lynched for rubbin' up against your lily-white round-eye tail?'
'Watch the names, buster,' I told him. 'I'll make a deal with you, you don't call me round-eye tail and I don't call you nigger, okay?'
The red and black was growing in his aura again and I realized that I was no longer dealing just with William, my fellow refugee, but with an armed and angry man who currently killed people for a living and was having a lot of trouble telling which people were the ones he was supposed to kill and which ones were on his side.
He half rose, then sat down again, his eyes full of resentment and hostility and something else that fueled both-the grief that cloaked all the other colors in his aura, and the self- reproach that was growing in prominence. The colors were altering so quickly, shifting from one emotion to the other, that I was having trouble naming them, although I knew what they meant.
'What you watchin'?' he asked belligerently. But he stayed seated and his hands were open on his knees. 'You look like you about to shit yourself. What's the matter? I look like some nigger mothahfuckin'
street gang rapist to you or what?'
'You got this all wrong, William,' I said when I was able to detach myself from watching his aura. It had a hypnotizing effect that was soothing in a purely detached kind of way. But it was alarming how quickly his soft-spoken kindliness ran to anger. I was convinced it was misdirected when pointed at me, but I squirmed anyway. If I was not exactly a bigot, it was probably more from lack of opportunity than from actual ideals. There hadn't been any black kids in my classes until high school, though the neighborhoods near us had been integrating gradually-and with much paranoid grumbling and dire prediction from my relatives. I didn't mind talking to a black person, but the sexual stuff made me uncomfortable, all the more so because I knew that if I were the liberal person I thought I was, it shouldn't. But the real problem I was having was that even though William and I spoke the same language and were from the same country, I knew less about the problems and attitudes of the culture he came from than I did about the Vietnamese. Proximity to the soul brothers back at the enlisted barracks-hard-core groups who looked like the Army equivalent of street gangs and made nasty remarks as I passed-did not lead me to believe that I was going to be liked just because I was in favor of the civil rights marches on TV. But I was damned if I was going to be lost in the jungle with enemies all around and a sick kid and a crazy man and admit to being a bigot on top of it.
'Private Johnson to you,' William Johnson snapped.
'You got this all wrong, Private Johnson,' I began again. 'You don't remind me of anything like a street gang.'
'Nah?' he asked, sounding maybe a little disappointed.
'Nah,' I said. 'What you remind me of is this nice little old lady I took care of during my psych affiliation in training. She was just as pleasant and sweet as anything except that every once in a while she attacked clergymen and tried to castrate them. The rest of the time you couldn't meet a nicer person.'
He didn't seem inclined to dignify my remarks with a response, so I speared a piece of monkey and turned around to give some to Ahn. He wasn't there.
'Babysan?'
'Ixave him alone, will you, he's probably gone to take a piss in the brush over there,' William said in the tone of an irritable father criticizing how I raised the kid.
'What if he runs into a booby trap or a snake or-'
'What would you do about it if he did? Scream?'
It was my turn to ignore him. I scanned the brush and the surrounding hills and valleys. No Ahn. But on the other side of our ridge was a valley with rice paddies. Across the valley was another ridge, and about a quarter of the way up this a few houses. No people that I could see, but curls of smoke rose from a couple of places in the village.
'Hey, look, civilization!' I said.
He didn't even look up from swabbing out his canteen cup with a wet leaf.
'Did you hear me?' I asked, forgetting to keep my dukes up. 'There's a village over there. People.'
'Yeah, but what kind of people do they be is the question.'
'It's a village,' I said.
He nodded. 'Yeah, but it ain't San Francisco.'
'But it's worth checking out. They might have some food we could buy, or medical supplies, or a radio-'
'Or VC. You act like it some kinda shopping mall. Well, it ain't, no more than I'm a platoon, even with you and babysan. You don't just go waltzing into those villages alone. Ho Chi Minh could be the mayor for all you know.'
'Yeah, sure, but it could also be where those guys who burned the field are heading, couldn't it?'
'Unh huh, and it could be they're just going to call in an air strike and waste the place too, just like they did that field. I wouldn't say that was a real healthy place to be, especially not for just you and me.'
