I rub my eyes. The details of the attack come back to me in sketchy, yellowed glimpses, like strobes flashing from a dirty light bulb.
“Thank you for helping me… Saving me.”
She nods once, then squeezes my hand. Her grip is tight, incredibly strong.
“I hep, Night Man. You hep…we.”
I groan. “I can’t.”
“Can, can!”
“No, I can’t. I’m not the Night Man. I’m nobody like that.”
“No, you all. You all. You Night Man. You hep.”
“How? How can I help you? I can’t even help myself. Look at me.”
She puts her face very close to mine, almost touching her cheek to the tears now running down my bristly cheeks.
“You hep you, you hep us.”
“What?”
“You hep you, you hep us.”
I don’t understand. My face tells her as much.
She points at my chest, then touches the side of my head, flutters her fingers over each of my eyes, then points to the middle of my forehead.
“You hep you, you hep us. Vâng?”
Yes. I know what she is saying. Somehow, I know. I nod to let her know that I do.
She nods back, exhales, then smiles. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
In the corner, her grandmother starts to sing.
20. The Plain of Jars
Before the skids touched the ground, each helicopter cut its engines, bringing their full weight of metal, men, and equipment down hard on the dried grass. In the dark, the men spilled out of their Huey and followed Chapel to the Chinook, the double set of heavy blades whooping over their heads.
They were on open tableland, dotted with boulders and trees, lit a dusky blue. Exposed country, dangerous. Broussard set down his pack, stretched his spine and gazed up at the sky. The moon was full, or nearly so, looking like a wide-open marble eye. Away from its cold white stare, a ghostly blanket of stars that made up the rest of the galaxy puffed and swirled in a dance far too massive, slow, and important for anyone to detect, captured as a snapshot a billion years old. Broussard had been looking up at the night sky for as long as he could remember, but never that he remembered had the universe seemed so close to the earth as it was out on this Laotian plain. All it would take was a determined jump from either side to cross over to the other.
“Where are we now?” McNulty said, tossing down his gear.
“We could be home.”
“Stop being fucking weird, Broussard. Can you do me that favor?”
The bay door to the Chinook dropped open, exposing a huge, carefully arranged stack of crates and unlabeled boxes, lashed tight with nylon cording.
“Who’s gonna hump all this shit?” McNulty said.
“Chapel says help’s coming,” Render said.
“Guardian angels with a fucking moving van?”
Broussard climbed the ramp, unhooked the stabilizing cords and started unloading, handing off the first box to Chapel, who grinned.
“Can you feel it, Broussard?”
“Feel what, sir?”
“The end.”
Nearly an hour later, the men leaned against the stacks they’d assembled on the grass, tired and sweating, as the three helicopters fired up and darted into the brightening sky at a tight angle, staying low as they gained speed and headed back toward the southeast, in the direction of Vietnam, the sound of their blades slapping at the exposed granite mountain peaks and sandstone bluffs that surrounded this elevated upland.
McNulty looked around as the emerging sun brought slow illumination to the landscape. “Where are we, sir?”
“Don’t matter where we are, numbnuts,” Darby said, loading his rifle.
“It might not to you, trailer rat, but it does to me.”
“Just do your goddamn job,” Darby said, lighting a cigarette.
“This is the Xieng Khouang Plateau,” Chapel said from the edge of the hill overlooking the lower hill country. “West of Phonsavan.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought,” McNulty said dryly.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, McNulty,” Morganfield said as he passed by to join Chapel at the edge of the hill overlooking the valley, murmuring softly into the radio.
“The mute finally speaks, and it’s to bust my balls. How do you like that?”
“I like it just fine,” Render said.
“This don’t look like no jungle,” Darby said, slinging his M-14 over his shoulder. “Better sight lines.” He smiled at Broussard. “I like it.” Darby walked away from the group, whistling.
“Man, don’t jinx this shit,” Render said. “I’ll walk my black ass all over God’s green, long as there ain’t no jungle involved.”
“You’d think you’d be used to it by now,” McNulty said, sprouting a grin when Render looked at him.
“Chuck, I’m not gonna take that shit the way I think you meant it. For your sake, you dig?”
“I will,” Broussard said, surprising McNulty, and everyone else in the group.
“Chicago’s an idiot,” Medrano said. “Don’t listen to a word he says.”
“The name’s McNulty, Medrrrano,” McNulty said, trying to roll the r without success.
“Haven’t yet,” Render said. “Won’t start now.”
The thud of bombs in the distance silenced everyone, bringing them back to the reality of the wider world.
McNulty peered up into the sky. “I didn’t hear no jets.”
“B-52s,” Broussard said. “High altitude.”
“What’re Big Uglies doing in Laos?”
“The same thing we’re doing here,” Render said, his face grim. “Nothing, right? Not a goddamn thing.”
Chapel and Morganfield rejoined the group, putting away maps and holstering their radios.
“You think anyone saw us land, sir?” McNulty said.
“No, I do not,” Chapel said.
“We’re pretty exposed out here, though,” Broussard said.
“Yes, we are.”
“Permission to speak openly, sir?” McNulty said.
“Do you ever speak any other way?”
McNulty paused. “Permission to speak, sir.”
“You don’t need to ask me for permission. This isn’t grade school.”
“I think we’re open to attack here, sir. Mortar fire, at the very least.”
Medrano snorted. “General McNulty.”
“No one’s firing on us here,” Chapel said, making a count of the stacked crates.
“No enemy in the area?” Broussard said.
“Not at present, no. I called ahead to make sure the area was cleared first. But even if there are a few stray Victor Charlie who wander close, they won’t attack us here.”
“Why would you say that?” McNulty said.
“Because it’s the truth,” Morganfield said. No one liked McNulty, even the guy who was barely there.
“Yeah, but why’s it the truth?”
“Darby is about to tell you,” Chapel said, clamping the pipe between his back teeth.
“Y’all need to check this out,” Darby called from the edge of the plateau, where we was glassing the hill country below with a pair of binoculars.
The rest of the men jogged over to Darby and looked out onto the topography below.
Grassland stretched out for miles, dotted with trees, boulders, and smaller grayish objects all nearly the same size, grouped together in clusters that stretched across the entire expanse.
“Check out them rocks,” Darby said, handing the binoculars to Broussard, who put them to his eyes. “They don’t seem to be random.”