Lost Soldiers Read online

  Muir forced a grin, masking his fear. ‘I’ve always been tempted to take a Vietnamese wife.’

  ‘Trust me, you’re not going to feel like settling down in Ninh Phuoc. If you want a wife, I’ll find you one in Sai Gon.’

  ‘I was teasing. My present wife would object rather violently to being replaced, you know.’

  ‘No need for that,’ shrugged Condley. ‘The Vietnamese have always been polygamous. You can have as many wives as you can afford.’

  ‘Now you’re teasing me.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not.’

  Muir rolled his eyes, obviously thinking of a retort, then let the notion go. Sai Gon was a long way away, but Ninh Phuoc was just up the river. If they could make it up the river. He gave Condley a questioning look. ‘You haven’t really told me what to do or say when we get there.’

  ‘It depends on what they’ve got, Professor. If it’s real, you can do your thing. If it’s chitchat, just be nice. Make the people feel important.’

  ‘I’m a scientist. I’m not supposed to be nice.’

  Another dead pig floated past, and then off next to the shore a dead villager, spread-eagled and bloated, spinning in the rapid current. Muir swallowed hard, watching the body twirl past them. Condley nudged him, snapping him out of it. ‘When we get there, just watch me. Smile when I smile. Eat the rice when I eat the rice. Drink the tea when I drink the tea. Smoke the cigarette when they give you one.’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘You do now.’

  Condley’s craggy face twinkled with secret happiness as the boat fought its way upriver. His shoes were squishy from the water in the boat and his fingers were crinkly from the rain. He feared the raw, surging power of Song Thu Bon, but at the same time he felt oddly content. The chalky river that ran from the mountains in Laos all the way to the sea just south of Da Nang was as comforting as an old friend. He had memories along its banks. Some of the memories were horrible. A few of them were even good. But all of them had meaning. And what was life if it brought you no meaning?

  Muir had decided to ignore him. The brilliant academic had turned away from him now, studying the flotsam as if history itself were slapping and bumping along the gunwales. The old boat shuddered against the current, causing its boards to creak. Muir shifted his gaze from the river to the dangerous beauty of the mountains that now rose up fierce and shrouded on all sides. ‘Do you know where we are?’

  Condley pulled out an old American tactical map he had kept from the war, carefully unfolding it. As a Marine thirty years before, he had laminated the map to protect it from the rains. It still bore black and red stains along its folds from where he had once used grease pencils to mark checkpoints for patrols and on-call targets for artillery. Turning it this way and that, he started matching the map to terrain features that rose up near the banks of the river. This was his area. He had walked every inch of it in another life, and neither he nor it had changed a whole lot since he’d left. Finally he held his finger on the map, showing Muir where they were.

  ‘We’re right here, Professor. That mountain over there is Nui Son Su. It was one of our key outposts on the edge of the Fifth Marines regimental headquarters in An Hoa. An Hoa is just behind the mountain. Or its ruins are, anyway. So that means we have two or three more turns in the river. The mountains will close in on us, then open up, then close in again – right here. And when they open up again, we’ll be in Ninh Phuoc.’

  Muir looked upriver. Indeed, the mountains were assembling themselves through the rain-mist, pushing at the river from both sides. He gave off a little shiver as he stared into the gap. The current picked up, turning frothy as the river narrowed where it passed between the mountains. Condley watched Tuan, studying the boat-master’s face for clues and deciding from the little man’s steadfast eyes that they were going to make it. Then for a long time he peered upriver through the rain, lost in memories.

  Lots of memories. Years of them, clinging to the crags and standing deep inside old foxholes that still scarred the hillsides.

  They broke through the pass and entered calmer, wider waters. Muir seemed to relax, his scientist’s need for certainty calmed by Condley’s map-reading skills. The river turned sharply to the left and Condley pointed to a high, steep mountain that rose more than a thousand feet up into the mist.

  ‘That’s Cua Tan,’ he said. ‘We’re almost at Ninh Phuoc.’

