Tree of Smoke (60 page)

“And it’s got you down,” Skip said, “it’s really got you down.”

Now the colonel let himself sigh deeply. “A lot of trouble around here lately. My own load of crap, this business with Trung…your mother and all. I’m sorry…Skip, I’m sorry.”

“About my mother? Or about the trouble in general?”

“About all of it. About your mother, sure…About whatever part of it I can be blamed for. Which is most of it. But none of us are going to come out of here any too happy. We’ve lost this war. We’ve lost heart.”

Speak for yourself, Skip had an impulse to say, but recognized it instantly as reflexive optimism. He said, “Do you want a drink?”

“No, I don’t want a drink.”

“All right.”

“You go ahead.”

He called for Tho. The colonel said, “Mr. Tho made coffee and I sent him home.”

Skip went to the kitchen and poured himself a shot and drank it off in a single pull. He poured another and returned to his seat to face his uncle, all his movements weakened by dread. He saluted with the glass. This second swallow brought tears to his eyes, and the colonel said, “That’ll straighten your hairs!” with such brittle falseness he himself seemed brought up short by it. He sat with his coffee cup in his grip, squinting, against what light Skip couldn’t say, as the day was nearly down…“I would not be comforted by angels,” he said.

Skip was aware of feeling as a child before an adult—before his mother, for instance, in her fits of loneliness—of wanting only to get through the moment, waiting to hear, That’s all, you can go, waiting for an end to this violating intimacy.

For many seconds his uncle stared as if they’d never met before. “Did you hear Nixon’s inaugural address?”

“No,” Skip said. “Parts of it.”

“He talked about keeping commitments, preserving our honor—not about winning. Not about the future of Vietnam or the future of the kids we see around here. Nixon. I don’t care what he says, you can see it in his eyes: he’s played the whole game out in his mind, play by play, and we lose. That’s how he sees it. Who did you vote for? The Democrats?”

“Nobody. I forgot to get a ballot.”

“I’ve always voted with the Democrats, this time reluctantly. Humphrey would have pulled us out even quicker, I think. The big boys see the big picture. So we lose. In the big picture it doesn’t matter. When it comes to geopolitical balance, just the fact we’ve fought the war is enough. For the United States it’ll all be fine in the end. But I’m not fighting for the United States. I’m fighting for Lucky and Hao and folks like your cook and your housekeeper. I’m fighting for the freedom of real individuals here on this ground in Vietnam, and I hate to lose. It breaks my heart, Skip.”

“You think we’ll actually lose? Is that what you think, ultimately?”

“Ultimately?” His uncle seemed surprised by the word. “Ultimately I think…we’ll be forgiven. I believe we’ll wander in the darkness for a good long time, and some of what we do here will never be made right, but we will be forgiven. What about you? What do you think, Skip?”

“Uncle, we’re in a mess. A mess.”

“Half the Agency stayed out of this war. I as much as offered you Taipei, Skip. I could have made it happen.”

“I don’t mean the American effort here. I mean us, we, you, me, these other guys. We’re in trouble with our own outfit.”

“Really? That’s fine. I’ve never felt any loyalty to organizations, Skip. Just to my comrades-in-arms. You fight for that guy on your right and that guy on your left. It’s a cliché, but clichés are mostly true.”

“I feel that too.”

“Do you?”

“I mean about who you fight for. I truly do.”

“Will…what were you doing in Saigon?”

“Yes,” Skip said, “that’s what I was telling you.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“I mean I started to.”

“Then finish, okay?”

“Yes. Rick Voss sent a note out in the mail packet. He wanted to see me. I thought I’d better go. So…” He wished he hadn’t added, like a schoolboy, the last dangling word.

The colonel made as if to get up but instead remained there, caught in his own tides, rubbing at his face with his fingers. “I had dinner with Pitchfork the other night. I don’t think we passed two words of conversation. Just sat there on the terrace of the Yacht Club letting the river go by. Didn’t talk. Didn’t have to…

“One day in the camp, in Burma, in Forty Kilo, there in Burma, when I was down with a fever and it was assumed I would die, he gave me an egg. Boiled it and peeled it and fed it to me bit by bit. One of the finest things anybody’s ever done for me. An act of profound generosity. But he doesn’t remember it. Thinks it must have been somebody else. But it was him. I remember who it was. Anders Pitchfork gave me an egg.

“To outlive those terrors together and then just to sit and share a meal at a place like the Yacht Club, to share a bit of comfort—you have no idea. It’s better than when my little daughter, little four-year-old Annie, would reach up with her little hand and—walking along holding my little girl’s hand, Will, and I’d look down and see her looking up at me. The love among comrades is that intense.

“And all I can say is, Fuck Rick Voss. Fuck Voss for what he’s done. I can’t do anything else. I can’t show him even a hint of what he’s missed. He’ll never know. All I can do is say, Voss: Fuck you.”

Sands waited to be sure he was finished.

“Colonel, you and I are friends.”

The colonel said, “Yes, Skip, you and I are friends.”

“We’re together in this.”

The colonel lifted his coffee cup and held it in both hands. “You told Voss everything, right?”

“I did?”

“Didn’t you?”

“We had lunch.”

“What did he ask about?”

“I think he was curious about where I’ve been, but I didn’t give him a chance to ask. I’m too confused, to tell you the truth.”

“And did you leave him to enjoy a similar state of confusion?”

“Yes, sir, I’m pretty sure I did. There was another guy, Crodelle.”

“I don’t know him. Crodelle?”

“RSC.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody else was there. We had lunch. But I saw the German.”

