Although “Dat-Tay-Vao” precedes The Touch, it was written after: back in ’85 or ’86. Jack Dann and his then wife Jeanne were editing In the Field of Fire, an anthology of Vietnam-related SF and fantasy. Jeanne asked me to do a story for them. The Touch recently had been published and I had a partially written Vietnam sequence left over. I’d originally intended it to be a flashback to how the mysterious Dat-Tay-Vao came to America, but it stopped the novel dead in its tracks, so I cut it.
I rewrote it top to bottom and sent it to the Danns. Jeanne liked it, Jack didn’t, so it was rejected. Jack was vague as to why—something about not being what he was looking for. I was a little miffed at the time but, having edited two anthologies since then, came to understand what he meant. I sent the story to George Scithers who bought it for Amazing.
The prequel to The Touch.
1
Patsy cupped his hands gently over his belly to keep his intestines where they belonged. Weak, wet, and helpless, he lay on his back in the alley and looked up at the stars in the crystal sky, unable to move, afraid to call out. The one time he’d yelled loud enough to be heard all the way to the street, loops of bowel had squirmed against his hands, feeling like a pile of Mom’s slippery-slick homemade sausage all gray from boiling and coated with her tomato sauce. Visions of his insides surging from the slit in his abdomen like spring snakes from a novelty can of nuts had kept him from yelling again.
No one had come.
He knew he was dying. Good as dead, in fact. He could feel the blood oozing out of the vertical gash in his belly, seeping around his fingers and trailing down his forearms to the ground. Wet from neck to knees. Probably lying in a pool of blood… his very own homemade marinara sauce.
Help was maybe fifty feet away and he couldn’t call for it. Even if he could stand the sight of his guts jumping out of him, he no longer had the strength to yell. Yet help was out there… the nightsounds of Quang Ngai streetlife… so near…
Nothing ever goes right for me. Nothing. Ever.
It had been such a sweet deal. Six keys of Cambodian brown. He could’ve got that home to Flatbush no sweat and then he’d have been set up real good. Uncle Tony would’ve known what to do with the stuff and Patsy would’ve been made. And he’d never be called Fatman again. Only the grunts over here called him Fatman. He’d be Pasquale to the old boys, and Pat to the younger guys.
And Uncle Tony would’ve called him Kid, like he always did.
Yeah. Would have. If Uncle Tony could see him now, he’d call him Shit-for-Brains. He could hear him now:
Six keys for ten G’s? Whatsamatta witchoo? Din’t I always tell you if it seems too good to be true, it usually is? Ay! Gabidose! Din’t you smell no rat?
Nope. No rat smell. Because I didn’t want to smell a rat. Too eager for the deal. Too anxious for the quick score. Too damn stupid as usual to see how that sleazeball Hung was playing me like a hooked fish.
No Cambodian brown.
No deal.
Just a long, sharp K-bar.
The stars above went fuzzy and swam around, then came into focus again.
The pain had been awful at first, but that was gone now. Except for the cold, it was almost like getting smashed and crashed on scotch and grass and just drifting off. Almost pleasant. Except for the cold. And the fear.
Footsteps… coming from the left. He managed to turn his head a few degrees. A lone figure approached, silhouetted against the light from the street. A slow, unsteady, almost staggering walk. Whoever it was didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Hung? Come to finish him off?
But no. This guy was too skinny to be Hung.
The figure came up and squatted flatfooted on his haunches next to Patsy. In the dim glow of starlight and streetlight he saw a wrinkled face and a silvery goatee. The gook babbled something in Vietnamese.
God, it was Ho Chi Minh himself come to rob him.
Too late. The money’s gone. All gone.
No. Wasn’t Ho. Couldn’t be. Just an old papa-san in the usual black pajamas. They all looked the same, especially the old ones. The only thing different about this one was the big scar across his right eye. Looked as if the lids had been fused closed over the socket.
The old man reached down to where Patsy guarded his intestines and pushed his hands away. Patsy tried to scream in protest but heard only a sigh, tried to put his hands back up on his belly but they’d weakened to limp rubber and wouldn’t move.
The old man smiled as he singsonged in gooktalk and pressed his hands against the open wound in Patsy’s belly. Patsy screamed then, a hoarse, breathy sound torn from him by the searing pain that shot in all directions from where the old gook’s hands lay. The stars really swam around this time, fading as they moved, but they didn’t go out.
