War and Peace

Hồ Chí Minh City–the Mekong Delta, 2016

Dan pulled the duvet to his chest. It was morning. Linda was sitting on the other side of the bed. She’d been up for ages writing postcards to her friends and reading her guidebook. It must be the jet lag. They hadn’t talked since leaving Phong in the lobby and returning to their room the night before. He was relieved she was no longer accusing Phong of scamming them into helping him get to America. And she was no longer threatening to go back home.

Yesterday, when she left him at the post office, he’d hurried after her, but she’d refused to look at him. She didn’t talk to him in the hotel elevator. Once inside the room, however, she had yelled, “You asked Thien about GI kids and guess what? One shows up and tells you what a hard life he has. He looks poor, and he wants to go to America. It’s a scam. They want to take advantage of you!”

He’d tried to convince her that Phong sounded genuine, but she asked whether he knew enough Vietnamese to understand what was really going on. She brought up Kim and challenged him about honesty and truth. As she wept, he gave her Edith Hoh’s business card. “Your Dr. E. . . . She told us to call in case of a crisis, remember? If this isn’t a crisis, I don’t know what is.”

Linda dialed the number straight away. It was already 10:15 p.m. in Seattle but Dr. Hoh was both patient and helpful. She listened to them both, advised them to keep talking to each other. She told Linda it wasn’t uncommon for veterans to conceal their past; one of her clients had discovered her husband’s Vietnamese child only after the husband had passed away. Dr. Hoh made Dan promise to be honest with Linda from then on and to have Linda’s agreement on decisions regarding his search for Kim.

They talked for over an hour, and Linda gradually calmed down enough to agree to continue the city tour in the afternoon, and to meet Phong in the evening.

Dan curled his body into a fetal position inside the duvet. He wished he could have talked to Phong more, but he’d promised Linda to speak to him only in her presence. What a terrible life Phong had had. He hoped Kim hadn’t left his child outside an orphanage somewhere.

When Phong mentioned his longing for his father, he’d wanted to pull the younger man into his arms. He’d been afraid that his child would blame him, but he saw in Phong so much yearning, hope, and determination that overwhelmed any blame.

He needed to talk to Phong again, see what he could do to help—maybe he could share Phong’s story with his veteran friends, some of whom were connected to other vets online. What a pity he didn’t have Phong’s phone number, otherwise he could ask a hotel staff member to arrange for another meeting and help translate for the conversation. Thiên sucked as a translator; he was being a jerk and it had been clear the guy wasn’t translating parts of the conversation and Phong had looked frustrated.

The clock on the bedside table now showed 7:18 a.m. Linda started texting on her phone. She must be telling her friends about the fights she’d had with him. Those women must be cursing him for ruining her holiday. He closed his eyes and turned his back to her. Regardless of Linda’s admonitions, he intended to go ahead with his search. There was no way he’d allow her to control his life. If she worried about ads in newspapers and on TV, he’d go for DNA testing; it’d be more private.

Dan wished it was still night so he could get some more sleep. His body ached. He could feel the imminent attack of a headache. He reached for the bottle of water he’d left on the bedside table.

“All that time I was thinking he was a scammer, but he didn’t even take the money I tried to give him,” Linda suddenly said.

He choked on the water, and coughed to clear his airway. He turned to her. “You mean Phong?”

She nodded. “I told Jenna about him and she sent me some links to articles about GIs’ kids. So I did some more research—”

“What did you find?” He sat up.

She gave him her phone. On the screen was an article published in the Washington Post, entitled “Legacies of War.” As he read, his eyes teared at the story of Võ Hữu Nhân finding his American family after forty-six years; he learned about Amerasians’ struggles. The article ended with a story of an Amerasian man, Nguyễn Thành Trung, who said that if he ever found his father, he would ask just one question: “Why did you leave me here?”

Dan stared at the question. If he told his child he had just been twenty years old, scared as hell, would his child forgive him?

Linda moved closer and they looked at more stories online, so many stories: Of Amerasians’ desperate search for their parents, of fathers rejecting their Amerasian children, of American vets traveling back to Việt Nam to find their kids, of happy reunions, of heartbreaks.

As he read, he hoped for a glimpse of light that would lead him to Kim and his child. But there was nothing about the Hollywood Bar nor the two sisters who’d worked there. From the phone, strangers stared at him; strangers who could well be his family.

He couldn’t believe he’d ignored this for so long. Over the years, sometimes it had crossed his mind that he should search the internet. But he’d resisted the urge. He’d buried the past and decided that it would cause him more pain to dig it up again. He’d tried to convince himself that Kim and his child were better off without him, and that the child wasn’t even his.

“This whole thing is so messy.” Linda pulled up an article. “Have a look . . . It’s about a woman who didn’t want to be found. Her family was destroyed because her GI came back looking for her. She was married and hadn’t told a soul about her past.”

