Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “That sounds pretty reasonable.” Paxton smiled. “But you didn’t answer my question.” She was a journalist, after all, and she was smelling the place out, and the people in it.

  “About why I am here? I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders, looking, and sounding, very Gallic. “I wanted to see it, so I came for Le Figaro. And then I stayed, because it intrigues me. I wanted to ‘see it through’ … and I like it here. It is a sinful place,” he said, smiling at her, “if you want it to be. I like my friends. And perhaps …” He shrugged. “Perhaps like all men, I like the danger. Paxton, don’t let men he to you. We all love to play with guns, to pretend we have an enemy, to take a hill away from a friend, or a house, or a mountain … or a country. We love it … it makes sense to us … until it kills us.” There was truth to what he said, and instinctively she knew it.

  “Is it worth dying for?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, smiling sadly at her. “Ask the men who died … what will they tell you?”

  “I think they’d say it wasn’t worth it,” she said philosophically, but he disagreed.

  “That’s because you are a woman. Maybe it was worth it to them.” He loved the argument, the exchange, the philosophy, and she liked him. “But to a woman it is never worth it. The men who die are their sons, their lovers, their husbands. A woman can only lose in war, never gain, and for her it holds no excitement. The faces of the women I photograph are all filled with pain, as they hold their dead babies, dead men, dead children. They do not care if they die themselves. I think they are much braver than men. But they cannot bear losing their loved ones.” His voice grew gentle then. “And you? The man you lost? Was he a lover or a friend?” He was curious about her.

  “Both,” she said, feeling calmer than she had in a long time. “We were going to be married. We had been together for … for four years … and I should have married him.” She looked away, still guilty over it. “I should have … but I didn’t.” Her voice was very soft at the end and he touched her hand.

  “If you didn’t, it is because you were not meant to. My first wife died in an accident. In a plane I was supposed to be on with her. I missed the plane. She went anyway. She was killed in Spain. And I felt guilty forever. She wanted children, I never did, and afterwards I thought if I’d let her have a baby, then I’d still have a part of her. But you know,” he shrugged, “it just wasn’t meant to be that way.”

  “Do you have children now?” Paxton asked softly.

  He shook his head with a smile. “We’ve only been married for two years, and my wife is twenty-eight. She wants to finish her career as a model before we have any babies.” And if something happened, Paxton asked herself, would they regret it? Was Gabby right with her simple, married life, and her pretty babies? Was she crazy to be here? Was Jean-Pierre right, that her marriage to Peter just wasn’t meant to be, or would she feel guilty forever?

  “How old are you, Paxton?” he asked, increasingly attracted to her with each sip of Pernod. Eventually he switched to Scotch, and eventually Paxton switched to water.

  “Twenty-two,” she answered him, and he smiled.

  “I am exactly twice your age.” But he didn’t seem to mind it. “I think I can say with absolute certainty that you are the youngest journalist here, in Saigon. And surely,” he toasted her, “the most beautiful.”

  “You haven’t seen me in the morning,” she said by way of conversation, and a voice behind her took her by surprise.

  “No, but I have.” She wheeled around in her chair, and it was Nigel. “I’d say you look very nice in the morning. Why, is this a serious question?”

  “Not exactly.” Paxton smiled, relieved that he had joined them. Jean-Pierre had had a little too much to drink by then, and she had a feeling he was going to start getting amorous with the next Scotch. Nigel’s arrival made it all a great deal simpler. “I thought you went to Xuan Loc” She smiled at him.

  “I decided to go tomorrow.” In truth, he had come across an appealing whore, and delayed the trip till the morning. “Have you two eaten yet? I hope not, I’m starved, and I don’t want to eat alone.”

  “No, we haven’t eaten,” Jean-Pierre volunteered, but it was nine o’clock, and Paxton was still feeling jetlagged. “Where do you want to eat?”

  “I don’t know. What about something quick somewhere, and then going to the Pink Nightclub to go dancing?” Nigel had his eye on Paxton, too, and the whore had only offered him temporary comfort. But Paxton was looking at her watch. She had to get up at four o’clock the next morning.

