MARTI LEIMBACH

The Man from Saigon

To Alastair, always

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Marti Leimbach

Copyright

About the Publisher

I

The first shots came as they were flying northeast toward Danang. Over the terrific noise of the engine and rotors, she could hear a pinging sound, something like coins being lobbed against the metal where she was sitting. It wasn’t particularly loud, and didn’t sound remarkable or worrying. For many minutes she sat stiffly in the nylon seat of the helicopter, the wind rifling across her trouser legs, sending her field jacket back so that she could feel a button pushing against her neck, being aware of many things, but not the pinging sound, the bullets directed at her, at all of them, as they spun above a canopy of jungle.

She had much to distract her from the pinging: the roar of the engine as the chopper skimmed over the tops of trees, the throbbing of the rotors, the explosions of fire from the door gunners, the effort she made to keep from being sick. It was a while before she even thought about it. She only registered the gravity of the sound because she felt a force behind her, a sudden pushing in of metal as though a fist had pressed the fuselage of the chopper inward, feeling mildly uncomfortable and new. The place where the metal had bent was low on her back, just above her belt. Had the bullet passed through the side of the chopper, it would have found a home in her right kidney. When she reached back to check that it was not her imagination, that there really was a small, convex lump behind her, she felt the hot metal at the same time as a rising panic, a kind of insistence from inside her that she respond to the assault, as involuntary as a sneeze.

It may have been that her body knew even before she clocked it in her mind that they were being shot at; that they were being hit. When she realized the sound she’d been hearing was of bullets meeting the skin of the chopper she found she had to control herself as she might a bucking horse, staying focused, intent, sitting the ride as the chopper dipped and swerved, as the pinging sound seemed to dissolve all others, so that it felt to her that the volume had been turned down, that the whole of the earth was silent, except for this one noise. She felt a kind of last-minute, hopeless panic, her life opening before her. Not her life passing year to year in a flash as it is said to do at such moments, nothing like that. Only where she was, and that she’d had a choice some time back, not now, and that she’d made the wrong choice. It was a feeling of being trapped and desperate, of having been cornered by her own mistakes.

She did not look at her colleague, her friend, Son. She knew he did not like being so close to American marines, that he did not like this particular route into Danang, flying over the jungle. There were always VC there, cloaked by the jungle’s thick canopy, willing to take a few quick shots in case they got lucky. Son had warned her, but she had not taken it in. Now, she could not bring herself to look at him. Nor did she watch the door gunners or turn to see the pilot. In fact, she could not see properly; every nerve seemed to focus inward at the terror brewing inside her.

If she’d had the presence of mind, she’d not have blamed the enemy, or the pilot, or command operations—not even the war, itself, for what was happening, for what more might happen—but would have cast the blame on her own poor judgment for getting on the chopper in the first place. For every small, seemingly inconsequential decision that had led her here, to this place, right now. Under fire, she found it hard to breathe or swallow or make a noise. More than anything, she wanted to run, which was of course not possible, and the fact that she could not run, that she was caged and airborne and entirely at the mercy of whatever would happen next, was almost unbearable.

She wrapped her hands over her head, over her eyes. She stared down at the floor and watched as a bullet made a mark there, a little rise of hot aluminum not far from her foot and she wished she’d followed the advice she’d read about traveling by helicopter in Vietnam, which was not only to wear a flak jacket, but to sit on one as well.

And then the pinging stopped. She waited for it to begin again, but there was no sound. She heard the chaos of voices and gunfire, wind and rotors, loud and relentless, hammering at her skull, but the pinging was gone. She felt something inside her shift and she was able finally to look up, scanning the faces of the others. She looked at Son. His black hair stood straight up, a result of sweat and wind. He tried to smile but his mouth was dry and taut so that all he managed to do was squint and meet her eyes with his reassuring gaze. One of the gunners was intent on unjamming his gun, the other so pale she thought for a moment he would faint and fall out of the open door. The gunner’s shirt was wet, as though someone had poured a bucket of water across his chest, and she watched as the wind dried it little by little, all signs of the terror of the last few minutes quietly disappearing.

Someone began to laugh. The pilot whooped and the gunner with the jammed M60 suddenly opened fire at no particular target. They had flown through it; they had won this moment. It wasn’t long before they could see the sands stretching eastward toward the South China Sea, the chopper landing safely in Danang. They trotted out, inspecting the fuselage for dings, for all those little holes that meant bullets. She walked around the helicopter, finding the area outside where she’d been sitting, looking up at the dented metal, the pocket where she’d felt the heat, the sharp splinters of metal beginning to fracture. The others were pointing to more serious breaks in the chopper, but she stared only at that one place where the bullet hadn’t quite broken through. Nothing had come of it. She would tell herself this thin truth for many days: while in the shower at the press center, while standing in line at the USO for burgers, while drifting off in thought when she was supposed to be interviewing someone, she would insist that nothing happened. The bullet had fallen back through the sky; the chopper had touched down like a giant trembling bird; everything ended the way it ought to have, with them safely on the ground, the heat gathering round them as the rotors slowed. It was a July afternoon and the air was still.

Shall I take a photograph? Son asked her, nodding up at the chopper, at the scar in the metal that held her attention. It seemed so innocuous now, the bullet hole, like the head of a lion mounted on a wall.

She told him no, the words coming out quickly, perhaps a little too loudly, as though he’d asked for something inappropriate and personal. Then she said, I didn’t mean to sound like that. Take the picture. Go ahead.

He brought the camera to his eye, framed the photograph, adjusted the focus, and released the shutter. They walked together across the airfield with their packs and cameras and she suddenly ran forward and was sick on the dirt by the fence-line. Son waited, then carried her pack for her.

You might one day want it, he said. That picture.

She was wrung out of emotions. She felt places in her body that were like bruises, the result of clenched muscles. She shook her head and wondered why anyone would want that photograph. Why would they keep such a thing? She did want it, not then but many months later when she was packing for home. It was among the few mementos she took with her.

A month before, in Saigon, a guy had given her a mimeographed pamphlet written by another reporter, the pages stapled together, corners curled, the title stamped across the front in capital letters: HANDBOOK FOR NEWSMEN IN VIETNAM. It was written during the years when the war was still young, a small affair with none of the sense of increasing disaster that hung about it now. Its author mixed practical advice with his own, idiosyncratic observations about the locals, warning reporters never to travel without ID papers, for example, and that the Vietnamese will always tell you what they think you want to hear. Nobody spoke much about the Handbook; everybody read it and pretended they had not. In fact, the reporter she borrowed it from made a point of saying he did not want it returned.

They were in a bar, a group of other newsmen around them, enjoying the air conditioning and the darkness that contrasted with the extreme light outside. She had arrived exhausted into Tan Son Nhut airport sixteen hours earlier, the plane diving toward the landing strip as though it meant to bury itself there. She’d never been to Asia, or covered a war. Now she found herself in a bar that might as well have been in New York or Chicago. She didn’t know what to expect. She felt a little disoriented. The chatter of the reporters confused her; she couldn’t even figure out what they were talking about—this infantry, that unit. Drinking did not help, but she certainly was not going to sit in the bar surrounded by men drinking scotch and order a ginger ale. The reporter who had asked her to meet him said he had something for her, and that something turned out to be a copy of the Handbook. He gave it to her along with his business card, his home number handwritten on the reverse side.

Let me know when you get back, he said. I’d like to hear how it went. He was ten years older than her, maybe fifteen, the beginnings of gray in his hair making his head appear to shine. He looked as though he felt a little sorry for her. He regarded her as one might a younger sister, even a child.

She smiled. You don’t think I’ll last two weeks, do you?

He was taken aback, though he tried not to show it. I didn’t say that. Anyway, it depends on where you go.

She laid the Handbook on the table next to their drinks. So where did you go? she asked.

He brushed the question aside. You’ll notice how slim it is, the Handbook. That’s because you really can’t tell people what they need to know. But read it anyway. Definitely read it.

He smiled. He explained he was leaving for New York the following day and all he could offer by way of good advice was for her to go home now. Or at least soon. It’s hard enough for a man, he said. Though being a woman will have one advantage. You’ll be the first on at the airstrip, that’s for sure.

She nodded. She didn’t know exactly what he meant and yet she felt to admit this would embarrass them both, so she filed the words away in her head: first on at the airstrip.

The drink came to an end. The man smiled and then looked right at her for a single, long minute as though trying to memorize her face.

I’ll be fine, she said. It was odd that he should be so concerned. It made her nervous—not of him, but of where she was, what she was doing. These were the earliest hours of the earliest days, long before bullets or chopper rides, before anything at all. She said she’d be fine but she had no way of knowing if this would be the case. She hadn’t really thought there could be any other outcome, until now.

He took a long breath. You’re awfully young, he said, or maybe it’s me. I’ve gotten old here. He finished his drink in one long swallow. Then he stood, shook his head as though to push away a thought, and flicked his ash into his empty glass. She extended her hand to shake his, and he took her fingers, drawing her forward and planting a soft kiss on her forehead. He nodded slowly, then turned away, holding a hand up at his shoulder as he went. He left the Handbook on the bar table for her as one might an old magazine, disregarding entirely the warning in the pamphlet’s introduction that the contents were confidential.

She read that she must bring a canteen, a poncho, zinc oxide, a hat, malaria pills. Never to go out with any unit smaller than a company. Bring pencils as well as pens because pens dried up in the heat and pencils broke or needed sharpening. Halazone, iodine, chlorine. She was told by those around her to be careful; some even recommended she not leave the ever-tightening boundary of the city. In the hotel’s narrow bed, she passed her first sleepless jet-lagged nights with the Handbook across her knees, scanning a flashlight across the words on each mimeographed page. In the middle of the night, just upon falling asleep, she would suddenly jerk awake, asking herself frankly how on earth anyone thought she could do the job of a foreign correspondent, a war correspondent, because she was quite sure she could not. She told herself it was normal to feel this way, that everybody must have their doubts. Then she doubted that, too.

She discovered it was hard to function in Saigon. The electricity didn’t always work. The water came out rusty from the taps. She drew herself maps, wrestled with the foreign money, drenched her clothes in sweat trying to get used to a climate that seemed from another planet entirely. One day she saw school children file past a dog that had died outside the school gates. The children walked over the stiffened legs or hopped above the bloated body. One of the boys got a stick and hit the dog’s ribs as though it was a piñata that had failed to burst open its sweets. A few others stood around, watching. Then another kicked the dead body. She went back the next day and the dog was still there, most of it.

She had plenty of time to read the Handbook because she found it impossible to sleep. The traffic was like some background record that kept repeating itself: screeching tires, honking horns, exhausts backfiring, and engines that moaned and spluttered under the slow poison of inappropriate fuel. That ended shortly after curfew at eleven, but then there was all the noise from the assortment of odd guests at the hotel where she stayed. Some nights they arrived drunk from clubs, speaking at the tops of their voices, playing music, or kicking a soccer ball down the halls. Fights broke out between the drunken ones and those who had regular jobs that required early rising. It was not unusual to hear an argument conducted in three different languages, and once in a while it got physical.

The hotel’s owner was a middle-aged balding man named Thanh. He had a mustache like two sets of toothbrush bristles stuck above his lip, and an open, sad face. He seemed particularly burdened by the noisy guests and was concerned, too, about their impact on the quieter ones. Even so, it did no good at all when he knocked door to door along the corridors at midnight with the question, They boddering you?, while further down the hall came shouts of laughter.

I was asleep, she always lied.

Even when all was peaceful at the hotel, it was still only a couple steps up from camping. Insects trailed her wherever she went, crossing whatever barrier or combination of sprays she used, bringing up itchy swellings on her skin. When she did sleep, she managed it only by putting a pillow over her head to block out the noise. Reading was good. It helped her to believe she was learning something useful and she knew there was much to learn.

In those early days she could not have understood what she had gotten into. For example, she paid no attention to the Handbook’s suggestion to pack belts and field straps—materials that could be made into a tourniquet—as she didn’t think she was going anywhere she might be shot. She glanced over instructions on first aid because she thought there were specific people who did that—others, not her. Okay, so she had seen some kids beating the corpse of a dog. And she’d noticed, too, how many people with crudely amputated limbs begged along the streets. But she hadn’t made the connection yet. She didn’t realize that people could play football down a hallway, walk outside and be blown up by a little anti-personnel mine strategically fixed beneath a car. She was still under the impression the war could be contained, a thing over there, something that had to be arrived at quite deliberately. She didn’t realize.

A lot of Vietnam correspondents have a story of how they came to the country: chosen by accident, paid for their own ticket by winning a game show, confused with another guy, filled in for someone else on R&R and the person never came back. Susan was no different—the choice to send her seemed random, the end result of a chain of assumptions. She was working for a women’s magazine and had a private interest in horse training—it was really the combination of those two facts that had brought her into the war. One long summer in ’66 she moonlighted for the police department, desensitizing their horses to gunfire, preparing them to cover student protests, city riots, rallies. The job required learning to shoot a pistol, launch smoke grenades from the saddle, and move the horses away from rings of fire, then toward them again—hours of this until they would happily jump through them. What we need here, said one of the officers, a transplant from the Southwest, a guy fond of flicking his hair back, of swaggering cowboy style into the barn in the early hours and staring right down at her ass as she worked, what we need here is a cow-y pony that can separate one man from another in a crowd, you know what I mean? A bolshie sonovabitch, gelded late.

She looked up from where she was working, bending down to trim a loose flap of frog off a front hoof. You mean a mare, then, she said.

Like hell! Mares can’t hack it when the chips are down. I don’t want to be right up against it and have my horse go all girly on me.

She took in a breath. She’d worked late on a story the night before and she was tired; she didn’t want an argument, especially one as inane as whether a mare was capable of going “all girly”. She moved to the next hoof and began clearing one cleft, then another, ignoring the guy. It was the only defense.

He came closer, gave the tag end of her chaps belt a little tug, and said, I like the way you ride.

She stood straight, dropping the horse’s leg, staring at the guy, the hoof pick held like a pirate’s hook. Quietly, as though sharing a secret, she said, You can fuck right off. To which he laughed hard, backing up as he did so.

That’s good, he said. That’s real good.

He told her he was biding his time for her. It won’t be long, he promised.

The horses had to walk through smoke, explosions, throngs of people. It was exactly the opposite of what is natural for them. She taught the small herd of four the same skills as for cutting cattle and slowly the horses began to disregard everything but the job at hand. Before work, on the weekends, late into the Midwestern evenings when the heat gave way to the velvet of a summer’s night, the training took up all her free time all that summer long, until she could have ridden beside a firing canon and the horses wouldn’t spook, until not even a dog was safe in an open pen because the horses would chase him out. Finally, at the end of the summer they sent a bunch of the officers into the ring with her and she focused her gaze on the one with the swagger, and felt her horse connect with her meaning, hooking on to the guy.

He made a run for it, whooping as though he enjoyed being chased, showing off to the others. He lifted his hat like a clown running in a rodeo; he made a show of pretending he was scared. But it took only four strides to catch up with him and less than ten seconds until she was circling him at a canter as he held up his hands in surrender, laughing. He expected her to let him go now, but she didn’t let him go. She kept up the revolutions, the horse rolling on its hocks, the sound of hooves like a drumbeat, so close to the guy he looked as though he’d been corked in a bottle. Now the officer stopped smiling; he stared at her helplessly, unable to move an inch, 900 pounds of horse around him like a cyclone. She watched a window of fear open on his face. He suddenly looked young and stupid; he suddenly looked like someone she felt sorry for. She sat back, bringing the horse to a halt.

Meet Millie, she said, patting a swatch of mane.

