The Phantom Blooper (20 page)

The Woodcutter and I grab Le Thi as she tries to slap paddy water onto her wounds. She fights us. The Woodcutter tries to hold her down, but she is a wildcat. I punch her in the side of the head with the meaty side of my fist, just enough to knock her unconscious.

The Woodcutter lifts Le Thi and lays her down gently on the paddy dike.

We work quickly, covering each smoldering wound in her flesh with black paddy mud. The mud cuts off the oxygen and the Willy Peter stops burning.

It's all over, just that fast. I feel sick.

The trail watchers have seen the white smoke from the shell and the village gong is
bonging
out an alarm.

As we walk down the paddy dike, with Le Thi in my arms, we are met by the whole village. A woman squats on the paddy dike and wails in agony and continues to wail and the sound of it is physically painful.

Bo Doi Bac Si pushes forward with his medical kit.

But Le Thi is dead. There is nothing anyone can do.

Later that day, the village prepares for a funeral.

They lay Le Thi in a
quach
, a child's coffin of fresh yellow pinewood.

The Woodcutter does not attend the funeral. As Song and I leave the hooch, the Woodcutter says curtly that Tiger Eye, the Commander of the Western Region, has ordered him on an important mission and will I go with him and fight, yes or no.

"I will fight, Uncle."

The Woodcutter nods. He focuses all of his attention on a toy rifle he is carving from a scrap of bamboo. He does not look up.

Song and I go to the hooch of Le Thi's family. After a simple ceremony at the altar of the ancestors the funeral procession moves to the family burial plot in the village cemetery.

We bury Le Thi in the cold black ground and we say goodbye.

Le Thi's mother tries to climb down into the grave and has to be restrained.

After the funeral, when the villagers have returned to the village, Song stands by the grave, very straight, like a soldier standing at attention, and cries, without making a sound, her whole face covered by her hands.

A week after we bury Le Thi the whole village comes together once again, only this time for a happier occasion, the long-awaited wedding between the Phuong twins and the two surviving Nguyen brothers.

I don't want to go to the wedding, but Song nags me into submission. Maybe she thinks that if I see a wedding I might want to be in one of my own.

Song and I stroll through the cool night air to the hooch of the Nguyen family. We hear soft laughter and happy people talking.

Inside the hooch, candles flicker in the main room and music fills the air.

We are greeted by the elder Nguyen, a dignified little old man who bows and welcomes us to his home. We return the bow and Song gives him a red envelope containing a small amount of money. Song thanks him for inviting us.

We sit. We eat pork, vegetables, fruit, rice wine, and sweet cakes. We drink green tea. Everything smells good and tastes better.

The party lasts all night. Some of us fall asleep. Some take naps and wake up to rejoin the party with renewed energy.

We are greeted at dawn by the Nguyen brothers, Mot and Hai. One sleeve of Mot's traditional high-collared blue silk tunic has been pinned neatly over the stub of the arm he lost at the victorious battle for the Nung combat fortress, where his brother Ba was killed.

When the elder Nguyen gives us the signal we begin the procession to the home of the Phuong twins.

Everyone is dressed to kill. The parade up the paddy dike is bizarrely festive when contrasted with our usual drab clothing. My Sunday suit is hanging in my closet in my room back in Alabama. But my black pajama outfit is enhanced considerably by the red silk sash Song made for me.

At the Phuong house the best men present the father of the brides with gifts of rice wine and a chocolate-brown teakwood tray filled with areca nuts and betel leaves.

We are invited inside.

The tray is placed as an offering at the altar of the ancestors. Red candles are lit and prayers for the ancestors are recited.

The Nguyen brothers bow to the ancestral altar, and to the elder Phuong, who bows and grins and seems a little soft in the head, and then they bow to the mother of the brides, who is very happy, maybe even happier than the brides themselves.

Then the Nguyen brothers and their best men go to meet the Phuong twins.

The guests drink tea and chat until the brides and grooms return to the main room together, beaming with happiness.

All of the guests join in the procession back to the groom's house.

Back at the Nguyen hooch the brides and grooms bow to the altar that honors the spirit of the soil, of
Xa
, the land, which is alive. They hold burning joss sticks and ask for permission to enter the house.