  After Cua Tan the river’s left bank opened into a valley that reached far to the east. Condley knew that the valley would eventually end in a huge canyon up against even higher mountains, a fiercely sharp range called the Que Sons. The Americans used to call the big box canyon the Antenna Valley. And at its entrance, just off the river, he could finally see the village of Ninh Phuoc.

  ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘We made it.’

  Long time no see.

  The boat-master thankfully followed his directions and left the river’s main current, navigating across the flood-lands toward the village. ‘A badass place,’ said Condley as they approached the looming darkness of its tree lines. ‘Lots of people died in here. The NVA kept a division up in those mountains. We had a reinforced Marine regiment back in An Hoa. When they ran into each other it could fuck up your entire day.’

  Tuan didn’t know ten words of English, but as he expertly worked the tiller he understood exactly what Condley was saying. He laughed, still shivering from the cold rain, and pointed toward the mountains.

  ‘Da, truoc nay, co nhieu linh Bac dang kia.’ Tuan then slipped from Vietnamese into the mix of pidgin French and English still left over from the region’s thirty years of war. ‘Boo-coo bang bang obah dare.’

  ‘Boo-coo,’ laughed Condley, repeating the murdered French phrase that had become so common in Viet Nam. ‘Boo-coo bang bang.’

  Quyen was waiting for them. The Vietnamese government’s liaison officer was standing on the high, flat paddy dike that marked the outer edge of the village, dressed in gray slacks, a white shirt, and black leather shoes. His thick hair was matted by the rain. Dozens of drenched villagers stood along the dike with him, smiling and elbowing each other as if the boat’s approach was grand entertainment. Condley waved to Quyen, calling to him. The whole village waved back, welcoming them.

  The boat putted up to the edge of the dike, docking alongside it as if it were a pier. Tuan threw a rope to a group of laughing, screaming young boys, who immediately tied the boat up to a tree. The current was strong here, even away from the main path of the river, and Tuan’s boat nudged gently prow-first against the mud of the dike, held fast by the flow of the water.

  ‘Chao ong, Chao ong!’

  Quyen greeted Condley with genuine happiness as the American stepped from the boat onto the muddy dike. The political officer had travelled to the village the day before in order to prepare the villagers for the meeting. Condley had worked with Quyen twice before, and he knew the young bureaucrat would be dying to go home. Quyen was a city boy, from Ha Noi in the north. In Da Nang two nights before, the locals had teased him that the villagers in the mountain hamlets off to the west were wild, of a different species, that drinking their water or their tea might make him sick, that some of their food might kill him, and that many of them even had tails. Quyen had half believed even the part about the tails.

  ‘Ah, Mr. Condley, Mr. Muir,’ said Quyen. He smiled brightly, rubbing his hands in front of his dark, narrow face as if each of these Americans were holding up a Buddha to be prayed to. ‘It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Ninh Phuoc. Come with me, come with me.’

  The dank air and clinging mud of the village were like a welcoming remembrance. Ghosts walked beside Condley on the muddy trails, dirty and unshaven, burdened by helmets and packs and weapons, loping tiredly, all parts of their bodies half asleep while their eyes stayed bright with fear. The ghosts would always be there, young-faced and yearning, even as time itself erased the evidence of their passing. It was a burden rather than a talent that Condley cou
ld walk a village trail and be in two time zones at once, the past just as fresh as today.

  Condley could smell cook fires and the twists of homegrown tobacco as he followed Quyen down the muddy path in the center of the village, the odors emanating from little shacks that were hidden down dark trails to his left and right. Children crowded round him and Muir, jabbering excitedly to one another, never having seen a Caucasian before this moment. They fingered the hair on his wrists. They touched his pale skin. They looked with wonder at his sky-like, molten eyes. Suddenly Condley began teasing the children in Vietnamese, and they burst into collective, appreciative laughter.

  He passed rows of flimsily built thatch homes, nearing the center of the village. The waterbulls were tethered in their stench-filled pens, lest they make a false step in the mud and be washed away by the river. Ugly little dogs barked and sniffed. Smiling, curious faces peeked out from shadowed doorways. It was all familiar. Nothing had changed except the war. And the knowledge that he was looking at it through the eyes of that which had already happened. But at least, he thought, already-happened was better than never-was.

