Sand in the Wind (72 page)

“I know this. In America everything is
bee
ger.”

He looked at Tuyen with mock resentment. “You want me to be angry with you now?” She smiled as she shook her head and sat down across from him. “You’d like Miami. We have mangoes, it’s warm, and there’s an ocean.”

“We have these things in Vietnam.”

“I know. That’s why you’d like it there.”

“But I am already here.
  
.
 
.
 
. Do they grow rice there?”

“Only during the tourist season.” Tuyen looked at him questioningly. “No, but they grow it in Louisiana.”

“This is near where you live?”

“Right next door.
  
.
 
.
 
. When you were at Sorbonne, did you study Greek Mythology?”

“You mean about the gods? Many years before I go there I study this in Vietnamese school.”

Kramer held up the mango as if he was lecturing a class. “Do you know what this is?”

“Yes, I buy it.”

“It’s ambrosia!”

“This word I do not know.”

“Ambrosia is the food of the gods.” Tuyen nodded her head. “Whenever I hear the word mango, I think of ambrosia.
  
.
 
.
 
. Let’s eat it.” Tuyen got up and brought him a knife. Kramer was about to cut the mango when he stopped and said, “This is a ceremony, we should say an invocation to the gods.” Tuyen looked at him questioningly. “A prayer.”

“Is the food of the gods. They do not say prayer.”

“You’re right.” He cut the mango in half, exposing its rich golden core. He then cut a small piece, and held it near Tuyen’s lips on the point of the knife. She moved her head back and took the piece of mango between her fingers. “You don’t trust me.”

“I think maybe I trust you.”

When they were done eating the mango, they walked back into the living room and Kramer said, “The ocean is near here, isn’t it?”

“Is not far.”

“Will you go there with me?”

“You say you have to go back.”

“I’m never going back.”

“They will come for you.”

Kramer’s expression became more serious. “I was supposed to go back last night. A few more hours won’t make any difference.”

“All right, we go.” The sad, proud expression had returned to her face, and only now did Kramer realize how happy she had seemed a few moments earlier. He placed his hands gently on her neck. Tuyen started to back away, but stopped herself and instead said softly, her eyes cast down in front of her, “You say we go to the ocean.”

“In a while,” he whispered as his hands moved along the front of her shoulders and beneath her robe before it fell to the floor.

The sky was overcast and ominous. Strong gusts of wind carried the smell of salt towards him, telling Kramer they were near the ocean. Tuyen was wearing a long white dress of embroidered silk. It was slit to the waist on both sides, revealing slacks of thin, white silk beneath it. He watched as Tuyen’s hair streamed behind her in the wind. The expression on her face made her seem very far away. In the distance, he heard the breakers. The white sand was deep and soft, and each succeeding dune seemed to promise a glimpse of the ocean behind it. Then it appeared — light green purging itself to blue towards the horizon. The expanse of it made him feel insignificant, and as if he were standing on a small, barren island. Tuyen watched him as his eyes followed the furious breakers, seeing them spend their force upon the passive sand only to once again recede into the ocean, softly. “Is beautiful, no?”

Kramer answered without moving his stare from the ocean. “I love to see her when she’s mad.”

The wind ripped at his words.

He felt her hand pressing down on his shoulder, and turned to see her leaning up towards his face. “I diddin hear you.”

He put his arm around her, and his lips searched within her hair for her ear. “I love to see her when she’s mad.”

Neither of them spoke as they walked towards the water. The beach gradually hardened under their feet. For a long time they stood at the edge of the wet sand, looking out at the horizon. Tuyen was at Kramer’s side, and he almost lifted her off the ground as he pulled her towards himself and against his chest. The wind blew strands of her hair across his face, and he pressed her tighter against himself while saying, “I feel so strong. I feel like the strongest person in the world.” He took Tuyen’s hand and almost dragged her as they walked silently along the edge of the water, the sounds of gusting wind and crashing breakers numbing their senses.

