The language of friendship is not words but meaning~ Henry David Thoreau
)*0*(
The muggy heat of the Vietnam jungle was pressingly oppressive that day. Flies and mosquitoes hummed and thundered; the heavy, humid air clinging to everyone’s bodies, enveloping them in a permanent muggy embrace.
James “Kodak” Koda is eighteen and has the memories of his Dad’s Normandy stories shooting rapid-fire in his head when his Huey touches down in ‘Nam. He doesn’t expect to live when the men hop out. But his feet touch the ground and he’s still alive. The trees sway, the breeze is calm, and he’s alive.
It’s a different kind of war.
He breathes out, fingers the chain around his neck that holds his mother’s Saint Michael’s medallion and both his folks’ gold wedding bands. And because he’s Koda, he dared to think that maybe this won’t be so bad, as his platoon headed out for the transport to take them further into the jungle.
)*0*(
The insignificant little village beneath the fiery dawn of the sky was called Phuong, for the phoenix born of its own ashes. It was no different than a dozen others, where children and dogs alike ran with fervor through the alleys, grannies and old aunts carefully minding them, while the parents and older siblings were in the rice paddies, struggling to feed mouths that always cried for more.
The presence of the ‘Merican G.I.s didn’t really do much to change the village’s day to day life; odd as that might sound. But it really didn’t, not at first.
But they didn’t know that those first few days.
All the grown-ups had been really, reeeeally jumpy when the funny green turtles that rumbled like tigers rolled up to their little home on the river. Jumpy but not surprised. The war had been headed their way for some time, now. That was what Minh Hein’s Daddy and Uncles and their friends always said, muttered around their pipes, into the charcoal cooking pits of their bamboo shacks.
Minh’s Má (her belly round with Minh’s all-important Little Brother) had been driven into a flurry with her husband’s second wife and Minh’s Aunties, all of them running around like headless chickens. They took all three of Minh’s older girl cousins, her half-sisters from Daddy’s second wife, who married Má’s sister when Má had trouble making babies: something that most Vietnamese women would have accepted but made Má unhappy, since she believed in the three Christian Gods.
Anyway, Má, her sister, and the Aunties sat the three older girls down on the dirt floor, slicing off their long hair and making them dress in their brothers’ spare clothes, paying no heed to any protests.
“You’re making us ugly!” half-sister Lanh wailed.
“You better hope you’re ugly!” Minh’s Auntie retorted, slapping her. Lanh fell silent. Lanh’s mother was the meanest of the two sisters that married Daddy.
At eight years old and as the youngest girl, Minh was forgotten in all this. Which was nothing unusual. It was even something she was thankful for, as she clutched her pretty pigtails protectively. But she was reduced to a shadow against the wall, as long strands of inky hair fell like teardrops. Still, she felt awful bad for her poor sister-cousins, who now looked like boys. They were crying, their faces a mess, so Minh thought that some water could clean them up, make them feel better.
So, she took a bucket and trotted off to the riverbed. The water was peaceful, almost pearly in the morning light. For once there were no bloated bodies floating from further upstream, where occasional bangs were heard amidst the jungle. It was a good day.
Despite her good intentions, the bright light and excitement in the air soon made her forget what she was doing. Minh took her time, skipping over rocks and stopping to draw pretty flowers in the dirt when she felt like it. By the time Minh remembered why she wanted to go to the river, a group of G.I.s had already claimed the bank; wearing funny green clothes and turtle shells on their heads that didn’t seem to keep the sun off their faces. They were sitting down on the fallen tree, smoking.
Minh shuffled in the too-big red shirt that served as her dress, uncertain. She poked her toe into the mud, debating. She liked to think of herself as a brave girl…after all, she was the only girl in the village brave enough to ride the biggest water buffalo during plowing season in the rice paddies. She thought it might make Daddy or her Uncles or somebody other than Má notice her for once.
Just a little.
(Didn’t work.)
