Another Man's Moccasins

She watched me over the newspaper as I sipped the coffee she’d left for me on the corner of the piano. “Battalion command has issy-ued a dire-connected...”

“Issued a directive.”

She looked hurt. “That what I say.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She was reading again. “Con-cern-a-ring the use of C-4 plascatic espelosove...”

“Plastic explosive.”

She nodded and studied the paper as if it had tried to trick her. “Plastic explosive.”

She was an excellent mimic and a pretty good student. “Mai, please?”

“Resydoo may result in C-4 poisonee, an’ fumes from encoseded quarter...”

“Enclosed quarters.”

“Enclosed quarters, that what I say.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She ignored me and continued. “Can be etremelousely dangerous. Wepeaon Speshulist Mack Brown report that atatempie to stamp-out C-4 can produss explosion....” She turned to me, looked over the rim of her cup, and winked. “I get that one right, yes?”

“Close enough.”

She saw the uninterested look on my face and continued to study me. “You no like coffee, cowboy?”

“No, your coffee is fine.” I continued poking at Rachmaninoff with an extended forefinger. “You ever have a shitty job that you didn’t enjoy doing?” I glanced up at the tiny prostitute sitting there in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge. “Forget I asked that.”

Mai Kim’s story was not a unique one in the rural villages of Vietnam; when she was eleven, she had been sold. She was fifteen now, and the four years of use in the world’s oldest profession had aged her like the major who had greeted me upon my arrival. Maybe it was the place; youth could not be maintained without innocence.

She blinked and folded the paper in her lap. “You no like here?”

I swiveled on the beat-up piano bench and rested the coffee cup on my knee, finally giving her my undivided attention. I could hear in the distance, but approaching, a group of Kingbees tipping their motors and flying over for a morning patrol. I’d learned that the H-34s, with their thirty-two-cylinder radial engines that sat right under the cockpit, were slower than the UH-1s but treasured for the large chunk of metal between the pilots and whoever might be shooting up at them. “It’s not that.”

She folded her arms. “What it, then?”

“Then what is it.”

“Then what is it?”

I smiled at her Wyoming accent.

Baranski and Mendoza had become irritated with my hardheaded naiveté and had begun spending more time on other investigations, leaving me with hours to sit and contemplate what I wasn’t getting done. Just as the major had intimated, the locals had quickly made me, and simply being observed talking with me had become reason for suspicion. But the hookers still talked to me; at least Mai Kim did.

I looked into the face of what seemed like the only friend I had in the place and wondered how long she’d keep talking to me if I didn’t start holding up my end. “You know about the drugs.” She nodded her head with concentration. “There was a young man who died after visiting the air base.”

“Lot of men die after visiting air base.”

I looked up at her. “This one was different.”

Henry studied the sleeping Indian.

“Different than what I know.”

“Crow?” I leaned against the counter.

He took a deep breath. “Yes, but not River or Mountain Band. He is something else.”

I pointed toward the moccasins. “The bead pattern is one I’ve never seen; it’s geometric, but not the Crow that I know.”

He knelt by the bars and examined the medicine bag and moccasins, though I noticed he touched neither, and nodded. “Kicked-in-the-Belly.”

I waited a moment. “You mind telling a heathen devil white man what that is?”

He pivoted and sat on the floor with his back to the cell, which Dog took as an invitation and joined him. “Eelalapi’io, a shunned band, one of thirteen exogamous maternal clans; fourth clan, grouped with ackya’pkawi’a, or Bad War Honors. ” I watched as he thought about it, first categorizing the information and then translating it so that it would be relatable to me linguistically and culturally. “Seventeen-twenty-seven, or thereabouts, there was a Crow war party led by Young White Buffalo that raided the Fat River country and came back with a very strange animal. This animal was as large as the elk but with rounded hooves, a long tail, and mane; it had no antlers, and the tribe was very interested in this new thing. A brave got too close to the rear of the animal and touched it. The creature struck the man as quick as lightning, knocking him to the dirt, where he rolled and clutched his midriff.”

"A horse, hence, Kicked-in-the-Belly?” I plucked the olive-drab field jacket from the top of the bag, crossed the room, and sat in the chair with my arms folded over the backrest. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, unless he’s got a hiding place out there that my guys couldn’t find.”

"Nothing on him” Henry continued to pet Dog.