Hillerman, Tony (33 page)

They stood beside the APC looking down at the long strip of ruin below them where two hundred Cambodians had once lived in a village called Neap.

“Why bomb there?” Osa said. “There couldn’t be any kind of road down there.”

“Dark of night,” Moon said. “They would have been flying very high, probably above thirty-five thousand feet. And they’d be coming all the way from Guam. It would be easy to miss by just one ridgeline.”

Osa was looking down at where Neap had been, saying nothing.

“Or maybe one of the planes had mechanical trouble. The pilot had to jettison his load.”

“One plane? Just one airplane could do all that?”

“I think they carry fifty bombs. Isn’t that what Nguyen was trying to tell us? Five hundred pounds of TNT per bomb. Or was it a thousand? Then multiply that by fifty.”

Osa was silent again, looking into the valley. “So maybe we’re not lost. Maybe the village was down there once.”

“Let’s say it was,” Moon said, thinking they could be on the other ridge in an hour, maybe less. They’d either find Phum Kampong and Reverend Damon or they wouldn’t. Either way, they’d be done with this. “Let’s get going.”

It wasn’t necessary. A man emerged from the trees behind the APC and stood watching them, a small thin man, slightly stooped, with gray hair cut short. Then he shouted, “Mrs. van Wing Garden.”

Osa remembered him. He was one of her brother’s converts from Phum Kampong whom she’d met on her last visit-one of the men Damon had been training to help him spread Christianity in the hills. He squatted beside the APC, small, thin, slightly stooped, his mustache gray, his eating rice with him, very glad to see Osa. In halting English he told them how he had heard their vehicle coming up the mountainside, thought it must be the Khmer Rouge returning, had hidden, had seen Osa standing in the hatch, had recognized her as the sister of Brother Damon, and had hurried along to try to catch them.

“You have come to replace your brother,” he said. “We all will thank you for that.”

Osa looked down at her feet. “Replace him? Is Damon not with you now?”

“Oh,” the man said. “You didn’t know about it.” He looked at Osa, then at Moon, expression rueful.

“Is he all right?” Moon asked.

“I was not at the village when the Khmer Rouge came. I live here, where I cut my wood and make my charcoal.” He motioned toward Via Ba. “I sell it over in Via Ba. But not now because nobody is left in Via Ba. But—”

Moon cut him off. “Where is Damon now? Will we find him at Phum Kampong?”

“They took him away. They took him and some of the Christians, and some of them they killed in the village.”

“But they didn’t kill Damon? He was still alive?”

“Down there,” the man said, pointing into the valley where Neap had once existed. “There we found his body.”

SAIGON
, South Vietnam, April 30 (UPI)— President Duong Van Minh announced today the unconditional surrender of the Saigon government and its military forces to the Vietcong.

RETRACING ONE’S STEPS IS EASY. Moon simply spun the APC around and headed it down the mountainside following the tracks the treads had made coming up. No problem. He peered downward through the driver’s viewing slot: a little pressure on the right steering bar when needed, then a little pressure on the left. Just think about that. No reason to think about strike three and you’re out. No niece, no bones, no brother.

Nguyen was perched in the hatch above. Osa slumped on the troopers’ bench. When he turned to glance at her, he’d see only the top of her head, looking at the rice sacks. What was she seeing in the burlap? What was she thinking of? He hoped she had been conscious of the probable time of Damon’s execution. From what the man had told them, his body had been found and buried about the day they’d slipped out of Puerto Princesa. Even if he had been the super-Moon that Ricky had fantasized, he couldn’t have kept that from happening. Or perhaps Osa would be remembering Damon had realized his dream to be a martyr. He hoped that would give her some comfort.

The man had described it as he had heard it from survivors at the village. He told it proudly, with a fair command of English vocabulary but a pronunciation that Moon guessed must be a mixture of Montagnard inflections and Damon’s own Dutch-based distortions. The Khmer Rouge had come at dawn, about twenty of them: two young men, a young woman, and the rest just boys. Some barely in their teens, barely big enough to carry their assault rifles. Everyone had been ordered out into the clearing where the villagers prepared their charcoal and joss sticks to be sold.

