And he was me.
4
My daughter held my hand. Ruby and Henry sat at the reception desk and looked at me, Henry with the receiver still at his ear.
Saizarbitoria had put our set of photographs of the young woman’s body on Ruby’s desk, and they lay scattered beside the battered snapshot. I had sent Sancho to Powder Junction to ask some questions at the Wild Bunch Bar, and Lucian lay on the entryway bench, still thankfully sound asleep.
"Daddy?” She was nuzzled up close, standing right next to me with her arms trailing down mine and her chin at the scar tissue on my clavicle. “Daddy, is it possible...?”
I looked at her, and it was almost as if she wanted it to be true. “No.”
“Then why would she be here?”
“I have no idea.”
Ruby looked again, studying the photos with renewed vigor. I faced the blue yonder in her eyes, and she nodded. “Walt, they could be related.”
I compared their faces. There was a resemblance, but with the swelling and discoloration of the victim in our photos, it was hard to make the leap.
Or I simply didn’t want to.
Henry began speaking into the phone in Cheyenne; I could understand the references to Brandon White Buffalo, but that was about it.
She was smiling at the camera, and she had great teeth, just as I’d remembered. There was a nervousness in the smile, though, a wayward tension that showed that she wasn’t used to having her photograph taken.
I thought about the body of the dead young woman by the highway and tried to connect it with the smiling woman in the old photo and to the one in my memory. I reached down and turned one of our photographs so that the profile of the woman matched the snapshot. Some of the bone structure was the same.
I glanced at Henry, and it looked like he was on hold again. He nodded toward the pictures. “It is possible.”
I crossed to the bench beside the stairwell and sat, careful to avoid Lucian’s boots; the last thing I needed was for him to wake up. I sat there thinking and looked at the streaming patterns of sunlight on the hardwood floor. Thinking about Vietnam, about Tan Son Nhut and Mai Kim—remembering the heat, the strange light, and the moral ambiguity.
“Who was she?”
I was startled by Cady’s voice and looked back up. I thought about all the wayward memories that had been harassing me lately, the recrimination, doubt, injured pride, guilt, and all the bitterness of the moral debate over a long-dead war. I sat there with the same feeling I’d had in the tunnel when the big Indian had tried to choke me. I was choking now on a returning past that left me uneasy, restless, and unmoored.
I chewed at the skin in the inside of my mouth and stared at the floor. “She was a bar girl at an air force base where I was sent on an investigation.” I glanced up at Henry. “You met her, when you came down.”
He nodded. “Before Tet.”
“Yep.” My eyes went back to the sun-scoured pattern at our feet, and I watched the dust that floated in and out of a sunshine that seemed far away.
Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1967
Gusts of dust, pebbles, and dirt scoured the airfield as the two rotors of the big Chinook forced everyone to crouch and look away. The wind from the blades was enough to knock me down and lift tarmac sections of over a hundred pounds. I kept my eyes closed and waited for the stinging to stop. The big helicopter landed, the gun crew relaxed, and the .50 caliber machine guns went limp as if the will to fight had left the aircraft.
It had.
I felt a hand on my shoulder as someone gripped me and shoved me away from the swirling, filthy air. “Ya-tah-hey, white boy!”
I had gotten a message from battalion headquarters indicating priority one from Special Operations Group, Military Assistance Command. Everyone in the communications shack wanted to know what it was about, but I’d quietly taken the closed paper into the street outside to open and read the short note. “Hue and Dong Ha in last twenty-four. Stopping in for R & R tomorrow night, eighteen hundred. Nah-kohe.”
When I could see again, we were standing at the edge of the airstrip, and I noticed that the Bear was loaded for bear—unsecured weapons hung around him like casually prepared death. The Cheyenne Nation, RT One-Zero, Recon Team Wyoming, wore a claymore mine in a canvas satchel, with a homemade detonation device in his chest pocket, a string of the golf-ball-sized V-40 minigrenades, a CAR-15, and a sawed-off M79. He was weighed down with every ammunition pouch I knew of, along with a Special Forces tomahawk at his back. I tapped a finger on the explosive device at his chest. “You better disconnect the blooper on that thing; we’ve got a lot of loose radio frequency around here, and you’re liable to go off to the happy hunting ground.”
