Finding Moon

He turned away from the river and stood beside her, looking down. She looked up, the question in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Moon said.

She looked down, shook her head. “It’s okay.”

“Sorry I was too late.”

“It has nothing to do with late,” she said. “Or early.”

What do you say to that? He didn’t think of anything.

“I just didn’t believe him,” she said, looking up at Moon to see if he understood. “My brother, you know. He was always talking big. He was always full of his dreams.” She looked down again, studying her hands. “He told me when he went off to the seminary. I thought he was just being silly. Being romantic. We went on a kind of picnic, the day before he caught the plane. I said, ‘Damie, you’re being silly going off to be a minister. They’ll find out about you in a minute and toss you out. You’ll be right back here again and all of those girls who’ve been chasing after you, they’ll all be married and gone.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no. Not Damie. That was the Damie you used to know. Now-’” She stopped, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He’d been reading a biography of Francis of Assisi, I think it was. One of the great medieval saints. He said he was done with chasing after girls. From now on, he would chase after God.”

She glanced up at Moon.

“Well,” Moon said.

She smiled. “I remember it so well. I punched him on the shoulder. I said, ‘Come on, Damie. Snap out of it. You’re dreaming.’ And he said-all excited-‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m dreaming, Osa. I’m going to be one of God’s saints. If I am man enough.’”

She looked up at him, waiting.

“Well,” Moon said, “he was man enough. And the way I remember what they tried to teach us in our religion class, he made it in as a saint.”

“I loved him,” Osa said. “He was a crazy little brother, but I loved him.”

Just as he had feared, he had started her really crying. He sat on the tree trunk beside her and hugged her against him and let her weep.

On the long roll down the final hillside into Via Ba, Nguyen Nung’s fear of ambush kicked in again. High in the hills he had become relatively relaxed.

Osa had stood in the hatch, watching, while Nguyen sat on the bench fiddling with the radio. The news he was hearing seemed overwhelmingly bad-serious enough for Nguyen to tap Moon on the shoulder and try to explain things. First it was more about the Americans being “all gone home.” They’d been hearing that the previous evening, that helicopters were flying in and flying out loaded with refugees from the U.S. Embassy. Not much new there. Nguyen’s next burst of excitement brought Osa down from the hatch to join him in listening.

“What’s happening now?” Moon shouted.

“I guess it’s all over,” Osa said. “The war. I think Nguyen is saying that North Vietnamese tanks broke into the presidential palace and captured everybody. He thinks the man talking now is the new president, announcing the war is over. They seem to be broadcasting orders to South Vietnamese units, telling them to quit fighting and surrender.”

Moon digested that. The Communists had won, then. No more South Vietnam. But from their point of view, maybe the best possible news. He tried to imagine what would be happening. Wild celebrations by the winners. Confusion. Despair. People fleeing the country. Who would notice an M-l 13 APC rolling across the delta flying a Vietcong flag? Who would care?

The trail they were following leveled. The trees thinned as they reached the edge of the valley. Moon stopped the APC. Nguyen remained in the hatch above him, methodically studying the houses through the binoculars.

“Ho!” he shouted suddenly. “People!”

Moon reached up for the binoculars, but Nguyen had already handed them to Osa, standing in the other hatch. Moon waited, nervous. What now? What would they do about Mr. Lee?

“I see Mr. Lee,” Osa said. “And a woman is with him.” She ducked out of the hatch and handed Moon the glasses.

The woman looked to Moon more like a girl. A teenager, perhaps. She sat in the shade of a hut beside one of the houses with Lee sitting across from her. No one else was in sight. A peaceful scene. Moon remembered the pigs. Of course, someone would still be there. The owner of the tethered pigs would have heard their APC approaching this morning. Time enough to hide, but not to hide the pigs.

“Let’s go,” Moon said. He didn’t want to allow hope to revive. It was still impossible. But hope revived without permission.

Through the driver’s slit he could see Mr. Lee waiting beside the irrigation ditch, the girl standing at his side. Lee shouted something. Nguyen shouted an answer. They exchanged more shouts. Moon cut the ignition, stretched, forced himself to be patient for a dignified moment. Then he followed Osa and Nguyen out the rear ramp. Mr. Lee was expressing condolences and ‘Osa was accepting them with her usual grace.

“And you,” she said. “Did you find your kam taap?”

Mr. Lee’s tired old face developed a smile of such luminous joy that no other answer was necessary. But he said, “Yes! Yes!” And pressed his hands in front of his chest, and said “Yes!” again.

“And even more wonderful,” he said, turning toward Moon, “we have good news for Mr. Mathias too. I think we have found the child.”

But not quite yet.

The girl with Mr. Lee was Ta Le Vinh, who was twelve and a second cousin of Eleth Vinh. As Mr. Lee described her presence, a villager cleaning the ditch had seen the Khmer Rouge coming and had come running with the warning. A dozen people had headed for the woods without stopping for anything. Others had waited to collect food, or clothing, or valuables. They had been caught and marched away. Five of the villagers who made it to the woods had kept going, intending to cross the mountains and find refuge with relatives until the territory was safe again. Seven stayed behind, including Ta Le, her parents, and Daje Vinh, who was the mother of Eleth Vinh. And with Daje Vinh was Lila Vinh, the baby.

Mr. Lee was explaining this, with Ta Le listening intently. “After you drove away this morning, I went out there.” And Mr. Lee indicated a high meadow across the irrigation ditch. “I noticed how the arms of the hill enclosed it, giving it the proper slope. An excellent feng shui site. So I walked up there and found several shrines and several kam taap. Many of these, too, had been desecrated by the Khmers. They had shot them with their automatic rifles, breaking them to pieces. And one of them was the kam taap we have been seeking.”

“Wonderful,” Osa said. “They hadn’t broken it up?”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Lee said, his smile undiminished. “Broken it up. But it doesn’t matter. I got a sack and picked everything up and brought it here.” He pointed to the house. “Another kam taap will be made. It is the bones that are important.” He looked at Moon for agreement. “There is where the spirit lives.”

“Right,” Moon said.

“Even then the good luck was already working. Miss Vinh and her family were watching me. They saw from what I was doing that I was a religious man. One who follows the teachings of the Lord Buddha could not be a Khmer Rouge. So Miss Vinh came out to learn who I was. She went back and told her family. But her parents said they would wait until the brother of Ricky Mathias came back in the vehicle so they could see him for themselves and be sure it was not a trick before they would come out of the woods.”

“That was sensible,” Moon said.

So Moon, Mr. Lee, and the Miss Vinh who was a second cousin of Eleth Vinh walked up into the meadow. Moon stood there in the hot afternoon sun, feeling foolish, sweat dripping from his nose, his eyebrows, trickling below his shoulder blades, feeling foolish and praying without words. Miss Vinh was pointing at him, shouting something toward the screen of trees. From the trees emerged a man, and just behind him a woman.

The woman carried a baby.

Moon realized he had not been breathing. He whooshed out a huge breath, inhaled another, and looked up at the sky. What is it that Muslims say? It came to him. God is good. God is good.

The adults proved to be the parents of Ta Le Vinh. The required courteous formalities of introduction were handled in an unusual hurry by Mr. Lee. The elder Vinhs were obviously nervous-not happy to be standing here in