“What German?”

“The guy from San Marcos. And Mindanao.”

“The so-called attaché? From the BND?”

“Wherever he’s from, he’s in Saigon now.”

“Then something’s up. All the more reason to get Trung out of here. The German was with Voss?”

“No. I saw him earlier, before the lunch.”

“The German.”

“Right. He was alone. He may have nothing to do with us.”

“If he’s not with us, he’s against us.” He looked hard at Skip. “Let’s just assume that about everybody.”

“I haven’t given anything away.”

“What were you doing with Voss?”

“We had lunch, lunch, lunch, that’s all.”

“This man Crodelle. What did he want?”

“He’s after your head. All our heads.”

“And they let you go?”

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel got up decisively as if in need of something but only stood by the window looking out at the yard, his knees locked, stringy calves outlined against the back of his slacks, big belly jutting forward, both hands way back on his hips, on his rump, nearly on his spine. An old man’s pose. Hard, sharp breaths. Suffocating with great emotion.

Skip said, “I sort of felt a certain sympathy on Voss’s part.”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t be fooled. With all respect to Rick Voss’s mother and with hope for the fate of his soul, that man is a goddamned son of a bitch.”

He sat down again on the divan and hiked the cuffs of his slacks. Brushed invisible crumbs from the fabric over his thighs. “Skip, listen to me. There’s no traveling side by side in the narrow places. In the narrow places you climb alone. It has to be enough to believe there’s somebody behind you.”

“I’m right behind you.”

“No. I think you’ve already started the process of saving your own ass. Go ahead and finish. Save yourself.”

“Uncle…”

“I think I’ll head back to the States. I was called back weeks ago.”

“I know. Crodelle told me.”

“I’ll do my best to keep you out of it.”

“Uncle, stay here.”

“I’ve put my hand to the plow. No turning back.”

“I mean here, right here, the villa. They don’t know about this place.”

“If they know anything, they know about this place—because you told them.”

“They never
asked
me. They only talked about Cao Phuc. As if they thought I was based there.”

“So you say.”

“They don’t know about Cao Quyen at all. Nothing. Whoever snitched us, he hasn’t told them.”

“Skip, I think it was you.”

“Uncle, no, no, no.”

“Then who? Not Storm.”

“I wouldn’t think so. But I don’t know.”

“No. He wouldn’t feel the pressure. He’s a monkey. That’s what we like about him.”

“Hao?”

“Hao’s a good man. And Trung’s his friend. Never happen.”

“What about Minh?”

“Lucky? He doesn’t seem positioned to be pressured either. And I’ve known him since he was a pup.”

“Then why do you accuse me? You’ve known me all my life. My father was your brother.”

“I can’t explain it, Skip. There’s just something about you. You have no loyalty at all.”

“Uncle. Colonel…I didn’t betray you.”

“Am I just a fool?”

“Uncle,” Skip said, “I love you. I would never do such a thing. I do love you, Uncle.”

“That may be right. That may just be right. But love and loyalty are two different things.” He gazed at Skip with a terrifying need in his eyes. “What do I think ultimately, finally? I think a young man finds his fortune in war. And I’m goddamn glad you made it, Will.” He sat back comfortably and sighed. “Talk to my ass: my head aches.”

Sands’s duties—though he had none—prevented him from attending the colonel’s memorial services, neither the one for the family two weeks later in Boston nor the military one the following month in Bethesda, Maryland. The colonel had been stabbed to death in Da Nang by a prostitute—the colonel’s throat had been cut by the brother of his Vietnamese mistress on the Mekong Delta—the colonel had suffered tortures unto death or been assassinated by enemy agents—so the story of his passing evolved through a series of reports into something not unrespectable.

When Sands learned of it he was out behind the villa watching three young boys harry a water buffalo from its rest in a mudhole across the creek. One kicked at its rump with the heel of his bare foot while the other two stung its spine with small switches. The ox, or the indications of it, its nostrils, its rack of horn, the bony hips and the peaks of several vertebrae, made no move. A woman, their mother, someone in authority, appeared from the blossoming bougainvillea above them and tempted the beast with a swatch of greens, and like some geologic fact it developed massively out of the ooze. Sands had heard a vehicle’s engine, and slamming doors. He realized it after the fact. Going toward the house he met Hao and Minh coming out to find him. Hao clutched several items of mail. Something in the way Minh held himself back, some mournful acknowledgment of a need for privacy between his elder and the man of the house—and Skip asked, “What is it?”

“Mr. Skip, maybe it will tell you that the colonel is dead.”

“Dead?”

“It’s bad stuff. We heard it from Mr. Sergeant. He passed me a letter for you.”

Without any power of speech Skip led them to the dining room and the three sat down at the table. One of the envelopes came minus a stamp. He cut it open with the blade of his Boy Scout pocketknife.

“I don’t believe it. I
can’t
believe it.” But he believed.

“Mr. Jimmy said it.”

He sought for words and heard himself say, “Mrs. Diu is making lunch.”

Neither Hao nor Minh replied.

“Where’s Trung?”

Hao said, “He’s on the Mekong. We took him.”

“Does he know about this?”

“Not yet. Minh will go there.”

“I can give you some money for him.”

“Just a little will be good.”

“All right.”

“Mrs. Diu is—have you eaten? I’ll tell her. Some soup. I’ll tell her.”

In amazement at the power of tiny necessities to surmount such a moment, he ordered that soup and rice be brought to the table. His guests ate slowly, and as quietly as possible, while Skip ignored his meal and opened the other two envelopes, which in fact contained three letters, and a poem: