Finding Moon

Morning, the Nineteenth Day

WITH THE MORNING LIGHT UPON it, the Mekong was busy despite the rain. Little boats were everywhere, being sailed, rowed, poled, pushed along with outboard motors. Moon sat on a bundle of something wrapped in burlap, hungrily eating a sticky mixture of rice and pork with his fingers and thinking about the bodies he’d seen floating past in this morning’s darkness.

“It’s no use trying to be neat,” Osa said. “Eating with your fingers neatly, it is simply not possible.”

Osa was sitting on the next bale, eating exactly the same rice mixture neatly.

The rain pattered steadily on the tin roof above them, dripped from the warehouse eaves, splashed in the puddles formed on the dock. Moon heard a thumping sound, far away but too regular to be thunder. He recognized the sound of artillery fire, or perhaps heavy mortars. According to Moon’s map, the only major town upstream was Can Tho, where Highway One bridged this arm of the Mekong. Perhaps they were fighting for that. Anyway, it must be a lot quieter here than around Saigon. The radio Rice had turned up loud in the hangar was full of bad news. The Tan Son Nhut air base had been bombed. That was next door to the capital, and apparently the planes that bombed it were U.S.-built fighter bombers-either turncoat pilots of the Vietnam Air Force or planes captured on the ground up north when Phan Thiet and its air base were taken. It didn’t seem to matter much. One radio report said ARVN marines had seized a C-130 trying to take off from Nha Trang with a load of refugees, forced the civilians out, and flown away. Big Minh, the new president since yesterday, was on the air. The reporter on Rice’s wavelength said he appealed to all citizens to be courageous, not to run away, not to abandon the tombs of their ancestors.

Everything was coming apart. Moon didn’t want to think about it.

What time would it be in Los Angeles? Evening. if she was lucky, if Dr. Serna had made no mistakes, his mother would be recovering now. Her heart pumping blood through unclogged bypasses, her surgical incisions healing. She might be out of the intensive care unit, in a regular room, reading the L.A. Times about disaster in Southeast Asia, watching television news, perhaps thinking of how alone she was, wondering what had happened to her unreliable elder son. Had Dr. Serna given her his promise? And what would she think of it?

Or the other possibility. Messages awaiting him at the hotel in Puerto Princesa and the embassy in Manila regretting to inform him that Victoria Mathias Monck had not survived the operation.

That would release her, at last, from her burdens.

“You look sad,” Osa said. “I think you are remembering something unhappy.”

“Oh, no,” Moon said. “Just thinking.”

“Of your mother,” Osa said. “I remember today is the day you said they would have her in the surgery. She is all alone. Of course you worry about her.”

“There’s nothing I could do if I were there.”

“You would hold her hand,” Osa said.

“I should finish here and go back and help Rice,” Moon said. Actually there wasn’t much he could do right now to help. Rice was stripping the heavy stuff out of the copter he had chosen for their rescue project. There had seemed to be plenty to choose from in the R. M. Air repair hangar, ranging from a little Cayuse too small for their purpose to a huge banana-shaped Vertol Chinook with its twin rotors, which was obviously too large. In between were four Hueys, familiar to Moon from his days with the Armored, an ugly Cobra in camouflage paint, and a Bell Kiowa. All stood on wheeled dollies. Some were obviously in the throes of repair, with panels removed and parts missing. The Kiowa seemed ready to go, but Rice had picked one of the Hueys. It had apparently been left behind by the U.S. Navy, and its original Marine Corps markings showed through the Vietnamese paint job.

“I remember this one,” Rice had said. “The radar’s off waiting for parts to come down from Saigon, but we won’t need radar, and these navy models were modified to increase the range.”

Moon had said he hadn’t thought they would need the range either. Weren’t they just hopping over the border thirty minutes into Cambodia?