  “I don’t think I should. I’m going to have to take a raincheck. Ralph Johnson is picking me up at five tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s he up to?” Nigel looked annoyed, and Jean-Pierre was rapidly getting too drunk to really care. And he only had another week before he met his wife in Hong Kong. And there was still lots of time to seduce Paxton.

  “We’re going to Nha Trang with a film crew,” Paxton explained.

  “It’s hot up there,” Nigel said with a frown, and then remembered how green she was, “and I don’t just mean the weather. Lots of Victor Charlie around. Watch your pretty little ass. Because if I know Johnson, he won’t watch it for you. He gets the story if it kills him. He’s been wounded twice, and I think he’s out here for a Pulitzer, although he won’t admit it.” Paxton smiled at the obvious rivalry between them.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Coming back tomorrow night?” Nigel looked intrigued by her, and she was a damn pretty girl. But she had no interest in him, or any of them. That wasn’t why she’d come to Saigon. She had come to learn what she could and write good stories for her paper. But there were plenty of men here if that was what she wanted.

  “I don’t know when we’re coming back,” she answered Nigel’s question. “Ralph didn’t say. Wouldn’t he have said something if we weren’t coming back?”

  Nigel laughed. “Not necessarily.” They all stood up, and the flurry of movement drew the beggars toward them. Nigel and Jean-Pierre waved them all away, and one child really tore at Paxton’s heart, a little girl with no legs being pulled along on a cart by her slightly older brother. Paxton looked away, unable to stand it any longer. You couldn’t change things for them, couldn’t make the war go away, couldn’t bring their limbs back.

  “You should do a story on the Quakers,” Jean-Pierre suggested when they left. “The American Friends Service Committee has a fabulous center. They fit all these kids with prosthetics. I got some fantastic photographs there. It’s really incredible what they’ve been doing.”

  “I’ll check it out. Thanks.” She smiled at them both, thanked him for the drink, and they dropped her off at the hotel before going on to another bar to drink longer and harder. They had decided to skip dinner for a while and go on drinking, since she wouldn’t join them. And when she got back to the hotel, she saw several nicely dressed couples going upstairs to the penthouse restaurant for dinner. But she was too tired to even think of food. She walked into her room, lay on the bed, and fell asleep as soon as she set the alarm, and before she even took her clothes off.

  And it seemed only moments later when she heard the alarm go off. It was a strange buzzing sound, and she was dreaming that there were insects coming after her, and then bees, and she was trying to escape by pedicab and the driver didn’t understand where she was going. And the droning noise went on, and then finally she opened an eye and looked around the hotel room. It was still dark, and she took a shower and washed her hair and climbed into the jumpsuit she had brought for occasions like this one. It was a dark khaki green, and she put on the boots she had, in case Ralph hadn’t had the time to get her the ones he had promised.

  She was downstairs at exactly five a.m. and the lobby was deserted, but the streets were already coming to life, with vendors and bicycles and cars, and people hurrying home or to work or to somewhere, and she could see the women in their pointed non la hats and graceful ao dais. She wal
ked outside and smelled the air, and you could still smell the pungent aroma of fruit and flowers, and still the smell of fuel and the cloud of smoke that always seemed to hang over the city, and then just behind her she heard steps, and turned and saw Ralph coming up the steps of the hotel in fatigues and a bush hat and combat boots exactly like the ones he carried, and he had a heavy vest on, and he was carrying another one, and when she joined him, he handed it and the promised boots to her.

  “You got the boots! Thank you.” She was amazed.

  “No problem.” And they weren’t. He had bought them on the black market where you could buy absolutely anything stolen from the PX, from tampons to nylons to army issue. “I brought you the flak jacket too. It’s not a bad idea, if you can stand to wear it.” And he had a spare helmet he gave her, too, and with that, he lifted her into the truck they were taking all the way up Highway One to where they were going. They had an army driver with them, and Ralph had a crew of four, two cameramen, a sound man, and an assistant. He introduced her to everyone, and they all looked like GIs. Everyone had on fatigues and camouflage and boots and helmets, and the sound man laughed nervously as he looked around, and the assistant unscrewed a huge thermos of steaming coffee.

