Strays

by C. Alexander London

  Ajax groaned, but he settled down into the mud, fighting all his instincts to hop up and bark and snarl.

  “Good boy,” Chuck said.

  “I changed my mind,” said Billy. “This is crazy. This could be a VC village. Communist sympathizers. Heck, we don’t even know where we are. This could be North Vietnam. Enemy territory. I’m not dropping my gun.”

  “Have some faith, Billy,” said Double O, although the waver in his voice sounded like he was trying to give himself the same advice. “We’re being quixotic.”

  “Quixotic. Right,” said Billy. “If you’re wrong about this, I’m never trusting a novel ever again.” He put his rifle on the ground and raised his hands high. “I hope they don’t think we’re surrendering to them.”

  “Now why would they think that?” said Doc, holding his hands higher over his head. Billy couldn’t believe Doc was being sarcastic at a time like this, but he appreciated the humor.

  In a flash, Ajax sprang to his feet and started barking. Chuck grabbed him and held him back, but looked up to see what had set him off.

  A boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, peeked out from behind one of the columns in front of the long, low building. He had pressed himself behind it when Ajax barked, but they could still see his arm and the edge of his red T-shirt.

  “That’s the kid from before, with the bike,” said Double O.

  “How do you know?” asked Billy.

  “I’m Double O, man,” said Double O. “Superspy.”

  “And his bike is leaning against the other column,” said Doc, gesturing with his chin but keeping his hands high.

  “It’s okay,” Chuck called out to the boy, taking slow steps toward the column and keeping Ajax, growling lowly, tight at his side. “He won’t hurt you.”

  “Kid doesn’t understand you,” said Double O. “But Ajax is speaking the universal language.”

  “It’s okay,” Chuck said again, raising his voice to higher pitch, speaking as gently as he could. “Can you help us? Help?”

  Chuck squatted down so that the boy was above him on the small porch. He petted Ajax to calm him. “It’s okay,” Chuck repeated, over and over, like a prayer. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” He didn’t really know what else to say.

  The boy peered around the column, his eyes dark and wide. Fear and curiosity wrestled across his face, but curiosity won, and he stepped toward Chuck. Ajax grumbled, but Chuck shushed him. He mimed holding his hand out, hoping the boy would understand. He did.

  The boy put his hand out and Chuck let Ajax sniff it, still holding the dog tight, just in case. Ajax, smelling no threat, seemed to relax as his nose worked over the boy’s hand. His tail started to wag, splattering mud into the air behind him.

  “Ajax,” Chuck whispered. “Kiss.”

  Ajax stood and immediately doused the boy’s face with his tongue. The boy cringed at first, stepping backward, but the tongue tickled his face and he laughed. He let Ajax keep licking him, and though he wrinkled his nose at the dog’s breath, he laughed hysterically now. Ajax snuffled at the boy’s shirt and poked him with his snout, eager to play.

  Chuck smiled. The boy smiled back.

  “I knew kiss would come in handy,” Chuck told the guys.

  The boy started petting Ajax, running his hand over the dog’s head, smoothing his ears back and letting them pop up again as he ran his tiny palm down the dog’s broad brown-and-black back. Ajax was loving it. He flopped down into the mud freely and rolled over, showing his belly, demanding belly rubs.

  “He likes you,” Chuck told the boy. The boy smiled and imitated Chuck, rubbing Ajax’s belly, even though he surely couldn’t understand a word the big American soldier was saying. Unlike humans, dogs knew how to make themselves understood without words. Ajax was teaching them both how to talk to each other.

  Chuck started to feel hopeful. He rummaged in his pack and pulled out Ajax’s favorite toy, the old rope with the can. He raised his arm to toss it.

  “No!” shouted a woman in a black shirt, rushing from inside the largest building, her sandals slapping at the mud as she ran. “No VC here!” she yelled. “You go! You go! No VC!”

