The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 24

"No. Can you go without me?"

"Don't worry. I'll be fine."

Darrow struggled out of bed in the darkness behind her. "What's wrong?"

Helen picked up her camera bags. "Linh can't go."

Darrow rubbed his eyes and put on his gla.s.ses. "Come with me instead to My Tho this afternoon."

"I promised to cover this. Besides, I'll be with my old buddies, Captain Olsen's unit. I haven't seen him since the Captain Tong pictures." She felt confident that she could handle herself and also a small excitement proving she could go it alone. Now that it had been decided that they would leave soon, these final missions took on a feeling of nostalgia.

Darrow frowned and looked at Linh. "You sure you can't go with her?"

"I'm fine." She resented his treating her like she wasn't competent enough to go alone and now was more determined than ever. Besides, giving him some of his own medicine might make things move faster to leaving.

After Linh left, Darrow sat in the bed and watched her pack the additional equipment she would have to carry alone. "Don't go," he said.

"You're being silly."

"For me." He hadn't intended it, but now it was a kind of test.

A test she wouldn't take. "Remember asking why the people supposed to love us the most are the ones who try to stop us doing what we love?"

He had met his match and didn't much care for it.

Problems plagued the a.s.signment immediately. At Bien Hoa, one helicopter immediately. At Bien Hoa, one helicopter after another was diverted or canceled so that she didn't make it to the small village where Captain Olsen's unit was stationed until late afternoon.

The village hugged the edge of the jungle; it had been evacuated and bombed the month before. Nothing remained but piles of rubble and stone, a few freestanding walls pocked with bullet holes. From the first soldier she encountered, she heard more bad news--Captain Olsen had a recurrence of malaria and had been evacuated five days before. No one had bothered to inform her. His replacement, Captain Horner, fresh out of officer's training, had been in-country only two weeks.

Samuels came around the corner of a wall. "I heard chow and our good-luck charm had arrived. Need any leeches burned off those pretty ankles?"

Helen hugged him, glad to see a friendly face. "How's it going?"

Samuels wagged his head toward the soldier standing next to her. "He fill you in?

Hornblower. Already lost three men since he's been here. An idiot."

Helen tried to ignore the shiver climbing up her back. The first c.h.i.n.k in her confidence. Her smile filled with doubt. Should she have listened to Darrow?

"We'll be lucky if he doesn't get us all killed. b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Think about turning around and catching that ride out. Come back when Olsen's here."

"Then you won't have anyone to complain to." She wished it hadn't been Samuels in front of her; otherwise, she might have jumped back on the helicopter.

"Be careful is all I'm saying. Work us some magic like you did last time."

"I could do with some myself."

A patrol was coming in along a path, and at its middle was a scraggly, lanklimbed man who towered over the others, sweating profusely and swearing.

"That," Samuels said, putting his arm around her, "is our leader."

The captain walked straight up to Helen as if she were one more obstacle to be overcome before the long day was accomplished.

"Meet my girlfriend, Captain," Samuels said.

Horner had a long, thin neck with a prominent Adam's apple that jerked as he swallowed. "I guess you're the reporter I'm supposed to allow."

Helen slapped Samuels's arm off. "That's right."

"They just told me Adams."

"Not a very complete description." She already felt weary of the coming fight.

He puckered his face as if he had bitten something sour. "I guess they really do start you at the bottom. Second-rate soldiers and women reporters."

Helen was too distracted by what Samuels had said to take full offense.

Everything told her that she had made a mistake not turning around and leaving.

"You'll have to keep up on your own. And no fraternizing with the men."

"Who am I supposed to talk to, then?"

"You're a photographer. Why d'you need to talk?" He turned his face slightly to spit, then walked away.

"Told you," Samuels said. "A charmer. You still have time to leave."

Helen dropped her pack. "It'll torture him more if I stay."

