Finding Moon

Afternoon, the Nineteenth Day

IF OSA VAN WINJGAARDEN’S DIAGNOSIS was correct, Nguyen Nung had suffered two cracked ribs, concussion, multiple wounds caused by some sort of shrapnel on his face, neck, chest, and scalp, plus assorted bruises and abrasions.

By Lum Lee’s analysis, based on cross-examining Nguyen Nung before the shot of morphine from a U.S. Army aid kit took effect, these damages had been caused when a Vietcong rocket hit the superstructure of the LST where his PBR was based just as Nung was scrambling up a ladder. He remembered being hit by something and flung from the ladder to the deck. The next thing he remembered was awakening in a PBR somewhere out on the river and being aware that they were being shot at.

The last time he revived, he’d found himself on the bottom of the boat, with the legs of a dead man across his own. He had extracted himself to find that the PBR had been run aground on the bank of a very narrow, very shallow creek. He had walked. He had come to the warehouse compound about dawn, found the gate unlocked, and entered. When he heard voices, he’d hidden himself in the closet. Could he find the boat again? Of course. How far was it? Nung was too hazy from the morphine by now to answer that coherently.

Osa picked bits and pieces of debris from various wounds, washed everything with soapy water, applied copious amounts of antiseptic, and swathed his face and neck in U.S. Government Issue bandages. Finally, with Moon holding the groggy Nung erect, Osa wrapped his chest in strips torn from a bedsheet.

“We let him down now,” she said, glanced up at Moon, and instantly looked away.

“I shouldn’t have screamed like that,” she said. “I am embarrassed.”

“I would have screamed a lot louder,” Moon said. “You open a door and see a guy pointing a grenade launcher at you. I might have fainted.”

They lowered Nung gently to the bed and were rewarded with a grimace, followed by a dopey smile. Nung said something that sounded to Moon like “tenk,” closed his eyes, and surrendered to the morphine.

Osa, leaning over him, closed a long gash on his cheek with the careful application of an adhesive bandage. She stood straight, stretched her back, shook herself.

“We should leave him to sleep a little,” she said. “I will go now and take that shower.” She laughed. “This time I look in the closet first.”

“Good idea. Nothing to do now but wait until we find out if our friend here can help us.”

“That tattoo on his chest,” she said. “You saw it?”

“Mr. Lee said it means Kill Communists.”

“That’s what I thought,” Osa said. “Poor man. What does he do now?”

Moon hadn’t given that much thought. He watched her close the bathroom door behind her and went back into the office. Through the doorway he saw Mr. Lee prowling the warehouse, checking bales and sacks. He had no desire to talk to Mr. Lee at the moment. What could they say? That they were lucky in connecting with this sailor? Probably it was great good luck. Now there seemed to be some chance, at least. He stood at Ricky’s window looking out at the armored personnel carrier parked by the hanger. An M-1 13, the same model they’d used in training at Fort Riley. The ARVN soldiers had left the hatches open, which meant it would be wet inside. Halsey had done that once, leaving Lieutenant Rasko’s bedroll to serve as a blotter, soaking up the rainwater from the metal floor.

Moon smiled, remembering how Halsey had talked his way out of that one. What would Halsey suggest to get out of this situation? He’d say something like “Que sera sera, so don’t sweat it.” As good advice as any. And what would Halsey think of Osa van Winjgaarden? He would have been impressed. She was the kind of woman Halsey always wanted him to chase. He’d point them out across the dance floor when they dressed up and went to the classier places. The tall ones wearing pearls. The ones with the long patrician faces, Bermuda tans, and the high-fashion jackets. The ones who handed the parking lot attendant the keys to the Porsche, who knew exactly how to walk, and hold their heads, and tell the world they owned it. The ones who, when they caught him staring, examined him with cool, disinterested eyes.

“Why not?” Halsey would say. “Maybe they can kill you but they can’t eat you.” He’d say, “Not my type, Gene.” And Halsey, who enjoyed the role of philosopher, would say, “Like hell they’re not. Unlike myself, a pragmatist happy with the attainable, you are a victim of divine discontent. You yearn for the perfect. But you ain’t got no guts.”

But in fact, they really weren’t his type. He knew it and they knew it. He learned it when he was younger. The hard way. He had been calmly and efficiently rejected. The duck rebuffed by the swan. He’d learned fairly fast, because Moon Mathias was unusually sensitive to the pain of humiliation.

But the water was still dripping into the M- 113 armored personnel carrier, getting things wetter and wetter. Moon slid open the warehouse door. Seeing nothing dangerous on the muddy road beyond the fence, he walked out into the rain to check it out.

The rubber cushion on the driver’s seat beside the engine was soaking wet, but by then so was Moon. He sat on it and looked around. Basically it was identical to the ones they had driven at Fort Riley. The ARVN outfit had installed racks for GI gas cans, welded a mount beside the second hatch for an M60 machine gun, and covered the floor with bags. Moon widened a tear in one of them and checked. Sand. Something to stop the shrapnel if the treads triggered a mine. He switched on the ignition. The fuel indicator showed two-thirds. He shifted into low gear, drove the APC into the hangar, tugged the big door closed behind it, and went to work. He’d refuel it, get it ready to go. It was good to feel competent again.

Nguyen Nung became more or less awake about four P.M., about thirty minutes after the rain slackened into a drizzle and gradually faded away. When Moon came in from the hangar, the clouds were breaking, there were signs of watery sunlight here and there, and Nung was sitting stiffly in Ricky’s office being cross-examined by Mr. Lee.

“He says the boat is about an hour’s walk down the river,” Mr. Lee said. “It was run up a creek and into heavy brush in a growth of mangroves. He estimates it’s about two or three hundred yards down the creek from this road we’re on.”

“What happened to the crew?” Moon asked.

Mr. Lee spoke to Nguyen. Nguyen shrugged, then produced a lengthy response.

“He doesn’t know,” Mr. Lee said. “But they came ashore in his boat, the boat he was a gunner on. He knew them. The boat commander was from Hanoi. Two of the other crewmen were also anti-Communist refugees from the north, another was from Hue, and another from near Da Nang. He guesses they would know the war is over and try to go home. The dead man was a local man. Nguyen’s family had a rice paddy in the delta. His father had been one of the headmen in the village just downstream before the Vietcong killed him and the family. And then one morning the United States napalmed the village, and the people who survived moved away.”

“What we need to know is whether the crew will come back for the boat. It doesn’t sound likely, unless they need it to get across the river.”

Lum Lee nodded. “We need to know that. And we need to know if the boat is in condition to take us out to the mouth of the Mekong. Mr. Nung remembers there was water in the bottom. They are made of fiberglass and it was hit by bullets.”

“Probably could be patched up,” Moon said.

“We also need to understand how to survive three days until it is time to go out and meet the Glory of the Sea.”

“That’s the problem,” Moon said. “We’re living on borrowed time staying here.”

“I think of Mr. Nung’s village,” Mr. Lee said. “He said he and some friends raised chickens there. Not all the buildings were burned.”

Since he had watched George Rice fly away, Moon had been kidding himself about their prospects, avoiding despair by not thinking about it. Now he felt a sudden rush of hope.

“Let’s go find out,” he said. “Can Mr. Nung travel?”

“Sure,” Nguyen Nung said, grinning a goofy morphine withdrawal grin. “‘Way we go.”

Special to the New York Times

SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 28-More than 150 Communist rockets slammed into Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon today, destroying a C-130 transport plane, killing at least two U.S. Marines and forcing suspension of evacuation flights.