  Ajax barked as the woman ran forward and the boy yelped, leaping away, his joy turning instantly to terror. Chuck grabbed Ajax and pulled him back as the woman reached the boy and grabbed him by the shirt collar in the same way, yanking him to her side and stepping in front of him, placing her body between the boy and the dog.

  “You go,” she said. “You no stay here.”

  “It’s okay.” Chuck stood and held his palm up, his other hand keeping Ajax back. The dog was still barking and snarling at the woman, his fangs bared and his eyes flashing fury. Behind Chuck, Billy and Double O took tiny steps back, moving toward their guns on the ground, just in case. The Vietcong had many female soldiers and spies, and you could never tell if one of them was disguised as a civilian.

  “I’d feel a whole lot better with my gun,” whispered Billy.

  “For once, we agree,” Double O whispered back.

  “We mean no harm,” said Chuck. “Quiet, Ajax!”

  Ajax quieted. Chuck ordered him to sit, and Ajax obeyed, but his eyes stayed fixed on the angry woman.

  “Peace,” said Chuck. He raised two fingers, flashing her the peace sign. “We come in peace, understand?”

  “I speak English,” the woman said. Her accent was thick, but her words were clear. “I am the teacher here. You must go. Go now. Leave here.”

  The woman was afraid. Chuck wondered of what. Was she afraid the Americans were going to start shooting up the village, or was she afraid the Vietcong would attack if they knew Americans were in the village? Did she not like dogs or did she not like soldiers? If Chuck were in her position, wouldn’t he be afraid too?

  “We will leave,” said Chuck. “But first, we need help.”

  As she looked Chuck up and down, the boy peeked out from behind the woman’s legs. He whispered something to her, and she shushed him in a way that Chuck recognized from his own school days. It hadn’t been that long since he was a schoolboy himself, really, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Please help us, mama-san,” he said. Her brow furrowed, and he worried that he’d offended her. “I mean, uh, ma’am,” he said. “Please.”

  The woman pressed her hands together as she thought. The boy clung to her leg. Her eyes flickered back to the other three soldiers.

  “We have a medic with us.” Chuck pointed to Doc. “If you have any injured or sick in your village, perhaps he can help?”

  “Medic?” she said. “Like a doctor?”

  “Yes,” said Chuck. “Like a doctor.”

  The woman’s expression softened. She nodded. “Come inside here,” she said. “Quick, quick.” She looked around at the other buildings and sighed. “Leave your weapons.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Chuck, and he signaled for the guys to follow.

  As they stepped to the dark opening of the doorway, the woman stopped and turned to Chuck. “No dog,” she said. “He stay outside.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Chuck answered. “Ajax has to come with me.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “No dog inside. Never.” She looked Chuck square in the eye. Her small body seemed to fill the whole doorway, unmoving.

  Chuck blew out through his cheeks and nodded. He tied Ajax up to the column in front of the door. “You stay here, pal,” he whispered to his dog. “We’ll be right inside, okay? You be a good boy.” He rubbed the dog’s head and went inside. Ajax whimpered as Chuck left, but the boy rushed from the woman’s side and ran to Ajax again.

  “Keess!” the boy shouted. “Keess! Keess!”

  Ajax cocked his head at the boy. The woman looked back with alarm, but Chuck saw Ajax’s tail wagging and he smiled.

  “Smart kid,” he said, and whistled from the doorway.

  Ajax looked at him.

  “Kiss!” Chuck called and Ajax obeyed, stretching to the end
of the leash and slobbering all over the boy again. The kid squealed with delight and grabbed the dog’s toy, setting off a tugging match that he was sure to lose. The boy and the dog grunted and rolled in the mud as they played. It was unclear who was enjoying it more — or who was getting dirtier in the process.

  Once she saw that the boy would be okay, the woman led Chuck through the doorway, followed by Billy, Double O, and Doc.

  “We have many sick people,” said the woman. “You will help?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Doc.

  Chuck looked around the dim space. It was filled with frightened faces, young and old, men and women, watching the soldiers’ every move. Benches had been pushed around the room to act as beds. Along the far wall was a cracked blackboard with chalky ghosts smudged across it.

