CHAPTER TENTHE NEWS OF PECH Lim Song’s execution had reached Vathana the day the first American craft docked in Neak Luong. For months afterward, she felt she would always associate Americans with sunshine and death. Through the tedious summer-month monsoons and into the fall she caught herself at odd times quoting Mister Pech to dockworkers, rivermen or refugees. Then she’d find tears welling in her eyes as his image and that of old Sambath came to her. And she would feel as though someone had ripped out her soul, as if her insides had been scraped clean leaving an empty cavity. And always the image mixed with clouds breaking in late afternoon, with sun rays beaming upon Americans and their war boats. Long after U.S. forces were withdrawn, after the Mekong from Saigon to Phnom Penh became
