For the Life of Thi Lin Klein

by Jack Twist

  Chapter 10

  “It’s not your fault.” I suppose I meant it though it would have been more difficult to say to someone who did not have a sore knee and scratches on her face. Cowering in that half a cave, at least not wondering now what was behind or in the darkness just ahead, I was able to look at her. Her eyes were tired and frightened, her forehead scratched and dirty.

  The baby’s cries were muted by the waterfall but no less persistent. Abbie unclipped the water bottle from her belt and took the piece of cloth from her handbag to try feeding her again. But it was all beyond the baby.

  “Would you mind not watching? I’m going to try giving her my breast.”

  “Will that help?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t have any milk. But it might encourage her. She doesn’t know how to suck on this and … I don’t know, if we don’t do something she’ll starve to death.”

  “Well don’t worry about me. I’ll keep watch.”

  I looked away as she unzipped the top of her flying suit but she had difficulty holding the baby and I turned to look “Give me the baby. Just until you’re comfortable.”

  I had handed her back and peered downstream but when the baby stopped crying I had to inspect. Abbie smiled, the baby at her small breast, and as if in response to our moment of mutual indulgence, the baby lifted her head away and gave out a desperate squeak.

  “I didn’t think it would last,” she said. “Would you pass me that bottle?”

  She held the bottle against her breast and poured but when she turned the baby in against herself she pulled away again.

  “Maybe she’s thirsty from all that yelling,” I said. “Try this.”

  Abbie took my water bottle and repeated the process. The baby spluttered and cried and spluttered and cried and sucked, and sucked, in silence.

  She had trouble nursing the baby with one hand and pouring with the other.

  “Maybe if I do the pouring you can get a better grip.” I poured too much. The baby coughed and spluttered and cried.

  “Take it easy. You’ll drown her. And soak me.”

  I got it more or less right, a steady dribble, and the baby settled into drinking again, then lifted her head from the nipple, cried once and closed her eyes. I took the bottle away.

  “She was thirsty, poor baby.” She was smiling down at the baby and gently rocking as she zipped her top. “She looks healthier already, doesn’t she? Not so red and blue.”

  I had my first close look. Her hands and feet were pointing up into the air as Abbie put her fingertips on her forehead, touching the strands of thin, dark-auburn hair.

  I asked, “Was Lin married?”

  “No. Her husband went missing a few years ago. Almost certainly he’s dead.”

  “The war?”

  “Well, not directly. He was a university teacher and she was a student, when they met.”

  “What will happen to the baby?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll be up to my father.” And she looked at me a moment as she rocked the baby in her arms. “Who is also her father. Crazy, mixed up family, huh?”

  When I said nothing she looked back to the baby. “Crazy situation. As if working in a war zone wasn’t enough he goes and falls in love. And here lies the poor, unfortunate little by-product. And with her mother dead, God rest her soul, I’m hoping my father will want her brought up in America.”

  “Will he be able to do that?”

  “Of course. Why not? She’s an American citizen. Or will be. I guess there’d be the usual red tape and he’d have to okay it with Lin’s family and prepare everything for her at home. But I’m sure that’s what he’ll want for her. Why not?”

  She seemed lost in her thoughts and I said nothing. Sunlight touched the lower edge of the opening. I stretched my legs so that my boots hung outside, decided to pull them in and sat forward to look around. Nothing but rocks, rushing water and the thickness of trees beyond. Where the hell were we headed from here? I sat back and looked at her again, ready to put another question when the baby beat me to it. And all of Abbie’s loving attempts to pacify her were wasted on her.

  “Let me try.” Ilifted her so that her head was rested on top of my shoulder, the way I had seen my sister and my mother do it a hundred times, without remembering until now. She cried on but when I gently patted her back she belched audibly, vomiting water, a few drops on the collar of my green army shirt. “Thank you. Shat on, now spewed on.”

  “Well, I’m a bit wet and sticky myself.” Abbie pulled the top of her flying suit away from her chest. But the baby had stopped crying, settled back in the crook of my arm and seemed to like it there. She lay still and quiet.

  “What is it with you? How do you do that?”

  “The girl has taste. I was going to ask you. You were saying, back at Muc Thap, that the baby’s mother, Lin, might have been in some danger.”

  “Did I ?”

  “Something about working for an American company.”