Dan had imagined the family Kim had, and her children, but not the consequences his search for her might bring. What if Kim wanted nothing to do with him? What if he could crash the life she’d worked hard to rebuild by finding her?

A ding on the phone. “That’s probably Jenna.” Linda took her phone back. She read the message, then looked up. “She wants to give us some money so we can buy some books and clothes for Phong’s kids.”

The hotel’s phone rang. Dan reached for the receiver.

“Good morning, Sir . . . I’m calling from reception,” a male voice said. “Mr. Thiên is here. He would like to talk to you alone, without Madam. He asks if you can come downstairs.”

“I’ll be there right away.” Dan put the phone down. Yesterday morning, when Thiên said he would quit, Dan had snickered. He hated the guy, and felt glad never to see him again. But in the afternoon, as they continued the city tour, he could see how helpful Thiên was to Linda. He was accommodating to her requests and enabled her to get good deals at the Bến Thành Market, the tailor, and art galleries. Dan thought Thiên had probably changed his mind about quitting. After all, the guy was earning good money from this trip, and probably also commissions from all those sales. But Thiên being so early couldn’t be good news.

He pulled on his jeans. “It’s Thien.”

Linda looked at the clock. “The tour starts in an hour. Or am I wrong?”

He zipped up his fly. “He wants to talk to me . . . alone.”

“What? Another secret you guys want to hide from me?”

“No more secrets, I promise. I’ll tell you what he says.”

Linda frowned. “Something is going on. Yesterday you two behaved as if you despised each other. I was the one who had to beg him to translate for your meeting with Phong, remember? Now that I think about it, he was pissed when you shouted at him in front of the post office.”

“Let me go deal with it, okay?”

She yanked at the curtain, opening it wide, refusing to look at him.

Standing in the hotel’s reception lounge, Thiên slapped an envelope onto the table. “Money you paid me in advance.” He dropped the hundred-dollar bill onto the envelope. “Good luck with finding your girlfriend.”

Dan wanted to gather the money, tell Thiên to fuck off, and go upstairs, but he couldn’t afford to upset Linda even more. If he let Thiên quit, Linda would explode. Thiên had booked all their hotels, arranged for transport and activities for the whole two weeks.

He sighed. “Let’s sit down and have a talk, shall we? Mr. Thien . . . you’ve helped a lot of vets, you know how much pressure I’ve been under.”

“No vet is as rude as you. You talk down to me, treat me like shit. I already told Duy and Như I cannot help you. I don’t care that your wife is their friend. If you need a guide, ask reception.”

“I thought you were professional, but you dump your customers during a tour? Don’t forget you’re the one who started all this trouble. You got drunk and told Linda.”

“I told your wife your secret, I know. . . . I didn’t mean to. But I’m glad she’s upset. She should be very angry. Because of you guys, we lost the war. I was fighting my ass off, and here you were, having a good time with your prostitute, getting her pregnant.” Thiên clucked his tongue. “All those years, people said we lost because we Southern Việt soldiers were coward, but the coward ones are you. You fucked our women and you don’t dare accept responsibility.”

Thiên’s words hit Dan so hard, he was blinded with anger and couldn’t acknowledge some of the truth. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you guys were all angels. I saw with my own eyes how some of you behaved. As for losing the war, ask your corrupt, incapable former leaders . . . If someone were to blame, it’s them.”

“Ha, at least they stayed and fought,” Thiên responded. “We were here fighting when you ran off, went home to your mama, remember? You left us here so the Communist had fun with us. Yeah, they had fun. They put us in reeducation camps. I spent five years in those prisons. Five years and they still call me Ngụy. That means illegitimate, you think that’s fair? You think it’s fair when they still treat me like the enemy but they welcome you back? You’re their rich tourists now. You’re their friends. I served your damn war and now I serve you.”

Dan thought of his dead friends. There was no way that he and his comrades should be blamed for the shit the Vietnamese had done to each other. It was their civil war. Thiên had suffered, but so had millions of Americans. He was too tired and had no time for another argument. Linda could come down any minute. “Okay, I hear you,” he said. “Can we just sit down and have a civilized conversation?” He wished the receptionists would stop glancing at them from across the lobby.

Thiên shook his head but threw his body onto an armchair.

“Mr. Thien .” Dan leaned across the table. “I’m here to make amends, and I need your help. Please . . . Linda was looking forward so much to this trip. You’ve been really helpful to her and I appreciate that very much. I know that I’ve been moody, but from now on I’ll try to keep my emotions in check.”

“Oh yeah? I not sure your drama is over yet. Now your wife knows about Kim, what are you going to do? You forget about Kim to make your wife happy?”

