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grenade; it was his death. Something clapped down over the grenade. The soldier had covered it with his helmet and now lowered himself, not rapidly, but with some reluctance, and covered the helmet with his body, staring at first at the dirt of the floor and then looking toward Hao’s face, only inches away, so that his eyes were readable as he curled himself around his terror. Long seconds passed in a voluminous silence.
    The silence held. More long seconds. The soldier’s face did not change, and he didn’t breathe, but his soul came back into his eyes and he stared at Hao with some comprehension.
    Hao became aware that the colonel lay across his chest, had thrown himself there just as the soldier had thrown himself over the helmet. He became aware of pain in his calves, his head, of the big American colonel’s weight. Hao sucked hard at the atmosphere, he was suffocating. The soldier himself exhaled the air he’d been harboring, and Hao felt the soldier’s breath bathe his face. At last the colonel placed his palms on the floor either side of Hao’s shoulders and heaved himself to his knees, and Hao was able to fill his lungs.
    The colonel stood up like a very old man and bent to grip the soldier’s arm. “Nothing happening, son.” The soldier was deaf. “Get up. Get up, son. Come on, now, son. Get up.” The youngster, finding life in his body, overcame some of his shock and rolled himself over. Quickly the colonel tossed the helmet aside, scooped up the hand grenade, pitched it underhanded toward the doorway, but it struck the wall and made it only as far as the threshold, and he said, “Damn it all.” He approached it, bent and took a firm hold of it, and strode out the door and to the well. He moved the lid aside and tossed the device into the depths. Then he walked back to the building and turned off his generator.
    The others followed him out, perhaps inadvisedly. Mrs. Van tended to the soldier, talking rapid English, brushing at his shirt and trousers energetically, almost hysterically, as if batting at flames. When she was done she started on Hao, swiping at the back of his shirt. “These are bad people,” she said in English. “This is what happens with these horrible people.”
    The master came out of the temple. From his place behind the screen he’d witnessed almost nothing. When Hao told him about the grenade, he took two long steps backward away from the lip of the well.
    The colonel said, “Look, I’m sorry. The well was the quickest place to come to mind.”
    Hao translated the colonel’s apology and then the master’s reply: “I believe it’s safe.”
    “If that grenade goes off, it’s gonna muddy up your water.”
    The master said, “Later it will become calm again.”
    “That thing must be deep. And is it concrete?”
    Hao said, “Concrete construction.”
    “It’s top-notch.”
    “Top-notch?”
    “It’s very well made.”
    “Yes. It was placed by the Swiss Red Cross.”
    “When was this?”
    “I don’t know when.”
    The colonel said, “They heard that noisy goddamn generator, didn’t they?”
    By way of an answer, Hao pursed his lips.
    Hao stood by politely while the visitors reloaded their gear and radioed the encampment on Good Luck Mountain.
    “We’ll scoot on up the hill,” the colonel said.
    “Good. There it’s more secure,” Hao agreed.
    In minutes a patrol of three jeeps arrived, and many soldiers, and the convoy roared away into the night.
    Hao crept into the schoolroom and felt along the wall for a nail. He undressed and hung up his shirt and trousers, swept his straw mat with his hands, unrolled two yards of linen to cover him against the mosquitoes. The master heard him from the other side of the wall, in the temple, and called goodnight. Hao replied softly and lay back in his shorts and undershirt in the pitch-dark.
    This colonel—Hao had never encountered him in a uniform. It seemed fitting. Somehow he thought of all Americans as civilians,