The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  The remaining wall opposite the door and screened-in windows loomed startlingly white and displayed a single item—the enlarged black-and-white framed portrait of Mhai. It hung there until the day Pete, dying, dragged it down so her face would be the last thing he saw.

  “What’s her name?” I asked the first time he admitted me to her presence.

  “Mhai.” The way he said it precluded further questioning.

  I stood staring at her, thinking that she looked familiar, searching my memory for the recollection, finally concluding that Vietnamese women often seemed familiar to those of us who had been there.

  Pete had spoken of Mhai only one other time during our long friendship. One beery afternoon he stood in front of the picture for a long time.

  “I will never forgive myself, Pollack,” he said. “I don’t think God will either.”

  “We’ve all done things,” I said. “Especially in Vietnam.”

  I thought of that different day and let out a breath so filled with pain that Pete turned sharply to look at me. My voice caught in my throat.

  “We’ve all done things,” I croaked.

  Pete waited.

  “We haven’t all done what I done,” he said finally, with the same catch in his throat. I waited.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I asked anyhow. “What? What have you done?” But I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Couldn’t tell me anymore than I could tell him about the different day.

  Pete’s blue eyes faded year by year. Red veins spread beneath the skin of his broken and mangled nose. His face with its tracings of wrinkles and scars assumed the texture of a pumpkin left too long bleaching in the sun. One nasty scar tugged up the left corner of his mouth and lent him a perpetual sad, sad smile.

  His secret, perhaps, and Mhai’s secret were hidden inside the boxes still unopened in my kitchen.

  After a certain age, your prostrate starts waking you in the middle of the night. Some nights I had to get up two or three times to empty my bladder. Then it was hard to go back to sleep. I wandered through the living room toward the kitchen for a swig of orange juice, which sometimes helped me to sleep, switching on lights as I went. Mhai’s eyes followed me; I hesitated in front of her picture.

  “What is it you’re trying to tell me?”

  Like she could really talk, Shaking my head, I ambled on into the kitchen and to the frig. My eyes happened to light on the boxes. For the first time I felt a stirring of curiosity. I staved it off. It was the middle of the night. I drank straight from the orange juice carton. My eyes moved back to the boxes, almost involuntarily.

  What the hell. I was already awake. If I went back to bed, I would do nothing but toss and turn the rest of the night anyhow. Restlessness often produced the nightmare. I pulled the first box up to the table, opened it, and began sorting through yellowed letters, expired insurance policies with no living beneficiaries, ancient car registrations, military documents, old black-and-white photographs of ex-wives and navy buddies... Things old men have collected going through a lifetime. I kept stuff like that myself.

  I found a couple of snapshots of Mhai, one of them with Pete in it. She looked more familiar than ever. I recognized Saigon’s Tu Do Street in the background. Pete wore field camouflage and his SEAL’s black beret. Mhai wore a Nancy Sinatra outfit with miniskirt and boots. It surprised me that she was almost as tall as Pete. Not that Pete was exceptionally tall, but she was still tall for a Vietnamese. Most of the gook women I had seen outside the gates of 9th Infantry Division headquarters at Dong Tam were scrawny little bitches with short legs and no tits.

  The other snapshot showed Mhai sitting in a U.S. Navy-gray quarter-ton Jeep in front of a Catholic church. I thought I recognized the church too, but couldn’t immediately place it. Mhai wore black peasant pajamas and a closed, suspicious expression. She seemed to be glaring defiantly at whoever took her picture. Her hands were bound in her lap.

  By dawn, my slight stirrings of curiosity had flamed into a full attack, a virus. It was like, suddenly, I had been assigned a mission: uncover the story behind the framed woman Pete kept so reverently on his wall and the secret of why God would never forgive him.

  Pete’s current telephone and address books contained nothing more promising than the numbers of plumbers, the local VFW and the like. I put aside a brittle address book with the ink faded almost brown. Old names and addresses. I got up and fixed breakfast, ate, showered, and then started calling. Marking off the numbers one by one as the respondents said they had never heard of Pete Brauer. Most people didn’t retain the same telephone number for two and three decades.