“Linda is a compassionate person. She’ll come around. She’ll understand that I need to look for Kim and my child.” As Dan uttered those words, he wondered if searching for Kim would be the right thing to do even if Linda agreed.

“If you want my advice, I say you ignore Linda. Women can’t pee higher than the top of grass blades.”

“Sorry? Women what?”

“They can’t piss high. That’s our proverb. Women cannot think big. So, are you man enough to look for your child, or are you afraid of wife, crawl under her skirt?”

“Of course I want to find my child—”

“Yeah, that’s the right thing to do.” Thiên sat up. “Everyone needs a father. A child with no father is a home without its roof. That’s our proverb, too. Because you want to search for your child, I’ll help you. But if you shout at me again, we’re done, understood?”

“Okay, but I need you to remember something.” Dan looked Thiên squarely in the eye. “I was an officer here. You can advise me but there’s no way I’ll accept being told what to do.”

As the words left his mouth, Dan wondered why he felt the need to express his authority over a person whose help he needed. Besides, he’d spent decades trying to escape his military title.

“Yeah, I know you were an important guy.” Thiên snorted. “But don’t expect me to salute you. For four years, I was a Marine Captain.”

Dan blinked. Up to now, he’d thought of Thiên mainly as a tour guide. He hadn’t stopped to consider the battles Thiên had fought, the men Thiên had led, the sacrifices Thiên might have made for those men. “Where were you stationed?” he asked. “With your rank, I think you could have immigrated to the U.S. if you wanted to?”

“I was in Huế and Quảng Trị.” Thiên stared at the table between them.

Dan shuddered. Those areas sandwiched between the North and the South had been soaked in the most blood. Despite their distance from Sài Gòn, he’d had to fly there occasionally on missions. He remembered picking up bodies near Huế. Intestines spilling out of open abdomens. Faces half blown off. Shredded limbs. The weight of the dead would pin his helicopter down as he tried to lift it off the ground. The smell of blood would cling to him even after he’d washed himself. The redness of it.

“With my years in the camps afterward,” Thiên said, “I qualified for the Orderly Departure Program, but my mother didn’t want to go. She said she was born here, she must die here. I’m her only son, how could I have left my mother behind?”

Dan looked at Thiên, at his gray hair and many wrinkles. The Vietnamese had suffered so much and had to make such difficult decisions. He recalled the stories he’d read, about families separating themselves onto different boats as they escaped Việt Nam to ensure at least someone would survive.

“I still have nightmares about those times, you know . . .” Thiên squeezed his forehead. “About Huế and Quảng Trị, the camps, the years after my release when I had no rights as a citizen . . . But I’m better off than my dead comrades. There’s no memorial for them here. Some graves of my friends were destroyed, dug up.” Thiên’s scar twitched. “You American vets have benefits, paid by your government. We have nothing. You have a wall in Washington, but we aren’t acknowledged there. We fought for you, alongside you, yet you pretend we don’t exist.”

Dan sat in silence. In his subconscious, he’d brushed aside the stories of ARVN veterans like Thiên. On his bookshelves there was no book written by any ARVN veteran, either.

Thiên looked at his watch. “Oh . . . I have to bring granddaughter to school.” He stood up.

Dan gathered the money, gave it to Thiên. “You can’t quit now, please . . .”

Thiên sighed, stuffed the money into his backpack and slung it over his shoulders.

“Hold on,” Dan said, “I still owe you. Our bike ride the other night, and your overtime.” He gave Thiên fifty dollars and walked Thiên to the entrance. “Let’s go to your wife’s shop later today, I think Linda would like to meet her, too.”

Nhân’s shop occupied the living room of the house she and Thiên owned. The building was tiny, situated within a maze of winding alleys, but it was neat: the rooftop and balconies were filled with pots of healthy-looking lemongrass. Up close, the plants looked like razor grass, but their use was versatile. With Thiên translating, Nhân explained the health benefits of lemongrass: it could cure a cold, stomachache, cough, or diarrhea, and help boost digestion. According to Nhân, the Vietnamese often surrounded their gardens with lemongrass bushes to keep mosquitoes and other insects away.

Dan and Linda went with Thiên’s family to dinner at a street restaurant where chicken, beef, squid, prawn, okra, and eggplants were marinated with minced ginger, chili, and lemongrass and grilled on coals right in front of them. Sitting there, surrounded by locals, listening to them chat in their own language, Dan recognized something unique about Sài Gòn that had survived the war: the charm of its people, their incredible energy and resourcefulness. In his nightmares, the city was war-torn, ravaged with violence like the day he’d left it. Now, seeing it thrive brought him a sense of peace and consolation. He was starting to understand why other vets had said the return trip had helped them.

