by Ron Lealos
The morphine had to do. No RTO. No medevacs would come for a dust-off. No doc to hold intestines in. No buddies to carry me back or mourn my death. If I was wounded, the morphine might be the only thing that kept me moving.
The little head on my shoulder weighed less than a frag. I stroked Tran’s hair while his bare butt rested in the elbow of my arm.
“Luong,” I said, “you’re right. Pack up. We gotta hump it for Cần Thơ and find someplace for Tran. I’ll watch.”
Luong moved to the back of the bunker, and I took his place, Tran still cradled in my arm. My right hand touched the trigger of the M16.
The sun was high enough to send tracers of light through the upper limbs of the banana trees. Thick fog rose from the paddies and died after billowing upward for a meter. The day was already warm enough to heat up the decay of the Delta. The smell of rotting garbage and boiling fish oil greeted the morning. Nothing moved on the horizon other than the gentle sway of the palms and the clouds across the sky.
Luong finished packing the ruck with the Starlight scope, grenades, and ammo. He helped me put the ruck on my back while I held Tran. Luong stepped out of the bunker and took point, Tran and I on drag.
“Back humpin’, Tran,” I said. “We’re off to find you a home.”
It would be a daylong hump, sticking close to the trail, not on it. Every approaching sound would require us to vanish in the bush until we were sure it wasn’t a patrol, less likely as we got close to Cần Thơ.
Morgan, Luong, and a baby. A fairy tale. Death was my life, and now I was risking it to save a war orphan in a land overflowing with parentless babies. But I couldn’t get rid of the daily scene of mama-sans standing in the dust beside the road. They weren’t selling Camels or Chiclets. They held up dead babies, already blackened by the sun, flies swarming. Rumor was the infants were drugged and rubbed with charcoal. This was another drama that fit perfectly into the sense of guilt, never far from any grunt’s conscience even if they had done nothing evil. They had seen the beast and the mama-sans with the corpses made more piasters than one’s selling their bodies or Coca-Cola. Now, my donation was saving Tran.
The red ball was packed-clay slippery in the humidity from the sandaled feet of peasants and VC. The speed trail wound through groves of bananas and chest-high grass. We were a klick from Cần Thơ and already had passed black-toothed mama-sans carrying baskets on their heads who scolded us when they saw Tran in my arm. Soldiers were a part of their life and history. But a grunt with a baby-san was another matter.
Ahead, the jungle ended, and hootches became thicker until the suburbs joined the city of Cần Thơ.
“Dung lai, Luong,” I said. Stop. “I better do some recon before we walk into town with a baby on our shoulders.”
Luong slipped into the grass. Within a meter, he was invisible even to me. No blade was flattened or even rustled. Luong moved quiet and unseen as a bamboo snake. I followed. Tran was asleep, head pressed against my neck.
In the distance, the whine of motorcycles and honking of jeeps drifted across the fields. A pig squealed, and roosters crowed. The whup-whup of Hueys signaled the presence of the army on the far side of town.
Luong squatted in the grass and took off his bush hat, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his fatigues. His M16 rested against his thigh, barrel pointed to the tips of the saw grass.
“You have plan, Morgan?” Luong asked. He picked his teeth with a piece of bamboo. The gaps in his mouth were black around the filed points of his incisors.
I held the sleeping Tran with one hand and wrestled my pack next to the M16.
“We’ll feed Tran,” I said. “Then I’ll probe Cần Thơ. There’s a couple European women there who run an orphanage funded by USAID. Really, it’s drug money from the spooks, but the nurses will know what to do with Tran. I won’t let anyone sell him. You dung lai here with the baby-san.”
C-rations that Tran could eat were running low. I sorted through the ruck with my left hand and moved the pork and beans, meatloaf and gravy, and beef slices aside. There was only one more tin of applesauce and one of peaches left. I used the bent opener to pry off the top.
The fucking mosquitoes attacked along with an army of flies. Fresh blood and food were all they needed to form a buzzing cloud in the little bivouac we made in the saw grass. Before I woke Tran, I smeared more bug juice on my hands and face.
Mosquitoes and flies didn’t bother Luong. He opened a leather pouch of cooked rice and added a few drops of fish oil from a plastic bottle covered in bright Montagnard writing that showed a fisherman pulling in a net filled with carp on a river sampan.
