Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “So when did you graduate?” he asked comfortably as they listened to the music and chatted. He seemed somehow younger here, as though the pressure was off him and he could relax, and she no longer sensed his underlying tension. And she laughed at his question.

  “I didn’t.” She grinned sheepishly. “I should’ve graduated in June, but I dropped out.”

  “That’s perfect,” he smiled, “perfectly in tune with your whole generation.” He was teasing her and he didn’t seem to care, and it no longer seemed so dramatic as they sat there. Whether she had her degree or not was of absolutely no importance.

  “Things kind of piled up on me last spring, and I got … I don’t know …, disillusioned.…”

  “And now?” He looked her straight in the eye. He didn’t really care what she’d done in school. He was interested in her as a grown-up. This was a grown-up world filled with real life and urgency, and people who died suddenly, whether or not they had gone to college.

  “It no longer seems very important.”

  “Viet Nam does that to you,” he said cryptically, sipping at his beer, and Paxton tried not to focus on how handsome he was. After all, he was married. “The things you used to care about don’t matter much anymore, the house, the car, all the little bullshit stuff that used to seem so important. And the things you took for granted matter a lot … it’s the people you care about here … that you stay alive for.” His eyes never left her. “Home seems a long way away sometimes, and yet supposedly, that’s what we all fight for.”

  “And is home what you’re fighting for?” she asked softly.

  “I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure what the hell we’re fighting for here, if you want to know the truth. This is my fourth tour here, and I swear I don’t know why I do it. We’re supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the people, but that’s crap, Paxton. We’re not winning shit. All they can see is that we’re killing their people and destroying their country. And they’re right, we are.”

  “So why do you stay?” she asked sadly. She kept wanting to know why people volunteered to be there. No one really knew why they were there, except the boys who’d been drafted. The others didn’t seem to know, and if they had known once, they had long since forgotten.

  “I stay because they’re killing American boys over here. And if I stay, maybe I can protect them. Maybe I’ve been doing what I do long enough to know how to do it just a little better. Or maybe not,” he said with a sigh, finishing his beer, “maybe it doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference.” It was a disheartening thought, but something everyone had said at one point or another. Everyone felt, at some time, that what they were doing was futile. “You’re a brave girl,” he said then, remembering her willingness to go down into the tunnel. “No one else who’s visited the base has ever done that, no woman anyway. And most of the men are scared to death, too, but they won’t admit it.” His eyes shone bright with admiration.

  “Thank you. Maybe I’m just stupid.”

  “Maybe we all are,” he said gently. He had lost two more men the day after she left, including the young radiotelephone operator whose call name was Tonto. But he didn’t tell her that. This wasn’t the time or the place for that, and it didn’t really matter.

  They walked out into the warm night air afterward and strolled for a little while. At least on the base, they were relatively safe. Except, even there, from time to time, there were bombs or snipers.

  “I’d like to show you some of this country sometime. It’s a beautiful place, even now.” There were times when he really loved it.

  “I’d like that. I went to Bien Hoa last week. I want to see more, but I’m not quite sure where to go yet.”

  “I could show you,” he said softly, and then he turned to her. “I’m not quite sure what to do about you,” he said with a look of confusion. “I … I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” She was flattered and she was drawn to him and she didn’t know what to say either.

  “What about your wife?” She decided to be open with him, and she wanted him to be honest with her, and he looked as though he would be.

  “We’ve been married for ten years, since I graduated from the Point. We have three kids. Three girls, funnily enough.” He smiled. “Somehow I always thought I’d have sons. And she’s fed up to the gills with the army. She was an army brat, too, just like I was, and I thought she knew what she was getting into, but she didn’t. Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t figure she’d get so tired of it. She wants me to come home now, and I’m just not ready.”

  “Do you love her?” Paxton looked him squarely in the eye, she wanted to know what this man was about, and he wanted to tell her.