Linda lowered the car window and snapped pictures of the emerald rice fields rolling alongside the road that led to the Mekong Delta. The wind lifted her hair, wafting a refreshing scent of lemongrass Dan’s way. She’d used the shampoo made by Nhân and said she should have bought more.

On a rice field, two farmers stood opposite each other, holding long pieces of rope, swinging a bucket to scoop water from a stream onto a field. In another field, a boy was riding a water buffalo, his body a mere mark of punctuation on the great sentence of the animal. As Linda waved and took photos, the boy threw both hands into the air, beaming.

Dan told himself he should print Linda’s photos from this trip and display them around the house. Perhaps the smiling child could replace his dreams of buffaloes and boys with their bodies ripped apart.

Yesterday, when Linda took a nap after their morning tour and before visiting Thiên’s house, he’d gone to the hotel’s business center. He needed to know more before he could decide whether to look for Kim and his child. An online search for “Hollywood Bar, Saigon, 1969” yielded no results. Plenty came up when he looked for “Bars, Saigon, 1969,” but there was nothing about the Hollywood. The information he found led him to more stories about Amerasian children. There was so much for him to read and learn.

Now, lush fields and gardens soothed his eyes. He couldn’t believe he was venturing into the heart of the Mekong Delta again. On his first mission here, he’d been amazed by the many shades of green from rivers, lakes, crops, and forests glistening below his helicopter; it wasn’t until later that he’d let himself see, among that green, the many shades of black and brown: scorched villages, burnt forests, deserted fields, bomb craters, and scattered bodies of people and animals.

He studied the thatched-roof houses surrounded by ponds and gardens where chickens and pigs wandered. Kim and his child could be living in one of them.

Their car approached a small town and traffic slowed.

“Mr. Thien, is your phone on? We wouldn’t want to miss Phong if he called,” Linda said. “My friend Jenna keeps asking if we’ve talked to him yet.”

Thiên held up his phone. “Maximum volume, Madam. Last night, I asked him to call me today, but he hasn’t.”

“Too bad we don’t have his address,” Dan said.

“We won’t be far from his hometown. If he call, we can visit him.”

Dan nodded, feeling grateful for Thiên’s help, thinking about Thiên’s struggles. Thiên’s only son was divorced. Like many, he worked as a construction worker in Saudi Arabia, leaving his only daughter for Thiên and Nhân to take care of. Dan had been astonished to learn from Thiên that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were working overseas as laborers. Thiên’s former daughter-in-law was in Taiwan taking care of an elderly Taiwanese man. She hadn’t seen her daughter for several years.

Thiên and his family would have had a very different life if the winning regime had acted differently. Thiên said that in the late eighties, his son had passed the university entrance exam but wasn’t allowed to study. Many children of former ARVN soldiers had experienced various forms of discrimination, some of which continued today. So strange, because everybody seemed to welcome returning American vets.

Linda cocked her head. “Is that a market? Can we stop to have a look?”

To their right, sellers and buyers were gathering on a dirt path that cut into the main road. “Great idea,” Dan said. Since last night’s adventures around Thiên’s neighborhood, he was excited to experience more of the local life.

Thiên parked. Linda handed Dan his cap, put on her sun hat.

The market was bursting with activity. Vendors squatted behind bamboo baskets brimming with vegetables, metal trays piled with meat, buckets filled with flopping fish, wriggling eels, or crawling crabs. Not far away, women stood behind pots of green plants and yellow and pink flowers.

Linda pointed her phone at Dan. “Say hello to our friends,” she beamed. He waved back awkwardly, realizing that she was doing a livestream on her social media. Thiên had gotten her a local SIM card with internet connection.

When Linda moved her camera onto Thiên, who was bargaining with a sweet potato seller, Dan continued on the dirt path. The happy look on people’s faces and the sound of their language reminded him of how much, at first, he’d adored the way of life here. If it wasn’t for the war, he’d love to come back regularly with Linda once they retired. They could escape the wet, cold Seattle winter to bask under the sun here, somewhere near the beach. The year-round warm weather of South Việt Nam would be good for Linda’s arthritis.

He ventured deeper into the market, and found himself in the middle of a crowd. People were speaking loudly; some were almost shouting. The breeze that had welcomed him at the market entrance had disappeared, leaving him alone with the sun’s intense heat. Sweat started to trickle down his neck and forehead. As he passed the meat vendors, the smell of blood nauseated him. He had to go back to the car. He looked for Linda but couldn’t see her. A cold feeling ran through his body. He imagined the VC, their faces smeared with mud, appearing from surrounding rice fields and pulling her away.

Several bells clanged. He turned around. Three bicycles with bamboo cages piled high approached. More than a hundred chickens were imprisoned inside the cages, their eyes black, their mouths gasping. Some were squawking, fighting for a place to stand, their feathers fluttering into the air. The bells continued to clang. “Tránh ra. Tránh ra,” a rider shouted at the women whose baskets blocked his path. The shouts drilled into Dan’s temples.

