Fields of Fire (48 page)

He passed rows of flimsily built thatch homes, nearing the center of the village. The waterbulls were tethered in their stench-filled pens, lest they make a false step in the mud and be washed away by the river. Ugly little dogs barked and sniffed. Smiling, curious faces peeked out from shadowed doorways. It was all familiar. Nothing had changed except the war. And the knowledge that he was looking at it through the eyes of that which had already happened. But at least, he thought, already-happened was better than never-was.

Condley teased Muir as they walked the dark paths in the center of the ancient village. “You know how to say dog in Vietnamese, Hanson?”

“I suppose this is going to be funny.”

“ ‘Dinner.’ ”

“They don't really eat them.”

“You know when we had ‘wild deer’ the other night in that restaurant in Da Nang?”

“I think I know what you're going to say.”

“You had ‘filet of mongrel dog.’ ”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I just did.”

At the center of the village, Quyen halted before a larger, stone house. The house was covered by a corrugated tin roof rather than the usual thatch. From its size, its tin roof, and the two sheds in the yard, Condley knew that this was where the village chief lived. Glass had not yet made its way to Ninh Phuoc. The house's window boards had been opened from the inside. As Condley caught up with Quyen he could see shadows moving underneath a single bare lightbulb that was hanging on a wire from the main room's ceiling.

“Electricity,” said Condley. “Now, there's progress.”

Quyen smiled, gesturing with an arm, indicating they should walk inside. “Yes,” said Quyen through his insistent happiness. “Electricity. Here in Ninh Phuoc, two years already!”

The village chief watched them carefully as they entered. The chief, a tough-looking man of about sixty, had arranged two small wooden tables at the center of his open-windowed entry room. A cracked porcelain pot was on one table, flanked by two small trays holding ten little teacups. The teacups were turned upside down on the trays. Next to the teacups on each tray was a pack of Vietnamese-brand cigarettes. To the chief's right, sitting on small wooden stools, were five old men. In other days they would have been called the village elders, but Condley knew that now, under the edicts of faraway Ha Noi, they were termed the village's People's Committee. To his left, sitting nervously by himself on another wooden stool, was a younger man of perhaps forty. An old calendar was on one wall behind them. On another wall were three certificates for military service, each with a picture of a smiling Ho Chi Minh and a communist flag.

“Le Xuan Minh,” said Quyen officially, waving a hand toward the village chief. “And the People's Committee of Ninh Phuoc.”

The seven men stood ceremoniously when Quyen ushered in the two Americans, wiping damp hands on their dirt-stained trousers. They had dressed up for the meeting, wearing long, gray-colored pants and long-sleeved cotton shirts, although their wide, powerful feet remained sockless in flip-flop sandals. They nodded perfunctorily when Condley shook their hands, each of them in turn holding his hand weakly, as if squeezing it would be a physical confrontation, and spoke softly to him in Vietnamese. Expectation filled their eyes, but they were patient and polite. Quyen had prepared them well.

“Moi ong ngoi do,” said the village chief, gesturing to the chairs.

“What do I do?” whispered Muir, suddenly nervous.

“Sit down and shut up,” grinned Condley, never taking his eyes off his counterpart across the table.

Condley, Muir, and Quyen joined the village elders at the little table. An unsmiling young woman appeared from nowhere, dressed in black slacks and a peasant shirt, her long hair pulled back behind her ears. She did not even look at them as she silently poured tea from the porcelain pot into the cups. Le Xuan Minh ceremoniously took a cigarette and lit it with a wooden match, then offered the pack to Condley.

“Da, cam on ong,” said Condley, thanking him and taking a cigarette, then passing the pack to Muir. The heavyset scientist tottered uneasily atop his little stool, taking out a cigarette as delicately as if it were a stick of dynamite, and passed the pack on to the ever-smiling Quyen.

“The weather is terrible,” began the village chief in Vietnamese, sipping his tea and dragging again from his cigarette. “But if you waited it would only get worse. So we thank you for coming to our village today.”

