“Nah,” Jack muttered. “That’s not something I do.”

  Stanley grew quiet. As he turned toward Jack, a ray of sharp sunlight hit the truck for a moment, and he appeared eerily illuminated. “My daddy’s a Baptist preacher. He didn’t want me to come fight out here, but I wanted to show him I’m no baby.” He nibbled a little on his bottom lip. “I thought signing up was the best way to prove to him I was a man.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “You needed to come all the way to Vietnam for that? Couldn’t you have just shot a deer and brought it home for dinner or something?”

  Stanley shrugged. “I dunno, maybe … but I’m here now anyway. Right?” His pale hand lifted up to adjust his helmet. “No looking back, that’s what they say.…”

  Jack was only half listening to Stanley now; instead, he was distracted by the unfurling new landscape: the thatched villages, thick tropical trees, and water buffalo hitched to carts.

  “You know, I’ve never even had a beer,” Stanley added, though at this point, it seemed to Jack that the boy was actually talking to himself.

  “Did you hear that?” one of the other men interrupted, slapping his hand down on the seat. “Fucking Stanley never even had a beer!”

  Everyone on the truck began to laugh. Everyone except Jack, who didn’t find it funny at all.

  * * *

  The steel helmet. The flak jacket. The heavy boots. The four canteens of water, the five grenades. The bandolier that held his ammunition and essential M16 rifle. All of it is heavy. But none of it is as burdensome as the twenty-five-pound PRC-25 radio he carries on his back. Every platoon has a single radio transmitting operator, and that responsibility is given to Jack. Lance Corporal Jack Grady from Allentown, Pennsylvania.

  Six foot two. Tawny-brown hair and a face like a movie star. Crystal-blue eyes that twinkle when he laughs. Hollywood—that’s the nickname his buddies call him at first, and then it sticks.

  He doesn’t ask for help when lugging the radio, even though his pack is heavy and the heat diabolical. Nor does he tell his buddies that he carries his sweetheart’s most recent letter tucked into the mesh of his helmet. The photograph from Atlantic City is also slipped inside, now creased and faded from his perspiration.

  Some days it reaches over a hundred degrees, and the platoon collapses on the ground, peeling off their sweat-soaked gear. Their feet swelter in their boots, drenched from walking in rice paddies. Jungle rot eats away at their skin and the lieutenant orders them when they take a rest to pull their boots off, wring out their socks, and air out their feet.

  There are fourteen men in his squad, three fire teams, and as they set out in patrol, they walk in single file. He is protected by a few men walking in front of him. Those men are the ones who must cut the jungle down as they walk. Sometimes with a machete. Other times with just their standard-issue knife. It is not a coveted position to be the first two men in line. The first man has the highest risk stepping on a booby trap or land mine. The second will most likely be killed in the blast as well. But Jack is somewhere in the middle, protected by the five or six men in front of him. He walks behind the second lieutenant, his platoon commander, Franklin L. Bates. Jack must be within arm’s length from Bates at all times in case he needs to reach the company headquarters and call in for an artillery strike or medical evacuation.

  When the radio is needed, Jack will slip it off his back and give Lieutenant Bates the hand receiver. He carries the radio just for him.

  Sometimes he hears music in his head when the platoon is route marching. Sometimes he pretends that the radio on his back is going to play Jimi Hendrix or the Doors. The Rolling Stones. The Kinks. The Who. It’s going to be a jukebox, calling the men to song, not to war.

  He finally pulls it off his back. Picks up the receiver, calls in, and Bates reports their coordinates. They pause for instructions, praying they’re not blown to pieces while they wait.

  Around them, the jungle teems with creatures that are all against them. The mosquitoes, the leeches. The enemy hidden under the brush.

  * * *

  He sleeps fitfully, never deeply. He hears the enemy everywhere.

  He carries the radio like a lifeline. He learns to shimmy across the dirt, extending the telephone-like receiver to his commanding officer. He keeps the radio on even in a foxhole, for it’s his responsibility. The radio is the only thing they have to summon help. To ask for backup or covering gunfire, to ask to help retrieve the wounded and the dead.

  He realizes early on his life is not what is the most valuable. It is the thing strapped to his back. Without it, they are all lost.

  CHAPTER 15Vietnam, 1978

  IN THE DAYS LEADING UP TO THEIR ESCAPE, LINH TRIES TO MAKE nothing seem out of the ordinary for Bảo. The firewood is stacked outside the house, the laundry is washed and placed on a clothesline, and the water jugs are full. She sends him off to school each morning.

  This type of planning has been her and Chung’s mindset for nearly a year and half. It was well known that the Communists watched everything from afar. If people suddenly placed too much money in the bank, or if a neighbor reported that they heard a family was quickly selling off all their belongings, an arrest could be ordered solely on the suspicion they were preparing to flee.

  So for just over a year, they have worked slowly and carefully. Chung took on more responsibilities at the collective farm to prove his loyalty. Linh found a job picking fruit at the orchard that had been her family’s until the takeover. At night, she and Anh wove baskets, using strips of bamboo from the garden, then sold them at a weekend market several miles away. Every bit of money they saved was buried underneath the earthen jars behind their house.

