Norwegian by Night

Part II

River Rats





Chapter 9

Sheldon has only been on the water in his imagination until now. It started with visions he described to Mabel in 1975. Their source was vivid, though mercifully simple: a letter from Herman Williams, one of Saul’s buddies from the boat who was with him when he was wounded. It explained the circumstances of Saul’s death.

In this way, the visions were derived from facts, but they were larger than the facts themselves. They were terrifying and alive, and became truly enveloping and relentless when Rhea came to live with them in 1976.

In this vision, Sheldon was patrolling the Mekong Delta with Saul, Herman Williams, Ritchie Jameson, Trevor Evans, and the Captain — a man they called the Monk.

It all began with a sort of open-hearted optimism.

Sheldon was on assignment for Reuters. His early photography book was just the sort of in-your-face realism they needed then. His own war record gave him the credibility among the younger men that he needed to document their contribution to the war effort. He was only in his forties and, while not stupendously fit, was still slender and alert. The call came late one night while he was watching Johnny Carson. Carson was interviewing Dick Cavett, and their comic timing and quick repartee had him and Mabel in stitches.

‘This is Reuters calling. We need you there. You up for it?’

‘My bags have been packed since the Tet Offensive.’

‘Good man. Leave in the morning?’

‘Morning? Why wait? How about now?’

In an hour he was transported to Saigon, where an elephant took him to Saul’s base in three minutes while Nepalese Sherpas carried the luggage. The colonel in charge shot Sheldon a thumbs-up, and Donny winked back. It was good to be on the line again, out among the men. How young they were now! Not like in his day. Was he ever this young? Of course not. Korea was fought by men, and not just any men. Men with better taste in music.

All the guys gave a ‘hoo-ah!’ when the old Marine walked into the barracks. Despite rank, they all saluted him, and he returned it. Just this once, of course. Respecting the old guard. They knew he was one of them, and not some chump from Stars and Stripes here to snap a few shots to put over whatever propaganda they’d just thought up. And he wasn’t some hippie dreaming of planting a wet one on Jane Fonda’s misguided arse. Nope. This was a real man to take some photos of life on the river. Where the insects where big enough to carry away little Vietnamese children, the air was thicker than the tension, and the only rule was that you couldn’t eat the dead.

Donny tossed his duffle bag on the upper bunk and swung up. He’d need to get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow he was getting on the boat with his son. And he didn’t want to make him look bad in front of the guys.

Before drifting off, he whispered, ‘Hey, Herman? You up?’

‘Yeah, Donny. What’s up?’

‘Why do they call the Captain “the Monk”?’

‘Oh, yeah. That. He doesn’t want to be here.’

‘Who does?’

‘No, I mean, he really doesn’t want to be here.’

The Oslo fjord runs gently under the hull of the jon boat, and the twenty-horse-power motor pushes them steadily south-west. Sheldon is seated on the white plastic bench near the stern, with his hand on the tiller. He wears the stolen Gore-Tex shell, and has put on the aviator sunglasses he found in the pocket. Paul sits on the third bench closest to the prow. Sheldon wonders if the boy has ever been in a boat before.

The Lonely Planet has a map of the Oslo fjord, and Sheldon uses it to navigate. Rather than follow the wider channel to the north, where the Danish ferries and cruise ships run — and could run over him — he passes through the sound between Hovedøya and Bleikøya islands, and then between Lindøya and Gressholmen, all the time hoping that Norwegians don’t have an overly nervous coast guard that asks too many questions.

Their boat is not the only one making the summer run south. There are ketches, kayaks, and catamarans; skiffs, scows, and even catboats. People wave to Sheldon and Paul. From the calm of splendid anonymity, Sheldon waves back.

Most of the smaller leisure craft seem to be headed out past Nesoddtangen at the tip of a massive peninsula and then south. Slow and steady, staying as close to land as possible, Sheldon follows them like driftwood. He and the boat and the boy putter on together, out into the water, away from the horrors of yesterday and into a blue-and-green world that knows nothing of who they are or where they came from.

Against the gentle wind and glimmering waves, Sheldon and Paul make their escape. As the tension of the city recedes, along with the harbour, the Opera, and City Hall, silence returns and brings with it the unheeded cries of the morning and all the mornings before it.

From inside the closet, Sheldon had heard her gasping for air. He had heard her being choked, her arms losing purpose, grace, and fight, flailing and clawing for any purchase on life. He had heard the hate that possessed the hands of the killer. He imagined her eyes growing wide as the terror overcame her, robbing her of any chance to save herself.

