by James Dunn
Much later my captor unlocked the door and handed me two turnips and three radishes and two small rolled leafs filled with rice. He waited silently while I ate.
"Hold your bowl still, and I'll pour some tea," he said in English. After he poured, I said, "Thank you."
He nodded at my midsection, "Is that a gunshot wound in your belly?"
"No, it's from a tree branch."
His face showed disbelief. "A tree branch? How did it occur?"
I smiled and said in Vietnamese, "An artillery round exploded and propelled me into a tree. May I know your name?"
That got a reaction from him. He grimaced, but quickly replaced his surprise with the poker face I'd seen earlier. He stared at my belly for a long time before speaking.
"You would be dead if that were true," he said in English.
I had to smile. "That is what the monks who rescued me said, too. They sewed me up and put medicine on the wounds. "
"They should have let you die," he said.
He studied me for a moment before walking out and locking the door.
The next day I didn't even hear him unlock the door. I awakened when he shook my shoulder. "Get up! Eat quickly. We have a long walk today."
I found the food he had left and wolfed it down. When I pushed the plywood door open he was standing in the path, his weapon resting in the crook of his arm. The other older man who had been with us yesterday was nowhere in sight. It was still dark when the two of us set out. Most of the village was just starting to stir.
I stepped onto the path in front of him and we headed west, up yet one more steep hill. With my sore belly and my sore foot we didn't make good time. I could tell that my captor was losing his patience, but my stamina was not at its best. I kept expecting a shove, or an order to hurry, but it didn't come.
We walked for hours, up one hill, down the other side, and up yet another. I was starting to falter when he finally commanded me to halt. The sun was directly overhead, and incredibly hot. I wished I had my old brimmed field hat to protect my shaved head.
I sat down in the shade of a huge tree. He took a long swig from a canteen, probably mine, and offered it to me. I drank deeply, not minding that the water was warm. I rested for about twenty minutes before he ordered me up and away, with no mention of food.
We walked all day, taking only that one break. I really worked at not slowing him down. I used a method the Abbot had discussed where you imagine that you are not in the body, but floating above it and observing without any judgment. It worked for a while, but then I tripped on a hidden root, and went sprawling on my face. As I lay there with my mouth full of dirt, and blood spurting from my bum ankle, I could hear the Abbot's voice, “Embrace each moment," I imagined embracing the mud in my mouth. Just then freckle-face said, "Let’s take a rest. I sighed and fell asleep where I lay.
Pain in my foot awakened me, and I opened my eyes to see my captor washing my wound. He refused to make eye contact with me, but placed a dark green leaf directly on the wound. He then went about applying a clean dressing. "That will draw out the infection," he said. I was too sore and too tired to care. He looked around and spoke, almost facing the trees instead of me. “This is a good place for a camp."
He set about making a fire, not even bothering to try to hide it. I drifted off to sleep and awakened in the darkness. He was sitting near me smoking a cigarette.
I rolled over and tried to sit up. He made no move for his weapon, but watched me struggle until I managed to get my feet fully situated. He got up and went to the fire-pit and brought back a piece of roasted meat.
I had not had any meat since being brought to the temple by the monks, and I just stared at it. The local populations seemed okay with roasted dog, cat, or even rat. I wasn't sure which of these it was, or if I should even care. I was just about to reach for it when he pulled it away.
He said, "Buddhists don't eat meat, but I thought I would check." I swallowed, and asked him if he had any rice or vegetables. He chewed slowly on the piece of meat. When he finished, he went again to the fire and brought my bowl filled with orange radishes and white rice. I thanked him and ate in silence while he watched me eat.
The next day about noon we came to another village. A cry went up as we approached, and a crowd gathered. Armed boys with ancient rifles escorted us to the middle of the clearing. Old women shouted and spit and cursed me. He barked an order and they dropped back.
An old man with a huge and ancient rifle screamed something I couldn't understand. He raised it to his shoulder, but before he could pull the trigger my captor wrenched it from his hands. He tried to kick me but was shoved backwards, landing in a heap. He got up slowly and turned his back and walked away. It looked like everyone in the village wanted me dead.
After much shouting and talking, a rope was placed around my middle and I was led to a pit and shoved in. It was at least eight feet deep, and I tumbled headfirst. The village cheered and made high-pitched noises. Many spit, and some threw rocks.
I managed to reposition myself with my feet below my head and looked up and saw two men place a heavy steel grate over the top. They laughed and spit before they left.
The ground smelled of urine, and the pit was damp. I moved back and forth, trying to find a position that didn't hurt too much. When they dug the hole it was about four feet across, but got smaller as it got deeper. I found myself wedged tightly into a narrow part at the bottom of the hole. I looked around and said to the darkness, "Embrace this, Beloved Abbot!”
I sat there, too numb to even think for some time. Finally, I heard a movement outside, and a wrinkled old woman with blackened teeth appeared and got down on her hands and knees. She squinted through the bars until she spotted me. "You killed my sons!" she croaked.
I wanted to tell her that I had never even been in this village, but it didn't seem like it would make any difference to her, so I just stared back at her. She stood up and pulled down her black pajama pants and squatted on the grate. A torrent of urine rained down on me. She redressed and kneeled again. "I hope you die tonight," she yelled.
