Finding Moon

Noon, the Twentieth Day

IT LOOKED FAIRLY EASY ON THE MAP. Rice had drawn a line in blue ballpoint ink from Via Ba angling slightly toward the border. He’d made a blue dot and written in Phum Kampong. “I remember now that’s what Damon called it,” Rice had said. “Actually, you should put in one of those little pronunciation hats over the a, the way the Cambodians spell Kâmpong.”

Back in Puerto Princesa such details hadn’t seemed to matter. They still didn’t. What mattered now was what Rice had also said. “Over two mountain ridges from Vin Ba and then up the next ridge and Damon’s place is right on top.” These weren’t really mountains-not even close by Moon’s Colorado Rockies standards-but they were significant hills. They ran out of road when they left Vin Ba’s little valley and the going had been hard even for a tracked vehicle.

But there were footpaths. Moon’s technique was to follow the one that went in the right general direction. They’d made a little plateau of stacked rice sacks next to the APC’s personnel bench and spread both maps on it. Nguyen manned his.50-caliber lookout post. Osa matched the elevation lines on the artillery chart with the terrain features they were seeing. When things didn’t seem to match, they stopped and consulted.

For Osa, this involved bouncing back and forth from sitting beside the rice sacks to standing on the bench with her head stuck out of the second hatch. There she would look for the spur, or the ridge, or the water drainage cut, matching map lines with the real landscape they were passing. For Moon, this involved an opportunity to look away from his viewing slot and study Osa with no risk of being caught at it. Nor was there much risk of running into a tree, since Nguyen was in the hatch above him, kicking him on the proper shoulder if he started letting the APC drift.

So Moon considered Osa’s long denim-clad legs, her rear elevation when she turned to look behind them, her ankles above the funny-looking walking shoes she wore, her back, her narrow waist, the way she moved, the way she held herself. Everything about her from the shoulder blades down he memorized. And, of course, made the inevitable comparisons. In a beauty contest, in a Hollywood casting competition, Debbie would be the winner, a ten. Osa was the sort of woman for whom the gurus of fashion in Paris and Milan (and wherever else such things happened) designed clothing. Debbie was the sort for whom clothing manufacturers, faced with human reality, manufactured dresses in the sizes actually purchased in the various middle-class department stores. In other words, in the same places he bought his own stuff.

Bleak thought. But Moon was a realist. Or considered himself one. Had he been the Moon Mathias whom Ricky’s exaggerations had created out here, he’d be making his pitch for Osa. Perhaps, if he actually was that super fellow, maybe he’d even be winning her. But the flesh-and-blood Moon was a K mart fellow. He knew it. By now, with Ricky’s tales offset by reality, so did Osa van Winjgaarden.

Now they were at the top of the second ridge and Nguyen was tapping a foot against Moon’s shoulder, signaling a stop. Time to eat something anyway. Time to take a rest. Moon climbed wearily out to take a look. Based on the Langenscheldt map, there should have been a small village identified as Neap in the valley below them. Moon had presumed this foot trail had led to it. Now he could see no sign of a village below. About two hundred people, Rice had said, and some terraced rice paddies. Instead of the little strip of cultivated fertility’ one expected, there was some sort of geological deformity where nothing grew. It was a long strip of broken rocks and desolation starting low on the opposite slope and running down the declivity. No place for a village.

True, there’d been no dot labeled Neap on the artillery map. But such maps tend to be more interested in terrain and less in homesites. Moon had expected to find Neap. Had counted on it. It would be proof he hadn’t taken a wrong turn. It would have been his final landmark. Beyond it, he would angle the APC to the left up the slope and reach the top. There they would find the village of Phum Kampong waiting, and the Reverend Damon van Winjgaarden-perhaps-alive. Without Neap, Moon was thoroughly lost.

With much pointing Nguyen showed them that the footpath they’d been following faded out on this stonier ground. Which way now? Nguyen had no idea. Then he was pointing eastward and repeating something that sounded like “Mekong.”

Indeed it was. The next ridgeline was lower. Over it and through the blue haze beyond was a ribbon of silver. Sunlight was reflecting off the river. Good. At least they were on the proper ridge.

Moon ate a cupful of boiled rice and some of the crackers they’d brought from the R. M. Air base and thought about it. The route they’d planned on the map had taken them away from the Mekong toward the Gulf to cross the border and then circled back in the hills. At least the Mekong was where it should be. At least that had gone right.

