Chapter Fourteen

 

We had almost reached the top of the trail before either of us spoke. A northerly wind was blowing, golden leaves wafting in a warm thermal high above us. Far away, lightning struck a tree. Thunder reverberated in the valley, sounding like a firecracker in a can. Another storm was fast approaching. This time it brought with it the first chill of fall.

The muscles in my legs ached as I followed Mary Ann up the last rise before reaching the Jeep. When we crested the hill, I saw we were not alone. Two stretch pickups and at least six men—loggers, from the appearance of their work clothes and steel helmets—were waiting for us. Sullen expressions masked their weather-beaten faces as we approached.

One of the men was sitting on the hood of the Jeep and I discerned a difference between him and the others. Although they were all large men who obviously earned their wages with their hands, this man was even bigger. Tattoos covered his huge arms and buzz cut red hair matted his massive head. Unlike the others dressed in overalls, the largest man wore black biker leather. Even though I had never seen him before that moment, I guessed he was a biker. Mary Ann dropped behind me, nervously touching my shoulder.

When I reached the Jeep, I nodded to the man and said, “How are you?”

His ugly frown acknowledged my greeting and he stabbed his meaty forefinger into my breastbone. “You the fellow trying to put us out of work?”

“You must be confusing me with someone else,” I said.

My answer obviously neither satisfied him, nor the others. They crowded around us in a semi-circle—so close that I could smell the strong odor of men who worked for a living beneath the hot sun. Buzz Cut stood in my face, smelling more like stale beer and bad breath than hard work. Without warning, he crooked his foot behind my ankle and pushed. It sent me tumbling backwards, brushing the sweaty men grouped around us as I fell.

“Leave him alone,” Mary Ann said, rushing to my side.

“Better get home to your mama before you get yourself hurt, little girl,” Buzz Cut said.

He didn't wait for her to take him up on his proposition. Instead, he kicked me in the groin with the steel toe of his motorcycle boot. I recoiled instantly and convulsed on the ground, trying to will away the pain from his attack.

“Stop it,” Mary Ann said, her voice animated as she tried to crawl between the man and me.

Two of the loggers grabbed Mary Ann's arms and shoved her against the Jeep. Paying no attention, Buzz Cut grabbed my shirt and hair on my head, yanking me to my feet and slamming me into the Jeep. By now, Mary Ann was struggling and screaming obscenities. As my head crashed against the hood, I glimpsed her vain attempt to wrench loose from their grasps.

Buzz Cut twisted my arm behind my back and bent me over the hood of the Jeep, again slamming my face into unyielding metal. My lips were swollen and bleeding and I had bitten into my tongue. Somehow, I managed to croak out a pitiful threat.

“Hurt the girl and you'll be sorry.”

“What are you going do? Piss on my foot?”

His Neanderthal witticism brought a few nervous chuckles from the loggers. When he twisted my wrist while pulling on my thumb and little finger, I braced myself for another vicious slam into the hood. This time it did not come. Instead, one of the loggers stepped forward.

Buzz Cut turned to face him without releasing my wrist. Mary Ann was still struggling but now had a red bandanna stuffed in her mouth. The logger, an older man with ruddy skin and thin graying hair kept, his somber gaze averted to something at our feet, refusing to look me directly in the eye.

“Whatever's happening on this mountain ain't no concern of yours,” he said. “Best just pack up and get on out of the county.”

“Check out the Jeep,” Buzz Cut said.

Three of the loggers bent to the task, tearing into our possessions in the Jeep, dumping the ice chest and rifling through Mary Ann's backpack. Mary Ann wrenched away from the two loggers and flailed away with both hands against Buzz Cut's chest. Blood and sweat dripping from the wound in my forehead filled my eyes and my right arm throbbed from the savage attack. Still, I twisted my body and managed to get between Mary Ann and the brutish man, remaining there until the two loggers regained their grip on her arms. My action earned immediate reprisal. Buzz Cut grabbed my hair and wrist and slammed me into the Jeep's hood again.

The first thing I saw as I regained consciousness was Mary Ann kneeling over me. Her eyes were red and tears streaked her olive skin. The loggers had littered our possessions across the ground before leaving.

