Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “Who can we talk to?”

  They both thought of the same man at once, and Ralph almost groaned at the thought of him, but Paxton said his name first. “Campobello.”

  “Jesus. I’m not sure he’d do fuck all for me, Pax.”

  “Then I’ll call … no … I’ll go see him. He must be pretty broken up too.” It was a mild understatement, and Ralph didn’t want to tell her now that the guy hated her guts and held her responsible for Bill’s death.

  “Look, why don’t you let me take care of it?”

  She blew her nose and her voice quavered again when she answered. “I owe it to Bill to do it myself. I’m going to drive out there.”

  “Shit. I’ll come with you.” She had no idea what she was walking into, but all his efforts to dissuade her were useless. And the mission of saving Debbie from the knowledge of their affair seemed to have given her new life and slightly better control over her grief, as he drove her to Cu Chi. But when they got there he hadn’t been prepared for the shock of running into Campobello almost as soon as they arrived and having him almost attack Paxton physically, while Ralph finally grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

  “For God’s sake, man, stop! Can’t you see the state she’s already in!”

  “She fucking well should be,” he shouted, tears streaming down his face, as she stood trembling near the car, trembling uncontrollably at what he’d just told her. It was more of what he’d said to Ralph earlier on the phone, but delivered with even greater venom. “Would you like to see the condition he’s in?”

  “Please …” She sank to her knees as she sobbed and began to retch as Campobello grew pale and watched her. “Please stop … I loved him …” And then suddenly, in the place where they stood, with recruits standing in the distance, watching them, only guessing at what it was about, there was silence. Campobello stood trembling and pale in Ralph’s hands, and Paxton stood staring up at him with open hatred. “I loved him. Don’t you understand that?” she said quietly, and now he was sobbing too.

  “So did I. I would have died for him. He saved my life in one of those fucking holes … and this time I couldn’t help him.”

  “No one could, man,” Ralph said to him, letting go of him then, “no one can help anyone here. It happens or it doesn’t. Look at all the guys you know who’re so fucking careful they squeak, and they buy it the day before they go home, and the others who’re sloppy and drunk all the time and they don’t get a scratch. It’s destiny. Fate. God. Call it whatever you want. But hating anyone over it isn’t going to change it.” Campobello knew it too, but that was what was driving him crazy. He wanted someone to blame, someone to take it out on. Too many of his men had died, and now the captain he loved, the man who had saved his life, been his friend, laughed with him, drank with him, been his pal, was gone, and it had to be someone’s fault. And he wanted desperately to blame Paxton.

  Ralph explained to him quietly what they had come there for, and Campobello looked startled. “Can you help us, man? She’s right. That stuff shouldn’t go home to his wife.” The sergeant looked at her angrily then, the venom coming back to him, but she was back on her feet then, looking shaken but determined.

  “You afraid of getting caught? Is that it?” he asked her.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid of hurting her, and their girls. He loved her, too, and them. There’s no reason to hurt them. We were talking about getting married. There’s no reason now for anyone to know that.” And then, although she didn’t owe him anything, she told him about her father. “He died with another woman in his plane, and my mother has had to live with that for the rest of her life, and one day my brother told me, and I always wondered why. We all did. In my parents’ case, I kind of knew, but it still wasn’t right. We didn’t need that. Neither do they. It’s enough to deal with the fact that he died … I’d like my things back.”

  “Like what?” He looked suspicious of her, and it was clear that he still wanted to hate her.

  “Three books of poetry, that I wrote some things in, and a bunch of photographs and letters. The rest won’t make any difference.” She looked embarrassed then. “I bought him some funny underwear for Christmas, and he had a lock of my hair somewhere. I think those are the only things that would matter.”

  “Why are you really doing this?” he asked her, walking closer to her now, unable to believe that she had no ulterior motive.

  “I told you why. What happened is painful enough for all of us. She doesn’t need to know about us.” And for an instant, just an instant, he believed she was a good person, and that hurt him even more. It hurt him even more to think that Bill Quinn had really loved her, that maybe he had died for her, or if he hadn’t, he might have. They were all tired and confused and overwrought, and they had all been there too long, Quinn and Campobello, and Ralph, and even Paxton.

