Glory's Child: A Novel of the American War in Vietnam: The Book of Thomas, #1

This book is dedicated

to all who were affected by the American War in Vietnam. It is for the generation of warriors who fought in the jungles and skies of Vietnam, for those who fought to save the wounded, and for those who fought on the streets, in universities, or in the homes of America, Vietnam, and around the world. It is for their children and grandchildren. This book is for all of us.

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Remember this is a novel, characters are mixtures, experiences compressed, dialogue and characters invented whole cloth, but these events happened to someone like us, and the story is for today.

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The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.

They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.

They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.

They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.

They say, We leave you our deaths: give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.

— ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

Preface

The Vietnam, or American War as it is known in Vietnam, was the direct result of decisions made after World War II as the victors divided the world between democracy and communism. Centuries of French colonialism in Southeast Asia, nationalistically known as French Indochina, was honored to keep Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh from unifying the country. The horrific, annihilating defeat suffered by the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 eradicated this buffer against communism. Written into the Geneva Accords, their capitulation drew the line at the 17th Parallel, separating the so-called democratic south from its communist brothers in the north, and most importantly to Ho guaranteed national elections he was sure to win to unify Vietnam. And with that, the French handed off their problems with the locals in Indochina to the USA.

The US supported Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of the new Republic of Vietnam. His corrupt family and friends’ government, with approval of the United States, refused to grant elections as promised and led directly to Ho Chi Minh’s effort to unify his country through the Communist Revolution of the Viet Minh.

The year 1963 marks the beginning of the US military presence in Vietnam as advisers, and in 1965 a few thousand Marines landed in Da Nang to begin the killing and dying. What came after was arguably the most controversial war in US history, the first military defeat, and the collective loss of confidence citizens had in their government. The tragic realization and rationalization sank into the national consciousness as the gruesome reality played out on the nightly news. More than 60,000 US and Allied soldiers lost their lives along with millions more uncountable North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, during this second Indochina war, the American War, glory´s child.

If contemplating a nadir from such a tragic trans-generational foreign policy disaster, the year 1968 would serve; and it is this year of the American War in Vietnam providing the primary background of Glory´s Child. Most of the characters are volunteers, doing what their country told them to do, for reasons handed down to citizen soldiers from the beginnings of civilization. These were the children of the glorious war of their fathers and proved once again all war springs from the seeds sown into the killing fields of the past.

The war was everywhere. On the streets of America, in its universities, as well as raging around the world. Few escaped the war. There were so many of them. War sent into every American home with the evening news during supper hour, and over much of the rest of the world as well. Those sights sparked a revolution of social change still burning today.

The Soccer Match

Nguyen Doan Le watched the soccer match from a distance. He was a Confucian, like his father, grandfather, and everyone else in his household dating back one thousand-years. His father had passed the rituals of life on to him, and the importance of life’s slowly changing roles. Like all the villagers, he was also an animist and knew all life grew from the same source; plants and animals possessed a life, something like his soul, and the god of mystery created them all. Le’s uncle, Thich Kim Lao, a Buddhist bonze, took Confucianism one step further. Thich Kim Lao taught him about an inherent and superior philosophy of harmony and equality among people, beyond traditional Confucian thought and its immutable and stately progressions.

Le could not reconcile the strange French game the boys played to his own life. The disharmony of the bodies smashing into one another and the anger it generated, just to force the ball into a net, seemed a very small reward for all the effort. But watching Tran Thien Don, his best friend, was like seeing a strong wind through the palms. He was poetry, and the struggle of this particular match seemed in keeping with the times. The way the sons of the soldiers from Saigon conducted themselves on the pitch, Le could not discern their belief in anything other than themselves.

Le sat on top of the six-foot-thick walls guarding the Imperial Citadel of Hue, the spiritual and cultural capital of Vietnam. He knew all the boys on the provincial team. They had all grown up together in the village of Dong Tinh, beside the Perfume River. The other team included sons of officials of the Ngo Dinh Diem government and officers in the South Vietnamese army. Diem sent them to Hue to replace traditional leaders, much as the French had done. It formed the same old story. Now the Ngo warlords used America to bankroll their terror. But, Diem was categorically different from the puppets the French installed. Le’s father told him they were much worse than the French. There was no respect for the ways of those around them. They lived apart and made only demands, imposed cruel taxes, and gave nothing but a self-serving, strange bureaucracy designed to eliminate the delicate fabric of relationships woven over centuries. Le’s uncle Lao told him they had started as Vietnamese, but greed and corruption changed them.

The sons of the Saigon government were getting beat in the soccer match and Le found himself glad, although competition was a new concept to him. The Saigon invaders became angry and started to point out Don, the star player on the villager’s team. Two hundred thousand people lived in and around the city of Hue, with Tran Thien Don the superior athlete of them all. The other side threatened him throughout the match. All over the pitch they bullied and pushed him, and though the soldier/referee favored the government side, all of them together could not stop Don from scoring. The players taunted Don and told him they would get him when the match ended.

Le, at fifteen years old already knew how to farm the hectare of land behind his bullock. He always tried to follow his father’s doctrines, but he saw the divisive trouble and deep discontentment in his village. An organization promising new horizons, the National Liberation Front, was already instructing him, and others in the village. The NLF did not usurp Buddha, their teachings appeared consistent. They spoke in secret to his village and as far as he could tell, they spoke the truth. At least the ones he saw looked and acted like him and his friends. They said they represented the Vietnam of the past and future. The Front appealed to Le, so he attended their meetings and talked other young men into joining him, including Don.