He gazed at the bicycles and saw himself staring down at them from his helicopter. “Those motherfuckers,” Rappa was screaming into the intercom, “they’re carrying ammo!” On the trail that zigzagged through the forest, a line of gooks were bicycling. As his helicopter neared, those on the ground looked up at him. They dropped their bikes, ran for cover, but the trees around them had been burnt by napalm, their charred branches grasping at the sky. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack. The gunner and the crew chief’s M60s coughed fire. As his aircraft lowered, Dan blinked. The dead looked young. Too young. They lay motionless on the ground, their bodies punctured by bullets. Blood had soaked their white shirts, which glistened under the sun. His eyes searched frantically for weapons. None. Next to him Reggie McNair was staring through the plexiglass, his mouth working silently, his hands white-knuckled on the cyclic pitch control.

“Oh fuck! They’re wearing school uniforms. Oh fuck!” Rappa cried, standing by the helicopter’s door, next to his M60.

“It’s their fault they ran from us. Their own damn fault,” Hardesty said.

“NO . . .” Dan howled and the corpses sat up, became the row of vendors who were smiling, chatting to each other, bargaining.

He walked to a tree, knocked his head against the trunk.

Noise rose around him. Sellers called out their wares. A child laughed.

Someone pulled his shirtsleeve. An old, toothless woman. Her mouth caved in as she smiled. She made a drinking gesture, offering him something with both hands: a cup of water.

He shook his head and walked away. He didn’t deserve kindness. Not from Vietnamese people.

He focused on his breathing. In and out. In and out. When would this end?

“Are you okay, Sir?”

A young man stood in front of him, his worried-looking face framed by a pair of square glasses.

“Yeah, thanks.” Dan turned to go back to the car but Linda appeared, her phone in front of her.

“Smile for the camera.” She snapped a photo of Dan and the young man.

“Oh, you caught me off guard.” The young man laughed. “I bet I look terrible,” he said, his white shirt blotched red with blood as he touched his exposed intestines.

Dan closed his eyes, shook his head, and turned away. He tried to control his breathing. In and out. In and out. As his tremors eased, he pulled his cap lower. That day many years ago, coming back from the mission, his crew chief had filed a report of ten enemies killed and five probables. Dan had said nothing about the children lying dead on the forest floor being counted as the enemy. As he lifted his chopper, he’d caught a glimpse of their school bags tethered to the back of their bikes.

How had the parents of those children coped? How could one cope with the pain of losing a child?

Opposite him, a boy was kneeling, arranging ears of corn onto a mat together with his mother. The boy looked the same age as the children he’d helped murder.

He wanted to kneel in front of the boy, take him by the shoulder, look into his eyes and say he was sorry.

Linda was still talking to the young man in glasses.

Thiên appeared. He lifted several bags high up, beaming. “My wife loves food from the countryside. Oh . . . that rice over there looks good. Give me another minute, please.”

Thiên squatted down in front of a bamboo basket heaped with white grains. How lucky for the guy, Dan thought, that he could get so excited about such everyday things.

The sun burned down on Dan as he waited. His throat was dry, sweat soaking the back of his shirt. He edged next to Linda, hoping she’d notice that he wanted to leave.

“Now . . . tell me where you learned your English.” Linda was asking the young man. “I think you speak it better than me.”

“No way.” The man laughed. “I learned it at university, and I hope you have no problem understanding me, since I’m an English teacher.”

“You are? That’s wonderful.”

“I am between my classes. I teach at the local primary school.” The man patted the black case he was holding.

Dan reached for Linda’s arm. “Can we please go?”

She turned to him and gasped. “Are you okay?”

“A heat stroke can be dangerous, Sir,” said the man. “I think you should sit down. Come to my house for a cool drink?” He gestured across the rice fields toward a low house nestled in a garden filled with tall trees.

“Thanks, but I’d rather get to our hotel early,” Dan said. They still had a long way to go and he didn’t want to travel in twilight or the dark. Not in the Mekong Delta.

“It’s no trouble at all, Sir. Really.”

Linda squeezed Dan’s hand. “Come on. Didn’t you say we came here to experience the authentic Vietnam?”

As they left the market together with Thiên, Dan gazed at the rice fields. A breeze blew, sending ripple after ripple across the vast green. He let his vision fill with the rolling waves as his breath slowed.

The young man introduced himself as Thanh. His house, with its sloped roof of red tiles and wooden pillars, looked like a sanctuary. Thanh unlocked the door. As they took off their shoes and entered, the soothing scent of incense welcomed Dan. The sight of a family altar greeted him: a high table laden with plates of colorful fruits, two vases of radiant white and yellow chrysanthemums, a row of ancient-looking portraits, and a blue ceramic holder from which sticks of incense smoldered, their perfume both enchanting and mysterious.

