We moved on and Eileen said, “Aren’t you hungry, honey? For something else maybe?”
“Not anymore,” Frank said.
Vinh looked at him with a smile that I’ve seen him use on a particularly stupid customer. “You don’t like to see dead fish?”
“Just a slab of their meat on a plate is the only way.”
“You never fished as a boy?”
“I was a landlocked kid. Too busy building tree houses and stockpiling dirt-clod hand grenades.”
“A boy who does not fish or hunt misses the real life and death,” Vinh said, and I could hear what I took to be the little male thing going on again between them.
“Who said anything about hunting?” Frank said. “I could hunt.”
“The animals you killed had eyes to stare at you, too, didn’t they?”
“I never killed anything slippery. And I always did it with a gun. What’s all this worm-on-a-hook shit? What’s fishing to a born grunt?”
“Grunt?”
“Grunt. An infantryman. You guys didn’t call them that?”
“I heard the word. But I thought you were a mechanic.”
It surprised me that Vinh was starting to be hard on Frank. The things that had passed between them that had made them these little vacation-spot buddies so far—was that over now? Had I missed it all? Then it occurred to me that maybe I was myself the reason for Vinh pulling back from Frank. He had not wanted to say anything to me about Frank last night when I asked him. There was something about the man—that was all Vinh would say. Maybe it was just me. He didn’t want to show me what it was that he and Frank had together.
But Frank didn’t seem to pick up on Vinh’s mood. He replied quite calmly, not at all defensive, just explanatory, “Anybody who carried a rifle and shot it in anger was a grunt to us. And I did that plenty.”
Vinh wouldn’t let it drop. “Why were you so anxious to fight, Frank?”
Eileen was probably listening to all of this, too. And it surely bothered her for what were probably some pretty complex reasons. As it was, I had totally forgotten her, I’d become so wrapped up in the men. But now she seemed not to want to hear any more. She said to me, loud, riding over the men’s conversation, “It’s exciting to be going to this movie set, isn’t it? When was the last time you saw ‘The Night of the Iguana’?”
As soon as I heard her voice, my face snapped over to her and I grew flushed with shame. I was very sorry that I’d been ignoring her—I’d contrived this trip with her; it was supposed to be mostly for the two of us; we were the ones to enjoy it.
I told her when I’d last seen the film and Eileen and I lagged a little behind as Vinh and Frank talked on, only a background mumble to me as my mouth and part of my brain did their duty to Eileen. But I was still conscious of the men, the red shirt and the black. And I watched the backs of their legs. They both had really fine, solid calves that clenched and fell, clenched and fell as they walked in the sand.
And we waded another little stream and then climbed some boulders by a beach bar and we went single file down a rocky path, Eileen’s voice going on about other Taylor and Burton movies that I loved—“Cleopatra” and “The Comedians” and “The Sandpiper” and even “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which I think was really the beginning of the end for Liz and Dick, even though they stayed married for eight years after that. But I was hardly hearing any of this; I was responding over my shoulder and watching the men, Frank out front walking the stones of the path as if they could be booby-trapped and Vinh followed carefully, very quiet, placing his feet, it seemed to me, only where Frank had put his.
And then the path ended and we went even more carefully along the seawall, pretty narrow really, with a shore of boulders just below us on our right and the sharp incline of the weedy bank going up into the trees to our left. Even Eileen stopped talking as we teetered along. The early-afternoon sun was very hot and the sky and water were so bright they hurt my eyes. So when I wanted to glance away from Vinh’s heels, which I was carefully following, I would look up the slope into the thick trees. It all felt familiar, up the hill. I don’t know why, but it reminded me of Vietnam, even though I was really a city girl. My parents would take me for vacations to Nha Trang and even a few times to Qui Nhon, where we had some relatives and where Frank served, though I hadn’t said anything about this to him. But both Nha Trang and Qui Nhon are on the South China Sea, and there must have been some place like this, with the sea so bright and the trees up a slope so thick. Some really special little moment that I’d had as a girl that got buried too deep to remember specifically, but which cleared my eyes and opened me up now to the shine of the water on Banderas Bay off the Pacific Ocean in Puerto Vallarta and to the thick looming of the trees up here near the set of “The Night of the Iguana.”