  “I did. I don’t know anymore. I meet her in Tokyo a couple of times a year, or Hong Kong, and we fight about the future. She wants me to get a job, and I’m not sure I could anymore. I’m thirty-two, and what the hell do you sell? The fact that you’ve been crawling around in VC tunnels for four years? The fact that you haven’t stepped on a land mine? That you take pretty good care of your men? What would that make me? A good director at a Boy Scout camp? I don’t know. I was trained for this. I guess that’s it,” he said sadly, “I’m a trained killer.”

  “How many men have you saved since you’ve been here?” Paxton asked quietly. “Isn’t that really what you do best? Saving your men from being killed by the others?”

  “Maybe.” She was very perceptive, and he liked that. He liked how smart she was, and how honest, and how gutsy, and how pretty. She was everything Debbie wasn’t. His wife complained all the time, and whined, about the kids, and the house where they lived, and her parents, and his, and Viet Nam, and their pay, and the PX, until he just couldn’t stand it. He wanted something more than that. But he didn’t know what yet. Or he hadn’t. Until the week before, when he’d seen Paxton. “I want you to know something.” He wanted to be straight with her. “I’ve gone out with a couple of other women before. Nothing important. A couple of nurses … a Wac in Long Binh … a girl in San Francisco once, but it was always on the up-and-up. They knew I was married and it was just a quick, straight thing. But … I don’t even know if you like me … but this is different … I’ve never met a woman like you.…” And he wanted her to know that.

  She smiled in the light where they stood, and without thinking, she reached up and touched his cheek. “Thank you.” And the gesture brought tears to his eyes. No one had touched him like that in so long that he had forgotten what it felt like.

  “I think I’m in love with you. Is it possible for a grown man to fall in love with a girl in a place like this and have anything good come of it?” He didn’t see how, and yet there was an intensity to their situation here, a sense that life was only for the moment.

  “I don’t know.” She looked sad for a moment, thinking of Peter. And this was so different. This was only for now, with no promise of anything more, no tomorrow, and very probably no future.

  “I never thought I’d leave my wife,” he said honestly, as they walked along, “and I’m not sure I would. We’ve been married for a long time and I love my children.”

  “How often do you see them?” Paxton asked.

  “Not very often. She brought them to Honolulu last time, but it was tough. We’re practically strangers now. This thing over here has been hard on them, and on her, I guess. At least I’m not in a hell of a lot of danger.”

  “That’s not what it looked like the other day.”

  He shrugged it off. To him, it was nothing. “You know what I mean. Hell, the fly boys go up and they get shot down by Charlie and the next thing you know they’re POWs. I’m pretty much behind the lines most of the time.” Except that they both knew there were no clearly defined lines here.

  She turned to him then, there was something she had to say to him. “I don’t want anything. You don’t have to make me any promises, say anything. I don’t expect you to tell me you’ll get a divorce so I’ll go out with you. We don’t even know
each other yet. Why don’t we just see what happens.”

  “Do you mean that? No promises? No deals? No ‘I’ll love you till the day I die?’” he said, as he gently put an arm around her shoulders. But she stopped walking then and looked up at him.

  “Just don’t die. That’s all I ask of you. Is that a deal?” She looked earnestly up at him with his great height and broad shoulders.

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Then that’s settled.” And they walked on, and they talked and laughed, and passed other couples doing the same thing, and she wondered if he was concerned if other people saw him, but he didn’t seem to be, and after a while he stopped and laughed as he looked at her.

  “Where the hell are we going? We’ve walked hallway to the DMZ tonight. I swear we’ve walked this base from one end to the other.”

  She laughed too. She was just enjoying being with him and it all seemed a little crazy. “I guess I should go back to my hotel.”

  “I’ll follow you back,” he said regretfully, he hated to leave her. “How about a drink at the penthouse?” They both felt as though they had something to celebrate, but she wasn’t sure what yet.

