Within minutes assault helicopters flew overhead and sprayed bullets and bombs over the village. An inferno, the fire created a hot wind that fed upon itself, heat upon heat, until Helen felt each breath she took scorched her lungs.
Linh pointed, and Helen again noticed a swarm of black fluttering shapes that looked like swallows or bats rising above the old woman’s hut. “Her flowers.”
Helen remembered when her father returned from duty in Italy. How he had brought her a red tin of amoretti. How he took the waxy wrapping as she ate each cookie, lit a match beneath it and smiled as it flew skyward like a spirit, to her screams of delight.
Although they watched the hut burn to cinders, the old woman was nowhere in sight.
The action seemed to be mostly over, and so it was a shock when a dozen men burst out of a tunnel opening at the edge of the village, the heat from the burning hut above the entrance roasting them in the tunnel, parts of their clothing curling off their backs in flame. They ran down the beach to reach the water, wanting to plunge in the wetness and stop the burning, but the running alerted the soldiers, who opened fire.
Linh yelled, but Darrow grabbed him. “No!” He pointed to Helen. “Stay between him and the soldiers.” She held Linh’s shoulder, felt the quivering of his muscles.
“They’re villagers, not VC,” he said.
Darrow ran down through the sound of the automatic weapons’ fire. So much smoke and the deafening pound of the helicopters-it was impossible to make out clearly what had happened.
Fifteen minutes later, the helicopters gone, the beach was strewn with bodies on the sand and down into the surf. An eerie quiet except for the keening cries of the village women who had a view of the beach. The mood of the soldiers had turned murderous. They went back again and again to the bodies of the dead men, as if they feared they would resurrect. Tanner took pictures, moving bodies with his foot into more graphic positions. “Don’t think this one is running anywhere,” he said to a soldier, who glared down, bayonet pointed.
Darrow’s forehead creased, his head bent down as he walked over. “That’s enough. Women are watching up there.”
Tanner turned and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get jealous, Sam. You’re not the only photographer in Vietnam.”
A few of the soldiers glared at Linh as he moved along the beach with Helen. “How come he didn’t warn us?” they asked over and over.
“Because he didn’t know. He’s on our side,” Darrow said.
When the first medevac landed, Darrow joined Helen and Linh. “Let’s take this one out. We’ve got enough.”
Tanner stayed with the company.
As they walked by villagers placed under guard, Helen felt their eyes on her. The women clutched their children against their bodies, away from the guns. “Why aren’t they releasing them?”
“Interrogation. Can’t ask a dead man if he’s VC.”
“Maybe we should stay,” Helen said.
“The company’s out of control. More Tanner’s style anyway.”
Scared herself, Helen didn’t have the heart to argue. Later, she would regret giving up so easily and leaving. The change in herself proved by how little she thought of the villagers’ fate, how uneasy she was around her own soldiers. They flew to the field hospital and unloaded Costello, who floated on a large pillow of morphine, oblivious to their good-byes. The trip back to Saigon was a gloomy one.
That night, as she prepared to take a shower, she noticed the ends of her hair were stiff. When she brought the tips to her nose, they smelled singed. After staying under the shower so long the water ran cold, she came out of the bathroom in her underwear and bra, hair dripping, and sat on the bedspread beside Darrow. He was stretched out, eyes closed.
“You’re dripping on the bedspread,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
He opened his eyes. “Let’s see Lan tomorrow.”
Helen bent her head down. How could she admit what she felt all afternoon coming home? Still as clear as after they lifted off from that beach-the photograph wasn’t enough. Helped no one. Soldiers still died, civilians suffered, nothing alleviated in the smallest amount by the fact that a shutter had opened and shut, that light had struck grains on emulsion, that patterns of light and dark would preserve their misery. No defense at all against the evil that had been perpetrated. Out on the beach that day, it had all been failure. Even the best picture would be forgotten, the page flipped.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Helen whispered, apologizing to the pillow, unable to meet his eyes.
Darrow covered her body with his. “That’s the first thing that goes. Belief. You’re better off without it.”
Hard facts were difficult to come by-twisted and manipulated by each mouth they passed through according to need or whim. Buried deep in newspapers or government reports, perceived facts had no effect on truth. Rumor, though, caught fire, flew as fast as the events themselves. Lived on in the minds of the listeners, haunting them.
They had been back in Saigon only hours when the first stories about Molina’s company began to circulate.
The official version was that a female VC climbed out of a tunnel and opened fire with an AK-47 on the soldiers, although no weapon or bullets were found, although after the initial attack, not a single American soldier was killed or even wounded by bullets.
Another version was that a village woman who had witnessed her husband gunned down on the beach below pulled out an old French-made hand revolver. Was it to kill herself or to kill the Americans? The soldiers panicked, opened fire, killing all the fleeing women and children. Later, said revolver was examined and found to be rusted out and empty of bullets.
Another, darker story was that Molina cracked, frustrated by the casualties and the defiance of the women, and ordered the soldiers to fire on them. The next day, on patrol, Molina walked point and stepped on a Claymore, killed, neatly ending any interrogation.
Whatever the truth, Tanner made the front page of a dozen newspapers documenting it. His pictures backed up military claims that VC and VC sympathizers had been gunned down in battle. Darrow threw the paper across the room.
“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Helen said.
“It doesn’t matter. I should have… been doing my job, not-”
“Babysitting me?”
“I was distracted. I can’t afford to be.”
The battles dragged on. Tay Ninh turned into Bong Son, which turned into An Thi.
At night, Darrow edged closer to Helen in the dark of the bedroom, the wind through the leaves of the flamboyant lulling like the sound of the ocean.
“What do you say, Helen, we delay leaving till next month. Get up to the DMZ one more time. I’ve heard things are going on in Qui Nhon and in the A Shau.”
Nothing.
“California will still be there a few months from now, huh? We’ll go with a few more covers under our belt.”
Later, Helen often thought about why she remained silent. Their love a riddle she couldn’t explain, only that Darrow coming of his own volition was the only way. Otherwise, she would be forcing him; unbearable, especially when it was obvious to everyone that she had lost the stomach for the work while he was so clearly born to it.
So he pretended he would leave, and she pretended that she believed him, and each knew the other was telling an untruth.
