Once Upon a Time in Vietnam

Throughout the Vietnam War, the United States had two pilots attain
the status of Ace by downing five enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat.
Their North Vietnamese opponents had sixteen.

The Russian manufactured MiG-21 dipped one wingtip in a shallow turn
over the land of legends and ancient dragons. The white hot Tropic of
Cancer sun baked the red clay road through the jungle on fire with
green and glistened off the silver sheet metal of the airplane's skin.
Like all Russian arms, the jet
fighter was simple and dependable. On the wings were the red
highlighted yellow stars of the North Vietnamese Air Force. The air
force of a country that had television and motorcycles and people
painted eyes on the bows of ships to guide mariners at sea. A land of
American legend, but Americans did not know it.

The jet passed just above the tops of the mangrove trees on one side of
the road so that the pilot could see if any carts or bicyclists were on
the road. A set of landing gear unfolded from beneath the silver wings
and the airplane made a broad, shallow turn to line up for a landing.
As the tires touched the ground plumes of red dust exploded behind it
and swirled into vortices by the engine exhaust. The tip of the tail
hinged open and a drogue chute opened behind the plane to save the
brakes from overheating.

When it rolled to a stop and the engine finally quit its supersonic
whine from the rows of spinning turbine blades, the commissar from the
village pedaled out furiously on a bicycle to meet the plane. The
commissar, whose name was Open Minded Gentleman, was already waving and
shouting before the pilot began to climb down the steps built into the
fuselage of the plane.

"Good afternoon!" Open Minded Gentleman called out in his high-pitched,
friendly voice. "What an honor!Welcome to our humble village!"

The pilot was wearing a bulbous, white and tinted glass fish bowl on
top of his small Vietnamese body and he left the dark visor down to
look tough as the young Vietnamese men wearing sunglasses in the
cities. The helmet made him look like he had a grasshopper's
head.

He regarded Gentleman from behind the visor and then said with arrogant
violence, "You got the machine to start the engine! Bring people to
turn the plane around on the road! Bring a truck to tow it where the
machine is! There must be men to guard it!"

"Oh, yes. Oh, yes," Gentleman said, bowing reverently over and over.
"We got the machine. We are greatly honored to have you here, Comrade
Captain! This village is the home of Dances With Wolves, the great hero
of the people who has shot down six American invaders."

"Dances With Wolves? From this village?" Grasshopper head sneered. "The
eagle does not come from a swallow's nest."

"But, it's true," the commissar insisted. "We grew up together. He is
my best friend."

"Nonsense. Now go and fetch me a woman to keep me company for the
night," the pilot demanded. "We fighter pilots have insatiable
appetites for life and death. I am told there is a girl here named
Little Orchid who's the most beautiful girl in the province."

The commissar lost his smile. He fought hard to force it back onto his
face and said quietly, "But, Comrade Captain, Little Orchid is my
sister."

"Think I care!" The pilot stepped up boldly to
Gentleman as if he was about to strike him. He leaned the flight helmet
directly in front of his face and reached up and opened the
visor.

The commissar began to laugh. "Dances With Wolves! You asshole!" He
grabbed the pilot in a friendly hug."Why did you let me off so easy,
you could have had more fun than that?"

"You're too easy," Dances With Wolves said."It's
never any challenge."

They hugged again.

Climbing down the nearly vertical trail into the
river valley, Dances With Wolves had switched out of his flight suit
and into a pair of baggy black shorts and a pair of sandals with soles
cut from a used truck tire. He was not wearing a shirt and his skin was
pale from not being outside.

Beneath him on the steep trail, Gentleman was
carrying a military satchel of things from the
commissar office. He looked up from following his footing and studied
the thick mist moving in around the black limestone pinnacles in the
valley. The heat of the day had changed quickly into a damp chill. He
pointed across the valley. "American planes come through here. Very
fast. Very loud. One after another.
Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Dancer looked across the valley but he said nothing.

"Is the war almost over?" Gentleman asked.

Dancer said nothing.

"Oh, no," Gentleman groaned as he emerged off the trail and onto the
road alongside a canal.
"It's my sister and Moon Lute. They're going after that fish
again."

"What fish?"

Little Orchid was wearing a traditional ao-dai, black trousers together
with a long white silk shirt. She was wearing a conical bamboo hat that
was held on her head with a red scarf for a chin strap, and teetering
on one shoulder was a bamboo pole that was balancing a basket and a
bundle on each end. She saw Dancer from
beneath the rim of the bamboo hat and stopped,
lowering her load slowly to the ground.

"Dances With Wolves!" Moon Lute rushed around Little Orchid and
embraced him. "We were told you were dead."

He shook his head as he held Moon Lute. Looking at Little Orchid as he
spoke he said, "Once or twice,maybe, but not for long."

