by Tatjana Soli
"Heading home." The words felt strange in his mouth, as if they had no connection to himself. After all these years, where was home? He felt at home right there, with this young man who could have been his son, but wasn't.
The boy blew out a breath. "Home. You are one lucky--"
"Your father should be very proud. Do you miss home?" Darrow asked. In the bright sun, he thought the young captain's face impossibly unlined, impossibly innocent. Had he ever been so young? Choked up, he pulled out a cigarette and offered one. Anderson took it but averted his eyes, and Darrow realized that he had missed that look, the toughness in the jaw, that the captain was boyish only in his joy of flying.
"I do and I don't, you know?"
Darrow chuckled. "I'm there, guy."
Anderson, egged on, sat up, nodding his head. "I mean, I'm in the groove here. Finally. I can do this. But there... it doesn't make sense anymore. I don't know if I trust it."
"Me, either."
"Then why you goin'?"
Darrow shrugged. "A woman. Couldn't help myself."
Anderson laughed out loud. "No shit? Well, good luck to you. You're a braver man than me." He took a long drag of his cigarette. "I'm supposed to be one of the best pilots. So they send me on all the tough stuff. Hero shit. So the chances of me eating it are better than if I was just a washout. How fucked up is that?"
"You don't have to be the best pilot."
Anderson laughed. "Wrong! I do, and they know it. Can't help myself." He thrust his hips lewdly. "Flying's the only other thing I've ever been good at."
The next day Anderson and Darrow were on their way to the firebase at Kontum.
The morning passed, uneventful, and Darrow spent the hours in a dreamlike mood, lulled by the closeness and speed of trees under his feet. Except for the earsplitting noise of the engines, it was a bird's-eye view of the world, like boyhood dreams of flying before other dreams, dreams of war, had taken over.
He would take Helen to Angkor and show her the expression on one particular face. Serenity mixed with savagery. Only she could understand--the history of the place showed both a great lust and indifference for violence. And wasn't that what they had become, Helen and he, interpreters of violence? A very twisted connoisseurship. They would sit on the warm stones in the evening, and he would whisper his greatest fears to her.
That the image betrayed one at last. It grieved and outraged, but ultimately it deadened. The first picture, or the fifth, or even the twenty-fifth still had an authority, but finally the repetition made the horror palatable. In the last few years, no matter how hard he tried, his pictures weren't as powerful as before he had known this. Like an addict who had to keep upping the dose to maintain the same high, he found himself risking more and working harder for less return. He would never again be moved the way he was over that first picture of a dead World War II soldier. Was his own work perpetrating the same on those it came into contact with? A steady loss of impact until violence became meaningless? His ridiculous brawl with Tanner when in truth Tanner was the logical progeny of their profession. Maybe they deserved to be charged with war crimes, too.
He worried, as the trees sped by beneath his feet, that Helen did not believe he loved her other than by his leaving. But he would prove it to her in a hundred thousand ways.
They were flying over the Plei Trap Valley when Anderson, whom Darrow now imagined as his and Helen's son, tapped him on the shoulder, yelling over the roar of the engine, the boyish grin absurd and comforting. "You okay?"
"Fine. The heat's getting to me."
"I got two wounded for emergency evac. We're the only free ride around. Okay with you?" he asked eagerly, as if he were borrowing keys to his father's car.
"Let's go." Darrow laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. He had gone a little deeper, and then not intending to, deeper still. Didn't every man in every war believe that he would be the one to make it, to survive, to return home filled with tales? Darrow was no different. The unspoken truth of how each of them survived their time.
