The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  But no. This guy was too skinny to be Hung.

  The figure came up and squatted flat-footed on his haunches next to Patsy. In the dim glow of starlight and streetlight he saw a wrinkled face and a silvery goatee. The gook babbled something in Vietnamese.

  God, it was Ho Chi Minh himself come to rob him.

  Too late. The money’s gone. All gone.

  No. Wasn’t Ho. Couldn’t be. This was just an old papa-san in the usual black pajamas. They all looked the same, especially the old ones. The only thing different about this one was the big scar across his right eye. Looked as if the lids had been fused closed over the socket.

  The old man reached down to where Patsy guarded his intestines and pushed his hands away. Patsy tried to scream in protest but heard only a sigh, tried to put his hands back up on his belly but they’d weakened to limp rubber and wouldn’t move.

  The old man smiled as he singsonged in gooktalk and pressed his hands against the open wound in Patsy’s belly. Patsy screamed then, a hoarse, breathy sound torn from him by the searing pain that shot in all directions from where the old gook’s hands lay. The stars really swam around this time, fading as they moved, but they didn’t go out.

  By the time his vision cleared, the old gook was up and turned around and weaving back toward the street. The pain, too, was sidling away.

  Patsy tried again to lift his hands up to his belly, and this time they moved. They seemed stronger. He wiggled his fingers through the wetness of his blood, feeling for the edges of the wound, afraid of finding loops of bowel waiting for him.

  He missed the slit on the first pass. And missed it on the second. How could that happen? It had been at least a foot long and had gaped open a good three or four inches, right there to the left of his belly button. He tried again, carefully this time…

  …and found a thin little ridge of flesh.

  But no opening.

  He raised his head—he hadn’t been able to do that before—and looked down at his belly. His shirt and pants were a bloody mess, but he couldn’t see any guts sticking out. And he couldn’t see any wound, either. Just a dark wet mound of flesh.

  If he wasn’t so goddamn fat he could see down there! He rolled onto his side—God, he was stronger!—and pushed himself up to his knees to where he could slump his butt onto his heels, all the time keeping at least one hand tight over his belly. But nothing came out, or even pushed against his hand. He pulled his shirt open.

  The wound was closed, replaced by a thin, purplish vertical line.

  Patsy felt woozy again. What’s going on here?

  He was in a coma—that had to be it. He was dreaming this.

  But everything was so real—the rough ground beneath his knees, the congealing red wetness of the blood on his shirt, the sounds from the street, even the smell of the garbage around him. All so real…

  Bracing himself against the wall, he inched his way up to his feet. His knees were wobbly and for a moment he thought they’d give out on him. But they held and now he was standing.

  He was afraid to look down, afraid he’d see himself still on the ground. Finally, he took a quick glance. Nothing there but two clotted puddles of blood, one on each side of where he’d been lying.

  He tore off the rest of the ruined shirt and began walking—very carefully at first—toward the street. Any moment now he would wake up or die, and this craziness would stop. No doubt about that. But until then he was going to play out this little fantasy to the end.

  2

  By the time he made it to his bunk—after giving the barracks guards and a few wandering night owls a story about an attempted robbery and a fight—Patsy had begun to believe that he was really awake and walking around.

  It was so easy to say it had all been a dream, or maybe hallucinations brought on by acid slipped into his after-dinner coffee by some wiseass. He managed to convince himself of that scenario a good half-dozen times. And then he would look down at the scar on his belly, and at the blood on his pants…

  Patsy sat on his rack in a daze.

  It really happened! He just touched me and closed me up!

  A hushed voice in the dark snapped him out of it.

  “Hey! Fatman! Got any weed?”

  It sounded like Donner from two bunks over, a steady customer.

  “Not tonight, Hank.”

  “What? Fatman’s never out of stock!”

  “He is tonight.”

  “You shittin’ me?”

  “Good night, Hank.”

  Actually, he had a bunch of bags stashed in his mattress, but Patsy didn’t feel like dealing tonight. His mind was too numb to make change. He couldn’t even mourn the loss of all his cash—every red cent he’d saved up from almost a year’s worth of chickenshit deals with guys like Donner. All he could think about, all he could see, was that old one-eyed gook leaning over him, smiling, babbling, and touching him.

  He’d talk to Tram tomorrow. Tram knew everything that went on in this goddamn country. Maybe he’d heard something about the old gook. Maybe he could be persuaded to look for him.

  One way or another, Patsy was going to find that old gook. He had plans for him. Big plans.

  3

  Somehow he managed to make it through breakfast without perking the powdered eggs and scrambling the coffee.

  It hadn’t been easy. He’d been late getting to the mess-hall kitchen. He’d got up on time but had stood in the shower staring at that purple line up and down his belly for he didn’t know how long, remembering the cut of Hung’s knife, the feel of his intestines in his hands.

  Did it really happen?

  He knew it had. Accepting it and living with it was going to be the problem.

  Finally he’d pulled on his fatigues and hustled over to the kitchen. Rising long before sunup was the only bad thing about being an army cook. The guys up front might call him a pogue but it sure beat hell out of being a stupid grunt in the field. Anything was better than getting shot at. Only gavones got sent into the field. Smart guys got mess assignments in nice safe towns like Quang Ngai.

