Tree of Smoke

Three men showed him where to cross the river at a narrow place. One waded in up to his waist, laughing, arms raised, to demonstrate its depth. Storm believed the other two wanted to show him an alternate crossing as well, but as the path up the mountainside opposite was visible from here, he waved and bowed and showed his middle finger, bared his feet, and forged across through a slow current with shoes and socks held high in one hand and his pack in the other. At the opposite bank he tossed his gear onto land and followed it ashore and examined his legs for leeches and found none. The men hooted encouragement while he tied his laces and as he climbed the path and until he was out of sight watched him possessively, as if they’d fashioned him and sent him forth.

High cumulus clouds in a rare blue sky. He still had the morning shade from the mountain. He went quickly. After an hour the sun topped the ridge across the valley. The glare crept swiftly down over the terrain ahead and at last assaulted him, stunned him with its weight. The path went sidehill, the grade was easy, but the mountainside itself was too steep for trees. Wherever shade came from taller scrub he stopped in it to absorb the breeze coming steadily down the Belum Valley.

The path took him north until in the heights it rounded a point and turned south, the mountainside now on the east, shading him, and he stopped to sit and drink. He’d reached a vast crab’s claw through which he could see the journey ahead, the path curving westerly and then northerly, keeping level until it headed straight north over the mountaintop. On the other side, Thailand.

In the absence of further hardship, he could conclude that the encounters and negotiations of these last few days had been enough, that he faced only physical terrain and had already come into the province of whatever god had him now. It occured to him all this might have been easier—a road, even public transit—from the Thailand side. But then he wouldn’t have paid entrance.

In twenty minutes he’d rounded the rim and climbed over the northern ridge to overlook a two-acre saddle of ground between a pair of small hills. Higher mountains in the distance. Below him, a tin-roofed wooden house and a small barn or shed. A narrow creek descended the western rise and cut behind the house and down over the saddle’s lip. Stunted chickens jerked along among the stilts of the house getting at food. Storm heard a goat bleating not far off.

He headed for the creek. Looking for a place he might fall and put his mouth in it, he followed the water around the clearing’s edge. Twenty meters from the two buildings he stopped. Out front of the larger one, under its thatched awning, in such a breeze as to keep the mosqui

toes down, a white man sat on a bench resting his back against the

wooden wall. Storm approached, and the man raised a limp hand in greeting. He wore a light blue sports shirt, gray pants freshly washed and pressed, and rope sandals. Thin, with a fringe of silver hair surrounding a sunburned baldness. One leg crossed over his knee.

“Yow, Bwana.” “Good afternoon. Such welcome as we can muster is yours.” “Are you British?” “I am, in fact.” “You need one of those British bwana helmets.” “A pith helmet? I have two. Can I offer you one?” “Why aren’t you wearing one?” “No need. Fm enjoying a bit of shade.” “What else are you doing?” The man shrugged. Storm said, “I hiked up from the village—The Roo.” “Ah, yes. A gentle people.” “Who.” “The Roo.” “Yeah. Right on.” “They don’t eat their neighbors. Or shrink their heads.” “They don’t. I dig that about them. Are you by yourself?” “At the moment.” “Who else lives here?” The man uncrossed his legs, placed his hands on either side of him,

and sat up stiff-armed, his shoulders hunched. “I’ve had some lunch, but

you must be hungry.” “I’m on a fast.” “Then I’m thinking you might like some tea.” “You got ice?” “No. It’s the temperature of the creek. Which is fairly cool. It comes

from higher country to the northwest.” “Aren’t you gonna ask me who I am?” “Who are you?” “Remains to be seen.” The man smiled. His eyes looked tired.

He rose, and Storm followed him over to the creek, where the man bent to grasp an end of rope and hauled out a large glass jar in a macramé sweater. “Our tea may taste a bit flat. I boil it thirty minutes. Come into the house and we’ll put you right.”

Storm went as far as the porch. He stood at the door and watched. The place had a wooden floor planed smooth. Big wing-shutters propped open by struts at either end of the room let in the breeze and light. He saw an open kitchen, where the man poured the tea into two large glasses, and the door to what might have been a bedroom. As soon as he heard the sound of the liquid Storm’s feet took him inside. “Good glasses,” the man said. “Not old jars.” Storm drank it all rapidly. Without a word his host took the glass from him and refilled it. He sipped his own and put his hand on a small refrigerator by the sink. “No propane today. Somebody’s got to bring it over from town on a horse.”

“Where’s town? “About ten kilometers north.” “We’re in Thailand.” “Yes indeed. Slightly.” Storm had finished his tea. “We’d better keep the jar handy for you.” “What’s your function here? What’s your role?” He hefted the jug by its rope. “I keep out of the way of things.” He

stood with his glass and his jar beside the door. “Take a chair onto the porch, won’t you?” He waited for Storm to precede him out again and then sat on the bench and crossed his leg over his knee while Storm positioned the chair so all its feet rested on boards rather than in cracks and removed his pack and sat down to dig in it for his smoking materials. Storm was determined to outwait him. He smoked a mangled cigarette and observed the chickens as they foraged mechanically.

“I think I will ask for your name again, if you don’t mind.”

“Sergeant J. S. Storm. Staff sergeant. Used to be.”

Storm waited.

“Perhaps once.”

“What outfit are you working for?”

“Allied Chemical Solutions. I’m happily retired.” “Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?” “Solutions to problems, yes. But the pun was appreciated amongst us,

Sergeant, never fear.” “You worked for the Company?” “The CIA? No. Allied’s entirely private.” “When did you come here?” “A couple of years ago at least. Let me see. In June maybe. Just at the

beginning of the rains. Yes. About the first of June.” “How’s Saigon?” “I haven’t traveled as much as some. I’d like to visit there one day.” “Bullshit, motherfucker.” “I hear they’re opening a Coca-Cola plant up north. Hanoi.” Storm snapped the end of his cigarette into the yard. “Are you telling

me you ran some kind of ops up in North Vietnam?” The man squinted at him and sipped from his glass. “What could’ve been going on up north? Some kind of listening post.

Is that what you’ve got here too? The same operation x years down the

line?” “Hm,” the man said. “What’s the situation, man?” The man leaned forward with hunched shoulders. He seemed not so

much uncomfortable as pensive. “You know who I’m here for.” “I’m afraid I don’t.” “The colonel.” The man sat back and cocked his head. “Which colonel?” “Colonel F.X., old maestro. Colonel Sands.” His host took a drink. In his movements, the thinness of his fingers on

the glass, the frailness of skin covering his jumping Adam’s apple as he swallowed, he actually seemed quite elderly. “Sergeant, I can’t remember when I’ve had a white visitor before. So you’re quite unusual here. But I think your manner of approach would seem out of place anywhere. May I ask: Were you a friend of the colonel?”