Looking at Paul sitting on the prow of the boat, leaning over to touch the water passing under its shallow draught, he wonders what the boy imagined as the tortured sounds of his mother’s life settled into stillness. He hopes that the boy’s own imagination is not as horribly refined as his own, which inevitably returns to the journey upriver in Vietnam.

It’s the dementia, Donny, said Mabel.

She didn’t understand. She had other anchors to steady her. But he wanted to correct her, all the same.

‘How demented is it to have the past rush up to meet us just before the end? Isn’t that the final act of the rational mind as it struggles to comprehend its step into the darkness? The last push for coherence before the great unravelling? Is that so mad?’

‘We should be in and out in about three or four hours,’ Herman said to the team. ‘An F-4 went down about seven clicks from here, and HQ thinks the pilot bailed. So we’re to go recover his skinny little arse before he has to do any actual soldiering.’

The Monk was speechless, as usual, as the other men put the supplies on the boat. It was raining, and everyone was still a little hung over from a three-day bender in honour of Saul rejoining the Navy for a second tour and getting back to the boat.

Saul didn’t talk to his father very much. Just normal stuff. ‘Pass me that rope,’ or ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ Sometimes, ‘How’s it goin’?’ Sheldon didn’t mind that. He watched what the boys were doing as carefully as he could. He didn’t want to get in the way. But in this vision — in this memory of a place he has never been — he was terrified of losing even a single moment. He felt that Jewish compulsion to document. To remember. To hold onto every last ray of the day and ensure that others would know that it has been seen. What once existed and no longer does.

The Monk was a careful pilot. Sheldon photographed his hands on the wheel and took the Monk’s portrait when the sun was over his shoulder, and all you could see of his face and body was the dark edges and stance against the river.

There was a darkness to his demeanour. A hidden pain. A plan of some kind. Sheldon, through the lens, saw it all.

He then photographed Herman’s slender and delicate black fingers that could have been trained to repair a watch, had they all been born on a different planet.

He watched Trevor clean his rifle with the care one would give to a hunting weapon inherited from a grandfather.

He photographed Ritchie and his smile, and wondered why people so often resemble their own names.

It was good on the boat. Since Sheldon had started taking this ride regularly in 1975, he seldom worried about Saul, despite knowing the end of the story. He didn’t watch his son with the plaintive gaze of a father or even a war buddy. He just went along for the ride. Taking it in. Being there. Basking in the warmth of camaraderie and life.

He enjoyed watching his son as a man. This is what he wanted, Sheldon reminded himself. Right? For his son to be a man? To become an American soldier.

The F-4 Phantom had been shot down with a Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile. The pilot, as everyone knew, was utterly blameless. But airmen had it easy, and everyone knew that, too. They sat in their air-conditioned tents, filing their precious nails, sipping tonic, playing gin, and jerking off to new and unsoiled magazines. Then, when a dinner bell was rung, they would don their spiffy gear that made all the girls swoon, get in the cockpits of their shiny planes — that some lackey had just cleaned and polished for them — and for fifteen minutes they’d drop napalm on people, and cattle, and open fields, and whatever else. Then, once their thumbs got tired, they’d go back to base, wipe a single drop of sweat from their foreheads as the press took their photos, and then resume their so rudely interrupted card hands as Red Cross girls named Heather or Nicky massaged their exhausted shoulders while the pilots flooded their ears with stories of derring-do.

Given the cushy life of the pilots, the boat boys weren’t going to give them the benefit of any doubts. It didn’t matter a lick to them, for instance, whether or not that SAM was the finest heat-seeking missile the communists could design, and it was fired at a low-flying plane that only had 1.7 seconds to respond before losing the left half of its fuselage. They didn’t care whether he was outgunned or not. That pilot was going to catch nothing but shit on his ride home, and knowing that gave each and every man on the tiny boat something really great to look forward to.

The real trick to a search-and-rescue mission was getting to the downed plane before the Viet Cong. The VC were murderous arseholes, but it was their country, and they had a demonstrable knack for knowing where things were. So when a plane went down, they just headed on over. The Riverines, on the other hand, had to find the way.

That was the Monk’s job as skipper. As they all puttered up the river, there really wasn’t much to do other than train the M60 into the woods and think of jokes and the girls they’d surely never have sex with. Not in person, anyway.

The rain came down steadily as the boat grunted through a estuary about twenty metres wide. Local boats passed by under the rifle barrels of the men, but none stopped, and no one even looked up as they passed.

Trevor sat behind the Monk in a manner that Sheldon found tense, as though he was prepared to spring from the bench and … something. It was hard to sense what would happen. Jump overboard, maybe? Tackle the Monk?