  Disappointment mounting, I was almost through the book when I came to a name heavily underlined, as though it carried particular significance. Lump Adkins. In San Diego. I vaguely recalled Pete having spoken of a “Lump” who was commander of a Riverine Patrol element operating with Pete’s Viet Frogmen on the My Tho River out of the navy patrol base at Dong Tam. Pete and I fought in the same AO, area of operations, during the same period of time, but neither of us could recall ever having actually met.

  I dialed Lump’s number. What luck if I found someone who had served with Pete. A graveled voice finally answered, “Yeah?”

  “Lieutenant Commander Adkins?”

  “Depends on who the fuck wants to know.”

  The telephone receiver trembled in my hand. I almost hung up without saying anything. It was like I was taking a step into time where maybe I shouldn’t be stepping. I always pretended I had finally checked out of Vietnam emotionally; I hadn’t. None of us vets had. Maybe we never would.

  “Lieutenant Commander Adkins, I have some bad news about an old shipmate.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Vietnam War provided the ritual passage to adulthood for my generation of Americans. Those of us who went knew the gagging stench of corpses burning from a napalm strike; understood how fear in the middle of a rainy night could loosen your bowels and fill your drawers; knew and understood the sickness in the pit of your stomach when the buddy next to you took one through the head, how you were sad that it had to happen to him, pissed off about it, but at the same time glad in a guilty way that if it had to happen to someone it happened to him instead of to you. Because we lived through it, we always had our shit detectors out against those who hadn’t but wanted to claim they had, now that it was safe. For the dirtbags who ran off to Canada or let their hair grow and hid out on campuses or who dodged the draft and lied about it later to become President of the United States. When two vets met, the first thing they did was establish bonafides.

  “What outfit were you with?” Lump Adkins asked when he picked me up at San Diego International. “Where were you?”

  “III Corps. Dong Tam, 9th Infantry Division, Fourth of the 39th.”

  Lump nodded. “Be damned, you say? Pete and I were at the Brown Water Navy river base at Dong Tam. What year were you there?”

  “During TET.”

  “Be double damned. So was Pete; I would’ve been except I got hit. I won’t hold it against you ‘cause you were stupid enough to enlist in the army. Were you a lifer?”

  “Retired a light colonel.”

  “I made it to lieutenant commander before the peacetime navy RIF’d my ass and put me out to pasture. I’m not sure I’d want to be in today’s touchy-feely navy anyhow. It’s full of cunts and queers.”

  Lump Adkins appeared to be somewhere between my age and Pete’s. He was bald except for a few white bristles sticking out around his ears. He was a bit taller than Pete, but still a few inches shorter than my six feet. He must once have been a formidable human being; he was still all square angles and concrete blocks. If you hit him with a hammer, the hammer would break. He was outspoken in the manner of most vets. If the truth as he saw it hurt your feelings, fuck you.

  “You came a long way,’ he said. “I’m not sure what I can tell you.

  When I started on Pete’s boxes, I thought to make a few phone calls, ask a coupl
e of questions if possible, and that would be that. Certainly I had no intention of flying across the continent. Old men don’t always travel well. But after talking to Lump on the telephone, it seemed the thing to do if I truly wanted to solve the mystery of what happened between Pete and his Vietnamese girl. Besides, what was there to hold me in Florida? I needed to get away for a few days anyhow. It would be like a vacation.

  I retrieved my luggage from the carousel and Lump led me out of the airport to his Buick. He had left it parked unattended in a waiting zone, which was against federal anti-terrorist regulations. He ripped a citation off the windshield, wadded it into a ball and hurled it at the gutter. A tow truck was undoubtedly on the way.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he growled. “You can’t even breath in this goddamned country anymore for all the laws.”

  He stopped at a Pizza Hut for a pizza-to-go, then at a convenience store for a case of Bud Light.

  “So ol’ Pete bought the farm?” he said. “That tough old sonofabitch.”

  He stomped the gas feed and angled his head away.

  His condo set on the backside of a pleasant-enough complex with a view of the harbor. He pointed out the nuclear aircraft carrier Abe Lincoln which had just returned from Arabian Gulf deployment. In his living room he popped Bud for both of us and opened the pizza.

