The Man from Saigon. Marti Leimbach
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that the blast would roll toward her. The burning metal tumbled through the air so cleanly, she thought it would fly straight to where she was sitting on the track. One of the crew on the track had already been injured. She saw him crumple in a single, smooth motion, as though someone had suddenly removed all his bones. He fell on top of the track, amid the burning copper shell casings which would blister your skin if they touched you, then he slid toward the edge. She might have hoped the soldier wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t hold on to such a simple, humane thought. She’d seen him fall, his body halfway off the edge of the vehicle. She’d seen the people running and crouching, throwing themselves this way and that, falling, dying, all of this happening beneath the heat of a rising sun. It seemed impossible that they had been so effectively ambushed and, then, that she had survived by running toward the jungle. In the thick of the jungle, she felt amazed to be standing, to be whole, stunned so that for a minute she ran her hands over her arms, her legs, then turned to Son and did the same to him. To think that she was still alive! Even her friend, too, even him. She was not afraid, but grateful. Grateful to every animal and bird in this harsh land, to the sun and wind and to everything she observed, suddenly free, standing, breathing, sweating, living.
Now it was only a matter of getting back to the convoy. She did not realize it was already moving. She pulled Son’s arm, told him they had better get out of there. But he stood silent and immobile, as though he’d been planted in the ground like wood. She began to grow concerned. She took his shoulders and shook him, frowning into his still, frozen face, wondering if he had some injury she could not see, a hole in his body like the holes she’d seen in bodies before, a dial of blood rimmed by charred black flesh, sometimes small enough you had to look for it, hiding an enormous, tattered exit wound. But there was no bullet and anyway, he was standing. Though his breath came in shallow gasps and his eyes stayed fixed on the air in front of him, he had no injury she could detect, and there was no explanation she could imagine.
At last she saw him move. He swallowed, sucked his lips in, and spoke in a hoarse whisper so that she had to lean toward him to hear. She realized all at once what was happening, what held him there, unmoving.
Behind us, he said.
The targets were known to everyone. For example, the men who carried radios were targets. Her second month as a correspondent, a Spec-4 was killed in front of her and his radio, still squawking, was hit two more times before she had the sense to crawl back out of the way. Son was screaming at her, Get down! Move! The lieutenant whose radio the Spec-4 was carrying was nose down in the dirt, yelling like mad for a medic. There were more bullets; they sent up spirals of dust only a few yards from where she was, splintered the branches of nearby trees, made hard cracks in the air around her. She could hear all this, the lieutenant going crazy, his cheek to the ground, his mouth open, calling and calling for help for the dying soldier, Son shouting her name until his voice was hoarse. But she was stunned; she could not bring herself to move. She dropped on to the dirt, her eyes level with the radio operator’s shoulder. She kept staring at his chest where smoke spiraled up from two neat holes, looking at his arms stretched out casually on the ground, the plastic handset still resting in his open palm. He wore a wedding ring. She thought about it, but she did not touch her camera. Had he been a dead Vietcong she would have gotten out the camera, but this was an American. He had a letter from home folded carefully in the band of his helmet, his face toward the high, white sun, his eyes large, empty, no longer focusing, and still the smoke rising from him, his chest on fire, his heart.
There was more shouting and bullets and the whoosh of rockets overhead. She heard the radio calling to the dead soldier, asking his position, calling over and over, a desperate voice demanding his coordinates, until finally the next bullets came and then even the radio stopped. Suddenly, she woke up as though from a stupor, felt a rush of fear gathering inside her, the sensation so strong it was like having the wind knocked out of her. All at once she cried out, then crawled as fast as possible to a nearby anthill, a huge mound, baked hard, bigger than a rosebush. She hid there, her hands over her head, her chin in her chest, wondering what she’d been doing—what on earth—sitting in the open like that, so easy to pick off.
The lieutenants leading platoons were targets. They allowed her to tag along with her steno pad. They allowed her to ask questions, to share C-rations and cigarettes, to dig a hole at night and sleep among the men, but not to walk point with them up front. They did not want her killed. It wasn’t that a lieutenant had any reason to favor her. She was of no use to them—if she died, if she didn’t—but she would not know to be wary of dried leaves, which can sometimes be old camouflage hiding an explosive. Or that an unusual object on the ground—a VC scarf or helmet—would blow her arm off if she touched it. They protected her by keeping her among them, and she cherished that protection. The commanding officers would not say this to her face, but a dead woman was not good for morale.
Son they did not worry about. Put him up front. Put him behind, in the middle, anywhere at all. He was male, Vietnamese, a journalist—who cared?
Radar equipment was a target. Artillery pieces were targets. Anything was a target, but there were values attached. A helicopter was worth a great deal. A reporter was not worth much, possibly nothing at all. Most of the ones who died were shot by accident or tripped a mine, at least before the war moved into Cambodia. Then it all changed. September 1970: twenty-five reporters killed that month alone. By then she was out of the war. She got a letter from a friend who was still there telling her Kupferberg was dead. Sanchez was dead. Jenkins was missing. Ngoc Kia, dead. She hung up her coat. She sat down on the steps. She thought, Everything in my life is poisoned. She thought, Don’t let me go back. But of course she wanted to go back. She would always want to.
But in 1967 she did not know any correspondents who had been killed, did not know any personally. You could die. Anyone could die; you didn’t even need to go out on combat assaults for that. Poisoned in a crowded street in Saigon from a hypodermic needle, or blown up while standing exposed at a bus stop waiting to board one of the military buses with steel mesh bolted over the windows to stop grenades. If you went out, or if you didn’t. Hotels were bombed. Church buildings. A secretary for the CIA heard a noise in the street, went to the window, and was killed when a car bomb exploded. Nobody meant to kill her, her specifically. There would be a lot of blood shed, then nothing for a week, a month, so that you began to relax. Then it started again. Marc’s cameraman, Locke, called it “the life cycle,” an ironic name, she thought. Marc was even more philosophic, saying “If it happens, it happens.” But one thing she thought she knew was that she herself was not a target, was never a target.
Yet here she is, with three guns trained on her.
The three Vietcong stand in a formation, one more forward than the others, rifles out, balanced in their hands so that the muzzles are aimed straight at her. She has not seen guns pointed in her direction before. She is used to seeing the sides of the barrels, the curves of the magazines, the focus of the soldiers who carry the weapons directed at some far-off target, not her. She remains completely still, as though for an X-ray, frozen in place, not sure whether to raise her hands. The soldiers must be assessing how dangerous she and Son are, studying their belts for weapons, searching the brush behind them for soldiers, for the green army uniform, the canvas-sided boots. Suddenly, one of them lowers his weapon and comes forward under the protection of his comrades, who stand ready to fire.
The soldier who approaches them is tall for a Vietnamese, with a narrow head like a rocket. There is a ferocity to his movements so that it feels to Susan as though a wild animal is charging them. He directs his attention at Son, whom he regards as though he has been hunting him for months, for years even, as though he knows him and hates him, as though there is some dreadful business that needs settling and which gives the soldier every right at this time to knock Son hard in the chest with the butt of his rifle and send him sprawling to the ground.
She sees Son’s head rock back, his knees collapse. She watches as he goes down with a grunt, his head rolling back as he falls. Her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes stare; she wishes she could turn