“Today is my grandmother’s sixth death anniversary,” Thanh said. “My mother is out shopping. You should see how many dishes she’ll be making. . . . But we’ll need plenty of food. Many of our relatives will visit us tonight.”

Dan recalled how Kim had cooked and prayed to her grandparents on their death anniversaries. She’d believed that the dead could return to enjoy the food, and that incense smoke could help the living communicate with those who’d passed away. Dan wished he could believe in it, too.

“Meet my father.” Thanh led them toward a man who sat in an armchair in the living room. Thanh bent down, telling the man something in Vietnamese.

The man looked up, his eyes blank. As they shook hands, Dan studied the man’s haggard face. Was he in pain? He sat with his back hunched, his feet on the armchair, his knees against his chest.

“How are you doing today?” Dan asked. Thanh translated, and the man’s face lifted. His smile was as timid as a child’s.

“Nice to meet you,” Linda said and the man gave her the same facial expression.

“What happened to him?” Thiên whispered as they sat on low chairs around an equally low table on the other side of the living room, near the altar. Thanh had opened a window and a cicada chorus streamed in, punctured by the chirping of birds.

“He lost his memory a few years ago, Uncle. I think the English word is ‘Alzheimer’s’?” Thanh turned on the standing electric fan and a breeze rushed to Dan, easing the heat that had clung to him like a tight shirt.

“Yes, Alzheimer’s . . . I’m so sorry,” Linda said.

“He doesn’t know who I am, nor my mother.” Thanh sighed, and the pain in the young man’s words cut into Dan, deep in his gut. Dan had witnessed such pain when he came along with Bill and Doug to visit Bill’s mother, who had been living in a care facility and also suffered from Alzheimer’s. Every time Bill visited his mom, he would bring along a photo album of their family to remind her of the life she’d had, of the children and the husband who loved her.

Dan turned and gazed at Thanh’s father, who was sitting there, silent, as if frozen in time. He wished he could tell the man about his wonderful son, who’d bestowed kindness to strangers and brought them home.

On the table was a bamboo tray holding a blue and white ceramic tea pot surrounded by matching cups. Thanh poured some dried tea into the pot. “My father doesn’t remember anything from his past, except for one thing.” Thanh shook his head. “His walk through Trường Sơn Jungle during the war.”

“You mean he was a Northern Communist soldier?” Thiên asked.

“Yes, Uncle . . . He fought in some major battles. Quảng Trị, for example. We’re lucky he survived.”

Dan exchanged looks with Thiên. Quảng Trị was the blood-soaked province where Thiên had commanded his troops, where Dan’s comrades had released countless bullets, rockets, and bombs to clear the way for him to pick up the dead and the injured.

How would the man react if he knew his former enemies were visiting his home?

“What’s your father’s name?” Dan asked Thanh, desperate to get to know the older man as a person.

“Nguyễn Văn Khoa.”

Thiên filled a glass with water and brought it to Nguyễn Văn Khoa. He knelt down so they were both at the same level; he talked to Thanh’s father, his voice gentle, as if speaking to a dear friend.

“I’m sorry . . . about what your father had to go through,” Linda told Thanh. “How long was he in the army?”

“Eight years.” Thanh poured steaming water from a large thermos into the teacups and rinsed them; slender white strands of steam whispered up his hands. “My grandma had already set up an altar for him, crying every day for her dead son. And then he came back.”

“Your grandma believed he was dead? Why?” Linda asked.

Dan looked up at the portrait of the elderly woman on the altar. She wore a black áo dài and a calm smile. He thought about the vicious memories snarling beneath that serene demeanor. He thought about his mother.

“It was terrible, really . . .” Thanh poured tea into the cups. “Her neighbor listened in secret to a Southern radio, which often broadcast a list of Northern soldiers killed. One day, they read my father’s name, his home village, and date of birth. My grandma hadn’t heard from my father for a long time, so she believed it was true. Later, once he returned, my father said the radio must have gotten the list from a former comrade in his unit who had deserted and joined the other side.”

Dan shook his head. There’d been a psychological war going on with dueling radio broadcasts. During his time in Sài Gòn, he’d sometimes listened to broadcasts from North Việt Nam, read by a woman called Hà Nội Hannah. She always brought the most terrible news about the war, announcing American units that had supposedly been wiped out, encouraging American servicemen to defect. It had been difficult to know what was true. When Hà Nội Hannah said that the American Army had massacred hundreds of civilians in a hamlet in Central Việt Nam, he’d thought it was all exaggeration and propaganda. But upon his return to Seattle, he read about the horrors of Mỹ Lai, which were confirmed by the Mỹ Lai court-martials.

