Back in Puerto Princesa such details hadn’t seemed to matter. They still didn’t. What mattered now was what Rice had also said. “Over two mountain ridges from Vin Ba and then up the next ridge and Damon’s place is right on top.” These weren’t really mountains-not even close by Moon’s Colorado Rockies standards-but they were significant hills. They ran out of road when they left Vin Ba’s little valley and the going had been hard even for a tracked vehicle.
But there were footpaths. Moon’s technique was to follow the one that went in the right general direction. They’d made a little plateau of stacked rice sacks next to the APC’s personnel bench and spread both maps on it. Nguyen manned his.50-caliber lookout post. Osa matched the elevation lines on the artillery chart with the terrain features they were seeing. When things didn’t seem to match, they stopped and consulted.
For Osa, this involved bouncing back and forth from sitting beside the rice sacks to standing on the bench with her head stuck out of the second hatch. There she would look for the spur, or the ridge, or the water drainage cut, matching map lines with the real landscape they were passing. For Moon, this involved an opportunity to look away from his viewing slot and study Osa with no risk of being caught at it. Nor was there much risk of running into a tree, since Nguyen was in the hatch above him, kicking him on the proper shoulder if he started letting the APC drift.
So Moon considered Osa’s long denim-clad legs, her rear elevation when she turned to look behind them, her ankles above the funny-looking walking shoes she wore, her back, her narrow waist, the way she moved, the way she held herself. Everything about her from the shoulder blades down he memorized. And, of course, made the inevitable comparisons. In a beauty contest, in a Hollywood casting competition, Debbie would be the winner, a ten. Osa was the sort of woman for whom the gurus of fashion in Paris and Milan (and wherever else such things happened) designed clothing. Debbie was the sort for whom clothing manufacturers, faced with human reality, manufactured dresses in the sizes actually purchased in the various middle-class department stores. In other words, in the same places he bought his own stuff.
Bleak thought. But Moon was a realist. Or considered himself one. Had he been the Moon Mathias whom Ricky’s exaggerations had created out here, he’d be making his pitch for Osa. Perhaps, if he actually was that super fellow, maybe he’d even be winning her. But the flesh-and-blood Moon was a K mart fellow. He knew it. By now, with Ricky’s tales offset by reality, so did Osa van Winjgaarden.
Now they were at the top of the second ridge and Nguyen was tapping a foot against Moon’s shoulder, signaling a stop. Time to eat something anyway. Time to take a rest. Moon climbed wearily out to take a look. Based on the Langenscheldt map, there should have been a small village identified as Neap in the valley below them. Moon had presumed this foot trail had led to it. Now he could see no sign of a village below. About two hundred people, Rice had said, and some terraced rice paddies. Instead of the little strip of cultivated fertility’ one expected, there was some sort of geological deformity where nothing grew. It was a long strip of broken rocks and desolation starting low on the opposite slope and running down the declivity. No place for a village.
True, there’d been no dot labeled Neap on the artillery map. But such maps tend to be more interested in terrain and less in homesites. Moon had expected to find Neap. Had counted on it. It would be proof he hadn’t taken a wrong turn. It would have been his final landmark. Beyond it, he would angle the APC to the left up the slope and reach the top. There they would find the village of Phum Kampong waiting, and the Reverend Damon van Winjgaarden-perhaps-alive. Without Neap, Moon was thoroughly lost.
With much pointing Nguyen showed them that the footpath they’d been following faded out on this stonier ground. Which way now? Nguyen had no idea. Then he was pointing eastward and repeating something that sounded like “Mekong.”
Indeed it was. The next ridgeline was lower. Over it and through the blue haze beyond was a ribbon of silver. Sunlight was reflecting off the river. Good. At least they were on the proper ridge.
Moon ate a cupful of boiled rice and some of the crackers they’d brought from the R. M. Air base and thought about it. The route they’d planned on the map had taken them away from the Mekong toward the Gulf to cross the border and then circled back in the hills. At least the Mekong was where it should be. At least that had gone right.
