He and Wilson stood over the body of the tribal lawyer, nothing left of his face after the Triple Canopy Operatives had done their work. The little girl would not leave her father’s body; just kept holding his hand and crying, as if his hand were his entire being, he no longer having a face.

He stood over them like stone, not even thinking to himself, thinking against type as was his habit. Wilson was nudging him, “Pozer, these Three-Cee goat-fuckers want us to leave; need to wrap up the loose ends. We need to get back to the LZ and report to Tina…”

He picked the sobbing girl up by the shoulder with his left hand, and handed her to Wilson. The Triple Canopy Operatives, all Salvadorans, then began murmuring to each other. Wilson began going ape-shit, “Pozer, what-the-fuck—she is the loose end!”

The shoulder-strap felt snug. The weapon’s weight was calling him, begging for release…

The TCOs reached for their slung irons a moment too late. He traversed his SAW from ankle to shoulder, turning the first TCO into a lopsided double-amputee, sawing the NCO in half—guts splattering everywhere as he gurgled angrily—and decapitating their weapons man. The girl stopped sobbing and now Wilson began to cry, and to sob hysterically through his tears, “Are you fucking nuts Poze!”

He then saw the condor up under the Andean rim—the same condor he always saw—through the hole in the canopy Wilson had blasted for the LZ. That condor always made him feel right…

The steam was still rising from the barrel and he felt so…right...

But there was a doubt. He traversed his SAW, pulling it down to his left as the men reformed: the weapons man’s head reattaching to the slumping body that rose to meet it; the NCO’s torso and head flipping back up out of the mud and slapping back down on the waist just above the lateral webbing; the first dude’s body and stumps rising from the mud in the same slow-motion flipping action, the left leg reattaching at the knee, the right ankle setting down on the jungle-booted foot…

Wilson then calmed down, “!dne esool eht si ehs—kcuf-eht-tahw, rezoP”

The calming gibberish that Wilson babbled made him feel lightheaded so he took a deep breath and looked back up at the condor, soaring there serenely, like a well-calibrated voice living on as an ancient bird in the sky…

Wilson then went ape-shit, “Pozer, what-the-fuck—she is the loose end!”

He traversed his SAW from ankle to shoulder, turning the first TCO into a double-amputee—then the NCO splattered into a pink mist and the Man in the Gray Suit from his childhood stepped through the vaporizing gore.

“Hello Mister,” he heard himself say, as Wilson dissolved behind him into a gibbering talk radio host, and the girl floated away up to his left, away from the condor, like a balloon that made cute baby sounds…

The impeccably dressed blonde-haired man had been ‘the guidance counselor’ who used to bring money and papers for Mom, and questions and condor stories for little Posey Senski. He brought these things to Mom’s phony marble-top kitchen table every year, on Posey’s birthday, January First as it turned out. The Man in the Gray Suit, who had stopped visiting Posey at 15 after Mom died in that car accident, but who lived on within his mind, stepped through the liquefying human gut-splatter.

“Hello Mister,” he heard himself say again as he floated free from the ground, hoping with all of his heart to fly like the condor, without effort, just gliding through the sky…

As the Triple Canopy Operatives, one dying, one a pink cloud that framed the neatly dressed man and the other standing stone-faced like a death-row inmate, all seemed to stand frozen in Time, the Man in the Gray Suit began speaking. His voice was perfectly-calibrated; a voice of monotonous serenity, as if calming thoughts had taken to the air on the wings of an ancient bird, “Do not worry about your grades Posey. You will do great things…”

“Yeah like raping the world one child at a time!”

He woke up in a cold sweat, sitting straight up out of bed while his voice echoed dully in the plush girly bedroom. He looked down to his left and Linona was just stirring, “You okay Baby, you dreaming about those South American people again?”

He hated how deep his voice was, too deep to keep quiet, “So you heard me? I hope I didn’t wake up Ruby.”

Her long thick chocolate legs then curled around his left leg and her voice got husky as she slapped her not-yet famous rear end, “Don’t worry Baybay, you in the good ole U. S. of Ass! Got my own zip-code up unda dese sheets! Ain’t nothin’ Linona cain’t make you foget Baybay.”

Why does it always turn me on when she talks ghetto?

What is the matter with me?

He kissed her on the cheek, slid his ankle out and hopped out of bed when she tried to put him in a key-lock. She snorted in a miffed manner as he slid on his jock and grabbed his wife-beater, “Where you goin’ Baybay? Mamma’s right hea!’”

“I have to get my roadwork in before work—Terrence has got a fight lined up for me only three weeks off. I need to be in shape.”

As he grabbed his cargo shorts and stepped into them she hummed seductively, “Shoot Baybay, you can knock dat fool out any day a da week. What ya needz ta do is climb back in with Mamma and pound out a decision up in hea’, where it counz!”

“Later Babe!” and he was out the bedroom door, grabbing his shoes on the way.

Feeling smug he called behind him, “I Can Not Lie Babe…”

He then heard her spiked knee boots slap-thud against the door at his back.

“…I’ll be home right after work!”

He was then comforted by the sound of the bed springs groaning as they always did when the big woman hurled herself into the air and landed back on her side wound up in bed sheets. It was a sound that indicated with a surety that she would be snoozing for at least another hour. He whispered to himself as he slid on his shoes on the way down the hall, “Enough time for breakfast—then out the door I go!”