By the time his vision cleared, the old gook was up and turned around and weaving back toward the street. The pain, too, was sidling away.
Patsy tried again to lift his hands up to his belly, and this time they moved. They seemed stronger. He wiggled his fingers through the wetness of his blood, feeling for the edges of the wound, afraid of finding loops of bowel waiting for him.
He missed the slit on the first pass. And missed it on the second. How could that happen? It had been at least a foot long and had gaped open a good three or four inches, right there to the left of his belly button. He tried again, carefully this time…
…and found a thin little ridge of flesh.
But no opening.
He raised his head—he hadn’t been able to do that before—and looked down at his belly. His shirt and pants were a bloody mess, but he couldn’t see any guts sticking out. And he couldn’t see any wound, either. Just a dark wet mound of flesh.
If he wasn’t so goddamn fat he could see down there! He rolled onto his side—God, he was stronger!—and pushed himself up to his knees to where he could slump his butt onto his heels, all the time keeping at least one hand tight over his belly. But nothing came out, or even pushed against his hand. He pulled his shirt open.
The wound was closed, replaced by a thin, purplish vertical line.
Patsy felt woozy again. What’s going on here?
He was in a coma—that had to be it. He was dreaming this.
But everything was so real—the rough ground beneath his knees, the congealing red wetness of the blood on his shirt, the sounds from the street, even the smell of the garbage around him. All so real…
Bracing himself against the wall, he inched his way up to his feet. His knees were wobbly and for a moment he thought they’d give out on him. But they held and now he was standing.
He was afraid to look down, afraid he’d see himself still on the ground. Finally, he took a quick glance. Nothing there but two clotted puddles of blood, one on each side of where he’d been lying.
He tore off the rest of the ruined shirt and began walking—very carefully at first—toward the street. Any moment now he would wake up or die, and this craziness would stop. No doubt bout that. But until then he was going to play out this little fantasy to the end.
2
By the time he made it to his bunk—after giving the barracks guards and a few wandering night owls a story about an attempted robbery and a fight—Patsy had begun to believe that he was really awake and walking around.
It was so easy to say it had all been a dream, or maybe hallucinations brought on by acid slipped into his after-dinner coffee by some wise-ass. He managed to convince himself of that scenario a good half dozen times. And then he would look down at the scar on his belly, and at the blood on his pants…
Patsy sat on his rack in a daze.
It really happened! He just touched me and closed me up!
A hushed voice in the dark snapped him out of it.
“Hey! Fatman! Got any weed?”
It sounded like Donner from two bunks over, a steady customer.
“Not tonight, Hank,”
“What? Fatman’s never out of stock!”
“He is tonight”
“You shittin’ me?”
“Good night, Hank.”
Actually, he had a bunch of bags stashed in his mattress, but Patsy didn’t feel like dealing tonight. His mind was too numb to make change. He couldn’t even mourn the loss of all his cash—every red cent he’d saved up from almost a year’s worth of chickenshit deals with guys like Donner. All he could think about, all he could see, was that old one-eyed gook leaning over him, smiling, babbling, and touching him.
He’d talk to Tram tomorrow. Tram knew everything that went on in this goddamn country. Maybe he’d heard something about the old gook. Maybe he could be persuaded to look for him.
One way or another, Patsy was going to find that old gook. He had plans for him. Big plans.
3
Somehow he managed to make it through breakfast without perking the powdered eggs and scrambling the coffee.
It hadn’t been easy. He’d been late getting to the mess hall kitchen. He’d got up on time but had stood in the shower staring at that purple line up and down his belly for he didn’t know how long, remembering the cut of Hung’s knife, the feel of his intestines in his hands.
Did it really happen?
He knew it had. Accepting it and living with it was going to be the problem.
Finally he’d pulled on his fatigues and hustled over to the kitchen. Rising long before sunup was the only bad thing about being an army cook. The guys up front might call him a pogue but it sure beat hell out of being a stupid grunt in the field. Anything was better than getting shot at. Look what happened in Hue last month, and the whispers about My Lai. Only gavones got sent into the field. Smart guys got mess assignments in nice safe towns like Quang Ngai.
At least smart guys with an Uncle Tony did.
