Old Man Read online

  It seemed to me that a lot of the people on the bus were tourists, not a lot of Vietnamese. Several different languages were being spoken around us. Not much English. Quite a few backpackers.

  There were three people sitting across from us. They were Caucasian and speaking English, with an accent. Husband, wife, daughter, about my age. The daughter smiled at me. I gave her a little smile back. Reminded myself I was saving my love for Jen Wertz. The two adults — they looked about Mom’s age — nodded at us and we nodded back.

  “Where you from?” the old man asked.

  “Australia. You? Yank?”

  “Canadian.”

  “You going to Cu Chi? The tunnels?” the lady asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I looked at the old man, wondering why it was so tough for him to tell me the stuff he could tell somebody we’d only just met.

  The Australian guy leaned forward, looked at the old man. “You look the right age to have been here during the war. You a veteran?”

  The old man didn’t answer, just turned and looked out the window. Not real friendly, I thought. The Australian guy sat back and looked at his wife. I couldn’t tell what the look meant. The daughter smiled at me again. I figured I knew what that look meant.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Jennifer.

  Jennifer. Jen. Whoa, what are the chances?

  As we were getting off the bus, the Australian man stepped up close to the old man. “Listen, I’m in the middle of writing a book about Vietnam, the Australian experience, you know? But I want it to be on the mark, get it right. Talk about the war America and its allies lost, how Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon, how all of them screwed up … how it was the most unpopular war the west ever fought, even more than Iraq. What I need is the perspective of the American soldier — ”

  “No.”

  “Look, mate, I wouldn’t take up a lot of your time, I really only need you to — ”

  “I really only need you to shut the hell up … mate.” When the old man said that, the Australian guy took a couple of quick steps backward. He was nervous — maybe even scared. Scared of someone in his sixties.

  The weird thing is, if I’d been him, I’d have been scared of the old man too. There was something about the way he was looking at the Aussie writer that was kind of crazy — off base, like he wasn’t totally with the program. Guys like that are scary and right at that moment the old man was a scary guy.

  The writer dude from Australia shut the hell up. And got out of there, dragging the family with him. They were moving quite rapidly

  I thought about trying to say something funny. Like well, I guess I won’t be taking her to the prom. But I changed my mind. Maybe not the time for Huffman humour.

  We moved away from the bus and followed the crowd that all seemed to be heading the same way. Cu Chi was a town. But we weren’t there to see the town. Nobody was. It turned out everyone on the bus, and all the people from all the other buses, were there to see the tunnels. The Cu Chi Tunnels.

  I figured this would be more boring than the Saigon zoo with its No Animals policy. Now we’d be poking around a couple of little tunnels with those things hanging down — stalactites. Total yawner.

  I was way wrong.

  The old man led me over to where you pay for the tour. He went up to this sort of cage and paid. He came back and handed me a piece of paper.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Why not? I don’t want to go by myself.”

  “I’ve been in tunnels. Not these tunnels but others like them. Charlie was very good at digging.”

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “It’s what we called them … the enemy. We called them other names too. But a lot of the time it was Charlie.”

  “So why are we here if you’re not even going in there?”

  “I don’t need to go down there.”

  I shook my head. “Well, I don’t need to go down there either. I thought this was about you. You’re the one who was in the war.”

  “This is about us. I’ve been in tunnels, you haven’t. You better get going. Your tour guide is leaving.”

  I wanted to tell him this was crap, but there were a lot of people around, and I didn’t want to look like the pain-in-the-ass teenager. I shook my head again and turned to follow the tour guide and about ten people who were in our group.

  The guide didn’t say much at first, just walked off and signalled for us to follow her. She looked like she was having a bad day.

  There were maybe twelve of us. We hadn’t gone far when suddenly this guy popped out of the ground right in front of us. He was wearing a black army shirt that looked like it came from Value Village and a floppy green bush hat. He was holding the hatch over his head like one of those sewer covers and grinning like crazy at us. He made his fingers in the shape of a gun.

  “Bang, bang, you all dead now,” he said, still grinning.

  I could see what he was saying. A bunch of soldiers walking along and suddenly, this guy is there with a machine gun or a grenade or something and yeah, everybody’s dead.

  Everyone snapped pictures like crazy for a couple of minutes. Everyone but me. I wasn’t going to waste film on a guy doing an impersonation of a jack-in-the-box and wearing cheap black pajamas. We walked on and eventually came to an exhibit. I’ve been to a few museums on field trips and stuff, but I’d never seen an exhibit like this one.

  The whole exhibit was booby traps that the Viet Cong used to kill guys. The worst one for me was this pit that was covered over just like the hole the guy had come out of. When the thatch cover was pulled away from over top of the pit, there were all these sharp bamboo stakes at the bottom, pointing up.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be walking along and falling into one of those pits. I had this picture in my mind of these soldiers looking down into the pit where one of their buddies was spread out with those stakes all through him. Trying to think of a way to help him. To get him out.