At the magazine, they thought horse training meant she was a particular type of person, a kind of rugged, intrepid girl willing to take physical risks—not what she thought of herself, not at all. Spring the next year she was called into the editor’s office and given the assignment to collect women’s interest stories for a feature they wanted on Vietnam. She was to be there only a few weeks.

War reporting? She was confused.

Her editor kept looking at the copy she was marking, barely registering the question. As you seem to like adventures, she said. The editor’s desk was littered with typescripts, paperweights, trays stuffed with clippings, envelopes, a grammar, a stamp pad, a half-empty bottle of aspirin, caffeine pills, two dirty coffee cups which sat next to the one from which she was now drinking. She smoked Larks, her lipstick ringing the filters of a collection of spent butts in the ashtray. She wore browline eyeglasses in the style of Malcolm X and had an affecting glare such that one tended not to argue.

Vietnam, Susan said. Women’s interest. It was more a question than anything.

The editor had a rash around her hairline, some kind of eczema that worsened with stress, and a large vein in her neck that bulged when she shouted, which was not infrequently. She looked up from what she was doing, scribbling over some copy with what might have been a glass marker, and reeled off a list: Orphans, hospitals, brave young GIs, gallant doctors, heroic captains, courageous American-loving civilians…go there, find it.

Susan nodded. So, no dying—She was going to say So, no dying sons, but her editor fixed her with a look that brought the entire discussion back to where it had begun, as a set of instructions. Then the older woman scratched her head and told Susan there were newsmen all over Chicago desperate to go to Saigon—didn’t she know that? Her fingers unstuck a file drawer and suddenly she slapped a manila envelope on to the desk, her eyes never leaving Susan’s.

Open it, she said.

There were photographs of women in combat gear, cameras around their necks, ponytails beneath helmets. She recognized one right away, the late Dickey Chapelle in her horn-rims and pearl studs, squinting through the lens. Another showed a girl with reddish blonde hair, a long, freckled nose. She was smiling at a soldier wearing a helmet that listed the months of the year, four crossed out, a pack of cigarettes tucked into the band.

Her editor said, That’s Cathy Leroy, age twenty-two. Little French girl arrived in Saigon with no job and no experience as a photographer. The way she makes a living is by taking more risks than the guys.

Cathy Leroy was built like a gymnast, not even five feet tall. In one of the photos she was following a group of four marines as they carried their dead buddy over a field of elephant grass flattened by the force of wind off a chopper’s rotor blades. Susan thought it was impressive what the girl was doing; it made something flicker inside her, a rush of possibility as though she had just stumbled upon a vision of herself in that same place, beneath the same hot sun and the same deafening sound of a medevac arriving. She had never, not once, considered a foreign assignment, let alone in a war zone. Now, as she flipped through the photographs her editor gave her, it occurred to her this was exactly what she wanted, or could want, if she dared.

She came across a black-and-white glossy of a brunette with cropped hair and large dark eyes, a pad out, a pen, a casual look on an intelligent face.

Kate Webb, her editor explained. She’s a stringer.

There was a pause between them, a lot of silent air that seemed solid. Susan cleared her throat. I’ve not really had any experience—she began.

The editor interrupted. Kate went out with no job at all. Like Cathy. But you have a big advantage in that your room is paid for. You’ll be on salary. She took out a fresh cigarette, waving it as she spoke. This assignment might lead to more. So think carefully before you say yes. She gave Susan a long look, brought a match to the cigarette, and inhaled sharply. Then she went back to marking up the pages she was working on while Susan sat in the chair across from her, not sure whether to leave or stay, to say yes or no. Not even sure whether to hand back the photographs.

After a minute the editor sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest and frowning at Susan, who had not shifted from her seat. When I said think carefully before saying yes, I did mean you should say yes. She dug into her handbag for a new pack of Larks, stripped the plastic seal, and offered one to Susan.

I don’t smoke, Susan said.

Start. It’s good for keeping the bugs off you in tropical climes.

It’s not that I don’t want to go—

I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t think you wanted to go. Of course you want to go. What I’m telling you is this: you won’t likely get another chance.

Susan tried to look confident, relaxed. She tried to imagine herself in Vietnam. I’m just letting the idea sink in, she said.

The editor attempted a smile, but it came out wrong, the smile was more like a grimace between streams of smoke. The idea is to have a chance to distinguish yourself, she said. The idea is to be somebody.

And so she had arrived early in 1967. By then there was already plenty of every kind of reporter in Vietnam, almost all men, and she doubted more than one or two of those who gathered at bars and restaurants, who stood in line at the cable office or wrapped up their film for shipment, expected her actually to go out into the field. The magazine, too, had imagined she would remain, more or less, within the protection of Saigon, staging occasional day trips to nearby (secure) bases.

But she soon discovered this was not possible, not if she wanted an actual story. She attended the afternoon press conferences, winding her way through the maze of corridors and windowless, low-ceilinged offices at JUSPAO, chatting to the reporters doing the same, but found nothing in the press releases that would translate easily into magazine articles. The military gave battle statistics: body counts, numbers killed in action, wounded in action, killed by air. They talked about the enemy, but rarely about people. They talked about territories, but not homes. They had a particular way of describing the Vietcong’s movements, how they “infested” villages, so that Susan imagined them like the enormous, prodigious cockroaches that roamed freely through cracks in the skirting boards of Saigon buildings, emerging from tiny spaces in plaster where wires flowed, even up through sinkholes. It was part of the jargon—WHAMO, LZ, DMZ, ARVN, PVA, NVA, SOP—that she was learning, that she was trying to learn, and which at first felt as mysterious and incomprehensible as Vietnamese itself. One day during her first week in the country, she made the mistake of drawing attention to herself by asking the lieutenant colonel making the announcement, a man who seemed to dread the afternoon press conference as much as the press who attended (who were said to be divided into two camps: those who did not believe the information, and those who did not care), a question about this terminology. Raising her voice so that it could be heard in the front of the room, she asked the lieutenant colonel to please tell her what “WBLC” meant.

The officer stood on a raised platform in front of a large map on which there were highlighted areas, circled areas, circles within circles, and a great deal of cryptic numbers. He was older than he ought to have been for his rank, somehow stalled at the lieutenant colonel status now for so many years it was certain he would remain there through to his retirement, which was imminent, though he was saddled for the moment with this band of undisciplined correspondents as though with unruly children. His uniform was newly starched, immaculate, with knife-point creases, reminding Susan all at once of something she had forgotten: how her father told the story of how he would examine his own dress uniform with a magnifying glass for wrinkles—this, before state dinners. She wondered if the lieutenant colonel in front did the same, whether he glided the glass across the crisp collar and sleeves, along the pressed seams on which she could not help but bestow a certain feminine admiration. Her own summer dress stuck to her skin, having lost its shape in the humid air. If she’d had to stand next to the lieutenant colonel she would have felt like a servant girl in an inadequate frock, and she was grateful that she was sandwiched, almost obscured, between the men sitting on either side of her.

You want me to explain what a WBLC is? the lieutenant colonel said. He leaned over the edge of the platform in a hawkish manner, his attention directed at her. She immediately regretted the question. She seemed to have ignited something inside the man. The lieutenant colonel had been using a pointing stick made of pale wood to indicate places on the charts and maps that flashed across the screen behind him. Now he slapped the pointer across his palm brusquely so that it reminded her of a policeman’s nightstick. His face seemed devoid of expression but she could tell by the way he set his mouth, as though holding back all manner of unsaid words, that nothing good would come of this conversation, which—she was reminded now—was being held publicly in front of all her colleagues, most of whom she had not yet had the opportunity to meet.

She nodded. The way the lieutenant colonel glared at her had an effect she would not have imagined of herself: her heart pounding, the heat lifting from her like a series of veils, her throat becoming uncomfortable as though she’d swallowed a bug. I’m afraid that is correct, sir, she said, grateful she was sitting down. I’ve never heard of a WBLC.

Miss, if you want to cover a war it is important you have some familiarity with military terms.

In one of her notebooks, one that she hoped would never be seen by the likes of the lieutenant colonel, or anyone gathered in the press room at JUSPAO, was a glossary of military terms which she had committed to memory. That is why I am asking the question, she said. Sir.

He grunted his disapproval, twirling his pointing stick in his hand. For a moment she thought he was going to strike the screen.

WBLC would be waterborne logistics craft, miss. I hope that will help with your education.

There was a smattering of conversation in response to this remark, a twitchy sort of laughter, exchanges whispered between the correspondents, who, Susan imagined, would either be agreeing with the lieutenant colonel that she was severely unprepared for her assignment here in Vietnam, or who were simply relieved it was the female reporter from Illinois being singled out for attack rather than themselves. She felt her face flush. She felt a beading of sweat along the rim of her skull. If her father hadn’t been a full colonel, she would never have dared to ask the next question. If she hadn’t grown up watching such men overindulge in every available vice, seen them drunk, heard their stupid off-color remarks, and the ridiculous manner in which they made every conversation a contest, she would never have said another word. But she’d seen it over and again and she was, after all, the daughter of a full bird. She cleared her throat. I’m sorry, sir, I don’t think I know what a waterborne logistics craft is.

The lieutenant colonel wheeled around, glaring at her, then glanced to the side, shaking his head. It was too much to look at her, so ill-informed, unwise enough to let her ignorance show. It was like seeing a man admit he had no clue, not an inkling, how to do his job, like having some failing fucking New Guy stand in front of him, parroting back the words he himself had instilled in the recruit: No, sir, I do not have any idea how to perform, sir! How to be a useful part of the US Military, sir! It angered him, enraged him. He looked across the audience of assembled press, with their unkempt hair, their fat bellies, their ridiculous safari shirts, sneering, he thought. Totally unaware. He was tired of them, tired of seeing them at the airports and officers’ clubs, ready to pounce on the smallest mistake made by the lowest-ranking of officers, ready to spread yet more tales of woe when the war, as he saw it, was going very well—magnificently, in fact. It was an impressive war if you looked at it properly, which these reporters never seemed to do.

You don’t know—he began, his voice rising with each word.

Someone passed a note to her. It arrived from across the room, hand to hand, over the laps of journalists. She held it in her palm, feeling the moisture of her skin soften its corners. She wished she wasn’t so nervous. It seemed completely unprofessional of her not to assume the same lazy confidence of the others in the room. Sampan, the note read. Sampan = WBLC.

She imagined the sampans she saw along canals. Long, primitive boats whose name literally means “three planks”. She’d seen them stocked with fish, fruit, paddled by families, by children even, in their black pajama trousers, their broad conical hats. She read the note, then carefully, silently, pressed it back into quarters, then eighths. Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel was still talking. I don’t have time, he emphasized, the US military does not have time, to educate unprepared girl reporters—

It was that expression “girl reporters” that did it. It lit something inside her she didn’t quite understand. She found herself interrupting the lieutenant colonel, then rising up despite how nervous she was, despite the crowded hot room, her face dotted with perspiration, the spectacle of it all. She stood, craning her neck to look taller and focusing her gaze directly at the man who glared down at her from his theater of maps. Her dress was ridiculous; she decided on the spot never to wear such a dress again. Even so, she stood, balancing herself on the back of the chair in front, holding the note, which she hoped the lieutenant colonel could not see, in the clenched fingers of her right hand. Are you talking about a sampan? she said, as forcefully as she could. It came out loud enough to hear, not a scornful question, not a challenge, but a genuine enquiry delivered with the assurance of one who will be able to evaluate the answer. When you say WBLC, do you really mean sampan?

It was as though a bubble of air between herself and the lieutenant colonel had been punctured, as though she were standing right up next to him, balancing on her toes, stretching her entire, compact frame up to meet the gaze of this large man. She was no longer afraid; she was no longer an observer. She felt herself finally to be among the press. There was a beat of silence between them, then the lieutenant colonel dropped his chin, blinking as though suddenly awakened from a dream.

A few chuckles, a reporter from AP laughing loudly, then a voice from the crowd, Son’s voice, the first time she would hear it, his heavy Vietnamese accent in which she could detect distinctly Anglican vowels, his light, slightly nasal tone. Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?

The colonel stayed his position, breathing purposely in, then out, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. After a moment he let out a sigh, turning his face so that the projector etched out the line of the Demilitarized Zone across his left cheek. His pointer, which he had dropped during the exchange with the female reporter, with Susan, he now retrieved from the floor. When he spoke, it was to the map screen. Yes, that is correct, he said, finishing the matter.

Thank you, sir! came Son’s voice from somewhere across the room. She did not know who was speaking. But Son had noticed her from the start, even that first week. He never admitted this, but later she pieced it together. Marc, of course, had not been at the briefing. She met him the following week, after deciding she’d better get out of Saigon and see the war for herself.

It was on a battlefield. Marc came on a convoy out of Cam Lo, riding in the open bed of a truck with his cameraman, Locke, and a dozen marines. They smoked and talked to the soldiers and looked out over the landscape shimmering with the day’s heat. Never in all the time they pitched over the bumpy roads did he think there would be a women ahead; but she had travelled out the day before and was about to beat him to a story.

They arrived at the base of a hill where a row of bodies, faces blackened as though burnt, waited to be taken back in those same trucks, a captain yelling for more bodybags and ponchos, men in gas masks working the duty. He didn’t see her yet, not her or any other journalists. He got out his notebook, his recording equipment. Locke trained his camera on the bodies stacked to their right, only briefly of course so as not to be seen doing so. The smell of the bodies was revolting. Marc kept himself from looking and held his breath as much as he could until they went up the hill on foot, out to the camp. They were brought to the observation post. No bodies here, just miles of dusty, red dirt, low-lying shrubs, rubble and artillery and sandbags and men in foxholes.

There was sporadic fire, plenty of incoming but none of it that close. Then an onslaught of artillery. He didn’t know when the serious shelling began, but it did, like a storm gathering and settling upon them, ceaseless and consuming. They dived into an open bunker, marines beside them curled up around the edges of the pit, their faces pressed against the shallow walls, their legs and arms seized up beneath them. They could not have gotten any smaller. Locke tried to work the camera, getting as much footage as he could. Occasionally, they became brave; moving cautiously over the dusty grounds standing at the rims of foxholes, desperate to get some good pictures, but equally ready to dive underground as the storm of firing continued. There had been explosions all morning, coming every thirty seconds, every fifteen, landing at first some distance off and now much closer. They thought they were up here doing a story about the morale of marines, asking them how they felt about being there, Con Thien, the meat grinder, the graveyard, three featureless hills right up against the Demilitarized Zone. But the incoming was so heavy there was hardly enough time between explosions to get even a quick on-camera.

The marines were extraordinary. After so many days and weeks of fighting they seemed to know how close a shell was by the sound of it, and would remain on their feet longer than he would dare to. He tried to be that brave but the rockets came cracking out of the sky—no sooner was he standing up than he was flat on his front again. He felt suspended in time, as in a dream when you cannot quite get your limbs to move. They needed the footage and surely this battle was something they ought to record, but they couldn’t get much. He would see Locke rolling film across the hills where the explosions followed a line of men in defensive positions, then both Locke and the camera would disappear. He clutched the microphone, trying to record some natural sound, but no sooner had he made the effort than he found himself once more on his face.

Something happened. The earth itself seemed to tip and now he was on his hands and knees, the tape recorder covered in dust, the microphone, the wires, sprawled out on the dirt. He didn’t know where Locke was; calling out would be useless. There was constant firing in both directions, the ground lifting up beneath him. Someone grabbed his shoulder and threw him into a bunker. It was Locke. He could tell because the camera knocked him in the face. They’d been up there less than an hour, maybe much less, but he did not know, and would not be able to recall.

