A River in May

by Edward Wilson

  She answered in English, ‘If you betray me, they will kill you.’

  ‘Trust me, I won’t.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t proved their commitment. You may come to my home this evening.’ She handed him a slip of paper with the address, then got back on her bicycle. ‘Don’t look at me when I cycle away.’ Lopez turned and walked away. He heard the white train of her ao dai flutter and snap in the sea breeze as she pedaled off. He didn’t even know her name.

  Lopez set off just after dark. To get to the address he had to pass through one of the poorest quarters of Da Nang. The roads were unpaved and pitted with deep potholes and mud baths. The poor leered at Lopez in the light of the jeep’s headlamps; their eyes seemed to be mocking him. He continued to a level crossing over a railway line that went down to the docks. The connecting bridges had been blown up long ago and there were no more trains. The line was covered in rank vegetation. On the other side of the crossing, there were no more slums: this was the precinct of the officers and profiteers. The address was a single story stucco villa with a courtyard, and an ornamental pond. A Vietnamese Army jeep was parked inside the wrought iron gate.

  Lopez parked outside and was padlocking the steering wheel when the gate scraped open and a man’s voice told him in Vietnamese to park inside. The man was middle-aged and wearing the uniform of a Vietnamese Army captain. He shook hands and told Lopez that he was ‘Nhung’s father’.

  He led Lopez into the house, which was too bright with overhead fluorescent tubes. Nhung was seated next to her mother. He formally shook hands with both of them. Nhung’s mother struck Lopez as a humorless woman who looked as though she should be chairing a school governors’ meeting. The father was an officer in the Transportation Corps, a good job that kept him out of battle and provided lucrative opportunities for selling army gasoline.

  Lopez didn’t understand why Nhung had invited him to her family home. The evening was a formal and claustrophobic one. They drank tea and carried on polite stilted conversation. Lopez found out that Nhung was studying modern languages at Saigon University and had taken a year out to be a teaching assistant at the lycée in Da Nang. He soon became aware that Nhung had spun her parents a cover story that involved Lopez giving a talk to her students on ‘American civilization’.

  The mother was saying fretfully, ‘… and when the trees were all dead, the Americans came with chainsaws, and cut them down. Such a beautiful city.’ She sighed. ‘But Saigon is so ugly now, without the trees.’ Lopez did not point out that it was the Vietnamese municipal authorities who had let the trees die in the first place.

  Meanwhile, the grandfather, with his loose white clothing, white hair and a wispy beard, sat cross-legged in an alcove off the main living area. He seemed unaware that there was any one else in the room: his business was being the eldest, the link with their ancestors. The grandfather impressed Lopez: he seemed outside time. He sat as still and as silent as a meditating monk. He had far too much dignity to engage in meaningless polite conversation.

  Just before curfew Lopez began to say goodbye to Nhung and her family. Suddenly the grandfather stirred from his alcove. It was uncanny, like seeing a saint’s statue come to life. The old man climbed out of the alcove and shuffled towards Lopez on bare feet. He could see that the parents were embarrassed, but Nhung looked as if she were trying not to laugh. As the grandfather approached, Lopez bowed his head. He thought he was about to receive a blessing or a profound Confucian maxim. The old man stretched out his hands. His gnarled arthritic fingers were clutching soiled and wrinkled banknotes. He wanted to do a black market currency swap.

  Nhung accompanied Lopez outside to open the gate. He tried to take her hand. She pulled away. ‘Don’t touch me. My mother is watching, Any suggestion of impropriety is going to cause me a lot trouble.’

  ‘Why did you ask me to come here?’

  ‘I wanted to get to know you better, I also wanted you to know my situation. My parents, as you can see, are bourgeois Catholics.’

  ‘Do they know?’

  ‘They know nothing. It’s difficult for me – I have to protect them as well as carry out my obligations as a cadre.’

  ‘When can I see you again?’

  ‘Wait at least two weeks: there are things I have to check. I can’t act on my own.’

  It all seemed so unreal to Lopez, but also so exciting. It was like waking up from a nightmare. He imagined that being a traitor must be like committing serious adultery. Living with your lawful spouse would become more and more irritating, but it was also easier because you could see the way out – a future, even a dangerous one, with the person that you really loved.

