“I can’t kill him,” he says in a low, nagging voice. “I’ll be fucked if I kill him.” Only fucked isn’t what he’s worried about. Damned is what he’s worried about. Killing was different in Vietnam, or seemed different, but this isn’t Vietnam, isn’t the green. Has he built these years of penance just to tear them down again? God is testing him, testing him, testing him. There is an answer here. He knows there is, there must be. He is just—ha-ha, pardon the pun—too blind to see it.
