“Babysan, you tell these people that if they want these hurt ones to get well, they had better come and help me. I cannot do this alone, and you and Truong and Hue can’t be my only help. Everyone must help.”
He nodded wearily and stumbled out the doorway.
Hue helped me with the man with the shrapnel wounds, who wasn’t as bad as the others and under normal triage conditions would have been the first treated. By the time he was mending, no one had arrived even to watch, and I could still hear Ahn jabbering away to his countrymen to help.
Truong looked back in cautiously, and hissed again, but touched the amulet with a fleeting, reverent poke as if she was afraid its power would electrocute her. For a second I felt a flash of terror, followed by acceptance of the terror, resignation to it, feelings that I knew from her face belonged to Truong, not me. When her hand dropped, she gave me a hard, quizzical look as if she couldn’t quite believe something she’d just been told, then drew close and took my hand.
We knelt in the mud beside the first patient, a deep scalp wound and left-sided enucleation (the eye had been poked out). Hue, Truong, and I made very slow progress alone, and no one stepped forward to help us until a couple of the children leaned forward and began to play with the amulet dangling from my neck as I bent over the patient, clasping hands in a ring-around-the-rosy with Hue and Truong. I felt a blast of the children’s curiosity and energy, and the circle enclosed by our hands filled with rosy light. The eyeball could not be replaced, of course, but the bleeding stopped.
With the closing of the scalp wound, the rose light drained to a dirty pale pink. There were still four more patients to be treated.
I was aware of people standing around and watching, of Ahn doing his carnival-barker best to get help for me, but everyone else seemed afraid. The next patient had so many wounds it was a wonder she had any life left in her. I crawled through the mud to reach her. A girl of about fourteen, she was so covered with mud and blood that it was impossible to tell what she might have looked like if half her face hadn’t been missing. I tried. Hue, Truong, and Ahn tried to help me. But we were all so drained. The girl’s ragged breathing stopped. Maybe we managed to ease her pain a little before she died; I don’t know. I had told Ahn that what we had to do when trying to heal these people was think about them as they might have been when well and wish hard that they be that way. The other two women, to whom he had passed on these instructions, stared at the girl in the mud. Hue’s aura waned for a moment until it looked as if she was coated all over with two inches of mud that flowed out of her skin. Truong’s flared, and she took the girl in her arms and began to rock her. I crawled to the next patient, looked into the face of an eight-year-old and the devastation of another gut wound, and turned away again. Ahn scooted on his butt to my side and patted me on the shoulder, but his hand didn’t have much force behind it. He looked as if he was about to cry too. He kept patting me and I kept bawling. Truong was still silently rocking the dead girl, but Hue crawled over beside us. Her face was stricken, stunned with pain, but she plastered her tough look over it and started to harangue me in a slow, angry voice, trying to snap me out of it, I suppose.
“Babysan, tell her I’m sorry, but it’s no good. We need more help. There’s not enough magic in me to do it alone, not enough magic in all four of us.”
Hue leaned over and touched the amulet as I said this and her tough face dissolved into remorse and more confusion that pierced me during the contact, so that I could hear her asking herself a jumble of angry, bewildered questions.
She raised her muddy hand to my cheek and touched it, then turned to her fellow villagers and spoke to them beseechingly, almost begging, but with an underlying steeliness that insisted on respect, insisted on attention, even while she was apparently imploring the compassion of the village.
Although I was far too wasted to consciously translate facial expression, tone, and aura in combination, something began clicking, and I became aware of what she was saying to the others. She told them that they were being shamed, that they were handing over the lives of their loved ones to a foreigner and then refusing to help her save them. The rain washed clear streaks in the mud on her face, and her plastered hair made her look as if she had drowned and returned as a banshee to haunt them.
