On Blood Road

by Steve Watkins

  “After that came the heavy artillery, bombarding us once they were able to draw close enough after the aerial assault. They destroyed most of our supplies and many of our bases. But they didn’t find all our leaders when the American troops and the ARVN swept through and began the arrests. Some fled, some hid, some stayed and fought and died, some perished before there was anyone to fight, only death from the sky. I was able to escape and make my way to the Saigon River, where I covered myself with mud and held on to roots to stay hidden along the banks. That was where I met Vu and Trang. We hid for three days, only able to come out in the dark. But with so many Americans in the area we couldn’t go far to look for food, and we had to hide ourselves again during the day.

  “The second night at the river another comrade found us, just before dawn,” she continues. “He slid down the bank and would have gone into the water if we hadn’t caught him. He had been wounded. An awful injury to his shoulder—his arm was only barely hanging on. There was so much blood. He was incoherent, mumbling, weeping. We did all we could. We pressed mud into his wound, made a poultice with grasses from the riverbank, kept pressure on to try to staunch the flow of blood.

  “But he was in so much pain. He begged me to help him, to take him to his family. He was feverish. He became agitated. And louder. Vu and Trang and I tried everything to help him, but it became clear that if he stayed with us he would give away our position. The Americans would find us, and they would kill us all.

  “When he began shouting, we had to do something. Trang pressed his hand over the man’s mouth to quiet him, but he wouldn’t be quieted. He struggled against Trang, clawed at him. Vu said we had to push him out into the current and let the river take him. We had already seen bloated corpses, many of our comrades, men and women, float past us. It was a river of death. But Trang said the man would panic more and give us away, and it would be a more terrible death for him to drown.

  “So Vu and Trang held him, turned him over, and forced his face deep into the mud. I held his legs. It was all I could do. I was so ashamed. We didn’t even know his name. Trang lay on top of the man. Vu kept his hand on the back of the man’s head, pressing it down hard, so he couldn’t breathe.”

  She draws a deep breath of her own, then lets it out. “It didn’t take long.”

  I think that’s the end of her story, but she isn’t finished. She says, “We eased his body into the water and set him free.”

  We’re lost, though Phuong won’t say so. But I can tell. She takes us down jungle trails that dead-end into hostile brush. She slashes our way through with her machete, or as far as we can get before she drops to the ground to rest, her face dripping with sweat, barely able to lift her arm from exhaustion. Once, sitting splay-legged on the jungle floor, she lets a viper slither close, inches from her feet. She doesn’t move. Even when I reach for the machete and slice off the viper’s head. She gives me a dead stare, lifts her canteen to her lips, then holds out her hand. I give her back the machete.

  “Are we lost?” I ask, but she says no, just orienting ourselves, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  “Soon we’ll arrive at a training and supply camp,” she says. “Deep in the jungle—hard to find even for those who know it’s there, which means it’s impossible for the Americans to find.”

  We keep hiking, all that day and into the next, but there’s no sign of the camp. I don’t say anything, though. I just go where she tells me, rest when she tells me, and try not to think about home and where I’m going instead, farther and farther away.

  I didn’t know what to say when she told me about her and Vu and Trang and what happened to the man on the banks of the Saigon River, and I still don’t know what to say. It’s so far outside my experience—at least my experience before the night of Tet. A part of me keeps repeating that it can’t be true. No one would ever do anything like that to anybody else.

  But of course it’s true. The murders of the MPs, the night of the executions, the underground hospital, the body parts in the jungle, the malaria victims in the tunnels, the shredded victims of the Dragon Ships in the ghost forest, Trang’s gore—after all that, how can I not believe that Phuong and Vu and Trang killed a wounded man in his delirium, smothered him in the muddy bank of the Saigon River?

  But what do I have to say back to Phuong? “That’s terrible”? “How awful for you”? “I’m so sorry”?

