how to say thank you in Vietnamese.
He nodded wisely and looked me up and down in the manner of dirty old men everywhere. 'Mamasan beaucoup,' he said. He sounded a little awestricken.
'No,' I said, grinning and shaking my head. 'No, papasan tete.'
Which was perfectly true, of course. Walking along beside me on the way back to the village, he stood only as high as my bust line, which might have been what led to the personal remarks. He laughed and shook his head at my incomparable wit and he and the Jim Beam disappeared.
The little girl was gone a long time and I began to think that bandages were too much to hope for. People probably didn't have any spare clothing that was in better shape than mine, which was pretty sad. I used the rest of the basin of water to rinse the mud off myself and tossed the thick residue into the ditch surrounding the house. A regular moat. Well, I'd already met the monster.
The old man was out in front of the house, admiring the snake again. He had technically killed the thing, though he'd never have made it without the rest of the village, Ahn, and me. But he walked around it and nodded to himself. I thought he was preening until I paid attention to his aura. It was the gray I was coming to associate with grief. I left Ahn for a moment and stepped across the ditch.
'Some snake, eh, papasan?' I asked, nodding to our kill, which still made my vertebrae stand at attention.
'Yes, numbah one snake,' he said sadly, pronouncing snake uncertainly, a new English word.
'I've never seen one that big,' I said inanely. He continued staring down at the snake as if I hadn't spoken. 'Beaucoup snake,' I said and spread my arms and rolled my eyes for emphasis. 'Are there more like that around?' I asked, and indicated our snake, plus another beside it and another.
The old man shook his bead sadly. 'Snake fini,' he said and repeated my gesture to indicate that he meant all the snakes were gone, then threw his arms up like a child imitating a bomb, making the appropriate explosive noises. It should have been funny, but the grieving gray and sparks of red in the aura belied his smile, and the whole demonstration was as grotesque as if he had plucked out his eye and asked me to laugh at him.
I looked down and nodded. Bombs might make you nostalgic for the comparative harmlessness of enormous snakes at that. He picked up a stick and drew a few deft lines in the mud and a hungry crocodile slithered within them, mouth open and tall lashing. The old man threw his arms in the air, miming the bomb again, and tapped the picture of the crocodile. 'Fini.'
As the mud oozed back together and the crocodile sank into the mire, he flourished his stick again and eels, otters, huge fish, and a hungry tiger populated the mud. 'Fine,' the old man said each time, his voice grimmer with the vanishing of each species. The tiger had figured in our word games on the ward, however, and I thought I might use it to change the topic to a lighter one.
'Mao bey?' I asked, pointing at the picture.
He looked at me as if I'd done something astonishing and now his smile deepened and some of the gray sank back into him in the same way his pictures sank into the mud. He nodded enthusiastically. An educable American. How astonishing.
I drew a picture of a house cat. 'Mao?'
He nodded. I was on safe ground. Maos had come up frequently in the word games Xinhdy, Mai, Ahn, and I had played.
I said, 'In English, Mao same-same cat same- same Kitty samesame me,' and pointed to myself.
He thought that was pretty funny and catcalled at me.
The little girl ran toward us, her black hair flying like a scarf behind her. In her hot little hand was a roll of gauze bandage, still in its white wrapper with the red cross in the blue circle.
'Co, co, see, see!' she cried. She was such a gorgeous child, like a doll with that Kewpie mouth and little pointed chin and that shining hair.
'Co Mao, Co Mao,' the old man said.
It was no good trying to get him to go ahead and say my name untranslated. I ducked back inside the house to bandage Ahn's leg. He was sitting up now, and supervised while I wrapped his stump. The little girl again watched as if her life depended on it. I smiled at her when I was done.
'Ahn, we should introduce ourselves.'
He looked dubious but said his name and a string of words after, looking as if he had just been elected to the dubiously honorable office of President of South Vietnam.
The little girl pointed to herself and said, 'Hoa,' and bowed to me and said, 'Co Mao.'
Ahn shook his head furiously. 'MamasaniKitty, chu-' I shook my head at him before he could say 'chung wi.' These people didn't need to know me by my rank any more than hmerican civilians did.
'Ahn, I have Vietnamese name here. I like Mao.'
