Thiên’s words hit Dan so hard, he was blinded with anger and couldn’t acknowledge some of the truth. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you guys were all angels. I saw with my own eyes how some of you behaved. As for losing the war, ask your corrupt, incapable former leaders . . . If someone were to blame, it’s them.”

  “Ha, at least they stayed and fought,” Thiên responded. “We were here fighting when you ran off, went home to your mama, remember? You left us here so the Communist had fun with us. Yeah, they had fun. They put us in reeducation camps. I spent five years in those prisons. Five years and they still call me Ngụy. That means illegitimate, you think that’s fair? You think it’s fair when they still treat me like the enemy but they welcome you back? You’re their rich tourists now. You’re their friends. I served your damn war and now I serve you.”

  Dan thought of his dead friends. There was no way that he and his comrades should be blamed for the shit the Vietnamese had done to each other. It was their civil war. Thiên had suffered, but so had millions of Americans. He was too tired and had no time for another argument. Linda could come down any minute. “Okay, I hear you,” he said. “Can we just sit down and have a civilized conversation?” He wished the receptionists would stop glancing at them from across the lobby.

  Thiên shook his head but threw his body onto an armchair.

  “Mr. Thien .” Dan leaned across the table. “I’m here to make amends, and I need your help. Please . . . Linda was looking forward so much to this trip. You’ve been really helpful to her and I appreciate that very much. I know that I’ve been moody, but from now on I’ll try to keep my emotions in check.”

  “Oh yeah? I not sure your drama is over yet. Now your wife knows about Kim, what are you going to do? You forget about Kim to make your wife happy?”

  “Linda is a compassionate person. She’ll come around. She’ll understand that I need to look for Kim and my child.” As Dan uttered those words, he wondered if searching for Kim would be the right thing to do even if Linda agreed.

  “If you want my advice, I say you ignore Linda. Women can’t pee higher than the top of grass blades.”

  “Sorry? Women what?”

  “They can’t piss high. That’s our proverb. Women cannot think big. So, are you man enough to look for your child, or are you afraid of wife, crawl under her skirt?”

  “Of course I want to find my child—”

  “Yeah, that’s the right thing to do.” Thiên sat up. “Everyone needs a father. A child with no father is a home without its roof. That’s our proverb, too. Because you want to search for your child, I’ll help you. But if you shout at me again, we’re done, understood?”

  “Okay, but I need you to remember something.” Dan looked Thiên squarely in the eye. “I was an officer here. You can advise me but there’s no way I’ll accept being told what to do.”

  As the words left his mouth, Dan wondered why he felt the need to express his authority over a person whose help he needed. Besides, he’d spent decades trying to escape his military title.

  “Yeah, I know you were an important guy.” Thiên snorted. “But don’t expect me to salute you. For four years, I was a Marine Captain.”

  Dan blinked. Up to now, he’d thought of Thiên mainly as a tour guide. He hadn’t stopped to consider the battles Thiên had fought, the men Thiên had led, the sacrifices Thiên might have made for those men. “Where were you stationed?” he asked. “With your rank, I think you could have immigrated to the U.S. if you wanted to?”

  “I was in Huế and Quảng Trị.” Thiên stared at the table between them.

  Dan shuddered. Those areas sandwiched between the North and the South had been soaked in the most blood. Despite their distance from Sài Gòn, he’d had to fly there occasionally on missions. He remembered picking up bodies near Huế. Intestines spilling out of open abdomens. Faces half blown off. Shredded limbs. The weight of the dead would pin his helicopter down as he tried to lift it off the ground. The smell of blood would cling to him even after he’d washed himself. The redness of it.

  “With my years in the camps afterward,” Thiên said, “I qualified for the Orderly Departure Program, but my mother didn’t want to go. She said she was born here, she must die here. I’m her only son, how could I have left my mother behind?”

  Dan looked at Thiên, at his gray hair and many wrinkles. The Vietnamese had suffered so much and had to make such difficult decisions. He recalled the stories he’d read, about families separating themselves onto different boats as they escaped Việt Nam to ensure at least someone would survive.

