Up Country Part 76

Susan leaned forward and looked at the gas gauge. She said, "We need gas. We just pa.s.sed a station. Turn around."

"There should be another one up ahead. Some of them give away rice bowls with a fill-up."

"Paul, turn around."

I made a sharp U-turn, and we pulled into the gas station and up to a hand crank pump. I shut off the engine, and we dismounted.

The attendant sat in a small open concrete structure and watched us, but didn't move. Clearly, this was a state-owned facility, and unlike anything I'd seen south of the DMZ. It was still very socialist here, and the good news about capitalist greed and consumer marketing had not reached into Uncle Ho territory yet.

I turned the hand crank, and Susan held the nozzle in the gas fill.

Susan said, "Crank faster."

"I'm cranking as fast as a European socialist would crank."

She said to me, "When we pay this guy, we're French."

"Bon."

I squeezed thirty-five liters into the big tank, and I looked at the total. I said, "Twenty-one thousand dong. That's not bad. About two bucks."

She said, "It's in hundreds, Paul. Two hundred and ten thousand dong. Still cheap."

"Good. You pay."

The gas station attendant had wandered over, and Susan said to him, "Bonjour, monsieur."

I added, "Comment ca va?"

He didn't reply in any language, but looked at the bike as Susan counted out 210,000 dong with Uncle Ho's picture on the notes. I pointed to Uncle Ho and said, "Numero uno hombre," which may have been the wrong language. Susan kicked my ankle.

The attendant looked us over, then looked again at the bike. We mounted up, and Susan said to the guy, "Le tour de Hue"Hanoi."

I accelerated out of there before the guy got wise to us.

We continued north on Highway One, then we pulled over and got into our Montagnard scarves and the fur-trimmed leather hats.

Susan said to me, "Why the h.e.l.l did you say 'numero uno hombre'?"

"You know-Uncle Ho is a number one guy."

"That was Spanish."

"What difference does it make? You're French, I'm Spanish."

"Sometimes your joking around is inappropriate for the situation."

I thought about that and replied, "It's an old habit. Infantry guys do that when it gets tense. Cops, too. Maybe it's a guy thing."

She informed me, "Sometimes you make the situation worse with your smart-a.s.s remarks-like with Colonel Mang, and you and Bill going to Princeton together."

Susan was in a b.i.t.c.hy mood, and I hoped it was PMS and not morning sickness.

Highway One was the only major north"south artery in this congested country, and even though traffic was supposed to be light because of the holiday, it seemed like half the population was using the two pathetic lanes of bad blacktop. We never got above sixty KPH, and every inch of the road was a challenge.

It took us nearly two hours to travel the hundred kilometers to the next major town of Thanh Hoa. It was pushing 3 P.M. P.M., and it was getting cold. The sky was heavy with gray clouds, and now and then we pa.s.sed through an area of light rain; crachin, rain dust. My stomach was growling.

I called back to Susan, "This should be Thanh Hoa. This is the first place we can head west and north toward Route 6."

"Your call."

I looked at the odometer. We'd come almost 560 kilometers from Hue, and it had taken us over eight hours. It was now 3:16 P.M. P.M., and we had less than four hours of daylight left.

I played around with a few options and decided that since it wasn't raining, I should get on the bad road now, and get as close as I could to Route 6 before the sun set; tomorrow could be raining and the next secondary road to Route 6 could be impa.s.sable, which was what Mr. Anh had been trying to tell me in his little briefing. I said to Susan, "We'll take the road out of Thanh Hoa. If we don't like it, we can go back and try the next one."

We entered the town of Thanh Hoa, still wearing our Montagnard scarves and leather hats. The town apparently hadn't been obliterated in the war, and it had a little charm. In fact, I saw an old gent wearing a beret, and there were a few hotels and cafes that hadn't been built by the East Germans.

A few people glanced at us, and a few cops in front of the police station gave us the eye.

Susan said, "They don't see that many Montagnards on the coast, so they're curious, but not suspicious. It's like American Indians coming into a Western town."

"Are you making this up?"

"Yes."

We got through the town, and I saw a small, blacktopped road to the left. A sign said Dong Son Dong Son and something in Vietnamese. I slowed down and pointed. and something in Vietnamese. I slowed down and pointed.

Susan said, "It's an archaeological site... the Dong Son culture, whatever that is... one thousand years before the common era. Maybe the road is newer."

I turned into the narrow road and drove about a hundred meters, then stopped.

I pulled the map out of the pouch and looked at it. I said, "This is the road. We take this about fifty klicks to some little village called Bai-what-ever, then head north on Route 15 to Route 6."

"Let me see that."

I handed her the map, and she studied it in silence. She put the map in her jacket and said, "Okay. Let's go."

I kicked the BMW into gear and off we went. The road pa.s.sed the archaeological digs, then the blacktop disappeared. The dirt road was rutted from carts and vehicles, and I kept the motorcycle between the ruts, which was a little better.

We were barely bouncing along at forty KPH, a little over twenty miles an hour, less sometimes.

The terrain was still flat, but rising. There were some rice paddies, but these disappeared and vegetable plots took over.

The BMW Paris-Dakar was indeed a good dirt bike, but the dirt wasn't so good. I had trouble holding on to the grips, and my a.s.s was more off the saddle than on. Susan was holding on to me tight. I said, "We're going to feel this in the morning."

"I feel it now."

