by Jack Twist
Chapter 8
I had wanted to steal silently into the night - to follow the road, headlights off, using what little light there was in the sky. But of course we couldn’t stop the baby from crying, or squeaking.
“I think this is ninety per cent water.” Abbie was nursing the baby and dipping a handkerchief corner into the water bottle containing the goat’s milk mixture. The baby refused to suck it. She just kept on crying.
I had put Mai’s bicycle on the bloodier side of the back seat and she sat next to it in silence, a young version of her mother. In the east behind us the village was now consumed by the night, as dark in that direction as it was in all others.
“I wonder if she’ll cry like that all the way.”
“If only I could get her to take some of this.”
The road ahead was a narrow hazy grey. At times I stood up to make sure I wasn’t going off to the side into muddy patches but avoided turning on the lights. The cry of a baby was not aggressive or challenging but piercing the night above the hum of the engine it set my nerves on edge. And I had no control over it. The engine I could turn off if need be. Anyway, we’d soon pass by the mountain and the lights of Saigon would spring reassuringly into view at the end of a low, flat drive.
“Come on, little one,” said Abbie. “Take some milk.”
The baby kept on crying.
The vehicle was just beginning to negotiate the rise in the road beside the mountain when the engine coughed. I disengaged the clutch and gave the accelerator some, hoping to clear a blockage in the fuel line. It sounded promising for a moment then spluttered and came to a complete stop. The fuel gauge told the story.
“Those thieving little bastards,” I said. “I thought they were after the rifles.”
“What?”
“We’re out of petrol. Kids back at the village must have drained it nearly dry.”
“Do you have any spare?”
“No. We filled up before we left. Should’ve been plenty.”
“So what can we do?’
“Walk.”
“Walk? To Saigon?”
I considered. “No. Not to Saigon. I reckon go back to Muc Thap. I’ll take the jerry can and see if I can get some petrol.”
“But what if they don’t have any?”
“I don’t know. There’s the stuff the kids took, at least.”
“And you think you can get that back?”
I stared around me, at a loss. “I don’t know. I just want to get to bloody Saigon. And get you there. I think you better leave the baby there this time, heh? Even if I can get some petrol. It’s all getting too risky. I mean if I can’t get any petrol I’m ready to walk to Saigon now. It’s so close. While we’re stuck in Muc Thap anything could happen.”
The baby kept on crying. I stepped out on the road. Abbie climbed out and stood on the other side of the Land Rover rocking the baby. Mai remained in the vehicle, watching us.
“I’m not walking to Saigon,” she said. “If you can’t get any gas I’ll wait there in the village. Lin’s family will help with the baby while I wait for the search party to arrive.” She was looking down the road towards the village. Her profile showed that determined set I’d noticed before.
“Well, let’s go. No point hangin’ around here, especially with the baby crying like it is.”
“She’s hungry, poor thing. I wish she could suck on this cloth. Come on, Mai. We go back to Muc Thap.” The little girl climbed out quickly. “Should she take her bike?”
“Yeh. Probably best.” I unstrapped the jerry can then lifted the bike out and placed it on the road beside Mai. She took hold of the handle bars. I went to the front of the vehicle and grabbed my M16.
“How could you run out of gas?”
“It was stolen.”
“I know.”
I pushed the lieutenant’s rifle under the seat as much as possible and began walking.
“Wait till I get my handbag. Are you taking your bag?”
“No. If we hurry we might be back before there’s much light.”
I waited while she took her handbag out of her duffel bag with her free hand. It had a long strap which she put over her shoulder.
“What about the helmets?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
Out of the Land Rover on the open road, the night seemed even darker. Mai trailed behind us, walking her bike. I wanted to walk faster but I would have left them behind.
Abbie whispered. “Hush, little one, hush,”
The road had leveled out again when we heard the first voice between the baby’s cries and when we turned I saw several dark shapes moving down the road towards the vehicle.
“Get down,” I told Abbie and we crouched down and moved over to the road’s edge. My right boot sank down in the mud.
I didn’t wait to see exactly which way they were headed. I grabbed her hand and we climbed over the low levee hump and immediately dropped into a paddy. We made our way through mud and water to a dry bank and scrambled along it, moving away from the road.
“Where’s Mai?” Abbie whispered.
I’d forgotten about her and ignored the question, engrossed totally with moving on as quickly and quietly as possible, slipping a couple of times into the wet paddy edge. Abbie kept her footing better, even with the baby, though I had to wait for her.
We got to another bank running parallel with the road and turned left. Only in that direction, west, towards the mountain, was there anything but flat rice fields and I was drawn to tall clumps of bamboo just visible at the lower parts of the mountain. The baby kept on crying. The bamboo was thick and tall and when we reached the first big clump I dropped to the ground and Abbie followed.
“What about Mai?”
“She’ll be okay. She only lives down the road.”
I looked back, straining my eyes. A very faint lightness in the east showed what looked to me like a flicker of shadows moving along the bank from where we had come. Had the baby not been crying I might have stayed for a closer look. Instead, I dragged Abbie to her feet again and we went further into the bamboo forest.
