number of snipers. Sometimes a hole in the foliage allowed a sight line twenty or thirty feet into the jungle, sunlight filtering through the dense overhead canopy, turning individual shafts of light the color of honey.
Linh reached out to touch small white flowers clinging to the trunks of trees as they passed. The trucks climbed sullenly up the red dirt road, engines drowning out every sound, the only movement the bouncing, swaying bodies of the soldiers. Some of them turned outward and squinted into the jungle, fingering the clips of their machine guns, the rings of their hand grenades. Others simply stared at the floor of the truck bed or closed their eyes or prayed, resigned and unconcerned, weapons splayed under their feet. Plenty of time for fear when the trucks stopped. But Helen was hardly aware of her surroundings, barely noticed the jungle or the soldiers, wondering if it was true that Darrow was unhurt. What if she got hurt now, before she saw him?
They reached a straight part of the road that leveled out, a slight depression muddied with the remaining trickle of a steam struggling across it. The abandoned trucks, noses buried in jungle, impeded their way.
Engines were cut and clips slammed home; the new silence rang in Helen’s ears. She ducked at the shriek of a bird, and the soldiers in the truck snickered. Odds were good that the enemy had long since departed, but still they moved forward with slow, deliberate steps.
The first thing was the vinegary sweet meatlike stench. An elemental imprint on the brain one recognized without knowing why. The instinct was to run, but instead the soldiers crawled forward, and Helen reluctantly followed. Clouds of birds and insects flew up as they neared. The ground littered with the detritus of battle-ammunition casings, a destroyed radio, hastily moved sandbags, bloodied bandages; weapons stolen.
A swarm of translucent orange-winged insects rose up, a kind of locust, and underneath Helen saw a flash of strawberry blond that she at first mistook for a clump of flowers. Two thick, loglike shapes covered with leaves, and going closer, she saw they were the bloated legs of a body. And then a few feet farther the lucky bush hat. Two soldiers rolled the remains into a rubber poncho, but the body did not move away in one piece. She turned away and vomited.
“That’s what you get, bringing women out here.”
She rinsed her mouth with water from her canteen and let the tears dry on her face as she pulled the lens cap off the camera. Most of the scenes too horrific to be used, but she took the pictures anyway because she had to keep her hands and her mind occupied. The promises of leaving replayed themselves in her mind. In this place filled with death, it was impossible to believe that Darrow remained unhurt. She wanted to go to Linh and be reassured all over again, but she couldn’t get him away from the other soldiers.
So she turned to the work. During their days wandering Saigon, Helen hadn’t known more than loading the camera and shooting, centering the images so they could be cropped, but Linh taught her how to extract the meaning out of a shot. It seemed impossible to concentrate on light, shutter speed, and aperture in the middle of combat or even in its aftermath, but those were the peculiar requirements of the job. Now the distance of technique saved her.
He had told her to picture the image being formed; the idea of light going through the lens, striking the translucent emulsion, staining it dark. The more light, the longer the length of time, the darker the stain. Those areas most saturated by light-by intensity and duration-called latent images. No turning back, only advancing frame by frame by frame. All the grays had to be sorted out, lights and darks contrasted, even if it meant making them up. She saw that even pictures that purported the truth involved a great deal of discretion and taste and choice, that subject matter and angle and intent were as involved in image-making as they were in the military briefings.
After the area had been searched, Linh stood apart looking down a gully along the side of the road. Helen went to stand near him, hoping he would say something more about Darrow, but when he remained silent she squinted into the gully. “What is it?”
“Look at those white flowers. Everywhere on this hill. I noticed them while we were in the trucks.”
Not understanding such callousness, she stared hard at his profile for a minute. “How did you know the rescue convoy would be attacked?”
“You mean do I have ‘spy’ knowledge? Do I have a secret phone to Viet Cong headquarters? Medlock knew it was a death mission. He had no choice. When the NVA leave a few alive, it is to lure more in. Guerilla tactics. I was a soldier once.”
The Vietnamese troopers complained about having to load the bodies onto the truck. Sergeant Medlock and another officer argued with them. Voices grew pitched and strident. Finally the Americans, even though there were fewer of them, loaded alone, and then the Vietnamese grudgingly helped. By the time all the bodies were on the truck, tension was high.
Helen took a shot of the back of the loaded truck with its inert human cargo like a sculpture from a circle of the Inferno. She knelt and framed the truck like a mountain, the focus sharp on the tread of the tires, the matching tread of the boots of the dead. The darkness of the surrounding jungle and the light on the road made it seem the most forlorn spot in the world.
“Man, let’s blow this place,” one of the soldiers said.
The trucks rumbled back to life. Helen rode in a jeep with Medlock while Linh rode with the Vietnamese soldiers in the trucks.
When they arrived back at base camp, the Americans went into the mess tent to eat while the bodies were loaded into helicopters for transport back to Saigon. Helen didn’t know what else to do, so she followed the officers and stood in line for hamburgers and more fruit cocktail. She sat at table and spooned peaches into her mouth although they tasted obscene to her.
“Did you see the price of the new radios they’re selling down at the PX?”
“It’s easier to buy radios and trade them for cigarettes. Sell them on the black market and make a fortune.”
“I’ll start my retirement fund right in Saigon,” Medlock joked from down the table.
“Next time I’m in town, I’m going to load up on chocolate.”
A pause, a moment of panic because Helen did not hear half their words, so lost was she in the memory of the strawberry-haired soldier’s chocolate, but then Medlock asked if anyone had caught the football scores from the paper. The world went on.
When Linh came inside, Helen was drinking coffee. “Can I talk with you?”
She felt exhausted and not up to dealing with him. Their relationship was wearing on both of them. She sighed but didn’t want to make matters worse. “Can it wait?”
“I told Darrow we’re going back to Saigon now. He wants for you to fly down to Mekong Delta today.”
“He’s really okay?” Helen hesitated. “About yesterday…” She was mortified by what now seemed like a temper tantrum on her part.
“I check when we’re okay for flying out.” He walked away, brusque, but he didn’t want to be tampered with any longer. Easier to keep a distance. With Darrow, that had been acceptable. She wanted more, wanted too much, pushed him past his limits. What she wanted, finally, more than he was willing to give.
EIGHT. Xa
Village
Helen and Linh flew low over the southern Mekong area to An Giang province, controlled by the Hoa Hao sect that opposed the Viet Cong. One of the few safe areas in the country, it was where Darrow had decided to stay and recuperate.
The air boiled hot and opaque, the sky a hard, saline blue. For miles the black mangrove swamp spread like a stagnant ocean, clotted, arthritic. Farther on they passed the swollen tributaries of the Mekong. Papaya, grapefruit, water palm, mangosteen, orange-fruit of every variety grew in abundance, dropping with heavy thuds on the ground to burst in hot flower in the sun. The soil so rich from the emptying of the Mekong that crops grew year-round, and the local food supply remained ample even during war time, allowing villages and
