“Get me out of here.” I could feel the tension rising in his voice. “I need to get out. Get me out.”
I wasn’t sure if he was being serious, he had just smiled for my picture, the flash lighting up his face in the dark, and we had only moved forward a few more feet, shuffling in a crouched position, our shoulders brushing against the dirt walls.
But as we rounded a corner we had been stopped by another tourist, her wide back blocking off the exit, so he was trapped between us, the confined space closing in even further.
I touched his back, his shirt peeled on with sweat, to reassure him.
“It’s OK, the tunnel ends just there, it’s not far.”
I didn’t feel claustrophobic, there was something soothing about being in the dark tunnel, my skin touching the earth, the smell of damp, as if I were descending deeper into the warm womb of the world.
The tourists ahead of us finally moved, and Dave scrambled forward quickly so that I could see the sunlight flicker through the entrance as his body moved up the stairs and then break into an even beam, the particles of dust dancing inside.
I squinted back into the sun, stepping into a crowd of people that had just left the tunnels, and looked for Dave. He was sitting at the base of a tree, the jungle dark behind him.
“You OK?”
“I’m better. It was just so…”
“Yeah, I know.”
I held out my hand and helped him up, then we started down the path deeper into the woods. They’d only allowed tourists into one small section of the tunnels, but they wound all through the jungle, and as we walked we searched out hiding places where the Viet Cong had camouflaged their exits. Long dead eyes peered through the curves of a tree root, disabled mines and wooden traps waited in soft ground, covered in leaves, and everywhere the jungle inched forward.
The list of American wars wound through Dave’s genealogy. There were ancient ancestors who found in the Revolution, several in the Civil War, on both sides, his grandfather had ridden a tank through France for World War II, and his father would have been on the ground in Viet Nam after his number was called if his family hadn’t forced him into the Navy to avoid being drafted.
He had been incredulous that we were going to visit.
“Viet Nam?”
“It’s safe Dad, don’t worry.”
“I know you’ll be smart.” A pause.
“What is it?”
“I spent so long thinking about Viet Nam. And now you’re going as a tourist.”
“Things change.”
“They certainly do.”
The War of American Aggression. That’s what the museum in Saigon called it, next to photos of US civilian massacres and the long, slow progression of the effects of Agent Orange. At the Cu Chi Tunnels, preserved as a historical site for the planning of the Tet Offensive, it had been stripped of its solemnity as a graveyard for soldiers and turned into a Boy Scout camp where you could live as a Viet Cong, sleeping in a replicated barracks, eating a meal and then lining up to fire an M16 at a circular target.
I leaned over the rifle, it’s heavy black body dragging me down, the guide murmuring instructions into my ear, press lightly, not very much, and then the rat-a-tat of the automatic weapon going off, the first time I had fired a gun, a stream of bullets, like a wisp arcing through the air, and then missing the target.
“Lift it higher,” the guide said again, and I tried to, but it kept floating away from me, wanting to avoid the target, so that the bullets just drove down into the earth creating divots into the roof of a hidden tunnel underneath.
And then Dave tried, and hit the target perfectly, and we shared with the other tourists how well we’d done or not done, and then told our motorcycle drivers that we’d just shot an M16 and then they asked us where we from and what did we think of Viet Nam, until we were talking and joking and ready to go back to the city.
The two young guys had picked us up at the station nearby where the bus from Ho Chi Minh City had dropped us off. The tunnels were another half an hour away, so we paid them to take one of us on the back of each bike. When we got there they pointed to an open-air café with a palm-leaf roof and told us that they would wait there until we were finished.
I climbed up behind my driver, holding on to the handle behind the seat, then we pulled out onto the road behind Dave on the second motorcycle. The jungle slowly thinned as we left the park, and then opened up into rice paddies and scattered swatches of trees interrupted by low wooden houses without doors. I watched the world of the Vietnamese farmers pass me by on the back of the motorcycle, and then from just outside my field of vision, I saw a blur of color and light.
Dave’s motorcycle had lost control, and I watched, horrified, as it fell to the ground. The concern I had felt for him this morning surged back, my heart thumping as we swerved to avoid them, stopping just ahead.
They were standing up by the time we reached them, dusting off some dirt, and peering at the motorcycle.
“Are you OK? Are you hurt?”
“Oh yeah, I’m fine. It was nothing.”
“But I thought – it looked really bad.”
“No, it’s just a flat tire.”
How would we get help? There was nothing: no stores, no houses, just trees and fields and bush, and the feeling of isolation began to weave another thread of fear around me.
Just as I turned towards our drivers and back to the motorcycle, a rustle from beyond the roadway drew our attention, and an old man, shirtless and shoeless with only a pair of swishy gray running shorts on emerged from behind the thicket of trees. He was carrying tools.
The three men shook hands and spoke among themselves, and then gestured for us to follow the old man. His house was just off the road, surrounded by a fruit-laden orchard of tropical plants. He led us into his workshop, a clay-tiled wooden building filled with tools and bike parts, and then they began working on the inner tube until a woman came to the door and invited us into the living room.
They had just been sitting down for dinner when they saw the accident and the plastic patio table was still set with food, but the woman led Dave and I onto a raised platform open on three sides and lined with a bamboo mat. In one corner, a TV was inset into a wooden cupboard with a backdrop of blue and white strings fluttering from the tin ceiling. In the other sat an even older, smaller woman, one of their parents, sitting toothless and smiling next to a rotating fan.
I took off my shoes and climbed up, then thanked them again and again for letting us into their home. We spoke in broken English and hand gestures, telling them where we were from, and the names of places in Viet Nam we had been to. I wondered how many Americans they had met since the war, being old enough to have lived through it, and whether they were surprised, like Dave’s father was, that we were there as tourists.
Once our driver came back with the fixed wheel, he paid the old man, and I took their hands in goodbye. The driver apologized again for the tire and the delay in getting us back to the bus station, but as we walked back out to where the road was I told him not to worry, I was grateful for where we had ended up.
I climbed back onto the motorcycle, and my driver and I pulled back out onto the road behind Dave. I watched the two of them speed off, and then turned and looked over my shoulder at the house. It got smaller and smaller, and then slowly faded away from view, so that I could no longer discern the people from the trees.