No light, the earth shaking, artillery shrieking above. He was aware of other people in the bunker, of the walls of sandbags, the dry earth pressing around them with every blast, red dust showering down from the sandbags over their heads, raining on his shoulders. On the floor, hugging his knees, neck bent, arms over his head, hands over his ears, he told himself that unless they got a direct hit, they’d survive. His cheek swelled, the place where the camera had hit him. He was missing his eyeglasses and then he realized he had them in his hand.

The bunker was only a few feet high, not much wider, hot. He felt the sweat on his back, his chest, running down his face. Another explosion, this one so close he called out, the sound rushing from his lungs as though forced out by the blast, his heart screaming inside his chest. He recalled reading an account by a survivor of the Ia Drang massacre, a soldier whose company had nearly been wiped out. The soldier had told how when his buddies were hit in the belly or chest, they let out a terrible scream and they kept on screaming, until they were hoarse, until the blood filled their mouths, until they died. He wished he hadn’t read that account, which had been in the Saturday Evening Post. He thought of it now; he didn’t know why. The noise was so loud, so penetrating, it seemed to alter the way his body worked. During the blasts he saw bright orange and red behind his eyelids, felt his skeleton acutely within the soft tissue of his muscles. Strange bits of information hung around the edges of his thoughts. Body counts from other battles, a line from a childhood prayer, a drive toward silence, the need for which was reaching desperation point. He was alternately blinded by darkness, then by light. Nothing happening now, not one thing, was natural.

He heard the metallic click of a cigarette lighter; a flame illuminated the bunker. He opened his eyes. Across from him, not ten inches from his face, was a woman. Her helmet was lopsided, the hair hanging beneath its rim coated in dirt, scratches across her cheek. Her eyes were open and glassy. He didn’t know her. Didn’t know why she was in the bunker or the base, or in the country itself. The world had receded to this one, small place, and here she was before him. The sergeant with the lighter lit a kerosene lamp. Nobody looked at each other, except him and the girl. They locked eyes and kept them locked, as though through doing so they might somehow stay more focused and right thinking. Already, he felt himself begin to settle. Despite the shelling, which continued. Despite the sound of air attacks charging north. He tried to get out his notebook and pen, but his hands were shaking too much. He couldn’t write. He dropped the notebook and let it rest by his boot, by her boot. His pen, too, lay between them.

Outside the air was one large fist of sound. It was a constant pummeling, endless, almost rhythmic. The noise seemed to go inside him; he could feel it in his bones and teeth, straight down his spine. He had, of course, been through such things before. This was not his first war. But that didn’t matter now. The only thing that had any weight, any significance at all, was this isolated moment, then the one that followed. He felt his legs begin to shake, the adrenaline coursing through him. He felt a low weight in his stomach. The girl across from him began to cry silently, her face frozen in an internal agony he understood, understood completely. His throat was dry, his mouth gritty with sand. His arms didn’t seem to have any strength in them. He felt weighted and immobile, a statue of himself, buried in the ground. It seemed to take all his strength to raise his hand, fingers trembling, and touch the girl’s face. He looked at her, breathing purposely in and out, trying to calm herself. He put the back of his hand on her cheek, on the soft skin beneath her jaw. He wanted to offer her something. It seemed the least he could do, sitting so close to her, and through all these minutes.

She reached forward and hooked his knee with her arm, leaning toward him. It helped. He couldn’t say why. The explosions continued, stretching out so that they seemed to follow on, each from each, in one long, continual crashing song. Occasionally, he moved his hand across the girl’s face, and over the top of her forehead, as though soothing a fever. She gripped his knee and he felt her fingers gratefully, needing her touch. The lamp went out, the darkness so sudden it made him almost sick with fear, and then the sergeant wearily, hesitantly, relit the wick. He saw now that the sergeant was frightened, even him, and he felt sorry for him, sorry for them all.

It felt as though they had been tricked. That there had been some terrible swindle and as a result they would now die. He had always thought he would recognize the moment of his death—through some sixth sense or a moment of dread that informs. Now he decided the opposite was true. It would come like fire when it came. It would revolve everything, crush his guesswork, all of his imaginings.

The girl sobbed silently, her shoulders shaking, and he held her until she stopped. The siege lasted twenty minutes or more, and when he and the girl finally, tentatively, pulled themselves apart and climbed, one by one, out of that hole he felt connected to her, as though he’d known her for ever, known her through the very end of the world and now, its new beginning. He held her arm as she climbed up, stood close to her as they crawled up on to the flat, featureless scrub, this place of unending battle, destined always to be so, now and until the end of the war. At some point they moved forward in a column, each man a few meters apart. He watched her walk ahead of him, then run. A jeep was backing up at the foot of the hill, getting ready to go back up the road to Cam Lo and she moved like a bullet towards it. He steadied his eyes on her as she ran, arms flailing, cameras whipping against her back, a notebook clutched in one hand, the other holding her helmet, heading for the jeep. The jeep was full already, no room at all, but she ran and kept running until it slowed to turn and the men inside lifted her aboard among the bodies. They did so effortlessly, as though plucking a flower from the ground. She balanced herself on the rim of the thick bed and he thought he could see her moment of revulsion at having to travel with the dead. Don’t look at their faces, he wanted to tell her, and when you get to the other side go straight for the bar. You had to be careful what you focused on in the war, he thought, and he watched until he could see nothing of the girl or the jeep, just the dust rising in columns.

He didn’t know who she was, hadn’t seen her before. She turned up just like that and he fixed on her in a manner he could not shake.

She learned about taking cover, the things you needed to look for, how quickly you needed to drop. From the pages of the Handbook she read, Look for a tree stump, a wall, a rock. Holes are good, buildings are good. Bunkers are good if you don’t get killed trying to reach them. She learned, too, that diving to the ground under fire is almost an instinctive act, although there are many new to the field who will stand, listening to bullets whiz by them, behaving as though they are nothing more than annoying insects swarming overhead. The Handbook had something to say about that. It said, What you hear are not bees. What you hear are bullets at the end of their range and they are probably too slow now to kill you, but it would make sense to avoid them anyway.

She had intended to avoid them; she had intended never to come under fire at all, but as the weeks dropped away she became less certain that any kind of safety could be ensured even within Saigon, let alone if she went to crazy places like Con Thien. That had been a mistake; that had been chancing it.

But even on supposedly safer ground there were no guarantees. She’d been a block away when a small bomb blew up a diplomat’s car. The next day a bar frequented by Americans took a grenade, injuring dozens and killing two soldiers and three of the bar girls who drank overpriced “tea.” Even so, Saigon itself did not frighten her. The assaults she suffered were not by artillery but by the prostitutes on Tu Do Street who called her names as she passed. Or when she walked, trying to stay beneath the thin shade of the plane trees, and soldiers sidled up to her asking where she was from, what was her name, where was she going. The hotel was one street down from the flower market and sometimes the air around it was so fragrant that if she shut her eyes she could make herself believe she was in the lushest garden in all of Southeast Asia. At night, the smell of flowers disappeared and the rats arrived, traveling up from the rivers, feasting on garbage. Beneath streetlamps the air clouded with insects. There were candy shops that sold Belgian chocolates and marzipan flown in from Spain, restaurants that brought in fresh lobster so that you could choose your own dinner from a tank. In the cosy heat of early evening, sitting on the terraces of the better restaurants, she would look up at the colorful sky, its reds and oranges set like a painting above her, unable to imagine anything more beautiful.

But there was contrast at every corner. People slept outdoors in the shaded entrances to shops, or flat out on benches, or sometimes curled on the steps of the cathedral until moved on. Market stalls sold goods quite obviously wrangled from the military post exchange or off the bodies of dead soldiers: combat fatigues, helmets, boots, even guns if you followed the vendor to the back room where they were kept. Old women sold tea, Marlboros and marijuana. Some sold only marijuana. Children sold pictures of naked girls, and the older ones sold the girls themselves. They stole the pens from your pockets, wrangled spare change from your hand. She lost a camera the first week and had to buy a new one. That is, purchase someone else’s camera, also stolen, but now displayed on a cardboard box propped up in a makeshift stall.

She was settling in, getting to know the places to meet, who to speak to, where to go, but also she registered an unease that (she would learn later) never truly lifted from a visitor to Saigon. The city surprised her in a million ways. There were mysterious chirpings and whistles that arrived with dawn, along with the onslaught of traffic, a ceaseless commotion that exhausted her as much as the temperature that she measured not in degrees but by how many times each day she had to immerse herself in water.

There were other sounds, too, that required attention. One night, shortly after her arrival, she heard something like thunder that confused her senses, making her imagine a storm when the night was clear. But the storm was not the reason for the noise; it was bombing to the west of the city, which from the street she could not see, but thought she could feel, detecting a kind of vibration in the air. The sound of the bombers was heard not only as thunder, but in a sudden heightened awareness of people around her, who appeared to step up their pace, or crowd themselves at doorways, or create even more knots of traffic in the swarming streets. The war registered itself in the way the window glass rattled, how the strings of lights upon railings flickered and were still. Closet hangers danced, making their tinny sound; dogs that roamed freely began to shout into the night.

In Susan’s own small room the pendant lamp above her bed was set in motion, barely noticeable, as rhythmic as a metronome. Plaster broke away and splattered on the floor, the war approaching and receding like a tide. Even if she wasn’t in the room at the time, she would notice upon her return the broken tile, the settling of dust, feeling almost as though someone had been through her things and moved them all a millimeter or two in a ridiculous but unsettling act. Sometimes, with a group of other journalists, she stood on the rooftop terrace of the Caravelle Hotel, watching the bombing, tracking tracers and bullets many miles off that poured from the guns of a US airship as though from a firehose. She watched the sudden red of bombs meeting their targets, trying to determine exactly where they were falling. There really was no more to it than that. She hadn’t thought about what it would be like to be on the receiving end of artillery, or to be under those bombs. In her cocktail dress recently purchased from Marshall Field’s, during those first few weeks in Saigon, while clasping the delicate stem of a drink from someone she’d just met, whose name she couldn’t recall as she clinked his glass, she could not imagine such things.

It turned out not to be a matter of time, but of distance. It was a decision you made, where you put yourself in the country, who you traveled with. It began slowly enough, going out with soldiers until something—an angle, a profile, an interview, a sudden, newsworthy event—happened her way. It had almost become a game she played—how close could she get to the war without getting too close. She wore chinos and a short-sleeved blouse, interviewing those who set up refugee camps and orphanages, her hair limp in its ponytail, her cheeks newly sprinkled with freckles. A gradual change was taking place; she settled into her role. She realized two weeks into what was now being called her “tour,” while trudging through a dusty, crater-filled village, barraged by gangs of children demanding their piastres, swearing in mixed-up English at her if she didn’t pay, that it was precisely because she hadn’t hungered after battlefields, and in fact had no definite opinion one way or another on whether the war was ethical or winnable, that she’d been sent in the first place. The magazine would never have chosen a “political” reporter. They’d chosen her because she was quirky enough to train horses in her spare time and because they thought—they really did think—that she would never leave Saigon. That is, all except her editor. She’d received a telegram a few days earlier:

GET STORIES OUTSIDE THE CAPITAL STOP YOU ARE AS GOOD AS ANY OF THEM STOP

She carried that telegram with her for days. It made her think she could do it, made her know. It was still too early for her to have bad dreams; too early for her to be woken in the night by them. She wished only to understand truly what was happening in this one small country and everything she did was a process of this unfolding. It was not unpleasant. Quite the contrary: it was exhilarating. The trip up to Con Thien had both terrified and intrigued her. She then went to Pleiku and wrote a good story about a small hospital there. That was when she came across Son, whether by fate or by deliberate intent on his part, she never knew. The country was full of random occurrences and anyway it was not surprising that she should meet him—everyone knew him. While Western correspondents came and went, staying a few weeks or a few years, their numbers growing exponentially with each season, Son remained, a kind of ambassador to the war. He’d watched the number of newsmen in Vietnam increase tenfold and more. He’d watched Saigon fill up like a dam.

His full name was Hoàng Van Son. He had a couple of identical Nikon F cameras, a heavy zoom lens which was a recent acquisition, and he filled his pockets with Ektachrome color and a few rolls of Kodak Tri-X black and white just to walk down the street. He had a long mouth that curled up at the ends, blocky white teeth that aligned as though he’d had years of orthodontistry, which he most certainly had not. He was quite handsome—Susan thought so—but in a way she was not used to and which kept her from fully acknowledging it. He spoke English very well—that was the main thing. He knew how to cover the war. They decided to form a partnership, him as a still photographer, her as a print reporter. He was her friend—she believed they were friends—and also her translator and her entrance into combat reporting. One afternoon, still during those early weeks in Saigon, he showed her how to fall to the ground when mortared. That is, he tried to convey how fast she needed to move. But she didn’t understand.

Is there a certain technique? she asked innocently. They were at the hotel. He’d been checking out the bathroom to see whether he could use it for a darkroom. The bathroom had a broken doorknob that occasionally locked solid, and for this reason there was a screwdriver behind the tap. The room looked as though a poltergeist lived there: rotting tiles that came off the wall and broke in pieces on the floor, plaster dust, handles that dislodged themselves overnight, doors that swelled with the humidity and wouldn’t shut or wouldn’t open. The bath was moldy; the grout grew a tenacious fur. Insects everywhere, occasional rats, which she discovered had gnawed spaces in the plaster where the pipes were laid so that they could navigate the whole of the building through the maze of its plumbing. Despite these flaws, Son said it was perfect. The bathroom would be ideal for developing his film. But could they put a board across the bidet (rust-colored water; jammed, immobile taps) and use it as a small table? Could they get rid of the flouncy shower curtain Susan bought because there had been none when she arrived? Could he move the towels? In short, could she do without a bathroom?

You want me to tell you how to fall down? he said. His cigarette bobbed in his mouth as he spoke; his large white teeth reminded her of piano keys, and though he was smiling he seemed completely baffled when she nodded and said yes. It was one of those moments between them—one of many—in which he seemed as confused by her as she was by him, by the whole of his country, and especially the war. He could have admitted he was equally mystified by Western women, and particularly by Susan, but he might have thought that this fact was already quite plain. Fall down? he said now. Just…his hands beside his head showed his confusion. Have you never done that?

Not deliberately, she told him.

If a vehicle is hit, it can easily blow up, and vehicles of any description are one of the favorite targets of the Vietcong, who attempt to take out as many supplies as possible on their way to the field.

She read this in the Handbook, but she had no idea what it meant, what it really meant, until Son threw her off a flatbed in the same manner in which you might throw off a bale of hay. She learned also in those long minutes that once you’ve heard the shooting and jump over the side of the truck, you should follow immediately wherever the soldiers are running. And they will be running toward the bullets. Again, this was not initially for her a voluntary act; she was hauled along by a marine who held her like a bag of groceries in his nonsmoking hand.

She was getting closer all the time. She didn’t realize how close.

She got a telegram from her editor:

EXCELLENT WORK ON HOSPITAL STORY STOP PHOTOGRAPHS BY HOÀNG VAN SON FIVE DOLLARS NO MORE STOP

She had to tell Son five dollars was all that the magazine would give him. She was embarrassed by how cheap her editor could be, or whoever it was who decided such things. Sorry, Son, we can’t really argue with them, but you could sell the photographs elsewhere, she said. It’s so little money, I’m embarrassed.

No arguing, said Son. Celebrating, yes, but no arguing.

But I hear Associated Press is paying fifteen a pop—

Susan, that is blood money.

Blood money?

I don’t think you understand what is danger yet. The first few months you won’t. What were you doing up in Con Thien? You’ll begin to judge these things better. Well, I hope so.

