by Peter Gilboy
The thought pleased her. But she trekked on.
Then one morning something was different. Not the terrain. It was the same. And still more hills ahead, more valleys to come, she was sure. But the guards were different, as if they knew something. Then she realized what it was. They had crossed an invisible border. Where were they? It was Laos. No, maybe Cambodia. No, it had to be Laos. She had kept track of the sun each day, and she knew they’d been moving west and northwest. Where else could it be but Laos?
Six more days, and she saw pointed peaks in the distance. The group descended slowly, and the land gradually grew to another thick forest that soon turned to jungle. Now trees leaned over them again; branches and thorns swiped at her. Her black pajamas were rags. Everything was green, including the strange light that shined through the leaves and towering trees. The heat pressed her from all sides. There was no breeze. A mist hung in the air. The jungle seemed to have its own intelligence, its own mind; the insects, the birds, even the palms and mangroves were watching her, watching all of them, ready to take any of them with a single misstep.
They crossed more waist-high rivers and ankle-deep streams. At times they let her bathe, naked in the streams. She wasn’t modest. She needed the water, so she stripped down each time and washed the best she could, all the time with the rope around her neck.
More days, and they edged slowly around the base of a tall stone hill with boulders ready to topple. Then she smelled it. Smoke. And something else. Some sort of food. Maybe someone cooking. But now the captors were leading the soldiers in a weaving pattern off to the side of the trail. She realized that the area was heavily mined.
They pushed her through another curtain of green, and into a flat, open space, cavelike because of the canopies overhead. Maybe this was the end.
Then she saw it. The camp. Fifty or more low tents. A row of wooden huts. Fire pits. A chicken. A pig. Weapons leaning against the huts—M16s and AK-47s; some kind of mortars and grenade launchers. But these weren’t the Viet Cong. The men were in tan uniforms with epaulettes, rather than black pajamas. They had steel helmets with camouflage. It was the NVA. The North Vietnamese Army.
The huts formed a long row along a dirt path. The tents were grouped between them. Opposite the huts was a makeshift hovel, even more dilapidated than the wooden huts. Cages. No more than doghouses, each of them. They were longer and taller than the one she had been in before, but they were open on all sides and on top. Men were in them. Maybe four to a cage. Some sat up and looked at them as the new Americans came closer.
She saw others then, not in cages. Maybe thirty of them, shirtless and working, digging something. Maybe a garden. No, it was too deep. Maybe a latrine. Maybe a mass grave. They stopped digging when they saw her, and turned to her, each of them expressionless.
Lieutenant Patricia Pavlik knew she had arrived.
49
JANUARY 18, 2006
NORTH ON 195,
11:20 P.M.
THEN WE CRAWL OUT to our line of Claymores to have a look. We meet the soles of two boots, facing us like a parenthesis sticking out of the ground. We look closer. It’s the LT. His sides are opened up. Geltz thinks that the LT must have changed sides and that he was coming after us. More probably he was just taking a piss. That’s what we’d heard. Him pissing. We can’t ask him how he got turned around in the dark. We can’t ask him why there’s dope in his pocket. We can’t ask him why he broke the rule.
And now real shit is coming toward us because we gave away our position. There’s low machine-gun fire. We skim-crawl to the ditch. There are invisible people around us. We can hear them. One of them is laughing at how stupid we are.
“Jesus,” I hear Geltz say.
“You see Jesus?” Wilcox says.
“I do,” Geltz replies. “He’s right over there.”
“He’s nowhere,” Colome says.
“You’re a heathen.”
“Got that right.”
So, it was the LT who went first. That’s who. Next was Geltz, taken out by a sniper. One minute he was with us and the next he was a slumped uniform with brains on the outside.
“Shit,” Greene says, and then he becomes a slumped uniform.
Now we aren’t normal scared. We’re scared scared as uniforms are slumping around us. The brotherhood, where is it now? It’s dying. Or was it a dream all along? A dream that we could all make it together.
The next day Colome gets picked off just sitting there. Then Rogers tries to make a run for it but doesn’t get far. And Williams, they got him when he peaked over the ditch.
