Tree of Smoke (37 page)

She put her feet on the floor and put on a flannel shirt over her nightgown. Still well dark. She lay back down and a bit later realized she’d slept again. No extra dreams. The clock ticked. Its radium dials said not quite six. She rose and found her slippers.

In the kitchen she put down a few drops of Carnation milk in a saucer for the cat. May the coyotes not get her. Or the toms. They didn’t need kittens around here…Still dark. Burris had been up half the night watching fright shows on the television. There was nothing she could do to keep him from the snares.

She lit a Salem off the burner on the stove. She boiled water for powdered coffee and sat at the kitchen table, a collapsible card table, set the cigarette in the ashtray, and pulled her shirt neck closed with one hand while she brought the cup to her lips with the other. Greenish streaks of light to the east. The window was dirty. Prayer was all she had. Prayer and Nescafé and Salems. This was the one time of day she didn’t feel crazy.

She spilled some coffee when the phone rang on the wall. God be with us all. She went to the wall and lifted the receiver wanting words to plead for mercy from whatever was coming. Before the terrors of possibility she only knew how to say, “Hello?”

“Hi, Ma. It’s James.”

“What?”

“Ma, it’s James, Ma. I’m calling to say Merry Christmas. Guess I’m a little late.”

“James?”

“It’s James, Ma. Merry Christmas.”

“James? James? Where are you?”

“I’m in Vietnam, like before. Like always.”

“Are you all right, James?”

“I’m fine. I’m perfect. How was Christmas for y’all?”

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

“I’m scared to hear you calling me.”

“I don’t mean to be scary. I just thought I’d say hi.”

“But you’re all right.”

“I’m just fine, Mom. Don’t be scared or nothing. Hey, I just sent you another money order.”

“I’m very grateful.”

“Sorry I slacked off there a little while.”

“I know it’s hard. I don’t count on it, I just say it sure helps us along.”

“I’ll try to do a little better. I truly will. How was your Christmas?”

“It went all right, James. It went just fine. I’ve got to sit now. Let me get a chair. You scared me.”

“Nothing to scare you about, Ma. I’m doing pretty good here.”

“Well, I’m glad to know it. Did you call Stephanie?”

“Stevie?”

“Stevie. Did you call her yet?”

“I mean to ring her right up. She’s next on my list tonight.”

“What time is it there?”

“Just about eight p.m. We call that twenty hundred hours in the military.”

“It’s six-oh-eight in the morning here in Phoenix.”

“There you go.”

“Get off, sweetie,” she said. “Not you—I got this old cat here.”

“You still got that cat?”

“No. Another one.”

“What happened to that other one?”

“Run off.”

“Coyotes got it.”

“I expect.”

“Well, you got you another one.”

“James—” she said, and her voice broke.

“Now, Ma.”

“James.”

“Ma. Ain’t nothing to worry about.”

“I got to worry.”

“It’s not like you’re thinking it is. We’re very safe where we’re at. I haven’t seen one bit of fighting. It’s just patrols. The people are all friendly.”

“Are they friendly?”

“Yes. They sure are, Ma. Everybody’s nice.”

“What about the Communists?”

“I’ve never seen a one. They don’t get around our part. They’re scared to.”

“If it’s a lie, I appreciate it.”

“It’s no lie.”

“And I expect you’ll be home soon. How long will it be?”

“Ma, I’m calling to say I’m signed up for one more go here.”

“One more?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“One more year?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She didn’t know what to say, and so she said, “Do you want to talk to your little brother?”

“Burris? Okay. Right quick, though.”

“He’s in trouble at school. The teachers have told me he wanders. One minute he’s there, next thing he’s gone.”

“What does Burris say?”

“He says he doesn’t like it at school. I told him to go anyhow. Nobody likes it, or they wouldn’t give it away free.”

“Put him on.”

“He’s sleeping. Just a minute.”

“Never mind, then. Just tell him I said he better get his tail in gear.”

“Thank you, James. I’ll tell him what his brother says.”

“Well, I’m talking on a radio unit, so I better let you go.”

