Tree of Smoke

Fire ants covered it, rolling in from the blazing day in a phalanx about six inches wide and God knew how long. “Have you listened to the radio?” Mrs. Bingham said. “The North is

attacking all over. They hit the American Embassy.” “Really.” “They’ve been repulsed, it seems. So the news reports say. But it’s the

American station. They’d want to sound victorious, wouldn’t they? Dear,” she said to her husband, who ministered to one of the small creatures, “she’s dead. Dead.”

“I was arranging her arms.” “Leave her alone.” The servant girl attacked the ants with brisk strokes of a short-handled

broom, driving them out the front door. The boy guarding the entrance edged a couple of feet to his left. The girl looked Chinese, taller than most, quite tall, with a very short black skirt and long legs.

Kathy asked, “Will you stay on?” “Stay on?” “Can you repair things, do you think you can rebuild the facility?” “What else can we do? Who else would take care of them? There are

only seven, but, I mean, nevertheless. Seven left out of one hundred sixty.” “One hundredfifty-eight,” the doctor said. “You had a store of antibiotics, didn’t you? I wonder if that’s still

true?” She knew they had antibiotics—the second refrigerator. “Goddamn them, who do they think they are, what are they trying to do? You’re Canadian, aren’t you? You’re not American.” Kathy said very evenly, “I’m wondering about your antibiotics now.

Now that things are so different.” “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Bingham said. “I wondered why you’d come around.” “I know. I’m sorry. I know,” Kathy said. “It’s just the way of things. It

would be such a help.”

“Do you have cold storage?”

“I was thinking of the Bao Dai facility. We have a couple of Frigidaires. It would really help. It truly would. Two hundred children, more or less.”

“We had one hundred fifty-eight/’ Mrs. Bingham reminded her. “Yes,” Kathy said, longing to strike her in the face. She asked them

again: “What will you do?” “We’ll probably stay on.” “Yes. We’ll stay on,” Mrs. Bingham said, staring at the maidservant as

she rinsed out rags at the sink. “Your generator is working well.” “Yes, yes. We still have power.” The doctor said, “Who do you really work for? What are you after?” His wife leapt to her feet. “Do you want medicine? Do you want

medicine?” She ran over to the girl at the kitchen sink and pulled up her skirt from behind. Underneath the girl went naked, she wore no panties—”There,” Mrs. Bingham said, “will we stay on? How could we leave!”

“Let her have the medicine.” She opened one of the refrigerators wide and shrieked, “Take it over

my dead body!” “Give it to her. She needs it,” the doctor said. “It was stupid of you to come,” Mrs. Bingham said. “Take it,” her husband said. The girl went on washing at the sink as

though none of this were happening.

Above Echo Camp as the sun rose the mountain disgorged black smoke like a volcano. The paddies on the west side, untouched by two wars, were now a wasteland, destroyed by NVA artillery or VC mortars, whichever it was, and by U.S. incendiary ordnance and rockets. Echo Camp lay untouched. Mortar blasts had dug craters a hundred meters off, nothing closer. The ville of Cao Phuc too was safe. But it appeared many of the villagers had been warned—that the VC had warned them—that they’d been contacted, cultivated, turned. The place had been strangely quiet the afternoon preceding the onslaught. The Purple Bar had been inexplicably closed. Before dawn Tuesday came the attack; by midmorning Tuesday the population had crept back home, though some still came, without bags or bundles, as if they’d only been gone a few minutes.

At dawn the colonel had arrived by chopper and come down the mountain in a jeep and toured the area with Screwy Loot and two men from Psy Ops—Sergeant Storm and a civilian the little sergeant referred to as the Skipper.

“Boy, boy, boy,” Screwy Loot said, “those F-16s sure tore the shit out of our mountain.”

The colonel said, “This is just the start. From now on all hell is going to rain down from these skies. It’s a goddamned shame.” The colonel was beside himself. During the fighting these villagers had disappeared, but the farmers on the mountain’s other side had not—except in flames. He slapped at the heads of several local men who sat on their rumps in the dirt in a line, legs straight out with their ankles trussed together and their wrists bound behind their backs. The Kootchy Kooties had captured a man, a VC, they said, who’d come at them with an AK and blown the Indian’s rucksack to shreds, right on his back. The Indian took hold of their blindfolded prisoner’s bound wrists and dragged him backward over the earth into the brush where the Kooties had pitched their tents. The little man grimaced so hard he seemed to unhinge his jaw as his arms popped out of their sockets at the shoulders, but he didn’t make a sound as the Kooties hung him by the wrists from the lopped-off branch of a banyan tree, his toes six inches above the earth.

Echo was messed up over Sarge, who’d been taken to Hospital 12 with wounds in his neck and spine and belly and waited there in a state of paralysis, too critical to be moved stateside. Most of Echo sat in the Purple Bar saying nothing, drinking only a little, silly with grief and nauseated by the violent power of fate. The new black guy sat among them telling whopping lies about people he claimed to know personally back home. He was able to talk because his heart wasn’t broken. He’d never really known the sarge. He came from the boonies in Louisiana and seemed both shy around these men and excited to talk about his home. “I been rode on by a witch before. I know a witch rode me all night once because I woke up tired and dirty with bloody corners on my mouth where I bit on the bridle. You can hang a horseshoe over your bed to keep witches off. Before she can come in your house she got to walk down every single road where that horseshoe been walking. My uncle fetched a rock and broke the arm on a witch one night and next day I swear on Jesus it was Sunday and old neighbor lady singing hymns in church got bubbles outa her mouth and fell down rolling and preacher say Take up her shawl and they took up her shawl and there was her arm bust and bone sticking out right where my uncle broke that witch’s arm and preacher say Drag her to the pit and they dragged her to the pit and preacher say Burn the witch and they burned her up right there in the pit. I swear it’s true. Don’t nobody back home say it ain’t. My uncle told me and everybody knew about it.” He was a pie-faced black youth, very black, the color of charcoal. Nobody stopped him and he might have gone on talking forever, but Nash came in and interrupted, saying, “Hey, you gotta see this, the Kooties are messing with that Vietcong and he’s all fucked up, I am not shitting you, man, you really gotta see this.”

Outside, Black Man watched while eating a mango, peel and all, with his hands. There were always mangoes around—bananas too, sometimes papayas. He said, “Those Lurps all janged up on bennies and goofballs. Zippy zoodle.”

One of the Lurps, in fact the most randomly unhinged of the colonel’s Kootchy Kooties, the savagely dressed black guy, stood in a bloody puddle in front of the hanging prisoner, spitting in his face.

Screwy Loot stood watching too, along with Sergeant Storm from Psy Ops.

The colonel observed from the shade, from a seat on an old connex crate shot full of holes, with chickens living in it. He and the Skipper didn’t seem interested in making their presence known. The lieutenant went over to them and said, “Well, now, it’s like this, the thing about this kind of thing …” He didn’t finish. He frowned. He chewed his lips.

The black Kooty seemed to be lecturing them while he dug at the man’s belly with the blade of a multipurpose Swiss Army knife. “They are kicking our ass and we gonna find out what’s what. They attacking all over the South. The American Embassy compound even.”

Sergeant Storm from Psy Ops said, “Man, no, don’t,” but not very loudly. Cowboy says, “Give it to the motherfucker. Make him holler. Yeah,

motherfucker. That’s how Sarge hollered. Make him holler.” His face was purple with rage, and he wept. “There’s something I want this sonabitching muhfucker to see” Now the Kooty went at the man’s eyes with the spoon of his Swiss Army knife.

“Do it, do it,” Cowboy said.

“I want this muhfucker to get a real … good … look at something,” the Kooty said. “Oh, yeah. Sound like a baby girl,” he said in answer to the man’s screams. He dropped his knife in the gore at his feet and grabbed the man’s eyeballs hanging by their purple optic nerves and turned the red veiny side so that the pupils looked back at the empty sockets and the pulp in the cranium. “Take a good look at yourself, you piece of shit.”

“Jesus Christ,” the skinny little sergeant said.

The colonel hopped down off the connex crate and walked over to the scene unsnapping the flap on his holster and motioned Cowboy and the Kooty out of the way and shot the dangling prisoner in the temple.

Sergeant Storm said, “Goddamn fucking right.”

Cowboy put his face directly in the colonel’s. “You didn’t hear the sarge crying and bawling till he lost his voice,” he told him. “One or two things like that, and this shit ain’t funny no more.”

Th e corpse went limp instantaneously and a rag of brain flopped down the side of its face.

Young Captain Minh, as a Viet Nam Air Force pilot, had directed ordnance against countless targets and, from the cockpit of his F-5E fighter-bomber, must himself have finished the lives of hundreds, but these had ended in obscurity, beneath carpets of fire and smoke, and Minh had never seen anyone kill anyone before.

It was a sunny morning. Almost noon. Already uncomfortably hot. The colonel holstered his weapon and said, “There is a great deal I’ll do in the name of anti-Communism. A great deal. But by God, there’s a limit.”

Minh heard the colonel’s nephew laughing. Skip Sands could hardly stand up, he was laughing so hard. He put a hand against the tent and almost pulled it down. Nobody paid any attention to him.

The black Lurp stared at the colonel and cleaned the blood from his clasp knife ostentatiously with his tongue before tromping off toward the north hamlet and the Purple Bar.

Minh took the attitude that all this destruction wasn’t happening, that a foul wind of illusion blew through, dragging behind it an actuality of peace and order. The village of Cao Phuc, for instance, what had happened here?—the Echo camp a small base, now, with Quonset huts, latrines, two big MASH generators; the temple still dominating the south hamlet but resting now on a thick concrete slab with a tiled entryway; the north hamlet overrun by a compound of refugee housing resembling crates and coops—all these changes in the couple of years he’d been flying the colonel back and forth. The Purple Bar was the same oversized hooch, a loitering place for dull-faced prostitutes, waifs whose families had perished. No local girls entered there.

“Jesus Christ,” Jimmy Storm said, “that is one fucked-up nigger.”

“And who fucked him up? We did,” the colonel said. “History might forgive us for what’s going on around here. But that man never will. He’d better not.”

Minh didn’t know this black Lurp who’d cut the prisoner’s eyes out. When the man wasn’t around, everybody spoke of him. He slept on his poncho on the ground, and only in the day. At night he moved through the world, no one said where. His hair grew out in wild foot-long clusters. He’d cut the sleeves and most of the pant legs away from his uniform, and nothing kept the vermin from his flesh but the bright designs of red, white, and blue paint streaking his face and limbs.

A little after sixteen hundred hours Minh and the three Americans went back up the mountain and on to Saigon in the colonel’s helicopter, a Huey modified with two extra seats and without a machine gun, on loan to the colonel from the VNAF, though the colonel himself had arranged for the VNAF to have it in the first place. On the colonel’s orders Minh took them to several thousand feet and kept up a speed of nearly a hundred U.S. miles per hour. Sergeant Storm, sitting on his helmet with an M16 across his knees, his hair raked back by the deafening winds, occasionally raised his weapon to fire a burst down into the world below. The colonel’s nephew sat next to the sergeant, staring out the open portal at the jungle and the paddies, the flicker of fires, man-destroyed badlands from which smoke ascended like steam through rents in a cauldron’s lid. Two fighter jets passing close underneath actually drowned out the incredible racket of the chopper’s motors. The craft came very close. F-104s. Minh could almost make out the emblem on one pilot’s helmet.

Skip Sands often smiled, and always Skip Sands joked, but Minh had hardly ever heard Skip Sands laugh. Why had he laughed at the poor tormented man? Certainly nobody could have found it funny. But something had struck him as hilarious.

The colonel, wearing his headset, sat next to Minh and studied the horizon and seemed to have forgotten the terrors of the morning. Skip, for his part, looked as if they’d never leave him. The colonel hadn’t mentioned his nephew’s behavior. Maybe it didn’t bear mentioning. Perhaps Skip thanked his God right now that he had no headset and that their transport was too loud for talk. But who can look into another’s thoughts? And Minh often felt of the Americans that behind their actions lay no thoughts anyway, only passions. But he’d seen Skip’s face as his uncle had helped him aboard and he believed completely that this American was thinking only of the murdered man.

For a brief period Minh let the colonel take the controls. It wasn’t safe, but the colonel did what he wished, and nothing could hurt him. The colonel had seen war at its worst and had once made to Minh a sad confession: in order to save his fellow prisoners from a massacre, the colonel, at that time a young air force captain like Minh himself, had killed one of his own comrades in the dark hold of a Japanese POW ship, had choked him to death with his bare hands. The colonel often shared such stories, possibly because he didn’t think Minh comprehended. Minh’s English, however, kept improving. He could speak confidently about matters within the realm of his duties and sometimes followed whole conversations among Americans, though the subtleties eluded him and he couldn’t hope to participate with any skill. And Minh thought he was probably the only person who knew that the colonel kept a wife in the lower Mekong Delta and frequently traveled to visit her in this very helicopter.

Th e airfield at Tan Son Nhut in Saigon had come under rocket fire three times since the initial predawn assault, but no attack was under

way at the moment, and they were permitted to land. They left Minh with the craft and crossed the field through an oily wind under gray skies. Outside the terminal Hao waited with the Chevrolet, just beyond the concrete barricades.

Skip thought he should demonstrate some minimal interest in where they were going, but he had none. Storm, however, demanded to know, and the colonel said, “Hao better have that figured out.” Skip and Storm in the back, the colonel up front beside Hao, who smoked a long cigarette and worried its filter tip with his thumb, dotting his pant legs with ash, and peered out myopically and drove without certainty. The city echoed with small-arms fire and the drumroll of helicopters and, somewhat curiously, firecrackers. They passed several unclaimed corpses at the side of the street but saw little real damage, saw people carrying on as usual, walking to and fro, sailing out on their small motorcycles. The colonel said, “Do we have a good enough fix on where we’re going?” but Hao didn’t seem to get the question, and the colonel said, “Hao, I don’t think we know where we’re going.”

“He tell to me the location. I will find it.” A few minutes later he said, ahead of the colonel’s next question, “Cho Lon is too big. Too many street.”

“There—there—those jeeps.” Hao stopped the Chevrolet near a trio of ARVN jeeps parked randomly around the dead bodies of two Vietnamese men.

“Stop. Stop. Go ahead and kill it,” the colonel said, and as Hao cut the engine he said, “Hao, we’re going to see some dead VC up here. I want you to look and make sure none of them is our friend.”

Hao nodded.

“You know who I mean?”

Hao said, “Our friend.”

“I don’t think he’s here. He shouldn’t be. But I want you to make sure. All right—let us proceed.” They all got out of the car. The two corpses lay side by side in the middle of the street with their

arms stretched above their heads. Each had been shot a great number of times. A squad of nine or so ARVN infantry sat in or leaned against the jeeps. Nearby a small ARVN officer smoked a cigarette, standing almost at attention with one hand on the butt of his sidearm.

“Major Keng?” “C’est moi.” “I’m Colonel Francis Sands. —Skip, can you get the drift for me?

This is Mr. Skip, my nephew and colleague. Skip, thank him for coming out. Thank him for keeping this under guard. Tell him I’m the one his information originated from.”

The major closed his eyes and smiled. “No need for that, Colonel. I

get you.” “No,” Skip said. “Your accent is terrific.” “Keng is a Chinese name. Incidentally, I am not Chinese.” “How many languages do you speak?” “French, English, Chinese. And my own, of course. What can I do

for you, Colonel?” The colonel said, “Did it all go like we told you?” “Like a charm,” the major said. “We ambushed them.” “Did they have explosives?” Major Keng tossed away his cigarette and beckoned them all over to a

jeep on whose rear seat lay four satchel charges. “Red China,” he said. “What time did they come here?” the colonel asked. “Three a.m. on the dot.” The colonel said, “Everything like we told you?” “Everything was correct,” Keng said, “to the tee. Oh three hundred

hours.” He swept his hand out at the corpses. “Two VC. As promised.” “What was the target?” “To destroy the traffic bridge there,” Keng said. “Is this stuff big enough for the job?” “I will give you my best guess: more than enough.” “No IDs, I suppose.” “No identity cards.” Keng shook his head. “Major, we won’t trouble you further. I just wanted to be sure our in

formation was correct. We’ll take a quick look at this overpass and be on our way.”

Storm and Skip followed the colonel over to the traffic overpass evidently targeted for destruction by the two guerrillas, and stood atop it. Buzzing motor scooters echoed below them. “I’m not sure I see the point,” the colonel said. “I suppose it would have tied up the street down there. But I’m not sure I see the point.” He headed back to the car.

Storm walked beside Skip and said, “I can tell by the way you move, you like it here. You walk very softly and you don’t get your body hot for no good reason. You use the air around you.” Making this remark he seemed strangely shy, not at all the tough little lunatic. “You know what

mean?”

“Sort of.”

“You blend with the air like a native,” Storm assured him.

After Colonel Sands had shaken hands with Major Keng and invited him out for supper and drinks and been politely refused, the colonel sat in the Chevy’s front seat maintaining a zealous poise and told Hao, “Out Highway One. Let’s get a drink.”

Hao executed a lurching U-turn and they left the corpses behind.

“Goddamn it,” the colonel said, “we are in business with a double.”

They were somewhere out on Highway One at a restaurant-tavern in an unpaved cul-de-sac, the Bar Jolly Blue, a place mainly, it seemed to Skip, for whores and gangsters. But it was the Saigon watering hole of Echo Platoon and of many serving the Cao Phuc landing zone, none of them present now, as today no soldier in the country took leave, not in the northern army or the southern, not the Vietcong or the U.S. forces. Skip, Storm, and the colonel sat in deck chairs under an awning in the cooling dusk, and they kept the Chevy’s radio tuned to AFVN and stayed on top of things. Skip hadn’t slept since he’d left Cao Quyen almost forty-eight hours earlier. He assumed the colonel and Storm were equally exhausted, but none of them wanted to go down before they knew what had happened, what might happen next, how things stood with this unprecedented monster push, which seemed, at this point, to have been a disaster for the enemy.

Between hourly radio news dispatches the colonel made phone calls from a pimp’s room to the U.S. Embassy and got a wealth of confusing and contradictory reports.

“Coordinated attacks all over Quang Tri Province. At least that far north.”

“How far south?”

“They hit Con Mau down there.”

“On the peninsula? Jesus.”

“They’re all over. And being slaughtered in swarms.”

Combined NVA and Vietcong forces had assaulted nearly every sizable population center and military installation in the South. “Bold and crazy,” the colonel said at first, and then as reports accumulated he said, “Bold and crazy and stupid.” While the overall offensive was stunning in its orchestration and its suddenness, its fierceness and grandeur, the individual attacks seemed to have been mounted without clear planning or adequate support.

The colonel poured drinks from a fifth of Bushmills—out of a case of it that rode with him everywhere in his Chevy’s trunk. “We’re bombing Cu Chi nonstop already. Any square inch where a GI isn’t standing is going to be a crater. I told you all hell would rain down. I consider this hasty. We had plans for those tunnels.”

“Just to get down to the actual facts,” Jimmy Storm said, “I don’t care about the tunnels.” “We’re casting about for some other approach to combating this enemy. Anything but what we’ve got,” the colonel insisted. “I started out with a red-hot desire to fry their minds. Now I spend my day trying to keep my own mind from exploding.”

Skip had spent half a year in exile, missing this, longing for it, and it seemed he hadn’t missed a minute, had taken up exactly in midconversation with the red-eyed colonel and the quivering bird-dog sergeant. It seemed the two held forth on parallel tracks, confident of meeting somewhere in infinity. Skip’s esophagus burned. He drank 7Up. In his mind the day’s truest fact was that the bleeding, gouge-eyed man his uncle had dispatched so readily was a human soul in a family of others who had known him by name and held him in love, and he, Skip, a spy for history’s greatest nation, was troubled that this should trouble him.

“What did I tell you,” the colonel said, “about centralization? The VC and the NVA are controlled from a single source.”

“Most elegant.”

“Probably unbeatable. We can’t win like this. Our young foot soldier this morning phrased it correctly. This shit ain’t funny no more. This shit is a mess. This shit has got to stop.”

Skip had never heard from the colonel any statement even remotely like this one. It was all wrong. It was completely false because it offered entrance to far too much that was true.

“If we can’t be centralized, if we’re going to flounder around like ants in molasses, then we as individual floundering ants can’t wait for orders

from above.” Storm said, “What’s the skin, daddy-o?” “The skinny is we’ve got ourselves a double, and we’ll work him very

carefully. But we have a lot of planning and thinking to do, and none of that begins today. Let’s just be happy we don’t have to sit on our asses while Uncle Ho executes one grand strategy after another until something works. This time it didn’t work. This time they tossed themselves into battle and just pointlessly expended themselves.”

