"Better. Lookit."
"Sheeit. Hey, lady. Lady, where the fuck you come from?" This from a pockmarked swarthy-type kid with some kind of a New York accent mixed with the redneck patois most of the grunts used. The auras of both men were flashing, red, brown, black, olive, mustard, orange, a confusion of high emotion that blurred together for me. I sat up, feeling as if I'd been in an elevator that had suddenly dropped two floors. We had been wending through the jungle as we had for the last four days when all of a sudden all hell broke loose and there I was, on the ground, with my guard bleeding on top of me and automatic bursts and hand grenades exploding around me and my bound hands pinned down by the body on top of me. A deep groan issued from someone nearby.
"We got a live one here."
"Well, pull him out. Where the fuck is Bao?" This was from other disembodied voices. I was still trying to focus on the two faces in front of me.
"Jesus, lookit her hands. Lookit her arm. Baby, did they hurt you bad?
Hey, Didi, you save that little bastard. They had themselves an American woman, the little fuckers."
"A whut. Maryjane, what the fuck you smokin' now-"
"No, man, I found her. Let her alone. Can you get up, baby?
Show papa where it hurts," and he tried to scoop me up and I wanted to collapse in his arms and sob but he was flashing so heavy with all that red and orange and black it seemed he was on fire. I looked around me.
Dinh was half-sitting, his arms being wrenched behind him. One leg was covered with blood, the calf lying at a funny angle from the thigh.
Maryjane, the dishwater-blond, saw the direction of my stare. "That the fucker who did you, baby? I'll fix his ass." He rose and strode over to Dinh.
"No, you don't, man. We gotta squeeze him first. He's some highrankin'
motherfucker," said the man who was tying him, the one called Didi.
"Yeah? Okay. I won't kill him, then," and he rared back and kicked Dinh's injured knee. The colonel let out a sound like brakes being applied at high speed and fainted. The smell of fresh urine added itself to the stench of death and evacuated bowels from the corpses of my former captors.
"Cut it out," I said, I thought loudly, but it came out a bare whisper.
"Hey, you asshole. You're upsettin' the lady. She been through enough." The guy with the New York accent helped me to my feet, but I didn't stay up very long. I took one look around me and doubled up again, losing the little rice I had kept down that day and retching long after the last of the bile had poured from me.
After a while I was able to tell them who I was. Someone got on a radio, back to base, and told them about me, about Dinh. There was a long pause, then: "Hold it right there, son. This is General Hennessey, on inspection tour. You say this is an American nurse you found? And she was in the company of these Vietcong guerrillas?"
"That's affirmative, sir."
"Give me your coordinates again."
He did, and the general set up a rendezvous. I thought at the time, I didn't think generals probably remembered how to do that anymore. I guessed I should feel honored. Maybe he'd want me to attend at party at his mess. I was dressed right for a mess then. My fatigues were in tatters, and I was covered with bites and scratches and that one long bayonet wound.
Someone picked up Dinh like a sack of potatoes and carried him, shattered leg dangling. I don't think they had a medic. Maybe he'd gotten killed. Maryjane and Zits, the guy from New York, supported me.
I don't know how long it took, how far it was. I wasn't entirely with it. I kept getting confused, thinking we were still back at the village with the point man walking into the minefield, and that was Dinh. When I looked down at my own hand I couldn't see any color at all around it.
I heard myself giggle. Maryjane grinned at me and wiggled his eyebrows encouragingly. "I'm outa juice," I explained. It made perfect sense to me, but he drew a spiral by his ear with his finger and Zits nodded.
That was pretty funny and I giggled again.
They tied Dinh to a tree. He couldn't stand, even on his one good leg.
He was out of it. They tried to question him, but he didn't say anything. I thought he was conscious most of the time, but no matter what they asked, how they hit him, what they threatened, he didn't say anything, except to groan and scream a lot.
Some of the questions were about me. The sergeant who was running the show would ask in broken Vietnamese, then the interpreter would ask, then they'd hit Dinh and he'd scream again.
"Not a fuckin' thing. What we gonna tell the general?"
Maybe he don't know nothin'."
"He knows what they did to her. Where she's from."
"Hell, man, she knows that."
"Yeah, but she's dinky dao as shit."
"Fuck it, man, he ain't gonna tell you anything. I'm tired of this shit. Let's play a little 'guts,' Sarge, whattaya say? That's first-class round-eye tail he was fuckin' with, man. We don't even get none of that. He's got some payback comin'."
"Damn straight."
"Nah, man, the general's gonna want to question this dde."
"You ain't been listenin', asshole. He ain't talkin'. We'll just loosen him up a little."
"Lookit him. You'll kill him before the general gets here, man. He's gonna be soooo disappointed."
"Ain't that a fuckin' shame. So we'll save him a piece. A tiny little piece."
I looked inquiringly at Zits. I was still having trouble talking. It had beenonly a few days, but it felt like forever since I'd heard English spoken by other Americans. It seemed to be going too fast for me. I still didn't get what they were up to. I wasn't tracking very clearly.
"You'll see, baby. Maybe you wanna play too."
Oh goody. Vietnam was so wonderful. In school nobody had ever wanted me on their team, and here the boys were, choosing me first.
"Me first, man, I found her," Maryjane said. He cut off Dinh's clothes.
"Hey, man, leave him a jock. There's ladies present."
"How can I cut off his balls if I leave him a jock? Besides, she's a nurse. She's seen it all."
"Don't cut him there yet, man. That's too much. He'll die too soon."
"I don't give a fuck," he said. But he stood in front of Dinh, and when he stood away, he was holding a bloody piece of something and there was a long bleeding strip where the colonel's right nipple had been. Dinh made that braking sound.
"See, baby, that's how it works. Wanna play?" Zits said. Then, "Hey, she's next, man."
"Umm, yeah, I'd like to play guts with her," someone said lasciviously.
I think he was kidding and meant something else, but my whole back convulsed. I stood up slowly and walked over to Dinh. I started to look at the knee. Touched the amulet slowly. But my eyes were drawn back to his face. His eyelids peeled back about a quarter inch from his eyes and he saw me and groaned. I stood up.
"She's takin' a long time to decide what she wants. Somebody ought to tell her it's spontaneous, like. Hey, baby, give somebody else a turn."
"Shut up. You don't know what that slant bastard did to her."
"No, but it's fun to imagine, huh?"
"You make me sick." Zits came up beside me. "Hey, baby, you need somethin' to work with, huh? A field knife maybe?"
I was looking at Dinh. His eyes struggled open a little bit more. Hue's father, who had blown up all the children in one village, murdered a family, shot one of my patients. I saw with a shock that while his screams might not have been faked, his degree of being out of it was. He was more alert than I was. And his aura, a bare thread, was.the gray of a concrete overcoat. He stared at me steadily, challenging at first, and then, in response to whatever he saw in me, imploring, pleading, demanding, calling in a debt. Without even speaking to Zits, I lifted his sidearm from its holster. He didn't seem to notice, he was watching me so hard. So was everyone. I don't know what they thought I was going to do. I pulled the gun out and, still watching the colonel's eyes, which lit with approval, his head nodding imperceptibly, stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.