The Village by Bing West

liked to hang around her house drinking beer and eating fresh peanuts. It was the mother who did most of the washing and pocketed most of the money, but everyone was satisfied with the arrangement.
    Top made some extra money through sex, but she would go to bed only with men she liked and when she felt like it and asked no fixed price. She took what was offered more as a gift than as payment and sometimes a week or two would go by when she would sleep with no one. Any Marine was at a disadvantage in the competition for her favors, since he had to coax her to bed during the daytime, when it was hot and sticky, and the children were running about shouting and screaming, and no room had a lock and the PFs and other Marines always tried to peek in and watch and laugh. In that environment sex was limited, but the Americans liked to visit the homes of Top and other young girls anyway, just for the companionship and the escape it provided from the war which washed over the village at dark.
    Top was one of the few villagers openly defiant of the Viet Cong. When she was fifteen, she had been kidnaped by the VC and forced to perform nursing duties in a hospital far back in the mountains. After several months, she escaped, only to be recaptured when she was within two miles of her house. But she persuaded her two guards to let her go before they had walked her back to the hospital. The district committee later punished the guards for immoral actions and ordered Top seized and returned to the hospital. But she proved too elusive. She never slept at home, and changed residence every night. Sometimes she would wait until dark before slipping into a friend’s house, and the dusk patrol often passed through her front yard on the off-chance that she would still be home. If she was, she would whisper to them what she had heard passed from house to house about VC movements that night. It was an information technique the Marines had learned from the PFs, who had several such contacts in each hamlet.
    Now at Top’s house, Riley kept calling, “Top? Top?” while O’Rourke and the other patrollers stood back in the shadows and kept watch. Eventually, the thatched door to the house swung up and outward like a garage door and Top stepped outside.
    â€œVC come, VC come,” she said, pointing toward the marketplace. She placed her hand affectionately on Riley’s arm, gestured to him not to shoot her, giggled and darted into the darkness down the path.
    The patrol turned back toward the market. To get there they again had to silhouette themselves on the long paddy dike. They went across the open space at a jangling trot, forsaking quiet to regain some concealment.
    Safeties off, they walked slowly up the trail, and when they reached the wide market, they spread out on line and gingerly moved across, ducking between the empty stalls, fingers on triggers, tense, waiting, expecting from somewhere a burst of fire or a hurled grenade.
    Nothing. Through the marketplace, back into the dark, narrow trail, up through the hamlet and out into paddies. Nothing. Across a dry paddy and into the scrub growth along the river bank. Nothing.
    O’Rourke was tense.
    â€œRelax, Lieutenant,” Sullivan whispered. “These people are always imagining there are Cong all over the place. All we have to do is watch the river.”
    Sullivan placed the men on line facing the water and motioned them to spread out and lie down. The night was dark with clouds and a boat could have passed by seventy yards from them without being seen. From the sounds, it was obvious that Viet Cong were on the river and on the far bank. The noise of loud splashes, as if someone had slipped off the bank, reached them and occasionally they heard the dull thunk of boat wood. Still, they saw no movement. One hour passed. Two hours. No one could pick up a definite target. Even Riley, squinting and bobbing his head, could not make out the boats he could hear moving in