...IN THE MORNING SUN

The sun peeked around the side of a distant hill and slanted onto a lush, green field.  As it soaked into thick foliage, streaks of light passed between blades of tall grass and came to rest against a line of vertical bamboo poles.  Tears rolled from a pair of swollen and squinted blue eyes that turned from the early morning glare to look at the bedraggled heap that lay slumped against the opposite end of the cage.  At least he wasn’t alone.  The past eighteen hours had been like a bad dream that still went on after the night was taken over by dawn.  It began when they were plucked from the sky and cast into a shallow and unkind river.  For hour upon hour, they had carried their dying comrade through the jungle.  Now they were the only ones left.  Beaten and bound, they were loaded onto the smelly old farm truck that brought them to this place.  Again they were beaten, and then thrown into this bamboo cage like the wild animals for which it was intended.  Total exhaustion allowed an escape into sleep to come easily.

He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.  The war had seemed far away, and he had never been more than a small part of it.  Sure, every soldier plays a part in the war.  His part was to dump artillery onto alleged enemy positions, but before now, he had never seen the enemy up close.  The thought that it was all going to end here in this cage was more than he was equipped to face.  A scream from deep inside of him erupted into the peace and calm of a new day and filled it with the sound of rage.  He grabbed the poles and shook the cage with all the strength he had left in him.  He couldn’t stop.  Again, he looked into the bright face of the sun, and wailed.  The cage rocked, and birds hastily flew away as the desperate screams of his fear and helplessness echoed through the trees...

                                                                         ***********

... “Why you come home so soon?” Nhut asked.  “I want to have surprise for you, but now you are here so early.”  She tried to look disgusted.

“You kiddin’ me?  I am surprised,” Andy said as he looked at the big fish that hung from her shoulder and to a point where it could slap its tail against hers.  When she saw how pleased Andy was by this surprise, her disgusted look quickly disappeared.

“Why didn’t you get a taxi?  You didn’t have to walk.”

“Not long walk from fish market by river.  I ride taxi there.”

Because the fish was so wet and slimy, Nhut refused Andy’s offer to carry it.

“You wear nice clean things,” she said.  “ Fish will make you messy and not so good to smell.”

When they got back to the house, Nhut flung the big fish onto the ground, and then pulled the rope from its gills.

“What now?” Andy asked.  “What can I do to help?”

“You can get hatchet for me.  It is in corner by stove.”

“Hatchet?” he asked.  “What you gonna do with a hatchet?”

“Bring me hatchet, and you will see.”  She put her foot on the fish’s back while she waited for Andy to return.

With one solid blow to the head, the blunt side of the hatchet brought to an end, the jerks and wiggles of the big fish.

“Damn!” Andy said, “you are deadly with that thing.  He didn’t even know what hit him.  I’ll be sure to never make you really mad at me.”

“I never do that to you,” she said.  “If I mad with you, I use other side of hatchet.”

With her foot still planted on the back of the unconscious fish, and the hatchet still in her hand, Nhut held both arms above her head, threw out her chest, and then flexed her muscles.  She looked quite the conqueror.  The applause and cheers of all the children who had lined up along the fence to watch, encouraged her to hold the