“The ironic thing is,” Thanh’s eyes were distant, “during his years as a soldier, my father used to listen to a Southern radio channel. It was forbidden, but he did it because the radio aired classical music just after midnight. He would lie there in complete darkness on his hammock in the jungle or in an underground shelter, his small portable radio pressed against his ear while his comrades were sound asleep. The music saved him.”

The teacup radiated its fragrance in Dan’s hands. He stood up and walked toward Nguyễn Văn Khoa, a man he and his comrades would once have called a gook, a dink, a slope. They’d used such names not just on a man like him, but on many Vietnamese, even the ones fighting on their same side, like Thiên.

Dan blew on the tea to make sure it had cooled down before giving it to Nguyễn Văn Khoa. The man received the tea, took a sip, and put it on a chair next to him.

“Your wonderful son made it. It’s good, isn’t it?” Dan said, and Thiên translated.

The man looked out of the window. Only silence was in his gaze.

“I tried but couldn’t get him to talk,” Thiên said.

Back at their table, Thanh poured more tea for everyone. “He was the best father,” he said. “He built this house with his own hands, but now it’s hard to get him to do anything. . . . I really miss him. When he came home from the war, you know what he brought along from the South? Books. He said he’d seen people burning them and he stole some.”

“Books were burned? When and why?” Dan asked.

“After the war,” said Thiên, “the new government said certain books were evil. So all types of books, deemed to be ‘đồi trụy và phản động’—‘decadent and anti-Communist’—were destroyed. Books written by writers in the South, translated books . . .”

“That’s terrible,” Dan said. For a reader like him, burning books was an incomprehensible act, and most people who didn’t even read would fight for the right to open any book they chose. Those in power feared free minds, and nothing unlocked thinking like literature.

“Where were you during the war, Uncle? Did you have to fight?” Thanh asked Thiên .

“I was with the ARVN. Your father and I . . . we could have killed each other.” Thiên rubbed his scar.

Linda had stood up to take a group photo, but she sat down as she heard this.

“Does it still hurt, Uncle?” Thanh said.

“Nah, but it painful here still.” Thiên put his hand on his heart.

Thanh shook his head. “What the poet Nguyễn Duy wrote is so true. At the end of each war, whoever wins, the people lose. Even though my father has Alzheimer’s, he can’t get rid of the war. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming.”

“Has he been able to receive any kind of counseling? He could be suffering from PTSD,” Linda said and Dan studied Nguyễn Văn Khoa, wishing he could do something for the man.

“I haven’t found anyone who could help him,” Thanh replied. “I read plenty of research in the U.S. about PTSD and trauma, but little research has been done here, nor do people pay much attention to mental health. My father is suffering from trauma, this I’m sure of. He can’t be in a room with a ceiling fan for example. The fan’s spinning blades would terrorize him and remind him of American helicopters.”

A shock jolted through Dan’s body; he had lost faith in God but he now felt God had led him here, to this conversation. “What did your father tell you about helicopters?” he asked.

“He said helicopters were his worst enemy, that there were so many of them. They appeared out of nowhere, any time, day or night. They dropped soldiers to hunt him and his comrades down. Twice, he was chased by helicopters that tried to shoot him . . .”

Dan looked at Nguyễn Văn Khoa. Had the man once been under the blades of Dan’s chopper? Had the man tried to shoot up at him?

Dan turned to Thanh. He didn’t want to reveal his past, but he owed it to this young man who had shown him nothing but kindness and honesty. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Your father, I . . . it was unlikely we were in the same battle, but I was a helicopter pilot here in 1969. I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut.”

Thanh’s jaw dropped. “You flew helicopters?”

“My husband’s task was to rescue injured soldiers.” Linda interjected. “He didn’t fly helicopters that shot people.”

The children were laid out in a row, as if lined up to go to class, surrounded by the brown earth, stained with red blood. What could he say to Thanh? He and his crew hadn’t slept for over two days, flying mission after mission, adrenaline screaming in their veins. The land below tried to kill them. Not soldiers, not VC, not AK 47s or recoilless rockets or Quad 50 machine guns, but the land itself. The endless green of it. That morning they had watched it spit up green tracers that raked another helicopter. The Huey, filled with troops, burst into flames, fireballing into a jungle-thick hill. The day before, another chopper had gone down, caught in an American artillery barrage someone hadn’t called off in time. He could still see the scratches in the metal of the 155-millimeter shell a split-second before it slammed into and obliterated the chopper.

It made no sense. The reasons they were there. The reasons for them to fly, their eyelids held open as if by invisible wires piercing their skin. “Gooks,” his gunner had said. “If they’re dead, they’re VC. No sweat, GI.”

