Читать книгу David A. Poulsen's Young Adult Fiction 3-Book Bundle - David A. Poulsen - Страница 9

1

Okay, what I said before about being pretty good with geography? Forget that. I expected Saigon to be all huts and mud — little orphaned kids everywhere holding out their hands and begging in these little pathetic voices, American man you nice … give little money. I expected to be standing in line at weird little shops (more huts), so I could buy a bowl of wet rice that I’d have to go through with my chopsticks to filter out the bugs crawling around in the bowl. I expected a city that was not like any city I’d ever see. I expected … a dump.

And I was wrong. First of all, it’s not even called Saigon any more. It’s Ho Chi Minh City. Okay, that was partly the old man’s fault; how would I know that? He called it Saigon, so I called it Saigon. And in fairness to him, a lot of the locals still call it Saigon too. I found that out later. But officially, at the end of the war, when South Vietnam and the Americans lost and the North Vietnamese took over, the leader of North Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh, and he decided to re-name Saigon after himself. Nothing like a healthy dose of self-esteem.

No huts, at least not in any of the parts of the city I saw. Skyscrapers, neon lights, clubs, restaurants, palaces, and parks — some people begging, quite a few of them actually, but not many of them were kids. If it wasn’t for the totally different trees and flowers, the gazillion people on little motorbikes and another gazillion people on bicycles and the fact that most of those gazillions of people were Vietnamese, I could have been in Toronto.

And I was wrong about that too — the everybody-being-Vietnamese thing. The old man told me that a pretty big part of the population of Saigon is Chinese. Especially in the centre of town.

Since we’d arrived at eleven thirty at night, I was pretty tired by the time we got our stuff off the luggage carousel, and the old man had flagged down a taxi outside. We were staying at a place called the Rex Hotel — the old man told me that while we were watching luggage drift past us on the carousel. Watching and getting pushed out of the way by rude people, who seemed to think that if they didn’t get their suitcase right now, the world was going to come to an end.

I got pushed out of the way three different times. By the third time, I was getting seriously annoyed, and I was about to educate the little Asian guy who did the pushing on some of the more creative ways to use English swear words when I noticed that he was a she. A tough little she, but a she just the same. I stepped back beside the old man, who was grinning and shaking his head. I might have thought it was a little funnier if I hadn’t been so damn tired.

Before we left the airport, the old man rented two cellphones at a little kiosk, one for each of us. “Our phones don’t work over here. so we’ll need these. Don’t lose it, or it’ll cost us, well actually cost you, a bunch.”

One of the top five prettiest women I’d ever seen in my life explained how the phone worked and what our numbers were. I wanted to ask a bunch of questions just so we could keep talking to her, but exhaustion from the plane ride had ground my male hormones into powder, so I settled for nodding a lot.

She spoke excellent English, but a couple of times she couldn’t find the word she wanted and fell back into Vietnamese. The old man seemed to understand, and even spoke a few words himself. I don’t know why, but I thought that was pretty impressive. I didn’t bother to tell him that though.

The taxi ride was another adventure. I expected the first words out of the old man’s mouth to be Rex Hotel, but instead he said some stuff in Vietnamese. Then we discovered the driver spoke English, so the old man said, “Just drive around for a while.”

I looked at him in the dark of the back seat. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Just for a few minutes. Go to sleep if you want.” Then he turned to the window on his side and stared out like a kid watching for Santa Claus. It was like I wasn’t there.

It was close to midnight, yet there was an awful lot of light. Neon lights and street lights and the lights from cars and motorbikes. It felt like four o’clock in the afternoon.

And there were a lot of people on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. That surprised me, since it was pretty late. Most were still in shirt sleeves because it felt like a summer afternoon feels back home. Lots of movement. There didn’t seem to be anybody just standing around. Quite a few eating places and most of them seemed pretty busy for that time of night. Except for the people eating in those places, everyone seemed to be in a hurry. A blur of moving bodies and vehicles of all types.

Noise too, lots of it. The driver had his window down, and there was this din — car horns honking, music coming from several different places, the rattle-hum of motorbike engines … and voices, loud voices that seemed to be speaking in syllables instead of sentences.

The other thing I noticed was the smells. A big mix of smells. From the streets we drove down, there was the smell of food, kind of like when you go into a Chinese restaurant in a Canadian or American city. It was jumbled together with gasoline fumes and the occasional whiff of garbage. There was the smell of the inside of the taxi, too, a mix of body odour and beer, I think that’s what it was. And from somewhere, there was the hint of a flower smell. Like you were in a garden or a flower shop. But that smell wasn’t there all the time. It seemed like the other stuff overpowered it.

“Stop here!” The old man had yelled it, and I jumped. Then he yelled again, something in what I guessed was Vietnamese. The driver looked in the rear-view mirror and shook his head, but he stopped the car.

I looked over, and the old man was leaning forward and staring at a building. It didn’t look like much to me, just a store that sold vegetables and fruit. The produce was in bins and baskets both inside the store and outside on the sidewalk. Like one of those fruit stands you see in British Columbia. Then there were apartments or maybe offices above that for five floors.

The old man opened the door of the taxi and stepped out. He said, “Wait,” without looking back, so I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the driver. Both of us waited, and both of us watched the old man.

He walked slowly to the building, looking up and down at it as he walked. Taking it all in. It had to have been a place that he knew for some reason when he’d been here before. Was it a grocer’s shop back then? I’d ask him later, but there was no guarantee he’d tell me. It didn’t seem like he was going to be telling me much.

There was a skinny little guy selling the vegetables, but he looked like he was putting stuff away. Closing up. About time, it had to be after midnight. The old man talked to the vegetable guy for a couple of minutes. The guy pointed up the street. The old man looked where he was pointing, then he nodded, and the skinny guy went back to packing up his groceries, covering baskets full of stuff and setting them inside the door of the shop.

The old man looked at the building some more, then reached out and touched the brick wall, left his hand just resting against the wall for a couple of minutes. Then he backed up toward the taxi, but he kept his eyes on the building.

He turned, climbed in the car and said, “Let’s go.” Then turned to look out the window again. He didn’t look at me or say anything to me.

We drove for a while longer. I noticed something else. Another sound. Loudspeakers. Not everywhere and not all the time, but every once in a while you’d hear these loudspeakers. Sometimes it was music; other times it was people talking, in Vietnamese, of course, so I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Mostly it was men talking, but sometimes it was a woman. When it was a woman’s voice, I got the feeling maybe it was like a commercial for something. The men’s voices, I couldn’t tell. It seemed harsher though, like the preachers on those TV shows where they tell you to smarten up your life and send money.

One thing was for sure. Ho Chi Minh City had like a major night life — clubs, lots of them. I could hear some of the music as we went by. Some oriental, some American. Even some oldies rock and roll. As we went past one place I could hear and see the band, all Asian guys pounding out a version of “At the Hop.” My mom loves that oldies stuff, so I know a lot of the songs from hearing them at home. These guys weren’t bad. People were dancing, and they were pretty good too.

Next was a karaoke place. I could see through the windows, some people dancing, some just watching. Two girls trying to sing “Roxanne,” the Police song. They sucked.

