spray.
“I’m fine on the bathroom thing, but I will have a shot of that.”
I sprayed my arms, the backs of my hands, and a little around my neck, basically exposed skin. The old man grabbed the can out of my hands and started spraying me like it was bathroom spray and I was a bad smell.
“Okay, take it easy.” I backed away. “That stuff’s toxic.”
“So are the mosquitoes.”
“What now?” I asked as he sprayed himself.
“A little hike.” The old man heaved one of the duffel bags up over his shoulder. Mr. Vinh did the same thing with the other one. I noticed he had the machete-looking thing in one hand. I hoped it was for knocking down a vine or two and not for fighting off boa constrictors and stuff.
My job was the backpack and canteens. There were three canteens. And the dorky looking briefcase. I had a little trouble getting it all sorted and hanging from various places on my body, but after a few tries I was more or less organized.
“Let’s make a move,” the old man said, but he stepped back to let Mr. Vinh lead. Apparently, Mr. Vinh knew better than the old man where we were going.
I fell in behind the old man, but on the way out of the camp, I looked back at Mrs. Vinh. She had stepped away from the fire and was smoking a cigarette. She looked up at me. Nodded. I waved a little wave at her and turned to follow Mr. Vinh and the old man.
I wondered if we’d be coming back here other than to get the Land Rover. I knew there was at least one tent in one of the duffel bags so maybe not. We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred metres when I learned my next big lesson about Vietnam. There’s forest and there’s woods and there’s brush and thickets and growth and timberland. All of them together don’t make jungle. Jungle makes jungle. And five minutes out of that camp, we were up to our asses in jungle.
Mr. Vinh was very good with the machete. No wasted motion. In fact, it didn’t look like he was working all that hard. He whacked away and carved a path where there hadn’t been one before. The machete had to have been ultra sharp. I decided not to do anything to upset Mr. Vinh.
6
If I’d thought Mr. Vinh’s camp felt like a sauna, I revised my opinion real quick. I figured out that back there was air-conditioned comfort. This was a sauna.
I had to walk fast because when he wasn’t carving a hole in the jungle, Mr. Vinh had this little trotting thing he did which covered a lot of ground in a short time. The old man had a long stride so he was right behind Mr. Vinh.
I had to haul ass to keep them in sight. And I noticed that neither of them looked back. That meant I either kept up or got lost in the jungle to be eaten by whatever creatures were making the noises I heard all around us.
I thought that was just in the movies. But there were noises, animal and bird noises, and not one of them sounded like any animals or birds I knew. The noises died away as we got closer to whatever creatures were out there and started up again behind us as soon as we passed them. No, not behind us … behind me. I was at the back. I hoped none of the noisemakers was hungry.
Then things got worse. We stopped at this swamp-looking body of water that stretched out in front of us for what looked like half a football field. I finally caught up to the old man and Mr. Vinh. They were at the edge of the swamp and the old man was digging into the duffel bag he’d been carrying. Pulled out two sets of rubber boots. Rubber boots with attitude. About a metre long.
“Hip waders,” he said. “Put them on.”
“We’re not going in there?” I looked at him like he was nuts. Which he was if he thought I was setting foot in that … water. With or without hip waders. “It’s the colour of sewage and it doesn’t smell good and who knows what’s in there.”
“So, what’s your point?”
“My point is I’m not going in there.”
“Okay, first of all, nothing bad will happen to you in there. You won’t drown, and you won’t get eaten by a great white shark.”
“That’s because no shark in his right mind would be caught dead in that crap.”
“Second of all, we’re crossing this, and if you decide you’re not going to, then I’ll see you back at the truck. You can leave now.”
I looked back at the jungle we’d just come through. I thought about the noises I’d heard in there. Plus, even though there was sort of a path, I wasn’t totally positive I could find my way back to Mrs. Vinh and the campfire.
“Are you sure there isn’t a better way? Like maybe we could go around this?”
“There’s no better way. If Mr. Vinh says we have to cross this, then we have to cross it. Put on the damn hip waders.”
Mr. Vinh launched into some Vietnamese lecture. Sounded like an English teacher when you don’t hand something in.
The old man nodded. “He wants us to hurry up.”
“Give me the damn hip waders.”
They were too big, and I had trouble walking in them. The old man took bungee cords and wrapped them around my legs a couple of times to keep them on. He made the cords so tight they hurt.
“You’ve cut off my circulation.”
“Then we better get going. It’d be a bitch if your legs fell off out there in the middle.” He waved his arm in the direction of the swamp.
I noticed Mr. Vinh didn’t have hip waders. “Is he going to cross like that?”
The old man shrugged. “He’s tougher than us.”
“He’s stupider than us.”
The old man actually cracked a smile. “Let’s go.” He nodded at Mr. Vinh, who did his little trot-shuffle step up to the swamp, then stepped out into it.
I was relieved that he didn’t disappear straight down and out of sight. He held his arms out to the side like he was balancing, but he moved pretty fast. I was wishing the guy had more than one speed.
The old man gathered up the duffel bag and stepped into the water, then moved off a few metres into the swamp. But this time he at least stopped and looked back to see how I was getting along. I had my canteens and backpack all arranged, but holding the briefcase up chest high meant I couldn’t use my arms to balance myself.
“This place takes brackish to a whole other level.” I don’t think anybody heard me.
There are earthworms that move faster than I was moving right then, and I figured it wouldn’t be long before I heard about it. But this time the old man was patient. Even said all that encouraging stuff. “Doin’ just fine, Nate…. Looking good, buddy.” That kind of stuff.
And I was looking good until a little past the midway point of our crossing. The water was up to about the middle of my thighs. I think my foot must have slipped off a rock on the bottom, and I lost my balance. I tried like crazy to get my feet back under me, but as I was scrambling around,
