I had heard about the Cold War in school, so at least I knew a little something.
“Anyway, we bombed the cities in North Vietnam a lot,” Uncle Dex continued, “but couldn’t invade because if we did, then we’d probably be at war with Russia and China, too, and it would be World War III and nobody wanted that.”
My head was already spinning with all this information about the war in Vietnam, but the more Uncle Dex talked, the more questions I had.
“It was mostly what you’d call a guerilla war,” he explained. “Out in the jungle and in villages and rice paddies and mountains all over South Vietnam. A lot of time we didn’t even see the enemy. Just snipers and land mines and booby traps and assassinations. The Viet Cong — those were North Vietnam’s guerilla fighters — didn’t wear regular uniforms, and just dressed like peasants. It was almost impossible to know if somebody you met was a friend or an enemy. Except in the North, in this area called the Central Highlands, which sort of connected the two halves of the country. The official North Vietnamese Army was up there, with regular uniforms and all, and there were some actual open battles between us and them.”
Uncle Dex was moving his hands to pretend he was drawing an outline of Vietnam, but it was still hard to follow what was supposed to be happening where in Vietnam. “Mostly what we were doing was trying to hit a moving target,” he continued. “Trying to control various areas of the country, stomp out guerilla activity. But we’d get control over one area or one province and things would start happening in another area, another province.”
“Did we wear regular uniforms?” I asked, thinking about the ghost and what he had on — which was like half a uniform and half just whatever. “I mean, our soldiers and all?”
“Mostly,” Uncle Dex said. “But things kind of broke down in places, especially out in the jungles when our guys were on patrols for long periods of time, or sometimes even living with local people to try to find out who was our friend and who was our enemy. A lot of those guys would quit wearing regular uniforms and just wear whatever was comfortable or whatever they felt like. And a lot of them even grew their hair long and grew beards and mustaches and stuff, which they kept that way while they were out away from everything, until they were ordered back with the rest of the army or marines or whoever they were with.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Some I’m sure did it just because they were out in the jungle, like I said, and didn’t have access to things like barbers and razors and anywhere to wash their clothes. Some just didn’t like the military or the war because they’d been drafted and didn’t want to be there.”
“Can I ask you just one more question?” I said.
“Sure,” Uncle Dex replied. “As long as it’s a quick one. Your mom and dad are going to wonder where you are, and I’ve got someplace to be so I need to close up the shop.”
I thanked him for staying around as long as he had and then asked, “Do you have any idea what ‘DMZ 68’ might mean? I saw it written somewhere in something about Vietnam, or rather about the war in Vietnam.”
“It stands for Demilitarized Zone,” Uncle Dex said as he shut down his computer, thankfully not bothering to ask me where I’d seen it. “It was this narrow area, up in the Central Highlands, not even a mile wide, between the borders of North and South Vietnam. There weren’t supposed to be any troops in that area, or zone, which was why they called it the DMZ. It was supposed to be neutral there.”
“And the ‘68’ part?” I asked.
“Not sure about that,” he said, “but the worst of the fighting happened in 1968 and spilled over into 1969. That was when most of the American troops were there — more than half a million of our guys.”
“That’s a lot,” I said, stating the obvious.
And I was certain now that I had met one of them. The ghost of one, anyway.
“Vietnam, huh?”
The ghost was in my bedroom, sitting on the floor again, his back against the wall, that unlit cigar still clenched between his teeth on one side of his mouth.
“We’re pretty sure,” I said. “I mean, everything fits. The Demilitarized Zone and 1968. Plus, your, well, your sort of uniform.”
He glanced down at what he was wearing and plucked at a loose thread on his vest. There were a lot of loose threads at all the holes and tears in it. None came out when he pulled, though.
“That’s good detective work,” he said. “Vietnam is coming back to me. Kind of. And when you say DMZ, that has a ring of something familiar. As though maybe that’s where we were then?”
He said it as a question. I asked a question back.
“Where you were when what?”
“When my lucky grenade didn’t blow us up to smithereens,” he said. “Me and Fish.”
“Do you remember anything about him yet?” I asked. “Like his real name, maybe?”
Z chomped harder on the cigar, which I’d noticed he often did when he was thinking hard about something, as if it might help. It didn’t. He took the cigar out and examined the chewed end, then popped it back in his mouth, which usually meant he was done.
But not this time.
“Something else I remember,” he said, “was that time with the lucky grenade — it wasn’t the only time me and Fish were out there like that. It’s hard to bring it all into focus, but I’m pretty certain there were other guys with us. Sometimes. Not ever a lot. Small team of guys, you might say. Operating at night. And we did some things I kind of don’t want to talk about, and I kind of wish I didn’t remember.”
He paused. “There were some people,” he said, speaking really slowly. “Some bad people. In some villages. I guess it was Vietnam, like you said. That sounds about right. Still not coming back to me all the way, but some. But anyway, these bad guys — it was our job to make sure they didn’t do any more bad things. It was our job to make them stop. To make them disappear … And that’s all I’m going to say on that subject.”
He had already started into his ghost-fade again.
“Wait,” I said. “Can’t you hold on a little while longer?”
It was too late, though, and in another second he was gone. I stared at the place where he’d just been, wishing he’d come back. Who knew how much time we might have to find out Z’s full name, and Fish’s, and what exactly happened to them in Vietnam. The last time, with William Foxwell, we had a couple of weeks, but what if that was the exception? What if usually with these ghosts you only got a couple of days to solve the mystery of who they were and what happened to them?
I lay down on my bed, a wave of exhaustion washing over me. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and it was pretty late already tonight. I thought about texting Greg and Julie, but my head felt too heavy, and then the rest of me did, too. I pulled the covers over me and fell asleep.
I had a dream, or a fragment of a dream, where I was in the jungle that Z described, where he and his buddy Fish were surrounded by the enemy — the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army — and we were hiding in the bushes. It was hot and hard to breath. There was no lucky grenade this time, just the enemy coming closer and closer and closer and closer, and even though I’d only just gotten there, time was already running out —
Next thing I knew it was morning and Mom was sitting next to me on my bed.
“Are you all right, Anderson?” Mom was asking me. She seemed to have said it a couple of times already.
“Yeah,” I said, struggling to sit up. “What’s going on?” I was totally confused and couldn’t remember what day it was or figure out what time it was, even though sunlight streamed through the bedroom window. And I couldn’t figure out why Mom was up. Because of her MS and how tired it always made her, she could hardly ever get up in the mornings before I left for school.
Mom brushed the hair off my forehead. “You shouted something in your sleep,” she said. “I came in to check on you. And it’s also time for you to get up and get some breakfast if you’re going to catch th
e school bus.”
I remembered now about the dream and wondered if I might have yelled something in the middle of that.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, sliding back down under the covers. “I’m okay. Must have been a bad dream.”
“Oh, no you don’t, Anderson,” Mom said in a voice that was way too cheerful for this early in the morning. “We’re having breakfast together for once, so no going back to sleep.”
She stood up and pulled the covers off of me. Even the sheet.
“Mom!” I grumbled.
“Don’t ‘Mom’ me,” she said. “I’ve already got waffles in the toaster oven.”
Five minutes later, Mom and I were drowning our waffles in syrup. I guess it was kind of a special occasion, her getting up so early to have breakfast with me, because Mom even let me spray whipped cream on top of mine.
“But no sugar crashing in the middle of class,” she warned.
I couldn’t say anything because my mouth was too full. It was delicious.
When I could finally talk I asked Mom what she remembered about the Vietnam War.
“The things that pop into your head,” Mom said. “It’s hard to keep up with you sometimes. Is this something you’re studying in school?”
“Not exactly,” I said, wanting to be as honest as I could. “But it kind of came up. You know.”
“Well,” Mom said, “I can’t say I remember a whole lot. I was really young, probably not even out of preschool when the war ended. I do remember my parents arguing a lot about it even after the war was over, when North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam. Your grandfather had served in the military during the Korean War, but that was before Vietnam. He supported the war, but my mother wasn’t so sure we should have been over there. One of her brothers — your great-uncle Dexter — was drafted, and he went over when he was eighteen. She always said he just wasn’t the same when he came back. He had always been this really happy guy, but then after Vietnam he got super quiet and stopped coming to family gatherings, even Christmas. It was very sad.”
“Did they name Uncle Dex after him?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mom said. She had stopped eating and was just pushing bites of her syrupy waffle around on her plate, suddenly quiet. I wished I hadn’t brought up the subject of the war.
“What happened to him?” I finally asked, though I was afraid it might make Mom even sadder.
“He passed away when you were very little,” she said. “You never knew him, but he did get to see you once, and hold you. He was in the hospital then. He had a hard time breathing. It got worse and worse. They said it was from being exposed to something called Agent Orange when he was in the war.”
I stopped eating, too. “Agent Orange?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “It was a chemical the Air Force sprayed over a lot of Vietnam to kill off vegetation in areas where our troops were searching for the enemy. It was so the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong wouldn’t be able to hide so well in the forests and jungles. I don’t think our government knew, or didn’t think about, the effect it would have on the people who ended up breathing it. Like your great-uncle. Respiratory diseases. Cancers. Skin diseases. All sorts of terrible things.”
I didn’t ask any more questions, but I did give Mom the biggest hug I could when I got up to go catch the bus to school. I used to think going to war must be really exciting, like in Call of Duty. But after meeting these ghosts, and now talking to Mom about her uncle and Agent Orange, I was starting to think maybe I had it all wrong.
That day at lunch, I filled Greg and Julie in on my conversation the night before with the ghost. Greg sat with his back to us at our table next to the cafeteria wall, his chair turned instead so he could keep a lookout on the lunch line and all the other tables — so Belman and his gang wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us again and sprinkle salt on our heads or whatever.