“We were very tight.” “A friend, I mean to say, and not a foe.”

“Roger. ‘Who goes there/ ‘Friend/ ” “Cheers, then.” “Where is he?” “The colonel is unfortunately deceased.” “I don’t think so.” “Yes, it’s true. Long ago. Somebody should have told you before you

made such an effort.” “I don’t think so.” “I can’t offer to change your thinking. But it’s true the colonel has

died.”

“That’s what they said years ago. His wife was getting widow’s benefits in Boston, meanwhile he was known to be living here, operating around these parts.”

“I didn’t know about this.” “I knew about it. And I know the colonel didn’t die.” “I see. He didn’t die.” “Fuck no.” “Do you know that for a fact?” “Fuck no. But I do know the colonel. He’s doing Plan B.” “And what’s Plan B?” “He let himself get captured in ‘69, he allowed it, man, as part of a

Psy Ops scenario, and whatever that shit led to lies behind the veil, but I can give you this much on stone-ass tablets: he’s still making it just a little bit harder to be a Commie.”

“And that’s Plan B.” “Set to music.” “Did he share this plan with you?” “Shit don’t work if you share it. It’s a one-man show.” “A one-man show.” The man smiled. “There’s the colonel in a nut

shell.” “What’s in your shed?” The man said, “You know, he was a captain when I first knew him.

Though not officially. Officially he was separated from the service.” Storm lit another cigarette and snapped his Zippo shut. “Yeah?” “That’s the way they worked it then. His outfit came as volunteer

civilians. America hadn’t actually joined the war against Japan. But the captain had. Some of you Yanks were bombing the Japs long before they

struck you at Pearl Harbor.” “World War Two. The Deuce.” “For you Yanks that was the best of wars. For me the best of wars was

right here in Malaya, ‘51 through ‘53. We fought the Commies, and we beat them. The colonel was in and out with us all the way along, including Operation Helsby here in the Belum Valley. He and I may have hiked down through this clearing together. May have traipsed through my parlor before it existed. May have done it more than once. I don’t remember. He and I were on the Long Patrol out of Ipoh together—one hundred three days of slime and such. One hundred three days running. That’s when you know a man. If he was alive, I’d be sure of it. Nor would he have to tell me. Not when you know a man.”

Storm nearly believed. “Well, what happened to him?” “Are you after the legend, or the fact?” “I’m after the truth, man.” “I’d venture the truth is in the legend.” “What about the facts, then?” “Unavailable. Obscured in legend.” “How many tunes do you know, motherfucker? Because I’m running

out of nickels.” The man stood up. “Let me take you someplace. Please come along.” The man led him beside the creek and over the hill to a water hole

among a copse of tall trees and much other growth, light coming down among the elephant-ears, cool, damp. In the hole a buffalo had sunk itself, only its nostrils protruding. Storm and his host watched a couple of small children filling four buckets and shouldering them on yokes. They looked terrified. The man spoke to them and they finished their work before departing.

“Over here.”

Just beyond the copse, overlooking the long view of mountains, the man set his foot on a mound and his hand on a waist-high four-by-fourinch post staked before it.

“Here’s the one-man show.” Storm closed his eyes and felt for the truth. Sensed none. “Never happen.

“It happens here.” “Do you know how many jive-ass graves I’ve seen?” “I couldn’t guess.” “Fuckers have shown me his bones. I’ve tasted his so-called ashes,

man. I’ve cooked his grease in a spoon and run it in my arm. That shit

don’t fly. I’m the tester, man. Every beat of my blood tells me he’s alive.” “I’m told he’s buried in this hole.” “If this is his grave, then he didn’t die back in ‘Nam.” “Right enough. If this is his grave.” “Well —is it? When was he buried? Who buried him? Did you bury

him?” “Not I.” “Who buried him?” “I don’t know. I’m told he died suddenly without explanation. I’m

sorry to say that somebody could have given him poison. That’s one pos

sibility.” A monstrous falsehood. But who were its perpetrators? “I met you once in Saigon. In ‘67 or ‘68.” “Let’s see. In ‘67 or ‘68. It’s entirely possible.” “You’re Pitchfork.” “I go by many names.” “Don’t play like that. I met you in Saigon. You’re the colonel’s old

buddy. You gave him an egg.” “An egg?” “In the prison camp, when he was hungry. You gave him an egg.” “Did I?” “He said you did.” “Well then, I must have done.” “You look the same. Are you always the same? You don’t get any

older? Are you Satan?” “Now you’re the one playing a game.” “Don’t show me graves.” “Then what can I show you?” Only the living colonel would suffice. The colonel smoking Cubans

and up to his old shit. “Here lies the colonel.” “Then what are you doing here?”

Pitchfork said, “I tend the grave.” Whether this served as the colonel’s grave or someone else’s, whether

he lived or rotted, his zone remained. And Storm had walked into it. “I want to see inside that shed.” They turned from the grave and went back up the hill. The sun hit

their faces, but to the east, behind them, clouds formed. Storm said,

“Looks like rain.” “Not this month. Never in the month of April.” “Show me inside that shed.” A board laid across wooden stays held shut the outbuilding’s door.

Pitchfork tossed down the bolt and stepped backward, drawing the door wide. Storm stepped forward. In the banded light something long and substantial lay across the ground. He couldn’t imagine what. He swallowed involuntarily and audibly. A monster without limbs. He watched its face develop like a photograph and run rapidly through the colonel’s innumerable dissemblances.

Pitchfork swung the door wider. “What is it?” “A mahogany log.” “A log?” “A mahogany log. I kept a pile of timber here. That’s the last of it. Till

I get more.” Another fake and phony prophet. Another fucked-up revelator. Storm drew his knife and grabbed the old man in a choke-hold from

behind and put the point to the man’s side, between the ribs, over the

liver. “Where’s the colonel?” “KIA.” “MIA.” “No. Deceased.” He tightened his choke-hold. “Fucker, you will tell me, or I will fuck

you up. Who dug that grave?” “I don’t know.” His voice came out like a frog’s. “Tell me who, or I will pull your tab.” “I don’t know who buried him. And when you pull my tab, as you

say, I still won’t know.” “What are you doing here?”

