by C. L. Hoang
Dodging around long strips of red firecrackers that dangled across the stall entrance, she spoke as if making a mental note to herself. “I also need to buy a couple of these strings for my father. He always went out and got them himself in years past.” Then turning to me, “Have you ever heard firecrackers this size explode? They scare me half to death, like real gunfire.” She laughed. “They must be loud enough to chase away evil spirits. The past few years, for security reasons, we are allowed to set them off only on New Year’s Eve and on the First Day of Tết, during the cease-fire. That’s plenty for me.”
She was excited and happy, flitting like a butterfly from one stall to the next, touching and admiring everything in sight. Watching her, I imagined the wide-eyed little girl who had held her mother’s hand during annual trips to the flower market in preparation for Tết and for a lifetime of familial duties. Just like that, her turn had now come. To play grownup herself.
I nudged her gently. “Say, Lee Anne. I didn’t give you any lì-xì money. So let me pay for whatever flowers you’re purchasing here. It’s only fair.”
She put up a fight but relented in the end, when I threatened to return her little red envelope otherwise. I helped her pick out a beautiful bouquet of red gladiolas and one of white tuberoses. “The water fairy and firecrackers can wait until later,” she decided at the last minute. “I don’t want to carry too much back to Mme Yvonne’s.”
It was just as well, since I barely had enough change left for taxi fares later. My run-in with Bob this morning had so upset me I’d neglected to exchange my Military Payment Certificates for more local currency, or Ðồng, before leaving. I was lucky to find enough of it in my pocket.
While I was paying for the flowers, the vendor’s daughter, a sprightly teenage girl with a ponytail and a cheerful smile, mentioned something to Lee Anne that made her blush as she accepted the long bouquets in her arms and muttered “Cám ơn” to both of them.
“What was that all about?” I asked on our way out.
“Nothing important, really,” she said, brushing me off at first.
Then encountering my prodding stare, she gave in, with fresh color on her cheeks. “The silly girl said I looked like a queen. But it was really my new áo dài she was talking about, because in the old days yellow silk was reserved for the emperor and his wives only.”
I swung around, did a double take on her. “You do look like a queen, actually. A beauty queen, holding the bouquets in your arms like that. May I take a picture of you, Miss Sài-Gòn?”
I wasn’t toting a camera so I made a frame with my fingers and focused it on Lee Anne, who stood radiant in the sunlight among a sea of spring flowers with the colonial hôtel de ville (city hall) in the background. My mental camera snapped away at this lovely sight, trying to sear it forever in my memory. In that moment of clear-eyed focus, the realization struck, stark and sobering, though hardly a total surprise. Welcomed or not, a big change was taking root in my heart that would no doubt alter my life and the lives of those closest to me, in ways and with consequences nobody could yet foresee.
It was dark by the time I got back on base, around 2000 hours.
Earlier, after returning Lee Anne to Mme Yvonne’s, I’d decided to heed Bob’s warning and head back to Tân-Sơn-Nhất for the next chopper ride with the sun still high above the capital’s skyline. Besides, my newfound perspective and all its tangled ramifications had been brewing in my mind, driving me to complete distraction.
I winced at the prospect of soon facing Bob, recalling with embarrassment my stubborn reaction to his well-founded concern this morning. Time to own up like a man, I told myself in resignation. After doing a mea culpa, which clearly was in order, maybe I should sit down and seek counsel with him on my conundrum, since ignoring the issue hadn’t made it go away—quite the contrary. I felt certain he’d be the last person to hold a grudge, that I could count on him to lend me a sympathetic ear and to be forthright and sensible in his advice. As most people who knew him would agree, there was no better friend, in good times or bad, than Bob Olsen.
Remembering the toy dragon in my desk drawer at the office, I made a beeline for the dispensary as soon as we touched ground. The cute stuffed animal was for little Ricky, of course, but I couldn’t wait to watch Bob’s expression when I pulled Puff the Magic Dragon out of the shopping bag. That alone must be worth Dean’s trip to Hong Kong to find the darned thing. The thought made me smile as I arrived at 3rd Tac Dispensary.