  Condley teased Muir as they walked the dark paths in the center of the ancient village. ‘You know how to say dog in Vietnamese, Hanson?’

  ‘I suppose this is going to be funny.’

  ‘“Dinner.”’

  ‘They don’t really eat them.’

  ‘You know when we had “wild deer” the other night in that restaurant in Da Nang?’

  ‘I think I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘You had “filet of mongrel dog.”’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I just did.’

  At the center of the village, Quyen halted before a larger, stone house. The house was covered by a corrugated tin roof, rather than the usual thatch. From its size, its tin roof, and the two sheds in the yard, Condley knew that this was where the village chief lived. Glass had not yet made its way to Ninh Phuoc. The house’s window boards had been opened from the inside. As Condley caught up with Quyen he could see shadows moving underneath a single bare lightbulb that was hanging on a wire from the main room’s ceiling.

  ‘Electricity,’ said Condley. ‘Now, there’s progress.’

  Quyen smiled, gesturing with an arm, indicating they should walk inside. ‘Yes,’ he said through his insistent happiness. ‘Electricity. Here in Ninh Phuoc, two years already!’

  The village chief watched them carefully as they entered. The chief, a tough-looking man of about sixty, had arranged two small wooden tables at the center of his open-windowed entry room. A cracked porcelain pot was on one table, flanked by two small trays holding ten little teacups. The teacups were turned upside down on the trays. Next to the teacups on each tray was a pack of Vietnamese-brand cigarettes. To the chief’s right, sitting on small wooden stools, were five old men. In other days they would have been called the village elders, but Condley knew that now, under the edicts of faraway Ha Noi, they were termed the village’s People’s Committee. To his left, sitting nervously by himself on another wooden stool, was a younger man of perhaps forty. An old calendar was on one wall behind them. On another wall were three certificates for military service, each with a picture of a smiling Ho Chi Minh and a communist flag.

  ‘Le Xuan Minh,’ said Quyen officially, waving a hand toward the village chief. ‘And the People’s Committee of Ninh Phuoc.’

  The seven men stood ceremoniously when Quyen ushered in the two Americans, wiping damp hands on their dirt-stained trousers. They had dressed up for the meeting, wearing long, gray-coloured pants and long-sleeved cotton shirts, although their wide, powerful feet remained sockless in flip-flop sandals. They nodded perfunctorily when Condley shook their hands, each of them in turn holding his hand weakly, as if squeezing it would be a physical confrontation, and spoke softly to him in Vietnamese. Expectation filled their eyes, but they were patient and polite. Quyen had prepared them well.

  ‘Moi ong ngoi do,’ said the village chief, gesturing to the chairs.

  ‘What do I do?’ whispered Muir, suddenly nervous.

  ‘Sit down and shut up,’ grinned Condley, never taking his eyes off his counterpart across the table.

  Condley, Muir, and Quyen joined the village elders at the little table. An unsmiling young woman appeared from nowhere, dressed in black slacks and a peasant shirt, her long hair pulled back behind her ears. She did not even look at them as she silently poured tea from the porcelain pot into the cups. Le Xuan Minh ceremoniously took a cigarette and lit it with a wooden match, then offered the pack to Condley.

  ‘Da, cam on ong,’ said Condley, thanking him and taking a cigarette, then passing the pack to Muir. The heavyset scientist tottered uneasily atop his little stool, taking out a cigarette as delicately as if it were a stick of dynamite, and passed the pack on to the ever-smiling Quyen.

  ‘The weather is terrible,’ began the village chief in Vietnamese, sipping his tea and dragging again from his cigarette. ‘But if you waited it would only get worse. So we thank you for coming to our village today.’

  Condley answered him with ritualistic politeness, speaking also in Vietnamese. ‘We are happy to be able to join you in your village, sir, and we deeply appreciate the goodwill you have shown to the American people by making this report to your government.’

  ‘He is not from our village,’ answered Le Xuan Minh as the village elders nodded. ‘It would be wrong for him to be kept forever with us.’

