The American Pearl

by Peter Gilboy

  “We gotta move,” Eddie says now.

  “Where we gonna move?”

  “I dunno. Fuck. How are the fingers?”

  “Still got a good hand,” I tell him.

  “Is it okay, Bob? You don’t mind, Bob?” With a heave, Eddie pulls Wilcox’s leg toward him and notches his weapon in the groove of Wilcox’s ankle. He lines up his sights for when they come. And they’ll come.

  Then Eddie raises his chin toward my crumpled nose. “You look like shit, you know.”

  “You smell like shit,” I tell him.

  It’s funny, but neither of us laughs.

  Waiting is a killer too. Now, more silence and more darkness, hours of it, it seems, but in a way, I savor the plush comfort of night, being hidden in the dark—until Eddie swivels his head to mine. I see the wavering outline of him, like a dark and ghostly hologram; his eyes shine as they bore into me. I know. A slow feed of adrenaline has kept me awake all this time, and now my body shifts into molecular alert. Eddie silently mouths the word I’ve dreaded for days: Ready?

  Yeah, I tell him. I’m ready.

  Then finally the words that even now are so close to my ear that I can almost feel his lips—You said you’d do it, Quintyn. We have a deal, man.

  I shake away my thoughts and find a smiling Julia waiting for me at the elevator. She doesn’t want to ruin this day either. Julia pulls on my shoulder and I bend to receive her kiss.

  “Ready?” she asks, and for an instant it’s Eddie Cobb mouthing the same words, like a spear in my gut, and again Eddie is present and standing right here with us.

  “Ready,” I tell Julia. “Mexican it is.”

  4

  MARCH 30, 1972

  QUI NHON, 12:25 P.M.

  T.R. FOUNTAIN AND PATRICIA bumped along the deserted dirt road and toward the compound gate. Dust kicked up behind them.

  “It’s hot like this in Baton Rouge,” T.R. called over to Patricia. “Hotter than two rabbits screwing in a wool sack.”

  Patricia hadn’t heard that one.

  “But it’s nothin’ to the people here,” he added.

  She nodded.

  “I admire them, you know,” he said. “They’ve outlasted the war. They’re real survivors.”

  Up ahead on the compound road, Patricia noted a tiny man in rags and a bamboo cone hat. Old Man Thanh is what they called him. He was coming the opposite way. Old Man Thanh had a mop over his shoulder, like a rifle. As they passed him he saluted them with the wrong hand and smiled at Patricia, a deferential smile. Patricia returned Old Man Thanh’s salute and his smile. Like T.R., she was always polite to the Vietnamese people.

  ***

  Old Man Thanh waited until the jeep had passed. Then he veered off to the shed and hung up his mop. He started down the dirt road toward the gate. Though Thanh was only sixty-three, he looked as worn and haggard as a man thirty years older; like a man who had survived a dozen wars and not just three.

  Thanh’s job was simple. And he knew they wouldn’t catch him, because the Americans never noticed him anyway. The thick heat was heavy on his shoulders, but his cone hat shielded his face from the sun. Dust rose at his feet as he dragged along in tire-tread sandals. Old Man Thanh adjusted his peasant hat to better shield his eyes, especially from the Americans he passed.

  Thanh had walked this road every day for more than a year. He knew exactly what to do because he’d done it before when the French were the occupiers. He was precise, counting each step: Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm…

  Two small steps per meter. In his left pocket were pebbles. Each hundred steps he shifted a pebble from his left pocket to his right and started counting over. Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm… Later he’d calculate the dimensions of the compound and relay the information to his son. His son would take it from there.

  Past the Officer’s Club and the closed motor pool, Thanh turned up the road toward the gate. Another jeep came toward him now, and he tilted his head up but kept his eyes low. He knew he was invisible to them, but nevertheless his pace stiffened. Thanh offered another thin smile showing his black gums and twisted teeth. What were the words they used? Yes, gook. And dink. When the French were occupiers, they had their own words but he couldn’t remember them anymore. He concentrated as another jeep came closer; silently, he continued counting, hai mươi mốt, hai mươi hai. He could feel his shoulders trembling.