  When Lopez got back to Nui Hoa Den, he found that Boca had insulted and pissed off all the Vietnamese. In a fit of paranoia, he had constructed an ‘inner perimeter’ in which only American personnel were permitted. The American sector was cordoned off with eight-foot-high barbed-wire barriers and command detonated Claymore mines. There was also another machine-gun bunker aimed, not outwards, but directly at the center of the main Vietnamese areas of the camp. The most insulting gesture of all was the padlocked steel grating that blocked off the American half of the underground bunker from that of their LLDB counterparts. Dai Uy Ky was so irate that he refused to speak to Boca.

  Lopez met Dusty for a private word: ‘What’s provoked all this?’

  ‘Something or someone’s persuaded Boca that the camp is in serious danger of being overrun and that it’s going to be an inside job.’

  ‘Guy’s crazy. Hey, aren’t we supposed to be imbibing copious quantities of Scotch right this very moment, to speed Sergeant Carson on his way?’

  ‘Guess so. Do you realize it’ll be the first time in the guy’s long and distinguished military career that he’s gotten through a war without being taken prisoner?’

  ‘I hate it when it’s my turn to be duty officer.’ Lepreux shuffled the dominoes and looked enquiringly at Lopez. ‘Another game?’

  Lopez shook his head. He had flown back to China Beach with Carson on the pretext of resolving a supply problem with the S4 – it had become obvious that Boca didn’t give a shit what Lopez did – and had wasted the day requisitioning supplies that he hoped would never be delivered. It was now nearly midnight and he was ready for sleep. Beaucoup Kilo, the leader of the Chinese Nung platoon who provided the nightly perimeter guard, was snoring on a chair in the corner of the orderly room. ‘Hey, Kilo,’ Lepreux shouted. There was no response. ‘Wake up, you fat fuck!’

  The Nung finally opened his eyes and looked blankly at Lepreux.

  ‘If I can’t get any zee’s, neither can you. Understand?’

  The Nung nodded; it was obvious he hadn’t understood a word.

  ‘I really hate this duty officer shit,’ Lepreux said again. ‘You have to stay awake all night and then they expect to carry on as normal with your staff stuff next day. And whenever it’s my turn, things always go wrong. First time I had the duty, some guy drowned messing about in the surf; that must have been before your time –’

  ‘No, it happened my first night. We were in the same replacement levy. Guy called Whiteford.’

  ‘Hey, you been out here a long time, Lopez. You must be the only guy left from that bunch.’

  ‘But you’ve been here even longer.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t go out in the field any more. And I keep my ass away from helicopters. I try to lead a quiet life, and I sure do hope this is going to be a quiet night.’

  Lepreux was about to start sharing out the dominoes for another game when they heard the sound of running footsteps outside. A young sergeant ran into the orderly room, shouting, ‘Someone just got shot!’ Afterwards Lopez wondered why they hadn’t heard the gun. The sergeant’s eyes were wild and dilated, and he was shaking with fear. He had just arrived in Vietnam – a ‘new kid’ – and couldn’t believe that the madness had begun already.

  ‘See what I mean? Whenever it’s my turn! Last time it was th
e Tet shit, now this.’

  Lepreux picked up his M16 and chambered a round. They followed the sergeant to the transient NCO billets, an old French beach house built of gray clapboard. Lopez listened to the soft soughing of the South China Sea that filled the night. Lepreux, by his wide, whined, ‘Why does this always happen to me? I just want a quiet life…’

  The medical officer, barefoot, in a T-shirt and trousers, was already there. ‘Dead,’ he said. He pulled back a sheet; for a second Lopez glimpsed the blond features of a twenty-year-old helicopter gunner. The boy-child gunner had just completed a full tour without a scratch and, until fifteen minutes before, had been on his way back to his Mom and Dad safe and sound. There was a hole in one temple and the mattress beneath his head was soaked with blood.

  ‘OK,’ said Lepreux. ‘I don’t need to see any more. Cover him up.’

  The medical officer drew the sheet over the shattered head.

  ‘Don’t let anyone come in and don’t let anyone leave. Seal the building.’ Lopez thought Lepreux looked embarrassed, as if he knew his words sounded trite and over-dramatic in the context of real tragedy and loss. He looked at Lopez. ‘This is a goddam-awful mess, and I feel ill. Can you help me?’

