“What a scene that was!” said a tiny woman.

But it was a double sadness that day, a funeral and the taking away of Thomas. The people were afraid they would take the girl, too, and then afraid they wouldn’t because they realized the direction the war had taken when the Americans left and maybe she’d live like a queen in America and maybe she’d be killed in their world. So when she cried, “Papa,” to him, they told the Americans it meant “Uncle” in their dialect.

Oh, and they gave Thomas gifts to take back, a Mickey Mouse watch—who knows where it came from?—a carved box, a square piece of hand-dyed cloth, a bell, and even a prized American baseball hat he didn’t want to accept because it meant so much to the owner. One by one, he was given something small from each person there as the chicken still boiled in the pot, the one chicken that would feed the multitudes. Ma’s chicken that was not killed by a land mine.

They set out the feast for the men, who looked at the food, the chicken looking a little gray to them. Fortunately it was only a tiny amount. The vegetables were sliced well but unfamiliarly. The rice was wrapped in what looked like leaves.

One said, “We just need to take him back. We don’t have time to kill. There’s no time to eat.” But they were talked into it anyway and they ate little, mostly the rice which was less likely to be contaminated because the water had boiled.

As they went to leave, her father turned and looked back and as he did, they handcuffed him. “They act like he’s a god or something,” said one of the Americans.

Then they left and Thomas watched until all grew small on the ground. He wept. How could he not? Down there was what he loved. His other world seemed dimensions away.

He cried the whole time even as he was taken up into the wind. Lin remembers that, and the grasses moving in circles so hard, her hair blowing, the wind on her, a woman pulling her away. “Papa!” she yelled, crying. The noise was terrible.

“It’s okay. He’ll be back.” Lin barely heard the words, but she believed them. All her life she’d been told she was the child of a savior, a beloved man, a man of great beauty and spirit, and that someday he would come back with the spirit they so loved. She believed them and waited with hope. She was certain each morning when she woke and washed her face in the bowl: This day. This.

For such a long time the small child, Lin, watched the sky for him to return. Her father the fisherman fed many villagers. One day he had come to Lin with a red koi from the river market and it was in a white bowl. She loved the fish. She stood beside roads. Waiting. Holding the fish in its bowl. Watching for him to come down the road. In her blue skirt, she stood outside in the rain and waited. It seemed everyone cried except for Lin who believed he would return and so she waited, smiling, watching. For nearly a year she watched.