  At least smart guys with an Uncle Tony did.

  Patsy smiled as he scraped hardened scrambled egg off the griddle. He’d always liked to cook. Good thing, too. Because in a way, the cooking he’d done for Christmas last year had kept him out of the fight this year.

  As always, Uncle Tony had come for Christmas dinner. At the table Pop edged around to the big question: what to do about Patsy and the draft. To everyone’s surprise, he’d passed his induction physical…

  …another example of how nothing ever went right for him. Patsy had learned that a weight of 225 pounds would keep a guy his height out on medical deferment. Since he wasn’t too many pounds short of that, he gorged on everything in sight for weeks. It would’ve been fun if he hadn’t been so desperate. But he made the weight: On the morning of his induction physical the bathroom scale read 229.

  But the scale they used downtown at the Federal Building read 224.

  He was in and set to go to boot camp after the first of the year.

  Pop finally came to the point: Could Uncle Tony maybe…?

  Patsy could still hear the disdain in Uncle Tony’s voice as he spoke around a mouthful of bread.

  “You some kinda peacenik or somethin’?”

  No, no, Pop had said, and went on to explain how he was afraid that Patsy, being so fat and so clumsy and all, would get killed in boot camp or step on a mine his first day in the field. You know how he is.

  Uncle Tony knew. Everybody knew Patsy’s fugazi reputation. Uncle Tony had said nothing as he poured the thick red gravy over his lasagna, gravy Patsy had spent all morning cooking. He took a bite and pointed his fork at Patsy.

  “Y’gotta do your duty, kid. I fought in the big one. You gotta fight in this here little one.” He swallowed. “Say, you made this gravy, dincha? It’s good. It’s real good. And it gives me an idea of how we can keep you alive so you can go on making this stuff every Christmas
.”

  So Uncle Tony pulled some strings and Patsy wound up an army cook.

  He finished with the cleanup and headed downtown to the central market area, looking for Tram. He smelled the market before he got to it—the odors of live hens, thit heo, and roasting dog meat mingled in the air.

  He found Tram in his usual spot by his cousin’s vegetable stand, wearing his old ARVN fatigue jacket. He’d removed his right foot at the ankle and was polishing its shoe.

  “Nice shine, yes, Fatman?” he said as he looked up and saw Patsy.

  “Beautiful.” He knew Tram liked to shock passersby with his plastic lower leg and foot. Patsy should have been used to the gag by now, but every time he saw that foot he thought of having his leg blown off….

  “I want to find someone.”

  “American or gook?” He crossed his right lower leg over his left and snapped his foot back into place at the ankle. Patsy couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about a guy who called his own kind gooks.

  “Gook.”

  “What name?”

  “Uh, that’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  Tram squinted up at him. “How I supposed to find somebody without a name?”

  “Old papa-san. Looks like Uncle Ho.”

  Tram laughed. “All you guys think old gooks look like Ho!”

  “And he has a scar across his eye”—Patsy put his index finger over his right eye—“that seals it closed like this.”

  4

  Tram froze for a heartbeat, then snapped his eyes back down to his prosthetic foot. He composed his expression while he calmed his whirling mind.

  Trinh…Trinh was in town last night! And Fatman saw him!

  He tried to change the subject. Keeping his eyes down, he said, “I am glad to see you still walking around this morning. Did Hung not show up last night? I warned you—he number ten bad gook.”

  After waiting and hearing no reply, Tram looked up and saw that Fatman’s eyes had changed. They looked glazed.

  “Yes,” Fatman finally said, shaking himself. “You warned me.” He cleared his throat. “But about the guy I asked you about—”

  “Why you want find this old gook?”

  “I want to help him.”

  “How?”

  “I want to do something for him.”

  “You want do something for old gook?”

  Fatman’s gaze wandered away as he spoke. “You might say I owe him a favor.”

  Tram’s first thought was that Fatman was lying. He doubted this young American knew the meaning of returning a favor.

  “Can you find him for me?” Fatman said.

  Tram thought about that. And as he did, he saw Hung saunter out of a side street into the central market. He watched Hung’s jaw drop when he spotted Fatman, watched his amber skin pale to the color of boiled bean curd as he spun and hurriedly stumbled away.

  Tram knew in that instant that Hung had betrayed Fatman last night in a most vicious manner, and that Trinh had happened by and saved Fatman with the Dat-tay-vao.

  It was all clear now.

  On impulse, Tram said, “He lives in my cousin’s village. I can take you to him.”

  “Great,” Fatman said, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll get us a jeep!”

  “No jeep,” Tram said. “We walk.”

  “Walk?” Fatman’s face lost much of its enthusiasm. “Is it far?”

  “Not far. Just a few klicks on the way to Mo Due. A fishing village. We leave now.”

  “Now? But—”

  “Could be he not there if we wait.”

  This wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t want to give Fatman too much time to think. Tram watched reluctance and eagerness battle their way back and forth across the American’s face. Finally…

  “All right. Let’s go. Long as it’s not too far.”