  Do I tell her about my misdeeds in New York—shoplifting records from a music store and getting chased down the street, jumping turnstiles to ride the subway for free, sneaking out to clubs in the Village, cheating on tests at Dalton, that time Geoff and I climbed underneath New York in search of the tunnel people?

  But that all seems so lame, doesn’t it? Compared to Phuong’s life and all she’s had to do, all she’s had to endure.

  We’re clearly in the foothills of something. Instead of the flat, sprawling acres of rice paddies and dense stands of bamboo that can hide a company of soldiers, we find ourselves on narrow trails crowded by unbroken forest, and climbing and then descending rolling hills and then up steeper slopes, wading deeper and deeper into more hostile vegetation. More tiger-tongue vines. Ridiculously tall palms. Twice coconuts shake loose and fall—landing with a loud thud just a few feet from where we’re walking. If they’d hit us, we’d be dead.

  At least it gives us something to eat.

  As if all that isn’t bad enough, I wake up the next morning with a white rash on my arms that itches like mad. But when I scratch it, white splotches spread farther up my arms, as if whatever is under my skin is trying to get away from the scratching. It spreads all over my torso and legs as well. And worse, my face swells so bad I can’t swallow. My cheeks get so puffy that I can barely see.

  I’m stumbling over every rock, every hole, every vine on the trail, when Phuong comes to an abrupt halt. There are people, some in pants and shirts, some only half-dressed. A couple of them have rifles, but others carry spears, bows, knives. It’s like something out of one of those old war movies I saw with my dad years ago where the landscape is empty and then the enemy is just suddenly there.

  Phuong tries to speak with them, but they don’t know Vietnamese, and she doesn’t know whatever language they speak. There’s a lot of pantomiming, some flashing of money. I’m so miserable, still clawing away, continuing to spread the white cloud under my skin, that I think about grabbing Phuong’s machete and scraping the blade wherever I itch, which by now is everywhere.

  Phuong tells me to follow them, and she shoves me in their direction, off the trail we’ve been blundering down and onto another that could be mistaken for nothing more than a random break in the bamboo.

  We don’t go far before the jungle opens into a clearing with a dozen thatch-roofed huts, a couple of open fire pits, children dancing around us and pointing and laughing, elderly women wearing some sort of sarong or skirt, some bracelets, necklaces, but little else, squatting close to the fires, tending to things cooking.

  Someone grabs me by the arm and pulls me down on a grass mat under one of the huts. Phuong takes my empty rice sash and canteen and hat, then tells me to take off my shirt and pants. “They will need to boil your clothes,” she says. “You must have laid in a patch of something. I don’t know what they say it is, but it’s causing your rash.”

  The itching is so bad that I don’t care about being left in my underwear. I balk when two women come at me with fists full of leaves, but they grab my arms and start rubbing the leaves all over me, head to toe, painting me with something sticky. It smells terrible, but the relief is immediate. “Thank you!” I gush, not sure if they understand. They smile at each other and keep rubbing, a second round, and then a third. I could cry, it feels so good to not feel so miserable anymore. With every breath I take, the itching subsides more, and after maybe an hour, the rash is all but gone. The women leave me sprawled on the mat, relieved, spent, done.

  Phuong comes to check on me after a while. She has my clothes, which are s
teaming and still wet. I don’t put them on right away. She also has a bowl of food, a stew of some kind. It smells nearly as bad as the leaf resin the women rubbed on me, but that cured the itching, so who am I to complain? My stomach growls, telling me to just eat it already.

  I drink and chew and force myself to swallow the chunks of unfamiliar meat. It’s so tough that I could chew for an hour and not break it down, so I just swallow and keep eating until it’s gone.

  “What was that?” I ask Phuong when I finish.

  “You may not want to know,” she says.

  “No really,” I insist, though from the way she says it, she might be right.

  “Singe,” she says. She makes a simian face and bends her elbows to tickle herself under both armpits, in case I don’t know the French word for monkey.