We drove a little farther, going pretty slow because of the traffic. That’s when it occurred to me — it was Saturday night here. See, I told you I’d lost a day of my life. I was thinking Friday.

Something else I didn’t expect — that Vietnam would be all about partying on a Saturday night. Then the old man said, “This is good right here.”

I looked around. Terrific. No hotel in sight. So we were going to haul our stuff around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City in the middle of the night for a while. This was getting to be more fun all the time.

The old man paid the driver, and a minute later we were standing in the middle of a brightly lit street. Big-time crowded.

“Now what?” I started to organize my stuff into walking mode. “You forget that we had a hotel, or did you lie to me about that? We just going to wander the streets until morning.”

“The Rex isn’t far from here. We need to eat first.”

“A lot of guys might have dropped their bags off first then walked back to this charming little spot for dinner.” I waved my arm around to indicate the charm.

“Yeah, we could’ve done it that way, but we didn’t, so now we eat, then we’ll head for the Rex. And, by the way, you complain way too much.”

He pointed to what looked like an outdoor lunch counter. People were sitting at seats that faced into the part where the cooks were making stuff. There were some benches a few feet back from where the people were eating. Every time somebody finished eating and stood up to leave, someone from the benches would race in there like this was the most exclusive restaurant in Asia and you were lucky to get in. It looked pretty dumpy to me. Especially compared to a lot of the places I’d seen as we were driving around. No band in this place and no karaoke.

I kept my mouth shut. I’d hate to be labelled a complainer. Especially when we were having all this fun.

We took over one of the benches, got our stuff gathered close around us, and watched the backs of the people who were eating. I tried to get a read on who’d finish next from the way they were sitting and making little eating movements. Couldn’t really tell.

It started to rain. Perfect. Not hard, but even soft rain’s still wet. The people at the counter who were eating were under a sort of canvas canopy. Out of the rain. The people at the benches — as in us — weren’t.

I looked over at the old man. He seemed to be, I guess you’d say, intense. Alive. Interested. Not at all bothered by the rain. He turned to me and said, “It rains a fair bit in Vietnam, so get used to it.” Heading me off before I could complain.

Sure, nothing to it. I’d get used to the rain just like I’d get used to hauling luggage around the streets of the city on foot in the middle of the night and sitting on a bench getting wet and cold waiting for a turn to eat at a place that looked like the ol’ health inspectors just might have missed it. Hell, anybody would get used to that, right?

We sat there for about fifteen minutes. Some people left. Others took their places at the counter. Finally, it looked like it was getting to be our turn. A couple of people finished eating in front of us, and I got ready to make my move. The old man put his hand on my arm. He nodded at a really old lady and a kid maybe my age. They were at the next bench to us, and I was pretty sure they’d got there after us.

They stepped forward and took the two spots at the counter. Didn’t even look at the old man to thank him or anything.

“That was stupid,” I said. “That old lady already has like a million wrinkles. The rain isn’t going to do anything to her.”

The old man smiled. “We’re next.”

Our turn finally came, and we took a couple of seats at the counter. I wasn’t all that comfortable, mostly because I had jammed everything I owned in where my feet were meant to go. I was sure we were surrounded by bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff. We were sitting with our backs to the street, which I didn’t like either because I figured that made things even easier for bandits or Asian gang members just waiting for some pathetic North American kid to come along so they could steal his stuff.

The old man didn’t seem all that worried about it. He was concentrating on ordering. There was no menu, just signs on the wall and hanging from the ceiling above where the cooking was going on. The signs were in Vietnamese, which meant I couldn’t figure out squat that was on them. The Vietnamese alphabet is like ours, as opposed to the symbols that are the Chinese and Japanese alphabets, but that only helps to a point. French uses the same alphabet as us too, but if you’re not French, you still can’t read it.

There were a couple of pictures of food, but I didn’t recognize any of it. The old man studied the signs.

“What do you suggest?” I asked him

He didn’t answer, and it was pretty loud in there, so I tried again, louder this time. “What’s any good?”

“Noodles.”

“What if I don’t like noodles?”

“Then you shouldn’t have got off the plane.”

“There’s a lot of stuff written up there. It can’t all be noodles.”

“I’ll order for you.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is, or will it be a surprise?”

The guy who seemed to be taking orders came along just then, so I didn’t get an answer. The old man did some pointing, held up four fingers and threw out a few words in Vietnamese. The order guy said some stuff back. It sounded like he was giving the old man hell for something. Then he looked at me, not real friendly, and walked away, shouting in the direction of the people who were cooking.

“So what am I having?”

“Noodles and fish.”

“Is the fish cooked?”

The old man shrugged.

“Will it be dead at least?”

“Pretty much.”

“You speak very much Vietnamese?”

“Some. I used to be pretty good. But I’ve forgotten a lot.”

That was it for conversation. The old man didn’t seem to feel like talking, and I was too tired to try.

I’ll say one thing — the place got the food out really fast. It was maybe a minute or so before I was staring down at a plate full of noodles and some things sitting on top of the noodles that I assumed — and hoped — were chunks of fish. It was all steaming and, actually, didn’t look or smell, that bad. I took the chopsticks and moved some of the noodles around, checking for anything that crawled. I didn’t see anything.

For a few minutes the old man and I just ate, no talking. The thing is I’m okay with chopsticks, but I kind of have to work at it. So I was concentrating pretty hard.

“Not bad,” I shouted after I’d worked my way through some of the noodles and one piece of the fish. “What kind of fish is it?”

The old man didn’t answer. He pointed at one of the pictures, which was exactly zero help. I got the feeling that whenever he thought I might not like the answer to one of my questions, he just didn’t bother to respond.

He chewed for a while, then looked at me. “You play any baseball?”

“What?” It wasn’t the conversation I expected to be having in that place at that exact time.

“Baseball. You play any?”

“Little League.”

“You any good?”

“Not bad, I guess. I played shortstop and once in a while catcher. Our team made it to the city finals one year. But we lost. I made an error in the last inning. Probably cost us the game.”

“Shit happens.”

“I thought we had a rule about saying shit.”

“We have a rule about you saying shit.”

“That’s not fair.”

The old man swallowed some more noodles and nodded. “You’re right. No more shit. Eat.”

We ate. But before I could finish, I was falling asleep. Sitting there surrounded by noise and chaos, I was afraid I’d slump forward head first into the noodles. The old man said something about Vietnam being a big-time baseball country. I was too tired to answer. Or care. He stood up, paid the guy who’d taken our order, and stepped back from the counter. I barely got my gear pulled out from under the counter before two businessmen-looking guys (what kind of business happens at midnight on a Saturday night?) piled into the seats we had just vacated.

We stepped out into the street. “Want me to carry something?”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

He headed off in what I hoped was the direction of the Rex Hotel. We were maybe ten minutes getting there, and there was constant noise and movement and light going on around us the whole time. But I don’t remember much more than that because I was in a total zombie state for most of the walk.

2

Which is probably why I don’t remember much of that first look at the Rex Hotel either.