“I got tired of the world.” “Who are you?” “Anders Pitchfork.” “There was a point a long time ago where none of you fuckers could

lie to me anymore, because I was the one distributing the lies. Half your

shit came out of my ass.” “He’s dead.” “Look,” Storm said, his heart breaking, “I’ve gotta get out of this ma

chine.” Storm released him. Pitchfork sat down heavily in the dirt, clenching

and unclenching his hands and not touching his neck. Storm said, “I suspect you of doing away with him.” “I’d suspect the same if I were in your position.” “And what is my position?” “Unknown.” After a minute he tried to stand and Storm put his knife away and

helped him rise. “Do you have any idea how deep down that person burned us, man?

How very deep down the burn went?” “No.” “As deep as hell is hot and dark, brother.” “Don’t call me brother.” “Don’t deny me, brother.” Pitchfork headed for the house and Storm watched him go. He came

out carrying a rifle with a short magazine and a skeletal metal stock which he unfolded from under the foregrip as he walked. Ten paces away he stopped.

“I think that’s one of those World War Two machines.” “I think an Ml Garand. The paratrooper issue. A lot of people died

by it.” “I heard you jumped out of planes.” “You know? —in the war itself, I only jumped out of one. Captain

Sands was flying the thing. My first and last jump in that war. Although I made a few with the Scouts around here in the fifties.” He raised the rifle and engaged the bolt and sighted carefully at Storm from ten feet away. His finger firm on the trigger. “You’ll be going now.”

Storm turned and marched south toward the trail, back the way he’d come.

He’d thought of continuing into Thailand, but fate had turned him around. Somewhere along the odyssey of years he’d negotiated a crossing without acknowledging its keeper or paying its necessary tribute. You don’t recognize these entities for what they are until after the crossing. Until after the dissemblances dissolve.

What could be left, what left undone?

From the trailhead he surveyed the distances he’d ascended this day and witnessed how far he’d come. As it dipped below the clouds the afternoon sun exploded down the valley.

He felt no fatigue. Only strength and heat. He believed he might make it back down before sunset. He hurried. As quickly as he descended, just as quickly the daylight withdrew up the mountain, and he saw his destiny entangled with the sun’s.

He passed into the shadow. The valley rested in a moment neither light nor dark. With the change the animals hushed. They’d begun again, the first chorus of night insects and sunset birdcalls, by the time he reached level earth. Still he saw no column of smoke, no fires ascending from the Roo.

He reached the spot at the river where the False Guides had sent him over in their happy knowledge he’d missed this most important thing. Without removing his shoes he raised his pack high above his head and divided the waters.

Nothing irrevocable had begun. On the ground in the vicinity of the tall pyre scores of candles flickered in the upturned halves of coconut husks. The villagers wore colorful, clean apparel and seemed busy with nonessential tasks, in and out of the hooches, keeping the moments cool, clapping in a slow rhythm, but only some of them, handing the rhythm from this pair to that pair of hands, no one committed yet, the thing only beginning to build. Maybe they saw him. Maybe they decided they didn’t. The priest stood next to the pyre wearing a headdress, his hair done in coils and feathers, holding a soft-drink bottle in both hands and talking to Mahathir. The boy stood both with them and apart from them.

Mahathir watched Storm come along the river’s edge and raised his hand. The priest seemed unperturbed, but Mahathir didn’t like this. “The ceremony is quite soon,” he said.

Storm said, “I can feel it.” “You did not go to Thailand. Why? Why didn’t you stay with your

friend?” “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.” “But, Jimmy, it’s not a good idea for you. This man has something to

do. I am a scientist, so of course I can observe. But for you it’s not a good idea.” The boy stood rigid, face pulled tight, breathing hard. None of the Roo looked at him.

The females had begun to assemble, younger ones and tiny girls sheathed in sarongs, wearing lipstick and rouge, beads strung in their hair. Small boys stood behind them, feet stuck to their spots but shoulders working, vibrating all over with excitement and childhood. So happy to be alive in their bodies, jumping around in their slave suits. Sodomizers of the True Thing.

“Doesn’t he have a special outfit? Where’s his costume?” “He will have no clothes. He will be naked.” “No, he won’t.” Storm took up the rhythm, first inside himself, and then bringing his

hands together loudly, and louder. They all watched him, neither ap

proving nor disapproving. Mahathir gestured as if to silence him. Storm stepped up beside the boy and raised his challenge. “I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!” The clapping went on, but he had their attention. “I AM THE TRUE COMPENSATOR!” He put his hands to his

sides and bowed his head. The priest spoke with Mahathir. Storm raised his face. “Tell him I’m the one. This kid’s an imposter.” “I will not tell him.” “Tell the kid, then.” “I cannot.” “Man, it’s no good if he’s doing it for money. You’ve gotta do it for the

thing, man, the thing. You need a reason, you need to be sent by the signs and messages.”

The priest spoke urgently to Mahathir, but Mahathir kept silent. “You want to take this man’s place?” “It’s not the kid’s place. It’s mine. I was sent.” He spoke directly to the

priest. “This motherfucker doesn’t know what he’s doing. I know what I’m doing. I know where it fits, I know what’s real.” “I cannot say this to him. I don’t know what will happen. We might

get killed.” “They’re a gentle people, man. Gentle, right?” “Do you understand what you’re doing? No.” “I’m getting this poor kid off the hook.” “No. You don’t understand this.” “I thought you were a Muslim. Do you believe this jive?” “Here in this area, where the trees are so tall, where the vehicles can

not come, where no one comes, this area is quite different. God is deal

ing with them differently in this area.” “Yeah — I get that, man. I just wondered if you did.” The priest spoke most emphatically. Now Mahathir replied at length,

and the priest listened with his head bowed, nodding his head, interrupting at intervals. The priest spoke briefly to the boy, who listened without protest, and Storm understood the sham would be revealed. “Kid, you came into this business without settling certain things in

side yourself.” “He is doing this to save his family.” “He gets the money. Tell him that. He gets the money. Hey, man, the

money’s yours. I’m not trying to step on anybody’s game.”

Mahathir spoke with the boy. The boy stepped backward several paces, turned, and pushed through the circle of females and the circle of young boys and stood beyond.

Mahathir said, “I knew this. I’m not superstitious. But it’s not unusual to see the future. Many people see it. It happens. I saw your future. I tried to tell you.”

The priest stood beside him and cried out in a strangled language and placed his hand on Storm’s head.

The clapping ceased. An old woman moaned. Storm raised his arms high and shouted, “I AM THE COMPENSATOR, MOTHERFUCKERS. I AM THE COMPENSATOR.”

The priest slapped his hands together once. Twice. Again, and he resumed the rhythm. The others took it up.

Men gathered in a third circle around them. The priest beckoned, and the headman came forth into the circle with Storm, the priest, and Mahathir. He carried an axe.

It takes what it takes, Storm promised the Powers.

The priest spoke loudly to the headman.

“He tells him to assemble the gods of the village.”

