“Yes I did, sir. The American people like Ho Chi Minh very much.”
There was another argument between them. Some of them didn’t believe him, others said we could get our pictures in American magazines and maybe we’ll meet Marilyn Monroe.
Pot Belly made up his mind. “Untie them,” he said.
“You want to take our photograph?” Pot Belly asked.
“I want to put you and your men on the cover of my magazine,” Reyes said. “You’ll all be as famous as Marilyn Monroe.”
There were still a couple of the soldiers not convinced, the one with the bandana who had captured them kept saying, “They’re lying, let’s take them out and shoot them.” But finally Pot Belly lost his patience and shouted at him, told him to go away and take his men on patrol.
“And for that you’re not going to be in the photograph,” he shouted as he skulked away. Pot Belly smiled at him. “My name is Phuong. Now where shall we take this photograph?”
Chapter 32
The soldiers took Connor and Reyes to one of the huts and showed them their gear. Connor picked up a blood-soaked bandana. “When they shot my guide I tried to stem the bleeding,” he said. He tossed it aside again, found his backpack and went through it, looking for his camera and his wallet. “They took all my money,” he said
Reyes looked over his shoulder, there was a photograph of Magdalena. Connor saw Reyes stare at it and hurriedly slipped it away again.
“Think of it as a donation to the local community fund,” Reyes said, pretending he hadn’t seen it.
Connor examined his camera. It was covered in mud and he took his time cleaning it.
“Is it all right?” Reyes asked him.
“It’ll do. Opportunity of a lifetime, man. You were making jokes about being on the front page of Time, but I reckon I will be after this.”
Reyes admired his balls. He could lose his fingers or Phuong could still change his mind and shoot them and all Connor could think about was his magazine piece.
Connor had Phuong and his men pose stern-faced with their guns in front of one of the huts but before he could take the shot the commander asked him for the copy of Time magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. He insisted on holding it up for the camera.
Connor shot an entire roll of film one-handed, arranging their weapons for them, tidying their uniforms, showing them how to look fiercer. He even persuaded Phuong to give up Marilyn Monroe.
“I’ll win a Pultizer for this,” Connor said. “I’m going to tell the whole world how the CIA is running drugs out of Laos.”
“They’ll never print it.”
“Oh, someone will. You can’t keep a lid on a story like this forever.”
“You know even if we get out of here you still have the Corsicans and Angel’s boys in Saigon to worry about. Your troubles aren’t over.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Phuong and his men invented more heroic poses with every shot. All these millions our government is spending to fight communism, Reyes thought, all they needed to was promise them a date with Marilyn Monroe or their picture in Time and they’d jump through hoops for you.
After Connor was done everyone was laughing and offering each other cigarettes and patting each other on the back like they’d just won the World Series. An hour ago they were going to shoot them in the head without another thought. It was like dealing with the mafia or the Kennedys.
They let him examine Connor’s wounds. As he suspected his fingers were badly infected, he had lost a tooth in his lower jaw from the beating they had given him and he suspected two of his ribs were probably broken but there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about that. He was in surprisingly good shape for all that he’d been through.
“You smell like a goat,” Reyes said. “You better have a bath before you get together with your wife again.”
Connor gave him a strange look but he didn’t say anything.
That night they all had dinner in Phuong’s hut and Reyes answered endless questions about Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Their knowledge of American history was sketchy at best; none of them knew Marilyn was dead, and there was an argument about whether Lincoln was still in politics or had retired.
They wanted to know everything about life in America, and he lied to them, told them the people lived in abject poverty and that only Nixon and his army ate ice cream every day. They wanted to know what Americans thought about the war in Laos and he told them most Americans supported the Pathet Lao. How could he tell them the truth? That most people didn’t even know where Laos was and the pilots who bombed them didn’t give them a second thought.
The question they kept coming back to was: what was it like to sleep with Marilyn Monroe?
When he got tired of fielding endless questions about her, he got a lecture on politics from Phuong, who really had been a professor of politics at the university in Vientiane once.
He told Reyes he had been arrested by the police for criticizing the government back in 1961, and when he lost his job because of his left wing views he joined the Pathet Lao. He still had a wife and two children in Vientiane and he missed them. He then confided in whispers to Reyes that he was disappointed with Ho, that the Chinese and North Vietnamese were trying to take over the revolution in Laos and that he sometimes feared that they might kill him too one day.
He still dreamed of a perfect political Utopia. In a lot of ways he was Connor’s twin.
The next morning Phuong himself escorted him them out of the camp with a dozen of his soldiers and they set off back through the jungle. After an hour’s hike he stopped and said that Tou would take them the rest of the way. They shook hands and clapped each other on the back. Reyes promised to bring him back a copy of the Time magazine personally. He felt a little sorry for him; persecuted by his own government, duped by his North Vietnamese allies and now he was lying to him as well.
He hoped the pictures of Marilyn Monroe would one day seem like a fair trade.