All Le knew about the Diem government of Vietnam was the soldiers who occupied the province. Drunkards who came from far away and acted like rulers of a foreign land. He hated and feared the way they treated his village. Le counted it as his good fortune his family was secure, they owned their land and animals. They did not hitch themselves to the wooden plows of others and till someone else’s land in order to pay their taxes, like some. Many of his friends never had a moment to slip into the river or walk into the magnificent city of Hue, the home of their Confucian past and the center of the universe. The work to survive in a just world was almost constant. Now the Diem government made it odiously burdensome. The Emperor lived and ruled in Hue during their paternalistic past. The last, Bao Dai, abdicated to Diem when Le was seven years old. And now, even though the administrative capital moved to Saigon, Hue remained the heart of South Vietnam. His father told him Saigon was as foreign as the moon, but the winds of heaven had breathed life into it and they must not defy the circumstances that made it real. Le and a growing number of his friends no longer believed. They were Buddhists, and at the same time, sympathetic to the Front. The support for Diem was slipping away.

Le and his friends heard rumors of the soldiers of the GVN doing unspeakable things to some of the girls in a nearby village; they could see what the government soldiers represented could not be right. The resistance was small, and the wind bends all small things. But in the grass, beginning to show, the revolution was taking root and growing.

On the playing field, outside the wall, Le saw the soccer match was over. By the bullying and name calling, he could tell the local boys managed to beat the boys from the south. The mood seemed ugly, but Le thought the GVN progeny reflected their fathers’ ways. This was the way of life.

Le stood up on the wall, about to call out congratulations to his friends, but something quieted him. The words stuck in his throat and he suddenly felt afraid. The armed soldiers from Saigon walked across the field to where the teams argued. Words flew back and forth on the field, but Le could not hear, then suddenly, the children of the village scattered like frightened ducks. Except for Don, who three of the soldiers restrained.

One soldier handed his rifle to the player Le identified as most vociferous in tormenting Don, star of the village team, now pinned to the ground by three of the largest soldiers. Le could not fully understand everything said below him, but he did hear enough to know the boy with the rifle was the soldier’s son and he could feel savage violence emanating from across the field. Le watched in fascinated horror as the boy with the gun turned it on the village boy, who led his team to an audacious victory over the government boys in a game the French had taught the soldiers’ grandfathers many years before. The village boy started a pitiful struggle against the three soldiers who held him, trying in vain to free himself. He nearly overcame the strength of all of them and Don hurled invectives at his captors. The soldier’s son aimed his father’s gun at Don and waited for a display of fear and acquiescence. The tormentor emitted a high pitched, nervous laugh that sent chills through Le, who watched the atrocious scene unobserved from atop the Citadel wall.

The torture continued as the boy once again took aim at the villager, who refused to show his terror. Suddenly, angered the abuse did not draw the expected response, the armed boy reversed the rifle and with a quick downward thrust, jammed the butt of the American M1 carbine into the face of the captured boy. Immediately, Le could see his friend’s face explode into a mask of blood.

The government soldiers dropped the boy’s arms in the dirt and left him there. As they walked off, hand in hand, the soldier patted his son on the back and congratulated him on playing a good game. The boy on the ground put his hands to his ruined face and kicked his heels in the dirt.

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The Perfume River flows from the highlands to the west, bringing with it the abelmosk and lily fragrances of the interior jungle. In a small village by the river, the most notable healer and herbalist in the province bent sadly over his grandson. Inside the small bamboo dwelling a group of men hovered around the soccer star of Dong Tinh. Outside, squatting with her back against the wall, his mother softly moaned, heartbroken such savagery had destroyed her son’s beautiful face.

What about his teeth? Don’s father asked his own father anxiously. The herbalist did not answer. He gave the boy some leaves known for their numbing powers and told Don to close his aching, swollen gums around them, and soon, after the leaves and the drugged tea took effect, he would try to straighten his teeth; still miraculously attached to his gums, though pushed back into his mouth. His upper lip split to the base of his nose, now nearly flattened against his face from the cruel blow of the soldier's son.

One among them stood silently. Thich Kim Lao, uncle of Le, one of the most influential Buddhist of the area withdrew deeply into himself, meditating on his next words, trying to clear his mind and be sure of his next step. Until now, the Buddhists had been silent. They had observed Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime for eight years. Diem and his homicidal brothers alienated the culture and aggrandized fortunes for themselves. After the Geneva partition of 1954, Diem defied the agreement and disregarded the promise of free elections, allied himself and South Vietnam with the co-operative United States by playing on the powerful nation’s paranoid fear of communist China and the Soviet Union. Now a nation subjugated to the policy domination of the United States, just as they had been vassals of the French, and even the Japanese during WWII. In Hue, the people were vassals to Diem’s regime in Saigon. The bonze thought it time for Vietnam to emerge with its own identity.

But the priest knew the villagers hardly dared raise their heads above their own furrows for fear of having them cut off. In this central region, the villagers had always been poor, but managed a subsistence economy providing their basic needs and caring for themselves. But the balance of life drastically changed under Diem’s regime. Now, what little they possessed the government altered to an unrecognizable form and took it from them. Their precious village formed the source and substance of life. They were the custodians of the earth. Their ancestors buried and venerated there. Their relationship to the past, the ebb and flow of their communal life, and the roles they held gave them value as human beings. Life indeed changed dramatically after the French colonists arrived over one hundred years before and the villagers lost much importance to the allure of city life and its economy, but nothing changed so much as in this time of invasion by Diem’s people. Now, Lao thought, thieves from Saigon are colonizing us from within.

