Mensonge bien gardé

"His sergeant put a gun to his head. He was willing to die rather than rape that girl. That's what the story is about. How could that man in Vietnam be the same man who killed Crystal Hagen? If he's re ally a rapist and a murderer, he would have given in to the dark side when he was in Vietnam. "
"You think he's innocent?" Lila asked, her tone more inquisitive than condemning.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm starting to. I mean, it's possible, isn't it?"

"Can't you feel it, Virg? Can't you feel things slipping?"
"Feel what slipping, Hoss?"
"I don't know how to explain it," Carl said. "It's like every time I go into that jungle I feel like I'm standing on a line, a line I know I shouldn't cross. And there's this screaming in my head, like some banshee whirling around me, pulling me, taunting me to step over that line. I know if I cross it, I become Gibbs. I'd say fuck 'em, they're just gooks, so fuck 'em all."
"Yeah," Virgil said. "I know. I feel it, too. The day Levitz bought the farm, I wanted to lay waste to every butter head in the province."
"Levitz?"
"The guy that got cut in half by that Betty.
"Oh...that was his name?I didn't know."
"But Hoss, once you go there you don't come back," Virgil said.
"That sixteen-year-old kid on Grandpa's porch, watching the sunrise, won't be there no more." "Sometimes I wonder if he's there now."

" We don't have a vote on being here," Virgil said, "and for the most part we don't have a vote on how we leave. But we do have control of how much of our soul we leave behind in this mess. Don't ever forget that. We do still have some choices," Carl held out his hand, and Virgil gripped it tightly.
"You got that right partner," Carl said. "We need to get outta here with our shit intact."
"That's all we need to do," Virgil said.

-Carl said that there's a difference between killing and murdering. What does he mean by that?"
I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from Virgil before I talked to Carl about it.
-"It's like this," he said. "You kill a soldier in the jungle, and you're just killing. It's not murder. It's like there's an agreement between armies that killing each other is okay. It's allowed. That's what you're supposed to do. Carl killed men in Vietnam, but he didn't murder that girl. See what I'm saying?

On the one side, Carl was a man kneeling in a jungle, taking bullets for his friend. On the other side was a sick bastard capable of extinguishing the life of a young girl in order to satiate his deviant sexual desires- two sides, one man. Somewhere in the box on my shoulder, there had to be an explanation of how the first man became the second.The box seemed impossibly heavy as I mounted the staircase to my apartment.