Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

Helen knew he was a liar but didn’t care. At this late date, personal preferences were a nicety. Should she start thinking other wars? South America? What would Linh think?

Matt’s hair was back in a ponytail, and he wore a fresh tie-dye shirt with a peace symbol on the chest. He looked almost presentable for an antiwar protester. He lifted Helen’s wrist and looked at the Montagnard bracelet. “Where’d you get that?”

“Years ago from a Special Forces guy. Before you ever took your first picture.” She lifted her chin toward his shirt. “You actually wear that to cover combat?”

“Sure. It’s a disguise.”

“It’s working. You don’t look like a photographer.”

“I totally dig this old-guard, ballbuster stuff.” Matt chuckled and refilled her champagne glass as it dangled in her hand, but she remained reclined, looking up at the stars. “And my mentor, old Tanner, with his Graham Greene vices and his Marine crap, too funny. It’s like you all read the same book.”

“Isn’t it amazing,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“The quiet. No planes, no artillery. I never knew the city any other way.” A wave of nostalgia and history and failure overwhelmed her, and she drank down her glass.

Matt poured her another and signaled to Tanner over her head. “So did the bracelet bring you luck?”

Helen shrugged. “I’m still here. Is that luck?”

Tanner came and sat down at her feet. “Tucked your VC partner safely away and now you’re ready to play with us, huh?”

“The two Matts have a proposition for you.”

She looked at the young man more closely. A boyish face, unlined and unknowing, a long thin nose with the sunburned skin peeling. He licked his lips, which were thick and pouting and didn’t match the rest of his face, and she realized he was wired up on speed. “Proposition away.”

He grinned a smirky kind of smile as if he were letting her in on some great prank. “It’s just a matter of time now before they kick us out, right? The excitement’s finished here.”

“So?”

“So… we’ll leave before they kick us out. But our way. A little car trip through Cambodia, stop off in Phompers. The only Western journalists to get pictures of what’s going down in the countryside. All the other reporters have been herded up in the French embassy.”

“Wow. That’s pretty risky.”

“That’s why we’re inviting you along,” Tanner said. “A bit of nostalgia. Our personal swan song.”

Tanner took risks, but she supposed he was most interested in saving his hide, vulture reputation notwithstanding. Matt had covered the Rangers in Hung Loc and gotten a good story out of it. Not so bad. Not so desperate.

“Cambodia?” she said, staring at him. The oldest of seductions-falling under the spell of one clearly more innocent than oneself.

“We go out through Thailand,” Tanner said. Now that she seemed actually to be listening to them, he was straightened into considering his own proposition.

“When?”

“First thing in the morning.”

Darrow had won the Pulitzer before he got to Vietnam. But he continued on, his fame growing to legend status as he became associated with this small, problematic Southeast Asian bush war. Always he wanted to cover one more action. She told herself she was not as obsessed as Darrow. She was a professional, accessing a potential gig. Tanner was seasoned; he knew the risks; he was going. So if it was doable, was she simply too afraid to push out to the limits as Darrow had done? A total shutout of the media. A once-in-a-lifetime thing. That puritan instinct. How could she let them-the bad guys, the ones who wanted to do their dirty work in the dark-win, when it was nothing more than another car trip on her way out?

As dinner broke up, Gary took her aside. “I heard what those two clowns are up to. You’re not going with them?”

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.

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 pass 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 lashing 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 pass 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, passing it back and forth among the three of them. He wore metallic blue-tinted sunglasses that reflected Helen’s image back to her.

“When did you first come here?” he asked.

“Why’re you wearing those glasses?” 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 shielded her from the ugly details but over the years, she had found them out. The relief of feeling nothing at those words.

“Fucking 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.