Would that serve as apology enough to Thanh? To Kim? To the children he had helped murder? To the child he had left here?

“I’m really sorry about what happened to your father,” Linda told Thanh. “The war ruined too many Vietnamese lives, Cambodians, Laotians, and Americans, too. My husband still wakes up screaming sometimes. You may not believe what I am saying”—her voice was filled with tears—“we’re here to offer our apologies, and to make amends.”

Thanh wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Then I have to do something, for all of us.” He hurried to the altar, ignited a match, lit sticks of incense, and raised the smoldering incense high. Dan stood up, his head bent; he prayed for innocent lives lost, for bleeding wounds to heal, for those who had been wronged to be able to forgive. When he opened his eyes, Thanh had led Nguyễn Văn Khoa to the table. Once the elderly man had sat down, Thanh reached for Thiên and Dan’s hands, putting them on top of his father’s. Thanh spoke in Vietnamese, in long sentences that sounded like prayers. Nguyễn Văn Khoa began to tremble. Thiên, too. Dan’s body started to shake; he sensed he had been allowed to live just so that he could witness this moment when a child of war brought former enemies together. The spicy-sweet smell of incense embraced them, and Dan felt so many other dead and wounded Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese gathering around them. His crew members Ed, Neil, and Reggie were there, along with the children they’d killed. All were holding hands, praying for each other, praying for peace.

Linda sat next to Dan on a stone bench in the garden, under the shade of trees. Birds chirped above their heads and butterflies flittered on a branch of yellow flowers close by. Inside the house, Thiên and Thanh were deep in conversation.

“Isn’t Thanh incredible?” Linda said.

Dan nodded. He’d written down Thanh’s email and phone number, with a promise that he would arrange for Dr. Hoh to talk to him.

“When Thanh prayed, I joined him too.” Linda looked up to a green canopy, as if searching for answers. “I found myself thinking about Phong and his family. . . . Thanh and Phong . . .they’ve both inherited our horrible war. Remember what I told Thanh in there? That we’re here to make amends. I must honor those words.”

Dan was on the edge of tears. He shook his head against it.

“What is it?” Linda asked.

“All of it. This place. I’m not sure, but I think it’s near the site where my helicopter went down . . .”

“Where you got injured?”

He nodded. He hadn’t wanted to tell his mother about the crash, but the army had notified her when he was in the hospital, so of course Linda knew.

“Are you ready to talk about what really happened? It may help,” Linda said.

He kissed her hair. He’d put up tall walls between himself and Linda. He needed to break them down.

She placed her hand on his.

He stared at their hands, covered by age spots. He wasn’t sure how many years they still had with each other, holding hands like this. He took a deep breath.

“It was October twelfth, 1969,” he said. “That afternoon, my crew and I were tasked to pick up a Long Range Reconnaissance Team, or LURP as we called it. They’d radioed us the location and said everything was clear.” He focused his eyes on the rice plants beyond them. “I approached the landing zone, not knowing that it was surrounded by a large number of VC.”

Linda gripped his hand.

“I almost made it when all hell broke loose. While our men were being butchered on the ground, my helicopter was hit by AK-47 rounds. Mortars and rockets exploded all around us. If one of those had struck the Huey, we’d have been destroyed. The LZ was so narrow, the trees so tall, I wasn’t able to lift the helicopter up quickly. And it was raining so hard . . .” He closed his eyes. He hadn’t been at his best that day. Kim and he had had a terrible fight the previous night about something trivial. He’d thrown his bottle of beer at her, hitting her head. He’d left to go back to Tân Sơn Nhứt without making up with her and ended up tossing and turning the whole night.

“Then?” Linda looked at him.

“Both my gunner and crew chief were killed almost instantly. My copilot called for air support as I tried to get us out of there. I thought we’d make it back to the base but our engine had taken such bad hits, we crashed shortly after. I don’t remember how we went down, just that when I came to, my copilot . . . he was dead too.” He couldn’t tell her that Reggie McNair had been trapped in his seat with a tree branch piercing his chest.

Linda clasped her palms against her mouth.

“All these years, I’ve wondered why I deserved to live. It was me . . . I was responsible . . .”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not!” She whispered. “Don’t think about the people who died, think about those you rescued, please . . . Remember David who visited us the year after your return? He told me you risked your life to save his. And Tom, who still sends you a card every Christmas.”

He loved Linda for trying to save him, for being here, for listening. In telling her about the crash, he’d hoped to lift the weight off himself. But it was still there, still contained in what he couldn’t bring himself to tell her: the school children he had helped slaughter—there was no other word—two weeks to the day the men he mourned crashed and burned. Maybe it was not his fault. Maybe it was what Kim would call his karma.

The weight of those dead children. The weight of the child he had abandoned.