Susan said nothing.
I got the Nissan up to a hundred KPH as we continued north.
Highway One swung east toward the sea again, and there were white sand beaches along the coast, and white sand hills to our left, covered with scrub brush. I said to Susan, “This is where I spent Christmas 1967. The white sands of Bong Son. We made believe it was snow.” I added, “There was a forty-eight-hour truce. We got a lot of Christmas packages from the Red Cross, and from private organizations and individuals. At that time, before Tet, people still supported the troops, if not the war itself.”
I recalled that Christmas was a particularly hot day, and the white sands had no shade trees. Christmas dinner had been delivered by helicopter, and we were sitting in the sand, eating turkey with all the trimmings, trying to keep the sand flies away, and the sand out of the food.
A kid from Brooklyn named Savino saw a long bamboo pole in the sand and decided to use it to make a shelter with his rubber poncho to keep the sun off him. He reached for the pole, someone shouted for him to stop, he pulled the pole, which was attached by a wire to a very large explosive device, and he blew himself back to Brooklyn in a body bag.
A bunch of other guys got hurt, half the platoon was deaf, and pieces of the kid were everywhere, including everyone’s mess tins and canteen cups. Merry Christmas.
I said, “A guy in my platoon was killed by a booby trap on Christmas day.”
“Was he a friend?”
“He… he wasn’t here long enough.” I added, “It was sort of a waste of time to make friends with the new guys. They had a bad survival rate, and they got people around them killed. If they were still alive after thirty days, then you’d shake their hand or something.”
We left my old area of operations, and I didn’t recognize this terrain.
Mr. Cam appeared to be getting uncomfortable with his arms behind his back. Susan noticed and asked me, “Should we untie him?”
“No.”
“He can’t get away when we’re moving this fast.”
“No.”
Susan finally lit her cigarette. I actually wanted a cigarette myself, probably because my head was still back in the Bong Son area of operations, where I used to do a pack a day. I said, “Let’s hear from Mr. Cam. Ask him if he remembers the war.”
She asked him, and he didn’t seem to want to answer. Finally, he spoke, and Susan translated. She said, “He was thirteen when the war ended. He lived in a village west of Nha Trang, and he remembers when the Communists arrived. He says that thousands of South Vietnamese troops had been passing through his village as they retreated from the highlands, and everyone knew the war was ending. Many people fled to Nha Trang, but he stayed in his village with his mother and his two sisters.”
“And what happened?”
She prodded him a little, he spoke in a quiet tone, and Susan translated. “He says everyone was very frightened, but when the North Vietnamese troops came, they behaved well. There were only women and children left in the village, and the women were not molested. But the Communists found a young army officer who had a leg amputated, and they took him away. Later, political cadres came and questioned everyone. They found two government officials disguised as peasants, and they were taken away. But no one was shot in the village.”
I nodded. “And his father? Brothers?”
Susan asked him, and he replied. She said to me, “His father had been killed in battle many years before. He had an older brother serving with the ARVN in the highlands, but he never returned home. He says his mother still waits for her son to return.”
I looked at Mr. Cam and saw he was upset. Susan, too, seemed disturbed by Mr. Cam’s story. My own memories of that time were starting to fill my head.
When you begin a journey like this, you have to expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed.
We continued on along the black highway, through the night, and back in time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We had come about three hundred kilometers from Nha Trang, and it was close to 10 P.M. I was keeping the speed down to conserve fuel, and we weren’t in any particular hurry, anyway. I looked at the fuel gauge, and the needle was hovering around a quarter full.
I asked her, “How far to Da Nang?”
She’d already figured it out and said, “About a hundred fifty kilometers. How’s the fuel?”
“We burned some fuel back there running the fuzz. We may be able to reach Da Nang with the extra ten liters. Or maybe we’ll see an all-night station on the way.”
“In the last three hundred kilometers, we’ve passed only four gas stations, all closed.”
“Don’t we pass through Quang Ngai?”
“Yes. It’s right on Highway One. Provincial capital. It’s about seventy-five kilometers from here.”
“Take out my guidebook and see if they mention a gas station.”
She opened the guidebook and said, “Well, there’s a small map of the town… there’s a hotel, a pagoda, a church, a post office, a place called Rice Restaurant Thirty-four, a bus station—”
“These cars can run on rice.”
“I hope so. This map doesn’t show a gas station. But there has to be a few in a town that size. Maybe one is open. If not,” she added, “there’s one more town after Quang Ngai and before Da Nang that we may be able to make. It’s called Hoi An, an old Chinese seaport. Very touristy and charming. I took a trip there the time I was in Hue. There are a lot of accommodations in Hoi An, and maybe a gas station that will be open late. We may be able to make it that far. There’s nothing between Hoi An and Da Nang.”
“Okay. Let’s see how it goes.”
Mr. Cam figured out that we were discussing fuel, and he said something to Susan.
She said to me, “Mr. Cam, who is now our friend, said that we can sometimes buy gasoline from private vendors. He says they sell it in stalls along the road. We should look for a painted sign that says et-xang, which means gasoline.”
“And they’re open all night?”
“Sort of. You go to the house near the sign, and they’ll sell you gasoline. I’ve done that on my motorcycle. The gasoline is usually sold in soft drink bottles, and it’s expensive.”
“How many Coke bottles do we need to fill a tank?”
“I don’t have my calculator. Look for a sign that says et-xang.”
I said to Susan, “Tell me again why Mr. Cam won’t do his civic duty and go to the police. Make believe Mr. Cam’s life depends on your answer.”
She stayed silent for some time, then replied, “I couldn’t even translate the concept of civic duty. If he gets his car back and about a hundred bucks for himself, two for Mr. Thuc, and a few hundred to fix the damage, he is not going to the police. When there’s an accident in Saigon, the last thing they want is for the police to show up.”
“Good. Case closed.”
Mr. Cam wanted a cigarette, and he deserved it. Susan lit it for him and held it while he puffed away.
We came to a place called Sa Huynh, a picturesque village on the coast surrounded by salt marshes. Before you could say “quaint,” we were out in the country again.
We continued on, and the highway swung inland through an area of small villages and rice paddies.
I glanced at my fuel gauge and saw that it was below a quarter of a tank. The road was flat, and I was keeping the speed down to eighty KPH, so I figured I’d be able to squeeze out enough fuel to reach Quang Ngai. If not, we had twenty liters in the gas cans.