In the end it’s down to just me and Eddie and Bob Wilcox. Then Wilcox stands up and announces he’s had enough of this shit, that he’s going home, and peace brothers, and he makes the sign with two fingers; there’s a single shot, and he suddenly stops, gives me a strange look as if just now remembering something, and then drops right there and becomes another flopping uniform that we can’t get to.
So that’s how it started, with something small. Something innocent. A weary Geltz falling asleep. Then, Greene firing the Claymore that caught the LT and brought everything down on us. But it was all of us, really. Sometimes the brotherhood makes a mistake. Sometimes the LT takes a piss. Sometimes everything comes together the wrong way. It’ll never happen, you say. The odds are with us, you say. The brotherhood will survive. The brotherhood will live on.
That’s how we got stuck in that ditch.
The Yellow Cab takes me north on the freeway. Eddie and I are alone in the back. I’m wearing a dark blazer. Blue tie. I loosen the tie and sit back and stretch my legs the best that I can.
Of course I’m wondering if she’s really there. And what would she be like now? No more than a human scrap, a wreckage of body and mind. But if she had enough wherewithal to escape, then she was strong. But strong enough to make it over such rugged territory? It’s hard to believe. It’s hard to believe that she’s there at all.
My thoughts go to Julia. I replay the image of her shouting. She’s not like that. But how can I blame her? Nam. And I know that the only relationship I’ve deeply cared about is over. Done. And it’s not due to that typical male-female quandary where two halves never seem to make a whole. No, it’s because of me. Me.
The taxi clips along at sixty-five. We pass an older-model station wagon with an old MIA sticker on the chrome bumper: Only Hanoi Knows. I used to believe that too. That Hanoi was the problem. But some Americans have known too. They’ve known all along. And, despite three rescue attempts and seven congressional hearings, there is much more to come out; much more for people to answer for.
The driver of the taxi is an unshaven, burly man with wide arms and curly hair slicked back on the side. He takes the beltway toward the airport road. He looks over his shoulder.
“Which airline?” he asks.
“Asiana Air,” I say.
“Heading to China? That’s where everyone seems to be going these days.”
“No, to Vietnam.”
In the rearview mirror I see him looking at me curiously. “I was there,” he says. “Wouldn’t go back for the world.”
“What years?”
“’68 and ’69.”
“You were there for Tet.”
“Naw,” he says. “Happy to miss it. I came late in ’68.”
“Marines?” I ask.
“Army.”
“Infantry?” I ask.
“Admin,” he says. “I knew how to type. Probably saved my life. Wouldn’t go back for the world.”
“Me either,” I tell him.
“But you’re going back.”
“Business.”
“What kind you in?”
“Lost and found,” I tell him.
He squints at me in the mirror. “Come again, Bud.”
“Public relations,” I say.
“Oh,” he says distantly.
We continue in silence, my mind shifting from Julia to the missing Lieutenant Pavlik, then to the cit
y I knew as Saigon. It’s is now named Ho Chi Minh City after the great nationalist leader and murderer. Towers and I will be there a day or so at most. Then we’ll travel by bus or train to Qui Nhon. My only task is to find the woman they called Shirley, the one who first got the information from that Vietnamese colonel. Maybe from her I can confirm or disprove that Patricia Pavlik is there. I’ll need to get some evidence, anything to show that she’s there. Or that she was there until recently; until someone killed her.
Or that I’ve been conned in a very long line of cons.
I exit the taxi and grab my bag. I pay the driver. The doors to the terminal slide open for me. I pause there, looking back, half expecting Julia to come whirling toward me with embraces and witty apologies. The doors slide closed.
The airport is bustling even at this time of night. The paging system echoes for someone to pick up the white phone, and then an announcement not to leave my baggage unattended, and to notify authorities if anything looks suspicious. From the glances I get from the other travelers, I’m the only one who looks suspicious. More than a head taller than the rest, large-framed, crushed nose. Black. I take long strides, but I feel something heavy about me, something labored, like I’m already a weary traveler.
