Returning to the Land of Fear

Hồ Chí Minh City, 2016

“Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead compartments.”

Dan took a deep breath and pressed his nose against the cold window, looking down.

“See anything?” Linda asked, leaning over.

“Too cloudy,” Dan sat back to give his wife a better view.

“We’ll be there before you know it.” She smiled, squeezing his hand.

Dan nodded and kissed Linda’s hair. Its peach scent gave him comfort. He couldn’t have done this without her. He had sworn he would never return to this place.

The plane rumbled through a thick bed of clouds. Linda flipped through the glossy pages of the Việt Nam Airlines Heritage in-flight magazine, scrutinizing photos of lavish villas built on top of lush hills, surrounded by white sandy beaches and rolling blue oceans. They’d both grown up in small, cramped homes, and he understood her obsession with beautiful houses, a mindset that had led her to become a real estate agent. Instead of just chasing money, though, Linda often searched out people or projects who’d help veterans with down payments on new homes. Or affordable places for vets to rent. Việt Nam vets. Afghan vets. Iraq vets. “Too many are homeless,” she’d told him. He loved her for that.

Outside, clouds still surrounded the plane, closing in. Their darkness stirred something deep inside of Dan. The old fear. His body tensed. He eyed the emergency exit. Two steps away. One step if he leapt.

At the airport, he had approached the check-in supervisor. “Please, I need to sit by the emergency exit.”

“Excuse me, Sir?”

He showed his disabled veteran card. Still, the manager shook his head. “All seats next to the emergency exits have been taken.”

He moved closer to the guy, whispering through gritted teeth, “Listen, I need to be close to the exit or I can’t fly.”

He was glad he fought for it and the exit was in front of him, not behind him.

He took a deep breath, telling himself to calm down. After a few long inhales and exhales, he saw clearly how ridiculous it’d been, the whole scene he’d made about the exit. Why was he always playing the stereotypical deranged vet? What was he going to do, kick out the door and jump out of the plane mid-flight?

He was putting on his headset, wanting to listen to some soothing music, when the plane lurched. Passengers around him murmured. The chair underneath him seemed to have disappeared and he threw his head back, hands gripping the armrests. The Airbus was losing altitude. Too fast. Heat surged through his body. The plane made a thundering sound when it bucked in the turbulence. The cabin shook violently.

The captain spoke over the loudspeaker, advising passengers to fasten their seatbelts.

The plane continued its violent shaking.

Inside of Dan, the old fear twisted, a serpent coiling and uncoiling.

He closed his eyes and suddenly he was back in the cockpit of his wartime helicopter, the clouds outside replaced by Vietnamese canopy jungle. The jungle was swirling wildly around the windshield. “We’ve only got about a foot and a half tail rotor clearance on the right,” Hardesty was screaming into his headset. Flashes of AK-47 fire blazed from the forest floor. Rappa returned fire with his M-60, his shoulders shaking. AK-47 bullets were hitting the aircraft. A hole appeared in the plexiglass just above Dan’s head. “Receiving heavy fire. Nine o’clock! Heavy fire! Nine o’clock! On the north perimeter!” McNair yelled into the VHF, the copilot’s voice high and panicky and then softening. “Dan?” A hand patted his cheek. “You okay?”

He opened his eyes. Some passengers were laughing in relief. The turbulence had passed. Dan blinked, his face hot with anger and embarrassment.

He shook his head, trying to chase away the images of his crew. But they were alive in his mind: his door gunner, Ed Rappa, making the sign of the cross, kissing the ground after their every mission; his crew chief, Neil Hardesty, chewing gum with his mouth open; his copilot, Reggie McNair, checking for the lucky, hole-filled socks he always wore when flying. Dan wished he could tell them he was sorry.

Why had they died while he survived? He’d asked himself that question countless times during the last forty-seven years.

“Hey . . . you need your pills?” The lines on Linda’s forehead deepened. He had added many more years to her appearance during their forty-five years of marriage. His rages that quickly gave way to uncontrolled weeping. His blackouts. His nightmares. The ghosts of his war.

“I’m okay, thanks.” Tears welled in his eyes. He wrapped his arm around Linda, pulled her to him. She was his rock.

“Your pills are right here if you want them.” She gestured at her handbag on the floor under the seat in front of her.

He nodded, looked out of the window, yearning to see the ground. He wished for nothing more than to get off this plane. A long time ago, he’d loved the thrill of flying, the sense of immense freedom and unlimited possibility.