But these G.I.s hardly seemed like people at all. Two were the color of burnt bread, the only white being their eyes.
The others were white as clouds, and their eyes were horrifying. Green eyes, blue eyes. Not one had dark eyes like a real person. Minh had always thought Daddy and her Uncles and the angry voices from the Talking Box were teasing when they called the ‘Merican’s devils.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
But Minh squared her shoulders. Well, devils or not, it was still her river. And she wanted that water. As it turned out, she didn’t have to worry. Minh was as invisible to the G.I.s as she was to her family.
Carefully, silently, she tipped-toed down and filled her bucket, sneaking peeks when a new G.I. came looping down to join his friends.
The other G.I.s lightened up to see the newcomer, as he squatted on the ground and rolled his neck, taking off his turtle-shell hat.
Minh’s eyes bulged in horror as gleaming yellow lit up in the sun.
)*0*(
“On fire!” a tiny voice squeaked in broken English. “On fire!”
High and frightened, and followed by babbling Vietnamese. It was the only thing Koda heard before a bucket of water was dumped on his head, as he sat down by the river near the village they were stationed at, his lighter flame unceremoniously put out by the baptism he received. When he shook the water from his eyes, there was the tiniest Vietnamese girl before him. With little midnight black pigtails, holding her now empty water pail. She was watching the light gleam off his hair with awe.
…It took a moment for him to understand what the hell just happened. Though when he does, he’s as powerless as his buddies to keep from hollering with laughter. The kind that made your gut hurt. Been a while since that happened.
“And the brass told us we was headed for hostile territory!” John Cursty whooped, while the equally dark skin Homer Morningbird wheezed beside him.
“No honey, I’m not on fire,” Koda managed to say when he was finally able to catch his breath. Grinning, he knelt and dipped his head towards the little girl invitingly. “See for yourself.”
He watched her bare, dirty feet tread ever so slightly closer. And felt her hand card through his wheat gold-tresses, giving a very gentle tug.
“Ohhh,” she understood as she stepped back, cocking her head with the absolute fascination of seeing something for the first time. Seconds later she’s patting it, stroking it with tiny giggles escaping her red button mouth. With her little red dress, it reminds him of Minnie Mouse cartoons.
“Well, looks like you found ya-self a little girlfriend Gealóg,” the platoon’s leader, Lone Wolf, acknowledged calmly as he came over to see what the fuss was about.
“Seems I have, sir,” Koda agreed, grinning as he stood up, ruffling the kid’s silky black hair while she snatched his helmet; curiously placing it on her own head, and struggling to peek out from under it. “And in case anyone wants to go skinny dippin’, the water feels real nice.”
That set Cursty and Morningbird off again like a pair of chipmunks, but Lone Wolf only clucked his tongue, eyes suddenly serious. “She should be gettin’ back to where she belongs, though. Locals are jumpy, Gealóg. Last thing we need is for one of their kids to go missin’ around us.”
That brought down the mood just a bit. Koda nodded, his own good mood evaporating.
“Yes sir,” he said. “I’ll take ‘er ‘ome.”
“See that you do.”
After refilling Minnie Mouse’s pail of water, Koda took the bucket in one hand, and rested his other on the kid’s helmet-covered head, letting her lead the way back up the bank, and down the dirt road leading back to her village.
And ‘sides from the fact that everybody kinda looked alike (Koda sometimes wonder how the hell these folks could even tell each other apart) there was something about this slap-together place that reminded him of small-town Nebraska. Moreover, of home. Not in anything physically…but defiantly in spirit. The spirit of knowing this wasn’t much, but it was theirs.
Then his conscious prickled and he glared at the bamboo shacks that didn’t look capable of keeping out the heat or the rain. Still, there was no denying that since he’d come to Vietnam, Koda had seen poverty as he’d never known it existed. That maybe didn’t exist in the States.
