“I mean we’re not headed to New York City. They’re all the same, these villages. What does it matter?”
“I want to know.”
Mike spoke up. “Phu Phom Four,” he said calmly.
“Four?” A voice behind Mike spoke up, amused. “Where are one, two, and three?”
“Probably napalmed, burned to ashes, Newguy.” Fries didn’t bother turning around.
“Stop calling me that. My name is Newton.”
“Relax, Newguy.”
“Will you keep calling me that when the next guy joins the squad?”
“If he replaces you? Sure.”
Newguy quieted down, silenced by the suggestion of his own impending demise.
They walked. Mike thought of Red, who had sent them a postcard from Okinawa. It had been three weeks since he’d left and two weeks since Newton had joined the squad. The note had Red’s words, but was in the neat handwriting of one of his nurses. He was being shipped back to the World, where he would see a specialist about an artificial arm. Mike pictured a hook like a pirate’s and shuddered involuntarily.
“How much farther?” Boots again. Mike gritted his teeth in an effort not to snap back at his friend. The heat was making them all irritable.
“Not too far now, Boots.”
“Boots, man, you need to get your act together. You sound like a toddler.” Fries was adjusting the radio again. Mike thought of carrying an extra heavy load of radio equipment and felt a wave of sympathy. He wasn’t surprised Fries sounded on the verge of losing his temper.
“Stop giving me shit, Fries.”
“When you stop acting like a damned two-year-old, I’ll stop.”
“I’m not—”
“Shut up.” Miles’s voice was low and threatening, a bit like the sound of far-off mortar shelling.
“Sorry, Miles.”
“Just shut it, Boots. It’s too damn hot for this right now.”
. . .
They reached the village around high noon. Mike stared at the now-familiar scene: the squalid huts cobbled together from C-Ration tins or cardboard, the vacant-looking elders, the children covered in sores. He felt the rush of pity and revulsion that never failed to overtake him on these missions. The other guys seemed to have built up an immunity to the poverty and suffering, vaccinated against it by constant exposure, but for Mike, the sight of each village was always fresh.
“What now, College?” Boots turned and gave him an expectant look.
“We’re supposed to interrogate them about supply chains.”
“I’ll do it,” said Newguy with bravado. He marched over to a stooped, disheveled-looking man with gray hair. The man’s eyes were dull. He looked about eighty, but Mike knew from experience he was probably younger than his own parents.
“You,” said Newguy. He jammed the butt of his rifle against the man’s chest. “You VC? You give supplies to VC?”
The man stared at him. “Tôik hông hiểu,” he said calmly.
Newguy spoke louder. “Supplies? Food? Weapons?” He gestured to his own rifle. “To VC?”
“Tôik hông hiểu.”
“He’s saying he don’t understand, dude.” Miles raised his eyebrows at Newguy. “Yelling at him ain’t gonna make him speak English.”
Newguy turned red. “Right,” he muttered. He took a few steps back and scuffed his foot into the dust.
Miles sighed. “Homdan?” he asked the man, in a kinder voice. “VC?” Miles had a knack for picking up words and phrases in Vietnamese, a talent he didn’t particularly enjoy exploiting.
“No, no VC.” The man shook his head. “No homdan.”
“What’s he saying, Miles?”
“He saying he’s not VC, and they got no ammo here.”
“Bull.” Fries spat at the ground. He was covered in sweat. His arms shook as he shifted the radio pack again. “They’re all VC.”
They searched the huts. They turned over the meager belongings of the villagers while the people watched them passively from doorways. They said nothing, standing stoically as what little they had was tossed around in the manner of bears scavenging a dump. Mike looked around at the chaos, feeling hot with shame. He watched a woman rush for a worn-out pot once Miles had finished looking inside. She clutched it protectively against her chest. Mike’s stomach turned.
“There’s nothing here,” said Boots. He yawned. None of them had slept the previous two nights for more than an hour at a time.
“Bull,” said Fries again. He grasped an older man by a graying ponytail. “Where is it? Where’s the ammo?”
The man said nothing. He stared at Fries blankly.
“Say something! Something! What is wrong with you people? Do something!” Fries’s eyes were wild. He pulled harder at the ponytail. The man had no reaction, allowing himself to be pulled to the ground like a marionette.
“Forget it.” Mike put his hand on Fries’s arm. “Fries, come on.”
Fries met Mike’s eyes. They stared at one another. Slowly, Fries relaxed, the release of tension evident from the slump of his shoulders. He shook his head and waved his hands slightly, as if to push away the demons that had momentarily overtaken him.
“Sorry, College.” His voice was soft now.
Mike didn’t say anything. They stood quietly for a moment, looking at each other.
“GI?” A girl about twelve. She was at his side, barely taller than his waist. She put out her hand, hopefully. “Food, GI?” He looked down at the top of her head, which he noted was covered in sores.
Mike ruffled through his pockets. He usually carried a bar of chocolate, but he hadn’t remembered to pack one today. Then, he felt a little wooden foot. He looked again at the girl, her eyes alive with hope.