  “Are you going home after this?” he asked her, almost forgetting that Ralph was there, and tears filled her eyes again as she answered.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged emptily. “I guess so.”

  He nodded. “I’ll go through his stuff. Wait here.”

  He did, and was gone for half an hour while she cried and Ralph smoked Ruby Queens, and finally the sergeant came back with a small package.

  “I’ve got the books and the photographs and letters and the underwear. I couldn’t find the hair, but it’s not there anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” She wondered if he’d been carrying it when he died, but she didn’t say it for fear of enraging Campobello further.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, trying to control herself, and taking the small package from him. It looked so pathetic now. There was so little left of the enormous love she’d had for him. So little left of their hopes and dreams. Like the towns the army had to burn to smoke out the VC, they left nothing behind them but rubble and ashes.

  He stood watching her as they walked back to Ralph’s jeep, and then he turned and called out to her. “Hey …” He didn’t want to say her name and she stopped, looking at him, the man who had hated her so much, who thought she had killed Bill.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, with his lips trembling. She wasn’t sure if he was sorry he had been so hard on her, or sorry Bill was gone, but either way, so was she.

  “Me too,” she said as she got in the car, and he was still watching them as they left the base and drove back to Saigon.

  CHAPTER 17

  “You gotta go home, kid.” Ralph was standing in her room at the Caravelle, and she was sitting on her bed again, with a belligerent look on her face this time and her arms crossed. Nixon had been sworn in the week before, and Bill had been dead for a month, and she was a month late going home now. “There’s nothing left for you here. Your six months are up. Your paper wants you home. Bill’s not coming back. And the Teletypes in my office are gonna drive me fucking crazy. They want you back, Pax. You’ve been here for seven months. You’ve got to go now.”

  “Why? You’ve been here for years.”

  “That’s different. I’m assigned here, and I have no one to go home to. No one who gives a damn. My parents are dead, I haven’t seen my sister in ten years, and I live here with the woman I love who’s having my baby. I have reasons to stay, you don’t. And you’re starting to go nuts here. You’re like those guys who’ve been down in the tunnels too long. Go home, get some air, get some R and R and if you love it here so fucking much, let them send you back or find someone else who will. But if you don’t get the hell out now, you’re going to do something stupid.” She had already gone on two missions with Nigel and Jean-Pierre, and Ralph could tell from the stuff she was writing that she was too overwrought to do herself or anyone else any good. “Get out, before I call them to come and get you.” He also knew that she’d stopped watching what she ate and she had dysentery so bad, she’d been running a low-grade fever. And she’d looked awful since Bill died. She was grieving, but she was trying not to let it show. It was like being dead o
n her feet and not willing to admit it.

  “Are you willing to make sense? Can I send you home? Or do I have to call them to come and get you? They will, you know. Your guy in San Francisco is getting pretty freaky. He wants us to call the ambassador and have you expelled if you don’t agree to get your ass home.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll go home. You win.”

  “Christ.” He heaved a sigh of relief. He’d been desperately worried about her. And he had run into Campobello at the PX once, too, and he didn’t look so hot either. It had taken a toll on all of them. “Okay, when? Tomorrow sound okay?”

  “Why so soon?” She wanted more time. She didn’t want to go. Maybe because Bill had died there. Staying in Saigon was like staying with him, in the room they’d shared, near the restaurants they’d gone to.

  “Why not?” Ralph answered her. “I’ll get you a ticket for tomorrow morning. There’s a Freedom Bird out of here sometime before noon. And I want you on it.”

  “You just want to get rid of me.” She smiled through her tears. She hated to leave him, and the people she’d met, and even the noise and the fumes and the craziness of Saigon. In an odd way, she’d come to love it.

  “I’m jealous of the shit you write,” he teased. “I’m never going to get my Pulitzer, if you stick around here.”