I woke up the next morning a little confused. The light was streaming in on top of me from a large window next to my bed. I didn’t have a shirt on, but I was still wearing the jeans and socks I’d had on the day before. I couldn’t remember getting undressed for bed. I guess that’s because I didn’t, not really.

I sat up and looked around. I was alone in the room. No sign of the old man. There was a clock on a shelf that jutted from the wall near the window. Ten sixteen. I was like whoa, I never sleep that long.

I got up and went into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. When I came out, the old man still hadn’t come back from wherever he’d gone. I got dressed, unpacked my clothes, and turned on the TV. I was still trying to find a channel that was in English when the old man came through the door.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty’s finally up and moving.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I don’t usually sleep in like that.”

“Don’t sweat it. Jet lag. Let’s go get some breakfast.”

“Is it going to be sort of … normal food?” The idea of noodles first thing in the morning was enough to make me give up eating for as long as we were in Vietnam.

“Bacon and eggs normal enough for you?”

I did the fist pump. “Oh, yeah.”

We ate in the rooftop restaurant. It was outdoors with a pretty cool view of the centre part of the city. That surprised me too, the city itself. Seeing them in daylight, the buildings weren’t what I expected. I mean, inside me, I knew it wasn’t really going to be all huts and grass shacks. But still I hadn’t expected this.

For starters, everything was bigger than I thought it would be. And the architecture was a lot different from what I expected. Some Asian looking buildings, pagodas and stuff, some fancy what looked like European architecture and some really modern looking places like you’d see in Los Angeles. That is if you ever got out of the airport and actually saw Los Angeles.

It was hot already, but there were some clouds around that looked like there might be some rain.

The waiter spoke English, and the old man ordered three orders of bacon and eggs, “one for you, one for me, and one for backup” was how he put it. This time I totally agreed with his food order.

I ate and the old man ate, but his eating wasn’t like mine. It was like he was sitting on something itchy. He kept moving around, looking around, and sometimes he’d just stare at something like he was trying to memorize it. Or remember it. A couple of times he shook his head. So maybe he wasn’t trying to remember. Maybe he was wanting to forget.

“So I figured it out,” I said as I dabbed toast in runny egg yolk.

“What did you figure out?”

“Why we’re here.”

“And why’s that?”

“You fought here in that war, the Vietnam War. The one the U.S. lost. You and Tal probably fought together. And now you’ve come back here to see what’s happened to the country since you left. Am I right? Is that it?”

“Something like that.” He was still looking around while we were talking, but then he looked at me. “This hotel and especially this restaurant were a big deal with American soldiers, especially officers. I came here a few times. It was a good place to forget … forget what was happening when you weren’t in places like this.”

“Were you an officer?”

“No,” he sipped coffee. “But sometimes the grunts … the regular soldiers, came here. Not often. A few times.”

“Nice place.”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t say any more. We concentrated on eating again, and he seemed less jumpy, less intense for a while. We shared the backup order of bacon and eggs. Ate everything. Sat back afterwards like stuffed hogs.

3

I have to admit it was a pretty good day. It was like the old man suddenly realized he had a kid with him, and it might be nice to do some stuff that a kid might like.

First, we went to the City Zoo, but we didn’t stay long. It pretty much sucked. I’d been to zoos back home, and they were all better than this one, even the smaller ones. The City Zoo in Saigon didn’t have many animals, and the ones that were there didn’t look like they got fed all that regularly.

I could see the old man was feeling bad that the zoo wasn’t great, so I said something about the gardens and the flowers being real impressive, but I don’t think he bought it.

Next we hit the Reunification Palace. When I hear palace, I think old. Like Buckingham Palace. This palace wasn’t actually all that old, 1960s. As we wandered through the halls and the grounds outside, I read some of the plaques that explained stuff. It was designed by a Vietnamese architect who got his training in France. Before the war and during the war, the place was known as the Presidential Palace, but when the North Vietnamese overran the country in 1975, their tanks smashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. And pretty soon the place got renamed — the Palace of Reunification.

I noticed that references to the war didn’t exactly heap a lot of praise on the Americans. Lots of stuff about how they used cluster bombs to slaughter women and children and committed every atrocity you can imagine. The old man didn’t spend a lot of time looking at that stuff.

More of the same when we crossed the street and went into the War Remnants Museum. Not a happy place. And if you’d fought on the side the old man had, it had to be tough going through there. It wasn’t all bad. There was a cannon that had a range of twenty miles, a tank, and a helicopter — all in the grounds around the museum. It was American equipment that got left behind when they pulled out. I think the old man wanted me to learn something about the war, but this wasn’t what he wanted me to learn. Inside the museum there were endless pictures of all the bad stuff the Americans did to people and to the countryside during those years. That was another short visit.

Next stop was Dam Sen Park, sort of Disneyland-Vietnam. The best thing was the elephant ride. Real elephants. The old man and me, we both went for a ride. It was cool, I have to admit. I asked the guy running the elephant place if mine had a name. He just shrugged like he didn’t understand me. I named mine Elly. I told the old man, and he named his Fant. Buddy movie stuff.

I was getting hungry, so we went to the downtown area called Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown. The old man told me Cholon means “big market.” To me it was big chaos. Plenty of shouting, people in a major hurry, lots of Asian architecture, pagodas, and statues of dragons, and these lion-dogs that sent jets of water into goldfish ponds.

“This is where we came for excitement when we had time off. Opium dens, sex, gambling — it was all here. Looks like they’ve cleaned it up some since then.” The old man had to shout that whole speech so I could hear him over the human noise.

“So which ones did you do?” I yelled back.

“All of ’em. The opium less often than the other stuff.”

We found a place that looked like it had pretty good food. We were right … the most amazing won ton soup ever. Not that I’ve had it a lot — Mom and I don’t dine out a bunch — but I’ve had won ton soup a few times and this stuff was awesome.

We didn’t talk — or yell — much during lunch, and it wasn’t until we were out of the busiest part of Cholon that we tried conversation again.

“There’s something I want you to see,” the old man said. “It’ll take us a little while to get there.”

We walked for a while, then got on this bus and sat about halfway back. I wanted to ask the old man where we were going, but by then I knew better. He’d tell me if he felt like it. We drove through the city, and this time it was my turn to stare out the window. I can’t say I was liking Saigon, but it was definitely interesting. Okay, maybe I was liking it a little.

It seemed to me that a lot of the people on the bus were tourists, not a lot of Vietnamese. Several different languages were being spoken around us. Not much English. Quite a few backpackers.

There were three people sitting across from us. They were Caucasian and speaking English, with an accent. Husband, wife, daughter, about my age. The daughter smiled at me. I gave her a little smile back. Reminded myself I was saving my love for Jen Wertz. The two adults — they looked about Mom’s age — nodded at us and we nodded back.

“Where you from?” the old man asked.

“Australia. You? Yank?”

“Canadian.”

“You going to Cu Chi? The tunnels?” the lady asked.

“Yeah.”

I looked at the old man, wondering why it was so tough for him to tell me the stuff he could tell somebody we’d only just met.

The Australian guy leaned forward, looked at the old man. “You look the right age to have been here during the war. You a veteran?”