From beyond, strangers, without the face of generations, came to tell them how to live. These parasites of America, with no morality, Diem, and his gang, traitors to their own country. They let it be known they ruled by divine intervention. Ngo Diem, who could not feed himself for one day on his own, came to claim the fruits of the villagers’ labor, and help himself to the barbarous acts of terrorism; one result the bonze observed lying on a mat in the bamboo house. Lao felt mortally incensed. He decided. No longer would Buddhists proclaim the middle road. No other way existed. He was now ready to die for the Lord Buddha. The boy in the room tipped the scales. With one blow, the entire village of Dong Tinh became a stronghold for the Front. Diem went far beyond governing, even for a warlord. The city of Hue would become a point of resistance to his defilement. He looked down at the boy and his ruined face. The face of modern Vietnam. The time for action had finally come. The Diem regime would go. Heaven would turn its face from Diem, and his wicked house would tumble as if it never existed. The winds of heaven which gave them life would now blow them away. There would be no possibility to sustain the emptiness of evil forever, because beneath it no creative, nurturing force existed. There was nothing. Even mighty America was nothing before the winds of heaven. America will waste all of its resources.

The wounded boy lay rigidly still, not asleep. The medicine man leaned his small frame near him and very gently took hold of the boy’s face. Instantly the boy’s eyes opened wide, expressing the pain and terror intentionally and purposely written on his broken face. Sorrow emanated from the dwelling.

You are ready, announced the healer. Look into my face and see into your grandfather’s eyes. He worked his fingers on the hinge of the boy’s jaw and slowly opened his mouth. With deft speed and considerable skill, he placed a round piece of wood between the boy’s teeth, at the left hinge of his jaw, and with his right hand, smoothly pulled the upper teeth into an alignment close to their original position. The boy turned his head and ejected a mouthful of blood from the broken palate and fainted. His body relaxed for the first time since his injury. He did not move. Mercifully, under the influence of strong pure opium and other herbs, he began to sleep. The herbalist shaped Don´s nose and pressed a muddy mold beside each nostril, straightened the broken cartilage, and successfully gave Don a functioning nose as he healed physically.

Yes, the priest sighed to himself, it is time once again for action. Vietnam lay bleeding from wounds inflicted by our own leaders. Time for the silent to speak with the eloquence of action. Action would go to the heart of the matter. Yes, Buddhists would once again arm themselves with the controlled truth of peasant thinking, and by action give the country’s revolution strength and legitimacy. They would unleash the repressed hatred of the entire country into those people who falsely claimed divine inspiration. The white light of truth told him Diem and the foreign interventionists were already dead.

Below him, Don’s grandfather, the physician, trimmed away loose pieces of Don’s flesh from the rip in his torn upper lip. Happy he slept, anesthetized by the narcotic tea. When he finished making the wound neat, with accomplished surgical skill, he pulled the halves of his split lip together with stitches sewn from inside the grievous wound.

The Tombs

Thich Kim Lao, the Buddhist bonze, stood silently and contemplated the sacred burial grounds of the Emperors of Vietnam. Their final retreat; their tombs. Where have they gone, he wondered, and into what life form have they evolved? He clapped his hands to call their spirits to him, and he said to them, This city of Hue we love so much will become a tomb within a tomb. His prescience a careful study of the past. It told him the revered city in his divided country must become a symbol. Hue the most precious jewel in the crown of both Vietnams. Lao thought of President Diem and his brothers and their trips abroad. Paris and Washington seduced them, they turned their backs on their own heritage, and forgot they could find the highest ideals and the greatest scholarship within their own culture. The Ngos spurned and belittled what was finest in Vietnam. One brother aspired for the College of Cardinals in Rome. Another satisfied to rule the country as a dictator. And Madam Nhu, wife to the most devious of the brothers, a distorted spiritualist with an opium addiction; a twin headed rapacious dragon with a voracious, insatiable appetite for recognition and power.

The soccer match played two years previously created the spark that moved Lao from inactive faith to concrete action. The winds of heaven had changed toward personal, direct involvement. The Vietnamese had allowed the French to partition their country, pillage their land, and colonize the people. Only during the Second World War, when France surrendered to Germany’s war machine, did France relinquish control to Japan, Germany’s strange ally. But only for a few years.

Thich Kim Lao bowed his head to the wonderful memory of Ho Chi Minh’s daring moves to the North. An educated man, Lao had traveled to Paris and spoke French and even some English. He knew about alliances and politics. But the labyrinth of cross purposes led him to faith in the will of heaven. He could not fathom why the Americans supported the Ngo family’s regime. It was to their shame. Had they forgotten Ho Chi Minh was once their ally? He ousted the Japanese with his Viet Minh. Many American flyers owed their lives to his men. Did the Americans forget Chiang Kai-shek had been instrumental in establishing Ho Chi Minh in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam? How could they fanatically devote themselves to Chiang Kai-shek and oppose the legitimate claims of Ho? Was it possible America’s leaders never studied the siege of Dien Bien Phu?

The barbarisms of the Ngo brothers filtered through the bonze’s brain and interrupted his meditations on what he knew to be a momentous event of global proportions. He realized then a unique opportunity presented itself. The people of the world must see what had come to pass. He no longer objected to Don and Le participating in the Front. No other option existed. The NLF and Buddha would be allies.

