Field Trip
A few months after completing “In the Field,” I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa’s death, and where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer. The field was still there, though not as I remembered it. Much smaller, I thought, and not nearly so menacing, and in the bright sunlight it was hard to picture what had happened on this ground some twenty years ago. Except for a few marshy spots along the river, everything was bone dry. No ghosts—just a flat, grassy field. The place was at peace. There were yellow butterflies. There was a breeze and a wide blue sky. Along the river two old farmers stood in ankle-deep water, repairing the same narrow dike where we had laid out Kiowa’s body after pulling him from the muck. Things were quiet. At one point, I remember, one of the farmers looked up and shaded his eyes, staring across the field at us, then after a time he wiped his forehead and went back to work.
I stood with my arms folded, feeling the grip of sentiment and time.
Amazing, I thought. Twenty years.
Behind me, in the jeep, my daughter Kathleen sat waiting with a government interpreter, and now and then I could hear the two of them talking in soft voices. They were already fast friends. Neither of them, I think, understood what all this was about, why I’d insisted that we search out this spot. It had been a hard two-hour ride from Quang Ngai City, bumpy dirt roads and a hot August sun, ending up at an empty field on the edge of nowhere.
I took out my camera, snapped a couple of pictures, and stood gazing out at the field. After a time Kathleen got out of the jeep and stood beside me.
“You know what I think?” she said. “I think this place stinks. It smells like
… God, I don’t even know what. It smells rotten.” “It sure does. I know that.”
“So when can we go?” “Pretty soon,” I said.
She started to say something but then hesitated. Frowning, she squinted
out at the field for a second, then shrugged and walked back to the jeep.
Kathleen had just turned ten, and this trip was a kind of birthday present, showing her the world, offering a small piece of her father’s history. For the most part she’d held up well—far better than I—and over the first two weeks she’d trooped along without complaint as we hit the obligatory tourist stops. Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in Hanoi. A model farm outside Saigon. The tunnels at Cu Chi. The monuments and government offices and orphanages. Through most of this, Kathleen had seemed to enjoy the foreignness of it all, the exotic food and animals, and even during those periods of boredom and discomfort she’d kept up a good-humored tolerance. At the same time, however, she’d seemed a bit puzzled. The war was as remote to her as cavemen and dinosaurs.
One morning in Saigon she’d asked what it was all about. “This whole war,” she said, “why was everybody so mad at everybody else?”
I shook my head. “They weren’t mad, exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.
“What did you want?”
“Nothing,” I said. “To stay alive.” “That’s all?”
“Yes.”
Kathleen sighed. “Well, I don’t get it. I mean, how come you were even here in the first place?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because I had to be.” “But why?”
I tried to find something to tell her, but finally I shrugged and said, “It’s a mystery, I guess. I don’t know.”
For the rest of the day she was very quiet. That night, though, just before bedtime, Kathleen put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You know
something? Sometimes you’re pretty weird, aren’t you?” “Well, no,” I said.
“You are too.” She pulled her hand away and frowned at me. “Like coming over here. Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you can’t ever forget it.”
“And that’s bad?”
“No,” she said. “That’s weird.”
In the second week of August, near the end of our stay, I’d arranged for the side trip up to Quang Ngai. The tourist stuff was fine, but from the start I’d wanted to take my daughter to the places I’d seen as a soldier. I wanted to show her the Vietnam that kept me awake at night—a shady trail outside the village of My Khe, a filthy old pigsty on the Batangan Peninsula. Our time was short, however, and choices had to be made, and in the end I decided to take her to this piece of ground where my friend Kiowa had died. It seemed appropriate. And, besides, I had business here.
Now, looking out at the field, I wondered if it was all a mistake.
Everything was too ordinary. A quiet sunny day, and the field was not the field I remembered. I pictured Kiowa’s face, the way he used to smile, but all I felt was the awkwardness of remembering.
Behind me, Kathleen let out a little giggle. The interpreter was showing her magic tricks.