But not quite. Moon explained the problem to Osa. Nguyen listened, a mixture of comprehension and bafflement.

“In other words, there should be a little bitty village down there. There isn’t and apparently never was. So I must have either gone too far one way or the other. Which means we are looking down into the wrong little valley and now we have some guessing to do.”

“Village?” Nguyen asked.

“Yes,” Moon said. “I thought there would be a village down there.”

“We’ll find it,” Osa said. “We’ll find paths down there, and they’ll lead us.”

Nguyen was shaking his head in vigorous denial. “No,” he said. “No more.” He pointed to the irregular line of broken stones. But that turned out to be a reference to the Ho Chi Minh trail, which snaked through the mountains along the border to feed supplies to the Vietcong in the delta. That finally understood, Nguyen made the sound of an airplane. He created one with two hands and flew it very slowly, very laboriously across his waist. That done, he said, “Very big.”

“Ah, yes,” Moon said. “The B-Fifty-twos.” He turned to Osa, still looking puzzled. “That’s why Kissinger started them bombing Cambodia. To cut off supplies to the VC.”

Osa was smiling at him. “I think you’re finally getting tired,” she said. “That’s interesting, but how does it help us?”

A good question. Nguyen seemed to understand the thrust of it. He trotted up the rear ramp and emerged with the Langenscheidt map in one hand, the artillery chart in the other. He held the commercial map against the side of the APC, indicated Neap, then created B-52 sounds and walked his fingers across Neap. “Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” Nguyen said. He held up his hand and flashed his fingers again and again. “I think fifty,” he said. He replaced the commercial with the artillery chart, put his finger where Neap should have been, said, “No.” He looked at Moon, then at Osa, seeking understanding.

They stood beside the APC looking down at the long strip of ruin below them where two hundred Cambodians had once lived in a village called Neap.

“Why bomb there?” Osa said. “There couldn’t be any kind of road down there.”

“Dark of night,” Moon said. “They would have been flying very high, probably above thirty-five thousand feet. And they’d be coming all the way from Guam. It would be easy to miss by just one ridgeline.”

Osa was looking down at where Neap had been, saying nothing.

“Or maybe one of the planes had mechanical trouble. The pilot had to jettison his load.”

“One plane? Just one airplane could do all that?”

“I think they carry fifty bombs. Isn’t that what Nguyen was trying to tell us? Five hundred pounds of TNT per bomb. Or was it a thousand? Then multiply that by fifty.”

Osa was silent again, looking into the valley. “So maybe we’re not lost. Maybe the village was down there once.”

“Let’s say it was,” Moon said, thinking they could be on the other ridge in an hour, maybe less. They’d either find Phum Kampong and Reverend Damon or they wouldn’t. Either way, they’d be done with this. “Let’s get going.”

It wasn’t necessary. A man emerged from the trees behind the APC and stood watching them, a small thin man, slightly stooped, with gray hair cut short. Then he shouted, “Mrs. van Wing Garden.”

Osa remembered him. He was one of her brother’s converts from Phum Kampong whom she’d met on her last visit-one of the men Damon had been training to help him spread Christianity in the hills. He squatted beside the APC, small, thin, slightly stooped, his mustache gray, his eating rice with him, very glad to see Osa. In halting English he told them how he had heard their vehicle coming up the mountainside, thought it must be the Khmer Rouge returning, had hidden, had seen Osa standing in the hatch, had recognized her as the sister of Brother Damon, and had hurried along to try to catch them.

“You have come to replace your brother,” he said. “We all will thank you for that.”

Osa looked down at her feet. “Replace him? Is Damon not with you now?”

“Oh,” the man said. “You didn’t know about it.” He looked at Osa, then at Moon, expression rueful.

“Is he all right?” Moon asked.

“I was not at the village when the Khmer Rouge came. I live here, where I cut my wood and make my charcoal.” He motioned toward Via Ba. “I sell it over in Via Ba. But not now because nobody is left in Via Ba. But-”

Moon cut him off. “Where is Damon now? Will we find him at Phum Kampong?”

“They took him away. They took him and some of the Christians, and some of them they killed in the village.”

“But they didn’t kill Damon? He was still alive?”

“Down there,” the man said, pointing into the valley where Neap had once existed. “There we found his body.”

SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 30 (UPI)- President Duong Van Minh announced today the unconditional surrender of the Saigon government and its military forces to the Vietcong.