He looked at her as though she were a live circus act. As though trying to decide if she’d fall off the wire.

First there had been the bunker in Con Thien, then Marc saw her at a party in Saigon. It wasn’t like him to go to such a party. He’d been in Vietnam a long time, been to more than his share of events in hotel rooms and embassies and restaurants, private rooms and villas, hotels and offices and bars. He’d grown weary of them. But tonight’s casual, crowded gathering took place in his own hotel, one floor down. He’d have had to make an effort to escape it and there had already been enough talk about him. About how solitary he’d become, how remote. The rumors—that he kept his own M16 under his bed, that he was never without the dried hind foot of a rabbit, either in his pocket or around his neck; that he, in fact, had a mojo bag full of talismans and holy cards, wore a St. Christopher’s, counted backwards from seven before jumping from choppers—used to make him laugh. But lately, he’d come to wonder if he appeared strange to his colleagues, enough so that they thought some explanation was in order. So he went to the party, arriving at the door to the welcome of Brian Murray, about whom no rumors were ever put forward. The man never seemed to travel five minutes for a story these days.

Oh, good, the press has arrived, Murray said. Murray was a print reporter and his comment might have been yet another little dig at television reporters who—it was understood—were not nearly as informed as those who wrote for newspapers. Marc never really understood the rivalry, and he didn’t see why Murray always felt compelled to remind him of it. It felt like a reprimand, coming from the older man.

You look well, Marc said. Murray wore crisp cream-colored trousers, a new belt. His shirt had been diligently pressed, undoubtedly by one of the Vietnamese girls who worked in the hotel. His shoes, too, were unscuffed, even glowing, beneath the layers of polish that had been applied.

I’m in one piece, he said.

You’ve had a lot of print lately.

The wire has. It’s Sanchez. He’s always out there, him. But not me. Not as much as I’d like. Murray said something else, too, but Marc found it difficult to hear him. The music blared from four speakers, rigged up in the corners of the room. Murray was a quiet guy. He didn’t look like he belonged in such a gathering. He looked like he should be at home with his wife and children, with a dog at his feet and a warm drink and a pipe. His hair curled in graying locks and his pale skin showed exactly how little he got out. He probably never left the city any more. He probably was at the door now because it was the quietest place to stand.

You going to let me in? Marc said.

Oh yeah. Sorry, Davis. Come in.

Marc looked for the bathroom, where undoubtedly there would be a tub of beer swimming in melted ice. He looked for Locke, but couldn’t find him. He was probably asleep. They’d been up most of the night before, flying the milk-run from Danang, hoping to get back before the weather turned. Marc got a drink and talked with a few guys from a French paper. The French pouted into their drinks and passed each other Gauloises cigarettes. They always looked so miserable at American gatherings; he wondered why they never appeared to miss a single one.

He picked up a Life magazine, thumbing through its pages for the stories about Vietnam, but it was all about protestors this week, photograph after photograph of marches and rallies. He glanced through the articles, looking at the images of streets and squares so crowded with people he could not pick out a single feature of cities he knew well. He tried to imagine himself there again, back home in the States. The country—his country—felt far away, almost impossible to reach. Sometimes, when they packed the film to be sent to San Francisco and then on to New York, it seemed to him like magic that the parcel could reach those same streets he knew, that the city blocks and buildings with all their shining windows existed at all, and even more astonishing, that they existed exactly as he remembered them, untouched, unbothered by the chaos he reported daily.

He put the magazine to one side. He looked up and he saw her; he saw Susan. She was by the door, standing in the exact spot he’d been next to Murray. For a moment, it seemed almost as though she had stepped out of his own imagination, or wasn’t really there at all, for in his mind she was somehow consigned to the north. He’d expected to see her in Danang or Chu Lai, or even once more in Con Thien. But of course it made more sense to find her here in Saigon among the press, the crowded bars and restaurants, the hotels. She would have been at the daily press conferences, the five o’clock follies, that he could barely bring himself now to attend. He’d heard from Locke that there was a new English girl in town, some girl journalist, Locke had said. The minute he mentioned her, Marc knew it was the same. I think I know the one, he replied. But even so, he always thought of Susan up north, not here. It shocked him, seeing her among so many people he knew.

She was framed in the doorway, her hands on either side of the opening. It seemed to him she was hesitating, taking in the geography of the room, the people inside. Murray was trying to talk to her—what was he, a sentry at the gates?—and from this distance she appeared to be answering him politely, her head tilted to one side. She looked shy, sweet, young. He wanted to go over to her but he hesitated, watching, and then she was swept up with a group and he didn’t want to intervene. Somebody asked him for the Life magazine and he handed it over wordlessly.

Davis—he heard, Hey, Marc! Someone was calling his name, a man, not her. He kept walking.

He tracked her, a few steps behind. It was a game at first. To see if she noticed him. He watched her pass through the party in a thin dress, its sleeves shaped like flute glasses from which her wrists seemed surprisingly delicate. He could still recall how she’d clung to him in the bunker, her arm looped over his knee, and the strength of that grip. The dress made her seem more fragile than she was, and in this manner he found her appearance deceptive, as though he was being shown a pretend version of Susan, when he knew full well how strong she was, how fast she could run. He could still see her racing down that hill, her feet swinging up to her hips as she pushed forward through the dust and stones to the jeep. Tonight she looked altogether different, and it was like looking at a beautiful portrait that showed some other new and lovely aspect of her person. He could hardly stand to look away.

He felt a hand clap around his calf and he stopped, frozen, staring down. It was Curtis, a soundman he occasionally worked with when he was lucky enough to get a soundman. He was arranged on the floor with some friends, sitting absurdly close to the speakers, which blasted the Stones so loudly you could feel the vibration in the air. The guys asked if they could mooch just a little weed as were down to seeds and stems. Marc patted his empty pockets, shrugging.

I’m all out, he said. The music was so loud he had to lean down, shouting into Curtis’s ear. From a distance it would have appeared as though he were telling Curtis a secret.

Curtis said, Bullshit, you’re never out.

I am. I swear.

We don’t have anything even halfway smokeable. Come on, man!

You’re out of luck, I don’t—

Curtis pushed two fingers into Marc’s shirt pocket and uncovered a dime bag he’d forgotten about.

You’re not awake, Davis, Curtis said.

It’s this new dreamy image he’s projecting, another of them said. Like he’s here but not here.

Very cool.

The coolest.

Probably thinking about a girl.

Don’t tell his wife!

Curtis laughed. I think he was just holding out on us.

Marc shook his head. He watched Curtis pinch a spray of the weed and stuff it into the blackened bowl of a small bong with dirty water, some marks on the plastic where it had burned.

Keep it, Marc said, nodding at the bag.

They told him to sit down, share a bowl with them, but he shook his head. His eyes floated across the room once more, searching for Susan, hoping she hadn’t left already. She was dressed carefully, her hair newly washed. She was probably going off for dinner later. He shouldn’t even have talked to these guys. He knew what they were after anyway. He should have just dropped the pot into their open palms and kept on tracking her. But he had honestly forgotten he had any. He wondered if the bag had gone through the laundry.

Over the course of the hour the hallway filled. People filed in from their offices, or on their way back from other parties, from restaurants or clubs or straight out of the field. They came and everyone packed in, some never getting as far as the stairs. He stepped over the legs of those with their backs up against walls, using Coke bottles for ashtrays, sharing rolling papers and pizza brought up, dried and cold now, curled in boxes. He saw some guys from the bureau and fell into conversation about an assignment. Curtis’s girlfriend arrived in a miniskirt and unshaven legs, looking like a scruffy cheerleader, and kissed him full on the mouth. Locke showed up, holding court with one group, then another. People called him ‘The Information’, a name he didn’t seem to mind. A couple of guys would go off to find some more beer, or better beer, or more pot, or better pot. A group would bring in a few more records and then, for no reason, a song would be interrupted halfway through as the LP was changed, the great scrape of the needle across vinyl singing in the speakers and someone calling out, Shiiiiit, what are you doing, man? A bicycle was hauled up the stairs—it belonged to a student who didn’t dare leave it on the street. A guy whose two silver bars said he was a captain borrowed it off him and was now trying to wheel it through the crowd. The captain was here only because his girlfriend lived in the hotel. She was nothing to do with the war, but exported goods to the US.

War talk, all of it. Locke described a particular hill battle near Kontum and how he’d traded cigarettes for grass, ounce for ounce, and all the better ways they could have used the Montagnards as fighting soldiers with American advisers, but didn’t, and now they’re giving information both sides, what a fucking waste. The guy he was talking to said he’d lost three cameras: one stolen, one ruined by water, and another hit by shrapnel.

While you were using it?

No, man, it was in my hag.

There were correspondents, and soldiers—officers—and two GIs on R&R planning to bunk in the room, guys who worked construction or something anyway and didn’t talk about the war or anything but just sat stolidly and drank one bottle of 33 beer after another, lining up the empties in neat rows like game pieces.

It was odd to see anyone sober, or anyone over thirty. He watched Susan and noticed that she didn’t drink much, that she didn’t know many people. She seemed to flit about, talking only briefly here and there, not entirely at ease. She had some friends among the exhausted nurses, who slumped on the floor with their oversized drinks, and pulled her down to talk to them. There were women: wives or girlfriends, some who worked for the USO or other relief organizations, the nurses who’d been brought in by jeep by some bunch of seriously in-breach soldiers. The women had their moments of peculiar talk and outrageous flirtations, except for the nurses who looked so tired they might lie down and sleep right there across a doorway if that’s where they fell. They sat on the floor or lay on the floor, their hair falling all around them like lank seaweed, looking up at the ceiling fan going round and round, or staring at the smouldering end of their lit cigarette, or leaning into the arms of one guy or other, crowding around the air conditioner, laughing, drinking, once in a while bursting out crying.

At last he found her alone at the window, one of three large sash windows with great swags that had grown dusty and old now, the ornate gold piping frayed along the seams. He went to the window next to where she was standing, amazed that she had not noticed him yet, much less recognized him. It occurred to him that she might be avoiding him. The way she studied the sidewalk outside seemed almost a deliberate turning away, and in one respect this gave him hope. That he’d had an impact on her, that she hadn’t forgotten the bunker in Con Thien, what passed between them in those minutes, what he thought had passed. If she wanted to avoid him, then it must be that she remembered, that she knew the power of their first, extraordinary meeting when she fled like Cinderella from the ball, holding her helmet with one hand, her notebooks in the other. In his day dreams he had often entertained himself with that last image of her, running toward the jeep, leaping up on to the open bed. It seemed wholly at odds with the woman he saw now, in a dress that hugged her hips, her hair falling in a fan across her shoulders, and the contrast he found dazzling, exhilarating. He didn’t know if he dared talk to her.

He glanced through the window and saw army trucks and clusters of careening bicycles, people rushing from the first throes of evening rain. The pedicab drivers leaned into the motion as they worked. The kids traded money and sold things they’d found or scrounged, pens and card packs, pictures of naked girls, all of them getting soaked now, getting drenched. A boy in a T-shirt three sizes too small and a pair of underpants, nothing more, darted across the crazy street like a dog, trying to avoid being killed outright, selling cigarettes that nobody wanted to buy. It began to rain harder and his hair shined with it, his underpants dragged down his hips, his bald little legs splashed in puddles. At some point the boy looked up and saw Marc at the window and called out Wanna buy? Marc reached into his pocket and found a clump of notes, dropping a colorful bill down to the boy who stood with his hand stretched out, his chin to the sky, rushing one way, then another as the note floated, swooped and dived to the street below. It felt mean to have made him work so hard for the note, so he threw some change and the boy ran for it, too; other children, hearing the coins scattering on the pavement, started doing the same. A crowd gathered, rushing in from adjoining lanes, not just children but old men, teenage girls, all of them rushing now. A child with only one arm danced below the window trying to lift the coins from the road with her single outstretched hand. A round woman with long gray hair pushed a child to one side. They were all running for the coins, calling up, screaming for more. But the rain was fierce, banging down on to the steaming tarmac and bouncing up again, streaming down the edges of the road, soaking the clothes and hair of the people below and drowning out their voices.

Suddenly, a spear of lightning cracked across a piece of sky to the west and all the lights went out. The street went black as though it had disappeared altogether, like a stage across which the curtain has been drawn. Inside, too, the room, the party, was suddenly immersed in darkness. He glanced away from the street and into the sudden gray shadows of the hotel—he didn’t even know whose room it was—and looked across at the adjacent window, blinking, searching for Susan, but she was gone.

The lights stayed off but no one was alarmed. It was a city of precarious amenities. Water, light, access down a particular street or building, at a particular hour or a different one, were granted or not granted. One night, as the guest of an embassy official (someone he assumed to be a spook), he’d been in one of Saigon’s best French restaurants when a blackout had taken hold of several city blocks. The waiters hurried with hurricane lamps and table candles, reassuring the diners that all was well. They had a generator for the kitchen, the food would not be a minute delayed. The waiters carried small flashlights, like theater ushers, and set out a line of lanterns at the station where they brought orders. He and the official carried on with their meal, though the man seemed suddenly quite awkward, straining through the darkness to see the other restaurant guests, who paid no attention at all to the blackout. If anything, they seemed to enjoy it. Outside, the streets were lit by headlamps and starlight; while the restaurant, now cloaked in the candles’ amber glow, felt like a festive cavern. Everyone spoke more softly than before, as though the candles enforced a kind of secrecy, and Marc found himself having to drop his own voice, leaning across the table and into the cloud of light made by the flickering flame between him and the official, in order to hear the man speak. They carried on for a few minutes and then he saw the official’s face suddenly glaze over. He was staring into a small spray of flowers that had been on the table all the time but, until now, had gone unnoticed. They were tiny lavender buds, each one the size of a thimble, and they let off an unusually strong scent in relation to their small size. In an abrupt move, the official dropped his napkin on to the table. Let’s get out of here before someone takes us for a couple of faggots, he said, standing. He summoned the waiter for the bill, threw some money on the table. One of the waiters followed them out apologetically, suggesting that they at least finish their main course, but the official said, Wrap it up, give it to someone. He looked down at the plate of change the waiter had brought, rumpled bills on a saucer of white porcelain. To Marc, he said, They give you these dirty notes so you’ll leave them as a tip. Why should I give him all that? The place doesn’t even have working lights. Then he said, Come on, let’s get something to drink.

Marc remembered this now, standing in the darkened party, and it made him smile and cringe at the same time. He listened as someone bemoaned the dead stereo, the unexpected discontinuation of music. Laughter erupted from down the hall where the darkness was almost complete. The party guests, unable to contain themselves in the excitement of the abrupt night, moved in waves in one direction, then another, guided only by the momentary hiss of a lit match, the glow of cigarettes, the few penlights that passed from hand to hand like batons.

And then, just as he least expected it, she was by his side. He recognized her profile in the darkness, her nose, her chin, the shape of her hips in the dress. Her voice was new to him. He’d never before heard her speak. I know you, she said, standing at his shoulder. He took her in, straining his eyes to see her more clearly. He remembered how in the bunker a few weeks earlier the darkness had obscured her, and how she’d arrived with the unexpected tide of light from the sergeant’s lamp. He could picture her face then, streaked with mud, a few scratch marks, her eyes frozen in fear, pupils wide, her mouth open, unsure whether even to take in a breath. He reminded himself that he had once held her, crying, in his arms. It gave him confidence to remember that, to tell himself that she had found solace this way.

She said, I wasn’t sure, at first, and then I thought maybe—I don’t know—that you wouldn’t want me to bother you.