Jimmy Storm laughed with a kind of exhausted abandon while Skip and the colonel watched. He got control of himself. “Jesus, how can you go forty-eight hours without sleep and then come up with this eloquent moonshine? KEEP THESE HARLOTS AWAY FROM ME,” he shouted at the mamasan waiting tables. “All right—you,” he said, “you can come here,” and he snapped his lighter open for the cigarette of a petite woman with fat thighs encased in a black miniskirt, explaining, “This one’s a lying psychotic whore. Good people. My kind of people.”

The colonel took a light off the same flame. He was smoking Players cigarettes in the flat pack—the brand, if Skip remembered, of James Bond.

“What’s this, now—no cigars?” “Some days they taste a little scummy. You still don’t smoke.” “No.” “Don’t start.” He smoked. “It’s a war, Skip.” “I understand.” Skip got up and wandered around the place. He looked into the

vague interior of the Bar Jolly Blue. Standing in the doorway he could feel it was ten degrees hotter inside. It was empty except for three girls and the mamasan behind the plywood bar, who called, “Yes, sir, you want beer?”

“I’m hungry.” “You want soup?” “Soup and a baguette, thanks.” “I bring you. You sit down.” “Let me introduce you myself,” one of the girls said, but he turned

away without answering. He went around to the concrete trough looking out on a dark plain of elephant grass behind the sex rooms. He pissed, washed his face from the spigot at the cistern, retucked his sweaty shirt, told himself: It’s a war, Skip. Vanquish fear.

He made his way back to his comrades.

At their table the colonel was telling Storm, “Eggs were hard to come by. We pooled things like that, eggs and any meat we’d trapped, and the docs, the medical people, such as we had, the docs decided who ate what from the food store. We caught dogs, monkeys, rats, birds. We had a few chickens cooped up.” He said to Skip, “I’m telling him what Anders Pitchfork did for me in the prison camp. I was sick, and Anders fed me a hard-boiled egg. Anders was allowed an egg every day because he was on a hard detail and needed the protein. And he gave one to me because I was laid out sick. And I didn’t say pish posh, no thanks—I gobbled that egg down quick before he changed his mind. If Anders Pitchfork walked in here and asked me to cut off my hand for him right now, I wouldn’t hesitate. My severed hand would lie here on this table. That’s what war gives you. A family deeper than blood. Then you go back to peacetime, and what do you get?—backstabbing enemies in the office down the hall. Guys like Johnny Brewster. Brewster is a thoroughgoing asshole, and he’s permanently pissed off at me. Do you know him, Skip?”

“Not personally. What did you do to piss him off?”

“The question is, what did Brewster do to me? Got me stuck behind a desk almost six months last year and answering a lot of questions. They tried to make it look like some sort of health inquiry. But I knew what it was about.”

“And what was it? Not the business in the Philippines?”

“Hell, no. About Cao Phuc. About my helicopter, about my platoon. And I put him on his ass, and do you know what? The questions stopped. The interlude was over, and I was back here again.”

“Put him on his ass, did you say?”

“Last June,” said the colonel, “I knocked him out.”

“What?”

“You heard right. I invited him to play handball. We suited up in the locker room, we stepped onto a court, and I walked over and I socked him on the chin. Ask any boxer: you don’t want to take a blow to the point of the chin. The first thing they teach you is—tuck your chin. I laid him out, sir, and I don’t regret it, because he’s a slimy, oily, politicking—have you got a thesaurus? I’d have to hunt through a thesaurus to give you Brewster’s full description.”

“I never heard anything about this.”

“I don’t know that he ever told anyone. How could he? No way of putting a good face on it, running to the brass and whining that he got his ass kicked.”

“Have you ever arm-wrestled this old thug?” Storm asked.

“No,” Skip said.

“I didn’t hurt the SOB. Johnny Brewster’s a strong and agile man. He parachuted into northern France for the OSS. But he spent too much time with the Resistance, and they turned him pink. Made him a leftist sympathizer. And he’s an elitest. Wants to get rid of us old thugs. The war shook quite a few of us toads in amongst the goldfish, and they’d like to get us sorted out.”

He signaled to Hao, who sat in the Chevy three yards away with the radio on and the door open. “Hao, Hao. Come on.” Skip saw by the way his uncle cocked his head and waved his fingers that he was drunk now. “Do you need anything? When was the last time you ate? Sit down, buddy, sit down.”

“I can get something in the bar.”

“Sit down, we’ll get you something, sit down.”

Hao sat down and the colonel waved at the mamasan and said, “Actually, I don’t play handball. Those noisy acoustics, and the ball whacking and the rubber shoes squeaking—never play it. It’s harder on your ears than the target range. It’s as deafening as artillery.” The mamasan approached and he said, “Get him something to eat. What can we get you, Hao? What are you hungry for?”

“I will talk to her.” Hao rose and walked off toward the barroom with the mamasan.

“John Brewster,” the colonel said, “wears socks with clocks on them and thinks Washington, DC, is slightly bigger than the universe. What are they going to do to me? Fire me? Jail me? Kill me? Will, young Will, you know something of my history. What can they do to me now? I was a prisoner of the Japanese. What is there left in human experience that they can hope or expect to scare me with?”

The mamasan came over with four bowls of soup and a plate of baguettes on a tray. The colonel tore a baguette in half and said, “I tell you this sincerely: there’d better not be a man at this table who in any way fears death.”

“Hear, hear,” Skip said. “It’s all death anyway,” Storm said. “Oh, I forgot,” the colonel said with a mouthful of baguette, “Mr.

Jimmy thinks he’s a samurai.” “I’m just moving through the motions, Papasan. Death is the basic

condition.” “What do you know about it really?” “No. No. The universe had to come from somewhere, right? Wrong.

It had to come from nowhere. The Big Nothing.” “Mr. Jimmy follows the Buddha.” “I follow a completely different mode of Buddhism.” “Mr. Sergeant Jimmy studies the Tibetan.” “I study the knowledge of the moves after death. The realm of the

Bardo. What to do at each part of the journey after you die. It’s full of wrong turns leading back here, man. Back to Planet E. I’m not coming back. It’s a shit-hole.”

“It’s a shit-hole with fireworks,” the colonel said. “Come back if you want. But don’t expect your current rank.” That his uncle would tolerate, even celebrate this fool. “You tried some meditation over in Cao Phuc —at the temple, didn’t

you, Colonel?”

The colonel squinted at Storm as if trying to summon an answer and after a considerable pause said, “I don’t play handball. Although it’s an ancient game. Sport. Pastime.” He sat back comfortably. “Venerable Irish pastime. Came from Ireland. Came over from Ireland.” His head nodded forward, and he was deeply asleep.

In this way began the Year of the Monkey.

ICathy traveled to Saigon to seek help from anyone she could, starting with Colin Rappaport at World Children’s Services. Vietcong and even stray NVA regulars marauded in the Sa Dec area, the Americans and ARVN had grown ruthless and undiscriminating in the pursuit, supplies weren’t getting to the Bao Dai Orphanage, soon it would all be impossible.

The American helicopters strafed anything moving on the rivers. To reach the road to Saigon she pedaled her bike along the paths by the canals, hard going, not muddy, but unresisting, slowing the tires—how pliant this land, how rich and soft, how deceptive—and out onto the dikes, in the open. A wind came rolling over the paddies and sunlight moved in the green shoots like a thrill under the flesh.

She waited in a dirt-floor café. Tin-roofed, straw-paneled. Sat at a table drinking hot tea from a tin can, awaiting transport across a river about a hundred feet wide. At her feet a little kid played with a bright green grasshopper half the length of his arm. She left the bicycle with the café family, who told her no helicopters had shown in the area since early morning. A sampan woman wearing pale violet formal-gown gloves and a pink face-cloth ferried her across. On the other side lay houses and gardens… A girl in a beautiful dress in a tiny plot of graves, prostrate on one of the tombs in the dappled shade … Kathy caught a lift with a farmer in a three-wheeled truck bearing old rice sacks full of duck feathers toward Saigon. A few miles southeast of the city their ways parted and he let her out.

She wore a calf-length skirt, sandals, no stockings. Sitting in a thatched teahouse beside Highway Seven she felt the sweat running from the crooks of her knees down her calves. She opened her knapsack and took out her Bible to read, but it was already too dark. She held it in her lap, flicking at the bookmark with her finger. Somewhere in the Psalms it said: Against You, You only have I sinned. For a few minutes as the explosions came particularly close the night of Tet she’d felt all pride crushed, all knowledge stopped, all desire, had existed only as naked, abject subjugation. Her sin had seemed small, her salvation or damnation seemed small.

Night came. A man set out red chairs in front of the teahouse.

She took a cyclo into the city. She stayed at a hostel of sorts across from the green-shuttered Jamia Mosque on Dong Du Street. She lay on a cot for half an hour but couldn’t sleep.

She went walking. It was nearly eleven. As she waded through the traffic, a cyclist bearing on his shoulder a three-meter-long sheaf of lumber seemed about to make a turn and possibly knock her head off with the ends of his boards. She stepped backward and was almost run down by a U.S. jeep—they called them “Mutts”—the tires screeched, and one wheel went up over the curb. “Sorry about that, ma’am,” said the wild-faced young infantryman driving. —So; nearly dead. She didn’t care.

She walked down a red-lit alley. In a window—a soldier slapping his woman while a child up on its knees on the mattress howled out of a face like a fist…

Through the doorway of a tavern—a couple of sad-drunk infantrymen dancing in the jukebox glow, each alone, chins down, fingers popping, shoulders working, heads bobbing, trudging like carriage horses toward some solitary destiny. She stopped to watch them. In the songs on jukeboxes or on radios tuned to AFVN she often heard God calling out to her—”Love me with all your heart” —”This guy’s in love with you” — “All you need is love”—but tonight the voice sang only to the soldiers, and its message didn’t reach the street.

She passed a recruit with his head hanging, one hand guiding his stream against the wall. He raised acid-bright eyes to her and said, “I been pissing for a thousand years.” His friend beside him was bent over puking. “Don’t mind me, ma’am,” he said, “I’m high on life.”

The Vietnamese were restful to her eyes. She had no background with them. The American soldiers seemed far too much like Canadians—pulling her heart out in an undertow of joy and sorrow, guilt, anger, and affection. She watched the broad backs of these two as they tottered away from her.

They threw hand grenades through doorways and blew the arms and legs off ignorant farmers, they rescued puppies from starvation and smuggled them home to Mississippi in their shirts, they burned down whole villages and raped young girls, they stole medicines by the jeepload to save the lives of orphans.

The next morning in the offices of the World Children’s Services Colin Rappaport said to her, “Kathy. Please. Let me find you a bed in one of the hospitals.”

“This isn’t the conversation I came here to have.”

“Do you realize the shape you’re in? You’re exhausted.”

“But if I don’t feel tired, it doesn’t count.”

“But you realize.” “I realize,” she said, “but I don’t feel tired.”

A t the start of February, James Houston, in his dirty jungle fatigues, caught a ride with a water truck from Good Luck Mountain down to Highway Thirteen and then with a jeep into Saigon. He could have stopped—had meant to stop—at the big base to look in on Sergeant Harmon at the Twelfth Evacuation Hospital. But the boys in the truck were heading all the way, and he simply stayed aboard.

The sarge, very soon, as soon as they got him to the point he could be moved without killing him, would be taken to Japan. If James wanted to visit him, he’d better do it now. This according to Black Man. According to Black Man the sarge was seriously hurt, hurt permanently. Something big and possibly from their own side had hit him from close range, hit him square in the belly, above his pelvis, and Black Man had promised James he wouldn’t like what he’d see.

From a vendor on Thi Sach Street James bought a stick of chewing gum and a fake Marlboro cigarette. His second tour had entered its third day. He was sober, AWOL, and virtually broke.

James’s two friends Fisher and Evans had shipped out the day before. Tall, chip-toothed Fisher had shaken James’s hand and said, “Remember our first night here?”

“The Floor Show.”

“Remember the Floor Show?”

“I sure do.”

“Remember that first time getting laid at the Purple Bar?”

“I sure do.”

“When the world ends, and Jesus comes down in a cloud of glory and all that shit, it’ll be the second most incredible thing that ever happened to me. Because I will remember that night at the Purple Bar.”

They embraced one another, and James put all his concentration into damming back the tears. They all swore to meet again. James assumed they never would.

In the Cozy Bar on Thi Sach James bummed another cigarette from an airman who revealed he was a Cherokee Indian and the descendant of chiefs and who refused James a second cigarette and seemed on the brink of ditching him until James, finally taking the stool beside him, rearranged the gun under his shirt, at which point the airman said, “What’s that there?”

“It’s for tunnels.” “For tunnels?” “Thirty-eight automatic. Got me a suppressor back at camp.” “Do you mean like a silencer?” “Yep. Christ almighty—what smells like gasoline in here?” “I pump jet fuel all day long.” “Is it you?” “I don’t smell it no more myself.” “Whoo. You’re making me dizzy. Buy me a beer, would you, please?” “No can do. You know, there’s a jeweler right on Thi Sach. I sold him

a forty-five this morning.” “He buys weapons?” “I sold him a forty-five.” “You think he’d like a thirty-eight?” “I bet he would.” “I bet I know where he can get one.” That afternoon, drunk, AWOL, flush with Vietnamese piasters on

the smelly street—odor after odor and the hiss of frying gunk—James stopped at a shop and bought himself some imitation Levi’s denims and a red T-shirt and a shiny yellow tour jacket illustrated with a naked woman that said “Saigon 1968.” It was far too hot for such a jacket, but he wore it anyway because it put him in an excellent mood. He bought two packs of real U.S. Marlboros and got a haircut from a street barber— he’d never had his hair cut anywhere but at the big base, but he was drunk enough to try something different—and afterward purchased a pair of flimsy blue-black loafers. He changed in the street while people very carefully didn’t look at him, and carried his fatigues in a brown paper shopping bag with string handles.

He thought he’d better get sober before he went to see the sarge, and before he got sober he’d better get drunker. Around eleven that night he bartered with a cyclo driver to get him to a cheap hotel in the Cho Lon District, but somewhere en route they revolutionized the plan and instead traveled in the unsafe hours of darkness nearly sixty miles to the shores of the China Sea and to a whorehouse James had heard of called Frenchie’s, a place with its own legend. At two in the morning they reached it, a scattering of shacks near a fishing village. He woke up a papasan napping on the bartop in the café who understood a little English and could guess the rest, and who, when James asked, “Are you Frenchie?” said, “Frenchie coming,” but Frenchie didn’t come. No exterior lights. He heard no generator. Saw no girls anywhere. No other GIs. Nor anyone else at all. The melancholy old papasan led him by flashlight to a bungalow no better than a hooch in a row of several just like it. Somebody else’s pubic hairs dotted his bedding. He stripped off the sheet. The thin mattress was stained, but the stains looked less recent than the pubic hair. For this room, including a battery-powered bedside fan, he was paying about a dollar a night. He didn’t bother letting the net down. He didn’t see any mosquitoes.

In the glow of a kerosene lantern he found his clasp knife and almost cut away the legs of his fatigues; but thought better of it and shortened his fake Levi’s instead. By the time he turned in, his drunk had become a hangover.

He rose around noon and went to the sand-speckled café, where a woman served him an omelet, hot tea, and a small baguette. Then he told her to bring him the same thing all over again, only with a beer, no tea.

He wasn’t the only customer. A one-legged GI in cutoff jeans and rip-sleeved fatigue shirt, a towhead with sunburned flesh and aviator sunglasses, sat a couple tables away drinking beer and eating nothing, most of the time holding a nine-millimeter pistol with his thumb on the ejector button, dropping the butt of the clip into the palm of his hand and slapping it back in, ejecting it, slapping it back in.

“We all die,” he said. “I’ll die high.”

James didn’t like this at all and got up and left.

He headed for the low seawall and the rumbling shore. The beach was narrow and the sand was brown. He sat on the rock wall and smoked a cigarette and watched a drowned rooster rolling in the surf. This wasn’t the Frenchie’s everybody talked about. Everybody said Frenchie sold only 33 beer—that much seemed correct—and also Spanish Fly. Also girls—but they were peasants—but they were girls. And everybody said there were Old West-style gunfights out front almost every night. And said the cyclo drivers never went near there after dark, or their little machines would be commandeered for races up and down the beach and usually out into the sea.

The noise of a single gunshot stopped his thoughts, and he ran to the café to look at the disaster, but nothing had happened. The towheaded boy sat alone there.

“HEY EVERYBODY,” the boy cried, though nobody was around. “This guy thinks he’s figured out some shit!” James stood in the entry and went no farther. He would have liked a

beer, but the lady had run off. “You want to play ‘Spin the Browning’?” James said, “No.” “You better get your shit-proof Playtex pants on, senor.” James took the chair across from him and sat with his hands at his sides. The boy stopped playing with the gun and scratched the puckered

end of his stump with his fingers, then resumed ejecting the clip into his palm and slapping it back in. “Don’t sit at my table if you don’t want to play my game.”

He’d obliterated the name on his name tape, apparently with the burning end of a cigarette. Instead of dog tags, from a string around his neck hung a rusty-pointed can opener.

He set the gun before him on the table next to a pack of Parliaments

and a Zippo lighter. “You like these things? Parliaments?” “Not much,” James said. “More for me.” He tapped out a cigarette, put it between his lips, and fired it up,

using only his right hand for these proceedings, resting the left on top of

the gun. James told him, “I can’t watch this.” “Fine. This ain’t the circus.” “How do I get a ride out of your insane asylum?” “Just start humping down the road.” “I can’t walk to Saigon.” The boy scratched his scalp with the gun’s muzzle. “No, man, no.

First motherfucker who sees you, he’ll be right up your ass with his scooter. Or his cousin will.” He kept the gun pointed at his scalp.

“Put that sucker down, would you?” “We all die, man.” “Ain’t you even got a name?” “Cadwallader.” “What about just putting it down for a minute? Then I could have a

beer with you.” “I told you my real name. Big mistake.” “Why is it a mistake?” “People know your name,” he said, “and it hurts.” “I realize you got tore up,” James said. “It’s the shits.” The towheaded boy closed his eyes and sat without a twitch, breath

ing through his nostrils. “Oh, man,” he said after a long time, “all you zombies.”

The buzz of a two-stroke engine approached and stopped outside. Cadwallader lowered the pistol to the tabletop. “The French have arrived.”

In came a skinny man dressed in Scotch-plaid Bermuda shorts, zoris, and a long-sleeved shirt. A white man, blue-eyed and bald-headed. Pulled up a chair as if to sit, but hesitated, noticing the weapon.

“It’s for you,” he said, and set down a cardboard packet next to Cadwallader’s hand.

Cadwallader dropped his cigarette and let it burn on the floor. He stripped a side away from the packet and spilled a dozen or so large tablets onto the tabletop. He plunked four down the spout of his 33 beer, and the mixture began to foam. He toasted James. “Time for a change.”

James said, “Frenchie.” “C’est moi.” “You speak English?” He shrugged disinterestedly. “This motherfucker’s fixing to do himself harm.” This time a complete body shrug—hands, shoulders, lifting himself

on his toes—with a little grimace of the face. “Why don’t we get us a couple of girls?” James suggested. Cadwallader watched the tabs fizz and dissolve in his beer. “You can’t

just paint everything with your mind to make it look like it makes sense.” “Don’t pussy make sense no more?” Frenchie swung his seat around, straddled it backward, and sat with his stringy legs sticking out and his forearms resting on the back of the chair.

Cadwallader floated his hand above his leg as if conjuring up the missing portion. “This is the only thing in the world I’ve ever seen that isn’t bullshit.”

“I hate to be the one telling you,” James ventured to say, “but that shit ain’t nothin’. There’s guys with a whole lot worse been done to them.”

“Here’s the explanation, Frenchie. We all die, right? Fuck you.” Cadwallader swirled his potion and drank it off in several pulls. He sat back and began cleaning under his fingernails with the pointed end of his church key. “Go ahead and go for that gun.”

The old man didn’t move. “Do you say I need a gun? Don’t you know I’m French? Our war is lost.” “There’s only one happy ending, man. If I don’t blow this world away, then I’m a coward and a bullshitter.” “Catch you later.” James got up slowly and with, he hoped, a harmless air. “I didn’t hurt nobody. So don’t tell me about karma.”

