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!
But Patsy wasn’t going to be greedy. He’d be fair. He wouldn’t strip the patients bare. He’d just ask for half—half of everything they owned.
He almost laughed out loud. This was going to be so sweet! All he had to do was—
Just ahead of him, Tram shouted something in Vietnamese. Patsy didn’t recognize the word, but he knew a curse when he heard one. Tram started running. They had broken free of the suffocating jungle atop a small sandy rise. Out ahead, the sun rippled off a calm sea. A breeze off the water brought blessed relief from the heat. Below lay a miserable villa—a jumble of huts made of odd bits of wood, sheet metal, palm fronds, and mud.
One of the huts was burning. Frantic villagers were hurling sand and water at it.
Patsy followed Tram’s headlong downhill run at a cautious walk. He didn’t like this. He was far from town and doubted he could find his way back; he was surrounded by gooks and something bad was going down.
He didn’t like this at all.
As he approached, the burning hut collapsed in a shower of sparks. To the side, a cluster of black pajama-clad women stood around a supine figure. Tram had pushed his way through to the center of the babbling group and now knelt beside the figure. Patsy followed him in.
“Aw, shit!”
He recognized the guy on the ground. Wasn’t easy. He’d been burned bad and somebody had busted caps all over him, but his face was fairly undamaged and the scarred eye left no doubt that it was the same old gook who’d healed him up last night. His good eye was closed and he looked dead, but his chest still moved with shallow respirations. Patsy’s stomach lurched at the sight of all the blood and charred flesh. What was keeping him alive?
Suddenly weak and dizzy, Patsy dropped to his knees beside Tram. His millions . . . all those sweet dreams of millions and millions of easy dollars were fading away.
Nothing ever goes right for me!
“I share your grief,” Tram said, looking at him with sorrowful dark eyes.
“Yeah. What happened?”
Tram glanced around at the frightened, grieving villagers. “They say the Cong bring one of their sick officers here and demand that Trinh heal him. Trinh couldn’t. He try to explain that the time not right yet but they grow angry and tie him up and shoot him and set his hut on fire.”
“Can’t he heal himself?”
Tram shook his head slowly, sadly. “No. Dat-tay-vao does not help the one who has it. Only others.”
Patsy wanted to cry. All his plans . . . it wasn’t fair!
“Those shitbums!”
“Worse than shitbums,” Tram said. “These Charlie say they come back soon and destroy whole village.”
Patsy’s anger and self-pity vanished in a cold blast of fear. He peered at the trees and bushes, feeling naked with a thousand eyes watching him.
. . . they come back soon . . .
His knees suddenly felt stronger.
“Let’s get back to town.” He began to rise to his feet, but Tram held him back.
“Wait. He looking at you.”
Sure enough, the old gook’s good eye was open and staring directly into his. Slowly, with obvious effort, he raised his charred right hand toward Patsy. His voice rasped something.
Tram translated: “He say, ‘You the one.’ ”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Patsy didn’t have time for this dramatic bullshit. He wanted out of here. But he also wanted to stay tight with Tram because Tram was the only one who could lead him back to Quang Ngai.
“I don’t know. Maybe he mean that you the one he fix last night.”
Patsy was aware of Tram and the villagers watching him, as if they expected something of him. Then he realized what it was: He was supposed to be grateful, show respect to the old gook. Fine. If it was what Tram wanted him to do, he’d do it. Anything to get them on their way out of here. He took a deep breath and gripped the hand, wincing at the feel of the fire-crisped skin—
Electricity shot up his arm.
His whole body spasmed with the searing bolt. He felt himself flopping around like a fish on a hook, and then he was falling. The air went out of him in a rush as his back slammed against the ground. It was a moment before he could open his eyes, and when he did he saw Tram and the villagers staring down at him with gaping mouths and wide, astonished eyes. He glanced at the old gook.
“What the hell did he do to me?”
The old gook was staring back, but it was a glassy, unfocused, sightless stare. He was dead.
The villagers must have noticed this too because some of the women began to weep.
Patsy staggered to his feet.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know,” Tram said with a puzzled shake of his head. “Why you fall? He not strong enough push you down.”
Patsy opened his mouth to explain, then closed it. Nothing he could say would make sense.
He shrugged. “Let’s go.”
He felt like hell and just wanted to be gone. It wasn’t only the threat of Charlie returning; he was tired and discouraged and so bitterly disappointed he could have sat down on the ground right then and there and cried like a wimp.
“Okay. But first I help bury Trinh. You help, too.”
“What? You kidding me? Forget it!”
Tram said nothing, but the look he gave Patsy said it all: It called him fat, lazy, and ungrateful.
Screw you! Patsy thought.
Who cared what Tram or anybody else in this stinking sewer of a country thought. It held nothing for him anymore. All his money was gone, and his one chance for the brass ring lay dead and fried on the ground before him.
7
As he helped dig a grave for Trinh, Tram glanced over at Fatman where he sat in the elephant grass staring morosely out to sea. Tram could sense that he was not grief-stricken over Trinh’s fate. He was unhappy for himself.
So . . . he had been right about Fatman from the first: The American had come here with something in mind other than paying his respects to Trinh. Tram didn’t know what it was, but he was sure Fatman had not had the best interests of Trinh or the village at heart.
He sighed. He wa
s sick of foreigners. When would the wars end? Wars could be measured in languages here. He knew numerous Vietnamese dialects, Pidgin, French, and now English. If the North won, would he then have to learn Russian? Perhaps he would have been better off if the booby trap had taken his life instead of just his leg. Then, like Trinh, the endless wars would be over for him.
He looked down into the empty hole where Trinh’s body soon would lie. Were they burying the Dat-tay-vao with him? Or would it rise and find its way to another? So strange and mysterious, the Dat-tay-vao . . . so many conflicting tales. Some said it came here with the Buddha himself, some said it had always been here. Some said it was as capricious as the wind in the choice of its instruments, while others said it followed a definite plan.
Who was to say truly? The Dat-tay-vao was a rule unto itself, full of mysteries not meant to be plumbed.
As he turned back to his digging, Tram’s attention was caught by a dark blot in the water’s glare. He squinted to make it out, then heard the chatter of one machine gun, then others, saw villagers begin to run and fall, felt sand kick up around him.
A Cong gunboat!
He ran for the tree where Fatman half sat, half crouched with a slack, terrified expression. He was almost there when something hit him in the chest and right shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer, and then he was flying through the air, spinning, screaming with pain.
He landed with his face in the sand and rolled. He couldn’t breathe! Panic swept over him. Every time he tried to take a breath, he heard a sucking sound from the wound in his chest wall, but no air reached his lungs. His chest felt ready to explode. Black clouds encroached on his dimming vision.
Suddenly, Fatman was leaning over him, shouting through the typhoon roaring in his ears.
“Tram! Tram! Jesus God get up! You gotta get me outta here! Stop bleeding f’Christsake and get me out of here!”
Tram’s vision clouded to total darkness and the roaring grew until it drowned out the voice.
8
Patsy dug his fingers into his scalp.
How was he going to get back to town? Tram was dying, turning blue right here in front of him, and he didn’t know enough Vietnamese to use with anyone else and didn’t know the way back to Quang Ngai and the whole area was lousy with Charlie.
A Soft Barren Aftershock Page 29