Patsy smiled as he scraped hardened scrambled egg off the griddle. He’d always liked to cook. Good thing too. Because in a way, the cooking he’d done for Christmas last year had kept him out of the fight this year.
As always, Uncle Tony had come for Christmas dinner. At the table Pop edged around to the big question: What to do about Patsy and the draft. To everyone’s surprise, he’d passed his induction physical…
…another example of how nothing ever went right for him. Patsy had learned that a weight of 225 pounds would keep a guy his height out on medical deferment. Since he wasn’t too many pounds short of that, he gorged on everything in sight for weeks. It would’ve been fun if he hadn’t been so desperate. But he made the weight: On the morning of his induction physical the bathroom scale read 229.
But the scale they used downtown at the Federal Building read 224.
He was in and set to go to boot camp after the first of the year.
Pop finally came to the point: Could Uncle Tony maybe…?
Patsy could still hear the disdain in Uncle Tony’s voice as he spoke around a mouthful of bread.
“You some kinda peacenik or somethin’?”
No, no, Pop had said, and went on to explain how he was afraid that Patsy, being so fat and so clumsy and all, would get killed in boot camp or step on a mine his first day in the field. You know how he is.
Uncle Tony knew. Everybody knew Patsy’s fugazi reputation. Uncle Tony had said nothing as he poured the thick red gravy over his lasagna, gravy Patsy had spent all morning cooking. He took a bite and pointed his fork at Patsy.
“Y’gotta do your duty, kid. I fought in the big one. You gotta fight in this here little one.” He swallowed. “Say, you made this gravy, dincha? It’s good. It’s real good. And it gives me an idea of how we can keep you alive so you can go on making this stuff every Christmas.”
So Uncle Tony pulled some strings and Patsy wound up an army cook.
He finished with the cleanup and headed downtown to the central market area, looking for Tram. He smelled the market before he got to it—the odors of live hens, thit heo, and roasting dog meat mingled in the air.
He found Tram in his usual spot by his cousin’s vegetable stand, wearing his old ARVN fatigue jacket. He’d removed his right foot at the ankle and was polishing its shoe.
“Nice shine, yes, Fatman?” he said as he looked up and saw Patsy.
“Beautiful.” He knew Tram liked to shock passersby with his plastic lower leg and foot. Patsy should have been used to the gag by now, but every time he saw that foot he thought of having his leg blown off…
“I want to find someone.”
“American or gook?” He crossed his right lower leg over his left and snapped his foot back into place at the ankle. Patsy couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about a guy who called his own kind gooks.
“Gook.”
“What name?”
“Uh, that’s the problem. I don’t know.”
Tram squinted up at him. “How I supposed to find somebody without a name?”
“Old papa-san. Looks like Uncle Ho.”
Tram laughed. “All you guys think old gooks look like Ho!”
“And he has a scar across his eye”—Patsy put his index finger over his right eye—”that seals it closed like this.”
4
Tram froze for a heartbeat, then snapped his eyes back down to his prosthetic foot. He composed his expression while he calmed his whirling mind.
Trinh…Trinh was in town last night! And Fatman saw him!
He tried to change the subject. Keeping his eyes down, he said, “I am glad to see you still walking around this morning. Did Hung not show up last night? I warned you—he number ten bad gook.”
After waiting and hearing no reply, Tram looked up and saw that Fatman’s eyes had changed. They looked glazed.
“Yes,” Fatman finally said, shaking himself. “You warned me.” He cleared his throat. “But about the guy I asked you about—”
“Why you want find this old gook?”
“I want to help him.”
“How?”
“I want to do something for him.”
“You want do something for old gook?”
Fatman’s gaze wandered away as he spoke. “You might say I owe him a favor.”
Tram’s first thought was that Fatman was lying. He doubted this young American knew the meaning of returning a favor.
“Can you find him for me?” Fatman said.
Tram thought about that. And as he did, he saw Hung saunter out of a side street into the central market. He watched Hung’s jaw drop when he spotted Fatman, watched his amber skin pale to the color of boiled bean curd as he spun and hurriedly stumbled away.
Tram knew in that instant that Hung had betrayed Fatman last night in a most vicious manner, and that Trinh had happened by and saved Fatman with the Dat-tay-vao.
It was all clear now.