  ‘Sure. What should I do?’

  ‘Wake Catfish and the adjutant, and tell them I’ll be in the orderly room.’ Lopez nodded. ‘I’m going to try to get the MPs out here – I think that’s the procedure. Hope I can get them on the landline.’

  An hour later, Sergeant First Class Albert Carson was sitting in the orderly room in handcuffs. Lopez, as his unit officer, was allowed to be present and to take notes. A Military Police major took Carson’s statement; meanwhile, a bored-looking Judge Advocate General’s Corps captain was jotting notes on a yellow pad.

  ‘What exactly did you say to Sergeant White when you first spoke to him?’

  ‘I said, “I’m trying to sleep, please turn the music down”.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘He turned the music down and I went back to bed. But five minutes later – just as I was starting to doze off – he turned it back up again.’

  ‘Did you ask him to turn it down again?’

  ‘Didn’t see the point, he wasn’t going to listen. So I went back and shot him.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘Turned the damned thing off, went back to bed and went to sleep.’

  On the table in front of the MP major was a sealed plastic bag with the suspect’s personal effects. Among the effects was a Zippo lighter that Carson had managed to hang on to through three wars and twenty-four years. While waiting to be repatriated from a POW camp in Germany in 1945 he had had engraved on it: Fuck God, Fuck Uncle Sam, Fuck the Army, And fuck you too.

  Lepreux told Lopez he had known Carson for some time and found the whole thing depressing. ‘Carson reminds me of an old tomcat me and my wife adopted when we were first married. That old tom suffered from arthritis, rheumatism – you could never pick him up without being scratched. Sunny days, he liked to warm himself on the stone flags of the yard between the married quarters. Well, one day a young kitten who just wanted to play skipped over and batted a gentle swipe at him. Our old tom opened one eye and hissed. The kitten thought it was part of the game and did the same thing again. The old tom jumped up, sank his teeth into the kitten’s neck and just shook him till he was dead.’

  Lopez had to go back to the C-team to deal with the incident. It quickly became obvious that relations between the helicopter crews and Special Forces were poisoned. In any case, the crews had seemed embittered and strange for some time. There had been some sort of incident in Quang Ngai province involving a company from the Americal division. The supporting helicopter crews had seen things that they shouldn’t have seen and photographs had been taken. The rumors were obscene. Now everyone was telling the pilots and crew to shut up or they’d be ‘shat upon from a great height’. Lopez had been at Fort Benning with a lieutenant who was a platoon leader in the division concerned, and who had struck him as a weak incompetent with a streak of sadism.

  In the early evening Lopez went to see Nhung. Her father was out and her mother was busy in the kitchen so they could talk freely. Her grandfather chaperoned them from his perch in the alcove, but as he knew no English and was deaf in any case, they could still talk. Lopez found Nhung angry and terse, as if she were dealing with him against her better instincts. She asked him to draw a map of Nui Hoa Den’s defenses. Lopez found it difficult to stop his hands from shaking as he drew the diagram. Suddenly, it was no longer idle talk and game playing; he really had become a traitor and was committing the sort of crime that had sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair – and they were probably innocent. She asked Lopez to include the locations of the escape tunnel and the emergency radio link and its underground antenna. Lopez did so and handed her the completed sketch. There was no turning back after that – he had handed his life to her.

  ‘When,’ he said, ‘should we meet again?’

  ‘At the end of the month. Can you come back to Da Nang then?’

  ‘I hope so, I will.’

  ‘Don’t come here. I’ll meet you at the visitors’ gate to the China Beach compound at ten in the morning on the last Sunday of the month.’

  Carson’s court-martial began the next day. Lopez had to attend as an observer as well as a character witness for the defense. He found it difficult not to imagine himself on trial. Carson had only killed one of his fellow soldiers – how many, thought Lopez, was he going to kill? He realized that betraying people in a war wasn’t at all like ‘serious adultery’: sleeping with someone else didn’t explode your wife’s aorta with a concussion blast and lacerate her body with shrapnel.