  The jeep hurried past him.

  Old Man Thanh shifted another pebble to the other pocket and continued to count. Waves of heat reflected from the aluminum roofs. He wiped his face with a rag, then his neck and the rim of his cone hat. A soldier approached, and Old Man Thanh turned away pretending to cough. The man passed. Thanh was invisible.

  He kept going, passing a two-story barracks with the top-floor windows boarded over now. Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm, sáu…

  He was almost out.

  ***

  As they approached the compound gate, Patricia adjusted her sunglasses and looked away.

  The guard held up his hand. “How’s the war today, T.R.?”

  “Not bad, Bobby. It seems just fine for a war.”

  The guard laughed and waved them through. Immediately they were out into the crowded and dusty street of Qui Nhon City.

  Lieutenant Pavlik took off her ball cap and let her ponytail free. She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head. She was out. And she wasn’t going to miss a thing.

  “Heard you got into it with Major Fuller,” T.R. called over to her above the noise of the engine.

  “An asshole.”

  “Heard he was comin’ on to you.”

  “Asshole,” she repeated. “He was drunk and I got tired of listening to his phony war stories.”

  “So you broke his nose?”

  “Split his lip,” she corrected.

  “So, what’d he say to set you off?”

  “Not for polite company.”

  “Well, good thing none’s present.”

  She laughed, then grew serious. “He said his tongue really knows its way around.”

  “Nice. What’d he say after you slugged him?”

  Patricia laughed. “He said, and I quote: ‘Fuck you do that for?’”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Di ăn cứt.”

  “‘Go eat shit,’” T.R. translated. “Here’s to small victories over here, Patricia.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  T.R. turned onto busy Vo Thanh Street. It was filthy and gray with dilapidated shops made of cinderblock and wood. Each store had iron grills in front and rooms above. The stores sold cigarettes, watches, diapers, and cosmetics, all from the world. Patricia heard the blare of a stereo, American rock and roll, the words distorted by the volume. She saw men with missing limbs hobbling along on stick-crutches. Women squatting easily on their haunches. Dust kicked up around the jeep. The smoky air was hot in her throat and the bright sun was painful to squint into.

  Still, it was exciting. This was humanity laid bare. And something else too: she saw that they were poor, yes, but unbowed; struggling desperately yet without disgrace, without tragedy in their eyes.

  They passed a vendor selling warmed French bread and lengths of dried squid. T.R. swerved around a pile of trash, then dodged a rackety horde of motorbikes and muffler-less scooters. People looked up at them as they passed, their faces staying on Patricia when they saw she was a round-eye woman. White. Pretty. Ponytail blowing. Men and women both stared as she passed. One woman smiled and waved, perhaps a recognition of sisterhood. They passed a man steering an ancient and wobbling pedicab. He did a double take and had to recover before he tipped over.

  T.R. pointed to the open-air market. He shouted over the engine noise. “You can get anythin’ there—gasoline, jeep parts, steaks, dope, watches, even guns. They stole most all of it from us, and this is where you come if you wanna buy it back.”

  They continued past the Jimmy Bar, the Lovely Bar, the Florida Sauna, each with girls outsid
e leaning easily against the front of the building waiting for soldiers who had already gone home.

  T.R. pointed. “All off limits,” he said. “But fellas still sneak down there.”

  “Not you, though, right?”

  “No, no,” he said, pulling villainously on his mustache. “Not me.”

  ***

  Old Man Thanh thought about his son, Bao, now thirty-five, his only surviving child, who had never known peace. He remembered his son playing good soldier and bad soldier with the other boys in the village. Some of them imitated the French by charcoaling mustaches on their faces and hair on their arms. Then they would try to capture the good soldiers. Now his son was one of the good soldiers, this time against the Americans with their own mustaches and hairy arms.