  “Shit, if the VC grab us on the way, they’re going to think they caught themselves a truck full of regular army.” He looked at Paxton, who was similarly outfitted. “Got any high heels in your purse?”

  “I’m too tall. I never wear them.”

  “I meant for me.” Everyone laughed, and they watched the sun come up as they headed out of Saigon. It was a beautiful summer morning. It was late June, and suddenly Paxton realized why people talked about the beauty of the country. As they left the city, everything was lush and green, and there was a delicacy and simplicity to everything that reminded her of antique silkscreens. And then here and there, you’d see craters, from bombs, or children standing by the roadside on crutches.

  The group fell silent as they drove, and Paxton was awestruck by the beauty of it, the red earth and the rich green. She just kept watching as they drove north, and finally Ralph Johnson leaned back over his seat to offer her some doughnuts.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “I’m finally beginning to understand what I’ve heard. Saigon is very different.” It had been pretty once, when the French were there, but it was dirty and loud and corrupt, and full of prostitutes and urchins. This had a natural beauty which Paxton had never seen before and touched her deeply. And yet even here, the country was battle-scarred, even far, far out in the country.

  “I was over here when they burned Ben Sue a year and a half ago … that was a beautiful place. It was a crime to burn it down.”

  “Why did they do it?”

  “To flush out the Viet Cong, cut off their food supply, their hiding places. Most of the time, they can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. So they burned it all down, and turned the whole thing into a parking lot. They claim they relocated everyone, but you can’t replace something like that. It was lovely and old, and they moved everyone into Quonset huts.” It was how he had met France, but he didn’t say anything about that. He didn’t know Paxton that well yet. “How’d it go yesterday?” he asked.

  “Okay. I kind of poked around Saigon, and kept getting lost.” She smiled. And then she decided to let her hair down. “The Five O’Clock Follies sure are bullshit, aren’t they? What’s that all about?”

  “I think they call it PR. Another word for it is propaganda, for our side.”

  “What’s the point?” She looked annoyed. She had come here for the truth, not to be lied to. As they talked, she took her helmet off and tied her ponytail in a bun. It was just too hot even to have hair, let alone have it hang down her back from under her helmet.

  But Ralph only laughed. “It gives us something to write about when we run dry, which doesn’t happen too often.” And then he smiled. “My buddies at the AP office were going crazy yesterday, apparently some guy’s nephew was due here and everyone has been instructed to keep him out of trouble.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Paxton looked amused too.

  “I don’t know. Visiting, I guess. Mustn’t be too smart. Viet Nam is a good place to stay out of.”

  She looked him in the eye with a steady glance as the others chatted over their doughnuts. “Does that mean you think I’m dumb too?”

  “Maybe.” He was honest with her. He always would be. “But I think maybe you’re different. I’ll tell you what I think when we’re through today, but I think you’re one of those crazy people who have to be journalists no matter what, who have to have the truth if it kills them.”

  “Thank you” was all she said, and she put her helmet back on her head and finished her coffee.

  They stopped briefly in Ham Tan, and then they pressed on to Phan Rang and Cam Ranh, and then they could hear gunfire in the distance. It was like the roll of thunder coming down from the mountains. The driver of the truck was in constant contact by radio with his base at Nha Trang, and he warned them before they got there, that they would be moving inland. They were going to a firebase that was under heavy attack, and they would be coming in from the rear. They thought they’d be pretty safe because the firebase was well protected and well armed, but they’d been under heavy fire all week, and this was exactly the story that Ralph wanted. It had taken him all week to get permission to be there.

  “Their RTO’s been telling me things are pretty hot there,” the driver explained, and by now Paxton knew that “hot” always meant VC and never weather. The weather itself was unspeakable, and she wondered at times how she would breathe when they got there. As they approached the base, they were told to get down low in their seats, keep their flak jackets on, and wear their helmets. It was seven a.m., and they were stopped two miles before they got to the remote artillery base where they were going.