But not quite. Moon explained the problem to Osa. Nguyen listened, a mixture of comprehension and bafflement.
“In other words, there should be a little bitty village down there. There isn’t and apparently never was. So I must have either gone too far one way or the other. Which means we are looking down into the wrong little valley and now we have some guessing to do.”
“Village?” Nguyen asked.
“Yes,” Moon said. “I thought there would be a village down there.”
“We’ll find it,” Osa said. “We’ll find paths down there, and they’ll lead us.”
Nguyen was shaking his head in vigorous denial. “No,” he said. “No more.” He pointed to the irregular line of broken stones. But that turned out to be a reference to the Ho Chi Minh trail, which snaked through the mountains along the border to feed supplies to the Vietcong in the delta. That finally understood, Nguyen made the sound of an airplane. He created one with two hands and flew it very slowly, very laboriously across his waist. That done, he said, “Very big.”
“Ah, yes,” Moon said. “The B-Fifty-twos.” He turned to Osa, still looking puzzled. “That’s why Kissinger started them bombing Cambodia. To cut off supplies to the VC.”
Osa was smiling at him. “I think you’re finally getting tired,” she said. “That’s interesting, but how does it help us?”
A good question. Nguyen seemed to understand the thrust of it. He trotted up the rear ramp and emerged with the Langenscheidt map in one hand, the artillery chart in the other. He held the commercial map against the side of the APC, indicated Neap, then created B-52 sounds and walked his fingers across Neap. “Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” Nguyen said. He held up his hand and flashed his fingers again and again. “I think fifty,” he said. He replaced the commercial with the artillery chart, put his finger where Neap should have been, said, “No.” He looked at Moon, then at Osa, seeking understanding.
They stood beside the APC looking down at the long strip of ruin below them where two hundred Cambodians had once lived in a village called Neap.
“Why bomb there?” Osa said. “There couldn’t be any kind of road down there.”
“Dark of night,” Moon said. “They would have been flying very high, probably above thirty-five thousand feet. And they’d be coming all the way from Guam. It would be easy to miss by just one ridgeline.”
Osa was looking down at where Neap had been, saying nothing.
“Or maybe one of the planes had mechanical trouble. The pilot had to jettison his load.”
“One plane? Just one airplane could do all that?”
“I think they carry fifty bombs. Isn’t that what Nguyen was trying to tell us? Five hundred pounds of TNT per bomb. Or was it a thousand? Then multiply that by fifty.”
Osa was silent again, looking into the valley. “So maybe we’re not lost. Maybe the village was down there once.”
“Let’s say it was,” Moon said, thinking they could be on the other ridge in an hour, maybe less. They’d either find Phum Kampong and Reverend Damon or they wouldn’t. Either way, they’d be done with this. “Let’s get going.”
It wasn’t necessary. A man emerged from the trees behind the APC and stood watching them, a small thin man, slightly stooped, with gray hair cut short. Then he shouted, “Mrs. van Wing Garden.”
Osa remembered him. He was one of her brother’s converts from Phum Kampong whom she’d met on her last visit-one of the men Damon had been training to help him spread Christianity in the hills. He squatted beside the APC, small, thin, slightly stooped, his mustache gray, his eating
rice with him, very glad to see Osa. In halting English he told them how he had heard their vehicle coming up the mountainside, thought it must be the Khmer Rouge returning, had hidden, had seen Osa standing in the hatch, had recognized her as the sister of Brother Damon, and had hurried along to try to catch them.
“You have come to replace your brother,” he said. “We all will thank you for that.”
Osa looked down at her feet. “Replace him? Is Damon not with you now?”
“Oh,” the man said. “You didn’t know about it.” He looked at Osa, then at Moon, expression rueful.
“Is he all right?” Moon asked.