Bob and I shared a double front office seldom occupied by the skeleton evening staff except in rare instances of emergency overflow. It was a surprise, then, when I walked in and found all the lights on, with nobody inside.
Something else felt out of kilter.
Bob had thumbtacked a map of Việt-Nam to the wall behind his chair as a clever tool to break the ice when a new pilot stopped in. Invariably, the flyboy would be drawn to the map to point out with pride all the target locations he’d flown. Before long, the men would be trading war stories like long-lost comrades. It was a creative gimmick by Bob to set his high-strung patients at ease, and it worked every single time. Next to the map was a hook where he would normally hang his stethoscope.
Both map and stethoscope had disappeared from the wall.
Likewise, the adjoining side wall looked oddly bare. Previously displayed on that wall in all its red, white, and blue glory was a Minnesota Twins 1965 American League Champions Pennant, another popular conversation piece for “Doctor Bob” and his patients. Tweety and I had long since learned to block out Bob’s endless recounting of that dream season of the Twins and his heated debates with his patients about the national pastime. For payback, we’d cooked up a good prank to play on him. At the first chance, one of us planned to lure him out of the office while the other seized his prized possession from the wall and concealed it. In its place, we would unfurl a 1965 World Series Pennant of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had conquered the Twins in seven games in claiming that year’s championship. So far, however, we hadn’t had any opportunity to carry out our devious scheme.
But the pennant was no longer there for the taking. Staring at me now was a blank wall.
Slowly, my uncomprehending gaze drifted down to the top of Bob’s desk, kitty-corner from mine. It looked uncommonly tidy, with nothing on it. Gone was the disparate clutter he’d never seemed to have the time to clear out: small piles of unfinished paperwork; stashes of dog-eared medical journals; months-old issues of Air Force Times or Stripes and Stars; all scattered willy-nilly across the top, weighed down by well-worn editions of the Physicians’ Desk Reference and his own weathered steel pot. Someone must have come in earlier and cleaned up the mess. The desk now appeared empty and unoccupied.
There were voices and footsteps approaching from the back of the building. I turned around as Tweety and two other medics trudged through the door.
“I’m glad somebody’s around,” I said. “Are we switching to new quarters? Looks like Captain Olsen has already cleaned out his desk. Did he say how soon I need to move my junk?”
One could have heard a pin drop.
I looked up to see Tweety staring back at me. Our eyes locked. An icy, tingling sensation crept up my back. We were all frozen. Trapped in the surreal moment.
Then, in slow motion, I watched Tweety pull out the chair from behind my desk and slide it toward me. Over the thumping in my eardrums, his voice reached through—a muffled echo from a distance. “Lieutenant Connors. Please have a seat, sir.”
I knew. The instant I caught the look in Tweety’s eyes, I knew.
My body sank down in the chair, all the wind knocked out of it. I closed my eyes, my head spinning, a churning queasiness in the pit of my stomach. It was so hot and stuffy in the office that I practically gasped for air.
A window, I screamed in silence. We need a goddamn window in here.
“How did it hap
pen?” The words squeaked out like a growl from my parched throat.
“I am so sorry, Lieutenant . . .”
“What the fuck happened?” I gripped my chair arms, my body steeling itself.
In a voice strained to control his own emotions, the young medic proceeded to take me through the whole chain of events. Reluctantly. With palpable, halting pain.
Stuck in the waking nightmare, in shock and disoriented, I stumbled to follow.
Earlier, Bob had planned an easy Sunday to run some last-minute errands at the BX then finish packing for his trip. And so he hadn’t signed up for MEDCAP, the first time in a long time he would miss the weekend jaunt with the Civic Action volunteer team. Ironically for him, today’s was supposed to be a fun-filled, event-packed outing, the culmination of months of hard work and preparation by the Dollars-for-Scholars Committee, of which he was a founding member.