Minutes later they dropped into a combat spiral, and he felt the familiar wrenching of the stomach, the mouth going dry. And then a terrible shattering, as if the helicopter had been hit by lightning, smote by a giant hand instead of a rocket. Now the boy turned all warrior, face grim and masklike as they spiraled earthward; a tearing sound signaled the rear tail torn away. The green of the trees roared toward them with a sickening rush, and between the branches Darrow saw flashes of light. The smooth, brown warrior from the Lolei temple, the eyes wild. Reluctantly, Darrow lifted his now gravity-weighted head and looked at Anderson once more. Son. He took leave of him and looked out. A rush of green and then Helen's face. The branches like arms reaching out. He calculated odds he had escaped from before as he heard the whooshing sound, the vacuum of air as the cockpit glass became as bright as a new sun. White knuckles and sunlight and her eyes. An infinity of green. Every shade of green in the world.
THIRTEEN
Ca Dao
Songs
Name: Samuel Andre Darrow
Rank/Branch:
Unit:
Date of Birth: 7 May 1925
Home City of Record: New York City, NY
Date of Loss: 14 November 1967
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 14127N 1074920E (ZA045798)
Status: Missing in Action
Category: 1
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: OH6A
Other Personnel in Incident: Captain Jon Anderson
The mission to recover bodies had been denied for months because of enemy movements, the area considered extremely dangerous, but then recon reported the enemy had pulled out. An invisible veil lifted, and although nothing to the eye had changed--the hills remained just as green, the paths stretched out in their promise of innocence--the land officially became neutral again.
Linh and Helen went in with a Green Beret unit and two South Vietnamese rangers familiar with the terrain of that part of the Ho Chi Minh trail network. They went in on cargo transports, linking with a contingent of Montagnard mercenaries led by Special Forces officers.
After hiking through the morning, the main force went to destroy enemy bunker complexes, while their unit branched off and went on the five clicks to the crash site. Because the bodies had not been recovered, Darrow and the pilot were listed as MIA. The mislabeling of the truth angered Helen, and she climbed the hills in a spirit of righteousness. She had not wanted to bring her camera, but Linh insisted that they bring a minimum of equipment.
From a neighboring hill, Helen focused binoculars and saw the blackened smudge of the crash site, the surrounding vegetation burned to charcoal in the fire. "There it is," she said, feeling foolish at the excitement in her voice.
Linh watched her, his eyelids half closed in the bright sun. Without a word, he followed one of the rangers down a steep ravine. He had been angry at her insistence to come, thinking there was no point in endangering herself.
Helen stayed in close to the man assigned as her escort, Sergeant James. He was a tall man with reddish hair and fair skin. Whenever they stopped for a break, he would take out a zinc stick and run it along his face and neck till his skin was white with the stuff. "I've burned and peeled so many times, I'm down to my last layer of skin."
Absurd as it was, Helen rushed her steps, walked ahead of James and passed Linh in her frenzy, as if time were still a factor, could change anything that mattered.
The crash site lay near the top of the hill, a view of green mountains extending all the way to Laos and beyond. The afternoon light slanted through the sky, cast everything in shades of greenish gold. The scent of grass was blurred by charcoal. The wind came up, a faint rustling of leaves, a clicking of bamboolike chimes in a graveyard. The most sacred place she had ever been.
She remembered Darrow waking her at dawn, watching the sun pour slowly across the Cordillera. The mountains too far away to ever reach, but now, deep inside them, they still stretched out of her grasp,
unknowable.
"Ever been here before?" she asked.
"Not likely. This is beaucoup dangerous bandit country. But recovery isn't bad. Once they're already dead, the enemy usually isn't interested in scoop-up."
Sergeant James joined the other soldiers surrounding the burned-out hull of the helicopter, already so weathered it looked as if it had been there decades. The men crouched over blackened mounds on the ground, unzipped a body bag, put on plastic gloves, and used spades.
Head pounding from a threatening migraine, Helen stood, her purpose gone. Of course, there was nothing there for her, but she had been unable to stay away. Her whole being unmoored, the excuse of going out was her only relief. A death to suffer through with no ceremony, no commemoration of who they had been to each other. A red drop fell on her shirt and then blood began to pour from her nose.
Linh was quickly at her side, pulling out a handkerchief, settling her in the shade of a tree.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Altitude. Heat."
