Fire Summer. Thuy Da Lam
Woman Returns to Continue the Work for Freedom.” He scribbled in his journal, in which he had already drawn lines and intersections and landmarks with fanciful made-up names, mapping their route in detail from Tan Son Nhat International Airport to downtown Saigon. “It’s a justifiable story, isn’t it?”
The bus stopped at the Hilton Inn near the junction where an urban canal emptied into the Saigon River. When they disembarked, she saw JP’s deep frown. She quickly averted her gaze and squeezed in between a portly Frenchwoman and her stalky grandson.
The visitors tried to forget the annoyance of their delayed itineraries as they trailed Xuan through the common area on the ground floor. He informed them that the three-story inn was government-run and explained the list of rules for housekeeping, washing, and ironing. They had a six o’clock family-style dinner and a midnight curfew.
“It’s bloody house arrest,” a man grumbled.
Xuan stopped in front of an eight-by-ten framed picture of Vo Chi Cong on the wall. Next to the Chairman of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was a life-size portrait of Ho Chi Minh in the garden of the Presidential Palace in Hanoi some thirty years before. To the visitors’ amazement, Xuan read aloud the script beneath the portrait in near-perfect French—words copied from France’s 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.”
Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits . . . . la liberté, la propriété, la sûreté, et la résistance à l’oppression.
“Maia,” JP whispered, “how about you and me see the Pearl of the Orient tonight?”
“No.”
They hauled their belongings up the circular stairwell and paused at the landing window, through which they could see the sky bulging with rainclouds. “The second floor is for the gentlemen,” Xuan said, “the third, for the ladies.”
“You have plans?” JP asked.
“I’m visiting my grandmother.”
“Mind if I come along?”
Through the glass doors onto the veranda, the visitors watched the raindrops plummet into the Saigon River and flood the downtown streets where half-naked children splashed from puddle to puddle under the stormy sky.
Alone in the room, Maia sat on the bed and unzipped her bag. From beneath the travel kit of anti-malaria pills, iodine tablets, first-aid supplies, and a Swiss Army knife, she pulled out a bundle of clothes and unrolled it: a pair of black peasant pants, two light blouses, a pale yellow embroidered đồ bộ, and an old Dragonwell tin in which she carried her father’s ashes, a bit of which she kept in her octangular jade locket. She put the tin on the rattan nightstand beside the bed. She caressed the yellow outfit, fingering the floral embroidery around the heart-shaped neck of the top and the silkiness of its matching bottoms. The bon voyage gift was as thin and velvety as rose petals, more like nightwear than street clothes, but the giver had assured her that she would blend in with the local womenfolk. She repacked and placed her bag at the foot of the bed.
She lay down, listening to the footsteps on bamboo flooring in the adjacent rooms and the pouring rain outside. She closed her eyes and saw satisfied gazes. She had not thought of returning until she stood in the headquarters of the Independent Vietnam Coalition in Orange County, California. She had stripped off her T-shirt and blue jeans, slipped on the delicate outfit, and then posed for scrutiny in the hall full of exiled Vietnamese. She saw longing in their eyes and heard anguish in their voices. She thought of her deceased father, and her desire for the home they had left more than a decade before surged through her. She believed she would be the one to return.
When she embraced the collective dream of the exiles, she felt she had made the right decision: to help the Coalition contact her great-aunt, a former military commander the expatriates trusted was capable of instigating insurgency in the Central Highlands. Maia had not met her maternal grandmother’s sister, but her face had been etched indelibly on her mind. From an old newspaper clip, Great-Aunt Tien gazed out—an open smile, wild long hair, and skin the color of her black clothes. Recently released from reeducation camp, E. Tien was the diasporic hope for a democratic government and repatriation. Whereabouts unknown. Locate her. Update her on the news from the Little Saigon headquarters and its alliance with those along the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. Contact made, Maia’s mission would be complete.
A Glorious Return
WEST OF VIETNAM’S Central Highlands, somewhere between the Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces, the early monsoon flooded the hilly terrain. Between the Sesan and Srepok rivers, red soil surged in streams, washing out the trails of men who now huddled in a thatched-roof makeshift on bamboo stilts. Through the breaks in the green canopy, they could glimpse the sky and imagine a glorious return.
“Eh, Vinnie!” Lee called from the hut. “Come eat.” Lee stepped out on the veranda as rain sluiced off the peaked roof onto the flowing land. The aroma of charred kouprey and manioc diffused into the rain-soaked jungle. Lee removed his narrow-framed glasses and wiped the lenses on his peasant pajamas, a size too small and ill fit for his husky build. When he returned the glasses to his eyes, he peered again into the vaporous night.
Vinnie Huynh, outstretched on an old frayed hammock knotted from parachute nylon and strung from tree branches, chanted a bastardized “Katyusha” deliriously. The rain splashed on his pale ghostly face, drenched his ripped Levi’s and Ranchero Stars and Stripes boots, tapped and bounced off the M-16 on his chest.
“Thằng ngu dại,” Lee muttered and limped into the downpour in blackened US Army boots. Vinnie’s naiveté reminded Lee of his own youth before the draft more than two decades ago. Dead of pneumonia before you make good with karma, Lee’s old tutu would have said. He made a futile effort to wring the cold rain from his overgrown hair.
Lee kept a hand on Vinnie’s shoulder as they felt their way across the flooded campground. They stepped around bomb craters that overflowed like giant goblets of burgundy toasting the pouring sky. A Russian Minsk leaned against the crater’s edge where Vinnie had crashed and bathed the morning of his arrival.
“Wait! My wheels.” Vinnie broke free from his companion’s grip and waded toward the motorcycle, tugging the M-16 through the red muddy water.
“Leave it. And return the rifle to the cave.”
The men had never remained at one spot for long, but when they discovered a womb-like tunnel in the belly of the Annamite Range, they decided to camp there for the monsoon season. They buried the bones they found in the cave and made offerings, asking permission of the old dead to use the area as an ammunition depot. Outside the cave, they erected their shelters on bamboo stilts.
“Let me carry this,” Vinnie said, clutching the rifle close to his chest. “I’ll guard us against spies, VCs, wild beasts—” He stopped and then whispered, “Did you just see that?” He slowly aimed the M-16 at the shadow beyond the bamboo thicket. Before Lee could stop him, Vinnie squeezed the trigger.
The gunshots shattered the lulling pitter-patter of rain. Men bolted from the thatched hut with weapons in hand. Some fled to the ammunition depot while others dove into the jungle.
“Bravo! Bravo!” A pair of crippled hands clapped from the window where yellow lantern light illuminated the drizzling night. The paralyzed cook was the only one of twelve who did not participate in drills or emergencies. “Another kouprey?” Cook Cu asked. “Snakes, lizards, geckos—delicacies for my moonshine?”
A voice came from the cave. “What did he hit?”
“Nothing,” answered a man in a bush.
“The kid’s trigger-happy,” concluded another behind a rock.
Near the bamboo thicket, they found Kai, a darkskinned waif, who was foraging for wild berries and mushrooms. He seemed unrattled. The youngest of the group, Kai carried at his side a long machete he used to clear paths and mark trails through the dense jungle.
The