Phuong grows quiet. The insects do as well, which is strange. Like somebody shushed the whole night.
“Do you want to come sit with me in the mouth of our cave?” she asks after a few minutes. “I can’t sleep yet. I heard you tossing and turning. I know you haven’t been able to sleep, either.”
“What about Khiem?”
She laughs quietly. “You haven’t heard him snoring all this time?”
We move to the opening, her in her quilted mountain jacket, me wrapped in my thin blanket, and lean against a boulder to look up at the stars.
“You know about constellations?” I ask.
“I doubt I know them in the same way you do,” Phuong says.
“Same stars, though, right?” I ask. “I mean the same ones I would see back in America. Because we’re both in the Northern Hemisphere?” Not that you can ever see stars at night over New York. But there’s always the Hamptons.
“Yes,” she says. “I believe they’re mostly the same stars. Maybe that means something.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
Bats come out, darting past our faces. I can’t tell if they’re leaving the cave or returning to it. Or if they just happen to be in the vicinity.
“I told you where we’re going,” Phuong said, a bat whispering by so close that it ruffles her hair.
“To the Lake in the Sky,” I say.
“Yes. To Nong Fa,” she says. “What I haven’t told you is where we are ordered to take you after, and why we are taking you there first.”
“Are you going to tell me now?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
“I shouldn’t tell you this. I have my orders, and those must be followed. But sometimes it’s hard. I know how anxious you’ve been. Anyone would be.”
I wait.
She continues. “You were told you can be useful to us. My superiors decided to keep you alive, as a prisoner, and for us to take you to Hanoi, where you might have some propaganda value. And where you might be used in a prisoner exchange for some of our people because your father is CIA.”
“I don’t know that for sure,” I say, simultaneously relieved and terrified to have her confirm what I’ve already known, or at least deeply suspected, all these weeks.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They believe he’s CIA. And so the instructions are to escort you to Hanoi. But my superiors decided there’s another way you can also be useful.”
“How?” I’m trying to stay calm, but my voice—and my hands—are trembling at the thought of the Hanoi Hilton and what will happen to me there.
“They have identified a man, an officer assigned to the supply station where we stayed in Cambodia, who they suspect is a spy for the Americans. You may remember seeing him.”
“When you came with three men to the bamboo cage? Was it one of them? The spy?” I’m still fighting to keep from letting on how shaken I am.
“Yes,” she says. “A smaller man with glasses. He was told that you are the son of Frank Sorenson, one of the CIA architects of the war on the Reunification Trail. He was also informed that our destination in Laos is Nong Fa and he was given the date we are expected to arrive.”
“Okay,” I say. “So?”
“No one else was told this information. If this man is a spy, we believe he’ll contact the Americans to let them know where they might attempt to rescue you. And if the Americans attempt to rescue you at Nong Fa, then it will be confirmed that this man is the traitor.”
“So I’m like, what, the bait?” This just keeps getting worse and worse.
“Yes,” she says.
“But what will happen? I know you won’t let them take me.”
“No. A unit of our commandos will be there, unseen, waiting for the Americans. There will be an ambush.”
“And they’ll be killed,” I say, crestfallen.
“Perhaps the Americans will retreat,” she says, though I’m not buying it. “Maybe they’ll pull back to safety and give up on the mission. It doesn’t matter either way—whether they stay and fight and perish, or whether they turn and run. Because if they show up at all, we’ll know about our spy, and he can be dealt with.”
“What happens to me?” I ask.
“You and Khiem and I will continue to the North,” she says.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I ask.
“Because you saved me,” she says. “Twice. And I haven’t forgotten. You are a prisoner and have every reason to hate me. To want to kill me. And yet, you saved my life. I didn’t know why. I still don’t.”
The silence swells between us, until she adds, “If the Americans show up, I want you to stay close to me. It will probably turn violent and keeping close to me is the only way you’ll be safe. I’ve been ordered to stay clear of the firefight if it should happen.”
“And if I run? If I try to warn them about the ambush?”
“You won’t make it,” she says. A pause. And then, “If you run, if you try to warn them about the ambush, I’ll have to kill you myself.”
The rest of the trek to Nong Fa is long and slow. Khiem spots a red-bellied squirrel in a fight for its life with a tree snake, or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, he kills both with his machete and roasts them on sticks over a small fire Phuong lets him make. He divides the meat for him and her, and acts annoyed when Phuong shares hers with me. He speaks to her sharply in Vietnamese, but she doesn’t respond. I don’t care, as long as he doesn’t hit me again. I eat snake and squirrel for the first time and am happy to have both.
My injuries heal quickly, making me think my ribs aren’t broken after all. Breathing gets easier, though the deep bone bruise in my chest is still painful to the touch. Other bruises, the ones I can see, fade to blue, then green, then yellow. I have no idea what my face looks like. My hair has grown out so long that I tie it back into a ponytail with a piece of string from Phuong—until she offers to chop it off with her knife. I figure it will be easier to have it short, so I let her.
We keep to mountain trails, crossing streams on more shaky cables, dragging ourselves up stone steps carved into limestone cliffs, scrambling over and around boulders blocking the path, sleeping in caves or under rocky overhangs. It doesn’t rain again—still months until the rainy season—but it’s nice to have the cover just in case.