The headman raised a hand and the circles parted for a quartet of women, each clutching the corner of a blanket. They laid it before the priest—a pile of hacked wooden carvings, most no bigger than a hand, several others up to half the size of any of their Roo worshippers. The four women threw back their heads and bawled like children as the headman attacked the figures with his axe. As he worked at it, getting them all, and as the women knelt to collect the pieces and add them to the pyre, Mahathir said, “They break their household gods and throw them on the fire because the gods haven’t helped them. These gods must die. The world may end with the death of these gods. The sacrifice of the soul of the stranger may prevent the world’s end. Then new gods will rise.

Storm observed the observers. Their faces barely showed in the light of the many candles strewn randomly at their feet. They looked not joyful, not solemn either—mouths hanging open, heads nodding as they clapped, clapped, clapped—looked ready in their souls.

Then the priest stood beside the headman and spoke loudly. “Go there,” Mahathir told Storm. “They will undress you now.” Storm walked to the priest as Mahathir said, “God help you!”

The priest held the shards of the icons. The headman bowed and pointed at Storm’s soggy shoes. Storm kicked them off. The headman bowed lower and touched Storm’s foot and pinched the fabric of his sock. Placing his hand on the headman’s shoulder, Storm peeled off his socks and stood up straight. Two young women came forward and tugged at his buttons and his fly. He thought of making a joke, but he was speechless. They pulled his pack from his back and then his shirt and helped him step out of his shorts and his underpants and then retreated into the circle. The rhythmic clapping continued. Every pair of hands now. Storm stood naked.

Facing Storm, the priest reached into the flap of his G-string for a folded sheet of paper which he straightened and held up close to Storm’s face—Storm saw nothing on it—and spoke loudly to the Roo, and showed the page again to Storm. He spoke to the headman.

The headman called out. A man brought him a spear.

The priest spoke. The headman handed over the spear. The priest skewered the page on its point, marched to the pyre, and, extending the spear as high as he could, rising on tiptoe, he jammed the paper among the logs and scraped it from the spearpoint.

“Wait,” Storm said.

He squatted at his pack and found his notebook in its plastic bag. He tore out the last page and replaced the notebook and stood holding out the page.

“It’s a little poem, man.” The priest came to Storm with spearpoint extended and accepted the offering and took it to the pyre and made it part of the sacred fuel. Storm let it be known: “COMPENSATION, BABY. COMPENSATION TONIGHT.” The priest spoke loudly and threw down his weapon. Storm bowed his head.

The blanket, only rags now, lay almost bare of the remnants of the gods. The priest scooped up the last few scraps in his hands. The headman dragged the blanket a few meters from the pyre, the Roo widening their circles as he did so. He made a careful business of straightening its edges and pausing to look up at the heavens as if navigating by invisible stars.

Against his chest the priest held the shards of the icons. He came to stand facing Storm.

He spoke again, and Storm heard Mahathir’s voice from beyond the rings of the Roo: “Kneel down.” He did so. The priest knelt too and spoke softly, and the headman assisted Storm in lying out flat on his back on the mutilated blanket. Onto Storm’s belly the priest let fall the few shards and made of them a small heap there.

He spoke, and Storm heard Mahathir: “He wants you to know this is only a symbol. It’s a fire on your flesh, but they will not light it. You will not be burned physically.”

Chosen to suffer penance because no one else is left. Traversing inordinate zones, the light beyond brighter or dimmer, never enough light, nothing to tell him, no direction home. One figure yet to be revealed in his truth.

Everyone had unmasked himself, every false face had dissolved, every dissemblance but one, his own.

Storm turned his head to follow as the priest returned to the pyre, where he stooped to pick up his soft-drink bottle and slosh liquid from it around the base. In the air an odor of diesel arose. The headman brought two glowing coconut halves and they each used a candle to set the fire.

The blaze began slowly. As it climbed the pyre, the clapping accelerated in rhythm. Damp wood cracked and shot in the flames. The conflagration devoured the peak. A cry went up. As the fire began to roar, Storm felt a breeze rushing over his bare chest and heard a woman screaming like a cyclone. The priest went back and forth through the intense heat tossing liquid into the orange flames. It hissed and steamed, and he moved from side to side casting a blue shadow on the vapors.

From the trees all around came the waterfall sound of scrabbling claws and the curses of demons driven into the void.

More women screamed. The men howled. The jungle itself screamed like a mosque. Storm lay naked on his back and watched the upward-rushing mist and smoke in the colossal firelight and waited for the clear light, for the peaceful deities, the face of the father-mother, the light from the six worlds, the dawning of hell’s smoky light and the white light of the second god, the hungry ghosts wandering in ravenous desire, the gods of knowledge and the wrathful gods, the judgment of the lord of death before the mirror of karma, the punishments of the demons, and the flight to refuge in the cave of the womb that would bear him back into this world.

His poem whirled upward as an ash. It said:

VIETNAM

I bought a pair of Ray-Bans from the Devil And a lighter said Tu Do Bar 69 Cold Beer Hot Girl Sorry About That Chief Man that Zippo got it all across

Man when Fm in my grave don’t wanna go to Heaven Just wanna lie there looking up at Heaven All I gotta do is see the motherfucker You don’t need to put me in it

Turn the gas on in my cage I drink the poison Send me an assassin I drink the poison Dead demons in my guts I drink the poison

I drink the poison I drink the poison And I’m still laughin

Th e wind was sharp, the afternoon sun quite warm, at least for late April, at least for Minneapolis. On a good dry day she could walk a quarter mile without discomfort, sit and rest for only a minute, and walk just as far before resting again. She left her car in a parking lot and her cane in the car and strolled three blocks to the Mississippi and crossed by the footbridge. Its action as vehicles passed below shuddered along her shins. Both knees hurt. She was walking too fast.

With the Radisson Hotel in sight she stepped into Kellogg Street to cross, and a truck, one of those small rented moving vans, came close to knocking her down, braking hard, failing to stop, whipping around her so closely the red lettering on its side was, for onehalf second, all that existed. She leapt back, the blood sparkled in her veins—nearly dead that time.

She’d dropped her purse in the gutter. Going gently down on one knee in her polyester pantsuit, she suddenly remembered a time when the question of her own survival hadn’t interested her even marginally. That glorious time.

Ginger waited just inside the door of the coffee shop among potted ferns. One of those women everybody calls Mom, though she wasn’t any older than the rest. How long since then? Fifteen years, sixteen. Since Timothy had marched off to the Philippines, and Kathy had followed. Ginger had probably lived around Minneapolis for half a decade—both of them had, but had never made the effort.

