She Weeps Each Time You're Born (15 page)

Duc climbed back up into the pilothouse as Hai stood winding the cord. There was no guarantee the fishing net hadn't damaged the engine. There was no way of knowing how long they'd been burning oil. When he was ready, Duc gave the signal. Hai pulled the cord. The first few pulls nothing happened. The doctor's wife busied herself with her prayer beads. After the third try, Arun took the cord from Hai and laced it up. All eyes were on the engine. Only Rabbit on the pilothouse could see a series of black clouds massing on the horizon. Arun's grin was almost maniacal. He pulled, the muscles standing out all over his chest. No day but this. The engine kicked on. In the distance the black clouds were already sparking, their underbellies ravenous and flashing.

T
HE FOUR OF THEM WERE SITTING ON TOP OF THE PILOTHOUSE.
From time to time a few fat drops fell, but it wasn't enough to make them come down. Everywhere black clouds whipped over the moon. Tu thought they had another hour before the weather hit. It was the first extended period of time either of them had spent with their children—An on the end with his arm around Son, the scratch on his face still angry and red, Rabbit on the other side of Son with her steely expression, the constellation of freckles on her nose and cheeks. It felt like only yesterday that Tu had pulled her up out of the earth like a carrot, something you harvested from the dirt, the full rabbit moon keeping watch, the scent of honey perfuming the night.

What do you want to know, said An. The clouds were beginning to win. He almost had to shout over the clamoring of the waves, each one tipped with silver. It was bearable, but soon it wouldn't be. Everything, said Son.

An sat with his memories of the past four years. As soon as he'd heard Buon Me Thuot had fallen, he had walked home through the panicking crowds from the base in Qui Nhon. He took off his uniform along the way, shedding it piece by piece like a snake molting its skin. How he'd left it lying on a low brick wall, first making sure the pockets were empty and there were no identifying marks anywhere on it. As if he could shrug it all off just like that.

The first few weeks after reunification he'd stayed hidden, never leaving home. His neighbors knew, but he'd always been the best of them, the one willing to help someone in need—An always fixing a flat, lending someone money for medicine or schooling, An giving someone the last ripe mango from the fruit bowl beside the altar. There was no fear they'd give him away.

When the posters came out blanketing the city, Phuong saw his name. An had been a captain. Before the Americans had retreated, he'd worked on an American base. The posters said
things like
TRANSFORMATION
and
FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY
. Report with ten days' worth of food to the old army base to be evaluated. The expectation was that it would be for no more than two weeks. The government didn't have the resources for mass imprisonments. Phuong packed his bag. Ten days, she said. We are lucky the government recognizes that a boy needs his father. An nodded. There had been talk of blood running in the streets, but it hadn't happened, and it didn't look likely now.

He arrived an hour before the main gate opened. There were others already waiting. On base the lines were endless. He was surprised so many had shown up. There was a feeling of optimism in the air. Ten days and they could be done with it, the last half-century. They could finally be a country of brothers. Maybe he had been wrong to oppose the north. Inside he moved from line to line as he was moved up the chain. Each time the official on the other side of the table asked him in a friendly manner if he wanted to be a good citizen. More than you know, he said. An could feel the officers trying not to stare at his mismatched eyes. Toward late afternoon an official passed him a legal pad. Not unkindly, he was told to write out what he'd done during the war, where he'd served, what he'd been in charge of. The more detailed the better, the official said. Dates, names, places, strategies employed.

When his turn came, he was led into an empty room. He was told to sit down and wait. The guard took the legal pad with his account handwritten over seven pages. The only names he'd listed were names everyone knew, generals and such. On page five he admitted he had once shaken hands with McNamara. He was off duty, wearing tennis whites on his way to a match, when the Secretary just happened to be passing by. The American An worked with in Transport and Logistics, a Colonel Wallace, had pointed him out to the Secretary. This is Captain Nguyen. Pleased to meet you, said the Secretary, extending his
hand. The Secretary's grip was beyond perfect, not too hard, not too soft. Afterward An told Phuong there was no way the U.S. wouldn't win.