This particular wing of the airport moves with a confusion of bodies, most of them Asian. I turn and head up a wide blue corridor assigned to Asiana Airlines. I shift my bag to the other hand and look around, noting how the Vietnamese are different from the Filipinos, who are different from the Koreans. Not just their dress and physical features, but the way they move too. The Filipinos move more easily, more casually. They are accustomed to the flights to their homeland. The Vietnamese march with an awkward hurriedness that has become part of their anxious way of life in America. Most of the Vietnamese are men, heads of families, probably returning temporarily to a homeland they fled but had never given up on. A Vietnamese man with a thin mustache and a tailored suit brushes past me, smiling uneasily toward his destination. A little farther down the corridor I see another Vietnamese man who has paused with his wife and high school–aged son to tie a shoe. I note that the Vietnamese are dressed rather formally, as Americans used to dress when they traveled. These new Americans are unwittingly upholding the tradition of each first generation.
The corridor widens and I pass some restrooms. I turn into a brightly lit nook of a shop selling T-shirts, candy, and paperbacks. I avoid the newspaper rack and stop at a gum display next to a shelf of miniature Washington Monuments. I glance at the doorway hoping to find Julia. She’s not there, of course. I pick out a pack of spearmint gum and open it as I walk toward the woman behind the counter, brassy, middle-aged, staring at nothing with her bored face.
I set down my bag and take out a bill. She puts out her hand without looking at me. “What are you getting?” she asks in a dull voice.
I hold up the pack of gum, forcing her to turn her head.
She scowls. “Don’t open it ’til you buy it, mister.”
Julia would have a witty reply, but my impulse is to grab the woman by the collar and shake her and explain that brave soldiers were left behind in a godforsaken jungle, for decades, and that opening a pack of gum is not worth a single syllable of comment by anyone.
The woman digs into the cash register for change, still shaking her head as she hands it to me. “Sheesh,” she says.
I smile, pick up my bag, and head toward the gate.
I keep smiling as I get to security, but that doesn’t stop them from pulling me aside and wanding me twice and then checking my hands for firearm residue. “Thank you,” I say, as they let me go.
The gate is crowded, but I find a seat at the end of a row of plastic chairs. It faces toward the large window where I see the nose of the waiting 777. Behind me is an Asian family. Vietnamese, I’m sure. The late-afternoon sun has turned to a Washington gray. I wish Julia and I were back in San Diego, away from this city with its dreary disposition. I reach up and touch the earring again.
There’s a tap on my shoulder.
I spin in my seat.
It’s only Towers. Out of uniform, wearing slacks and a blue-and-white-plaid shirt. “Are you excited, sir?” He comes around to the front of the chairs and puts down his bags. He takes the seat next to me.
“Don’t call me sir. We’re acquaintances, traveling together.”
I expect him to say, “Yes, sir,” but he repeats, “Are you excited, Mr. Ames?”
I give him a look. “It’s Quintyn,” I say.
“Yes…Quintyn. Are you excited?”
“Mostly I’m tired, Jodee.”
He tries to stifle a yawn. “You’ll get lots of sleep, Quintyn. It’s a long flight. Eleven hours and fourteen minutes to Seoul, depending on the jet stream. Then ten hours and six minutes to Nam.”
“Nam?”
“Yes.”
“We’re not going to Nam, Jodee.”
“We’re not?”
“There’s no place by that name,” I say.
“I don’t understand.”
“Nam was a time, Jodee. Not a place. Now it’s gone. I hope. Even soldiers who go back there can’t find Nam. The plane takes them somewhere, but Nam—it isn’t there. It’s gone.”
He nods uncertainly.
“Nam was lie after lie. Nam was black kids dragged off to fight in a country they’d never heard of. Nam was turning to your buddy in a hole and saying, ‘What are we going to do now?’ and your buddy says, ‘We’re going to die now.’”
Towers shuffles his feet.
“So we’re going to Vietnam, Jodee. Got it? There is no Nam.”
He nods. “Vietnam, sir.”
“You got the camera?”
“And the mic,” he says.
