Hillerman, Tony (32 page)

Moon cut the ignition and climbed up into the hatch, into the sunlight and the silence.

Where now would he look for Ricky’s baby?

Nguyen was looking at him, making a wry face and the empty palms-up gesture of failure. Moon nodded. He climbed out of the hatch and dropped to the ground.

From somewhere behind the house just ahead

of them came grunting. A pig? Then a rooster crowed. The door of this house Moon faced had been made of bamboo canes wired together hung on leather hinges. It stood open now. Moon looked in at a dirt floor partly covered with a mat, at a cabinet turned on its side with its contents of dishes and pots scattered around it. But the grunting was coming from behind the next house—fifty yards down the community’s irrigation ditch.

Two pigs, both lean and mean by American pig standards, were tethered by long leg chains to one of the posts that supported the back porch of the small bamboo-and-thatch hut. The sight of Moon provoked a chorus of frantic grunts and squeals. They had water in a rusty metal trough. They wanted food, expected it, demanded it, competed for it, snapping and pushing.

The pigs suggested that some villager had been there after the Khmer Rouge left. Pol Pot’s troops might fail to catch a rooster, but they would hardly have missed two tethered pigs. But swine devoid of their owner could tell him nothing, least of all where to find the swineherd. And these unfed swine might be as abandoned as the empty houses, the trail that had turned itself into a street, the rice paddies, the ditch that irrigated them, the whole little valley and the hills that closed it in. He would find something back at the APC to cut the chains and free them. That should be a job in the range of his competence.

Nguyen the warrior was still standing behind the .50 caliber, conditioned by his dangerous years in the Brown Water Navy to expect ambushes. His expression, as much of it as was visible around the now-grimy bandages, suggested he wouldn’t mind a fight. Nguyen had expressed his distaste for Cambodians in general and Khmer Communists in particular when he first understood they were heading for a village across the border. He had provided a half dozen anecdotal examples of Cambodian rudeness, barbarity, dishonesty, laziness, and otherwise slovenly conduct. Mr. Lee, in translating this, added that the feeling was common among Vietnamese, North and South, and was matched by a Cambodian contempt for Vietnamese, and exceeded by the distaste felt by Laotians for Thais, and vice versa.

Nguyen waved and said, “Nobody?”

“Nobody,” Moon agreed. “Just two orphaned pigs.”

Osa appeared from around the APC, her face and hair wet. Washing in the irrigation ditch, Moon guessed. He’d try it himself. It seemed to be fresh water diverted from the stream they’d crossed on the way in. He would wash, and collect Mr. Lee from wherever he’d wandered, and get to hell out of here. Finish this. Be done with this. End it. Forget it.

Osa was smiling a rueful smile. “Too bad. I guess nobody is left,” she said. “I know you had hopes. I did too. It is a terrible disappointment for you.”

“Que sera sera,”
Moon said, thinking of Halsey’s standard formula for dealing with hostile fate. Thinking of Sergeant Gene Halsey dead under the jeep. Of course. What would be would be. And for Malcolm Mathias, despite grandiose intentions, this empty village was what would be at the end of the road for him.

Osa was studying him, looking worried. “Maybe—” she began, but could think of no way to finish it.

“Let’s find Mr. Lee,” Moon said, “and make sure we haven’t missed anyone—or anything. And get the hell out of here.”

“He said he would be back very quickly,” Osa said. “He said he wanted to find his
kam taap.”

They waited. Even Nguyen was quiet, thinking his thoughts.

Finally Osa touched his arm. “When the wars are all over and there is peace again, then you could come and find the little girl.”

“Yeah,” Moon said, thinking maybe someone could do that. But not Malcolm Mathias.

“I think it would be easier then. There would be refugee agencies to help people find their relatives. It was that way in Java after the war.”

“I think I should go and find Mr. Lee. Maybe I could do that.”

As Moon said it, he saw Mr. Lee walking down the track toward them. “I find not a thing,” Mr. Lee said. “But I think there is a place back there”—and he pointed to a field beyond the ditch—“where some people might be buried just a few days ago. And I find where the Khmer Rouge have torn down some tombs and broken the
kam taap
that were left in them.” He paused. “But I did not see mine.”

“I guess that’s our only good news,” Moon said.