  Something I’d noticed: whenever you saw anything about American war crimes, it was all those rotten bastards. But anybody who ran into one of the booby traps I saw displayed there was going to die a pretty horrible death. Cruel. But this exhibit was like a celebration. Like somebody had won the Stanley Cup. We showed ’em. I guess they did.

  I was glad we didn’t spend a lot of time at that exhibit. Next we got to go down into one section of the tunnels ourselves. The guide told us there were 125 miles of these tunnels. Three tiers of them that had kitchens, first aid stations, weapons caches — it was unreal. And the Viet Cong, who were the communists in South Vietnam — Charlie — they did a lot of their war preparations from down there. And launched attacks from inside the tunnels.

  The guide said there were guys on the American side called tunnel rats. Their job was to go down into these tunnels and try to find and destroy the enemy. I tried to imagine what that job would have been like. The guide said guys volunteered for that job. He sounded like he actually admired people who would do that. I knew one thing — there was no freaking way I’d have volunteered to go down there and look for the enemy.

  I got tired of listening to the guide, so after we’d been down there awhile, I wandered off by myself. This part of the tunnel had been a command post. I moved slowly through it and came out into what had been a dormitory — probably big enough for about twenty people to sleep in. Some of the bunks were still there.

  “Hi.”

  I turned and there was the Australian chick, Jennifer, standing there. “Hi.”

  I looked around. There were other people in the room, another tour group, but I didn’t see Jennifer’s parents.

  “Where’re your mom and dad?”

  She shrugged. “We’re not interested in the same things.”

  I nodded. Tried to think of something to say. “Uh … what did you think of that bamboo pit deal?”

  She made a face. “Gross. Scary.”
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br />   “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “So your dad — did he fight in the war here?”

  “Yeah. I guess so. He doesn’t say much.”

  “But when he does … ” She had a little smile on her face.

  “Yeah, sorry about that … he wasn’t exactly polite to your dad.”

  “It’s okay. Dad can be like so annoying. There’ve been a few times when I wouldn’t have minded telling him that myself.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  We just stood there for a couple of minutes, looking like kids the first day in a new school — totally lost. “You want to walk around?” I wasn’t sure why I asked her that, and I figured she’d do the I better get back to my parents thing but she didn’t.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” We stood there for another little while. Then I decided, if we were going to walk around together, we should probably do some actual walking.

  I started off around the outside of the room. Looked at the beds, the walls. The dirt ceiling with wooden beams holding things up.

  “You never told me your name.”

  “Oh sorry, you’re right. It’s Nathan … Nate.”

  “Which one?”

  “I like Nate better.”

  “Me too. I’m Jen … Jen Dodsworth.”

  Jen Wertz … Jen Dodsworth … sweet.

  We walked around, not saying a lot. Making little comments about stuff we were looking at.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked her.

  “Eight days.” Sounded like she was keeping track. Wanting to get the hell home. “And we don’t go back for another whole week. You?”

  “I’m not sure. This whole thing was my old man’s idea. He doesn’t tell me much. Another few days maybe.”

  “I miss my dog.”

  “Oh, yeah … uh … what’s its name?”

  “Farnsworth.”

  Farnsworth Dodsworth. Nice.

  “What kind of dog is he?” She hadn’t said it was a he, but I figured nobody names a female dog Farnsworth. If the dog was a golden retriever, I decided I’d run out of the tunnels and throw myself into the bamboo pit.

  “Dalmatian.”

  Not a golden retriever. I didn’t like Dalmatians either, but then I didn’t like any kind of dog. I decided not to share that information with her.

  There were quite a few places where the tunnels got narrow and small and we had to scootch down and duck walk to get through. Scootching down and getting close to Jen wasn’t all that bad, even in a tunnel.

  We worked our way through a few more rooms — a kitchen, a weapons storage area, a printing shop, and then we came to another dormitory. Either that or a hospital. More beds. This time we were by ourselves in there.

  “I wonder if they had sex down here.”

  I looked over at her. I wondered if that was her way of being flirty or if she was showing me how adult she was or what. I shrugged. “The guide said there were women down here as well as men so I guess … maybe.”

  I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going to go from there, but it didn’t go anywhere because that’s when her mom and dad showed up.

  “Jennifer, where did you get …” her mom stopped in mid-sentence when she saw me. “Oh, hello.”

  “Hi again,” I said.

  “Where’s your father?” Mr. Dodsworth (or was it Farnsworth?) asked me.

  “He stayed up top.”

  “He didn’t come with you? Sent you down here by yourself?”

  “He said he’s seen enough tunnels.”

  “He was bloody rude to me, I’d have to say. All I did was ask a question. He didn’t have to swear … quite rude.”

  “Yeah, well, my old man’s a rude son of a bitch.”

  That seemed to be a conversation stopper. Mr. Dodsworth turned toward the exit and spoke over his shoulder. “We better be getting along, we seem to have lost our group. Jennifer?”

  The three of them started off toward the doorway. Jennifer stopped and looked back at me. “Jendoll at westcom dot au. Will you remember?”

  I nodded. “Jendoll at westcom dot au. I’ll remember. Oh, and I’ve thought about what you asked me … you know, about having sex down here in the tunnels. The answer’s a definite yes.”

