The American Pearl

by Peter Gilboy

  As the door closes I catch the barest glimpse of Eddie. I blink hard. Maybe he’ll go away. I look again. He’s still there.

  Eddie doesn’t say anything. Nothing at all. He doesn’t have to. I hear it nevertheless, a soft rumble that reverberates from somewhere deep down, forming words that are clear in my head: You said you’d do it, Quintyn. We have a deal, man.

  6

  MARCH 30, 1972

  CUY HOA VILLAGE, 2:05 P.M.

  T.R. FOUNTAIN PULLED THE jeep up in front of the small gate. The arching crossbeam read Cuy Hoa in curling letters. Beyond the gate was a checkerboard path of blue-and-white tile. Down the path Patricia could glimpse a green-and-yellow cottage.

  T.R. smiled. “Like I told you,” he said, “just a couple of extractions. The nuns will help. Should take me an hour or so. A little more, maybe.” He pointed down the blue-and-white path toward the village. “Just stroll around. Go for a dip if you want. You don’t even need a suit,” he added with a small smile. “Relax. I’ll find you later.”

  He saw the concern on her face.

  “Leprosy is hard to catch, Patricia. I’ve been comin’ here for almost a year and I haven’t gotten it.”

  He pretended to think a moment. “’Course the incubation period is seven years, so maybe I don’t know it yet.”

  Patricia didn’t laugh.

  ***

  Thirty-five miles away Old Man Thanh opened the door to the Florida Sauna. His demeanor suddenly changed. He was no longer the demur and fawning compound worker. He was straight-backed and stern. With the pebbles still pulling on his pockets, he marched toward the door at the back of the room.

  It was called the Florida Sauna, but it wasn’t in Florida and there was no sauna. There were only curtained rooms with padded massage tables and a small shower in a back corner. Thanh made his way past the curtained rooms. He heard giggles and sighs and outright laughs. Mixed languages, Vietnamese and English. He smelled cigarette smoke and beer. But otherwise the place was spotless. Thanh demanded that. The girls were paid well too. Another of his demands. Not just because of the information they provided, but because his granddaughter, Thi, was there as well. Of course she hated it, hated him now. He’d ruined her. But Thanh knew she could be trusted; not like some of the others. Besides, there weren’t many ways for a woman to make a living during a war. And there’s always a war.

  ***

  Patricia followed T.R. down the blue-and-white pathway, taking it all in with the eyes of a prisoner who had been held captive too long. She passed a small European-style cottage with a sloping white roof and green-tiled steps to the porch. She saw other cottages too, each tiled in its own sparkling pattern of yellows, blues, or greens. Rising behind the cottages was a two-story stucco building like a Spanish villa, probably a dispensary where the French nuns worked. She could see a steeple and bell tower in the center of the little village. Its arches were bordered in bright yellow and aquamarine.

  Colors everywhere. This is what a children’s town would look like, she thought. This is like a playground. T.R. had told her that the villagers made tile. Some of it was even exported, he’d said. In the distance were white sands lining the green-beaded water. Already she could smell the sea, the salt air. She saw mangrove trees and date palms. Soaring coconut palms. A stunning paradise is what this was.

  ***

  Thanh marched to the rear door of the Florida Sauna. He didn’t care what was going on behind the curtained rooms. Blow jobs mostly: Tình dục bằng miệng. The usual humiliation for the girls. They’d been told to provide more imaginative delights too. Hanging basket: Cái lưỡi hậu cái giỏ treo. For five dollars extra the girls would sit awkwardly in a basket suspended above their customer, then be lowered on a pulley until he entered her. The customer would then get his pleasure by spinning the basket with his hand. Sometimes the girls preferred this because they barely had to touch the men.

  Thanh made sure the girls were trained in more than sex. Basic English, of course. But also how to smile and giggle shyly with fingertips to their lips. They knew what to say, how to elicit information. For centuries pretty things like these had been some of the best intelligence agents. Even with most of the Americans gone, Thanh still got good information. MPs would taxi some of the remaining soldiers from MacArthur Compound. Ten dollars for a lift both ways. Two at a time; and the MPs got a freebie for bringing them in. Everyone needs a little relief.