“You hear that artillery upriver a while ago?” Rice had asked. “We may not be able to get back here to refuel.” What then? Moon had said. And Rice had shrugged and said the best bet would probably be to try for Thailand. So now Rice was removing the machine gun mounts and, as he put it, “everything else that us peace-loving neutrals don’t need to get us the hell out of here.” The less weight, the more miles, Rice had said.

Now Moon was aware that Osa had been staring at him. “Or maybe you were thinking of your sweetheart,” she said. “You must be missing her.”

“No,” Moon said. He chuckled and shook his head, thinking how Osa, who often was so uncannily right about what was on his mind, could be so wrong on this one. He tried to imagine how he’d deal with Debbie in this damp, odorous warehouse. Or how Debbie would deal with him. And with Rice, and Mr. Lee and the others.

“Not missing her?” Osa was looking surprised. He guessed she hadn’t expected his amusement.

“It’s not the kind of relationship you’d normally expect. I own a house. The bank and I own it. I rent out two of the rooms: one to a man who works with me at the newspaper and one to Debbie. Well-” He couldn’t think how to finish this explanation. How much had he said when he had that fever?

“Just sex then?” Osa said, looking very wise. “I don’t think so. When you were so sick you talked about when you would get married. You talked about love.”

Moon found himself embarrassed. “Did I?”

Osa too. Her face was flushed. “I apologize,” she said. “I am sorry. This is not my business. Why am I prying into your private life? This is terrible of me. Don’t answer any of my questions. I am terribly sorry.”

“No, no. It’s all right.”

Osa wasn’t saying anything. Moon suspected she might be crying. Or trying not to cry. Why not? Fatigue. Fear. Dirt. Discomfort. Worry about her brother. Too damn much stress for a woman. Too damn much stress for Moon too. He wasn’t going to look at her. What was her last question?

“Sometimes love and marriage don’t go together,” he said. “Sometimes other things have to be considered. For example, my mother married a man she didn’t love. Her second husband.”

“Oh,” Osa said. She made a sniffing sound. Trying not to cry, Moon thought.

“How about you?” he asked. “You ever think about marrying somebody you didn’t love? Or not marrying somebody you did love? Or any combination of the above?”

“Yes,” Osa said.

“Which one?”

“I guess it was a combination of the above. I was going to marry him, but he went away.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t come back.”

Well, at least she wasn’t crying anymore. But Moon didn’t know exactly how to stop this.

“Was this recently?”

“I was nineteen,” she said. “Going to school in Jakarta. He was a teacher there. He taught French.”

Moon digested that. Or thought he had. “I think something like that would happen to Debbie,” he said. “She’s a very pretty girl. Small and blond. The kind of girl that when she walks into a room all the men look at her. But she doesn’t use her head. She picks the wrong kind of man and she’s going to get dumped. Have her heart broken.”

Osa said, “You are a very funny man,” and when he looked at her, surprised, she was laughing at him.

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Men,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She laughed again. “I mean you don’t understand women.”

“Like how?”

“That’s not what happened to me at all. That’s not what’s happened with Debbie.”

“How the hell do you know?” said Moon. He was not in the mood to be a source of Osa’s amusement.

“Of course I don’t know,” she said. “You see, I am doing it again. I’m sorry. We will not talk about it any longer.”

“Well,” Moon began, but the noise of an approaching vehicle interrupted him. For a former sergeant in an armored outfit it was a familiar noise. A tracked vehicle, which meant armor. Here that meant trouble.

He stood out of sight at the truck entry door of the warehouse. An armored personnel carrier wearing mottled gray-green camouflage paint splashed with mud had stopped with its nose almost touching the gate in the high wire fence that barred access to the compound. Rice was hurrying out of the hangar toward it. As Moon watched, Lum Lee emerged from the door of the little Quonset hut that housed the R. M. Air offices. Mr. Lee stood just outside, watching.

“What is it?” Osa whispered. She was standing just behind him.

