Red Flags (2 page)

"I didn't know the colonel well. I was just a captain. He was fifteen years my senior, my superior officer. We didn't exactly socialize. You know, you might try his executive officer, Major Gidding."

"General Gidding passed away three years ago. He was the first one I found." She held back wisps of hair fluttering around her face. "Two others are deceased as well. Two begged off. The seven who agreed to meet weren't very forthcoming. Mostly I get lofty sentiments about valor and honor."

"Your mother wasn't . . . ?"

"Told anything? Other than being instructed not to open the coffin, no. Not really. She was so shattered—widowed, pregnant. She just let the protocols and ceremonies carry her along. He was buried at West Point. Afterward it got even tougher for her. A while later I arrived."

"You weren't enough to keep her occupied?"

"Yes. Yes, I fit the bill," she said, sounding impatient, as if being her mother's diversion had been a challenge.

"What did your mom tell you about your father?"

"That he wouldn't have died if he had cared more about us and less about his career."

"Really?" I said, taken aback.

"Mom wanted him to stay an instructor at West Point. She said he had real gifts as a teacher and she didn't see why he felt he had to be an infantry officer. At times I wondered why they had ever been together. He was from a military family. She hated the military, hated all the deference expected of an officer's wife."

"Being an Army widow's no picnic either."

"My whole childhood she was furious with him for going back to Viet Nam when he didn't have to. She couldn't forgive him. I couldn't bear to listen to it. I'd wind up defending him."

"A lot of us volunteered for more tours or extended them. Didn't his awards—"

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as commanding officer . . .' blah-blah-blah. I could recite the medal citations when I was in grade school, before I even knew what all the words meant. Not much of a substitute for an actual dad."

She was his daughter. Tall, thin as a rail, with that same anxious concentration. The wind rushed through the treetops, swaying the branches.

"Except for those damn citations, I have only my mother's version of who my father was."

"I can see that."

"I wanted to hear about him from people who knew him as a soldier—knew him at the end." She wrapped her arms around her middle, fighting the chill. "A lot of people go to where their loved ones perished to commune with those they've lost: to the site of a plane crash, the spot on the highway where someone they loved was killed. For a long time I thought I'd sense something if I did that—found the place where he died."

I winced. "You're actually thinking about going back there?"

She blinked rapidly. "I did, last year."

Why was I surprised? Young Americans were honeymooning in Ho Chi Minh City these days, frolicking on the beaches at Nha Trang.

"I take it you didn't find what you were after."

She shook her head. "Never got further than Saigon. The aborigines in the mountains were demonstrating against the government. The authorities wouldn't let me into the Highlands."

"Yeah, they're crushing the Montagnards again, poor bastards. So you've come here looking for what you couldn't find there?"

"I'm hoping." She shielded her eyes against the cold sunlight. "I want to know what he was doing when he died . . . if it was true he stupidly put himself in harm's way. I want the facts—unvarnished."

I knew a bit about piggybacking ghosts around and I hesitated, reluctant to disturb hers. She slapped the car, exasperated.

"I've gotten the platitudes and pats on the head. Honestly, I don't want to be spared. It's just impossible when you don't know. It never leaves you." Her eyes cut me. "No matter what the truth is, I need to hear it."

And her gut told her she hadn't yet. I knew the war had burrowed into those of us who had been there, but it was disturbing to see it haunting someone her age. She was stuck with her grief, mourning the father she had never known.

The wind plastered our jackets against our arms and torsos. She trembled, ears crimson. Bert's neon saloon sign went on in the window. The regulars quickly appeared, crunching across the gravel.

"Mr. Rider, I can't keep standing here in the cold. Let me at least buy you a drink."

"Erik. Please call me Erik."

We went in. Bert's wife was filling glasses. The TV played, barely audible, stock quotes and news streaming above and below a talking head. I ushered Celeste to a booth, found out what she drank, and fetched it. She sipped her bourbon. I downed my shot and tipped back a Kirin.

"Haven't much time," I said, checking my wristwatch and feeling the fool for using the transparent dodge of pressing business. She looked exhausted, finding it difficult to keep pleading her case. I needed to do the smart thing and brush her off.