That night, Horner ordered plastic ponchos strung in a triangle against the crumbling wall so that Helen was "protected" from the rest of the soldiers. She lay down in the darkness, wearing full uniform and boots. Stars pulsed overhead like the small spots of fire she remembered from bonfires on summer nights along the beach back home. After the hamlet, the night sounds--screech of birds deep in the jungle and hum of insects--felt familiar and soothing. The two sides were not fighting the same war. For the Vietnamese, everything was known, was home, even if they came from the north. For the Americans, even the sounds before going to sleep were strange and menacing.

The thought nagged at her that she had missed an opportunity with Darrow, insisting on going alone. But he took it for granted that she would give up anything for him. Unlike him, she hadn't been in Vietnam too long; she had barely started.

The plastic liner squeaked, and a man rolled in underneath it. "Shhh!"

Helen squinted, unable to make out a face but recognizing the voice. "Samuels, get out."

"A little Laos heaven? Or how 'bout a sip of dago red?"

"No thanks." A rotten smell came from him; they had been out for days, while she had showered that morning.

"Talk to me. Tell me about the big lovely world."

"If Hornblower finds you here, he'll can me."

"He's snoring away. And I have a lookout."

"Not a good idea." She was indulging him like a child, but it was too dangerous.

"So good to see you again... you have no idea. Just to touch something soft." He reached out and placed his hand on her stomach.

"If you don't leave when I count to three, I'll scream. Wake them all up."

He withdrew his hand. "Just remember this. I go to sleep every night dreaming about lying next to you in that foxhole. That's as close to a woman as I've been in a while."

"My heart breaks. Good night, Samuels," she said loudly, and he was gone in another squeak of plastic. In the dark, she heard chuckles all around.

At dawn they broke camp and walked, single file, along a narrow dirt road; tree camp and walked, single file, along a narrow dirt road; tree trunks and leaves and vines and bushes on each side so dense they formed a solid wall, curving overhead, forming a shadowed tunnel.

Samuels avoided her all morning, walking point, while Helen trudged behind Captain Horner. If possible, the captain's face seemed even thinner and bonier than the day before. When he spoke to her, the sight of his Adam's apple made him seem oddly vulnerable.

Now that she had exiled herself from Samuels and the other men, Horner seemed to have a change of heart and was anxious to include her on the mission, bring her to see his side of things. "This area is a major trade route for supplies from the north. We're supposed to figure out where they are and then bring in airpower."

"Sounds tough." She wondered if he was too green to know that he was being sent out as bait to see what was in the area.

"I don't get asked for my opinion on operations, you know?"

"Sorry."

"My goal is to get all these guys back to base in five days."

"Gotcha."

His profile was to her, and she saw his Adam's apple go up and down, twice, before he spoke. "I didn't mean for those men to die."

Helen looked up in surprise, but Horner's small, stony eyes revealed nothing, and it seemed as if the words had not come from him. "Understood," she said.

"But you don't write. I mean, you're only a photographer?"

Horner enforced strict discipline on the men. No talking, five feet between each on the men. No talking, five feet between each man, fire only when fired upon. Despite herself, she was impressed. They walked for two days in deep backcountry, not encountering another human being. Later, Helen would remember the patrol with the haziness of hallucination, the silence so complete it made one's ears ring. If one stood still, one could hear an undercurrent, a hum, to the forest, even the sound of water on leaves, trees dripping moisture as if they were perspiring.

Giant teak trunks blocked the sun, and the vegetation lay thick and snarled below; unseen animals crashed away through the brush while birds screamed overhead. A russetcolored dust floated in the air. The ground a springy compost that left behind perfect footprints; Helen thought of Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail. During the heat of the day, the air was so hot and thick it tasted green on the tongue, like swallowing a pond.

It was not Helen's job to keep track of where she was, only to follow the man in front of her, and so the days became a series of rutted paths climbed, narrow gra.s.sy valleys traversed, rocky dry streambeds to be crossed. In the morning, they woke to a thick fog that reduced visibility to the end of one's arm, m.u.f.fling sound so that their voices seemed to have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away. By noon, the sun burned away the fog. In a clearing, with blue sky overhead, the light emerged, harsh and chalky and forbidding.