Huang, who had been hauling bodies, was the first to react. He quieted her, patting her hand, but she placed the hand on my shoulder. Behind him came Hoa’s mother, and the little girl who had carried her sister on her hip, and her brother. Ahn took Hoa’s hand and put it on my shoulder. She pulled away from him for just a moment, but as the others crowded around her, her face took on a rapt look. The power flowed, flooding from the people all around me, touching me, Hoa, the patients, and one another. Then Hue spoke again and I knew without needing to know Vietnamese that she was telling them, “These are not bodies. These are not corpses. These are not merely wounds. These are your daughters, sons, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends. Remember them working in the fields beside you, helping you build your home, doing business with you in the market, celebrating holidays with you. This child has played with your children. This child could be your child. Comfort her.”
The people stood around me, or sat on their heels beside me, their hands on my shirt, my bare arms, fingers in my hair and touching my knees, my back and waist, one or two pressing too hard, most of the contact more tentative. Two of them, men I didn’t recognize, touched the amulet, and from them I received an initial stab of suspicion and anger, rapidly followed by a rush of excited, strengthening energy, indecipherable amid the rest of it. I wedged my fingers between theirs and the amulet and their fingers closed over mine.
And then I remember the little girl I was touching, her gut wound healing, the skin coming together smooth and even clean, and her breathing slowing, the look of pain fading to one of fear and childish anger at being abandoned. When she started demanding her mother, I noticed the next patient. There wasn’t enough room for all of the villagers to touch the girl or me, so some of them were jammed up against their neighbors but touching the other patients. All but the girl who died were already healing.
I wanted to go back to sleep, right there in the mud. But two young men helped me inside another hut. Just before I fell asleep I thought: These young men must have come from the other village, with the patients. There were no young men in this village yesterday.
Nothing should have been able to wake me, but the voices did. For one thing, they weren’t the voices I’d become familiar with in the last twenty-four hours. For another thing, as tired as I was, my nerves were taut and I had a series of half-waking nightmares. A Russian in a tall fur hat was bending over my mom. I knew it was my mom, even though she didn’t have a head. It was under her arm and she kept saying, “I hate to put you to all this trouble, sir. Really, my daughter can take me to the doctor in the morning.” But the Russian had a secret invention, and I understood it had something to do with what Sputnik had found in space, and he was going to use this to put Mama’s head back on except he didn’t know which way around it was supposed to go.
Our neighborhood was up in flames and the Vietcong were marching into Bethel and pretty soon they’d cross the bridge over the gully down by Foster’s house, but I knew they didn’t know the land as well as I did, see. I seemed to be at home alone in our house. The family had gone someplace, or maybe had already been killed. I slunk through the backyard, past the crab apple tree, down the broken cement sidewalk, through the garden, and into the gully. I could hide in the gully and the Vietcong would never find me because they hadn’t grown up on our street and only kids who had knew about the gully. Later, I snuck down to Foster’s house in time to see them march across the bridge, and I crossed under it and ran way down the gully behind Foster’s house. They’d never think to look for me there.
But then, even though Foster’s house was two blocks away from ours, when the Vietcong got mad and set fire to our ho
use because nobody was home, I could see everything clearly. The house went up like matchsticks and I thought: No, wait, let me get the quilt Grandma made, and the elephants Mama had been collecting, and my scrapbook of the Kingston Trio. And my kitty, Blackie, where was Blackie? And then I saw that Blackie was dead and knew they’d shot him for fun. They were burning the crab apple tree and our garden and had started on Sortors’ garden when I remembered that Blackie had died when I was ten, so this had to be a dream.
I thought: But I’m good. I haven’t done anything to anyone. I try to help the others, I translate, I am friendly and helpful, I assist those less fortunate. And I saw that I was pounding on a door shouting that I wanted to return to a safe place, while all around me people like zombies or lepers clawed at my clothes and tried to infect me. I was in hell, but that couldn’t be right, because I had been good and done as I was supposed to.