On impulse, Tram said, “He lives in my cousin’s village. I can take you to him.”
“Great” Fatman said, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder. “I’ll get us a jeep!”
“No jeep,” Tram said. “We walk.”
“Walk?” Fatman’s face lost much of its enthusiasm. “Is it far?”
“Not far. Just a few klicks on the way to Mo Due. A fishing village. We leave now.”
“Now? But—”
“Could be he not there if we wait.”
This wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t want to give Fatman too much time to think. Tram watched reluctance and eagerness battle their way back and forth across the American’s face. Finally…
“All right. Let’s go. Long as it’s not too far.”
“If not too far for man with one foot, not too far for man with two.”
5
As Tram led Fatman south toward the tiny fishing village where Trinh had been living for the past year, he wondered why he’d agreed to bring the two of them together. His instincts were against it, yet he’d agreed to lead the American to Trinh.
Why?
Why was a word too often on his mind, it seemed. Especially where Americans were concerned. Why did they send so many of their young men over here? Most of them were either too frightened or too disinterested to make good soldiers. And the few who were eager for the fight hadn’t the experience to make them truly valuable. They did not last long.
He wanted to shout across the sea: Send us seasoned soldiers, not your children!
But who would listen?
And did age really matter? After all, hadn’t he been even younger than these American boys in the fight against the French at Dien Bien Phu fifteen years ago? But he and his fellow Vietminh had had a special advantage on their side. They had all burned with a fiery zeal to drive the French from their land.
Tram had been a communist then. He smiled at the thought as he limped along on the artificial foot, a replacement for the real one he’d lost to a Cong booby trap last year. Communist… he had been young at Dien Bien Phu and the constant talk from his fellow Vietminh about the glories of class war and revolution had drawn him into their ideological camp. But after the fighting was over, after the partition, what he saw of the birth pangs of the glorious new social order almost made him long for French rule again.
He’d come south then and had remained here ever since. He’d willingly fought for the South until the finger-charge booby trap had caught him at the knee; after that he found that his verve for any sort of fight had departed with his leg.
He glanced at Fatman, sweating so profusely as he walked beside him along the twisting jungle trail. He’d come to like the boy, but he could not say why. Fatman was greedy, cowardly, and selfish, and he cared for no one other than himself. Yet Tram had found himself responding to the boy’s vulnerability. Something tragic behind the bluff and bravado. With Tram’s aid, Fatman had gone from the butt of many of the jokes around the American barracks to their favored supplier of marijuana. Tram could not deny that he’d profited well by helping him gain that position. He’d needed the money to supplement his meager pension from the ARVN, but that had not been his only motivation. He’d felt a need to help the boy.
And he was a boy, no mistake about that. Young enough to be Tram’s son. But Tram knew he could never raise such a son as this.
So many of the Americans he’d met here were like Fatman. No values, no traditions, no heritage. Empty. Hollow creatures who had grown up with nothing expected of them. And now, despite all the money and all the speeches, they knew in their hearts that they were not expected to win this war.
What sort of parents provided nothing for their children to believe in, and then sent them halfway around the world to fight for a country they had never heard of?
And that last was certainly a humbling experience—to learn that until a few years ago most of these boys had been blithely unaware of the existence of the land that had been the center of Tram’s life since he’d been a teenager.
“How much farther now?” Fatman said.
Tram could tell from the American’s expression that he was uneasy being so far from town. Perhaps now was the time to ask.
“Where did Hung stab you?” he said.
Fatman staggered as if Tram had struck him a blow. He stopped and gaped at Tram with a gray face.
“How…?”
“There is little that goes on in Quang Ngai that I do not know,” he said, unable to resist an opportunity to enhance his stature. “Now, show me where.”
Tram withheld a gasp as Fatman pulled up his sweat-soaked shirt to reveal the purple seam running up and down to the left of his navel. Hung had gut cut him, not only to cause an agonizing death, but to show his contempt.
“I warned you…”
Fatman pulled down his shirt. “I know, I know. But after Hung left me in the alley, this old guy came along and touched me and sealed it up like magic. Can he do that all the time?”
“Not all the time. He has lived in the village for one year. He can do it some of the time every day. He will do it many more years.”
Fatman’s voice was a breathy whisper. “Years! But how? Is it some drug he takes? He looked like he was drunk.”