The old man didn’t answer, just turned and looked out the window. Not real friendly, I thought. The Australian guy sat back and looked at his wife. I couldn’t tell what the look meant. The daughter smiled at me again. I figured I knew what that look meant.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Jennifer.

Jennifer. Jen. Whoa, what are the chances?

As we were getting off the bus, the Australian man stepped up close to the old man. “Listen, I’m in the middle of writing a book about Vietnam, the Australian experience, you know? But I want it to be on the mark, get it right. Talk about the war America and its allies lost, how Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon, how all of them screwed up … how it was the most unpopular war the west ever fought, even more than Iraq. What I need is the perspective of the American soldier — ”

“No.”

“Look, mate, I wouldn’t take up a lot of your time, I really only need you to — ”

“I really only need you to shut the hell up … mate.” When the old man said that, the Australian guy took a couple of quick steps backward. He was nervous — maybe even scared. Scared of someone in his sixties.

The weird thing is, if I’d been him, I’d have been scared of the old man too. There was something about the way he was looking at the Aussie writer that was kind of crazy — off base, like he wasn’t totally with the program. Guys like that are scary and right at that moment the old man was a scary guy.

The writer dude from Australia shut the hell up. And got out of there, dragging the family with him. They were moving quite rapidly

I thought about trying to say something funny. Like well, I guess I won’t be taking her to the prom. But I changed my mind. Maybe not the time for Huffman humour.

We moved away from the bus and followed the crowd that all seemed to be heading the same way. Cu Chi was a town. But we weren’t there to see the town. Nobody was. It turned out everyone on the bus, and all the people from all the other buses, were there to see the tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels.

I figured this would be more boring than the Saigon zoo with its No Animals policy. Now we’d be poking around a couple of little tunnels with those things hanging down — stalactites. Total yawner.

I was way wrong.

The old man led me over to where you pay for the tour. He went up to this sort of cage and paid. He came back and handed me a piece of paper.

“Where’s yours?”

“I’m not going.”

“Why not? I don’t want to go by myself.”

“I’ve been in tunnels. Not these tunnels but others like them. Charlie was very good at digging.”

“Who’s Charlie?”

“It’s what we called them … the enemy. We called them other names too. But a lot of the time it was Charlie.”

“So why are we here if you’re not even going in there?”

“I don’t need to go down there.”

I shook my head. “Well, I don’t need to go down there either. I thought this was about you. You’re the one who was in the war.”

“This is about us. I’ve been in tunnels, you haven’t. You better get going. Your tour guide is leaving.”

I wanted to tell him this was crap, but there were a lot of people around, and I didn’t want to look like the pain-in-the-ass teenager. I shook my head again and turned to follow the tour guide and about ten people who were in our group.

The guide didn’t say much at first, just walked off and signalled for us to follow her. She looked like she was having a bad day.

There were maybe twelve of us. We hadn’t gone far when suddenly this guy popped out of the ground right in front of us. He was wearing a black army shirt that looked like it came from Value Village and a floppy green bush hat. He was holding the hatch over his head like one of those sewer covers and grinning like crazy at us. He made his fingers in the shape of a gun.

“Bang, bang, you all dead now,” he said, still grinning.

I could see what he was saying. A bunch of soldiers walking along and suddenly, this guy is there with a machine gun or a grenade or something and yeah, everybody’s dead.

Everyone snapped pictures like crazy for a couple of minutes. Everyone but me. I wasn’t going to waste film on a guy doing an impersonation of a jack-in-the-box and wearing cheap black pajamas. We walked on and eventually came to an exhibit. I’ve been to a few museums on field trips and stuff, but I’d never seen an exhibit like this one.

The whole exhibit was booby traps that the Viet Cong used to kill guys. The worst one for me was this pit that was covered over just like the hole the guy had come out of. When the thatch cover was pulled away from over top of the pit, there were all these sharp bamboo stakes at the bottom, pointing up.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be walking along and falling into one of those pits. I had this picture in my mind of these soldiers looking down into the pit where one of their buddies was spread out with those stakes all through him. Trying to think of a way to help him. To get him out.

Something I’d noticed: whenever you saw anything about American war crimes, it was all those rotten bastards. But anybody who ran into one of the booby traps I saw displayed there was going to die a pretty horrible death. Cruel. But this exhibit was like a celebration. Like somebody had won the Stanley Cup. We showed ’em. I guess they did.

I was glad we didn’t spend a lot of time at that exhibit. Next we got to go down into one section of the tunnels ourselves. The guide told us there were 125 miles of these tunnels. Three tiers of them that had kitchens, first aid stations, weapons caches — it was unreal. And the Viet Cong, who were the communists in South Vietnam — Charlie — they did a lot of their war preparations from down there. And launched attacks from inside the tunnels.

The guide said there were guys on the American side called tunnel rats. Their job was to go down into these tunnels and try to find and destroy the enemy. I tried to imagine what that job would have been like. The guide said guys volunteered for that job. He sounded like he actually admired people who would do that. I knew one thing — there was no freaking way I’d have volunteered to go down there and look for the enemy.

I got tired of listening to the guide, so after we’d been down there awhile, I wandered off by myself. This part of the tunnel had been a command post. I moved slowly through it and came out into what had been a dormitory — probably big enough for about twenty people to sleep in. Some of the bunks were still there.

“Hi.”

I turned and there was the Australian chick, Jennifer, standing there. “Hi.”

I looked around. There were other people in the room, another tour group, but I didn’t see Jennifer’s parents.

“Where’re your mom and dad?”

She shrugged. “We’re not interested in the same things.”

I nodded. Tried to think of something to say. “Uh … what did you think of that bamboo pit deal?”

She made a face. “Gross. Scary.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“So your dad — did he fight in the war here?”

“Yeah. I guess so. He doesn’t say much.”

“But when he does … ” She had a little smile on her face.

“Yeah, sorry about that … he wasn’t exactly polite to your dad.”

“It’s okay. Dad can be like so annoying. There’ve been a few times when I wouldn’t have minded telling him that myself.”

“I know what you mean.”

We just stood there for a couple of minutes, looking like kids the first day in a new school — totally lost. “You want to walk around?” I wasn’t sure why I asked her that, and I figured she’d do the I better get back to my parents thing but she didn’t.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” We stood there for another little while. Then I decided, if we were going to walk around together, we should probably do some actual walking.

I started off around the outside of the room. Looked at the beds, the walls. The dirt ceiling with wooden beams holding things up.

“You never told me your name.”

“Oh sorry, you’re right. It’s Nathan … Nate.”

“Which one?”

“I like Nate better.”

“Me too. I’m Jen … Jen Dodsworth.”

Jen Wertz … Jen Dodsworth … sweet.

We walked around, not saying a lot. Making little comments about stuff we were looking at.

“How long have you been here?” I asked her.

“Eight days.” Sounded like she was keeping track. Wanting to get the hell home. “And we don’t go back for another whole week. You?”

“I’m not sure. This whole thing was my old man’s idea. He doesn’t tell me much. Another few days maybe.”

“I miss my dog.”

“Oh, yeah … uh … what’s its name?”

“Farnsworth.”

