The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 37

What effort and bitterness!

Helen stretched. "I'm taking you out for a big dinner when we get back to Saigon." She had felt ashamed at Lan's house, so obvious that the American's beneficence simply corrupted.

Linh began to refuse but stopped when he saw her look of disappointment. After their intimacy during her illness, he didn't know how to act with Helen in public. He didn't know what to do with this woman.

"Good. It's settled," she said.

He smiled, at a loss.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I am thinking I would like to sit at the Continental and drink a very cold gin and tonic and eat a club sandwich."

On a.s.signment as part of a "pink team," a hunter/killer helicopter team, Helen of a "pink team," a hunter/killer helicopter team, Helen and Linh squeezed together in the observer seat of a tiny Loach on their way to join Cobra gunships going out on a mission. The pilot was early and asked if they wanted to run a little "scenic recon," a joyride through the mountains along the Laos border.

"The two of you together aren't as heavy as the gunman." The pilot laughed, finding the idea especially hilarious that morning.

They sat pinned against each other, the front of the helicopter a bubble floating over the land, nothing blocking their view but the metal floor and control panel. The razored mountaintops tangled in fog. The observation heli cop ter hung, birdlike, over trees and wrapped itself between rocky peaks plunging hundreds of feet into narrow ravines, dark even at noon. They hovered over giant waterfalls, bamboo thickets, hardwood forest, broadleaf jungle, all interlaced with small, jewel-like fields of elephant gra.s.s. In an hour, the only human they spotted was a lone Montagnard tribesman.

Helen's eyes hurt from the strain of searching for movement in a sea of green, the ride so vivid it was like a dream of flying, a magic carpet ride. Trees flew beneath her feet. The rush of green and sunlight lulled her, the pilot pulling up and the machine shuddering against gravity. She had a vision then, an infinity of green, her body tingling with heat despite the cool air in the helicopter. She burned and closed her eyes.

Linh, sitting next to her, scanned the terrain through binoculars. He placed his hand over hers, then gave her the gla.s.ses and pointed to a rocky cliff. "See, Helen? Come back now," he said in her ear above the roar of the engine.

As she focused the gla.s.ses on the dirt track under the cliff, a tiger stepped out into full view. The orange and black stripes burned against her eyes after the torrent of green.

The animal stood calm, detached, eyeing the land below him. Only total isolation would give him the arrogance of ignoring the pounding machine overhead. He stood for another moment, head lifted, testing the air, as the helicopter swung around to pa.s.s over him, the pilot maneuvering for a closer sight line, his hand reaching for the M16 at his feet, but in a single flex of movement the animal stretched, his body attenuated long and thin, a wisp of smoke blown away, and the rock ledge was empty.

"d.a.m.n, did you see that?" the pilot shouted, elated.

Helen smiled at the pilot and looked ahead, but what she felt was the brief second Linh's hand had covered her own. Like a single jolt of electricity. He was right. She had been far away, closed off, but now she could see. She leaned and whispered, "I'm here with you now."

SIXTEEN.

Tay Nguyen Western Highlands The war changed, and she was changed within it. she was changed within it.

A major battle was mounting in the Dak To valley area in the Central Highlands, the same area that had seen horrific battles years earlier in the war. A paratrooper squadron that Helen had covered several times before had been defeated, and now infantry companies were being sent up to fight entrenched enemy positions.

Rumors were that the handful of remaining soldiers had called down strikes on their own position, hoping that if they missed a direct hit, they might escape in the chaos.

To Gary she insisted on covering the story--they were her soldiers and her area-but when she went to the bathroom afterward, she could not stop her hands from shaking.

Foreknowledge a curse.

"You don't have to go," Linh said.

"I want to. The soldiers don't get to choose." What she meant was that she needed needed to, that the tension she felt was the thing she had been missing in California. That adrenaline coursing through her.

"You've already proved you're brave."