'Yes, but with Ahn along-I mean, he's a Vietnamese.'
'If he's not from that village or don't have relatives there, that ain't gonna cut no ice with them. Lotsa strays runnin' around the countryside. People look after they own folks. Can't take care of every draggly-ass kid who wanders in.'
'Maybe not but-' In the trees below I saw movement, and Ahn broke into the clearing by the paddies. 'Jesus, there he is. He must have spotted the village and gotten the same idea I did.' I started off after him, but William was on his feet and pulling me back before I had time to take so much as a step.
'You can't go down there. They puts mines and booby traps all along the paddies. Babysan probably gonna get the rest of his ass blown off. No need to make it two of you.'
'I won't abandon him,' I said. 'And I'm sorry, but you are crazy and you do scare me.' He curled his lips and wouldn't look at me, intent on polishing the weapon he had captured. 'William, I know when you're going to flip out if I'm awake, but when I'm asleep I can't-'
'That's bullshit,' he said in a low voice with so much force behind it I felt as if he'd slapped me. 'You don't know no such thing.'
'I do. Look.' I pulled out the amulet and showed him. 'This lets me see a light around a person that shows me what they're feeling-I can sort of read them. An old wise mana magician, kind of-who was one of my Vietnamese patients gave it to me.'
He smacked at it. 'What you tryin' to tell me, girl? That I should leave you go wanderin' off by yourself through the jungle 'cause you got some gook equivalent of a mood ring? You think I'm dinky dao!'
'Look if you don't believe me!' I took it off over my head and handed it to him. 'Put it on. Go ahead. And tell me what you see. Go on. I dare you. I double-dare you.' Jesus, I was regressing to thirdgrade fights with my brother again. But he slid the amulet over his rifle barrel and very gingerly slipped it over his head.
'Now look at me!' I said. 'What do you see?'
see one crazy white chick thinks she's Sheena, fucking Queen of the jungle,' he said, but his voice was a little more.reasonable as he stared.at me. He passed his hand over his face once in a weary gesture.
'Look, sister, you better cool down now. You so mad you glowin' a little red around the edges.'
'Aha!' I said. 'See what I told you! See what I told you. Here, gimme it back.' I felt blinded without it, like one of the mythological Graeae deprived of her eye. He handed it back, shaking his head, and when I put it on I saw that his aura was back to being predominantly blue and yellow again. He was beginning to understand, in spite of himself.
'William, I have to go now. I have to go get Ahn. I'll be able to tell if those people will hurt me and I'll be careful. But even if you weren't-pardon me-crazy sometimes, I'd be no safer with you than I am alone. Nobody's safe in this shit. You know it better than I do, for Chrissakes. But I can't let a handicapped kid go running around in the jungle by himself, and the longer I sit here beefing with you, the harder it will be for me to find him before he reaches the village.'
'I could hit you over the head and carry you or drag you,' he threatened.
'That wouldn't make for very speedy progress, would it?' I said.
'Sheeit,' he said. 'You go on, then, dammit. But don't go cussin'
William Johnson when the VC are cutting' your womb open while you still alive. You think I crazy and you scared. Let me tell you somethin', lady. I have been real scared travelin' with you and that gook kid. My ass ain't been worth nothin' since I took up with you. Get the hell out of here if you so het up to do it. I'm gonna contact that squad I saw.
If I can get 'em to swing back by the village and there's enough left of you to put in a body bag, I'll see to it your mama gets it to bury.' He turned around.
'William?'
'Unh huh.'
'Did you maybe capture a smaller gun I could have just in case it does look like I'm going to be captured?'
He snorted and handed me the machete without a word and marched off. I looked after him for just a moment, feeling irrationally abandoned, but then I looked away and saw Ahn at the edge of the rice paddy, and a flurry of people in pajamas and conical hats running into the paddies toward him. I plunged down the hill and into the trees, expecting to feel the trip wire of a booby trap against my shin, or my foot step first into nothingness, then to be pierced by pungi sticks as I fell into a tiger pit. It must have
