"Okay, be that way," I said aloud. She looked healthy enough now, her aura bright and strong despite all the muddiness surrounding it. This village had managed its oh. problems before I came along and I wasn t about to intrude on the privacy of a woman who obviously didn't want me there.
I was turning to leave when the woman who had brought me to the hut stepped into the doorway. Ahn squeezed in beside her. She seemed chagrined and bowed two or three times. I reciprocated. She started speaking rapidly to Ahn, gesturing toward the woman on the bed with lifts of her chin, watching me anxiously. Clearly, she had expected the girl to be rude and was apologizing for it.
"What did she say, Ahn?" I asked.
"This one name Tran Thi Truong, very please to meet you," Ahn 'd, inclining his head to the woman beside him. "Truong say that one sal I I Dinh Thi Hue."
Dinh Thi Hue interrupted suddenly, with a spate of imperious questions, her words sounding harsh and accusing.
"Well, what did she say?"
"She want to know where are other American soldiers."
I started to say there weren't any more and then thought maybe that wasn't such a good idea.
"What's it to her?" I asked Ahn.
Truong pulled us outdoors and started talking again, in low, emphatic tones, her eyes full of apology, but also some anger.
Ahn looked wise and said, "Last time Americans here they boomboom Dinh Thi Hue." He made a graphic gesture with a circle of the forefinger and thumb and the forefinger of his other hand as casually as an American eight-year-old might wave hi. "Make babysan. She no like American soldiers."
No wonder. I turned back to her with more sympathy, which I had no idea how to express. I murmured, "Sin loi, Dinh Thi Hue."
Ahn was defensive on my behalf, however, and hobbled over to Hue's bedside and regaled the girl for several minutes, nodding at me, slapping the thigh above his stump with a gesture that said it was now sound as a dollar owing to my expert intervention, and clearly told her I was a GI of a different kind than she had known before. I hoped he wasn't telling her I was the only one of my kind.
She let out a long sigh and lay back against the pillow, her face sweaty and her hair still matted with mud and blood. Her face seemed familiar to me, but I thought that was because she reminded me of one of the patients. She had a banty toughness about her that reminded me of Cammy Dover, a four-foot-eleven biker I'd met at a folk club in Denver.
Ahn picked up her hand and la daied me over to her, and put our hands together. She didn't look into my eyes but inclined her head a bare half inch and muttered something in English.
"She say, 'Thank you, Mao,' for helping her when big snake have her. She say thank you to Ahn also, because Ahn hite big snake, make him let her go. She say Ahn and Mao numbah one team and she love us too much."
I laughed and patted his shoulder. "I say Ahn numbah one bullshitter and full of wishful thinking, but thanks for trying."
"Com bic? What means 'wishful thinking'?" he asked.
But about then Hoa came to the door and gestured urgently to Ahn to la dai. He turned away from the peace conference and hobbled toward the door, negotiating the ditch with more agility than I would have thought possible. I wished we'd been able to save his crutch during the crash.
The little girl appeared in the doorway again and this time la daied me.
Truong frowned at her, but the child didn't notice.
Dinh Thi Hue watched all of this through slitted eyes, as if taking notes.
"It's been great having such a warm friendly chat with you," I said,
"but I gotta go now. Kids. You know how it is. Probably want me to car-pool them to the Little Ixague game or take them to the Dairy Queen."
She blinked, mildly puzzled. Her aura looked a little less muddied now.
I thought I would be able to tell from it if she was losing blood. It would be dimmer surely. The way she felt about Americans, I didn't want to invade her privacy to check under the Army blanket someone had laid across her. Truong bent over her, murmuring something.
The rain started again, a thin gray drizzle. It made a pewter backdrop for the wet brilliance of the jungle.
As soon as I was outside, Hoa took off at a run, leaving me standing beside Ahn.
In a few minutes, Hoa returned, her pace slow and solemn this time, her arms cradling something that turned out to be a puppy.
"This Hoe's friend, very fierce tete guard dog, Bao Phu," Ahn told me.
"Protecting Hoa, Bao Phu is hurt. Hoa want Mao to make better."
Wow. Snake charming, faith healing, and veterinary medicine all in one day. Ought to look great on my r'esumd.
he funeral procession for the old woman was a slow, thin line Tof people bareheaded and barefoot, people in conical hats and B. F. Goodrich sandals, people in what seemed like patched Sunday best, trudging, sometimes slipping, up the muddy incline, carrying smoking incense that refused to stay lit and stubs of guttering candle protected by open palms or a leaf shield. Children blew noisemakers and pounded on things-a shell casing, the basin I'd used to clean Ahn's wound. The noise, I've learned since, was meant to frighten away demons. I got the feeling from the auras of those around me that having a funeral so late in the day was irregular-that there might be more demons out than usual.
Hue limped, with Truong anxiously offering support and mostly being spurned. Both women wore white with bits of gilt paper and red cloth attached to their hair and clothing. Hue, who should have been in bed after her miscarriage, walked with the help of two friends. She walked hunched over and I guessed that was because the snake must have broken some of her ribs. Ahn and I joined the procession, and he leaned on the old man, Huang, for support and knocked another stick against his makeshift crutch to make noise. I caught up with them and it was all I could do to keep pace with an old man and a crippled boy. I was that exhausted, and the path was very slippery.
Ahn looked up at me with the lugubrious expression of an amatellr undertaker doing his best to look depressed about an improvement in business. He wasn't pleased about the old woman's death, I knew, but with the practicality of the poor and dependent, he knew she was dead and he was alive. The cause of her death was also a chance for him to fit in, get himself adopted and become one of the villagers. He didn't want to dissociate himself from me, exactly. My world had been his home for some time. Together we had done something that earned him a place in this world. But although he was a child, he could not afford to be an innocent. He was hedging his bets for his own survival. His faith in my omnipotence was not what it once had been. Which was in line with my assessment of the situation. I patted his shoulder and trudged beside him.
I didn't understand many things about that funeral, but the need for the incense was obvious, and not just for symbolic or religious reasons. The body already stank-the crushing from the snake would have ruptured the organs and hastened the decomposition. It was carried on a board and draped with a red cloth, jungle flowers scattered on top of it.
Fortunately, the pallbearers walked very slowly and were as sure-footed as mountain goats. There had apparently been no time to build a coffin.