“Oh, no. Dat-tay-vao not work if you drunk.”
“What won’t work?”
“Dat-tay-vao… Trinh has the touch that heals.”
“Heals what? Just knife wounds and stuff?”
“Anything.”
Fatman’s eyes bulged. “You’ve got to get me to him!” He glanced quickly at Tram. “So I can thank him… reward him.”
“He requires no reward.”
“I’ve got to find him. How far to go?”
“Not much.” He could smell the sea now. “We turn here.”
As he guided Fatman left into thicker brush that clawed at their faces and snagged their clothes, he wondered again if he’d done the right thing by bringing him here. But it was too late to turn back.
Besides, Fatman had been touched by the Dat-tay-vao. Surely that worked some healing changes on the spirit as well as the body. Perhaps the young American truly wanted to pay his respects to Trinh.
6
He will do it many more years!
The words echoed in Patsy’s ears and once again he began counting the millions he’d make off the old gook. God, it was going to be so great! And so easy! Uncle Tony’s contacts would help get the guy into the states where Patsy would set him up in a “clinic.” Then he would begin to cure the incurable.
And oh God the prices he’d charge.
How much to cure someone of cancer? Who could say what price was too high? He could ask anything—anything!
But Patsy wasn’t going to be greedy. He’d be fair. He wouldn’t strip the patients bare. He’d just ask for half—half of everything they owned.
He almost laughed out loud. This was going to be so sweet! All he had to do was—
Just ahead of him, Tram shouted something in Vietnamese. Patsy didn’t recognize the word, but he knew a curse when he heard one. Tram started running. They had broken free of the suffocating jungle atop a small sandy rise. Out ahead, the sun rippled off a calm sea. A breeze off the water brought blessed relief from the heat. Below lay a miserable ville—a jumble of huts made of odd bits of wood, sheet metal, palm fronds, and mud.,
One of the huts was burning. Frantic villagers were hurling sand and water at it.
Patsy followed Tram’s headlong downhill run at a cautious walk. He didn’t like this. He was far from town and doubted he could find his way back; he was surrounded by gooks and something bad was going down.
He didn’t like this at all.
As he approached, the burning hut collapsed in a shower of sparks. To the side, a cluster of black pajama-clad women stood around a supine figure. Tram had pushed his way through to the center of the babbling group and now knelt beside the figure. Patsy followed him in.
“Aw, shit!”
He recognized the guy on the ground. Wasn’t easy. He’d been burned bad and somebody had busted caps all over him, but his face was fairly undamaged and the scarred eye left no doubt that it was the same old gook who’d healed him up last night. His good eye was closed and he looked dead, but his chest still moved with shallow respirations. Patsy’s stomach lurched at the sight of all the blood and charred flesh. What was keeping him alive?
Suddenly weak and dizzy, Patsy dropped to his knees beside Tram. His millions… all those sweet dreams of millions and millions of easy dollars were fading away.
Nothing ever goes right for me!
“I share your grief,” Tram said, looking at him with sorrowful dark eyes.
“Yeah. What happened?”
Tram glanced around at the frightened, grieving villagers. “They say the Cong bring one of their sick officers here and demand that Trinh heal him. Trinh couldn’t. He try to explain that the time not right yet but they grow angry and tie him up and shoot him and set his hut on fire.”
“Can’t he heal himself?”
Tram shook his head slowly, sadly. “No. Dat-tay-vao does not help the one who has it. Only others.”
Patsy wanted to cry. All his plans… it wasn’t fair!
“Those shitbums!”
“Worse than shitbums,” Tram said. “These Charlie say they come back soon and destroy whole village.”
Patsy’s anger and self-pity vanished in a cold blast of fear. He peered at the trees and bushes, feeling naked with a thousand eyes watching him.
…they come back soon…
His knees suddenly felt stronger.
“Let’s get back to town.” He began to rise to his feet, but Tram held him back.
“Wait. He looking at you.”
Sure enough, the old gook’s good eye was open and staring directly into his. Slowly, with obvious effort, he raised his charred right hand toward Patsy. His voice rasped something.
Tram translated: “He say, ‘You the one.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Patsy didn’t have time for this dramatic bullshit. He wanted out of here. But he also wanted to stay tight with Tram because Tram was the only one who could lead him back to Quang Ngai.