  They have already paid all they have to the latest smuggler who has agreed to get them out of Vietnam. Two other fishermen had previously promised Linh they would get the four of them out. Each of them took the first payment from her but never reappeared for the second. But now things are different, for it is the first time Linh has paid the second of the three payments. The last one is to be made on the day of their journey.

  Five days before they are set to leave, Linh and Chung realize they don’t have enough money to make the final payment. They continue to calculate the missing sum in their mind, struggling to figure out a way to get the needed funds. It is late at night when the couple find themselves staring at their hands.

  Their gold wedding bands glimmer on their fingers. Sacred to them in the most holy way, for they believe the rings are a symbol of their marriage and love. The thought of selling them causes them both tremendous anguish.

  “We’ll replace them as soon as we can,” Chung promises. He slides his off and hands it to his wife.

  Linh holds the ring in her palm then closes her fingers around the gold circle. The last time she held the ring in her grip was on her wedding day, when she and Chung took vows that bound themselves to each other for eternity.

  “It will bring us bad luck if we sell them,” she whispers.

  “We cannot stay,” Chung reminds her.

  “But will it even be enough?”

  Chung does a rough calculation in his head. “I think we might need to ask Anh to sell hers, too.”

  Linh shakes her head. “No, we can’t. She’s already lost so much.”

  He doesn’t answer at first. Then Chung’s face becomes resolved. “I will ask her, then.”

  * * *

  The next morning Linh rises early. She dresses in her traditional áo bà ba, the long white tunic and flowing pants. She brushes her long black hair and adjusts her conical hat to cover her eyes. On her left hand, she still wears her gold wedding band. In a small silk coin purse, she carries her husband’s as well as the ring Anh has stoically given her.

  Three hours later, she walks home with the amount of money they need for the journey, but the sight of her bare finger, and the realization that Chung’s and Anh’s are now bare too, breaks her heart.

  * * *

  On the morning of their escape, Chung, nervous to draw any attention to him and his family, goes to work as usual and harnesses the village’s half-starved water buffalo to a plow while the women plan their separate departure.

  The sisters move quickly after Chung departs. Bảo does as his mother instructs, wearing a second pair of clothing underneath his normal cotton shirt and pants. His mother doesn’t protest this time when he takes some food she’s left in the kitchen and puts it on a plate for Bibo.

  “See you soon,” he tells the dog as he kisses him by his matted ear and tenderly rubs his spotty brown coat. He thinks they are only going on a trip and will be back in a few short days.

  Anh has packed a pot, three lemons, a box of sugar, and some triangles of pressed rice wrapped in leaves into a tightly folded kerchief. Linh carries a thermos of water, some kerosene, and more food as well. They walk slowly down dirt paths and through patches of forest.

  “Mama, are we almost there?” he asks after two hours of trekking.

  “Yes,” Linh replies. “We are almost there.” But she stretches the truth. They continue to walk for another hour. Just when Bảo doesn’t think he can go one step farther, his mother points to a small wooden house.

  “It’s just over there,” she indicates.

  The house is long and narrow. Mud floor. Corrugated metal walls. A little girl in a torn yellow dress is in the back, drying banana leaves.

  Linh tells Bảo to go in the back and help the girl. “Make a new friend,” she says.

  A man emerges from the house and waves Linh and Anh inside.

  Within the dark, dank interior, Linh takes out a can from the things she has packed. She opens it and spills out some coffee. Within the dark grains, two small gold bars are revealed. She takes another can out, and two more sparkling bars emerge.

  The man takes them and dusts off the coffee by polishing the bars on his pant leg.

  Anh excuses herself and goes outside. She hears the little girl pepper Bảo with questions. She looks younger than him. Her hair is long and tangled; her face is smudged a little with dirt.

  “My name is Mai,” she says. “Are you here for my father?” she asks. “People come here and bring him gold.”

  * * *

  Anh is silent as Linh tells Bảo they are both leaving him and will meet him later after it is dark. “Your father will meet us there too. It is too dangerous for us all to travel together, so we need to arrive there separately.”

  She watches as Linh crouches down to kiss him on the head. “That little girl in the back is the daughter of the man who is arranging our special voyage,” she whispers. “Her father is a friend of the captain. She knows the meeting spot where the boat will come.”

  He reaches to touch his mother, and the sight of his fingers reaching for Linh’s cheek guts Anh to her core. Her sister is kneeling, her arms stretched out to him. Her black hair is tied back, and the light catches his reflection in her eyes.

  “I want to go with you,” he begs. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  Linh fights back tears. “I know, bé tí, I know.” She struggles to soothe him, to make him feel safe, like she has always done in the past.

  She reaches into one of the baskets that she is carrying on her pole, and she hands him a mango.

  “Everything will be fine,” she offers, trying to smile through her tears.

  Anh turns away. For years, she has believed her sister’s promises, but now she cannot help but feel uncertain. Still, as she listens to Linh’s parting words to her son, she knows they are true.

  “Bảo, you know your ma always saves the sweetest fruit for you.”

