That night when we camp, miles north of the carnage, Phuong spends a long time talking to Khiem and Le Phu, who seem traumatized by what we’ve seen. They keep weeping, hanging their heads, only whispering their responses when Phuong stops speaking or asks them questions. They don’t eat their allotment of sticky rice and peppers. My stomach growls, seeing it sitting there in their cupped hands where Phuong ladles it out.

Finally, late, they lie back on the ground, their heads propped on the root flare of one of the tall trees with smooth bark. The tree branches reach high overhead, forming a cathedral arch above the small forest opening where we hide. A hot, dry wind rolls off the mountains from the west. I find my own tree to lean on, too hungry to sleep, too shaken by what we saw that afternoon, and what we had to do, to close my eyes.

Phuong comes over to check on me, too. She hasn’t tied me up at night in weeks. I can’t remember the last time she did it. Not that I feel any freer.

“Khiem and Le Phu haven’t seen this before,” she says.

“Seen the results of a bombing?” I ask.

“The war,” she says. “It’s their first time in battle. Or not in battle, but seeing what happens in battle. Or from your bombing of our people. They’re from the same village in the North. Farm children.”

“I’d never seen it, either, until I came here,” I say. “Except on the TV news, and you can just change the channel when that comes on. Since Tet, it seems like I haven’t seen anything else.”

Phuong nods. “You become used to it in some ways. But in many ways, you never do.”

We’re quiet for a while. I thought she was going to ask me how I was doing, but now it seems as if she wants to be reassured herself—that we’ll all get past this, that we won’t be haunted by what we’ve seen, the things I assume she was saying to Khiem and Le Phu. Or maybe she just wants to hang out with someone, even an American, who’s been through it before and doesn’t need to be consoled like Khiem and Le Phu.

“What did you mean when you said this is how the war will be won?” I ask.

There’s a rustling in the dark, some small night creature moving through brush. The beat of invisible wings darts past. I wonder if they’re bats.

“The Vietnamese people have been fighting for independence since before I was born,” Phuong says. “Even my parents saw their training, their studies in Paris, as part of the struggle. Ho Chi Minh also studied in Paris. He lived there for many years, to get to know the enemy, and to learn how to defeat them. First we fought against the French. In the Second World War, we fought against the Japanese, with the promise that Vietnam would be liberated when the war was won. But that was a lie. The Japanese were defeated, but the French returned, saying Vietnam still belonged to them. They controlled the South, but the North belonged to Ho and the Viet Minh, the party of liberation. In Hanoi, we celebrated our independence, but how do you accept a divided country? So we fought the French and defeated them at Dien Bien Phu. Once again, in the peace talks, there was the promise of elections to reunite the country. But the promise was broken. Corrupt politicians and corrupt military in the South refused to give up their control, their power. The elections never happened. We were lied to yet again. So we began the war against the South. We would have been victorious yet again, but then came the Americans.”

I’d been thinking the war between North and South Vietnam was like our Civil War—the North fighting to keep their country united, the South wanting to secede. The way Phuong is talking about it now makes it also sound like the Revolutionary War, with Ho Chi Minh as their George Washington, fighting the tyranny of a foreign colonial power. For us it was the British; for them it was the French. And now, it’s us.

I can tell Phuong believes every word of what she says—not just in a schoolgirl kind of way, but in her heart. She’s as much a patriot for North Vietnam as my dad is for America—or the America that he’s convinced has to save the world from communism, wherever it might be taking root, like in Vietnam. I’ve heard much of what Phuong’s been saying from Geoff, of course, but I used to just figure he was repeating stuff he’d heard from his parents, the same way I used to repeat the arguments for the war I heard from my dad.

“So you see, we will never quit,” Phuong continues. “We will never surrender. No matter how many of our comrades perish. No matter how many of your bombers murder our convoys of bo doi. If we have to sacrifice ten of our people for every one American life or ARVN life, that’s what we are prepared to do. We sacrifice for the greater good. This must always be true of a people fighting for their own liberation.”

“But you execute people,” I said. “Your own people, or at least in South Vietnam. Right? The night I was kidnapped, they were going door to door. Killing Vietnamese …”

“Killing corrupt politicians and military leaders,” Phuong says, sounding exasperated.

“Dragging people out of their beds,” I say. “Probably killing them in front of their families. Murdering them. They murdered the American military police I was with.”

Phuong scowls. “Don’t tell me about murders,” she snaps. “Did I not tell you about all the bodies of my comrades who drowned, who were shot and dumped, left to swell and rot in the Saigon River?”

“So it’s war,” I say. “That’s it? That’s the explanation for everything? The justification for whatever happens on either side, no matter how terrible?”

I know the answer even as I throw out the question. Khiem and Le Phu are sitting up now, listening to us argue in French. They pick up their weapons, as if they think they might have to protect Phuong. Or maybe they just want to get some American blood on their hands so they’ll be fully initiated into the fight. They spent the afternoon hauling dead bodies out of a bombed-out field. Now’s their big chance to add to the kill total.

“Yes,” Phuong says quietly. “War is the explanation and it is the justification for all that happens. Terrible things will occur. People will be sacrificed. No one is innocent. No one can be free of the violence of war until the last shot is fired. And the last shot will be fired by our side. And the Americans will give up and return home. And the corruption in the South will end. And the reunification of our country will be complete. And then, and only then, there will be no more war.”

“But what about communism?” I say. “You want to be like the Soviets and the Red Chinese? Like, oppressing your own people? No freedom to believe what you want to believe, or say what you want to say, or own your own business, or travel where you want, or anything?” I know I sound just like my dad, saying these things. I’ve heard him going on about the evils of communism a hundred times. Now I’m the broken record.

Phuong shakes her head. “You say this as if the Vietnamese people had these freedoms before, under the French. Or as if they have these freedoms now in the South, under the puppet government of the Americans. If communism gives us liberation and reunification, then of course I’m for communism. If the Soviets and the Chinese provide us with the weapons we need to fight the Americans and the ARVN, then yes to communism again. And if Ho says this is the way to bring us together as true Vietnamese people and country, then yes a third time.”

I don’t know what to say to all that. Probably I need to go back to my civics class and pay more attention to what we’re supposed to be learning about the different forms of government, and about democracy versus communism, and all that stuff.

“It’s still not right,” I mumble. I smell of burning fuel and burning bodies. We all do. The whole forest does. The whole world. “All this death.”

“Of course it’s not right,” Phuong says, which surprises me. “Parfois, il n’y a pas d’autre moyen.” Only sometimes there is no other way.

I shut up after that. Phuong sighs and moves to softer ground. Le Phu and Khiem put down their weapons. Maybe they sleep. I do, eventually. More bats whisper past. Or maybe I dream them. Maybe it’s all just a dream.