Then they burned the house that Damon used as his hospital. They untied Damon’s arms and the young woman told him to point to the villagers he had made into Christians. But Damon would not tell them.

Here the man had stopped. He had looked at Osa—obviously not wanting someone who had loved Damon to hear this. Go ahead, Osa had said. It was what Damon wanted. And so the man had continued. He said the Khmers would push someone out of the crowd and the question would be repeated, and Damon would say that only the person they were holding there would know whether or not they believed the words of Jesus. Then “they would hurt Brother Damon,” the man said, and ask the question again, and hurt him again. Finally one of the women of the village stepped out of the crowd and said she was a Christian. And then others stepped out, men, women, and children. The Khmers bound their arms and tied them all together and ordered the other villagers to kill them with clubs. But nobody would do it, so the woman shot two of those who refused. And one of the Khmer boys shot another one. Then the villagers would beat the Christians a little, but not hard. So another one was shot. Then the woman ordered it stopped. They left the Christians all tied together. The other young men they herded into a group. The woman said these men would be trained to help liberate their homeland from the capitalist oppressors. She hadn’t said what would be done with the Christians.

“She didn’t tell us, but we found out,” the man said. He walked to the edge of the clearing, pointed down into the valley, and said, “We found their bodies down there.”

That had ended it. Except the man had embraced Osa, and she had embraced him hard and for quite a while. The man told her something, speaking too low for Moon to overhear even if he had wanted to.

It was a hard climb up the final ridge before Vin Ba’s valley. Moon stopped where the trees were thin at the top to let the engine cool and to give everyone what he had been calling a “comfort break.” Nguyen stayed inside, fiddling with the radio, telling them something about the U.S. Embassy. About helicopters. “Americans gone home now,” he said sadly. “Congs coming in Saigon now.” Osa listened a moment, then came down the ramp, wandered into the trees, and sat on a fallen tree trunk. Moon stood beside the APC looking through the binoculars.

From here, too, you could see the Mekong— barely visible through the gap where the valley opened into its narrower Cambodian flood plain. There was just a flash of reflected sunlight through the haze, but it could only be the river. It was a dramatic view and Moon stared at it a long time-though he hated the humid haze and the heat and everything that dirty river represented to him. if he didn’t look at it, he would have to look at Osa, sitting on a fallen tree behind the APC. He’d have to try to think of something to say to her. Something sympathetic and consoling but not stupid. Not something that would make her cry. Or maybe that would be better. They said one shouldn’t hold grief in.

He turned away from the river and stood beside her, looking down. She looked up, the question in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Moon said.

She looked down, shook her head. “It’s okay.”

“Sorry I was too late.”

“It has nothing to do with late,” she said. “Or early.”

What do you say to that? He didn’t think of anything.

“I just didn’t believe him,” she said, looking up at Moon to see if he understood. “My brother, you know. He was always talking big. He was always full of his dreams.” She looked down again, studying her hands. “He told me when he went off to the seminary. I thought he was just being silly. Being romantic. We went on a kind of picnic, the day before he caught the plane. I said, ‘Damie, you’re being silly going off to be a minister. They’ll find out about you in a minute and toss you out. You’ll be right back here again and all of those girls who’ve been chasing after you, they’ll all be married and gone.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no. Not Damie. That was the Damie you used to know. Now—’” She stopped, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He’d been reading a biography of Francis of Assisi, I think it was. One of the great medieval saints. He said he was done with chasing after girls. From now on, he would chase after God.”

She glanced up at Moon.

“Well,” Moon said.

She smiled. “I remember it so well. I punched him on the shoulder. I said, ‘Come on, Damie. Snap out of it. You’re dreaming.’ And he said—all excited—‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m dreaming, Osa. I’m going to be one of God’s saints. If I am man enough.’”

She looked up at him, waiting.

“Well,” Moon said, “he was man enough. And the way I remember what they tried to teach us in our religion class, he made it in as a saint.”

“I loved him,” Osa said. “He was a crazy little brother, but I loved him.”

Just as he had feared, he had started her really crying. He sat on the tree trunk beside her and hugged her against him and let her weep.