“Can I still call you Mom?” “Kathy!” “Fve got to sit down.” “Are you all right?” “A truck almost hit me. I spilled my purse.” “Just now? —But you’re okay.” “Just out of breath.” Ginger looked around, waiting to be told where to sit. She’d gained

thirty pounds. Kathy said, “I’d have recognized you anywhere.” “Oh — ” Ginger said. “But you can’t say the same.” “Well, nobody’s getting any younger. What am I saying! It’s just that

it’s so good to see you, and …” The work of lying twisted her features.

She gave it up. “I’m a little worse for wear.” “It’s not crowded at all. Sunday.” “What about over there?” “By the window! No view, but at least—” “I’ve got about thirty minutes.” “At least there’s light. I mean there’s a view” Ginger said, “but all

we’re seeing is traffic.” “I’m supposed to make a speech.” “A speech? Where?” “Or some remarks. There’s a recital of some kind next door.” “Where next door?” “At the Radisson. In one of the convention rooms.” “A recital. You mean pianos and things?” “I hope they have decaf.” “Everybody’s got decaf now.” They ordered decaf coffee, and Ginger asked for a cinnamon roll and

immediately called the waitress back to cancel it. The waitress drew the

coffee from an urn and brought over two cups. “If you don’t mind very much,” Kathy said, “can I have a little real milk?” “Coming up,” the waitress said, and went away, and they didn’t see

her again. “What kind of recital is it?” “I don’t know. It’s a benefit for MacMillan Houses. For Vietnamese

orphans. So I’m on the chopping block.” “Oh, right. Did you write a speech?” “Not really. I just figured—I mean it’s only a sort of, ‘Thanks for the

money, now give us more.’ ” “The Eternal Speech.” “So I’m sorry we can’t have a proper lunch.” “No problem. I’m seeing a play across the river with John. A musical.

The Sound of Music.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.” “It is, it is.” “I’ve seen the movie.” “But I always thought it was a silly title,” Ginger said. “Because music

is already a sound, isn’t it? They should just call it Music.” “I hadn’t thought of that!” Ginger’s purse, a small one of soft gray leather, rested beside her cof

fee cup on the table. She opened it and handed Kathy the letter. “I’m

very sorry about this, Kathy.” “Well, no. Why? I don’t see why.” “It went to the Ottawa office and sat there a week. Colin Rappaport

found it—” “So you’re still with WCS.” “Still? Forever.” “How’s Colin?” “I guess he’s fine, but we don’t have any contact, not really. He re

membered you’d gone back to Minneapolis, and without calling or anything he just mailed it on to our office. I guess he tried finding your phone number, no luck. Plenty of Kathy Joneses, but he didn’t know your married name. Are you still married?”

“Still married. He’s a physician.” “Private practice?”

“No. The ER at St. Luke’s.” “I guess it beats Canada.” “Why?” “I don’t know. Socialized medicine, I mean, but I don’t know. I don’t

know what I’m talking about! … What’s your name?” “Benvenuto. What about you? Are you still with John?” “Yep. No changing that, I guess.” “It’s terrible! Asking after someone’s husband and saying, ‘Are you

still together.’ ” “Your husband isn’t Seventh-Day.” “Carlos? No. He’s all science.” “Oh, Carlos. Benvenuto.” “He’s Argentinian.” “How does he lean? I mean religiously.” “He’s all science. Not spiritual in any way.” “I’ve never seen in you in church. Where do you go? I mean …” “I don’t go anymore.” Tortured silence. Kathy noticed the large number of paintings on the

walls. Nonrepresentational art. This was an art café. “Have you fallen away?” “I guess I have.” Ginger still had that perpetually arch expression on her face, shaded

by fear—she’d always looked worried and defensive, on the brink of guilty tears, always looked about to confess she hated herself—a false impression, as she’d always been a friend to everyone. “Maybe you haven’t fallen away, Kathy. Maybe not exactly. Our pastor says the healthiest spirit is one who’s been through the dry places. But even in the dry places, the church can help. In the dry places most of all, don’t you think? Why don’t we go next Saturday? Come with me.” She actually had a wonderful face, ascending and plunging, taking you with it.

“It’s been years, Ginger. I just don’t feel the pull.” “Come anyway.” “I think I never felt it. I think I only went for Timothy’s sake.” “Timothy certainly felt it! It glowed right out of him. It engulfed

everyone around him and lifted us right up like a tide.”

“I know,” Kathy said. “Anyway …”

At the next table sat an old woman and another of middle age, mother and daughter, Kathy guessed, the old woman talking in a monotone, the daughter listening in a hate-filled silence. Kathy made out the words “and … but… so …”

“Well,” Ginger said, “anyway” —indicating the letter by Kathy’s plate —”So Colin sent it on to St. Paul. And Fm still in St. Paul.”

“And Fm in Minneapolis.”

“How long have you been teaching at the nursing college?”

“Four, no five … Since 77. Five years last October.”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Who?”

“Benęt?”

“Oh!”

The white envelope, thickly packed with what must be several pages, its right corner covered with stamps in many colors, had come from Wm Benęt, Pudu Prison, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Carefully she opened it. A newspaper clipping: a photo of a man in handcuffs. Wasn’t this the Canadian, William French Benęt, who’d been sentenced recently by the Malaysian courts? Sentenced to be hanged for dealing in firearms? Canada had protested the sentence. Then he’d been hanged. The prisoner had written to her, the man condemned, here was his letter. Prisoners got all kinds of addresses, any kind of charitable organization, any strand for a man going down, but how had he come by the name Kathy Jones? The letter comprised several —many—handwritten notebook pages folded around a four-by-six snapshot: dozens of people and their wild miscellaneous luggage surrounding a Filipino jeepney with one of its rear wheels removed. Every face smiling, every chest expanded with pride, as if they’d brought down the vehicle with spears.

“Once upon a time,” the letter began —

Dear Kathy Jones,

Dear Kathy.

Dearest Kathy,

The blood rushed into her extremities and her face as if she’d plunged them into hot water: the same feeling she’d had twenty minutes ago when the van had nearly mashed her.

Once upon a time there was a war.

She set down the letter. Looked out over the restaurant. “Are you okay?” She picked up the pages and folded them around the snapshot. “Is it something bad?” “Mom.” “Yes.” “Do you remember Timothy?” “What?” “Do you remember Timothy? I mean very well?” “Of course, yes,” Ginger said. “I think about him often. It changed

me that I knew him. He made a difference. That’s what I was saying be

fore. He really made a difference.” “I don’t run into anybody who knew him. Not anymore.” “I wanted to say I’m sorry about Timothy. I wrote you just afterward,

but here we are in person, and—it’s been a while, I know, all these years,

but…” “Thank you.” “He was a remarkable guy.” “I have no memory of him.” “Oh.” “Memories used to come like beestings, ouch, out of nowhere, but

now they don’t come. But sometimes I get such an urgent, this urgent—

feeling.” “I see … Or no, I don’t.” “This fist just grabs me by the heart and yanks at me like a dog telling

me, ‘Come on, come on’—” “Well, I guess that’s, that’s—well —understandable, in a way. And — ” “I don’t know you well enough to talk like this, do I?” “Kathy, no! I mean, yes — ” “Excuse me,” Kathy said. “Sure. Sure. Sure.”

Making her way to the ladies’ room, she set her purse by one of the sinks and splashed water on her face—thanked God she didn’t use makeup. Looked in the mirror. A bit of graffiti on the tiles beside it in Magic Marker:

electric child on bad fun

The bathroom stank. In Vietnam the blood and offal had spilled everywhere, but it had all belonged to God, God’s impersonal filth. Here in the public bathroom she smelled the proceedings from other women, and it was foreign.

She locked herself in a stall and sat with the letter on her lap. To read it was the least she could do. With a sickness in her throat, she unfolded the pages.

April 1, 1983

Dear Kathy Jones,

Dear Kathy.

Dearest Kathy,

Once upon a time there was a war.

There was once a war in Asia that had among its tragedies the fact that it followed World War II, a modern war that had somehow managed to retain or revive some of the glories and romances of earlier wars. This Asian war however failed to give any romances outside of hellish myths.

Among the denizens to be twisted beyond recognition—even, or especially, beyond recognition by themselves, were a young Canadian widow and a young American man who alternately thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American.

That’s me. My name is William Benęt. You knew me as Skip. We last met in Cao Quyen, South Vietnam. I still have the mustache.

After I left Vietnam I quit working for the giant-size criminals I worked for in 11 served when I knew you and started working for the medium size. Lousy hours and no fringe benefits, but the ethics are clearer. And the stakes are plain. You prosper until you’re caught. Then you lose everything.

So, what’s my line? This and that. Smuggling. Running guns and such. Once I stole an entire freighter eftee and sold it in China. A freighter. (Can’t tell you which city I sold it in, because oomobody Our dearly beloved illustrious Warden Shaffee probably reads my mail before it goes out.) Mostly running guns.

That’s what’s got me in the calaboose here in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a capital crime in Malaysia, designated such by the same government that buys arms from America. We’re all the same bunch but, like I say, from my end of the telescope the ethics are clearer. Or as x said to x, I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can’t remember who said it.

To make a long story short, since the days when you knew me as Benęt I’ve lived under a dozen aliases, not one of them government-issued. I’ve led a life of fun and frolic, a real life of adventure, and I never expected it to last very long. When I go, which will be soon, I won’t be sorry, I won’t have regrets. Anyway, as my uncle used to say, an adventure isn’t actually any fun till it’s over. Or was it you who told me that? Anyway, this one’s over. Some of this that I’m saying is a bit of a false front, a bit of bravado, but it’s true for the most part. In fact, if this note ever reaches you, I’m sorry to inform you they’ve already hung hongod hung me—hanged me? Somebody should decide once and for all, was he hung, or was he hanged?

I have a wtfe common-law wife and three kids in Cebu City in the P.I. It’s just something that happened. I think she’d say the same thing. But I think I like the kids. They’re teenagers, sweet kids. Haven’t seen them for a while. Cebu City got a little too hot for me, in the law-enforcement sense of the word, and she wouldn’t move to Manila. Loves her extended family and all that, couldn’t leave them. Her name’s Cora Ng.

If you have any sense, your traveling days are long over, but if you happen to get down that way, stop in at the Ng Fine Store near the docks and ask for Cora and say hi.

The Warden tells me the Canadian Consul’s coming around today and I can pass along any letters for mailing. The Consul and I hate each other and I don’t actually let him visit me, but he has to stop around anyway, especially in “The Last Days” here, just to keep up appearances for the press. So I guess this letter goes out tomorrow, and this is hello and goodbye from (I hope I hope) an old friend.

They’ve had me here since August 12. Today is April 1, April Fool’s Day, an appropriate day to put on end the long fiasco, but I’m scheduled actually for April 6. I waited this long to write so I wouldn’t have a lot of time to sit around wondering if I’d reached you, wondering if you’d answer.

Just had my supper. Now I’ll start a six-day fast and go to the gallows nourished only in my soul. So what was fny the condemned’s last meal? Same as always, rice in some kind of fishy broth, and two bread rolls. Bon appétit!

Kathy, I believe I loved you. It never quite happened with anyone else. I take your memory with me. And I give you my thanks in return.

Love, Skip

April 2 The Warden came by last night to convert me to Jesus and pick up my mail but I didn’t give him this letter. I guess I’ll wait a few days. I guess I hate

— Someone came into the bathroom. She recognized the voice of the

old woman who’d sat at the next table. “Did Eugene say what his son died of?”

“Eugene never had a son.” “Heart attack?” The stall two doors down banged open and closed. Kathy looked at her watch. She was late. She put the pages in her

purse and got up to go out past the old woman, who stood by the mirror

with her head cocked and stared at the floor. She went back and found Ginger and made her apologies and left. She made for the Radisson Riverfront Hotel, the first door around the

corner, and in the lobby looked around for the MacMillan Houses event. She gathered the function involved something for, or about, or by young women, for there were many present in the lobby—very young, twelve, thirteen, all of them pretty girls, explosive and giddy, heavily made-up as if for the stage, their imperfections made brazen by this accentuation of their beauty—knock-knees, low waists, blotchy thighs in short skirts, probably because they felt chilly.

Following the directions of a brass-plated sign by the elevators, she passed through the lobby and down a long hallway at whose ending, at a table, sat a woman with two shoe boxes. From the auditorium’s open double doors came the kindly, amplified drone of someone reading a speech from a page.

“Are you here for the MacMillan fashion show?” “Good. I’m in the right place.” “A to L, or M to Z?” “I think I’m looking for Mrs. Rand. I’m supposed to speak.” “Well —Mrs. Keogh is downstairs.” “I don’t think I know Mrs. Keogh. I think I dealt with Mrs. Rand.” “Mrs. Rand is at the podium.” “Do you suppose I can go in and sit?” The woman said, “Oh.” The idea seemed to strike her at the wrong

angle. “There’ll be an intermission.”

“Or I can catch her at the intermission. I’ll just sit over here.” Except for the woman’s chair and table, the area was bare of furniture. “Or I’ll be in the lobby. I’ll try back in a few minutes.”

