They’re cluster bombs. Or bouncing bombs. Or bomblets. Or even, sometimes, bombies. They go by different names. The commandos in the bamboo cage warned me about them, warned me to be careful, to be on the lookout, but I forgot. The bomblets are contained in larger bombs, which are designed to open before hitting the ground, releasing the bomblets. The bomblets, each with its own little parachute, land near the Trail. Or they blow far off course. There are millions of them.

Some explode when they hit the earth. Some bounce and explode at the level of a torso, or a head. Some explode when trucks run over them. Some explode when bo doi kick them accidentally. Some, buried in fields or lost in the forest, explode when buffalo step on them, or plows hit them, or branches fall on them, or night animals sniff them, or birds perch on them, or the wind blows heavy on them. Some never explode. They’re duds. Some explode for no clear reason after kids discover them in the forest, and carry them to their village, and play with them for hours, rolling them on the ground like bocce balls, jumping over them, stopping when a stranger, a Vietnamese soldier, steps out of the longhouse and yells at them, in a language they don’t understand, to stop.

Khiem herds the children and villagers away from the clearing and into the forest, taking the bodies of the two dead kids with them—the one who was holding the cluster bomb, the other who was hit in the forehead by shrapnel. Once everyone is safe, Khiem aims his AK-47 at the remaining bombs and fires. The explosions leave small craters in the packed earth.

Le Phu is buried. The kids are buried. One of the villagers, perhaps the mother of one of the dead children, kneels and wails and hits herself on the head over and over with a large, flat stone. Others stop her, but not before blood streams down her face.

We leave soon after. No one in the village acknowledges our departure. They aren’t angry. At least they don’t seem to be. Maybe they’re resigned to this—to losing children to a war that they know somehow, distantly, is going on around them, but I doubt they understand. I barely understand it myself, and I’ve grown up with it on the news.

I can’t shake the images: of the little boy right after the explosion, reaching with his bloody stumps for Phuong, mouth open but no sound coming out; of Phuong holding the dying child in her lap; of Khiem, still numb from the loss of Le Phu, collecting bombies from the other children.

And I can’t shake the question that won’t go away, though I already know the answer: Can my dad be the architect of this as well?

Another freak rainstorm catches us the next day on the side of a mountain, and we’re exposed to everything the sky hurls down at us, as if we deserve it. We trudge through for hours, slipping on the muddy trail, climbing around places where the trail is washed away, looking for any shelter but finding none. We come to a cliff, with wooden stairs lashed together and nailed or tied to the sheer rock face, a steep climb that we have to make. Below us is a sharp drop with boulders and a river at the bottom. Above us is the promise of a return to the ridge trail, and maybe a cave where we can dry off and sit out the deluge.

The stairs wobble dangerously. With all three of us on them, they pitch in unpredictable directions. I can’t believe they’ll hold us, but Phuong assures me that hundreds, thousands of bo doi have made this passage with their heavy loads of supplies. “These trails will be used until the Americans discover them, and then abandoned until the Americans forget,” she says. I’m supposed to take solace in this, but my legs and arms are trembling too much.

We’re a third of the way up when the rain quits. We’re halfway up when we hear the whine of a twin-engine plane cresting the horizon. Phuong and Khiem press their backs against the cliff, brace themselves, and unshoulder their AK-47s. An American spotter plane flies at us from the north, so close that I can see the face of the pilot, just for a second. Khiem fires a short burst, and the plane veers away but doesn’t leave. It circles around and comes back at us from the south. This time an arm reaches out the passenger window—with a hand holding a pistol. Bullets ricochet off rocks a few feet above our heads, sending a spray of dust and pebbles raining down.

“I’m an American!” I yell as loud as I can. “American! American!” I pull off my straw hat and wave it at the plane. Khiem slams the butt of his weapon into my chest. I stagger, think I’m going to pitch over the side, grab the safety rope, and barely manage to hang on. Khiem raises his gun to hit me again, but Phuong stops him. At first I can’t breathe. He’s knocked the wind out of me. Then, when I get my breath back, I feel the ache of a deep bone bruise. It hurts to breathe. Khiem tugs me to my feet, shoves me ahead of him, and jams the barrel of his AK-47 into the small of my back to force me the rest of the way up the wooden stairs.

It takes forever, every arduous step more painful than the one before, every breath a knife to my ribs. Khiem keeps jabbing me with his weapon, barking at me in Vietnamese. Twice when I slow too much he hits me higher, at the base of my skull. I pitch forward. He grabs my shirt and jerks me upright. Phuong, in the lead, doesn’t know any of this, or maybe she knows and chooses to ignore what’s happening.

Khiem isn’t through. When we finally crest the ridge and climb off the wooden stairs, I don’t even have a chance to sit before he starts hitting me with his fist—keeping his AK trained on me the whole time. I double over from a blow to my stomach, then to my chest. He slaps me hard, twice, in my face. The third time I cover myself, but that just makes him angrier. He trips me, and when I fall he kicks me wherever he can—my legs, my back, my shoulder, my arms, the back of my head.

I curl into a fetal position, wrap my arms over my head, struggle to pull away when I see where he’s kicking me next. He catches me anyway, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I vomit blood. Phuong finally intervenes, yelling at him, stepping between us, pushing Khiem away.

I want to hurt him back. I want to kill him. I hate him, and hate what he’s done to me, leaving me scared and helpless—and raging inside, with no way to let it out. I can’t even yell at him, curse at him, anything. I pound the dirt with my fist, spit up more blood, sit up sobbing, snot running down my burning face. My jaw aches. I’ll have bruises all over my arms, legs, back, face, everywhere. I’m afraid Khiem broke one of my ribs when he slammed his gun into my chest on the stairs—that’s how bad it hurts to take anything more than a shallow breath.

“We can’t stay here,” Phuong says. “We’re too exposed. The Americans might return.”

She’s right. There’s no tree cover, no cave, no shelter of any kind. Just barren rock, a moonscape. We make for the tree line, a quarter mile away. I swear that if Khiem gets behind me again, if he stabs me one more time in the back with his weapon, I’m not going to be afraid. I’m going to fight. I seethe and wait for the moment, that deep well of anger powering my legs forward. But Khiem keeps his distance. Phuong tells him to take over the point position—the lead—so he passes ahead of me. I could jump on him from behind, grab a rock and pound his head in, seize his weapon and kill him and make my escape.

Only I’ll probably get killed instead—by him hearing me make my move, or by Phuong, to protect him.