  “I’ve got journalists here,” the driver explained when he was stopped by heavily armed rear sentries. They were carrying standard M-16’s, which Paxton already knew from Ralph were inferior to the Soviet AK-47’s carried by the Viet Cong, because our weapons jammed and theirs didn’t.

  The sentries looked inside, and Paxton recognized an M-60 machine gun and the sound of a 150mm howitzer in the distance. She had tried to read up on everything, but it was different seeing it all now in action, and it was more than a little scary. She could feel her heart beating, especially when they looked at her, and continued to question the driver.

  “What about the Delta Delta?”

  The driver smiled. “Same thing. She’s a journalist too. Right?” He turned and smiled openly at Paxton.

  “Yes, sir. I’m with the Morning Sun in San Francisco.” She fumbled for her papers, and they waved them on without any further questions while the driver and Ralph exchanged a smile, and she wondered what had just passed between them. “What was that all about? The Delta Delta stuff I mean.”

  “You’re going to hear a lot of it while you’re here.” Ralph grinned.

  “They call you that at first too?” she asked innocently, and he laughed out loud at that one.

  “Not likely, sweetheart. I’d better tell you what it means. Delta Delta are the radio call signs for D-D. Doughnut Dollie.” Everyone in the truck laughed and Paxton wanted to stamp her boots.

  “Shit! I came all the way out here, and I didn’t do it to pass out goddamn doughnuts!”

  “You tell ’em, lady!” The driver cheered and even Paxton laughed. It was infuriating to be treated like some beauty queen who had come over to see if anyone would whistle.

  “Delta Delta, my ass!” Everyone knew “Doughnut Dollies” were nice women who did a lot for morale, but it was still no compliment to Paxton.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Ralph laughed, and she threatened to hit him. But a few minutes later they were told to get down as artillery fire began to whiz over their heads. They all climbed gingerly out of the truck when told, and the cameramen and the sound man bega
n assembling their equipment. Ralph was telling them what he wanted from them, and after conferring with some of the troops, the driver was explaining to Ralph which entries into the camp were safest. But from the sound of it, none of it was perfectly clear, and a young black private who came running down to them told them what they already knew, that “they were hot hot hot,” and as he said it, he stared longingly at Paxton.

  “Hey there, where you come from?” he whispered as they got down low near the truck, and Ralph confirmed to her that what she heard were howitzers in the distance. The South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, were supporting the American troop movements. But the Americans liked to rely on their own.

  In their opinion, their own guys were always better, and they were fighting the NVA, the regular North Vietnamese Army, unlike the Viet Cong, who were really just farmers although brave ones.

  “I’m from Savannah,” she said, trying to appear calm as she talked to the young black guy.

  “Yeah? Me too.” He gave her an address that didn’t mean much, and she smiled, suddenly thinking of Queenie.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked with interest.

  “In Nam?” He grinned. “Hell, baby, I’m two weeks short. I’m starin’ my DEROS right in the eye. If I can just keep my ass out of trouble for the next two weeks, I’m takin’ that freedom bird home to Georgia.” His DEROS was his date eligible for return from overseas. And two weeks short meant that he had been there for 380 days, 375 days longer than Peter had lived when he got there. “What’s yo’ name?” She was beautiful, and all he wanted to do was talk to her and touch her. He had a girlfriend at home, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to talk to Paxton.

  “Paxton.”

  “Yeah?” He looked amused, and Ralph glanced at them over his shoulder.

  “Keep down,” he told her firmly.

  They were all taken into the firebase after that, and it was an incredible view into a picturesque-looking little valley, all green and very beautiful and smoking with the constant exchange of fire. There were planes flying low overhead, and other planes were dropping bombs in the distance. The men called them “birds dropping eggs.” The commander of the firebase came to meet Ralph and his crew, and Ralph was careful to introduce him to Paxton.