“Z and Fish,” Julie murmured. She had her lunch roll stuck to the end of her fork and occasionally brought it close enough to her mouth so she could take a small, thoughtful nibble.
“So we know he was in Vietnam in 1968,” she said. “And we know he was in the Demilitarized Zone and at some point he and his friend Fish were surrounded by the enemy. In the jungle. And we know they went on what sounds like some sort of secret missions. Like maybe to assassinate people.”
“He didn’t exactly say that,” I corrected her.
“But it did sound like it, right?” Julie asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess. He didn’t want to go into any details or anything.”
“And how old would you say Z is, or was?” Julie asked. “That might be something that could help us.”
Greg turned around to look at Julie and me. We all looked at one another. “I’m no good at telling how old grown-ups are,” Greg admitted. “I mean, I know my dad is a lot older than Anderson’s dad, older than everybody’s dad, but I couldn’t say that he looks a lot older or anything. He just looks old. They all do.”
“Yes,” said Julie. “They all just look grown-up.”
“Not Uncle Dex,” I said.
We all agreed that Dex was the exception.
“But they were mostly young in Vietnam,” Julie said. “The average age of soldiers was only nineteen. So this Fish could have been very young.”
“Why were they all so young?” I asked.
Greg answered. “Because of the draft. All the guys had to register with the government back then once they turned eighteen, and then they picked birthdays and the ones whose birthdays they picked had to serve in the army for two years, and most of them went to Vietnam for one of those years.”
Greg was turned back around, his back to me and Julie, when he said this. “I kind of know a lot about Vietnam,” he added. “Because of my dad. Since he wouldn’t talk about it I had to read a bunch of stuff on my own. Not that I know everything, of course.”
“Well, what else do you know that might be helpful?” I asked.
Greg shrugged. “I was thinking maybe we should take a field trip.”
“To where?” Julie asked, still nibbling on her roll.
“To The Wall,” Greg said.
That one threw me off. “Why would we go to a wall?” I asked.
Greg laughed. “Not a wall. The Wall. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, up in DC. They call it The Wall.”
Julie apparently knew about it, too. “It’s a long wall of black marble cut into the side of a hill in a forested part of the National Mall, near the Lincoln Memorial,” she said. “The names of all the Americans who died in Vietnam are carved into the marble. Great idea, Greg. Many people go there to find the name of their relative or friend who died, and to leave flowers or notes at the base of The Wall. It’s supposed to be a very powerful memorial.”
“What do you mean ‘powerful’?” I asked, hating to be the odd man out in knowing all this stuff.
Julie laid her hand over her heart. “Very emotional,” she said. “Because it is so different from most memorials. It doesn’t celebrate the war. It remembers those who lost their lives there.”
“So you think we should go?” I asked the back of Greg’s head. He was still keeping an eye on the cafeteria.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe your uncle Dex can drive us like he did when we went on that trip with the first ghost. Remember? When the ghost rode with us?”
“He wasn’t with us the whole time,” I reminded Greg. “He faded in and out.”
“Yes,” Julie said, “but he was there, and perhaps our new ghost, Z, might recognize some names on The Wall, and it might help loosen some more of his memories, so that we can help him find out what happened.”
“When should we go?” I asked.
“Soon,” Greg said.
“Yes, right away,” said Julie. “We don’t know how much time we have, Anderson, and you said yourself that when he visited you last night he faded out very quickly at the end, and for no reason that you could see.”
Z didn’t show up that night in
my bedroom. I waited and waited until my yawns started to run together and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.
I decided I would talk to him even though he wasn’t there, on the chance that maybe he was there, just not in a state where I could see or hear him.
“So, we’re going to this place up in Washington,” I said to the room. “It’s this memorial for Vietnam War veterans like you, only it’s the ones who were killed, and just so you know, your name might be on there. We’re hoping you’ll be able to come with us and let us know if it helps you remember anything. My uncle is driving us this weekend, on Saturday.”
I waited for a minute to see if Z would show up, or say something, or even if there might be one of those breezes in the room that might or might not be him. That was the way it worked with our other ghost. He could be near us sometimes, but not visible and not able to show himself except for a little gust of wind or whatever.
But I got nothing.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’m heading for bed. Please don’t wake me up, if you can help it. I’m kind of tired from not really sleeping the past couple of nights, and if I fall asleep in class again, I’m going to probably get in trouble at school. You could go over to Greg’s house if you want. He might not mind it if you did, and if you woke him up. I probably wouldn’t do that at Julie’s, though. I’m not too sure, but I’m guessing she would probably get mad at you for waking her up in the middle of the night.”
I waited a few more minutes, and then crawled into bed.
Something thumped against my window and I practically jumped back up again, but it was just a branch banging into the side of the house from outside, and most likely the wind causing it for real.
I sank back down into bed. This ghost business was exhausting.
Lost at Khe Sanh Page 4