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by Erik Cederblom
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Nguyen Minh—bare feet, frayed, loose, black cotton clothing, and wide, vee-shaped, woven hat—hunkered down in the shade of a palm tree at a small, make-shift anvil. Her baby nearby was accustomed to the steady ping of her hammer as she fashioned souvenirs from the detritus of war to hawk to the American troops. Today, she was working on a short piece of steel wire that was bent around a separate wire ring and back onto itself. It only took a few raps of her hammer to straighten the slight crimp in the stiff wire which was there to prevent its accidental removal. She ran her fingers over the piece to find any imperfections and used a small, fine file to ensure the shaft was perfectly straight and smooth. She wiped it with an oily rag, then slid it back into the hole from where it had come, making sure it slipped easily. She held her breath as she untied the string that had held the lever down while she had worked, but the pin functioned as designed; the lever didn’t move. Such a simple thing, she thought and retied the dirty string through the pull ring to make sure it stayed in place.
She exhaled, placed the hand grenade in a basket, and picked up her baby to let it nurse.
***
Dewayne Petcher, tall, skinny, quick to smile, grew up in a Bed-Stuy neighborhood of New York City. His single mother and a network of aunties worked hard to keep him from falling into the street life and he finished high school, the first in his family to graduate. College was never a consideration.
“Peaches, there’s a war on. You’ve got a low draft number. F’sure, you gonna get drafted. Why don’t you enlist before you get that letter? That way you’ll get your choice of who you serve with. You could learn a trade; you’ll be all set when you get out.”
“What do you think about the Marine Corps?” Dewayne asked.
“Peaches, why’d you want to do that? You’re smart, but you’re not tough. You’ve seen the news: Marines in Viet Nam living in the mud, getting rained on, getting killed. You join the Navy. Nobody’s shooting at no sailors on ships.”
Months later, Dewayne wrote home:
You were right, Mama, the Navy treats me good. Basic training was not that tough. Good news: I did well on some test and I’m going to be a Corpsman, work with doctors taking care of people. When I get out, I’ll be all set to work as a paramedic, maybe with an ambulance service, or even in a hospital. Won’t that be something?
Eighteen months later, Hospital Corpsman Dewayne Petcher, US Navy, without ever having set foot on a ship, was assigned to a field hospital located at the edge of the landing pad for the helicopter squadrons at Ky Ha, the base for Marine Air Group 36. He had wound up in one of the war’s hot spots.
Life there was days of mundane medical routines, punctuated by hours of chaos when choppers lined up with their bloody cargo: young Marines to be repaired and returned or airlifted out and forgotten. During major battles, the small field hospital processed more trauma cases in a week than most midsized hospitals in the states might in a year.
Dewayne took pride in what he was doing; he had found his calling. He shook his head at the irony of his situation. Mama wanted me to join the Navy as a way for me to stay safe, and here I am with the biggest, baddest gang of all. But there ain’t nobody better armed than these Jarheads.
***
Minh had grown up in a rural village, little more than a cluster of homes surrounded by rice paddies. She had gone to school, been a good student, and dreamed about becoming a teacher. But her parents discouraged the idea, “War is coming,” they said. “Can you eat a book? Do books lay eggs?” So, at eighteen, she married and resigned herself to the prescribed life of a peasant farmer.
When the Americans built an airbase nearby at Chu Lai, she asked, “What does it mean for us?”
“Nothing. The war doesn’t concern us,” her husband said. “We are farmers. Who would have an interest in us?”
But one day, a long line of armed Americans swept across the farms in the area. They rounded up all the men so they could be questioned by South Vietnamese interpreters. The Americans did not speak Vietnamese, did not understand her husband when he tried to tell them he couldn’t just leave his water buffalo, still tethered to a plow in the rice paddy, and go with them. They thought he was being uncooperative, shot the animal, and took him anyway. He returned about a week later, a frightened man. Now, without his buffalo, he had lost the ability to prepare his paddy for planting. There would be no rice crop. And if American or Vietnamese soldiers came back, there was no telling what they might do. They told him his name had been written down: “Uncooperative; possible Viet Cong sympathizer.” So, he left, headed north to Danang to find work in the city, never to return, never learning that Minh was pregnant with their first child.
She blamed the Americans—they were the ones who had shot the buffalo.