On the long roll down the final hillside into Via Ba, Nguyen Nung’s fear of ambush kicked in again. High in the hills he had become relatively relaxed.

Osa had stood in the hatch, watching, while Nguyen sat on the bench fiddling with the radio. The news he was hearing seemed overwhelmingly bad—serious enough for Nguyen to tap Moon on the shoulder and try to explain things. First it was more about the Americans being “all gone home.” They’d been hearing that the previous evening, that helicopters were flying in and flying out loaded with refugees from the U.S. Embassy. Not much new there. Nguyen’s next burst of excitement brought Osa down from the hatch to join him in listening.

“What’s happening now?” Moon shouted.

“I guess it’s all over,” Osa said. “The war. I think Nguyen is saying that North Vietnamese tanks broke into the presidential palace and captured everybody. He thinks the man talking now is the new president, announcing the war is over. They seem to be broadcasting orders to South Vietnamese units, telling them to quit fighting and surrender.”

Moon digested that. The Communists had won, then. No more South Vietnam. But from their point of view, maybe the best possible news. He tried to imagine what would be happening. Wild celebrations by the winners. Confusion. Despair. People fleeing the country. Who would notice an M-l 13 APC rolling across the delta flying a Vietcong flag? Who would care?

The trail they were following leveled. The trees thinned as they reached the edge of the valley. Moon stopped the APC. Nguyen remained in the hatch above him, methodically studying the houses through the binoculars.

“Ho!” he shouted suddenly. “People!”

Moon reached up for the binoculars, but Nguyen had already handed them to Osa, standing in the other hatch. Moon waited, nervous. What now? What would they do about Mr. Lee?

“I see Mr. Lee,” Osa said. “And a woman is with him.” She ducked out of the hatch and handed Moon the glasses.

The woman looked to Moon more like a girl. A teenager, perhaps. She sat in the shade of a hut beside one of the houses with Lee sitting across from her. No one else was in sight. A peaceful scene. Moon remembered the pigs. Of course, someone would still be there. The owner of the tethered pigs would have heard their APC approaching this morning. Time enough to hide, but not to hide the pigs.

“Let’s go,” Moon said. He didn’t want to allow hope to revive. It was still impossible. But hope revived without permission.

Through the driver’s slit he could see Mr. Lee waiting beside the irrigation ditch, the girl standing at his side. Lee shouted something. Nguyen shouted an answer. They exchanged more shouts. Moon cut the ignition, stretched, forced himself to be patient for a dignified moment. Then he followed Osa and Nguyen out the rear ramp. Mr. Lee was expressing condolences and ‘Osa was accepting them with her usual grace.

“And you,” she said. “Did you find your
kam taap?”

Mr. Lee’s tired old face developed a smile of such luminous joy that no other answer was necessary. But he said, “Yes! Yes!” And pressed his hands in front of his chest, and said “Yes!” again.

“And even more wonderful,” he said, turning toward Moon, “we have good news for Mr. Mathias too. I think we have found the child.”

But not quite yet.

The girl with Mr. Lee was Ta Le Vinh, who was twelve and a second cousin of Eleth Vinh. As Mr. Lee described her presence, a villager cleaning the ditch had seen the Khmer Rouge coming and had come running with the warning. A dozen people had headed for the woods without stopping for anything. Others had waited to collect food, or clothing, or valuables. They had been caught and marched away. Five of the villagers who made it to the woods had kept going, intending to cross the mountains and find refuge with relatives until the territory was safe again. Seven stayed behind, including Ta Le, her parents, and Daje Vinh, who was the mother of Eleth Vinh. And with Daje Vinh was Lila Vinh, the baby.

Mr. Lee was explaining this, with Ta Le listening intently. “After you drove away this morning, I went out there.” And Mr. Lee indicated a high meadow across the irrigation ditch. “I noticed how the arms of the hill enclosed it, giving it the proper slope. An excellent
feng shui
site. So I walked up there and found several shrines and several
kam taap.
Many of these, too, had been desecrated by the Khmers. They had shot them with their automatic rifles, breaking them to pieces. And one of them was the
kam taap
we have been seeking.”

“Wonderful,” Osa said. “They hadn’t broken it up?”