Free A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

his face away from me again and I reach over and turn it back. There are no tears, but he is looking very serious. I say, “Tell me one thing you like in Saigon.”
    Mr. Fontenot wiggles his shoulders and looks away. “Everything,” he says.
    “Why should I not think you are a crazy man? Everybody knows Americans go to Vietnam and they want to go home quick and forget everything. When they think they like Vietnam while they are there, they come home and they know it was all just a dream.”
    Mr. Fontenot looks at me one more time. “I’m not crazy. I liked everything there.”
    “ ‘Everything’ means same as ‘nothing.’ I do not understand that. One thing. Just think about you on a street in Saigon and you tell me one thing.”
    “Okay,” he says and then he says it again louder, “Okay,” like I just push him some more, though I say nothing. It is louder but not angry. He sounds like a little boy. He wrinkles his brow and his little black eyes close. He stays like this for too long.
    I ask, “So?”
    “I can’t think.”
    “You are on a street. Just one moment for me.”
    “Okay,” he says. “A street. It’s hot in Saigon, like Louisiana. I like it hot. I walk around. There’s lots of people rushing around, all of them pretty as nutria.”
    “Pretty as what?”
    “It’s a little animal that has a pretty coat. It’s good.”
    “Tell me more.”
    “Okay,” he says. “Here’s something. It’s hot and I’m sweating and I’m walking through your markets in the open air and when I get back to my quarters, my sweat smells like the fruit and the vegetables in your markets.”
    I look at Mr. Fontenot and his eyes are on me and he’s very serious. I do not understand a word he’s saying now, but I know he’s not saying any bullshit, that’s for sure. He sweats and smells like fruit in Saigon. I want to talk to him now, but what am I to say to this? So I just start in about fruit. I tell him the markets have many good fruits, which I like very much. Mangoes, mangosteens, jackfruit, durians, papaya. I ask him and he says he has not eaten any of these. I still want to say words, to keep this going, so I tell him, “One fruit we do not have in South Vietnam is apples. I loved apples in Saigon when GI bring me apples from their mess hall. I never have apples till the GIs give them to me.”
    As soon as I say this, Mr. Fontenot’s brow wrinkles again and I feel like there’s a little animal, maybe a nutria, trying to claw his way out from inside Miss Noi. I have made this man think about all the GIs that I sleep with in Saigon. He knows now what kind of girl he is talking to. This time I turn my face away from him to hide tears. Then we stop talking and we sleep and in the morning he goes and I do not come and help him bathe because he learns from Miss Noi already how to clean his hands.
    Is this a sad story or a happy story for Miss Noi? The next Saturday Mr. Fontenot does not come and see me dance naked. I sit at the bar with my clothes on and I am upon a time and I wonder if I’m going to fall off now. Then boom. I go out of that place and Mr. Fontenot is standing on the sidewalk. He is wearing a suit with a tie and his neck reaches up high out of his white shirt and I can bet his hands are clean and he moves to me and one of his hands comes out from behind his back and he gives me an apple and he says he wants to marry Miss Noi.
    Once upon a time there was a duck with a long neck and a long beak like all ducks and he lives in a place all alone and he does not know how to build a nest or preen his own feathers. Because of this, the sun shines down and bums him, makes his feathers turn dark and makes him very sad. When he lies down to sleep, you think that he is dead, he is so sad and still. Then one day he flies to another part of the land and he finds a little animal with a nice coat and though that animal is different from him, a nutria, still he lies down beside her. He seems to be all