“Home, home,” Minnie Mouse chimed happily when they came to one shack no different from the others. Though the heavily pregnant woman that nearly fainted in the doorway when she saw them kinda made it stand out.
“Minh Hein!” the woman croaked, hand to her heart as Koda steadied her, before quickly stepping back.
“Má! Đây là bạn của tôi Tóc Rồng! Anh ấy đẹp!” Minnie Mouse chirped happily. And also introducing him, if Koda wasn’t mistaken, from the way she took off his helmet and gave it back to him.
“Ma’am,” he greeted, giving the smile that always smoothed things over back home -and this was a lot more important than merely getting out of detention or a speed ticket. Being able to work together -or at least not suspect each other- might be the thing that kept ’em alive. That let him get home in one piece to Paddy and Andy, his two brothers. Unconsciously, his thumb dug underneath his shirt, tugging the chain that held his medallion, the silver flashing in the morning light.
The sight of it seemed to bring the mother back to herself, and she stared at the metal before meeting his gaze.
“… Kính mừng Maria? Giêsu?” she questioned, one hand tugging her daughter to her side, the other reaching under her own blouse, tugging a tiny wooden cross on a string out for Koda to see.
Well, he’d be damned.
)*0*(
Minh was nearly crowing with delight when Dragon Hair joined them for breakfast with his friend the “Lone. Wolf?” And for once, Minh was served her share of food right after her two brothers (being the youngest girl, Minh normally ate last.) Her good luck was due to the fact that her older half-sisters were too ashamed to sit near the young golden G.I. with their hair cut so badly.
They didn’t even seem to like the water Minh went through so much trouble to get for them. So rude.
Well, sucks for them, Minh thought, happily munching on her daily bread. Watching as Daddy and her Uncles and important men from the village talked mainly to Lone Wolf, asking the serious boring questions only grown-ups could like. Dragon Hair, Koda, kept mostly out of it as well and seemed to like it that way; his dark eyes (properly dark, like a real person’s) instead taking in her home. The patched straw on the thatch roof, the woven mats pushed aside that they slept on. The metal bowls that were Má’s pride and joy. The only metal bowls in the village.
Minh tugged Koda’s sleeve when all the grown-up were distracted. He smiled down at her, far nicer and a lot warmer than either Daddy or her Uncles did. If they looked at her at all, the youngest girl in the family. At best, Minh got glances from them. Or glares. But this? Minh could feel it all the way to her toes.
She wondered if he’d ever let her sit in his lap, the way she’d seen other kids sit with their grown-ups. The way only Má let her do (and not since she got Little Brother in her belly).
“What’s up, Minnie Mouse?” he asked her easily, arm across his knee, golden eyebrow cocked. Minh thought carefully about the ‘Merica words she knew. And she knew a few, because she always listened carefully when the grown-ups forgot about her.
She deliberated before she found the ones she needed.
“Your home…nice?” she asked, please with how the words came out. Even though she had to repeat them twice before Koda understood it.
“Oh, my home? Here honey-” he said, fishing through his pocket before pulling out a folded picture. Touching the paper with more gentleness than Lanh’s mother touched any of her daughters, Koda smoothed it out, then showed Minnie a picture of five people, on the porch of their house. She recognized Koda with his dragon hair, his arm around a younger boy and an older one. Behind them were two people who Minh took to be Koda’s Má and his Daddy. And with three sons no wonder Koda’s daddy hadn’t gotten another wife as hers did. But what made Minh gasp was the house itself, thrilled with the image of their rocking chair, the shiny stuff in the windows, the size of it!
Three of her house would fit in that thing!
“You very, very rich,” she said and nodded admiringly.
Minh doesn’t get why her friend with the dragon hair suddenly got quiet, something he’d rarely been in the short time since she met him, and she missed how his gaze flickered around the bamboo shack, the ditch in the dirt floor that serves as their stove, the slits in the walls that let in the sun (and the rain).
His hand gently patted her hair.
“Guess we were,” he admitted.