  Six men waited for Thanh. They jumped to their feet as he entered the room. A hero had arrived. They stood at attention. They knew about his successes as a Viet Minh soldier against the French. Decades of struggle. Now he was a leader of the đấu tranh strategy against the Americans; a leader of what the Americans called the Viet Cong or the VC or simply Charlie.

  Thanh nodded for the men to sit. He reached into his pockets and laid out the pebbles in two piles. He counted out twenty-six—marking his steps east through the compound, a hundred steps per pebble, two small steps per meter. Thirteen hundred meters in all. Then nine pebbles after his turn north toward the gate. There it was, the rough dimensions of the compound. With these, his men would strike.

  Thanh unfolded a map onto the table. He traced the path he had walked and recounted the purpose of each building. The PX here, closed. Guard quarters here. Barracks there. Officers Club. NCO Club. Supply. Dentist. Motor Pool, closed. Not many Americans were left on the compound after all these years of occupation. Now he’d see to it that nothing was left. Nothing at all.

  ***

  Patricia came to an intersection of paths. Mosquitoes spun around her and she waved them away. She turned up a green-tiled path that was lined in soft yellow. A one-armed bicycle rider came toward her, steering badly. He nodded pleasantly as he passed. In the distance she saw a couple holding hands. Their faces were partially bandaged. They noticed her and smiled without waving. Two old people sat dozing on the porch of their cottage. Somewhere, children were laughing. Patricia turned to see them in a square playing some sort of game by hitting stones against a nearby palm.

  Everything was serene and undisturbed, a child’s dream at the edge of an adult nightmare.

  ***

  Thirty miles away, Captain Brian Pavlik leaned back in his chair. Nineteen days to go and he’d be out of this shithole. Back in the world. A civilian again. Patricia seemed to be okay with military life, but soon they’d be done with it and gone. Not soon enough for him, though. He wanted out now.

  Brian Pavlik looked down at the January issue of Road & Track in his lap. A Dodge Challenger R/T stared up at him, lime green with a black stripe: 440 cubes, four-speed and offset Rallye wheels. Looked like a missile. Maybe he’d get one of those when he got back. Why not? He had the woman he wanted. Needed. Why not the car he wanted? Patricia wouldn’t squawk much once they were home. It was just Nam that was making her uptight. Couldn’t blame her. Nothing much to do anymore. Just waiting. Just putting in time.

  But Brian knew that some of it was his fault. Sometimes he could be a jerk. No wonder she was distant. Okay, so he was possessive. No, not possessive; he was protective of her, that’s all. Was that a fault? Was it a problem that he cared so much? He loved to watch Patricia, the strong delicacy of her, how she sat and stood and walked, even how she ate. Others watched her too, he was sure. Well, let them watch. She was his. And back in the States she’d relax. They’d get a place. He’d bring in the bread. They’d start a family.

  Captain Brian Pavlik had a nice job waiting for him. Eastman Kodak. Cameras and copiers. The future. His future. Maybe they’d be with the company in Gates, New York. But probably at their new division in Windsor, Colorado. He could manage a whole district, a whole fucking state. Good money. And he’d get that lime-green Challenger R/T that looked like a missile.

  He thought back to how close he and Patricia used to be. Sweethearts in high school. College together. ROTC together. She used to have passion, real passion. Couldn’t get enough. But fucking Dinkville changes people. Mad
e Patricia irritable. Made her bored. Made her turn off. Maybe she had a secret lover. No, not that. For sure, not that.

  ***

  Patricia stepped onto the soft sands strewn with tiny shells. The sun’s heat soaked through her fatigue blouse. A faint breeze cooled her face and kept the mosquitoes away. She unlaced her boots and kicked them off. She walked to the water’s edge and let the South China Sea circle her feet and drain back again. It wasn’t like the Atlantic, which could be treacherous, could snatch someone away. Here, there were quiet ripples; but still there was a beat to it, that eternal pulse gathering and spilling, gathering and spilling.

  T.R. was right. It felt good here.