He didn’t move.
I shook my head and looked at him. “Did you think you were going to have to fight your way in?”
It was a tight, flat smile. “In or out; it makes little difference.”
He wasn’t traveling alone; beside him stood a recon Montagnard, as the French had named them. About half my height, the little guy was a fierce-looking individual issuing sullen looks from under his pith helmet. He also carried the cut-down version of the M16, as well as a suppressed .22 caliber High Standard, a 60 mm minimortar with ammo, and a Special Forces Randall Model 14 Bowie knife.
“Walt, this is Babysan Quang Sang.”
I stuck out my hand. “Glad to meet you.” He looked at my hand as if he’d never seen one. I waited a moment and then dropped it. "C’mon, I’ll buy you guys a beer.”
As we turned to go, Henry stepped into a lieutenant colonel who was headed the other way. The Bear’s movements slowed until he was absolutely still. “Watch where you are going.”
The light colonel stood there for a moment looking at the collective armament and at the tall Indian with the carved bone amulet in the image of a horse at his throat, the recon patch, and the ID bar that read STANDING BEAR. The half-bird then looked at the indig who in turn looked ready to pull his knife and leap for the officer’s throat. It took a moment for the colonel to respond, but when he did, he smiled. “That’s watch where you’re going, sir.”
It promised to be a stimulating forty-eight hours.
Action at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge was well under way when we arrived, and there were no tables available, so we sidled up to the bar like a threesome of fur trappers from the great northwest. I ordered three Tiger beers, turned to toast my best friend in the world, and yelled to be heard over the crowd. “Good to see you alive!”
“Good to be alive!” He looked behind him and saw that the tiny Montagnard was being ingested by the crowd. Henry set his beer down, turned to pick Babysan up, and placed him on the bar between us. Quang Sang smiled as if this were an everyday occurrence and drank his beer in one breath. Le Khang gave me a warning look from the other side of the bar but quickly went back to polishing the glassware when Henry took off his cap and rested it between them. “So, this is where you have been spending the war?”
“I sometimes reconnoiter to the piano.” He nodded his head, knowing full well I was lying. “Henry, they cut your hair.”
He smiled. “They cut yours, too.”
It was quiet for a moment, and I felt compelled to ask, “Where to next?”
He looked around but figured there weren’t any VC in the immediate vicinity. “Hill 861 and then back over the fence to Laos!”
“I didn’t know they were in the war.”
He shrugged and sipped his beer. “They are not.”
I nodded. “What’s on Hill 861?”
“Cong.” He smiled. “But there will be a lot less in twenty-four hours!” He nudged the Montagnard. “Powder River!”
The tiny bushman screamed out in a voice as high-pitched as those of most of the women in the bar. “Powder River! Mile-wiye an inch-deep letter buck!”
The Cheyenne Nation stood there, illuminating pride. “I figured if he was going to be on Recon Team Wyoming, he should know the history.”
“Boy howdy.”
“Would you like to hear his rendition of ‘Cowboy Joe’?”
I shook my head and looked back at Henry. “You’ve gone native.”
He smiled, but it was all teeth. “I have always been native.” He tipped his beer up and downed it in three swallows, slamming it down alongside Quang Sang’s knee. The tiny man followed suit, so I slammed mine and held up three fingers.
He flipped a thumb toward Babysan. “Do you know the story on these people?”
“A little.”
He leaned in close, and our more reasonably projected conversation took place over Babysan’s knees as I handed them their beers. “They’re a combination of Malay tribesmen, Chinese Han, Polynesians, and Mongols.” He smiled again, and again it was all teeth. “Did you know that the Mongols used to ride 250 miles a day?”
I made a face.
“Made the Pony Express look like pikers.” He took a sip of his beer. “They do not get along with the rest of the Vietnamese. They figure they are a bunch of effete snobs that wouldn’t last twenty minutes out in the bush. The lowlanders call them . . . ,” he looked around, and his eyes dismissed the other southern Vietnamese in the loud room, “. . . savages.”