  “I still have nightmares about those times, you know . . .” Thiên squeezed his forehead. “About Huế and Quảng Trị, the camps, the years after my release when I had no rights as a citizen . . . But I’m better off than my dead comrades. There’s no memorial for them here. Some graves of my friends were destroyed, dug up.” Thiên’s scar twitched. “You American vets have benefits, paid by your government. We have nothing. You have a wall in Washington, but we aren’t acknowledged there. We fought for you, alongside you, yet you pretend we don’t exist.”

  Dan sat in silence. In his subconscious, he’d brushed aside the stories of ARVN veterans like Thiên. On his bookshelves there was no book written by any ARVN veteran, either.

  Thiên looked at his watch. “Oh . . . I have to bring granddaughter to school.” He stood up.

  Dan gathered the money, gave it to Thiên. “You can’t quit now, please . . .”

  Thiên sighed, stuffed the money into his backpack and slung it over his shoulders.

  “Hold on,” Dan said, “I still owe you. Our bike ride the other night, and your overtime.” He gave Thiên fifty dollars and walked Thiên to the entrance. “Let’s go to your wife’s shop later today, I think Linda would like to meet her, too.”

  Nhân’s shop occupied the living room of the house she and Thiên owned. The building was tiny, situated within a maze of winding alleys, but it was neat: the rooftop and balconies were filled with pots of healthy-looking lemongrass. Up close, the plants looked like razor grass, but their use was versatile. With Thiên translating, Nhân explained the health benefits of lemongrass: it could cure a cold, stomachache, cough, or diarrhea, and help boost digestion. According to Nhân, the Vietnamese often surrounded their gardens with lemongrass bushes to keep mosquitoes and other insects away.

  Dan and Linda went with Thiên’s family to dinner at a street restaurant where chicken, beef, squid, prawn, okra, and eggplants were marinated with minced ginger, chili, and lemongrass and grilled on coals right in front of them. Sitting there, surrounded by locals, listening to them chat in their own language, Dan recognized something unique about Sài Gòn that had survived the war: the charm of its people, their incredible energy and resourcefulness. In his nightmares, the city was war-torn, ravaged with violence like the day he’d left it. Now, seeing it thrive brought him a sense of peace and consolation. He was starting to understand why other vets had said the return trip had helped them.

  Linda lowered the car window and snapped pictures of the emerald rice fields rolling alongside the road that led to the Mekong Delta. The wind lifted her hair, wafting a refreshing scent of lemongrass Dan’s way. She’d used the shampoo made by Nhân and said she should have bought more.

  On a rice field, two farmers stood opposite each other, holding long pieces of rope, swinging a bucket to scoop water from a stream onto a field. In another field, a boy was riding a water buffalo, his body a mere mark of punctuation on the great sentence of the animal. As Linda waved and took photos, the boy threw both hands into the air, beaming.

  Dan told himself he should print Linda’s photos from this trip and display them around the house. Perhaps the smiling child could replace his dreams of buffaloes and boys with their bodies ripped apart.

  Yesterday, when Linda took a nap after their morning tour and before visiting Thiên’s house, he’d gone to the hotel’s business center. He needed to know more before he could decide whether to look for Kim and his child. An online search for “Hollywood Bar, Saigon, 1969” yielded no results. Plenty came up when he looked for “Bars, Saigon, 1969,” but there was nothing about the Hollywood. The information he found led him to more stories about Amerasian children. There was so much for him to read and learn.

  Now, lush fields and gardens soothed his eyes. He couldn’t believe he was venturing into the heart of the Mekong Delta again. On his first mission here, he’d been amazed by the many shades of green from rivers, lakes, crops, and forests glistening below his helicopter; it wasn’t until later that he’d let himself see, among that green, the many shades of black and brown: scorched villages, burnt forests, deserted fields, bomb craters, and scattered bodies of people and animals.

  He studied the thatched-roof houses surrounded by ponds and gardens where chickens and pigs wandered. Kim and his child could be living in one of them.

  Their car approached a small town and traffic slowed.