I tried to wake myself up, but I was lying on the ground and something was wrong with my belly and I saw my intestines and knew there was a lot of blood, and I wondered why it didn’t hurt. Patients always cried when they got their intestines torn out. And I said, “Hey, somebody help me stuff these things back in and sew myself up,” and when I looked down again I looked like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. And all the neighbors were standing around, not looking like factory workers and secretaries, but like farmers, wearing overalls and housedresses and carrying pitchforks. They all had that closed-off “I refuse to discuss it with you” look that Mom and Dad get sometimes—the one they get when I think they’re mad at me but later I find out they’re scared to death and don’t want to think about it because it will scare them worse. And nobody would help me, until the guy who was guarding the POW on Carole’s ward at the 83rd stepped out of the crowd, still wearing his uniform but carrying a pitchfork and wearing a nasty grin as he aimed his pitchfork at my guts.
This time I woke up. Ahn’s cane tapped me on the side. “Mamasan, mamasan,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“Hurry, mamasan. Run to jungle. VC here. Hue say you go to jungle, hide.”
“Okay, okay, keep your pants on,” I mumbled, only half absorbing what he was saying but feeling the adrenaline zinging back into my veins like a strong jolt of caffeine.
I peeked out but saw nothing. “Where are they?”
“Hue’s house. Hurry. Hue fool them. Have meeting. You go quick.”
“Okay, but…” I pressed the amulet between our hands. A rush of inarticulate desperation, grief at losing yet another parent, and fear for himself and me swept to me from Ahn. I tried to project reassurance, but apparently the charm reflected only what was really in the wearer because Ahn just looked more afraid. “Didi mau, mamasan. Didi mau,” he begged.
I had to slip around the front of the house, since if there was a back way I didn’t know what it was. I must have slept several hours. The sky was relatively bright gray, with part of it yellower than the rest where the sun was trying to burn through. The jungle steamed with a sweet, earthy smell that made me want to lie down and bury my face in it. But I needed to find cover, and fast.
Just inside the trees I hesitated for a bare moment, undecided where to go, frightened again of mines and booby traps. Someone grabbed me from behind and I whirled around, ready to fight. Hoa tugged on my hand and pulled me behind her.
She was fogged in gray and muddied with olive-tinged brown, a color that would have made me uneasy if I wasn’t already just plain terrified. She led me through some brush that had a track wide enough to have been made by a large dog or a small child. She lifted a bush and there was a hole dug beneath, not terribly big but big enough. The spot was within shouting distance of the village, without all that much cover, but it looked just like the rest of the jungle and the bush was high enough that nobody should step on me by accident. I crouched down and she pulled the bush back on top of my back. I could still see out a little, between the roots.
I waited for a long time, watching the village, watching particularly the space between Hue’s house and Truong’s. The voices continued shouting, but it was muffled and I kept nodding off, despite being scared to death.
How did Hoa know about this hiding place? Could that sweet little girl be a VC? Then I remembered the puppy. Of course, this must be the doghouse. I should have been able to tell by the smell…and the stuff that squooshed under my hands and knees.
While I was wondering where the dog was, the meeting let out. I had no idea Hue’s house was so large. The whole village was there, many of the patients from the night before, and several young men and women whom I’d never seen before, plus one older man. It was to him Hue was appealing. Suddenly he backhanded her, knocking her to the ground, and one of the others, like the guard in my dream, leaned forward and jabbed her in the leg, where the snake had bitten her, with his bayonet.
The older man asked her another question, but she shook her head and kept talking. The younger man threatened her again, but his superior restrained him.
The auras of the people this morning were mostly dim and muddy. Even Hue’s usually bright, fierce one was toned down with gray and the olive-brown Hoa’s had shown. But the senior man’s contained a burst of brilliant lemon yellow within a spotted aqua, a deep teal, and a lighter, less definite green. And though all of these were encased in a rim of brown weariness and umber depression, the yellow of the intellect, the blue of his devotion to his ideals made his aura outshine everyone else’s except that of the sadistic younger man. His aura was all too familiar to me, though he wasn’t. He strobed with black light that cast warped shadows on the red of his fury. Just like William on a crazy rampage.