The rain was heavy now, the drops splattering the floor near the window, open for the necessary breeze it allowed into the crowded room. He saw a fat raindrop land on her bare arm, another on her shoulder, and it was all he could do not to reach out and wipe them away. You’re getting wet, he said, leading her from the window. Lightning came and went; with every bolt she became temporarily visible, the opaque whiteness making her skin seem pale, almost translucent. Then she seemed to disappear altogether as his eyes adjusted to the dark wake of the vanished electricity. He was fascinated by her presence, he couldn’t say why. He had anticipated this meeting for weeks, guessing at where he might see her, and under what circumstances. He’d been careful how he asked after her, allowing himself to display no greater interest than he would in any new journalist he might see in the field, or at least not much more. He knew her name, who she worked for, a few places she had been recently. He looked at her now, wondering whether to tell her how he had sought her out, how her memory had dogged him. They had met in such honest isolation, both of them terrified, neither hiding nor able to hide anything about themselves. He had never admitted, nor would admit, to that kind of fear, certainly not to another journalist. But she’d been there, witnessed it, given him the gift of her trust as she clung to him in the bunker. Now she said I know you, and it seemed so right and appropriate a greeting. She did know him, had seen a part of him he did not allow himself to dwell upon; he had considered at that time the possibility that they would suffer a direct hit, that the bunker would disintegrate and take them with it, that he would die with her there. He’d thought of that very thing and he knew, too, that she had.

The lightning came and went once more, a kind of shutter through which they saw each other and then did not. When he was able to focus again he saw her blinking up at him, smiling. He had not seen her smile before and he drank it in, greedy for it. She was so alive, so vibrant before him. He had found her once more. That, in itself, seemed a miracle. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and twirl her.

I wasn’t sure whether to come over or not, she said.

I’m glad you did.

I used to see you on the news all the time. Before I arrived here, I mean.

He nodded, at first confused. She carried on talking now, listing some of the news reports she’d particularly admired, one of which he hadn’t done at all—it had been a colleague of his at the network—and at some point he realized that when she’d said I know you this is what she’d meant. That she’d seen him on television.

His stomach soured; the euphoria of a few seconds earlier drifted away. He felt himself receding, as though he had somehow been suddenly transported to the ceiling and was now looking down upon himself talking to this woman, a young and attractive woman who had no idea who he was except as he appeared on television when he did his best to sound as much as possible like Walter Cronkite. He wanted to rewind to that moment by the window, or even before when he followed her around the crowded rooms. He found himself shaking his head slowly, unintentionally back and forth. She had no idea who he was. Whatever he thought of their meeting in Con Thien, it held nothing for her. She seemed to him suddenly just like any girl, like anyone else at the party. He watched her grow silent in front of him, aware perhaps that something inside him had shut down, that he was no longer listening.

I’m sorry, he said, his voice filled with disappointment, sounding overly contained, even robotic. I thought you were someone else.

The lights went on again and a great round of applause erupted from the party’s guests. He could see her plainly now, and though the storm continued to rage outside it no longer felt as if it were here in the room, even between them. The record went back on, so loud that the guests raised their voices to shout over the heavy beat. Some began dancing, colliding into those who stood with drinks and some who sat. She leaned toward him so that her mouth was just under his chin, her brow knit, and said in a clipped manner, Then I beg your pardon.

She turned and walked in one deliberate, fluid movement, leaving him unsure whether to follow or let her go. He was angry and he had no right to be angry. He wanted to call to her, even to argue with her, this stranger, a woman whom (he reminded himself now) he did not even know. Unable to get her attention in the din of the party noise, the blaring music, the waves of laughter that seemed to come from the corners of the room, he went after her once more. When he was close enough, he reached forward and touched her shoulder and she turned, her eyes fierce upon his. Now he saw her as he remembered her, the strength of her emotions connecting them. It comforted him somehow, to see her once more as strong and clear as she’d been those weeks ago, not hiding a thing about herself. She could hate him if she wanted; that was understandable. He’d humiliated her—he realized that—but it hadn’t been deliberate and he wanted to tell her so. Instead, what came out was altogether different, a plea from inside him that he hadn’t reckoned on. He said, You were in that bunker by the observation post. We sat across from one another. You don’t remember that?

She looked confused at first and he thought for one brief, dreadful moment that somehow he’d gotten the wrong girl altogether, that it was his mistake. It didn’t seem possible that the girl in the bunker was some other English girl. He knew her face, her eyes. But there was no point in carrying on. It had happened, finally, even inevitably: they had met again. Never in all his imaginings did the event have so little importance.

I’m sorry, he said. Never mind.

He looked down, trying to decide how best to navigate himself away, out of the room, the hall, the hotel. He thought he could go to the bureau, or somewhere.

Then she said, Con Thien?

He felt something between them relax. He looked up and saw her face, the awareness arriving like a slow-growing wave. She began to fidget, holding her elbow with one hand, pressing her fingers over her mouth. She looked at him newly, her eyes scanning his face, his chest, his hands. Finally she said, I remember that.

He hadn’t moved, was standing close, still holding her arm.

She said, I didn’t know it was you. I mean, how would I know? You were covered in dirt. You didn’t have a helmet on and it was all in your hair—Her hands moved to her own hair as she said the words. He felt the corners of his mouth rise, felt a wash of relief. She remembered. He let go her arm now, sure she would remain with him, that whatever would happen now had already begun, had taken hold. She looked down at the floor, a frown of concentration across her brow. I thought you were a marine, she explained.

No—he began.

Your hair is short like a marine and you had a first-aid pouch—

It was a tape recorder. The first-aid pouch is waterproof so I use it—

You weren’t wearing glasses.

They were in my hand.

I was sure—

Susan, he said, the first time he used her name. Think back. I had no weapon.

She looked down at the floor as though searching there for something she had dropped. He saw her shoulders move; she looked up and he realized that she was laughing. He tried to smile but could not. When had his life become so weighted he could not laugh with a beautiful woman?

Oh my God, she said. She sounded happy, relieved, a little overwhelmed, even. I thought I’d never see you again.

The truest advice she ever heard about combat reporting was that if you were really scared, you shouldn’t go. But the amazing thing about being around war so long—one of the amazing things—was how it began to feel normal; healthy fear melted away and was replaced by curiosity. The stories came daily, told at the bar or while waiting at the airport for a lift. They were printed in newspapers, cabled from the offices on Tu Do Street, and with every story of a firefight, a skirmish, a reconnaissance, a bombing mission, a search-and-destroy, came a sense of the increasing normality. It was exactly the way the horses she had trained became used to fire and smoke and crowds and sudden loud sounds: a simple system of approach and retreat. Not that she became immune to fear—in some respects she felt scared all the time—but she reached a place where it arrived too late to keep her from doing the dangerous thing.

She did not feel braver. It was more that over the weeks the battles themselves had moved toward her, moved toward them all, into every city, every ville, so that it no longer seemed such an odd thing to witness and report, then eventually to wait around when a rumor was in the air, and at last to request to be woken at 4 a.m. to go out on an operation. It happened naturally, a slow attrition of common sense.

Now, she packed ace bandages, iodine, cotton. She regarded bits of rope or twine with interest, carried duct tape even though it weighed so much, wore a thin leather belt with a strong buckle. These things became most ordinary, like packing socks or underwear. She didn’t think about why she packed them any more, though if asked she could tell you. Almost all battle deaths are caused by loss of blood.

Midnight, miles and miles from Saigon, out with soldiers in the jungle, absolutely riveted with concentration, unable to do anything but walk forward, she strained her eyes to keep track of Son, who was in front of her, and of the man in front of him. The line of soldiers stalked the land under the absolute darkness of a jungle night, putting the flats of their hands against the backs of the guys in front of them, training their eyes on to the tiny pieces of fluorescent tape tacked on to helmets, following the flashes of light that danced in the opaque screen of black as they marched. She held the hand of the man in front, and the man behind. There were no instructions required; they were all so scared that holding hands made sense. She had forgotten that she had not been drafted and had no need to be there, that she was not a useful part of the military machine. She had forgotten, had been in the process of forgetting for some time now, and had arrived at a place in which it hadn’t seemed at all extraordinary to go on this search-and-destroy mission. Following the column, part of it now, she thought how easy it would be to become lost, to somehow spiral out of this line of safety. If she were to get herself into trouble, this would be the place. It would be so easy to become momentarily separated and it would feel, she imagined, like losing your way in outer space. And then it happened. Not contact with the enemy, not the sudden rush of incoming artillery in her ears, but the same abrupt, unexpected tide of awareness that she had experienced before. In the middle of that night, in a manner that arrived like its own assault, while walking silently in a string of men barely out of their teens, it was as though she suddenly discovered where she was and how stupid she had been. It was, she realized, like being in the helicopter the first time she was on the receiving end of gunfire—she could not get away. She felt the sweat dripping down the sides of her body, flooding her forehead, her eyes. She would follow the men with assiduous care, with the same steady, silent footsteps, even though now she was out of her mind with fear, even though she would do anything not to have come on the operation. It happened to her the same way every time: the discovery always came too late, or in the wrong place, or the wrong circumstances. Each time that she came, however momentarily, to her senses, it was like being back in that helicopter months before, hearing the bullets like tiny hammers beneath her and wishing she could run.

Then don’t go.

Marc would tell her this late at night as they lay in bed. It was his answer to any hint of worry or doubt, any concern at all about things that happened—the chopper being hit, the awful night on the search-and-destroy mission. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything. Or she wasn’t supposed to admit it.

But I want to go, she said. She didn’t say that it was he who had woken her with his restless audible dreams, that she would not be up late at night worrying if he hadn’t startled her in the night with his voice. When he talked in his sleep he did not sound like himself. The first time she heard him she was frightened, waking momentarily to the thought that she was elsewhere, with a stranger, listening to a voice that seemed wholly detached from the man beside her.

He kept whiskey by the bed, always a glass of it, or a mug or paper cup. He took a long swallow now, then searched the ashtray, using a penlight so he could see. I’ve got a jay in here somewhere. Hand me those matches. Look, you go back to sleep. You’ll feel better later. It’s always worse at night.

What is worse?

She looked at him slyly. She wanted him to admit he had the same fears as she, though it would do no good even if he did. He shook his head, pushing himself up, so that his back leaned against the wall. He had a pillow on his lap, the ashtray on the pillow. Everything, he said. He might have said more, about how the dreams rise with you in the morning, that you eventually find there is no rest, but he did not. He sat in bed and smoked diligently until she fell asleep. In the morning he told her it was nice that she slept so well. He told her he was jealous.

Like everything in Vietnam, their relationship seemed to be on fast forward. They’d met for the second time at the party, and after that night he’d disappeared up north again and she was forced to put him from her mind. His face, which she had known from television when she used to watch from her apartment in Chicago as he broadcast from Vietnam, was now part of her daily thoughts. She associated him not with a network but with that bunker in Con Thien, that hotel room where they stood by the window, an electric storm, a particular song that kept being played on the record player. Back when she watched him as part of a news report, it had seemed as if he was broadcasting from a world far away and unreachable. Now it felt as if the television image of him was from another world, a ghost of him that visited the living rooms of people across America. She thought of him altogether too often, and then one day he arrived unannounced at her door, telling her he knew a very good restaurant, and asking if she had time for a bite.

She wasn’t all that shocked to see him. He’d somehow managed to get a cable to her, letting her know when he’d be back in town and asking if it would be all right to get in touch. Apparently, get in touch meant come and fetch her from her room.

It’s three in the afternoon, she said.

Should I come back later?

No.

Am I allowed in? Or are we going to stand here in the hall?

We’re going to—She didn’t know what they were going to do. She had a page of copy in her hand. Her fingers were stained from fixing typewriter ribbon that had gotten twisted. She wondered if there was black ink on her face. She wanted to appear bold, decisive, to be someone he would take seriously, who could surprise him. We’re going to your hotel, she said. I prefer it.

He tried not to show his delight. He looked around him—at the peeling walls, the scuffed floorboards with tiny holes throughout from some kind of insect damage, at the bare bulbs and places on the ceilings where water from long ago leaks, had stained the paint. I think I agree with you, he said casually.

She would have changed her clothes but there was nowhere in the room to undress except in the bathroom and Son had crowded photographs in various stages of development there. She ended up brushing her hair and checking her face with a hand mirror.

I didn’t know you were a photographer, he said.

I’m not.

He indicated all the black-and-whites clipped along the walls.

She told him they belonged to Son. I think you know him, she said. Now his expression changed and so she added quickly. It isn’t what you think.

Where is he now?

Son? She thought for a moment. I have no idea.

He just pops in when he feels like it?

She smiled. She didn’t like the way the conversation was going. He doesn’t have anywhere to live. No money. He sleeps on the floor, on a mat. I know it must seem very odd.

Very. He took her hand. You’ll need an umbrella, he said.

He wasn’t especially tall but in her recently purchased flat canvas sandals he seemed so to Susan. He guided her as they walked along the sidewalk, which smelled like a mixture of overripe fruit and urine. He told her about his most recent story. He offered her a cigarette. Whenever the conversation strayed from the subject of the war—what was being said, where he’d been, descriptions of the men in the company he’d gone out with, or who he’d recently spoken to from an embassy—he seemed all of a sudden nervous. She let him talk, learning from him but feeling, too, that this is what she could expect, a wildly attractive tutor, an alluring purveyor of knowledge about the war.

Where are you from? she asked.

New York, he said quickly. Then told her how he’d grown to prefer Danang to Saigon, how he really didn’t like it down here any more.

You’re married, aren’t you? Her question, injected into the conversation as it was, made him lose his train of thought.

Currently, he answered.

She didn’t mind. Not at first. In the circumstances in which they found themselves, it didn’t make all that much difference.

Marc was what Son politely called “not so cautious,” by which he meant the guy had a death wish. Susan’s and his was a misguided amorphous, sprawling kind of relationship with no obvious direction or end in sight. In other words, perfect for the time being. They met between stories, holing up in his hotel or anywhere else they could find, disappearing for a day and then emerging again, rushing out to get another story. It was exhausting and addictive. And among many other things, it had the effect on Susan of knocking away whatever remnants of common sense and perspective she had. She went out on more missions. She took more risks.

I’m thinking you might get killed soon, Son said one night. They were sharing a meal at the Eskimo, sitting shoulder to shoulder, eating off each other’s plates and talking about something else entirely—how the Americans had brought over enormous pigs from the States in an effort to increase the size of Vietnamese pigs, a silly operation that had resulted in no demonstrable gain as the smaller pigs ran away from the atrocious, slow monsters from the West. In the middle of laughing, Son had suddenly gone quiet and then issued his concern. If something happens to you—he began.

Nothing will, she interrupted. That was on the eve of an assault mission they covered. And she’d been right that time. Nothing happened—or rather, nothing happened to them.

Another telegram:

EXCELLENT STORY BUT FEEL YOU PRE TAKING TOO MANY RISKS STOP MAGAZINE CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR RECKLESS REPORTING STOP BE MORE CAREFUL STOP

She could imagine her editor sitting in her houndstooth skirt with its matching jacket, the vein at her temple throbbing, her skin itching as though she had fleas, sleeves pushed up away from the clutter on her desk. Cursing Susan for making her sweat like this, she would dictate the wire to some trembling young secretary. The cost per word of such a wire was too high to include the expletives, which the secretary would understand must be deleted from the final dictation. That’s it! she’d say when she had completed the message. Now bring me a fresh pack of matches. Then she’d ball up some paper as the girl fled tfrom he office, the dictated cable in hand.