“I don’t know. Maybe he mean that you the one he fix last night.”
Patsy was aware of Tram and the villagers watching him, as if they expected something of him. Then he realized what it was: He was supposed to be grateful, show respect to the old gook. Fine. If it was what Tram wanted him to do, he’d do it. Anything to get them on their way out of here. He took a deep breath and gripped the hand, wincing at the feel of the fire-crisped skin—
Electricity shot up his arm.
His whole body spasmed with the searing bolt. He felt himself flopping around like a fish on a hook, and then he was falling. The air went out of him in a rush as his back slammed against the ground. It was a moment before he could open his eyes, and when he did he saw Tram and the villagers staring down at him with gaping mouths and wide, astonished eyes. He glanced at the old gook.
“What the hell did he do to me?”
The old gook was staring back, but it was a glassy, unfocused, sightless stare. He was dead.
The villagers must have noticed this too because some of the women began to weep.
Patsy staggered to his feet.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know,” Tram said with a puzzled shake of his head. “Why you fall? He not strong enough push you down.”
Patsy opened his mouth to explain, then closed it. Nothing he could say would make sense.
He shrugged. “Let’s go.”
He felt like hell and just wanted to be gone. It wasn’t only the threat of Charlie returning; he was tired and discouraged and so bitterly disappointed he could have sat down on the ground right then and there and cried like a wimp.
“Okay. But first I help bury Trinh. You help, too.”
“What? You kidding me? Forget it!”
Tram said nothing, but the look he gave Patsy said it all: It called him fat, lazy, and ungrateful.
Screw you! Patsy thought.
Who cared what Tram or anybody else in this stinking sewer of a country thought. It held nothing for him anymore. All his money was gone, and his one chance for the brass ring lay dead and fried on the ground before him.
7
As he helped dig a grave for Trinh, Tram glanced over at Fatman where he sat in the elephant grass staring morosely out to sea. Tram could sense that he was not grief-stricken over Trinh’s fate. He was unhappy for himself.
So…he had been right about Fatman from the first: The American had come here with something in mind other than paying his respects to Trinh. Tram didn’t know what it was, but he was sure Fatman had not had the best interests of Trinh or the village at heart.
He sighed. He was sick of foreigners. When would the wars end? Wars could be measured in languages here. He knew numerous Vietnamese dialects, Pidgin, French, and now English. If the North won, would he then have to learn Russian? Perhaps he would have been better off if the booby trap had taken his life instead of just his leg. Then, like Trinh, the endless wars would be over for him.
He looked down into the empty hole where Trinh’s body soon would lie. Were they burying the Dat-tay-vao with him? Or would it rise and find its way to another? So strange and mysterious, the Dat-tay-vao… so many conflicting tales. Some said it came here with the Buddha himself, some said it had always been here. Some said it was as capricious as the wind in the choice of its instruments, while others said it followed a definite plan.
Who was to say truly? The Dat-tay-vao was a rule unto itself, full of mysteries not meant to be plumbed.
As he turned back to his digging, Tram’s attention was caught by a dark blot in the water’s glare. He squinted to make it out, then heard the chatter of one machine gun, then others, saw villagers begin to run and fall, felt sand kick up around him.
A Cong gunboat!
He ran for the tree where Fatman half sat, half crouched with a slack, terrified expression. He was almost there when something hit him in the chest and right shoulder with the force of a sledgehammer, and then he was flying through the air, spinning, screaming with pain.
He landed with his face in the sand and rolled. He couldn’t breathe! Panic swept over him. Every time he tried to take a breath, he heard a sucking sound from the wound in his chest wall, but no air reached his lungs. His chest felt ready to explode. Black clouds encroached on his dimming vision.
Suddenly, Fatman was leaning over him, shouting through the typhoon roaring in his ears.
“Tram! Tram! Jesus God get up! You gotta get me outta here! Stop bleeding f’Christsake and get me out of here!”
Tram’s vision clouded to total darkness and the roaring grew until it drowned out the voice.
8
Patsy dug his fingers into his scalp.
How was he going to get back to town? Tram was dying, turning blue right here in front of him, and he didn’t know enough Vietnamese to use with anyone else and didn’t know the way back to Quang Ngai and the whole area was lousy with Charlie.