Twice we meet columns of bo doi making their way south, bent forward under their supply loads, staggering up the trails we walk down, sometimes tumbling down the stone steps we ascend. We help bury two who die from their falls. Others who are injured just find a way to continue. Some express surprise to see an American on the Trail, but most are so fatigued, with so far still to go, that they don’t bother.
Every step closer to Nong Fa fills me with dread. There will be a rescue attempt. Maybe. Or maybe it will just be a break in the trip north and nothing more. I don’t know which one to hope for. I don’t want anyone to be killed trying to save me; I don’t want to be buried in a Hanoi prison. How could they ever let me go in a prisoner exchange? I probably know too much. I replay the conversation with Phuong over and over in my mind. A squad or a company or maybe a whole battalion of NVA commandos will be there to ambush the American rescue team. If there is any truth to one of those men being a spy back at the Cambodia supply station, I know Dad will do whatever it takes to rescue me. Maybe he’ll even come to Nong Fa to save me himself.
But what if he does come? He could be killed. The rescue team could be slaughtered. And it will be my fault. I have to think of something, anything. But even if I run away right now, somehow get away from Phuong and Khiem, I have no way to warn anybody.
The only chance I have is to go to Nong Fa and look for an opportunity to somehow signal the rescuers that it’s a trap. Maybe Phuong is tired of the war, tired of all the killing. Maybe she told me about the spy and the rescue and the ambush not to stop me from warning the Americans, but to make sure I do, so they can escape. So that I can get aw
ay, too.
I shake my head to clear it out, because even as I have those thoughts, I know how ridiculous they are. Stupid daydreams about playing hero, saving the day, being John Wayne. Why don’t I just grab a machine gun and shoot down all the bad guys while I’m at it?
I have a distant memory of having prayed not long after I was captured, but no memory of any prayer being answered. But maybe that isn’t the point of prayer. I haven’t been to church enough to know, but I think maybe it’s a comfort thing. I decide to try again, and start off well enough: “My God.” Only the prayer doesn’t progress any further. Just “My God,” over and over, like a heartbeat. After a while it is my heartbeat. My God, My God, My God. My God.
Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu.
The trail takes us to high ridges as we continue our journey, with long views of rolling mountains, rising one after another like a pod of great whales swimming through a green ocean. In the early mornings, the world is soaked in mist, which gradually settles into valleys, leaving the mountaintops exposed as if they’re resting on clouds and not connected at all to the same earth as us. There are narrow waterfalls, gothic rock formations, terraced rice paddies, and forest canopy as far as I can see. We hear thunder some days that isn’t really thunder but bombing raids over the horizon on other sections of the network of trails. Twice at night the sky blazes with lightning that isn’t lightning, either, and more thunder. We see gashes in the jungle where jets have been shot down, and crashed and burned; black napalm smears on mountainsides; ghost valleys bleached white by Agent Orange.
But for all that, there’s still more jungle that will never be destroyed or burned or erased, still more hidden trails and paths and roads and supply stations and columns of bo doi making the anguished months-long trek, carrying the war through the Wild West of Laos and Cambodia down into South Vietnam.
The terrain gradually changes as we descend from the high trails, until we find ourselves winding our way through groves of giant bamboo. Phuong says it means we’re getting closer to Nong Fa. She says she was there once before, but she doesn’t remember to warn us that the bamboo will be alive with ants. And that they will rain down on us as we brush the stalks and leave us bloody with their deep bites. We try going faster, but slapping at the ants, brushing them off as soon as they land, or trying to, makes that impossible. They’re everywhere. In my hair, all over my face and arms, inside my clothes. I slap and dance and curse. We all do. But there’s no escape except to keep going.
The forest floor is strewn with razor-sharp bamboo slivers that are another hazard, our sandals barely enough protection for the undersides of our feet, and no protection at all for the sides, or our ankles and calves. Every step brings more cuts, more ant bites, more misery. We leave a bloody trail and practically cry with relief when we finally emerge out of the bamboo nightmare and into pine forest, with soft needles cushioning the way forward.
We come to another village, with a circle of men drinking through long green bamboo straws from a metal container fashioned from a bomb casing. Phuong says they’re Taliang people, and they’re drinking fermented rice, something called lao hai. They grunt when we approach but wave us off when Phuong tries to negotiate with them for food. We leave empty-handed, though they do let us wash off our blood in a small stream that snakes through their compound, with a small footbridge connecting their huts and animal pens on each side. Khiem looks longingly at a fat boar and caresses his machete.
That afternoon, we come across an enormous python in the process of swallowing a barking deer. Only the forelegs and head are still visible. The deer is somehow alive, its eyes wide with silent panic, its tongue hanging out as it gasps for air. Phuong lets Khiem use his machete this time, and he puts the barking deer out of its misery. We take the front half; the python keeps the rest.
