with it, he perceives physical and spiritual information about people that helps him heal them.'
'I don't get it,' I said. 'It's usually pretty clear what's wrong with my patients, but I can't do anything about it just because I know what's wrong
'Maybe not, but he can. The way I understand it, the amulet also amplifies his aura so he can use his energy to help someone else's.
Before he got hurt he traveled all over the north part of the countrynobody ever gave him shit, not VC, not NVA, not ARVNS. Because he knew how to read them, how to heal the folks around, so that they always protected him from the hard-core badasses. Too fuckin' bad mortar shells don't have all that much of an aura.' His voice was bitter again.
'How about the night I saw the ball of light, then?' I asked. 'I wasn't wearing the amulet.'
But he'd had enough of my questions and looked at me as if I were a sister who'd gotten more than her share of cake at his birthday party.
He shrugged. 'You said you were sick. You figure it out.' And he returned to the ward to say a good-bye to Xe that I suppose both of them must have known was final.
When I dreamed that night it wasn't about R&R or about Xinhdy or Tony. I dreamed about Xe. I couldn't remember much except that he was floating around in a big balloon and seemed to be looking for something. I had the feeling he was looking for Heron, but I also knew, the way you do in dreams, that that wasn't quite right. And ihen I thought it might be me he was looking for and I wanted to tell him where I was, but Lieutenant Colonel Blaylock was hiding in the jungle somewhere with a rifle and if she found out I was watching that balloon instead of being back on the ward, she'd shoot me and make sure I wouldn't get my Bronze Star either.
I went to Taiwan for R&R. After Xinh's death and my cheerful chat with Heron, I couldn't bear to stay in Vietnam one extra minute.
As soon as my papers were processed and Marge had rearranged the schedule, Sarge drove me out to the airport. Ahn rolled over on his stomach and wouldn't say good-bye to me, but That squeezed my hand and Mai handed me a folded paper fan. 'Airplane too hot,' she explained, fanning herself with her hand.
At the airport, the NCO in charge of the R&R flights said no way could he get me out. I started feeling panicky. It was one day of my leave just sitting there. I told him to send me anyplace, anyplace at all, just get me out of country. He found one seat on a plane to Taipei. I didn't have the faintest idea what I'd do in Taiwan. The corpsmen told me proudly of their exploits and showed me photos of their bedroombound dates, but I was damned if I was going to spend my little taste of freedom from the 83rd in one lousy room.
Sick of the Army, tired of the military milieu in general, alone in a foreign country I had never explored before, I headed straight for the naval base. I don't remember why. Maybe I needed time to become acclimatized to a week playing tourist. But I found I'd been missing things I'd taken for granted, even despised, before. I met a Navy wife at the PX coffee shop and sat for hours drinking coffee and listening to gossip and routine marital problems that would have normally bored me stiff. It felt good to hear another woman a normurse, nonmilitary woman, talk about ordinary, everyday housewifing business that had nothing to do with sickness or war or dying. I found her child-rearing traumas fascinating, her struggles with the base schools gripping. I cannot for the life of me remember if I even got her name.
After I left her I wandered around the commissary in a daze, and at one point stood between the rows of sugar pops and frosted flakes and remembered all my junk food breakfasts and Saturday morning cartoons and prizes and box tops and good old American come-on advertising, and I stood there and wept like a fool. I never thought I'd miss crass commercialism so much, and realized that I was capitalist to the core. I missed the damned radio and TV commercials. I wished Xinhdy could have seen, oh, a Maybelline ad, or a Clairol one. She'd have thought them very glamorous. On Armed Forces Radio, the only commercials were 'Do preventive maintenance on your vehicle,' and 'Clean your weapon,' and
'Don't use captured enemy weapons and, if you happen to be an enemy listening, we wouldn't advise you to use your own weapons either.'
