Amy Burns is originally from Birmingham, Alabama but makes her home in Scotland where she is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow. Her poetry and prose has been published in print in *Biscuit Short Story Winners' Anthology 2009: The Possibility of Bears*, *Let’s Pretend (InFidelity) Anthology*,* Green Muse*, *QWF*, *unbound press* and online at *971 Menu*, *Clapboard House*, *From Glasgow to Saturn, Brown Williams Journal*. She has worked as an editor/publisher of the literary journal *unbound press* and is now the editor of *Spilling Ink Review*.

Maison des Reptiles (June 20, 2010. Issue 18.)

Fourteen months into his obligation to Uncle Sam and the Walking Dead, Robert ‘Hula’ Grubbs decided what he wanted to do with his life.

The revelation came just after his twentieth birthday and just before he underwent a hepatic lobectomy, the photographic details of which were featured in a government-funded study: Penetrating Abdominal Injuries and the Vietnam War.

January, 1967: Operation Deckhouse Five.

Mekong River Delta.

BLT 1st Battalion 9th Marines. Simple philosophy: ‘Kill them all today so we don’t have to face them tomorrow’.

But you had to find them to kill them and rumor was that a Philippine radio station leaked news of Deckhouse to the Viet Cong. The whole affair, a fuckfest. It meant the POW cage in Vung Tau wasn’t as full as it might have been; meant casualties; meant KIAs. When it was all said and done: dead, 21 Viet Cong, 7 US Marines; confiscated, 44 small weapons, and 42 tons of rice.

Hula reached down, put his hand into his open stomach and said, “It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”

Wild-eyed, attending medic Albert ‘Al-bone’ Stewart held up the empty morphine syrettes and laughed. “No man, I don’t guess it do. You juiced to fuck’n back. And get your damned dirty hand out of it.”

To pass the time Hula thought about snakes. Pit vipers: cottonmouth, copperhead, rattlesnake. Shades of Hula’s youth morphed into scaled-cylinders, fanged-threads colored with chestnut saddles, russet hourglass warnings: poisonous. He thought about Labor Day 1955. Uncle Leonard ate half a lemon ice box pie, sucked down half a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, and went half a bubble off plumb. He shouted, “Come on boys! We’re going on ourselves a high-boot-long-sleeved-shirt-snake-hunt.” Uncle Leonard wasn’t afraid to take up serpents, not cause he thought God would protect him but cause he didn’t care whether God protected him or not.

Hula tried to tell Al-bone about his Uncle Leonard but when he opened his mouth all that came out was: “Snakes.”

Al-bone said, “Shut up Hula, they ain’t no snakes. Be quiet now. We gone get you back soon.”

Hula felt afraid. He didn’t want to go ‘back’ for more. He tried to get up. “Where you taking me?”

“Evac, man. Hospital. Just try and be still.”

Hula felt hands on him, heard Dickey Richter’s voice: “You want me to tie him?”

“Nah, this’ll shut him up.” Al-bone gave Hula another shot.

Dickey Richter: gunner. Problem since reassignment in Okinawa. Made enemies in the Special Landing Forces, 7th Fleet. Made enemies inside the 9th: “Where’s his rucksack?”

“Can’t you wait till he’s gone?”

“Dead gone?”

“You cold man.”

“Can he hear us?”

“Nah, he don’t hear us.”

“Bastard’s looking at me.”

Hula stared slack-jawed as Dickey Richter rummaged through his rucksack. He stole: a fat bag of grass, bayonet, bug juice, canned peaches, Time Magazine April 9, 1965 with cover – The World According to Peanuts. Dickey Richter also stole pictures that Hula thought were hidden well enough, sewn up in one of the inside flaps: VC swimming in barbed wire, Nagoc Phan giving a peace sign in Phu Bai and Amanda Ford somewhere in Alabama pointing at something in the distance.

Dickey Richter held up Amanda’s photograph and said, “S’at your bird dog Hula?”

Al-bone said, “Go on Dickey, you got enough.”

And that’s when Hula knew what he wanted to do with his life. Number One: If he ever saw Dickey Richter again, he was gone kill him. Number Two: if he ever made it back to the States, he was gone marry Amanda Ford, take the money and land her daddy promised, and build himself a fine hotel and a world-famous reptile themed amusement park: Maison des Reptiles.

He thought the French bit made it sound classy and being classy would surely help a person in the reptile business.