I was sure we had to keep going. There just wasn’t enough cover in the open spaces among the bamboo and they had to be some kind of VC patrol. Who else would be out at night like that? Anyway I wasn’t prepared to stop and find out. The baby might have been safe but we weren’t.
We began climbing and the bamboo ran suddenly into rain forest. I pushed aside the low, overhanging branches of small trees to find another more open area where the trees grew taller and gave almost no cover. So we charged on, the ground before us sloping uphill at a more obvious incline. It was more difficult for Abbie because it was so dark and she was carrying the baby while I had my rifle in one hand and the jerry can in the other to clear the way.
When I could make out a thick section of smaller trees with vines intermingled among them I turned towards it. Abbie followed. As we fell into this cover I looked back down the slope but could see nothing. Still I dragged her to her feet.
The trees opened up again and I led her diagonally across and up the mountain’s slope until we stumbled into another thicket with huge leaves that slapped our faces as we pushed through. The ground gave way beneath us in the darkness and we found ourselves slipping down an almost vertical bank which ended in a more sparsely treed gully. I don’t know how Abbie managed not to drop the baby because I lost my hold of the jerry can and was slipping too quickly to go back for it.
We stumbled into a muddy creek at the bottom and climbed upstream until we came to some rocks where the trees gave better cover. “Stop!” Abbie hissed. “For God’s sake. That’ll do.”
She dropped to the ground, put both arms around the baby and stared up at me, panting defiantly in the jungle-covered darkness. I peered through the leaves down the gully. I had felt more than seen the way here and now I tried to listen but, although they had weakened, the only sounds rising out of the blackness were the cries of the baby
.
“Is there some way you can shut her up?” I wanted silence, just for a moment, to hear what the jungle might be saying. Put your hand over her mouth for a minute, I wanted to say. But Abbie glared up at me and held the baby tight.
Finding a place among the rocks, I sat down, took up the rifle and pointed it into the branches on the downstream side of us. We waited. The baby’s cries abated further. We had to keep brushing some sort of bugs away from us.
“I hope Mai is okay,” Abbie whispered. I didn’t want to think about that. I just wanted to listen. “There’s no one coming,” she said. I said nothing. “I don’t think they even left the road. They were looking at the car.” Though they persisted, the baby’s cries were quieter and less nerve-racking. “Probably the kids who stole the gas.” She didn’t bother to whisper.
“I saw them follow us into the rice paddies,” I whispered.
“I didn’t. I’m sure they didn’t leave the road.”
I turned to her. I could just make out her eyes. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “So at least Mai should be safe. Be quiet, baby. Please.” The baby kept up its squeaks. She unclipped the water bottle from her belt. “Would you mind holding this? I’ll try to feed her again.”
Abbie dipped the corner of the little cloth into the water bottle and placed it onto the baby’s open mouth, to no avail. She didn’t even know enough to turn her head away.
“Try turning her in towards you more.”
The baby jerked a hand into the air in protest as her face met Abbie’s chest and she went on crying. But then, mouth still open in vain hope of sustenance, she was suddenly silent.
“Oh, please. Could it be? I guess she’s exhausted as well as hungry. Just look at her. Isn’t she beautiful?”
We could hardly see her. I took the comment to be something women always said about babies. Abbie took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at some dirt or blood on the baby’s tiny shoulder. She was now still and quiet and I pointed the M16 into the branches. When I looked back at Abbie her eyes were closed.
“You alright?” I asked.
She opened her eyes. “Just tired. So tired. And my arm aches. I’ll be okay.”
I didn’t want to take the baby. I wanted to be ready with the rifle, but she had to rest and the baby might have woken had we placed her among the rocks. She was not the first new baby I had held. My older sister had three kids. But she was the smallest, almost small enough to hold in one hand.
Abbie lay back as best she could. “I’ll just have a little rest,” she said and closed her eyes. I settled myself, baby in one hand and rifle in the other, which was as ridiculous as it sounds. Babies and guns don’t mix, like babies and war. And the scene would have looked particularly ludicrous to anyone who knew anything about my shooting skills. ‘You can’t hit much with a rifle in two hands,’ Tony Carmody told me later. ‘You’d’ve been better off putting the weapon down and holding the baby. That way if a Vietcong happened along he might’ve taken pity on you.’
But I wasn’t laughing at the time. A strange and omnipotent night closed in, alive with lethal foreboding, it seemed to me, as I watched the thickness of leaves in front of me until they began to take shape and turn deep green. But at least I could hear the jungle then, the ripple of the creek, the call of some bird or animal, and I could hear my subsiding heartbeat. With the approach of dawn mosquitoes came out and were so thick in the air I put the rifle down to keep up a constant waving over me and the baby, refraining from slapping, afraid that any sound might mean the end, a bloody end, to me and possibly the girl asleep beside me. The sweat in my hair, running down my face and neck, had as much to do with fear as the humidity.
Part 2
The Jungle