For the Sake of All Living Things (93 page)

“No!”

Sullivan lay head bent, in her arms, her small breasts with their hard nipples under his cheek and neck. His eyes were open. He could see his left leg, her right, her pubic bush. She was very lovely. Very kind. Only it was, for him, all very unsatisfying and it increased the turmoil.

“Are you okay?” Rita said softly.

“Yes,” he answered. “Did you come?”

“Yes. You’re a bit bigger than I imagined.”

“Oh. Am I hurting you?” He raised his head, began to move off her.

“No,” she said, hugging him. “I mean your dick. I haven’t been with anyone in quite a while...” She paused as if to think, then added, “We could do this again.”

“I’d like that,” Sullivan said. He felt sad. “Only...”

“Only?”

“...I’m leaving. I’ve requested reassignment. I’ve decided to get out...”

“John!”

“...of the army.”

T
HE LAND IS ARID,
barren. Before him rises a cliff. Rock outcroppings project to the sides. There is a shack of wide, crude-cut boards. In the harsh sunlight it looks old, weathered. He stands before it, barefoot, bare chested. There is no door. The shack is built into the rockface, the opening arch is very dark. He approaches. He attempts to peer into the blackness. About him there is not a single tree, not a blade of grass. The opening is an adit, a mine shaft entrance. The sound of digging comes from in deep. He moves into the shadow of the shack but does not pass beneath the timber frame. He thinks to call but he has no voice. He thinks to call but he has no voice. He thinks to call but he has no voice.

For a time he stands still. The cliff shadow lengthens then melts into night. Now all is dark. No longer can he look into the darkness, into what is before him, into what is behind. Still the sounds. Groans. Digging. Laughter. The night becomes cold. The wind carries minute ice crystals, then thick snow, driven, drifting up against the shack, sealing the adit, encasing the groans, the digging. He is so cold his teeth chatter. The laughter comes from there, and there, from behind, to the side, over there. He wraps his arms about his chest, shoulders. His fingers sting near frostbite. He squats, tucks his head, hugs his legs to his chest tucking his hands between his calves. There is a crack, a snapping, a rap. He can’t...

“John! John! Come on. Open up.” Sullivan rolls to his back, straightens his legs into the sleeping bag. “John, are you in there?”

“Ah, yeah, one second.” His voice is sleep-hoarse. He shuts his eyes, pulls his legs back up, attempting to recall the vision, the thought.

“Come on. It’s freezing out here.”

It has taken the last days of December and the entire month of January for him to begin reacclimation to the cold winds of an Iowa winter, has taken every minute of that time to begin to defrost his emotional numbness, his intellectual stupor. At the end of his first tour of duty in Viet Nam his folks had thrown him a large welcome-home party. Then he’d gone back. On his second homecoming he was greeted at the airport by his parents and sister and her boyfriend. He’d gone back again. At his third return only his father met him and at home only his mother was there.

“You aren’t going back again, are you?” his mom pleaded.

“No. No more,” he’d said without looking at her.

“You’ve done enough,” his father said. “Let somebody else go.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I’m out for good.”

“I can always use you here.” His father put his hand on John’s forearm. “Gus could use you, too.”

“Henry, that poor boy just walked in and already you’ve got him rushing off to work.” Mrs. Sullivan wiped her hands on her apron then smoothed it down against her dress. “Tomorrow night we’ll have ham with pineapple slices. And baked beans. I’ll start em soaking right now.”

“That’s nice,” J. L. said. “But...ah, I think I’d like to go out to Uncle Gus’s.”

Two days later he’d moved into the heated tack room of his uncle’s old barn. Then for a month he’d walked the frozen snow-covered fields, walked them at sunrise and at sunset, alone. For a month he’d slept in the tack room, not talking, not listening to a soul.

“Come on.” Margie banged on the door. “I brought you the paper. The war’s over.”

He moved deliberately, pulled on a pair of dungarees, let his sister in, pulled a quilted wool shirt over his tee shirt and long-johns top.

Margie held up the newspaper. “They’ve signed the peace accords in Paris.” Her smile was broad. She was happy, thrilled, not by the agreement but for her brother.

J. L. looked quizzically at her. He smiled his boyish smile and said, “That’s nice.” It was the same “that’s nice” he’d said to his mother about the beans, the same “that’s nice” a parent, not really listening, might say to a child who’s just reported that her imaginary friend has been run over by a bus and is now lying splattered against the walls of her mind.