The realization of the magnitude of the Buddhists’ plans, and the impact the acts would have on the conscience of the world, went through Lao like starlight through the universe. What could small men of the Diem regime do against the will of heaven? Prior to 1954 his beloved city of Hue had been a part of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and enjoyed a stability unknown now. Lao reached out and touched the tombstone of an emperor of ancient times, wanting to feel a spark from the past. But he only felt the coldness of the stone. Ho Chi Minh followed the rules of the Geneva Accords of 1954 and withdrew north of the 17th parallel, dismal at leaving Hue behind.

He removed his hand knowing the fire must arise from within himself. The others were right. Now time for the hand to warm the stone; time for the soul of the country to take the lead. Buddhists, the most powerless and silent, must become the powerful and vociferous leaders they had historically been in times of great crisis, and manifest the consensus Lao knew to be in the hearts of the villagers of South Vietnam. The Ngo family created more than a crisis. The Buddhist believed the despotic rulers cut themselves off from their source of strength. They placed all of Vietnam’s fate in the hands of foreigners. They were neither creatures of the land nor beings from the sea. And they could not fly. Lao thought of the western term, schizophrenia, he learned in Paris, and laughed amongst the tombs in the heart of Hue. The Ngo family was a monster who opened its mouth and asked the western world to fill its bloated belly. The Diem regime threw a heavy blanket over the villages and the people were suffocating. Saigon lured village people to the city with the illusion of wealth and opportunity. Self-sufficiency vanished, jealousy and greed taking its place. Now hatred, so long repressed, would bubble to the surface and spew like lava, burning away the ugliness of foreign influence, and purify the country. Lao looked out over the garden of the Citadel and sadly realized he gazed at one of the sacrifices.

Lao turned to the two who followed him to the grave sites. In a time of peace, they would only be boys, barely beginning their lives. In the recent past, they would have selected Le as a candidate for mandarin. Don would have been about to marry, to begin his gradual climb into the village hierarchy from youngest to oldest. As it was, they already completed their first assignments for the Front. Nguyen Doan Le, the young intellectual, just beginning his studies at Quoc-Hoc College in Hue, and Tran Thien Don, the brilliant athlete, just arrived back in Hue from a year in Saigon. The wound Don sustained in the struggle showed a top row of teeth that receded to a miraculously moderate underbite. And a scar ran from the middle of his upper lip, straight into his half-flattened nose. The two halves of his upper lip joined imperfectly at the scar, so the left half hung perceptively lower than the right, giving him a slightly asymmetrical appearance. After committing to the Front, his first assignment, post training, was as a houseboy in the Presidential Palace in Saigon.

The boys stood waiting patiently for the priest’s attention for over an hour. They had not seen one another for a year, and were happy in each other’s company, relating their adventures in the burgeoning revolution. They watched the holy man become unaware of time in any conventional sense. Certainly, they could feel the power of his mind and sensed the priest’s encompassing presence as he slowly and silently moved from one soul to the next. When he turned to walk toward them, the young men could see a transformation in his old face. Lao looked curiously like a boy.

What is it, Master? Le asked respectfully. The old man looked into the sky. He could smell the sea to the east, carried on the wind. It had changed direction.

It is time. The boys looked at one another and smiled.

Here it comes, their looks told one another. Lao, a part of the young men’s lives since their birth and known in all of the villages around Hue for fifty years before they were born. Every day he knelt in the city and held out his begging bowl to receive what heaven promised him: freedom from desire and want. His faith and purity sustained him, fulfilling his needs; and he never felt disappointed when people ignored him in times of quiet, for he sought peace. Whenever troubles came, Buddha was the source of peace and hope. Now, they needed power, and the time had come, even if it must be war. They would show Diem real power. The power of the Lord Buddha.

The bonze finally spoke, Let us walk. The boys fell in step with him, one on each side. They continued toward the city. At length he turned and said, Tran Thien Don, tell me, what do you know about this city?

Don, pleased Lao asked such a simple question, he began answering like a student standing in the classroom reciting his lesson: Master, the city was built in 1802 by Emperor Gia Long. The name Hue means harmony and culture; indeed, it is the center of our land. Our greatest university is here, and the repository of our art treasures. Lao did not respond. He just looked at the boy who had come to mean so much in his life.

After a minute he spoke to the other boy.

What do you say, Nguyen Doan Le? They continued their walk. In a few moments the youngest of them spoke.

As elder brother already said, it is our cultural heritage, and the soul of our country. The place of the National Study College. From it I hope to learn our past and something of the world to come.

The Buddhist stopped his stride and took a step back to separate himself from the boys. They stopped and turned to face him. He directed his thoughts to the boys. They are like Buddha must have been, revolutionary Confucians, not satisfied with the old ways, seeking more from life than fulfillment through the roles one played, wanting more equality with the kings. With their lives threatened, South Vietnam would return once more to Buddhism.

Younger brothers, a great evil has existed in our country for so long. The very winds of heaven are changing. Soon we will celebrate the Lord Buddha’s birth. Even as I speak, the president’s brother, an archbishop of the Catholic church, forbade us from carrying tributes on Buddha’s birthday. We can fly no flags to celebrate our master’s life. Many say Diem’s brother would be more if he could. He covets high office. Lao paused, then he said, The bonzes have decided to protest this action against our love and faith.

The boys looked at the priest with surprise, not alive long enough to remember any active political involvement from the Buddhists. They only knew the Diem regime, and the idea Lao spoke made them afraid for him. The young men attended many political education meetings the NLF held over their two-year membership. On the sixth day of this very month, they were officially joining the Communist Party. They would be honored as the youngest members in the province having successfully completed their first assignments.