The room was windowless. He knew it was one the Americans had used for debriefings. When the fighter pilots came back from their bombing runs, they would come into this room and tell what they had seen, if there had been any new bridges thrown up overnight, any supply routes made obvious by the defoliation. There had been maps and aerial photos taped to these walls. Someone had even hung a photo of Ho Chi Minh on the back of the door with the eyes X-ed out.

The official who entered the room was middle-aged. Comrade Do was clean shaven, his cheeks sunken like most of the northerners. An noticed he had cuffed his left sleeve higher than the right, presumably to show off his new wristwatch. The northern soldiers were buying everything in sight—watches and refrigerators and TVs and radios, motorbikes, even cars, things they had never been allowed to own in the north. Secretly some of them felt betrayed. All these years, decades really, they'd been told that in the south only the top echelons of the corrupt capitalistic swine owned such items and now to come all the way down here only to discover that even middle-class families had gas stoves!

Comrade Do smiled. Overhead the light began to flicker. You want to be a good citizen, don't you, he asked. Of course. An said it before the comrade had even finished the question. With his left hand Comrade Do slid the yellow legal pad with An's account on it across the table. The watch flashed on his wrist. An realized the man was left-handed and that he didn't know that one wears a watch on the opposite wrist.

The new government wanted names. It wanted secrets. It wanted even the littlest things like who took out the trash and on which day of the week. An knew he could never tell enough.
It wasn't in his nature to harm others. He closed his eyes and thought of his children. At five, Son had the face of an old man. Still, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Somewhere he could hear a door closing, hinges creaking as it blew shut.

There was nothing else to do. He threw himself on the shoals. Said he'd worked with the Americans, that he had little involvement with the Vietnamese. Comrade Do licked the face of his watch a few times and began shining it with his elbow. The Americans left in '72, he said. What did you do after that? Something about the way the comrade licked the watch, the slowness of his movements, like a cat licking its paws after a kill. An sat back in his chair. He realized everything about his case had already been decided. He didn't say another word. It was out of his hands. A river sweeping him onward toward wherever it would bear him.

After three nights crammed in a holding cell, he was taken by truck five hours into the highlands. Back in the day the holding cell had been used to keep drunk American soldiers under lock and key until they sobered up. For three nights it housed more than thirty men. Each hour they rotated positions. Three men at a time were allowed to lie down. The rest of them stayed standing, the air by the wall like being smothered alive. At the front of the cell the ventilation was the freshest, though it meant you were mashed up against the iron bars. Men stepped away from the rungs with marks running the length of their faces.

Those first days there was a Buddhist monk in the cell. His orange robe shone like a sunbeam, head smooth as a globe. Somehow he spent three days kneeling. Even when the monk's eyes were open, An could tell he wasn't there, all earthly attachments severed. He never saw the monk take any of the paltry food and water they were handed once a day in two wooden bowls for the entire cell. The monk simply knelt by the plastic bucket they relieved themselves in, the bucket with a hairline
crack spidering down the side of it, which someone had tried to stop up with gum, urine and waste slowing leaking from the crack, the monk's robe soiling in the seepage. Time dripping on into more time. The monk didn't blink when men squatted to defecate right by his head.

At mealtime on the third day the guard read a list of names. An and ten others were called. They were told to prepare their things and leave without eating. None of them had anything to prepare. All their things had been confiscated the first day they came on base. By the time they got to the trucks, there were other prisoners already waiting inside along with two guards with old guns. The guards sat smoking and tossing their butts wherever, the ends still burning faintly, smoke curling off the tips. After an hour one man surreptitiously picked one up and took a drag. When the guard saw the smoke slowing forking out of the man's nose, he went over to where the man was sitting and hit him savagely in the shoulder with his gun. Then the guard lit a fresh cigarette and placed it in the center of the truck bed. They all sat watching as it burned down. Time burning on into more time. All the men with a cigarette habit squirmed in their seats, the men teased like dogs with pieces of meat. It was only the beginning. The guards didn't even laugh.