Sheldon sat far back in the boat, snapping pictures. Taking in the jungle. Trying to understand the terrain, the men, this war. It was so different from Korea. In Korea, the communists attacked the South with Soviet backing, and the United Nations passed a resolution while the Soviet ambassador was in the bathroom, and so the whole to-do was pretty straightforward. This one was all rather less straightforward. And, of course, the big trick in Korea was that the Southern ones wanted us there. Over here, not so much.

After three hours on patrol, the boat came to a rest by a small pier. The Monk didn’t move. He just tossed a radio to Saul and looked at Herman. Ritchie, who outranked them both, then said, ‘Witzy and Williams. Go.’

That’s what they called Saul. ‘Witzy’. Because ‘Horowitz’ was too long, and ‘Saul’ was too old-fashioned.

Why these two? Witzy and Williams? Because who can avoid saying it, that’s why.

‘I’m going, too,’ said Sheldon. No one replied. It was as though, for the first time on the trip, Sheldon wasn’t really there.

Saul handed a letter he’d been writing to Ritchie. ‘Mail it for me if I bite it.’

Ritchie said, ‘OK.’ That’s all he said: ‘OK.’

Saul stepped up to the pier with his M16 in one hand and the radio in the other. He said to Ritchie, ‘My girl’s pregnant. Does that just take the cake or what?’

‘You should go home,’ he said unexpectedly.

‘I probably should,’ Saul said, and then he started hoofing it up the pier with Williams.

They walked through a very small village that seemed deserted. Four thatched houses were clustered together on a patch of brown, muddy ground. A bicycle wheel rusted in the rain. A basket of rotten vegetables sat overturned on a table. Sheldon photographed them, and walked on.

Saul took point, followed by Williams and then Sheldon. Saul was a good soldier. He paid attention, didn’t allow small things to distract him, and didn’t talk while they walked. But he was also in his early twenties, and so didn’t walk slowly enough, didn’t pay close-enough attention, and didn’t talk softly enough when he did open his mouth.

As the jungle opened into a small rice paddy, Saul took out a compass, took a bearing, and then pointed a little off to his left. He turned and looked behind him, right past Sheldon, and got a sense of the terrain they would see on their way back. This was a valuable lesson that Sheldon had been taught in Korea. Once again, his drill sergeant’s voice came back to him: ‘The reason nothing looks familiar when you’re heading back is because it isn’t. You’ve never seen it before, have you? If you don’t turn around, how will you know what to look for? Huh? You! Shithead! What’s the answer?’

On that day, it was another shithead. But it could have been Sheldon, and often was. By the time his own day came at Inchon, he’d be glad for the lessons he’d learned.

They smelled the plane before they found it. The F-4 had only been halfway through its bombing mission, and so went down with lot of fuel that burned with a different smell than napalm, rice paddies, cattle, and people. According to Herman, it was only a two on the ‘gag-o-meter’, whereas the rotting corpses of children in the hot sun was a nine.

A ten was saved for the smell of letters received from bureaucrats.

Saul couldn’t tell from the smell which direction they needed to travel. But soon they started to find pieces of the plane on the ground. Just little scraps at first, like bolts, and bits of twisted metal, but enough to know they were getting closer.

Sheldon looked at his watch. They’d only been in the jungle for fifteen minutes.

Saul directed them towards a small rise up the side. It was a good idea, because it gave them a more commanding view of the grid. Before they reached the top, Williams gave a whistle and said, ‘Over there. Check it out.’

Saul and Sheldon turned to their left, and there, about a half-click away across easy ground, were large chunks of the plane.

‘Anyone see the shithead pilot?’ Williams asked.

Saul pointed off to the left. ‘That could be the parachute.’

‘Right, then. Let’s go see if there are any pink bits in the cockpit first,’ said Williams.

As they were walking down the hill towards the jet, Sheldon made out an incongruous figure leaning against a tree by the side of the footpath. Saul walked right past him, as though he weren’t even there. As Williams approached, Sheldon shouted, ‘Herman, on your right.’

‘Oh, that’s just Bill. Forget about him. F*cker shows up all the time. Never helps, though.’

When Sheldon caught up, he saw that it was indeed Bill Harmon, his friend from New York. Bill was wearing shabby trousers, penny loafers, a blue button-down, and a Harris Tweed jacket. Bill did not show up during these trips between 1975 and 1980. It was only after he died that he popped up and chimed in. Only Sheldon wasn’t sure that Bill was really Bill. He looked like Bill. He had the same stupid things to say that Bill did, but he didn’t feel like Bill. His presence was both more vast and more juvenile at the same time. Bill, in life, had never left Sheldon feeling perturbed. This guy did.