  * * *

  Anh and Linh quietly trudge through the woods, not a word exchanged between them. They know the plan. They have imagined it for weeks. Now each step must fall into place, and they pray for no unforeseen problems that might derail their escape.

  The biggest risk is leaving Bảo alone with the fisherman and his daughter. Anh knows Linh must surrender to this part of their escape—that her brother-in-law has stressed that they must separate as a family to avoid suspicion.

  But it is an oppressive request. Her sister must put her trust a complete stranger and hope he does what they’ve bribed him to do—to bring Bảo to the place where their boat will depart.

  Anh takes a step closer to her sister, lets the cloth with her few belongings slide from her shoulders. “He will be there waiting for us,” she promises. Her hand reaches to squeeze Linh’s fingers.

  For her whole life, it’s been her sister who has reassured her. But now their roles are reversed.

  Linh turns to her, the whites of her eyes shining against the dark sky. She grips Anh’s hand in her own. But she says nothing. For the first time since Anh can remember, her sister has no words.

  CHAPTER 16

  AT NIGHTFALL THE FISHERMAN TELLS HIS DAUGHTER, MAI, to take the little boy to where they fish after sunset.

  Bảo follows the girl. Her yellow dress is like a lantern in the evening sky.

  As they approach the shore, he notices a few small fishing boats already there, but Bảo does not see his mother or father.

  “Is that our boat?” he asks Mai as he points to the tiny wooden crafts bobbing in the dark water.

  “No,” she answers. She giggles as if she is still playing a game.

  “Is that our boat?” he asks again, indicating to another one that looks empty anchored closer to the shore.

  “No,” she answers again.

  Fear washes over him. Neither his mother nor his father nor Anh has come over to meet him, and he wonders if Mai’s father has somehow tricked his parents, taken their gold and separated them from him in the process of this hoax.

  “Where is your father?” Bảo now begs the little girl. “He promised to help my parents.”

  Her face glows in the moonlight. Her eyes are wide and empty. “I don’t know,” she says. “Where is yours?”

  Bảo has no answer. He last saw his father at sunrise as he headed out, a pole with two baskets balanced on his back. “We are going on a journey,” Chung told him. But he still doesn’t understand why they’ve left him here all alone.

  * * *

  * * *

  Night falls and the air cools. Two layers on his body, but no blanket for warmth, Bảo curls himself tightly into a ball and closes his eyes. Mai has left. He is hungry and imagines a bowl of rice in his hands, counting each grain to make the hours go by more quickly. He tells himself when morning comes, he will convince the captain’s daughter to take him back to their hut. If his mother doesn’t arrive as she promised, he must think of another plan to ensure they are somehow reunited.

  An hour later, he hears a rustle in the grass, and Bảo sees his mother walking toward him. Bảo rushes over and embraces her. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him close. Her warmth flows over him like a blanket. He begins to cry, unable to stifle the emotion that he had fought to control.

  “I didn’t think you’d ever come,” he utters through his tears.

  She pulls him again closer to her. “Nothing would keep me from you, bé tí.” Minutes later, his aunt emerges from the forest, having followed Linh’s path. She walks toward them.

  In the grass, mosquitoes buzz and bite. Now, the three of them united, they wait, frozen as statues.

  Soon two more adults appear. Like Linh, they are carrying provisions wrapped in cloth. One person is clasping a carved statue of the Virgin Mary to their breast. Another is carrying kerosene.

  They all crouch low, looking out to the water, waiting for a sign that their boat is near.

  Lastly, Chung arrives. Bảo sees his father approaching through the tall grass, his bamboo pole with its loaded baskets sags across his back. His eyes are lit and flickering in the darkness.

  His mother does not move, but Bảo can sense her relief. She turns to him and places a finger over her mouth. But her lips are now curled in a smile. She reaches into her blouse and takes out a yellow handkerchief, which she lifts in the air like a small flag. His father lays his pole down in the tall grass and moves toward them. Anh is a few steps behind.

  * * *

  The light flashes like a beacon from the boat before melting into the shadow of the night.

  It was the sign they have been waiting for. Slowly they wade into the river toward a small fishing boat. They walk until the water is waist deep. Linh and Chung lift the cloth-tied bundles of food above their heads. Bảo stays at his mother’s side, holding on to her pant leg. None of them can swim, and he’s never been so deeply submerged in water before.

  Everyone scrambles to try to get on board the boat. The person carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary pushes ahead. The single fisherman, with the light strapped to his head, pulls them each onto the boat, telling them they have all brought too much.

  The boat bobs up and down; water laps at its wooden edge.

  Bảo is lifted on board, then Linh, then Anh. The men are last. They crouch next to the others, shoulder to shoulder, fitted together to occupy nearly every inch of space.

  Chung wraps an arm around his son. Between his knees, he safeguards what they have brought for the journey. Linh’s face tips to the moonlight, and Anh watches her sister’s family with longing. The ache inside her is overwhelming. She looks back at the strip of land, the country she has known her whole life and the soil in which her husband is buried beneath, the ancestral shrine she has devoted to her prayers for those she has lost, her husband and their baby. She glances at her own naked ring finger, then her sister’s and Chung’s. She prays that the act of selling their rings won’t bring them bad luck.