  Unlike Pete and I, who were reasonably neat in our habits, Lump was old-man bachelor messy. Soiled dishes, dirty coffee cups, take-out Chinese cartons and empty beer bottles accessorized the decor, whatever it normally was. Only a single framed photograph on the wall testified to his wartime service. It showed him and Pete Brauer, both looking much younger, and a third naval officer brandishing weapons on the deck of a navy river patrol boat, a PBR. “This was taken shortly after Pete and I first linked up in-country,” be explained, looking at the picture. “Pete had his Frogmen and I had my Biet Hai river rats. Him and me and Ensign C.C. Cochran—he’s the tall skinny kid in the picture—kicked some serious gook ass.”

  We settled into facing chairs, Lump took a deep swig of Bud and burped grandly.

  “Now, what is it you want to know?”

  I unzipped my bag and took out the big portrait of Mhai. I had removed it from its frame and slipped it into a mailer tube. Lump looked at it.

  “What can you tell me about Pete and her?” I asked.

  “Mhai “ he said

  “You know her?”

  “The cunt,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By late 1967, U.S. bombing, shelling and defoliation of rural areas in Vietnam had driven peasant refugees thronging to the fringes of cities and towns like Saigon, DaNang, Hue and Bien Hoa. Four million men, women and children, roughly a quarter of South Vietnam’s population, were shunted into makeshift camps of squalid shanties whose primitive sewers bred dysentery, malaria, typhoid and other diseases. The cities turned almost medieval. Beggars, hawkers, whores and drug pushers roamed the streets whining and tugging at Americans for money.

  In the middle of Bien Hoa, which had degenerated into a sleazy tenderloin of bars and brothels, set a gigantic American air base, the southern point of entry for war materiel and fresh GI replacements. Naval Lieutenant Pete Brauer gazed intently out the window as the airliner stuffed with its human military cargo soared low for a landing. The base hadn’t changed that much from his last tour, except to grow bigger and dustier. It was still a patchwork of wooden buildings and Quonset huts, parking ramps for aircraft, and dusty roads. Various military vehicles loaded with troops and supplies scurried around like ants. Jet fighters loaded with bombs and rockets took off with thunderous roars, climbing straight up, trailing black smoke as they went. Helicopters—Hueys, Chinooks, Jolly Green Giants—choppered about like bumblebees.

  Passengers went conspicuously silent as the airliner dropped in on final approach. For most of them, young and fresh-faced, this was their first tour. They didn’t know what to expect, but they had all heard the horror stories.

  “On behalf of the captain and crew,” announced a cheerful stewardess over the cabin intercom, “we would like to thank you for choosing Flying Tigers Airlines. The approach to beautiful Bien Hoa will be steeper than normal to avoid attracting ground fire. Chances of a sniper attack or mortar fire are twenty percent. May God keep you safe during your stay in Vietnam.”

  The airliner touched down and rolled to a stop on a ramp in front of Operations. Lt, Brauer, already wearing battle dress jungle fatigues, was among the first to step out of the air-conditioned plane into the blazing sun. The familiar heat and stench of the country hit him like a blast furnace blowing across a sewage pit. He paused and squinted through the blinding tropical sunshine and drifting dust. Sweating GIs hustled about unloading supplies from a C-130 Hercules while others replaced the incoming beans and bullets with outgoing six-feet-long silver-colored metal caskets.

  Lt. Lump Adkins sat in an open Jeep quarter-ton in front of Ops, waiting in the sun. He had earned his nickname from the sound made by any guy foolish enough to cross him. Lump! was the sound the guy made when he hit the deck. Lt. Adkins had been court-martialed at least three times. But so had Lt. Brauer, Lump recalled, which explained why Brauer was over forty years old flying back into Vietnam and still only a lieutenant. Both Brauer and Adkins were among the breed, so it was said, who should be kept locked up during peacetime and let out only in the event of war.