Kramer saw the receding waves leave a strange object exposed. Many times before he had seen something like this happen, and now as always he wondered what he would find when he reached it. It wasn’t until he pressed his foot against it that he knew — the lip of an all-but-buried combat helmet. Again he looked out at the ocean, remembering the reefs off south Florida, their calm, quiet beauty, realizing that the violence before him was merely on the surface, but there. He gently pulled Tuyen back towards the dunes. The wind no longer blew against their faces, and when he looked back, her hair was flying freely in front of her. Again the sand became soft. Their feet sank deeply into it as they climbed the dunes. Suddenly the sounds of the wind and the breakers became muffled and seemed very distant. They were in a valley between two large sand dunes.

Kramer dropped to his knees, gently pulling Tuyen down in front of him. Again her stare was sad and impenetrable. He leaned back on his elbow and looked up at her. With outstretched fingers, he combed the hair away from her face. Only then did he place his hand beneath her chin. Ever so gently, he moved her face to slightly different angles, as if examining the facets of a precious stone, trying to delve into its center and find the source of its radiance. “What is it you are thinking?” she asked. Kramer made no reply, and his expression told her that he didn’t know. “Your house is by the ocean?” He answered her with a slight shake of his head. “Is beautiful, no?”

Kramer realized that she was referring to the ocean, and also that his answer would apply equally well to her face. “When I see it, life seems very short.”

“You are young. You will live many years.” Kramer gave a quick, sarcastic laugh, and Tuyen asked, “Your father is how old?”

“Fifty-five, fifty-six.”

“You will live to be a hundred.”

Kramer burst out laughing as he fell back in the sand. “No! Please, no.” Tuyen also began to laugh and she said, “Maybe ninety.”

“Okay, that’s a little better,” Kramer answered, a smile still on his face. He reached out for her hands and placed them upon his chest. She leaned over him, strands of her hair hanging alongside his face. “Tell me about time again.”

“I say I cannot tell you.”

“Like you did last night.”

“I will tell you what I think sometimes.
  
.
 
.
 
. When I am sad, time seems not to move. I see my life before me, and it seem very long. But then I think, if I kill myself, there will be time before I die, less than a second maybe, but this second may seem longer than many years, longer than all the time I would have live.”

Kramer sensed a fallacy in what Tuyen had said, but the words themselves and the manner in which she had spoken them made her idea soothing. “Do you really believe that?”

“Maybe is true. I do not know.”

He wanted to hear her voice, and mainly for this reason, he finally asked, “When you are happy, doesn’t it make you sad to know that time is moving so fast?”

“No, I do not think about this. If I am happy or if I am sad, is already happen, is —” she hesitated while trying to think of the right words.

“It’s in the past.”

“Yes, is already in the past. Many things have happen to me, many bad things. But I remember the times when I was happy. They cannot be made separate — are a part of my life which cannot be divided. The bad things, they too are a part, but is all one — cannot be divided. When I remember, the bad things they are there, not alone by themselves. Too they seem far away, not me —” Tuyen again paused while trying to think of the right words.

“They’re not as real. It’s as if they happened to somebody else.”

“Yes, sometimes.
  
.
 
.
 
. I cannot believe they happen to me
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
sometimes. Sometimes I remember, but more than only the bad things.”

“And when you remember when you were happy?”

“Is like I am happy again. Everything I remember.”

“Like when you remember Paris and —” Kramer suddenly realized what he had said. His voice diminished to a whisper as he added, “Hue.” Tuyen knew immediately what he was thinking. She watched his troubled expression as he tried, but failed, to keep himself from asking her, “Will you remember last night?”

The slight hesitation before she said, “Yes, I will remember,” and the tone of her words made it clear to him that she could have added, “but not like Paris.”