'Okay, okay,' he said, as if I were very upset about it, and looked at Hoa as if to say, Americans, who can tell what they're going to want next?
She nodded gravely, as if, because of his advanced age, his position and wisdom were unquestionable.
I wanted to rest a little longer, but thought I should first check on my other patient. She seemed to be asleep as I poked my head in the doorway, but as soon as I set foot in the room she jerked awake and glowered at me. Ignoring the glower, I knelt beside her.
Her aura was mostly a muddy jumble of anger, grief, fear, and pain, but the basis of it was an appealing brilliant aqua and clear yellow, with tendrils of spring green and a bloom of pink. The brighter colors were smothered beneath the layer of muddy ones, like the rainbow in an old slick. She looked at me with a rebellious hatred that struck me as totally unfair, considering I'd helped save her life twice.
'Okay, be that way,' I said aloud. She looked healthy enough now, her aura bright and strong despite all the muddiness surrounding it. This village had managed its oh. problems before I came along and I wasn t about to intrude on the privacy of a woman who obviously didn't want me there.
I was turning to leave when the woman who had brought me to the hut stepped into the doorway. Ahn squeezed in beside her. She seemed chagrined and bowed two or three times. I reciprocated. She started speaking rapidly to Ahn, gesturing toward the woman on the bed with lifts of her chin, watching me anxiously. Clearly, she had expected the girl to be rude and was apologizing for it.
'What did she say, Ahn?' I asked.
'This one name Tran Thi Truong, very please to meet you,' Ahn 'd, inclining his head to the woman beside him. 'Truong say that one sal I I Dinh Thi Hue.'
Dinh Thi Hue interrupted suddenly, with a spate of imperious questions, her words sounding harsh and accusing.
'Well, what did she say?'
'She want to know where are other American soldiers.'
I started to say there weren't any more and then thought maybe that wasn't such a good idea.
'What's it to her?' I asked Ahn.
Truong pulled us outdoors and started talking again, in low, emphatic tones, her eyes full of apology, but also some anger.
Ahn looked wise and said, 'Last time Americans here they boomboom Dinh Thi Hue.' He made a graphic gesture with a circle of the forefinger and thumb and the forefinger of his other hand as casually as an American eight-year-old might wave hi. 'Make babysan. She no like American soldiers.'
No wonder. I turned back to her with more sympathy, which I had no idea how to express. I murmured, 'Sin loi, Dinh Thi Hue.'
Ahn was defensive on my behalf, however, and hobbled over to Hue's bedside and regaled the girl for several minutes, nodding at me, slapping the thigh above his stump with a gesture that said it was now sound as a dollar owing to my expert intervention, and clearly told her I was a GI of a different kind than she had known before. I hoped he wasn't telling her I was the only one of my kind.
She let out a long sigh and lay back against the pillow, her face sweaty and her hair still matted with mud and blood. Her face seemed familiar to me, but I thought that was because she reminded me of one of the patients. She had a banty toughness about her that reminded me of Cammy Dover, a four-foot-eleven biker I'd met at a folk club in Denver.
Ahn picked up her hand and la daied me over to her, and put our hands together. She didn't look into my eyes but inclined her head a bare half inch and muttered something in English.
'She say, 'Thank you, Mao,' for helping her when big snake have her. She say thank you to Ahn also, because Ahn hite big snake, make him let her go. She say Ahn and Mao numbah one team and she love us too much.'
I laughed and patted his shoulder. 'I say Ahn numbah one bullshitter and full of wishful thinking, but thanks for trying.'
'Com bic? What means 'wishful thinking'?' he asked.
But about then Hoa came to the door and gestured urgently to Ahn to la dai. He turned away from the peace conference and hobbled toward the door, negotiating the ditch with more agility than I would have thought possible. I wished we'd been able to save his crutch during the crash.
The little girl appeared in the doorway again and this time la daied me.
Truong frowned at her, but the child didn't notice.
Dinh Thi Hue watched all of this through slitted eyes, as if taking notes.
'It's been great having such a warm friendly chat with you,' I said,
'but I gotta go now. Kids. You know how it is. Probably want me to car-pool them to the Little Ixague game
