“That doesn’t make us bad people.”
She tried to smile, then got pensive. She said, “I’m upset about those photographs.”
I replied, “I’m upset about the book not showing up.”
She looked at me and nodded. “Sorry.” She asked, “What do we do about the book not showing up?”
I thought about that. Mr. Anh could have spent some time strapped to a table as Colonel Mang clipped electrodes to his testicles and cranked up the juice. If that was the case, Mr. Anh would have said, “Dien Bien Phu! Ban Hin!” and anything else that Colonel Mang wanted to hear.
Susan asked again, “What do you want to do?”
“Well… we could go to Hanoi and try to get out of here on the first flight to anywhere. Or we can go to Dien Bien Phu. For sure, we can’t sit here all day.”
She thought a moment, then said, “Dien Bien Phu.”
I reminded her, “You said my Vietnam luck has run out.”
“It has; you were mistaken for a Frenchman. My luck is still good, notwithstanding my Playboy centerfold. Let’s roll.”
I kicked the BMW into gear and accelerated onto the highway.
Susan leaned forward and looked at the gas gauge. She said, “We need gas. We just passed a station. Turn around.”
“There should be another one up ahead. Some of them give away rice bowls with a fill-up.”
“Paul, turn around.”
I made a sharp U-turn, and we pulled into the gas station and up to a hand crank pump. I shut off the engine, and we dismounted.
The attendant sat in a small open concrete structure and watched us, but didn’t move. Clearly, this was a state-owned facility, and unlike anything I’d seen south of the DMZ. It was still very socialist here, and the good news about capitalist greed and consumer marketing had not reached into Uncle Ho territory yet.
I turned the hand crank, and Susan held the nozzle in the gas fill.
Susan said, “Crank faster.”
“I’m cranking as fast as a European socialist would crank.”
She said to me, “When we pay this guy, we’re French.”
“Bon.”
I squeezed thirty-five liters into the big tank, and I looked at the total. I said, “Twenty-one thousand dong. That’s not bad. About two bucks.”
She said, “It’s in hundreds, Paul. Two hundred and ten thousand dong. Still cheap.”
“Good. You pay.”
The gas station attendant had wandered over, and Susan said to him, “Bonjour, monsieur.”
I added, “Comment ça va?”
He didn’t reply in any language, but looked at the bike as Susan counted out 210,000 dong with Uncle Ho’s picture on the notes. I pointed to Uncle Ho and said, “Numero uno hombre,” which may have been the wrong language. Susan kicked my ankle.
The attendant looked us over, then looked again at the bike. We mounted up, and Susan said to the guy, “Le tour de Hue”Hanoi.”
I accelerated out of there before the guy got wise to us.
We continued north on Highway One, then we pulled over and got into our Montagnard scarves and the fur-trimmed leather hats.
Susan said to me, “Why the hell did you say ‘numero uno hombre’?”
“You know — Uncle Ho is a number one guy.”
“That was Spanish.”
“What difference does it make? You’re French, I’m Spanish.”
“Sometimes your joking around is inappropriate for the situation.”
I thought about that and replied, “It’s an old habit. Infantry guys do that when it gets tense. Cops, too. Maybe it’s a guy thing.”
She informed me, “Sometimes you make the situation worse with your smart-ass remarks — like with Colonel Mang, and you and Bill going to Princeton together.”
Susan was in a bitchy mood, and I hoped it was PMS and not morning sickness.
Highway One was the only major north”south artery in this congested country, and even though traffic was supposed to be light because of the holiday, it seemed like half the population was using the two pathetic lanes of bad blacktop. We never got above sixty KPH, and every inch of the road was a challenge.
It took us nearly two hours to travel the hundred kilometers to the next major town of Thanh Hoa. It was pushing 3 P.M., and it was getting cold. The sky was heavy with gray clouds, and now and then we passed through an area of light rain; crachin, rain dust. My stomach was growling.
I called back to Susan, “This should be Thanh Hoa. This is the first place we can head west and north toward Route 6.”
“Your call.”
I looked at the odometer. We’d come almost 560 kilometers from Hue, and it had taken us over eight hours. It was now 3:16 P.M., and we had less than four hours of daylight left.
I played around with a few options and decided that since it wasn’t raining, I should get on the bad road now, and get as close as I could to Route 6 before the sun set; tomorrow could be raining and the next secondary road to Route 6 could be impassable, which was what Mr. Anh had been trying to tell me in his little briefing. I said to Susan, “We’ll take the road out of Thanh Hoa. If we don’t like it, we can go back and try the next one.”
We entered the town of Thanh Hoa, still wearing our Montagnard scarves and leather hats. The town apparently hadn’t been obliterated in the war, and it had a little charm. In fact, I saw an old gent wearing a beret, and there were a few hotels and cafés that hadn’t been built by the East Germans.
A few people glanced at us, and a few cops in front of the police station gave us the eye.
Susan said, “They don’t see that many Montagnards on the coast, so they’re curious, but not suspicious. It’s like American Indians coming into a Western town.”
“Are you making this up?”
“Yes.”
We got through the town, and I saw a small, blacktopped road to the left. A sign said Dong Son and something in Vietnamese. I slowed down and pointed.
Susan said, “It’s an archaeological site… the Dong Son culture, whatever that is… one thousand years before the common era. Maybe the road is newer.”
I turned into the narrow road and drove about a hundred meters, then stopped.
I pulled the map out of the pouch and looked at it. I said, “This is the road. We take this about fifty klicks to some little village called Bai-what-ever, then head north on Route 15 to Route 6.”
“Let me see that.”
I handed her the map, and she studied it in silence. She put the map in her jacket and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
I kicked the BMW into gear and off we went. The road passed the archaeological digs, then the blacktop disappeared. The dirt road was rutted from carts and vehicles, and I kept the motorcycle between the ruts, which was a little better.
We were barely bouncing along at forty KPH, a little over twenty miles an hour, less sometimes.
The terrain was still flat, but rising. There were some rice paddies, but these disappeared and vegetable plots took over.
The BMW Paris-Dakar was indeed a good dirt bike, but the dirt wasn’t so good. I had trouble holding on to the grips, and my ass was more off the saddle than on. Susan was holding on to me tight. I said, “We’re going to feel this in the morning.”
“I feel it now.”
It took us nearly two hours to cover the forty kilometers to the end of the road. We entered the little village called Bai-something, and the road ended in a T-junction. I took the road to the right, which was Route 15, and the dirt was in better condition. In fact, there was gravel on the road, and the road was crowned and had drainage ditches on both sides.
According to the map, it was over a hundred kilometers to Route 6, and at this speed, it would take at least four hours to get there. It was now 5:40 P.M., and the sun was going down behind the mountains to my left.