“They didn’t send me. I volunteered.”
Mr. Cam seemed to be trying to follow the conversation, probably wondering if we were talking about killing him. To cool him down, I patted his shoulder and said, “Xin loi,” which sort of means “Sorry about that.”
Susan asked me, “Is your Vietnamese coming back?”
“I think so. Xin loi. When we wasted somebody, we’d say, ‘Xin loi, Charlie.’ Like, sorry about that, Charlie. Get it?”
She stayed quiet for a while, wondering, I’m sure, if she was with a psychopath. I wondered about that, too. I said to her, “My adrenaline is pumped. I’ll be all right.”
Again, she said nothing. I think she was a little frightened of me, and to be honest, so was I.
I said to Susan, “You wanted to come along.”
“I know. I’m not saying anything.”
I put my hand over my shoulder, and she took it and squeezed.
I went back to my driving. The flatland narrowed here to a strip between the mountains on our left, and the sea on our right. Traffic had totally disappeared, and I was making a steady hundred KPH.
Susan asked, “Do you want me to drive?”
“No.”
She began massaging my neck and shoulders. “How you doing?”
“Fine. There’s a place a few hundred klicks up ahead called Bong Son where I served for a few months. Look for the Chamber of Commerce sign.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the map. Why don’t you tell me how you got your R&R in Nha Trang.”
“Tell you what. We’ll go to the A Shau Valley outside Hue, and I’ll tell it to you where it happened.”
“All right.” She massaged my temples and said, “I told you at the Rex that it’s good to talk about these things.”
“Tell me that after you hear this story.”
She stayed silent awhile, then said, “Maybe when you leave here this time, you’ll leave the war here, too.”
I didn’t reply, then said, “I think that’s why I’m here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We continued north, up Highway One, through Vung Ro, a beach resort with a few guesthouses and a small hotel with an outdoor café. If Mr. Cam hadn’t been along, we’d have stopped for a coffee or a drink, which I needed.
After Vung Ro, the road swung away from the coast and became desolate again, a dark expanse of rice paddies and dikes, and an occasional peasant’s hut.
Mr. Cam was sitting silently. He’d realized, I guess, that if we were going to kill him, we’d have done so already. This realization makes some captives relax and go along peacefully; others get the idea that it might be safe to make a break.
I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, looking for headlights. Headlights meant trouble. I said to Susan, “There is not one single vehicle on the main national highway.”
“People really don’t travel in the countryside at night, except for the occasional bus. During the day, Highway One is so crowded, you barely make thirty miles an hour.” She added, “I’m told that the police stop patrolling the highways about an hour after dark.”
“That’s a break.”
“Not really. The army patrols the highways until dawn. The cops stay in the towns.” She added, “The army patrols will stop anyone on the highway.”
“What’s the next major town?”
She looked at the map and said, “A place called Qui Nhon. But Highway One passes to the west of it, so we don’t have to go through the town.”
I said, “That was a big American hospital town.”
“You remember it?”
“Yes. Qui Nhon got the cases that the hospital ships didn’t get. We also did a lot of Vietnamese military and civilian cases there. Plus, there was a big leper hospital outside town.”
“Oh… I’ve heard of that place. There’s still a leper hospital there.”
“We had a combat medic who got so burned out in the field, he volunteered to work in the leper hospital. We made a joke of it. You know? Whenever things got really bad, we’d all volunteer for the leper hospital at Qui Nhon.” Susan didn’t laugh. I said, “I guess you had to be there.” I asked her, “How far?”
“I think just up ahead a few kilometers.”
“Can you read a map, or are you faking it?”
“That’s a sexist remark.”
“Xin loi.”
She gave me a punch in the shoulder, which surprised Mr. Cam. I said, “Mr. Cam’s wife never punches him. I’m going to marry a Vietnamese woman.”
“They’re so docile, you’d be bored out of your mind.”
“Sounds good.”
She said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I said to her, “I’m a little concerned about the truck driver.”
She thought about that, then said, “Well… the truck driver didn’t know we were foreigners. He assumed we were Vietnamese, who were being chased by the cops. He didn’t see a thing.”
“Good point.”
We passed the Qui Nhon road that intersected Highway One, and there were a scattering of buildings at the intersection, including a gas station, but it was closed. I asked Susan, “Do you think any gas stations are open?”
“Why would they be?”
“Right. I don’t think we’re going to make it to Hue on one tank of gas, even with the spare gas cans.”
“Turn off your headlights. Saves gas. Ask Mr. Cam.”
I looked at the gas gauge and did a little arithmetic in my head. I figured we could go another two hundred to two hundred and fifty kilometers, depending obviously on the size of the tank and our gas mileage. The extra ten liters in the cans would add maybe another fifty or sixty Ks to our range. I said to Susan, “Ask Mr. Cam where he would get gasoline at night.”
She asked him, he replied, and she said to me, “He doesn’t know. He’s never driven this far north, and rarely drives at night.”
I laughed. “Well, where was he going to refuel?”
Susan replied, “Obviously, he had no intention of driving us to Hue.”
“I know that. Tell him that.”
She told him, and Mr. Cam looked a little sheepish.
Susan said, “I remember some late night gas stations in Da Nang.”
“How far is Da Nang?”
She looked down at her map and said, “About three hundred kilometers.”
I looked at my fuel gauge again and said, “I hope it’s downhill, or we’re not going to make it. Maybe we should get chubby here out of the car.”
“We need him to pump gas. Paul? What were we thinking?”
“I thought we’d have a bigger gas tank or get better mileage. If worse comes to worse, we’ll pull over, wait until light, and get to an open gas station.”
I looked up ahead, and on the flat horizon, I could see the glow of lights. I asked Susan, “Is that Bong Son?”
“It should be.”
I began decelerating and looked around at the sparse landscape, which seemed familiar. I said, more to myself than to Susan, “This is where I saw the elephant.”
“What elephant?”
I didn’t reply for a few seconds, then I said, “It’s an expression. Men who have seen combat for the first time say, ‘I have seen the elephant.’ ” I looked at the road and the terrain on either side where I’d had my first firefight, on an early morning in November 1967, the day after Thanksgiving.
Susan asked, “What’s it mean?”
“Don’t know. But I know it’s old — not ’Nam related. Maybe it goes back to Roman times when Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.” I repeated, “I have seen the elephant.”
Susan remarked, “It sounds almost mystical.”
I nodded. “There is no one on this earth more mystical, superstitious, and ultimately religious than a combat soldier. I’ve seen men kiss their crucifix and make the sign of the cross before battle… then they’d put an AK-47 round in their helmet band, which represented the enemy bullet that had been meant for them. And they’d stick an ace of spades in their helmet because the Vietnamese regarded it as a symbol of death. And there were all sorts of other talismans, and rituals that men would go through before battle… bottom line, you pray.”