Farnsworth Dodsworth. Nice.

“What kind of dog is he?” She hadn’t said it was a he, but I figured nobody names a female dog Farnsworth. If the dog was a golden retriever, I decided I’d run out of the tunnels and throw myself into the bamboo pit.

“Dalmatian.”

Not a golden retriever. I didn’t like Dalmatians either, but then I didn’t like any kind of dog. I decided not to share that information with her.

There were quite a few places where the tunnels got narrow and small and we had to scootch down and duck walk to get through. Scootching down and getting close to Jen wasn’t all that bad, even in a tunnel.

We worked our way through a few more rooms — a kitchen, a weapons storage area, a printing shop, and then we came to another dormitory. Either that or a hospital. More beds. This time we were by ourselves in there.

“I wonder if they had sex down here.”

I looked over at her. I wondered if that was her way of being flirty or if she was showing me how adult she was or what. I shrugged. “The guide said there were women down here as well as men so I guess … maybe.”

I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going to go from there, but it didn’t go anywhere because that’s when her mom and dad showed up.

“Jennifer, where did you get …” her mom stopped in mid-sentence when she saw me. “Oh, hello.”

“Hi again,” I said.

“Where’s your father?” Mr. Dodsworth (or was it Farnsworth?) asked me.

“He stayed up top.”

“He didn’t come with you? Sent you down here by yourself?”

“He said he’s seen enough tunnels.”

“He was bloody rude to me, I’d have to say. All I did was ask a question. He didn’t have to swear … quite rude.”

“Yeah, well, my old man’s a rude son of a bitch.”

That seemed to be a conversation stopper. Mr. Dodsworth turned toward the exit and spoke over his shoulder. “We better be getting along, we seem to have lost our group. Jennifer?”

The three of them started off toward the doorway. Jennifer stopped and looked back at me. “Jendoll at westcom dot au. Will you remember?”

I nodded. “Jendoll at westcom dot au. I’ll remember. Oh, and I’ve thought about what you asked me … you know, about having sex down here in the tunnels. The answer’s a definite yes.”

Her face turned bright red, but she was laughing as her parents hurried her out the door. They weren’t laughing.

I’d seen enough of the tunnels, so I worked my way back to where we’d come in and went back outside. For a minute I stood there blinking, trying to get my eyes to work in the bright sunlight. I spotted the old man sitting on a bench drinking a coffee and reading a newspaper. I walked over to where he was sitting. The newspaper was in Vietnamese … definitely not English.

“Can you read that?”

He didn’t look up. “Not a word.”

I sat down on the bench. He put the paper down. “How was it?”

“The tour? Interesting.”

“That’s it … interesting?”

“You know how parents ask their kids how they liked something and the kids say interesting but what they really mean is that bored the crap out of me?”

“I’ve heard that happens,” he smiled.

“It happens. I said interesting, and I meant interesting.”

“Good. You hungry?”

“I’m hungry for a Big Mac.”

“How about a Big Spring Roll?”

“Terrific.” I looked around, praying for a set of golden arches to pop out of the ground like the guy in the Value Village army uniform.

“We’ll eat, then we best be heading back. Need our sleep tonight. Tomorrow it’s feet on the floor at oh six hundred hours.”

That’s what he actually said … oh six hundred hours. Military talk.

Sir. Yes, sir.

4

0600 hours was about oh three hours less sleep than I would have liked.

I knew about thirty seconds after I had my “feet on the floor” that today was a big deal. The old man was different. He wasn’t twirling his hair like he had at the border, but I knew something was going on inside him.

He was quiet, pointed to the bathroom and said, “I’m done, it’s yours.” When I came out, there was fruit and cereal and milk on the table. Since we didn’t have any of that stuff with us, I knew he must have ordered room service. I hadn’t thought of the old man as a room service kind of guy.

While I ate, he rolled clothes and other stuff we’d need into two sleeping bags, then threw them into two dull green duffel bags. He also threw in some sandwiches, matches, bug spray, and a knife the size of a small sword. Maybe it was a machete. I wasn’t sure since I’d never seen a machete up close. If we needed to chop our way through the forest, I figured that thing would do the job.

When I’d finished eating, the old man told me to brush my teeth and put my toothbrush and some clothes in my backpack. He said I wouldn’t need my duffel bag. Okay, so that meant we were sleeping somewhere else tonight. Of course, the sleeping bags were pretty much a giveaway, but the toothbrush thing sealed the deal.

There was a knock at the door. I answered it and found myself looking at a guy about a hundred years old who came up to my chin. He looked serious, not grumpy exactly, but real serious. He looked like the kind of person who was serious all the time. Chinese or Vietnamese, I couldn’t tell. He also weighed maybe 125 pounds total. Not a big guy, but even with the age and how little he was, he didn’t look like a guy you’d want to mess with. Kind of like the old man that way.

He was wearing a black shirt over a black T-shirt and green real baggy pants like the kind you see American soldiers wearing in war movies. Except they looked a few sizes too big. He was also wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins ball cap. That made no sense to me. Watch a lot of hockey do ya, little fella?

The old man stepped around me and shook hands with the guy, invited him in.

“This is Mr. Vinh. Mr. Vinh — my son Nathan.”

“Nate,” I said.

Mr. Vinh nodded but didn’t offer to shake my hand.

“Mr. Vinh and me, we got some stuff to talk about.” The old man pulled some money out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Why don’t you go shopping or something for a half hour?”

I handed it back to him. “First of all, I’ve got money. Second of all, since it’s oh six hundred hours plus about twenty minutes, I figure the shopping is going to be a bit scarce. Third of all, I get that you want me out of here. So this is me leaving.”

I started to leave, then stopped and turned back. “We’re coming back here right? To this hotel?”

The old man nodded.

As I walked through the door into the hall, I heard him say, “Thanks, Nate,” behind me, but I kept going toward the elevator.

I’d seen a computer in the lobby and there were a couple of things I wanted to do. I bought a coffee at the little restaurant on the main floor, got a password from a drop-dead gorgeous Vietnamese woman at the desk and set myself up at the computer.

First thing. Jendoll at westcom dot au. I worked my way to the email function, typed in Jen’s address and started tapping out an email.

Hey, I’m the guy you met at the tunnels. How you doing? My old man and I are going somewhere for what looks like a couple of days, then I should be back here. Feel like taking in a movie or just getting a burger or something? Notice I didn’t invite you for noodles, which should tell you that I’m a really nice guy. You can email me if you want to at Nathanh@telcomworld.net

LOL

Nate

I hit send. I figured she’d still be sleeping like most of the normal people in the world at that moment, so I didn’t expect an answer back. Maybe later. Maybe.

Then I googled something called My Lai. It was something I’d seen pictures of in the War Remnants Museum. I wanted to know more about it.

I spent twenty minutes reading and looking at pictures. It’s a good thing I’d already eaten because I wouldn’t have wanted to after I finished finding out about My Lai.

I could have just cut and pasted something from Wikipedia or some other site, but I wanted to write it out in my own words. This is My Lai …

March 16, 1968.

