by Jill Hunting
Did I have other brothers? No, I replied, but I had two older sisters. “You are lucky!” she said. In the Cham culture, the youngest daughter inherits the house. She takes care of the parents, while the other children “have to leave” and live with their new families.
Cam’s mother, who was now in her mid-seventies, lived too far from My Nghiep for us to visit her that day. Song said I must return, and he would take me to see her.
Chuck and our driver pulled up. I went to the van, opened my suitcase, and removed Pete’s picture. When I handed it to Cam, she looked at his face and back to mine. “This is for your mother,” I said. “Please tell her Pete’s sister came back.”
Soon the five of us were on our way again. We all agreed that something extraordinary had just happened. “It is like the Arabian Nights!” Song said. “Like a fairy tale to my ears. It is unbelievable but true! How can you run into this girl? I just told the driver to stop here. Then we went across the street and I said, ‘It’s too hot. Let’s go back.’ Unbelievable!”
I wasn’t surprised by what had happened in My Nghiep. Granted, it was a miracle. But I was getting used to miracles.
Jim wondered if Pete had been remembered because he was romantically interested in the daughter. Chuck explained, “This isn’t an entertainment culture, where people sit around and watch television. They tell stories. Pete was important to that woman, because she has told stories about him for forty years. But that is a reflection of the oral tradition in their culture.”
It was lucky, if that was the word, that Chuck had left his suitcase behind, because while no tangible evidence of Pete’s life remained in Phan Rang, in an out-of-the-way hamlet, in a weaver’s shop chosen at random, I had met someone else to whom my brother was still very real. Ironically, I had traveled to the other side of the world to find a family that, unlike mine, had never stopped talking about him.
Why look for the living among the dead? I suppose it’s the way some of us learn that they are not really gone. I used to think, when people said such things, that it was only pabulum. Now, to my surprise, I believed it.
After a long day’s drive, my companions and I met for a late dinner in our hotel in Saigon. We ordered french fries, filet mignon, and flan.
Many restaurant menus in southern Vietnam had a “sex” cocktail — a reminder of the sex industry that flourished during the war — and this one was no exception. We had seen Sex on the Beach, Sex on the Pool Table, and now Sex in the Snow. Chuck and Jim were gentlemen, but they never failed to point out the cocktail I should order, since I refused to drink the vin de pays.
At five o’clock the next morning, we were bound for the Mekong Delta.
SIXTEEN
“A Wind-Blurred Far Away”
C
arey Coulter wasn’t supposed to be on an airplane bound for Phu Quoc on the morning of November 12, 1965, but he was. What choice did he have? The school for refugees there needed supplies. If he didn’t show up, the Special Forces guys wouldn’t be happy.
Pete wouldn’t be happy, though, with this last-minute change of plans. But wasn’t it the job of an IVS education volunteer to help schools in refugee compounds? And wouldn’t his team leader approve of his taking initiative?
They were supposed to look at the new apartment Carey had found in Can Tho. There was no way, however, to reach Pete and ask if they could postpone it. Pete would be back in Can Tho again soon. They could see the place another day.
The pilot of the small plane had already taxied onto the runway when Carey saw Pete’s Scout pull up. Pete stepped out. He was alone. He didn’t look happy.
As the plane gathered speed and left the ground, Carey saw Pete raise his fist and shake it at him. It was too late. They were airborne. He would just have to explain later.
Les Small, a former IVSer who was now employed as the agriculture representative of the U.S. Operations Mission in the Mekong Delta, was also at the airport that morning. From his base in Can Tho he traveled extensively in sixteen
provinces, working with provincial reps, including several ex-IVSers. He went by car if he was headed somewhere relatively safe or a military convoy had secured the road. Otherwise, he hopped a small plane contracted to USOM or one of the military transports making daily milk runs around the provinces. Today, he was on his way to see a prov rep in one of the less secure parts of the delta.