Condley answered him with ritualistic politeness, speaking also in Vietnamese. “We are happy to be able to join you in your village, sir, and we deeply appreciate the goodwill you have shown to the American people by making this report to your government.”

“He is not from our village,” answered Le Xuan Minh as the village elders nodded. “It would be wrong for him to be kept forever with us.”

“We very much appreciate your having kept him for so many years with your own people,” answered Condley. “And it is right that he be returned.”

“Surely he has a family in America,” said Le Xuan Minh. “They will have missed him.”

Quyen had grown increasingly nervous from the two men's immediate rapport. The political officer puffed mightily on his cigarette, then leaned across the table, interjecting himself between them. “The Vietnamese government has always worked very hard for complete cooperation on these issues,” he said, making sure that both parties remembered where the ultimate power lay. “So you see, Mr. Condley, sometimes we have success.”

Condley took an extralong drag on his own cigarette, the harsh local tobacco hurting his lungs. He frowned, playing with his teacup for a moment. Finally he cleared his throat, hesitating to make the obvious point. “So that I may make a full explanation to my authorities, I must ask you why it took so long to report this man, since he was buried in your village cemetery.”

They were prepared for the question. In fact, Condley knew that was why Quyen had insisted on leaving for Ninh Phuoc by himself the day before. The village chief nodded to his elders before speaking, indicating that his comments were not merely his own.

“We did not find the body until the rains washed away part of the cemetery this year,” said Le Xuan Minh. “It was in a family plot.” He exchanged another deliberate glance with his elders, gaining nods of affirmation from them. Then all of them looked over at the younger man sitting separately from them. Finally Le Xuan Minh stubbed out his cigarette.

“This is Nguyen Hao,” he said. “He buried your soldier among his ancestors when he was a little boy.”

Hao remained silent, looking nervously at the others with what seemed to be great embarrassment. Finally he spoke. “I was twelve years old. We found him dead outside our house. My grandmother told me to bury him.”

“Why didn't you report it?” Quyen asked the question with harsh tones, but Condley knew that the political officer had already rehearsed both the question and the answer with the beleaguered Hao. This was a Vietnamese version of Kabuki, an act designed to allow the government and the villagers and perhaps even the Americans to save face.

“Who would I talk to?” Hao grew defensive. “I was a boy. Soldiers from all sides constantly moved through our village. The Americans never came to ask about him. I could not go to the Americans. Both sides might shoot me. I was afraid.”

“But what about later?” Quyen pressed him. “All the villages know that we have had an agreement with the Americans for many years. You are shaming our country when you hold back information. Your entire village loses face.”

Hao looked at them all, this time with genuine fear. “I was afraid for my family, that the government would think we took sides in the war. And Mr. Quyen, sir, I say with great respect once again that no one ever asked about the dead American during the war. There was no fight in our village on the night he died. There was no crashing of a helicopter, no land mine explosion, no ambush. Soldiers moved through our village, both sides. Artillery always fell at night while we slept inside our family bunkers. We woke up and the American was lying dead on the trail outside our door. And my grandmother, sir, was the senior voice in our house. She told me to bury the soldier and to be quiet. We did not want any trouble, even then. She was the voice of the family and I must respect her.”

A silence fell over the gathered men. The young woman reappeared with a second pot of tea, then slipped back into the darkness. Outside, the rain was falling harder. It was making little pops against the tin roof above them and they could hear it in the trees. The dogs were still yapping and the children were playing happily in the rain. Condley sipped fresh tea. He lit another cigarette. And finally enough time had passed that he could utter the ritual words of forgiveness.

“Mr. Quyen, Mr. Minh, I would like to say on behalf of my government that I hope no harm will come to this man. After all, his family committed an act of great kindness when they allowed our soldier to be buried among their ancestors. If they had not shown him this respect, we would not have been able to come here today and recover his remains. So I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hao for the actions he took as a young man. And if it is permissible, we would like to examine the remains and then take them back to America.”

An audible, relieved sigh filled the dank room. The village elders moved almost in unison as they returned empty teacups to their trays and rose from their little stools. For the first time, Le Xuan Minh smiled, showing off a mouth full of snaggled, tobacco-stained teeth. He reached across the table, shaking Condley's hand.