  I think I’m going to throw up. Phuong points to a skinned carcass hanging on a rack just out of the reach of a few skinny dogs. It looks almost human—dead human with most of the flesh stripped off.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Because you wouldn’t have eaten it,” she says. “But it’s necessary. We have to continue and you need food for strength. I doubt there will be more coconuts on the Trail. And we have no more rice.”

  “But monkey?” I’m still struggling to keep from losing it.

  “These people are hungry themselves,” Phuong says. “They may be starving. Many of my people making their way on the Reunification Trail are starving. The Americans have disrupted everything with their bombing raids, their mass destruction anywhere they suspect we may be. In Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Laos. Crops, livestock, the wild animals these people hunt to feed themselves. All killed. And you complain about eating monkey. Do you not realize they are sharing with us all they have for themselves?”

  Embarrassed, I start to apologize—which isn’t something I’m used to—but Phuong cuts me off.

  “Next time you will go without,” she says.

  “Can we at least stay here for the night?” I ask, but she says no, we’ve already lost too much time and have to get farther down the trail before stopping for the night. She doesn’t know the name of the tribespeople but does her best to thank them for the food and for treating my rash. She offers them the money that apparently they hadn’t accepted when she showed it to them before, but they just look at it, then drop it on the ground as if it’s nothing.

  We shouldn’t have eaten the monkey.

  I find out first, an hour down the trail, when I’m hit by stomach cramps. I try to ignore them at first—I’ve had dysentery off and on since Saigon—but when they get too bad, I double over, drop to my knees, and vomit up everything I’ve eaten.

  Five minutes later, Phuong is on the ground next to me, throwing up so hard that she ends up on her hands and knees, her AK-47 flung to the side. It’s noisy and nasty and violent and terrible in every way. My stomach is on fire. Phuong rolls onto her side and curls up in a fetal position, arms crossed over her abdomen, rocking and moaning.

  I know we can’t stay here, exposed, so I crawl off the trail, pulling her with me, until we find our way into a stand of bamboo and enough space for a nest where we can collapse, hidden, until hopefully the monkey, whatever of it is still in our bodies, somehow can pass through without killing us.

  Both of us vomit over and over, deep into the night, until nothing comes out, then we dry-heave. I spit up blood. Drink some water, but as soon as it hits my stomach the vomiting starts all over again. The same with Phuong. After, we both collapse back on the ground. And then come the chills. And the delirium. It goes on for hours, and must be going on with Phuong, too, but I’m too weak, too helpless to check. Everything aches. I’m freezing. Each breath causes muscle spasms. I see things, hear things: people whispering on the other side of the bamboo, Vietnamese voices, conspiring to attack us. They have machetes. They’re going to hack us to death, and no one will know. I try to warn Phuong, but I can’t find her. I search for her, back in the ghost forest, going from white tree to white tree, fearful of who might be hiding behind each one, but compelled to find out, to keep on until I reach her. There’s Vu, alive again, but faceless, mute, uncomprehending when I speak to him, walking blindly, arms extended, trying to feel his way somewhere. And my mom! She’s there! I call to her, but she doesn’t answer. I run to catch up, but she keeps moving away from me, and no matter how fast I run, I can’t make up the distance. “Mom! Mom!” I scream in desperation. I have to catch her. We have to find a way home. But someone is moaning close by. It’s Phuong and she needs me. I have to let Mom go.

  My fever breaks. The delirium passes. I’m bathed in sweat, my face pressed to the damp ground, grit in my mouth, a desperate thirst, night so black I can’t see anything. I feel around me until I find a canteen. I drink until it’s empty. A voice says, Go easy, go easy, you’ll make yourself sick again, but I can’t stop. I lie back down, sweat rolling off my face, my clothes soaked, but at least the nausea is gone, along with the chills and the hallucinations. Black turns gray, and when I force my eyes open I can make out shapes. The bamboo walls surrounding us. Phuong, her back to me, still shaking and whimpering. I find her rucksack, pull out her poncho, and drag it over her, but she’s thrashing now and throws it off. I gather it over her again, and this time wrap my arms around her and hold on.