  She smiled, she liked the idea, and wondered if they’d run into any of the other journalists there, but she didn’t really care. She had no secrets.

  He followed her back in her rented car, an ancient Renault that barely made it, and he parked outside the hotel and followed her inside, and put an arm around her as they went up to the penthouse. It had been an amazing evening for both of them, and Paxton felt as though she had come a long way in a short time. And it was more than just from San Francisco to Saigon. She felt as though she had been hurled from another life to this one, and she was not quite sure what she felt yet. She knew she was drawn to Bill Quinn, and she couldn’t have torn herself away now, there was an urgency to what she felt, and yet there was fear, too, and from a strange distant place in her heart, there was also sadness. There were other people in their lives, he had his wife, and she was still struggling with the memory of Peter. And yet, they were here now, and suddenly she knew she needed him, just as he needed her, and maybe that was more important.

  “Paxton?” He said her name carefully, because it was new to him, and she turned toward him with a shy smile.

  “Yes?”

  “You were looking very serious there for a minute. You okay?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  “Don’t.” He smiled, and then brushed the top of her head with his lips as they reached the penthouse. Tom Hardgood was there, and Jean-Pierre fresh from Hong Kong, but he was with a girl, and then in a corner, Paxton noticed Ralph sitting quietly, deep in conversation with a beautiful Eurasian. She was startled to see him there. She hadn’t seen him all week, and she had just left him a message at the AP office that morning.

  Bill Quinn had seen him too, and he guided Paxton over to him, and Ralph introduced her to the lady.

  “France Tran … Paxton Andrews.” She was incredibly beautiful, and when she spoke, Paxton noticed that she had a French accent. She looked to be about Paxton’s age, and she was wearing a white ao dai, and seemed perfectly at ease at the penthouse.

  “Hi, France,” Bill said, “how’s An?”

  “He’s fine.” She smiled, glancing at Ralph warmly. “He’s a little monster.”

  “He sure is,” Ralph agreed. “He put a frog in my boots last week. Fortunately, I checked before I put them on.” Ralph laughed, and Paxton was surprised to see a side of him that she had never even suspected. She wasn’t quite sure whom they were speaking of, but she assumed they were talking about a child, and this woman’s son obviously. But suddenly she wondered if she and Ralph were married.

  They chatted a few minutes longer and then she and Bill sat down, and she was trying not to look confused, but she leaned over and asked him, “Who is that?”

  “France?” He was surprised she didn’t know her. She and Ralph seemed so close. “She lives with Ralph. She married a boy in the forty-fifth cav, and An is their baby.” He seemed to hesitate, and Paxton stared at him, wanting to know the rest of the story. “He was killed before the baby was born. Now he must be about two, something like that. And she and Ralph have been together for about a year. They live together, I think, but he keeps it pretty quiet. In Gia Dinh.” All she knew was that it was a suburb of Saigon.

  “Are they married?”

  “No. Her mother was French and her father was Vietnamese, and I’ve only talked to her a few times, but she seems to have some pretty strong feelings about mixed marriage. The army gave her a terrible time when Haggerty died. I’m not sure they’ve given her widow’s benefits yet, and they tried to accuse her of being a whore and An not being his baby.”

  “What about his family?”

  “He never told them he’d married her, and I think his family was pretty uptight. From some hick town in Indiana. They won’t acknowledge her or the baby.”

  Paxton looked horrified. “And what about Ralph? Won’t he marry her and adopt the child?”

  Bill smiled at her naiveté. She wanted everything all neatly tied up. But things didn’t always work out here. “Maybe you should ask him.”

  “She’s beautiful.” Paxton had been impressed by her obvious gentility and education.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “And smart. But if he tries to take her home, back home they’ll call her a gook, just like they will the whores who hang out at the Pink Nightclub. Back home, no one knows the difference.”

  “All you have to do is look at her, Bill.” She sounded exasperated, but she was naive, and he knew it.

