Tree of Smoke Read Online Free PDF

although in his entire life he’d seen only government Americans and military Americans, and a few missionaries. Just the same, he thought of Americans as cowboys. The young soldier’s courage astounded him. Maybe it was good they’d come to Vietnam.
    But even through the wall he could feel the master’s anger at himself for dealing with the colonel. The American was attractive, fascinating, but the Americans were, in the end, just another horde of puppet-masters. The curtain falls on the French, the curtain rises, now the American puppet-drama. But the time of slaves and puppets was over. A thousand years under China, then the French domination—all of it finished. Now comes freedom.
    Hao spoke softly to Master. He wished him lucky dreams. He himself couldn’t sleep. His bowels smoldered with fear. What if another grenade rolled toward him out of the night? Listening for his murderers, he became aware of the oppressive life of the jungle, of the collective roar of insects, as big as any city’s at noon. A curse lay over everything. His wife was sick, his nephew was dead, the wars would never stop. He found his sandals with his feet and went out to the well and drank from the can in the dark and recollected himself. Nothing could hurt him. He’d lived, he’d known love, he’d been shown much kindness. Lucky life!

     

    A fter rolling the device into the temple, Trung turned and ran behind the row of huts as quietly as he could and entered the trail. Only a few meters along, he slowed down, listening. Voices, movement. But no blast.
    A minute; two minutes. If the noise had come he might not have heard it for the booming of his blood.
    He stood in the narrow thoroughfare with his arms wrapped around his middle, grief wringing itself out of him. He hadn’t expected the fools to be sitting there next to the American. He hadn’t wept in years.
    If I’d actually killed them, I might weep less.
    This outpouring was good. The old women said, Scatter your tears, they’re good for the crops. He’d cried for lots of reasons in his youth. Not much since then.
    He moved on down the path. In Saigon they’d given him only the one grenade. Well.
    He’d been told to wait for the American civilian who brought the film projector. A specific target. He hadn’t asked why then they hadn’t sent a good shot, with a rifle. He guessed the American’s death was meant to seem incidental.
    He had to take to the creek briefly to get around a hamlet where lived some noisy dogs. Heading downstream he reached the house of the region’s head cadre. The occupants slept. In the tiny garden behind it he squatted with his rump against a tree trunk, draped his head with a rag, and put his face down onto his knees. He rested for two hours.
    He didn’t know why he’d asked his old friend Hao for funds. He hadn’t been instructed to initiate any contact. He didn’t think he should examine his motives.
    Immediately after the roosters’ second crow, he woke the cadre and reported his failure. He was issued a Chinese Type 56 rifle and two banana clips, each holding thirty rounds, and told to go back to the encampment of ragtag boys by the Van Co Dong River, a “lost command” of Hoa-hao guerrillas. They’d declared themselves ready to submit to relocation and indoctrination.
    “Has there been any trouble?” he asked the cadre.
    “No one has harmed them. You won’t encounter any tensions.”
    “All right. Keep the gun. But let me have a flashlight.”
    The river ran high. Trung had to make his way to a ford well above the encampment, cross over, and hike back downstream, some five or six kilometers overall.
    He hooted as he came to an outpost, a lean-to of banana leaves and bamboo, but no one answered.
    The path led to a black scarred region close by the river, formerly a market square. The people here had been driven out by a plague, and later a practitioner had ordered the buildings burned in a superstitious ceremony. A small barn