When the prisoners got off the trucks, there was nothing but jungle in every direction. They had to hike several hours. Sometimes it seemed like the guards didn't know where they were going. Under the canopy the heat felt like a blast furnace, even in the shade of the broad serrated leaves. The first few men through the path were quickly adorned with leeches on their necks, one of them as big as a plum and as dark. The very first man in line hacked at the brush with a machete, then after fifteen minutes he would hand it off to the next man and sink to the back of the line. The path was a trail animals used, scat everywhere, dried and fresh. An didn't know places like this still existed, miles and
miles that had never been bombed. Places where things would still grow.

After a few hours they were told to stop. They were eighty men standing in the jungle. All around them stood a ring of men with guns, some of the guards just boys, their uniforms too big or obviously borrowed. The prisoners were told their job was to clear the land, harvest the trees, build their own shelters, grow their own food, find any mines that might still be present, prove their loyalty, redeem themselves, regain their citizenship, keep an eye out for those among them unable to be rehabilitated, realize the error of their ways.

The first few nights they slept out in the open. Each morning their mosquito bites were so bad they looked like carriers of the pox. An's unit consisted of twenty men. There was a colonel who refused to do any work, but the others covered for him at first until they didn't. Each week new trucks would arrive filled with men expecting to stay ten days. Every time the trucks pulled up, An could see the situation reflected in the new arrivals' horrified faces. How fast a man physically deteriorates. The first month he lost twenty pounds.

The very first structures they were forced to build were a series of small boxes barely big enough for a man to stand up in. The first man put in the box was a former student leader named Nam. But I protested against Diem, Nam said over and over as they dragged him in one morning. Don't listen to him, the guard said. He is a traitor who has been to the great enemy. I have been to the United States, Nam conceded, but to lecture
against
the war. He said he'd been flown to America by anti-war organizations to speak with students in a place called Berkeley, another called Madison. The guards got his arms in and closed the door. A piece of wood shot through a bolt in the front to keep it closed. All morning in the hot sun they could hear Nam's cries
at first like a small child, then like a wounded animal, and then nothing. The guards made a show of taking him out that night when the others came back from clearing the jungle. When they opened the door, he fell on his face, his body shaking, mouth white with foam. Two men were ordered to carry him over to the spot where they all slept out in the open. By morning he was dead. Why, someone whispered as they walked into the jungle at the start of the day. To show us the power of the box, someone said. Why him, someone asked. Because he was weak and they didn't need him. No, someone else said. The man speaking carried a length of rope coiled around his arm, his voice a deep baritone. This is how he was meant to serve, the man said. Nobody said anything. And with that, they began to suspect one another.

In less than a week they'd built two barracks. The floors were dirt, and they were told not to hew any windows into the walls. The hardest part was cutting down the trees miles away in the jungle and dragging the logs to camp. They didn't understand why they had to use trees from so far away, but they didn't question it. The first night the men slept in the new barracks, the guards came around and bolted the door. By the end of the night the heat of fifty men created condensation on the roof, and the ceiling began to drip. There was a plastic bucket in the corner. In the long night if one of the men suffered from runny stool, it smelled as if they were all wallowing in it. Nobody said anything because they knew in time it would happen to them.

During the day there were various teams of twenty. Building was the best assignment. After a few weeks an architect arrived in one of the trucks, but the guards didn't care. Nobody is better than anyone else, they said. One of the supply sheds collapsed during a thunderstorm. For a while two of the barracks looked rickety until the men shored it up at the urgings of a newly arrived engineer. Even when someone needed medical attention,
the guards didn't turn to the numerous doctors in camp, three of them surgeons trained in France. When a man accidentally had two of his fingers cut off with an adze, he died within the week from a combination of infection and blood loss.