  “A schoolhouse,” he said.

  “It was,” the woman answered.

  Chuck wondered if there were people gathered like this in all the buildings, hiding and watching, waiting for the Americans to leave their village. Waiting for the war to end. Chuck wondered where all the other schoolchildren were.

  The woman spoke to the room in Vietnamese, giving some sort of speech. As she talked, she pointed at the American soldiers. Some people nodded, others coughed. A few clicked their tongues against their teeth or asked questions.

  When the woman was done, the crowd parted in the middle, and she gestured for Doc to go to a young man lying on a bench along the back wall. Even in the dim light, it was obvious that he was not well.

  His arm hung limp off to the side, almost touching the floor. His skin had almost no color, and his eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. The only true sign of life in him was the sound of a low whistle as he struggled to breathe. The man sitting next to him held a damp cloth pressed to the young man’s forehead.

  As Doc approached, the other man lifted the sick man’s shirt and Doc stopped. He stared at the wound and then looked up at the crowd in the room. His heartbeat quickened.

  The young man wasn’t simply sick. He had a wound in his stomach, and it was swollen and oozing with infection.

  “An accident,” explained the woman, but Doc looked back at Chuck with eyebrows raised, trying to signal something else. He rolled his eyes around at the crowd, trying to tell Chuck to look closely at the people in the room, at the large number of young men watching them closely, watching them nervously, but Chuck couldn’t read Doc’s expressions the way he could read Ajax’s, so he just nodded encouragement for Doc to tend to the young man’s wound.

  Only Doc knew the wound was no accident. He had seen too many wounds just like it on other young men.

  It was a gunshot wound.

  The way Doc figured it, at least half the people in the schoolhouse with them were enemy soldiers, pretending to be civilians. It was the only explanation for why there would be so many young men when they had never seen any in a village before. And it would explain the gunshot wound and why the woman was lying about it.

  Doc wished they hadn’t left all their weapons lying in the dirt. He wished Ajax were inside with Chuck instead of tied up outside playing with a kid. He felt helpless, but until he could warn the others, he had to do whatever he could for the wounded man in front of him.

  He knelt down and felt the man’s fever with the back of his hand and started rummaging in his pack to find something to ease the man’s pain. There wasn’t much else he could do to help the guy, but it would at least make him look busy, and buy them some time. He started to wonder if American soldiers had shot this man, maybe even if his own unit had shot him in their firefight last week.

  While Doc worked, Chuck turned to the woman. “Can you help us as well?” he asked.

  The woman nodded.

  “We’re looking for a Frenchman,” he said. Billy brought over the letter from his cousin that described the Frenchman’s mansion with its chandelier and its fine china plates and marble floors. And its dogs. The woman read the letter carefully.

  “There are many words here I do not know,” she said. She pointed at a few. Chuck looked at Billy and shook his head. They were all curse words and a few dirty words about a certain famous actress.

  “What?” said Billy. “My cousin’s a marine, not a member of the good manners club.”

  “They got a club for that?” Double O joked.

  “Don’t worry about those words,” Chuck explained. “What about the place? Do you know a place like he describes?”

  The woman thought. She called out some questions in Vietnamese and some of the men in the room answered. One of them laughed. The woman snapped at him and a brief argument started among the men, but she ended it simply by raising her hand in the air.

  “I guess teachers have a lot more power here than they do back home,” said Billy.

  “Nah,” said Double O. “My mom can do that too. Teachers gotta have attitude. It’s true all over the world. No such thing as a weak teacher, least not for long.”

  The woman smiled politely and then spoke to Chuck. “Why do you want to find this place? Is this your mission?”

  Chuck looked at the others. He could lie and say yes, and make this woman think the full force of the United States Army demanded her cooperation, or he could be honest and tell her the truth, that they were on their own, fleeing their own countrymen just to save a good dog’s life.

  Outside, he heard Ajax barking playfully and the boy laughing. He turned back to the woman.

