Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

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 impressed if nothing else by the single-mindedness of the enemy. I can’t take their hate personally.”

“You aren’t one of those conspiracy-theory crazies?”

“Just remember,” he yelled as she ran outside, “where there’s smoke, there’s usually a bale of marijuana close-by.”

She groped her way in the darkness, and she didn’t know which was worse-her stomach or the fear of sniper fire. When she came back, they talked several more hours into the night, Frank so full of information that Helen wished she had a recorder on because she simply couldn’t absorb it all. Finally he stood and stretched. “Bye, sweetheart. I’m out tomorrow for a five-day patrol.”

“Take me with you,” she said.

“No way, baby girl.” He leaned down close to Helen’s ear, and she smelled chili and beer on his breath. “They want you to be part of their movie, don’t ever forget it.”

“Please let me go with you.” She blushed. After all, she was the girl with The Quiet American under her bed.

He went off to a corner of the room and came back with a small stitched bracelet. He motioned her to stick out her wrist. “Here. It’s from the Yards. Good people. Now you’re one of us.”

“That means no.”

“Can I ask you a favor?” Frank asked. “A smell of your hair?”

She nodded, and felt a scratch of whispers and a peck on her cheekbone.

“I want to know what’s really going on.”

He inhaled with a deep gulp. “I’m a sucker for beautiful hair.” He sighed. “I’ll never admit I told you this. My little present for you, so you can sleep better to night. Didn’t know your brother, but I knew Wagner’s unit went in to assassinate some local chieftain along the Laos border. They were dropped into this mud hole, didn’t know that the dry area on the map became a lake at the wrong time of the year, heavy and thick like quicksand, and they were stuck; when the bullets started flying they realized they had been ambushed; sitting ducks, the whole unit wiped out minutes off the plane. Crying shame. Shit like that doesn’t happen to us.”