“How long till we get back to the village?” he asked Tou.
“It’s about half a day’s walk.”
Half a day, just enough time. Bear would be out to get him in the morning and then they would be on their way back to the world, the world and Magdalena. Who knew what would happen then.
“Reyes, I owe you my life,” Connor said. “I don’t think I can ever repay you. I misjudged you.”
“Look, Connor, just because I’m not the bastard you thought I was, that doesn’t make me a saint either.”
“I still owe you.”
Reyes didn’t want his thanks. I wonder if you’ll thank me when your wife leaves you? He hefted his knapsack over his shoulder. “Let’s get going,” he said.
Chapter 33
They emerged from the green corridors of the jungle onto the ridgeline. They could see the smoke of cooking fires above the trees and hear the barking of dogs echo down the valley. The mist around the distant mountains was tinted with violet in the late afternoon sun.
“How far?” Reyes asked Tou. They seemed so close, but he knew it could be deceptive-- nothing in the jungle went in a straight line.
“Just a little way,” he said, which was his answer to everything.
This scene could have been from any time in the last five thousand years, he supposed. They seemed as far away from the twentieth century right now as it was possible to be.
He heard a roar and a flash of silver appeared violently over the ridgeline. Reyes saw the blue star painted on the silver skin of the fuselage. Connor said, “It’s okay they’re ours.”
It was one of the dumbest things he had ever heard anyone say, as if those guys could even care who they were. Anything moving in the jungle was enemy for them.
It was a T-28, one of the bombers out of Long Tieng coming back from a raid, must have been buzzing the hills looking for targets. He saw the winking of the machine guns mounted along the wing before he even had time to react.
Reyes rolled down the slope and lay among the thick jungle and listened. He prayed they didn’t have any rockets left under the wings or they’d torch the whole hillside. He heard the pilot bank and come around again, screaming so low overhead he thought he was going to crash right on top of them.
And then he was gone.
Reyes waited until he was sure it was safe and got cautiously to his feet. It was like someone had gone through the jungle with a giant scythe.
Reyes called out for Tou, was relieved to see him trotting back down the path, still grinning. “That was close!” he shouted.
Reyes looked down. Connor lay face down, clawing at the dirt with his nails. “I think something’s wrong,” he said.
“Fuck,” Reyes said.
A white sliver of bone had pierced his skin, just above the ankle, which was twisted at an odd angle away from his body. There was some blood but not a lot.
“I think it caught on something when we rolled down the slope,” Connor said, grunting with pain. “I heard it crack.”
Reyes knelt down beside him. This didn’t look good.
Connor was white but he wasn’t in too much pain, not yet. That would come. Reyes took out his knife and cut off his boot and sock before the swelling made it impossible. He checked his circulation by squeezing the toenail and felt for a pulse.
He didn’t have any morphine; if he could get him to the village, the Hmong had plenty of opium though. In the meantime he gave him a stick to bite on. “This could get bad,” he warned him.
For once Tou stopped smiling.
“What is it with you, Connor? You always been this accident prone?”
“Never even broke a fingernail before this trip.”
He turned back to Tou. “If you go to the village for help, can you get back before night?”
He shook his head. “We have to take him with us,” he said.
Connor had turned white and was covered in cold, greasy sweat. He was going into shock. Reyes fashioned a makeshift splint out of bamboo, tied it on with strips cut from his shirt. It would have to make do.
“Just try to keep still,” he said. “There’s no easy way to do this.”
Tou hacked down two stands of bamboo with his machete and cut them into poles about the same length. Then he made webbing out of vines and they lifted Connor onto it. He screamed, but there was no time for refinement, he knew they had to hurry. He doubted if even Tou could find his way in the dark and the night set quickly here.
They set off again. Connor was just a wiry guy but he was heavier than he looked. They could carry him easily enough along the flat parts of the trail but when they went downhill it was impossible to keep their balance.
They knew they’d have to abandon the makeshift stretcher. Connor tried to stand on his good leg but then he gasped and went down again, panting with pain. His fingers clutched at Reyes’ arm like he was trying to squeeze the bone out of it. “Fuck, it hurts too much,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well I’m not leaving you here, not now we’ve come this far.”
“You’re a madman. Get away from me.”
Reyes knelt beside him and put his arm over his shoulder.
“God damn you, Garcia, leave me be!”
Connor gritted his teeth but there was a high-pitched keening noise coming from him.
“You’ve got to help me or we’ll all be stuck here,” Reyes said. He and Tou lifted him upright, supporting him under each arm. Connor bent his knee to keep his injured ankle off the ground. The smaller Tou almost buckled at the knees, now Reyes had almost all the weight.
Connor groaned with pain and almost passed out.
“For Christ’s sake, stay with us,” Reyes said.
When they got to the bottom of the valley, they laid him down and rested for a few minutes before trying again.
“Only way is to drag him,” Tou said.
“Okay,” Reyes said.