“A radio unit?”

“Yes, ma’am. Up at the base camp.”

“You’re on the radio? And I’m on the phone!”

“Happy New Year’s, Ma.”

“Same to you.”

“Have a happy New Year’s, Ma.”

“I will. You do the same.”

“I sure will. All right, then, so long.”

“So long, James,” she said. “I pray for you day and night. Don’t listen to what they say. You’re doing the Lord’s work to keep his faith alive in a world going dark. It’s one of them Old Testament times.”

“I know. I hear you, Ma.”

“Communists are atheists. They deny the Lord.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Look at the Old Testament. Look how many slain in the name of the Lord. Look at First Samuel, look at Judges. Be the Lord’s smiting hand if you have to be.”

She heard him sigh.

“I just mean to take your arm and buck you up. Read your Bible daily. There’s doubters and demonstrators and God knows what. Traitors is what they are. If you hear about those people, shut your ears. Thank God they don’t come around Phoenix. If I saw a demonstration I’d get in a truck and come through that pack like a boulder down a mountain.”

“They’re telling me my time’s up, Ma, so I better say ’bye, so—’bye.”

There had been a washing sound coming over the phone. It stopped when her son rang off. “Well,” she said to nobody.

She rose and put the phone back on the hook.

A
rare, brilliant morning. Nguyen Hao stayed in bed late, watching feathers of mist turn in the light outside the bedroom window, thinking what it meant to do battle with—no, not to fight against, but simply to face unwaveringly—the dragons of the Five Hindrances: lust, aversion, doubt, sloth, restlessness.

Sloth kept him in bed awhile. Restlessness drove him downstairs to the tiny court behind his kitchen, where the sun made more mist. Under its warmth everything gave off ghosts. They woke from the bricks, rose with a deep reluctance, disappeared.

Hao spread his white handkerchief on the stone bench, seated himself carefully, and tried to find some quiet in his mind.

At nine-thirty, Trung rattled the back gate. Hao got up and found the key and opened the padlock. The Monk possessed forged papers now. He walked around Saigon with impunity. He looked healthy, even happy. They sat together on the marble bench as they’d done many times, never, in Hao’s opinion, making any progress. Anywhere ahead lay the turning point.

“Are you all right?”

“Kim is sick. Worse than before.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been thinking about the Five Hindrances.”

“Sometimes I do too. Do you remember a poem?—‘I’m caught up in the world like smoke blown everywhere.’”

“The dragons have defeated me,” Hao said. “They’ve driven me so far into the world I can’t get back to the silence.”

The Monk appeared to be thinking about it all. Hao was too weary to prod him. After a while the Monk said, “I try to get back too. I want to find the silence again. But I can’t get back.”

“Will you stop trying?”

“I think I have to finish the life I’ve lived. I’ve been very confused.”

“I’ll be honest. You’ve confused me too.”

“Do you criticize me for taking so long?”

“I’ve spoken to the colonel about you many times. He suspects you might be taking our money falsely. But you keep turning up. I’ve told him you’re worth supporting because you keep coming back.”

Trung said, “I remember when the cadres came to my village in 1945 and read Ho’s speech to us. A young woman got up and read in a voice like a song. The world rang with Ho’s words. In the girl’s beautiful voice he talked about freedom, equality. He cited America’s Declaration of Independence. He won my heart. I gave everything. I left my home behind. I spilled blood. I suffered in prison. Can you criticize me for taking so long to betray all of that?”

Hao was shocked. “Your language is strong.”

“The truth is strong. Put it this way: the people’s thirst for freedom has driven us to drink bad water.”

Whether or not he lied, here was a story the colonel would understand. “I’ll put it in exactly those words.”

“The negotiation is over. I’ve come to ask, and to give.”

“What do you ask?”

“I want to be done with this life. I want to go to the United States.”

Hao couldn’t believe it. “The U.S.?”

“Can it be done?”

“Of course. They can manage anything.”

“Then let them take me there.”

“What do you offer?”

“Whatever they want.”

“But now. Immediately. What?”