Don asked, What are you planning?

We will gather as we always do. Except we will go beyond the pagodas and reach out to the country. Indeed, we will reach the entire world.

They will harm you, Don said, surprised at himself for speaking so directly to the priest. Lao looked at the boy and his ruined face, gently. It is insulting to touch a man’s face. What the ARVN soldiers did, was a calculated lifelong humiliation.

Yes, the priest said softly, they are masters of cruelty and knew exactly what they were doing. But they are no match for the truth. Evil will bring its own downfall. The instrument will be Buddhists.

Lao’s soulful eyes comforted the boy. He continued, When the soldiers hurt you, they thought they only hurt you. And how you suffered, even to this day. Don turned away when he intercepted their eyes. The girls hurt him most. But the gang from Saigon, soldiers unworthy of the title, hurt everyone they are supposed to serve. They are not from here. They cannot find their way. We will show them. They have forgotten who they are. We will call them by name. On the eighth day of this month, you will come and see. The friends looked at each other. Two days after their induction into the Party. Both of you come, but do not protest yourselves. But tell everyone you may see after, exactly what you saw. His tone very somber as he talked to his witnesses.

Le and Don exchanged glances of excitement. The revolution of the NLF was real and ongoing, and they were a small part of it. They realized public acknowledgement and favor would come with Buddhist support. To Don it meant revenge would come sooner than he hoped. Don presented his face as a badge of honor. To those that knew he received his wounds in the revolution, he became a symbol, the face of the struggle. But now he knew it would be much more glorious than previously told. And he would have his vengeance.

Le concluded that when society saw the spiritual leaders openly supporting the revolution, the government could do nothing but fail, and their magnificent country would be in their hands once again. Who could stop it? he wondered. Empire America is a giant obstacle, but surely, if they see what the people of Vietnam want, they will not try to impose their will on us.

Purpose filled the young men. Hate also fueled Tran Thien Don. He did not think it would take long to win, after Diem fell.

Nguyen Doan Le.

Yes, Master. The boy stood at attention, and inwardly Lao smiled at him, the person closest to his heart.

If I had a son, he said, heaven could not make one finer than you. The old man felt his thoughts flow without hindrance into the young man’s mind. The younger man swelled with polar emotions of humility and pride. It would have been difficult for Don and Le to choose between Lao’s praise and their ascension into the ranks of the Communist Party. To have both was heaven on earth.

Lao spoke, Remember this as concerns the Quoc-Hoc College. It is a true national treasure. Heroes and traitors have studied there.

An example, Master.

The priest watched the clouds come across the sky and the shadows they cast. He answered, Ho Chi Minh studied there. As did his general, Vo Nguyen Giap. The boy brightened. He knew they had attended and was proud to be among such company. Ngo Dinh Diem also attended; the most illegitimate and fractious despot ever to rule Vietnam, the one who corrupts us all, and whom we rebel against. Are you still so proud?

Le laughed out loud and Don joined in, displaying rare outward emotion. A few silent tears rolled down the weathered face of the priest. He turned and as if addressing the city and spoke once more. All things must die for creation to come to fruition. So, it is with you, great city. And I will be at the very center, buried with you in a grave within a grave.

The boys looked toward the inner walls of the Citadel, mystified at what the revered old man said.

Thomas

It was 1963. Cherry blossoms were bursting in fullness and magnolia fragrance drifted over the campus. Outside of the Georgian brick gymnasium, Thomas leaned against the metal handrail on the stairs descending to the football team's locker room. His knees were tight and occasional waves of dizziness from the concussion sustained at yesterday’s spring practice session swept over him. He should have been in the hospital. But his sense of duty, and desire to keep his needed scholarship and walk away from the game with at least a monogram, kept him from missing practice. He could not afford to fall any further behind. His precious scholarship was on the line.

Thomas was a good footballer. The trouble was there were so many a shade better. But it was a living, and the gateway to his degree. And it was life spent with long patches of sunlight, away from the drunken domination of his father and hopeless alcoholism of his mother. He came to Wake as a scholar-athlete, recruited to play for a team where winning was not everything. Thomas was on his own in a private college few could afford. Even with a football scholarship, during the off-season he worked the docks at Carolina Freight Line. Through the night, eleven to seven, he unloaded truck trailers on the third shift. Classified as casual labor he escaped having to be a union member though he earned union scale. The union members hated the hard-working college boys for showing them up, but the regulars could count on the casuals to man the docks at odd hours while they took their vacations and sick leave. He was a spot replacement but worked steadily, all over the docks. No one in the union gave Thomas any trouble. It was good money and it paid for his off-campus apartment. Between football and the docks, some of the rich boys borrowed money from his small savings. He needed both jobs to survive.

Football demanded utmost effort for the super talented. Thomas fought for his life every day. He wasn’t big enough at 5’9", and 165 pounds, to take the punishment. Not for defensive cornerback. At the college level, he was a couple of steps slow. At every practice he was the target for the first team’s game plan. The second-tier team in the conference ran over him like a freight train gone wild. He was almost the only person who thought he could play on this level. In his last spring practice nothing had improved.