"Whatever you can spare," she said, her voice calming. She took slow, deep breaths, keeping herself contained—patient—even as her heart raced. I could see the pulse in her throat. She was revving for something.

"You look a little peaked," I said.

"Haven't eaten since morning," she admitted, sipping again. "Didn't want to stop."

I signaled Bert's wife and she threw on two bison burgers.

Celeste. Young, alive, and tortured. It was palpable. Even sitting, she moved constantly, darting from side to side just a fraction, as if boxing against somebody in there with her.

"Did you know my dad in Saigon in sixty-four, before Cheo Reo?"

Smart. She was easing me into it. Okay, Saigon was the easy part. I fussed with the chipped Formica and nodded. "I knew who he was."

"How bad was it?"

"There were street demonstrations. Occasional bombs. Otherwise Saigon was pretty much a great duty station early on."

"Oh," she said, surprised.

"Minimal bullshit, quick advancement. Sleepy, tropical. Palms, tamarind trees—like that. Exotic food, exotic women. New Orleans, with bigger and better guns. Perfumed with flowering trees and marsh water and every kind of shit, human and otherwise. I actually miss it. There were only sixteen thousand of us in country then. Most commuted to the war, did their work, and hustled back to town before sundown. We slept in real beds in real linen."

"There was fighting though, right?"

I shrugged. "The guerrilla war wasn't much, just hot enough to qualify us for hazardous-duty pay and put a little zing in life. Shootouts stayed in the hinterlands, but most of the fighting was small time—dinky and
dien cai dau:
crazy. The Viet Cong just kept sawing away at the Vietnamese military, a piece at a time. They'd take potshots, block roads, hit and run. Drop three mortar rounds on us and be gone before the last one landed."

"But the Viet Cong had such a fierce reputation."

"Yeah, well, in those days the VC didn't even have enough weapons to arm all their fighters. They had to take turns with them—a sad hodgepodge of copies and discards, all different calibers. When they attempted larger attacks, they'd herd villagers into nearby fields to yell and set off firecrackers . . . to sound like there were lots of them."

"Doesn't seem like much of a war," she said.

"It wasn't. More like a bad neighborhood you policed during the day and stayed out of after dark."

Mrs. Bert delivered our bison burgers and the condiment tray. I removed the cap from the mustard. Celeste worked on her burger and waited for me to resume.

"The VC owned the night, we owned the nightlife. The young sergeants partied, the middle-aged noncoms invested in real estate and bars and lived with Asian mistresses they married in Buddhist ceremonies—or not. A lot of servicemen and embassy staff had their dependents with them."

"Wives?"

"Yeah, kids too. Families leased villas in good districts, with pools and tennis courts. Had peacocks wandering the lawns. Cooks, amahs, gardeners . . . a swim before lunch, a round of golf at the Saigon Golf Club in the afternoon."

"Sounds like an American raj," Celeste said. "My mom never mentioned that she could have gone with him. I could have been born there." She sat quietly for a minute, absorbing this possibility.

"Was it exciting?" she said. "Exciting enough to make someone want to go back?"

"Sure. Boring too. Funny every once in a while." I slathered some ketchup on my burger. "Listen, it was never neat or simple. There wasn't just one war, us against them. There were a bunch of wars all going on at once. You had to sort through them. You weren't always sure which side you were on."

I took a pull of beer.

"By the time I served under your dad, two years later, Viet Nam was going through its top bananas like a fruit bat. They were on coup number eight. President Diem ruled for nine years. His successors were lucky to last nine weeks. Every time a regime was taken down, counterinsurgency stopped, the government and army derailed. Then the latest junta generals would replace all the civil and military leaders with their guys and it all started up again."

Action on the tube elicited a small outburst from the sportsmen gathered at the bar. They high-fived and locked on the screen. I took a healthy swig and felt the alcohol bathe my tensed brain. I had to watch it. She was good at getting people to talk. I needed to back away. I waved to Mrs. Bert for the tally.

"Where are you heading from here? Who's next on your list?"

She peered out the window. It was getting late. White flakes threaded the air.

