The Return: A Novel of Vietnam

by Charles W. Sasser

  Van followed her out, keeping a distance. Father Pierre watched her leave with a fond expression on his face.

  “Co Ly ees one of the orphans,” he said.

  I looked up. “She was one of Madam Bonnie My’s orphans? Is Bonnie My still here in Dong Tam?”

  The priest shook his head sadly.

  “Co Ly ees an orphan of after the war. Dear Bonnie My sold her hotel to some Austrian missionaries after the battle that ees occurring in it during TET. They repaired it and the poor prostitutes must be going. It became solely an orphanage which ees catering to bastard children the American GIs left behind. A few years ago from now, a lovely young lady, Connie Nhu from Saigon, relocated here and ees headmistress. Co Ly was of her generation of orphans. She ees staying there still and ees willing to come here to help an old priest in fading health.”

  “Whatever happened to Bonnie My?” I asked.

  “She ees leaving Dong Tam not so long after Mhai ees leaving. Her amour was taken prisoner of war by the Viet Cong guerrillas. Bonnie My traveled to Hanoi and to other places attempting to have the release of Ensign Cochran—“

  “Ensign Cochran?” I interrupted. “Pete Brauer’s executive officer?”

  “You are not knowing?”

  “I knew he became a POW. I didn’t know that he and Bonnie My...”

  “Soldiers come to a country to conquer, but very often it ees they who are conquered themselves and are assimilated as the river assimilates the rain. That ees one thing about war. Ensign Cochran assisted Lt. Pete in making a trap for Commander Minh using Mhai as the bait. It ees, of course, failing, for Commander Minh ees too smart. But in the ongoing process, Ensign Cochran ees falling in love with Bonnie My. He and Bonnie My are very much in love when the guerrillas capture him near Vam Tho. I never see her again when she go to find him, nor am I seeing Mhai again.”

  The priest folded his hands on the table and bowed his head. He remained silent for so long I thought he must be praying. Clearly he had been extremely fond of the young women.

  “Lt. Lump Adkins thought Mhai was a spy,” I intruded when the silence had built too long.

  Father Pierre’s eyes slowly lifted. “Ah, yes. Lt. Lump. The surly bull.”

  “He thought Mhai was gathering intelligence to feed to Minh, that she might somehow be behind information that helped lead to the defeat of Lump’s junk base on the river.”

  The thin priest shrugged, a tired lifting of one shoulder.

  “Once Mhai ees beginning to talk, she confides in me often. She ees Catholic, of course. That ees how I am learning so much about her and Pete and their poor souls. But if she ees a spy, I do not know. She ees chieu hoi and does not return to the Viet Cong, but still she ees refusing to betray her former friends. I am not thinking she would betray her new ones.

  “I am saying only that there ees a relationship between Mhai and Commander Minh which I am still not understanding. After she walks again, she ees meeting with Commander Minh several times. To supply him with information?” He shrugged. “I know only that they are rendezvousing in a secret place. It ees she, I am certain, who ees arranging an unusual meeting in Saigon between Minh and Lt. Pete. She did not talk about it. After the dinner together between the two enemies, Minh issues an amnesty order declaring the American ees not to be harmed in Dong Tam or elsewhere, other than in open battle. I do not think Lt. Pete ees ever knowing about that order.”

  He paused to gather his thoughts.

  “There ees much that ees remaining a mystery about that time—about the way Mhai vanishes and the rage Lt. Pete ees in when he comes returning to the mission and ees burning his paintings of her.”

  He sighed deeply. “Strange and unusual times,” he said as he looked back to those times.

  Pete and Mhai grew close, he said, after she began talking that afternoon in the garden. The crusty middle-aged American warrior and the young Viet-French woman who had fought with his enemies. The romance blossomed in the garden as the bougainvillea and other tropical flowers blossomed. Father Pierre sometimes watched from his rectory window and smiled down at the two of them walking hand-in-hand once she was on her feet again, limping but not badly, or while they sat and talked and she posed for Pete’s brushes.

