by Peter Gilboy
She knew it would take her months, maybe longer, and all that time she knew to keep moving east. Over the mountains. Away from the hills.
She tried to remember how it had all started. It was so long ago. It was by the sea, wasn’t it? The South China Sea? And that’s where she was heading, wasn’t it? Yes. That’s what occupied Patricia’s mind each moment. She would continue to follow the valleys and streams the rest of the way, back to sea.
Months, and her hair grew wild. Months, and she was surprised to feel even stronger. She ate insects and whatever crawled. Sometimes she heard wings fluttering and things hissing and moving lightly as if behind her, following. She would look back, and there was nothing there.
She spoke to herself in Vietnamese. She drank from streams. When she had to drink from a rice patty, she’d cup her hands and swirl the water, waiting for the chunks of filth to sink to the bottom.
Many months in, she was caught in a flood on a hillside, the monsoons trying to wash her away. Another time she was caught in a jungle fire started by lightning. She had burns, but they were nothing. Nothing.
Then a fungus enveloped her. She could see it and feel it, and sometimes she tore at her skin. But her mind was on one thing. One thing only.
Time did not move. It was always the same day, a rotation of sun and night, followed by sun and night, and then sun again. No hours, no weeks, no months or years. Just suns and nights stretched out behind her with no end. And in front of her too.
Valleys crisscrossed, and she wasn’t sure which way to go. A number of times she had to backtrack for hours, or even a day, and try a different slope.
Sometimes she would find a cave in a valley wall, and she would stay there for days to rest. Once she found a waterfall where she could catch fish. She stayed there almost a week before continuing. She waded through swamps and climbed around tall limestone hills. In one place she found where the rains had eroded the land to reveal ancient ruins and cemeteries.
Another time, with no food for days, she passed out. Villagers found her and carried her to their huts. She stayed for some time, growing stronger from their rice and fish. The language of the village was not Vietnamese, so she had no way to speak with them. But the villagers celebrated her. She was their joy. These peasants were thrilled to be resisting in any way they could. They gave her food. They gave her medicine and clothes. They knew where she was going. America. And they were thrilled to be part of her journey.
Another time she fell from a steep hill and was found unconscious by a woodcutter. He took her to a village. She rested there for over a month, as his family guided her to recovery. They spoke Vietnamese there, and she asked them about the sea, but they had never seen it. She asked about large towns and cities, but they had never been there and didn’t know the way. She knew that they were refugees in their own country. But because they spoke Vietnamese, she knew that she was closer to her destination. The sea. But there was no way she could know how close the sea was.
She climbed around rocky hills. She crossed high meadows where she fought stinging ants. She came to villages with flags that had a red star. She knew what that meant, and she knew to detour miles around them to stay safe.
In one place a group of villagers saw her crossing a paddy, hunched over and moving as quickly as she could so as not to be seen. They rushed to her and hid her until night. Then they led her back to their village. It had a flag with a red star. But these villagers fed her and let her rest. They gave her new clothing. Then they concealed her in a cart and carried her farther on her way.
She journeyed through two seasons of monsoons. She drank from giant leaves. She drank directly from the sky. She had heard that there were tigers and wild boar, and she watched for glowing eyes in the dark, but so far she had been able to avoid them. Or they had avoided her. She came across places where nothing grew, still pocked from the war. She did not pray, except once in a forest of trees that towered so high that she recalled a cathedral; she imagined that the trees were the stilts of God. For some reason she sensed a home in this space; that He was somehow here. For a time it seemed to her that she was significant to Him, along with all the teeming life around her. She knelt, struggling to remember her prayers in English, then speaking the one prayer she remembered, saying it out loud and slowly.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
But she couldn’t remember the rest in English, and switched to Vietnamese, as when she had prayed with the other prisoners.
Cha cả sáng, nước Cha trị đến,
ý cha thể hiện dưới đất cũng như trên trời.
Xin Cha cho chúng con hôm nay lương thực hằng ngày,
và tha nợ chúng con, như chúng con cũng tha kẻ có nợ chúng con,
xin chớ để chúng con sa chước cám dỗ,
nhưng cứu chúng con cho khỏi sự dữ. Amen.
When she left that area, the forest quickly turned to jungle. She found a stream and followed it downward. Streams led to the sea, didn’t they? Then, after a time, the jungle seemed to grow darker and darker, though just as green and full of sound. It was daytime but the dense canopies overhead blocked out so much of the sun. And she was able to move more quickly then, because the vegetation was so thin. In places it was a cavern. A dark cathedral.
Finally she broke through a curtain of branches and giant leaves. She stepped out into a clearing; a small meadow, here in the middle of the jungle. And something was glowing along the edges of the meadow. She investigated and found large irregularly shaped leaves growing along the ground. They seemed to glitter.
Something gathered in her mind as she sat and studied the glittering plants. Maybe she could signal. But to whom? To God? She wanted to laugh. Would it matter if she signaled? If she made letters no one would see. Or maybe a plane would find the letters. Such a small chance. She looked skyward and saw only blue.