“Ah, no,” Mr. Lee said. “Not so good. It would be better to find it broken than not at all. I could gather up the bones and have another
kam taap
made for them. There are ceremonies that could be done. And then the place would be found for their permanent tomb, where the wind and water are correct.” He paused, attempted a smile. “Now they are simply lost. Just as they were when I came to your hotel room in Los Angeles.”

His words, and the sorrow in the old man’s face, reminded Moon that delivery of these bones was an unfuffilled Mathias contract and another failure on his list. He tried to think of something reassuring to say, thought of nothing, and the frustration, fatigue, and disappointment turned to anger.

“Why do they do this?” Moon said, gesturing toward the emptied village. “Pol Pot and his army. On the radio they’re saying the son of a bitch wants to turn Cambodia back to farming, fishing, the simple life.” He gestured at the row of shacks along the ditch. “What’s simpler than this?”

Mr. Lee looked away, frowned. “I think it was the religion,” he said. “Mr. Rice said he thought the people of Via Ba followed Lord Buddha very closely. They were very good Taoists. The other villages would know that. if they know that, the Khmer Rouge would soon know it. Or they might see it here in the village. They would hate that. Buddhism is part of the decadence Pol Pot has told them they must wipe away.”

Which meant, as it turned out, that Mr. Lee was not going with them. Mr. Lee would stay behind. He must study this village, this valley, as a geomancer would study it, to find a
feng shui,
the place where a devout Taoist would have left his
kam taap
until Mr. Lee came to recover it.

“I will find it,” Mr. Lee said. “It will be a place next to the hills. Better, it will be between the protecting spurs of two hills where the energy would flow down to it.” These are called the “green dragon” and the “white tiger,” Mr. Lee explained, and they kept the wind flow mild. And from this spot between the two, one should be able to see water flowing away. Not toward the place but away from it.

There was a lot more of this explanation, and Moon nodded now and then to indicate he understood. But he didn’t want to hear Mr. Lee’s pitiful clutching for a last straw of hope. He wanted to get the hell out of there. Back to keeping Shirley’s dog, fixing J.D.’s truck, keeping Rooney sober. Back to Durance and the sort of problems someone like Malcolm Mathias could cope with. Back to the sort of women he could understand.

BANGKOK
, Thailand, April 28 (UPI)—An embassy spokesman said today that the United States would contest Thai government plans to return aircraft flying Vietnamese refugees here to Vietnam.
    He said the aircraft had been provided to the South Vietnamese at a cost of more than $200 million and would fall into the hands of the Communists if returned.

IT LOOKED FAIRLY EASY ON THE MAP. Rice had drawn a line in blue ballpoint ink from Via Ba angling slightly toward the border. He’d made a blue dot and written in Phum Kampong. “I remember now that’s what Damon called it,” Rice had said. “Actually, you should put in one of those little pronunciation hats over the a, the way the Cambodians spell Kâmpong.”

Back in Puerto Princesa such details hadn’t seemed to matter. They still didn’t. What mattered now was what Rice had also said. “Over two mountain ridges from Vin Ba and then up the next ridge and Damon’s place is right on top.” These weren’t really mountains—not even close by Moon’s Colorado Rockies standards—but they were significant hills. They ran out of road when they left Vin Ba’s little valley and the going had been hard even for a tracked vehicle.

But there were footpaths. Moon’s technique was to follow the one that went in the right general direction. They’d made a little plateau of stacked rice sacks next to the APC’s personnel bench and spread both maps on it. Nguyen manned his .50-caliber lookout post. Osa matched the elevation lines on the artillery chart with the terrain features they were seeing. When things didn’t seem to match, they stopped and consulted.

For Osa, this involved bouncing back and forth from sitting beside the rice sacks to standing on the bench with her head stuck out of the second hatch. There she would look for the spur, or the ridge, or the water drainage cut, matching map lines with the real landscape they were passing. For Moon, this involved an opportunity to look away from his viewing slot and study Osa with no risk of being caught at it. Nor was there much risk of running into a tree, since Nguyen was in the hatch above him, kicking him on the proper shoulder if he started letting the APC drift.