“Here,” he said, before he could change his mind. He thrust the soldier doll at the girl, who took it, surprised.
The girl looked at the doll, then back at Mike. She nodded. “Thank you, GI,” she said softly. She brought the doll to her chest in a quick embrace, like a small child.
The others watched but said nothing. The girl, still cradling the doll, slipped away, invisible.
“Let’s move out.” Mike’s voice was short. No one questioned him. They gathered their things in silence and made once again for the darkness of the jungle.
Chapter 10
Toronto, Canada
2007
“Liz?” Elizabeth can hear her mother calling and groans. She’s cross-legged on her bed, absorbed in a novel she found at Evan’s shop. She knows her mom’s been unpacking the basement all day and has been strenuously avoiding having to partake at all. She pretends she doesn’t hear; she’s wearing her iPod, after all. At the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs, she turns up the music to assuage her guilt: If she really can’t hear her, it’s not technically ignoring, is it? She turns away from the door, pretending again not to hear the knock. Humming to herself, she turns a page.
“Liz!” Her mother approaches from behind, waving her hand in front of her daughter’s face. “Hello!”
Elizabeth sighs, resigned. She pulls out her earphones and raises her eyebrows at her mother, questioning. “What is it?” She motions toward the book. “I’m trying to read here, Mom. Educating myself.”
Her mom looks at the cover. “The Haunted Diner? Is that what passes for education these days?”
“It has a lot of big words.”
“I’m sure.”
“And an important message.”
“Right. Don’t order your eggs with a side of poltergeist.”
“We can’t all be literary snobs like you, Mom. How’s that one you’re reading—Violent Vaccines?”
“Venomous Vaccines, actually.”
“Hemingway, right?”
&nbs
p; “You know what? I’m going to leave, and I’m going to take this letter with me.” She waves an envelope enticingly in front of Elizabeth’s face.
Elizabeth looks confused. “What—oh!” Her face lights up in comprehension. She eyes the envelope. “Is that—?”
“Yup.” Enthused, her mother cuts her off. “Look at the back!” She tosses the envelope on the bed. Elizabeth picks it up and feels a wave of excitement: it has a London return address.
“I was starting to think she’d never write back,” says Elizabeth, turning it over in her hands. She had written Ms. Merriweather over a month ago. She’d described how she had found the doll, then taken it to the University to try to verify that it was the real thing. She had written the letter very carefully so that it sounded grown-up, with proper grammar. Her parents had both proofread it for her. Then she had mailed it to the publisher’s address she’d found online with Evan. Her dad had even paid for it to go express. Then they waited. And waited. And waited.
“Why couldn’t she just have an e-mail address, like any normal person?” Elizabeth had grumbled over dinner, frustrated, after two weeks had gone by without any reply. She wasn’t used to sending letters in the mail. It just took so long.
He dad had chuckled and explained to her that Ms. Merriweather, who was very old, may not even have a computer. Elizabeth didn’t believe him. “Granny has a computer,” she pointed out. “She e-mails all the time. Everyone has an e-mail address.” Her parents had looked at each other and laughed.
Elizabeth had felt annoyed. “Stop laughing at me!”
“We just feel old. We remember when there was no e-mail. Or texting.”
“Or iPods.”
“Or even CDs.”
“Microwaves!”
“Microwaves?” Elizabeth looked aghast. “How old are you two anyway?”
“Old enough to remember life before e-mail.”
“Well,” said Elizabeth fairly, “I guess not everyone has e-mail. There’s that tribe in the Amazon that has no contact with the outside world. Probably they don’t have it.”
“Probably not even microwaves,” added her mother dryly.
“Where do they heat up their takeout?” Elizabeth smirked at her parents.
Her mom suggested that while Ms. Merriweather might indeed have a computer, she could be a very private person and not want her e-mail address publicly available. Elizabeth knew her mother was probably right—she and Evan had come to that conclusion too—but still felt that the whole process was being unnecessarily slowed down by having to rely on sending the letter the old-fashioned way.
But now the wait is over. Elizabeth stares at the envelope. “I’m going to open it,” she declares.
“Not so fast.” Her mother snatches it back. “We should wait for Dad. He’ll be home any minute. It wouldn’t be fair to open it without him: you know how excited he is about all of this.” She tucks the letter in her belt. “Think about how you’d feel if we opened the letter before you got home.”
Elizabeth sighs. She wonders how her father would feel if she went to Afghanistan for a year. She doesn’t say that, though. “Fine,” she replies instead. “You’re right. It would be uncomfortable for everyone to watch him cry.” She picks up her book, but eyeballs the letter again. How does her mom have such restraint? Elizabeth would have opened the envelope even before she made it through the front door.
Noting her daughter’s expression, her mother backs out of the room. “Don’t even think about it.” Her tone is cheerful. “I’m going to hide it.”
