The Man From Saigon (3 page)

The officer stood on a raised platform in front of a large map on which there were highlighted areas, circled areas, circles within circles, and a great deal of cryptic numbers. He was older than he ought to have been for his rank, somehow stalled at the lieutenant colonel status now for so many years it was certain he would remain there through to his retirement, which was imminent, though he was saddled for the moment with this band of undisciplined correspondents as though with unruly children. His uniform was newly starched, immaculate, with knife-point creases, reminding Susan all at once of something she had forgotten: how her father told the story of how he would examine his own dress uniform with a magnifying glass for wrinkles—this, before state dinners. She wondered if the lieutenant colonel in front did the same, whether he glided the glass across the crisp collar and sleeves, along the pressed seams on which she could not help but bestow a certain feminine admiration. Her own summer dress stuck to her skin, having lost its shape in the humid air. If she’d had to stand next to the lieutenant colonel she would have felt like a servant girl in an inadequate frock, and she was grateful that she was
sandwiched, almost obscured, between the men sitting on either side of her.

You want me to explain what a WBLC is?
the lieutenant colonel said. He leaned over the edge of the platform in a hawkish manner, his attention directed at her. She immediately regretted the question. She seemed to have ignited something inside the man. The lieutenant colonel had been using a pointing stick made of pale wood to indicate places on the charts and maps that flashed across the screen behind him. Now he slapped the pointer across his palm brusquely so that it reminded her of a policeman’s nightstick. His face seemed devoid of expression but she could tell by the way he set his mouth, as though holding back all manner of unsaid words, that nothing good would come of this conversation, which—she was reminded now—was being held publicly in front of all her colleagues, most of whom she had not yet had the opportunity to meet.

She nodded. The way the lieutenant colonel glared at her had an effect she would not have imagined of herself: her heart pounding, the heat lifting from her like a series of veils, her throat becoming uncomfortable as though she’d swallowed a bug.
I’m afraid that is correct, sir
, she said, grateful she was sitting down.
I’ve never heard of a WBLC.

Miss, if you want to cover a war it is important you have some familiarity with military terms.

In one of her notebooks, one that she hoped would never be seen by the likes of the lieutenant colonel, or anyone gathered in the press room at JUSPAO, was a glossary of military terms which she had committed to memory.
That is why I am asking the question
, she said.
Sir.

He grunted his disapproval, twirling his pointing stick in his hand. For a moment she thought he was going to strike the screen.

WBLC would be waterborne logistics craft, miss. I hope that will help with your education.

There was a smattering of conversation in response to this remark, a twitchy sort of laughter, exchanges whispered between the correspondents, who, Susan imagined, would either be agreeing with the lieutenant colonel that she was severely unprepared for her assignment here in Vietnam, or who were simply relieved it was the female reporter from Illinois being singled out for attack rather than themselves. She felt her face flush. She felt a beading of sweat along the rim of her skull. If her father hadn’t been a full colonel, she would never have dared to ask the next question. If she hadn’t grown up watching such men overindulge in every available vice, seen them drunk, heard their stupid off-color remarks, and the ridiculous manner in which they made every conversation a contest, she would never have said another word. But she’d seen it over and again and she was, after all, the daughter of a full bird. She cleared her throat.
I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think I know what a waterborne logistics craft is.

The lieutenant colonel wheeled around, glaring at her, then glanced to the side, shaking his head. It was too much to look at her, so ill-informed, unwise enough to let her ignorance show. It was like seeing a man admit he had no clue, not an inkling, how to do his job, like having some failing fucking New Guy stand in front of him, parroting back the words he himself had instilled in the recruit:
No, sir, I do not have any idea how to perform, sir! How to be a useful part of the US Military, sir!
It angered him, enraged him. He looked across the audience of assembled press, with their unkempt hair, their fat bellies, their ridiculous safari shirts, sneering, he thought. Totally unaware. He was tired of them, tired of seeing them at the airports and officers’ clubs, ready to pounce on the smallest mistake made by the lowest-ranking of officers, ready to spread yet more tales of woe when the war, as he saw it, was going very well—magnificently, in fact. It was an impressive war if you looked at it properly, which these reporters never seemed to do.