The repellent fit snugly back in my ruck next to the silencer for the Hush Puppy.
“Maybe you should feed Tran,” I said. “Give you a chance to get to know him better. Establish a little trust. I’ll di di to town.”
The saw grass smelled ripe and wet from yesterday’s rain. Some of the tips held seed buds like wheat in the fields of The World and waved a golden salute in the tropical breeze.
Through the grass, we could see the trail. But no one could see us.
Luong set the leather pouch on the ground and put the fish oil in his pack. Flies crawled on his forehead and fingers.
“Vang, Morgan,” Luong said. “Tran eat gao with peaches.” Rice. He reached for the baby-san with a smile that reflected the overhead sun off the sharp points of his teeth.
I moved my hands around Tran’s ribs and gently passed him to Luong without letting the baby-san’s head flop onto his chest. Flies landed on Tran’s butt and legs and began to feed on his gook sores still glistening with ointment. After Luong had Tran in his arms, I swatted at the flies and covered the baby-san with my poncho.
“Tran sleep,” Luong said. “Feed baby-san when wake up.”
I stood, leaving the pack and C-rations on the ground. The bandoleers on my chest slipped easily beside the ruck. I dropped my frags next to the extra ammo, but kept the M16 and two cartridges in my fatigue pocket.
“Won’t be needing this arsenal,” I said. “If I get in an ambush, it won’t save me. Don’t think I’ll get jumped this close to town. You keep it. Take good care of Tran. Should be back in a couple hours. Regular signals. Cao biet, Luong.” Good-bye.
Luong patted Tran’s back and flashed me the peace sign.
The saw grass barely moved as I stepped through onto the red ball trail, visions of a sleeping innocent in a land of death putting speed into my mission.
The old two-story French villa in Cần Thơ that housed the USAID orphanage was on Hoa Tao Street. Apple Blossom. Rainwater from leaking gutters had stained the white stucco walls with brown designs. Termite and bullet holes made the building look like a huge, off-white dartboard. In the middle of the wall facing Hoa Tao Street, a red cross was painted beside the three concrete steps that led to a screened front door. The mesh was torn and hanging to the cement.
My M16 was propped against the wooden frame of a stall selling Chiclets, Hershey bars, Pez, and Coca-Cola, and I leaned on a torn sign that read BEST PRISE FOR GI.
The mama-san who sold me an ice-cold Coke for 5 p wore a conical straw hat to shade the afternoon sun. Her soiled, gray pajamas were buttoned to her wrinkled neck. Two baby-sans tossed stones and played hide-and-seek between her scarred legs. The sandals on the mama-san’s feet were worn out, and her white heels showed through holes the size of the Medal of Honor in the rubber.
The street was busy with oxcarts, mopeds, Citroens, Jeeps, and pedestrians dressed in pajamas, jeans, or colorful ao dais. There were no Vietnamese men older than seventeen or younger than forty-five in sight unless they were on crutches. The Saigon government had caved in and declared a universal draft demanded by Johnson. Vietnam’s finest were the same ARVN that often di di’ed when the action got hot.
America’s finest were part of the street scene. GIs stumbled in and out of the bars that lined the packed-clay road while white-helmeted MPs watched and chatted with young women
wearing satin dresses slit to midthigh. All the soldiers carried M16s, and most had Colts strapped to their waists. I was no more out of place than Nixon at a Quaker retreat, sipping a bottle of Coke through a straw and smoking a Camel.
Gasoline fumes were stronger than the smell of overripe fruit and fly-covered pork that hung from the booth two down. Neither the perfume of the bargirls nor the sweet smell of orchids and hyacinths could win against the blue smoke that billowed from the unmuffled exhausts of the motorcycles and cars.
The door to the orphanage opened. A redheaded woman stepped out, long, fine hair flipping up in the afternoon wind. She was followed by a Vietnamese woman carrying a diapered baby-san with only one foot. The mama-san bowed and walked down the steps.
Standing tall, the redhead waved and watched the mama-san blend into the crowded traffic. The pale, white arms that were crossed on the redhead’s chest pushed up breasts that stretched the fabric of her white cotton blouse. She wasn’t smiling.