Thomas tried to look beyond the daily two-hour beatings. Football had been good to him. It placed him among a class of people who were out of his reach before. He liked to fantasize walking in his old neighborhood, wearing his monogram sweater with the block W on the pocket, showing the folks back home that, despite everything he and his brothers and sister had lived through, he accomplished something. He played for the respect being a college level athlete brought. What family pride the Bishops had was largely attributable to sports. Both of his brothers were players and happily smashed the high school records he left behind. Quitting was unthinkable, because college life was a relief and a liberation. In the beginning it all seemed so overwhelming, so elevated from his previous environment. College offered him exhilarating freedom and the newfound pleasure of overcoming, what were to him, great challenges. Football was the vehicle that carried him away from the textile mills in Mebane. Thomas was grateful. He would be the first college graduate on either side of his family tree. He had learned, thanks to football, he could make it on his own. The game of football gave him something to believe in. It had taken him much further than anything else in his life, taking him to one of the Big Four universities in North Carolina, and provided him an outlet for his anger.

His father came to the home games, saw him on the special teams covering punts and kickoffs, got drunk, and often made a spectacle of himself, yelling at the coach to put him in the game. But football placed him beyond his father’s dominion. Thomas went into the game on the kicking teams and to give a breather to the starters or when the score was out of reach. But he had enough playing time to be a part of the team. The connections it gave him at the men’s athletic club, and standing in his fraternity, made the commitment more than worthwhile. After all, he did play, and he carried a feeling inside him he thought few understood. Football gave him values and a place to grow, and a method for the transference of pain.

Marlana

Marlana had been talking to him as he fell asleep in front of her, on the low couch in Bo Chee’s lakeside house. Marlana didn’t like football and she could not have cared less how many times Thomas went on the field. She got up and went to the linen closet and brought back a sheet. She looked at his body. Even in sleep, Thomas’ compact body was as firm and defined as a sculpted statue. His thick black hair was finger combed and lay across his forehead. He was a visual delight to her. She reached out her hand to touch him. As her finger traced a line from his shoulder to the tightness of his waist, his skin quivered at her touch. Marlana hated the nicks and small scars on his arms and legs from playing the dreadful game. She loved his body. She remembered when it looked much smoother. They had been mildly arguing about the game when Thomas slipped away into sleep.

Coward, she said, in no way meaning it, that’s one way to escape my inevitable conclusion. She quietly unfolded the sheet and placed it over her sleeping lover. As she stood, the sun from the skylight in the studio room fell on her and touched her auburn hair, the red and gold highlights seemed to move and dance before Bo Chee’s eyes.

Hold it there, Marlana. Don’t move.

OK, Marlana spoke to the Korean artist, who was on his knees before his easel. He had been silent and meditative, with brush in hand, for nearly an hour. Now he was ready. With the skill of a master calligrapher, Bo Chee inked the essential lines of Marlana’s body.

Marlana was his senior student. At the moment, also his model. Her small round breasts were bare. She took great pleasure standing before Bo Chee. Sunlight washed over her. "Just wait until Dr. Harriman sees this. Do you think the Southern Baptists are ready for this type of student-teacher rapport? I can see it in the Winston Morning News, ‘Jap Professor Loses Tenure Over Student Nude.’ Or, ‘Wake Woks Jap.’"

Quiet... you are so noisy, Marlana. I don’t have tenure, and I’m Korean. I would get up and decapitate you for the insult if I weren’t busy, Bo Chee admonished as he lightly brushed the rice paper. She stood in a relaxed pose. Her hair hung to her waist. Her green eyes flashed at him in the artist’s sunlit room. There were three other easels set up, white and blank, the rice paper waiting for Bo Chee’s inspirations.

Come and see, he beckoned.

Are you finished already?

On this one I am. One can’t make corrections.

Marlana reached toward the couch and picked up Thomas’ undershirt and pulled it on. It fell to her knees and made her seem even smaller than she was.

Bo Chee stood to receive her opinion of his art. She walked around behind him and put her arms around his waist, standing silently. Her breasts rested on his wrapped silk kimono. She kissed the back of his neck and sent a pleasant tingle through his body. He waited for her to speak.

Finally, she said, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Both laughed as they looked at the black India ink on the rice paper. Lines flowed from his hand, and a minimal representation of a woman appeared. But as a facsimile of Marlana, it was a masterful abstraction.

I don’t know, Marlana. It’s only been two years since they’ve allowed dancing. The President of the Baptist Convention would hold it up as a work of the devil Oriental. They give me such grief!

Well, I won’t brag about it around campus. People are talking about the three of us already, anyway... She squeezed his waist until he grunted from the expelled air. Oh, Bo Chee, I love you.

You love him, too, he said, indicating Thomas’ sleeping form. He has problems only Buddha could solve.

Yes, you’re right. We all do. But what’s wrong with that? He’s my physical and you’re my mental.

Bo Chee smiled as he turned to face her. I love him too. Now it is time for me to prepare our food.

Thomas and Marlana discovered each other in his freshman year. She was a sophomore and neither considered it love at first sight. Nothing could have prepared Thomas for the impact of college life and its freedom. But he loved it, especially the ideas that Marlana spoke about. Thomas lost his virginity in the sixth grade, but Marlana was the only woman he had known other than a jazz singer at Blues Alley in Georgetown. He first saw Marlana at a protest arranged by the campus newspaper. Marlana was the student who lit a ten-foot cross on fire on the campus mall. Popular with the students, the protest forced the Southern Baptist Convention to sever its direct control of Wake. At first, her lack of inhibition and guilt, and complete candor in the way she spoke intimidated him. She seemed so hedonistic and completely selfish and had something to say about everything. But she wrapped him in her aggressiveness and Thomas began to thoroughly enjoy her. Gradually he came to more than admire her, and then to love her as a valued friend, and beyond. They were perfect outlets. A year passed before they became lovers, and then Thomas showed her all the things he knew about sex, and she showed him another way to feel about the world outside himself. Over the past two years they remained great friends. For Thomas, Marlana supplied an element that he missed, and for which he unknowingly longed for. Sometimes she was the teacher and Thomas the willing student. Reversing roles at other times. It was always fun, because between them they had so much to learn, about almost everything. They went about the task as if their time was short.

