slipped off and the grenade blew.