“I was not at the village when the Khmer Rouge came. I live here, where I cut my wood and make my charcoal.” He motioned toward Via Ba. “I sell it over in Via Ba. But not now because nobody is left in Via Ba. But-”
Moon cut him off. “Where is Damon now? Will we find him at Phum Kampong?”
“They took him away. They took him and some of the Christians, and some of them they killed in the village.”
“But they didn’t kill Damon? He was still alive?”
“Down there,” the man said, pointing into the valley where Neap had once existed. “There we found his body.”
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 30 (UPI)- President Duong Van Minh announced today the unconditional surrender of the Saigon government and its military forces to the Vietcong.
Afternoon, the Twentieth Day
May 2, 1975
RETRACING ONE’S STEPS IS EASY. Moon simply spun the APC around and headed it down the mountainside following the tracks the treads had made coming up. No problem. He peered downward through the driver’s viewing slot: a little pressure on the right steering bar when needed, then a little pressure on the left. Just think about that. No reason to think about strike three and you’re out. No niece, no bones, no brother.
Nguyen was perched in the hatch above. Osa slumped on the troopers’ bench. When he turned to glance at her, he’d see only the top of her head, looking at the rice sacks. What was she seeing in the burlap? What was she thinking of? He hoped she had been conscious of the probable time of Damon’s execution. From what the man had told them, his body had been found and buried about the day they’d slipped out of Puerto Princesa. Even if he had been the super-Moon that Ricky had fantasized, he couldn’t have kept that from happening. Or perhaps Osa would be remembering Damon had realized his dream to be a martyr. He hoped that would give her some comfort.
The man had described it as he had heard it from survivors at the village. He told it proudly, with a fair command of English vocabulary but a pronunciation that Moon guessed must be a mixture of Montagnard inflections and Damon’s own Dutch-based distortions. The Khmer Rouge had come at dawn, about twenty of them: two young men, a young woman, and the rest just boys. Some barely in their teens, barely big enough to carry their assault rifles. Everyone had been ordered out into the clearing where the villagers prepared their charcoal and joss sticks to be sold.
Then they burned the house that Damon used as his hospital. They untied Damon’s arms and the young woman told him to point to the villagers he had made into Christians. But Damon would not tell them.
Here the man had stopped. He had looked at Osa-obviously not wanting someone who had loved Damon to hear this. Go ahead, Osa had said. It was what Damon wanted. And so the man had continued. He said the Khmers would push someone out of the crowd and the question would be repeated, and Damon would say that only the person they were holding there would know whether or not they believed the words of Jesus. Then “they would hurt Brother Damon,” the man said, and ask the question again, and hurt him again. Finally one of the women of the village stepped out of the crowd and said she was a Christian. And then others stepped out, men, women, and children. The Khmers bound their arms and tied them all together and ordered the other villagers to kill them with clubs. But nobody would do it, so the woman shot two of those who refused. And one of the Khmer boys shot another one. Then the villagers would beat the Christians a little, but not hard. So another one was shot. Then the woman ordered it stopped. They left the Christians all tied together. The other young men they herded into a group. The woman said these men would be trained to help liberate their homeland from the capitalist oppressors. She hadn’t said what would be done with the Christians.
“She didn’t tell us, but we found out,” the man said. He walked to the edge of the clearing, pointed down into the valley, and said, “We found their bodies down there.”
That had ended it. Except the man had embraced Osa, and she had embraced him hard and for quite a while. The man told her something, speaking too low for Moon to overhear even if he had wanted to.
It was a hard climb up the final ridge before Vin Ba’s valley. Moon stopped where the trees were thin at the top to let the engine cool and to give everyone what he had been calling a “comfort break.” Nguyen stayed inside, fiddling with the radio, telling them something about the U.S. Embassy. About helicopters. “Americans gone home now,” he said sadly. “Congs coming in Saigon now.” Osa listened a moment, then came down the ramp, wandered into the trees, and sat on a fallen tree trunk. Moon stood beside the APC looking through the binoculars.