  She bent to look around beyond us and seemed satisfied that for now, this was as good as any place to be. “I don’t really know. I mean, I’ve only been here for a couple of months.” She turned to me and thought for a moment before she said, “I got the impression that she and my father were keeping something from me. At first just the situation with the baby, but then, as I got to know Lin, I sensed that ... well ... you see Thi Lin Quang was not your average local woman. Make that, just, not your average woman. She graduated university, has lived in France and speaks fluent French and English. She was going to be someone, you know. I think she was biding her time. I’m sure that she was involved in .... concerned for .... her country’s future. More than her interpreting and liaison job with the oil company would suggest.”

  She rubbed her knee and pulled it up under her chin as she spoke. “Of course this is mostly guess work on my part. I mean she was with my father for reasons other than political, as all the evidence indicates.” She looked at the baby again. “Is your arm getting tired?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “I’ve got a spare cloth in my bag. I think she’d fit on it if we lay it on this little sandy spot here.”

  The baby jerked her hands up as I placed her on the cloth but didn’t open her eyes. We watched her hopefully. I couldn’t help, for that moment, being moved by the size of her, the helplessness, lying there in a half-shelter, in the hands of children themselves, or not much more, and foreigners. But if some sense of responsibility stirred inside me, it was for the girl more than the baby who was at least close to her home. And my ultimate concern was for myself. Immediately beyond us an unknown rainforest loomed, just beyond that a country in chaos and beyond that a world in confusion.

  “You were saying? About Lin?”

  “Yes. Well, I’m guessing. But she was just too exceptional, you know, not to be someone. And my father said once, though he was clearly biased, that she ... he called her a woman of great intellect as well as a good heart. A leader, with exceptional vision.”

  “And the communists wanted her dead, you think? Because she was working for the Americans?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Lots of people work for Americans.” Then she looked at me again and seemed to summon her thoughts. “You know. She mentioned a name back there at Muc Thap. I couldn’t make much sense of what she was saying. She was very concerned for my father, naturally. But she mentioned this name, Lee something Bar, something like that. It seemed to terrify her. I think she may have recognised him as the man who shot her. I must remember the name, as much as I can remember of it, to ask my father. Lee blank Bar.”

  “Have you ever heard the name before?” She shook her head and reflected in a way that made me feel she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I asked her what had made her decide to come to Vietnam to work.

  She wasn’t officially an employee of the oil company, and admitted it seemed crazy, as everybody was quick to remind her. It had to do with her relationship with her father
, who had been coming to this country on business trips for as long as she could remember. He was convinced of the existence of substantial oil deposits in the South China Sea and finding and tapping them had become his life’s work. And while the oil company was here supplying the military, he had been able to convince the American government that his survey unit should stay. And so politics stepped in. He was required to keep the Saigon government informed, in ways that irked him somehow.

  All of this had stirred the curiosity of his daughter, over many years. She wanted to share, at least understand, her father’s fascination with this part of the world, and the work that kept him so often away from his family. During her later teens in college he was away more than ever, increasing her need to experience his precious and exotic Orient.

  The war alone stood in the way. And when it wouldn’t end, didn’t look like ending soon, she ignored all warnings, took her visa approval as a good enough guarantee of safety, and with a spirit of adventure not unlike her father’s, went off to join him. She had turned twenty-one, finished college, and no one could stop her, not even her father.

  He tried to stop her, as did nearly everybody she knew. She reminded him that they were now living in the seventies. Women, and she was one of them now, had choices. He worried of course but she was sure that he was also proud of her.

  “At least he never calls me crazy, like some of my friends. One in particular. And so I thought if I got set in a career or married or something, I would never get here, and I’d always regret it.” She stretched her legs out and folded her arms. “So here I am. Ironic, really. I have a brother who got as far away from the place as he possibly could.”

  “Where?”

  “Canada. To dodge the draft.”

  I picked up the rifle and leaned forward for a better view. “Did you hear that?”

  She shook her head, bending forward also. “I didn’t hear anything, except the water.”

  We listened again, for some minutes, and then I sat back, but kept hold of the M16. “So. Your brother went to Canada. What does your father think of that?”

  She leaned back and shifted her legs. “Well, he was disappointed at first. But I think now he might actually agree with him, though he’s never said as much. He’s become very understanding about it. And it can cause a few problems, though nothing serious, because he has to work with the military.”

  “They know?”

  “Oh, yeh. Someone found out. One of them made a joke once that I should have been the son, and my brother the daughter. My father was not amused.”

