Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

The veteran said, “May I ask where you’re from?”

I understood what he meant, but I chose not to show it all at once. “New Orleans,” I said. Perhaps not to betray my little game with the veteran, I did not look at him directly when I answered. I glanced across all the other faces and the young woman from Northern Louisiana could not hide a little jolt of distaste over this. Even that pleased me somehow. These were human beings and they had to have their own narrowness, their own prejudices. This woman showed it to me not because I was an Asian claiming game-show equality with her but because I was from New Orleans.

“I mean originally,” the veteran said, and he added, “You don’t mind me asking?”

I was turning back to the man and ready to smile at him and say I didn’t mind at all and let him wait a few more moments before I confirmed his hunch, but before I could say a word, I was surprised to hear Vinh’s voice, not hostile or angry but still very firm, say, “We are from the Republic of Vietnam originally. Now we are American citizens and so are our children and so will be our children’s children.”

For him to take over and answer the question would not surprise me. But the elaboration of it, talking about our children and our children’s children (though in Vietnamese culture the unborn and even the unconceived children are already thought to be part of the family), this is what surprised me. He was looking directly at the veteran and the veteran was looking directly at him, and maybe Vinh thought he was drawing a line, like the man does, the male animals do, here’s the line of my territory — look at it and don’t get too close. But maybe not. Because when the veteran suddenly smiled broadly and jumped up and strode the few steps over to us and bent and insisted on a handshake from my husband, Vinh gave his hand without hesitation and he was very intently looking into the face of this American, as if he was a man who needed a thousand baked chicken dinners and hadn’t decided who to buy them from.

The veteran said, “I’m Frank Davies and this is my wife, Eileen.” He checked back over his shoulder and his wife was looking a little confused, not knowing whether to continue to talk with the other Americans or to come over to us, as her husband was motioning for her to do. Then the pinch of confusion was gone and the face I saw at the pool returned, the placid face exactly in between exasperation and affection. “Come on, honey,” Frank Davies said, and the couple at the bar turned to get the bartender’s attention and the woman from Minnesota said something to her husband and Eileen Davies rose and came over and shook our hands and she and her husband sat down with us.

I saw no discomfort on Vinh’s face at all of this. I could tell if he was really wishing to make a quick escape, and he wasn’t. This interested me greatly. He turned slightly toward these two people but not all the way. He was still angled more toward the balcony and the bougainvillea and the sea than he was toward the veteran and his wife, but he clearly accepted their being with us. He did not look away from them, and there was not a single little glance to me as if to say, Look what you’ve led me into now. He was apparently content.

Frank Davies said, “I was in Vietnam, as you can see,” and he thumped himself on his chest. Vinh and I both dutifully read his T-shirt once more.

Eileen’s hand came out now and fell lightly on her husband’s as it returned from his chest and landed on the arm of the chair. The gesture seemed to be a reminder not to say certain things that he had said many times before. When he felt her hand, Frank looked at his wife and he began, “My wife. .” But he paused, again measuring his words. I expected him to tell us that his wife didn’t like him talking too much about all of that, but apparently even this was something he’d agreed not to say, for he finished the sentence: “. . she’s the winner in the family.”

This was a reference to her game-show victory, but when Frank heard himself say this, you could see his face flinch as he unexpectedly interpreted his own words in another way. He could not resist: “I wish I’d been part of a winner for you folks.”

Eileen smiled faintly and I looked at Vinh and he thought for a moment and then he squared around in his chair, leaving the sea. “What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Coca-Cola,” Frank proclaimed. “I’ve given up the hard stuff.”

“And you?” Vinh smiled over to Eileen, and she looked at me before she answered. Her eyes searched my face for a moment and it seemed like she was trying to see if it was okay with me for her to answer him, if there was some sort of hidden protocol from our culture that she needed to observe in requesting a drink from my husband.

I felt so sure that this was what was going on that I was about to remind her that we were from New Orleans, but before I could speak, she looked back to Vinh and said, “White wine.”

Vinh called over the waiter and ordered the drinks and Frank caught the waiter by the sleeve before he went to get them and said, “Coca-Cola from a bottle. Not a can, por favor.”

The waiter nodded at him as if he understood this request and Vinh said, “You’ve given up cans, too?” When Vinh was in his sharpest business mood, he could probe people like this, and it was not always with a friendly intent. But Frank laughed loud and he said that he sure as hell was. Vinh smiled and nodded, and this may be surprising, but I was having trouble now reading his mood. I make so many presumptions about people from the things I observe, and I’m usually right. But I’ve been around Vinh long enough to observe when he has made his feelings invisible to me, and this was one of those times.

So the drinks came and we talked, Vinh and me and this proud-to-be Vietnam veteran and his wife, Eileen. We asked where Frank had served and it turned out that he’d been a helicopter mechanic in Qui Nhon. He told us a story about how he’d had trouble with a “butter bar” because Frank was going up on his own time as a door gunner and he was supposed to be just a mechanic. When I got a chance, I asked what a butter bar was and he said a second looey and that was not much help. It had to be some kind of Army man, perhaps a rank. But as his words flowed on, I was sitting there thinking about Frank Davies going into the place where the Army men eat their meals and there was an incident at one of the tables, Frank was arguing with a bar of butter and they came to blows and Frank squeezed the bar and it was oozing through his fingers and all the men were sighing like a game-show audience, but Frank was in big trouble.

Then Eileen was at my elbow. She’d moved her chair closer to mine and she leaned near and she said in a low voice, “The men do go on about the war, don’t they?”

This snapped me out of my little fantasy and I looked over to Frank and he had turned his attentions strictly on my husband, and Vinh was listening to him, leaning slightly forward and listening as if with great interest. He spoke to Frank and I didn’t catch the words, but Frank nodded vigorously and said more and I turned to Eileen and replied, “My husband doesn’t often talk about all of that.”

“Was he a soldier?” Eileen asked.

“Yes,” I said, “a very good one. He was a major in the airborne. But later, about a year before the end of the war, he was reassigned to Saigon City Hall, where he worked in a special program to develop business in the city. They were trying until the very end to make the economy work, to make people want to defend their way of life. Everyone respected my husband.”

Eileen looked over to her husband and pursed her lips. “Frank was a good soldier, too. He wanted to do so much. He really felt like he was responsible for everyone.”