  Father Pierre inadvertently came upon them one morning following a light rain. He didn’t know Pete was visiting. They were laughing and soaked from having been caught by the brief, fast squall. Mhai looked so voluptuous that the priest’s breath caught in his throat. Long raven hair streamed wet down her back. The thin cotton dress Pete bought for her in Saigon clung to curves that had filled out wonderfully with her recovery. She turned to Pete and they stopped laughing, but the thing that caused the laughter remained radiant in their faces. Their arms tightened around each other and their lips slowly came together.

  The priest watched, unnoticed, mesmerized by the tender scene. Tears filled his eyes. He slowly walked away, unwilling to intrude on what was apparently their first kiss.

  They soon began sleeping together in Mhai’s cell.

  “I know God ees forgiving me for whatever sins are committed in this house of God,” Father Pierre whispered. “But when there ees war, love wherever it ees occurring must be encouraged to bloom lest war become the norm and ees destroying that which ees most precious about mankind’s soul. I believe surely God ees making an exception for certain sins when there ees war.”

  Shortly after the kiss in the garden, Pete approached the priest. “Father, I’m unlocking Mhai’s door. She can come and go whenever she wants.”

  The maiden in the tower was free.

  With trembling hands discolored by liver spots, Father Pierre reached for the tea pot Co Ly had left on the table. He abandoned the attempt and his hands fell exhausted to his sides. I got up to pour for him, but he dismissed the offer with a weak flutter of his hand.

  “Perhaps we shall continue the story in the morning over breakfast, Monsieur Kazmarek,” he apologized. “Looking into the past ees taking much out of a man.”

  CHAPTER THTRTY-THREE

  During the war, Father Pierre must have suffered greatly from the increased pressures leading up to TET and from his untiring efforts to care for the displaced needy and war orphans. Even in those days he was not a young man. The war turned him into a ravaged reed of a shadow, from which he never seemed to have recovered. He had joined common cause with Bonnie My in expanding her combination whorehouse and orphanage. The hotel gradually took on as much the character of an orphanage as brothel.

  Even as the orphanage grew, the priest said in resuming his story over breakfast, Pete retained his room at Bonnie My’s. He refused to permit Mhai to spend the night there with him, even if she had so chosen. Although both Vietnamese and American soldiers and, Pete was convinced, sometimes-even VC, came and went with tittering scantily clad girls on the other three floors, the fourth floor was restricted to children. And to Pete, whom the children accepted once they wormed past his gruff exterior.

  Sometimes in his tiny room on those infrequent nights when he was there, with Piss Hole dutifully on guard at the door on the ground floor, he overheard the smallest of the orphans sniffling and weeping in their lonely quarters. He got out of bed when crying persisted in the room next to his. He went over, opened the door and turned on the light.

  The weeping ceased. A new arrival of about five-years-old pulled covers up to his chin and peered fearfully at the American with widened, tearful eyes. A leather strap had been wrapped around his waist and the mattress to keep him in bed. The older little boys in the other three bunks simply flopped over onto their bellies, away from the light, and went back to sleep.

  The newby wore a U.S. Army patrol cap given to him by the GI who found him half starved and grieving crouched next to the rotting corpse of his mother. She had died in a napalm strike. The kid had been too frightened and too heartbroken to leave her side. The too-big cap covered the kid’s ears and the bill was twisted to one side. He resembled an exaggerated big
-eyed waif in the popular Keene paintings.

  “It doesn’t do you any good to cry,” Pete barked and stood there helpless in the doorway with his arms hanging. He had slipped on his jungle trousers but stood bare-chested. He was broad and imposing with a solid mat of salt-and-pepper hair running from his collarbone all the way into his trousers.

  Silent tears ran down the child’s hollow cheeks. He cringed under the covers and seemed about to disappear before Pete’s eyes. Pete’s voice softened.

  “Look here, Beetle Bailey,” he said, “life is sometimes tough. But you got to be a big kid now and take it on the chin.”

  Although the child understood no English, something about the changed tone of the SEAL’s voice appeared to reassure him. One little clenched fist appeared from underneath the covers. The tiny hand opened to reveal a silver locket on a delicate chain.

  “What do you have there, Bailey?”

