Water Everywhere

I must find a way to get home in this flooding water.

I walk by a dock at Saigon River in Vietnam. While making a turn at the slanting gangplank at the river
dockside, a truck carrying logs tilts to one side and collapses into flood water. The logs roll out and find their
way to the river, floating toward the river’s mouth where it meets the ocean. I’m about to step into a path where I
usually take to go home, but the overturned truck blocks off the path. I backtrack to the winding river road to
find some other way.
The flooding is now on all the routes that I know to get home. Warning signs on stick are stuck in the
water at areas dangerous to cross. The only route with some likely unflooded grounds that may get me home is
through the woods. I better get going, or risk sleeping on the street tonight.
Still, I sit slumped on a rock bench, conveniently now serves as a rest stop, trying to figure out how to get
home.
“Mai!” my friend Linda’s voice calls out from the woods. “What are you doing siting there? I’m stuck in
the flood. Let's just hurry up and find some way to get home before it gets dark, okay?”
I turn and see Linda coming out from the trees, saying “I don’t know of another road to get home. Do
you?”
“Yes, I know a way to get to the river where there is a tall tree. From the top of the tree, we can see roads
viable for getting home.”
We walk through the woods. Except for the occasional hissing sounds of insects from the trees, the still
quietness reigning unbroken for long intervals gives me uneasy feelings. Growing up in the Vietnam War, I have
learned, from the news and from war footages on television, the lessons in school, and from the tales told and
retold by word of mouth, all the secret activities of the Vagabond Characters (VC).
Every time I pass by a thick bush, a deserted field, an unusually quiet neighborhood, I brace myself for
something unpleasant, but nothing detrimental has occurred to me. At the sprawling National Military Cemetery,
I actually have the crawling sensation when I hear muffled sounds of movements, and the hard thuds of something
bumping against the coffins inside the graves!
“This cemetery gives me the creeps!” I say, brushing at the goosebu mps with the hair standing up on end
on my arms.
“I feel so too,” Linda nods, her eyes glinting of apprehension. “I heard that the VCs often take the
position of ambush in the vacated coffins inside the graves. Upon receiving the alert of you coming, they pop up
and rush out toward you with whooping in victory. You can barely have time to figure out what is happening
before a tangle of flashing arms and legs swoop down to lift you up, and carry you kicking away into the woods.”
We come to an area of livelier but intriguing atmosphere: The occasional sound of woodpeckers hammering
their beaks into tree trunk, the eerie wooing of owls, the flapping wings of bats, and the monkeys repeatedly
making the sound boozoo, boozoo.
I become suspiciously alert at seeing the tall grass strangely parting as if being pushed aside by invisible
hands. Linda is also looking transfixed at the parting grass.
I hear a slow-moving, grass-thrashing noise, intermingled with a murmur of gurgling water -- any
mysterious sound in a desolated place indicates danger.
The tall grass parts wider, I look at the gap in the parted grass, unblinking. From the culvert mouth, a
face pops out, camouflaged with tiger-patterned green stripes, a bold, thick, black stroke underlined each eye.
The face emerges out of the water and through the parted grass, and glares in our faces.
Shouting voices rising up from the woods, accompanied by the sound of a large number of VCs fast
approaching towards us, prevent us from hanging around. Sensing incoming danger, we dash toward a tall tree.
We fling ourselves up the tree, snatching at low hanging branches, and swing up the branches hand over hand, the
twigs creaking and leaves thrashing against us.
As we crash into the tree, the birds cease their chatters, fly up, and then regroup to swoop back down to
their perches. The monkeys in the tree rush about hastily. An owl makes a ghostly calling sound, and another owl
gives out long answering hoot. Hound dogs bark loudly a short distance away. I hope the riotous noises will not
attract the VCs’ attention.
The noises die down after a little while. We slip through the branches until we can find a position to
observe what is going on with the man with the camouflaged face.
The face reemerges from the reeds in the creek. It slowly rises up until it is seen attached to a body in
combat fatigues -- an American Marine. He makes a small movement to look toward the tree, then he runs away.
From the forest comes a savage roar of many voices, as the VCs rush toward the Marine. He turns his head
to look in different directions, and bolts away in the direction of the American Embassy, identified by the
American flag billowing on the flagpole.