Then we passed a cut in the trees, a groove down the hill, a place where the water runs off, and I could see a brick building up there, crumbling in the woods. But we passed it by and Frank led us farther until we arrived beneath the pole at the dock, rising up maybe forty feet, and it puzzled me what it once was supposed to do. Maybe it was some sort of crane or something to unload supplies. But it kind of gave me the shivers, standing up there so stiff and alone. The dock itself jutted out over the sea here, but its surface was gone; it was just the frame gaping out over the water and I turned around and there were two levels of balconies built into the hillside, fieldstone walls all jagged and irregular.
They had seemed so imposing from the beach, but up close it was clear that they were just facades, illusions, for as walls they contained nothing but the hillside, and as balconies they didn’t connect to anything at all. Frank had climbed the broad stone steps beside them and he had run into a dead end. I could even see it from where I was standing. The steps went nowhere, just ending in the weeds and the trunks of the slope trees. “Just a real fine collection of small animal turds up here,” Frank declared. Then he glanced down to Eileen at the foot of the stairs and said, “Sorry, honey. At least I didn’t say ‘shit.’ ”
Before I had a chance to react to what would have been a slight surprising prudishness in Eileen, she said, “That’s right, sweetie. At least you didn’t say ‘shit.’ ” And all of a sudden my surprise shifted to this almost tender private joke between them. I was glad for that, but it did take me by surprise.
Frank came down the steps and I looked to Vinh. He was sitting on a pile of stones in the shade and he was watching the sea, I thought to go sit beside him, but Frank passed Eileen by—I was surprised again, expecting the little thing that had happened between them to surely end in an embrace of some sort, or at least a touch, a glancing kiss, something. Frank went past her with his attention already on my husband, and before I could act, it was Frank sitting next to him. This was still all right by me. I wanted to just get close and stay quiet and hope that they would eventually get back in their private mood with each other.
There were more stones piled nearby and I sat down and Eileen came and sat next to me and I was afraid she’d start talking, but she didn’t. We all looked out to sea, looked at the big rocks hulking out there and the jagged line of mountains far across at the other side of the bay. Finally Frank said, “This isn’t so bad. I figured there’d be people all over us out here selling Liz and Dick stuff.”
“Don’t you believe in free enterprise?” Vinh said, and I listened for the sound of combat in his voice again. But it wasn’t there, exactly. I knew he didn’t like all the swarm of vendors either, in spite of his being a businessman. He had too strong a sense of decorum.
Frank kept his face out to sea and he shrugged. “Sure I do. But sometimes it just gets so goddamn silly.”
Vinh laughed, and it was a deep, appreciative laugh. I couldn’t believe my good luck. All these two men had to do was sit down in the shade for a couple of moments and the first things out of their mouth let me find what I was looking for. “You’ve got it there, Frank,” Vinh said. And I understood that ho
wever foolish Frank could appear hanging on so hard to the Vietnam veteran part of himself, however embarrassing it might sometimes be for Eileen, he certainly hadn’t given in to the light and lively and less filling and soft as a cloud and reach out and touch someone culture that America had to offer. All the things that I had a sweet tooth for, my husband couldn’t stand, not this man who’d been through a war and survived, the man who’d made his way in a strange land. And here was another man as uncomfortable with all that as Vinh was. Sure, these two could be buddies for a week. I fancy myself an observant woman, and there it was at last for me to see, as I sat on a crumbling boat dock at the foot of the set of one of my favorite movies.
Well, that was a relief, I thought. I even turned to Eileen and said, “There’s got to be more to the place than this.”
“Of course. Through the trees you can see buildings up there on top of the hill.” Eileen turned her attention to her husband. “Honey, get us up to the top.”