“If that’s all right. If you don’t mind. I’m sorry—” “No,” she said, mortified, her face flaming, “I’m late. I’m very sorry.” In the lobby she sat in a chair upholstered with brown leather and

brass rivets and opened her purse.

April 2 The Warden came by last night to convert me to Jesus and pick up my mail, but I didn’t give him this letter. I guess I’ll wait a few days. I guess I hate to say goodbye. I didn’t convert to Jesus, either.

Once I thought I was Judas. But that’s not me at all. I’m the youth at Gethsemane, the one on the night they arrested Jesus, the sleazy guy who slipped out of his garment when the throng had hold of him, and “he fled from them naked.”

I think you’re interested in the concept of Hell. I remember you as something of an expert. Dante’s 9th circle of Hell is reserved for the treacherous—

To kindred

To country and cause

To guests

To lords & benefactors

I betrayed

My kindred out of allegiance to my lords

My lords out of allegiance to my country

My country out of allegiance to kindred

My crime was in thinking about these things. In convincing myself I could arbitrate among my own loyalties. In the end out of shifting allegiances I monogod to I betrayed everything I believed.

I have to restrain myself from writing down every little thing. I feel I could take note of every little thought and describe every molecule of this cell and every moment of my life. And I have plenty of time. I have all day. But a limited amount of popor, and moybo your But only so much paper, and only so much faith in your patience, so I’ll rein in my thoughts.

April 3 This morning they hanged, hung, or in other words strung up a guy, some leader of a Chinese gang. They do it right out in the courtyard here at the prison, Pudu Prison, not for from downtown Kuolo Lumpur, about a hundred yards from where I’m sitting, but I can’t see the rig from this cell. Cells across the gangway get the whole view. But condemned guys, no. They keep us on the other side of the building. If I chin myself l-ea on the bars of my window I can see the roofs of houses across the street. The first time I get a look at the scaffold will be the last time.

There’s some whacking with a cane, that’s the preliminary punishment, but we don’t hear any hollering. Anyway I haven’t. The guy this morning was the fourth to be stretched since I got here last August. I suppose he had it coming, even the caning. These Chinese gangs are nasty, nasty and mean.

Maybe I’m covering up my fear. I don’t mean to sound flip. Or I do mean to, just out of nervousness, but I don’t want you to think I’m going to the noose with a flippant attitude. Three days from today, that’s it. I die. With an empty stomach. No last meal but an unbeliever’s prayer. If you still believe, Kathy, pray for me. Pray for me if you still believe.

April 4 In South Vietnam I thought I’d been sidelined. Removed to a place where I could think about the war. But you can’t be sidelined in a war, and in a war you mustn’t think, you musn’t ever think. War is action or death. War is action or cowardice. War is action or treachery. War is action or desertion. Do you get the idea here? War is action. Thought leads to treason.

My uncle told me once of seeing a soldier throw himself on a hand-grenade. Do you think that guy thought about it first? No. Courage is action. Thought is cowardice.

The soldier lived. The tfw*g grenade was a dud. I bet he thought about it afterward, though, and plenty. Among the people he meant to save, would have saved if the grenade had blown him up, was my uncle. Uncle Francis survived that night, but the war took him eventually. Through the years I’ve heard rumors to the contrary, but he was the kind of guy to generate rumors, old Uncle Francis. A guy with at least three graves that I’ve heard about, and probably more, if I’d bothered to ask around. But I know he’s dead and buried in Massachusetts.

I am my uncle’s legacy. After he died, his spirit entered me. He died not long after I last saw you, Kathy. Just a few months after, I think.

I think you met him once. You called him a rogue. He was one of these guys who look like they’re put together out of small boulders, with the biggest one in the middle. He had a gray flattop haircut. Do you remember flattops? Do you remember my uncle? He was kind of unforgettable. He used to say, It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, Don’t interrogate your opportunities, It’s not what you do that you regret, its what you don’t do, things like that. He died, and his spirit entered me. There was some question about whether he actually died, but not on my part. If by any chance he was alive, his spirit couldn’t have entered me.

Please don’t think I’m getting mystical here. When somebody close to you dies I think it’s a pretty general experience, pretty runof-the-mill, to start noticing how they’ve influenced you and maybe to start cultivating thooo encouraging those influences to flourish. So thoy livo on our mentors live on inside us. That’s all I’m talking about. Not possession by ancestral spirits or anything.

April 5 That leaves God.

I’m dangerously close to refusing forgiveness. Dying impenitent, because of anger at myself. Dying without a prayer. I’ve lived for fourteen years without a prayer. Fourteen years heading for the other side of the street whenever I thought my shadow was in danger of falling on a church’s wall.

I know if you pray for me Your prayers will touch God And God will touch my heart And I will repent

I think I was drawn to you because you were a widow, like my mom. Child of one widow, lover to another. You scared me. Your passion and your belief. Your grief and tragedy. My mom had that too, but veiled and polite. So I ran away from both you gals. And then I didn’t answer your letters. And here you go, one from me you’ll never be able to answer.

OK…

OK, Kathy Jones. Our funny little warden’s standing here waiting for this letter. Last chance for the mail train. Tomorrow morning I’m off.

Warden, if you’re reading this, au revoir.

You too. Au revoir, Kathy Jones.

If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t run. Much love Skip

Yes, she remembered the uncle. He was impressive at a glance. Prowess, a word she’d never used, came immediately to mind. Dangerous, but not to women and children. That type.

Skip she didn’t remember nearly as well. More boy than man. He joked, he evaded, he dissembled, he lied, he gave you nothing to remember. This current representation of himself—even as it tore at her, she wasn’t sure she believed it.

She looked again at the photograph, dozens of Filipinos surrounding a stalled jeepney, and felt very moved—more so than by the news photo of Skip, the smeary fading face and its crippled arrogance and self-pity, more so than if he’d sent from that Damulog era a photo of himself, or of her, or of both of them together.

She put it all back in her purse and sat with her eyes closed. She

hardly remembered saying goodbye to Ginger. Had she been unkind? “Are you Mrs. Benvenuto?” It was the woman handling the tickets, no taller standing up than

she’d been sitting down. “Yes.” “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize.” “That’s all right.”

“It’s intermission now. Mrs. Rand’s probably in the basement. The dressing rooms.”

“I’ll be right along.”

Kathy followed down the slate-tiled, echoing hallway, thinking of gangster films and the Last Mile, and the woman led her to a door not far from the big ones to the auditorium and down a flight of steps. The walls twittered, and young models raced everywhere in their glad bodies, deaf to their matron, who stalked them calling, “Girls?—Girls?— Girls?—Girls?” as Kathy entered a large, low-ceilinged chamber. Lovely models posed. Flashbulbs popped. The girls themselves popped in and out of cubicles made of dividers on casters.