Having observed firsthand the atrocious conditions at the local schools, the Civic Action team had decided to expand its involvement beyond the mere provision of medical care to the poor. A new program was initiated that aimed at improving the classroom environment for indigent children and doing whatever possible to promote learning. The civil engineers on base, the Red Horse Squadron, contributed time, labor, and recycled material to shore up the schools’ crumbling infrastructures. Meanwhile, a base-wide drive was launched to raise funds and collect donations of books and school supplies. It received an overwhelming response from airmen as well as their friends and families stateside. As the project rolled forward, a committee was put in place, the Dollars-for-Scholars Committee, whose charter was to coordinate the overall effort and to select the recipients for a limited number of scholarships.
On this day, after months of wrestling with detailed logistics, the committee was ready for their inaugural trip off base. They couldn’t have picked a more propitious time, ten days out from the end of the Year of the Goat. They’d be making the rounds of schools in the surrounding rural area, bearing gifts of school supplies, which like everything else in this part of the world were in severe shortage: slate tablets, chalk, pens, notebooks, pull-down maps, globes, and more. There would be ribbon-cutting festivities to dedicate rebuilt and expanded facilities, followed by a picnic, then the much-heralded presentation of scholarships.
“I was pissed I couldn’t go with them,” Tweety said wistfully. Besides Bob and me, he also hadn’t signed up for this weekend’s function, having to wait on base for a MARS phone patch to call home. It was his parents’ silver anniversary today. Shaking his head at the fortuitous coincidence, he mumbled, “Who’s to argue? Just wasn’t meant to be.”
Something else wasn’t meant to happen this morning. Captain Silverman of the base Dental Corps, our Civic Action leader, woke up with a virulent case of FUO (fever of unknown origin): fever, shakes, nausea, diarrhea, the whole nine yards. Around the time I stormed out of the hooch after my heated exchange with Bob, Captain Silverman had just concluded that he, too, would have to scratch his day’s plans and remain in bed. That meant our regular team of eight would miss half its members, not the least its leading representative, on this most ceremonious occasion. It appeared a cancellation and reschedule were in the offing.
After a flurry of phone calls, however, Bob let himself be persuaded at the eleventh hour to stand in for Captain Silverman, because “the show must go on.” There had been such anticipation on the part of schoolteachers and their young pupils that a last-minute postponement of the events would have caused huge disappointment. For the deprived children, who had so looked forward to receiving their gifts, the affair was to be their early celebration of Tết. Nobody had the heart to deny them that simple joy, if it could at all be helped.
His loose ends almost tied up, Bob gallantly agreed to lead the team on the road. His only stipulation was that everyone was to “haul ass” so they wouldn’t run further behind with this late change. Finally, around 0830 hours, the five volunteers climbed aboard an Army Huey nicknamed Patches, after the numerous pockmarks scored on its body by Charlie’s gunfire. From the Thunderbirds’ helipad, Tweety waved them off, feeling the full letdown of one left behind.
“I would’ve been right there with them, if I didn’t have to wait at the MARS station,” he explained again, almost apologetically, holding his head in his hands. “Just wasn’t meant to be.” His two medic buddies had slipped out some time ago, leaving us alone in my office.
Even in my daze, I could hear Tweety’s rapid breathing. Slumped over in a chair opposite mine, he seemed to be staring at some invisible screen on the floor, watching in fixated horror as the movie replayed once again. His weary voice droned on.
“Shortly after they left, my phone patch came through. It was late for my folks in Nevada, but they were tickled I’d called to wish them happy anniversary. No sooner had we hung up than I was put through to another line holding for me, this one internal and urgent.
“It was my buddy Tommy at the Bird Cage, who knew I’d been waiting at the station. He sounded completely flipped out. I had to yell at him to slow down so I could read him. ‘Patches,’ he shouted in my earpiece. ‘Patches went down. Search-and-Rescue’s on the scene right this minute.’ I dropped the phone, hustled like hell back to the Cage.”