At nineteen, he joined the army and applied to be a pilot even though he didn’t think he had much of a chance. Many of his friends had either been drafted or had gotten their notices, so it was just a matter of time before he’d get called up anyway. And he’d figured that going into the army would give him the chance to travel, as well as the opportunity to attend college after his enlistment. When a letter arrived, telling him to get ready for eight weeks of basic training, a month of advanced infantry training, and then nine months of flight training, he’d shouted with joy so loudly that his mom dropped the colander filled with pasta she was making for dinner. She asked him what was wrong and he read the letter to her. He told her he’d taken many aptitude tests and to his surprise he’d passed. The recruitment officer had said the army urgently needed helicopter pilots in Việt Nam, but he’d thought there’d be many people applying.

When his mom said that she didn’t want him to go, that he could be killed, he told her not to worry, that God would keep him safe. Like many nineteen-year-olds he thought he was invincible. It had taken him about a month in Việt Nam to lose that illusion. He was only twenty-three when he left the army, but he felt sixty. The knowledge of death had robbed him of his youth.

An announcement came from the plane’s loudspeaker. The female voice spoke Vietnamese. He closed his eyes, concentrating on its rise and fall. So lyrical, it sounded like a song. Like the lullabies Kim used to sing to him.

Something sounded familiar. “Xin vui lòng.” Did that mean “please”? Before this trip, he’d tried to reacquaint himself with the language, but it didn’t seem to help much.

Linda unzipped her bag, took out a jar of cream, lathered it onto her face. She put on pink lipstick. Her favorite color. She was turning sixty-six this year, but whenever he looked at her, he could still see the woman he’d fallen in love with. They’d gone to the same high school, and he’d started to notice her during his junior year. He could still picture her racing up the basketball court, her face red with determination, her tanned legs flying as she dove for a ball. He’d always been glad his younger sister Marianne was on the team. Going to Marianne’s games gave him a chance to watch Linda.

“Enough,” Linda had told him several months ago, after he’d wept watching the news about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “In fact, more than enough, baby. We went way past ‘enough’ years ago.” She showed him the commission check she’d received from selling a condo. “With this money, I want us to go and deal with your issues, once and for all.”

We went way past “enough” years ago. She didn’t need to say this trip would determine if their marriage would survive; he sensed it in her voice. He knew she deserved to be happier, yet he also knew it’d be hell to be back. All his bad memories would come alive. But he owed it to Linda to face his ghosts. They were engaged by the time he left for Việt Nam and she was waiting for him when he returned. She’d stayed with him in spite of everything. But what if she knew the truth about Việt Nam? And about Kim?

He took his passport from Linda’s handbag and went through the pages. His fingers began to tremble. “Where the hell is it?”

“What?”

“The visa.”

She showed him the page with a brilliant red stamp. “See? Still here and still valid.”

He shook his head. Việt Nam unnerved him in ways he couldn’t control.

“Oh, I nearly forgot.” Linda winked as she pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, slid it between the pages of his passport. She explained that her Vietnamese friends Duy and Như told her to do it. They hadn’t been back to Việt Nam, saying that they’d lost their country to the Communists, but apparently they knew.

Duy and Như went to church with Linda, the same church that had gathered blankets, clothes, toys, and food for Vietnamese refugees when they’d first arrived as “boat people” in the late 1970s. Linda saw them every week at mass, but Dan hadn’t gone in years. Việt Nam had made him believe that God had little power over a world that was so in love with war.

As much as he loved his wife, Dan wondered if it was a mistake to take this trip with her. The year before, Bill and Doug had asked him to join them when they went back. He just couldn’t do it. Now he realized it might have been better to return with his veteran friends. They’d understand his emotions, his fears. Now that he was about to arrive, he was sure he hadn’t prepared enough for the trip. He’d visited the Seattle Public Library and his local bookstore and brought home piles of books written by Vietnamese writers. Over the years, he’d read books by American veterans, to try to understand his experiences, to know he wasn’t alone. Still, Vietnamese literature opened his eyes. The book that had affected him the most was The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh, his former enemy. Reading it was like looking into a distorted mirror. He could easily have been Kiên, the Northern Vietnamese veteran in the novel. The title said it all. When he told his vet friends, they were surprised he chose books written by people who had once tried to kill them. Whom they had once tried to kill. But he needed to understand the people he’d dehumanized during the war. In searching for their humanity he was trying to regain his own.

During the first few years after he got back, Linda had tried to ask him about the war, how it’d been and what he’d seen. He told her he didn’t want to talk about it. Then one summer night in 1983, he’d dreamt about the Việt Cộng attacking him. Several VC jumped him. He was wrestling with a man, strangling him, when he heard Linda coughing and choking. He woke up to see his hands clenched around her neck.

