My ditty bag contained a change of dressing for Ahn; three bags of M&M's, one plain, two peanut; a can of shoestring potatoes; six packets of fizzles; a comb; lipstick; change of underpants; and wallet. My fatigue pants held adhesive tape, scissors, scraps of notes I'd written to myself, a discarded medicine card, a small flashlight, pens, a pencil, several I.V. needles and a couple of syringes I'd neglected to discard, and Xe's amulet.
A spasm of bitterness swept over me as I fingered it. My mother hadn't warned me about days like this. She'd never dreamed there could he days this bad: starting with Xe's death, ending with Tony's and Lightfoot's, and me, an unathletic, very conspicuous uniformed woman, stranded with a one-legged child she could barely talk to in terrain she hadn't the foggiest idea how to handle. Where were all those goddamn marines when you really needed them?
I fell asleep wondering how I was going to explain Tony's death to his wife-I would have to do that, I figured, if I got out of this all right.
I owed him that-or maybe that was exactly what I didn't owe him. No, no, I could lie and say I was medical escort for a critically injured child Tony was flying to emergency care and-oh, what the hell. How was the Army going to explain my death to my family? At least Ahn didn't have that kind of problem.
I'd been turning the amulet over in my hand like one of those jade egg-shaped worry stones I got in Taiwan. The worn old glass reminded me of Xe and the hospital and safety and of Charlie Heron, burned out and idealistic at the same time. I slipped it around my neck. It hadn't been such hot luck for either one of them, but Xe had died an old man at least. Anyway, it couldn't hurt. I fell asleep with it around my neck, my thumb tracing its smooth contours.
I slept very poorly. The foliage had shielded us from the worst of the rain initially, but soon the wind changed direction and we were taking the full force of it. The poncho kept blowing up over our heads. And I had fitful half-dreams full of fear that I would make noise and reveal our position, and self-reproach that I really didn't seem to feel all that much about Tony and Lightfoot dying. Why wasn't I grieving?
Tony and I had been lovers for three months. He given his life to save ours-well, for the time being at least.
And instead of thinking nice thoughts to send him to heaven with, an ungrateful bitch inside me kept muttering, Women and children first, huh? Thanks a lot, Tony. Now what do I do? You're the one with the survival training, the combat conditioning, all that good shit. What am I supposed to do when people try to kill me? Punch 'em with my bandage scissors? My recruiter told me this would never happen to me. The Army wouldn't let it-guess we outsmarted the Army, buh?
They probably told you you'd never get knocked off those gorgeous pins of yours by a helicopter prop either. And I would try to make myself cry, forcing up memories of those long legs storking about my hooch as he sipped a beer or smoked a joint, the smell of his skin, the feel of his curls, the way he felt inside me. Funnily, all I could remember of his eyes right then was those damned mirrored shades.
I knew it was healthy to cry, and this might be my only chance, but I just kept wondering hopelessly how we were going to get out of there.
How I didn't even have the pioneer woman's traditional last round to use on myself if capture became inevitable. And even if we never saw a VC, what would we eat? Where would we sleep? How would we keep from being blown to pieces by all of the things that were all the time blowing my patients to pieces? And we would get nowhere fast-Ahn's prosthesis, which worked well enough on the level concrete floors of the hospital, was going to be a problem in mud and rough terrain.
I opened my eyes in the middle of this rambling anxiety attack passing itself off as a dream and realized that I must have been sleeping in spite of everything. It was now fully night, with a steady hard pour.
Across the elephant grass the chopper sat in a blackened circle, glowing with heat and little interior fires. And around it other things glowed, like huge fireflies. I could see the lights clearly through the rain, the elephant grass, and the darkness, but the funny thing was that many of the colors were not bright or light ones but dulled down-a brown glow, a taupe one, wine-colored, teal, brown with red spots, olive, rust, and even, I swear it, a black glowing deeper and hotter than the blackness around it. These mixed and wavered and changed often, but they danced around the chopper like so many Tinker Bells. And as my eyes adjusted, I saw within the glow people in military hats a little different from ours, with rifles in their hands. They were digging around the helicopter, looking for the bodies, I supposed, or usable debris.
I jumped as something touched me on the shoulder, and looked up to see Ahn, encased in a pale green glow sparked with grayed violet, putting his finger to his lips. I nodded.
The fireflies poked around for some time, then fanned out, looking up and down, side to side, rifles ready. I always knew where they were, however, thanks to old Xe's handy-dandy cosmic gizmo. Everybody was lit up like a Christmas tree.
A teal-blue glow stalked through the elephant grass, toward us, then below us, and at first I wanted to shut my eyes so the woman with the rifle couldn't see me. Because light was pouring from me, too, just as it was from Ahn, who was wrapped tightly around his tree limb, gray-violet rays of radiant fear leaking from him.
But the closer the woman got, and somehow I knew it was a woman, a girl really, even through the blinding rain and her personal light show, the more I felt I knew about her: Poor kid, she's so heartbroken she doesn't even know how scared she is. And the closer she got, the more the light grew distinct, into separate colors, brown overpowering the teal, gray-violet overpowering both, all three colors blending into one another before bleeding from her into the darkness, not in beams, the way you'd think light should, but in droplets, like tears. And the whole time her rifle was at the ready, waiting for us to make a false move.
We didn't, though. We lay there barely breathing for what seemed like hours, until, when I looked around cautiously, I could no longer see any of the nine glows I had counted-two mostly teal, three mostly brown, an amber, a rust, a black, and a dull red.
I patted Ahn on the arm and the little brat yawned at me. He'd gone to sleep, rain and all. "Come on, babysan, I think we better didi mau."
His purplish gray had been superseded by a brighter red and green which I knew, don't ask me how, were much healthier colors for a growing boy.
The green was a shade that spoke of growing things, similar to the faint phosphorescence that was the aura of the tree that hid us, the plants all around us; the red, vital and strong, qualities in Ahn that were obvious watching that one-legged boy shinny back down the tree.
The sky lightened a little in one direction and the sun peeped out beyond the rain, splashing a rainbow across the sky. It seemed inappropriate, under the circumstances, but it had its uses. I didn't know if Vietnamese kids were ever boy scouts, but I thought they might have survival skills little girls who were bookworms in Kansas City might not have mastered. "Ahn, can you tell from the sun which way is the sea?"