  Pete walked over and sat on the edge of the bed to examine the proffered locket. It was in a little heart shape. It opened to display a faded black-and-white snapshot of a Vietnamese woman’s face. Pete glanced up. The kid watched him with soft brown eyes.

  “Your mother?” Pete said. “Awww, Bailey, that’s really tough, kid.”

  He returned the locket to the clenched yellow-brown fist. Bailey hid it again underneath the covers. Pete started to get up to leave. A tear ran down Bailey’s cheek. The liquid eyes begged him not to go.

  “Okay, kid. I’ll sit here with you for a minute. But you gotta get your sleep. Understand?”

  Pete sat on the edge of the bed, feeling awkward; he had never been much around children. Bailey’s eyes closed. One of his hands ventured out to grasp Pete’s thumb. From that night on, Bailey became Pete’s favorite among the orphans. Every time he came to Dong Tam, he made sure he brought a special treat for the little boy. Candy, a toy he picked up in Saigon, extra food. Bailey looked forward to Pete’s visits. He would be waiting in the downstairs foyer when he knew Pete was coming, ready to fly out on matchstick legs to fling himself into the rough American’s arms.

  The first time Mhai witnessed the display, she looked at Pete as though she had never seen him before. Her eyes misted.

  “Don’t look that way,” Pete groused. “The kid lost his mother, okay? I feel sorry for him.”

  Pete became almost a three-way partner with Father Pierre and Madam Bonnie My in support of the orphanage. He once stole an entire truck load of army C-rations and had Piss Hole deliver them to the hotel. On the days that Pete was away, Mhai spent her time at the hotel helping with the children. She always returned to the mission well before dark and the onslaught of Bonnie My’s night trade.

  “Thay Li thinks it ees your spirit that ees now struggling, Lt. Pete, my son,” Father Pierre probed tentatively. He and Pete and the Buddhist monk were ending a garden session during which the monk had expounded on Sidhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha back in the Sixth Century B.C., and the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths of man’s condition and his Eightfold Path to enlightenment.

  Pete hesitated. His brow clouded. He seldom let anyone see beyond the set countenance he wore like a mask to ward off evil.

  “I’m fighting this war on the one side,” he said presently, “but I can see the merits and the wrong on both sides.”

  “That ees a wisdom,” Father Pierre assured him.

  “Is it?” Pete asked. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to make war when the enemy are nothing but gooks.”

  “‘Who can he wise, amazed, temperate and furious,” the priest quoted,

  “‘Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.’”

  Father Pierre accompanied him out the gate to where Piss Hole waited patiently in the parked Turncoat. Ensign Cochran’s tall boyish form came trotting down Huang Street from the direction of Bonnie My’s hotel. The two SEALs and Piss Hole were joining a Dong Tam ARVN convoy enroute to Saigon. Lump Adkins chose to stay behind to escort a supply run upriver to Junk Base 35 rather than suffer through a regular meeting with Captain “Progress Is Our Most Important Product” Draper at MAAG. Pete would make Lump’s excuses for him.

  Father Pierre appeared uncomfortable, on edge. He touched Pete’s arm and drew him aside.

  “It ees a beautiful day,” he said. “It ees a beautiful day for flying.”

  Pete looked at him. The priest seemed to be conveying a message without, in strictest terms, violating his neutrality status.

  “It will be hot and muggy on the road to the capital,” Father Pierre added, stressing the warning home. That was as far as he would go. He turned so quickly in his long black robe that the heavy crucifix he wore around his neck swung like a pendulum. He hurried back inside the mission to take a walk with Mhai in the garden.

  “I’ve changed my mind about the convoy,” Pete informed Ensign Cochran.

  “Skipper, Cap’n Draper is expecting us.”

  “Piss Hole will drive us out to the army base. I’m sure we can catch a chopper in.”

  “Pete... Skipper. I wanted to use the Jeep to do some shopping on Tu Do for Bonnie and the kids.”

  “Not this time, C.C.”

  The ARVN convoy was ambushed on the drive in. Three trucks were destroyed by mines.