Seeing Les waiting, Pete went over to say hello. He was about to leave for Ba Xuyen Province, he said. Les had never driven that road. He considered it too dangerous. He knew, however, that IVSers were more casual about security than most Americans. In fact, he had driven in some questionable areas himself as a volunteer in Kien Giang Province. Still, he was so surprised to hear Pete say where he was going that he uttered a single word: “Really!”
Pete left the airport and headed southwest on Route 4. In Soc Trang, he needed to arrange for a language teacher for Paul Lukitsch. A member of the ag team, Paul was learning two languages. The farmers in Ba Xuyen were predominantly Cambodian and Chinese-Cambodian, so he needed to speak some Khmer. He also needed to know Vietnamese, and the tones didn’t come easily to him.
A young woman Pete had met recently might make a good tutor, and besides, he had been hoping for an opportunity to get to know her better. He and Paul would meet with her, then go to the Cambodian dragon-boat races on the main canal that ran through town.
All of a sudden he remembered the money Paul had given him to pick up a pair of trousers at a dry cleaner’s in Vinh Long. Should he turn back and get them? Vinh Long was more than twenty miles in the opposite direction. Turning around would mean crossing the Mekong on the ferry at Can Tho and re-crossing it just to get this far again. It would put him well behind schedule.
On the other hand, maybe he should just continue on his way and bring Paul’s pants to him next time.
But a promise was a promise.
He wheeled around and headed for Vinh Long.
Since late August, he had been living in a house flanked by a café and a Vespa shop. Jim Linn, an agriculture extension technician on his team, had the room next to his. Jim had done a good job of smoothing things out between local officials and young Vietnamese volunteers who, with his help, were setting up garden plots for refugees to plant fast-growing vegetables.
At the house, Pete went into his room, found Paul’s money, and put it in his wallet. On the way out the door he saw Jim. He told him he was on his way to Soc Trang.
He paid for Paul’s trousers at the dry cleaner’s, which shared the premises with a barbershop. Harold Kooker, another team member, was going in for a haircut. Harold taught English at the normal school in Vinh Long. The job wasn’t going so well. First, he had been assigned classes of sixty students each. The principal agreed to divide the classes in half, but that hadn’t solved a second problem, which was administrative. English language class was technically an elective, and even though students were required to attend, Harold was not allowed to grade them. When he developed a reputation for giving hard tests, the students threatened to boycott them.
Like other members of Pete’s team, Harold appreciated him for the things he did to boost morale. Pete considered it part of his job as a regional team leader to do these things, like stopping to chew the fat with Harold when he saw him at the barbershop. They joked about Pete’s receding hairline. Around 1:15 P.M. he left Vinh Long.
The temperature was in the high eighties, with humidity creeping upwards of 80 percent. That morning, it had rained lightly. Now the skies were essentially fair, with only a high, thin layer of cirrus clouds.
Pete reached the river at Can Tho. For the second time that day, he drove his Scout onto the ferry. Always eager to practice his Vietnamese, he struck up a conversation with two people. He hadn’t forgotten his years as a hitchhiker and was quick to offer a lift to someone who needed it. He teammates were used to seeing him pull up with passengers in his vehicle.
The two Vietnamese were headed in the sa
me direction. Pete said he could give them a ride.
I am headed south on the highway out of Vinh Long with Song, Chuck, Jim, and our driver. We cross an immense suspension bridge, a joint venture between Vietnam and Australia, that spans the Mekong. It’s a clear morning, with blue skies and small puffs of clouds in the east.
When I came to Vietnam in 1991, the country was still recovering from the war and suffering the effects of an economic embargo. It was not unusual then to see three people riding one motorcycle. Today the bikes have only one or two riders. Some wear helmets, but men wearing baseball caps or no head covering at all are more common.
If a woman wears a hat, it is conical. Most women ride in pants. To protect their lungs from pollution and their skin from tanning, many wear a cloth mask that covers their face from the nose down. Some, like Song’s wife, also wear gloves to keep their arms pale.