Marlana perfected what she thought of as an artistic temperament. Indeed, a natural performer, unconventionality her genre. Shocked and repelled at the sight of the tufts of hair under her arms the first time he saw her nude, he felt an odd attraction and repugnance. Finally, he realized what repelled him was his own ignorance and prejudice at her tweaking society’s nose, and his own. As time together passed, Thomas learned to look beyond her surface traits, and developed a few of his own. He grew a moustache for a semester, smoked a pipe and let his hair grow modishly, and frequented the campus coffee house. He thought about body hair less and less and Marlana began to shave her legs when she modeled. No one like her existed in high school. Thomas learned to appreciate her freedom and to relax in his. He put away the clumsy pipe, which he never liked anyway, but stuck to the coffee house crowd and their stimulating conversations.

You want some drink, Marlana? How about the rum punch I made last week? Yes? I’ll make a big pitcher for all of us.

Thomas is in training. I can’t even get him to go with me to the Tavern on the Green.

Aw shit, Bo Chee emitted his favorite American vulgarism, two or three fruit cocktails won’t kill him. That damned football might, but the fruit with rum and vodka won’t. And the poetry he writes, that might kill too... but not the rum punch.

Marlana watched the elegant bachelor, in his mid-forties, walk across his studio to the well-equipped kitchen along the far wall. Inserted into the tongue and groove oak floor was a hexagonal tile inlay, and on it a round oak table with four hand carved oak chairs surrounding it. Bo Chee started to cut and peel the fruit. He blended oranges, bananas, fresh cherries, and chunks of pineapple into liquid, then he added Jamaican rum and Russian vodka without measuring.

The blender noise woke Thomas, but he did not move or speak. He looked at Marlana and listened to his friends.

Did you hear what Thomas said about his football practice today? They made him play defender of tackles, she said, trying to sound as if she knew the game.

Defender of tackles? Bo Chee corrected, No Marlana, they moved him to the position of nose tackler, although I am unclear as to why they name them after parts of the body.

Thomas groaned, Oh, good God. I come to tell you my troubles, my aches and pains, and you two don’t know which end of a football to play with.

I do too! said Marlana. The one with a point.

Very funny, Marlana. Is this the beginning of another chapter to our never-ending argument on the philosophy of football?

You brought it up. I didn’t know football had any philosophy.

Children, children, admonished Bo Chee. I must say, Thomas, it looks like you were played with from both ends today. Bo Chee laughed from across the room.

Damn, Chee. When they fire Wildeman, why don’t you apply for his job?

What is his job?

He’s the goddamn football coach.

I don’t pay much attention to that department. I have my own wars to deal with. But, I’m only kidding. I know the man. The pay is right. Did you know he is the highest paid man on campus? Imagine!

The only reason we go to the games is because you make us... and you don’t even get to play, Marlana groused. She felt the rise of a good argument on why sports in general, and football in particular, represented all the things she believed to be the basest in human activity.

I play.

Well, not much. And less next year, it seems.

That’s what I hear... give me one of those monsters Bo Chee, so I can be as smart as this damn girl. By the way, tell me, if some of your philosophical debates would draw 30,000, don’t you think the pay would be better for your department? Bo Chee laughed good naturedly. Thomas took one of the tropical concoctions and the three friends drank. It contained over four ounces of alcohol, and his mood elevated immediately. It didn’t take much for Thomas, who rarely drank during the times he was involved with football.

Bo Chee, your drinks are the best. I can’t stand the taste of alcohol. God, bourbon is disgusting, he said, thinking about his fraternity brothers and his father's favorite.

The weight of the day fell away. He tumbled into the intoxicating experience of drinking with his professor and his girlfriend. Every time he spoke about the football trials, they all started to argue, and ended with the simple advice to quit. But it wasn’t that simple. The ramifications were what his friends overlooked. It had taken all his skill and determination, and the help of his high school coach to get out of Mebane. He would not let him down. He admitted he hated Coach Wildeman’s brand of college football. The brutality and dehumanizing conditions were just part of it. But those were just peripheral issues. Quitting itself was the problem. He had never quit anything. It was his duty to himself and a few other people to continue, and to finish what he gratefully started years before. Nothing up until then had been enough to make him want to leave his scholarship. He’d play tackle until they carried him off the field. What else could they do? He couldn’t think of anything worse. As long as he was part of the team. Hell, he thought, we can’t all quit.

Give me my shirt, please, Thomas said to Marlana. Marlana peeled it off without a moment’s hesitation. All three of them laughed at their intoxicated and substantially scandalous situation. Thomas was more determined than ever to finish out his time at Wake.

Joining Up

Thomas stood behind Bo Chee while the philosopher painted a Korean’s idea of the universe on the easel in front of him. It’s beautiful. You are so good, Thomas complimented.

Bo Chee smiled and replied, It’s not me. It’s the true balance... harmony. We are such a small part of the whole. I have given myself up to the loss of ego and have surrendered to the larger universe.

It sounds like you are saying it’s not you painting.

Yes, the brush is in my hand, but I am not painting some small idea, or fantasy, like you seem to love to run after. I am trying to get out of the way enough for something to happen.

