The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 28

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 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 to come by--twisted and manipulated by each mouth they pa.s.sed 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 doc.u.menting 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.

Days pa.s.sed, each a lure that Darrow went out and followed; Helen again took the human-interest a.s.signments she had previously scorned. The radius of her pursuits circling tighter and tighter, with the apartment in Cholon eventually the only place she was absolutely at ease.

Robert threw his "Light at the End of My Tunnel" party at the broken-down at the End of My Tunnel" party at the broken-down Hotel Royale. The restaurant and bar were colonial-period shabby, in keeping with the party's theme. Robert walked through the palm-lined lobby in the white wool uniform and pith helmet of a French military commander. People overflowed the lobby, standing on the steps and out on the sidewalk, sipping champagne while a band played fox-trots and tangos in the overhead ballroom. A street boy, small and fast, reached his hand up like a periscope over the platters, stuffing his mouth with what ever he grabbed before it could be taken away. A crippled war veteran leaned against the building, his left leg missing, and sipped at a gla.s.s of champagne someone had handed him.

In the cab going over, Darrow hummed show tunes. Helen had borrowed a long, cream-colored gown with a large black silk rose pinned at the chest. "Nice," he said, uninterested. He had reluctantly put a suit on, and he sat in the backseat of the small car, knees to his chest, looking crushed and miserable.

They walked up the steps to where Robert stood in the doorway. "The luckiest man in Vietnam," Robert shouted and raised his gla.s.s. "Beware, I might try to steal her away to night."

Darrow smiled a strained, polite smile. "Do it while I get drinks," he said, and made a quick escape into the crowd.

"As cheerful as always," Robert said.

"He's tired."

More and more people arrived, cars jamming traffic for a block all around.

"How many people did you invite?"

"Oh, five hundred, give or take. Everyone I've ever met in this country. But I don't recognize half the faces here, so I think it's taken on a life of its own. Appropriate for a war with a life of its own."

Annick had been right--she had underestimated him. "You're leaving in style."

"Leave with me."

Helen smiled and looked down. For a moment she thought he mocked her, but he understood how shabby her situation was. Besides, there was no sport in it, like shooting fish in a barrel. "Is Annick here?"

"With her new beau. She's not one to hold a grudge, especially at the mention of a party."

"No, she isn't. That's part of her loveliness."

"Such a pretty dress and such a sad face." Robert drew himself up and put his hand across his chest. "Marry me."

"You're drunk."

"That's right. That's the way men like me screw up the courage to ask for what they want. After the fact, when it's too late."

"It is too late, isn't it?" She bit her lip. "You'd fall down dead if I accepted."

Robert burst out laughing and drank down his gla.s.s. "Of course I would. That's what's so delicious about you. You think like a man. No, I need a sweet, marrying type who loves me and stays out of war zones."

"That's not me," Helen said, smiling, stung by his words. "What're you going to do with all of that peace?"

Robert shook his head. "I'm more in love the more you pull away."

Darrow walked between them, balancing three full champagne gla.s.ses. "Who's pulling away?"

"I am, if I'm lucky. All I care about is my departure time," Robert said. He winked at her and poked his finger at Darrow's chest. "You know what they say--'Old reporters don't fade away, they transfer to lesser bureaus.' "

"Don't give me that. Los Angeles is a kick up."

Robert drank down his gla.s.s in one gulp. "Not if you want to be where the action is. Not if you consider the work a calling." His sudden earnestness made all three fall silent. Although it was obvious Darrow didn't think much of him, Robert respected and disliked the man in equal mea sure.

Darrow shrugged. "Say no."

"Oh, baby, that's where you and I differ. I'm twenty-nine months, five days too long in this h.e.l.lhole." The one thing Robert knew for sure was Darrow's stringing Helen along was shameful.

"We're leaving soon." Darrow looked down at his feet.

Robert raised his eyebrows and looked from him to Helen. She seemed equally surprised. "That's great. Really. I'm two hundred bucks poorer, but what the h.e.l.l."

"You bet on us?" Helen said. "Against us?"

"I'm a reporter. I took the odds."

Helen wandered the dining room and found Annick at a table of Americans from the emba.s.sy. A large, beefy-faced guy with curly black hair protested as Helen pulled her away to the bar to have a drink alone.

"Isn't he beautiful?" Annick looked back at the man, who never took his eyes off her. "Two champagnes."

"How long have you been seeing this one?"

"This one is the the one." one."

"You said that last time. Isn't it bad form to bring him to Robert's party?" Annick wore a long, beaded red gown that sparkled as she moved. Now she pushed away from the bar and began to sway to the music. "Look around. All the good men are either leaving or dying. What difference can it possibly make?"

"What if you end up alone?"

"I was married and ended up alone. Everyone leaves. Robert, Sam, and you. It makes me too sad."

"Then find someone."

Annick turned a tough, appraising look on her; the businesswoman face at the shop was the real her. "You count on the future too much. Tonight, just dance."

"Go get your beau." Helen laughed, pointing to the man at the table, his lips pressed together in a frown.

"He hates to dance. And he's jealous. If I dance with another man, it will be a bad night."

"Then let's you and me," Helen said, pulling her toward the dance floor.

"You're fou. Crazy."

"Now you've convinced me."

Out on the dance floor, the two women danced to cheers from the surrounding tables. Helen led, and they both stumbled, doubled over laughing so they could hardly stand. Slowly they worked out the rhythm for a box step.

Helen floated to the music, her mind on the silly spectacle of herself and Annick, a huge surge of relief not to worry and want. She was glad she hadn't drunk much champagne, that this was pure joy she felt. As Annick spun in a circle away from her, sparkling, Helen thought she was perhaps right, this was the only possible escape from the war.

The first sign something was wrong: the band coming to a ragged stop, stranding the dancers on the floor. Angry yells. Helen recognized Darrow's voice. As she made her way through the crowd, she saw Tanner first but could not make out his words. Darrow stood quietly across from him while Robert stepped between the men, trying to lead Tanner away. Instead, he jerked out of Robert's grip, lurching forward and again saying something she couldn't hear.

Darrow made a single forward motion, right fist connecting with Tanner's face, knocking him onto his back. Cartoonish. Uncertain laughs came from the crowd, and Helen saw a smear of blood under Tanner's nose as he shook his head. He sat relaxed on the floor, dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief someone handed him. When he spoke, his voice was low and reasonable, as if he were discussing politics over brandy.

"Screw you, Darrow... just as dead with or without my pictures."