There were birds and butterflies, the soft rustlings of rural-anywhere. Below, in the earth, the relics of our presence were no doubt still there, the canteens and bandoliers and mess kits. This little field, I thought, had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage. Still, it was hard to find any real emotion. It simply wasn’t there. After that long night in the rain, I’d seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud. Over the years, that coldness had never entirely disappeared. There were times in my life when I couldn’t feel much, not sadness or pity or passion, and somehow I blamed this place for what I had become, and I blamed it for taking away the person I had once been. For
twenty years this field had embodied all the waste that was Vietnam, all the vulgarity and horror.
Now, it was just what it was. Flat and dreary and unremarkable. I walked up toward the river, trying to pick out specific landmarks, but all I recognized was a small rise where Jimmy Cross had set up his command post that night. Nothing else. For a while I watched the two old farmers working under the hot sun. I took a few more photographs, waved at the farmers, then turned and moved back to the jeep.
Kathleen gave me a little nod.
“Well,” she said, “I hope you’re having fun.” “Sure.”
“Can we go now?”
“In a minute,” I said. “Just relax.”
At the back of the jeep I found the small cloth bundle I’d carried over from the States.
Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that?” “Stuff,” I told her.
She glanced at the bundle again, then hopped out of the jeep and followed me back to the field. We walked past Jimmy Cross’s command post, past the spot where Kiowa had gone under, down to where the field dipped into the marshland along the river. I took off my shoes and socks.
“Okay,” Kathleen said, “what’s going on?” “A quick swim.”
“Where?”
“Right here,” I said. “Stay put.”
She watched me unwrap the cloth bundle. Inside were Kiowa’s old moccasins.
I stripped down to my underwear, took off my wrist-watch, and waded in.
The water was warm against my feet. Instantly, I recognized the soft, fat feel of the bottom. The water here was eight inches deep.
Kathleen seemed nervous. She squinted at me, her hands fluttering. “Listen, this is stupid,” she said, “you can’t even hardly get wet. How can you swim out there?”
“I’ll manage.”
“But it’s not … I mean, God, it’s not even water, it’s like mush or something.”
She pinched her nose and watched me wade out to where the water reached my knees. Roughly here, I decided, was where Mitchell Sanders had found Kiowa’s rucksack. I eased myself down, squatting at first, then sitting. There was again that sense of recognition. The water rose to mid-chest, a deep greenish brown, almost hot. Small water bugs skipped along the surface.
Right here, I thought. Leaning forward, I reached in with the moccasins and wedged them into the soft bottom, letting them slide away. Tiny bubbles broke along the surface. I tried to think of something decent to say, something meaningful and right, but nothing came to me.
I looked down into the field.
“Well,” I finally managed. “There it is.”
My voice surprised me. It had a rough, chalky sound, full of things I did not know were there. I wanted to tell Kiowa that he’d been a great friend, the very best, but all I could do was slap hands with the water.
The sun made me squint. Twenty years. A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. In a way, maybe, I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d mostly worked my way out. A hot afternoon, a bright August sun, and the war was over. For a few moments I could not bring myself to move. Like waking from a summer nap, feeling lazy and sluggish, the world collecting itself around me. Fifty meters up the field one of the old farmers stood watching from along the dike. The man’s face was dark and solemn. As we stared at each other, neither of us moving, I felt something go shut in my heart while something else swung open. For a second, I wondered if the old man might walk over to exchange a few war stories, but instead he picked up a shovel and raised it over his head and held it there for a time, grimly, like a flag, then he brought the shovel down and said something to his friend and began digging into the hard, dry ground.
I stood up and waded out of the water.
“What a mess,” Kathleen said. “All that gunk on your skin, you look like
… Wait’ll I tell Mommy, she’ll probably make you sleep in the garage.” “You’re right,” I said. “Don’t tell her.”
I pulled on my shoes, took my daughter’s hand, and led her across the field toward the jeep. Soft heat waves shimmied up out of the earth.
When we reached the jeep, Kathleen turned and glanced out at the field. “That old man,” she said, “is he mad at you or something?”
“I hope not.” “He looks mad.”
“No,” I said. “All that’s finished.”