Tweety’s voice broke, and he paused. His hand shook as it went to pinch the bridge of his nose. I sat motionless, sweat streaming down my face and my back.
“When I arrived, all out of breath, SAR had just checked in. I overheard their confirmation on the radio with my own ears: Patches had crashed and burned. Of the crew of four and the five passengers—not one single survivor. The rice paddy was strewn with blood-stained debris and school supplies, they said.”
There was a gasp, more like a sob being choked back. I looked up. Through the tears, we stared at each other. No words came.
It was a while before Tweety resumed his account.
“You know how the chopper would normally dance in and out of the palm trees along the Ðồng-Nai River, for cover? Eyewitnesses on the ground reported that Patches wasn’t rock-and-rolling like that. Instead, it was flying low and straight, full-throttle forward, which made it an easy target for AAA. Overconfidence or pilots’ error? Or were they so rushed for time they just cut corners? Nobody knows. No matter now. SAR determined that a .51-caliber from the jungle below had raked the ship and dropped it from the sky just minutes after takeoff. Unfortunately for all aboard, Patches’ luck had finally run out.”
I kept staring at Tweety. My brain frozen, incapable of grasping the facts. They sounded much too simplistic, too arbitrary, to even make sense. Might it all have been a horrible mixup, that it wasn’t Patches’ smoking carcass in the rice field after all?
And then the big picture hit me full blast, unlocking my brain and sending it in a tailspin of agonizing questions. In the chaotic aftermath, had the children and their teachers been forgotten and left waiting in the schoolyards for the gift bearers who never showed? And Nancy. My heart squeezed. Had someone been able to contact her before she’d already left for Hawaii? Dear God. Please let there be families or friends by her side when she got the news. Not all alone, stranded at some airport away from home or waiting in a honeymoon suite on Waikiki.
I shut my eyes, but the images kept dancing before them: my hooch mate’s big smile; the wallet picture of his newborn son, whom he’d longed to cradle in his arms; Puff’s scrunched-up mug, which I never had a chance to surprise him with; our whirlwind excursions to Sài-Gòn . . .
A lifetime of friendship and memories, crammed into a few short months.
But for my own selfish agenda, I, too, should have been aboard that chopper today.
My chest felt so tight that it might explode at any moment.
“The medical commander was looking for you in the afternoon.” Tweety’s voice reached through the fog and dragged me back into the present. “Graves Registration Service
needed assistance to gather Captain Olsen’s personal effects so they can be packed up and shipped home to his family. A couple buddies and me volunteered to help, in your absence. We’re just now done clearing out the hooch and his office.” He hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind, Lieutenant. It all had to be done ASAP.”
I nodded, started to get up, but my knees went wobbly and I had to stay put for a minute.
Tweety was already on his feet. As I slogged past him, I stopped and placed my hand on his shoulder. Our eyes said what we couldn’t: we’d both lost a friend and a brother today. No words could express the true depth of our grief. He turned away, choking back the emotions.
“A memorial service is being planned for later this week.” He fought to keep his voice even. “Details will be communicated as they become available. I’ll keep you informed, sir.”
I gave his shoulder a tug then lumbered through the door into the warm night. Somehow, I found my way back to the hooch.
It looked deserted. Bob’s side of it had been stripped bare—as if it had never been occupied. A pall settled over the room, heavy and forbidding. Had I not been so exhausted, I probably would have tried to crash somewhere else for the night. But it was approaching lights-out, and my body had already hit the wall a long time ago, hurting all over. I collapsed on my cot.
Something made a crinkling noise as my head hit the pillow. I reached down behind my head and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper. A hand-written note. I sat back up and moved under the overhead light bulb.
Roger,
What do you know. I’m heading out with the MEDCAP team after all. Long story for later. Just want to say I’m sorry about this morning. I was out of line. You do what you need to do. But be alert and watchful while in the city, that’s all. Hopefully we’ll have time tonight for a cheeky few at the OC before I hit the road in the morning. See you then, pal. Remember: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. We are. Bob.