I field-dressed my Camel and set the Coke bottle on the ground. With the M16 in my right hand, I threaded my way between mopeds and walked to the orphanage door. The metal handle was only held by one screw and nearly came off in my hand.
The redhead sat behind a scarred, wooden desk in the middle of the room under a ceiling fan that barely moved the mushy humid air. She wrote with a Bic pen, but looked up with the sound of the screen door’s creak.
“No guns allowed,” she said. “Park them against the wall.” She pointed to a sign next to me that read WEAPONS. A bamboo basket for pistols sat on a C-ration crate, and the wall was nicked at the height where an M16 sight would touch the plaster.
The air in the room was dense and heavy. I wiped the sweat that was suddenly beading on my forehead.
“That’s against the orders of the day for Cần Thơ, ma’am,” I said. “Supposed to be armed at all times.”
The pale, white skin on the woman’s cheeks turned red. She pointed the Bic at me, and her brows pushed together in a frown.
“I’ll have none of that,” she said. “I don’t give a farthing about any ‘orders of the day.’ If you want to come in, stow your weapons over there. Or take them out in the street with you.” She moved the barrel of her Bic in the direction of the WEAPONS sign.
The woman spoke with an Irish brogue. Her chin was square and masculine below full lips that were light red without the need of lipstick. Rounded cheekbones surrounded a perfect nose that was slightly turned up. White teeth showed as she talked. Full, black eyebrows ran above green eyes that seemed to see through me and into Hoa Tao Street.
My bush boots made crackling noises in the grit-covered floor on my way to the weapons storage. I leaned the M16 on the wall and unhooked my holster, lightly dropping the Colt in the basket. I turned back to the woman.
“Name’s Smith, ma’am,” I said as I walked across the wooden floor toward the woman’s desk. “Yesterday, we got caught in a firefight about five klicks from here. We were in a vil when the VC ambushed us, killing all the civilians. Except one. A year-old baby-san named Tran. We’ve got him hidden out. Before I hand Tran over to anyone, I want to know what’s going to happen to him.”
The woman sat back in her rattan chair. Bamboo weave protested with a squeal. She tapped the end of the Bic on her forehead and inspected me for tics and lice.
Dirt and sweat. No mud-covered pig in a vil rooting in the garbage smelled any worse than me. The stains under my armpits didn’t end before they disappeared under my web belt. I could season the beef strips in my C-rats with the salt caked on the liner of the bush hat I held in my right hand. I used to be as pale-skinned as the woman. Now I didn’t know if my face and arms would ever be anything but red from clay dust and sunburn. At least I had washed off last night’s bug juice and black greasepaint, which made me look like a raccoon.
The redhead laid down the Bic on a small stack of files and folded her hands.
“I’m Colleen O’Hara, Mr. Smith,” she said. “Or is that Private? Corporal? I don’t see any stripes or a name tag. But you seem like officer material. Tell me more about the baby-san. Pull that chair over.” Colleen nodded her head to the left.
Against the wall, a metal folding chair sat listing to the side, padding on the seat ripped and showing gray steel. I unfolded the chair and put it in front of the teak desk. I sat down, careful to keep my weight on the right side.
“First, I know what happens here,” I said. “USAID thinks it’s a great idea to win hearts and minds by paying Vietnamese to adopt war orphans. Not bad propaganda back in The World either.”
I stroked the rim of my helmet, keeping my hands from going AWOL.
“But the cash really comes from the CIA and is used to pay bribes and hush money,” I said. “The kids are made slaves. Or worse. I don’t want that for Tran. What I want to know is that he’s going to be well taken care of.”
The ceiling fan clicked and wheezed on every rotation. It was moving slowly enough that cobwebs formed on the blades.
Windows on the walls away from Hoa Tao Street were louvered and the slats were open. Outside, the leaves of banana trees scratched the wood. Behind Colleen, a closed door held a sign reading PRIVATE in red letters. RIENG was written just below. USO posters were spread around the walls, mostly showing happy uniformed soldiers who looked like Fred Astaire dancing with WACs who looked like Ginger Rogers.
The sound of baby-sans crying came through the door marked RIENG. The muted noise was joined by the clicks of mama-sans talking in rapid fire Vietnamese.