‘What are you doing here, Bill?’

‘Antiquing.’

‘What?’

‘The French colonials were here for ages. Indochina has some amazing hidden treasures that I can get top dollar for back at the shop.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and we’re in Vietnam. Of course I’m drunk. Want some?’

‘I got to go. We have to find the pilot.’

‘Pilot’s dead,’ said Bill. ‘They put a bullet in him before his parachute hit the ground. Very unsporting. There’s really no need for you to go on.’

‘So I’ll tell the guys and we can go back.’

‘They won’t believe you.’

‘Why? Are you the ghost of Christmas past?’ And without waiting for a reply, Donny shouted, ‘Hey, Williams. Hold up. The pilot’s dead. We should go back to the boat.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Bill said so. He knows.’

‘Can’t put your faith in Bill, Donny.’

‘But sometimes he’s right.’

‘Sure, but who knows when? Besides, it’s not my call.’

‘Well, then tell Saul.’

‘Fine.’

And so Herman told Saul, and Saul just shrugged and kept on going. After a few moments, though, he became pensive and stopped. For the first time on the trip, he turned and addressed his father directly.

‘What are you doing, Dad?’

‘I want us to go home. I want you to grow up.’

‘You should have thought of that before suggesting I come here.’

‘You’re right, and I’m sorry. But I never said you should go back. This second tour was all your idea.’

‘You don’t remember our conversation very well, do you?’

‘I might have said something about America being at war. But if I did, I didn’t mean you had to go back. You did your duty. More than most people.’

‘It was your idea to join me here. I can’t go back. I can’t write a report saying that Bill Harmon appeared in the woods and had the inside scoop on the pilot’s whereabouts.’

‘You loved Bill.’

‘Still do. But he’s hardly a quotable source, is he?’

‘This is madness!’

‘Your madness. So what’s it going to be? You heading back, or do you want to watch this play out?’

‘I want to be with you.’

‘Well, come on then. And be quiet. There are VC around here.’

And so they walked on, leaving Bill behind.

In what seemed like no time at all, they arrived at the plane. It hadn’t crashed straight down or managed a controlled landing. It had its bits shot off in mid-air, and it had fallen to the ground with the graceless tumble of a meteor.

The cockpit was somewhat intact, because that is how randomness works. Sheldon took a picture.

Saul, on some impulse, said, ‘Herman? Go check the cockpit. I’m gonna see about that parachute.’

Saul then turned to his father and said, ‘Well? You coming or staying?’

‘I want to be with you.’

What Saul wanted was to bring his shithead brother pilot home. That’s what he’d been sent to do, that’s what he had been trained to do, and that’s what he wanted to do. Because an American shouldn’t be rotting in some green pile of Asian compost. He should be home with his family.

The parachute was hanging from a very tall tree just at the end of the marshland that Saul and Sheldon had to cross in order to reach it. The pilot was black, which surprised both of them. You didn’t see many black pilots in 1974. And the pilot, like Bill had said, was dead. The poor bastard hadn’t even been given a chance to land. The Vietnamese didn’t understand the blacks. They had never seen anyone from Africa before. They thought they were white men dyed black as camouflage. There were documented cases of the VC using steel brushes on these men, trying to get their blackness off.

‘Right, that’s it. Let’s go,’ said Sheldon.

‘We’ve got to get him down.’

‘No we don’t.’

‘Yes we do.’

‘No. We damn well don’t!’

‘You carried Mario home. You told his parents. His father hugged you and cried.’

‘I was on a secure beach. You’re in the jungle alone. This poor man here …’

‘Come on. Help me cut him down.’

‘Saul, be reasonable. The VC know you’re coming for the pilot. They know it, and there’s a 50-50 chance they got here before you.’

‘Then why not shoot me?’

‘Because an injured man needs to be carried, and that way they immobilise two or three men and not only one.’

‘Why not capture me?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

And then Saul got enraged, and everything came to a head. ‘There’s a negro hanging from a tree. A negro who is an American soldier. How do I let him stay there? How do I walk away from that man? Explain to me how I can walk away from him and still be your son, and I’ll do it. I swear I will.’

And, at this precious moment, Sheldon had nothing to say. Nothing at all.

So Saul swung his rifle across his chest like a bow, and started climbing the tree.

