laughed so hard at the impersonation of their mother that liquid poured from her nose.
“She sounds like a monster.”
“No,” Helen answered. “She’s just that way.” It never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with such demands.
____________________
In her effort to prove that she could survive in Saigon and function without Darrow’s help, she befriended other journalists in town, went to official briefings, took the rickety blue-and-white Renault taxis out to Tan Son Nhut to photograph American and Vietnamese soldiers back from operations. She and Robert joined official army junkets that flew journalists out in transport C-130s to write and take pictures of scarred land and dead soldiers hours after the action ended. Robert was content doing his job, writing up his stories, but she found the whole process frustrating. Her pictures were no different from those of a dozen other freelancers selling photos to the wire services for fifteen dollars a picture.
The journalists were in a questionable fraternity while out in the field, squabbling and arguing among themselves, each sensing the unease of the situation. No getting around the ghoulishness of pouncing on tragedy with hungry eyes, snatching it away, glorying in its taking even among the most sympathetic: “I got an incredible shot of a dead soldier/woman/child. A real tearjerker.” Afterward, film shot, they sat on the returning plane with a kind of postcoital shame, turning away from each other.
In terms of the present moment, they were despicable to the soldiers, to the victims, to even themselves. In the face of real tragedy, they were unreal, vultures; they were all about getting product. In their worst moments, each of them feared being a kind of macabre Hollywood, and it was only in terms of the future that they regained their dignity, became dubious heroes. The moment ended, about to be lost, but the one who captured it on film gave both subject and photographer a kind of disposable immortality.
The wires sent her to cover human-interest stories-hospitals, charities, orphans, widows-but when she opened the paper and saw combat shots by Darrow as well as others, she knew that she was being sidelined. Of course, the truth of the war existed everywhere-battle and combat only a part of the whole-but her truth pulled at her from out on the battlefields. With her failure out in the field part of the public record, she didn’t know how to start again.
Another month passed; she grew more restless. Only skimming the surface of the land and the war, returning to her safe bed every night. The reporters that were satisfied at this level were like archaeologists piecing together fragments and guessing at the truth of something long since disappeared. She felt like a fake. She kept going on the after-battle junkets with Robert, embarrassed for them both, needing the drinks at the Continental bar each night.
At dinner with Robert, she tried to explain her dissatisfaction. Ever since the night she left with Darrow, Robert remained aloof, as if there were some irony that he alone was privy to. She understood he needed to save face. She had acted badly, and there was probably no fixing it. Outwardly they still joked and flirted, but they both understood that things had changed between them.
“Is it enough?” she said. “These pictures don’t feel like enough.”
Robert shrugged, bored and disappointed. A cruel thought ran through his mind that at least nurses didn’t bring their work with them. “You’re too earnest now.”
“Sorry,” she said, realizing her mistake confiding in him. She changed the subject by ordering another drink, but he wasn’t fooled.
“The only way to get the picture you’re talking about is to get so close you become part of it.”
But instead of deflecting her, his words gave her an idea. Now she went hunting at the air bases for stories. To go around official channels, see what was really going on, she copped rides alone on transport helicopters dropping rations and ammunition at distant firebases. Since there was no ostensible story, no combat, there was no restriction on her movements, either. Whenever possible, she tried to visit Special Forces camps in the hope of running into someone who had known her brother. There were men at the outposts half-naked in the heat, bodies coated by the inescapable dust and dirt that caused small boils on the skin, eyes wild from the isolation and the threat of danger. A few refused to talk with her, simply watched from the edges of the camp like feral dogs, but most were glad for the company. She sat and shared cigarettes, took their pictures, and talked while the chopper unloaded. In between the most banal questions-What’s your name? Where’re you from? How long you here for?-she caught glimpses of what she wanted.
At one landing base high in the foothills, the pilot decided to put up for the night. Pleased, she didn’t bother mentioning that it was against regulations for her, a woman, to spend the night out in the field. Inside the small sandbag-and-wood structure with the unmistakable barn smell of marijuana, Helen was introduced to a former Special Forces officer, Frank MacCrae, wearing an apron and cooking a vat of chili over a makeshift fire pit. At forty-five, he was considerably older than the other men, and unlike them he was at home there. He had lived in Vietnam more than seven years, spoke the language fluently, lived out in the villages.
When they sat down to dinner-a dozen soldiers, the pilot, and Helen-Frank was quiet at first, drinking down beer after beer in a few gulps, appraising her. The chili had a bright layer of orange oil on top, and the native hot pepper made her lips burn and then go numb. When Helen complimented him and asked for seconds, he flushed with plea sure and brought out a bottle of wine he had been saving. “I was keeping it for when we have a boar to roast, but what the hell.” He eyed her cameras. “Nice. I used to have a good Nikon but banged it up… Miss my picture-taking days. So now they’re sending girl reporters?”
“Not willingly,” she said. “They didn’t send me. I snuck out here on my own.”
“How long you been in-country?”
“Two months.”
“Two months. Oh, baby.” He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his white T-shirt freckled with reddish chili spots. “You came too late.”
“How’s that?” The heat of the chili beaded her forehead with sweat, and she wiped it with a napkin. That was her fear, that she had missed the biggest part of the war already. Her stomach started to churn.
“The good ol’ days are gone.”
“Oh, not this again,” one of the soldiers said.
“See… we were just learning how to do business here, but they screwed it all up. It’s easier to send soldiers, easier to throw money at corrupt leaders who’ll play ball with us. Easier for us to just take the damn thing over.”
“Did you know my brother, Michael Adams? He was here two years ago; died last year. Plain of Reeds area.” A deep burble rose from her stomach, and she regretted taking the second bowl of chili.
“Not familiar with. Who was his captain?”
“Wagner, I think? Project Delta?”
“It’s a small world up here. Didn’t get to meet him. A damn shame.” Frank smiled as Helen’s eyes watered, a belch escaped. “Not used to good home cookin’?”
The pilot, bored, got up and signaled the others to go over to another table for a game of poker.
Helen felt as if she would explode. “The report was just the generic ‘Died a Hero’ stuff.”
Frank examined the ceiling and blew smoke rings. “Our government is creating a show. All that shit years ago about Diem being the Winston Churchill of Southeast Asia. Did the English riot in the streets against Churchill? Did he imprison or kill his opposition? That was all a PR campaign courtesy of Life magazine.”
“Maybe Diem tricked us.”
Frank shook his head, gently at first and then harder. “No! No, no, no. Everyone knew he was a crook from the get-go. That’s why they chose him.”
“So why?” She stood, clinching her bowels. She’d have to make a run for the out house in the dark.
“Now you’re going!” He banged down all four feet of the chair on the floor and clapped his hands. “Start thinking like a reporter about your own side, too. Why aren’t you satisfied with the pabulum they fed you about your brother? Friends of mine started poking around-it was not appreciated. Got stonewalled, their stories weren’t considered credible, they were reassigned back to the States. Visas and military passes revoked. I’m