“Technically, it’s a Model One-hundred-thirteen armored personnel carrier,” Moon said. “Armed with one fifty-caliber machine gun on that little mounting on the roof. The one we drove had two benches, six men on each side with their gear stacked in the middle. Driver jammed in against the engine, peeking out through dirty bulletproof glass and no headroom for anyone to stand up unless the roof hatches were open.”

Rice seemed to think it was good news. He unfastened the chain holding the heavy gate. A small man wearing the U.S. Army-model helmet of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and an officer’s uniform climbed out of the roof mounting, hopped off the vehicle, and walked through the gate ahead of it. Rice thrust out his hand.

“Looks all right so far,” Moon said.

Then he saw the ARVN officer was holding a pistol. Rice’s gesture seemed to have been defensive.

“No,” Moon said. “Not so good.”

“A pistol,” Osa said, voice hushed.

The rear hatch of the armored personnel carrier dropped and a soldier emerged, also in an officer’s uniform, carrying an Ml6 rifle. And then the entourage was moving, with Rice, Lum Lee, and two officers in front, and the APC coming along slowly behind them. The men walked into the hangar. The APC parked, the engine died, and a soldier wearing a fatigue cap and carrying a rifle climbed out. He stretched, scratched his hip, and leaned against the vehicle.

“What should we do?” Osa asked.

“I’d say wait. See what happens.”

“But-” She didn’t finish the thought.

“These are the good guys,” Moon said. “R. M. Air was fixing helicopters for them. Maybe they heard the place had been evacuated so they came by to see what’s going on.”

“Perhaps so,” Osa said. “But he pointed a pistol at Mr. Rice.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He and Osa should be looking for a place to hide. Under the bales stacked against the wall. Or in the bales. “Our best bet is to get our things together and be ready in case we need to be. Sort of clean this place up.”

“In case they shoot Mr. Rice and Mr. Lee and come looking to see if there is someone else to shoot?”

“Well, yes,” Moon said. He picked up his rice bowl and his map, put them both in his bag, and looked around the floor for any other traces that they’d been there.

“We could hide over there,” Osa said, indicating the mountainous stacks of burlap bags.

“You watch,” Moon said. “Don’t leave any evidence we’re here. I’ll make us a hiding place.”

He moved enough bags to make a narrow crevice against the wall, put his bag in the back of it, and added Osa’s baggage to the cache. He was arranging two sacks atop the pile to be pulled down behind them when he heard an engine starting.

Osa was standing just inside the doorway, pointing. Moon saw Mr. Lee, looking very wet, climbing the steps into the warehouse. The dolly holding Rice’s favored Huey had been rolled out onto the landing pad. The rotor blades turned slowly. Rice was at the controls beside the officer with the pistol. The engine revved, fell to a purr, revved again. As the copter blades picked up speed, the officer with the rifle climbed in through the side door and motioned for the soldier to join them. He ran from the APC, ducked under the rotors, and pulled himself in.

Mr. Lee stood beside them now, watching the copter rise and make a sharp turn out over the Mekong. Over the noise of its engine came the hard crackling sound of automatic rifle fire.

“I believe the Yellow Tiger Battalion has lost one of its company commanders, the leader of its intelligence platoon, and one of its soldiers,” Mr. Lee said.

“And have we lost Rice?” Moon asked. “Or is he going to fly them to safety and then come back for us?”

“I think Mr. Rice will not be back,” Mr. Lee said. “And I think we should find a place to hide ourselves.”

Through the doorway, Moon saw two men slipping through the gate. They carried automatic rifles and wore the black pajamas and conical hats he’d seen in war movies. Five men followed, heading for the hangar.

“Right over here,” Moon said, pointing to the great pile of bales. “And hurry.”

HANOI, North Vietnam, April 28-(Agence France-Presse) A spokesman for the foreign office here said today that the proposal of the new president of South Vietnam for a negotiated peace had “come too late” and that the war would be ended by “a military solution.”