  “If not too far for man with one foot, not too far for man with two.”

  5

  As Tram led Fatman south toward the tiny fishing village where Trinh had been living for the past year, he wondered why he’d agreed to bring the two of them together. His instincts were against it, yet he’d agreed to lead the American to Trinh.

  Why?

  Why was a word too often on his mind, it seemed. Especially where Americans were concerned. Why did they send so many of their young men over here? Most of them were either too frightened or too disinterested to make good soldiers. And the few who were eager for the fight hadn’t the experience to make them truly valuable. They did not last long.

  He wanted to shout across the sea: Send us seasoned soldiers, not your children!

  But who would listen?

  And did age really matter? After all, hadn’t he been even younger than these American boys in the fight against the French at Dien Bien Phu fifteen years ago? But he and his fellow Vietminh had had a special advantage on their side. They had all burned with a fiery zeal to drive the French from their land.

  Tram had been a communist then. He smiled at the thought as he limped along on the artificial foot, a replacement for the real one he’d lost to a Cong booby trap last year. Communist…he had been young at Dien Bien Phu and the constant talk from his fellow Vietminh about the glories of class war and revolution had drawn him into their ideological camp. But after the fighting was over, after the partition, what he saw of the birth pangs of the glorious new social order almost made him long for French rule again.

  He’d come south then and had remained here ever since. He’d willingly fought for the South until the finger-charge booby trap had caught him at the knee; after that he found that his verve for any sort of fight had departed with his leg.

  He glanced at Fatman, sweating so profusely as he walked beside him along the twisting jungle trail. He’d come to like the boy, but he could not say why. Fatman was greedy, cowardly, and selfish, and he cared for no one other than himself. Yet Tram had found himself responding to the boy’s vulnerability. Something tragic behind the bluff and bravado. With Tram’s aid, Fatman had gone from the butt of many of the jokes around the American barracks to their favored supplier of marijuana. Tram could not deny that he’d profited well by helping him gain that position. He’d needed the money to supplement his meager pension from the ARVN, but that had not been his only motivation. He’d felt a need to help the boy.

  And he was a boy, no mistake about that. Young enough to be Tram’s son. But Tram knew he could never raise such a son as this.

  So many of the Americans he’d met here were like Fatman. No values, no traditions, no heritage. Empty. Hollow creatures who had grown up with nothing expected of them. And now, despite all the money and all the speeches, they knew in their hearts that they were not expected to win this war.

  What sort of parents provided nothing for their children to believe in, and then sent them halfway around the world to fight for a country they had never heard of?

  And that last was certainly a humbling experience—to learn that until a few years ago most of these boys had been blithely unaware of the existence of the land that had been the center of Tram’s life since he’d been a teenager.

  “How much farther now?” Fatman said.

  Tram could tell from the American’s expression that he was uneasy being so far from town. Perhaps now was the time to ask.

  “Where did Hung stab you?” he said.

  Fatman staggered as if Tram had struck him a blow. He stopped and gaped at Tram with a gray face.

  “How…?”

  “There is little that goes on in Quang Ngai that I do not know,” he said, unable to resist an opportunity to enhance his stature. “Now, show me where.”

  Tram withheld a gasp as Fatman pulled up his sweat-soaked shirt to reveal the purple seam running up and down to the left of his navel. Hung had gut cut him, not only to cause an agonizing death, but to show his contempt.

  “I warned you…”

  Fatman pulled down his shirt. “I know, I know. But after Hung left me in the alley,
this old guy came along and touched me and sealed it up like magic. Can he do that all the time?”

  “Not all the time. He has lived in the village for one year. He can do it some of the time every day. He will do it many more years.”

  Fatman’s voice was a breathy whisper. “Years! But how? Is it some drug he takes? He looked like he was drunk.”

  “Oh, no. Dat-tay-vao not work if you drunk.”

  “What won’t work?”

  “Dat-tay-vao…Trinh has the touch that heals.”

  “Heals what? Just knife wounds and stuff?”

  “Anything.”

  Fatman’s eyes bulged. “You’ve got to get me to him!” He glanced quickly at Tram. “So I can thank him…reward him.”

  “He requires no reward.”

  “I’ve got to find him. How far to go?”

  “Not much.” He could smell the sea now. “We turn here.”

  As he guided Fatman left into thicker brush that clawed at their faces and snagged their clothes, he wondered again if he’d done the right thing by bringing him here. But it was too late to turn back.

  Besides, Fatman had been touched by the Dat-tay-vao. Surely that worked some healing changes on the spirit as well as the body. Perhaps the young American truly wanted to pay his respects to Trinh.

  6

  He will do it many more years!

  The words echoed in Patsy’s ears and once again he began counting the millions he’d make off the old gook. God, it was going to be so great! And so easy! Uncle Tony’s contacts would help get the guy into the States where Patsy would set him up in a “clinic.” Then he would begin to cure the incurable.

  And oh, God, the prices he’d charge.

  How much to cure someone of cancer? Who could say what price was too high? He could ask anything—anything!