American soldiers went into two small villages — one was called My Lai, pronounced Me Lie. The soldiers killed over four hundred people — unarmed men, and women, and children. They herded them together and machine gunned them, bayoneted them, even killed the animals that lived in the villages. There were pictures of groups of women holding their little children and babies just a few minutes before they were all shot. One old man was thrown into a well and then shot after he was down there. Some soldiers refused to kill innocent civilians, but most didn’t. When the world found out what had happened there that day, twenty-six American soldiers were tried for murder and other war crimes. One was convicted.

I was still sitting at the computer looking at one of the pictures — it was these people, all women and little kids dead in this ditch — when the old man came down to get me. I minimized before he saw what I was looking at.

“We’re ready to go. Come on up and help us with the stuff.”

I shut off the computer, stood up, and followed him to the stairs. I was having trouble getting the pictures I’d seen from My Lai out of my head.

When we were back in the room, I saw that Mr. Vinh had one of the duffel bags over his shoulder and was just reaching for the other one.

The old man and I both said “I’ll take that” at about the same time. The old man got there first and took the duffel bag. I offered to take the one Mr. Vinh had slung over what there was of his shoulder, but he shook his head and made for the door.

The old man pointed to a briefcase-looking thing on the bed. “You can bring that. Don’t set it down, and don’t lose it.” It was one of those old-style ones, rectangle shape, and there was masking tape wrapped around it a few times to keep it together.

Great. I get to look like a total nerd out there.

“And leave your cellphone here. Where we’re going you won’t need it, and you could lose it.”

I tucked the phone into my duffel bag, which wasn’t making the trip, and shoved the duffel bag in a corner, not hidden but not totally out in the open. My style of security.

I pulled my backpack on, picked up the briefcase, and followed Mr. Vinh down the hotel stairs. The old man came down behind me.

Don’t set it down, and don’t lose it. So it’s either a bomb, or drugs, or money. And I’m carrying it. Lovely.

5

I know now why the iPod was invented. It’s for driving through Vietnam in a Land Rover that looks like it could quit at any moment and never ever go again with two guys, one who doesn’t speak English and the other who doesn’t feel like talking. In any language.

For a couple of hours I looked out the window, especially when we passed through some village. The brief case was at my feet, which didn’t leave a lot of room for actual feet, but god forbid I should lose our drug stash.

Ever play that game where you count horses while you’re driving? I played that same game except with pagodas. Since I was the only one playing, I won twenty-six to nothing.

Then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I discovered something else about the Land Rover. It didn’t have air conditioning. It was the hottest day since we’d arrived — as in freaking hot — and after I sat there soaking in my own sweat for a while, I pulled off my T-shirt and stashed it in my backpack. Went with the bare chest look. That helped a little.

We seemed to be driving along or near a coast. I could see water … sometimes in the distance, sometimes right alongside us. I had decided I wouldn’t ask the old man where we were going or how long it would take to get there. I figured he wouldn’t answer anyway and if he did, it would be one of those answers that didn’t make any sense.

He was like he’d been that first night in Saigon. Looking at everything as we drove, his ass on barbecue coals — big-time intense.

More iPod music. We passed rice paddies, and little villages, (the huts at last), and fields of crops that I didn’t recognize. And, of course, we went through jungle — although most of that was just on the edges, so it didn’t look like much more than a big forest. Which, come to think of it, is what jungle is, right?

We were on something called the AH 1 — the old man did tell me that much. A main highway in Vietnam. We were on that road for about five hours — two stops — one for a pee break, the other for coffee that had the colour of a urine sample and a taste that didn’t convince me it wasn’t.

I was bored, and I was getting stiff from the back seat of the Land Rover. We were in a sort of mountain range, so the view was pretty good for a while. The ocean, if that’s what it was, was below us now and still on our right. Endless dense, bushy looking forest to our left. As I shifted my body for the fiftieth time, I could see we were approaching a big place. Civilization. The old man turned around and looked at me for the first time since we’d left Ho Chi Minh City.

“Da Nang. Big air base during the war.”

That was it. He turned back and faced the front again. Yeah, thanks for the in-depth guided tour. I pretty well know everything there is to know now.

We came down out of the mountain range and onto flatter ground. Just before we got to the edge of the city, we left the AH 1 and headed west toward some hills, more mountains and jungle terrain off in the distance. This was a shorter leg of the trip, less than an hour until we turned right into what looked like a gravel driveway except that it went for quite a ways. When we stopped, I wasn’t sure why. Then I noticed what looked like a camp tucked into some trees.

A couple of tents, pretty big ones. A Vietnamese woman standing by a big campfire between the tents. There was a big pot over the fire, and she was looking into it. Didn’t look up at us at all.

You ever see the play Macbeth, you know, Shakespeare? They did it at our school last year — I ran the lights for it. The woman by the fire looked like one of the witches from Macbeth. Just needed two more witches and you could have had that …

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

It’s not like she was ugly or nasty looking; it’s just that standing there all bent over and stirring whatever was in the big pot that was sitting over the fire, well, that’s what she reminded me of. Mr. Vinh turned off the Land Rover. He and the old man climbed out.

I pulled my earphones, put the iPod into my backpack, and followed them out into the outdoors … and what felt like a sauna. I got my T-shirt and pulled it on over my head. Modesty — there was a lady present.

Mr. Vinh walked over and looked into the pot. Grunted. I didn’t know if the grunt meant, mmm, delicious or what is that slop? I could smell whatever it was she was cooking, and I would have said somewhere in between.

The old man said something to Mr. Vinh, who shook his head and said something back. The old man spoke again, I think he said the same thing that he’d said before, but this time he threw in a bunch of gestures and pointing, somewhere into the brush behind the camp. Mr Vinh responded with some arm waving and pointing of his own. His pointing was at the pot. My guess was that the old man wanted to get going, and Mr. Vinh wanted to sample whatever was on the menu first.

The lady stirred some more, but still hadn’t looked up at any of us. She said something, and that set Mr. Vinh off again with yelling and more waving.

The old man shook his head and walked over to me. Pissed off. “Might as well sit down. He wants to eat before we go on.”

I was with Mr. Vinh on this one — especially if what we were going to eat was edible — meaning not noodles.

“Sit down where?” I looked around. There was a shortage of lawn chairs, picnic tables and blankets.

“On the goddamn ground.”

Okay, that clinched it, the old man was not a happy dude.

I found a spot where there were maybe three blades of grass and a couple of weeds and sat. Mr. Vinh brought me a wooden bowl and chopsticks.

Noodles. Just kill me now.

“What a nice surprise,” I told him.

The old man helped himself to a bowl of the noodles, threw me a canteen of water from his duffel bag and one of our sandwiches. He sat next to me.

“Don’t take all day eating that.”

“You know something, you’re starting to be a pain in the ass to be around.”

He set his bowl down, and I figured I was about to find out just how tough this sixty-some-year-old guy was. I waited to get hit.

He shrugged. “You know something — you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m way over the top here. Sorry. Enjoy the noodles, I know they’re your favourite.” He grinned at me.

“That Mr. Vinh’s wife?”