  “It’s my dog, ma’am,” he said, and then he told her the story. She listened carefully, but her expression showed no change as he told her about Ajax’s bravery and skill and how the army planned to put him down, and about how they’d abandoned their duty as soldiers to save him.

  When he was done, she turned to the room and started repeating the story to them in their language. He couldn’t tell if she was arguing for or against helping him. The men had a lot of opinions, which they expressed loudly.

  “There may be such a place,” the woman told Chuck.

  Relief washed over him. He pulled out his map and handed it to her. “Can you show me?”

  The woman carried it to a group of young men, who immediately began pointing at it and arguing, jabbing their fingers at different places and waving their fingers in each other’s faces.

  “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?” Double O asked no one in particular.

  Doc left the injured man’s side and stepped over to Chuck and the others.

  “Guys,” he whispered. “We have to get out of here.”

  “What? Why?” said Billy.

  “You notice anything strange about this place?”

  “The whole country’s strange to me,” said Billy.

  “The men,” whispered Doc. “Look at the men.”

  Double O glanced around. He was the first to get what Doc was saying. Most of the women were holding their children close and trying not to look at the Americans. They were afraid. But the men — the men were not afraid. They had a look Double O knew well, a look he’d seen all his life, from guards in department stores and doormen at fancy apartment buildings and from cops. It was a look that said loud and clear, “You’re not welcome here.”

  “He’s right,” said Double O. “We should get out of here.”

  “They’re helping us,” Chuck said.

  “Or they’re just waiting to take us prisoner,” said Double O.

  “This is a VC village. I’m sure of it,” said Doc.

  Double O agreed. “Wish I’d seen it sooner. Never should have come here. Never should have put our guns down.”

  “It was your idea to put the guns down!” hissed Billy.

  “Just ’cause it was my idea doesn’t make it a good one,” Double O snapped back at him.

  “I think it may have been unwise to tell them the truth,” said Doc. “Did you know there’s a cash reward for anyone who brings the Vietcong commandos the tattooed ear of a United States Military scout dog?”

  “Yeah,” sighed Chu
ck. “I know.”

  “So even if these people are not VC, they are now in a position to earn money by helping the VC and hurting us. And this village looks like it could use some money.”

  From the bench, the wounded man groaned. The woman left the men with the map and came over to Doc Malloy.

  “Can you help him?” she asked. The men looked up from the map and watched him closely.

  “I gave him some medicine for the pain,” said Doc. “But the wound is bad. If he can’t get to a real hospital, he will die. There is nothing I can do here to treat an infected gunshot wound.”

  The woman nodded, understanding.

  “He is not a bad man,” she said. “My cousin.”

  Doc didn’t say anything. Sometimes, silence was the only appropriate answer. Outside, the boy laughed with Ajax.

  “I think we should leave your village before dark,” Chuck said.

  “He is like you,” the woman said. She looked at him. “He left his army. All these men.” She gestured to the men with the map, about a dozen of them. “They were with the Vietcong, yes. I know you know this.”

  Chuck heard Double O clear his throat but he kept eye contact with the woman, letting her tell her story, as she had let him tell his.

  “They fought to protect their homes from invaders — first the French, then the Americans,” she said. “I do not apologize for this. In war, no side is all right or all wrong. We want freedom and we want peace. My cousin is young and he believed these things could be gained with guns. So he fought, all these men fought. Last week, they captured a unit of soldiers from the ARVN, our own people, fighting with the Americans. Their officer ordered them to shoot the prisoners. All of them.”

  She shook her head, sadly. “In war there is death, yes. But this, to kill prisoners. It was murder. My cousin refused. He wanted to fight for his country, not murder his countrymen. The officer was angry. The officer yelled. The officer threatened him if he did not shoot the prisoners. Still, he refused.”

  Chuck could picture it: the frightened prisoner, the frightened soldiers holding him prisoner, the impossible choice. What a monstrous thing war was, he thought. The choices they all had to make: loyalty to their side or doing the right thing. Most of the time, it was hard to know what the right thing was.