You don’t know
—he began, his voice rising with each word.

Someone passed a note to her. It arrived from across the room, hand to hand, over the laps of journalists. She held it in her palm, feeling the moisture of her skin soften its corners. She wished she wasn’t so nervous. It seemed completely unprofessional of her not to assume the same lazy confidence of the others in the room.
Sampan
, the note read.
Sampan = WBLC.

She imagined the sampans she saw along canals. Long, primitive boats whose name literally means “three planks”. She’d seen them stocked with fish, fruit, paddled by families, by children even, in their black pajama trousers, their broad conical hats. She read the note, then carefully, silently, pressed it back into quarters, then eighths. Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel was still talking.
I don’t have time
, he emphasized,
the US military does not have time, to educate unprepared girl reporters
—

It was that expression “girl reporters” that did it. It lit something inside her she didn’t quite understand. She found herself interrupting the lieutenant colonel, then rising up despite how nervous she was, despite the crowded hot room, her face dotted with perspiration, the spectacle of it all. She stood, craning her neck to look taller and focusing her gaze directly at the man who glared down at her from his theater of maps. Her dress was ridiculous; she decided on the spot never to wear such a dress again. Even so, she stood, balancing herself on the back of the chair in front, holding the note, which she hoped the lieutenant colonel could not see, in the clenched fingers of her right hand.
Are you talking about a sampan?
she said, as forcefully as she could. It came out loud enough to hear, not a scornful question, not a challenge, but a genuine enquiry delivered with the assurance of one who will be able to evaluate the answer.
When you say WBLC, do you really mean sampan?

It was as though a bubble of air between herself and the lieutenant colonel had been punctured, as though she were standing right up next to him, balancing on her toes, stretching
her entire, compact frame up to meet the gaze of this large man. She was no longer afraid; she was no longer an observer. She felt herself finally to be among the press. There was a beat of silence between them, then the lieutenant colonel dropped his chin, blinking as though suddenly awakened from a dream.

A few chuckles, a reporter from AP laughing loudly, then a voice from the crowd, Son’s voice, the first time she would hear it, his heavy Vietnamese accent in which she could detect distinctly Anglican vowels, his light, slightly nasal tone.
Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?

The colonel stayed his position, breathing purposely in, then out, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. After a moment he let out a sigh, turning his face so that the projector etched out the line of the Demilitarized Zone across his left cheek. His pointer, which he had dropped during the exchange with the female reporter, with Susan, he now retrieved from the floor. When he spoke, it was to the map screen.
Yes, that is correct
, he said, finishing the matter.

Thank you, sir!
came Son’s voice from somewhere across the room. She did not know who was speaking. But Son had noticed her from the start, even that first week. He never admitted this, but later she pieced it together. Marc, of course, had not been at the briefing. She met him the following week, after deciding she’d better get out of Saigon and see the war for herself.

It was on a battlefield. Marc came on a convoy out of Cam Lo, riding in the open bed of a truck with his cameraman, Locke, and a dozen marines. They smoked and talked to the soldiers and looked out over the landscape shimmering with the day’s heat. Never in all the time they pitched over the bumpy roads did he think there would be a women ahead; but she had travelled out the day before and was about to beat him to a story.

They arrived at the base of a hill where a row of bodies, faces blackened as though burnt, waited to be taken back in
those same trucks, a captain yelling for more bodybags and ponchos, men in gas masks working the duty. He didn’t see her yet, not her or any other journalists. He got out his notebook, his recording equipment. Locke trained his camera on the bodies stacked to their right, only briefly of course so as not to be seen doing so. The smell of the bodies was revolting. Marc kept himself from looking and held his breath as much as he could until they went up the hill on foot, out to the camp. They were brought to the observation post. No bodies here, just miles of dusty, red dirt, low-lying shrubs, rubble and artillery and sandbags and men in foxholes.

