The Lotus Eaters_ A Novel Part 42

She grimaced. "Of course not. What kind of fool do you take me for?"

At noontime, they were already on Route 1, getting close to the border. already on Route 1, getting close to the border.

Foreign employees at the wire services who had already abandoned the country left keys with directions to their cars, and the three had been able to take their pick.

Nothing military because one couldn't be sure that isolated pockets of VC didn't still believe the war was on. They settled on a custom-painted pink station wagon with peace signs and the graffiti YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE on the side. They would try to pa.s.s themselves off as hippies or smalltime drug smugglers--anything was better than being press if they were stopped.

All three sat in the front seat and filled the back with scavenged tires from other cars and cans of petrol. With their equipment on top of that, the car was filled to the roof and made it impossible to see out the rearview mirror. Starting at dawn, they had already stopped to repair three punctured tires. The car had no air-conditioning, so they rolled down the windows.

The hot air battered Helen's face, her lips, turned her hair into sharp las.h.i.+ng wires, but it felt good being in motion and having a purpose. Her mind skated, full of dangerous curves and valleys, a grand adventure. Once she got to Thailand and flew to Linh, they would take some time off in California. There would always be other wars. All in the service of this excitement that was commensurate with the risk one took. At times she had the dispiriting notion of needing to remain constantly in flight, although after all these years, she was growing tired, never alighting in one place too long, never putting her full weight on the crust of the earth in case it gave way. Her job was to get pictures, but sometimes she forgot why.

The countryside appeared empty. When they did pa.s.s villagers, there was more a look of surprise in their faces than anything else. Helen didn't know what she expected to see, nothing had changed--only the same barren fields and plots of banana trees and patches of scrub that had always been.

Matt sat in the middle and rolled a joint, pa.s.sing it back and forth among the three of them. He wore metallic blue-tinted sungla.s.ses that reflected Helen's image back to her.

"When did you first come here?" he asked.

"Why're you wearing those gla.s.ses?" she asked.

"You should have seen her. A schoolgirl practically wearing bobby socks,"

Tanner said.

Matt took a deep drag on the joint and held his breath for a minute. "When?" he finally squeaked out, still holding smoke in his lungs.

"We need to stop and eat," Tanner said.

"I'm starving. What did you bring?" she said.

"Whatever I could find. Some chips. Mangoes. C-rations," Matt said.

"Who would bring C-rations?" Tanner yelled.

"They'll keep," Matt said.

"Jesus."

"You know what--you do it next time, Mr. Gourmet." Matt turned around with his knees in the seat and burrowed in a bag behind the seat. A can flew out the open window.

"What're you doing?" Tanner yelled.

"You said you didn't want C-rations."

A bag of potato chips flew out. Helen pressed herself into the door. "I came at the end of 'sixty-five. I dropped out of college to come. I worried the war would be over by the time I graduated." She shrugged, but Matt and Tanner were still arguing. "I wanted to find out what happened to my brother. The pilot refused to land so the crew pushed the men out from ten feet up. He broke both ankles and while he was stuck in the mud the enemy shot him. He died like an animal." MacCrae had s.h.i.+elded her from the ugly details but over the years, she had found them out. The relief of feeling nothing at those words.

"f.u.c.king pigs." Matt took a long drag off the joint. The smoke emptied out of his mouth with a gasp.

"You're like, drawing attention to us, throwing things out the window," Tanner said to Matt.

"I'm hungry," he said, flinging himself back down into the seat.

Her story, told at long last and at such cost, seemed already forgotten by both of them. Minutes pa.s.sed.

"So why'd you stay so long?" Matt said.

Helen was silent. "Because it seems like you're doing the most important work in the world. Leaving was like dying."

They drove on in silence until they heard the soft thunk, thunk, thunk thunk, thunk, thunk of another of another flat tire.

"Jesus," Tanner said.

They pulled off near a small hut, hidden from the road by a bamboo thicket.

Tanner pulled out the jack and a new tire while Matt wandered off toward the building.

"Where are you going?" Tanner yelled. "Why don't you help me?"

"I'm taking a p.i.s.s, okay?" Matt said.

"Why's he going to the hooch? Asking for a bathroom?" Tanner shook his head.

"He's resourceful, that boy."

A few minutes later, Matt reappeared around the corner of the hut and waved them over. Up close, Helen saw that his eyes were marbled with red veins from lack of sleep and smoke. They followed him to a small dirt yard in the middle of which lay a struggling but still alive goose.

"His wing and his leg are broken," Matt announced in a dreamy voice.

The animal labored to get away but only made dusty circles in the dirt. Its black eye looked dull, but when Matt moved closer, the bird made a gritty, hissing noise at him.

"How can you tell?" Tanner asked.

"I grew up on a farm, man," Matt answered. "And it's about lunchtime."

Tanner snorted.

Helen looked from one of them to the other. "Don't we need to get going?"

"We need to eat," Matt said. "Give me an hour."

"I'm still working on that d.a.m.ned tire. Go ahead," Tanner said. "Are you sure that thing's not diseased? Doesn't have rabies?"

"Birds don't have rabies, man."

Helen regretted coming with these two, couldn't stand their squabbling any longer. Their recklessness made her afraid. She had lasted this long because she took only calculated risks. With the fall of Saigon, she'd done her bit. Covered the takeover, and should have gone home. Cambodia was a whole other thing. "I need to get out of here. I need to get to Linh."

Both of the men turned to look at her.

Helen wiped her face. "Never mind."

Matt's attention went back to the goose. "Maybe he fell out of a cart or was run over. He'll be dead in a few hours and then he'll go to waste."