I quickly realized that I couldn't hold my breath forever, and decided to risk a small breath. The pungent odor nearly gagged me. The words of my first sergeant popped into my mind, "I just don't get any better than this, eh?"
I huddled there in my piss-soaked robe in the cold and damp ground and asked myself why I ever wanted to leave the safety and serenity of the temple.
Truong's voice answered my question inside my mind. We had once been talking about destiny and fate. He was explaining one of the Abbot's lectures.
"We would like to think we have free will, but it is possible that everything we do is predetermined by our intentions. Once our intentions are clear, we find ourselves impelled to action."
I sighed and wondered if I was going insane. Hearing voices was a sign of losing your sanity, wasn't it? I was tired enough that I soon fell asleep crouching there.
I woke up at the first hint of light, stiff and sore. My foot hurt with a numbing throb. I tried to stand, but there just wasn't enough room for both feet. The sore one couldn't hold the weight, and the other one was too cramped to be of any use.
I was afraid that if I got my knees to bend I would be wedged in, so I just made the best of it and leaned my head back and closed my eyes, trying to think.
I wondered what kind of advice the Abbot would offer in this sort of a situation. "When no course of action presents itself, the wise man meditates.”
That fast, the thought sprang forth in my mind in the Abbot's soft voice. I even thought I heard Truong snicker in the background.
"Wow," I muttered. "I'm starting to hallucinate!"
My mind seemed restless, so I closed my eyes and started the process of noticing my breath. The Abbot taught me to "Breathe in the pain of the world, embrace it and bless it as a teacher. Then breathe out a blessing for all the suffering souls."
"Suffering souls,” I mused. "Here I am halfway aro
und the world from everything I know and love. All the men in my unit are dead. I haven't seen or spoken to another American in God knows how long. My current living quarters is the bottom of a piss-filled pit somewhere above the DMZ that the villagers use as a latrine. And, oh yeah! They all want to kill me! Does this qualify as a suffering soul?"
I closed my eyes even tighter and tried to imagine the face of the old Abbot. "How would you respond to that one, old buddy?
"What is the first of the Four Noble Truths? Brother Toby?" It really was the Abbot's soft voice inside my head; with the same rhythm to his sing-song voice. Could it be that those monks had some clairvoyant way of communicating?
Again the question came. This time the voice sounded a little more insistent. "Okay, sure. All life is suffering. But some suffer more than others. And yes, I know that all suffering can be alleviated. That's the second one."
"Well," said the Abbot's voice with more than a little humor. “Then you know the drill."
They had gently chided me when I called the eightfold path the drill. Basically, there were eight attitudes that the monks tried to maintain. Each one supposedly lead to the next, starting with right understanding. If we had a right understanding of the big picture, it would lead to right thinking, and from that would come right speech, which would demand right action, etc.
Although the concepts were by now familiar, I was having trouble applying them to my situation. Basically I wondered how all this could get me out of the damp pit.
So often right action to a Buddhist was simply to tune out the outer world and listen within. That's what they called meditating. My dad was fond of saying that it was hard to remember that we came to drain a swamp when we were up to our asses in alligators. But the Abbot said that when nothing else presented itself as a course of action, we could sleep and remain in the problem, or we could meditate.
So I closed my eyes again and tried to return to the meditation. I breathed in all the pain, and devoured it into my heart, and transformed its energy into blessings and tried to send it out into the world.
Now Truong's voice spoke to me as he translated and explained the Abbot's teaching. "It is neither our pain nor their pain. It is just universal suffering. It is impersonal and it will land on all of us."
I continued the breathing exercise, trying to remember what came next. "It’s not the suffering, but our resistance to it that causes us misery."
Resistance? How could anyone not resist living in the latrine? I heard a sound, and my eyes popped open. In the early morning light a small girl's face appeared. She was maybe five or six and she was on her hands and knees. Dark brown eyes looked down on me. She greeted me in Vietnamese, and I answered her back.
"Are you hungry?" she asked in a stage whisper. "Yes," I croaked. Her tiny hand thrust a package through the iron grate. It looked like a leaf, all wadded up, and it slipped from her hand and fell to the bottom of the pit. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said.
I stooped and groped with my right hand, and found it wedged against my knee. I held it up to her and said, "Don't be sorry, I found it. Thank you." She studied me for just an instant and flashed a tiny smile, and was gone. I unwrapped the leaf and there was a small quantity of rice, and a small red pepper. I started to stuff it into my mouth, but remembered what the monks taught.
"Eat slowly, focusing your entire being and attention on what you are eating. Fill your mind with gratitude, and accept it as a blessing for all beings. Savor each morsel."
So I put a small amount of the rice in my mouth and sucked all the juice from it, and chewed it into a paste before swallowing it.
Each bite took about a minute, and I managed to make the gift last for several minutes. When it was all gone I popped the hot pepper into my mouth and said aloud, "Best meal I ever ate!"
"And maybe your last." said a voice from the grate. A freckled face appeared above my head.
"Where did you learn your English?" I asked.
