December 24, 1970

The quietest of the four men was doing most of the talking.

“That wasn’t us, out there today. It wasn’t, right? It was someone else. That’s what it was – someone else. Not even us. Right? Are you thinking that, too? That’s all I can figure. I mean, what else could have happened? That’s the only way I can … oh, shit. Oh, God. Oh, God. Fuck. Oh, my God..”

“Shut up, Shoe. Just shut the fuck up..”

“I can’t man. I can’t. I mean, I try, but it just keeps comin’ out. It’s like it …”

The second man to speak didn’t move from his cot, didn’t flex a muscle. He lay perfectly still. He was staring at the ceiling in the pitch dark. “It didn’t happen, is what happened.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Like that. It …”

“Shut up, and listen. It didn’t happen, period.” His voice was calm, but dark. “We never got there. We were never there – understand? We can make that fly. No one’s gonna care. No one’s gonna give a good goddamn. No one.”

“What if …”

“What if nothing. That’s what it’s going to amount to – nothing. That’s what it amounted to, anyway.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“No one’s gonna give a good goddamn – except us.”

“Yeah. What about everyone ...?”

A third man pitched in. “Fuck everyone else. You do what you have to do. But you swallow it.”

The second man nodded.

The third man said: “No one can know. Only us.”

The fourth man: “I need to take a walk.”

Second man: “You OK?”

Third: “Yeah, you OK?”

Fourth man: “I need some air.”

The room went silent, pretty much for good. Each man could hear the other two breathing, and that was all. It was December 24, 1970, and what had been a day filled with extraordinary noise, brutal cacaphony, was now and truly a silent night. No one stirred for hours. No one even roused with the single gunshot sometime in the deep, deep night. They all wondered, alone, to themselves, but from where they lay, it sounded only like a muffled pop. Coulda been anything. Didn’t sound dangerous. Not deadly. Certainly not cleansing.

It was, in fact, all three.