I nodded along with him. “I get the point.”
“They make fun of them because their skin is darker and their pronunciation is different, but they routinely whip the VC with bows and arrows.”
“I got it.”
“They have a jungle economy, so money does not mean anything to them. The French used to pay them in beads. . . .”
“Got it.”
“Uncle Sam pays Quang Sang sixty bucks a month, and he’s the highest-paid yard in his tribe.” I stopped saying anything. “These people have one of the strongest warrior ethics of anyone I have ever met.” Even though we were close, his voice had risen to the previous level. “They have been abused by the Vietnamese, the Communists, the French, and now by us. And when this criminal war is over, I can guarantee you that they will pay the highest price.”
I took a breath and waited as the all-around radical calmed back down. Henry had always been a hothead, but it seemed as if his temper had gotten worse in the last few years; maybe it was the war, maybe it was the times. “I guess that ‘native’ remark got you a little angry.”
He took another swallow of his beer, reset his jaw, and looked at me some more. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I sometimes think I’m funny.” I watched him continue to watch me as I sipped my beer, a little slower now.
It was well into the witching hour. I had introduced Mai Kim to Henry and Babysan. We had transferred the party to the piano bench, and Henry and I watched as the two of them slowly danced to “Hurt So Bad.” I was accompanying Little Anthony and the Imperials with a one-finger melody. It was a big piano bench, which was good, because the Cheyenne Nation and I pretty much filled it up. He was turned toward the dance floor, while I was drunkenly focused on the piano keys.
Henry Standing Bear swayed with the music but broke the rhythm by bumping my shoulder. I turned to look at him, and he gestured with his beer toward the dance floor. I half turned on the bench and looked at the pair. They were the only dancers still out there, and they swayed in the green and red glow of the dim Christmas lights and in the shadows of the floods from the air force base.
After a few turns, Babysan Quang Sang gave me the thumbs-up. “I think he likes me.”
Henry smiled. “I think he likes her better. He was negotiating true love, but I told him you were paying for her services. I arranged it with the pilot over there.”
I shook my head and looked back toward the bar. Hollywood Hoang raised a glass of what looked like champagne to seal the deal, and I looked back at Mai Kim. “She’s a good kid.”
I could feel him studying the side of my face and turned back to the piano. He continued to watch me. “You get some?” I shrugged and shook my head no. “Why not?” He took a sip of his beer, I took a sip of mine, and we sat there in silence longer than sober people would. “You still dating that blonde back in Durant?”
As near as I could remember, Henry had only met Martha once at the county rodeo dance, but the Cheyenne Nation didn’t miss much. “I don’t know if I’d call it dating. I haven’t heard anything from her in about a month and a half.”
He snorted. "Walter...” He always called me Walter when he was going to drop a load of philosophical crap on me, as though the shorter version of my name couldn’t withstand the strain. “It is a war.”
“Even here, I noticed.”
“There is a certain suspension of the normal rules of engagement.”
“We’re not engaged.”
“You might as well be. Shit, Walt, you shake hands with a woman and you feel like you have to be true to her for the rest of your life.” I didn’t say anything but kept plinking, and the silence returned to our voices.
The USO had a piano tuner, of all things, who was touring Southeast Asia, but since the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge was off base, they hadn’t come here. I moved up an octave, but it was only marginally better.
“I am sorry.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him and turned. “What?”
He continued gazing at the dancers. “For yelling at you, I am sorry.”
“It’s not important.”
“Yes, it is.”
He was silent again.
The Bear didn’t make statements like this lightly, and I’d learned to pay attention to him when he spoke in this tone of voice. “I am not so sure that I am going to make it through this war, and I would not have you think poorly of me.”
I sat there staring at him and tried to think which part I wanted to argue with first, finally settling on the most important. “Of course you’re going to make it through this war.” He still didn’t say anything. “One day we’re going to be old, fat guys, and we’re going to sit around and drink beer and talk about getting me laid.” It sounded flat, even to me, so I stopped. “I know it’s hard out there....”