“John”—Margie dropped the paper on his sleeping bag—“why don’t you come and live at home?”

“Yeah, I will,” J. L. said. “In a little bit. I just want to resettle a bit first.”

“It’s been five weeks.”

“That’s not so long.”

“They signed the peace agreement.”

“Yeah. That’s nice.”

“Please come back. Mom’s sick with worry about you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Kiddo. I’ll be back in a bit. Right now I’d just like to rest!”

What nonsense, Vathana thought. Dear Holy and Enlightened One, what can it mean? She blinked. She dared not leave her eyes shut should the apparition return. Tigers, she thought: Of all things. Chased by tigers, as if I didn’t have enough complications. In the darkness of the hut she turned to the soft sounds of Samol and the synchronous snoring of Samnang and Sophan. Papa, she thought, he’d say it means someone is in love with me. Oh sweet Papa, sweet Mama, how I long to kiss you again. What is your life in our beautiful little town? The best of Cambodia, eh Papa? The best. Have they left you alone to grow rice? Surely they tax you horribly. It’s not as bad as some say, eh? Do you remember the time Samnang got stuck in the tree in the orchard and I went up to get him and the branch broke. Oh Papa, I thought you’d die laughing. Tigers! Of all things. They almost caught me.

For hours she lay with her eyes open, talking to herself, to Sophan who’d become so much a part of her, to her parents and children, talking to rivermen and peasants, talking happily to hundreds of people in her mind—trying, trying so hard, to hide her fears. Through cracks in the blue plastic tarp she could see the sky graying. She thought to rise, to visit the pagoda before the children woke, but as she rolled forward her abdomen tightened spasmodically and she fought back an urge to vomit. She lay back. Where is my energy? she thought. I feel so ill. So weak. Always tired. She tried to think why but she was afraid to pursue the thought. Instead she thought of the camp. It had never been anything but poor huts with poor sanitation and poor people but now it seemed shabbier than ever. The sun had corroded the blue plastic of the tarps and many were cracked, some shredded. What would they do when the rains came? What would they do if the FANK security teams came? Overtly it was not a crime to belong to an association but there were new, unwritten rules. Even to have a friend in the associations could label one an infiltrator. From the Khmer Rouge came irregular nocturnal conscription raids. No one was safe. Association activity had become covert, more radical. The city, like the nation, continued to move outward along the dim lines of political polarization.

A few days before, Teck had visited her in the camp. His constantly shifting beliefs confused her. “There are rumors,” Vathana had whispered.

“I know,” he quieted her.

“They say they are very cruel. They kill every soldier they capture. And they kill the families, too. They take all the other people out to the forest.”

Teck chuckled at her fears. “It’s only a transitory step, eh? It’s a necessity of war.”

“Are government troops equally cruel?” she asked.

“How would I know?” Teck said. His tone was light, amiable. “With the Americans gone from the South, well, one can see the future, eh?”

“They say,” Vathana said, “the Khmer Rouge have launched new attacks against Kompong Thom. Here FANK cracks down on...”

“FANK is much better,” Teck had retorted. “Our battalion-days in the field are back up to the best months of 1971.”

“And you say the cruelty of the KR, it is empty rumor, eh?”

“Some of it. Khmer are Khmer, yes? We share certain values. Some KRs might be terrible, but not all. Those madmen and atrocity stories, they’re exaggerated. You know what I believe...”

“Teck, we should speak more quietly...”

“...I think it is the government propagandists that start the rumors. If the KR win, they won’t be any worse than Lon Nol. Ha! They won’t be so corrupt like that Sihanouk.”

“They say...”

“If you are so afraid, move to Phnom Penh with me. Aah, why do I ask?”

“...some people”—Vathana avoided his remark—“have escaped. They say the KR soldiers rip children apart with their hands. That they line up all the pregnant women and stab their bellies with long bamboo needles...”

Teck broke into full-blown laughter. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from an intelligent woman. You’d believe anything. Ha! Besides, you’ve got a flat belly, eh?”

“Then you, you a FANK officer, you think we’ve nothing to fear from them?”

“No. You can be afraid. Be afraid of war. But I think the war will stop. I think maybe a few more battles. Lon Nol, he’s asked for a cease-fire. Kissinger worked a cease-fire for Viet Nam. Now, maybe, for us.”

