start to warm my cold-clotted blood.
Behind the crisply uniformed general, Dinh's body hung lifeless from the tree, like a modern version of the crucifix, his rain-diluted blood still flowing in pink rivulets down his chest, his mouth. What's wrong with this picture? I wondered, and when I looked down at my own legs I realized: the aura was missing. It wasn't clinging to the body as I had seen the auras do so often right after death. It was clinging to me, overlaying my wisp of muddied pink with that clear blue and yellow, and sparks of red.
No wonder the general thought I was a VC spy. I was wrapped in the late colonel's aura, and it was a little like being wrapped in one of those cloaks of invisibility from the fairy tales, only not quite as useful.
still, I was beginning to feel a little stronger. It could be worse.
What if I were Vietnamese, with no right and no desire to leave this beautiful, blighted land? If this were my home, and I had nothing to do but stay and try to fend off wave after wave of invaders while my family, the culture I knew, the very landscape rotted around me like an old silk curtain in monsoon season? Nothing to look forward to but struggle and more struggle. The last few days had been horrible, but I still had options, another home, one of my own-but I needed to snap out of it if I wanted to live long enough to see stupid TV commercials and eat Sugar Pops for breakfast again. What Colonel Dinh had said echoed back to me from what seemed like years before, but was only that morning: 'Life is not meant to return to a dead limb, and now that it does, it burns. . . .'
'Well, young woman, if you have any explanation I'd like to hear it.
What were you doing in the company of the enemy?'
'I was a prisoner, sir,' I said. 'That's why my hands were tied.'
Obviously. jerk.
'Yeah, but what about that guy on top of you, sweetheart?'
Maryjane asked nastily. 'Looked to me like he was takin' your share of the heat. Some enemy.' Maryjane's tone had raised in pitch to the shrill and malicious end of the scale.
'And that guy.' Zits jerked his thumb at the colonel's corpse. 'Why'd you off him? Like the general says, we coulda got valuable information out of him.'
'You didn't want valuable information,' I spat back. 'You'd already tried questioning him and you knew he wasn't going to say anything. You just wanted to hurt him.'
'So? What was it to you? Hadn't he hurt you? Or maybe you liked it, huh, baby?'
'No, I just don't like to see people mistreated.'
Somebody laughed harshly. 'Well, lady, you are in the wrong war, then.'
From being protective and solicitous, the men had become hostile, aggressive. Looking up at the general, who wore an expression of smug satisfaction that must have been much the same as that worn by an early witch-hunter, I saw what was happening with graphic clarity. The blackness in the general's aura cannibalized the other colors that had been present in it, and grew, webbing out to touch the blackness that was the primary component of Maryjane's aura, to sprout more blackness in Zits, to web with the hatred and anger that had become part of every man's aura, and where the blackness met blackness, it was amplified, until the clearing was filled with it. General Hennessey sure was a leader of men, okay. He just didn't have much use for women.
One of them looked at the other while the general thumbed his side arm.
Maryjane gave me a lopsided grin and pulled out his machete. 'You know, General, if the Cong had done her, they'd have made it hurt.' He grinned and winked at me. Big joke. Very funny.
'Oh, great, soldier,' I said. 'What did you do when you were a kid?.Rip the legs off of frogs? Did I take away your toy and-' I was stopped in mid-sentence by a commotion on the perimeter. The sentry was yelling something and somebody else was yelling back. Several of the men ran over to see what was going on. The general merely turned around, annoyed at the distraction.
'Goddamn, sir, will you look at that? They must be havin' a fuckin'
sale on 'em today,' Maryjane said as two men wrestled a third between them into the clearing. The third man wore crossed bandoliers slung over his bony shoulders and prominent rib cage.
He was still fighting, and one after another flung the men who held him away from him and jumped Zits, trying to wrest his weapon from him.
Three more men pulled him off and held him down. Zits covered him.