  “Will you come and see me in San Francisco?” she asked sadly.

  “Is that where you’re gonna be?” He’d relaxed now that she’d agreed to leave the following morning.

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I will if they give me a job on the paper.”

  He smiled admiringly at her. He had come to love her like a kid sister in the past seven months, and he was going to miss her very badly. “They’d be stupid if they didn’t give you a job. Lady, you’re one hell of a good reporter.”

  “From you,” she said with awe and love in her voice, “that means a lot. Christ, I’m going to miss you. Do you want to have dinner tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  He came alone, he left France at home with An, as he often did. Most of the time he didn’t like her hanging out with the other reporters. And tonight he just wanted to be with Paxton.

  “You gonna be alright?” he asked her seriously after their second Scotch.

  “I guess so,” she said, looking into the glass as though it had all the answers. “I don’t know.” She looked up at him. “Is anyone ever the same again when they leave here?”

  “No,” he said honestly, “they aren’t. Some of them just hide it better. But maybe you haven’t been here that long, maybe it hasn’t really changed you.”

  “I think it has.” He was afraid of that too. For her sake.

  “Maybe you just think that because of Bill,” he said hopefully. He’d seen people ruined by Viet Nam. The drugs, the VD, the danger, the disease, the wounds, and the strange things it did to one’s spirit. It was so beautiful, and our being there was so wrong. For most people, it was desperately confusing. But he hoped she hadn’t been there long enough to be poisoned by it, or to fall so in love with it that she couldn’t forget it. “It’ll do you good to go home. There is life after immersion foot.” He smiled, but she didn’t.

  “It would do everyone good to go home. Maybe you too one day,” she said gently. “God, I’d love to see you there. It’s going to be so hard going back. How do you begin to tell people what you’ve seen here?”

  “Does your family know about Bill?” She shook her head. She hadn’t told anyone. She’d been waiting to see what he decided to do about Debbie. And maybe he would never have left her after all. That had always been a possibility between them.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell them now. There’s no point.”

  He nodded. There was a lot one could never tell anyone about Saigon.

  They stayed up drinking until four o’clock in the morning, and he came back later to take her to the airport. She had the same small tote bag she’d had when she arrived, the same small valise, the same ache in her heart, except now it was considerably bigger. She had lost two men in Viet Nam. And yet, in spite of everything, she had come to love it.

  “Do yourself a favor, Pax,” he said with a sad smile as they said good-bye. “Forget this place as fast as you can. If you don’t, it’ll kill you.” Some part of her suspected he was right, but another part of her told her not to let go of it. Because she didn’t want to.

  “Take care of yourself, Ralph.” She hugged him tight. “You know, I really love you.”

  And when he pulled away from her there were tears in his eyes, and the last thing he said to her before she boarded the plane was “I love you too, Delta Delta.”

  CHAPTER 18

  She landed at Oakland Airport after a seventeen-hour flight, on a plane that had been chartered by World Airways. She had talked to a few returning GIs on the flight, but almost everyone was so exhausted and burned out and scared to be going back that they didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even a pretty blonde like Paxxie. They had all hoped and dreamed of this day for so long that now it was terrifying to be going home. And what were they going to say? How did you explain to someone what it felt like killing a man? How did you tell someone what it was like killing a man hand to hand, running a bayonet through his guts, or shooting a sniper in the face who turned out to be a woman. How did you explain the nine-year-old boy who had thrown a hand grenade and killed your friend, and then you rushed into the bushes and dragged him out and killed him? How did you tell them what it was like? Or about the sunsets on the mountains, or the green of Viet Nam, or the sounds and the smells, and the people, the girl who couldn’t even say your name, but you knew you loved her. There was nothing any of them could say. So most of them rode home in silence.

