He holds the hammer at its end the way his father taught him. Children come to watch, even as another storm approaches. He ignores them when they ask, “Hey, mister, why are you building a fence so tall?” They don’t even know him.

He doesn’t want to see. Or be seen. He can’t say that. He wants to disappear. He can’t say that, either. So he says nothing and soon they leave.

It is as if the fence he builds will be a wall between him and the faces of ghosts, the past, even his son. Marco. He wants a wall.

His back hurts. He digs in the few places where he can find earth, not rock. He digs the postholes with a digger and no gloves. His hands have blisters. The wood has splintered, but the brand name is still intact, new as if it were just attached. His hands would hurt if he thought about it. Instead he thinks about the cement. Three bags. Four. Damn, he didn’t buy enough and he doesn’t want to have to get a ride back to town for anything. So the north corner doesn’t stretch quite far enough.

When the work is done, he puts the tools away and goes inside and sits in the corner like a spider and remembers and thinks and Thomas has a full mind. He thinks of the daughter, Lin, he left behind. Digging reminds him of the land mines he had protested. It was a civilian area. It was where their allies walked. “It’s not a war zone,” he’d told the men. “You can’t do that here.”

Thomas forgot there were no longer any rules.

“There ain’t no such thing as a civilian,” said one soldier. No such thing as a place where no one was shot. “Everyone here is a VC or pig or enemy of some kind. Remember this. There’s no room for peace on any inch of this goddamned land if you want to stay alive.”

They kept digging, rigging the mines. The redheaded man said, “Just watch your own step,” as if threatening.

He remembers the soldier who said that, just a kid, really; he still had freckles. He remembers the way they eyed Thomas with suspicion for his concerns and he knew they would kill him if he didn’t keep silent. He still sees their faces, dirty, angry. After a while, they showed no fear. It had been trained and wrung out of them like water, or blood out of cloth.

He refused to dig and they all watched that, too, especially the red-haired one. But it was war. It was fast. They soon forgot. Everyone but him. He tried to remember where the mines were so he could go back later and at least build a fence around them, because he didn’t know how to decommission them. He didn’t even remember if that was the right word. No children running toward water were going to be threatened. No water buffalo blown apart in the air. No young lovers roaming or old women going down to wash clothes, or wives going to the floating market where everything from ducks to lotus flowers were sold. No legs lost. Because even in war there were still lovers and there were still clothes to be cleaned in the water. And the people there reminded him of his own people just wanting to live and work.