"Every good war picture is an antiwar picture. Why am I here otherwise?" She laughed at Linh. "Stop worrying. Anyway, I've become one of the charmed, haven't you heard?"

The Vietnamese called them the Tay Nguyen, the Western Highlands, because the Tay Nguyen, the Western Highlands, because in their minds they still saw the country as a whole, not accepting the artificial divisions of north and south.

Names were important.

Names, finally, were the only thing the Vietnamese had left. For a whole period of history, Vietnam existed only on the tip of someone's tongue, forbidden to be said out loud.

Geography became power.

Names given to pieces of land or sea or mountain told who was in control. The Vietnamese were irritated by the Americans' sense of place. Especially irksome was the name South China Sea, locating their Eastern Sea in relation to their traditional enemy, China. Another irritant, the Far East--far east in relation to what? They had had this problem before.

The French referred to the Highlands as the Hauts Plateaux, a sensible descriptive name for the plateau stretching from the southern border of North Vietnam to within a hundred miles of Saigon, from a thin strip of cultivable land on the east to the fierce mountains of the Annamese Cordillera. Annamese another slap in the face--a French colonial fantasy meant to obliterate the original Vietnam. They called their mountains the Truong Son. Why, they asked, should Vietnamese use foreign words to rename their own land?

Helen had her own geographies. She knew the land by its colors--the Mekong always greens and golds and blues, the light soft, opaque from the water on the earth and in the air. Soldiers inevitably covered with dirt, the dirt of the delta heavily mixed with clay along the waterways so that it dried whitish on the faces and bodies of both the living and the dead. The Central Highlands were a land of chiaroscuro, sharp shadows, subtle gradations so that green could range from black to the most delicate shade of moss.

Forests of browns and blacks, hardwood torn up by B-52s, moonscape tracts of gray, uprooted trunks and roots creating surreal sculpture. The soil a deep, rich laterite red that rouged uniforms and faces of the soldiers and faded over time to the rusted color of dried blood.

Her geographies, too, were full of dangerous curves and valleys; she had to remain constantly in flight, never alighting in one place too long, never putting weight on the crust of the earth that might give way. A line from Tacitus was continually in her mind: In his sorrow he found one source of relief in war In his sorrow he found one source of relief in war.

They made their way up on ammunition drops and convoys until they reached up on ammunition drops and convoys until they reached field headquarters in a dusty, barren valley in the foothills. The press tent was in chaos, and in the command tent radio reports came in that helicopter after helicopter was being shot down. No evacuations in the last twenty-four hours. Calculations had ammunition on top of the hill running out by morning.

Infantry companies would go on foot through the jungle and fight their way to the pinned-down men. The surrounding hills echoed with NVA regiments, a nonstop barrage of weaponry.

Food was served to the departing soldiers but because of conflicting departure orders, they got a mix of breakfast and lunch. The men piled the food up on their plates, carrots against scrambled eggs, prime rib coupled with pineapple cake and grits. All fuel, it seemed like a good idea to fill the belly, another armor to survive. The food flown in that morning cheered up the young, scared faces; they took it as a demonstration of their value. Helen grew queasy at the sight of the bounty, knowing the perversity of military thinking, that the best food was reserved for the doomed. Literal last meals, but even with that knowledge, Helen chewed her food, not tasting, but sure that days or even hours from then, the idea of not eating would torment her. She chose to be full only in order to have the issue of hunger not interfere.

When Helen made her request to accompany one of the relief companies, the PIO flatly denied her. "This is critical stuff. Way too dangerous to allow a woman."

"I've covered these companies before--"

"Don't bother. I can't spare a man to escort you."

"I've been covering combat for two years--"

He made a long, sour face. "Regulations."

"Not for me. I covered this area in--"

"Regulations, understand?"

"--in 'sixty-six, before you even knew where Vietnam was."

"We don't need a dead woman."

From behind her, she heard a loud voice and felt a heavy hand clap down on her shoulder. "Helen Adams."