“Cease-fire!” Vathana shook her head woefully. “They still fight—like Captain Sullivan said they would. What did we have, a four-day lull?”

“What would he know! Four days now. Then a few battles. Then maybe forty days. Then maybe four hundred.”

“So, the attacks in the North, you think...”

“I think it is time my wife and children came to live with me.”

“You were going to come here.”

“My orders, you know...Anyway, you are for peace, eh?”

“Of course.”

“Then I think it’s time we settle with the Khmer Rouge. What do they want, eh? An end to corruption? Me too. You believe just like me. Soon we’ll stop this war.”

Again Vathana thought to rise but again she felt nauseous. She sat up. Teck’s visit had been short. A perfunctory gift to each child. Then he’d gone—where, she didn’t know. Probably to gamble or to see his friend Kim, she’d thought. Or maybe to find Louis. Louis had been drafted and was assigned to the southern Neak Luong garrison. She stood. She felt dizzy. For a moment she stood with a hand touching the wall, her eyes closed. When she opened them she felt better. “Sophan,” she called quietly.

“Yes Angel?”

“I’ll be at the clinic tent. When the children wake, maybe they would like to wash in the river.”

Vathana worked with the patients for an hour before Keo Kosol appeared. He had not spent a night with her since Doctor Sarin’s release. He arrived and departed on no schedule. Vathana had not learned any more about him, his true identity, his reasons for coming, what he wanted. At times he laid his eyes on her with such longing it made her think of a heartsick puppy, yet because of her rejection he stubbornly refused to recognize or give in to his desires. She had not and would not chase him away. She could not report him to the authorities. How could she subject him to the possibility of the same torment as Doctor Sarin?

“Hey Angel”—Kosol’s loud and beautiful voice made her face snap up from the woman she’d been tending—“you know what I hear?”

“You don’t even say hello?”

“Aah! Who needs it?” Vathana stood, stepped toward him so their voices would not be so public. Kosol boomed for the entire infirmary, “If we want to see Samdech Euv, we must give him our support.”

“Kosol.” Vathana shut her eyes, put a hand to her forehead.

“No. It’s okay to say so. I heard he’s in Preah Vihear. Or maybe Stung Treng. All we need do, if we want him to return, is offer him our support.”

The words set the infirmary abuzz. Norodom Sihanouk might return! He might bring peace! Return us to the peace we once knew! Even within Vathana, though she struggled to keep it hidden, the idea sent a flutter through her bosom. Or perhaps the flutter was caused by feelings she still harbored for this poet. Simultaneously she felt embarrassed by his loud, obnoxious behavior.

“Hey Angel, you know what else?” He opened a Khmer newspaper. “This is straight from an American. Listen to what she says. ‘I would think that if you understood what Communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday become Communists.’ Ha! She’s very famous. Jane Fonda. Very famous, very smart, eh? She visits Hanoi. Here’s what else she says. ‘I loudly condemn the crimes that have been committed by the U.S. government in the name of the American people.’ Here, you read it. Have everyone read, eh? She knows. She knows they are immoral fucking foreigners.” Vathana froze at his last words. Perhaps the war led to rough language, but not in her infirmary. Again she was embarrassed. Worse. She was terror stricken. What if they came and took her away, took her like they’d taken Sarin Sam Ol. “Immoral fucking foreigners,” Kosol boomed in his beautiful sonorous voice. “I’ve got to go, Angel. See you later.” He stopped at the tent flaps. “Just think,” he shouted back, “our choice: Samdech Euv or the fucking
phalang.
”

Vathana could not keep her mind on work. Still for two hours she projected a confident, content facade. But when she left, tears welled to her eyes. She returned to the hut where Samnang and Samol both greeted her with leg hugs. “Up,” Samol sang. “Pick me up.” “Ba-ba. Ba-ba,” Samnang said. His face sparkled with an earwide grin. Vathana lifted Samol. “Ba-ba-ba.”

“Yes, you too,” she said, and Samnang climbed to her arms as a monkey climbs a tree. “Oh,” Vathana sighed as Sophan came and lifted both children, “oh, you’re both getting so big.”

When they were in, out of the sun, with the children off on an adventure, Vathana moaned, “Sophan.”

“Angel, you look very sad.”