Another Man's Moccasins

I put my own hands up to show I didn’t mean any harm, even if I had been capable, and stood there looking into that one eye. “It’s okay. It’s okay... I’m not going anywhere.”

He stood there for a moment and then slowly lowered himself back to a sitting position on the bunk. He was breathing heavily from the exertion of trying to tear the jail down, and I stood there listening to the wheezing of his breath from behind the bandages at his throat.

After a moment, Dog stopped barking, and I noticed that he and Ruby were peering around the doorway. Some backup. I pulled the palm of my hand across my face and looked at her, still a little breathless myself. “You couldn’t have just told me?”

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1968

He shook his head. “No, it is classified.”

Babysan Quang Sang had never seen a hamburger before and poked with a finger to lift the bun as if it were booby-trapped; it was water boo, or water buffalo, and the local viande du jour. He turned and looked at Henry, who picked up his own hamburger and took a bite. A few seconds later the Montagnard picked up his own sandwich and took a bite, chewing quietly and watching Henry for more pointers. “Il ne gout pas comme le jambon.”

Henry laughed. “He says that it does not taste like ham.”

We watched Babysan try to figure out the fries, and I studied the tall Indian who would have been more at home scalping white men on a sunny afternoon along the Little Big Horn River. “I’m going to say something I never thought I would.”

He picked a fry up from Babysan’s plate, dipped it in the ketchup, and stuck it in his mouth as an object lesson. He turned back and leaned in close. “What?”

Babysan ate part of a fry and then dropped the remainder back on his plate. It was possible that the Vietnamese had had enough of all things French. “I envy you.” The exhale of his laugh was as if I’d punched him, and he sat there only inches away with a look a shade past indescribable. “I envy the clarity of what you’re doing.”

He laughed again and thought about it. The pause was so long you could’ve said the pledge of allegiance in it, but for the Northern Cheyenne, it was nothing. “What, exactly, are you doing here?”

I took a long pause of my own. “Not a lot. I got sent up from BHQ to investigate a drug overdose, but nobody’s talking.” I looked into a set of eyes that saw the world the way it really was and felt the shame of my duty. I thought about what I was doing and whether it was making any difference. “This place is such a mess....”

Henry took another fry from Babysan. “That may be the understatement of the century.”

My next words were out before the thought was fully formed. “Take me with you to Khe Sanh.”

He looked back at me and laughed, but he realized that I was serious and so became very serious in turn. “Are you insane? Everybody, including every Marine in Vietnam, the general staff, and LBJ are trying to get out of there, and you want to go in?”

“Yep.”

He looked around as if the guys in the white jackets with butterfly nets might be hovering nearby. He was silent and then lowered his head as if I hadn’t said what I’d said, his eyes just visible below his boonie hat. “Walt, you can get killed up there.”

“Better there than dying of boredom here.”

"Walter...”

“Look, I’ve got a three-day at China Beach, and that is not where I intend to be.”

I read the report with my hand on my chin.

She had been unconscious within seconds, although her heart had probably continued to beat for another fifteen to twenty minutes. As was assumed, the manual strangulation applied by the forearm indicated an assailant much stronger than the victim.

There were small linear abrasions on the neck, but these had been caused by the decedent’s fingernails as she had attempted to dislodge the arm around her throat. The flesh under her nails had been tested and, as I’d surmised, it had turned out to be her own.

Fracture of the hyoid bone and other cartilage was evident, as was hemorrhaging of the thyroid gland in front of the larynx. I read the thing again, from the beginning, and looked up at the man lying in the cell.

It didn’t make sense. Why would a man this size, and with this much strength, use his forearm in a chokehold strangulation when he could’ve practically snapped the tiny woman’s neck with a thumb and forefinger?

The giant had finished the last potpie hours earlier, had carefully replaced the unused spork, and put the empty plastic tray in the others, slipping it forward, halfway through the bars. He was dead asleep now, and his whispery snores provided a steady beat to the conversation Sancho and I were having.