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

“Don’t you believe in free enterprise?” Vinh said, and I listened for the sound of combat in his voice again. But it wasn’t there, exactly. I knew he didn’t like all the swarm of vendors either, in spite of his being a businessman. He had too strong a sense of decorum.

Frank kept his face out to sea and he shrugged. “Sure I do. But sometimes it just gets so goddamn silly.”

Vinh laughed, and it was a deep, appreciative laugh. I couldn’t believe my good luck. All these two men had to do was sit down in the shade for a couple of moments and the first things out of their mouth let me find what I was looking for. “You’ve got it there, Frank,” Vinh said. And I understood that however foolish Frank could appear hanging on so hard to the Vietnam veteran part of himself, however embarrassing it might sometimes be for Eileen, he certainly hadn’t given in to the light and lively and less filling and soft as a cloud and reach out and touch someone culture that America had to offer. All the things that I had a sweet tooth for, my husband couldn’t stand, not this man who’d been through a war and survived, the man who’d made his way in a strange land. And here was another man as uncomfortable with all that as Vinh was. Sure, these two could be buddies for a week. I fancy myself an observant woman, and there it was at last for me to see, as I sat on a crumbling boat dock at the foot of the set of one of my favorite movies.

Well, that was a relief, I thought. I even turned to Eileen and said, “There’s got to be more to the place than this.”

“Of course. Through the trees you can see buildings up there on top of the hill.” Eileen turned her attention to her husband. “Honey, get us up to the top.”

“The stairs lead nowhere.”

Then I remembered the water runoff we’d passed. “I saw a place to go up,” I said.

Frank and Vinh slapped their knees in acceptance and we all got up and I walked point this time, leading everyone back along the seawall to the cut in the trees and that groove coming down. “We can go up here,” I said.

Vinh stepped in front of me and looked up the hill and said, “Okay. If you have to do this.”

“There’ll be no T-shirts at the top,” I said. “I bet I can promise that.”

Frank laughed and it looked like he was going to make a move past Vinh to lead the way, but Vinh started up the path too quickly, getting out in front, and Frank hustled to follow. I looked at Eileen and we both watched the men jockeying like this for position, and then she rolled her eyes at me. We both offered the other the opportunity to go next — I wasn’t all that eager to be near them, now that I thought I understood. But Eileen finally insisted the hardest, and I went up the rut before her, the hillside squeezing at my hamstrings. I climbed with my face down for a while and the water runoff widened, turned into something more like a path, and there were even a few flat stones along the way, like the cast and crew had used this same way up the hill.

I finally raised my eyes and the two men were about thirty meters ahead, moving pretty fast, Frank still behind. I stopped and watched them and I don’t know why I noticed it, but they were remarkably quiet. They were traipsing up among dead leaves and twigs and such and yet I didn’t hear them at all. There must have been something in the way they were moving that made me sensitive to this, because somehow I knew it was on their minds as well. They were a little hunched and alert and they moved without any wasted motion, not even bobbing up and down. Then they reached the top of the rise and stopped and Frank came even with Vinh. I followed the turn of their heads and off to their left I could see a small, one-story brick structure without a front wall. They cocked their heads and looked into the gaping concrete rooms.

I put my head down and strained at my tight legs and went on up, conscious now of how much noise I was making, crunching leaves and scraping on the flat stones. I’d always wondered what it was like when Vinh was with his company out patrolling or whatever they did in the jungles. I felt suddenly like I knew. When I got to the top of this rise, I was surprised to find the men gone. The path continued on ahead, through a little open meadow, and then began to climb again. I could see along it far enough to know the men hadn’t gone that way.

I flexed my legs to try to stretch out my muscles and I looked around. The two men were nowhere to be seen. The two side-byside concrete rooms gaped open to me and I glanced down the path and Eileen was struggling up, making a last effort, and then she was beside me. “Where are they?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Frank?” Eileen’s voice quavered into the still, hot air and there was no reply. There was just the sound of the distant surf, coming from over the hill ahead of us, and the buzz of some insect whisking past and then away.

I was curious about this little building. It was too basic to be anything used in the movie, and then as I approached, I noticed an inner wall of tiles and the stubs of old shower heads. This was in the left-hand room, and I stepped into the room to the right as Eileen called out Frank’s name again. The walls here were covered with graffiti, the profuse linking of names from floor to ceiling. Ramon and Maria, Ed and Mary, Sigmund and Katherine, on and on, a swarm of lovers touching letters, stuck by arrows, bound in by ragged marker-pen hearts. I saw a flash of color out of the comer of my eye. It was through the back window, beyond a row of low bushes. A red shirt slipping past in the trees, and I looked closer just in time to see the black shirt following.

“They’re out in the back,” I said to Eileen.

“Frank,” she called again.

“Yes, Eileen?”

“Where are you?”

“Here I am.” The voice was coming around a comer of the little building now and I looked again at all the names, running my eyes quickly around and around the wall packed with true love, and I wondered how many of these couples were still in love right this moment.

“Vinh and I were exploring out back.”

“You having fun, sweetie?” Eileen said, and there was no ridicule or irritation in her voice. It was like she was indulging an active child.

I stepped out of the lovers’ room and I thought it was a shame that the front wall was broken down and the place smelled of mildew and stone dust.

Frank did not answer Eileen’s little motherly question. Instead he turned to my husband and said, “You keep pretty good noise discipline there, Vinh.”

“Perhaps you drowned out my mistakes.”

“You weren’t hearing any sounds out of this troop either,” Frank said, and his voice rasped a bit from Vinh’s sharpness.

“Can’t we go on?” Eileen said, pretty sharp herself now. “This isn’t really part of the set.”

Both men looked to the path tracking up and over the hill and I could feel the tension between them. Frank turned first and moved off pretty fast, and I was surprised to see Vinh follow just as fast.

Eileen cried out, “Wait for us,” and this did slow Frank down and pull him into an upright position. He glanced over his shoulder and Vinh was coming up on him and it didn’t seem fair to me for him to pass Frank while he was just paying attention to his wife.

So I called, “Vinh,” and my husband slowed and even stopped and turned to wait for us. Frank stopped as well, just beyond him. Eileen and I looked at each other and I didn’t know exactly what was in her mind, but she was obviously noticing the same odd thing going on between the men that I was. She and I took our sweet time about getting ourselves together and strolling up the path and the men were waiting, so I let myself look around.