Lin remembers this now and thinks she is alive, but her mother, the maker of shoes, the onetime cashier, is not, and Lin forgets her at times. No one ever told her about the death of her mother. Whenever she asked why her mother would go into a minefield, they only said it was a mystery. “No,” said Auntie. “Her favorite chicken went there and she was chasing after it.”

The village people found ways to make the army wait. One man read a story. To do so was a gift, the soldiers were told. He did it slowly, translating to English. It was the story of the butterflies that had lived in the forests. The soldier-searchers were impatient. “It is a funeral,” Thomas told the intruders again. His voice implied again how rude they were. “You must wait.” He himself listened and cried. Now there were no more butterflies. No forests. Then another story was told. It was the story of a wise man and a wise woman who had survived the French. The wise woman always wore a red scarf around her neck. They called her Red. But then the wise man and woman were taken into captivity by their allies and never seen again and after they were gone, the village people, without the guidance of these two, forgot to treat the world well. They neglected to be kind to the birds, or greet the trees. They thought that was why they were bombed by a fire god from the sky. Otherwise the bombs would have turned into birds and flown away like leaves in a wind. Soon there were no leaves, no birds except one, and it dropped a red scarf over the village where the two had lived, reminding those who remained.

Maybe, Lin thought at the time, this was why Grandmother, the eldest woman, always wore a scarf around her own neck. Later she learned it was to hide her scar.

Then some of the accounts of Thomas were recalled. At first that included how well he fished for them. Lin didn’t listen well enough. She was still thinking of the story and the birds. In her eyes she could see them as they once were.

And one man praised Lin’s mother. Crying, he said, “Oh, how well she made shoes. No one ever made shoes like Ma did.” Ma. Her mother’s name. She, the girl, is named for her mother’s real name. Thuy Doc Lin had made shoes waterproof by using the sap of plants no longer there, long since bombed. Lin had a special pair. They were a bit too large for her so she could grow into them, and she wore them anyway. Each one had an artificial red flower on it.

But stories were their riches.

They even told the story of the horse that had come from France and made it by boat to their village. They first worshiped its beauty. Then the old man said, “I rode it everywhere I went. I even rode it to Old Grandmother’s house.” Even though it was a funeral, the people laughed because Old Grandmother’s house had been only a short distance away. Some remembered the horse and how the man rode it in every possible position, not by choice. In spite of themselves and the sad day, they laughed. He rode it sideways, leaning over the neck with his round face in the mane, thrown across the top, and he rode it almost underneath, yelling as he went.