  “Where does your mother fit into all of this?”

  “My mother and father separated years ago. She used to say she just couldn’t compete with a whole other country. Used to call it the other woman.” She thought about this a moment before she turned to me. “Anyway. Enough of my crazy mixed up family. Why are you here, Private Ross?What are your reasons for coming to this war?”

  “I was sent. Called up and sent.”

  “You mean you were drafted?” I nodded. “Did you mind?”

  “Not too much. Not enough to resist.”

  “Or go to Canada.”

  “No.”

  She had her head rested on her knee as she watched me. “And how do you feel about it now?”

  After listening to her I wanted to say something clever, at least informed, but there just wasn’t enough in my background to allow for it. I had completed high school with a good result in English, average for the rest, but enough to scrape in an entry to a Law degree, largely at my parents’ insistence. I quit before Easter, couldn’t wait to enter the workforce like my mates.

  My father hid his disappointment, I hid my shame, small as it was, and started work with an insurance company. Uni demanded full commitment, while a Monday to Friday office job, with regular pay, left weekends free for cricket. I was eighteen, with secret dreams of some sporting glory. And I reckoned I was no chance of achieving any sort of glory as a struggling, sleep-deprived, poverty-stricken uni student.

  My thinking on the world beyond was no more mature. Whatever great geopolitical/economic wheels moved the world and its people, they turned with little or no appreciation from me. Conscription sparked some interest in the war but what I did understand about the reasons for it left me at best ambivalent. I suspected, as did many others by the late sixties, that the protesters might not be the total ratbag rabble we were told. And hanging around with Tony Carmody, and to a lesser extent Al Stanley, increased my suspicion that we conscripts might have been handed the rough end of some kind of political pineapple.

  I had a friend from high school days, a clever friend but also a rebel, who tried marijuana and grew his hair long before the rest of us were game. He had taken part in demonstrations and declared his intention to conscientiously object if his birthday number came up in the draw, and go to jail if necessary. The last time I had seen him I was at home during our first big break in training, after basic, and he looked at my almost shaved head, with obvious amusement and less obvious pity and asked, “What’s it feel like, Mark? Licensed to kill?”

  But he had always been weird, a misfit, people said, and it was all so political, and when politics, on your personal list of likes and dislikes, ranked somewhere between algebra and shopping with your mother, its influence on your life’s plans was about as significant. My parents had always voted Liberal. ‘Better for business,’ they said. I don’t recall much family discussion on politics beyond that.

  My father had served with the RAAF in World War 2. He didn’t leave Townsville during the years of the war and met and married my mother there, but he was serving. My mother gave birth to their first child there, but she also was serving, as a nurse. That’s what you did. The country was at war and you served.

  I suppose there was some sadness in the fact that I thought more about how to get a leather bound ball between the bat and leg of an opposing batsman than I did about the reasons why I might be sent to war. Certainly my long-haired friend thought so, but that was the case. You served. Never mind what the brain might know, it was in the blood.

  So that to the American girl watching me then I could only answer, “It’s okay. I’m only a driver, which is just as well, because I’m no hero.” She smiled at me. “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just your accent. Forgive me. I like listening to accents. Where are you from? In Australia?”

  “Brisbane. That’s on the northern, east coast.”

  “Can you play tennis?”

  “Not much. I play cricket.”

  “Cricket? I thought all you Aussies played tennis. I thought cricket was a game played by the English, especially Evelyn Waugh characters, at places like Eton and Oxford, where they say, ‘ I say’ and ‘Jolly good, old chap’ and things like that.”

  “No. It’s not like that where I come from.”

  The baby squirmed in her sleep and jerked a hand into the air, attracting our attention.

  “Yes, miss?” said Abbie and we watched her settle again then looked around outside. “So. It’s nice to rest but when do you think we should go?”

  “Yeh, soon. So’s we can find our way back to the road and pick up a lift as soon as possible, I hope.”

  “And they’ll be out looking for us by now.It’s just so nice though, to be able to rest without the sound of crying.”

  “Yeh. Without the crying.”

  She shifted herself again, holding her knee. “Oh, God, I hope we get out of this jungle soon. The first thing I’m going to do when I get to the embassy is have a very long shower.”

  “You should probably try to wash the dirt out of those cuts,” I said.

  She felt her forehead. “How bad are they?”

