In Pharaoh's Army Read Online Free PDF Page B

TV?”
    “Yes.”
    “What do you like to watch?”
    He said something I didn’t understand. I asked Anh for a translation. She took her time. Finally she turned and said, “It’s a puppet show.”
    “How about
Bonanza?
You like
Bonanza!”
    “Little Joe,” he said in English.
    But he was already looking away.
    “He doesn’t see those shows,” Anh said. “He hears about them from the other kids.”
    “Doesn’t your sister let him?”
    “No television,” she said, and picked up the wicker bag at her feet. The drivers cranked their engines; people began to board the buses as we approached the landing. The trees cast long shadows out over the water, and when they fell over us the air turned cool,and Anh’s face and hands took on the luminous quality of white things at dusk. I knew I had somehow made a fool of myself again. It vexed me, that and the way she’d smiled when I said I could be trusted. I made up my mind to show her I was a really good guy, not just another American blowhard.
    “We have an extra TV,” I said. “It’s in the truck.”
    “We don’t need television.”
    In Vietnamese, I said, “Van, do you want a television?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    She hefted her bag. “What kind?”
    “Zenith.”
    “Color?”
    I nodded.
    “How big?”
    “Big enough.”
    “Nineteen inches?”
    “Twenty-five.”
    “Twenty-five inches? How much?”
    “It’s not for sale.”
    “What for, then—Chicom?”
    I couldn’t help laughing.
    “What for, then?”
    “Nothing.”
    She watched me.
    “It’s a gift.”
    “A gift,” she said. She went on watching me. She looked away and then looked at me again. “Okay,” she said unhappily, as if agreeing to some exorbitant price.
    I was going to tell her to forget about it if that was how she felt, but I said, “I can drop it off tonight.”
    She considered this. In a tone of surrender, she said, “Okay. Tonight.” She told me where she lived. I knew the street—a line of cement-block bungalows along the reservoir, just inside town.
    W E LET the buses go well ahead of us, figuring they’d pick up any mines that might have found their way into the road since we drove out. I didn’t say anything to Sergeant Benet about my plans for the television until we approached the crossroads. A short distance to the west lay our battalion; a bit farther and to the east, My Tho. I asked him to make the turn east. “Let’s get a drink,” I said.
    He wasn’t interested. The drive back had done him in, and I knew how he felt because I wasn’t exactly in the pink myself. We’d lost radio contact again after we left the landing. All we could get was static broken occasionally by urgent, indistinct voices that vanished when I tried to tune them in. The road was empty and getting dark. Stretches of it were already dark where trees overhung the road, scratching the top of the truck as we went by. Sergeant Benet had continued in his solitude, mute, pensive, not even smoking anymore. I’d been left with nothing for company but the consciousness of my own stupidity in making this trip, which I was now trying to talk Sergeant Benet into prolonging. Finally I had no choice but to tell him the truth, or a version of the truth in which I appeared as benefactor to a deprived child.
    “What’s his mother look like?”
    “I don’t know. I talked to his aunt.”
    “This aunt, she pretty?”
    “I suppose you could say so.”
    “Well, sir, you didn’t give away any TV.”
    “I’m afraid I did.”
    “No sir. It’s still in the back there.”
    “But I promised.” When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I gave my word.”
    He turned west toward the battalion.
    I could have made him drive the other direction, but I didn’t. In this moment on the darkening road, Anh seemed a lot farther away than My Tho—an impossible distance. I was glad to be off the hook, and heading home to a good show.
    We made it with time to spare. Sergeant Benet set up the television while I