She sat with her head tilted back, the metal taste of blood stripping her throat raw. "Don't be angry with me."
Linh was cleaning a lens with cloth. "For nosebleed? We all miss him."
"Then why the looks?"
"You have been here long enough but still you act like a child." Linh remembered Darrow's theatrics over Samang's snakebite death in Angkor. Why couldn't any of them accept fate? Why the long march out here? Of course, he must ask himself the same question. The answer that he feared for her and didn't fear for himself. More and more he believed detachment the only answer to the constant onslaught of loss.
"Just be my friend."
"I am always your friend."
Later she walked back and forth along the outside of the site, searching debris scattered a good distance from the crash. Between tall swales of elephant grass, she found small fragments of 35mm film, the emulsion burned away so that it had a milky, blinded look. Linh recovered a piece of the embroidered neckband that Darrow used for his favorite Leica; it had been wedged under a stone. Although he would have liked to have kept it, he handed it to Helen, and she held it carefully between her fingers, as if it still burned.
Sergeant James came over to her and handed her his canteen. "Miss?"
"Sorry," she mumbled. "Heat."
"We need to be pushing off."
Helen nodded. Her fingers still searched the charcoal ground for slips of film.
"Ready to leave." He took back his canteen and screwed the cap back on. "Sorry for your loss. They died like heroes. Trying to rescue two of our own."
"Khong biet." I don't know.
He crinkled his nose as if from a bad smell. "How's that?"
"Too many heroes in my life. All gone."
Her fingers were soot black as she pocketed three small pieces of film. When she wiped the sweat off her forehead, a black smudge trailed behind. The time of extravagant grief over; now she was dry-eyed and quiet. Something had changed, she feared, what ever connection she had felt for the land or the soldiers broken.
Linh came up to her and motioned to her forehead.
During those convalescent days he had nursed her in the Cholon apartment, Linh had decided the only tribute he could pay Darrow was to send Helen home safely. She agreed to go only once the body was recovered. When they got news of the crash, Gary insisted that Linh go with him to the apartment. As soon as Helen opened the door and looked into Linh's face, she knew. The worst part how little a surprise it had been, how easy to accept. She pulled Linh inside and closed the door on Gary. But even the fatefulness of the death did nothing to diminish her grief. The sound of her crying tore open his own wounds. An agony to stay with her; an agony to leave.
During those long days, she had asked him about his life, and for the first time he revealed parts. She had earned this trust. He told how his father had been a nationalist, simply wanting in dependence for his country. When Ho embraced the early promise of Communism, he followed. Linh had joined the NVA, believing his father. Soon, they both realized it was a false promise. The family had been willing to lose all, escape. But they found the South, too, corrupted, filled with puppets for the foreigners.
_______
Now Helen untied her bandanna and wetted it from his canteen, wiping the charcoal from her brow and then spreading the wet cloth open to cover her whole face. Under torture, men suffocated this way.
"It's time to leave." He plucked the cloth off her face.
Sergeant James stood at ease with the other soldiers, facing the ravine they had come up, feet spread, arms clasped behind his back like a sentinel. Two improbably small body bags lay at the soldiers' feet.
Far away the hollow thrum of underground explosives could be heard like a heartbeat. Many hilltops over, delicate white puffs of smoke hung in the air.
The Montagnards were supposed to carry the remains out, but they did not show up. James said they were probably still blowing bunkers, so the soldiers decided to carry the bags themselves and not risk getting caught out overnight.
In single file the soldiers walked step by step down the dirt path, the ground loose and red under their boots, each of them shouldering the end of a splintery wood pole, and the unevenness of their strides and the small slips in the crumbling soil caused the bags to sway and squeak. Linh and Helen followed--the ravine plunging, hairpin and overgrown--alternately blinded by the sunlight and then plunged into dark shade as they made their way back down the steep mountain.