“Mrs. Keogh,” her escort called, and the girls’ matron waved and came over. “This is Mrs. Benvenuto.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“We’re all late! I’m just glad you made it. I’ll tell Mrs. Rand. If you want to sit in the audience—is that all right?—if you just wait in a seat, she’ll call you up and introduce you after she talks about the Orphan Flight. We’ve got a couple of girls here from the same flight—from the same—your flight. Three girls.”

She referred to the evacuation flight out of Saigon, the plane crash that had broken Kathy’s legs. Forty of the survivors had gone out on a later flight. Only a few had been adopted in the U.S. and a couple, apparently, here in Minneapolis.

“Three of the orphans?” “Yes! A kind of reunion. Li—where’s Li? She’s not dressed! Girls!” cried Mrs. Keogh.

Kathy left her without saying goodbye, because a young Eurasian girl had just passed them to go out the “Exit” door across the large chamber, and Kathy felt compelled to get a look at her. She followed the girl out and up the concrete steps, at the top of which the girl leaned against the wall in an alley, alone. She moved aside slightly to let Kathy pass. Kathy went two steps beyond her, bringing into view the river at the alley’s one end, the street at the other. Kathy thought she recognized this Eurasion child, or Amerasian, who would have been four or five years old the morning of the crash, thought she recalled her standing up on her seat on the plane, remembered her uncharacteristically long legs and round eyes and the brown tint to her hair. Kathy had seated one of her own exactly next to her in the plane’s upper compartment, the lucky compartment. Many of her own had been in the upper deck and had survived. She’d put her children aboard, helped with the loading of others, had left the plane to head back to Saigon and at the last minute was offered a seat by an acquaintance from the embassy who’d decided not to go, not just yet—she couldn’t remember his name, they’d never met again—to this day, he probably thought her dead in his place—and she’d leapt at the chance, not to escape the downfall, but to help, to be of use, to ease the terrors of tiny pilgrims. She hadn’t even known the destination. Australia, probably. They hadn’t made it. And eventually this child’s journey had ended in St. Paul. In two-inch heels and a blue skirt and yellow T-shirt tight across her training bra, with lipstick and mascara, she looked like a little whore, arrogant and sullen, her auburn hair twisting in a wind that blew from the street through the alley and down the Mississippi. She opened her purse and found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Her cheeks pouched as she shielded the flame with her hand and lit a filter-tip cigarette. She exhaled and the breeze snatched the cloud from her mouth.

Kathy again slipped past the girl, down the stairs. She negotiated the basement’s bedlam and went to the auditorium above, a decent space for public events, with firm, cushioned seats and a steep rise, though the walls gave back the PA in a slight echo, and the mike made piercing sibilants and popping p’s. The event’s second half had begun. The house had been darkened, but lights brightened the stage, and she saw her way. Many seats remained empty. So as not to make a disturbance she took the first vacant place on the aisle. At the podium a large-jawed, stately woman with a tight gray hairdo, presumably Mrs. Rand, in a pink ensemble, spoke of orphans. Apparently Mrs. Rand dealt with a small delay, going past her text, extemporizing valiantly. She talked about the “orphan runs” that had flown so many children to new lives in the very last hours of the terrible, terrible war, of Flight 75, which Kathy had ridden and which fate had brought down like a dragon; and Kathy reflected, certainly not for the first time, that the war hadn’t been only and exclusively terrible. It had delivered a sense, at first dreadful, eventually intoxicating, that something wild, magical, stunning might come from the next moment, death itself might erupt from the fabric of this very breath, unmasked as a friend; and she mourned the passing of a time when, sitting

in a C -5A Galaxy airplane as it bounced into paddies suddenly as solid as rock, hearing the aluminum fuselage tear itself into jags and swords, she’d pitied only the children around her and regretted only the failure to get them out of the war, when the breaking of her own legs had meant not shock or pain, but only bitterness that she couldn’t help the others. Mrs. Rand now introduced the three girls from Flight 75, including Li, the Amerasian, all wearing the ao dai, the flared shift over satin trousers, pacing one by one to stage left and again to stage right, compellingly selfconscious and poised, spirits quivering in flesh, and seating themselves on folding chairs so that their shoes were visible, black pumps with two-inch stiletto heels. Mrs. Rand described the crash, eight years ago almost to the day, she said—although she was off by a month—one of the worst aircraft disasters in history, she was sad to say, with more than half of the three hundred children and adults aboard, almost everyone in the bottom cargo compartment, the majority of them children under two years of age, taken away to Heaven. A mechanical failure. For some years afterward Kathy believed a missile had shot them down. Mrs. Rand knew more about the mishap than Kathy herself and described the final few seconds, the plane breaking into burning parts that boiled in the wet paddies, the clouds from ignited oil. On impact Kathy must have shut her eyes. She remembered only sounds, predominantly rending metal — a very vocal idiom of many vowels and grinding consonants, ragged gutturals, magnificent vowels, all the vowels, A, E, I, O, U, urgent, bewildered, gigantic. Then a general black silence lacerated by pleas and outcries and weeping, including her own. And one or two children laughing.

The girls left the stage to small applause. Mrs. Rand spoke of MacMillan Houses and its good, good work, its excellent relationship with the government of Vietnam. Rather than listening, Kathy prepared her own remarks, it’s wonderful to see so many, this kind of effort requires more than private donors alone, therefore government grants and legislation, therefore your congressmen, your senators, above all your hearts, new lives given hope, tremendous gratitude, no, stress private donors, the annual expense for postage for just one office can amount to, food for a single mouth for a year can exceed, no, not a mouth, a single child, good food for a single one of these wonderful children can cost about, the buildings and facilities, education, your generosity, or rather education out of poverty, your heartfelt generosity, or rather shelter, food, and warmth for young bodies, education out of poverty, true hope for lives just beginning, all depend on your unflinching, heartfelt generosity, or just unflinching. Or just heartfelt. And, no, sacrifice. Dig at them. On more than just the kind generosity of people like you and me, ladies and gentlemen, but on, yes, our unflinching sacrifice. Dig away. To her right in the dimness the ring glinted on the finger of a gentleman propping his cheek on his hand. He’d shut his eyes. Some of the men, in order to endure this, may have given up the season’s first afternoon of golf. On the women near her she saw the bright, interested faces of people trying to stay awake. A little lad with his finger firmly in a nostril, doing nothing with it, just parking it there. The scene before her flattened, lost one of its dimensions, and the noise dribbled irrelevantly down its face. Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking—someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone’s soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can’t remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who’ve ruined their health, worshipped their own lies, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.