Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

When she returned to Samuels, she concentrated on his tanned arms, still perfect, the dragon tattoo still wrapped around the muscled left forearm. She took his hand and held it to her.

When they placed him in the helicopter, Helen got on also. “I don’t want him to be alone.”

The corpsman squeezed her shoulder. “He’s not going to make it, okay? Nothing you can do either way to change that.”

At the field hospital, stretcher bearers ran Samuels into the tent. An hour passed. The noise of the planes and jeeps, the rushing of the medical staff, unreal after the silence of the forest.

Finally a nurse came out to have a cigarette and offered one to her. “Honey, you need to clean up.”

Helen wiped her hands against her pants and felt the dry crustiness of them.

“Over there,” the nurse said. “The supply building. Hot water and soap, a cot to lie down in. You need it.”

“Samuels?” Helen said, barely able to mumble the words, her mouth dry, tongue thick.

“Oh, sorry, honey. Didn’t make it to the operating table. Somebody should have told you.”

Helen nodded her head. Before, there had been this small, shiny thing inside her that kept her immune from what was happening, and now she knew it had only been her ignorance, and she felt herself falling into a deep, dark place.

“Come on,” the woman said. “Let’s get you cleaned up and fed.”

After the nurse went back on duty, Helen returned to the supply building. Inside, it was hot, close, and dim, the only light from a row of exposed lightbulbs at the front of the building and the cracks of light through the rough, uneven seams of the metal walls. Racks of metal shelving stood eight feet tall, piled with supplies as tight as the stacks in a library. The air smelled of cardboard and plastic. As promised, a small cot was made up in one of the rows.

Helen put her equipment underneath the cot, then stretched out. She rolled onto her side, dragging her muddy boots across the blanket, too tired to take them off. Her arms and legs and chest trembled so that she had to clench her teeth as if against cold, and yet her skin was bathed in sweat. Beyond tears. She longed for something, anything, even physical pain, to provide a diversion.

“ Adams.”

She did not know how much time had passed, but she woke to the sound of a helicopter coming in. The flights had been constant, the radioed battle that Horner’s unit was joining, the wounded piling in. She prayed that Horner had delayed the unit but knew he wouldn’t. Just as he wouldn’t take blame for breaking Samuels. Although now he would die in shame, Samuels had simply chosen the method of his suicide. Horner’s way would have earned him a metal for bravery. It sickened her. She heard a soldier calling her name again. This was her ride to rejoin the company.

She rolled off the cot and crawled on her hands and knees farther into the rows till she reached the farthest, darkest corner. She sat on the floor balled up, with her back against a box, her knees drawn into her chest, her forehead resting on them.

“ Adams! Where the hell is she?”

The door opened, and her name echoed against the thin metallic walls. Helen breathed in, held her breath until she could feel her pulse throbbing. The door slammed shut.

“Where did the girl photographer go?”

Helen rolled down on her side, the ground cool and smelling of moisture like a damp basement. She tucked her fist under her chin. When she closed her eyes, she saw Samuels as he had been next to her under the plastic partition, and then she fell asleep.

Hours later, she left the supply building and searched out the air controller.

“We couldn’t find you for the supply run.”

“I’ve got enough film, and I need to send it out. When’s the next flight to Danang?” She held her breath, the lie so obvious.

He looked at his clipboard, bored. “Cargo flight at sunset.”

“I’ll be in the mess tent.”

She sat on a bench and stared at the table. She stood at the LZ half an hour before the plane was ready to take off. She had already boarded when a soldier ran up with her camera bags that she had left behind, forgotten, in the supply building.

When Helen returned to Saigon, she was relieved to find Darrow and Linh on an assignment in Cam Ranh Bay. In the apartment, she continued her hiding, camped under the mint green bedspread, trying to forget what had happened, including her own humiliating part in it. A pain throbbed behind her eyes-she could not put Samuels out of her mind, his death like a disease inside her. The more she thought about it, the less she understood what had happened or whom to blame.

The film in the bags was an accusation; if she could not figure out Samuels’s intention, she couldn’t in good conscience broadcast the photos, so instead of mourning the loss of her friend, she had to act as judge on his actions. Obviously Horner had been in the wrong, had demoralized his men, but Samuels was a veteran of two tours. He should have been able to deal with Horner easily. Had he just been showing off, a terrible, stupid accident? Or had Samuels snapped? Had the waste and stupidity up to that moment finally done him in?

There were worse alternatives to consider. Had the lines begun to blur so much that Samuels simply didn’t care whether there was a bullet in the chamber or not?

In exasperation, Gary came to pick up the film himself, and she reluctantly let it go because to make an issue of it would be to convict Samuels. An assistant would develop the rolls. Gary took one look at Helen and called a doctor. He promised to return after the film was processed.

When the doctor examined her, he shook his head. “Exhaustion. Post-stress.”

“You’re my doctor, right? Call it vitamin deficiency.”

The sheets were dirty; she hadn’t changed them in weeks, too busy for normal life. Gingerly Gary sat on the edge of the bed. “What happened, honey bunny?” He didn’t want to be responsible for his star girl photographer going down and that becoming the story.

Helen shook her head. How could she not betray Samuels and still let the photos go out? “I don’t think the film’s any good.”

“They’re great shots. You just need to rest, okay?”

She leaned over, her eyes slipping away from him. “I don’t know what happened. Out there.” She knew what had happened inside, Samuels’s frustration. But hadn’t he really meant it as a dare, a bit of drama, a boyish prank?

The room was hot, and Gary ’s forehead beaded with sweat. “Why do you stay here? I pay you a lot better than living here.”

“It’s the real Vietnam.”

“Who the hell cares? Didn’t you notice? The real ’ Nam is a shit hole.” Gary kicked at a pillow on the floor. Bad enough to witness all the military casualties, but now his reporters were falling apart. Every day he lived with the guilt, sending them out, knowing the dangers, the scars it would leave either way. Pretending, pretending, his cowboy talk that none of it was so bad, that they’d be okay if they took precautions. And here was his girl getting all messed up.

“Why’s the place good enough to die for, then?”

“That’s real philosophical and deep and all, but I got my own problems. Look, sweetie, I don’t know when’s a good time to tell you, so here it is. The new assistant was rushed and used too much heat drying the negatives. The emulsion melted.”

The shock that the whole thing had been destroyed stunned her. “All of them?” Despite her doubt about releasing them, now the news knocked the wind out of her. It was clear now that she would never have sat on the photos. Samuels betrayed again, now by being forgotten.

“Of course not. About half. But listen, the ones left were good enough for another cover. And your fee doubled, too, so not so bad, huh?”