The brides and grooms spend a long time bowing to each and every one of their relatives. It reminds me of Decoration Day back in Alabama, when all of your cousins and aunts and uncles that you don't know are trying to introduce themselves to you all at the same time. As Old Ma, my grandmother, would say, these people got so many kin it would take a team of Philadelphia lawyers to untangle the roots of their family trees.

On the way home I am careful not to be caught up into any of Song's comments about how wonderful married life must be. She's shy, but I know that she's secretly crazy about me. Maybe when I escape I can take her with me. If not, I can always send for her later.

When Song and I get married back in the World, she will want to buy color televisions and ruby rings and washing machines. She'll get her hair fixed at a fancy beauty parlor twice a week and will get fat and will lie around in bed all day, watching soap operas on TV, eating bon-bons and yelling at the maids, like in a horror movie.

After the wedding I go back to our hooch. Song goes to visit her best friend, the pregnant Fighter-Widow.

I'm squatting on my reed sleeping mat, using my rice sickle to cut myself a new pair of B.F. Goodrich sandals. I'm hacking away at a chunk of truck tire Johnny Be Cool found on the wreck of a six-by that hit a land mine out on the road.

Without warning I am knocked over by concussion shock waves and a black comet hits the earth.

The sky is falling and the whole world is blowing up. I feel like a New Guy at Khe Sanh under his first bad incoming. Except that I have experienced this kind of incoming before. Nobody makes artillery shells big enough to make the earth bounce. It's an arc-light, a B-52 attack.

Lake-bombs fall five miles from Boeing Stratofortress strategic bombers that fly too high to be heard, three planes to a flight, carrying 60 tons of high-explosive bombs. American bombers are making toothpicks of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, vaporizing teak trees as tall as New York skyscrapers and as old as Jesus Christ. The bomb run will leave a swath of cratered badlands a mile long. As great blocks of sound are cracked by power, the impacting of the bombs overlaps into rolling thunder, not simply a sound but a hard wall of noise moving across the face of the earth like an iron glacier, a sonic roar that can tear out a man's eardrums at one thousand meters.

I yell, "
MAY BAY GIAC MY!
"--"American pirate planes!"

I run for the family bunker. But Johnny Be Cool is trying to pull his water bo into the water bo's bunker. I stop to help, knowing that Johnny Be Cool is too stubborn to go into the family bunker until his water bo is safe.

The water bo is stubborn too, a lumbering giant with a look of being unbelievably stupid, just like a cow back in Alabama if the cows were built like dinosaurs. Johnny Be Cool pulls on the bo's brass nose ring while I kick the gray-black monster in the ass.

We grunt and groan.

Acres of virgin forests are flying on the horizon.

Finally I do a quick comparison of weights and dimensions and grab hold of Johnny Be Cool. I pick him up and carry him, kicking and screaming, to the family bunker.

Song is waiting for us outside our family bunker. She says, "Come, Bao Chi, my brother. My friend is having her baby and she wants you to be here."

Inside our family bunker the Fighter-Widow is in labor. The bunker smells of alcohol and is lit by four kerosene lamps. A camouflage parachute has been hung on the ceiling of the small chamber. The Fighter-Widow is lying on her back on a straw-filled mattress.

The Fighter-Widow groans, in pain, and there's blood. She looks like someone who has been gutshot. Bo Doi Bac Si is delivering the baby, assisted by the Broom-Maker.

The Fighter-Widow sees me. In the worst throes of her labor pains she glares at me, fiercely, glowing with pride. She's telling me with her black eyes that she has survived the cruelty of the Black Rifles, who shove electric light bulbs into the vaginas of Vietnamese women and break them so that the women cannot give birth to Viet Cong babies. She groans again, swallows a scream. She's sweating. The baby is coming out.

The Fighter-Widow watches me with intensity as she fills the rocking tunnel with the joy in her eyes. As bombs weighing a ton each jolt dust from the roof of the bunker, the Fighter-Widow grunts her Viet Cong baby into the world an inch at a time, still staring at me, fighting me with her belly, gripping in one white-knuckled hand a small white plaster bust of Ho Chi Minh. In her other hand she holds the toy bamboo rifle carved by the Woodcutter.

Johnny Be Cool wipes the Fighter-Widow's face with a damp cloth, then squeezes a few drops of water from the cloth onto her lips.