I wasn t. “Then don’t.” “I don’t even know what karma is.” “You’re better off.” “I’m going somewheres. I’m going for a swim. So if you end up doing

something, there won’t be nobody here to care.” “Frenchie’s here.” “Frenchie don’t care,” James said, and went back down the path to sit

on the seawall.

In only a couple of minutes the towheaded boy came after him. Having jammed the index finger of each hand into the mouth of a 33, he was able to carry two dangling bottles while humping on crutches. He stopped. Hung on his struts like a scarecrow, flicking drops from the mouth of one of his beers, with his thumb, directly into James’s face. “As the recipient of a Purple Heart I can fuck with you all I want, and it’s tough shit.”

“The fuck it is.” “You can’t attack a pitiful cripple.” “The fuck I can’t.”

“Hold these 33s for me.” He dropped the left crutch, and lowered

himself down the other to sit on the sand before letting it fall. James gave him back one beer and kept one. “Peace and love, my fellow Americans.” “All right, then. Peace and love.” “I got all sideways.” “It ain’t nothin’.” “Sorry ‘bout that, I guess.” “Is your leg hurting you?” “I can call you a dumb fuck for asking a dumb-fuck question, and

you can’t do shit, because I’m crippled. You want some pills?” “Not just now I don’t.” “There’s thirty milligrams of codeine inside every one of these

things.” “I tried pot a few times … Hell, I been drunker’n that.” “My invisible foot hurts.” “What area is this?” “We’re in Phan Thiet. Or Mui Ne.” “I never seen boats like that before.” “Those are dinghies. The real boats are out fishing.” “They look like bowls for soup.” “What are you? Absent without leave, missing in action, or deserter?” “AWOL, some.” “I’m a deserter.” “I’m just AWOL. Anyways I think.” “Thirty days and it’s desertion.” “I ain’t up to thirty yet.” “My leg deserted. So I followed the example. Cut out from China

Beach.” “Didn’t you like it?” “That smiley gung-ho physical therapy? Fuck no. I like to drink and

cry and take pills.” “I don’t need telling.” “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that, GI. I got seized up in a mood.” “So this is Phan Thiet, you think?” “Yeah. Or Mui Ne.”

“And this is really the worl’ famous whorehouse? I heard this place jumped.” “It’s been like this for the last two weeks. It don’t jump since the big

push. The enemy triumphed over Frenchie.” “Where’d everybody go?” “Mostly people went back to their units, or somewhere else, I don’t

know. You’re coming the other way.” “I guess I am.” “You bug out at the height of the action, boy, that’s desertion.” “Why are you trying to convince me that I deserted?” “I’m philosophizing, brother, not convincing. Hey, if they were shoot

ing at me, I’d leave too—Wait! I already did!” “I didn’t desert for that.” “Then why?” “I had to see a feller.” “Who is it?” “A guy supposed to be at Hospital Number Twelve over there.” “So you cut out to go see him?—or you cut out so you don’t have to?” “Yeah, funny. What’s your name again?” “Cadwallader.” “Don’t rag on me, Cadwallader. I got twice as many legs to kick

with.” “What am I gonna call you?”

ŤT 77

James. “Not Jim?” “Never Jim.” They finished the beers and flung the bottles into the surf. James went among the coconut palms down the beach, Cadwallader

following with great, three-legged strides while James turned upright one of the odd round boats—giant baskets six or seven feet across, of woven thatch and batten, coated with something like lacquer—and dragged it in heroic, lurching fits toward the surf. Little naked children came around to view the struggle. If there were any grown-up people in the hooches beyond the palms, they didn’t show themselves.

He stopped for breath, still many yards from the water. “Where’s your mighty weapon at?”

Cadwallader pulled up his shirtfront. The gun butt protruded above his waistband. “If you’re riding with me, it’s liable to get wet. ‘Cause I’m liable to

sink us.” “Lift up that boat over there.” James raised the edge of another of the overturned boats, and Cad

wallader wrapped the gun and his cigarettes and lighter in his shirt and tossed it under. James did the same with his Marlboros and in one last explosion of effort got the craft out into the waves.

Up to his chest in the mild surf, Cadwallader laid his crutches in the boat and clambered aboard. The craft had one paddle. “Rock and roll!” cried Cadwallader while James nearly capsized them. “If we get in the wrong current we’ll never see land again. Do you care?”

James tried paddling on alternate sides. He didn’t know where to stand, or whether to stand at all in this rocking hemisphere. “This ain’t working. How do they make these things go?”

“Gimme that paddle. I’m a sailor in my blood.”

The children stood on the shore and watched the boat drift away. Goats bleated in the coconut grove. Soon James heard nothing but the surf behind them. Beyond the shore the grove, beyond the grove the hooches of thatch and straw … They go up like matchheads, he thought.

“We’re lost at sea!” Cadwallader cried. “My head is swimming from

the symbolism of it.” “You remind me of my little brother.” “Why—what about him?” “I can’t put my finger right on it. You just do.” They floated around and the current took them away from Vietnam. “Well, James, you gonna stay awhile?” “Maybe. I don’t know.” “I can talk to Frenchie about a discount.” “I got money. I don’t need a discount.” “That’s kind of a strange attitude.” “I’m just saying I don’t need no favors.” “Where are you at in your tour?” “A little ways into number two.” “You’re just a mess of strange attitudes. I don’t get why anybody

would go around a second time on this hog.”

“Ain’t no reason for it,” James admitted. “Are you short?” “Not that short.” “How far along are you?” “Eight months. Six months and eight days when they hurt me.

Halfway and eight. It’s fucked up.” “Just as fucked up to eat shit if you’re the new guy.” “Yeah. It’s always fucked up to eat shit. That’s part of the plan.” Cadwallader rose storklike on his single leg, tipped sideways, and

rolled into the water. James was entirely alone in the ocean until Cad

wallader broke the surface, blowing and spitting. “Hey, man.” “Hey what.” “Get back in the boat.” “What for?” “At least stay there.” “I am. You’re the one moving.” “I can’t paddle this thing. Come on, I’m about to lose you.” “Yeah?” “Cadwallader. Cadwallader.” “Adios, motherfucker!” “It’s a mile to shore.” Cadwallader floated on his back a hundred feet away. “Cadwallader!” James paddled hard but he didn’t know how it was done. He could

glimpse the boy now only when the low swells dipped. Cadwallader floated on his back, staring upward and kicking. “You’re coming the right way!” James shouted, but Cadwallader didn’t hear or didn’t care. James believed one of them was making progress toward the other, and this inspired him. The paddle seemed to function better if he worked it back and forth like a fishtail out behind. The work exhausted him. Cadwallader came near and James grasped at his hand, but he fended him off. James clutched at his hair. Cadwallader yelped and took hold of the side. James didn’t have strength to haul him aboard. He had no breath left even to swear at him. His chest heaved and the coppery taste of fatigue filled his mouth.

Cadwallader kicked away, turned over, and began swimming overhand toward shore. James paddled after. The current seemed to be with them now.

The teacup craft scraped bottom and the small surf pitched it around. James got out and dragged it to land.

Cadwallader lay flat on his back a hundred yards off. James trudged toward him, dragging a crutch by either hand and leaving two lines behind him in the sand. Meanwhile, the waves had reclaimed the boat. It bobbed in the foam and seemed to be heading out to sea.

“You’re fucked up, man. You’re all wrong inside.” “Obviously.” “I’ve had it, man.” “Gimme my sticks.” James flung each one as far from him as possible. “Get your own god

damn sticks.” He shuffled to where they’d stashed their gear and retrieved it and

examined Cadwallader’s gun, a Browning Hi-Power. “Hey,” he called. “This is officer’s issue. Are you an officer?” Cadwallader crawled bitterly across the sands like a cinematic Saha

ran castaway. “Are you an officer?” “I’m a civilian! I’m a fucking deserter!” He dragged himself to James’s feet. James ejected the Browning’s

magazine and yanked back the slide to clear the action of the last bullet

and said, “Now you can play all you want.” “Fuck you. I got plenty of ammo.” “Enjoy it, then, and I’m taking the weapon.” “Gimme back my boom-boom.” “Never happen, or you’re gonna kill yourself.” “You’re stealing my gun.” “Looks like it.” “Fuck your cracker ass. That’s my ticket to Paradise.” They both lit cigarettes off Cadwallader’s Zippo, and James said: “I gotta go.” He turned and walked off. “Halt. That’s an order. I’m a lieutenant, man.” “Not in my war,” James said over his shoulder. As he headed through the chink in the seawall he heard Lieutenant

Cadwallader calling, “Kill me a Gook, man!”

James caught a ride in a Mutt with two men of the Twenty-fifth from downtown Saigon out to the big base. They dropped him right in front of the Twelfth Evacuation Hospital in its fog of rotor dust and he went inside without talking to anyone and was instantly lost amid all the wards with their sickly hush and medical stench. He’d had a lot of beer that morning and felt irritable and hollow. First they told him Ward C-3, then no, C-4, and the nurse for C-4 guessed Ward 5 or 6, and finally a nurse in 6 gave him a doughnut and said she cared for the expectants and some of the bad ones and brought him to a curtain around a space in a kind of alcove and said to him, “Jim? Do they call you Jim?” She didn’t move the curtain.

“I go more by James.” She moved the partition aside a bit. “Sergeant Harmon?” the nurse said. “James is here. James from your unit.”

The sarge was in no kind of shape. James stood beside the bed and said, “Hey, Sarge,” and tried to work up something further, but failed. James wanted to say The guys are gonna drink without you around and say They were shooting the place up a while ago and say I was shooting the place up too. He was angry at somebody around here and possibly it was the sarge, who looked not very different from dead, certainly past provoking by news of undisciplined conduct. He looked like the Frankenstein monster laid out in pieces, wired up for the jolt that would wake him to a monster’s confused and tortured finish. The sarge even had gleaming metal bolts like the Frankenstein monster’s coming out the sides of his head—for what purpose? A sheet covered him up to where his navel would have been, if he’d had an abdomen instead of something that looked put together out of scraps from a slaughterhouse. A machine beside the bed made a regular hiss and thunk. Red numbers on a monitor’s screen told his pulse: 73, 67, 70.

“What’s that tube out of his mouth for?”

“James, the sarge isn’t breathing entirely on his own yet.”

The nurse moved a chair for him, and he sat beside the bed and took Sarge’s hand. A bubble traveled up the drip in the sarge’s wrist. “Sarge.”

The sarge’s very blue eyes, free-floating in their sockets, drifted toward James and stopped. Sarge made a ticking noise with his tongue against his palate.

“Do you see me?”

The sarge clicked his tongue again, tsk tsk, as if he were scolding a kid, tsk tsk. The lips white and cracked, flaking.

James leaned close and looked down into the sarge’s eyes. Eyelashes shellacked together by tears, radiating out in a burst, as in a child’s drawing. Beautiful blue eyes. If they were a woman’s you couldn’t stop looking at them.

“What’s that sound he’s making?” he asked, but the nurse had gone. “What are you trying to say, Sarge?” He wiped his own tears and sucked and spat in the brown waste can full of swabs and slimy tissue papers. “I just came by,” James said. “Just to say hi. See if you need anything. Shit like that.”

Every few seconds, that ticking sound. Was it Morse code? “Sarge, I forgot my Morse code,” he said.

Two nurses came in and moved James aside and drew the tube from between Sarge’s lips and stuck another tube deep down his throat. The tube made a scouring and sucking noise and the numbers on the monitor rose rapidly—121, 130, 145, 162, 184, 203. After a minute they replaced the tube and the sarge was able to breathe again and the numbers descended slowly.

“Goddamn,” James said.

“We’re keeping his lungs clean,” one of the nurses said.

“You didn’t even say hello,” James said.

“Hello, Sarge,” the nurse said, and they departed and James sat down again and took the sarge’s hand.

The sarge’s eyes floated there burning and pleading. Everything coming out of his eyes. James wept like a barking dog. The reality and the Tightness pouring off him, the purity of weeping, just crying, and who gives a shit—this is bigger than any of your games. The tears ran backward from the sarge’s eyes over his temples and into his ears, but he made no sound other than by clicking his tongue.

“This is James, Doctor,” the nurse said. She’d come back with a happy-looking medical man. “James is from Sergeant Harmon’s unit.”

“How we doing today, Sergeant?”

“What happened?” James said.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened? What happened? How’d he get hurt?”

The doctor said, “What happened to you, Sarge?”

The sarge moved his flaking lips and clicked his tongue. “He makes that noise,” James said. “Can you hear it?” “What happened to you, Sarge? Do you remember? We talked about

it yesterday?”

The sarge timed the movement of his lips with his machine’s exhalations, and he said, “I—I — ” or moved his lips so it looked like that’s what he said.

“Remember what we talked about? We said you might’ve got hit with

a flare? Hit in the back?” “I thought he got hit in the middle, the belly, I thought—” “The flare entered below the solar plexus and headed up the spine, as

far as we can tell. Laid him open all up his backbone.” “He got hit with a flare?” “Correct.” ‘You mean a flare. A signal flare.” “Correct. Lotta damage. Muscle, lung, spine. Spinal cord all the way

up to the second vertebra. Lotta damage, huh, Sarge?”

Moving his lips. Trying to produce sounds with the saliva in his throat, trying to shape a statement. As far as James could make it out, the message was, “I’m a mess.”

The lines for the phones ran ten deep, but there were three other phones just for the use of officers at the Officers’ Club, and he went there. After he’d dialed for the operator he kept his right hand on the butt of his new pistol and locked eyes with anyone who got near. He had all three phones to himself.

He gave the operator Stevie’s number, an unforgettable series of digits, he’d dialed it hundreds of times thousands of years ago, in high school.

Her mom answered—”Hello?”—sleepy and maybe frightened. He hung up. A captain brought him a Budweiser. These guys weren’t so bad. He

took his hand off his gun and lit a smoke, and then called home. “What time is it there?” his mother said. “I don’t know. In the afternoon.” “James, what did you decide? On the business of staying on? What

did you decide about it?”

“I put a little extension on my visit here.” “Why would you want to stay on? Don’t you realize you’ve done your

service to your country? As much as anybody ever has.” “Yeah… It felt like it wasn’t over yet.” “Don’t you dare sign away for no more of it after this one.” “I been shirking my duties. They might not even want me no more.” “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re probably shell-shocked.” “Suppose they cut me loose —maybe I could come to Phoenix.” “Well, yes, yes, hon. Where else would you think of to go to?” “I don’t know. Some island maybe.” “What do you mean, a island? We don’t live on a island.” “How’s everybody? How’s Burris?” “Burris takes drugs!”

Jesus. “Don’t swear!” “Jeez. Jeez. What kind of drugs?” “Whatever kind he gets his hands on.” “How old is he?” “He’s not even twelve!” “What a little punk. Well—well—what do you hear from Bill Junior?

Anything?” “Bill Junior was away almost a month.” “Away where?” “Away. Away. Away is all.” James paused to take the last drag and put out his cigarette. “You

mean jail?” “One on drugs, and another off to jail!” “What for?” “I don’t know. Some of this and some of that. He got in jail one week

after New Year’s Day and didn’t get loose till February tenth. They had him for three weeks. He had to plead guilty and get two years’ suspended sentence or they’d-a kept him and kept him. These folks are tired of the misbehavior.”

“Is he in Arizona?” “Yep. Suspended sentence. If he strays in his behavior they’ll put him in Florence with your Dad. Like father, like son.” “Ain’t that sweet.”

“Don’t be smart about it. The Holy Spirit’s been battering away at the souls of the men in this family for generations. But do you think he’s ever made so much as a dent?”

“Yeah—you know what? Maybe the Holy Spirit ain’t so holy.” “What on earth do you mean?” “You been to Oklahoma, ain’t you, and Arizona. And that’s all.” “What do you mean by saying that?” “I don’t know. Just you need to get around a little more, before you

start talking about the Holy Spirit.” “James, do you go to church?” “No.” “James, do you pray?” “To who?” His mother began to weep. “Woman, let me tell you about the Holy Spirit. He’s crazy.” “James,” she said. He really felt nothing, neither sorrow nor satisfaction, but he said to

her, “Mom, okay, sorry ‘bout that. I’m sorry.” “Will you pray? Will you pray with me now, son?” “Go ahead.” “Dear Lord, dear Redeemer, dear Father in Heaven,” she said, and

he removed the receiver from his ear thinking if the Holy Spirit ever came to South Vietnam, he’d probably get his balls shot off.

Over at the bar he saw men drinking whiskey from glasses with ice. An officer in fatigues stared down at his fingers while they shredded his cocktail napkin.

At this moment he thought suddenly of Sergeant Harmon: Oh, my Lord. He wanted water. “Son,” his mother said, “are you still there?” The dry, cracked lips—thirsty, parched. Signaling with his tongue. “Thanks for the prayer, Ma,” he said, and hung up the phone. He tipped his beer and drank it away and sucked out every last drop.

It was the best he’d ever tasted. The worst and the best.

James dreamed he couldn’t find his car. The parking lot changed into a village of narrow curving streets. He didn’t want to ask for help, because he carried his M16, and these people might arrest him. Time was running out. That’s what he remembered when he woke on the mat in his saturated civvies, though the dream had held a million peripherals, avenues of twisted events and unspoken complications. He dreamed a great deal each night. It felt like work. Sleeping made him tired.

He got up to start the air conditioner, but there wasn’t one. A jukebox downstairs thumped under his feet. A mosquito net hung from nails over the open window. He’d thought it was day, but it was only the yellow bulbs of a sign outside. He found his blue-black loafers and went down the stairs on the side of the building for a beer. This was a cul-de-sac, unpaved, and he had to watch the mud. The Bar Jolly Blue. He sat with some guys, also from the Twenty-fifth, also Recon, but bad boys, Lurps. They gave him some speed and he woke right up. There weren’t any women with them. Their eyes shone like animals’. These guys took acid, things that kinked up their nerves, turned their brains inside out. “Come with us. We just go. We run the night. We take speed. We fuck. We kill. We destroy.” He wanted to make things happen but he couldn’t. He realized he would just have to go with these guys, go LRRP, transfer over. And his eyes would be transformed like theirs. He said, Do you know Black Man? “Yeah,” they said, “we know Black Man, he runs with us.” He can show me how to transfer, James said. “Then do it, do it, haven’t you done everything else but this?” Yeah, sure, he said, it’s time to get it on with the monsters.

“You got some time to go?”

“I’m in my second tour.”

“They give you home leave?”

“I don’t want home leave.”

“Don’t you want to see home?”

“This war is my home.”

“Good. Go home you end up playing Solitary till you wear the faces off. Deck after deck. Sitting in the window doing it.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the shit that goes through my head on a daily basis is against the law,” one said. “But not here. Here the shit in my head is the law and nothing but the law.”

“They got theories of war, man. Theories. We can’t have that. Can’t have that here. We got a mission. Ain’t no war. Mission.”

“Moving and killing, right?”

“You got it. This motherfucker has got it.”

“Fucking A.” “So keep it.” “You know what a double veteran is? You fuck a woman and then you

X her.” “Everybody here is double veterans.” “Yeah?” “Here’s to every dead motherfucker.” They left, and he drank his beer and watched a go-go girl with bruises

on her legs. Couple of mosquitoes bumping stupidly along the wall beside his head. Otherwise he had the moment to himself. The music pounded, country stuff, psychedelic stuff, the Rolling Stones. On the bar, and behind the bar—the slow humping dance of a lava lamp, a scintillating waterfall in a Hamm’s Beer sign, a kaleidoscopic clock face broadcasting the minutes, the little lit shrines to the religion.

I can’t figure out is it too real, or not real enough, said James to someone … or someone to James… Then in comes the colonel, the civilian, the good-as-CO of Company D, the more or less stepdad of Echo Recon.

He filled the doorway, shirt open, breathing convulsively. Arms flung around two small whores who smiled showing gold bridgework. He didn’t look at all squared away. “Help me, sojer.”

“Sit him over here.”

They helped him into the mashed seat of the only booth—everything else was tables. He signaled for a drink. Insofar as the somber light allowed, his face looked purple and then very pale. One of the girls squeezed in beside him and opened his shirt wider and wiped at his pale sweaty chest, covered with silvery hair.

“I’m in a coronary medical situation.” “Should I get some help?” “Sit down, sit down. I’m having a medical situation but mostly I’m

overheated and poisoned by this goddamn rice brandy. You ask for Bushmills, they hand you Coke full of rice brandy. That concoction ain’t for drinking. It’ll sure kill warts, though.”