“The stairs lead nowhere.”
Then I remembered the water runoff we’d passed. “I saw a place to go up,” I said.
Frank and Vinh slapped their knees in acceptance and we all got up and I walked point this time, leading everyone back along the seawall to the cut in the trees and that groove coming down. “We can go up here,” I said.
Vinh stepped in front of me and looked up the hill and said, “Okay. If you have to do this.”
“There’ll be no T-shirts at the top,” I said. “I bet I can promise that.”
Frank laughed and it looked like he was going to make a move past Vinh to lead the way, but Vinh started up the path too quickly, getting out in front, and Frank hustled to follow. I looked at Eileen and we both watched the men jockeying like this for position, and then she rolled her eyes at me. We both offered the other the opportunity to go next—I wasn’t all that eager to be near them, now that I thought I understood. But Eileen finally insisted the hardest, and I went up the rut before her, the hillside squeezing at my hamstrings. I climbed with my face down for a while and the water runoff widened, turned into something more like a path, and there were even a few flat stones along the way, like the cast and crew had used this same way up the hill.
I finally raised my eyes and the two men were about thirty meters ahead, moving pretty fast, Frank still behind. I stopped and watched them and I don’t know why I noticed it, but they were remarkably quiet. They were traipsing up among dead leaves and twigs and such and yet I didn’t hear them at all. There must have been something in the way they were moving that made me sensitive to this, because somehow I knew it was on their minds as well. They were a little hunched and alert and they moved without any wasted motion, not even bobbing up and down. Then they reached the top of the rise and stopped and Frank came even with Vinh. I followed the turn of their heads and off to their left I could see a small, one-story brick structure without a front wall. They cocked their heads and looked into the gaping concrete rooms.
I put my head down and strained at my tight legs and went on up, conscious now of how much noise I was making, crunching leaves and scraping on the flat stones. I’d always wondered what it was like when Vinh was with his company out patrolling or whatever they did in the jungles. I felt suddenly like I knew. When I got to the top of this rise, I was surprised to find the men gone. The path continued on ahead, through a little open meadow, and then began to climb again. I could see along it far enough to know the men hadn’t gone that way.
I flexed my legs to try to stretch out my muscles and I looked around. The two men were nowhere to be seen. The two side-byside concrete rooms gaped open to me and I glanced down the path and Eileen was struggling up, making a last effort, and then she was beside me. “Where are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Frank?” Eileen’s voice quavered into the still, hot air and there was no reply. There was just the sound of the distant surf, coming from over the hill ahead of us, and the buzz of some insect whisking past and then away.
I was curious about this little building. It was too basic to be anything used in the movie, and then as I approached, I noticed an inner wall of tiles and the stubs of old shower heads. This was in the left-hand room, and I stepped into the room to the right as Eileen called out Frank’s name again. The walls here were covered with graffiti, the profuse linking of names from floor to ceiling. Ramon and Maria, Ed and Mary, Sigmund and Katherine, on and on, a swarm of lovers touching letters, stuck by arrows, bound in by ragged marker-pen hearts. I saw a flash of color out of the comer of my eye. It was through the back window, beyond a row of low bushes. A red shirt slipping past in the trees, and I looked closer just in time to see the black shirt following.
“They’re out in the back,” I said to Eileen.
“Frank,” she called again.
“Yes, Eileen?”
“Where are you?”
“Here I am.” The voice was coming around a comer of the little building now and I looked again at all the names, running my eyes quickly around and around the wall packed with true love, and I wondered how many of these couples were still in love right this moment.
“Vinh and I were exploring out back.”
“You having fun, sweetie?” Eileen said, and there was no ridicule or irritation in her voice. It was like she was indulging an active child.
I stepped out of the lovers’ room and I thought it was a shame that the front wall was broken down and the place smelled of mildew and stone dust.
Frank did not answer Eileen’s little motherly question. Instead he turned to my husband and said, “You keep pretty good noise discipline there, Vinh.”