Although their attention was strained, constantly on the lookout for an ambush or mines, the silence, as palpable as the sunlight, made them dreamy. Helen found long stretches of time when her mind was empty, her thoughts ceased; her present and immediate future and even her past, all receded. As free as she had ever felt in her life.

The illusion grew within her that she had always been in this forest. At times it seemed as if they were the only human beings left on the earth, and it was simply a fantasy to think that cities like Saigon or, for that matter, Los Angeles existed.

Two nights after the incident with Samuels, Helen dropped off a pack of cigarettes on his bedroll. The next morning, she found a small pyramid of canned peaches on her pack. Samuels moved back in formation so that he walked in front of Helen again, taking back his role of big brother.

"You stay right behind me. I'm charmed. No mine is going to get me."

On the fifth morning they reached their objective, a small plateau overlooking a valley with a village below. The relief on Horner's face made Helen start to like the man.

When they opened radio contact, they got orders to abandon their patrol and move as quickly as possible to the main road and head north. A convoy would pick them up en route and join them to two companies that had run into heavy NVA fire.

They fanned out and moved quickly down the gentle gra.s.s slope, their long, loose strides stirring up hundreds of greenish yellow gra.s.shoppers that jumped waist-high in their path. Helen felt like the prow of a ship, gra.s.s brushing her thighs, flecks of greengold insect life like the spray of water from a bow. The sun fell in heavy, flat planks, smothering sound, the great silence of the forest extending to the valley so that she felt they had been bewitched. Nature hushed and waiting for a misstep on their part to yawn awake.

They reached the rice paddies bordering the village. As far as they could see in any direction, no human being visible, their enchantment continued. The surface of the paddies feathered in the imperceptible breeze.

"Let's have three men go through the paddies," Horner said.

The men looked down or away. They weren't returning to base but were heading to combat; no one wanted the extra danger of the paddy. The men had told Helen that Horner ordered the men who had died to scout a paddy after a villager confessed it was mined.

"Who wants to volunteer?" Horner again asked, and the men, again, remained silent.

Helen felt sick to her stomach, the calm of the last week gone. For the first time in the five days, she desperately needed Linh or Darrow.

Finally Samuels coughed. "Captain, we need to meet up with the convoy. Why don't we skirt the paddy and village to reach the road quicker?"

"Negative. We will finish the original mission."

Samuels took a deep breath, and Helen wanted to reach out a cautionary arm but didn't.

"With all due respect, sir. An empty paddy in the middle of the day is a live one."

Two of the men shook their heads and began to hand off extra equipment.

Horner nodded, satisfied. "We'll need one more," he said, staring down at his map.

"Oh, f.u.c.k it," Samuels said, and threw off his equipment.

Helen crouched down and took a picture of the three men standing at the edge of the paddy. She got one picture of Samuels knee-deep in water, turning to give the other two a thumbs-up with his dragon-tattooed arm.

Ten minutes later she heard the shrill whistling of a mortar sh.e.l.l from the village.

They all ducked, but Helen looked in time to see the explosion of water all around Samuels. The other two men in the paddy splashed through the water, reaching him as sh.e.l.ls burst at their old positions. They all ran to the shelter of a paddy dike.

"s.h.i.t!" Horner yelled. He flattened on the ground, and when he saw Helen rise to take a shot, he screamed, "Down!" After a few minutes, the sh.e.l.ling stopped. The three men in the paddy scuttled back across the water and scrambled up the bank, collapsing next to Helen.

Samuels was panting. "Not a scratch."

The men chuckled and spread out, gulped water from their canteens.

Figuring she had enough shots, Helen took off her lens and put the camera away, intending to have a smoke.

"That was close," one of them said.

"Everyone's okay," Horner said.

"No thanks to you, stupid motherf.u.c.ker," Samuels said and glared up at Horner.

Horner scanned the village with his binoculars but said nothing. The other two soldiers remained silent. The air tense, Helen almost wished another mortar would fire just to distract them.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n West Point a.s.shole," Samuels continued.

"Did you make it to the other side of the paddy?" Horner asked sadly.