Song squats next to her friend, trying to comfort her. Song is trembling. She rocks back and forth to ride out the pounding of the B-52 bombs. Her black pajama trousers are stained--Song has wet her pants.

I say, touching Song's shoulder, "
Coso khong?
"--"Are you afraid?" Song looks up at me, smiles, nods.

The Black Rifles shot the Fighter-Widow's husband, so she took his place in the ranks. Giving birth to this baby means that she has replaced the dead Front fighter two for one. And it's a tribal event; the child is the future of the village.

With a fierce grunt of ecstasy the Fighter-Widow fires her
Chien Si
baby at me like a greasy pink mortar shell.

The baby takes one breath and then starts crying. Song says, "It's a boy!"

Song lifts the fat, bald, oily-red Communist baby, but the Fighter-Widow turns her face away, afraid to look at the baby, afraid because of the smoke American pirate planes spray into the treetops to kill the jungle. Vietnamese mothers fear the two-heads-no-arms babies. Some two-heads-no-arms babies have flippers instead of arms, or two bodies attached to one head, or sometimes they are born with their hearts outside their bodies. Sometimes other things happen, things implied by looks and grimaces, things so hideous that no one is willing to describe them.

The baby bellows out a hearty squall, and everyone is relieved. Song lays the baby on the mother's breast and speaks to the mother softly. The Fighter-Widow unbuttons her black blouse, pulls it aside, and gives her heavy breast to the baby. The hungry baby suckles mother's milk from the dark brown nipple. As the mother nurses her baby she sings a little song into the baby's ear.

Silence falls across the village.

Now that the bombing has ended, Commander Be Dan arrives with fighters to carry the Fighter-Widow back to her own hooch.

Before they carry her out, the Fighter-Widow offers the toy bamboo rifle to the baby. A tiny hand grips the white wood. The baby swings the toy rifle back and forth, then puts it into his mouth.

Commander Be Dan grunts his approval and the Front fighters laugh and cheer.

The Fighter-Widow laughs. She holds the baby up so that everyone can see. "B-Nam Hai," she says, naming the baby.

Song takes the baby as the Front fighters lift the mother onto a hammock. Song kisses the baby and says, "B-Nam Hai."

"B-Nam Hai," echo the fighters, laughing as they carry the VC widow out into the sunlight.

Outside, Bo Doi Bac Si calls me over and I help him treat some of the village trail watchers who have stumbled in from the edge of the strike zone, ears and noses bleeding, some even bleeding from their eyes.

Then I head back toward the hooch, knowing that Song will be there, working on my disguise for my new mission, and knowing that she will insist that I try it on for her for her approval.

"
B-Nam Hai
," I say to myself as I walk back to the hooch alone.
B-Nam Hai
--"B-52."

I march into the village of Khe Sanh in the late afternoon wearing Song's clever disguise. Commander Be Dan and the Woodcutter are with me. The Nguyen brothers and the Phuong twins, the newlyweds, are traveling with us, but at a distance.

I am thrown a few sloppy salutes by half a squad of Army pukes who are drunk, laughing, loaded with money, and out for a skivvy run to Beaver Cleaver's popular steam-and-cream in the part of the village of Khe Sanh that we call Sin City.

Enjoying my new status as an officer, I crank off a crisp salute.

Suddenly four black Marine grunts stumble out of a gook shop and into our path, four big bruisers. Surely somewhere in this world there must be some small-or at least regular-size-black guys, but you never see any of them in the Marine Corps.

For a few moments we intermingle with the black grunts. I turn my face away, afraid I might be recognized, and then we'll all be playing gunfight at the O.K. Corral for real. I'm sure that I can actually hear the vibrating tension in Commander Be Dan's trigger finger.

But all the black leathernecks see is an Army Captain, with shiny chrome railroad tracks on his collar lapels. All they see is some silly pogue brass in a clean set of stateside utilities, with black leather combat boots--spit-shined--and a .45-caliber automatic pistol in a black leather shoulder holster. There is a clip in the pistol, but they can't see that there are no bullets in the clip--Commander Be Dan sort of insisted.

I am an Army Captain, escorting a Viet Cong suspect, a harmless-looking old papa-san with his hands tied behind his back. I'm being assisted by an Arvin Ranger Lieutenant. The Lieutenant is armed with an old Thompson submachine gun and is missing a hand.