  On the last day of Carson’s court-martial Gary Linden, one of his former officers, was called as a character witness. Lopez listened while Linden gave his testimony. It turned out to be an earnest, dignified and articulate account of Carson’s ‘high moral character, selflessness and devotion to duty.’ The three majors and two colonels who made up the board – effectively judge and jury – were impressed. Lopez was impressed too, for he knew Linden to be an unpredictable and dangerous psychopath. He remembered how when Linden first heard news of the murder, he had pounded the club bar with glee and shouted, ‘Carson done got some round-eye body count!’ At the court-martial, however, Linden spent an hour giving a complex and sensitive testimony about how the horror and stress of war had finally caused a soldier of ‘innate human decency and sensitivity’ to have ‘a momentary aberration’. Lopez knew that everything he said about Carson was true, but was amazed that Linden was the one saying it.

  That evening the board members went to the officers’ club bar and sat in a dark corner by themselves to confer. They had to decide Carson’s sentence in the morning. Linden, meanwhile, unaware of their presence and roaring drunk, was bragging in a loud voice to a group of new arrivals about a Viet Cong officer whom he had tracked down and killed. He explained, in clinical detail, how he had cut out the Viet Cong’s heart, carried it on the end of his dagger into the market place of the nearest village and, surrounded by an audience of shocked Vietnamese, fed the heart to the village dogs. The next morning the board decided to discount Linden’s testimony and sentenced Carson to three years’ hard labor in Leavenworth.

  THE END OF THE MONTH CAME. The hours just ticked away, an inexorable countdown to eternity blast-off. Lopez wondered if there were clocks and calendars on prisons’ death rows. His cover story for coming to Da Nang was to pick up the CIDG payroll. Pay day, he thought – pay day.

  Lopez also had to visit the PX, the Post Exchange. He hated going there, but when anyone came to Da Nang they were expected to go shopping for the rest of the team. The list was mostly booze, but also cassette tapes, toiletries and a punching bag for Mendy to practice flicking jabs. The PX was located at Da Nang airfield, not far from the mortuary. The Exchange was a massive warehouse. You could buy anything from duty free Chanel No.
5 to flavored condoms, from exercise bikes to excise-exempt Cadillacs to drive, if you still had legs to work the pedals, when you returned to the States. At first, Lopez thought it was bizarre to have a bursting shopping mall amid the bloodiest battlefields of Vietnam. Later he realized the goods in the PX were the whole point. The sale and distribution of all that crap was why the war was being fought.

  Lopez found the PX just as nausea-inducing as its neighbor, the mortuary. When you walked into the Post Exchange the cryonic chill of air conditioning overload grabbed your testicles. There were no windows, but the building was tinsel bright with the light of a thousand neon tubes. Lopez stopped by the magazine racks and picked up a free copy of Stars and Stripes, the official army newspaper, and turned to the back page which always had a list of those killed in action the previous week. He found the names of two line infantry officers, Tadeusz and Williams, who had been in his company at Fort Benning. He didn’t recognize any of the other four hundred names on the page.

  Lopez tucked the paper under his arm and walked past stacks of electric fans, tape decks, amplifiers, speakers, refrigerators, cameras and televisions to the counter where they sold clocks and watches. He had to get a watch for Sergeant Jackson, who wanted it as a present to make up with his counterpart. The air conditioning chilled Lopez’s sweat to ice-water and the ticking displays of clocks triggered a sense of nausea that turned his legs to lead and drained the blood from his face. A hideous reproduction Swiss cuckoo clock went tick tick, whir, then tick tick – cuckoo, cuckoo. Time. He closed his eyes and saw the images of past and future slaughters pasted on the insides of his eyelids. Tick tick, whir. He opened his eyes. Nausea rising. The gleaming displays of stereo systems and cameras – cool, subdued and seducing in the artificial chill and neon light – were suddenly mixed up with a dying soldier trying to make the sign of the cross with a handless arm; a dead girl in dirty blood-sodden bandages; Bobby’s stumps – lots of stumps, stumps scorched and shredded; the proud woman with her hand nearly shot off; the destruction of Phu Gia, the blind breastless Xuan Huong; the dead boy at Dai Binh wearing those gray shorts with the elasticized waist – and then the accounts of the massacre at My Lai and of the ditches filled with dead babies and raped women - I had not thought death had undone so many. Lopez leaned against a counter and willed himself not to vomit. He counted to sixty, then to a hundred, and felt himself steady. Then he finished the shopping – for those he was going to kill.