“Yes, sir.” “I’m old army air force, but I respect the infantry.” “I know you, sir. I’m with Echo Recon.” “It’s honorable to be a foot soldier.”

“I gotta believe you.” “If you ever get a wart, nick it with a razor and soak it ten minutes in

rice brandy.” “Yes, sir, I will.” “Yes, indeed. Echo. Sure thing. You’re my tunnel man since I lost the

Kootchy Kooties.” “Well, I went down in a couple tunnels is all, seems like. Three tun

nels.” “That counts. Three’s a good number.” “It ain’t much.” “Jesus, you’re the biggest tunnel man I’ve ever seen.” “I ain’t that big.” “For tunnels you are.” “Sir, do you know about Sergeant Harmon?” “He’s been hurt, I understand.” “Yes, sir, paralyzed clear up to his neck.” “Paralyzed? Jesus God.” “Clear up to his neck. He’s tore up from the floor up.” “It’s a goddamn shame.” “I’m going to shift over to the Lurps. I mean to hurt these bastards.” “There’s no shame in hating, son, not in a war.” “I ain’t your son.” “Forgive the presumption.” “I’m drinking too hard tonight.” “I feel for your loss. The sergeant’s a fine man.” “Where’d the Kooties get to, sir?” “I’m denied the use of them. A couple rotated out. The whole LZ is

gonna go. No more Kooties. No more chopper.” “I thought so. I wasn’t seeing you awhile.” “It’s all collapsing. At home and abroad. At home I believe my wife

and my little girl are banging the same mulatto activist beatnik peace

nik.” “I’d just as soon hang around this mess.” “I’m sorry. I’m drunk and sick and embarrassing. —I was saying …

hatred. Yessiree. It’s love of country that sends us forth, but sooner or

later vengeance is the core motive.” James assumed the colonel knew his subject. Here was a fat-ass civilian discussing warts, and here also a living legend—a life of blood and

war and pussy. “Did you go to tunnel school?” “No.” “You want us to send you?” “I want Lurp training.” “How long have you been around?” “I’m one month into my second tour. Into number two.” “If you take the training, they’ll probably want you for a third tour.” “That’s fine. And can you fix this AWOL thing?” “AWOL?” “I’m three weeks missing, is the truth of it.” “You go back to your platoon tomorrow, first thing.” “Yes, sir.” “Get cleaned up and go back.” “First thing tomorrow. Yes, sir.” “We’ll fix it and put you on the LRRP training.”

Th e summer rains had held off. But today it rained.

Skip walked several kilometers alone from a village he’d visited with Pčre Patrice. Not quite 10:00 a.m. now by his air force wrist watch, a gift from the colonel in his boyhood … Martin Luther King had been killed. Robert Kennedy had been killed. The North Koreans still held hostage an American naval vessel and her crew. The Marines besieged at Khe Sanh, the infantry slaughtering the whole village of My Lai, hirsute, self-righteous idiots marching in the streets of Chicago. Among the hairy ones the bloody failure of January’s Tet Offensive had resounded as a spiritual victory. And then in May a second countrywide push, feebler, but nearly as resonant. He devoured Time and Newsweek and found it all written down there, yet these events seemed improbable, fictitious. In six or seven months the homeland from which he was exiled had sunk in the ocean of its future history. Clements, Kansas, remained as it had been, of that he could be confident; to Clements, Kansas, only one summer could come, with its noisy locusts and blackbirds, and the drifting fragrances of baking and soap suds and mown alfalfa, and the brilliant actuality of childhood. Gone, stupidly gone —not the summer, but himself. Departed, exposed, transfigured. Overridden and converted, if it came to that. He loved and fought for a memory. The world inheriting this memory had a right, he couldn’t help seeing, to make its way unbeholden to assassinated ideals. Meanwhile, the air around him glittered with an invasion of delicate insects. Closer to the ground the population thickened—ducks and chickens, children, dogs, cats, tiny potbellied pigs. He’d ridden out on the back of the priest’s motor scooter after stories and sayings among the scattered parishioners. He’d collected a single tale from an old woman, a Catholic, a friend of the priest. Pčre Patrice had continued west while Skip headed home on foot.

A half hour along the rain caught him and he sheltered under the awning of a tiny store whose leather-faced papasan smoked a cigarette with exquisite languor and had nothing to say. When Skip smiled at him the old man’s face broke open in an exalted smile quite full of healthy-looking teeth. The storm was a harmless roaring downpour interrupted, however, by startling gusts that tore at the vegetation and furrowed the large puddles in the roadway. Skip bought a “Number One” soft drink in one of its several unidentifiable flavors and drank it rapidly. He addressed the old man in English: “Do you know what I think? I think maybe I think too much.” The rain stopped. Across the road in front of a small house a young woman played peekaboo with a child just walking, who lurched on tiptoes while a slightly older sister danced a solitary improvisation, with sweeping, parallel gestures of her arms, all three of them smiling as if the world went no farther than their happiness.

That morning he’d been very moved by the tale he’d learned, which began: Once upon a time there was a war; a soldier left his wife and baby son behind and went off in defense of the country. The young wife looked after their house and their garden and their child. Each evening at sunset she stood by the river behind their home and looked for her beloved husband to come sailing on it back into their lives …

One night a storm burst over their little home and snatched at the roof and battered the walls. It blew out the lamp, and the little boy wept in terror. The mother held him close and relit the lantern. As she did so, her shadow leapt up on the wall by the doorway, and she comforted her son by pointing at it and saying, “We have nothing to fear tonight—see? Daddy stands by the door.” Immediately the child was comforted by the shadow. Every evening after that, when she came back into the house after standing by the river and longing for her husband to return out of the last rays of the sun, her little boy called for his daddy, and she lit the lamp, and every evening he bowed to the shadow on the wall and said, “Goodnight, Daddy!” and slept in peace.

When the soldier returned to his little family, his wife’s heart nearly burst with joy, and she wept. “We must give thanks to our ancestors,” she said to him. “Please prepare the altar and look after your son,” she said, “while I get food for a thanksgiving meal.”

Alone with his child, the man said, “Come to me, I am your father.” But the child said, “Daddy’s not here now. Every night I say goodnight to Daddy. You’re not Daddy.” As he heard these words, the soldier’s love perished in his heart.

When his wife returned from the market, she felt a cloud of death in their home. Her husband refused to give her even a word. He folded up the prayer mat and refused her the use of it. He knelt in silence before the meal she prepared, and when the food was cold and no longer worth eating, he walked from the house.

His wife waited many days for his return, standing by the river as she’d done when he was a soldier. One day her despair overcame her, and she took her child to a neighbor’s house, kissed and embraced him one last time, and ran to the river and drowned herself.

Word of her death reached her husband in a village down the river. The shock broke the ice in his heart. He returned home to look after his son. One evening, as he sat beside his son’s pallet and lit the oil lamp, his shadow leapt up on the wall beside the door. His son clapped his small hands together, bowed to the shadow, and said, “Goodnight, Daddy!” At once he realized what he’d done. That night as his child slept he built an altar by the river and knelt by it for hours, making it known to his ancestors how deeply he regretted his failure. Just before dawn he took his sleeping son to the riverside, and together they followed his faithful wife into the waters of death.

The old woman had relayed the tale without any expression or detectable interest. It gripped his heart. The child and the mother alone in their life. The man and the woman who misunderstood one another, the shadow who was a father. The river that washed away their histories.

He entered a valley with a wide flat creek running down its middle, and this time was caught in the downpour. He walked through it under a black umbrella. The creek foamed under the battering rain. Afterward it rolled along swiftly, brown and muscular, with scummy whorls. He came again onto the level ground, carpeted with paddies, that predominated the landscape around Cao Quyen.

He passed the dwellings, not peasant hooches but small homes with gardens out front, and behind them the rectilinear tombstones over the family graves with their half hoods, like large stone bassinets. Here and there along the road ahead people had set fire to small wet neighborhood trash piles that sent up a smoke disorientingly reminiscent of the autumnal perfumes of his childhood.

The old woman had added a coda to the tale: After the tragic deaths, the sky rained among the mountains. The river that had drowned the family swelled, its waters grew angry, even the biggest stones in it wobbled from side to side, and the noise of its outrage never again abated. Even in the dry months, when its water moves along calmly, the river still roars. A bit of sand scooped from it and held in the hand makes a loud noise. Drop the sand in a pot and fill the pot with water; in a minute it boils.

When he got back to the villa the black Chevy sat out front, and his uncle lay inside on the divan in the living room, while beside him, on the floor, lay a dog who’d been around the place lately. The colonel lifted his hand from the dog’s head and waved at Skip and said, “I’m being digested by your couch.” Skip helped him sit upright. “By these pillows.” He appeared flushed, and yet, beneath that, pale. ‘Tour silken pillows.”

Nguyen Hao occupied a rattan chair beside the low black lacquer coffee table. Sitting right there but managing to seem much farther away, he said nothing, only nodded and smiled.

“What time is it?” the colonel asked.

“Almost one. Are you hungry? And welcome, incidentally.”

He’d been told to expect the colonel sometime after the rainy season, and that was all. Been told in fact by the colonel.

“I ordered coffee,” the colonel said.

The dog attacked its privates with a volcanic, ecstatic grunt-music.

“Got yourself a dog.”

“It’s Mr. Tho’s. I think we might eat it.”

The toilet flushed in the downstairs bath. Jimmy Storm came out in clean fatigues. Adjusting the hem of his shirt, he stared at the masturbating animal. “I think your dog’s in love.”

“My dog? I thought he was your dog.”

Storm laughed and sat on the couch and said, “You’re a foolhardy moocher of a mutt.” He scratched the dog’s head and then smelled his fingers.

“Why didn’t you take the chopper?” The sight of Jimmy Storm made

him speak brusquely. “The chopper’s no longer mine.” “Oh. Whose is it, then?” “It still belongs to our allies, but they’ve put it to better use. And we’re

breaking down the LZ—that’s official now.” “I thought all this was happening months ago.” “The gods move slow, but they never stop moving. No more Cao

Phuc, as of this September first.”

UT7 77

1 m sorry. “Fortunes of war,” the colonel said. “In any event, I wouldn’t have

taken the chopper today. This is an unofficial visit. Just family.” “Tho can bring you a beer. Or what about a drink?” “He’s making coffee. Let’s talk with our heads clear. I’d like to con

duct some business.” “Well, okay. I’m not here for the free doughnuts.” It was something

his mother sometimes said, and it sounded silly to him. “Have you thoroughly reread the Dimmer article?” “On double agents. Yes, sir.” Storm said, “Jesus Christ.” “What.” “I read that thing.” “What.” “Nothing what. It’s not applicable.” “Sergeant.” “Colonel, if you want to assassinate the Virgin Mary with Oswald’s

Mannlicher, I’ll spot for you.” “You’re saying we’re not within the guidelines.” “Yeah. Adapt and improvise.” “Skip? What say?”

“I’ll drive the getaway car.” “We’re not shooting the Blessed Virgin.” “Should I wait to be told? Or should I ask?” “We’re here to discuss a hypothetical.” “Not an assassination.” “No. God, no.” “Along the lines of a deception operation?” “So you remember our previous chat about this kind of thing. Our

hypothetical chat.” “You talked about a double. A hypothetical double.” Mr. Tho came in with a tray of cups and two pots and poured coffee

for the Americans and tea for Nguyen Hao. As he departed he herded

the dog from the room with the side of his foot. The colonel worried his coffee with the spoon. “What is this stuff?” “Creamer? That’s powdered creamer.” “Powdered cream?”

JNo— creamer. “Lord, it doesn’t dissolve. What is it made of? Clay?” “Hao brought it. I assume Mrs. Diu asked for it.” “Jesus Christ. It tastes like somebody’s armpit.” “Seems like it’s been around for years,” Storm said. “It kind of snuck

up on civilization.”

“Engineers could build a substantial dam out of this stuff. They could hold back mighty waters. Now. As to our ruse de guerre. The operation.”

“The double. The hypothetical double.” “His status has shifted.” “How much can you tell me?” “He’s a walk-in. He had his toe in and out for quite a while. But when

Tet came, he dove headfirst. He’s ours. If we use him, we use him long-range and short-run. So we can keep this a family op. Are you needing some information?”

“Family op. The family is … ” “Just the three of us here, and Hao’s nephew Minh, my helicopter pi

lot. Lucky. You’ve met him. Lucky, and the three of us.” Storm said, “And Pitchfork.” “And Pitchfork, if we need him. Pitchfork’s in-country.”

“I thought the Brits were out of this.”

“They’ve got a couple of SAS teams here in New Zealand uniforms. And a few specialists wearing Green Berets. So Anders is here. He was SAS for years.”

“Now, long-run but short-range’—what does that mean?”

“Long-range, I said, but short-run. We’ll send him back north for a onetime op, delivering some deception material. This is the operation I brought you out for, Skip. Operation Tree of Smoke.”

The colonel waited for Skip to adjust to this news. Skip experienced no excitement. Only the lethargy and sadness of a

man freezing to death. “How far outside the guidelines are we?” “Guidelines don’t apply to hypotheticals. We’re brainstorming.” “Then you don’t mind if I play the role of Dimmer a little?” “Go ahead. We need a Devil’s advocate.” “I think in this case, the Devil is you.” Storm said, “Skipper’s on the side of the angels.” “He’s asking the hard questions. Somebody has to. Go ahead. What

would Dimmer say?” “I can tell you exactly what questions he’d ask. Or anyway the impor

tant ones—the ones that leap out at me.” “For instance.” “Can you control his commo both ways?” “No. We won’t even try. This is a onetime, one-way operation. He

can blow this particular op and nothing else. We give him nothing else.” “And if he blows it? If he’s a fake?” The colonel shrugged. “Nothing ventured. Next question.” “Has he told you everything? Or at least enough to start testing him

by polygraph? How’s your information?” “Nebulous at this point. We’re still in the process of initial assess

ment. You’ll be the IO on this one.” “Me?” ”You’re not here for jollies. You’re the interviewing officer.” Skip took a deep, involuntary breath and let it out. “So.” “So—next question.” “I guess this one’s already been answered: How far along is the

process? Has he been polygraphed? But we’ll do that later.” “I don’t want polygraphs. I don’t trust those things.”

“Dimmer says to test continually. ‘Polygraph early and often/ “

“No polygraph. There’s only one way to vet a man, and that’s with blood. He’s given us the blood of his comrades. That’s better than any machine can tell us.”

“Why not both?” “Only blood will tell. He needs to feel we trust him. And do you trust

me? Can you go with my judgment on this?” “Yes, sir. No polygraph.” “Thank you, Skip. It means a lot.” The colonel wiped his upper lip

with a finger. By a kind of inner wilting, and a sinking of the sun in his expression, he managed to convey that trust in his judgment was at a premium. “What else?”

“The jackpot question.” “Shoot, sir.” “Have you reported the case?” The colonel shrugged. “Let me get the article.” Skip rose to his feet. “Up jumped the Devil,” Storm said. Though it was classified, he kept it on the desk. “He’s got a list of do’s

and don’t’s,” he said when he returned. “Number Ten.” “Don’t stand, please.” Skip resumed his seat. “Number Ten: ‘Do not plan a deception oper

ation or pass deception material without prior headquarters approval.’ ” “This is what I’m talking about,” Storm said. “But what the fuck.” “Twenty: ‘Report the case frequently, quickly, and in detail …’ Let’s

see here. All right, the Devil speaks loud and clear: ‘The service and officer considering a double agent possibility must weigh net national advantage thoughtfully, never forgetting that a double agent is, in effect, a condoned channel of communication with the enemy.’ What we’re discussing amounts to an unauthorized liaison.”

“I like ‘self-authorized.’ ” “A self-authorized liaison with the enemy.” The colonel said, “Hao, will you get me some real milk somewhere

on earth, please?” Hao left the room. The colonel sat up straight, hands on his knees. “Nobody in this

room has ever met the hypothetical fella. No liaison as of yet, as such.”

“Colonel, sir, as long as it’s just us for a minute.” “Right. Go ahead.” “I understand it’s a family op and all that. But should we necessarily

be talking in front of Hao?” “Hao? At this point Hao knows more than we do. He brought our

man in. He was the initial contact.” “What do we really know about him?” “Really? What do we really know about anybody in this hall of mir

rors?” “Really nothing.” “Ten-four. Here’s a rule of thumb: trust the locals. Have I ever told

you that?” “Plenty.” “You can’t trust everyone in this country, but we’ve got to trust some

body. We go by our guts. And I can tell you this,” he said, as Hao returned with a small pitcher, “I just asked for milk and here it is. And that’s how everything always works with Mr. Hao.” Hao sat down and the colonel said, “Mr. Hao, we’re planning a self-authorized national deception operation. Are you with us?”

” ‘Zeckly,” Hao said. “Good enough?” the colonel asked Skip. “Plenty good.” “More questions?” “That’s the lot,” Skip said. “Fine.” The colonel took from his breast pocket a half dozen three

by-five note cards of the kind Skip had handled all too often, and began a presentation. “It’s out of the bag: a national deception operation. But it can’t be any kind of op unless it comes with a plan. Let’s move to that phase of the hypothetical. How do we get bogus product credibly into the hands of the enemy? Specifically into Uncle Ho’s hands? Through a plant who allows himself to be captured and tortured? Through a double who ‘steals’ phony documents? An almost impossible task, but a combination of those two would be nearly ideal. Coming from separate sources, its credibility would be enhanced.”

“Is all that written on those little cards?” Storm asked. “Jimmy,” the colonel said, “you make me tired.” “All this is hypothetical,” Skip felt it necessary to be assured.

“Yes, yes, nothing’s figured out. We don’t know what we’re doing yet. Thus the coming debriefing. And you’re the debriefer. The man’s name is Trung. You have some Vietnamese. He has some English. You both have some French. Right, Hao—he’s got some English?”

Hao spoke his first complete sentence since entering: “No, Colonel,

excuse me. He doesn’t speak English. None.” “Well, fine. That’s why Skip spent a year in Carmel.” “We’ll work it out,” Skip promised. “I know you will. Mr. Tho!” the colonel called. Tho appeared with a dishtowel in his hand. He was probably in his

sixties but seemed physically no more than middle-aged—although philosophically seasoned, imperturbable—and he smiled radiantly because the colonel smiled at him first.

“Mr. Tho-break out the Bushmills.”

They all took Bushmills mixed with water. Even Hao accepted one and held the glass with both hands without drinking from it. The potion banished the colonel’s paleness, and halfway down his highball he seemed rescued from any symptoms of his illness. And clearly he was ill.

Without any bitterness that he could, himself, detect, Skip said, “Do you wonder what I’ve been doing?” “The same as all of us—waiting while a viable strategy emerges.

Meanwhile, what are you doing to keep busy?” “Nothing. I’m wasted here. I’m a pogue.” Storm said, “That’s jarhead terminology.” “It applies.” “Up until this stage we’re entering,” the colonel said, “the candidate

has to set the pace. And look—the most convincing thing about him is all this delay and this reluctance. It says to me he appreciates what a step this is. And he’s honest with us about being doubtful.”

Hao spoke: “Yes. He is honest. I know him.” “But now he’s committed,” Skip said. “He’s come over. That’s right. That’s the situation,” the colonel said.

“Now he’s ours and I want him here with you. I don’t want him in Cao

Phuc or in Saigon. I want him where he hasn’t worked before.” “But what’s the delay?” “He can’t just disappear. He’s part of a cell. The cell is part of a net

work. He can’t just go on vacation. He’s offered credible reasons for reloeating to this area, or he assures us he has, but it takes time. He says it

takes time and I believe him.” “Meanwhile, Fm a pogue. Reading Dickens, as you know.” “And Ian Fleming. Sorry I couldn’t get the Tolstoy.” “Anything big and fat, or full of suave secret agents.” “Have you read Shell Scott?” “Sure. You mean the series. Richard S. Prather.” “What about Mickey Spillane?” “Everything. A dozen times.” “Henry Miller?” “Can you get Henry Miller?” “He’s legal now. He went to court. I’ll get you Henry Miller.” “Get me Tropic of Capricorn. I’ve read Tropic of Cancer.” “I didn’t like Cancer. Boring. Capricorn’s really good.” “Wow. I didn’t know you stayed so current.” “They were written in the thirties, man. Mr. Tho!” he called. “Do I

smell food?” He drained his glass. “Let’s get out while lunch cooks. Let’s

take a drive.” “Or walk,” Skip said. “There’s a tunnel just down the road.” “You’re kidding. Here?” “We’ve got all the latest stuff, Uncle.” “Let’s explore,” the colonel said. “And don’t forget the bottle.” The outing was a failure. They followed a zigzag course down the

main road, walking around the puddles. “Don’t talk to me about current events,” the colonel said. “That’s all I ask. Jesus Christ, another Kennedy. Can’t somebody kill Uncle Ho? These folks mean business.” He stopped as if to make his next point, but more likely to catch his breath. “You whack them down in January, they’re back all bright and shiny next May, ready for more of our terrible abuse. Is that the tunnel?”