  “That’s all you have to do, maybe, Pax. Other people don’t see it that way. To them, a gook is a gook is a gook is a dink is a slanteye, is the same person who killed their son or their fiancé or their brother. It’s not going to be easy taking these girls home.”

  “But she’s different.” Paxton pleaded her cause for no reason.

  “Not to them.” She wanted it not to be true, but suspected it was, and it made her sad for this woman she barely knew. But she knew he was right. Back in the States, the beautiful Eurasian girl would be a “gook” just like the others.

  They talked for a long time that night, about the war at first, and then about other things, and he never mentioned his wife again, or his children. He had been in Viet Nam for so long that he had begun to feel alienated from everyone. And he was fascinated to hear all that she had to tell him about Berkeley.

  He escorted her back to her room when they closed the bar, and he left her at the door, without pressing further.

  “I should be back in Saigon in a few days,” he said quietly, “I’ll call you before I come.” And then without another word, he bent and kissed her gently on the lips, and then he was gone, and when he left, she wanted to beg him to stay alive. But she didn’t even dare think now of the danger lurking in the Cu Chi tunnels.

  CHAPTER 15

  Bill Quinn came back to Saigon three days after that, and he called Paxton before he came, and when he arrived, he looked handsome and clean in a starched dress uniform, and she was waiting for him in the lobby. This was an “official date,” he had said, and she smiled when she saw him walk into the lobby, looking tall and young and very handsome.

  “Wow!” he said when he caught sight of her. She was wearing her hair down, and she was wearing a pink silk dress she had brought from home. It was very short and it showed off her legs and she tried not to remember that Peter had always liked it.

  Bill had made reservations at a restaurant near the embassy, and she felt very grown up as he ushered her in, and they showed them to a corner table. The room looked very French, and was romantically lit, and there were fragrant bouquets of flowers on all the tables. And here, finally, they escaped the smell of fuel. And there were Americans at almost every table around them.

  She told him about another mission she’d been on with Ralph, near Long Binh, and he frowned while he list
ened to her.

  “It sounds dangerous.” He looked frankly worried, and wondered if he should say something to Ralph now.

  “So is being here. Don’t be silly, Bill. I’m safer than you are in Cu Chi.”

  “Like hell you are,” he said quietly, feeling strangely protective of her, which even struck him as odd. He never worried about what Debbie did, back in the States. But Debbie was in San Francisco, and Paxton was ten years younger and running around Saigon, looking for trouble.

  “Looking for Viet Cong in tunnels isn’t exactly what I’d call safe.” In fact, she had forced herself not to think about it all week. And when she’d gone to Long Binh with Ralph, he had given her a somewhat stern lecture, about “not fraternizing with the troops,” which at first had amused her. But then she realized that he was serious, and she had turned to him in amazement.

  “How can you say a thing like that?” She was referring to France, and he knew it, but that didn’t sway him.

  “It’s different for me, Pax. I’m a man. And Bill Quinn is married.”

  “So what? What difference does it make? His wife is halfway around the world and so are we. What if we’re all dead next week? What difference will it make then?” In a matter of weeks, she had come to think like everyone in Saigon.

  “And when he goes back to her?” Ralph had said quietly. “How will you feel then? You’ve had one heartbreak in your life, isn’t that enough?”

  “I can’t help that.” She had looked away from him. She didn’t want to justify her love life to Ralph Johnson. He was her friend, but he had no right to tell her who she could go out with and who she couldn’t.

  “It’s not too late to stop it now. But Viet Nam is a strange place. Things get serious very fast, or sometimes they don’t get serious at all when they should, because half the time we’re all scared shitless we’re going to be dead by this afternoon, and the other half of the time we’ve watched so many people die that we don’t give a damn about anyone or anything. Don’t get involved with a soldier here, Paxton … or even a correspondent. You’ll get hurt. We’re all a little bit crazy.” He was trying to warn her and he meant it.