Inch by inch they pulled him up the slope. Connor’s leg bounced on the hard ground and this time he passed out. Now it was like dragging a bag of cement up a flight of stairs.
They stopped halfway to rest again. They had lost the trail and it was almost dark but they knew they were close because they could hear the village dogs howling. They could see the first stars through the canopy of the trees.
“Let’s keep going,” Reyes said.
He had reached that point of exhaustion where he was ready to give up. Somehow Tou kept him going. “Nearly there, boss,” he kept grinning over and over. “Nearly there!”
Suddenly they emerged from the jungle into a clearing and shadows came rushing out of the gloom to help them. Half a dozen Hmong picked Connor up and carried him into one of the huts. Reyes just lay there, next to Tou, too tired to move another yard. He reached out and grabbed the boy’s hand. ‘Tou, you are a fucking hero, you know that?”
“You too, boss,” Tou said and they both started laughing hysterically in the darkness.
He was back; he had done it. He thought it was all over.
He should have known better than to even dream it.
Chapter 34
They laid him on a bamboo mat on the floor. In the dim light of the oil lamp he looked like a cadaver. The headman’s son prepared an opium pipe, tamping the sticky black opium into the bowl and lighting it for him. Connor’s hands were shaking from the pain. He inhaled as deeply as he good, and after he had finished the first pipe, Reyes could see the tension go out of him.
“I guess this is what it’s meant for,” he said.
“A few more pipes should keep you going through the night,” Reyes said. “In the morning you’ll be back in Vientiane. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You still have my camera?”
“Your camera?”
Reyes had forgotten all about it. He looked over his shoulder and there was Tou, grinning and holding up Connor’s knapsack and pointing to the camera.
“That’s the least of your worries.”
“That’s my Pulitzer,” he said.
He heard the village girls pounding rice outside. Tou grinned and bobbed his head and said he was going outside and Reyes wished him luck.
“Where’s he going?” Connor said.
“That’s how they do their courting,” Reyes said. “The young boys talk to the girls while they’re pounding the rice. If the pounding stops you know he got lucky.”
“You really slept with Marilyn Monroe?”
“Sure I did. Nixon, too. Nixon was better, Marilyn just lay there, but Nixon likes screwing people.”
Connor laughed at that. “I’m never sure with you what’s the truth and what’s the lie. You like to keep people guessing, don’t you?”
“Because the truth is so banal. I just hang around the fringes of the great and mighty and do little jobs for people. That’s me, Connor, a fringe player.”
“Like I said, that could be truth or you have just snowed me again.”
“It makes me an unreliable source so be sure you don’t quote me on anything.”
“One thing I know...you really love her...don’t you?”
“Who?”
The opium was really starting to have an effect. Connor’s eyes closed and he mumbled something Reyes couldn’t hear. Reyes patted his shoulder. “You should never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to,” he said.
They had given him a little raised platform off the ground to sleep on. He lay down and listened to Tou’s girl giggling as she pounded the rice. He must be doing all right. He closed his eyes, replaying the last forty-eight hours in his head, marvelling at his own luck. A lot of times now he thought he’d pushed fate too far and somehow he always walked away smiling. He guessed he would use up all his lives one
day and he wondered if he would have any warning or would it just be a magic bullet?
He listened to the pigs rooting and snuffling in their sleep underneath the hut. He realised the pounding had stopped. Tou’s smile must have won her over. Good for him. He listened to the silence of the jungle, breathing in the sticky sweet smell of the opium.
He thought about Magdalena. He always did about this time every night. After seven years it had become a habit.
Connor woke sometime in the night. “Are you there, Reyes?”
“What’s up, Connor?”
“It’s hurting again, bad.”
Reyes sat up, lit the oil lamp next to his bed and squatted down beside him. He prepared another opium pipe for him, helped him hold it to his lips. He bent over to take a better look at his ankle. His foot was swollen to twice its size and the toes felt cold. The circulation wasn’t getting through. He wondered if he’d lose his foot. A one-armed one-legged journalist. There weren’t many of those.
The opium kept going out so he had to keep lighting it for him. He couldn’t do it himself with that mangled hand.
“Some fix, huh?”
“I’ve been in worse. We got lucky this time.”
“How is getting captured by the Pathet Lao and strafed by your own Air Force lucky?”
“I look at it this way, Connor. It’s like walking past a sleeping lion. You get past once - well, that’s lucky. You do it again, and that’s just about a miracle. You go up and drag on his tail and call him a lazy sunnavabitch and he eats you, that’s not unlucky, that’s just plain dumb.”
“You trying to tell me something, Reyes?”
“I think you got the idea.”
“I was just doing my job. Someone has to tell people what’s going over here.”
“You really think it matters? You tell people what’s happening, but if someone in the government says it’s not? There’s not a damn thing they can do about it. People wander about in the dark all their lives because they don’t care or they can’t change anything even if they do.”
Naked in Saigon (Naked Series Book 3) Page 12