What am I gonna do?
As suddenly as they started, the AKs stopped. The cries of the wounded and the terrified filled the air in their place.
Now was the time to get out.
Patsy looked at Tram’s mottled, dusky face. If he could stopper up that sucking chest wound, maybe Tram could hang on, and maybe tell him the way back to town. He slapped the heel of his hand over it and pressed.
Tram’s body arched in seeming agony. Patsy felt something too—electric ecstasy shot up his arm and spread through his body like subliminal fire. He fell back, confused, weak, dizzy.
What the hell—?
He heard raspy breathing and looked up. Air was gushing in and out of Tram’s wide-open mouth in hungry gasps; his eyes opened and his color began to lighten.
Tram’s chest wasn’t sucking anymore. As Patsy leaned forward to check the wound, he felt something in his hand and looked. A bloody lead slug sat in his palm. He looked at the chest where he’d laid that hand and what he saw made the walls of his stomach ripple and compress as if looking for something to throw up.
Tram’s wound wasn’t there anymore! Only a purplish blotch remained.
Tram raised his head and looked down at where the bullet had torn into him.
“The Dat-tay-vao! You have it now! Trinh passed it on to you! You have the Dat-tay-vao!”
I do? he thought, staring at the bullet rolling in his palm. Holy shit, I do!
He wouldn’t have to get some gook back to the States to make his mint—all he had to do was get himself home in one piece.
Which made it all the more important to get the hell out of this village. Now.
“Let’s go!”
“Fatman, you can’t go. Not now. You must help. They—”
Patsy threw himself flat as something exploded in the jungle a hundred yards behind them, hurling a brown and green geyser of dirt and underbrush high into the air.
Mortar!
Another explosion followed close on the heels of the first, but this one was down by the waterline south of the village.
Tram was pointing out to sea.
“Look! They firing from boat.” He laughed. “Can’t aim mortar from boat!”
Patsy stayed hunkered down with his arms wrapped tight around his head, quaking with terror as the ground jittered with each of the next three explosions. Then they stopped.
“See?” Tram said, sitting boldly in the clearing and looking out to sea. “Even they know it foolish! They leaving. They only use for terror. Cong very good at terror.”
No argument there, Patsy thought as he climbed once more to his feet.
“Get me out of here now, Tram. You owe me!”
Tram’s eyes caught Patsy’s and pinned him to the spot like an insect on a board. “Look at them, Fatman.”
Patsy tore his gaze away and looked at the ville. He saw the villagers—the maimed and bleeding ones and their friends and families—looking back at him. Waiting. They said nothing, but their eyes…
He ripped his gaze loose. “Those Cong’ll be back!”
“They need you, Fatman,” Tram said. “You are only one who can help them now.”
Patsy looked again, unwillingly. Their eyes… calling him. He could almost feel their hurt, their need.
“No way!”
He turned and began walking toward the brush. He’d find his own way back if Tram wouldn’t lead him. Better than waiting around here to get caught and tortured by Charlie. It might take him all day, but—
“Fatman!” Tram shouted. “For once in your life!”
That stung. Patsy turned and looked at the villagers once more, feeling their need like a taut rope around his chest, pulling him toward them. He ground his teeth. It was idiotic to stay, but…
One more. Just one, to see if I still have it.
He could spare a couple of minutes for that, then be on his way. At least that way he’d be sure what had happened with Tram wasn’t some sort of crazy freak accident.
Just one.
As he stepped toward the villagers, he heard their voices begin to murmur excitedly. He didn’t know what they were saying but felt their grateful welcome like a warm current through the draw of their need.
He stopped at the nearest wounded villager, a woman holding a bloody, unconscious child in her arms. His stomach lurched as he saw the wound—a slug had nearly torn the kid’s arm off at the shoulder. Blood oozed steadily between the fingers of the hand the woman kept clenched over the wound. Swallowing the revulsion that welled up in him, he slipped his hands under the mother’s to touch the wound—
—and his knees almost buckled with the ecstasy that shot through him.
The child whimpered and opened his eyes. The mother removed her hand from the wound.
Make that former wound. It was gone, just like Tram’s.
She cried out with joy and fell to her knees beside Patsy, clutching his leg as she wept.
