Up Country Part 20

"Of course it is. You're from Ma.s.sachusetts. Plus, I like you."

"Well, I like you, too. That's why I want you to stay out of this."

"It's your show." She jumped on the big Ural, and I got on the back, which was much roomier and more comfortable than the motor scooter. She had a backrest, which had a grip for me to hold on to. She started the engine, and the roar echoed off the low ceiling.

Susan pulled out of the parking area, and we headed south and crossed another small bridge over a stream, and off the island. To my left I could see the wide expanse of the Saigon River, filled with pleasure boats on this Sunday afternoon.

Susan pulled off to the side of the road, turned to me and said, "If they think you're up to something, they won't kick you out. They'll watch you."

I didn't reply.

"If they arrest you, they'll do it in some small town where they can do what they want with you. That's why it would be good if you had someone with you."

"Why wouldn't they arrest you, too?"

"Because I'm an important member of the American business community, and it would cause a real stink if I were arrested for no reason."

I replied, "Well, if I need a nanny along, I'll let you know."

She said, "You're a cool customer, Mr. Brenner."

"I've been in worse situations."

"You don't know that yet."

She gunned the motorcycle and bounced back onto the road.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

We headed west through a mixed landscape of rural and urban: rice paddies, new industrial parks, primitive villages, and high-rise apartments.

Within twenty minutes, we had left the urban sprawl behind us, and we were into the open country. Motor traffic was light on a Sunday afternoon, but there were lots of ox carts, bicycles, and pedestrians, which Susan wove through without slowing down, horn honking almost continuously.

The countryside had gone from low-lying rice paddies to rolling terrain; vegetable plots, pasture, and cl.u.s.ters of small trees.

Now and then, I'd see a pond, which I could identify as a bomb crater. From the air, they used to come in three colors: clear blue water, muddy brown water, and red water. The red water indicated a direct hit on a bunker with lots of people in it. People soup, we called them.

Susan shouted above the noise of the engine, "Isn't this beautiful country?"

I didn't reply.

We pa.s.sed four wrecked American-made M-48 tanks, which all had the faded markings of the former South Vietnamese army on them, and I a.s.sumed they had been destroyed in April 1975 by the North Vietnamese as they drove toward the final battle of Saigon, which mercifully never took place.

A huge cemetery appeared around a curve in the road, and I said to Susan, "Stop here."

She pulled off the road, and we dismounted. I went through an opening in a low wall and stood among the thousands of lichen-covered stone slabs lying flat on the ground. Stuck in the ground beside some of the slabs were red flags with a yellow star in the center. On each of the slabs was a ceramic bowl that held joss sticks, some of which were smoking.

An old man walked up to us, and he and Susan had a short conversation.

Susan said to me, "This cemetery is mostly for the local Viet Cong and their families. That part of the cemetery is for the North Vietnamese who died liberating the South-well, he said liberating. I guess you-we would say invading."

"Ask him if there's a South Vietnamese military cemetery around here."

They conversed, and Susan said, "Such cemeteries are forbidden. He says that the North Vietnamese bulldozed all the South Vietnamese military cemeteries. This makes him sad and angry because he cannot honor the grave of his son, who was killed while serving with the South Vietnamese army. His other son was a Viet Cong and is buried here."

I thought about that, and about our own Civil War cemeteries that honored the North and the South. But here, all memory of the defeated nation seemed to have been obliterated, or displayed in a dishonorable way, like the wrecked tanks that had been left as reminders of the Communist victory.

I saw an old lady sitting against the wall selling joss sticks. I gave her a dollar and took a joss stick. I walked to the closest grave and read the inscription: Hoang Van Ngoc, trung-uy, 1949"1975 Hoang Van Ngoc, trung-uy, 1949"1975. He was born the same year as me, but thankfully that's all we had in common. Susan came up beside me and lit the joss stick with her lighter. The smoke and smell of incense rose into the air.

I don't pray, unless I'm being directly shot at, but I put the stick in the bowl, thinking about the 300,000 North Vietnamese missing who had no grave markers, our two thousand who were missing, and the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers who I'd just discovered lay underground in bulldozed cemeteries. I thought about the Wall, about Karl and me standing there, then about Tran Van Vinh.

One part of me said that Tran Van Vinh could not possibly be alive, while another part of me was convinced that he was. My conviction was based partly on my own ego; Paul Brenner had not come this far to find a dead man. Partly, too, there was that almost miraculous set of circ.u.mstances that had led me here, and which, as a rational person, I wanted to discount, but couldn't. And finally, there was this suspicion that Karl and his friends knew something I didn't know.

I turned away from the grave, and we walked back to the motorcycle.

We continued on. I remembered this area west of Saigon because I had ridden shotgun a few times with convoys to Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border. In those days, the rural population lived mostly in strategic hamlets, meaning guarded compounds, and the ones who didn't were Viet Cong who lived in the Cu Chi tunnels. Then there were the part-time VC-pro-Saigon government by day, dinner with the family, then off to the night shift with the AK-47.

This area between the Cambo border and the outskirts of Saigon had been heavily contested throughout the war, and I recalled reading somewhere that it was the most bombed and sh.e.l.led piece of real estate in the history of warfare. That could be true, from what I remembered.

I also recalled a lot of defoliation with Agent Orange, and when the vegetation was all dead and brown, the American bombers would drop napalm and set the countryside on fire. The pall of black smoke would hang for days until a rain came and deposited wet soot on everything.

This is what the generals could see from the rooftop of the Rex, if they looked west during dinner.

I saw that the vegetation had come back, but it didn't look right; it looked scrawny and spa.r.s.e, the result no doubt of the residual defoliants in the soil.

The Ural 750 made a lot more noise than an equivalent American or j.a.panese motorcycle, so we didn't talk much.