Susan was fond of the woman; she did not want to cause her an early stroke, so she returned as follows:

BEING MORE CAUTIOUS STOP FOLLOWING SUPPLY CONVOY TO REFUGEE CAMP STOP HOPE THIS COMPLIES WITH REQUEST STOP STOP WORRYING STOP

She and Son were traveling with the 9th Infantry to what she thought would be a safe enough place in the Delta, an area where huge camps were being set up for what were being called “refugees,” that is, people emptied out of villages thought to be enemy strongholds. Her reason for choosing the story was simple: she wanted a story that did not require her to walk miles or sleep on the ground or sit in a hole in the rain. Besides, there was her editor to consider. This was meant to be easy, the refugee story, with photographs of children and mothers and smiling soldiers. She wore a pair of utility trousers, a T-shirt and field jacket. The rain was easing off so that she could flip back the hood on her poncho, enjoying the cool air, talking to the guy next to her on the armored personnel carrier about his collection of fighting fish that—so she learned—were a species that originated in Vietnam. They’d been traveling over an hour now, a slow, uneventful journey; it might have been a tractor ride on a wet summer’s day.

She’d run out of water and was drinking from Son’s plastic bottle, the canvas flaps jigging with the movement of the track, her sunglasses making her nose sweat. She was handing him back the bottle when she heard gunshot. The bottle dropped. She wheeled toward the sound, the air cracking around her as though blocks of wood were being exploded close by, then a huge booming explosion that made everything shake.

It was as though the world was erupting beneath them. Great spouts of earth rained down as the ground, blasted with mortars, sent mud flying as though an enormous force was kicking it straight into her face, over her head. The M60 mounted on the hull of the track burst into life; she was deafened by the gun’s noise, which soared through her, lifting her up, making her weightless as though she were floating. She had always thought she was protected if only by the firepower of the men with whom she traveled. By the guns, the boxes of ammunition, the ever-squawking radios, the sheer volume of artillery. Joining the convoy, so heavily armored, hadn’t given her any concern, not a moment of worry; they were heading for a refugee camp, not trying to take a city. And now, this.

The first few blasts destroyed the vehicles in front and the ensuing attack came straight at those who stalled. She was traveling on the open back of the APC; there was no place to take shelter, and she realized suddenly that the feeling of floating was due, in part, to how hard she had to work just to hang on to the vehicle. They were reversing now off the road, bouncing over uneven ground, churning up mud, scraping against the brush, which itself sparkled with gunfire. The track was tipping one way, then another, lunging into the jungle, then reversing up again, the men above her yelling to each other, firing madly, the spent casings dancing on the track’s deck. She saw tracers to the rear, flashes from the enemy guns. She looked at Son, indicating wildly the attack which was coming from behind, hoping he could somehow alert the gunman. Instead he grabbed her arm, pulled her down and together they jumped off the track, running, wheeling and diving, tripping, getting up again. It was a crazy thing to do, to run blindly toward the bush, away from the approaching gunfire, but there were soldiers on the ground now, too, and they didn’t know what else to do.

They survived the initial, lethal minute. That was the first thing. They missed the ammo log that exploded, the fragments of burning metal, the small-arms fire that rang out around them. It was the right thing to run. They might have made it, too, but there was a kind of disorientation; the jungle seemed to swallow them whole. The fighting continued, went on and on. They didn’t know which way to move. They heard screaming; they heard the long cracking sound of machine guns. But they were out of voice range and never heard the call to mount up. The convoy moved on without them while they were still trying to figure out where the road was, where the shots were coming from. All around them was jungle, elephant grass and vines, the air full of carbine, the heat like someone holding a blanket over her head.

She didn’t feel frightened. When she saw the ammo log blow she imagined that the blast would roll toward her. The burning metal tumbled through the air so cleanly, she thought it would fly straight to where she was sitting on the track. One of the crew on the track had already been injured. She saw him crumple in a single, smooth motion, as though someone had suddenly removed all his bones. He fell on top of the track, amid the burning copper shell casings which would blister your skin if they touched you, then he slid toward the edge. She might have hoped the soldier wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t hold on to such a simple, humane thought. She’d seen him fall, his body halfway off the edge of the vehicle. She’d seen the people running and crouching, throwing themselves this way and that, falling, dying, all of this happening beneath the heat of a rising sun. It seemed impossible that they had been so effectively ambushed and, then, that she had survived by running toward the jungle. In the thick of the jungle, she felt amazed to be standing, to be whole, stunned so that for a minute she ran her hands over her arms, her legs, then turned to Son and did the same to him. To think that she was still alive! Even her friend, too, even him. She was not afraid, but grateful. Grateful to every animal and bird in this harsh land, to the sun and wind and to everything she observed, suddenly free, standing, breathing, sweating, living.

Now it was only a matter of getting back to the convoy. She did not realize it was already moving. She pulled Son’s arm, told him they had better get out of there. But he stood silent and immobile, as though he’d been planted in the ground like wood. She began to grow concerned. She took his shoulders and shook him, frowning into his still, frozen face, wondering if he had some injury she could not see, a hole in his body like the holes she’d seen in bodies before, a dial of blood rimmed by charred black flesh, sometimes small enough you had to look for it, hiding an enormous, tattered exit wound. But there was no bullet and anyway, he was standing. Though his breath came in shallow gasps and his eyes stayed fixed on the air in front of him, he had no injury she could detect, and there was no explanation she could imagine.

At last she saw him move. He swallowed, sucked his lips in, and spoke in a hoarse whisper so that she had to lean toward him to hear. She realized all at once what was happening, what held him there, unmoving.

Behind us, he said.

II

The targets were known to everyone. For example, the men who carried radios were targets. Her second month as a correspondent, a Spec-4 was killed in front of her and his radio, still squawking, was hit two more times before she had the sense to crawl back out of the way. Son was screaming at her, Get down! Move! The lieutenant whose radio the Spec-4 was carrying was nose down in the dirt, yelling like mad for a medic. There were more bullets; they sent up spirals of dust only a few yards from where she was, splintered the branches of nearby trees, made hard cracks in the air around her. She could hear all this, the lieutenant going crazy, his cheek to the ground, his mouth open, calling and calling for help for the dying soldier, Son shouting her name until his voice was hoarse. But she was stunned; she could not bring herself to move. She dropped on to the dirt, her eyes level with the radio operator’s shoulder. She kept staring at his chest where smoke spiraled up from two neat holes, looking at his arms stretched out casually on the ground, the plastic handset still resting in his open palm. He wore a wedding ring. She thought about it, but she did not touch her camera. Had he been a dead Vietcong she would have gotten out the camera, but this was an American. He had a letter from home folded carefully in the band of his helmet, his face toward the high, white sun, his eyes large, empty, no longer focusing, and still the smoke rising from him, his chest on fire, his heart.

There was more shouting and bullets and the whoosh of rockets overhead. She heard the radio calling to the dead soldier, asking his position, calling over and over, a desperate voice demanding his coordinates, until finally the next bullets came and then even the radio stopped. Suddenly, she woke up as though from a stupor, felt a rush of fear gathering inside her, the sensation so strong it was like having the wind knocked out of her. All at once she cried out, then crawled as fast as possible to a nearby anthill, a huge mound, baked hard, bigger than a rosebush. She hid there, her hands over her head, her chin in her chest, wondering what she’d been doing—what on earth—sitting in the open like that, so easy to pick off.

The lieutenants leading platoons were targets. They allowed her to tag along with her steno pad. They allowed her to ask questions, to share C-rations and cigarettes, to dig a hole at night and sleep among the men, but not to walk point with them up front. They did not want her killed. It wasn’t that a lieutenant had any reason to favor her. She was of no use to them—if she died, if she didn’t—but she would not know to be wary of dried leaves, which can sometimes be old camouflage hiding an explosive. Or that an unusual object on the ground—a VC scarf or helmet—would blow her arm off if she touched it. They protected her by keeping her among them, and she cherished that protection. The commanding officers would not say this to her face, but a dead woman was not good for morale.

Son they did not worry about. Put him up front. Put him behind, in the middle, anywhere at all. He was male, Vietnamese, a journalist—who cared?

Radar equipment was a target. Artillery pieces were targets. Anything was a target, but there were values attached. A helicopter was worth a great deal. A reporter was not worth much, possibly nothing at all. Most of the ones who died were shot by accident or tripped a mine, at least before the war moved into Cambodia. Then it all changed. September 1970: twenty-five reporters killed that month alone. By then she was out of the war. She got a letter from a friend who was still there telling her Kupferberg was dead. Sanchez was dead. Jenkins was missing. Ngoc Kia, dead. She hung up her coat. She sat down on the steps. She thought, Everything in my life is poisoned. She thought, Don’t let me go back. But of course she wanted to go back. She would always want to.

But in 1967 she did not know any correspondents who had been killed, did not know any personally. You could die. Anyone could die; you didn’t even need to go out on combat assaults for that. Poisoned in a crowded street in Saigon from a hypodermic needle, or blown up while standing exposed at a bus stop waiting to board one of the military buses with steel mesh bolted over the windows to stop grenades. If you went out, or if you didn’t. Hotels were bombed. Church buildings. A secretary for the CIA heard a noise in the street, went to the window, and was killed when a car bomb exploded. Nobody meant to kill her, her specifically. There would be a lot of blood shed, then nothing for a week, a month, so that you began to relax. Then it started again. Marc’s cameraman, Locke, called it “the life cycle,” an ironic name, she thought. Marc was even more philosophic, saying “If it happens, it happens.” But one thing she thought she knew was that she herself was not a target, was never a target.

Yet here she is, with three guns trained on her.

The three Vietcong stand in a formation, one more forward than the others, rifles out, balanced in their hands so that the muzzles are aimed straight at her. She has not seen guns pointed in her direction before. She is used to seeing the sides of the barrels, the curves of the magazines, the focus of the soldiers who carry the weapons directed at some far-off target, not her. She remains completely still, as though for an X-ray, frozen in place, not sure whether to raise her hands. The soldiers must be assessing how dangerous she and Son are, studying their belts for weapons, searching the brush behind them for soldiers, for the green army uniform, the canvas-sided boots. Suddenly, one of them lowers his weapon and comes forward under the protection of his comrades, who stand ready to fire.

The soldier who approaches them is tall for a Vietnamese, with a narrow head like a rocket. There is a ferocity to his movements so that it feels to Susan as though a wild animal is charging them. He directs his attention at Son, whom he regards as though he has been hunting him for months, for years even, as though he knows him and hates him, as though there is some dreadful business that needs settling and which gives the soldier every right at this time to knock Son hard in the chest with the butt of his rifle and send him sprawling to the ground.

She sees Son’s head rock back, his knees collapse. She watches as he goes down with a grunt, his head rolling back as he falls. Her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes stare; she wishes she could turn away. He is on the ground, on his knees. The soldier turns now to her, glaring as she reels back, her body tense, expecting a blow. But he does not hit her. He shouts at her in Vietnamese, kicks Son, and issues an instruction she doesn’t understand. Son manages a response which includes the words bao chi journalists. There is a pause as the soldier takes this in. He mutters a short sentence also containing the word bao chi, and Son responds once more, his focus still on the ground, unmoving. The others remain ready to fire.

She feels so tense she thinks she may faint, and she wonders if they will shoot her as she falls. The first soldier nudges Son with his foot. A second approaches, this one smaller with bushy hair sticking out every direction, and Susan sees that he has a sword in one hand, his rifle in the other. He starts speaking in a rapid, insistent manner, pointing to the sky with the sword, a crude weapon that looks as though it has been made from burnt metal. All around them are flying insects, the sun so bright she squints and still cannot see. It is like being inside an overexposed photograph. Her vision fades at the edges. For a moment she thinks they are going to kill Son with the sword, bringing it down upon his head as he crouches on the ground. She cannot take this in, how they are going to kill them now as easily as if the act were a culling of stock. But the soldier seems more interested in what he sees above him, in the pale, hot sun scorching from its height above the scrub and trees. The sword does not come down on Son’s neck. Nobody is to be killed, at least for now.

Son is told to get up. He rises, his hands arranged behind his head, his neck bowed. The third of the young soldiers is with them now. He has an air of certainty about him, and circles as though assuming ownership, his weapon more loosely held than the others. They are talking, a rapid exchange that means nothing to Susan until Son speaks to her in French. His French is as good as his English, much better than hers. He does not meet her eyes.

“They want us to move fast now,” he says. “Before the air strike.”

Being captured, she discovers, is a feeling of being trapped, but worse even. Being trapped and buried alive. Son carries himself stiffly, his shoulder swollen from the earlier blow, one leg of his trousers torn at the knee with a gaping hole that seems to get larger by the hour. Her field jacket is tied around her waist, slightly damp from the morning rain and her own sweat, smelling like warm grass and mold. She has lost her hat and has only a scarf to keep her hair out of her face, the sun off her head. For now, the sun is not a problem. They walk through a dense stretch of jungle that allows in only the darkest green-hued light. The jungle has a fairytale aspect to it, with huge leaves, vines that hang like snakes, tongues of fungus that poke up from the ground. It has a smell, too. Rotting vegetation, stagnant water, hot wet earth. Her breath feels scorched in her lungs. She takes in the air and it feels empty to her, unable to deliver the oxygen she needs. She wonders how she stays standing, walking. She thinks she can feel the gaze of the soldier behind her, his eyes on her back, his rifle close enough so that she could reach back and touch it. She listens to the sounds of the jungle, the whistles and rustles, the birds through the trees, their own footfalls on the jungle’s floor. Everything spooks her. If she thinks too much about the soldier behind her she will scream.

These first hours are like no others she has experienced, not even when she pressed herself into the earth under fire. They are almost unbearable. She knows she is lucky to be alive. During the ambush, when she reeled back from the first explosion and saw the truck in front buck and collapse on its side, then heard the small-arms fire open up, she squeezed her eyes shut and listened, had no choice but to hear the cries of the wounded around her. That, too, was terrible. The battle had lasted only a short while. A matter of minutes, not even a quarter of an hour. They had run so that they would not be hit in the crossfire, and because they feared the vehicle might explode. They’d run because running was instinctive. Now, of course, she wishes they had not. She always knew it was possible to be wounded, to be shot, but it never occurred to her that she’d stumble upon the Vietcong in the same sudden, slightly incredible way that you might come across moose in a forest, and end up captured.

The plain, dark uniforms, the bushy, unkempt hair, the faces which appear younger than they are make the Vietcong seem more like a small band of lost boy scouts than enemy soldiers. They were separated from their unit when it scattered during the firefight. They had been as lost as Susan and Son were at the moment of their meeting. It was all a dreadful coincidence. Two have AK-47s. One has what looks like a Soviet semi-automatic. They have grenades and Chicoms, the appalling sword. The sword is what disturbs her most. The soldier who has it seems to enjoy swiping the air with the blade as he walks. It bothers her more than the guns and grenades, more than their acetate map that they carry, discussing where to go. The map is blackened with mildew, with little pockmarks like the actual craters that gouge the land. And it belongs, she realizes with a start, to the US Army.

“What are they going to do with us, Son? Please talk to me—tell me what they are saying—”

He won’t reply. For some reason, whatever she asks Son, he will not answer. He scowls and moves one leg in front of the other, sometimes rubbing his palms along the sides of his shirt. The sweat trickles from his forehead, his sideburns, making a damp patch beneath each arm and across his chest. She wants to know if he has any idea where they are being taken, what his guess would be, whether he is injured from where the gun struck him—anything. But he will not reply or turn her way. Perhaps this is what happens to people in such extreme circumstances. They go inward, forgetting the allegiances they once had, thinking only of survival. The minutes, then hours, pass in a dull, tense silence.