When he was high enough, he grabbed a branch, and used his service knife to slice away at the cords and silk of the parachute. The pilot’s feet were just over six feet from the ground. It wasn’t a long fall. Somehow, though, it felt like a slow one. A certain nausea came over Sheldon when the man tumbled to the ground.

As Sheldon watched, the first waves of resignation passed through him. He’d been here ‘on assignment’ so many times, watched this event so many times, that he knew both when and how terror comes. It would all happen soon now. In just a moment, Saul would start off down the only path towards the plane, just as Herman came up the same path — having burned some maps and papers to deprive the enemy of intelligence.

He knew what would come. Still, just in this moment, it had not happened yet. He was between the knowledge and the reality of what was to come — just where Cassandra found herself before it drove her mad. It was a precious moment. So precious that Sheldon delayed, allowing himself to sleep each night with this knowledge of what would happen.

During this moment — as Saul dropped from the tree and put his knife away, and took off the pilot’s dog tags and put them in the upper-left pocket of his own shirt — Sheldon watched as his son became a man.

It was not a grand moment. There were no witnesses to it. There were no heroics. It was merely a small gesture of dignity and respect between one man and another. And in that, for Sheldon, the possibility of a better world was created. All we had accomplished thus far — as little as it may have been — took place in the unseen and forgotten efforts of Corporal Saul Horowitz recovering the mortal remains of Lt Eli Johnson.

And so, before the end, there was a moment of grace.

In that moment, Sheldon raised the camera to his eye and took their picture.

The release of the shutter freed time to carry onward. Sheldon watched Saul step on the trip wire that set off the explosion that would kill his only child. He watched from a position in front of Saul and Eli Johnson, just off the footpath to their left.

When it happened, Herman came running up behind him and towards Saul.

The VC had packed the bombs with nails and ball bearings and — perversely — casings from American rifles they’d picked up off the ground from a previous battle.

All these items tore through Saul’s legs, his groin, and his lower torso.

Before the pain registered on his face he collapsed, because there were no longer bones, muscles, or ligaments to hold him up. Lt Johnson’s body came down on the side of the path, and would not be recovered by the team. Only his dog tags, in Saul’s pocket, would make it back to the US, his parents, and the coffin they would be buried in.

Herman screamed and started to cry almost immediately. He grabbed Saul by the lapels of his shirt and, with the strength of the terrified, hoisted him onto his back, much as Saul had carried Johnson, and Donny had carried Mario, and men throughout history have carried one another.

The shooting began as soon as Herman started running.

No one looked at Sheldon any more. No one paid him any heed at all. Even Bill was gone.

Herman ran a full click through the jungle, into the tiny village, out to the boat. Ritchie was manning the M60 and firing wildly into the woods to provide covering fire, but he didn’t know if there was even anyone there.

Trevor was still poised on the bench behind the Monk.

As soon as they were aboard, the boat started moving, and soon they were free of the land.

But it wasn’t over.

The Monk turned the boat around so they could open it up heading downstream, and put more distance between themselves and whatever was in the bushes.

Herman stuck a morphine syringe into Saul’s carotid artery and then stuck two pads on the femoral arteries of his legs.

This field dressing would keep Saul alive for three more days once the boat made it back to the port, but he would never regain consciousness.

Sheldon sat on the bench next to Trevor. There was nothing he could do for Saul — the son who had once stood on his lap to study his nose with the intensity of a scientist, and had put his fingers in his father’s joyful tears.

He watched passively as the boat rounded a bend towards a line of wooden rafts. He opened his eyes wide as machine-gun fire from those same rafts started pelting the hull.

As the bullets came in, the Monk let go of the wheel.

Trevor, who was already coiled, sprang forward and grabbed it, steering them directly towards the first raft at ramming speed.

The Monk impassively walked to the bow of the boat, stood upright at the prow, and then raised his arms like a Brazilian cliff diver, or Jesus and the criminals on their crosses.

Ritchie eviscerated one of the rafts with the M60. Splinters and the red spray of blood made a small cloud around it as the base broke apart.

Herman worked on Saul, Trevor piloted the boat, and the Monk stood there, untouched by man or movement as Saul bled.

This was Sheldon’s last vivid image in the dream. It was the one that woke him that night to talk with Mabel and ask his question. The one he still wakes with in the mornings. Somehow, the events of that day are not clear to him beyond this point. He knows the boat made it to safety. Saul was evacuated to Saigon, and died in the hospital. The letter was mailed as promised, and Rhea received her name. Trevor and Herman stayed on the boat until the end of their tour, and then went home.

The Monk never got shot. But one day, in another battle, he allegedly dived into the river and never came back up.