The Healer's War (41 page)

Sometime later the chunking of chopper blades drew my attention. A Huey descended to hover in the clearing, blowing the hell out of everything.

I just sat there and ate its wind, the rain, watching a fitlooking tanned guy with white hair jump out. Some other guy was there too, but I was watching the general as if I'd never seen one before. He wore a shiny gold buckle at his waist. I thought what a great target it would make. He was clean, pressed, authoritative, and handsome in a steely sort of way. Like the successful older man every secretary yearns to marry. I didn't much care for the mossy-green aura camouflaging his intentions, but at least it went nicely with his uniform.

In a couple of minutes the chopper lifted up again and swung away from us.

Maryjane and his sergeant, who looked perpetually stone-bored, walked up to the general. The general stalked up to the corpse still hanging from his bonds against the tree, and examined him, his expression growing angrier and tighter with every second, so that I thought pretty soon his skin would split open from the tension. Maryjane pointed at me.

The general strode over and stood above me like a wrathful God.

"You don't rise when a general officer addresses you, Lieutenant?" he asked.

I just stared at him. I thought about trying to straighten out my knees, stand up again. Nope. Too much effort.

"From what the men here tell me, I have to conclude that you're a VC

sympathizer," he said as if accusing me of something shocking. I thought it over. It was at least partially correct. I had certainly sympathized with Colonel Dinh in his last moments. But generals weren't much for such nice distinctions.

"I was performing according to my MOS, sir. One of my primary goals is to relieve suffering."

"As a member of the United States Army, Lieutenant, your primary goal is to help win this war. Do I make myself clear?" I didn't ask what war, when did we declare war. I didn't want to cause the man to have a stroke. "I understand you just executed a valuable enemy prisoner, of your own volition, costing us the opportunity to extract vital information. Do you realize the loss of that information will result in the deaths of thousands of Americans?"

I shrugged.

The moss green in his aura erupted into a study in angry, arrogant reds and oranges, mingled prettily with the mustard of a low order of intelligence, and a swamp of deep blue and teal for fanatical devotion to selfish causes. Like his own career. His face was rapidly growing purple. He grabbed my arm and yanked and I found that I did have a squeak left in me after all. It was my bayoneted arm. It was growing increasingly edematous and inflamed. Might have to amputate that sucker, I thought idly.

He released me and wiped his hand off on his fatigues, swearing.

"Where the hell did you say you found her?" he asked Maryjane.

"I got her off a dead VC, sir," Maryjane said.

"How do you know she's one of ours? I don't see any dog tags."

"Want us to search her, sir?" someone asked eagerly.

"Later. Young woman, I want to see your military ID."

"Okay," I said. Then I remembered that I'd taken it out of my pocket and put it in my ditty bad and my ditty bag was long goneback at Hue's village. "oops," I said. "It got lost."

"Very convenient. Men, I want you to hear this. Our enemies are very clever. There is a report that a Lieutenant Kathleen McCulley went AWOL

about two weeks ago. She went down in a Huey headed for Quang Ngai.

She, the pilot, and crew chief and all presumed dead. It's an open secret, been talked about over the phone, over the radio. Now here is this girl, claiming to be McCulley. How could a lone girl have made it this far? And didn't you say, private, that when you found this woman she was being shielded by one of her comrades? Doesn't that tell you something? You know, all Communists are not Vietnamese. There are even American women in the employ of the enemy. Now, I would hate to think that an American Army nurse might have been so foolish as to have succumbed to Communist propaganda, but these women aren't real troops, after all. They can be scared and intimidated. The giveaway with this one is that she killed her leader over there before he could tell you anything about his operation, himselfor her. Gentlemen, I think we're dealing with a traitor here. I have my doubts if this woman ever was Kathleen McCulley, but if she was, five 'II get you ten she lured that chopper Into an ambush and then rejoined her VC buddies."

Wait a minute, sir," Zits said. "Sounds like you're going to courtmartial her."

"Well, that would be one option, private."

"Sir?"

"If this gets into the press, it will cast a shadow over all of our loyal girls in the service, all of our brave nurses and other female personnel. You men wouldn't want to see that happen, would you?"

There was a lot of random mumbling basically to the effect that they didn't really give a shit.

"Well, there's an alternative. Nobody knows about this but you men and me. Supposing this woman was killed with the rest of her comrades?

Supposing for the classified files, Kathleen McCulley was killed by the enemy. For the official files, she died in a chopper crash. To spare her family, of course."

I stared at him, hearing the words but not believing them. He had to be kidding, didn't he? No, of course not. Generals didn't kid. But he was coming to take me home. That's why he was here. I was going to go back to the 83rd and have a last swim at China Beach and get my stuff together and go home and see my mom and Duncan. I had been drifting along with the shock and fatigue, thinking that I was so close to being out of all this, if not the beach, just a warm bed and a bath . . .

"I want to go home," I said, but everybody else was talking and nobody heard me. That was just as well. Whining about home wouldn't do me any good. Everybody-well, almost everybodywanted to go home. I was being a privileged character again. The people I'd been among for the last week or so were home already and a fat lot of good it did them. I felt a little strength start to course through me, a few tendrils of anger 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.