“I can tell you the rumors are true. There’s going to be a big push at the New Year. Everywhere in the South. It’s a major offensive.”

“Can you give specific information? Places, times, and so on?”

“I can’t give you much, because it’s mostly NVA. But in Saigon it’s us. Our cell has been contacted. We’ll be working with a sapper team. They’re planting charges in the city. We’ll probably have to guide them to two or three locations. As soon as I have the locations, I’ll pass them to you right here.”

Hao could hardly respond. “The colonel will value information like that.”

“I’m almost certain they’re laying these charges for the big push. I believe it’s coming exactly on the day of Tet.”

Four years dancing on the doorstep, and now all this in less than twenty minutes. Hao couldn’t keep his hands in his lap. He offered Trung another cigarette, took one himself, held the lighter for them both. “I respect your courage. You deserve the truth from me. And so I tell you this: The colonel is interested in the possibility that you’ll double. That you’ll go back north.”

“I could probably go back. There’s a program to take tribesmen north for education and indoctrination. The idea is to send them back home afterward, to organize. I’ve had some involvement with the program.”

“You’d really go back north? Why?”

“I despair of explaining.”

“What about going to the States?”

“Afterward.”

After going north as a double agent? Hao doubted the existence of any afterward. Something gripped his heart. “We’ve been friends,” he told Trung.

“When peace arrives, we’ll still be friends.”

The two men sat together on the smooth marble bench, and smoked.

“There—all right?” Trung said. “We’ve crossed over.”

F
rom Dr. Bouquet’s notes:

Sands sat on the veranda himself in the heat of the afternoon with the doctor’s notebook in his lap, while behind him moldered and loomed the house full of codes and files and words and referents and cross-referents, examining an illegible line in the doctor’s jottings, the notebook hastily closed on wet ink, the line blotted out. No matter which way he turned the page—

T
hree weeks short of his scheduled release from the navy, Bill Houston had a fight with a black man in the Yokosuka enlisted mess, in the kitchen, where he’d been detailed with three other sailors to paint the walls. Houston’s unvaried style of attack was to come in low and fast, get his left shoulder into the other man’s midriff while hooking his left arm behind the man’s knee, and upend them both so that Houston came down on top, driving his shoulder into the solar plexus with his full weight behind it. He practiced other moves as well, because he considered fighting important, but this opening generally worked with the tough opponents, the ones who stood their ground and raised their dukes. This black man he was having it out with caught Houston a blow to the forehead as he rushed for the man’s legs, and Houston watched stars and rainbows fly as they both fell onto a five-gallon bucket of paint and spilled it all over the place. He’d never gotten into it with a black guy before. The man’s middle was as hard as a helmet, and he was already squirming away as they slid across the tiled floor on a widening pool of institutional-green enamel. Houston tried to right himself as the man hopped up as lightly as a puppet and aimed a sideways kick from which Houston’s skull was saved only because the guy slipped and went down in the goop, his left hand stuck out to catch the fall. But his hand slipped too, and he made the mistake of going onto his back in the effort to get himself up again, and by that time Houston had his bearings and jumped on his stomach as hard as he could with both feet. This maneuver was called the “bronco stomp” and was reputed to result in death, but Houston didn’t know what else to do, and, in any case, while it ended the altercation and gave Houston the victory, it didn’t do much more than knock the wind out of the guy. Six men from the Shore Patrol arrested the combatants, two green bipeds now racially indistinguishable. As the SPs wiped them down, laid tarps across the seats of the jeeps, and led them away in handcuffs, Houston determined that if they did a stretch in the brig together he would avoid a rematch. Officially he’d put the guy away, but Houston was the one with the great big bruised knot between his eyes, somewhere under all this paint. “What was the fight about?” a patrolman demanded, and Houston said, “He called me a dumb-ass cracker.” “You called me a nigger,” the guy said. “That was during the fight,” Houston said, “so that don’t count.” Still excited from the battle, proud, happy, they felt friendly toward one another. “Don’t call me that no more,” the black man said, and Houston said, “I wasn’t going to anyway.”