The Reckoning

The New American West was her gig, not Asia, especially not the part with dead souls from the baby boomers’ war. Her writer friends were baffled. They already thought she was made in the shade. She was the get- girl for photo features about ski country plutocrats, gang bangers on the rez in Navajo country, crop circles in Nebraska, and psychotherapy for brain-damaged Everesters who would be king. She had a regional following and a cute Victorian town house in Boulder. Why risk her place in the universe? To them, Cambodia was like some weird fit of hubris. Molly could barely explain it to herself.

She had first learned of the existence of an official grail quest for soldiers’ bones at a gallery opening in Taos. The artist’s brother was a navy kid full of tales. Something in his mention of a circular, never-ending bone hunt funded by taxpayer dollars had triggered her instincts. The New York Times had gone for it. Now she was here.

A white rag hung from a bamboo pole, and she decided that was their landmark. Her sense of relief as well as her misgivings welled up all over again. She wanted the forensics team to see in her a kindred spirit. Like them, her job was to lay bare old secrets. And she was jet-lagged and Cambodia’s furnace heat had sapped her pluck.

Let them be kind, she thought, or at least not hostile. Let me get a foothold. They were U.S. military. They were their tribe. She was hers, a professional outsider forever working her way in. She knew better than to count on the kindness of strangers, yet found herself praying for it anyway.

It shouldn’t have mattered. The story was her mission. She’d moved heaven and earth to land this assignment with the Times Sunday magazine, and she meant to make it work. She could freelance for the Rocky Mountain region until doomsday. Or she could make her grab at the brass ring. The same week she turned thirty, Molly had cropped her black hair and gotten the last of her hep-A shots and flown off to the dark side of the moon.

The truck finished its long drift, coming to rest precisely beside the white rag. They sat idling. The driver stared ahead with both hands on the wheel. Molly squinted into the white light, searching for some sign of Recovery Element 1, or RE-1, as this particular recovery team was designated. Their concealment aggravated her. She did not want to take them on blind faith.

Finally, she reached for the rope that served as a door handle. Climbing down, she hurried to the back to drag her big black mule bag from between stacks of wooden Coca-Cola boxes. The truck departed with an intricate clattering of gears.

She was a week late, a matter of finishing other assignments, and of course no one was waiting to greet her. By now they had probably given up on her. Molly turned in a slow circle, one hand shading her eyes. The sun was high and her shadow was barely a splash underfoot.

She felt tiny and vulnerable standing there in her mountain-biker T-shirt. “Vicious Cycles,” the slogan said. She’d saved it for this very moment, to make a macho debut with the GI Joes, to show she had some pedigree. Some pedigree, she thought, panting for air. Heat rash bubbled on her bare arms.

She unlocked her mule bag and rummaged for a loose white shirt with long sleeves. She had Irish skin that instantly freckled and burned. Vampire skin, a boyfriend had once called it, the ruin of a body built for the thong. Naturally, she’d forgotten a hat. But she was sure the soldiers would swap or sell her something, if she could only find them.

She walked to the far side of the road, hoping to find them toiling away in a large hidden pit. Instead, to her dismay, she looked out upon a labyrinth of emptied paddies, and heaps of dirt, and footpaths branching off this way and that into mirages.

She refused to call out. She couldn’t possibly be lost. It was broad daylight and the immense floodplain lay flat in every direction. An orange pin flag marked one of the paths. The flies flocked to her sun-screen, and they had a bite like bees. Cursing in whispers, she set off along the path with her camera bag swinging.

At the end of ten minutes, she spotted a figure quivering in and out of sight on the far side of a drained lake. Molly wiped the sweat from her eyes. Through her longest lens she decided that with his blond hair and long jaw he had to be one of the American soldiers. He seemed to be looking right at her, but didn’t return her wave.

Take the bull by the horns, she thought, descending from the footpath. By the time she unraveled their trail system, he might be long gone. She was about to start directly across the dried lake bed when a man spoke behind her. “I wouldn’t go out there,” he said, “not if it was me.”

Molly turned. The man was tall and thin and tidy, with a red-and-white-checkered Khmer scarf hooded over his head. Dirt smudged the knees of his baggy Levi’s. He was clean shaven and wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the movie-star face of Che Guevara. A mason’s trowel hung from one hand. On the ground behind him, a dented and scratched steel briefcase sat neatly upright on top of two sticks, obviously his work kit. And something else, she noticed. He was not sweating. In every way, he seemed to govern himself, even in this climate.

“I didn’t see you,” she said.

“The place is littered with leftovers. War junk. Nightmares,” he said.

UXO, he meant. Unexploded ordnance from thirty years of killing. Ordinarily she would have rolled with the sermon; it was gentle enough. She was new to the territory, and as a journalist she valued the early guide. But she was tired and pissed off by the heat and this strange flat maze, and was in no mood for wisdom.

“I’ve had the lecture,” she said. “The orange flags mean the area’s cleared. Red means stop. But the lake bed is empty.” It was a silly thing to say. Just because you couldn’t see the danger didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“Ever seen them fish?” he said. “Take one grenade, any vintage. Remove pin. Throw in water. It’s easier than a net. The problem is, the stuff is old. Half the time it just sinks into the mud and waits.” He paused. “What I’m saying is, Molly, let it not be you. You’re much too pretty.”

He knew her name. And he was hitting on her? In this heat? She fanned furiously at the flies.

He leaned down to offer his hand, and reading her race, affected a brogue. “Duncan,” he said, “Duncan O’Brian, descended from kings. As for you, Miss Drake, there’s no mystery. Everyone’s known you were coming.”

She thought he only meant to shake, but he took a good grip and lifted her from the lake bed. He was simply not going to allow her to be stupid. She desperately wanted to sit, but it was too soon to show weakness. It showed just the same.

Before she knew what he was doing, his scarf was draped over her head like a veil. “There, that should help,” he said. “It gets brutal out here.”

The scarf was a marvel. Immediately the air felt cooler. The blinding sun became bearable. The flies disappeared, and with them the feeling of assault. To her surprise, the cloth smelled clean, like rain, not sweat. The small bit of shade heartened her. She had a place to hide. All of that in a stranger’s gift.

“I’m fine, thanks.” She started to lift away the scarf.

He brushed aside her pride. His hair came to his shoulders, streaked with gray at the temples. She could not tell his age. A very weathered mid-thirties, or a young fifty.

“It’s called a kroma,” he said. “The Khmers use it for everything you can imagine, a hat, a shawl, a fashion statement, an umbrella, handcuffs, a basket for fruit, a sling to carry their babies. The checkered pattern represents the cosmic tension between life and death. Or knowledge and ignorance. Your pick.” There was a touch of the hermit to him. He loved to talk.

The strength was coming back into her. “I only wanted directions,” she said. She pointed at the man across the lake bed.

“From our gypsy child?” He had a farm-boy smile. “Not a chance. He never comes close, and you can’t get within two hundred yards of him. We’ve put food out for him, in case he’s American. But he leaves it for the dogs. We’re not sure who he is or why he’s like that. He just showed up one day. The first time I saw him I thought, Ah, boy, you’ve reached the end of your magical mystery tour. Look at him, all borrowed together. Peasant pants and Vietcong sandals made of old tires. We know the sandals, we’ve found his tracks, tire tracks. Probably Michelin rubber, from the old Michelin plantations to the east. And no hat, you notice?”

It took Molly a moment to catch his teasing, the “no hat.” “I thought he was one of you.”

“One of us?”

“A soldier.”