  “They just need a bit of a cleanup. Do you want me to do it? I can see where they are.”

  “No, it’s okay, thanks. I’ll do it.”

  She reached outside the opening and held her hands under the water’s spray. “Don’t you have any
injuries?” she asked, washing her face.

  “No. I’m just tired.”

  “Me too.” She settled herself against the wall of the cave again.

  “Why don’t we rest a while,” I suggested. “Might make it easier to find the road..”

  “Do you think we’ll find our way back okay?”

  “Yeh. Should be easier now we have full light.”

  It sounded braver and more informed than I was, but I couldn’t say what was really on my mind, that I had no idea now in which direction the road lay, and in fact, was not prepared for this. Officially a trained digger, having done basic, corps and jungle training, I was, at that point, regretting my attitude, of doing just enough to get by, taking the least line of resistance. Okay you wanted me. I’m here. But don’t expect too much. The conscript’s excuse. You’re interrupting my career. Cricket career, that is. First over the wall? First out of the trenches? No thanks. It might interfere with my unquestionable prospects, with my secret dream, to open the bowling for Queensland at the Gabba. Of course selection in my club’s A grade team would be helpful first. At least I had sense enough to keep my dream to myself.

  So I contemplated as I stretched out in that rocky little recess by the waterfall, my boots coming dangerously near to the sleeping baby. Afraid to hang them out of the opening, I dropped to one side, still sitting up and rested my head on the damp rock wall. I looked at Abbie, envious of the way she used the confined space. Her eyes were closed and she looked asleep already.

  This sense of responsibility was foreign to me, even before the nation’s random acquisition of my services. Until now, from the day they cut off my hair and put me in a uniform, keeping my head down, my mouth more or less shut and volunteering for absolutely nothing, had kept my short unremarkable military career free of serious trouble. Luck too had contributed, more than I appreciated at the time. I had applied for transport from basic training, my second choice among other support-soldier options, but I could have finished up anywhere. The admin officer whose task it was to allocate newly trained personnel to the various arms of the green machine, post basic training, who had for whatever reason elected to give me my second preference, also deserved my thanks. And there were soldiers known to me who had made it easier, one at least whose good natured kindness saved me in a very direct way from what would have been big trouble.

  The work all came so easy to Lyle O’Malley, the slow-talking, troubleshooting hayseed from somewhere near the Murrumbidgee. He seemed born to be a drover, a gun shearer, a soldier, something heroic. And at the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra, if not for Lyle, I would have finished up on the CO’s carpet, trying to explain my actions, or lack of them.

  During a simulated ambush exercise our platoon had dug in beside a track to wait for passing ‘enemy’ and at about 4 a.m. I was startled into consciousness by gunfire. It was all done with blank ammunition of course, and it was just training, but my falling asleep would have earned me some sort of stiff, disciplinary boot in my slack, irresponsible arse, had I been found out. Lyle, our section leader as always, was right beside me. He had waited nearly all night for the confrontation to begin, and initiated it, while I slept and while he let me.

  And Lyle’s attitude was the same in Vietnam, as everybody saw soon after his arrival. Bushfire Daniels had run his truck off the road near Dat Do and bogged it in a paddy field. He claimed he had taken the narrow side street to save time but everyone except the officers knew Daniels’ detours were entrepreneurial, not operational. Loaded with sand, nose-first in the mud, his vehicle seemed immoveable. His prospective local customer had abandoned him, and the sale of the sand, at the arrival of our platoon sergeant (Donald Duck, by nickname) who radioed the engineers for a grader to come and rescue the truck.

  While he waited Daniels cursed the unfairness of the situation, the danger, army trucks, rice paddies, the war and the greedy, ungrateful Vietnamese, in particular a collection of their skinny progeny who had gathered, laughing, hoping for a handout, only to be chased away by the big redheaded Uc dai loi with his truck in the mud.

  Then Lyle O’Malley arrived, climbed over the truck’s cabin, opened the bonnet from where he stood in water on the front bumper and produced a shifting spanner from a pocket. He tinkered for a while, climbed back into the cabin, started the truck and slowly reversed it out. And so was called ‘Spanner’. But I had known him from Canungra and to me he was always Lyle.

  Well there was no Lyle or anyone else here to save my slack arse this time. It was all down to this soldier on his own, and the daughter of an American oil man with no military training. I closed my eyes but don’t think I actually fell asleep.