He nodded, slurped noodles. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

We ate. The noodles weren’t bad. There was other stuff mixed in with them, vegetables of some kind — no bugs. The sandwiches were tomato. Kind of plain.

“You fight around here? Some battle?”

He nodded. “Among other places. This was the last one.”

“Last one for you? Or of the whole war?”

“Last one for me. Tal was in more shit after this.”

I’d almost forgotten about Tal.

The old man was working the contents of his bowl pretty hard and not looking at me. I was starting to figure out his signals. He didn’t want to talk anymore. I finished the noodles, got up, and took my bowl and chopsticks to the lady, who was still busy with the pot on the fire.

“Thanks, Mrs. Vinh. Excellent noodles.”

She didn’t say anything, but she did look up. First time she’d done that. Grunted. That seemed to be an important part of the Vinhs’ vocabulary. I grunted back at her, hoping I was being polite.

She went back to work. Mr. Vinh was sitting close to the fire, eating. I wondered when Mrs. Vinh ate.

The old man came over to where I was. He looked at Mr. Vinh. “Ready to go?”

Mr. Vinh stood up. Threw the last of his noodles on the ground. Didn’t look happy — although I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell when either of the Vinhs were happy.

“You might want to use the facilities before we go.” The old man pointed at the edge of the jungle out behind the tents. “And use this — generously.” He passed me a can of mosquito spray.

“I’m fine on the bathroom thing, but I will have a shot of that.”

I sprayed my arms, the backs of my hands, and a little around my neck, basically exposed skin. The old man grabbed the can out of my hands and started spraying me like it was bathroom spray and I was a bad smell.

“Okay, take it easy.” I backed away. “That stuff’s toxic.”

“So are the mosquitoes.”

“What now?” I asked as he sprayed himself.

“A little hike.” The old man heaved one of the duffel bags up over his shoulder. Mr. Vinh did the same thing with the other one. I noticed he had the machete-looking thing in one hand. I hoped it was for knocking down a vine or two and not for fighting off boa constrictors and stuff.

My job was the backpack and canteens. There were three canteens. And the dorky looking briefcase. I had a little trouble getting it all sorted and hanging from various places on my body, but after a few tries I was more or less organized.

“Let’s make a move,” the old man said, but he stepped back to let Mr. Vinh lead. Apparently, Mr. Vinh knew better than the old man where we were going.

I fell in behind the old man, but on the way out of the camp, I looked back at Mrs. Vinh. She had stepped away from the fire and was smoking a cigarette. She looked up at me. Nodded. I waved a little wave at her and turned to follow Mr. Vinh and the old man.

I wondered if we’d be coming back here other than to get the Land Rover. I knew there was at least one tent in one of the duffel bags so maybe not. We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred metres when I learned my next big lesson about Vietnam. There’s forest and there’s woods and there’s brush and thickets and growth and timberland. All of them together don’t make jungle. Jungle makes jungle. And five minutes out of that camp, we were up to our asses in jungle.

Mr. Vinh was very good with the machete. No wasted motion. In fact, it didn’t look like he was working all that hard. He whacked away and carved a path where there hadn’t been one before. The machete had to have been ultra sharp. I decided not to do anything to upset Mr. Vinh.

6

If I’d thought Mr. Vinh’s camp felt like a sauna, I revised my opinion real quick. I figured out that back there was air-conditioned comfort. This was a sauna.

I had to walk fast because when he wasn’t carving a hole in the jungle, Mr. Vinh had this little trotting thing he did which covered a lot of ground in a short time. The old man had a long stride so he was right behind Mr. Vinh.

I had to haul ass to keep them in sight. And I noticed that neither of them looked back. That meant I either kept up or got lost in the jungle to be eaten by whatever creatures were making the noises I heard all around us.

I thought that was just in the movies. But there were noises, animal and bird noises, and not one of them sounded like any animals or birds I knew. The noises died away as we got closer to whatever creatures were out there and started up again behind us as soon as we passed them. No, not behind us … behind me. I was at the back. I hoped none of the noisemakers was hungry.

Then things got worse. We stopped at this swamp-looking body of water that stretched out in front of us for what looked like half a football field. I finally caught up to the old man and Mr. Vinh. They were at the edge of the swamp and the old man was digging into the duffel bag he’d been carrying. Pulled out two sets of rubber boots. Rubber boots with attitude. About a metre long.

“Hip waders,” he said. “Put them on.”

“We’re not going in there?” I looked at him like he was nuts. Which he was if he thought I was setting foot in that … water. With or without hip waders. “It’s the colour of sewage and it doesn’t smell good and who knows what’s in there.”

“So, what’s your point?”

“My point is I’m not going in there.”

“Okay, first of all, nothing bad will happen to you in there. You won’t drown, and you won’t get eaten by a great white shark.”

“That’s because no shark in his right mind would be caught dead in that crap.”

“Second of all, we’re crossing this, and if you decide you’re not going to, then I’ll see you back at the truck. You can leave now.”

I looked back at the jungle we’d just come through. I thought about the noises I’d heard in there. Plus, even though there was sort of a path, I wasn’t totally positive I could find my way back to Mrs. Vinh and the campfire.

“Are you sure there isn’t a better way? Like maybe we could go around this?”

“There’s no better way. If Mr. Vinh says we have to cross this, then we have to cross it. Put on the damn hip waders.”

Mr. Vinh launched into some Vietnamese lecture. Sounded like an English teacher when you don’t hand something in.

The old man nodded. “He wants us to hurry up.”

“Give me the damn hip waders.”

They were too big, and I had trouble walking in them. The old man took bungee cords and wrapped them around my legs a couple of times to keep them on. He made the cords so tight they hurt.

“You’ve cut off my circulation.”

“Then we better get going. It’d be a bitch if your legs fell off out there in the middle.” He waved his arm in the direction of the swamp.

I noticed Mr. Vinh didn’t have hip waders. “Is he going to cross like that?”

The old man shrugged. “He’s tougher than us.”

“He’s stupider than us.”

The old man actually cracked a smile. “Let’s go.” He nodded at Mr. Vinh, who did his little trot-shuffle step up to the swamp, then stepped out into it.

I was relieved that he didn’t disappear straight down and out of sight. He held his arms out to the side like he was balancing, but he moved pretty fast. I was wishing the guy had more than one speed.

The old man gathered up the duffel bag and stepped into the water, then moved off a few metres into the swamp. But this time he at least stopped and looked back to see how I was getting along. I had my canteens and backpack all arranged, but holding the briefcase up chest high meant I couldn’t use my arms to balance myself.

“This place takes brackish to a whole other level.” I don’t think anybody heard me.

There are earthworms that move faster than I was moving right then, and I figured it wouldn’t be long before I heard about it. But this time the old man was patient. Even said all that encouraging stuff. “Doin’ just fine, Nate…. Looking good, buddy.” That kind of stuff.

And I was looking good until a little past the midway point of our crossing. The water was up to about the middle of my thighs. I think my foot must have slipped off a rock on the bottom, and I lost my balance. I tried like crazy to get my feet back under me, but as I was scrambling around, I tripped over something — a submerged log or something and fell backwards into the swamp.