I look toward the windows again. There’s a white man standing there, watching a Vietnamese girl bounce a ball on her knee. He has a bland retail-merchant look, decent haircut and shined shoes, but the rest of him is underdressed in loose-fitting jeans and a frayed jacket. I know those eyes. You’d expect it on a gaunt or crazed face. But there they are, the eyes of a person who’s not quite sure how he survived, or why.
He probably has a normal life now. Couple of grown sons or daughters and a wife who still struggles patiently with him, and who can’t fathom why he’d ever want to go back to that place; and he doesn’t have the words to explain it. Perhaps one more instance of the two halves never fitting, even if they wanted to. I touch the gold earring on my right ear and wonder if Julia is wearing hers. We’re not done, Julia and me. We can’t be.
Our flight is announced. We wait our turn and then file down the ramp to the plane. My mind shifts back and forth: Julia. Patricia Pavlik. Julia. Patricia Pavlik. I look back up the ramp for Julia. There’s only Filipino and Vietnamese heads bobbing toward me.
I turn my mind toward the journey ahead and step onto the plane.
50
DAY 11,691
2004
SHE HAD WATCHED THEM die, one at a time. Some had simply given up and they found them the next morning. Others had tried to run and were caught. They were executed. Bayonetted in front of the others. Some weren’t caught, and after some months their captors would find their bare bones, stripped and gnawed through by insects and animals. They would bring back the bones and toss them to the Americans still in cages.
Some were simply executed. No reason given. And still others simply disappeared. She had been told they were safe, that there was some kind of an exchange. But she didn’t believe it.
Lieutenant Pavlik had tried to escape four times. They had caught her each time. And beat her. They didn’t execute her like the others. She was a prize of some sort. She knew that.
Before, when she tried to escape, she had tried to outpace them through the forests and jungles, across the meadows. That was her mistake. She wasn’t strong enough. There had to be another way.
Her Vietnamese was good. She could hardly remember her English now. Fewer and fewer Americans were left to spea
k with, and even they now conversed with each other mostly in Vietnamese.
On this day Patricia Pavlik would try again. She did not expect to make it. That would be hoping too much.
The placement of the mines around the camp had been changed at intervals. That would be her first obstacle. But she had watched how they stepped now, what they avoided. She knew the route. She knew it by heart. She had already walked it a thousand times in her mind.
So she fled when the night was darkest. Heavy overcast. No stars. No moon. She stepped carefully, trying to remember how many steps to this mine, which way to turn when she got to that mine. In some places she wasn’t certain and simply risked it. If there was an explosion, she wouldn’t feel it; and besides, it would be okay.
As soon as she was beyond the mines Patricia stopped and hid. That was her plan this time. To hide rather than try to run.
As the sun came up, she found a hollowed-out tree and concealed herself inside it. She covered herself with leaves and bark to keep away some of the mosquitoes and flies. She waited. She did not eat. She drank the water that came from the sky.
It was a week, maybe, until she thought they had given up. Then she didn’t hear them anymore, coughing or slapping mosquitoes or cursing. She was weak, but she crept out of the hollowed tree, stumbling, aching from being curled up so long. Her body was cramped, and it took hours to fully unfold and stretch her limbs. Then she looked for food. She found berries nearby and ate them, then leaves. Anything that crawled or slithered. Then she kept going. Heading east. That was the way, wasn’t it? Yes, east.
In places she found orange fruit, like persimmons. She found green fruit. Once she found wrinkled fruit, like prunes. She soon learned what to look for. Another time as she went, she found a tall tree with spiked fruit and knocked some down and broke them open to find a yellow center. She ate greedily and gathered more. She kept going.
No one was pursuing her, so she no longer had to fear leaving a trail through the brush or footprints in mud. Her skin had hardened and dried over the years, and that was enough to keep some of the mosquitoes from biting. She could only move slowly, though, at times fighting through vines and thickets with only her hands. She struggled to tear through tangled foliage. In places she followed trails left by animals. They invariably led to streams. Sometimes she would look back and see that she had made no trail at all; as if the jungle had immediately sprung up and reclaimed itself.