Yes, she decided. And she began crawling along the ground tearing at the stems of the leaves and bundling them under her shirt, carrying them to the center of the meadow. She trampled down some higher grasses and began laying out the letters. Her name. Yes, she would write her name. Not chó cái, female dog, which is what the guards called her. But her name. Her family name.
She began to lay out the tall letters.
***
There was more to her name. More letters. What were they? She couldn’t recall. She tried and could almost see the letters in her mind, but they wouldn’t come. And then she wept at what they had taken from ever. Even her name! She was furious. They had stolen everything from her! But she would write out the thing they called her, the soldiers and the guards.
***
She tried to think, was there more? But no words came to her. She sat in the meadow trying to remember. It was no use. But it brought other images to her mind, of a man at the edge of some kind of water, pulling her up. The image came closer, his kind eyes, his smile. It was her father. Yes, it was her father! She grasped for the image of her mother, but it wasn’t there. She tried again. It wouldn’t come. It wouldn’t come.
The grass was soft. Insects swarmed and settled on her, but her brown skin was thick and hard. She hardly felt them. She remembered being a soldier, but was that really true? Yes, she realized. It was true. And had she been married? Yes. What was his name? She tried to recall, but it was too far away for her remember.
Now Lieutenant Pavlik was more determined than ever. It couldn’t be so far now to the sea. Maybe even to her home. And though she was beyond exhaustion, her determination gave her a renewed assurance, a renewed confidence that she might find her way home.
But first she needed to rest. Maybe she’d stay here in the meadow for a time, eat what she could, rest up, and gather her strength for another push forward. Yes, that’s what she would do. And then, how far? How long? It didn’t matter that it might be more months. Or longer. She would keep going. But Patricia sensed she was close. Close. She held t
hat thought in her mind.
Lieutenant Patricia Pavlik lay back on the meadow grass beside the glittering leaves. She closed her eyes.
In seconds, she was asleep.
PART III
Hope is a risk
that must be run.
—Georges Bernanos
51
OVER THE ARCTIC
JANUARY 20, 2006
CONSIDER THE THINGS WE talked about in the ditch: In the daytime, nothing. They could hear us, and we could hear them, so we slept, except for a lookout. But at night we waited for them and talked. Not about the chopper that wasn’t here yet. Our radio was busted, and we hoped they had our last coordinates. We talked about regular things: leaches, Firebirds and Camaros, Coors versus Bud. We talked about how many Claymores we had left. We talked about God’s simple mercy, and whether we were heirs to a greater kingdom than this jungle. That was mostly Colome, who had a black rosary that he was always thumbing through. Geltz said that maybe this was all there is, the night and the breeze and that one star up there. Then we talked about morphine, and how much we had left, and was there enough just in case? We talked about how they don’t tell you in basic why you get two dog tags. One dog tag goes with the guy who finds your body. He takes it back to HQ. The other dog tag goes in your mouth. They’ll sort out who you are later.
It’s a widebody Airbus, an A380 to be exact, with a double deck. We’re in first class, Towers and me; row one, seats E and F, with width of thirty-five inches and a pitch of eighty-one. Alec’s doing. Nice. Eddie is here too. He slipped in somehow. I can hear him, like the ocean in a seashell. Things stick to us as we go through life. We know that. We know that all too well.
You’d think we’d have to fly east to get to Inchon, Korea, our first stop; but we’re heading north, which doesn’t make sense until you realize that the shortest distance to Inchon is over the pole. The plane has a map-screen for us, with an icon showing where we are; but when we’re close to the north pole, the icon flickers. That’s because, near the top of the world the computer doesn’t know which way the plane is flying. Geometry. It’s simple. Except to computers, I guess.
I’m thinking of Julia as we land at Inchon. Her anger, mostly. Her fury. How can I blame her? I can’t. I can’t.
Inchon is right outside Seoul. The word Inchon means “kind river.” It wasn’t so kind to the Marines back in September of 1950. That’s when they made their famous amphibious landing under MacArthur and came ashore to break the North Korean supply lines; which led to the end of the war, or at least its stalemate, which hasn’t changed to this day.
My mind goes to Colonel Philip Corso. He’s the one who was on Eisenhower’s National Security Council and who testified in 1992 about hundreds of sick and wounded American soldiers who were within ten miles of Panmunjom, the place for the prisoner exchange after that war. And yet for some reason they never made it. He provided documents to prove they were there. And he showed that our soldiers had then been shipped to the Soviet Union.
Nothing happened then, other than the immediate attempts to discredit the colonel. Suddenly he was a well-known liar. He was a thief. A UFO nut. He had passed classified documents. He distorted his military accomplishments. There were furious attempts to debunk his testimony as well: It simply couldn’t have happened, not in a million years. We don’t leave anyone behind.
I take out the photo of First Lieutenant Patricia Pavlik. Military IDs are like mugshots; no attempt to flatter. And yet she’s pretty in the photo, a small smile, hair tied back, shoulders squared, her eyes piercing the camera. But what could she look like today. If she’s really there today.