He disappeared without answering, and then I heard the sound of metal on metal, and soon the grate was raised and set aside. He pushed a long piece of angle iron at me and said, “Grab it, and I will help pull you out."
I did, and he did. Soon I lay panting on the ground at the edge of the pit.
He tossed the iron aside and picked up his AK-47, pointing it at me. "Time to go," he said in a near monotone.
The sun was just about to appear, but still below the horizon, making the eastern sky glow in the darkness. I got to my feet and felt the barrel poking into my back. We headed for the jungle again. I was still hungry, but apparently breakfast had already been served.
"Just keep moving," he ordered.
It was again uphill most of the day. I had the sinking sensation of walking right back to where I had started, but knew I was heading as much north as west.
We walked all day, and the jungle thinned and changed to a sparse forest, with occasional open meadows. We walked all day and never encountered another soul. Outcropping rocks began to appear, as we followed a well-worn path.
By early afternoon, my foot was throbbing and a bloody mess. I struggled to be able to simply pick it up and let it fall, emptying my mind of everything but that simple task of picking up my feet and placing them in front of me.
Finally the order to stop came. I crumpled immediately to the ground, trying to elevate the sore foot. I managed to fling it up on a fallen tree.
"A walking stick or crutch would help me walk," I said. My captor just glared at me and rummaged in his backpack. "Are we in Laos yet,” I asked.
He met my question with an icy stare. "Do not speak unless you are spoken to," he ordered. He reached into his pack and got a coarse rope and made a loop in one end. He tied my feet and then my hands. Sensing that the time for conversation had past, I closed my eyes. I was almost instantly asleep.
When I woke up, there was a crude crutch next to me. I looked at him to thank him but he turned away. "Eat fast," he said, "you can make up for how slow you walk!"
He untied me and I struggled to my feet. I tried a couple of steps with the crutch. I could see an improvement almost immediately, as it allowed me to use my sore foot without placing full weight on it.
We walked uphill and westward for most of the morning at a fast pace. Three times he thought he heard something and we got quickly off the trail and hid in the deep underbrush. I didn't see anyone, but my captor was taking no chances. I could always hope it was ARVN or American troops, but I never saw anyone at all.
Just before midday the trail leveled and then started going downhill. I figured this guy must have been planning to meet up with someone, and was running late. We never did have lunch or even stop except for a quick sip of water. I was so glad we were finally going downhill that I forgot to be worried that we were getting closer to what might be a POW camp.
Suddenly he poked me roughly in the middle of my back and hissed to me to hide. l ducked behind a huge tree trunk ,with him right behind me. Maybe three seconds later, five men came into view. They were unkempt and smelled strongly of body odor. But the most interesting thing was their hair. Each one had long hair, longer than most Asian women wear it. Each was carrying a weapon, and they were trotting. They trotted right past us heading the same direction we were going.
"Cambodians!" my captor whispered. "They would kill both of us if they saw us."
"We are still in Viet Nam,'' he answered to the question I was going to ask. "They kill everyone they meet, even their own people."
I opened my mouth to speak but he shushed me. Just then seven more came trotting by. My captor pulled on my robe and I backed away from the trail. We worked carefully to get through the heavy underbrush without making noise, and came at last to a large tree with dense branches and leaves. He pulled aside one of the branches and shoved me in front of him.
I looked around at an open area that was completely hidden from the outside. It looked as though it might even keep the rain off of us. "We make camp here... no fire," h
e said.
I wondered if he was going to tie my hands and feet, but he just laid his pack down and searched its contents. I was tired enough that I sat cross-legged on the soft grass. I wondered how grass could grow where no sun ever reached. But I was too tired to think. I watched passively as he divided the remaining ration of rice into two nearly equal parts and covered each with pieces of cabbage. He handed one to me and we ate in silence.
My habit was to chew each bite completely and savor the tastes. He ate absent-mindedly, and finished before I was halfway. A swallow each from a canteen and we were out of water. He made a pillow of his pack and lay down on his back. His weapon was near his right hand. "Don't even think of leaving," he warned. "You would be caught and killed in a slow and cruel way." Then he closed his eyes.
I finished my meal and wondered if he was asleep or just closing his eyes. Either way I didn't plan on leaving and ending up with the Cambodians. I straightened my spine and started my breathing exercises.
I must have sat there for hours. The sun went down, and the dark night crept in. It became so totally dark under that canopy that I am not sure I could have seen my hand if I held it in front of my nose.
Thoughts of other camps arose. I recalled the last night with my unit, and the excitement of preparing for a last mission. Then the nights in the temple appeared in my mind. I noticed them, but didn't attach to them. Next came thoughts of the Abbot, and Truong, and the long discussions in the temple. Each time I simply noticed without any grasping or clinging. Each thought sort of softened and then vanished, and it seemed to take longer and longer for another to appear.
There seemed to be a long time between each breath too, and yet I stayed comfortable, watching as a small point of light inside my head seemed to get brighter and closer.
This too I noticed without putting any significance on it. It was almost like I was too tired to care what appeared within my mind. The light moved closer and closer still, and brighter too. I began to wonder if it could be seen, so I opened my eyes.