There was sporadic fire, plenty of incoming but none of it that close. Then an onslaught of artillery. He didn’t know when the serious shelling began, but it did, like a storm gathering and settling upon them, ceaseless and consuming. They dived into an open bunker, marines beside them curled up around the edges of the pit, their faces pressed against the shallow walls, their legs and arms seized up beneath them. They could not have gotten any smaller. Locke tried to work the camera, getting as much footage as he could. Occasionally, they became brave; moving cautiously over the dusty grounds standing at the rims of foxholes, desperate to get some good pictures, but equally ready to dive underground as the storm of firing continued. There had been explosions all morning, coming every thirty seconds, every fifteen, landing at first some distance off and now much closer. They thought they were up here doing a story about the morale of marines, asking them how they felt about being there, Con Thien, the meat grinder, the graveyard, three featureless hills right up against the Demilitarized Zone. But the incoming was so heavy there was hardly enough time between explosions to get even a quick on-camera.

The marines were extraordinary. After so many days and weeks of fighting they seemed to know how close a shell was by the sound of it, and would remain on their feet longer than
he would dare to. He tried to be that brave but the rockets came cracking out of the sky—no sooner was he standing up than he was flat on his front again. He felt suspended in time, as in a dream when you cannot quite get your limbs to move. They needed the footage and surely this battle was something they ought to record, but they couldn’t get much. He would see Locke rolling film across the hills where the explosions followed a line of men in defensive positions, then both Locke and the camera would disappear. He clutched the microphone, trying to record some natural sound, but no sooner had he made the effort than he found himself once more on his face.

Something happened. The earth itself seemed to tip and now he was on his hands and knees, the tape recorder covered in dust, the microphone, the wires, sprawled out on the dirt. He didn’t know where Locke was; calling out would be useless. There was constant firing in both directions, the ground lifting up beneath him. Someone grabbed his shoulder and threw him into a bunker. It was Locke. He could tell because the camera knocked him in the face. They’d been up there less than an hour, maybe much less, but he did not know, and would not be able to recall.

No light, the earth shaking, artillery shrieking above. He was aware of other people in the bunker, of the walls of sandbags, the dry earth pressing around them with every blast, red dust showering down from the sandbags over their heads, raining on his shoulders. On the floor, hugging his knees, neck bent, arms over his head, hands over his ears, he told himself that unless they got a direct hit, they’d survive. His cheek swelled, the place where the camera had hit him. He was missing his eyeglasses and then he realized he had them in his hand.

The bunker was only a few feet high, not much wider, hot. He felt the sweat on his back, his chest, running down his face. Another explosion, this one so close he called out, the sound rushing from his lungs as though forced out by the blast, his heart screaming inside his chest. He recalled reading an account by a survivor of
the Ia Drang massacre, a soldier whose company had nearly been wiped out. The soldier had told how when his buddies were hit in the belly or chest, they let out a terrible scream and they kept on screaming, until they were hoarse, until the blood filled their mouths, until they died. He wished he hadn’t read that account, which had been in the
Saturday Evening Post.
He thought of it now; he didn’t know why. The noise was so loud, so penetrating, it seemed to alter the way his body worked. During the blasts he saw bright orange and red behind his eyelids, felt his skeleton acutely within the soft tissue of his muscles. Strange bits of information hung around the edges of his thoughts. Body counts from other battles, a line from a childhood prayer, a drive toward silence, the need for which was reaching desperation point. He was alternately blinded by darkness, then by light. Nothing happening now, not one thing, was natural.

He heard the metallic click of a cigarette lighter; a flame illuminated the bunker. He opened his eyes. Across from him, not ten inches from his face, was a woman. Her helmet was lopsided, the hair hanging beneath its rim coated in dirt, scratches across her cheek. Her eyes were open and glassy. He didn’t know her. Didn’t know why she was in the bunker or the base, or in the country itself. The world had receded to this one, small place, and here she was before him. The sergeant with the lighter lit a kerosene lamp. Nobody looked at each other, except him and the girl. They locked eyes and kept them locked, as though through doing so they might somehow stay more focused and right thinking. Already, he felt himself begin to settle. Despite the shelling, which continued. Despite the sound of air attacks charging north. He tried to get out his notebook and pen, but his hands were shaking too much. He couldn’t write. He dropped the notebook and let it rest by his boot, by her boot. His pen, too, lay between them.