  ‘We very much appreciate your having kept him for so many years with your own people,’ answered Condley. ‘And it is right that he be returned.’

  ‘Surely he has a family in America,’ said Le Xuan Minh. ‘They will have missed him.’

  Quyen had grown increasingly nervous from the two men’s immediate rapport. The political officer puffed mightily on his cigarette, then leaned across the table, interjecting himself between them. ‘The Vietnamese government has always worked very hard for complete co-operation on these issues,’ he said, making sure that both parties remembered where the ultimate power lay. ‘So you see, Mr. Condley, sometimes we have success.’

  Condley took an extra-long drag on his own cigarette, the harsh local tobacco hurting his lungs. He frowned, playing with his teacup for a moment. Finally he cleared his throat, hesitating to make the obvious point. ‘So that I may make a full explanation to my authorities, I must ask you why it took so long to report this man, since he was buried in your village cemetery.’

  They were prepared for the question. In fact, Condley knew that was why Quyen had insisted on leaving for Ninh Phuoc by himself the day before. The village chief nodded to his elders before speaking, indicating that his comments were not merely his own.

  ‘We did not find the body until the rains washed away part of the cemetery this year,’ said Le Xuan Minh. ‘It was in a family plot.’ He exchanged another deliberate glance with his elders, gaining nods of affirmation from them. Then all of them looked over at the younger man sitting separately from them. Finally Le Xuan Minh stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘This is Nguyen Hao,’ he said. ‘He buried your soldier among his ancestors when he was a little boy.’

  Hao remained silent, looking nervously at the others with what seemed to be great embarrassment. Finally he spoke. ‘I was twelve years old. We found him dead outside our house. My grandmother told me to bury him.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report it?’ Quyen asked the question with harsh tones, but Condley knew that the political officer had already rehearsed both the question and the answer with the beleaguered Hao. This was a Vietnamese version of Kabuki, an act designed to allow the government and the villagers and perhaps even the Americans to save face.

  ‘Who would I talk to?’ Hao grew defensive. ‘I was a boy. Soldiers from all sides constantly moved through our village. The Americans never came to ask about him. I could not go to the Americans. Both sides might shoot me. I was afraid.’

  ‘But what about la
ter?’ Quyen pressed him. ‘All the villages know that we have had an agreement with the Americans for many years. You are shaming our country when you hold back information. Your entire village loses face.’

  Hao looked at them all, this time with genuine fear. ‘I was afraid for my family, that the government would think we took sides in the war. And Mr. Quyen, sir, I say with great respect once again that no one ever asked about the dead American during the war. There was no fight in our village on the night he died. There was no crashing of a helicopter, no land mine explosion, no ambush. Soldiers moved through our village, both sides. Artillery always fell at night while we slept inside our family bunkers. We woke up and the American was lying dead on the trail outside our door. And my grandmother, sir, was the senior voice in our house. She told me to bury the soldier and to be quiet. We did not want any trouble, even then. She was the voice of the family and I must respect her.’

  A silence fell over the gathered men. The young woman reappeared with a second pot of tea, then slipped back into the darkness. Outside, the rain was falling harder. It was making little pops against the tin roof above them and they could hear it in the trees. The dogs were still yapping and the children were playing happily in the rain. Condley sipped fresh tea. He lit another cigarette. And finally enough time had passed that he could utter the ritual words of forgiveness.

  ‘Mr. Quyen, Mr. Minh, I would like to say on behalf of my government that I hope no harm will come to this man. After all, his family committed an act of great kindness when they allowed our soldier to be buried among their ancestors. If they had not shown him this respect, we would not have been able to come here today and recover his remains. So I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hao for the actions he took as a young man. And if it is permissible, we would like to examine the remains and then take them back to America.’

  An audible, relieved sigh filled the dank room. The village elders moved almost in unison as they returned empty teacups to their trays and rose from their little stools. For the first time, Le Xuan Minh smiled, showing off a mouth full of snaggled, tobacco-stained teeth. He reached across the table, shaking Condley’s hand.