Now sorry that he knew, Kramer wished only that there could have been at least some doubt in his mind. There seemed nothing for him to say, and Tuyen also remained silent. She had sensed what would happen even before she had spoken, knowing that he would somehow see beneath her words. The troubled look on his face made him seem even sadder than when she had first seen him, when he and Donaldson sat drinking in her bar, during those moments when the childish arrogance would slowly fade from his face leaving nothing but fear and doubt. Now, for the first time, it was she who reached out and touched
his
face. He couldn’t help but smile as he looked up at her, realizing that she again saw him as a child — not a scared, angry child, but still a child. It made little difference now, he knew this.

“You will walk back with me?”

He was still feeling some sense of loss; but it hadn’t been unexpected. He nodded and said, “Yes.”

He got to his feet and watched Tuyen as she climbed to the top of the sand dune. She glanced back towards him to make sure he was coming, then started walking again. Kramer stood watching her graceful silhouette. The sun glinted off her dress as she turned away; and suddenly, in one horrible instant, her image appeared to explode before him, a deafening barrage of rifle fire reverberated within his head, and a mutilated, bullet-riddled form, flesh flying from it, collapsed in front of him.

Kramer slowly dropped to his knees. He remembered. He had finally remembered. “I knew it,” he said in a dazed whisper. “I knew it.
Now,
I have to remember it
now!
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
All of it!
” Confused segments flashed through his mind. He tried to control himself, deciding to go over it minute by minute. Unable to rise from his knees, he called Tuyen. “Now,” he said with determination. The only way it was possible for him to start was by saying everything aloud. “Forest was talking to me. Forest was talking to me. Trippitt came over and asked who the Professor was. Forest was talking to me, then Trippitt asked — Professor, then somebody shouted, ‘Look! Out there. A Gook.’
 
” Kramer remembered turning to see a figure walking across the rice paddies towards them. The figure staggered and fell. He got up again. Somebody yelled, “He’s NVA!” Kramer remembered being able to make out a tattered and mud-covered NVA uniform, and saying to himself, ‘He’s an NVA soldier. He’s trying to
chieu hoi.
’

Somebody yelled out, “He’s a
chieu hoi.
”

“
Fuck it!
Blow him away!”

“
I’ll
blow him away.”

“No!”

“No, don’t!”

“Wait!”

At first the men watched in silence as he staggered towards them. They lined the edge of the high ground waiting for him. Then there was some laughter as he continually staggered and fell. It seemed to take a long time before he reached the last dike between himself and the high ground.

Kramer remembered the way he paused after climbing over this dike. Less than twenty yards of rice paddies lay between him and a hundred Marines. He stood staring at them, hands on hips, his chest heaving while he tried to catch his breath. Somebody yelled, “C’mon!” He remained standing with his hands on his hips for a few more seconds, then began taking slow, sure steps towards them. Kramer remembered staring at his tattered uniform, and then seeing the wild, fantastic look in his eyes. His steps quickened. Suddenly he drew a knife from his belt. With all the strength he had left, he began to run towards them. No one could believe what was happening. Their rifles lay forgotten in their hands. As soon as he saw the knife, Kramer’s stare shot back towards his eyes. Wild and unreal, they came straight towards him, screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! You’re death! KILL ME!” Kramer couldn’t, made no effort to move, his rifle hanging down at his side, the figure staggering straight towards him, eyes screaming, “You’re death! You’re death!” There was a single shot from an M-16. The sound of it seemed muffled. With his insane eyes still glaring at Kramer and his knife held high, the figure started to take one more step. Kramer heard an awesome burst of rifle fire at the same instant all the flesh was being ripped away from his face. The burst continued as he spun completely around, turning crimson, falling in Kramer’s direction.

Even after he lay motionless, just below the surface of the water, there was another shot, two more, and a final one. Again there was silence, no one really sure it had happened, the water turning red in front of them. Then someone laughed, and another laugh. A Marine jumped into the rice paddy and pulled from it, by the hair, a piece of raw, butchered flesh. A hand grabbed for its belt as a souvenir, and only came up with a bullet-riddled half of it. There was some laughter. “Did you see the crazy motherfucker?”

“Tried to take a whole company with a knife!”

Laughter.

“He must have two hundred holes in him!”