So Moon considered Osa’s long denim-clad legs, her rear elevation when she turned to look behind them, her ankles above the funny-looking walking shoes she wore, her back, her narrow waist, the way she moved, the way she held herself. Everything about her from the shoulder blades down he memorized. And, of course, made the inevitable comparisons. In a beauty contest, in a Hollywood casting competition, Debbie would be the winner, a ten. Osa was the sort of woman for whom the gurus of fashion in Paris and Milan (and wherever else such things happened) designed clothing. Debbie was the sort for whom clothing manufacturers, faced with human reality, manufactured dresses in the sizes actually purchased in the various middle-class department stores. In other words, in the same places he bought his own stuff.

Bleak thought. But Moon was a realist. Or considered himself one. Had he been the Moon Mathias whom Ricky’s exaggerations had created out here, he’d be making his pitch for Osa. Perhaps, if he actually was that super fellow, maybe he’d even be winning her. But the flesh-and-blood Moon was a K mart fellow. He knew it. By now, with Ricky’s tales offset by reality, so did Osa van Winjgaarden.

Now they were at the top of the second ridge and Nguyen was tapping a foot against Moon’s shoulder, signaling a stop. Time to eat something anyway. Time to take a rest. Moon climbed wearily out to take a look. Based on the Langenscheldt map, there should have been a small village identified as Neap in the valley below them. Moon had presumed this foot trail had led to it. Now he could see no sign of a village below. About two hundred people, Rice had said, and some terraced rice paddies. Instead of the little strip of cultivated fertility’ one expected, there was some sort of geological deformity where nothing grew. It was a long strip of broken rocks and desolation starting low on the opposite slope and running down the declivity. No place for a village.

True, there’d been no dot labeled Neap on the artillery map. But such maps tend to be more interested in terrain and less in homesites. Moon had expected to find Neap. Had counted on it. It would be proof he hadn’t taken a wrong turn. It would have been his final landmark. Beyond it, he would angle the APC to the left up the slope and reach the top. There they would find the village of Phum Kampong waiting, and the Reverend Damon van Winjgaarden—perhaps—alive. Without Neap, Moon was thoroughly lost.

With much pointing Nguyen showed them that the footpath they’d been following faded out on this stonier ground. Which way now? Nguyen had no idea. Then he was pointing eastward and repeating something that sounded like “Mekong.”

Indeed it was. The next ridgeline was lower. Over it and through the blue haze beyond was a ribbon of silver. Sunlight was reflecting off the river. Good. At least they were on the proper ridge.

Moon ate a cupful of boiled rice and some of the crackers they’d brought from the R. M. Air base and thought about it. The route they’d planned on the map had taken them away from the Mekong toward the Gulf to cross the border and then circled back in the hills. At least the Mekong was where it should be. At least that had gone right.

But not quite. Moon explained the problem to Osa. Nguyen listened, a mixture of comprehension and bafflement.

“In other words, there should be a little bitty village down there. There isn’t and apparently never was. So I must have either gone too far one way or the other. Which means we are looking down into the wrong little valley and now we have some guessing to do.”

“Village?” Nguyen asked.

“Yes,” Moon said. “I thought there would be a village down there.”

“We’ll find it,” Osa said. “We’ll find paths down there, and they’ll lead us.”

Nguyen was shaking his head in vigorous denial. “No,” he said. “No more.” He pointed to the irregular line of broken stones. But that turned out to be a reference to the Ho Chi Minh trail, which snaked through the mountains along the border to feed supplies to the Vietcong in the delta. That finally understood, Nguyen made the sound of an airplane. He created one with two hands and flew it very slowly, very laboriously across his waist. That done, he said, “Very big.”

“Ah, yes,” Moon said. “The B-Fifty-twos.” He turned to Osa, still looking puzzled. “That’s why Kissinger started them bombing Cambodia. To cut off supplies to the VC.”

Osa was smiling at him. “I think you’re finally getting tired,” she said. “That’s interesting, but how does it help us?”

A good question. Nguyen seemed to understand the thrust of it. He trotted up the rear ramp and emerged with the Langenscheidt map in one hand, the artillery chart in the other. He held the commercial map against the side of the APC, indicated Neap, then created B-52 sounds and walked his fingers across Neap.
“Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,”
Nguyen said. He held up his hand and flashed his fingers again and again. “I think fifty,” he said. He replaced the commercial with the artillery chart, put his finger where Neap should have been, said, “No.” He looked at Moon, then at Osa, seeking understanding.