When her father finally gets home, he practically jumps up and down at the news. “She wrote back!” He is almost squealing, like a little kid on Christmas morning. Elizabeth cringes slightly. Does he have to act so weird? Her dad doesn’t notice. He takes the letter from his wife and stares at it. “I was starting to think she would never reply, you know. That she doesn’t regularly check her mail, or that maybe she’s even too old to read, to see the letters on the page. I thought maybe we’d never even hear back and that we’d never know and that the whole thing—”
“Dad!” Elizabeth reaches over and grabs the letter from her father. “You’re rambling. I’m opening it.” She tears at the envelope and removes the letter from inside. It’s handwritten on thick, creamy white stationery with the initials M.M. in black script at the top. She begins to read:
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you so much for your letter. I have, over the years, received a great many letters from people claiming to have found the soldier doll. Each one ended in disappointment for me, as none was ever my doll. Worse, some were faked, which was disheartening as well as disappointing.
However, from your description, photograph, and laboratory tests, it would seem that the doll you have found is almost certainly my own soldier doll! His uniform is a different colour than I painted it all those years back, but obviously it is natural that people would have fixed him up as the years went by. I can scarcely believe that after all this time, I may see the doll again.
Because of my advanced age, I regret that I cannot travel to Canada to see the doll in person. Your suggestion of coming to see me in London, therefore, is very kind, and I do heartily accept the invitation to meet. I would be happy to host your family for tea at any time.
I look forward to your reply and anticipate your arrival in London in the near future.
Yours truly,
Meg
P.S. I look forward to future correspondence with you. For your convenience, my e-mail address is [email protected].
Elizabeth looks up, smug. “See?” she says. “She has an e-mail address, Dad. I told you. Everyone has an e-mail address.”
He mother grins. “What about the pygmies?”
“Right, except for them.”
“Well now, how can we be sure?”
Elizabeth snorts and picks up the letter. “So, Margaret Merriweather thinks it’s the real thing! And she’s invited us to London.”
Her mom nods. “It’s very exciting.”
“Absolutely,” agrees her father. “But we can’t go right away. There isn’t time now. It will have to be after I head out. When I have some leave time. I’ll have to meet you there. And then there’s the question of money…” Her dad frowns, whipping out some paper and a pen. Muttering to himself, he starts scratching down figures.
“Calm down, Dad.” Elizabeth takes the letter back from him. “You’re freaking out. Can’t we just relax here for a minute and be happy about the doll?”
“She’s right, John. We haven’t been to London in years.” Her mother has a dreamy look in her eyes.
“That’s true, hon. How many years has it been?”
She looks at Elizabeth. “Well, Elizabeth is fifteen, so it was about sixteen years ago now, I guess. She was born about nine months after we got back.” She winks at her husband, who’s smiling nostalgically. He takes the letter back again.
Elizabeth catches the wink. “Ew,” she says, groaning. “Gross. Gross! Why do you do this to me?”
“Do what?”
“You know. Talk about how I was born nine months later. Yuck!”
“Why is that upsetting? Nine months later, the stork brought you, in a neat little bundle—”
“Uch, just stop it.” Elizabeth is blushing now.
Her mother pats her hand. “Relax,” she says. “You should feel lucky we’re so open with you.”
“I think we could be a little more closed.”
“It’s just a stork.”
“Funny.”
Her dad looks up. He’s been concentrating on some arithmetic. “Sorry,” he says. “What are you two talking about?”
“Birds,” says her mom. “Liz doesn’t like them.”
“Well, she’s never been very outdoorsy,” he
says, oblivious.
Elizabeth coughs, trying not to laugh.
He rubs his hands together. “It will be expensive,” he says, looking up from his calculations. “But I think we can manage a trip to England in the fall.”
“Yay!” cheers Elizabeth. Mentally, she starts packing. What’s the weather like in England in autumn?
“You’re sure, John? We can afford to go to London, the three of us?” Her mother looks worried now.
Her father looks down at the paper in front of him. “I think so,” he says. “We haven’t had a family vacation in over a year. It would mean dipping into our savings a bit, but I think it’s worth it. Especially now.”
The unspoken words hang in the air. He’s shipping out in less than a month. Elizabeth pushes the thought out of her mind.
“I need to go tell Evan,” she says, standing up. She’d think more about tracking people down later. Right now, she wanted to share her news. She had promised she’d let Evan know as soon as she’d had word from Ms. Merriweather.
Elizabeth logs on to Facebook and sends off a message to Evan. She balances the computer on her lap and leans back against her yellow tufted headboard, bare feet stretched out toward the end of the bed. She examines her toes critically. The purple nail polish is chipping; she’ll have to fix it later. She picks at the lint on her duvet cover impatiently, staring at the floral pattern until it’s a pastel blur. He usually responds right away.
Waiting, she checks her friends’ pages, looking at their recently posted pictures. They’d all gone sailing last weekend, by the looks of it. Katie’s parents have a boat they keep at the marina. There is a photo of Jamie Sullivan and Elise, with Jamie’s arm around her. They’re wearing bathing suits and laughing. Jamie’s hair is wet and sticking up in different directions, like Evan’s. Elizabeth is surprised and relieved that looking at him now, she feels nothing.
She remembers the day she’d found out about him and Elise. She’d been at her locker. The stupid thing had never opened properly, and she’d been pulling at it for at least five minutes, trying to unstick the door.
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