Later I shopped and bought jewelry and presents for friends at the 83rd and the family and went to a Taiwan aboriginal dance where they dressed us visitors up in native costume and had us dance with them, something a lot like the squaw dances the Indians hold at powows at home. I had dresses made and I smelled flowers and traveled inland to the gorgeous Taroko Gorge and saw a turquoise river flowing through the mountains and the marble factory. The funniest thing was getting on a FAT airlines plane and hearing only oriental voices and seeing only oriental faces all around me. I began to feel panicky when all the speeches by the stewardesses were in Chinese. To my relief, a man's voice with a heavy Australian accent announced that 'this is your captain speaking.' Of course, there are undoubtedly lots of marvelous oriental pilots, but I knew only of the mess the ARVNs made of our technical equipment, and the association was automatic.
I felt like a large barbarian, a feeling that was reinforced when I went shopping. I kept forgetting, surrounded by small oriental people, that I was no longer in Vietnam. I was looking at one ring in a jeweler's stall and said, 'Oh, that one. I like. Numbah one.' And the man in the stall said, 'Yes, madame, that is an emerald of the finest quality.
Would you care to try it on? Could I offer you tea, perhaps, while you are considering your choice?' I felt like a condescending fool.
And once my cab passed a construction site and somebody dropped a board or a hammer or something. I was on the floor of the cab before I knew what I was doing.
The driver was alarmed. 'Miss, miss, you okay?' he asked.
'Oh, sure, thanks. just-uhropped my contact lens. There you are, you little devil.'
But the country was more beautiful than I had ever imagined, and I almost forgot about Vietnam in the fun of going shopping, dressing up and eating in nice restaurants. People were unexpectedly kind. I ran out of money before I could collect my developed snapshots and the man at the photo store told me not to worry, to send the money to him when I got back to Nam, no sweat, he had a brother who was a dentist in the States and so that made me okay too. And the girls in the hotel gift shop, where I had bought a couple of rings, called me over on my last day to give me a sack of dried pineapple as a going-away present.
I returned to the 83rd, if not eager to get back to work, at least eager to share my adventures with my friends and play lady Bountiful with the presents: a book for Marge and jade earrings for Voorhees's wife, a pirated rock tape for Meyers and an ivory back scratcher for Sergeant Baker, strings of beads for Carole and Judy, a woven Chinese handcuff for Ahn, and a delicately carved wooden hair ornament that struck me as something that would be beautiful in Mai's hair if she kept her locks dry long enough to wear it. It cost maybe thirty-five cents in American money and I intended to get her something nicer but ran out of money. I felt guilty about being so chintzy when I had been so little comfort to her over Xinh's death.
So I was surprised at her reaction when I intercepted her and gave it to her.
'Very pretty,' she said admiringly and handed it back to me.
'No-it's for you,' I told her. 'I don't know if you wear this kind of thing or not, but I thought it would look nice in your pretty hair.'
'For me? You buy present for me?' Her eyes started filling as she handled it. 'Thank you, thank you very much. Is so beautifoo. Wait. I have present for you too. It not here today. I bring it tomorrow-,,
'Oh no, Mai, you already gave me a present. You were right. The plane was very hot and I used your fan all the time. I just wanted to bring you the comb because I think a lot of you. It's so little really.'
But the next day she was there with a bolt of purple silk. She held it up against me, measuring. 'It maybe too long for Western dress.'
'But that's good,' I said. 'I've really been wanting a Vietnamese dress. I'll have mamasan at the gift shack make me one. You always look so pretty in yours.'
She took the cloth back. 'No way you have her make Vietnamese dress for you. I make you go dal.' The next day she measured me for it and within a couple of days brought it over to the ward, along with an invitation from her family to come to the village and have dinner with them. So far as I knew, none of the other girls had been invited to a Vietnamese home. I had to get special permission, but Mai was well known and liked at the 83rd and had doctors, nurses, and corpsmen she had worked with in the past writing to her from all over the world.
Permission was granted. The day we were to go, we both dressed in our go dais, my purple one so much larger than her little pink flowered one, and Joe took our picture. We walked down the road unmolested though not exactly unnoticed through Dogpatch and to Mai's house. Her mother had fixed a chicken dinner and left the beak and the claws on top of the cooked meat so I would know that it wasn't dog or cat. Their house was large and spacious, with covered decks for eating and cooking.and big fan-cooled rooms full of
