Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

Although their attention was strained, constantly on the lookout for an ambush or mines, the silence, as palpable as the sunlight, made them dreamy. Helen found long stretches of time when her mind was empty, her thoughts ceased; her present and immediate future and even her past, all receded. As free as she had ever felt in her life. The illusion grew within her that she had always been in this forest. At times it seemed as if they were the only human beings left on the earth, and it was simply a fantasy to think that cities like Saigon or, for that matter, Los Angeles existed.

Two nights after the incident with Samuels, Helen dropped off a pack of cigarettes on his bedroll. The next morning, she found a small pyramid of canned peaches on her pack. Samuels moved back in formation so that he walked in front of Helen again, taking back his role of big brother.

“You stay right behind me. I’m charmed. No mine is going to get me.”

On the fifth morning they reached their objective, a small plateau overlooking a valley with a village below. The relief on Horner’s face made Helen start to like the man. When they opened radio contact, they got orders to abandon their patrol and move as quickly as possible to the main road and head north. A convoy would pick them up en route and join them to two companies that had run into heavy NVA fire.

They fanned out and moved quickly down the gentle grass slope, their long, loose strides stirring up hundreds of greenish yellow grasshoppers that jumped waist-high in their path. Helen felt like the prow of a ship, grass brushing her thighs, flecks of green-gold insect life like the spray of water from a bow. The sun fell in heavy, flat planks, smothering sound, the great silence of the forest extending to the valley so that she felt they had been bewitched. Nature hushed and waiting for a misstep on their part to yawn awake.

They reached the rice paddies bordering the village. As far as they could see in any direction, no human being visible, their enchantment continued. The surface of the paddies feathered in the imperceptible breeze.

“Let’s have three men go through the paddies,” Horner said.

The men looked down or away. They weren’t returning to base but were heading to combat; no one wanted the extra danger of the paddy. The men had told Helen that Horner ordered the men who had died to scout a paddy after a villager confessed it was mined.

“Who wants to volunteer?” Horner again asked, and the men, again, remained silent.

Helen felt sick to her stomach, the calm of the last week gone. For the first time in the five days, she desperately needed Linh or Darrow.

Finally Samuels coughed. “Captain, we need to meet up with the convoy. Why don’t we skirt the paddy and village to reach the road quicker?”

“Negative. We will finish the original mission.”

Samuels took a deep breath, and Helen wanted to reach out a cautionary arm but didn’t.

“With all due respect, sir. An empty paddy in the middle of the day is a live one.”

Two of the men shook their heads and began to hand off extra equipment.

Horner nodded, satisfied. “We’ll need one more,” he said, staring down at his map.

“Oh, fuck it,” Samuels said, and threw off his equipment.

Helen crouched down and took a picture of the three men standing at the edge of the paddy. She got one picture of Samuels knee-deep in water, turning to give the other two a thumbs-up with his dragon-tattooed arm.

Ten minutes later she heard the shrill whistling of a mortar shell from the village. They all ducked, but Helen looked in time to see the explosion of water all around Samuels. The other two men in the paddy splashed through the water, reaching him as shells burst at their old positions. They all ran to the shelter of a paddy dike.

“Shit!” Horner yelled. He flattened on the ground, and when he saw Helen rise to take a shot, he screamed, “Down!” After a few minutes, the shelling stopped. The three men in the paddy scuttled back across the water and scrambled up the bank, collapsing next to Helen.

Samuels was panting. “Not a scratch.”

The men chuckled and spread out, gulped water from their canteens.

Figuring she had enough shots, Helen took off her lens and put the camera away, intending to have a smoke.

“That was close,” one of them said.

“Everyone’s okay,” Horner said.

“No thanks to you, stupid motherfucker,” Samuels said and glared up at Horner.

Horner scanned the village with his binoculars but said nothing. The other two soldiers remained silent. The air tense, Helen almost wished another mortar would fire just to distract them.

“Goddamn West Point asshole,” Samuels continued.

“Did you make it to the other side of the paddy?” Horner asked sadly.

Samuels blew air out through his lips in a slow hiss, the fight knocked out of him.

“No, I don’t think you did.” Horner looked tired but kindly, like a father urging his son to finish a necessary task. “Go back across.”

The other men shifted, but Horner held up his hand. “Just Samuels.”

No movement except for the scanning of Horner’s binoculars over the paddy.

“No,” Samuels said.

Horner sighed and put down the glasses. He brushed a dried weed off his shirt. “That’s an order.”

In a burst of energy, Samuels was on his feet, his revolver unholstered. “You go.”

Horner’s skin went red; he seemed more offended than frightened. “You’re looking at a court-martial, mister, unless you put that thing down,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. When Samuels didn’t move, he leaned forward. “Now, I said.”

“It’s not even loaded, you stupid fuck.” Before Horner could get close, Samuels turned the gun at his own head, grimaced, and fired. Everyone crouched for a minute, unable to comprehend what had happened.

As they laid him out, Horner got on the radio, ordering an immediate medevac. Helen knelt down next to the corpsman.

Samuels’s helmet was still on, and as the medic pulled off the compress wrapped under his nose to his neck, a wave of black passed over Helen’s eyes. The forehead, the eyes, the nose, all of it was the old Samuels, but the lower jaw was missing. Blood poured in luxuriant gushes down his chest. The entire crescent of his upper teeth was laid bare; she quickly turned away. The corpsman grabbed a large body compress and pressed it up into the hole beneath the nose.

“Hold this down tight, okay?”

Helen nodded and held, breath gone, pressure behind her eyes as if she were going to pass out.

“Don’t press on the neck,” the corpsman yelled as he punctured the skin, creating a trache hole. “You’ll block his breathing passage.”

Helen followed orders instinctually. She looked into Samuels’s eyes, and his look said he couldn’t believe in the reality of what had happened, either. She leaned down to his ear. “Don’t you give up on me.”

A few minutes later his body went into convulsions, the torso bouncing as if an electric current pulsed through him, legs stretched out and trembling, arms reaching, throwing Helen and the corpsman off.

“I need help to hold him down!”

One of the solders came, knelt on the other side of Samuels, and pinned his arms. The medic couldn’t give morphine because it was a head wound. After a minute, Samuels’s body relaxed, the tension loosened. His eyes, which had been wild and fierce with pain, now flattened out. When she looked into his eyes, his gaze was cool and impersonal, a great distance and solitude in them.

The medic wrapped an elastic bandage around the compress and over the helmet. “No need taking it off and having things spill out.”

Helen moved off, hands covered in blood. She didn’t want to dig out her bandanna from her camera bag, smearing blood on her equipment. Too afraid of snipers to get water from the paddy, she settled for wiping her hands on her pants. Horner sat on a rock alone, face crumpled and worn, years of training all unraveled in minutes.