From here, too, you could see the Mekong- barely visible through the gap where the valley opened into its narrower Cambodian flood plain. There was just a flash of reflected sunlight through the haze, but it could only be the river. It was a dramatic view and Moon stared at it a long time-though he hated the humid haze and the heat and everything that dirty river represented to him. if he didn’t look at it, he would have to look at Osa, sitting on a fallen tree behind the APC. He’d have to try to think of something to say to her. Something sympathetic and consoling but not stupid. Not something that would make her cry. Or maybe that would be better. They said one shouldn’t hold grief in.
He turned away from the river and stood beside her, looking down. She looked up, the question in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Moon said.
She looked down, shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“Sorry I was too late.”
“It has nothing to do with late,” she said. “Or early.”
What do you say to that? He didn’t think of anything.
“I just didn’t believe him,” she said, looking up at Moon to see if he understood. “My brother, you know. He was always talking big. He was always full of his dreams.” She looked down again, studying her hands. “He told me when he went off to the seminary. I thought he was just being silly. Being romantic. We went on a kind of picnic, the day before he caught the plane. I said, ‘Damie, you’re being silly going off to be a minister. They’ll find out about you in a minute and toss you out. You’ll be right back here again and all of those girls who’ve been chasing after you, they’ll all be married and gone.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no. Not Damie. That was the Damie you used to know. Now-’” She stopped, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He’d been reading a biography of Francis of Assisi, I think it was. One of the great medieval saints. He said he was done with chasing after girls. From now on, he would chase after God.”
She glanced up at Moon.
“Well,” Moon said.
She smiled. “I remember it so well. I punched him on the shoulder. I said, ‘Come on, Damie. Snap out of it. You’re dreaming.’ And he said-all excited-‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m dreaming, Osa. I’m going to be one of God’s saints. If I am man enough.’”
She looked up at him, waiting.
“Well,” Moon said, “he was man enough. And the way I remember what they tried to teach us in our religion class, he made it in as a saint.”
“I loved him,” Osa said. “He was a crazy little brother, but I loved him.”
Just as he had feared, he had started her really crying. He sat on the tree trunk beside her and hugged her against him and let her weep.
On the long roll down the final hillside into Via Ba, Nguyen Nung’s fear of ambush kick
ed in again. High in the hills he had become relatively relaxed.
Osa had stood in the hatch, watching, while Nguyen sat on the bench fiddling with the radio. The news he was hearing seemed overwhelmingly bad-serious enough for Nguyen to tap Moon on the shoulder and try to explain things. First it was more about the Americans being “all gone home.” They’d been hearing that the previous evening, that helicopters were flying in and flying out loaded with refugees from the U.S. Embassy. Not much new there. Nguyen’s next burst of excitement brought Osa down from the hatch to join him in listening.
“What’s happening now?” Moon shouted.
“I guess it’s all over,” Osa said. “The war. I think Nguyen is saying that North Vietnamese tanks broke into the presidential palace and captured everybody. He thinks the man talking now is the new president, announcing the war is over. They seem to be broadcasting orders to South Vietnamese units, telling them to quit fighting and surrender.”
Moon digested that. The Communists had won, then. No more South Vietnam. But from their point of view, maybe the best possible news. He tried to imagine what would be happening. Wild celebrations by the winners. Confusion. Despair. People fleeing the country. Who would notice an M-l 13 APC rolling across the delta flying a Vietcong flag? Who would care?
The trail they were following leveled. The trees thinned as they reached the edge of the valley. Moon stopped the APC. Nguyen remained in the hatch above him, methodically studying the houses through the binoculars.
“Ho!” he shouted suddenly. “People!”
Moon reached up for the binoculars, but Nguyen had already handed them to Osa, standing in the other hatch. Moon waited, nervous. What now? What would they do about Mr. Lee?
“I see Mr. Lee,” Osa said. “And a woman is with him.” She ducked out of the hatch and handed Moon the glasses.
Finding Moon Page 26