We cross numerous small bridges over rivulets. Bamboo grows right up to the road. I count six pumps at a Mekong gas station and note the heavy black wire strung on telephone poles — more signs of progress since my first trip to Vietnam. A poster bids us good-bye: “Vinh Long — Have a Good Journey!”
Bicycles hauling a kind of surrey with front and back benches, called “pulling taxis,” move slowly along. We pull around to pass them. Shops line the road, and in one, red meat is cooking in a large pan on a rack over a table. A man in a baseball cap removes the browned pieces with long chopsticks.
We pass a sign that says we are fifteen kilometers from Can Tho. Pete has less than an hour left.
We approach the entrance to the ferry at Can Tho. We will share it with two tourist buses, a few vans like ours, and numerous motorcycles and passenger cars. We wait our turn until a man knocks on the hood, signaling our driver to inch forward so more vehicles can squeeze onto the ferry. Cars and trucks line up three across and seven deep.
The Mekong is one of the world’s longest rivers. Six countries share its waters: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Here, it gives an impression less of might than of dependability. That so many people earn their livelihood from this river makes clear the connection between “current” and “currency.” The ferry transects the river without a struggle, and I gauge our movement only by watching the billboards on the bank recede.
I’ve been up three hours, since 4:30 A.M., and haven’t had coffee yet. I feel a headache coming on. We bump off the ferry and onto the opposite shore. Shops line the road, which is narrower here. Green coconuts dangle overhead from the trees. Some of the bushes have been pruned into popsicle shapes.
Song says we will stop at a hotel to see a man about a horse. He has picked up this expression from Chuck. It sounds funny coming from Song, a man hard to picture on horseback. I like it better than “happy house,” the Vietnamese equivalent of “restroom.”
In the hotel gift shop I buy a reversible hand-embroidered silk robe. The men I’m with all admire it, especially when they hear I paid nineteen dollars for it. We move on to a coffee garden and my headache lifts, no thanks to the pounding disco music. My companions and I have a good twenty-five years on any of the other customers.
Back in the van, we go through Can Tho, then Cai Rang, which is no longer a village, as in Pete’s day, but a city. We rumble across an old metal bridge. Thinking aloud, I speculate that the sound of an approaching convoy must have carried far down the road. Song agrees. I imagine a Vietcong squad waiting to ambush an ARVN, or South Vietnamese army, convoy — alert to the noise of vehicles on the bridge.
Song says we are not far from the X on the map I have given him.
At night, I had heard, the Vietcong dug holes in the roads. They would either bury a mine or dig a hole to make it look as if they had. A driver seeing evidence of digging in the road had three choices: slow down, stop, or speed up and skirt the holes. “At night, the Vietcong dug holes in the road,” Song says. “Maybe they buried a land mine, or maybe they only dug a hole. You didn’t know if there was a mine, so you had to stop.”
I have pieced together a lot of information about the afternoon when Pete took this road for the last time. A hundred details — gathered from more than fifty IVS alumni, papers in the old trunk, my other research, and a word here and a rumor there — have coalesced into a silhouette, if not a complete picture, of that day.
I have learned as much as I can and am reconciled to not knowing everything. I have retrieved my lost connection with my brother and discovered the man he was. I know him better now than when he was alive. I think of him with love and no piercings of sadness.
I always thought someday I would visit this place. Only now, it seems, was I prepared to do it. For years I have imagined this stretch of road. And not correctly, it turns out. Instead of being hemmed in by vegetation, and spooky, it is sunlit and open.
I am no longer searching for information about Pete. I’m here to pay my respects. I feel grateful to have kind companions with me. Even though I am just getting to know them, they want to take part in a ritual of remembering someone they never knew.
At the end of my journey, I have arrived a tenacious, free, more openhearted, more knowledgeable, braver individual. But there is still one thing I need to see.
That’s how it will seem, anyway, in retrospect.
At 2:40 P.M., a little more than a mile south of Cai Rang, Pete’s Scout comes up behind an ARVN convoy returning from Operation Dan Chi. Two Vietnamese are in the vehicle with him. He passes the convoy.