Colleen continued her recon. Her head nodded up and down, making decisions. The tightness of her gorgeous face said she was finding more questions than answers.
“Now, laddie,” Colleen said, “how do you know all that?” She smiled, and a dimple sucked in on her cheek.
I touched the handle of the Gerber fighting knife in my pocket. There was no way Colleen or General Westmoreland would get me to stow it while I was in-country.
“Let’s just say that the boonie-rat network knows all,” I said. “There’s not diddly that happens in ’Nam without the smoke signals passing it around. If it don’t happen, it gets told anyway. Don’t mean nuthin’. I’m a good listener.”
Colleen’s Irish smile infected me like a case of the giggles. I smiled back.
“By the way,” I said, “is it Miss O’Hara or Mrs.?”
The rattan chaired creaked again. Colleen sat back and crossed her forearms on her chest, but the leprechaun smile stayed.
“Well now, Mr. Smith,” Colleen said. “Why would I be tellin’ you that? You won’t say what your rank is. It is Mr. Smith, now isn’t it? Not Lieutenant? Or agent?”
A small hole above the knee of my bush fatigues showed the whiteness of the skin not exposed to the tropical sun and ever-present mud and dust. I played with a loose thread of the once-green cotton.
“Okay, Miss O’Hara,” I said. “Let’s not go down that trail. I’m here about Tran. I don’t care where the money comes from or why. Only that Tran’s looked after and not sold into slavery. Or that some South Vietnamese politician gets a piaster richer by selling him someplace else.”
The dimple was gone. Colleen’s face changed as fast as the weather in Dublin.
“We do the best we can with what little we have, Mr. Smith,” Colleen said. “Before any child leaves this building, we run a background check on the adoptive parents. But we’re depending on intel provided by the military and the Provincial government. And the CIA. Do you trust any of them?” She slammed her hand on the desk, and the sound was the crack of an AK. “You don’t know me, but I’m insulted you’d even suggest I’d sell babies. Who do you think you are?”
The hole in my pants was now as big as the bottom of a Mike 2 grenade. I thought I was going to ask the questions.
“We’ve made a whorehouse of this whole country,” I said. “For centuries, the foundation of Vietnamese society has been the family. Now, that’s burned away like the jungles we bomb with
napalm. Kids are sold on the street. And out the door of orphanages. Used to be that a thousand piasters fed a family of five for a year. It takes a thousand today to feed one person.”
The right side of my butt was cramping from sitting off balance in the crooked steel chair. I shifted to the left and felt myself tipping toward the floor.
“And there’s no men around for support,” I said. “Unless they’re cripples. The teenagers younger than seventeen run in gangs and terrorize anyone who has a rice bowl to cook in. It’s the baby-san mafia. What they don’t steal, the corrupt local government and VC tax collectors get. I’m not blaming you. I said it before. My mission is about Tran. What can you do? And how can you be sure?”
Red hair covered the tops of Colleen’s shoulders and thick strands hung to the peaks of her breasts. She twisted the strands with her left hand.
“Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Smith,” she said. “With that and ten piasters I could buy an M16. It’s a buyer’s market on Hoa Tao Street. We don’t sell babies here. In fact, it’s just nearly the opposite. We pay for them to be adopted. But I still want to know more about Tran. Where did you find him and how? Where’s his mother?”
Firefights. The sound was a mad minute louder than standing inside the jet engine of a B-52. But I never heard it. My focus was on the targets and saving my ass. The noise was drowned by blood and severed arms. Nick’s body jumping at the hit of every AK round.
Somehow, an ant had gotten into my filthy sock. I squished the little red biter and took a deep breath without looking at Colleen.
“We were rappin’ with a CAG ghost named Nick in the vil where he was TDY,” I said. “Just as we were leaving, the VC ambushed from the palm trees. He was holding Tran. Nick curled up around the baby-san and took all the bullets.”
I hung the hat on my knee, covering the hole, which was now the size of a Coke bottle bottom.
“We made friends with Tran through the afternoon,” I said. “He seemed to be Nick’s adopted son. Everybody was killed but us. We hid behind some grave mounds at the edge of the vil. Grabbed Tran and di di’ed. Didn’t see any mama-sans around. I figure they got greased, too.”