  Lump started the Jeep when he spotted the navy officer getting off into the thick afternoon heat. It wasn’t necessarily Brauer’s age that made him stand out among the scared FNGs like a gamecock among newly-hatched chicks. Nor was it his size, for he was compact and of no more than average height. What set him apart as a seasoned warrior was the crooked nose, broken several times no doubt, the wide face with its intense blue eyes and the scar that tugged up the left corner of his mouth. A guy who looked that tough, who looked like he might kill you with his eyes and then stand and piss on your corpse, could only be the former UDT Frogman turned SEAL.

  Ensign Cochran had passed on pertinent details from the new Nguoi Nhai commander’s Personnel File. Such as that he was a three-war veteran: World War II, where he was sunk aboard the destroyer USS Duncan at the Battle of Cape Esperance; Korea, where he was wounded infiltrating Chicom lines and crawled out on his own after four days and three nights; a previous Vietnam tour when he commanded a platoon from SEAL Team One. Three wars, it was noted, and three divorces. A new war every decade and new women more often than that.

  Brauer sounded like Lt. Adkins’ idea of a good combat naval officer. He drove the Jeep up to the new arrival and got out.

  “Lt. Brauer?”

  Pete looked him over. “This goddamned asphalt is melting through my boot soles. Why are we standing here?”

  “Because we were both dumb enough to volunteer to root in this pile of dung?”

  Brauer nodded and extended his hand. “Sounds reasonable. I’m Pete Brauer.”

  “Harold Adkins, Most call me Lump.”

  They shook hands. They were going to get along.

  “Ensign Cochran would have met you,” Lump said, “except I had to come out of the bush anyhow to pick up medical supplies. I’ll run you to Saigon and you can in-process with MAAG headquarters before we hop a Huey out to Dong Tam. I ‘advise’ the Vietnamese Riverine Patrol there, River Division 51.”

  Pete tossed his stuffed parachute bag onto the open Jeep’s rear seat.

  “That it?” Lump asked.

  “I travel light. Where’d you get the Jeep?”

  Lump hesitated. Then he grinned.

  “Next time you steal one of these fuckers,” Pete said, “maybe you should opt for a better paint job. There’s army green showing through the navy gray.”

  Yep. They were going to get along.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” Lump solemnly replied as he thrust his passenger an Ml carbine and a bandoleer of 30-cal ammo. “Here. You ride shotgun.”

  They took Highway 15 to Hi
ghway 1, which the French during their own long war in Indochina had called Street Without Joy. They passed bright green fields bordered by fringes of impenetrable jungle and great stately palms as tall as three-story buildings. Papasans and old women toiled in the rice. Young kids rode flat-horned water buffalo and sprawled across their backs.

  Pedestrians in cone-shaped straw hats formed walking ant lines along the road and thronged the little grass-hut villages. A cacophony of engine sounds and blasting horns filled the air in the towns as bicycles, trishaws, Honda motorbikes, three-wheeled Lambrettas, old Ford trucks and psychedelic-painted school buses maneuvered for clearance and advantage. Kids shouted and sprinted alongside the Jeep.

  “Buy Coke-Cola, Joe? Gimme chop-chop? You souvenir me?”

  “Changed much since your last tour?” Lump asked.

  “Gook poontang still run sideways?”

  Lump laughed. “Except it stinks a lot worse and is well broke in.”

  “Then it ain’t changed much.”

  “I wager there’s not a virgin left this side of the South China Sea. We’ve got a half-million horny troops in-country fucking everything up to and including the water buffalo. The VC and NVA are fucking us right back. Pete, we’re doing a hell of a job winning the war and saving the world from communism—on paper. But that ain’t the real story. We still ain’t winning this goddamn war”

  “All you have to do is win your own little piece of it.”

  “Kicking ass along the My Tho River was our most important product until—“

  His voice trailed off. He gestured ahead to a U.S. Army deuce-and-a-half truck resting on its side in a rice paddy where an exploding land mine had thrown it. Smoke oozed from a jagged hole torn in the middle of the road. Boxes and barrels of foodstuffs were strewn about. GIs with Ml6s kept jabbering crowds of Vietnamese at bay.

  An MP sergeant waved the Jeep to a halt. “Sir, we’re mine-clearing the rest of the highway to Saigon,” he said. “If you’re traveling alone, you take your chances.”