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

They were gesturing. I leaned forward. Frank pointed at Vinh and then off to the trees. He touched his own chest and swept his arm toward the sea. Then Vinh pointed at the brick building and they nodded. I didn’t figure this out very quickly. It even puzzled me when they both stooped down and studied the path and separated, picking things up off the dirt and stuffing them into their pockets. This was very strange. Then Vinh stood up briefly with one of the things from the ground in his hand. He held it up and it looked like a stone, a rather large stone, and Frank came up behind him and looked, too, and shook his head no. He held something up and it must have been another stone, smaller. Vinh nodded and dropped the large stone and they both kept looking. But when Frank’s back was turned, I saw Vinh return and pick up the big one.

I was beginning to understand. They finally had enough stones in their pockets and they approached each other once more and spoke briefly and then they stood back to back, Vinh facing the trees and Frank facing the hillside and the sea. It was like in all the old movies where two men are going to fight a duel. I wondered for a moment if that’s what they were going to do, if they’d just go ten paces, turn, and throw rocks at each other.

But they had something else in mind. At some signal between them they began to walk away from each other, but they just kept walking. Frank went over the edge of the hill and disappeared. Vinh kept going until he splashed through a narrow stream and came up to the edge of the woods. I understood now that this was some kind of little war game. They were going to stalk each other or something. Maybe try to capture and control the brick building. When this hit me, I suddenly grew aware of Vinh’s red shirt, how it would stand out among the trees. But, as it sometimes happens between husbands and wives, Vinh seemed to have the thought just as I did. Or maybe I sent it to him. I don’t know. But he stopped at the trees and looked back, looked briefly for Frank, and when the man was not in sight, Vinh took off his red shirt and rolled it up and put it under his arm.

My husband’s chest and arms are quite strong, really, and I tilted my head at seeing them suddenly like this, across a field, against those trees, the breeze coming off the bay, and I felt a little wiggle of something in me, a snaky little romantic feeling that started in my chest and then, as Vinh moved into the woods and the dark skin of his broad back faded into the shadows, the feeling slithered out of my chest and down inside me real fast and I looked out to the sea and closed my eyes.

Here I was in this little pose and if someone was watching me who knew what to look for in people, she would wonder if I was thinking of Vinh as he once was, or maybe someone else altogether. The answer was that I was thinking of neither of these. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was aware only of myself; I stepped out of myself and saw me, and that was all that was in my mind. The romance was gone right away. I’m sometimes too observant for my own damn good. It should’ve been Vinh as he once was who I was thinking about. That would have been nice, that moment.

But instead I remembered Eileen sitting in this same way nearby, and I opened my eyes. The hillside and the brick building and the woods were deserted. I glanced over to Eileen and she was lying on her back, her forearm over her face. She seemed to be asleep.

I looked back down the hill and that feeling of being let down that I’d had earlier came back. The whole scene in front of me kind of blurred. Even all the things that my mind knew were beautiful seemed flat all of a sudden, like a postcard you’d buy in a hurry at the airport.

But I did wonder where the men were. So I looked harder. Frank had claimed the shore and the hillside, and I figured it would be easier to spot him at this point. The slope went down and then rolled over a crest and into another slope I couldn’t see, and beyond, there was the meadow with the naked foundation in the center. Farther on was another crest and another invisible slope, this one dropping down to the shore and the sea. I figured Frank was on one of the far slopes and I waited for a few moments and he was staying out of sight and so I peered into the woods where Vinh had gone.

It seemed like a pretty silly game to me. I wasn’t sure what they were doing. They weren’t exactly stalking each other, or they probably would’ve both gone into the woods. But maybe they were stalking. Frank had to defend his earlier actions out here in the open, going down the path and all. Maybe he was the force that had taken the beach — like those first Marines coming ashore in Ðà N ng or something. And Vinh was the other side — would he actually play the part of the Vietcong, who he hated? Perhaps. Perhaps if this American had given him no choice, he would play the Vietnamese no matter what the politics. I didn’t know. And I guess it’s important to realize that I didn’t know what Vinh would do in this situation. The man in the woods was hidden from me, too.

Then I saw Frank. His black shirt and shorts would have been good camouflage in the shade of the trees, but against the meadow he was very clearly visible. He was moving in that low glide of his and he crouched behind the stone foundation. He peeked up and looked in the direction of the brick building, which was maybe a hundred and fifty meters across the meadow and up a roll of the hill. I didn’t know what he was waiting for, if the point was to go take the building. Vinh was nowhere in sight, and I didn’t know what Vinh was waiting for either.

The truth be told, my husband was in the airborne, but I think he was mostly back at the base camp giving orders and organizing supplies and looking after paperwork. He is a businessman, always has been and I guess he always will be. And Frank said himself he was a helicopter mechanic. These men weren’t fighters, in spite of their nearness to a war.

I scanned the tree line and then I saw Vinh. He was sliding around a tree, and it struck me that I was watching this old movie. These men were crouching and hiding and sneaking around like all the old movie actors in all the old war and spy and detective movies ever made, all those wonderful old unreal movies. that made my hours after midnight so peaceful. Vinh was a heavy sleeper and I had good hearing and so I could watch these films in my bed. I would pull the sheet up to my nose and lie there on my Posturepedic mattress and I was in the United States of America in an era of peace and prosperity in spite of the deficits and I could hear the wind outside as a Louisiana summer storm blew in and I was safe and I was cozy and I was watching a whole world of men with steel pots or fedoras on their heads and they were in the middle of big trouble, but boy, could they sneak around and glide around, and they were never going to get hurt by anything, you knew that for sure.

Vinh slipped out of the woods and I realized that Frank didn’t see him because the brick building, was between the two of them. Vinh stood by the little stream and he looked up to the top of the second floor of the building and sighted from there down to his feet on the bank of the stream. Then he laid his rolled red shirt next to a rock and he crouched low and stepped over the flowing water.

I looked at Frank and he was moving. He was going around the far side of the foundation in his low crouch and he was heading, I guessed, for the building. Meanwhile, Vinh was edging his way around the near end, his neck craned hard to his left so he could catch early sight of Frank if he should suddenly appear. But Frank was circling wide now to approach from the other direction, and so the men were still unaware of each other.