  She spun around, taking it all in. No fences. No barbed wire. No guards. No Quonset huts. No men. No war.

  Even before coming here she considered the military to be a man’s game. Always a war someplace. Near or far. Always blood somewhere, it seemed. It was like men ran toward war. She’d sometimes wondered if they needed war; maybe that’s how they finally come alive, in the bloody rush of it all. Maybe they needed death to be so close. Maybe Nam was not just a curious place for them. Another male stopover. Maybe men needed to be destructive.

  It was different for her, for women. They didn’t need to be destructive. They came alive in nurturing, not war. It was all so clear to her.

  She spun around again. Patricia gazed up and down the beach—nobody. She couldn’t help herself. Laughing, she stripped down to her panties and bra and raced into the water.

  She dove deep. The warm water slipped by her as she breast-stroked under the surface, eyes open, gliding until she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She surfaced, gulping air, treading water. She spun around to the shore and the little village and laughed. She swam out even farther then, powerful strokes through the water that was almost as smooth as a lake. Fifty yards, and then even farther before she turned and swam parallel to the beach. She stopped and looked around. Then, she was off again, kicking even harder now, her arms swinging over her head in perfect strokes, breathing to the left, to the right, pulling herself through the water.

  Patricia surfaced again and saw T.R. at a distance standing by her clothes. She swam back along the shoreline and stepped out of the water.

  “Don’t look,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, but he stared at her soaked bra and panties, now translucent.

  “I said ‘Don’t look’!’”

  “I said ‘Of course.’”

  It didn’t matter. She wanted to hug him with thanks. She snatched her clothes, turned her back, and quickly dressed. She turned toward him again, her fatigues soaking through in places. She shook her hair like a dog drying off, spraying him. They both laughed. She pulled out a rubber band and tied her hair back into a ponytail.

  Then she turned and ran down the beach barefoot, away from him, faster than he could ever run. Faster and faster, the soft sands moving under her feet, the warm salt air against her cheeks. Somewhere, invisible birds sang their songs. She reached a grove where the palm trees forked down to the water. She stopped there and caught her breath. She moved into the shade and sat down on the sand. Palm leaves waved over her head. The sun fell through the leaves in shimmering shafts of light.

  Patricia lay back and closed her eyes. After a while T.R. caught up. He removed his shirt and swung it over his shoulder.

  “I forgot to mention the sharks,” he said

  “Very funny,” she responded, not opening her eyes.

  T.R. sat down beside her. He moved closer.

  ***

  Thanh nodded to a cadre member waiting in the corner. He pulled out an HT-1 radio, a half-duplex model recovered from an ambush. For years the stupid Americans had provided them with every sort of armament they needed. Before the Americans, it was the French who supplied them. Before that it was the Japanese. For centuries before that it was the Chinese invaders. The people’s resistance—sự chống cự– had been going on for hundreds of years. But the French and Americans, and even the Chinese, couldn’t compare to the merciless Japanese soldiers. Monsters. Sadistic. The people’s resistance had fought them, too.

  On this day, the enemy—kẻ thù—would suffer another defeat.

  ***

  “I expected it to be cold, like the Atlantic,” Patricia told him. She stretched her arms upward as if reaching for some nonexistent clouds. She pointed to the sea. “My dad would love this place. He loves all kinds of water. He was my swimming coach, you know?”

  “No, I didn’t,” T.R. said.

  “He’d push me harder than anyone. He’d push me right to the edge, and then demand more and more, like a drill sergeant, except with love.”

  “I think I’d like your dad.”

  “Yeah, but he wouldn’t like you.”

  He laughed. “I’m harmless as a hamster,” he told her.

  “Right.”

  They were quiet a moment, looking out at the horizon. She said, “It’s so good here, T.R. I’m not on display. No one is staring.”

  “You’re an endangered species, Patricia.”

  “Yeah, the round-eyed chick.”

  He laughed again. “Round eyes and slope eyes. That’s the game here.”

  “I’m sure you give equal opportunity,” she told him.

  The dentist didn’t answer.

  “And they call me ‘the captain’s wife,’” she said, spitting it out angrily. “As if he owns me. Of course Brian loves it.”