  “Mr. Thien, is your phone on? We wouldn’t want to miss Phong if he called,” Linda said. “My friend Jenna keeps asking if we’ve talked to him yet.”

  Thiên held up his phone. “Maximum volume, Madam. Last night, I asked him to call me today, but he hasn’t.”

  “Too bad we don’t have his address,” Dan said.

  “We won’t be far from his hometown. If he call, we can visit him.”

  Dan nodded, feeling grateful for Thiên’s help, thinking about Thiên’s struggles. Thiên’s only son was divorced. Like many, he worked as a construction worker in Saudi Arabia, leaving his only daughter for Thiên and Nhân to take care of. Dan had been astonished to learn from Thiên that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were working overseas as laborers. Thiên’s former daughter-in-law was in Taiwan taking care of an elderly Taiwanese man. She hadn’t seen her daughter for several years.

  Thiên and his family would have had a very different life if the winning regime had acted differently. Thiên said that in the late eighties, his son had passed the university entrance exam but wasn’t allowed to study. Many children of former ARVN soldiers had experienced various forms of discrimination, some of which continued today. So strange, because everybody seemed to welcome returning American vets.

  Linda cocked her head. “Is that a market? Can we stop to have a look?”

  To their right, sellers and buyers were gathering on a dirt path that cut into the main road. “Great idea,” Dan said. Since last night’s adventures around Thiên’s neighborhood, he was excited to experience more of the local life.

  Thiên parked. Linda handed Dan his cap, put on her sun hat.

  The market was bursting with activity. Vendors squatted behind bamboo baskets brimming with vegetables, metal trays piled with meat, buckets filled with flopping fish, wriggling eels, or crawling crabs. Not far away, women stood behind pots of green plants and yellow and pink flowers.

  Linda pointed her phone at Dan. “Say hello to our friends,” she beamed. He waved back awkwardly, realizing that she was doing a livestream on her social media. Thiên had gotten her a local SIM card with internet connection.

  When Linda moved her camera onto Thiên, who was bargaining with a sweet potato seller, Dan continued on the dirt path. The happy look on people’s faces and the sound of their language reminded him of how much, at first, he’d adored the way of life here. If it wasn’t for the war, he’d love to come back regularly with Linda once they retired. They could escape the wet, cold Seattle winter to bask under the sun here, somewhere near the beach. The year-round warm weather of South Việt Nam would be good for Linda’s arthritis.

  He ventured deeper into the market, and found himself in the middle of a crowd. People were speaking loudly; some were almost shouting. The breeze that had welcomed him at the market entrance had disappeared, leaving him alone with the sun’s intense heat. Sweat started to trickle down his neck and forehead. As he passed the meat vendors, the smell of blood nauseated him. He had to go back to the car. He looked for Linda but couldn’t see her. A cold feeling ran through his body. He imagined the VC, their faces smeared with mud, appearing from surrounding rice fields and pulling her away.

  Several bells clanged. He turned around. Three bicycles with bamboo cages piled high approached. More than a hundred chickens were imprisoned inside the cages, their eyes black, their mouths gasping. Some were squawking, fighting for a place to stand, their feathers fluttering into the air. The bells continued to clang. “Tránh ra. Tránh ra,” a rider shouted at the women whose baskets blocked his path. The shouts drilled into Dan’s temples.

  He gazed at the bicycles and saw himself staring down at them from his helicopter. “Those motherfuckers,” Rappa was screaming into the intercom, “they’re carrying ammo!” On the trail that zigzagged through the forest, a line of gooks were bicycling. As his helicopter neared, those on the ground looked up at him. They dropped their bikes, ran for cover, but the trees around them had been burnt by napalm, their charred branches grasping at the sky. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack. The gunner and the crew chief’s M60s coughed fire. As his aircraft lowered, Dan blinked. The dead looked young. Too young. They lay motionless on the ground, their bodies punctured by bullets. Blood had soaked their white shirts, which glistened under the sun. His eyes searched frantically for weapons. None. Next to him Reggie McNair was staring through the plexiglass, his mouth working silently, his hands white-knuckled on the cyclic pitch control.