“What’s left of it.”

The colonel waited silently ten seconds before persevering over the last twenty yards to stand before the tunnel, now an eroded delve in a small bluff.

“Well, no, Skip, no. I don’t think so. Have you seen the tunnels in Cu Chi? You haven’t, have you?”—pronouncing it the native way, so it came out Goochy.

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“This isn’t a tunnel, Skip. It looks more like the man’s own excavation. More like he was excavating a cavern or something—but the geology doesn’t seem the kind where you’d find caverns—don’t you need limestone for that?”

“A cavern?” “Maybe there’s a subterranean crevasse here. A crevasse in a buried rock.” “Okay. Yeah. He was definitely fascinated by caverns. Possessed. I looked at his notes.”

“Sure. But it’s not a VC-type tunnel in the least. The VC tunnels aren’t like this at all. The entrances go straight down. Makes it harder to breach one.” Skip couldn’t tell if the colonel was disappointed in the tunnel alone, or also somewhat in his nephew.

They left the mystery behind and went back to see about lunch, Skip dealing with his irritation—the tunnel wasn’t a tunnel. Nor even, probably, a cavern. He felt jilted by the dead man. Bouquet had let him down.

At the villa’s low gate the colonel reached for Hao’s elbow. Clinging to the smaller man’s arm, he stooped to pick up a tree limb thrown down by the recent storm as if he’d grown interested, suddenly, in jetsam, and leaned on it as a staff as he took the last few steps to the entry.

Mrs. Diu had lunch ready. They went directly to the black lacquer dining table, where Tho officiated, Skip thought, with a certain air of accusation: in sixteen months, except for the priest, these were his first guests to a meal. Local fare today, beef noodle soup with mint leaves and bean sprouts. But American-style sliced bread fresh from the oven, and butter too. And Bushmills throughout. No chopsticks, not even for Hao. And no Bushmills for Hao. Dessert was a kind of pudding made from guava.

“To the Irish,” the colonel suggested, having cracked a second fifth, or, Skip feared it possible, a third.

“Well —I didn’t think we did.” “We started out Shaughnesseys. All of a sudden on the boat over it was Sands.”

“That’s what Aunt Grace told me. All my life my mother treated it like some great mystery and scandal.” “No, it’s just a source of amusement and minor shame. How’s the

news from your mom?” “All good, I guess. I get letters from her. I send back postcards.” “Anyway, fellas, I wasn’t toasting a whole nation. Just my old team—

the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. I’d say they’re the majority of them

Polish. At least we were when I was on the squad—look at Skip. Look at

his face. He thinks the old man is about to start.” “Go ahead, Uncle. I’m drunk enough, if you are.” “Yes yes yes, I’m full of hot gas. You could raise a balloon with my

reminiscences. Go ahead, change the subject.” “Your paper for the journal. I didn’t understand your paper.” “I didn’t either.” “This isn’t exactly changing the subject—if the subject is hot air.” “I’m impervious to criticism.” “Lotta wild terms in there. ‘Insulated activity.’ ” “Insulated activity: showing initiative, i.e., taking the bull by the

horns while the brass sits on its ass.” “And others.” “What others? I’m your glossary.” “I can’t remember.” “Jargon is important. Consider the potential audience. These folks

are all about mumbo-jumbo. Have you read ‘Politics and the English

Language’?” “Urn-George Orwell. Yeah.” “Have you?” ‘Tes. And 1984.” “Well, 1984 is coming. And it won’t take seventeen years to get here.” “Anyhow,” Skip said. “More like sixteen,” Storm announced. “Sixteen what?” “Sixteen years till 1984.” “Wait a minute. Eighteen. Eighteen.” Storm laughed, waving a slice of bread around beside his crew-cut

head.

“Men,” the colonel said, “the enemy isn’t doing this.” “Doing what?” “Adding and subtracting, Sergeant.” “What’s the enemy doing, Colonel?” “They’re cutting up our dud ordnance and blowing off our testicles

with it. They’re living in holes in the ground. They’re not having pudding. They’re eating their children in the name of victory. That’s what they eat for lunch. So let’s get with it. We’ve got one of them on our side now. He could whip half our infantry by himself. He’s come in by every gate—you know the VC’s ‘three gates’? Blood, imprisonment, and time in the North, he’s done all three. Hao can tell you—this guy’s been fighting since the French. He was a prisoner on Con Dau. He went north and was reindoctrinated after the Partition. He came back down on Uncle Ho’s trail and he’s been doing his worst ever since. Couple years ago in Cao Phuc he tried to assassinate me.”

“You’re kidding.” “About a year after Kennedy died, so late ‘64, I’d say. Two and a half years ago. He admitted it to Hao.” He turned to Hao, who’d remained invisible despite his presence at the table, and Hao confirmed it. “He said to me, yes.” “Tossed a grenade into the temple when I was visiting. He’s the real McCoy. Lousy Chinese grenade.” Skip felt his mouth hanging open as he regarded his uncle—drunk, obsolete—absolutely unkillable. “Question is, with that kind of commitment, what’s making him

turn? What does he say, Mr. Hao?” “I don’t know,” Hao said. “That’s the part I don’t like. Don’t like it at all.” “I don’t know,” Hao said. “Listen, listen,” Skip said, suddenly buoyant, “we’ve got to create the

bogus thing, the fiction. Maybe I can help with that.”

“That’s what you came seven thousand miles for. Suppose this. Suppose in the embassy bombing last year some papers got loose in the wind. A transcript, say—minutes of a meeting of a few old pirates who think they’ve got a nuclear weapon they can divert. These horrible folks want to smuggle it into Hanoi and put a stop to the nonsense. What they see as nonsense. Which actually is nonsense.”

“Wait,” Skip said, “not a meeting actually about the, the—whatever you call it—the plot, not the plot itself. The meeting was about trying to stop the plot. These are not the plotters, in other words. They’re the ones trying to investigate the plotters.”

1 get you.

“I don’t,” said Jimmy Storm.

“The papers aren’t the minutes of people actually conspiring,” Skip said, his ears buzzing from the Bushmills, “not of the actual conspiracy, but of folks assessing the, the” —marshalling his powers—”the progress of the conspiracy. So there’s this coded transcript—”

“Not in code. Just some torn fragments that survived the bombing. A few shreds — ” The colonel’s thoughts continued without speech.

Skip regretted getting back to this subject now. The colonel had been right to postpone drinks until they’d discussed it. Now they were discussing it again, and he, for one, didn’t know what he was saying. But the colonel lifted another sip of whiskey to his lips, and it was over. “Give me giants!” he said. “I mean, for the love of—Johnny Brewster? He’s spent the whole war in Washington batting a handball around and scheming how to break up the operation at Cao Phuc. And now it’s broken up— September first, all over, no more. Fucker was OSS. He fought a war: he knows, or once upon a time he musta known—John Brewster must jolt upright in bed some nights and think, Wait a minute, wait a minute, wasn’t this about something else? But before he can remember it’s about the survival of freedom, and human salvation, and the light of the world — the pettiness and bullshit of his dreams drag his head back down to the pillow, and he’s snoring away again. And next morning it’s just about Langley. The war is in Langley, and it’s between guys like him and guys like me, and it’s all about the Agency. I knocked that sonofabitch on his ass. Goddamn these fuckers. What do guys like that think the United States of America is trying to do in Vietnam? Now, wait—and these fuckers in Langley, these fuckers at the Pentagon. These fuckers! They don’t know. They just don’t know.”

He bowed his head.

“Colonel,” Jimmy Storm said.

The colonel raised his head.

“Colonel.”

“Yes.”

“You fuck me up,” Storm said. “Is that a compliment?” “Fuck yes.” “Get me out to the car,” the colonel said. Hao stood up. He took no initiative beyond that. “Hey, guys, hey—why don’t you stay the night?” “No, Skip, no. Best be going back.” “Take me with you. Let me hang around Saigon. Just for the week

end.” “We can’t have you in the city, Skip.” “Come on. I was there for Tet.” “I took pity. No more of that. You’re a soldier.” “Hang around. Please. We can play some poker.”

I m a pogue. Storm said, “He thinks he’s the lost beautiful child.” “Wow,” Skip said, “it’s the American Century.” Storm said, “Rocknroll is here to stay.” Good and drunk, Skip Sands of the CIA stood and aimed himself at

the stairwell. He felt steady enough to climb the stairs and find his room but too dizzy to lie down in it, and so sat in a chair with his feet resting on the wave-flung, heaving bed.

He woke from an hour’s nap and went to the veranda to drink hot, strong coffee less reviving than his thrilling vertigo before the vista of his mistakes, all this wrongness he’d wandered into on the tails of his uncle, the aboriginal Man of Action. Neanderthal, had been Rick Voss’s term. Mr. Tho came out with a burning mosquito coil in a dish and set it on the arm of the opposite chair, and there you are, simplicity itself, the ember of the foul-smelling incense, orange bead tunneling along its spiral path toward extinction and nonentity. He felt surrounded, assailed, inhabited by such serpentine imagery—the tunnels, Project Labyrinth, the curling catacombs of the human ear … But over all loomed the central and quite different image: the Tree of Smoke. Yes, his uncle meant to unfold himself like a dark wraith and take on the whole Intelligence Service, the very way of it, subvert its unturnable tides. Or assault it on the handball court.

For its nourishment, he’d asked for real milk in his coffee. It tasted pretty much like the chalky substitute. The new dog came between his knees and shoved its snout into his cup and went at it with a vocal, snarfing sound.

Uncle F.X., pillar of fire, tree of smoke, wanted to raise a great tree in his own image, a mushroom cloud —if not a real one over the rubble of Hanoi, then its dreaded possibility in the mind of Uncle Ho, the Enemy King. And who could say the delirious old warrior didn’t grapple after actual truths? Intelligence, data, analysis be damned; to hell with reason, categories, synthesis, common sense. All was ideology and imagery and conjuring. Fires to light the minds and heat the acts of men. And cow their consciences. Fireworks, all of it—not just the stuff of history, but the stuff of reality itself, the thoughts of God—speechless and obvious: incandescent patterns, infinitely widening.

At any point before now, he realized, he might simply have told his uncle he wanted to go home. But he couldn’t slip out from under this far along, this deep in, and collapse the sky on his uncle’s anvil head. He wouldn’t see that head bowed low.

He called Tho to the veranda. “What’s the story on this dog?” Tho said, “Le médicin.” “It’s a doctor’s dog?” Tho nodded, gambling on agreement, and retreated. Soon Mrs. Diu came out. “Mr. Tho says the dog has the spirit of Dr.

Bouquet. When the doctor die, after one year the dog is coming.” “Dr. Bouquet was reborn as this dog?” “Yes. Dr. Bouquet.” “Mrs. Diu.” “Yes, Mr. Skip.” “Why won’t Tho speak English to me?” “He doesn’t speak.” “He doesn’t speak English? Or he doesn’t speak at all.” “Yes, sometimes,” she said. “I don’t know.” “Good,” he said. “I hope that clears things up for you.”

The dog was in the yard now lifting a leg at one of three papaya trees. Nearby Mr. Tho supported himself with the handle of a rake as he crouched to put a match to a pile of household rubbish. Skip admired the papayas with their slender forms and tufted crowns and the fruit clustered around their throats … The old papasan stepped back and watched, making sure of the flame while his reconstituted employer, curled tightly as a doughnut, bit at vermin around the base of his tail.

“Excuse me, Mr. Skip.” Mrs. Diu was still at his shoulder. “You want supper?”

“Let me think about it. I’ll be there in a minute.”

One thing at a time. Maybe he’d send for Pčre Patrice, have him to supper. As a kind of penance, in the presence of the priest, he would force down a sickening meal. But he’d nodded off, and reached this decision while dreaming. He woke at 9:00 p.m. by his air force wristwatch. Dark like a velvet gauze, the burn pile’s embers, the canine Bouquet snoring at his feet. He was hungry, but life was ludicrous. He went to bed.

Th e Cherry Loot was a tight, muscular, earnest youth with the shirt of his fatigues tucked and the waist pulled up too high. He didn’t smoke, and he drank very frugally, with suspicion. He talked a lot about microbes. Tropical diseases occupied his mind. Apparently he’d read a book about swift, horrific things they couldn’t vaccinate against. As for the enemy, he hardly believed in their existence. They didn’t frighten him at all.

Cherry Loot told Sergeant Burke, “I’m gonna make the best of this fuck-a-monkey show. Don’t mean fuck to me if it’s illegal, unjustified, and sinful. Today we’re heroes, tomorrow we’re the Nazis. You never know. Nobody on this ball knows shit.” It was an attitude refreshing if not outright inspiring. Everybody else was headed the other way. “I was dating Darlene Taylor until this hippie named Michael Cook took her to a party and gave her drugs and fucked her and turned her into a hippie, and if Michael the evil hippie is against this war, then I am goddamn for it. That’s all I have to know.” The Cherry Loot didn’t seem the least bit cherry. He didn’t know what country he was in, but he was at home in the universe.

He was fast, precise, devoted. It took him two days to catch up to the time zone, and on the morning of the third he sprang awake, looked around with clear eyes, and demanded to have brought before him any material and personnel that might enlarge his understanding of the local VC tunnels. This came down to a few of the guys and a couple of wrinkled drawings the Cowboy Corporal had made for the old, the previous, the former, the Screwy Loot.

Screwy Loot, it was said, had gone to Tan Son Nhut, hitched a ride on a MAC flight to Honolulu, and melted away into the gigantic heaven of stateside.

Cherry Loot spent a morning in his Quonset hut with the Cowboy Corporal’s drawings spread out on the collapsible table serving as his desk. He demanded creative input from his sergeant. “Isn’t there some radar or sonar we can use to deal effectively with this shit? I mean, we only want to know where these tunnels are located. We don’t have to crawl around inside to figure that out, do we? Are we bugs or snakes or some shit like that? Or are we upright rational humans on two legs with brains so we can attack this problem?”

“I don’t think we really have to do this, sir.”

“What?”

“I don’t think we actually have to map these holes.”

“I’m under express orders to accomplish this. It’s our whole purpose for being here. Otherwise you know what we do? We get down along Route One and breathe some stuff s gonna kill us. That’s the alternative assignment. Clouds of God-knows-what that’s gonna fuse up your lungs and no doubt sterilize your balls.”

“Express orders, sir, I mean, sir, do you mean written?”

“I mean they are clearly expressed inside my mind as I interpret them. Do you want me to hassle somebody to clarify in writing? Because ROTC didn’t teach me fiick-your-mother about how to survive one day in this shit but they did teach me not to go yanking the coat of my superiors or catch their attention in any way.”

“I encourage you to make that policy, sir,” Burke said. “But there’s squads they call them tunnel rats will go down in there for you. I can check if they can get assigned over here.”

“We’re under Psy Ops-CIA till September first, then there’s a chance we all go home. I’m saying a chance.”

“Sir. Consensus is that Colonel F.X. has ripped his stitches.” “Leave it alone. You don’t know the history of this thing.” Cherry Loot paced the camp hatless under the smoldering clouds of

noon. He seemed profoundly afraid, but not of the war or of his responsibilities in it. Of something bigger. Cosmically worried.

Echo found very irritating the difference in the way litter was handled by Screwy Loot and by Cherry Loot. Screwy had just let the trash scatter itself around until the sergeant, at first Harmon and then Ames and finally Sergeant Burke, hustled them to police the area, but Cherry wants it done by the clock, everything tick-tock, wants it all relentlessly squared away. In a number of ways the Cherry Loot was screwier than the Screwy Loot. Screwy Loot hadn’t been entirely irrational about garbage. Just extremely twitchy about all else.

Blac k Man was snapping his fingers, wrinkling his face, squinting his eyes, then popping them wide—all ripped up over whatever he was trying to get across even as James was still approaching the Cherry Loot’s Quonset hut—saying to James:

“And you go up against Mr. Charlie, right into him, right through each other, and you swap yourselves and it ain’t you coming up here with us, man, with your buddies. It’s him. And it ain’t him coming up over there and getting with the other Charlies, squatting down and shovel that sticky rice up into their face, man, it ain’t him. It’s you. Oh, they just mickey mousing us every which goddamn way.”

“Black Man.” “Yeah, baby.” “It’s me.” “Oh. Oh. Shit, yes. Yes, it is. You going in to see the new boy?” “Looks like it.” Black Man chewed his lips nonstop today. “He’s cherry but he act

like he don’t know it.” James said, “How’s it going?” “Okay. Okay. One or two demons have quit eating me.” James hadn’t seen Black Man in a long time. Since Tet. “I thought you were gone.”

“It wasn’t nothing. All that blood turned out to be from one little vein

or something. Shit. Didn’t you hear I was dead almost?” “You got hit?” “No. I got cut over there at the Tu Do Bar. Nigger followed me in the

John.” “You got in a knife fight?” “Muhfucker broke a bottle and jabbed my shoulder right here while

I was pissing.” “You get a Purple Heart for that shit?” “Almost ate it for my muhfucking country, now I’m back here

smelling you. And you stink.” “I didn’t know nothing about it.” Black Man’s eyeballs were shaking in his head. James said, “I saw the sarge. Remember Sergeant Harmon? Staff

Sergeant Harmon?” “Yeah. Harmon. Sarge. Yeah. You saw him? Just now?” “No. Right after.” “Right after the bad thing?” “Yeah,” James said. They stood in the parallelogram of shade on the Quonset hut’s east

ern side. James sat down and leaned back against the wall, but Black

Man couldn’t sit. “Hey, man. Tell me your name.” “You dreamin’!” “Please tell me at least your first name.” “Charles. Charles Blackman.” “Blackman?” “That’s what I mean. That shit right there. Name like that.” “Gah-damn. Name like that.” “You going in to see the New Loot?”

ŤT yy

1 guess. “He got some moves, baby.” “Yeah, he’s a little ball of fire.” “Yeah. Ball of fire.” “Charles Blackman.” “See?” “I guess there’s white guys named Whiteman.”

“Yeah, yeah. But I don’t hear the laughter, you dig?” James said, “I’m laughing at you, but you’re making me kind of sad.” The door banged. The little sergeant from Psy Ops strode from the

Quonset hut and sat down facing James like an Indian at a powwow and

said, “Another perfect day. Whether we know it or not.” “I don’t think so.” The sergeant read James’s name tape and said, “$o-^ Houston, J.

What’s the for—jerk-off? I’m just kidding. Sorry. I’m an idiot this mornp>

ing again oh shit. And I bet you never been to Houston.” “Nope. I’m from Phoenix.” “It’s hot there. What’s the for?”p>

ŤT 77

James. “They call you Jimmy?” “Sometimes, but I tell them don’t.” “They call me Jimmy. But don’t call me James. I like Jimmy. Don’t

ever call me James. Let’s keep it loose. It’s hot in Phoenix. It breaks a

hundred there. One-oh-two, one-oh-three, one-oh-four.” “You that guy from Psy Ops?” “Yeah.”

UT 77

Jesus. “What.” James just shook his head. Jimmy lay back and pulled his cap down over his face. “It’s hot here

too. Vee-yet Nam. It means ‘permanent sweat’ in their fucked-up language.”

Once again the door banged. A guy came out and walked off toward the latrines without greeting them. Storm hopped upright. “Phoenix Houston’s turn.”

He followed James in and stood beside Sergeant Burke and said not a

word while the Cherry Loot took his turn. “Corporal Cowboy.” “Yes, sir.” “Did you think I wouldn’t get around to you?” “Matter of fact, sir—” “I saved the worst for the last.” James looked around for a chair, but Cherry Loot had the only one in

the room.

