Tatjana Soli - The Lotus Eaters

“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 passed.

“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 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 piss, 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 damned 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 grass, 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 passed 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 analyzing 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-class 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 hell 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 Fucking Dakota?”

“I once heard my mama say nobody 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 pushing 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.”

“Fuck the TV guys.”

Helen almost envied them their glee, their lust for fame, their complete and unblushing 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 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 passed 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 eyeglasses like the old Vietnamese man’s.

“Teuk? Nuoc?” 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 shirt 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.