“After we pulled out of Southeast Asia, the CIA busted their ass for the Hmong. They’d got to know and admire them, and hated to leave them in the lurch. But they were way short on resources and way long on restrictions. Then, somewhere around ’90, I read that some Hmong refugees had been settled on the Arkansas River, working for farmers there. That’s a big irrigation district in the southeast part of the state. So I took a notion to go see how they were doing.
“Not too well, it turned out. The country there’s a lot different than the Laotian jungle. It’s even flat, and so far east, you can’t see mountains. I asked around, and they told me the people to check with about the Hmong were preachers, so I went to one and told him I’d like to find an old Hmong friend of mine. All the name I had for him was Yang. He told me thousands, probably tens of thousands of Hmong had been flown to the States to keep from getting massacred by the Communists. They were scattered all over the country. But he did know a Yang, and told me how I could find him.
“So I went, and by God it was him! One chance in thousands, like playing the lottery. It was him. He’d already known a certain amount of English, and gotten a lot better at it since, so he’d been made foreman of the Hmong working on this big produce farm. I’m not ashamed to say we cried all over each other. It was minutes before we could even talk.”
At the memory, the flyer’s eyes had welled up. He paused to take another bite of omelet and another swig of coffee while he recovered himself. When he spoke again, it was with a grin. “Yang had kids by then, one of ’em being Lor Lu. Maybe six or eight years old, about the size of a healthy flea, born in a refugee camp in Thailand. And he came up to me and called me Bar Stool! Not even Mister Bar Stool. And I asked Yang how he knew that name, because Yang’d been calling me Lieutenant Yarnell.
“Yang was kind of apologetic. Said that here, the kids didn’t always use proper manners. They’d got American habits from the kids they went to school and played with.” Bar Stool paused to eat the last bite of omelet. “The Hmong, some of ’em anyway, believe in past lives. From Buddhism, I suppose. And Yang explained that Lor Lu had been American his last life. That he’d been Lieutenant Lewis.”
Bar Stool peered thoughtfully at Ben. “I guess that answers your question.” He gestured with his fork. “Your lunch is getting cold.”
Ben ate. He had a whole new appreciation of the man across the table from him.
“And that,” Ben said to Lee, “is how he explained Lor Lu’s being Muong Soui Louie.”
Lee Shoreff looked dismayed. “And he believes this?”
Ben smiled. “There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation available.”
“But—it makes no sense! None at all!”
He shrugged, still smiling.
“And you believe it,” she said accusingly.
“Seems fine to me. I’ve always felt comfortable with the idea of past lives. I believed in them the first time I heard of them.”
She looked at the girls, who’d been listening with great interest, ignoring the television. Then she turned again to her husband. “I wonder if it’s true that Abilities Release gets into past lives . . . what purport to be past lives.”
“Among other things.”
“I suppose you’d like to try it out.”
“My dear,” he said, “I took Life Healing shortly before I met you. At the first east coast Millennium center, on Long Island.”
Lee’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t!”
“Sure did. You weren’t there to tell me I couldn’t, so . . .”
“Ben, that’s not funny!”
“It’s not dreadful, either.”
She frowned thoughtfully. This man she loved, this good and gentle man . . . “What ever happened to your life that needed healing?” she asked.
“This life? Nothing much. But some earlier lives . . .” He cocked and waggled an eyebrow comically. The girls giggled.