By noon, the jungle is a dark oven through which they travel. In only a few hours she has endured capture, marching, abandonment, with no prelude to these lessons. They walk, all of them tense. The Vietcong have the guns, which is why they are in charge, but there is a feeling they are as miserable as their captives, obliged to fasten themselves to these stray, anonymous people, to take charge, to point the weapons at them. Though they began the march with purposeful, angry strides, now in the early part of the afternoon they have sunk into a steady, weary step. They chat infrequently. There is a concentration of movement, on placing one foot in front of the other, every action slowed by the heat. This is no different with them than all the times she has been with the Americans, though now she is expected to move more quickly. Even so, the rhythm of their steps, the steady, almost mechanical pace is the same.

The only animation the Vietcong have shown came shortly after they set out, once the air strike had come and gone and they could hear it in the distance. The trees hid the billows of black on the horizon, but she could imagine the spiraling smoke, the planes disappearing one by one. Susan had a bag of watermelon seeds in the pocket of her fatigues, the sort of thing you buy before the Tet holiday and eat with friends. The Vietnamese soldiers took it, along with everything else she owned: her papers; a “women’s interest” story—about a triple amputee, six years old, who with remarkable prosthetics was now able to walk and use a spoon; extra socks; money; MPC notes; a signaling mirror; T-shirt; compass. They sat with their canteens and passed her comb from man to man, giggling. They tested her pens for ink. It was as though these unremarkable personal things were valuable bounty; they examined each item carefully Then they took her boots—a means of controlling her movements, kinder than tying—her gold cross, hairbands, a letter from Marc.

“Anything more you need?” she said as they tried to figure out what the Kotex was, holding it against make-believe wounds as though it were a dressing.

They have taken Son’s map, binoculars, matches, insect repellent, gum, and his cameras, which he handed over only reluctantly. They have taken everything she owns except the clothes she wears and her hammock. Without the weight of her possessions she is looser, lighter, able to move more freely, and yet Susan feels more exposed. If she could cloak herself in the things that are hers, she might stave off the disorientation which is arriving, she knows, not because she feels it yet but because it has been described to her by others, by women she once interviewed in an Illinois State Prison, for example, who were locked up for such crimes as “lascivious carriage,” which meant they had lived with a man out of wedlock. Once the women’s clothes and possessions were confiscated, once they had been dressed identically and doused with lice powder, their personalities themselves began a process of unraveling. The draftees she had interviewed some months previously reported the same feeling after their civilian clothes were discarded, their heads shaved so that they could not recognize themselves in a mirror, and every ounce of privacy annihilated to the extent that even the toilets were set out starkly in rows on a long wall with not so much as a screen between them. It did something to you, set in motion a kind of uncertainty that was easily manipulated by whoever was in charge.

She reminds herself that the men in control now are only three youths who somehow became separated from the rest of their unit during the ambush. It was almost by obligation that they took her and Son prisoner. And though their rifles are menacing enough, they have immature, bland faces. They only want her things for the novelty value. When she reminds herself of all this she feels more herself, and she can believe, however fleetingly, that the whole thing is a game. As if any moment they will release her and Son, and then all scatter behind trees, count to twenty and start again.

That is how she will tell it, she decides, if she gets the opportunity.

Hours later she is not sure she will get the chance; the mood of the soldiers has changed. They’d been excited at first by what their prisoners had in their pockets, but now they appear bored with the whole thing. Miles into the march she is surprised they don’t just shoot her and Son and have done with it. They are weary. When they pass under low branches they are attacked by red ants which seem to wait for their prey, dropping down on them as they pass and biting at their collars. Like Susan, the Vietcong have to dig the ants out or squash them beneath their clothes. They swear in Vietnamese just as she would swear in English, if she dared to speak at all. The soldiers look at Son and Susan as if the ants are their fault. At rest stops they glare at them with hatred, Susan thinks, as though it is they, the VC, who have been taken prisoner by these inconvenient others.

She supposes it is the responsibility of guarding that weighs on them, especially in the heat of the day. For her part, she is too frightened to hate them. There are times she is so certain they will kill her that she almost wishes it would be said aloud. She thinks the admission might help prepare her for the act, like anesthesia. By mid-afternoon her head is swimming. There is a pain in her left temple that tracks her pulse. All at once, almost without meaning to, she says, “They will take us someplace and shoot us. Near a swamp or a rice paddy. In a field.” After many hours of saying nothing she is suddenly talking to herself, talking to Son. He doesn’t answer, but he is giving her a curious look as though she’s inexplicably sprouted a tail. She’s feeling giddy; perhaps that is why he is staring at her. They sit beneath a cluster of trees. Her feet are numb all the way up to her knees. She is being allowed some water and she wishes there were enough so that she could drink for as long as she wanted, pour it over her head, over her feet which are dead to her now, so that it feels like she is walking on stumps.

One of the soldiers has collected some bamboo that he is carving carefully for reasons she does not understand. She is aware of the heat, the air swollen with moisture, but she no longer seems to be sweating. She hears herself speak and it sounds like someone else talking, not her. “They’ll stand us on the side of a bomb crater, shoot us, and then we’ll fall in,” she says. Her mind flashes images, sometimes disjointed, as though she is dreaming. She sees craters and bones, tall dry grasses, the white sun. She shivers and wonders why; thinks it must be her own fatigue making her imagine this. The craters look like convenient graves. She’s seen them full of water, newly alive with marine life, and wondered then how the fish managed to find their way into bomb craters. She has seen soldiers bathing in them, peasants fishing in them. She’s also seen a body or two. She thinks this is remarkable, that she could die now in a hollow of the earth, in the footprint of an explosive whose origins are from some Midwestern town half a planet away.

Her skin has gone strangely cool. Her lips taste of salt. Son is staring at her. The soldiers seem not to notice, perhaps not to care. For a moment she thinks she might fall asleep, right here, right now. Her head begins to dip, her eyes closing. She realizes she is becoming a heat casualty. She has seen troops medevac’d on stretchers in the same condition. Her awareness of this startles her. She recovers long enough to ask for more water.

“Can you walk?” Son asks. These are his first words to her in many hours and they feel good, like the water itself. But though he has spoken only once, the sound echoes in her mind so that it feels he is asking again and again: Can you walk, can you walk? Part of her, the part that is thinking straight, still rational, knows that it is heat exhaustion that is the problem. She drinks as much as she is able, then nods and stands up. Her feet are bleeding, she realizes, but she can walk.

They reach a clearing made some time ago by US troops who, judging from the look of the place, had apparently wanted to land a helicopter right here in the jungle. She studies the tree stumps that have been blown up, charred wood, charred ground, a lot of sudden sunshine that comes through like a knife. She feels almost drunk, her legs jelly, her arms shaking, the cool sweat like the glistening oil of a snake. She is glad there are no craters near by, even though she knows she is only imagining what might happen, that nobody has told her, told her anything really.

The soldiers are busy scouring the land, looking for leftover C-rations, matches, cigarettes, gum—anything the soldiers may have left behind. There is a fair chance they’ll find something valuable. Marc once told her it was not uncommon for the Americans to bury a whole carton of C-rations rather than carry it. He told her this as they stood in a wooded area, a fire behind them from where the troops had burned a Vietcong hideout. She watched a GI walk to the river’s edge to dump a load of rations, then get another box and do the same again. What’s he doing? she asked. Marc looked up from his notepad, blinked into the sun, and explained. She’d had no idea. It was like a thousand details of this war that were a mystery to her. She looks now as the three Vietcong soldiers pick up bits of garbage, an empty Salem pack, a cracked Bic lighter. If found, rations are treasure to the Vietcong, better than money, which they seldom have a use for except to surrender to their superiors.

She imagines the Americans back again, the soldiers who made the clearing. With their M16s, their bandoliers, grenades and knives and helmets. She wishes them back and for a moment she smiles, picturing the face of a captain she met while out with Marc on a story in Gio Linh. She didn’t think she’d paid that much attention, but there is his face in front of her now, the slightly wild glaze of his expression, the thin upper lip, the whites of his eyes bright against his face, which is dark with earth and sun, with insect repellent and dust.

He’d stood in a clearing waving an ice-cream cone as he spoke. There’d been a story about how the troops were under-supplied, with TV footage of them describing how they might run out of C-rations at this rate. Command had reacted, first by getting after the reporter about “misreporting,” and second by sending barrels of ice cream and ammunition out to the soldiers immediately. She watched the captain talk between slurps of ice cream, which melted faster than he could eat it, running down his sleeve, attracting insects which he picked out with his fingers. They’d blasted out a temporary landing zone to get in a chopper for a wounded soldier and it looked like the clearing where she sat now. She half expected to see the white wrappers, the Popsicle sticks, packaging from dressings, cigarette butts. She half expected to see that captain’s grubby face, the dusty, sagging uniform, the reassuring gun.

You shouldn’t have said what you did, Davis, the captain had told Marc. Ruins morale, a story like that.

Wasn’t me, Marc said. I didn’t even know about it.

It might not be you who did it, but it was your network, that’s for goddamn sure. I mean, why can’t you people get on the team?

Marc sighed. I didn’t know the guy who did that story. We’re not all that friendly, the press. To each other, I mean.

I don’t know. You look awful friendly to me, the captain said, moving his gaze from Marc to Susan and back again. Getting altogether too friendly, I’d say.

She’d only known Marc a few weeks then, the charge of electricity so strong between them it was as recognizable as an army flag. They could deny it—to the captain, to a dozen others—but it was obvious, palpable, a disaster in the making.

Under normal circumstances, if she were to think about the captain at all, she would have recalled with a small stitch of resentment the way he looked at her as if she was a nice little can of rations tucked into Marc’s own pack. But that is not what seems important now. What she thinks of now, what she wants most of all, is the ice cream. She is almost exhilarated by the thought of something cold and sweet and wet.

Son is studying the Vietcong, the ground, the treeline. She imagines he is assessing the chances of running into American soldiers. He frowns into the distance, then looks away, and she concludes that nobody is coming. The only sounds are jungle sounds: the rustling of unseen animals, of scurrying birds and monkeys and rats. Occasionally, she hears a series of long, piercing cries and she imagines that one of the hidden creatures is murdering another of them, and she is reminded of the cries of the men she heard during the ambush. She blames herself for being here now. She swats at the insects that flutter next to her head, confusing her in the heat and dust with the vibration of their wings and the constant stimulation of movement near her eyes.

As they begin again, moving out of the clearing, she asks Son once more if he thinks they will be shot. They are walking over splintered, dead branches strewn with new vines that grow easily over the broken land, around torn stumps already sprouting new buds, the land so fertile and determined it is a force of its own, as powerful as the war. For a moment she thinks she sees Son nod. This sends her into a desperate, pleading burst.

“Is that right, then?” she says. “Is that what is going to happen? We’ll be shot?”

He has no chance to respond. One of the soldiers indicates with his gun that she needs to keep moving. Walking is increasingly difficult. Her feet hurt; she is drying out. In a minute she’ll begin hallucinating, or perhaps she will fall. She feels invisible to the soldiers, who move them on like cattle. She feels invisible to Son; perhaps in his mind she is already dead.

Salt pills, the juice of a dragonfruit, water and shade. She is nursed with these simple things and when she wakes she has no idea how long she has been asleep. She thinks it has been a long time, but judging from the light still left in the day, it has been less than an hour. They begin again to walk. She feels better than before, but not great. She wishes Son would talk to her, just a few words every once in a while and she would be satisfied. He still does not turn around or slow his pace. Perhaps he has no choice. She is handicapped by her inability to understand what is said when the soldiers speak to him. Before they took her wristwatch, she had checked the time every ten minutes, comforted by the thought that it was the same time everywhere else as here in this wilderness. Now she feels adrift, out of synch with the world. The soldier with longish hair is ahead, the other two behind. The guards keep their rifles on their shoulders, or use them to point, like extensions of their arms and hands.

You get ground down to powder, then you get greased, that’s what a GI told her once, his summation of the life of an infantryman. He was missing two teeth, knocked out when he dove during an attack on a firebase that was nearly overrun. He struggled with the gap in his mouth, his tongue escaping so that he developed an unwelcome lisp. Then you get greathed, he said. You thtart getting religion. You thtart wanting God.

She understands now what he meant. It was this right here. Her feet ache. Her hands are scratched so that the blood beads against the skin, attracting flies. She watches the soldier with the long hair, the one in front, and wishes he’d trip a wire and leave nothing left of himself bigger than a stone. Then, just as she has this thought, the soldier gestures behind him, putting Son up front to act as his personal bomb squad to clear the path ahead. It bothers her to see Son there, a rifle trained on his back. She notices with relief when the guard lets the rifle drop once more. It is not difficult to imagine the soldiers getting bored with prisoners, shooting them for convenience’s sake, bringing their bodies to the river. It is unfortunate, she thinks, that she has such an imagination that she can envision the execution, or, as she walks the narrow, difficult path, almost see a booby-trap exploding. To be brave, she thinks, you need to be right here, right now, with no sense of what might happen in a few hours or days. To be very brave you need never to imagine consequences or sudden turns of events. You need, really, to have no imagination whatsoever, which is why (she concludes) good writers are not usually good combat reporters. Wrong temperament. Like bringing a race horse to a rock concert.

They rest, squatting on the jungle floor, sitting on their ankles in the fashion of the Vietnamese. The one with the narrow head, who was carving bamboo earlier, lays the shavings in a pile and then rubs two pieces back and forth, strikes a spark with a flint and makes a fire. The flames shoot up unexpectedly and he jumps back as though something live has sprung at him. This sends the others into giggles, their grubby faces smiling in a manner that seems genuinely warm. They are friends, Susan can see that. She observes them the way she might a herd of exotic animals with their own unknowable social order. A part of her understands they may be like her and Son, who have traveled together so long that they have become a kind of family, but she doesn’t dwell on this. Instead, she tells herself they are killers—all soldiers are killers—but she hopes they are not yet completely dead inside.

The flame is for bits of fish and rice produced from a bag. The fish are old, dried, and yet her hunger makes it smell delicious. She longs to eat. She longs to talk to Son. They have bound her wrists with green wire. She does not understand at first why they find it necessary to tie her now, after so many hours without, until she sees that once they have tied her and Son’s wrists they can put away their weapons, lie down, relax. One of them stretches out on a rock; another makes a seat out of a log, then rushes back when he is attacked by ants. The soldier who lit the fire makes up the meal and brings it to the others. The soldiers eat, chatting as they do. They drink from their canteens and make jokes, particularly the smallest of the three, the one with the sword. He lies on his back, his sword above him, splicing the air with the dark blade, commenting in a manner that occasionally brings chuckles from the other two. They might have been friends together on a camping trip. When finally they have finished eating they offer some fish to her and Son, getting out cigarettes and smoking while she and Son eat awkwardly with their hands bound.

A few minutes later they turn, all at once, and stare at her. She would be startled, but she is too tired to be startled. All movement has been made slow by her exhaustion and the heat. It takes more than a tough look to raise her heartbeat, but it feels as though a pack of wolves has just woken up to her presence.

“What?” she says in English.

The thin one, the one who clubbed Son with his rifle, is the first to speak. He has a soft, high-pitched voice that is difficult to take seriously. “How long you work for American imperialists?” he asks in French.

To her it sounds like a line out of a propaganda leaflet. She ignores it at first, but the soldier repeats the question.

She looks to Son for guidance. He meets her gaze, then looks away.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she begins, and the question is repeated, same as before.

“I don’t work for them so much as explain to American women what is happening over here.”

He looks confused, probably because she said “women,” so she answers once more. “I describe the war for Americans in their own country. So that they know what is going on,” she says.