***
Dewayne was nearing the end of his tour of duty, thirteen months of living behind a barbed wire perimeter that took in a stretch of land on the edge of the South China Sea, big enough to accommodate an airstrip for several squadrons of jets at Chu Lai and a separate base at Ky Ha for the choppers—several square miles in all. The countryside beyond the perimeter was deemed “pacified,” but Marine patrols regularly swept through the area looking for any signs of Viet Cong activity. A small community had sprung up outside the base, and industrious Vietnamese had set up bars and shops selling beer and trinkets at inflated prices to the handful of men who stepped through the checkpoint, willing to pay several times what the locals would have paid for barely cold Vietnamese beer.
All this time living behind barbed wire, maybe I should see what the hood looks like at least once before I rotate out, Dewayne said to himself. Maybe buy a present for Mama.
It was the only time he would step beyond the barbed wire to explore the narrow road lined with structures of bamboo mat walls and thatched roofs. Vendors beckoned to him and pointed at their wares, but Dewayne was content just to explore.
He paused to watch when he came upon a handful of Marines haggling with a couple of women who were hawking South Vietnamese flags. The flags were small, about the size of a sheet of paper, three red stripes on a field of yellow printed on thin cloth. He had no interest but was fascinated by the scene. Except for a few civilians who had passed through the field hospital, it was his first time hearing Vietnamese being spoken or the music of Vietnamese laughter.
There was a young woman standing back from the group, watching, as if deciding whether to join in. She had a sleeping baby on her back, held securely in place by a cloth that wrapped around and tied in front of her.
He smiled at her, and she stared back—the same hard stare he received back home when he strayed into neighborhoods where he was not welcome.
Dewayne spotted something and pointed at the baby. The woman recoiled. He pressed his hands together, bowed his head slightly, pointed to his own eye and pointed at the baby. The woman didn’t understand but pulled the baby around in front of her. An open pin was dangerously close to the child’s face. She quickly closed the pin and looked for signs of injury. Then she looked back at Dewayne. Her eyes softened, her face eased, but still, she did not smile. Dewayne pressed his palms together again and stepped back, ready to leave. The woman said something and held up a flag she had been holding. He shook his head: “No, thank you, I’m not interested.” The woman reached out and pressed the flag into his hands. Dewayne took it. Again, the woman said something.
He shrugged, “I don’t understand.” He pointed to himself. “Dewayne Petcher,” he said. “Peaches.” Then he pointed at her, his face a question mark. “You?”
“Minh,” she said pointing at herself. “Pee-chess?” she said pointing at him.
Dewayne grinned and nodded, “Yes, Peaches.” On an impulse, he reached into the medical kit that was always with him and offered her a tube of benzocaine ointment.
Minh looked at the tube but did not take it.
Reaching his right hand into the air, Dewayne made a sound like a mosquito and circled a fingertip down and touched his left arm. He slapped the make-believe insect and started scratching the spot as if to relieve an itch. He looked at her to make sure she understood but couldn’t read her face. He squeezed out a tiny dab of white ointment, rubbed it on the make-believe insect bite, and sighed contentedly. He pointed to an insect bite on the baby and offered the tube of ointment again. This time, she took it.
Silent as stone, she looked at him for a long time, then slid three bangles from her wrist—thin, tan and white, translucent hoops made from the horn of a water buffalo—and handed them to Dwayne. Then she returned the baby to her back, picked up her basket, and walked off without looking back.
Dewayne watched Minh walk away. Somehow, the interaction with her felt like closure for time in Viet Nam. He turned to walk back to the base. It was time; he was going home.
In his mind, he replayed the thirteen months that had disappeared in a blur. The parade of bloody bodies through the field hospital had been endless. The wounded were never there long enough to get to know, and he had stopped seeing their faces. It was easier that way. He had been a key member of the medical team, but once he lifted off in a chopper to Da Nang, from there to catch a ride back to the States, he would quickly be replaced and forgotten. One of the doctors had counseled him about how to use the G.I. Bill to go to college, maybe even med school. For the first time in his life, he could imagine a life stretching out in front of him that did not include going back to the hood.
With a mixture of relief and a sense of a new beginning, Dewayne Petcher strolled back toward the base, crossing diagonally through one of the open fields that bordered the approach road to the gate. About a third of the way across the field, something fluttered in one of the shrubs just off the path. About five feet off the ground, a kite, shaped like a yellow butterfly, had gotten caught in a spikey succulent. He stopped, reached in, and gently untangled the fragile kite from the thorns. It would be a perfect present for his younger brother. He was smiling as he tugged on the kite string, never seeing that it led to a safety pin that pulled easily out of a dust covered grenade. It was such a simple thing.
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Erik Cederblom, a Marine helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, writes short stories—most of them having nothing to do with war.
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