I was only totally in the water for like a second and a half, but I swallowed what I was sure was a lethal dose of swamp water. I scrambled and splashed my way back to my feet sputtering, choking and trying to say “Shit,” all at the same time.

The amazing thing is I kept the briefcase from going in the water. Kept my arms up as I was falling. Could’ve drowned, probably poisoned myself, but I saved a briefcase I’d never even seen the inside of. Genius.

“You okay?”

I had a feeling the old man was trying to keep from laughing.

“Just ducky,” I said.

The rest of the way to the other side went okay considering I was feeling like I’d been slimed. The water was cool so that part had been okay. At least it got some of the sweat off me.

By the time the old man and I got the hip waders off and back in the duffel bag, Mr. Vinh had disappeared into the jungle ahead. I hoped the old man knew where he’d gone.

I wanted to take time to wring out my T-shirt, but the old man shook his head.

“Saddle up. We’re moving out … now.”

Was it just me or was he starting to sound like somebody out of a war movie? I didn’t have time to think about it because he headed off down what looked like a bit of a jungle path, moving even faster than he had before.

I saddled up and hustled after him, the canteens jouncing around as I sort of jog/sloshed off into the jungle. I was able to catch up even though neither Mr. Vinh, who I could just make out up ahead, nor the old man slowed down even a little bit.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been hiking, but I was sure of one thing. I was tired to the point I could have fallen over. I was walking with my head down, and I almost ran into the old man. He’d stopped suddenly, and Mr. Vinh was just a couple of metres ahead.

I looked up. We were at the edge of a huge clearing that looked like someone had gone through and cut down all the trees and left a lawn. The grass was a little long for a lawn, but I was so happy to be out of the jungle I wasn’t about to criticize the groundskeeper. It was a space about the size of our school gymnasium, maybe a little bigger.

The old man dropped his duffel bag. Mr. Vinh did the same thing. The old man said some stuff, some English, some Vietnamese, and threw in a few hand signals. I was getting used to their way of communication, and I figured out that the old man and I were going to set up the tents while Mr. Vinh’s job was to get the food out.

“Where are we?” I dropped the canteens and backpack on the ground. Then I set the briefcase down very carefully. I still didn’t know what was in it, but after the effort I’d made to keep the thing dry back there in the swamp, I wasn’t about to let anything happen to it now.

“A clearing. It was an LZ — Landing Zone. Places like this choppers used to set down to drop guys for search-and-destroy missions. Evacuate wounded too.”

That was a big explanation for the old man, so I decided not to push it. I looked around, tried to imagine helicopters coming in, getting shot at from the jungle all around, landing, taking off again. I shivered. Part of it was because my clothes were still soaked, and it was getting cooler. But I don’t think that was all of it.

“We’ll stay right here tonight, push on again in the morning. There’re dry clothes in the duffel bag Mr. Vinh was carrying. Better get changed.”

“Change like right out here?”

“The master bedroom’s occupied. And I don’t recommend you go back into the jungle and start peeling off clothes. No telling what might happen.” This time he didn’t try to keep the grin off his face. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t setting foot into anything that looked like jungle without the old man and Mr. Vinh real close by.

The old man started setting up one of the tents and Mr. Vinh was doing something to do with food. I got some dry gonch and socks and another T-shirt and jeans out of the duffel bag. Then I turned away from them and tried to change. Going for privacy. It wasn’t easy. The clothes I had on were sticky, and the ground was uneven, so I was hopping around trying to get the wet jeans off and the other pair on. It took a lot longer than I wanted it to.

I had one leg in the dry jeans and was trying to get the other leg in without losing my balance when I heard laughing behind me.

“You try it, you think it’s so easy,” I yelled over my shoulder.

I got the other leg into the jeans and whipped around to look at them while I did up the button and the fly. The old man was looking at me, still grinning but not actually laughing. I looked over at Mr.Vinh. He was bent over, and he was killing himself laughing. Making little Vietnamese comments to the old man, who was nodding.

“And just when I thought ol’ Mr. Vinh had no sense of humour at all.” I gave them both my best pissed-off face, but that got Mr. Vinh laughing even harder. “You son of a bitch,” I said.

But the thing is, it was funny. And for the first time since I’d started on this whole stupid summer from hell, my old man and I laughed at the same time. But neither of us was coming close to Mr. Vinh in the laughter department. I thought the old guy would have a heart attack or something.

“Actually, you’re both sons of bitches.” I threw my soggy T-shirt at Mr. Vinh.

It wasn’t long before we had two tents set up, my wet clothes hanging from a tree on the edge of the clearing, and we were eating. Something. Some of it I recognized. There was bread and a can of some kind of meatballs that we passed around, each of us spearing a meatball when it was our turn.

The rest of it I wasn’t sure about and didn’t ask. There was some kind of fish; at least I thought it was fish, raw fish. There were cold noodles (what’s a meal without noodles), and this salad looking stuff that didn’t taste like salad. I drank quite a bit of water with that meal.

7

Dark came in fast and I was real tired, but I didn’t want to go to bed. Not yet. We’d cleaned up from our meal, and the old man was sitting down against one of the folded up sleeping bags and looking up at the darkening sky. Mr. Vinh was sitting cross-legged and smoking a pipe.

I spread out my sleeping bag on the ground and lay down on it, my head propped on one elbow. I watched them. I was trying to figure out what was going on.

“You feel like sleeping, that’s our tent.” The old man pointed.

“I feel like sleeping, but I feel more like talking … that is if anybody wants to talk to me.”

“I can’t speak for Mr. Vinh.” The old man went back to looking at the sky.

“I was thinking more that I’d like it if you talked to me.” I’d noticed that now we were actually out here, the old man seemed a lot calmer, more settled than when we’d been travelling to get here.

“What would you like to talk about, Nathan?”

“Nate.”

“What would you like to talk about, Nate?”

“How about where are we for starters?”

He pointed back over his shoulder. “In that direction is the A Shau Valley. That’s where we’re headed. During the war, this valley was part of something called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnamese soldiers used this as their main infiltration route into the south. A lot of battles were fought around here. A hell of a lot of people died in that valley.”

“And this is where the battle you told me about, the one you and Tal were in, this is where that battle happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you want to come back here?”

“Jesus, Nate, you could be one of those interviewers on 60 Minutes or something. These are tough questions.”

“Sorry.”

“A lot of guys come back. Visit the places where shit happened. I don’t know exactly why. I never wanted to experience anything like that ever again. And I didn’t think I’d want to be reminded of what happened here. So I can’t explain exactly why we’re here, except that I guess I changed my mind.”

“It just seems weird to me after all this time.”

“Forty years.”

“Seriously? Forty years?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you remember stuff that happened that long ago?”

“Like it happened this morning.”

“I still don’t get why … after forty years.”

“It’s the right time.”

I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. But I was too tired to try to figure it out.

“What happens tomorrow?”

“We walk. Five miles to a place I want to see. A place I want you to see. After that I don’t know.”

I stopped listening after the five miles part. I hoped there weren’t any more swamps. I picked up the sleeping bag and pushed it into the tent. I fell asleep like somebody had hit me over the head with a brick.