...I didn’t like what I was reading, but couldn’t stop.
...Though fiction, I felt their “realness.”
...They are perfect illustrations of the impact of society on one (or more) individual.
...Killing is a by-product -- a means to an end.
...Though I didn’t like reading them, I am thankful I did.

Vietnam. The 60s. Many of us knew people who were in that war. Many of us wondered why few of those who returned were unwilling to talk about it. In The Negligence of Death by Jerome Gold, we learn why.

The story revolves around the life of Dixie, a green beret. Some might say he is the main character. He’s not. Death is the main character in this book. As a silent voyeur, the author takes the reader to Vietnam into Dixie’s life -- his “daily” life in Vietnam. After a few pages, you really don’t want to be there; you don’t want to see and hear through Dixie...you want to go home, AWOL. But you can’t; you’re in for the duration . . .just like Dixie.

This book has just 179 pages. Fast reading -- if you can stand it. You join Dixie in his sixth day, when he tells you “the worst part was the bodies. They reeked, some were five or six days dead and the troops . . .did not like being reminded how negligent was Death.” From then on, the book could easily be titled How Many Ways are There to Die?

And there is sex. “The woman lay on her back in a cave dug into the side of a trench. As I passed she opened her legs. I went on to wake up a man who was sleeping. When I saw her again, a Ranger was on top of her.”

And there are drugs. “I was in great pain and the medic on board gave me morphine. In Saigon they gave me morphine again. It was a wonder to me that I did not die of good care, but I kept my mouth shut and waited for them to administer each shot.”

Somewhere along the way you discover Dixie’s real name and that he is a radio operator/communications officer. But it is really unimportant; it could just as well have been through Mitch’s eyes, as he tells: “So these other two Arvins who are standing around take their oranges and put them between the guy’s legs. And they’re laughing. He’s got half his face blown away and he’s going ‘uh-uh-uh’ and pointing to those goddamn oranges, and laughing.”

There is no storyline . . .it could just as easily be actual tape transcripts of daily conversations and actions by those stationed in Vietnam. Oh yes, this is a story about Dixie, who is in Vietnam. He gets wounded and goes back home. You might think the book ends there.

But Dixie reenlists, to share one last scene: “...one of the small green uniforms appears in front of me and I fire a short burst, it is so pure and sweet and clear, like sudden knowledge, like certainty, and the small green man flies backward, it is as though he were flying, his arms lift, his back arches, his feet raise off the ground, it’s Superman! Ha ha. Now almost to the perimeter, there are Americans, and I fire off the rest of the magazine, ha ha, they fall, they are so surprised...I fire right into them ha ha ha, I am hit again ha ha...it is so funny, everything is, and I feel such love . . .”

Read The Negligence of Death. Understand Vietnam.

Burke DeVore is unemployed. He has been downsized. He was once a middle manager with a promising future. Then one day he was told “your job is not going forward.”

Burke’s wife has taken on two part-time jobs. His daughter is in college; his son in high school. Burke has been unemployed for two years with no prospect of gaining a similar job with a similar salary. Although everything they could do has been done to cut expenses, they are now facing loss of their home, schooling -- everything.

One day the history of the United States will reflect that, during the 90s, many middle managers were abused, harassed, and dismissed without regard. Those affected had no way of fighting back. Being excellent loyal employees was not enough to keep a job. The bottom line dividends ($) to the stockholders, to the owners, boards and other regulators was what mattered; people didn’t.

Burke DeVore is making history...but he might not make the history books, though he’s fighting a war. I pray he is the only one that chooses his method of fighting.

Burke was not alone when he got axed. One-fourth of his company was cut; Burke’s product line was dropped completely. (He was a production line manager at a paper company.) You may immediately empathize with Burke -- we hear about similar situations on the radio or read it in the newspaper every day.

The Ax is a story about many of us. Working from the bottom up, after 25 years Burke had become a specialist in his field. His loyalty, hard work and experience had allowed him to arrive at a place where he had finally been able to “buy” (which means a long mortgage) a home and provide for his children’s higher education. He had planned his career, toiled diligently and reached a goal...and then was told, “Don’t go away mad; just go away.” Oh yes, his company tried to ease the action. Burke went through counseling, he took a class on how to prepare a resumé, and received a generous severance. With all of his accumulated vacation and sick leave, he even got a flat sum of “four thousand, seven hundred, sixteen dollars, and twenty-two cents.” Then Burke adds, “To tell the truth, if it had been nineteen cents, I doubt I would have known the difference.”

Burke needs a job. “More and more of us are out here now, another thousand or so every day, and we’re chasing fewer and fewer jobs.” Burke prepared a new resumé, hunted for a job, and interviewed numerous times, doing exactly what his former employer had taught him to do. He tried to do it their way.

You first meet Burke as he considers, “what now? I’ve never actually killed anybody before, murdered another person, snuffed out another human being . . . How do you know beforehand that you can do it . . .This has to work. I have to get out of this morass, and soon. Which means I’d better be capable of murder.”

After doing all the right things, no employer had hired him. And, after just receiving the ax, like so many others, he knew he could not change these employers who cared nothing about their people. So, there was only one alternative that Burke could see; eliminate the competition for the available jobs.

Establishing a fictitious company and placing an ad for an individual who would apply for “his” job, as anticipated, Burke receives hundreds of applications. After studying each one, he finally, objectively, arrives at six candidates who are either better or equally qualified. He establishes a plan to eliminate his competition, then proceeds to kill each man. Studying trade journals to keep up with the job area, he reads an article about a nearby plant and visits there. Deciding that the job he wants is at this plant, he adds the elimination of one more competitor, the present manager, to his plan of action. The first elimination succeeds. The second, however, is a fiasco, and he winds up killing both his competitor and his wife. He then meets his third victim and they commiserate with each other: “. . .this is the first society ever that takes its most productive people, at their prime, at the peak of their powers, and throws them away. I call that crazy.” But this becomes a problem, the competition has become a person, and Burke works to ensure that future kills do not become personal. He’s merely eliminating the competition.

Thus the story follows Burke through his family life and the problems they face as a result of his unemployment; we follow Burke as death provides for his future.

Until the day occurs when he goes for the interview for “his” job, and requests, “Wish me luck.”

Another coincidence happened yesterday as I started preparing this review. A friend sent me an online joke, showing a man sitting at a computer, pointing out that the year 2000 has come and no computer bug has occurred. Two seconds later, a giant bug jumps out of the computer and pulls the man into the machine. It was funny the first time I saw it months ago. But yesterday, I remembered the following from The Ax:

. . .I think about the circumstances that have led me here, to this thorny place. And I think about the millennium.

Strange, that. I’d never thought about it before, that the simple arbitrary numbering of years could have an effect on us, but it turns out to be so...

2000; and it all stops.

Maybe that is what they’re doing. It’s as good an explanation as anything they’ve offered. They’re trying to make everything neat and perfect for the end...

This kind of business management that has never been seen in the world before, trashing productive people from productive careers in productive companies, is happening because of the millennium. Because of the year 2000. I’m out of work because the human race has gone mad.

On that thought, I fall asleep. It’s only later that I wake up in terror.