Hearing the sound of vehicles on the bridge, a Vietcong squad takes up positions on both sides of the road. Concealed by tall grass, they form a V, their semiautomatic weapons trained on the open end.
They see a jeep with a tall, light-haired driver coming down the straightaway. Pete approaches. At the first sound of gunfire, he floors the accelerator pedal. Bullets hit the vehicle from straight on, and on the driver and passenger sides. Pete almost makes it through the hail of fire when a single round goes through the tailgate, through the wallet in his right rear pocket, and into his flesh. With the shock of the pain, his right leg jerks and his foot comes off the gas. He has lost control of the pedal. The Scout comes to a stop. It leaves no skid marks.
The soldiers run up with their weapons drawn. They are screaming and Pete is talking as fast as he can. He tells them he is unarmed.
The sergeant is in a fury, a hothead. Who is this American, speaking Vietnamese? A spy! He has ruined the ambush of the ARVN convoy they have been waiting for! He and one of his men yank Pete out of the vehicle. The rush of adrenaline and the will to live come to Pete’s aid as he struggles to remain upright, trying to talk his way out of this. The sergeant grows more enraged. He orders a couple of his men to take the two passengers out of sight.
With great effort, Pete tries to prop himself against the Scout. The sergeant places his weapon against the base of Pete’s neck. TOK-kooo. Pete slumps to the ground. The sergeant fires four more shots into Pete’s head. One of his men sprays ten more rounds into his body.
Five minutes later the convoy comes upon the scene. A radioman informs the duty officer at MACV Command Center J313-1 that a body has been found on the ground beside an American vehicle. It is carrying a lot of identification: Peter M. Hunting, U.S. civilian, regional supervisor of International Voluntary Services, based in Vinh Long. He was killed when his vehicle hit a land mine. Next, the radio operator reports sniper fire and calls for an air strike and armed helicopter support.
MACV calls the IVS house in Saigon. Don is not there but returns soon and is informed of what has happened. He immediately calls Arthur Gardiner’s home in Washington. Gardiner is out of the country. Don calls John Hughes. He tells Hughes that Pete’s family must be notified before word gets out and a reporter calls them. He then retreats to his bedroom for a while and loses track of time.
The duty officer enters a correction to the log four pages later. It states that no mining occurred, two tires of the vehicle were blown, and the doors were peppered by sma
ll-arms fire. The report adds:
When convoy arrived at site the vc opened fire. Convoy immediately dismounted and took vc under fire, vc then withdrew. No other friendly casualties occurred. Troops in convoy screened both sides of road. This info furnished by civilians at site and vicinity who were questioned.
Pete’s body is flown by helicopter to Saigon. The Scout is returned to Can Tho. Joseph Robinson of the regional USOM office collects Pete’s identification papers and a Vietnamese artist’s sketch on the seat. No other personal items are found in the vehicle.
Carey Coulter returns from his visit to the refugee school. He is at the airport when someone tells him that Pete has been killed. The only thing that saved his life, he realizes, was the Special Forces guys insisting that he come to Phu Quoc.
Late in the day, around dusk, Les Small arrives back at the airport. An American military officer who saw him talking to Pete that morning comes up to him. “I’ve got bad news,” he says. “Your friend was killed.”
What are the chances of finding the exact spot where it happened?
I’m watching the road with Song, wondering where he will tell our driver to pull over. If we have learned anything from our experience in the Cham hamlet yesterday, it is that his choice of stopping places is apparently guided by more than happenstance. We don’t know how close we can come to the site of the ambush: A hundred feet? A hundred yards?
We step off the van and into the grass on the roadside. I concentrate on balancing the bunch of long-stemmed flowers under my arm while I hold burning incense sticks in my praying hands. Smoke drifts across my face and into my nostrils.
Addressing Pete, Song prays. He has come to pay respect to his soul. He expresses regret that Pete was killed in an accident of war. He acknowledges his good purpose in coming to Vietnam, the good he accomplished, the help he gave, his goodness as a man. “May you rest in peace,” he concludes, “wherever and forever.”