“We got sixty-six days left on this thing.” “Yes/sir.” “Before we have to break this thing down and we all go back to the

regular Twenty-fifth Infantry.” “Yes, sir.” “We had ninety days and we’ve wasted twenty-four out of ninety. Speaking of which,” the lieutenant said, “you were AWOL twenty-one

days last February. I know your history. Where were you —demonstrating

at the Democratic Convention?” “The who?” “The Democratic National Convention?” Sergeant Burke said, “Sir, the Democratic Convention was last week.” “Where’d you run to, Corporal?” “I was on a special assignment.” “No. You were drunk and running, and the colonel fixed it with my

predecessor. Say yes, sir.” “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant looked at the sergeant from Psy Ops as if expecting

comment. None came. The lieutenant said, “We want focus, which

means we want mission, which means we want goals. Otherwise we get

pulled and sent thirty kliks over that way, to the most horrible place on

earth. Have you seen that wasteland along Route One?” ‘Tes, sir.” “Our mission is mapping the local tunnels. You’re the one jumped

down in there.” “Me?” James said. “You went in there.” “Just to sort of, you know,” James said, “sir.” “Well, what’s your report?” “I don’t know. Like what?” “What did you see?” “Just tunnels.” “What about it? Tell me something.” “The walls are very smooth.” “What else?” “It’s small in there. You can’t stand up.” “You have to crawl?”

“Not exactly crawl. Just stay bent over is all.” “You must be insane,” the Cherry Loot said. “No argument there, sir,” James said. “I’d like to put you back in those tunnels. Get those suckers mapped

in detail. Not these raggedy drawings. You kind of like it down there,

don’t you?” “It ain’t exactly that.” “Well, no, shit no, nothing ain’t exactly nothing no more. But you

kind of like it down there.” “You can go ahead and volunteer me if it gets you all hard,” James said. “Look, sojer, I want to create an environment about two-by-two kliks that I know every single thing inside it that lives and breathes.”

“You know, there ain’t but six tunnels around here. I been in them all and they don’t go nowhere. The real tunnels are north of here. Northwest.”

“Don’t tell me that. You take away my reason for living.” “I want reimbursement for my kit.” Tour kit, is it.” “I paid two-eighty-five for the gun and the silencer and the headlight.

Seems like I should’ve been issued one, but if I’d waited on the army I’d

still be waiting this minute.” “You mean two hundred and eighty-five dollars?” “Yes, sir.” “What’s that on your hip?” “Hi-Power.” “Where’s your.380 for tunnels, then?” “It’s kind of complicated.” “Is it? Is there anything not kind of complicated in this fuck-a

monkey show?” “Never happen.” “Two-eight-five?” “Thereabouts.” “If I could put in for actual cash money, I’d get a whole bunch for

myself. I can put in for a tunnel kit, maybe. That much seems reasonable.” “Put in for one, then. I can sell it and break even.”

“Are you going to make me an accessory to black marketeering

now?” “Just thinking out loud is all.” “I can’t have people thinking. I can’t have it.” “Yes, sir.” “Meantime for sixty-six more days you hit the ground running every

day and all day you bust hump for Echo Platoon. No leave no furlough

no beer at the Purple Bar say yes sir.” “Yes sir.” “Dismissed up and at ‘em rocknroll.” James turned to go. “All right. Wait.” “Yes, sir.” “After I chew you up for sixty-six days, what’s your plan?” “I’m over to Nha Trang for Lurps.” “No shit. The recondo school? That’s on-the-job training, man.” “I know it.” “You know who they do their training maneuvers against?” “Yeah.” “The NVA Seventeenth Division. They just put you on patrol and see

who eats who.” The little Psy Ops sergeant laughed happily. “You fuck up in training

you’ll be dead, and mushrooms,” he said, “will be growing outa your

ass.” “Shut up, Sergeant—please. Corporal, this your second tour?” It IS. “They’re gonna make you do your third.” “Fine with me.” “Dismissed,” the lieutenant said. “Good luck. Dismissed.”

H e woke in the late afternoon to the quarreling of birds. Gave himself a sponge bath of water and, for its cooling effect, rubbing alcohol at the bowl in the upstairs bathroom. Put on his army surplus bathing trunks and zoris and went downstairs. “Mr. Skip, it is tea?” Mr. Tho said in English. “S’il vous plait,” he said. He sat at the desk and went to work on the passages of text even before his tea had arrived or his head had cleared of dreams, for he’d often found this a favorable state in which to come by the meaning of a foreign phrasing, to catch its glimmer. He kept the lamps off and worked in a kind of twilight. During pauses he peered at the porcelain model of the human ear, running his finger along the delicate Labyrinthe membraneux—the Utricule and Saccule, the Canal endolymphatique and Nerf vestibulaire, the Ganglion de Scarpa and Ganglion spinal de corti—and

Si incroyable que cela paraisse, les Indiens Tarahumaras vivent comme s’ils étaient déjŕ morts …

“Incredible as it may seem,” Sands had rendered it, “the Tarahumara Indians live as if they were already dead …”

Il me fallait certes de la volonté pour croire que quelque chose allait se passer. Et tout cela, pourquoi? Pour une danse, pour un rite d’Indiens perdus qui ne savent męme plus qui ils sont, ni d’oů ils viennent et qui, lorsqu’on les interroge, nous répondent par des contes dont ils ont égaré la liaison et le secret.

It required a definite act of will for me to believe that something was going to happen. And all this, for what? For a dance, for a rite of lost Indians who don’t even know who they are or where they come from and who, when questioned, answer us with stories of which the thread and the secret have drifted from their grasp.

Each afternoon he followed a long nap with this game of translation, while outdoors the birds continued, some insistent, others probing, interrogatory, grandly ecstatic, troubled—more intelligible, at least in their intent, than the mysterious song of M. Artaud:

Il me sembla partout lire une histoire d’enfantement dans la guerre, une histoire de genčse et de chaos, avec tous ces corps de dieux qui étaient taillés comme des hommes, et ces statues humaines tronçonnées.

I seemed to read everywhere a story of childbirth in war, a story of genesis and chaos, with all these bodies of gods which were carved out like men; and these truncated statues of humans.

This Artaud sounded tough. Maybe he was in earnest, maybe he was actually after something. But E. M. Cioran. The Cioran. It was decadent. It was—unproductive, and delicious:

Cet état de stérilité oů nous n’avançons ni ne reculons, ce piétinement exceptionnel est bien celui oů nous conduit le doute et qui, ŕ maints égards, s’apparente ŕ la Ť sécheresse ť des mystiques.

This state of sterility in which we neither advance nor retreat, this peculiar marching-in-place, is precisely where doubt leads us, a state which resembles in many respects the “dry places” of the mystics…

… nous retombons dans cet état de pure indétermination oů, la moindre certitude nous apparaissant comme un égarement, toute prise de position, tout ce que l’esprit avance ou proclame, prend l’allure d’une divagation. N’importe quelle affirmation nous sem

• ble alors aventureuse ou dégradante; de męme, n’importe quelle négation.

.. we relapse into that state of pure indétermination where— since any certainty whatever seems to us a lost turning—each resolution, all that the spirit advances or announces, takes on the aura of a divagation. Then any affirmation, no matter what, seems foolhardy or degrading; the same for any negation.

He would seek out an English translation, if such existed. To read and feel the meaning erode under the work of his mind—he was hungry for that pleasure. He thought of writing a letter to a friend saying: I think I might be bad, I could actually be evil, and if there’s a Devil it’s possible I’m his ally … Right at the heart of my ability to grasp the truth, I want to be paralyzed, I want to swoon… I want my mind to fail before the truth. I want the truth to flow over me only as something sensual and as nothing else. Want it to wet me—to be real, to be a thing …

He never wrote it down. He didn’t know who the friend was. He had no friend in the world but E. M. Cioran:

Le détracteur de la sagesse, s’il était de plus croyant, ne cesserait de répeter: Ť Seigneur, aidez-moi ŕ déchoir, ŕ me vautrer dans toutes les erreurs et tous les crimes, inspirez-moi des paroles qui Vous brűlent et me dévorent, qui nous réduisent en cendres. ť

The detractor of wisdom, if he were a believer as well, would never stop repeating, “Lord, help me to fall, to wallow in every error and every crime, inspire me with words that scorch You and devour me, which reduce us both to ashes.”

No wonder Bouquet had written in his notebook:

In the glory of war, in the bliss of combat, in the truth of war we see that might makes right. And that our respect for principles is based on eloquence and superstition.

He’d actually finished with the colonel’s files. A momentum had developed. Pointless labor, useless trash, but for the bureaucrat nothing’s trash until he affronts his soul by throwing it out.

Why was he not off meeting with villagers in the region, collecting folk tales? Why did he send Tho out to tell Pčre Patrice he had a fever when the priest came to beg a hot meal?

Sans rime ni raison, remettre toujours tout en question, douter męme en ręvé!

Without rhyme or reason to keep putting everything in question, to doubt even in dreams!

Reading Cioran he was revisited by the revelation he’d had as a tenyear-old, when a railroader’s son had showed him a small photograph of a woman fellating a large black penis, only the man’s torso visible, the woman’s sickly-happy eyes flirting with the camera—that his curiosity about such acts wasn’t an alienating treason, that it was known, gauged, understood, that others would feed it.

Le doute s’abat sur nous comme une calamité; loin de le choisir, nous y tombons. Et nous avons beau essayer de nous en arracher ou de l’escamoter, lui ne nous perd pas de vue, car il n’est męme pas vrai qu’il s’abat sur nous, il était en nous et nous y étions prédestinés.

Doubt collapses onto us like a disaster; far from choosing it, we fall into it. And try as we will to pull out of it, to trick it away, it never loses sight of us, for it is not even true that it collapses onto us—doubt was in us, and we were predestined to it.

He’d come to war to see abstractions become realities. Instead he’d seen the reverse. Everything was abstract now. Alone in this house, alone in this war, with the likes of E. M. Cioran … No wonder Bouquet had gone out to the veranda …

Night again, the insects are loud, the moths are killing themselves on the lamp. Two hours ago I sat on the veranda looking out at the dusk, filled with envy for each living entity—bird, bug, blossom, reptile, tree, and vine—that doesn’t bear the burden of the knowledge of good and evil.

The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive

Between jobs Bill Houston mooched off his mom, living with her and also with Burris, his twelve-year-old brother, which put him on the same level, it seemed to him, of this strange preteenager, a problem child like the elder two, a flunker and a truant, a glue-sniffer, pot-puffer, drinker of cough-control medicines. A test of faith, the old woman said, a call to prayer. In August, in answer to prayers of his own, Houston got a job on the west side loading raw linseed into semi trucks and soon took a room in the region dominated by Second Street and known as the Deuce, in whose skid-row atmosphere he felt he could forget his mother and wrestle unobserved with his confusion. He’d have headed for the ships again, if not for the general discharge. He wondered about the Merchant Marine, but he believed they wouldn’t have him either. Houston thought of his younger brother James, facing war, assaulted by experience, pulling ahead of him somehow. The whole world had left him in its wake, while at Roy Ruggins Seed, as so often in his work life, he earned his pay performing the same motions over and over. Up before the sun and then hiking a lot of miles in and out of thosefifty-three-foot trailers, back and forth, a long way up the ramp and all the way to the front, dragging two eighty-pound sacks with hay hooks. Here and there little points of daylight in the cars’ leaky interiors. Stacking the sacks in each layer at a right angle to the sacks in the layer beneath. Eight layers high. Linseed had a peculiar, sick-making smell. They worked deep-desert summertime hours, five to nine in the morning and five to nine at night, taking eight hours off during the hot of the day. Between shifts trying not to get drunk. Or anyway not too drunk.

After he lost that job he gave up his room and tried the Salvation Army, who rigorously insisted on sobriety, however, and who couldn’t be fooled for long. Expelled for liquor breath, he would have made it all right sleeping daytimes in the square downtown and tramping the streets at night, but a person had to eat, and from the New Life Mission he got only one peanut-butter sandwich at noon and franks and beans for supper, both meals with a cup of reconstituted chocolate milk. While he waited for this fare twice each day in a line of losers, life laughed at his hunger, and he wished he was in a situation with a roof and a kitchen, the navy once again, or again the Salvation Army—even jail. He’d passed three weeks in the Phoenix lockup awaiting trial on a charge of assault and found nothing behind bars to complain about. They served you three meals there and the people were decent—criminals, maybe, but sober and well-fed criminals didn’t behave too badly. Anywhere but his mother’s house. Her zealous hope of Heaven made it hell there.

In a tavern on Central he met a chubby adorable Pima woman who called herself a half-breed. She took him out to the desert on the reservation way east of town and they sat on the hood of her rattletrap Plymouth in the cooling dusk while the sky turned a nothing-colored shade of blue. They hit it off fine, he and this warm-hearted woman with a brown front tooth in her happy Eskimo face. Short and fleshy. She was in actual point of fact spherical. She took him home to her shack east of Pima Road, just inside the reservation, and within days he married her in a ceremony conducted by a wizened old cretin who claimed to be a medicine man. Houston and his new wife lived in bliss for two weeks, until her darkly, poisonously silent brother showed up and moved in. While she napped one afternoon Houston took six dollars and six cigarettes’ from her Plymouth’s glove compartment—six, his lucky number, and lucky for her it wasn’t in the double digits—and rode back to the Deuce on a bus. Did he need a lawyer? He doubted it. The woman had burned her way into his heart, but two weeks hardly counted. He didn’t intend to complicate the adventure with a divorce.

After October, after the rainy season, many mornings in Cao Quyen came with sunlight before the inevitable dull afternoon —he thought sometimes of a remark of Jimmy Storm’s: “Ain’t no sky in the tropics” — and with this gift came certain regions of beauty into the villa’s eastern rooms, solid-looking slats of light between the louvers upstairs, the kitchen filled with pinpoint reflections among the utensils, the murky office’s shutters fiercely outlined, also the large rectangular vents near the parlor’s ceiling: flat, stark planes like a painter’s small exercises in perspective … And then the afternoon’s perpetual, uniform, businesslike illumination from overcast skies sank his soul. In the morning he saw it-options always waited open. By afternoon he couldn’t take steps, the ground was gone, doubt had dissolved it.

Mrs. Diu said, “Lady to see you, Mr. Skip.”

He rose from the desk, entered the parlor, and encountered a female stranger, freckled, brown, stringy, in a white blouse with front pockets, a man’s khaki trousers, and he said, “Kathy,” before he realized he knew her.

In Damulog she’d had none of the flushed and frightened—hysterical, or haunted—leaning, overheated look of so many jungle missionaries.

She had it now. One hand gripped the rim of a peasant’s conical hat— the nong la. He took it from her and set it on the coffee table in the parlor and she followed it to stand there a little out of breath, keeping her hat near.

“I was told about a Canadian.” “I can get us some tea. Would you like some tea?” “Is it you? You’re the Canadian?” “Speak up, now, ma’am. Tea or no?” “How about some of that incendiary compound you drop on the vil

lages?” “I’m, I’m —I’m all out.” “I might have known. I did know. AID! Del Monte! Canadian! What

else? Toronto Symphony Orchestra?” “Seventh-Day Adventist.” “All of you, oh, my Lord. You’re too laughable to laugh at.” “I’m translating the Bible, I’ll have you know.” “It isn’t funny.” “Don’t you think I’ve caught on to that? I lost my sense of humor a

long time ago. Now, will you have tea with me, Kathy? Or isn’t this a so

cial call.” “I’m calling on a Canadian.” “But socially, right?” “Yes. I’ll bet you’ve got honey.” “No. Condensed milk, the sugary stuff.” “No honey?” “Nothing like that.” “No? Maybe you thumbed your nose at McNamara. Is that the one?” “The Secretary of Defense?” “Yeah. He must’ve put you in exile as a punishment, huh?” “I like it here very much.” “You spies are always so perky and so chipper.” “Have a seat.” With all that had come along to disillusion him, the

dismal realities of his work, it lit up his heart to be called a “spy.” She sat on the edge of a chair and looked around wildly. “All right, now,” he said, “tea.” “How are things in Canada?” “Come on. Please.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I’m just, I’m quite simply—I’m angry.” She got up without any purpose in her face. “I’m leaving now.” As if getting the idea from having expressed it, she went quickly through the entry and out, slapping her hands onto the bicycle she’d parked out there and kicking at its kickstand, a black bicycle.

“Kathy, come on, wait,” Skip called, but he didn’t go after her. She’d said she was angry. He didn’t think she very often felt any other way.

He sat on the divan and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking at the magazines on the coffee table—Time, and Newsweek, a cover photo of two black American Olympic athletes raising the single-fist salute of the Black Power Movement. In Mexico City, he believed, but didn’t know, because he’d stopped reading them.

Back she came. “I never heard from you.”

He waited until she took hold of the large chair facing him, dragged it a little distance away in a show of dissent, and sat down on its creaking rattan. “Well?”

“Well, I sent a few cards.”

“I wrote a slew of letters. I even mailed a few. Do you know why I cut off communication?” “I hope you’ll tell me.” “Because when Father Carignan died —did you know he died? Of

course you know he died—because news came to us that the priest near Carmen had drowned, and you were the one who brought the news to the diocese, and we were together three weeks, as lovers, and you never mentioned it!”

“Didn’t I get a letter from you a year ago? A long time after the priest, the business there, the drowning.” “It took a while, but I finally figured it out: liars aren’t worth talking to.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I appreciated the letters.”

This seemed to give her pause. “You never really answered. Cards don’t count.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to lie.” True, but not truly the reason for his silence. He’d thought her letters crazy. “Or, well, no—letters are hard. That’s closer to the truth.”

“A phony Canadian talking about truth. Incidentally, what name do you go by?”

“Skip.” “Skip who?” “Benęt. But mostly Skip. Still Skip.” “Alias Benęt wants to talk about truth!” “We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves. As you once

said to me yourself.” “I don’t remember ever saying that, but it’s certainly true when it

comes to somebody like you, it’s certainly true in your case.” “So then—you’ll stay awhile.” She glared, eyes watering. Her wrath went out of her in a gusty sigh,

and he could tell she was glad to see him.

As for the spy, he was thrilled, his hands shook with joy. He found Mrs. Diu and asked for tea, fruit, bread, returned to his guest to say, “Just two minutes,” and went back to hang around the kitchen, terrified of facing Kathy without things to eat and drink, while Mrs. Diu prepared them. He brought the tray himself.

She too appeared suddenly shy. “This dog,” she said, “just wanders all

around.” “That’s Docteur Bouquet. He used to own the place.” “He acts like he still does.” “He’s reincarnated.” “Really. He sure picked the wrong country to be born a dog in.” “But I’d say just the right household.” “He’ll end up in somebody’s chopsticks.” “I think he’s too old now.” He started to scratch the dog and realized it would dirty his fingers.

“Hey,” he said, “I can’t really ask you to stay. I’m not in a position to en

tertain. Not at all. Not these days. Buried under work.” “What?” “Well, that’s insane.” “Yeah. It is. I mean to say—” “I thought I was rolling with it, but I guess I’m in a panic here.” “Do you want me to stay, or do you want me to go?” “I want you to stay.” He fumbled and dropped a small baguette, and Docteur Bouquet

trotted off with it. He watched it go, a man without graceful reflexes. “I’ve been calling him Docteur Bouquet, but I think it should be ‘Monsieur/ His degree wouldn’t stay with him into the next life, would it?

What are you doing up here in Cao Quyen?” “What am I doing here?” “Yes. More or less.” “I’m with WCS now. No more ICRE.” “WCS?” “World Children’s Services is a network of nearly sixty agencies

around the world, providing social services to children and their families

since 1934.” “I’m sure it is.” “Adoption assistance is the core service of WCS. In several districts,

including this one, we’re doing what we can to coordinate efforts on be

half of children without families.” “I wouldn’t doubt it.” “Stop it. So I was visiting the missionary family in Bac Se, and they

told me about you. The Thomases.” “I never met them. Never heard of them.” “They heard about you from a priest.” “Thong Nhat—Pčre Patrice.” “I wouldn’t know. I just know I came out of my way to say hi to a fel

low Canadian, and instead I find you. The Quiet American.” “Oh, well,” he said, “thanks for not calling me Ugly.” “You wouldn’t hear it anyway. You’re deaf. We all know that about

you by now, all but you Americans yourselves.” “It seemed like we were getting along there for a second.” “Sorry.” She ran out of things to say and gazed at him pitiably. “Que pasa?” ” ‘Que pasa’? You talk like a GI.” “I know. Que pasa?” “I’m all worn out.” “I’m sure you are.” “I mean—I’m the ugly one. It’s worn me down, hasn’t it?” “Look,” he said, “I’m so glad you came. I’m so happy, Kathy.” “Really?” “Do I have to make a fool of myself?” “I wouldn’t mind,” she said.