"I'm not sure I should try that road in the dark and the snow." She looked toward the bar. "Mrs. Bert rents rooms, I hope."

I shook my head. "It's not a bed-and-breakfast sort of town."

"Damn." Concern swept over her face. "Might I impose on you, Erik?"

What was there to say? Outflanked. "Where's your stuff?"

"Front seat of the rental."

Mrs. Bert eyed us as we left the bar; the regulars paid no attention. Not minding other people's business was the only town tradition I knew of, other than shooting up Bert's parking lot on New Year's Eve.

 

"Your place is beautiful." She sounded surprised. And relieved.

I'd driven her up in the Bronco. Her rental never would have made the steep grade.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Hard not to be, with that vista."

The sun set like a boiling rock, turning the Trinity Alps dark green. Faint remnants of gold from below the horizon rounded the rolling hills.

The cabin sat on the edge of a steep drop, giving the back porch an enormous view of our valley, nestled in green twists and slopes. There wasn't another house in sight. The faint whiff of wood smoke was the only sign of other human habitation.

"Do you mind the isolation?"

"I've come to like it."

She put her things in the room next to mine and returned to claim the armchair in front of the hearth. It was growing colder as the light outside died.

I said, "Would you fire up the kindling in the fireplace? It's all set to go. The matches are by the hearth, on the log pile."

She knelt to ignite the wood shavings and splints, baring a band of skin at the small of her back. The room filled with the aroma of apple wood and sage as the scrap caught. Celeste stood up and paused at the framed photos on the mantelpiece. She spotted her father in a group shot.

"I don't have this one. Is this Team Thirty-one? I recognize a couple of faces."

"Yes, some of it."

"You guys ever get together?"

I shook my head but she didn't see; she was still examining the photograph. "No," I said. "We don't."

She looked back, holding my gaze for a moment, weighing something about me. I held up a bottle of fifteen-year-old whiskey. She nodded yes and I got down the cut-crystal glasses, bringing everything over to her. Nothing like kick-ass whiskey in a heavy tumbler. The fragrance alone revived me some. Celeste resettled in the armchair, covering up in a quilt.

"Why do you think he volunteered to go back?" she said.

"To get another crack at a field command, maybe. Career officers needed that on their resumés to advance. That and gongs."

"Gongs?"

"That's what GIs called medals. You needed gongs and a field command or you'd be out of the running for promotion and eventually out of the Army. The higher you went, the harder it got. It was like musical chairs."

"So my mother was right. He was as ambitious as the rest of them."

"General Westmoreland allotted six-month combat commands to as many officers as possible. He rationed them because the fight was going to be over right quick."

"Did you think it would be done that fast?"

"No, but they didn't ask me or other ordinary mortals."

Her cheeks were rosy from the warmth of the fire. I knocked back my drink.

"Whole regiments of North Vietnamese regulars came streaming across, accompanied by Chinese generals advising them. The local Viet Cong armed up too. No more improvised bombs made out of rice husks and sugar. Forty miles north of Saigon, the South Vietnamese lost three hundred men in one ambush, including four U.S. advisers. Just to make sure they got our attention, the Communists decapitated the Americans."

"Good God. Why?"

"Beheading was real popular. The VC decapitated local officials all the time and dumped their heads in the toilet. Burying people alive was big too. Four Americans beheaded, though—the message was clear. We weren't immune. It wasn't going to be a cakewalk if we were truly getting in the fight. The unwritten rules changed as well."

"What rules?"

"They'd never gone after American dependents: no attacks on wives or school buses. One afternoon in Saigon, two VC killed the MPs guarding a movie house and then rushed into the theater with a bucket full of arsenic sulfide and potassium chlorate they'd picked up in a pharmacy. The bomb wounded a lot of our civilians, killed an officer."

I wedged the logs closer together with the poker and stood with my back to the fire. Wrapped in the quilt, she looked tiny.

"They car-bombed our billets, restaurants, the embassy, set off a bomb at a baseball game out at Pershing Field. It was open season on Americans. Dependents were ordered out, the Marines and combat battalions in—two hundred thousand of us. There was no mistaking what was coming. The intelligence on the North Vietnamese elite clinched it."