Hue ignored him, appealing instead to the older man.
He shook his head and turned away from her. The younger man kicked her on the site of her injury and planted his foot on her abdomen, setting the bayonet blade against her face. Hoa ran shouting from among the villagers, toward my hiding place.
Staying alive around here appeared to be a popularity contest and I had just lost. I flipped the bush back, stood up, and started to run for it. I saw the trip wire just in time. It was stretched between the two trees, just beyond the dog hole.
If I had been thinking straight, I could have managed to run smack into it. But then it might not have killed me. It could have been a pungi stick trap, which would merely maim or poison me, not a grenade. My reaction time was way too slow, and by the time I made the decision and avoided it, someone was twisting my arms up behind my back so hard I heard the joints pop. The pain shot like a branding iron through the arms, into my heart, down my gut, and straight to my bladder and bowels. A knife blade twirled itself before my eyes.
Then all at once a strident voice began talking in rapid Vietnamese and one of the younger men, probably no more than a teenager, stepped in front of me while talking fast to my captor. The young man looked vaguely familiar, and though he spoke in Vietnamese I understood the gist of his speech, which would have translated to something like, “Colonel Dinh, perhaps I misunderstand the situation, but if I may venture a suggestion, I with my own eyes and all these people saw this woman—excuse me, sir, this foreign whore”—he spit at me, for effect—“perform magic that healed last night’s casualties. Perhaps the Colonel would find it less embarrassing to interrogate her elsewhere.”
Hearing him, understanding him, I knew him. He was one of the men who had helped me into the hut the night before, one of the strangers who had touched the amulet, and he was trying to save me. His aura was cyanotic with fear of being thought a traitor, but it also bore a blue brighter than that of his superior, blue that spoke of a part of his spirit that had been revived. When he touched the amulet, when he helped heal his comrade, he had healed a little, too. Furthermore, he was still a little linked to me, even though time had passed and contact was broken. He carefully avoided looking at me.
The colonel strode in front of me, glared at me, nodded abruptly, and I was manhandled back to the village. The little creep w
ho held my arms had to bend me over double to keep my wrists between my shoulder blades, because he wasn’t tall enough to reach my shoulder blades easily when I stood up straight. So I stumbled ahead of him to where Hue sat painfully erect, watching our progress with an aura cloaked in battleship-gray and her eyes desperately hard. Something gleamed in the mud: her gold tooth.
The others had disappeared—including Ahn. The villagers were still protecting him, which I took to mean that the young soldier who had spoken to the colonel was right. The village was too frightened of the VC to try to save me, but the colonel would be pushing his luck to mistreat me here. Damn. William knew I was here and there was a slim chance he might have found other men, that I might still be rescued, although I wasn’t sure that by the time that happened I would be in any shape to know the difference.
While I was thinking this over, surrounded by small people who were smirking at me, poking, groping, and otherwise trying to make me jump so that my arms would hurt even worse, the colonel stooped and extended a hand to Hue. He said something gruff and disapproving to her. She looked up at him and spoke again. And again I understood what she was saying without translation. The words of my captors, except for the boy who had talked to the colonel, were still a blessed mystery to me. Obviously, a detached part of me decided, the amulet formed a link between those who touched it, one that conferred understanding—I supposed it must simply get clearer and more literal with practice, or length and intensity of contact. Or perhaps I simply understood more because of the urgency of my need to know what was being said.
Hue’s face was swollen, bleeding, and covered with filth, but she said in the calm, soft voice appropriate to a well-bred Vietnamese girl, “I have done nothing incorrect, Father. You are mistaken about the woman. She is not really an American. She’s a magician who has made herself look like an American, to test us, if you ask me. She saved my miserable life. Would you have me dishonor our ancestors by betraying her?”
The Healer’s War Page 28