  And when Paxton got off the plane in a skirt and a blouse, her hair pulled back in a bun, wearing the red sandals that were battered now, it was hard to believe that she was home. This didn’t feel like home anymore. Home was Saigon and a room at the Caravelle. Or was it here in the house she had once shared with Peter in Berkeley? Or the Wilsons’ home? Or her mother’s house in Savannah? It was only when she got off the plane that she realized she didn’t have a home anymore, and a young boy standing next to her, looked at her, shook his head, and whispered, “Man, it feels weird to be home from Nam,” and she knew what he meant, because she had been there with him.

  Ed Wilson had sent a limousine for her, and she rode sedately in the back of it, on her way to the paper. But she wasn’t prepared for the reception she got. She felt like a hero in a foreign land, when editors and people she had never met shook her hand and told her what a terrific job she had done in Saigon. She was stunned, and she had no idea what they meant, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks as she thanked them. And then finally, she was alone with Ed Wilson, and he looked long and hard at her and he knew that it had taken a terrible toll on her. She had changed. She had grown thin and gaunt, but more than that, there was something in her eyes now that scared him. Something sad and old and wise. She had seen men die. She had been in battle.

  “You’ve had a rough time,” he said without asking her anything, and she tried to smile as she nodded.

  “I’m glad I went.” And she really meant it. Because of Bill, and Ralph, and herself. And because in an odd way, she’d felt she owed it to Peter, and her country.

  “I’d like you to go home and rest for a while, and then come back, Paxton, and write about anything you’d like to. You’ve done a beautiful job, and we’d like to keep you on, with your own byline.” She was touched and pleased and she wanted to do that, but there was still a little tug at her heart when she thought of the column she’d written from Saigon.

  “And ‘Message from Nam’? Will someone else be taking it on?”

  He shook his head and smiled at her, knowing that all journalists were like that. Their columns were their babies. “Nixon is promising to de-escalate the war. And for the time being, I think we can get by getting our reports from Saigon from the AP of
fice there.”

  “They’ve got some great people,” Paxton said, thinking of Ralph, but Ed Wilson was smiling proudly at her.

  “And you were one of them. Paxton,” he said honestly, “you surprised the hell out of me. I never knew you had it in you. I thought you’d be back here in a month, horrified at what you’d seen there.”

  “I was pretty horrified at first, but at least I felt I was doing something useful.”

  “You certainly were. And for the last few weeks, I never thought we’d get you back to San Francisco.” He frowned. “What was the delay anyway?” For a minute, she didn’t know what to tell him. The man I fell in love with was killed … another one …

  “I … you get pretty involved over there. It’s not easy to just up and leave.”

  “I guess it isn’t. Well, get a good rest now, and come back here in a few weeks, whenever you feel ready.” She wondered how soon that would be, and she looked at her watch, remembering that she still had to get a hotel room. But his office had already taken care of that too. “We booked a suite for you at the Fairmont. Marjorie wanted you to stay at the house, but I thought you’d need the rest, and by now you must be pretty independent.” And he’d also told Marjorie that if she was carrying any diseases from Viet Nam, they didn’t want that in their guest room.

  They had also provided a car and driver for her, and the Wilsons were expecting her for dinner. But by dinnertime it was fifteen hours later for her, and Paxton could hardly keep her eyes open at the table. It was an emotional meeting for all of them, and she felt almost as though they all expected her to tell them why Peter had died, and she had no new answers for them now, only more questions.

  Gabby chatted endlessly all through the meal about how cute Marjie was, how active little Peter was, and how wonderful their new house was. They had Fortuny fabric on the walls, Brunschwig wallpaper everywhere, and blue curtains in the bedroom, she explained, and twice during dinner, Paxton was so exhausted and got so confused, she accidentally called her Debbie. It was as though she couldn’t cope with it all. It was all too much, and their lives for the past seven months had been just too different from hers. And more than once she had to fight back tears and the urge to tell them she just couldn’t stand it. She missed the sounds, the smells, her room at the Caravelle, Peter … Bill … she felt as though her head were spinning when she left them. And when she got back to the hotel, she lay there awake for hours, feeling vulnerable and tired and shaken. She finally fell asleep as the sun came up, and two hours later the hotel operator woke her up. And she had to get up and shower and change to catch her plane to Savannah.