A flutter of red tracer bullets glares after the Marine as he runs for his life, stooping with his head bent
low, and he flings himself into the river. The bullets strike at the water around him as he swims. Some bullets
pass close above his head each time it comes up out of the water.
“Oh, my! The VCs are shooting the American!” Linda whispers in agitation. “Do they have to use so many
bullets on one man? Dirty VCs!”
The Marine mostly keeps his head in the water as he swims away, bubbles coming out of a hollow grass
stem that comes straight up from his head. The VCs run along the bank, shooting in greater frequency whenever
they see his head come up.
Long streaks of blood come blooming up and expanding in the water, rapidly turning a large area into the
horrible red color. My heart sinks, wondering if he will survive the assault. Directly under our tree, a little
distance beyond the red patch, I see his head rising with his nose barely above the water, his arms moving in
quick strokes.
“Cease shooting and retreat,” the VC leader says. “With so much blood loss, he is unlikely to come out of
it alive.”
The VCs turn and march away in single file, with the rifles flung over their shoulders.
We quickly slip down the tree to see what becomes of the man. We run into one dead end after another,
and have to back out to find another way, hoping we don’t lose track of the escaping Marine.
We reach him at an eddy pool of the Saigon River, near the American Embassy. But he is dead, floating
face down in the clumps of muddy reeds. Dead probably from so much blood loss, I figure. We move over to him,
and as I touch him, I detect light twitching in his one leg. I grab him by the arm, and feel him stiffening up.
“He is still alive, Linda!” I yell. “Turn him over and shove him to shore!”
As we turn him over and tilt his head above the water, to keep it from getting into his nose, he opens his
eyes, looking worried.
“Don’t worry. We not VCs!” Linda says.
“You not VCs?!” The Marine says, his face in perplexed suspicion.
“You don’t need to speak in pidgin English to us, man,” I say. “We can understand and speak proper
English!”
We all burst out laughing.
“You sure you are not VC kids?” he says again, staring at us, looking less tense. “So what are you kids
doing here?”
“Trying to find a way home out of the flood,” I say. “Are you really okay? You are unharmed, not visibly
hurt, so why did you lay in that way in the water?
“I thought some girl VCs were coming toward me,” he says, smiling. “I tried to play dead, but couldn’t
because you tickled me!” “Lucky it was only you kids. Thank you for saving my life.”
“We didn’t save your life. You were in no danger of dying or drowning,” Linda says.
“You turned me over,” he says, “and that prevented me from being choked to death if I stayed longer in the
water.”
“You are full of it,” I, shaking my head, giggling.
“What are you doing here?” Linda says.
“Yes, tell us about it,” I say, listening eagerly.
He looks at us, considering. “It’s a matter of national secrets.”
“You don’t have to tell, but I think you are spying behind the enemy lines,” Linda says.
The Marine says nothing, just smiling.
“You wouldn’t swim around here again to save your life, would you?” I say. “What with all the bullets
whizzing above your head, the aggressive VCs chasing you, with their guns at the ready the moment you emerge
from the water. It gave me quite a start when I saw the blood blooming in the water. I was sure that you were
shot.”
He giggles. “I released red dye packs to draw them to the red water while I escaped.”
“Oh, clever!” Linda says. “So you are a Marine on a spy mission to detect the positions of the VCs, to spot
out the VC bases, and to identify their infiltration routes, so the American Marines can block them up. I learned
all about this on TV.”
“You two are smart kids,” he says, patting our heads in turns. “Now you go home, up that fence right
there. This is not a safe playground for kids.”
We climb up the steep hill flank, crawl through a Barbed-wire fence, and plop down on a field of sparse
dry grass. An airplane takes off from the runway, and I look up and realize that we are at the Airport Tan Son
Nhat.
On the grounds adjacent to the airport, The American Airport Base seems to be carrying out more
activities than usual -- great number of American Marines, and their ally Vietnamese Marines seem to be in
preparation for combat, and the machinists hover near a big concentration of fighter airplanes.
When we get to our neighborhood, it is also flooded. The houses look like they’re rising from the water.
Luckily both our houses located on high rise grounds are not flooded.