Thorn bushes crowding the path snagged at Helen's pants, and once, as she gazed out over the valley, a large thorn dug a long scratch along her arm. Beadlike drops of blood formed along the wound, but she was oblivious to it until Linh came up next to her and rubbed it roughly with a piece of cloth, his eyes glittering.
"You must watch where you're going. Be more careful."
When they made it back to the LZ it was sunset, and a helicopter was on its way to drop supplies and take them out. Helen ached to go back to the city, to the crooked apartment she had not moved out of, boxes half packed. She waited with her back to the two bags lying by the side of the clearing.
As they waited, four LRRPs, called Lurps, walked in from the bush. They high-fived the platoon digging in for the night, nodded thoughtfully to the bags at the edge of the clearing, then squatted under a tree and began to boil rice and dried meat. These types, MacCrae's kind of guys, worked in deep cover, adapting to native ways and language.
Linh went over and joined them. Exhausted, Helen sat on a box of rations. She was surprised when one of the men held out a plastic cup to Linh, and more surprised when he accepted, squatting down to drink with them. By the jerk of Linh's head and the guttural laughter of the soldiers, she guessed it was the local hill tribe moonshine, a fermented alcohol made of rice, lethal stuff.
The helicopter came in, and everyone turned away to shield their faces. The whole camp pitched in to unload supplies. Two of the Lurps jumped up, jubilant and drunk, and each took one end of the first body bag and swung it up on the floor of the helicopter, where it landed with a hard thud.
"Careful!" Helen yelled.
The two men stared at her with blank expressions. "They won't feel a thing anymore, dolly," one of them said to the howling laughter of his companions.
Helen stared at them and at Linh sitting there, a part of them. "I'll remember that when I carry your bag."
The soldier made a motion with his hand as if he had touched something hot. "Sssssss!"
Helen watched as the next bag was loaded in carefully, almost tenderly.
Linh staggered up to her. "We're not going out. We're going on patrol with them." He nodded his head back to the Lurps eating their dinner.
"You're drunk." Helen's gaze took in the group of men who were oblivious to their presence. "Do they know this?"
"Already arranged."
"By who?"
He wagged his head. "Me."
She rubbed her boot back and forth in the d
irt, a long, tired arc. "I'm beat. You go. I'm going back on this ride."
Linh grabbed her arm. "For me, this time. Without questions."
She hesitated. After Darrow's death, she felt strange around Linh. The memory of the three of them together making the absence more painful. "I don't have enough film."
"Enough for the job."
"Which is?"
Linh studied her face, looking for something. "You said you wanted to photograph the Ho Chi Minh trail. Still do?"
After three days, Helen no longer thought of the crooked apartment or Saigon. Even Darrow changed from a pain outside, inflicted, to something inside, a tumor, with only its promise of future suffering. The fastness of the jungle struck her again in all its extraordinary voluptuousness, its wanton excess. It enchanted. Time rolled in long green distances, and she took comfort in the fact that the land would outlast them, would outlast the war--would outlast time itself.
They traveled straight west for three days, illegally crossing the border at some point, and continued on. They moved beyond rules; she, in her grief, was also beyond rules. Gradually, as happened each time, Helen was absorbed by the details of the patrol--the heat, the terrain, the soldiers--till nothing else existed. She was impressed by the obvious relish with which they went about their job, hardwired for it in a way other units were not. They lived deep in the land; traveled through it like ghosts. No base camps or supply drops. Understood there would be no mercy if they were caught. They made do with very little--whatever was on their backs or taken from the land.
Deep in the wilderness, Helen experienced the longed-for slipping beneath the surface, losing the sense of herself as separate from her surroundings. After five days all thought of the war was gone. Only movement and land covered, the safety of the men and herself. She lost her tiredness, lost her appetite. Simply ate and slept enough to have the strength to keep walking. The idea of taking photos small and beside the point. The Lurps mostly ignored her except for the one who had made the body bag comment. After a week he came up and complimented her: "You're almost invisible."
