main infiltration route into the south. A lot of battles were fought around here. A hell of a lot of people died in that valley.”
“And this is where the battle you told me about, the one you and Tal were in, this is where that battle happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you want to come back here?”
“Jesus, Nate, you could be one of those interviewers on 60 Minutes or something. These are tough questions.”
“Sorry.”
“A lot of guys come back. Visit the places where shit happened. I don’t know exactly why. I never wanted to experience anything like that ever again. And I didn’t think I’d want to be reminded of what happened here. So I can’t explain exactly why we’re here, except that I guess I changed my mind.”
“It just seems weird to me after all this time.”
“Forty years.”
“Seriously? Forty years?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you remember stuff that happened that long ago?”
“Like it happened this morning.”
“I still don’t get why … after forty years.”
“It’s the right time.”
I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. But I was too tired to try to figure it out.
“What happens tomorrow?”
“We walk. Five miles to a place I want to see. A place I want you to see. After that I don’t know.”
I stopped listening after the five miles part. I hoped there weren’t any more swamps. I picked up the sleeping bag and pushed it into the tent. I fell asleep like somebody had hit me over the head with a brick.
The A Shau Valley
1
I woke up and freaked.
In the pre-dawn semi-light, I was sure of one thing — I’d been carried off to a giant jungle spider’s web. The spider’s webbing was all around me. I tried to move my eyes without moving my head so that whatever it was that had taken me prisoner wouldn’t know I was still alive. Or awake.
I didn’t see a spider. But I did hear the old man’s voice outside the tent, talking softly, and Mr. Vinh’s high-pitched singsong answering.
“Uh … morning,” I called out. I didn’t want to let on that I might need to be rescued from a bloodthirsty insect, but I wouldn’t have minded if the old man happened to look into the tent right about then.
He didn’t. “Hey, Nathan, gather up that mosquito netting as you’re getting up. We’ll need it again tonight.”
I pulled my hand out from under the covers and gently reached up, touched the spider’s web. Mosquito netting.
“Uh, yeah, mosquito netting. I’ll gather up the mosquito netting. I’ll just gather it up. No problem.”
“Good.” I heard the old man saying something to Mr. Vinh. I was pretty sure the phrase “strange kid” was part of what he said.
I gave up on the netting long enough to pull on the rest of my clothes. It didn’t take long since I hadn’t totally undressed the night before. I’d pulled off my shirt and running shoes and that was it. I had this feeling that sleeping in your gonch in the jungle was an open invitation for some creature to sneak into your sleeping bag and start gnawing on some private area best left un-gnawed.
I’d just finished getting the shirt and shoes back on and picked up the jumble of netting when the old man and Mr. Vinh stomped into the tent, wearing slickers but looking wet anyway. Raining outside. The old man was carrying the briefcase. He opened it and pulled out what looked like some maps … and a couple of old photographs.
They both sat on the floor of the tent. The old man was sitting cross-legged with the briefcase in his lap, lid down, and one of the maps lying on its surface. Mr. Vinh sat next to him. Both were staring hard at the map.
The old man pointed at a couple of points on the map. Mr. Vinh nodded and spoke in a mix of Vietnamese and English that was pretty well gibberish to me. The old man answered him also with a mix of words, most of them one syllable. As usual, I understood pretty well nothing.
But it was quite an animated conversation. A couple of times Mr. Vinh didn’t seem to know the answer to whatever the old man wanted to know. When that happened, he shrugged and shook his head. The old man’s voice got pretty loud right about then. After maybe the third time it happened, the old man looked up at me. It was like he suddenly realized I was there, still sorting mosquito netting and watching the two of them.
“Get that sleeping bag rolled up and into that duffel bag outside, the bigger one. The mosquito netting too.” That was it. He went back to the map, except that now he had some of the photographs spread out on the briefcase, and he was pointing at them too.
I gathered up the netting and sleeping bag and stepped out of the tent. The rain wasn’t hard, but there was enough of it that I knew I’d be soaked pretty fast. There was a gathering of branches next to the tent, sort of a lean-to and the two duffel bags were under it. I didn’t remember the lean-to from the night before. Maybe they’d put it up after I’d gone to bed or maybe it was there from before. I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was dry under there. I took my time packing up the rest of the gear.
The old man and Mr. Vinh came out of the tent, and the old man tossed a slicker to me. I pulled it over my head, lifted the hood into position and stepped out from under the lean-to. It was raining harder now, a lot harder. Even with the slicker I got pretty wet … pretty fast. Not as bad as after the swamp episode but fairly damp just the same.
I went around to the other side of the lean-to to take a leak. It was the most privacy I could hope for unless I wanted to go out into the jungle a ways. And I didn’t want to do that.
We ate bananas, two each, under the lean-to before heading out. Nobody was going to get fat on this trip. That was obvious. I pulled my hood back just long enough to check the sky. It looked like the clouds were about fifty metres above our heads and the rain was coming down even harder. Nice day for a walk in the jungle.
I gathered the canteens and the backpack. The old man had stashed the briefcase in the bigger duffel bag, so I didn’t have to carry it anymore. Mr. Vinh grunted a couple of times and started off across the clearing, machete in hand, toward the jungle that was on the other side. This time the old man nodded that he wanted me to go next and that he’d be at the back. I didn’t mind that actually. At least this way I wouldn’t get lost in the jungle or picked off by some python without anyone even knowing.
2
I don’t know how long we walked. I do know that the rain stopped. Trouble was, it was actually worse after that. Hot with a humidity of maybe four hundred percent. Steam was actually rising off the jungle floor. I pulled off the slicker, but it didn’t matter. I think I was wetter when it wasn’t raining than when it was. I laid on my