  Government troops suffered two KIA and five wounded to machineguns and B-40 rockets.

  “How did you know?” Ensign Cochran asked his commander.

  “I get paid to know.”

  The warning may have issued from the priest, but Pete suspected Mhai was behind it.

  Why, he wondered, couldn’t she have cautioned him herself rather than involving Father Pierre? Was it because she still maintained contact with the guerrillas, with Commander Minh, and didn’t want Pete to know about it? What other explanation could there be? He asked her about it. She pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Several more times during the following weeks, nebulous tips passed on by the priest saved Pete from making decisions that might have led to disaster. The encounter and dinner with Commander Minh in Saigon cinched it. Mhai, not the priest, was his guardian. Although conscious of the fact that her contact possibly saved his life, he nonetheless felt troubled and a little jealous.

  Lump kept him on edge about it, sowing doubt. The woman, Lump insisted, was a scorpion, deceitful, untrustworthy and ultimately deadly. Pete himself began wondering if she might not be a double agent. Pretending to chieu hoi in order to gather intelligence to pass back to her former comrade lover, Commander Minh? Working both sides against the middle to satisfy her own self-interests? After all, Dong Tam, like most cities, teemed with intrigue. B-girls, shopkeepers, soldiers, even government officials were often VC spies.

  “When I’m not here and Mhai leaves the mission, where does she go?” Pete asked Father Pierre.

  “ She ees still not walking far nor fast,” the priest evaded, adding helpfully, “She ees going to Bonnie My’s to help with the children. Or she ees shopping for our food.”

  “Have you ever seen her with anybody else. I mean...” He faltered. “Does she have any friends in town?”

  Father Pierre was working in his garden at the time, hoeing weeds. He straightened, arched his back, and cast a reprimanding look at his SEAL friend.

  “‘Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst

  “‘birds, they ever fly by twilight...”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Pete grumbled.

  The priest resumed hoeing.

  The fall of Junk Base 35, the brief confrontation between Lump and Pete over Mhai, and Lump’s subsequent wounding and evacuation from Vietnam created some additional tension in the odd relationship between the American SEAL and the former Viet Cong woman. Pete felt vaguely guilty, responsible for the disaster at the junk base, although he was certain he had said nothing to Mhai that could have aided Minh in his attack. It was even more doubtful that Mhai could have picked up anything useful about the junk base on her own.

  Still...

&nb
sp; “Why do you look at me like that?” Mhai asked him.

  Pete averted his eyes. “I didn’t know I was.”

  “It was like cold water.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Rumors of a big enemy offensive had continued to circulate all through the month of January 1968, reinforced by enemy activity. On 21 January, NVA main force divisions laid siege against U. S. Marines at Khe Sanh in the north near the DMZ. Other main force NVA units began moving into 9th Division’s AO in the Delta, either to run out South Vietnamese troops and their allies or to kill them. Commander Minh’s 514th VC Infantry Battalion, the 261st VC Alpha Battalion and the 502nd VC Heavy Weapons Battalion were already operating in the AO. The National Liberation Front broadcast a special message urging its troops to inflict heavy casualties in a final “all-out war effort.”

  Nonetheless, in spite of all this, the NLF in the South announced its usual cease-fire truce with the approach of TET, the Vietnamese New Year beginning at the end of January. It was usually a time of temporary peace marked by a cease-fire scrupulously observed. Saigon made its own announcements. The country looked forward to celebrations.

  It turned out to be a ruse on the part of the North Vietnamese to lure the South into a posture of false security. Before dawn on 30 January, eighty-five thousand VC fighters appeared out of nowhere to launch the TET offensive. VC sappers attacked even Saigon, surprising sentries distracted by fireworks displays. VC hit the Presidential Palace, the radio station, the ARVN General Staff Command and the American embassy.

  By 1 February, thirty-four of forty-four provincial capitals and sixty-four District capitals also had been hit. Of all the cities attacked, fighting was severest in the seacoast city of Hue. U.S. Marines suffered heavy casualties in house-to-house fighting. It would take them until 25 February to clear and re-occupy the city. Fierce fighting continued all over South Vietnam for nearly a month.