“Perhaps you drowned out my mistakes.”
“You weren’t hearing any sounds out of this troop either,” Frank said, and his voice rasped a bit from Vinh’s sharpness.
“Can’t we go on?” Eileen said, pretty sharp herself now. “This isn’t really part of the set.”
Both men looked to the path tracking up and over the hill and I could feel the tension between them. Frank turned first and moved off pretty fast, and I was surprised to see Vinh follow just as fast.
Eileen cried out, “Wait for us,” and this did slow Frank down and pull him into an upright position. He glanced over his shoulder and Vinh was coming up on him and it didn’t seem fair to me for him to pass Frank while he was just paying attention to his wife.
So I called, “Vinh,” and my husband slowed and even stopped and turned to wait for us. Frank stopped as well, just beyond him. Eileen and I looked at each other and I didn’t know exactly what was in her mind, but she was obviously noticing the same odd thing going on between the men that I was. She and I took our sweet time about getting ourselves together and strolling up the path and the men were waiting, so I let myself look around.
Things were still pretty wildly overgrown, but we could see some full buildings off to our right, set on higher ground that looked back into the bay. This was the main set, I think, the hotel run by Ava Gardner in the movie.
“Isn’t that the place?” I said to Eileen, nodding to the buildings.
“Maybe so. Maybe.”
We looked around for a path going off in that direction, but the only one we found didn’t go twenty meters before it was overgrown and then just disappeared into a really nasty thicket.
“I don’t see a way over there,” I said to Eileen, and she was not where I expected her to be. I found her up the hill, at the crest, and she was looking off in the distance and she had her hands folded before her with the wind blowing her hair back and she looked very nice there, very contented. Like a bookplate I once had, a girl standing against a breeze on a hill. Books make you dream, I think it said, just over the place where I wrote my name: This book belongs to Trn Nam Thanh Gabrielle. I miss bookplates. You can’t hold a TV show in your hand and put your bookplate inside the cover where a girl stands on a hill dreaming of a wonderful future, just like in this wonderful book.
I glance
d at the men and they were shuffling their feet and sniffing the air. I climbed up beside Eileen and the view was very nice; the bay was broad and very blue; the shore over on this side was deserted, a long curve of lacy surf. Very nice. I looked at the path and it wound down the ragged hill to a crumbling two-story brick building, though this one still had its front wall. And closer to the beach was the concrete frame of a foundation, all the walls gone from this one.
“We going over the hill?” Frank said.
It was all lovely but very lonely, too, up here. There was nothing of the movie to recognize, really. No sense of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor ever being here. No ghosts here at all, it seemed. Just wreckage and weeds and silence. I turned my face to the wind coming in from the ocean and I stripped off a scarf that I’d used to tie up my hair and the wind blew my hair behind me, a nice feeling, I guess, though I wouldn’t kid myself or anyone else that it had any intensity, this feeling. The wind in your hair is really a thrill only for a girl who hasn’t met a man yet.
I don’t mean that as cynical as it sounds. I just felt a little let down, I guess. There was a pretty snapshot up here, but no romance. That may sound odd from the woman who found romance in the muddy water spoiling the bay, but this was the mood that had suddenly come over me. I was weary of this vacation. And the men wanted nothing more than to charge over the hill. Frank was waiting for an answer and Eileen apparently wasn’t going to give him one. I looked at her and her eyes were closed and I hoped that she was feeling more than I was.
“Over the hill,” I said, and Frank flashed past and then Vinh, who gave me a quick glance as he went by. I knew all my husband’s gestures, the subtle language of his face, all of that; I knew these things with such certainty and accuracy that it never surprised me when he sometimes seemed uncomfortable around me. But this glance of his as he went over the hill had something to it that I had not seen before and that I did not understand. Like the startled and yet fully comprehending look he might have if he and I had been standing on the edge of a cliff and the ground had just given way and he was hanging out there in the air about to drop straight down and he and I both knew there was nothing to be done about it.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories Page 21