She turned and came face-to-face with Captain Olsen. Unchanged from two and a half years before, as if that dreary day in the Mekong were only yesterday.

"You must have made a deal with the devil," she said. "You look younger than when I last saw you."

"Just a little malaria and desk work."

"I went out with your replacement, Horner."

"That was a cursed mission. A d.a.m.ned shame."

Helen didn't mention Samuels, but he didn't need mentioning. She could see the responsibility for it in Captain Olsen's eyes. No Dorian Gray after all.

"This man here"--Helen pointed at the PIO--"is denying me clearance. My company is already moving out."

"Lowen, you giving this girl a hard time?"

"He said I'd be demoralizing dead."

"A real lady's man, huh? This is the girl who made me a hero. The eight-hundredpound gorilla of picture takers. Let her have what she wants."

The PIO made a face. "Go. Get a .45."

"I won't carry a weapon," Helen said.

The PIO paused, his face scrunched up. "If she's your friend, I'd brief her."

Captain Olsen took Helen's arm and moved off toward the mess. Helen motioned Linh over. "I want to cover this," she said.

Olsen nodded and shook Linh's hand. "Lowen's an a.s.s, but he's right on this one.

Things are bad up there. Take the gun."

Helen shook her head.

"Serious. No one is going to help you up there."

"I'll carry it," Linh said.

When they came back, the PIO was smoking a cigarette.

"Smoking's bad for you," Helen said.

"If we're carrying weapons," Linh said, "I want an M16 and and the .45." the .45."

The PIO turned red. "s.h.i.t, I don't believe this." He glared at Olsen, who ignored him. "You ever shot one of these?"

Linh didn't hesitate. "Many times."

Hours later, climbing from dense jungle to hardwood forest then back to jungle, dense jungle to hardwood forest then back to jungle, they reached the base of the mountain at dusk. They squatted in place along the path, Helen resting her back against a tree. Usually, they'd set camp for the night, but time was essential; in the morning there might not be anyone left. Artillery barrages and air strikes on the surrounding hills deafened them; ground shook as they climbed over fallen trees blocking the narrow, steep dirt path.

As they approached the crest where the company was pinned down, parachute flares illuminated the landscape in an eerie light. As far as the eye could see, trees splintered and burned, a whole forest of devastation. Heavy smoke forming a fog. The flare died into a deeper, more eerie darkness.

As the company marched the final distance of several hundred yards in the dark they pa.s.sed fallen logs, singly, then in cl.u.s.ters, then in mounds, discovering to their horror in the illumination of another flare the shapes were not logs but bodies. Stripped of uniforms, boots, weapons, resembling splayed and disfigured trees.

In the middle of the night, the relief company stumbled the last few feet to reach the Americans occupying a small circle of abandoned enemy bunkers. Out of a force of more than a hundred, only a dozen men remained. They had been without food for a day, strung out along the shallow forward observation bunkers.

After they briefed the new troops, the men devoured rations, then fell asleep on the bunker floor. One of the men, grimy faced, still held a spoon as he slept. Helen attached a flash and took his picture. Another picture of the sign made from the top of an ammo crate at the bunker entrance: WELCOME TO h.e.l.l .

A black soldier, PFC Simmons, stood next to Helen. "Looks like we're none too early."

"They hung them out, sending them up here alone," she said.

"Then what about us, lady?" he asked.

Nothing for Helen and Linh to do until daylight but sit and wait, the air rotten with the smell of bodies in the woods around them, smoke from the fires dotting the surrounding hills. Her eyes stung. She tried to wash them out with water, but it was no use, so she closed them and tried to rest, pressing against the damp dirt wall of the bunker. She dozed through the night, grabbing fistfuls of minutes, only to be startled awake by the slamming of rockets, the hiss of metal shards driven into what ever they came into contact with, the overhead dirt roof slowly trickling down on them.