  “Brian’s not here.”

  “The captain’s wife,” she repeated. “Soldiering’s just a game to Brian. I go along, but I never forget what’s real.” She picked up a small shell by her side, a turquoise mollusk that was almost transparent. “This is real,” she said, looking into T.R.’s eyes. “See how delicate it is.” She ran her thumb across its rough ridges, then closed it into her hand before returning the shell carefully to the sand.

  “I’m real, too,” he said.

  ***

  Captain Brian Pavlik picked up the phone and dialed his wife’s office. Not there. Hadn’t been for some time. He tried the O’ Club. Not there. He wondered again: A secret lover? One of those NCOs? That’s a laugh.

  ***

  “Are you taking your office assistant home with you?” Patricia asked him. “Or is she just another part of your Nam experience.”

  “I’m not goin’ home.”

  “Oh, right. Tossed your orders. You’re really nuts, T.R.”

  “What’s better than here, Patricia?” He spread out his arms. “Look around. Tell me. What’s better? Back home ain’t the world. This is the world. The way it ought to be. I’m a dentist and a pretty darn good one. But I don’t want to spend my life lookin’ into people’s mouths.”

  T.R. lay back. She lay back too. He slid closer to her and turned on his side, facing her.

  “I could stay here forever,” he continued, “and never look in another mouth, never get mad again or sad. No more stupid regulations. Back in the world, all those people doin’ the same pointless things.” He reached over and brushed some sand from Patricia’s hair and forehead. His fingers moved across her cheeks and faint freckles. He traced around her lips.

  “That feels good,” she said. “Tell me about T.R.”

  “My mother raises poodles.”

  Patricia laughed. “And?”

  “The servants all have uniforms.”

  “And?”

  “Doesn’t that say it all?”

  She laughed again. “I mean about you. The others are just geographical bachelors. But you’re a professional.”

  “No, I could get married,” he said. “And this bachelor thinks you’re quite good lookin’.”

  She smiled but didn’t respond.

  T.R. placed his hand on her stomach.

  ***

  The man with the HT-1 radio spoke crisply into the receiver as Thanh recited the coordinates to him, repeating everything twice in code.

  ***

  Patrici
a lifted his hand from her stomach. “I’m not going to be another one of T.R. Fountain’s Nam adventures.”

  But she wanted to be touched. And she had to admit he was handsome. His long thin body was more muscular than she had thought. His droopy mustache, disheveled hair, and casual way made him look more like a beachcomber in a whiskey ad than an Army dentist.

  “God, Patricia. Let your hair down,” he said. “Loosen up.” He saw her piqued look. “I mean your ponytail. That’s what I meant. Loosen it up.”

  She sat up and slid the band off her ponytail. She shook her head until her hair fanned over her shoulders. She lay back again. She turned her head, not looking at his bare chest, but smiling into his face in a friendly way to show she wasn’t angry.

  He pretended to take a picture of her with a camera. “Better,” he said.

  “Thank you, T.R. For getting me out of the compound.”

  “My pleasure. May I hold you?”

  She looked away, reluctant to hold his gaze. “Are you going to cast your spell on me?” she asked.

  “May I hold you?” he repeated.

  “No.”

  But she slid closer to him, resting her cheek against his chest, the fine hairs. She breathed a deep sigh and could smell his skin and sweat. It was different from Brian’s smell. T.R.’s arms felt good around her. Very good, in fact. It had been some time since she’d been held like this. T.R. stroked her hair. She drew a long satisfying breath.

  T.R. propped his head on his elbow then, looking down at her. She felt him move his hand again to the flat of her stomach. She didn’t object this time. It felt good.

  “You’re not just an adventure to me,” he said.

  It was a lie. But the weight of his hand was comforting as her stomach rose and fell with each breath. T.R. glanced around, surveying the area for children or idle strollers from the village. They were alone. Then his hand moved under her fatigue blouse. That felt good too. T.R. shifted a leg and crossed an ankle over hers. She didn’t say anything. He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek. Patricia turned toward him. Shafts of light played across their faces from the leaves above.