  Her face turned bright red, but she was laughing as her parents hurried her out the door. They weren’t laughing.

  I’d seen enough of the tunnels, so I worked my way back to where we’d come in and went back outside. For a minute I stood there blinking, trying to get my eyes to work in the bright sunlight. I spotted the old man sitting on a bench drinking a coffee and reading a newspaper. I walked over to where he was sitting. The newspaper was in Vietnamese … definitely not English.

  “Can you read that?”

  He didn’t look up. “Not a word.”

  I sat down on the bench. He put the paper down. “How was it?”

  “The tour? Interesting.”

  “That’s it … interesting?”

  “You know how parents ask their kids how they liked something and the kids say interesting but what they really mean is that bored the crap out of me?”

  “I’ve heard that happens,” he smiled.

  “It happens. I said interesting, and I meant interesting.”

  “Good. You hungry?”

  “I’m hungry for a Big Mac.”

  “How about a Big Spring Roll?”

  “Terrific.” I looked around, praying for a set of golden arches to pop out of the ground like the guy in the Value Village army uniform.

  “We’ll eat, then we best be heading back. Need our sleep tonight. Tomorrow it’s feet on the floor at oh six hundred hours.”

  That’s what he actually said … oh six hundred hours. Military talk.

  Sir. Yes, sir.

  4

  0600 hours was about oh three hours less sleep than I would have liked.

  I knew about thirty seconds after I had my “feet on the floor” that today was a big deal. The old man was different. He wasn’t twirling his hair like he had at the border, but I knew something was going on inside him.

  He was quiet, pointed to the bathroom and said, “I’m done, it’s yours.” When I came out, there was fruit and cereal and milk on the table. Since we didn’t have any of that stuff with us, I knew he must have ordered room service. I hadn’t thought of the old man as a room service kind of guy.

  While I ate, he rolled clothes and other stuff we’d need into two sleeping bags, then threw them into two dull green duffel bags. He also threw in some sandwiches, matches, bug spray, and a knife the size of a small sword. Maybe it was a machete. I wasn’t sure since I’d never seen a machete up close. If we needed to chop our way through the forest, I figured that thing would do the job.

  When I’d finished eating, the old man told me to brush my teeth and put my toothbrush and some clothes in my backpack. He said I wouldn’t need my duffel bag. Okay, so that meant we were sleeping somewhere else tonight. Of course, the sleeping bags were pretty much a giveaway, but the toothbrush thing sealed the deal.

  There was a knock at the door. I answered it and found myself looking at a guy about a hundred years old who came up to my chin. He looked serious, not grumpy exactly, but real serious. He looked like the kind of person who was serious all the time. Chinese or Vietnamese, I couldn’t tell. He also weighed maybe 125 pounds total. Not a big guy, but even with the age and how little he was, he didn’t look like a guy you’d want to mess with. Kind of like the old man that way.

  He was wearing a black shirt over a black T-shirt and green real baggy pants like the kind you see American soldiers wearing in war movies. Except they looked a few sizes too big. He was also wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins ball cap. That made no sense to me. Watch a lot of hockey do ya, little fella?

  The old man stepped around me and shook hands with the guy, invited him in.

  “This is Mr. Vinh. Mr. Vinh — my son Nathan.”

  “Nate,” I said.

 
Mr. Vinh nodded but didn’t offer to shake my hand.

  “Mr. Vinh and me, we got some stuff to talk about.” The old man pulled some money out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Why don’t you go shopping or something for a half hour?”

  I handed it back to him. “First of all, I’ve got money. Second of all, since it’s oh six hundred hours plus about twenty minutes, I figure the shopping is going to be a bit scarce. Third of all, I get that you want me out of here. So this is me leaving.”

  I started to leave, then stopped and turned back. “We’re coming back here right? To this hotel?”

  The old man nodded.

  As I walked through the door into the hall, I heard him say, “Thanks, Nate,” behind me, but I kept going toward the elevator.

  I’d seen a computer in the lobby and there were a couple of things I wanted to do. I bought a coffee at the little restaurant on the main floor, got a password from a drop-dead gorgeous Vietnamese woman at the desk and set myself up at the computer.

  First thing. Jendoll at westcom dot au. I worked my way to the email function, typed in Jen’s address and started tapping out an email.

  Hey, I’m the guy you met at the tunnels. How you doing? My old man and I are going somewhere for what looks like a couple of days, then I should be back here. Feel like taking in a movie or just getting a burger or something? Notice I didn’t invite you for noodles, which should tell you that I’m a really nice guy. You can email me if you want to at [email protected]

  LOL

  Nate

  I hit send. I figured she’d still be sleeping like most of the normal people in the world at that moment, so I didn’t expect an answer back. Maybe later. Maybe.

  Then I googled something called My Lai. It was something I’d seen pictures of in the War Remnants Museum. I wanted to know more about it.

  I spent twenty minutes reading and looking at pictures. It’s a good thing I’d already eaten because I wouldn’t have wanted to after I finished finding out about My Lai.