Fortunately, the dog was back for more. Skip roughed his fur and fed him bites of mango. “And you’re here about orphans, I guess. For WCS.”

She nodded her head, slice of mango speared on a fork and upheld like a flag, mouth full of bread roll. Swallowed the bread, the mango, almost the fork too.

“Now it’s me who’s sorry. I wasn’t thinking—do you want a regular meal?” She shook her head, still chewing. “No, thanks. Yes—I mean, yes, adoption. We’re an umbrella organization for adoption agencies.” “If every family in North America adopts one Vietnamese, we win the war.” “Something like that. I wouldn’t mind clearing the country out and

just leaving it to the killers.” “Are you guys as hard up as ICRE?” “Oh, sure—relative to the size of our effort we are. But as I once

heard Mayor Luis say—We will find the money, we will kneel to many

people.’ ” “You’re good. You sound just like him.” “Have you been in touch?” “No.” “Me neither.” “Let’s get back to the other thing,” he suggested. “Where you said you

wouldn’t mind if I made a fool of myself.” “Let me eat first.” In a few minutes he showed her to the upper rooms. From what he

could see, climbing behind her up the stairwell, she’d kept a little weight in her hips and thighs, but she’d called it right, the life had worn her down. He himself had gone the other way. He didn’t have a scale, but his bathing trunks fit him tighter and he wore them lower, beneath the belly roll. No scale, but he’d been provided a stethoscope and a blood-pressure gauge. A dozen rolls of bandage, no adhesive tape. Wartime supplies were like that—all cocked up. These were the thoughts that ravaged him as he tried to figure out how to deal with his overwhelming happiness and lust, his buzzing fingertips, clenched heart, dizziness. Not that he thought she’d mind a pass, but she was nuts—at the very least complicated—hidden-wounded, phony-cynical, overpassionate. Definitely angry. And all of it inflamed him. And she was the last woman he’d slept with, one of five in thirty-odd years of life. Men with graceful reflexes don’t interrogate their opportunities. Men without them should stop the questions. And of the five, she was the only one he’d slept with more than once. He led the way into his bed suite, turned to her, and — nothing. No reflexes.

“I said I wouldn’t mind,” she said, and they commenced with an awkward kiss.

“Mr. Benęt, do you have any wine?”

“I do. Thank God, I do. And half a fifth of Bushmills.”

“Sounds like a party,” she said, and laid two fingers lightly on his forearm. Taking the fingers in his hand, he led her to the double-sized bed, where he put to use what he’d learned from Henry Miller’s daring passages, from small obscene photographs, dorm-room bull sessions. As in the time in Damulog, they didn’t speak. Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other. As she’d said, she didn’t mind, and at the very last part she gazed upward at something on the ceiling and cried out. And for an instant he thought, I am James Bond, before he dropped again into gray doubting—Artaud and Cioran, the dog, the weather, the point of it all, waiting for contact with a supposed double agent, the thing he’d been brought here nearly two years ago to accomplish. And it was folly. The wild-card operation and the war itself—folly on folly. And this woman beside him with whom hęM just made love, perspiring like a handball player.

There was a little contest, then, it seemed to him, as to who was going to talk first. “It takes a fire to make hot water,” he said, “but if you want a shower—”

“Oh, come on! I’ll take it cold.”

“I’ll pee,” he said. “And then you can have the shower, okay?”

While she showered he wiped himself down with the bedsheet and got back into his bathing trunks. He thought he might look at a book, but the weather was ominous and he had only the rumored, greenish daylight from storm clouds to see by. All the books, he thought, are downstairs. There’s nothing to do, he thought. Nothing to be done. He sat at the little tea table staring at his knees, his bare feet.

She came back with a towel wrapped around her and her hair slicked back, the high pinks visible even in her sun-browned cheeks. She had sad, pouched knees. Holding the towel to her breast she stretched, extending only her left arm, keeping the towel close. Across from him was a chair, but she sat on the bed. “Those look like the first clothes I ever saw you in. You were wearing an odd sort of bathing suit, just like that, with pockets.”

“The very same pair, actually. They’re sturdy as hell.” “What about your wild Bermuda shorts?” “They fell apart, I guess.” “There was a storm then too.” “The first time you saw me I wore pants. That restaurant in Malay

balay, remember?” “I refuse to remember.” She’d come at just the right time. This was her atmosphere. This was

the light for her, for sad, pale skin below the tanned neck and above the rough elbows, for a virgin martyr’s poise, for her unexpectant waiting— her right calf, rather thick and like a peasant’s, dangling from the bed and the foot plunged into shadow near the floor, which was of old wood, the other leg akimbo and the sole of its foot against the other knee, making a number 4 with her legs as she lay back on the bed, her hand across her breasts, the other behind her head—pond-light, church-light. Had she known how he stared, she’d never have allowed it. But she turned her eyes to him and looked at him full on as if he didn’t matter, without any change of her expression. She wasn’t, herself, beautiful. Her moments were beautiful.

The room darkened and gusts carried voices from the ville and the rattle of things shaken, though just before the rain the wind let off, and what came down might have fallen any summer’s day in New England.

“You’re really staring.” “You are a goddamn relief. You’re making everything go away.” “Everything such as?” “Boredom. Boredom. And too much thinking. Cabin fever.” “Oh, we know all about cabin fever in Manitoba. Come spring, guys

jump in their trucks and drive a hundred miles for a shot of whiskey.” “Speak of the devil. You want some Bushmills?” “We forgot! For gosh sakes—what are you staring at?” “Isn’t that allowed?”

“Not when it’s me. I’m an old crone. This sun roasts you like a marsh

mallow. I’m all beat-up.” “You just wear the badge of your adventures.” “Malarkey.” “No.” “You think this place is an adventure?” “Sure.” “It isn’t fun, though. It’s an adventure, but an adventure isn’t fun till

it’s over. If then.”

This impressed him as a truth. He poured two shots of lukewarm Bushmills and brought them to the bed. Scooting back against the wall, she held the small glass in both hands and sipped.

“Do Seventh-Day Adventists usually drink?” “Some do, some don’t. Here in this mess I’d say all of us do when we

get the chance.” “Where were you? On the delta.” “A ville called Sa Dec. But I had to leave. It’s different around there

since Tet. Everything’s chewed up by big American bullets. Everybody has to be careful. Disaster’s just around the corner. For a lot of people it’s already here. It’s a terrible, terrible situation. You get used to it and plod along, then one day you wake up and you’re not used to it anymore. Then after a while you get used to it all over again.”

“So you’re here looking for orphans?” “We don’t have to look.” “Right. Right.” “We’re just liaisoning with missionaries. If we can, we want to get

something going, something better. Bigger. The existing facilities are terrible, every one of them.” At the moment terrible things didn’t interest him. As she spoke he studied her head and wondered what Rembrandt might have tried in such lackluster, truthful illumination.

Kathy said, “And your camera.”

Camera. “I remember you had a camera. Do you still have it around?” “I gave it up. No more photographs. It turns the world into a mu

seum.” “Instead of?”

“Instead of a crazy circus/’ He kept photographs in his dresser drawer, next to the Beretta pistol

he’d never used. “Look here.” He handed her a dozen or so. “Emeterio D. Luis!” “Not a single one of you.” “A jeepney! I miss those things.” “Nearly fifty people riding on it.” “No wonder the tire popped.” A knock. Mrs. Diu asked admittance. “We’ll be down for supper,”

Skip called through the door. “I have the incense. You want?” “All right-She came in with three sticks fuming sweetly in her hand and said,

“Yes, good evening,” and placed them in their holder on a high shelf across the room. “Okay. Supper later. I will tell you,” she said, and went out closing the door softly behind her.

The rain had stopped. Through the screened view, in the two minutes of dusk before black nightfall, he watched Tho ascending one of the papaya trees behind the villa. Because they jutted over the bank and the creek the old man couldn’t simply knock the papayas down, but had to walk up to them on the flats of his splayed bare feet with a kitchen knife in his teeth, clinging to the trunk with both hands, cutting one of the fruit away one-handed and clutching it under his arm, descending backward, and taking the last two feet in a weightless hop to the earth.

“Can I have another drink?” “By all means, comrade.” “Just a wee splash.” Skip felt a little irritated, suddenly, that Kathy had first wrung apolo

gies from him—though he’d made jokes, belittling his atonement—and she’d now forgotten it all. And it occurred to him that the months of solitude had taught him to read himself, to parse himself like a scholar; that one person on this earth had become known to him.

It rained again, and then it was night. She couldn’t return now to the missionaries in Bac Se. They slept together side by side, without sheets, she in one of his rough hand-washed T-shirts and he in boxer undershorts. Following breakfast the next morning she left for Bac Se on her black bicycle, and Skip never saw her again.

1969

Whe n the three Americans appeared at the front door of his home to take him to the Armed Forces Language School, Hao felt uncertain as to the nature of the encounter. The only one of them who spoke, a black man, did so politely, introducing himself as Kenneth Johnson from the American Embassy. They drove downtown in a closed, air-conditioned Ford with diplomatic plates, Hao in the back with one of the two younger men.

At their destination the two younger men both got out, and each opened one of the doors for the passengers. Hao and Kenneth Johnson proceeded alone past the concrete barricades toward the fine new building. Its predecessor had been wrecked in the Tet attacks the previous year. Two or three thousand members of the Vietnam military studied English here. The interior smelled of fresh paint and sawn wood.

As far as he knew, the building housed no prisoners.

Johnson led him down a stairwell to the building’s basement, where a uniformed marine fell in with them. The students thronged the upper stories and their footfalls vibrated in the ceiling overhead, but in this basement hallway Johnson, Hao, and the marine walked alone. At the corridor’s end they came to a door with something like a small adding machine fixed to the wall beside it, four or five buttons of which Johnson now pressed expertly, and the door lock hummed and clacked.

Johnson said, “Thank you, Sergeant Ogden,” and he and Hao entered a hallway lined with closed doors. Here it was quiet, air-conditioned. Johnson led him through the only open door into a small lounge furnished like any parlor with a couch and padded chairs, also a large electric-run cooler, red, with the words “Coca-Cola” on it. The room had no windows. This basement must be far underground.

“You want a Coke?”

Johnson lifted the cooler’s heavy lid, took out a dripping bottle, and, levering off its cap on an opener attached to the cooler’s side, handed the drink to his guest. It was very cold.

Feeling obligated, he took a sip. He pursed his lips and sluiced it down the right side of his mouth and swallowed. He had a bad tooth, a left molar. The colonel had spoken of a dentist.

“Have a seat,” Johnson said, and Hao sat himself on the edge of the couch’s cushion with his feet poised under him like a runner’s.

Johnson remained standing. He was small for an American, with big stains in the armpits of his white shirt. Hao had never before conversed with a Negro.

They’d taken him an hour or so after Kim had left for the market. That meant they hadn’t wanted her to see. That they cared to keep this visit a secret. That no one knew where he was.

Johnson sat down comfortably in the chair across from him and offered him a cigarette. Hao accepted it, though in fact he possessed a pack of Marlboros, and lit it with his own lighter and dragged deep and blew smoke out through his nostrils. Nonfilter. Delicately he spat out a shred of leaf. The fact that this man’s forebears had been a race of slaves embarrassed him.

Mr. Johnson returned his cigarettes to his shirt pocket without taking one for himself, and stood up. “Mr. Nguyen, will you excuse me a minute?” While Hao tried to make sense of the question, the black man went out without shutting the door and left him alone with his thoughts, which weren’t happy ones. He dropped the last of his cigarette into the bottle and it hissed, floated, darkened, sank halfway to the bottom.

Through the open doorway Hao saw his wife Kim, accompanied by another American, passing along the hall. A fissure opened in his soul. She watched her feet as if negotiating a rocky path. Apparently she didn’t notice him.

The black man came back. “Mr. Nguyen? Let’s relocate the discussion, do you mind?” Johnson hadn’t sat down. Hao understood that he didn’t intend to, that he himself must stand up. He let himself be guided only a few steps along the hallway to a second windowless room in which sat a thin, angular, youthful man with reading glasses far down on his nose, one ankle crossed over his knee, looking down and to the left at the contents of a manila folder opened on the table beside him. He smiled at Hao, saying, “Mr. Nguyen, come on in, I want to show you this thing,”

and Hao searched for hope in his almost sociable tone of voice. On the table were arranged devices and wires like an elaborate radio system. “I’m Terry Crodelle. Everybody calls me Crodelle, and I hope you

will too. Okay if I call you Mr. Hao?” “Okay. Yes.” “Sit, sit, please.” He sat in the hard wooden chair beside Crodelle’s. A third chair

waited, but Mr. Johnson remained at attention. Here were two very different American types, both dressed the same in their somber slacks, their brilliant shoes, white short-sleeved shirts: Johnson standing, extraneous, mildly uncomfortable, brown-skinned and blackheaded, Crodelle relaxed and in charge, with pale, freckled skin, and hair the color of straw.

Mr. Johnson said, “Do you want Sammy?” Crodelle gave no answer. “Mr. Hao,” Crodelle said, “we’re going to keep this short, never fear.” “That’s good.” “You’ll be back home within the hour.” “Today we’ll plant a tree for the Tet.” “Do you understand my English?” Hao said, “Sometimes I don’t understand many things.” He still held

his half bottle of Coke with its drifting cigarette butt. Gently Crodelle

took the beverage from his grip and placed it on the table. “Another drink?” “No, thank you. But it’s quite good.” Crodelle put his glasses in the pocket of his shirt and leaned in to

contact Hao’s gaze without hostility or guile, but studiously. He had stubby eyelashes the color of his hair, and irises a pale blue. “I don’t want an interpreter in here. Can we talk without an interpreter?”

“Yes. My English is not good to speak, but I understand better.” “Good enough,” Crodelle said. And Johnson said, “Good enough,” and left the room, shutting the

door behind him. “Do you know what this contraption is?” “Maybe a radio.” “It’s a machine that can tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.

Or so they claim.” Did the machine transmit this news about himself now?

“How can it work?” “It’s not my area. We won’t be using it today.” Hao said, “I am searching true peace. I cannot wait for you to make

the peace. I cannot wait for you guys.” Crodelle smiled. “War is not peace.” Crodelle rose and went to the door and opened it. “Ken?” he called,

and then said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hao.” It was Johnson who appeared. “We need a translator.” Johnson left the door ajar. Crodelle arranged the third chair, saying,

“Just someone to help us get things across.” He sat down and again crossed his ankle over his knee. Hao wondered if they’d let him smoke in here. “When was the last time you saw the colonel?” Hao patted the Marlboros in his shirt. Crodelle produced a lighter

and held out the flame while Hao steered the tip of his cigarette into it and puffed, reflecting that life in this city of feints and reversals called for nimble steps and a long view, and he lacked this combination. He found himself unable, for instance, to cope with his wife’s brother, who owed him money, who had lived in Hao’s father’s house since the old man’s death, when it became Hao’s property, but who refused to acknowledge his debt. Relatives and business: he’d failed to navigate between them. And since his father’s death he’d run the family’s enterprises into the ground. He couldn’t handle the day-to-day of simple commerce; much less whatever these people had in mind for him now. He inhaled delicious smoke and said, “Not for a long time.”

“One month? Two months?” “I think maybe two months.” Johnson had returned. “Here’s Sammy,” he said, and a very young

Vietnamese man dressed in slacks and shirt just like the Americans’ sat in the third wooden chair while Johnson left again and Crodelle spoke rapidly, looking at Hao.

“Mr. Hao,” the boy translated, “we’ve invited you here instead of arranging an apparently chance encounter in a public space. I will tell you the reason.”

“Tell me,” Hao said in Vietnamese.

“Because we want you to understand that this inquiry has the weight

of the United States government behind it.” In English Hao said, “Fm a friend for the United States.” “Do you have a lot of friends?” Hao asked the interpreter, “What does he mean by such a question?” “Fm not sure. Do you want me to ask him to explain?” “Why did they bring me here? Why do they ask if I have a lot of

friends?” “That’s not my business.” “Sammy,” Crodelle said, “just ask him the questions. I talk to you,

you talk to him. He talks to you, you talk to me. You two don’t sit back chatting.” “It’s best just to speak to him, and not to me,” the boy suggested to Hao.

Hao held his cigarette almost vertically so as not to lose the two-inchlong ash and put his lips under it to get a puff. Crodelle said, “I forgot the ashtrays. I don’t actually smoke myself.”

Sammy said, “Can I get one?” “An ashtray? Please, if you don’t mind.” Now he was alone with pale Crodelle again. A lot of friends? Not a

lot. Perhaps the wrong ones. He’d clung to the colonel as to a mighty tree, expecting it to carry him from the tempest. But a tree isn’t going anywhere.

Sammy knocked and came back in with an ashtray as well as his own burning cigarette, put the tray on the table in front of Hao, dipped his own ash. “It’s all right?”

“Smoke away,” Crodelle said. “Smoke like Dresden, man,” and Hao brought his Marlboro gently above the ashtray and let fall the pendulous ash.

“American cigarette,” he said. “I like it better than Vietnam.” He

stubbed it out and sat back. “Who’s the friend who visits you? The VC.” A simple enough question. But the route to the answer started some

distance from it and passed through a thicket of irrelevant histories. He spoke of his training at the New Star Temple. Of how the tenets had seemed, in a way, cowardly excuses for old men to hide behind, but afterward, in middle age —now—had begun to reveal their importance.

He spoke of the Five Hindrances—they did, indeed, hinder—and the Four Noble Truths—they were actually true. When he’d run out of things to say, the translator Sammy dragged from his cigarette and said: “Buddhist.”

Crodelle said, “To each his own. I’m not here in the name of any particular outfit except Five Corps. So your friend’s name is Trung, correct?”

“Trung. A very old friend. We went to school at the New Star Temple.” “What name does he travel under now?” “I don’t know.” “What’s Trung’s full name?” “I don’t know.” “You went to school with him, and you don’t know his full name?” Hao said in English: “Wait one minute, please.” “Mr. Hao, his name is Trung Than.” “I think so.” “When was the last time he came to your house?” “Please wait one minute.” —And Kim, in the hallway, her head down. Had they arranged it that

way? Possibly. Probably. To what end? He didn’t want to think this out too far. He hoped he understood his position. He hoped he had a grip on his goals. He said, in English, “I want to go from here to a good place. To Singapore.”

“Singapore?” “Yes. Maybe Singapore.” “Just you?” “My wife also, please.” “You and your wife want to emigrate to Singapore.” ” ‘Zeckly.” “Is that your first choice?” “I want to go to the United States.” “Then why did you say Singapore?” “The colonel says I can go to Singapore.” “Colonel Sands?” “He’s my friend.” “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Malaysia’s a better bet.—

That is, if we’re the ones helping you.”

Hao didn’t want their help. But the choice seemed help or harm. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Do you understand the expres

sion?” “Sometimes I don’t understand.” “We need to talk later about things like where we put you. Right now

we need to become friends. Nothing more.” “It’s bad stuff.” “What’s bad stuff?” “Now.” “Now is bad stuff? Here and now?” “Yes. Please. I am the colonel friend.” “You have the wrong friends.” “No. He is a good man.” “Certainly. A good man. Yeah—you have to wonder how many oper

ations have been code-named ‘Labyrinth.’ ” The boy didn’t translate.

“Do you want another Coke?” “No, thank you. Sorry. My tooth has a sore.” “Hao, it’s not bad stuff. In fact, if I can’t pour another Coke down

your gullet, I believe we’re finished for today. I just wanted to introduce myself. I’ve done that, and I really don’t have much else to say. Except I hope we can be friends. Once in a while I’ll contact you, bring you down. We can talk. Get further acquainted, have a Coke. That okay with

“Yes. A Coke,” Hao said in English. “Does Sammy need to translate what I just said?” “No, it’s okay. I understand.” “I guess we’ve lost the car. Let me give you some cab fare. You’re

planting a tree for Tet?” “Yes. Every year, each year.” “Kumquat? With the orange fruit?” “Kumquat.” “They’re beautiful.” “Yes. That kind.” “Like the ones you have now in your front yard.” “Yes.” “You plant one every year? How many have you got?”

len.

“And this one makes eleven.” “Yes. Eleven.” Eleven years since my father died. Crodelle seemed to study the lying device, which was made up of

several components laid out on the tabletop. “Jesus, will you look at all these wires.” He’d said nothing about keeping this visit a secret from the colonel. It probably suited their purposes either way. Or they guessed he’d never mention it because it could only lead to questions, and he’d be grappled down by lies. But Trung—should he tell Trung?