A couple of hours later, after a sharp descent through the evergreen forest, we reach the rocky shore of Nong Fa, a clear blue bowl at least a mile across to more distant green hills—islands or peninsulas, it’s impossible to tell. I sink to my knees in the face of it, the ridiculous beauty opening before us like a dream. Cloudless sky. Cool cross-breezes kissing the water, stirring up intersecting ripples. Phuong and Khiem sit on rocks next to me. We slip out of our sandals and slide our feet into the lake. It wouldn’t surprise me if all my wounds are healed when I pull them back out.
“Are you going in?” I ask Phuong.
“The bottom is too soft for wading,” she says. “So this may be as far in as I go. But you’re welcome to swim—as long as you stay close to the shore.”
She puts her sandals on, stands up, and studies the boundaries of the lake. I follow her gaze, picturing American gunships blasting over the horizon, swooping in low over the lake, while NVA commandos in camouflage burst from their hiding places with their antiaircraft weapons, Phuong and Khiem and me caught in the middle.
But the afternoon stays quiet.
Khiem leaves to gather firewood, so he can roast the barking deer. He didn’t bother to dress the carcass before, but just slung it over his shoulder and carried it with us, blood and guts dripping behind him. Phuong follows him to help. I stay at the water’s edge, with nowhere else to go, and try wading in. Like Phuong said, there’s no solid bottom, though, just soft ground that gives way so that almost as soon as I start in, I’m up to my chin and treading water. Clouds of sediment rise around me like a dirty bath. I swim out to clear water, duck under, and scrub my face and hair clean of all the sweat and grime. Then I turn over and float on my back under the pale blue sky.
No gunships come into view. No bombs. No automatic weapon fire. No rescue attempt. No ambush.
We eat blackened deer. We rest. Khiem rouses himself, fashions a fishing line, and returns to the lake, to a rocky spot a hundred yards away from where we set up camp. Phuong cleans her weapon. I go back to the water’s edge, swim again, sit some more until it gets too hot, then move into the shade. And wait for what’s to come. Phuong cleans her AK a second time and keeps glancing around nervously. Twice she follows Khiem to his fishing spot and then disappears into the pine forest. She doesn’t say anything when she returns about where she’s been, but I have my suspicions. Hard as I try, though, I don’t see any signs of the NVA commandos hiding out there, preparing for the ambush.
At dusk we eat Khiem’s fish. He insists we finish it all and then dispose of the bones and scales and guts far from our campsite, because if there’s any left, bears might come. Phuong translates.
That night, unable to sleep, I ask Phuong if she’s still awake. We’re lying on beds of soft pine needles, just inside the forest cover, which feels luxurious in contrast to the hard ground that we’ve slept on for weeks. I can see the lake, the distant hills, the stars. A chill wind blows over the water. The air is filled with the citrus scent of a thousand orchids growing on the trees.
She says yes, she’s awake. She says she can’t sleep, either. Anticipating. She doesn’t say anticipating what, but she doesn’t have to.
I want to ask her where she went during the day, and if she knows where the commandos are hiding, if she’s been in touch with them. I want to ask if she was letting me swim alone, without her or Khiem close by standing guard, because that’s part of the ambush plan.
But I know she won’t answer any of those questions. So instead I ask something I think she will. “What will you do after the war, Phuong?”
It takes a long time for her to respond. “I will return home to my family, of course,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to let them out of my sight for a very long time. My brothers and sisters. My aunts and uncles and cousins. My grandparents. If they’re still alive. They were already very old when I left Hanoi two years ago. I would want to eat everything my mother used to cook for me when I was a girl. Her pho bo rien, banh xeo pancakes, spring rolls, dragon fruit.
“If the bombing stopped, I would go for a long walk every day all around Hanoi—along the Red River, which the old people still call Ascending Drag
on. Across Long Bien Bridge. Through the French Quarter, around Hoan Kiem Lake—the Lake of the Returned Sword—through Ba Dinh Square. I would take my little sisters to mountain gardens filled with sea flowers and daisy nightingale and milk flowers and lotus. We would visit the Buddhist pagodas, if they’re still standing after the war, and pray for our ancestors, and for all who’ve been lost.”
She sighs. “And I would go back to school,” she says. “I’ve always loved being in school, and I’ve missed so many years already.
“To become a doctor,” she adds. “There will be so many who need help after the war. So many injured and crippled. So many to be made whole again.”
We’re silent for a while. I’ve only been away from my home and family for two months, and I’m heartsick and homesick. For Phuong it’s been two years. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be.
“And what will you do after the war?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Before I would have told you I’d go back home to New York, and go to concerts, and hang out with my best friend, Geoff. Go to the Hamptons to my grandparents’ house and let them spoil me there. Go back to school. Just have fun. But now …” I trail off.
“Now the first thing I would do is make sure my parents are okay, and then I’d be nicer to them. My dad, he’s such a big believer in the war. I wouldn’t know what to say to him about it, except to ask him to please let somebody else take over so he can come home and we can be a family again, him and me and my mom. I would tell him that I’ve missed him, and I want him back.”
I think hard about the question. After the war. After the war. My stomach growls. “And I would definitely eat, too,” I add. “A lot. Pizza. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner I would eat pizza. And bagels and cream cheese. And hamburgers and french fries and chocolate milkshakes.
On Blood Road Page 16