After several hours, she slid down until her head was in Linh's lap, and he placed his hand over her ear to m.u.f.fle the sound so that although she still could hear the barrages, the noise was distanced by the thickness of one hand. His cupped palm gave her the buzz of blood, the pulse of the ocean, the childish certainty that nothing could happen to her while she was protected in this way.

At four in the morning the frequency of the mortars increased, and a sergeant ordered Helen and Linh to move to the deeper back bunkers. Unfamiliar with the area aboveground, they asked to take their chances and stay put, but the sergeant wouldn't argue the point.

They crouched and scuttled across the broken, debris-strewn ground. The opening was supposed to be only ten feet from the observation bunker, but they traveled at least thirty feet until they ran into the tree line. They retraced their way back and veered to the left, finding a larger entrance than the sergeant described, but the shriek of incoming made the decision for them. Helen threw herself onto the ground inside, Linh at her back, the fall of several feet knocking the wind out of her while a mortar exploded twenty yards away. Underneath, in the darkness, she felt something smooth and clammy and realized she was sinking into human flesh.

Helen jumped, taking her chances outside rather than trapped in the ground. She doused herself with her remaining water, took her soiled shirt off over her T-shirt. She huddled against a low wall of sandbags. Mortars rang in her ears, strangling sound, and she could make out Linh's words only when he came close.

"Go back." He pointed to the observation bunker.

Nervous tears ran down her face. She couldn't stop them although she didn't feel afraid, didn't feel anything at all. The constant bottoming fear of being hurt or worse gone. But the biggest danger was after the fear left. She yelled at Linh, "Go ahead. I'm better out here."

He sat down next to her, and she shook her head, pushing at him to go away, but he stayed at her side. Later, when she calmed down, they crawled to another empty bunker for the rest of the night. The sh.e.l.ling continued until dawn. At first light they made their way back the observation bunker. The sergeant took a look at Helen and handed her his cup of lukewarm coffee made with a packet of instant and a heat tab.

Half an hour later, in the gray foggy light of morning, she saw American soldiers approaching through the trees. The sergeant took out his binoculars. Helen felt relief that the ordeal was over; her head dull, she felt something was wrong, but still no fear. Linh said the soldiers were coming from the wrong direction, not from the trail they had used.

The sergeant trained his binoculars through the fog. When the soldiers were less than fifty yards away, Helen saw a lead soldier raise his machine gun. Her thoughts slowed.

She felt cool and divorced from what was happening in front of her. Maybe the soldiers thought that Vietnamese were in the bunkers? The soldier opened fire, a spray of bullets, and Helen frowned, unable to comprehend the sight before her eyes. The sergeant screamed words to the other men in the bunker who opened fire on the men walking through the trees.

When the fog burned off, B-52s dropped canisters of napalm that set the surrounding hills on fire, the sky swirled gray and blue. Next came gunships, and this time they were able to get in and out unharmed. They had either broken the enemy or he had retreated.

Helen stood outside the bunker, looking at the area that she had only been able to grope her way through in the dark. In the white light of fog and smoke, she could make out the charred remains of trees and bodies. She brought her camera up to her eye, a relief. She followed the soldiers through the trees and took pictures of the dead Vietnamese in American uniforms. Those wounded lying silent, uncomplaining, resigned to their fate. Not expecting any help. Helen was struck by the foreignness of this reaction, the extreme capacity for hardship, and she couldn't help feeling a disagreeable respect.

The Americans hated the enemy's willingness to use civilians, to dress in the enemy's uniforms, and yet playing by conventional rules would have lost the war.

American soldiers crawled out from beneath the ground, faces lean and dark, eyes like sharp knives from being afraid too long, uniforms molded to their bodies, patinaed by sweat and dirt. As they stretched stiff, cramped bodies and moved through camp, they grew more animated until Helen captured a shot of two soldiers lobbing a C-ration can like a football, a moment of relief at surviving the night.

She walked the camp and took pictures, simply a matter of composition and aperture and shutter speed. This was a bigger battle, with more casualties than she had ever before witnessed, and yet she felt less, actually felt nothing.