The general came out from behind a tree he had just happened to step behind. 'What seems to be the problem here, men?'
'We found this dude pokin' around the dead gooks, sir. We started, you know, rappin' with him, and he fuckin' attacked us.'
'I was gonna off him, but Darby said since he was American we should, like, try to bring him in,' the other man said.
'Okay, soldier, what have you got to say for yourself?' the general demanded.
What was left of William spit and a glob landed right in the middle of the shiny gold buckle. The red and black aura was strobing like crazy and so was the aura surrounding Zits.
'Goddamn it, cut it out,' I said. 'He's dinky dao. He thinks you're VC. Leave him the hell alone.' I pushed past Maryjane's machete and knelt beside William. He spat at me, too, but I'd seen lots worse lately.
I didn't have much aura left to share and there was nobody I much wanted to touch, but the general solved that problem for me. He came and stood so that his leg brushed my back.
'Do you know this man, young woman?' He was trying to intimidate me, but his well-fed, rested energy was what I needed. Only nothing happened.
No change took place and William spat at me again.
So I slapped him, and glared at him.
He rolled his head back and forth, back and forth, trying to shake that aura. After what seemed like forever to me, it receded and he opened his eyes.
'Lieutenant Kitty, baby. Hey, girl, what's happening'? I thought you was takin' babysan down to the ville.'
I sighed, sat back on my heels, and buried my head in my hands.
'You know this woman, soldier?' the general asked. 'What are you doing in this sector? Where's your unit?'
William blinked several times, as if trying to focus on me. His entire aura extended only about a quarter of an inch from him and was as wavery and uneven as the EKG of a patient with a myocardial infarction. 'What the fuck is going' down here? Man, I was trackin' you dudes, only I wasn't always certain if it be you or if it be VC, dig? So I sort of follow along. Then, I dunno when, I see some other dudes humpin'
through the bush and I'd have thought it was you only they was draggin'
the lieutenant like she be the doggie in the window, if you can dig that? And then, man, I don't know. I was layin' down fire at someone and then somebody else opened up, but I'll be damned if I know who the fuck I was shootin'. I got like hit, see?' He touched the back of his head, and when he held up his fingers, they were bloody. 'When I come out of it, I go to look at the bodies and then these other dudes come at me and-oh shit, man, was that you? Lieutenant Kitty, you right on, girl. I must be dinky dao as shit to take these dudes for gooks. Ain't no gooks that ugly. That's a joke, man.'
The black radioman guffawed and two other black guys snorted.
'He may be dinky dao but he ain't blind,' one of them said.
But William was taking stock of his surroundings now, and the same instinct that had told him when to roll under the bed sent bluegray needles of alarm prickling from his aura. 'Oh hey, man, hey, now, look, I didn't-I mean, no way did I off one of our guys, did I? I-'
The general cleared his throat and Zits and Maryjane glared at him, but the black soldier leaning against the tree said, 'No, man, nothin' like that. just seem like the jungle full of lots of folks 'sides Charlie out for a walk today.'
'I told you we were both lost-' I began wearily, but William cut me off with a nervous spate of chatter. It was a side of him I hadn't seen before, another defense, I suppose, besides an automatic weapon or a straryglehold.
'Man, I dig. This is really wild. 'Cause I can tell you for dead sure I never expected to see this woman alive again. How's babysan, Lieutenant?'
I shrugged and mumbled, 'He's at the village.'
William plunged right on over my words. He was sitting up now, while the medic, who was one of the other black men, cleaned and bandaged his wound. His arms flew around as he talked so that the man had trouble bandaging him as he told the story of his unit being overrun.
'Yeah, I heard about that. Numbah ten, man. We didn't know nobody got out.'
'Why didn't you report to headquarters, soldier?' the general demanded.
'General, man, that's what I be tryin' to tell you. I be tryin' to report back for weeks, man. But you know, I got me no radio and you the first bunch
