Elizabeth rolled over from where she was sprawled. Her pajamas carried a picture of Wonder Duck on the front. "What'd Mr. Sayers mean on the way back, Grdndpa?"
"When?"
"In the helicopter when he said, 'Well, I guess we really showed Charlie today." " Elizabeth took a breath. "Who's Charlie, Grandpa?"
"Stupid," said Sammee. "Charlie was the VC. The bad guys."
"How come you called him Charlie, Grandpa?" persisted Elizabeth. The frozen explosion on the wallscreen cast an orange glow on her features.
"I don't remember," said Disantis. He paused with his hand on the door. "You two had better get to bed before your father comes up. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day-"
Later, alone in his room, sitting in silence broken only by the hum of the air conditioner, Disantis realized that he could not remember why the Vietcong had been called Charlie. He wondered if he had ever known. He turned out the light and opened the sliding doors to the balcony. The humid air settled on him like a blanket as he stepped out. Three floor~ below, Justin, Sayers, and the others still sat drinking. Their laughter floated up to Disantis and mixed
with the rumble of thunder from a storm on the distant and darkened horizon.
On their way to a picnic the next day, Mr. Sayers tripped a claymore mine.
The guide had. put them on a simulated patrol down a narrow jungle trail. Sayers was in the lead, paying little attention to the trail, talking to Reverend Dewitt, an airwaves minister from Dothan, Alabama. Justin and Heather were walking with the Newtons, a young couple from Hartford. Disantis was further back in line, walking between Sammee and Elizabeth to keep them from quarreling
Sayers stepped into a thin tripwire stretched across the trail, a section of dirt erupted a meter in front of him, and the claymore jumped three meters into the air before exploding in a white puff.
"Shit," said Sayers. "Excuse me, Reverend." The Vietnamese guide came forward with an apologetic smile and put a red KIA armband on Sayem The Reverend Dewitt and Tom Newton each received a yellow WIA armband
"Does this mean I don't get to go to the picnic?" asked Sayers.
The guide smiled and directed the others on how to prepare a medevac LZ in a nearby clearing. Lieutenant Naguchi and Minh cleared underbrush with machetes while Headier and Sue Newton helped spread marker panels of iridescent orange plastic. Sammee was allowed to pop the tab on a green smoke marker.
The dust-off bird came in with a blast of downdraft that flattened the tall grass and blew Disantis's white tennis hat off. Sayers, Dewitt, and Newton sat propped on their elbows and waved as their stretchers were loaded. The patrol resumed when the dust-off 'copter was just a distant throbbing in the sky.
Justin took point. He moved carefully, frequently holding his hand up to halt the line behind him. There were two more tripwires and a stretch of trail salted with antipersonnel mines. The guide showed them all how to probe ahead with bayonets. For the last half-kilometer, they stayed in-the, grass on either side of the trail.
The picnic ground was on a hill overlooking the sea. Under a thatched pavilion sat dim tables covered with sandwich makings, salads, assorted fruits, and coolers of beer. Sayers, Newton, and Dewitt were already there, helping two guides cook hamburgers and hot dogs over charcoal fires. "What kept you?" called Sayers with a deep laugh.
After a long lunch, several of the tourists went down to the beach to swim or sunbathe or take a nap. Sammee found a network of tunnels in the jungle near the picnic pavilion and several of the children gathered around as the guide showed them how to drop in CS gas and fragmentation and concussion grenades before actually searching the tunnels. Then the children and a few of the younger adults wiggled in on their bellies to explore the complex. Disantis could hear their excited shouts as he sat alone at one of the picnic tables, drinking his beer and looking out to sea. He could also bear the conversation of his daughter and Sue Newton as they sat on beach towels a few meters away.
"We wanted to bring my daddy but he just refused to come,- said the Newton woman. "So Tommy says, 'Well, shoot, so long as the government's paying part of it, let's go ourselves.' So we did."
"We thought it'd be good for my father," said Heather. "I wasn't even born then, but when he got back from the war, way back in the Seventies, he didn't even come home to Mother. He went and lived in the woods in Oregon or Washington or somewhere for a couple of years."
"Really!" said Sue Newton. "My daddy never did anything crazy like that."
"Oh, he got better after a while," said Heather. "He's been fine the last ten years or so. But his therapy program said that it'd be good for him to come on the Vet's Tour, and Justin was able to get time off 'cause the dealership is doing so good."
The talk turned to children. Shortly after that it began to rain heavily and three Hueys and a lumbering Chinook picked them up to return them to the Sheraton. The dozen or so people in Disantis's group sang "Ninety-nine Bottles Of Beer on the Wall" during the short flight back.
There was nothing scheduled for the afternoon and after the storm passed several people decided to go shopping at one of the large malls between the hotel complex and the Park. Disantis caught an electric bus into downtown Saigon where he walked the streets until nightfall.
The change of names to Ho Chi Minh City had never really taken and the metropolis had officially been renamed Saigon in the early Nineties. The city bore little resemblance to the excited jumble of pedestrians, motorbikes, strip joints, bars, restaurants, and cheap hotels Disantis remembered from forty years earlier. The foreign money had all gone into the tourist enclaves near the Park and the city itself reflected the gray era of the New Socialist Reality more than it did the feverish pulse of old Saigon. Efficient, faceless structures and steel and glass high-rises sat on either side of busy boulevards. Occasionally Disantis would see a decaying sidestreet which reminded him of the cluttered stylishness of Tu-Do Street in the late Sixties.
Nguyen van Minh joined him as Disantis waited for a light to change on Thong Njut Boulevard.