Dancer moved to embrace Little Orchid next and she moved to bow, then
he stopped himself and bowed while she moved to hug him. They ended up
with an awkward half-embrace. He placed a hand on her back and he could
make out the warmth of her skin beneath the cool silk.

"Well, this is good fortune, then," Moon Lute said,happily. "You can
come with us."

Gentleman explained, "A couple of days ago they saw a big catfish
across the river. Now they can't go on living until she catches it.
Little Orchid thinks it's a sign from Heaven."

"A sign from Heaven?" Dancer did not resist Moon Lute pulling him by
the wrist. "What do you have for bait?"

Gentleman switched his satchel to a fresh shoulder and picked up the
bamboo pole to balance over the other. "Allow me to carry
everything."

At a place near the mouth of the canal where it
emptied into the river, Dancer helped the women get a long, shallow
dugout into the water and they all climbed in carefully. Little Orchid
got her feet and the bottoms of pants wet shoving them off and nearly
capsized the boat jumping into it. The women started to laugh
hysterically until Dancer shouted at them to
be still.

"Look what you're doing!" He shouted. "There's water everywhere in here
now!"

"Are you going to melt?" Little Orchid asked.

She leaned over to grab a handful of water to splash on him at the same
time Gentleman moved to rearrange himself in the rear of the dugout and
the entire boat heaved over and would have capsized if Dancer had not
thrown his whole weight against the opposite side.

He asked, "Do you have it all out of your system
now?"

They began paddling out into the swift moving muddy current of the
giant river. There were sampans and canoes and round bucket boats on
the river. As close to the surface as they were in the shallow boat,
the river looked as wide as a lake. As Dancer paddled he told them. "If
we fall over out here we are all going to end up in the ocean."

"Oh, good," Moon Lute said. "We can go to Hollywood."

About to take another stroke with the paddle, Dancer smelled something
burning. Looking behind him he saw Gentleman lighting a Russian
cigarette.

Little Orchid was facing Dancer in the boat. She
laughed. "My brother thinks he's a Russian now. He probably has a
bottle of vodka in his bag."

Gentleman leaned forward and tapped Dancer on the elbow with a
half-full bottle of vodka. "You must be around Russians all the time.
Have they taught you how to drink like a man, yet?"

Dances With Wolves shook his head.

"Still incorrigible," Gentleman laughed. "You aren't so self-righteous
about flying Russian airplanes."

"That's what this war is all about, you know?" Gentleman explained.
"It's about whether we get
Russian cigarettes and vodka or the American Standard Oil and Coca
Cola. I don't see why we couldn't let the Americans take over long
enough for us to get washing machines and Cadillacs, and then we could
drive them out later."

Moon Lute glared hard at Gentleman all the way from her spot in the
front of the boat. "You want us to become whores?"

"Whores?"

"Whores." Little Orchid pointed to herself and to Moon Lute.
"Everywhere the Americans go the women become prostitutes. Japan,
Okinawa, Philippines,Thailand."

"America," Dancer added.

"You two don't know the first thing about Americans."

Orchid laughed. "Oh, yes we do. You forget Dances With Wolves and I
went to the university in France. You can hear the Americans two blocks
away. No matter whose country they're in,
they treat everybody like they're lucky to have them there.The women
wear so much make-up on their faces they're like circus clowns and they
wear big heel shoes to make them look taller."

Dancer said, "So their butts stick out."

"Well, see, I like that," Gentleman admitted,
lustfully.

"Forget it," Moon Lute told him. "You will never be able to afford
enough nice things to get an American girl. They're all like that woman
in Green Acres.What's her name? In the opera gloves? Zsa Zsa
Gabor."

"No, that was Eva," Orchid corrected her. "Zsa Zsa was the one from
Moulin Rouge."

"There are two of them?"

"There are three of them. The other one is Magda."

Dancer looked at Little Orchid sitting in front of him in the boat
peeking out from beneath the rim of the bamboo hat, her cheeks and chin
wrapped in the red scarf. "Remember when I taught you to fish in
Paris?"

"Yes." She reached overboard and splashed him
playfully with some of the river water. "You brat."

"Tell me what happened?" Moon Lute asked.

Without looking away from Dancer, she explained, "He went and bought a
fish at the market and then brought it back to the dormitories and told
us that you could
catch them all day in the Seine with only an old shoe for bait."

Moon Lute, Gentleman and Dancer were already laughing before Little
Orchid could finish the story.

"So, I went down to the river with this fishing pole and an old leather
shoe on a hook and started casting it out in the river while everyone
in Paris was walking by and laughing at this stupid little Vietnamese
girl and her shoe!"