“Mr. Hao is a good man. He meant no harm. His father died in the war. He was honored for battlefield bravery with a certificate personally signed by Ho Chi Minh.”

“Mr. Hao is a very good man,” answered Condley. “We will remember his kindnesses, and those of your entire village, to the dead soldier's family once we have identified the remains.”

The remains were in a tin-roofed shed next to the village chief's house, wrapped inside an old American poncho. Once they reached the shed, the eight Vietnamese men stood respectfully off to one side as Condley and Muir moved to the poncho.

It was as if Muir had suddenly gone into a trance. He stood motionless in front of the remains, looking down at them with opaque eyes. He was breathing deeply. His meaty hands clenched into fists and then relaxed, then clenched again. Finally Condley nudged him.

“Are you okay, Professor?”

“This is the hardest part,” said Muir, his eyes still on the poncho. “Touching it for the first time.”

“Relax. It's dead.”

“It's not an ‘it.’ ”

“Then why did you call it an ‘it’?”

“Let me say something about what we're looking at. Would you like to feel completely inconsequential, Brandon?”

“Frankly, no. I'd just like to get out of here.”

The scientist was undeterred. It was as if anthropology were his religion and he were a high priest, and it was essential that a sermon be issued before he delved into the remains.

“We're looking at a mystery that's thirty years old. It might even confound us, just as so many others have as we've tried to piece together old bones and clumps of equipment to unravel the tragedies of the past. But do you know what thirty years is in the context of eternity, Brandon? Nothing. Nothing. Not even a drawn breath in the lungs of Father Time.”

“They're waiting for us to do something, Professor. And a typhoon is getting ready to make you a permanent resident of Ninh Phuoc.”

“I have my emotions,” answered Muir. “Respect that.”

Muir now obliged Condley by kneeling before the remains and starting to undo the torn and rotting poncho. “Did you know that eight hundred thousand years ago a meteor smashed into what is now Viet Nam, burning forests, throwing up fresh outcroppings of rock, and killing thousands of people? We can't find their remains, but we have been able to find the axes made from those rocks by the people who moved onto the land just after the meteor crashed. As well as the tektites from the meteor itself. Think of that. We can find the tools from almost a million years ago. We know just where the meteor hit. And yet we strain with difficulty to positively identify a man who died only thirty years ago.”

It was raining harder. Condley was growing nervous. And, besides, after five years of “digs” he was used to Muir's emotions. “Well, give it a go, Professor. We've got a boat to catch.”

Muir had calmed down. He was in his element now, all business as he carefully peeled back the old poncho and began to examine the stiff skeleton of a man dead nearly thirty years.

“It's in remarkable shape,” mused the scientist as he considered the skeleton before him. “Definitely Caucasian—look here at the cheekbones and the structure of the teeth. I'm amazed we have a full skeleton instead of the isolated jaw here and femur there that we find in the crash sites. He's lucky they took such good care of him.”

“He doesn't look that lucky to me.”

Muir caught the irony of his comment. “Sorry, Brandon. It's the wages of being an anthropologist. I tend to think of them as … well, still existing, but merely in an altered state.” He continued his intricate preliminary examination, leaning forward in the dark musty shed to get a closer look. “The cemetery must be mostly sand. That helped to preserve him. The jungle soil is so voracious that it even eats the teeth away in a remarkably short time. And look at this—”

Condley leaned forward also. Muir was holding a pair of dog tags that still remained on a chain. They had been around the dead man's neck. Condley whistled, amazed. “Positive ID. What a find. What service is he, Professor?”

“Army,” answered Muir, squinting in the darkness. “Theodore Deville. Specialist, Fourth Class. Blood type, O negative. Religion, no preference.”

“Well, he's a Buddhist now, isn't he?”

“Show some respect, Condley. This is a comrade-inarms.”

Muir stood slowly, shifting his gaze from the skeleton to the leaden sky that showed through the shed's doorway. Along the pathway in front of them the children were gathering again, staring excitedly as if the two Americans were visitors from Mars.