Galaxy's Edge Magazine by Joe Haldeman

Author:Joe Haldeman [Robyn, Lezli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction And Fantasy, science fiction magazine
ISBN: 9781649730756
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Copyright © 2020 by Barb Galler-Smith.

Joe Haldeman was born in Oklahoma in 1943, and as a child he lived in New Orleans, Alaska, and the Washington, D.C. area. Drafted, he fought in Vietnam, then became a professor at MIT for thirty years. Married to Mary Gay Haldeman since 1965, he has been a freelance author since 1969, mostly writing science fiction, winning him multiple Hugos and Nebulas.

THE MONSTER

by Joe Haldeman

Start at the beginning? Which beginning?

Okay, since you be from Outside, I give you the whole thing. Sit over there, be comfort. Smoke em if you got em.

They talk about these guys that come back from the Nam all fucked up and shit, and say they be like time bombs: they go along okay for years, then get a gun and just go crazy. But it don’t go nothing like that for me. Even though there be the gun involved, this time. And an actual murder, this time.

First time I be in prison, after the court-martial, I try to tell them what it be and what they get me? Social workers and shrinks. Guy to be a shrink in a prison ain’t be no good shrink, what they can make Outside, is the way I figure it, so at first I don’t give them shit, but then I always get Discipline, so I figure what the hell and make up a story. You watch any TV you can make up a Nam story too.

So some of them don’t fall for it, they go along with it for a while because this is what crazy people do, is make up stories, then they give up and another one come along and I start over with a different story. And sometime when I know for sure they don’t believe, when they start to look at me like you look at a animal in the zoo, that’s when I tell them the real true story. And that’s when they smile, you know, and nod, and the new guy come in next. Because if anybody would make up a story like that one, he’d have to be crazy, right? But I swear to God it’s true.

Right. The beginning.

I be a lurp in the Nam, which means Long Range Recon Patrol. You look in these magazines about the Nam and they make like the lurps be always heroes, brave boys go out and face Charlie alone, bring down the artillery on them and all, but it was not like that. You didn’t want to be no lurp where we be, they make you be a fuckin lurp if they want to get rid of your ass, and that’s the God’s truth.

Now I can tell you right now that I don’t give a flyin fuck for that U.S. Army and I don’t like it even more when I be drafted, but I got to admit they be pretty smart, the way they do with us. Because we get off on that lurp shit. I mean we be

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