She'd also tell me it was no use getting morbid. Good advice, but a little hard to follow. I tried to mentally construct a letter she would be able to relate to.
Dear Mom, A funny thing happened on my way to transfer Ahn to a different hospital. The darn chopper broke down and Ahn and I had to jump into the jungle. Tony, good captain that he was, went down with his ship, but we met this colorful character named William who's on his way back to civilization to get reassigned, since his last post was terminated. Little Ahn has been learning lots of new American expressions from him and woodcraft tricks I'm sure will stand him in good stead if he joins the Vietnamese Boy Scouts later on.
Anyhow, we've been spending the day on this wonderful nature hike. Your African violets would really take to this country.
The place looks like one big greenhouse, crammed with angel wing begonias, spider plants, ferns, mother-in-law's-tongues, all kinds of vines and ivies and flowers, most of which look as if they want to eat you. Seriously, though, it's very beautiful, if in bad need of a good pruning, and you'd enjoy the bird-watching and identifying all the kinds of spiders and lizards. We've heard monkeys too.
Though we haven't seen them, I know that's what they are because they sound just like the sound track of a Tarzan movie. There's supposed to be even bigger wildlife around, but so far none has crossed our path.
Fortunately, it's not too hot because this is the rainy season now. A little wet, but don't worry, I remembered my raincoat! Love to Daddy and all I wouldn't mention the amulet. She might not like me accepting jewelry from strange men, especially patients.
I wondered if the amulet would give me aura-enhanced nightmares. At least the glow from the greenery was fainter at night than during the day, probably because, with the whole sun-chlorophyll reaction, plants put out more energy during the daytime. That was good because all of that unaccustomed visual stimulus had given me a peculiar headache in the middle of my forehead.
Something rustled between the tree trunk and the ridge, where William was lying. At least good fortune had brought him to us, I thought, raising myself to my knees to peer over at him as if he were one of my night-shift patients. Something hard caught me across the throat and slammed my head back against the bank.
William's face loomed above me, his forearm pinning me by the throat to the bank. He wore a strange expression not of hatred or anger so much as concentration. Fortunately, the bank was crumbly and gave under my head, or I think he would have killed me right away. I kicked out and felt my boot scrape Ahn.
"Cut it out," I said, though it didn't sound like that when it came out.
"William, dammit, stop!"
Ahn flew into him, pounding him silently with bony little fists, dragging at his arm. William released me long enough to backhand the boy halfway down the rest of the ridge.
I couldn't wait to get my breath back, but gasped, "William, goddammit, what the fuck's the matter with you?"
He started to grab me again but I blocked him, rather feebly, with my own arms, and looked into his eyes again, trying to find out, before I died, what in the hell was going on. My arms were surrounded by a dingy mauve light that fused with his dull maroon glow and diluted it. He sat back on his haunches abruptly, overbalancing himself so that he tumbled*backward a pace or two. He threw out his hands and grabbed a branch, sat up, shook himself like a wet dog, and blinked.
Ahn scrambled around him up the hill and hid behind me, rubbing his stump tenderly and sniffling. But he hadn't uttered a single cry throughout.
William crawled back up the hill. I scuttled back and nearly knocked Ahn over, but William just said, " 'Bout time you got some sleep, girl.
I'll take watch."
"Oh, no thanks," I said, determined not to sleep a wink around him lest I inadvertently die before I wake.
"What you mean, 'no thanks'?" William asked. "Thass crazy. You gotta sleep." He said the last like a mother cajoling a youngster.
"I'm crazy?" I hissed. "You just tried to kill me."
He looked blank.
"Yeah," Ahn chimed in. "You numbah ten, GI. You get mamasan like this and He parodied choking himself and made a terrible face, then dropped his hands to his sides. "Hey, William, you some kinda VC?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. I did what? Is this child jiving me or what?"
"You tried to kill me, William," I said, and relaxed enough to try to figure it out, now that I was pretty sure he was himself again. "Maybe you were having a dream or something about being back at your unit again, do you think?"
"Yeah, yeah, could be. Hey, I'm real sorry-" He extended his fingers to my neck as if to stroke away the bruise I could feel rising. "I didn't mean-shit, I'm real sorry." His voice broke and I realized he was crying. He reached out a rather large paw and grasped Ahn's hand. "Sin loi, babysan."
Ahn gave him a measuring look that was older than he was, and nodded, dismissing the whole thing.
"It's okay, William," I said. "It's over."
But none of us slept, and as soon as it was light enough to move without falling over our own feet or tripping on one of the knots of roots and vines crisscrossing our path, we started walking again.
"Where are we going, William?" I asked.
"Hell if I know. I was just told, when you out in the bush, you keep movin'. So we movin'."
It was good enough for me. Only I wished I was sure we were moving toward a hot meal, a nice bunk, and lots of ugly wire and sandbags between us and other people's bullets.
Ahn clung to my hand all morning, but suddenly he slipped away, looking very excited, and peered intently along the side of the trail. I stopped and he took hold of the tail of my uniform shirt for balance and jabbed at something with his crutch stick. I thought it was a snake, but when Ahn shuddered backward I decided it might be even more dangerous.
"William?" I whispered. He was walking point. We were several yards behind him on the trail, though we were going as fast as we could and he as slow as he could.
"Yeah?"
"I think Ahn found a mine." I snatched Ahn back when he leaned forward to poke again, but he wriggled from my grasp and once more extended his crutch.
William rejoined us and caught the stick in mid-thrust, pulling it out of Ahn's grasp so that he fell back against me.
"You VC, kid? Try to blow us all up?"
"No VC," Ahn said. "Look," and he made eating motions, as if he were scoopin rice out of a bowl into his mouth.
I took about four hasty giant steps backward as William prodded the mound of earth this time. I could vaguely see little round shapes at the top. "What are they?" I whispered as William dug at the mound with a stick and flipped something loose that rolled to his feet. "They look like Sterno cans. Homemade bombs?"
"Don't seem like it, but almost as bad. Beans and muthahfuckers."
"Huh?"
"Beans an' hotdogs. See here? Some dudes, when they out in the field and they got C rats they hate, they just buries 'em. How you get along with lima beans?"