Patsy swayed. He had it! No doubt about it—he had the goddamn Dat-tay-vao! And it felt so good! Not just the pleasure it caused, but how that little gook kid was looking up at him now with his bottomless black eyes and flashing him a shy smile. He felt high, like he’d been smoking some of his best merchandise.
One more. Just one more.
He disengaged his leg from the mother and moved over to where an old woman writhed in agony on the ground, clutching her abdomen.
Belly wound…I know the feeling, mama-san.
He knelt and wormed his hand under hers. That burst of pleasure surged again as she stiffened and two slugs popped into his hand. Her breathing eased and she looked up at him with gratitude beaming from her eyes.
Another!
On it went. Patsy could have stopped at any time, but found he didn’t want to. The villagers seemed to have no doubt that he would stay and heal them all. They knew he could do it and expected him to do it. It was so new, such a unique feeling, he didn’t want it to end. Ever. He felt a sense of belonging he’d never known before. He felt protective of the villagers. But it went beyond them, beyond this little ville, seemed to take in the whole world.
Finally, it was over.
Patsy stood in the clearing before the huts, looking for another wounded body. He checked his watch—he’d been at it only thirty minutes and there were no more villagers left to heal. They all clustered around him at a respectful distance, watching silently. He gave himself up to the euphoria enveloping him, blending with the sound of the waves, the wind in the trees, the cries of the gulls. He hadn’t realized what a beautiful place this was. If only—
A new sound intruded—the drone of a boat engine. Patsy looked out at the water and saw the Cong gunboat returning. Fear knifed through the pleasurable haze as the villagers scattered for the trees. Were the Cong going to land?
No. Patsy saw a couple of the crew crouched on the deck, heard the familiar choonk! of a mortar shell shooting out of its tube. An explosion quickly followed somewhere back in the jungle. Tram had been right. No way they could get any accuracy with a mortar on the rocking deck of a gunboat. Just terror tactics.
Damn those bastards! Why’d they have to come back and wreck his mood. Just when he’d been feeling good for the first time since leaving home. Matter of fact, he’d been feeling better than he could ever remember, home or anywhere else. For once, everything seemed right.
For once, something was going Patsy’s way, and the Cong had to ruin it.
Two more wild mortar shots, then he heard gunfire start from the south and saw three new gunboats roaring up toward the first. But these were flying the old red, white, and blue. Patsy laughed and raised his fist.
“Get ’em!”
The Cong let one more shell go choonk! before pouring on the gas and slewing away.
Safe!
Then he heard a whine from above and the world exploded under him.
9
…a voice from far away…Tram’s…
“…chopper coming, Fatman…get you away soon… hear it?… almost here…”
Patsy opened his eyes and saw the sky, then saw Tram’s face poke into view. He looked sick.
“Fatman!’ You hear me?”
“How bad?” Patsy asked.
“You be okay.”
Patsy turned his head and saw a ring of weeping villagers who were looking everywhere and anywhere but at him. He realized he couldn’t feel anything below his neck. He tried to lift his head for a look at himself but didn’t have the strength.
“I wanna see.”
“You rest,” Tram said.
“Get my head up, dammit!”
With obvious reluctance, Tram gently lifted his head. As Patsy looked down at what was left of him, he heard a high, keening wail. His vision swam, mercifully blotting out sight of the bloody ruin that had once been the lower half of his body. He realized that the wail was his own voice.
Tram lowered his head and the wail stopped.
I shouldn’t even be alive!
Then he knew. He was waiting for someone. Not just anyone would do. A certain someone.
A hazy peace came. He drifted into it and stayed there until the chopping thrum of a slick brought him out; then he heard an American voice.
“I thought you said he was alive!”
Tram’s voice: “He is.”
Patsy opened his eyes and saw the shocked face of an American soldier.
“Who are you?” Patsy asked.
“Walt Erskine. Medic. I’m gonna—”
“You’re the one,” Patsy said. Somehow, he bent his arm at the elbow and lifted his hand. “Shake.”
The medic looked confused. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
He grabbed Patsy’s hand and Patsy felt the searing electric charge.
Erskine jerked back and fell on his ass, clutching his hand. “What the hell?”
The peace closed in on Patsy again. He’d held on as long as he could. Now he could embrace it. One final thought arced through his mind like a lone meteorite in a starless sky. The Dat-tay-vao was going to America after all.