Fourteen hours and twenty minutes to Inchon. We have to wait and then change planes, and it’s another five hours and twenty minutes to Ho Chi Minh City, what we used to call Saigon. We’re in a smaller Airbus 320, a mid-to short-range aircraft with a center aisle only.
From Inchon to Saigon, the plane bounces badly for nearly the whole flight. The landing at Tan Son Nhat airport is hard and abrupt. The runways are cracked white cement. In a distant corner I see the protruding tails of broken American helicopters that haven’t been cleared to this day. Also in the distance are aircraft wings piled up on the earth like so many unburied bones.
The flight attendant announces our arrival in Korean, then Vietnamese and French, and finally in English. She reminds us that we gained a day after crossing the international date line. That means that we’ve lost almost two days.
The attendant then tells us that we’re to go to the Customs and Immigration Center. I smile to myself when I consider that Vietnam’s immigration desk might not be real busy these days.
Towers and I wait for the others to file off the plane first. I estimate two hundred former refugees returning, mixed in with an assortment of past-middle-age Americans, and smiling, well-dressed Japanese. The last to exit, we stand and move to the door. It’s early morning in Vietnam.
As I descend the wobbly metal steps, my body remembers. Until now, only my mind has remembered. But now my body recalls the heat. My mouth recognizes the dust. It isn’t just Nam, but something else that I recognize too; the unmistakable stench of military machismo. I look back at Towers, who is wincing from the glare and the heat.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “You’ll never get used to it.”
We head to customs and are met by a dozen uniformed officers with enormous Soviet-style shoulder boards. I seem to be the main attraction here. Perhaps my size. Perhaps something else.
They let us change currencies, about one dollar to twenty-two thousand dong. But there’s no need. I know that the dollar is more respected, and any market or hotel will happily accept them.
An hour later, we’re out of customs and into a noisy melee of taxi drivers as well as motorbikes revving their two-cycle engines. Other drivers wait with small minivans, or stand next to their old black French taxis that sag nearly to the ground. Each driver is bent on making the equivalent of a peasant’s monthly wage in a day. Off to the side is a late-model car, a silvery Toyota Cressida, waiting by the curb at the far end of the building. Its driver is leaning against the car.
Towers is struggling with his two bags. He’s sweating and his face is red. He looks excited but perplexed.
“We’ll take a taxi into the city,” I say.
“But what should we call it, Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?”
“Depends on who we’re talking to.”
Towers wipes his cheek with his shoulder. “Let’s get something with air,” he says.
At that moment, the driver of the Toyota Cressida points to us and waves casually. It’s an attractive young woman in tight jeans and a red blouse. Towers is startled. “Does somebody know we’re here?”
“I’m sure,” I say.
“That’s spooky,” Towers says. “What if it’s some kind of setup, sir?”
“Then we’ll find out right off what we’re up against,” I tell him.
I proceed toward the Toyota, shaking my head at the motorbike drivers and brushing past a Japanese businessman waiting for his bags to be loaded into a minivan. As we approach the Toyota, the woman comes toward us smiling. “Let me take your bags,” she says. She’s wearing a leather cabbie hat cocked to the side over her flowing black hair. She tosses our bags into the trunk, then smiles at us. “May I take you to your hotel?” she asks, in a near-flawless American accent. She smiles brightly, and her eyes nearly disappear into narrow slits. “Or perhaps you prefer the Apocalypse Now nightclub.”
“You’re kidding,” I say.
“Not kidding,” she says in a cheery voice. “Come and see.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “It is not far. Everything is up to date here.” She slides into the driver’s seat.
“Skip the nightclub,” I tell her as Towers and I get in the back. All the windows are down. I notice a crucifix dangling from the rearview mirror.
She reaches into the glove compartment and takes out a CD. She holds it up. “Madonna?” she
says.
“Spare us,” I tell her. “I thought you said everything was up to date?”
“Eminem?” she asks.
“No.”
She pulls from the curb and heads to an intersection, then turns right. As we bump along the two-lane potholed road, she taps the CD against the steering wheel and bounces in her seat to the music in her head. We pass a small billboard announcing something in Vietnamese about a Sony TV. Then a sign for a Nissan. Capitalism is alive and well in socialist Vietnam.
“Which hotel, Mac?” she says, then laughs into the mirror, her eyes narrowing to slits again. “Isn’t that what you say?”
“Exactly.”
“Should I follow that car, too?” She’s still laughing and tapping the CD.
“You’ve seen too many American movies.”
“Do you have air?” Towers asks her.
“What’s air?”
“Air conditioning.”
“No. What hotel?”
“Caravelle on Tu Do Street. Is it still there?”
“Same location, but the street has a different name. Tu Do means ‘freedom.’ Now it’s Dong Khoi, which means ‘Street of the Uprising.’ The communists like that better.”
“Just get us there, please.”
“I think you’d really like the Majestic Hotel better,” she says. “The Cuu Long. Same area. How about that instead? Nice views of the Saigon River. It has a good bar. I highly recommend it.” She glances back at me. “Highly.”