Crodelle said, “What on earth is all this for? … This thing obviously attaches to your finger …” He’d wait for the next time Trung sought him out, and at that time he’d decide how much to tell. Crodelle said, “One of these days you and I and a technician will sit

down and find out how all this works.” Hao said, “It’s the same.” “The same?” He meant it’s all the same, it doesn’t matter, everybody’s lying.

ICim waited out front of the house beside the tree, its roots wrapped in newspaper, until her husband came home in a cyclo cab. She watched him climb from the cart and pay and come at her smiling, as if nothing had happened.

“Those people asked me about Trung,” she said. “Your friend.” “They asked me too,” he said. “Did you see me there?” “I saw you in the basement.” “What do they want?” “It all concerns Trung. I think he’s in trouble.” “They said he comes here to visit us.” “No, Trung doesn’t come here. Have you ever seen him here?” “No. They asked me if he comes here, and I said no.” “They asked me too, and I said no, he doesn’t come to my house.” “Good. If my grandmother’s ghost chases you tonight howling at you,

I’ll tell you what she’s saying: Don’t scatter your kindnesses.” “That’s the end of it,” he said. “No trouble.”

“This one’s exactly the same size as most of the others/’ she said,

meaning the tree. “I went to the market on my way home.” “Kim,” her husband said, “listen to me: You know who I am.” “I can’t find the shovel,” she said. “Do you expect me to dig with my

hands?” “You know me,” he said. “Don’t make trouble.” “I want peace.” “Then listen to my grandmother. She always told us, Don’t scatter your

kindnesses in the forest. Plant them where they’ll grow and feed you.” “Good advice.” “Are those Americans angry at you?” “No. Everything’s good.” “Did they give you money for a cyclo?” “More than enough.” “Me too. Where’s the shovel?” “I don’t know.” They went to the edge of the low ironwork fence, and there, using the

corner of a small board and his hands and fingers, he scraped out a hole, and they put the tree in it. From the next street over they heard singing, firecrackers, the cries of children. With the side of her foot she kicked the dirt into the hole, careful to get as little as possible on her sandal. Her husband stared at this operation as if wishing he could grow tiny and throw himself in.

Tomorrow she’d have her fortune told. She’d been looking forward to

it. Now it seemed a punishment. “Ah,” he said, “I remember.” “What?” “The shovel is in the …” “Where?” “No, no. It’s not there,” he said.

Th e double had arrived. He came to the villa in the black Chevrolet, with an entourage, Hao, Jimmy Storm, the colonel, even Hao’s young nephew Minh, formerly

the colonel’s helicopter pilot, now back with the Viet Nam Air Force but not, today, in uniform. To Skip it seemed a gathering unnecessarily inclusive.

They all sat in the parlor—the double Trung on the divan, between the colonel in his loud Hawaiian shirt and the uniformed Jimmy Storm—and Sands ordered coffee and studied this person he’d waited two years to get a look at.

Trung was about five-six, and bowlegged. He could have been any age between thirty and fifty, but Skip understood him to be Hao’s old schoolmate, which would make him just past forty years old. He didn’t grease his hair; it spiked upward in the middle of his scalp. He had dark skin of the kind in which miscellaneous shallow scratches left scars. Thick eyebrows came together sparsely over the bridge of his nose. He had large ears, a weak chin. An ugly face, but friendly. He wore Asian-looking, strangely tinted blue jeans and a green T-shirt a little small for him—both quite new-looking—and black high-top tennis shoes, also apparently Asian-made, also new, and no socks. He kept his hands on his knees and both feet on the floor. Between his feet lay a forest-green knapsack, probably new; collapsed, probably empty. In a kindly way, Trung met his stare. The whites of his eyes had a yellow tint. Maybe his relaxed manner came from illness.

At this moment, the most genuine and legitimate in Skip’s journey as a Cold Warrior, his uncle seemed distracted, wouldn’t sit down, walked from window to window looking out, and failed to make introductions.

“Skip, come with me. I’ve got some news. Come out front with me.”

They stood outside the entry in the muggy morning, Skip thinking he should go upstairs and get into something besides bathing trunks and a T-shirt, and the colonel said, “Skip, I’ve got bad news.”

“It looks more like good news.”

“Yes, that’s him, that’s our man.”

“That is good news.”

“No. Yes,” the colonel said. “Now. Skip. Your mother has died. Beatrice. Bea.” The statement struck him like a blow to the chest. Yet its meaning

eluded him completely.

“What the fuck?” Skip said.

“The timing’s terrible. And the cable is three days old.”

“No. I don’t believe it.”

“Skip, sit down. Let’s sit down.” They rested themselves on the step. Cool, worn granite. His uncle was reaching into his breast pocket with his right hand. He placed his left on Skip’s right shoulder. Now Skip held in his hands a pale yellow piece of paper. Whenever afterward he reviewed this moment he was unable to suppress these details, he had to include them.

The colonel said, “I’ll be back with a drink,” and left him alone with the cablegram. He read it several times. In it his mother’s pastor explained she’d passed away due to complications following a routine radical hysterectomy. Whatever that meant. The pastor offered his sympathies and above all his prayers.

The colonel returned with a glass in his hand.

” ‘Routine radical,’ ” Skip said. “How do you like that?”

“Here. Please. Here. You need a good stiff shot.”

“Jesus, okay.”

His uncle stood over him holding out the glass, but Skip failed to accept it. Palms up, he held the cablegram like a big delicate ash. “I’ll miss the funeral.”

“It’s bad stuff.”

“I hope somebody’s there.”

“She was a fine woman. I’m sure she has many mourners.”

The colonel drank away half the glass he’d carried here for his nephew. “The cable came three days ago. I was in Cao Phuc. They radioed me that a cable had come, and I meant to get in touch with somebody and find out the content, but I failed to make it a priority—there’s so much cable traffic, and it’s generally so picayune, as you know … And in all honesty, Skip, I was distracted.”

“Well, no, you don’t need to—you know.”

“It’s all done. No more Echo. Courtesy of Johnny Brewster, probably. But maybe not. For all I know, they’re just getting us out of the way so they can carpet-bomb the place.”

Jesus.

“So I’m sorry about the delay. When I got back, Trung said he was ready to move. In all the excitement about losing Cao Phuc, I’d almost forgotten him entirely.”

“The funeral is day after tomorrow.”

“Go, if you feel you have to.” “Obviously, I can’t.” “The folks back home understand. They realize you’re off to war.” “Can I have my drink?” “Oh, shit.” Skip drained the glass. “Skip, I’m going to leave you a few minutes to collect yourself. Then

we’ll need you back inside ready to do your work.” “I know. Jesus. Both in one day.” “I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.” “Sure. I’ll be in.” Skip watched the road beyond the gate. Not thinking about his

mother at all. He supposed he’d think about her later. He couldn’t predict the order of these emotional events, his mother had never died before. Nor anyone close to him. His father had gone before he could remember. His Uncle Francis had lost a young son, drowned while sailing off Cape Cod, to say nothing of all the comrades fallen in war. Skip himself had watched his uncle shoot a man who hung from a tree branch. Guess what? People died. He wished he didn’t have to take this moment alone. It was useless to him. He was glad when his uncle returned and sat by his side.

“Well, Uncle. I’m your orphan nephew.”

“Beatrice was a wonderful wife to my brother. I never thought of it before, Skip, but he must have died in the micjst of his happiness. It was short, but she made him very happy.”

“They killed her. The butchers.”

“No, no, no. They know their stuff. You’ve seen what they can do. You bring in a foot soldier in half a dozen pieces—a year later he’s ready for the parade.”

Skip folded the cable in half and again in half but couldn’t choose which one of his pockets to defile with it. He tossed it overhand toward the road.

“You know what? Your dad knew what counted. He married early. He wasn’t like the rest of us. Hell, in our family none of us is like the rest of us. I’m five-foot-eight with shoes on. Your Uncle Ray is six-four.”

“Is he your senior?” “Ray? He’s two years younger. Two years and three months.”

“Oh.” “The point is, you’ve got family. You’re not an orphan. I guess that’s

the point.” “Thank you.” “I mean it. But you know that. You always have. Now, listen, it’s bad

stuff, and the timing’s terrible …” “I’ll be fine. Let’s go in.”

Rflr. Skip had said the local priest might know where to buy a certain kind of powdered bark from which Kim wished to brew a medicinal tea. These days her health seemed good. But herbs and medicines still enthralled her. Hao and his nephew left the Americans and went looking for the priest’s house, taking the creekside path for only a couple of hundred meters, passing behind a series of small yards, each with one or two or three monuments covering family graves, and entered the Catholic domain by the back garden.

In the homes up and down the creek old women boiled the day’s rice over charcoal or sticks of kindling, but no smoke came from the priest’s. Minh had to whistle twice. The little man came from the back of the house barefoot, cinching his belt, buttoning a long-tailed American-style shirt hanging nearly to his knees.

Hao felt irritation at finding him home. He’d only wanted to talk to his nephew about the family business.

“Yes, I know you,” the priest said when Hao began to introduce himself, and Hao explained he needed herbs for his wife. Also, perhaps, something for a bad tooth.

“I can give you directions, but I can’t escort you.”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m not going out today,” the priest said. “I’m staying in. I had an important dream.” Minh asked, “Did the dream tell you to stay indoors today?” “No, I just want to be quiet and remember and understand.” Hao wished he didn’t have to talk to such people. But his wife—

ghosts, dreams, potions, every kind of nonsense. So here he was. “Do you know of an herbalist or not?”

“Take the road north out of town. The third hamlet you reach, ask for

the Chinese family. They’re not really Chinese,” he added. “Thank you.” They walked back to the villa by the roadway. Hao decided this quest

for phony remedies would end here. No enchanted powders for Kim. He’d make up a lie. “It doesn’t matter,” he told his nephew. “I only wanted to talk to you. We haven’t seen you for weeks. Three months, at least.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Minh said. “I’m the general’s slave. I can’t get away.” “And the last time you visited you didn’t even stay for tea. It wasn’t us

you came to the city for. It was your woman friend.” “It’s difficult, Uncle.” “I asked the colonel to bring you to my house today, or you probably

wouldn’t have come.” “And the colonel brought me here.” “Is it such an inconvenience?” “It’s a journey. I’m not necessary here, but I like to see you, and it’s

good to see the colonel.” “There’s a problem with my wife’s brother. Huy.” “I know about it. Uncle Huy.” “It’s impossible. Do you have guns on your helicopter?” “It’s General Phan’s helicopter.” “What kind of guns?” “One machine gun.” “I want you to attack the house.” “Uncle Huy’s house?” “He doesn’t belong in it. It’s my house. He owes me eleven years’

rental.” “You want me to strafe the house?” Minh said, using the English word. “No,” said Hao in English, “not strafe. Not strafe. Destroy.” “With much love and respect, Uncle, that’s not a good idea.” “You see how angry I am.”

UT yy

I see. “Then go back home to Lap Vung. Talk to your Uncle Huy, tell him how angry I am. Will you go home for Tet?” “No, I can’t go. I’ll go for my aunt’s birthday.”

“His wife?”

“In March.”

“What date exactly?”

“March eighteenth.”

“Talk to him, please.”

“He’s a stubborn man. I don’t want to ruin Aunt Giang’s birthday.”

“Ruin it. I don’t care. You see how angry I am.”

They’d arrived at the low iron gate of the big villa in which his old friend Trung, surrounded by Americans, gambled negligently with his future. So. Trung had all along been completely sincere. Hao had never believed him.

Inside, the colonel was talking, seated on the divan next to Trung with a teacup in one hand and the other hand on Trung’s shoulder. Hao had seen little of the colonel lately, and in any case was terrified of him now. On Trung’s other side sat Jimmy Storm, his arms crossed in front of his chest and an ankle resting on his knee, as if someone had tied him in a knot and left him helpless. Trung, however, seemed completely at ease.

Hao and Minh took chairs at the border between parlor and office, not quite in nor out of the gathering. The colonel stopped talking to Skip in order to interrupt himself, saying, “It’s two families helping each other. In the end it’s all about family. Do you have family, Mr. Trung?”

Trung looked confused, and Hao translated. Trung told Hao, “I have a sister in Ben Tre. My mother died a long time ago. You remember.” Hao spoke Vietnamese: “The colonel’s sister-in-law just died a few days ago. The mother of his nephew here.”

“This man with us now?”

Hao nodded once.

“Sounds like he’s got family,” the colonel said.

Hao told him Trung had one sister whom he hadn’t seen for several years.

The colonel caressed Trung’s shoulder. “This guy’s the goods. He’s been on board since ‘46. Twenty-plus years.”

Mr. Jimmy hadn’t said a word. Hao disliked the way he stared.

Trung said, “This young man’s mother just died?”

“His uncle brought the message this morning.”

“Please tell him I’m sorry.”

But the colonel was addressing Skip: “What I want you to apprehend above all is that you’re not running this man. In a sense you’re not even collecting data. Definitely not interrogating. Definitely not. Just serve as a sponge.”

“I understand, sir.” “If you regard yourself as learning, just getting his story in general,

we’ll all be much better off.” “All right.” “And I don’t want you sweating under any elaborate fiction, either.

Whatever he asks you, I want you to be completely honest with him —

long as you’re sure he’s not digging for product.” “All right.” “But, I mean, if he asks about your background, your family, your

life—everything, tell him all of it.” “Very good.” “What is he saying?” Trung asked Hao. “He’s giving instructions. He told his nephew to be honest with you.” “Will you say for me that I’m grateful?” Hao wanted to shout: I’m lying to all of you. “You two, you’ll have to work out your commo,” the colonel told

Skip. Skip said, “We’ll get along.”

Going back to Saigon, Minh rode in the backseat with Jimmy Storm. Minh didn’t know why he’d been asked along on this outing. Because they were two families helping each other, he understood this, but still, he played no role. As short as a month ago he’d have resented the time out of his furlough, but Miss Cam, his girlfriend—her father had turned cold toward Minh, the house was closed to him, and she refused to meet him secretly. Apparently the father had depended on marrying his family to Uncle Hao’s wealth. He must have learned there wasn’t any.

His uncle’s problems had crushed the good sense from his head. The preoccupation with the house on the Mekong and the rental he surely knew he’d never see, and the suggestion Minh murder the whole bunch, it was all too silly. Meanwhile, Hao hadn’t even mentioned the colonel, particularly not the change in him. The colonel was pale, breathing was work, all morning he’d sipped his Bushmills rather than gulping it, and he’d held the glass with his fingertips rather than in his fist. And Jimmy Storm had kept unusually silent, unaware, or pretending to be, of the colonel’s deepened loneliness.

Minh himself had seen little of the colonel since his C&C chopper had gone back to the Viet Nam Air Force, and Minh with it, still its pilot. Except for the.30-caliber machine gun his uncle was so anxious to have him turn on his own family, the craft carried no assault equipment; he was spared combat and remained an aerial taxi driver, now for General Phan. The general had given him an unprecedented week’s furlough. He felt grateful, but saw the leniency as part of a new pattern. The military’s attitude had changed. He didn’t like it. The fire had died.

“Hao,” the colonel said, “stop the car.” They’d reached Route Twenty-two by now. Hao pulled to the side of it and the colonel got out, in order to relieve himself, Minh presumed.

But he only stood beside the vehicle, fixing his attention, it seemed, on a solitary cloud in the sky ahead of them like a small, wispy moon perhaps many dozens of kilometers distant, perhaps poised over the China Sea, which was invisible to them. The colonel moved toward the front of the car, knuckles of one hand resting on its hood, right hand on his hip, and waited in the brown landscape of dirt, once thick jungle and paddies, now poisoned rubble, nothing but jags and skeletons, and glowered at the cloud as if trying to influence its activity, staring down this thing of nature until its drift had taken it some ways southward out of their path.

He got back in the car. “Okay. Roll on.”

No one else spoke. Even from the sergeant there came only silence. Minh had once felt himself acquainted with the rhythms of these two comrades. He sensed a blank space where Storm should have made a dry comment, or one of his jokes.

Ski p realized he’d overprepared. What had been left to him these past two years but to memorize the labyrinths of doubt and J. P. Dimmer’s “Observations on the Double Agent”?

“Experience suggests,” Dimmer warned his readership, that some people who take to the double agent role—perhaps a majority of willing ones, in fact—have a number of traits in common … Psychiatrists describe such persons as sociopaths.

• They are unusually calm and stable under stress but cannot tolerate routine or boredom.

• They do not form lasting and adult emotional relationships with other people because their attitude toward others is exploitative.

• They have above-average intelligence. They are good verbalizers —sometimes in two or more languages.

• They are skeptical and even cynical about the motives and abilities of others but have exaggerated notions about their own competence.

• Their reliability as agents is largely determined by the extent to which the case officer’s instructions coincide with what they consider their own best interests.

• They are ambitious only in a short-range sense: they want much and they want it now. They do not have the patience to plod toward a distant reward.

• They are naturally clandestine and enjoy secrecy and deception for its own sake.

The double who’d never encountered J. P. Dimmer said to Sands, “Your tea is delicious. I like it strong.”

Skip carried a pair of dictionaries from his study and laid them on the coffee table. He assumed this man waited for instructions he couldn’t give him, while he, Skip, the officer-on-site, wanted what? To stop waiting. To serve. To make himself indispensable in putting this man to use against his own people. To know this man, and his uncle was right, you won’t map a traitor’s mind with thirty yes-or-no answers and three lines traveling a polygram. Better the floundering and backtracking and getting lost, bilingual dictionaries and mismatched goals. And even with these difficulties and with his bridges on fire behind him, this Trung savored his tea, allowed himself to be completely caught up in Mrs. Diu’s shortbread pastries, and enjoyed his introduction to M. Bouquet and recommended roasting the dog on a spit rather than boiling him in pieces. No slippery gaze, no tenseness about the knuckles, nothing like that.

Where was Judas? Skip began to wonder if this wasn’t perhaps some off-course neighbor of Hao’s, here by some ludicrous miscommunication. The double had only a little English, and Skip’s Vietnamese was simply inadequate. Both spoke French with slightly less than true facility. In all three languages they might make zigzag progress toward crossed purposes.

“In the United States we don’t eat dogs. Dogs are our friends.”

“But you are not in the United States now. This is Vietnam. You’re far from home, and this is a sad day. Mr. Skip, I’m very sad for you. I wish I came on another day.”

“You understood my mother passed on?” “My friend Hao explained it. I’m very sad for you.” “Thank you.” “What was your mother’s age?” “Fifty-two.” “I came back from the North in 1964. After ten years in that place.

The march home was very hard. All the way I thought about my mother, and my love for her came to life again strongly. I remembered many things about her that I didn’t know I remembered. I was very sad to think she’d be an older person when I returned to her. I wanted my mother to be young again. But when I reached Ben Tre she was dead for six months. She lived to be almost sixty. Her name was Dao, which is a kind of blossom. Sa I cut the dao blossom for her monument.”

“Do you have a wife? Children?” “No. Nobody.” “And your father?” “He died when I was a small child. Killed by the French.” “Mine too. Killed by the Japanese.” “Any wife for you? Some children?” “Not yet.” “So it’s very hard. I see it. Very hard when the second one goes away.

How did your mother die?” “I’m not sure. Some surgery that went wrong. How about yours?” “An illness. My sister said it lasted for almost four months. Our

mother died while I myself was very sick and I had to stop along the way down from the North. A fever came over me. Not like malaria. Something different. I lay in a hammock for two weeks. Other sick comrades came and strung their hammocks in the same place and we lay there without anyone to help us. After a few days some of the hammocks held corpses. I survived my illness and waited to feel my mother’s arms around me again. I was very sad to find she’d died, but in those days I had strength, and my passion for the cause was much bigger than my sadness. I was sent to Cao Phuc, where one of my first orders was to assassinate your uncle. But I didn’t kill him. My explosive failed. Aren’t you glad?”

“Very glad.”

“If it had functioned, my friend Hao also would have died. But the cause meant more than Hao. I’d already lost many comrades. You bury a friend—that gives you an enemy. It calls you more deeply into the cause. Then the time comes when you kill a friend. And that might drive you away. It can also have the opposite result—to deafen you against your own voice when it wants to ask questions.”

“And you began to ask questions. Is that what brings you to us?”

“I had questions from the beginning. I didn’t have ears to hear them.”

“What changed for you, Trung?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps my mother’s death. For a man without children, that’s a big change. Then the time is ready for your own death. Any time it can come, even before your body is killed.”

“What exactly do you mean? I don’t think I understand.”