  And little by little it works. She stops shaking. I stop sweating. And I keep my body pressed against hers, both of us curled up together on the jungle floor, and merciful sleep comes and that’s how we survive the night.

  In the morning, while Phuong still sleeps, I pull myself away from her and stagger out of the bamboo with the canteens in search of more water. Amber light filters through the thick canopy, and all the voices of the jungle seem to waken at once—the birds, the monkeys high in the trees, barking deer. Every step is a chore as I follow the trail up what should be a gentle rise, hoping I’ll find a stream soon. I don’t have the strength to go far. I stop and listen for the sound of running water, and after two false leads, I hear it for real. Not more than a trickle, but enough to fill the canteens until my knees start trembling and my legs threaten to give out. It’s too much, too soon. I have to crawl back to the bamboo nest and Phuong.

  She’s still passed out. I lift her head and gently pour water onto her chapped lips. She swallows. I let her rest, then do it again. I brush her long black hair out of her face, use some of the water to wash off vomit and dirt, let her sleep, and lie down to sleep again myself. I don’t know why I’m working so hard to save her. It’s just what you do. But also, if she dies, I die. I have no idea where I am in this jungle and can’t possibly survive out here on my own. What are the chances of my being rescued on the Trail? I’m more likely to be killed by American bombs.

  When I wake the second time, Phuong is the one sitting, leaning against the bamboo, her legs drawn up in front of her, forehead on her knees. She hears me struggle to sit as well and lifts her head and gives me a wan smile. The effort of even that seems to exhaust her. She puts her head back down. I drink some water, nudge her arm with the canteen. She drinks some, too.

  The next hour passes in that way—one of us remembering to drink, then reminding the other to do it, too, slowly rehydrating, slowly coming back to ourselves. The morning turns into late morning, judging from the angle of the sun’s rays that find their way into our hiding place. It grows warmer, but not as bad as the fierce January heat back on the plains of Vietnam. Just almost as bad. Phuong hasn’t spoken all morning. Neither of us has. Neither of us do. Neither of us has the strength. Maybe neither of us has anything to say.

  I crawl out again for more water and manage to stand longer this time to fill the canteens. Then I drag myself back to the bamboo. Phuong has retrieved her weapon, rucksack, and gear. It’s all next to her now, the gun across her lap. She might have even cleaned it. So if she needs to shoot me, or shoot anybody, she’ll be ready. It makes me angry, or as angry as I can get in my weakened state. He
re I am getting water for her, after holding her all night through her chills and fever sweats and everything, and all she can think about is her gun, which means all she thinks about me is that I’m still her prisoner. So maybe I should have taken the weapon in the middle of the night, once my fever passed, and just gone ahead and shot her instead. Too bad I don’t know how to fire the thing.

  I throw her canteen to the ground next to her, but she catches it and looks up at me, surprised.

  “Merci, Taylor,” she croaks, the first and only words either of us have spoken. And for some reason that makes me feel better. I guess my emotions are all over the place—from being so sick, from being so weak, from being so starved, from everything that’s happened over the past two weeks, from having my world be upside down with no chance of it ever being right again.

  “Pas de tout, Phuong,” I say back, because even with all that I guess I should still be polite. Not at all.

  We rest, refill canteens, rest some more. Sleep again that night in our little fortress, though Phuong says we need to be careful about bamboo pit vipers, which scares me enough that it’s hours after she dozes off before I quit worrying enough to fall asleep, too.

  We both wake before dawn when it’s too dark to venture out. I only know Phuong is awake because I can just make out the shape of her sitting up, and because I can hear her talking softly to herself, her voice barely a whisper. I listen for a while and realize she’s singing. So I lie there, keeping still and enjoying the sound, though I don’t know any of the words.

  Finally, at first light, she stops. We drink the last of our water.