“Why didn't you do something?” she said. “Least you could have kicked him in the shin.”

“Guess I could have pissed on his foot,” I said, swollen lips distorting the words as they crept from my mouth in a garbled mumble.

Mary Ann grinned, despite herself, at my mumbled retort. “You all right?” she said.

“Nothing a team of dentists and neurosurgeons can't fix,” I said. “Now at least we know what probably happened to Bill's tapes and thesis material.”

Levity shattered the tension but the reason behind the attack remained imprinted on my brain like a bad stain. Mary Ann helped me in the Jeep. Even though she had no driver's license, she got behind the wheel and started for Turkey Gap.

She cut short a few corners as she raced down the mountain but my vision was too blurry and brain too muddled to help. I could barely bend my right arm as she hurried me to a doctor in Turkey Gap. Unlike in any city this doctor had an office in his house. He asked no questions as he cleaned and bandaged my wounds. No bones were broken. Except for many scrapes and bruises and a splitting headache, I was okay.

That night rain returned along with the darkness. Violent memories accompanying the rain colored my fitful dreams, returning me to Vietnam.

***

During monsoon season, our clothes stayed constantly damp. Each of us had a sheet of plastic liberated from packaging that helped waterproof boxes of ammunition. When it rained, we used our plastic sheets to shield ourselves from the downpour. During monsoon season, the plastic sheets got lots of use.

We were operating in a free fire zone. According to Intelligence, there are no friendlies in a free fire zone. This meant that we could open fire on any human we encountered without calling back to Headquarters to ask for permission. Headquarters apparently did not consider Montagnards human.

The area where we were working was the ancestral home of one of the many tribes loosely lumped into a group called Montagnards or “mountain people” by the French. Damp from incessant rain and tired from an all-day hump, we came upon an unexpected clearing in the jungle. It was a Montagnard village and that set off a primordial alarm ringing in my ears.

The tribes that comprise the Montagnards occupied Vietnam long before the ethnic group that most now think of as traditional Vietnamese. To say that the two groups of people disliked each other would be understating the issue. They hated each other. Because of this hatred, Montagnards fought on the side of the Americans during the Vietnamese War—an act that earned them relentless retribution.

We found the small village eerily quiet and apparently recently abandoned. The fire pits looked fresh, the half dozen long houses recently constructed. There were also broken cooking utensils and other personal objects that spoke of a rapid exit from the premises. This did not seem that unusual, as approaching NVA soldiers had likely prompted the villagers to make a hasty exit and seek a more secure hiding place in the jungle.

That night, torrential rain returned. Most of us kept our personal belongings in waterproof ammo boxes. That night, it rained so hard that my air mattress and ammo box both floated out from under my poncho liner, taking me with it. I spent the remainder of the night dripping wet.

The morning brought a temporary end of the rain, along with extreme temperature and humidity. The village occupied a bit of ground adjacent to a mountain stream. The villagers had dammed the stream to form a small pond. After ten days, our clothes were as filthy as we were. We took the opportunity to wash our clothes, and our bodies, in the pond. The simple act raised our spirits immensely—at least for the moment.

Our clothes, left beside the pond to dry, felt wonderfully clean when we finally tired of frolicking in the water and got out to dress. Answering the call of nature, Lenny Dotson disappeared into the jungle in search of a little privacy. When he did not return after ten minutes, I followed his path into the snarl of vegetation to check on him.

I found Lenny not far away, standing with his back to me and staring at something on the ground. It is not a smart thing to disturb someone with a gun—even your best friend. Instead, I called to him gently.

“Lenny, what’s the matter?”

Lenny did not answer. He just continued standing there, catatonic. When I approached, I saw that he was staring down into a crater, a bomb crater, created by a large explosion. The Montagnard villagers had used it as a refuse hole to discard their trash and whatever they could no longer use. NVA soldiers had apparently found a more nefarious use for the hole in the ground.

Lenny’s mouth gaped in a silent scream as he stared down into the pit. When I joined him, I realized why. The massacred remains of the Montagnard villagers—three men, five women, and six children—littered the killing hole, and a swarm of rats and maggots feasting on their mutilated bodies.