  “Oh fuck! They’re wearing school uniforms. Oh fuck!” Rappa cried, standing by the helicopter’s door, next to his M60.

  “It’s their fault they ran from us. Their own damn fault,” Hardesty said.

  “NO . . .” Dan howled and the corpses sat up, became the row of vendors who were smiling, chatting to each other, bargaining.

  He walked to a tree, knocked his head against the trunk.

  Noise rose around him. Sellers called out their wares. A child laughed.

  Someone pulled his shirtsleeve. An old, toothless woman. Her mouth caved in as she smiled. She made a drinking gesture, offering him something with both hands: a cup of water.

  He shook his head and walked away. He didn’t deserve kindness. Not from Vietnamese people.

  He focused on his breathing. In and out. In and out. When would this end?

  “Are you okay, Sir?”

  A young man stood in front of him, his worried-looking face framed by a pair of square glasses.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Dan turned to go back to the car but Linda appeared, her phone in front of her.

  “Smile for the camera.” She snapped a photo of Dan and the young man.

  “Oh, you caught me off guard.” The young man laughed. “I bet I look terrible,” he said, his white shirt blotched red with blood as he touched his exposed intestines.

  Dan closed his eyes, shook his head, and turned away. He tried to control his breathing. In and out. In and out. As his tremors eased, he pulled his cap lower. That day many years ago, coming back from the mission, his crew chief had filed a report of ten enemies killed and five probables. Dan had said nothing about the children lying dead on the forest floor being counted as the enemy. As he lifted his chopper, he’d caught a glimpse of their school bags tethered to the back of their bikes.

  How had the parents of those children coped? How could one cope with the pain of losing a child?

  Opposite him, a boy was kneeling, arranging ears of corn onto a mat together with his mother. The boy looked the same age as the children he’d helped murder.

  He wanted to kneel in front of the boy, take him by the shoulder, look into his eyes and say he was sorry.

  Linda was still talking to the young man in glasses.

  Thiên appeared. He lifted several bags high up, beaming. “My wife loves food from the countryside. Oh . . . that rice over there looks good. Give me another minute, please.”

  Thiên squatted down in front of a bamboo basket heaped with white grains. How lucky for the guy, Dan thought, that he could get so excited about such everyday things.

  The sun burned down on Dan as he waited. His throat was dry, sweat soaking the back of his shirt. He edged next to Linda, hoping she’d notice that he wanted to leave.

  “Now . . . tell me where you learned your English.” Linda was asking the young man. “I think you speak it better than me.”

  “No way.” The man laughed. “I learned it at university, and I hope you have no problem understanding me, since I’m an English teacher.”

  “You are? That’s wonderful.”

  “I am between my classes. I teach at the local primary school.” The man patted the black case he was holding.

  Dan reached for Linda’s arm. “Can we please go?”

  She turned to him and gasped. “Are you okay?”

  “A heat stroke can be dangerous, Sir,” said the man. “I think you should sit down. Come to my house for a cool drink?” He gestured across the rice fields toward a low house nestled in a garden filled with tall trees.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather get to our hotel early,” Dan said. They still had a long way to go and he didn’t want to travel in twilight or the dark. Not in the Mekong Delta.

  “It’s no trouble at all, Sir. Really.”

  Linda squeezed Dan’s hand. “Come on. Didn’t you say we came here to experience the authentic Vietnam?”

  As they left the market together with Thiên, Dan gazed at the rice fields. A breeze blew, sending ripple after ripple across the vast green. He let his vision fill with the rolling waves as his breath slowed.

  The young man introduced himself as Thanh. His house, with its sloped roof of red tiles and wooden pillars, looked like a sanctuary. Thanh unlocked the door. As they took off their shoes and entered, the soothing scent of incense welcomed Dan. The sight of a family altar greeted him: a high table laden with plates of colorful fruits, two vases of radiant white and yellow chrysanthemums, a row of ancient-looking portraits, and a blue ceramic holder from which sticks of incense smoldered, their perfume both enchanting and mysterious.