They laughed and laughed until they reached the far shore. Entering a
narrow canal, they passed one of the paddles up to Moon Lute to steer
them from the front. They glided past mangroves roots that intruded
into the canal and under low-hanging branches into a lotus pool that
was formed where the canal ended. A set of stone steps descended
beneath the water surface, blackened with age. The steps were all that
remained of thousand year old temple that the French had taken apart to
use the blocks for building materials. The water was still enough that
they did not need to paddle to hold their position, and Little Orchid
dropped a baited hook and line over the side.

Dancer was lying in the boat with his head on the basket and his feet
crossed, nestled against Little Orchid's breasts while she was
distracted with the fishing line. He had his eyes closed listening to
the candles that once burned in the ancient temple.

Little Orchid pulled one of his toes to get his
attention. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"You have to be thinking about something."

"Not a thing, not really."

"Well, you said not really. What were you sort of thinking
about?"

He said. "Do you think if I just laid here for the rest of my life you
could bring me something to eat once in a while?"

She huffed.

"I was thinking how nice it would be to have a house in the village,"
Dancer said. "To plant rice and have a vegetable garden and some
chickens. Like the guy in Green Acres."

"Right." She chuckled suddenly. After a moment she turned and looked at
him. "You're serious?"

"Maybe a pig."

Gentleman poured himself another drink of vodka into a small drinking
glass with milky white mineral stains. He was wedged into the rear of
the boat with his arms over the sides. "Ridiculous."

"That's what this war is about," Dances With Wolves said sleepily. "It
is a war against want. A war fought within each one of us."

The line went taut in Little Orchid's fist and she yipped with
surprise. Then the line pulled suddenly and she shrieked. "Something
has the line!"

Gentleman, Orchid and Lute all moved to the side of the boat Orchid had
been fishing from and the boat went over, spilling everything into the
canal. Dancer went from his heavenly comfort in the boat to the sticky,
insect embraces of the water lotus, not able to tell which way to go to
the surface. When he got
his head above water, he was overwhelmed by the women shouting.

"I got him, I got him!" Little Orchid shouted.

"Get him to shore! Get him to shore!"

Dancer encountered the silver tin tea pot floating on the water surface
and a paddle. He kicked until he could feel his feet dig into the gooey
mud on the canal bottom. The moment he did, his foot passed over
something huge and rubbery moving under his foot.

"Here he is!"

Tossing the paddle and the teapot aside, Dancer bent double under the
water. Kicking to sink himself to the bottom as quickly as he could, he
was shocked to put his hands on a massive catfish. It was too big to
get his hands around and he felt quickly along its back towards the
mouth.

He reached its jaw exactly as Little Orchid and Moon Lute both jerked
the fishing line hard, setting the large fishhook into his thumb so
deeply that he felt the point scrape the bone. The pain was so
unexpected and so intense it drove all of the air out of his lungs in a
burst of cascading bubbles.

He tried to grab the line with his other hand, but the women
interpreted it as the fish struggling harder, so they leaned backwards
on shore with all their might. He savagely grabbed the fish by a gill
and fought it towards the shore. The pain was so excruciating that he
pointed under water to show the fish where to go.

Dancer surfaced twice and managed to shout. "The
hook! The hook!"

After several moments of shouting confusion, they all fought the
thrashing fish close enough for Dancer to pull it through the water
lotus onto the river bank. Once the others realized what had happened,
they all stood helplessly
staring at Dancer. In the dying light they could make out the dark
blood on his arm mixed with the black mud. Nothing moved for a moment
except the fish expanding its gills gasping for water.

There was no way to pull the hook back out with the spiny barb.
Gentleman pulled out his knife and cut Dancer's thumb along the shank.
The knife was mercifully sharp, slicing like a surgeon's scalpel into
the flesh of the thumb to bring the hook out sideways. He pulled the
bottle of vodka out of the soaking bundle he had
recovered out of the water and poured some of the alcohol on the
wound.

After a moment, Gentleman offered the bottle to
Dancer to drink. He reluctantly shook his head.

Little Orchid was nearly crying. "Oh, Dancer! I feel terrible! Are you
going to be able to fly?"

Dancer held the wound closed with his other thumb and forefinger and
bent over to put the top of his head on the ground. "I can fly. Just
don't touch me."

The others collected everything that had fallen into the canal. They
pulled the dugout up on shore and emptied all of the water out of it.
After they repacked it as best they could, they packed the large fish
into the boat in the very front and sat on the wooden gunwales to wait
for Dancer to stand up.

Finally, very slowly, Dancer climbed to his feet and allowed Gentleman
to bandage the thumb with a ribbon of fabric. He walked to where Little
Orchid helped guide him into a seat in the boat.

He muttered to her, "We are even for Paris."

She almost laughed, but she stopped herself. "More than even. I am in
your debt."

"More than even?" He sounded satisfied. "Then I am not paddling."