She thinks she should put up some sort of resistance, that at least she should refuse to answer certain questions. There would be dignity in opposing their efforts. Instead she answers casually, as though she is answering questions for a stranger on a bus, or when introduced to somebody at a party, rather than being interrogated. She would like to be the unyielding, self-possessed prisoner that Son is. He looks away from them, or straight through them. He answers nothing or shrugs. It makes no difference if they tie his hands or not; he behaves as though he is their superior in every way, speaking only when he wishes and refusing to be bullied. Even the food, which he picked at as though it were something he might discard at any moment, did not appear to interest him.

But there are no questions that require her silence. They interrogate her in a half-hearted way, mostly asking again and again whether she works for the American army—No. Whether she helps the American officers—No. Whether she knows of the atrocities committed by the Americans. What atrocities? The napalm, the killing of civilians. Yes, of course, I know about that. What do you think? I think it is bad. You are American? No. My mother is English. From England. I was born in Buckinghamshire. She does not tell them that it was on an RAF base, that she grew up eating Raisin Bran and peanut butter as often as Weetabix and marmalade, that she has lived in the US for almost the whole of her adult life. She does not say that the clearest memory she has of Buckinghamshire is an awful boarding school in which girls were not allowed blue jeans or tampons, the use of which was tantamount to declaring oneself a slut. The Vietcong soldiers confer for a moment. Then they say, But you look like an American! All white people look alike, she replies. The small one laughs. He is missing a front tooth; she can see a centimeter of curled pink tongue in the gap of the cage of his teeth, a snail in a shell. The missing tooth makes him look even younger. They’ve been captured by evil children, she thinks.

Because they have no idea what to do with her, or what to ask her, it seems, they move to questions about how people get engaged in America, and other odd questions about sex and marriage. American brides are not virgins, they say. Doesn’t the husband feel cheated? No. They don’t believe it. And perhaps because they don’t believe it, they go back to their original questions: Are you working for Americans? No. Do you help the American military? No. Do American girls sleep with several men before they get married?

They can’t speak English; their French is awful, a tangle of words beneath a heavy accent that itself would make communication difficult. They must think her French is terrible, too, because they wince and shake their heads and ask her to repeat everything. Moi no compris pas toi parler, they say, which means me not understood you to speak and is unlike any French she has heard. It appears no more refined language is possible between them unless Son acts as a translator, which at the moment he appears reluctant to do.

Finally, the one with the long hair says, “What does your father do for a job?”

“He’s dead,” she tells them. It is true. He died of an aneurism last year. She thinks, with some regret, that he’d never have approved of her working in a war zone, that he’d have done everything possible to prevent her from going.

“Dead?” He studies her carefully “In the war?”

“No. He was too old for this war. He was sixty—” This is too much information. She doubts these soldiers know how old they themselves are, what day they were born, let alone how old their fathers are. She repeats, “Mort. Il est mort long-time.”

They nod, satisfied. Their fathers are probably dead, too, she concludes.

Apparently, the green wire that held her wrists during their meal is necessary also for this period of interrogation. Afterwards, they free her and ask her to take photographs of them with Son’s camera. They want her to take the pictures but only when the barrel is pointed her way, and only as they appear to be taking aim. She asks to stop—again, her imagination is too fertile for this game—for what if they thought it would be amusing to have her take a photograph as they pulled the trigger? She tells herself to stop thinking so much and tries to take comfort in the fact that it is only through the frame of her camera that she sees them training their rifles on her. She comes to this realization—that they’ve relaxed their guard, that they don’t seem the least interested in killing—and it serves as a tonic to calm her. Even so, she asks them to please allow her to put the camera down. She does not want to take any more pictures, she explains. She’d like to give back the camera now.

They appear mildly disappointed. The thin one spits, then turns away abruptly. The one with the long hair gives orders for them to carry on marching. Their new manner is to carry their weapons with the absent constancy with which small children carry their favorite teddies. The guns are there, are always there, but they have all grown accustomed to the guns, herself included, so that they seem almost as though they aren’t real, or are never fired, or contain no bullets.

“That’s an interesting sword,” she tells the soldier with the sword. He holds it up, smiling at it as though it were something he has made himself. It’s an ugly sickle with a crude handle, but he presents it now to her as though it is a work of art birthed from his own genius.

“This is from an automobile spring,” he tells her, running his finger along the air above the blade. “And see this handle? From a howitzer.”

She nods, amazed. So he did make it. Seeing it as a composite of its many parts, she has to admit there is genius involved.

A soldier’s relationship to his weapon is complicated. She recalls the time a platoon she was with fired continuously in a “mad minute” because they heard a branch snap among the trees. The noise came from every direction, even from the ground, rising up through her feet, her legs. It passed through her and she felt her body as a thin veil, a kind of skin through which sound pulsed. There was no real reason for the explosion of fire. It was only that they’d been carrying so much ammunition; they were tired of hauling it all. Afterwards, she could not hear properly. She sat on a stack of ration boxes and wrote messages on a steno pad to Marc, who was with her. Smoking, listening to that single sound eeeeeeeee e spinning in her mind like an insect, her writing pad out, her water bottle almost empty, she felt suddenly exhausted, running only on nervous energy. She might have curled up next to Marc but it was too hot for that and, anyway, she would never have shown him any affection in front of the soldiers.

I keep thinking that somebody is just there, or there, she wrote, then indicated the treeline, watching us and deciding exactly when to shoot and which one of us to shoot first.

Marc sat with his legs folded, knees bent, his shirt loose around his neck. His utilities had a tear in the pocket from overstuffing them with TV batteries and cables. Through the hole, she could see the white skin of his thigh, a strong contrast to the brown of his arms, his hands. He shook his head, dismissing her fear.

It’s like a movie in my head, she wrote. How do I make it stop?

He got her to play a game in which he wrote a line from a song and she had to guess the song. Then another game in which you filled up boxes on a hand-sketched grid. He drew her away from her thoughts. He wrote, You’re beautiful.

They played hangman and he wrote out PEACE.

She thinks how far away he seems now, belonging to another time. She recalls his face, his dark hair with a crown in front so that if he cuts it too short it sticks straight up. The war had produced a few early gray hairs that clustered by his temples, some new lines by his eyes from squinting in the sun. She has known him six months and in six months he has become far too important to her. She blames the tide of her affections on the war, too. It seemed to transform everything to extremes.

“Here, look! Look, you!” It is the soldier with the sword. He is frustrated because her thoughts have drifted. He commands her attention again as a pesky younger brother might. A younger armed brother, she reminds herself, and nods quickly at the soldier and his sword, indicating she is paying attention. “This is very sharp,” he says, and holds the dark sharp edge near her palm. He wants her to admire the blade, which he has honed to a thin, lethal plane; the handle which allows a strong grip. She looks down at it, but will not touch it. It is how Marc would behave, unimpressed, a little bored. Along with the sprinkling of gray hair, Marc has also acquired here in Vietnam a bold, incautious wit that she is able to assume at times, as though having been with him so much she has assimilated this part of him.

“What you think?” says the soldier. He looks proudly at the sword, holding it up in front of him.

“I think you could use it to shave,” she says. “That is, if you ever needed to.”

The soldier nods, unsure of her meaning.

In Saigon she had become accustomed to sudden violence, expected but nonetheless surprising. People speculated; there wouldn’t be anything today, or this week, or until such-and-such a time. She walked the streets with reporters in tiger suits—their canteens and cameras and tape recorders strapped on to them, some holstering pistols—and just in front of them would be civilian women on their way to a tennis game, looking sporty and white, like women in country clubs all over America. The expats ate lavishly, whatever else was going on; the best restaurants were run by Corsicans, the best clubs by Vietnamese women. A restaurant on the Binh Loi Bridge was blown up—partially blown up—not once, but three different times and still they gathered there because of its position along the river and because it was built on stilts and was therefore irresistible for at least a single visit. Once, while between courses at another restaurant near by, she pointed out the window to where she swore she saw a VC soldier. Her companion, Marc’s cameraman, Don Locke, said, Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me, and asked the waiter for more fish sauce for his chiko rolls. She tried not to worry. The magazine liked her stories; they wanted more. Her editor cabled her to tell her she could sell her combat pieces elsewhere if they couldn’t use them. Locke ate his chiko rolls. She thought, Maybe I’m just seeing things.

And (mostly) she did not worry. Few reporters were wounded, fewer killed. What were the chances? The tennis players rode in their air-conditioned elevators; French women sunbathed at the sports club, lying on their backs and squinting up at the F-100s soaring overhead. The helicopters dove low so that they could see the bathers, who rolled on to their backs and waved with their fingers. These women weren’t afraid. They pointed their breasts to the unseen pilots above, smiling as though to a friend. Vietnamese officers’ wives had grand social schedules. For them, Saigon was one big party. She became friendly with a girl named Nicola, who was having a longstanding affair with a lieutenant colonel who’d re-upped twice just to stay near her, and who frequently flew her to his base for parties. Hippies traveled from around the world just to check the place out. No one thought they were taking risks. And when they went home they told their stories, exaggerating all the dangers that they never themselves truly believed.

“Son, I’m so scared,” she whispers now. She is in a hammock, he is on the ground. Even at night the jungle smells like a stagnant pond. Tonight, the world around her is so black she cannot tell if her eyes are open or shut. It is difficult to assume a relaxed expression or focus her gaze normally. Her vision seeks a destination and she finds herself straining to see in the darkness so that she has to blindfold herself with her hands. She wonders if they will kill them in their sleep, why they haven’t killed them already, why they haven’t let them go. She doesn’t know anything, she despairs, not even if her eyes are closed. It seems unfair, all this confusion.

The guards take turns sleeping. The one on duty sits as though in a trance and may be asleep; he has not moved in at least an hour, though time is distorted now and she cannot honestly tell. He has not moved anyway.

Nothing makes sense. In the morning they will either be killed or get up and march. She doesn’t know why she should die, or why they are marching, because she has no idea where they are heading anyway. Perhaps the Vietcong soldiers are lost. They certainly seem unable to find their unit. They are as stranded and alone as she and Son, but it is they who have the weapons.

“I’ve had enough,” she says now, a phrase she might have used about a bad phone line, no seat on the bus.

From Son comes a whining noise, like that of a dog, and when she hears it she realizes he has, indeed, been listening, noticing, that he has not been nearly so removed as he appeared all day. She feels his hand on her back through the thin material of the hammock, and with that touch she becomes calmer, more solid in herself. He rubs his palm in a short circular motion, then leaves it still for a long time. She cannot remember anything being so comforting. She’d like to reach to him, but dares not. It is the first time—the only time—he has touched her.

She met Son in a hospital in Pleiku about a week after her arrival in the country. He’d come in from the bush with a bunch of soldiers from the 4th Division, his lip cut, the blood all down his shirt, making the green cotton black. The lip looked awful, swollen so that he appeared to be pushing it out like a pouting child. It was the end of the day now and he was arguing with a nurse that he didn’t need any stitches, just give him a needle and thread; he’d do it himself. He claimed he’d stitched himself before in the field and it hadn’t even gotten infected. Please, he said as the nurse clasped his chin. Ah do it!

The nurse held his jaw in her hand, dabbing iodine on his face. Don’t move, Tarzan! she said.

Da nun show may! he said. He was a scrapper; he never stopped talking.

Why’re you moving so much? You want to split that lip worse? The nurse had her eye on his lip, squinting into it as though down a scope glass. She was angling his face for better light. On her smock was her name, Tracy Flower, sewn neatly in what might have been the same stitch being applied now to Son’s lip.

Da nuns! he tried again. Dey show may!

Nuns? Are you talking about nuns? I’m not a nun. Stop moving.

Tah so!

She let go his face and he cupped his hurt lip behind his palm to shield it. He saw Susan watching and pretended he had not. She could tell this by the way he moved away all at once, as though discovered. She’d seen him earlier while walking the lines of beds, trailing the triage nurse, passing through screens thin as kite silk that separated the living from dying, and again outside the muddy exit where the grim drums of gasoline lined up above their nests of fire. She had seen him and had felt instantly drawn to him, a feeling powerful enough that she had needed to remind herself it was invisible. It was as though he knew her, or wanted to know her, and she felt it that way, as a kind of invitation.

The nuns showed me how to sew, he said quickly before the nurse could grab him again. Susan realized now why he had got her attention. It was not the wound to the lip, not Son himself, but how he spoke during the temporary moment he had his jaw back. It wasn’t only that his English was good, though that in itself would cause her to take notice, but that the vowel sounds were British. That is what had seemed so oddly familiar to her. She knew the voice. She’d heard it that day at JUSPAO when she’d infuriated the lieutenant colonel by insisting he tell her what a WBLC was. Sampan, she remembered, and the voice of a young Vietnamese journalist who said, Can we have confirmation that a WBLC is a sampan, sir?

Son tried to smile now, but the lip prevented it. Susan smiled at him, but only for a moment. The nurse was giving him instructions again. She had a soft but commanding voice, reminding Susan of one of her father’s sisters, who had that same way of telling you what to do in the nicest fashion, but with an authority that meant you better do it.

Nuns? she was saying. Well, that’s just grand. Now keep still!

The nurse was as tall as he was. Her hair, pinned at her neck, had come loose from its clip and she blew it away from her eyes, still holding on to Son. He finally gave in, sighing into her palm, and stood quietly for the stitches. Susan could see the grit on his neck, the red mud smeared on his trousers, the caking of dirt around his fingernails. He was just in from the field and he’d sweated so much his hair rose straight up from his head as though the light were sending a current through him. He seemed to be trying to move away from the nurse and stand still at the same time, almost jogging in place. Finally, he gave up the struggle and stood without wincing as she put line after line of neat stitching across his mouth. In the middle of the procedure, in a gesture as casual as a wave, he held up a camera, angling it on to the concentrating nurse, and snapped several shots of her stitching his lip.

Who is that? Susan asked another nurse, someone she’d tagged herself on to, a woman named Donna who did not object to being followed around. Donna held two bottles of urine pinned under one arm and a third in her right hand. They didn’t have anything as useful as Foley bags but had to improvise even in this regard, using empty water or saline bottles to collect urine. The hospital operated out of little Quonset huts, corrugated-iron buildings, like pig arcs, maybe half a mile from the landing strip. Sometimes rockets intended for the airstrip hit the wards by mistake. They used to operate out of tents, held in place by sandbags, and the sandbags still lined the walls.

You’re still here? Donna said. She dried her palm against her thigh, pushed a swatch of heavy bangs from her forehead, and gave Susan an amused, slightly disapproving look. She wore a long smock with sleeves that she rolled as high as they would go on her arm. The smock was stained a rust color with damp patches beneath the arms. She nodded down at her bottles. You want a job?

Susan said, I really wanted to interview a surgeon, but I haven’t talked to one yet—

No, and you won’t, Donna said.

Then you’ll be stuck with me a little longer.

That’s okay. You on a deadline?

Susan told her yes, though this was not strictly true.

You can bunk with us. But really, I should make you do something! Donna moved with purpose, with the stamina of a plow horse. Everywhere she went in the ward she picked up one thing, deposited another; she carried rolls of bandages, ringers, drugs, sheets, plaster, splints, these items balanced across her chest or on her hip. You’re a nice girl, Susan, and we don’t mind you being here. But a reporter in a hospital! I mean, no offense, sweetheart, but really. Titties on a tomcat, you are.

They ran into Son in front of a supply room. What are you doing here? Donna said, and he slouched off, was herded off, in truth. Susan nodded at him, then looked at Donna, making a question with her hands.

Who knows? the nurse answered. Some gook with a hurt lip. Who gives a

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