  Thanh was proud of his son’s Victory Medals. But he had nothing personal against the Americans. Though they never noticed him, they weren’t cruel like the French had been. And he made enough money from them to feed his wife.

  Thanh’s knees trembled as he forced himself to keep walking. Maybe he was too old for this now. He’d been brave and violent as a young man, even caught French soldiers in ambushes, took them down, smashed them gleefully; maybe something had happened to him, age perhaps, and with it a loss of stamina. Still, he wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t. He told himself again that there wasn’t much to worry about. The Americans would check him at the gate just as they’d checked him when he came in. He’d leave with nothing but his work card and the pebbles in his pockets.

  Thanh lined up with the others at the gate, waiting to be searched.

  ***

  Vo Thanh Street ended at the narrow coastal road, and T.R. swung south along the spectacular South China Sea. It occurred to Patricia that Qui Nhon could be a small resort city except for the sandbags stacked along every street and the barbed wire that coiled up at each intersection. No dogs. No cats. No birds. People have to eat, she knew.

  “How come you like it here?” she asked T.R.

  “I don’t like it here.”

  She looked over at him.

  “I love it here,” he emphasized.

  “Will you miss it?”

  “Not goin’ home. Tossed my orders.”

  “Don’t tell me, what are they going to do, send you to Nam?”

  He laughed with her.

  T.R. lit a Camel with his Zippo and exhaled with obvious pleasure. Patricia wanted to tell him that those things could kill you, but it would be ridiculous given the country they were in and the strange village where they were headed.

  There were no street signs, but T.R. had said not to worry, he knew the way. And he’d be careful, he’d said. The rule of the road was first come, first served—except for the mammoth ARVN trucks that demanded the right of way and always got it.

  Patricia pointed at a row of sickly brown huts on stilts over the water, like sticks glued together and rocking in the morning tide. They passed shit corner. She’d only heard about it until this moment but could now see men and women wading in thigh high. Others were already squatting to relieve themselves in the tide.

  T.R. drove quickly but expertly. A long, straight stretch and the jeep went into a noisy cruise. Miles farther down the coast they came upon a stone-faced man in a pedicab clutching a coffin the size of a child. He didn’t notice them.

  Another few miles and T.R. downshifted, made a quick swerve, and they left the coastal road. Now it was all dirt and dust and spinning wheels. He shifted to four wheels and soon they were jolting along the eastern side of Vung Chua mountain.

  Patricia leaned forward hoping for a glimpse of the village.

  “How much further?”

  “Five, six miles.”

  “Brian’s never been there.”

  “Forget about Brian,” he replied. “You’re with me.” He glanced over at her. “You sure you’re okay, Patricia?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  ***

  Old Man Thanh watched as a towering MP with a shiny helmet and starched fatigues moved along the file of compound workers. He patted the workers’ stomachs and legs as he moved, lifted their hats and peered under them like he might find a grenade. The woman in front of Thanh opened her brown bag and set it on the dirt. The MP stopped and rummaged inside the bag. Work clothes and a carton of Winstons. He motioned for her to go on.

  Now he stopped in front of Old Man Thanh, who was looking down at his feet. The MP lifted Thanh’s cone hat, then patted his pockets. He felt something. The pebbles.

  “What’cha got in there, papa-san?” the MP said loudly.

  Thanh stiffened but kept his head low. He could hear the pulse in his ear. In his mind he saw them studying the pebbles and realizing their purpose.

  ***

  Their jeep jerked over ruts and ridges in the road. Jungle leaves waved at them on the right, like enormous green flags. Vines coiled up and knotted like rope. Mosquitoes flurried against the windshield. Smells and tastes came toward Patricia in a rush—sweet followed by something tangy. Everything here was alive. Everything here was thriving.