It took us nearly two hours to cover the forty kilometers to the end of the road. We entered the little village called Bai-something, and the road ended in a T-junction. I took the road to the right, which was Route 15, and the dirt was in better condition. In fact, there was gravel on the road, and the road was crowned and had drainage ditches on both sides.

According to the map, it was over a hundred kilometers to Route 6, and at this speed, it would take at least four hours to get there. It was now 5:40 P.M. P.M., and the sun was going down behind the mountains to my left.

The road rose into the hills ahead, and I could see higher hills with mountains behind them. We didn't speak much because it was hard to get the words out with all the bouncing.

It was almost dark, and I was looking for a place to stop for the night. We were definitely in the hills now, and the Viets didn't live much away from the towns, villages, and agricultural areas. Pine trees came up to the sides of the road, and it was getting spooky. I stopped the bike and took a rest. I said to Susan, "Maybe there's a ski lodge up ahead."

She took the map out of her jacket and looked at it. "There's a village up ahead called Lang Chanh, about twenty klicks."

I thought a moment, then said, "I don't think I want to go into a North Viet village after dark."

"Neither do I."

"Well... I guess this is it." I looked around. "Let's find a place to hide us and the bike."

"Paul, nothing is moving on this road now. You could sleep in the middle of it."

"Good point." I wheeled the bike up a few meters and rested it against the trunks of some pine trees.

Susan opened a saddlebag and took out the last two bananas, the last bottle of water, and the two rain ponchos.

We sat near the bike with our backs against two pine trees, and I peeled my banana. I said, "Here's some good news. No land leeches in the pine forest."

"Chiggers and ticks."

We ate the bananas and drank the water and watched the light fade. There was a thick cloud cover, and it was pitch dark around us. We could hear sounds in the pine forest, like small animals scurrying around.

She lit a cigarette and looked at the map by the flame of her cigarette lighter. She said, "Another four hundred kilometers to Dien Bien Phu."

We sat in silence and listened to the night. I asked her, "Did you camp out as a kid?"

"Not when I could avoid it. Did you?"

"Well, not when I lived in South Boston. But in the army, I camped out a lot. I once figured that I spent over six hundred nights under the stars. Sometimes it's nice."

A loud clap of thunder rolled through the hills and a breeze came up. It was either cold here, or I'd been in 'Nam too long. I said, "Sometimes it's not."

Susan lit another cigarette and asked me, "Want one? It curbs your appet.i.te."

"I just had a banana."

It started to rain, and we put our ponchos over our heads. We moved closer together to conserve body heat and wrapped the ponchos tighter around us. I said, "Crachin. Rain dust."

"No, this is real f.u.c.king rain."

The rain got heavier, and the wind got stronger.

Susan asked me, "How much are they paying you for this?"

"Just expenses."

She laughed.

We were both soaked, and we started to shiver. I remembered these cold, wet evenings in the winter of 1968, dug into the mud with nothing more than a rubber poncho, and the sky was filled with pyrotechnics that had a terrible beauty in the black rain.

Susan must have been thinking the same thing, and she asked me, "Is this how it was?"

"Sort of... actually, it was worse because you knew it was going to be the same every night until the winter rains ended in March... and you had the extra problem of people on the prowl who were trying to kill you." I paused and said, "That's it for the war, Susan. It's over. Really."

"Okay. That's it for the war. The war is over."

We wrapped the ponchos around us, and lay down together in the rain under the pine trees.

It rained through the night, and we shivered in the rubber ponchos and got as close as we could to each other.

Tomorrow was Dien Bien Phu, if we made it, then the hamlet of Ban Hin, and the person or grave of Tran Van Vinh.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

A gray dawn filtered through the dripping pine trees. gray dawn filtered through the dripping pine trees.

We unwrapped ourselves from the wet ponchos, yawned and stretched. We were both soaking wet and cold, and a chill had seeped into my bones. Susan didn't look well.

We shook out our ponchos and rolled them up. We opened the saddlebags and took out dry socks, underwear, and clothes from our backpacks, changed, and threw our wet jeans and shirts into the trees; we didn't need many more days of clothes. Maybe fewer than we thought.

Susan had more Montagnard scarves in the saddlebags, and we used one to wipe down the bike, then put on the others and changed tribes.

We did a quick map check and got on the BMW. The engine started easily, and off we went, north on Route 15 to Route 6.

The road was mostly red clay and bits of shale that provided some traction if I didn't gas the engine too quickly.

A kilometer up the road, I spotted a small waterfall cascading from a rock formation into a stream by the side of the road.

I pulled over, and Susan and I washed up with a piece of orange soap she'd brought along, and we drank some cold and hopefully clean water.

We mounted up and continued on. There wasn't anything moving on the road except us, but I couldn't get the speed past sixty KPH without losing control. Every bone and muscle in my body ached, and the last real meal I'd eaten had been in the sixteen-sided pavilion restaurant, and that was Sunday, New Year's Day. Today was Wednesday.

We approached the small village of Lang Chanh, and beyond the village was the beginning of the higher hills, and beyond that, the mountains whose peaks I couldn't see because of the low clouds and mountain mist.

I slowed down as we entered the squalid village of bamboo huts and ramshackle pine log structures. It was just a little after 7 A.M. A.M., and I could smell rice and fish cooking.

There were a few people around and lots of chickens. Susan said, "I need to get something to eat."

"I thought you had a banana yesterday."