Linda would have left him if he hadn’t phoned a psychiatrist the following morning to make an appointment. Until that incident he’d refused to see a shrink because he hadn’t wanted to be diagnosed with any mental health issue that could lead to him losing rights, even getting his driver’s license taken away. Dr. Barnes had pointed out to him that he wasn’t the only veteran with problems and then asked him to attend what he mysteriously called Group 031, a name intended to protect the anonymity of its members. Dan appreciated that nondescript name; he didn’t want others to know he was attending a PTSD group. That was where he met Bill and Doug. After a lot of counseling and meetings with the group, he felt better, but for years Linda wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with him.

In their joint sessions with Dr. Barnes, Linda had learned a few things about his time in the war—but not the most important things. Not about Kim. Not about his dead crew members. Not about the schoolkids whose blood he had watched seep into the earth. On his best days, Dan had even been able to convince himself that none of it had ever happened.

Recently, through a veteran spouse support group, Linda had become friends with Dr. Edith Hoh, herself the wife of a Việt Nam vet. Dr. E., Linda called her. Linda insisted that they see her before this trip. At the meeting, Hoh was encouraging. She said she’d visited Việt Nam with her husband and it helped. She asked them to discuss their feelings and their expectations for the trip. She advised them to give themselves time to process their emotions once they arrived and not to rush into too many activities. She wrote her home phone number on her business card. “Call me in case there’s a crisis,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how late or early it is, just call.”

The plane continued its steep descent and once the clouds cleared, Dan peered down. Rice fields. It had been a lifetime, but those fields hadn’t lost their emerald color. When the sunlight hit the checkerboard mirrors of water-submerged paddies, they still glinted like knives. And those rivers that slithered through all that green still looked like venomous snakes.

Linda sneaked a look. “Oh, so pretty.”

Sài Gòn, now Hồ Chí Minh City, gradually came into view. Once familiar like the palm of his hand, the city’s skyline had become totally strange, punctuated by tall buildings gleaming with glass, and streets clogged with traffic.

“Look at all those high-rises.” Linda’s voice was full of excitement.

He wanted to tell her about the columns of smoke that used to fill the sky, the whistling sound of rockets as they approached the city, the flares that lit up the night, the street beggars who’d lost arms and legs, but he feared bringing up the memories.

He craned his body, looking for the sight of Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport, now called Tân Sơn Nhất, where he’d been stationed, at first just ferrying big shots and celebrities on what could be regarded basically as sightseeing jaunts. “Many are called but few are chosen, young Warrant Officer,” the First Sergeant had told him. “You were first in your class and look good in photos, just the way they like it. Be grateful.” One time he’d even flown a well-known Hollywood star out to a firebase. His aircraft commander and the other crew members were awestruck. But he found the presence of the visiting actor reinforced the odd sense he was having of playacting, being in some movie about the war rather than the real thing. While he was grateful not to be in combat, he also felt guilty and a need to test himself under fire. He thought that was the whole point of being there.

Eventually he was assigned as pilot and aircraft commander to the company’s slick platoon. Flying his Huey, a Bell UH-1D/H helicopter, he’d engaged in combat assaults and resupply missions, carrying rations, ammo, or live soldiers in, and sometimes dead or broken soldiers out. He had no way of knowing how those missions would change his life forever.

Tân Sơn Nhất Airport spread out before his eyes. It looked unfamiliar, and a weight lifted from his chest. The place had changed. He shouldn’t worry so much. He was just a tourist now. A flabby American with a fanny pack accompanied by a woman with a selfie stick. No one needed to know he was a vet.

As he watched a flight attendant across from him lean back in her seat and adjust her áo dài, he was again flooded with memories. Kim had often worn the same type of dress, with a high collar and soft cloth flowing from her neck down to her knees. One day many years ago, he had admired her in her white áo dài getting ready for a Buddhist ceremony at a neighborhood pagoda. They’d just moved into the apartment he rented for her. She was standing by the window, her hand moving the comb down her river of hair. He was on the bed, astonished at the irony of his host country: the beauty and grace amid the horror.

“We’re here. Yay!” Linda said as the plane rolled to a stop. Dan squeezed his forehead. He’d tried to erase Kim from his life. He’d burned all her pictures. He’d tried to convince himself that she was just a dream, a ghost. But she had remained stubbornly real in his memories, and now she was rushing to him as he returned to the city where they’d met.

Again, he saw her beautiful eighteen-year-old face. Her brown eyes. Her tears.