  Then the hill suddenly dropped away on their left, all the way down to the South China Sea far below. Small fishing boats idled out on the water. Stretches of sugar-white sands scalloped the mountain’s base. She could see the emerald water curving its way into little coves; crystal clear down to the coral and the sands, then a lighter blue farther out, and finally a wonderful green-blue all the way to the horizon. From this height, the water looked stationary. No breakers. Not like the Atlantic, she thought. Hardly any waves at all.

  Patricia thought of her husband, Brian. It didn’t matter to her that her name tag said “Pavlik.” Patricia was still a Rowland. She slept in the same bed with Captain Brian Pavlik, but he didn’t own her. She’d been clear about that. She was twenty-two when they’d married right out of Princeton. She was old enough and bright enough to know better, she told herself now. But apparently not. A disaster is what it was. Brian hadn’t grown. He was still the same boy. She performed her marital duties, at least once in a while. Hard to avoid it when there was only one bed. Just a little tonight, honey. Just once. Take the edge off. He was quick with it, and that was fine. She got out from under him. Let him sleep.

  Brian had to know. How could he not? There was so much silence between them. So many words that neither of them spoke. Or maybe it was just her words that went unsaid. How could he not know? How could it not have registered that she was just playing out the marriage scene here and that back in the world she would be swift with the divorce?

  Now Patricia heard birds, finally birds, invisible in the dark green foliage as they cawed to warn others away, or made long trills to woo a mate closer. Clouds of mosquitoes continued to spin by them, some trapped in the air pocket of the jeep. She slapped them away. She heard the screech of monkeys and then other sounds she could not begin to identify.

  She was finally seeing it. She was finally here, in the country she had only heard about.

  ***

  The MP yanked Old Man Thanh toward a table. “Dump ’em out, Bud.”

  Thanh knew what he meant. He emptied the pebbles from both pockets, careful to keep the two piles separate. The MP stared, then called out something to another MP. Thanh knew the words—stupid slope. The other MP roared as Thanh smiled an embarrassed and dumb smile. Then he scooped one pile into his right pocket and the other pile into his left pocket. He bowed his head and stood waiting, staring at the MP’s enormous spit-shined boots. His mouth quivered.

  The MP shook his head at Thanh, then patted him on his head. He pointed to the front of the line. Thanh took two steps, then looked back. “Keep going, papa-san,” the MP shouted. The MP glanced over at his buddy. “Dumb dink,” he howled.

  ***

  Their jeep crested a rise, and they started downward. T.R. had to brake quickly as the jeep jostled and jolted, in places scraping bottom on the ridges and ruts in the road.

  “What’s the place called again?” />
  “Cuy Hoa,” T.R. told her.

  Patricia caught a glimpse of a steeple. It disappeared as they rounded a bend and the jungle rose up again on their right. Then the final curve, descending more steeply now as the jeep scraped its way over stones and humps in the dirt.

  Then she saw it—and blinked to make sure. Colorful dots up ahead. Yellow dots. Orange dots. Turquoise and red dots. Rows of them sparkling in the midday sunlight. She glanced over at T.R. He gave her a told-you-so smile. A fairyland, he had promised her. An oasis in the middle of a war. She saw purples and yellows glistening in the sunlight. Bright blues and reds. All with the emerald backdrop of the expansive sea. All of it here. Right here.

  Patricia spread out her arms and felt the wind rushing by. She stood, her head over the windshield as she gripped it for balance. “I’m free!” she shouted. “I’m free!”

  ***

  Thanh held his breath as he approached the gate. He was proud that he remembered to count even the last dozen steps to the barbed-wire fence. Muoi hai…muoi ba. He shifted a final pebble and looked around. One more step. Then another. And another. No one shouted. No one yanked him back.

  A moment later Old Man Thanh disappeared into the thronging Qui Nhon street.

  ***

  The sparkling dots came even closer, and now she could see what they were: red rooftops and blue rooftops and stretches of vibrantly colored paths. A Disneyland, T.R. had said. Surreal is what it was. Unbelievable, if she hadn’t seen it for herself. She was speechless, and blinked to make sure it was really there. Really here.