Helen walked off and sat in the shade of the hut while Matt made quick, expert work of beheading the goose, plucking the quivering body, then chopping it up to cook over an open fire. The whole spectacle disgusted her, but after the pieces began to fry, releasing the smell of cooking meat, she felt a stab of hunger and realized she was starving. The body always betrayed one's best intentions. Memory of the recently flopping body, the head and neck thrown a few feet away in the tall gra.s.s, vanished, and instead she remembered Sunday dinners at home when Charlotte cut slices of white meat and put them on china plates as thin as flower petals and pa.s.sed them down the table.

Matt grinned and brought Helen big, dripping chunks of breast and thigh wrapped in paper. She ate it down fast, laughing with the two men over how good it was, wiping the grease off her mouth and chin, then wiping her hands against her pants but unable to get the oily residue off.

Matt sat next to her holding a drumstick and attached thigh in both hands, biting off enormous mouthfuls of steaming meat.

"So how did you end up with a Vietnamese?" he said.

She smiled and took another bite of meat. "Ask Tanner. He's made a hobby out of a.n.a.lyzing my love life."

"Not bad chow, huh?" Tanner asked, taking a long drink from a bottle of whisky.

Helen nodded. "It's good." Matt gave her another handful of breast meat. She took a long pull off the bottle and handed it back.

"Linh's okay in my book," Tanner said. "He's a good photographer, and he keeps his nose clean. Doesn't seem to resent the fact that he's treated like a second-cla.s.s citizen in his own country. That most of us suspect him of being a Red."

"That's big of you," Helen said.

"What I'm saying is that Linh is a realist. Of course he loves you; he got the prize.

Darrow thought it was all owed to him. He kidded himself he was here for a higher purpose when he was just grubbing around for a byline and an award like the rest of us.

Darrow would have put you on that chopper and come out here himself."

The truth of it stung Helen.

The sky was a high, pale blue with long wisping tails of cloud. The only sound their chewing and the rustling of paper.

"Where the h.e.l.l did you learn to cook like that?" Tanner finally asked.

Matt looked at the two of them. "Truth time? My old man beat me so hard I decided I better run away if I wanted to stay alive. Went to North Dakota at fourteen years old and cooked in a greasy spoon till I was eighteen."

"Why North f.u.c.king Dakota?"

"I once heard my mama say n.o.body in their right mind would ever go to North Dakota. So I thought the odds were good they wouldn't find me."

"Did they?" Helen asked.

"Never even looked. Best time of my life." Matt bowed his head. "Found an Indian woman who worked the cash register. Made love to me every day for four years until she found out I lied about my age. Kicked me out, can you believe it? She did things--"

"We don't want to hear about your squaw," Tanner said.

Helen's mind was buzzing with alcohol. The sense of urgency pouring out of her.

"So then what did you do?"

"Came to Vietnam," Matt yelled and clapped his hands.

She didn't want to know but had to ask. "How old are you?"

"Nineteen." He arched his eyebrows. "Why? Interested?"

"We need to go."

"Best way to go to a genocide is on a full stomach," Tanner said, and Matt and he burst out laughing. Helen smiled. Clowns. Gary was right; she was glad he didn't know where she was. But after the pictures came in, all would be forgiven once again. It was always about pus.h.i.+ng the envelope.

"This is the big one," Tanner said. "I can feel it. We're going to be famous."

"Interviewed by Cronkite," Matt said. "The TV guys will fight over us."

"f.u.c.k the TV guys."

Helen almost envied them their glee, their l.u.s.t for fame, their complete and unblus.h.i.+ng lack of empathy.

"So, what was it like back in 'sixty-five?" Matt asked.

"You came too late." Helen smiled. "The good old days are all over."

Bellies full, they drove in drowsy silence until they approached the border. The in drowsy silence until they approached the border. The guard house appeared abandoned, but they slowed the car anyway. The road ahead was littered with rocks and leaves, but otherwise empty except for a lone old man walking toward them, down the middle of it, carrying a suitcase in each hand. He stumbled as they pa.s.sed him, refusing to look up, either from fear or exhaustion. They stopped the car.

"Can we help you, Father?" Helen asked.

He stood still, unsure in the bright sun, squinting behind black-rimmed eyegla.s.ses like the old Vietnamese man's.

" Teuk? Nuoc? Teuk? Nuoc? " Water? she asked, making a drinking motion. " Water? she asked, making a drinking motion.

He dropped his bags, exhaustion now evident in shoulders that remained stooped, and he shuffled over. He wore a tattered, dusty white s.h.i.+rt and khaki pants. His feet in rubber sandals were cracked and bleeding. Tanner dropped the tailgate for him to sit on, then went into the front of the car and got his camera. Helen handed the old man a canteen of water, and he gulped it so quickly he retched.

"Whoa, take it easy, old man," Matt said.

"Where did you come from, Father?"

"Prek Phnou, outside Phnom Penh. I am a teacher."

"That's far away on foot."

"I walk week. More. I don't know. Lose track of everything. I hide in the day in forest, but Khmer Rouge leave me alone. They think I will die on my own."

"We are going to Phnom Penh," Tanner said, crouching down and snapping pictures of the man as he drank.

"Te!" No! he shouted. No! he shouted. "Te Kampuchea! Te Phnom Penh!" "Te Kampuchea! Te Phnom Penh!"

"It's okay, Father."

"They empty the city. The hospitals. Terrible. I see things I did not wish to live to see."

"Are you a person of Vietnam?" Helen asked.