We'd been on the road about an hour, and now we were heading northwest toward Cu Chi and Tay Ninh, which was where Route 22 went. Funny, I still get lost in northern Virginia, but I knew this road. Obviously, it was important to me once.

We entered Cu Chi, which I remembered as a small heavily fortified provincial town, but which was now a bustling place of new buildings, paved streets, and karaoke parlors. It was hard to imagine the intense fighting that had gone on in and around this town for thirty years, beginning with the French Indochina War in 1946, through the American War, and ending with the Vietnamese themselves in a fight to the finish.

Red flags flew everywhere, and in the center of a traffic circle was yet another North Vietnamese tank on a concrete platform surrounded by flags and flowers.

Susan turned into what looked like the main street, then she pulled over and stopped. We dismounted, and I chained the motorcycle to a rack as Susan took her camera out of the saddlebag.

We stretched and beat the red dust off our clothes. She asked me, "Have you ever been here?"

"A few times. On my way to Tay Ninh."

"Really? What were you doing in Tay Ninh?"

"Nothing. Part of a convoy escort, as I recall. Bien Hoa to Cu Chi to Tay Ninh, then back before dark."

"Amazing."

I wasn't quite sure what was amazing, and I didn't ask. My b.u.t.t was sore, my legs ached, and I had dust in all my body orifices.

We took a walk along the main street, and I was surprised to see groups of Westerners. I asked Susan, "Are these people lost?"

"You mean the Americans? They're here to see the famous Cu Chi tunnels. They're a big tourist attraction."

"Are you kidding?"

"No. Do you want to see the tunnels?"

"I want to see a cold beer."

We turned into an open cafe and sat at a small table.

A young boy hurried over, and Susan ordered two beers, which materialized in a few seconds, sans gla.s.ses. So we sat there, covered with dust, chugging beer from bottles without labels, Susan smoking, still wearing her sungla.s.ses.

The sinking sun was angled below the cafe's canopy, and it was hot. I commented, "I forgot how warm it is here in February."

"It's cooler up north. As soon as you go over Cloudy Pa.s.s, the weather changes. It's rainy season up there."

"I remember that from '68."

Susan seemed to be staring off in s.p.a.ce, then said, as if to herself, "Even all these years after the last shot was fired, the war hangs over this place... like that guy across the street."

I looked across the street and saw an old man swinging on crutches, one leg missing, and part of one arm also gone.

She said, "And those tanks on the sides of the road, the Cu Chi tunnels, military cemeteries all over the place, battlefield monuments, and war museums in every town, young men and women with no living parents... I kind of ignored all this when I first got here, but you can't ignore it. It's everywhere, and I don't even see half of it."

I didn't respond.

Susan continued, "It's also part of the economy, the reason for a lot of the tourism here. The young expats sort of make fun of all this war nostalgia-you know, the vets coming back to see this and that. They... we call it visiting Cong World. That's pretty awful. Very insensitive. That must p.i.s.s you off."

I didn't reply.

She said, "That was nice of you-the joss stick."

Again, I didn't reply, so we sat in silence. Finally, I said, "It's very strange being back here... I'm seeing something you're not seeing... recalling things you never experienced... and I don't want to get weird on you... but now and then..."

"It's okay. Really. I just wish you'd talk about it."

"I don't think I have the words for how I feel."

"Do you want to go back to Saigon?"

"No. I'm actually enjoying this more than not enjoying it. Must be the company."

"Must be. It's sure not the heat and the dust."

"Or your driving."

She called the boy over, gave him a dollar, said something to him, and he ran off into the street. A few minutes later, he was back with a pair of sungla.s.ses and a wad of dong in his hand, which Susan told him to keep. She opened the sungla.s.ses and put them on me. She said, "There, you look like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider."

I smiled.

Susan picked up her camera and said, "Look tough."

"I am am tough." tough."

She snapped a picture of me.

Susan gave the camera to the boy, then pulled her chair next to mine, and threw her arm around me. The kid took a shot of us with our heads together and bottles touching. I said, "Get a few extras for Bill."

Susan took the camera from the boy and said, "Can I send these to your house, or will that cause a problem?"

I recognized the question for what it was and replied, "I live alone."

"Me, too."

We used the single WC in the rear and washed off the road dust. Susan gave the proprietor a dollar for both beers and exchanged New Year's greetings with him. We went out to the street and walked back to the motorcycle. Susan asked me, "Would you like to drive?"

"Sure."

She slung the camera over her shoulder, gave me the keys, and we mounted up. I started the engine, and Susan gave me a quick course on driving a Russian Ural. She said, "The gears are a little sticky, the front brakes are soft, and the back brakes grab. The acceleration may be a little faster than you're used to, and the front tends to climb. Otherwise, it's a dream to drive."

"Right. Hold on." I found myself going too fast down the main street. I pa.s.sed two cops sitting on their bicycles, and they yelled something at me. "Do they want me to stop?"

"No. They said have a nice day. Keep going."

Within ten minutes, we left the town of Cu Chi behind, and I was getting the hang of the machine, but the congestion on the narrow road was giving me some problems.

"Use your horn. You have to warn people. That's the way they do it here."

I found the b.u.t.ton and blasted the horn as I swerved through bicycles, pedestrians, motor scooters, Lambrettas, pigs, and ox carts.

Susan leaned forward and put her right arm around my waist and her left hand on my shoulder. She said, "You're doing fine."

"They don't think so."

She gave me directions, and within a few minutes, we were off on a narrow road that was barely paved.

I asked, "Where are we going?"

"Cu Chi tunnels straight ahead."

After a few more kilometers, I could see ahead to a flat open area where a half dozen buses were parked in a field. Susan said, "Pull into that parking field."

I pulled into the dirt field partially shaded by scraggly trees.