What do you mean?

You were talking about going to Vietnam, another piecemeal idea. You talk about it like you think you can matter, that your ideas have some sort of validity there. Do you know anything about the country? You run at life with supposed ideals and unselfish notions to give the world. You know, Marx was a philosopher. Stalin was an idealist. Like you. And there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than a man with a certain point of view.

Goddamn, Bo Chee. I was telling you how good your picture is. Now you’ve got me in the company of big time killers.

If you join the Marines, in whose company do you think you’ll be?

Fuck, Chee, you really know how to hurt a guy. Look, if everyone would throw their guns and knives in a pile, so would I. I’m going to have to decide. I see it. The news special last night put the handwriting on the wall. It also put the fear of God in me. I’ll tell you, South Vietnam is going to fall without help.

Let me ask you, do you really think your involvement and participation in this war will, in any way, make things better? Thomas, I will personally be very disappointed if you decide to go.

If someone doesn’t go, who the hell is going to stop them? If not me, then who? Thomas exploded, Who’s going to stop them!

Who? Certainly not the government of the United States. America knows nothing about the Orient, or if they do, they don’t respond that way. Listen to yourself. What you are saying is you are willing to kill and die for tired, old, cold war mentality of creeping communism. Why doesn’t America leave them alone, or better yet, help both sides work it out?

I’m sorry. I’m tired of arguing, Bo Chee. It’s going to be a long, grueling day. I know they are trying to steal my scholarship...

Why not go to Western Carolina? You told me, they want you.

Bo Chee. Come on! It’s me, Thomas. Remember me? I’m a Wake student. I work here, too. This is home.

Bo Chee smiled and went back to gaze at his pastel watercolor, painted on thin, transparent paper. The lines were spare and classic. The scene showed a great snow-capped mountain vista with one trail, and on it, one man leading a horse. I’m sorry, also, he said. Football to me is a microcosm of war. I don’t believe as you, that the game is an outlet or substitution. I believe it is a training ground. It is violent and look at the way things happen. Big players try to mismatch with the little ones in both war and football. Thomas smiled at Bo Chee’s understanding of at least one important aspect of football. It’s a foolish man’s game. I see that. And this military adventure in Vietnam... it’s internal, you think of it as their version of America’s Civil War. It is not. America will only prolong the suffering, Bo Chee said. It is a revolution.

Are you telling me my government would allow our men to die for nothing? I just can’t buy that. They are asking for our help. Someone’s gotta help them, Thomas restated. He got up from his chair and entered the kitchen area of the large open room of Bo Chee’s house. Plants hung throughout and small bonsai trees in oversized clay pots provided an air of being comfortably outside.

Anyway, my worry’s a long way off, Thomas said as he walked to the sink and peeled an orange. It’s just the television made it so real. Walter Cronkite said to expect American combat troops fighting by this time next year, and not just as advisors. I don’t know, I hope I’m wrong, but I think I stand a good chance in the draft, which is another reason I can’t let go of my scholarship. I hope the Vietnamese can go ahead and get it over with this year. They say the government forces are in control and just need more help from the US.

All we know is what we hear. We don’t know who is asking for help. Is it the entire country, or even a representative sample? Is it really the will of the people? Who knows, Thomas? Your idealism is a gift and a talent. But it can blind you. You see what you want to see. It is only a way for old men to get young men to go out and die for them. It is only politicians furthering their own cause. Bo Chee walked out on his small sun deck, looking out on the pond. Spring blossoms splashed the scene with colors. Waterlilies covered the near side of the pond.

How so? Thomas asked, following his teacher.

Well, you can’t take just a small slice of an idea and use it to justify life and death decisions. You must consider the core of an idea and read the extreme assumption. There’s no way you can participate and withdraw at the same time. You haven’t seen the picture yet. If you happen to be wrong, your regret will be great.

Thomas fought for understanding. Bo Chee, I’m a poor boy from Mebane, North Carolina. I’ll never be a professor. I’ve heard some people are going to head for Canada if the draft comes close to them.

Why? asked Bo Chee.

To avoid the draft, of course.

That’s a fine idea. Why don’t you do it also?

Go into exile?

It would be better than going to war.

Like I said, Bo Chee, I’m just a smart southern boy, and this is my home. I believe in my country.

In many ways I am in exile.

I can see your point, Bo Chee, but I’m not. I’ve already decided. Thomas got up to go. It’s time for me to head to the gym. Thanks for lunch. Thomas put his hand on Bo Chee’s coat and fingered the material. He felt a deep affection for his teacher. Thomas wished he understood. He wanted an approval from Bo Chee that wasn’t forthcoming.

What have you decided?

Well, you old exile, you’ve always got a home with me. If it gets down to it, and my country orders me to Vietnam, then I’ll go. I don’t want to go. But I’m not going to jail and I’m not slipping into another country.

Is that all?

No. I’ve also decided how I’m going to do it if the thing’s still going on after I graduate.

Go on.

As an officer, that’s for sure. Also, if I can pass the fucking physical, I’m going to be a pilot. It got so quiet the air filled with small sounds normally unnoticed; the ruffle of birds’ wings and light breezes in the meadow. No words came to his mind to express his melancholy at the unfortunate words he heard from Thomas. He’s going to be condemned for crimes against humanity, thought Bo Chee. He is so young. Indeed, he has seen much of the underside of life, but he’s still innocent. Saddened, Bo Chee felt he failed him as a teacher.

Don’t you see, Thomas, I am Korean. What is happening in Vietnam, happened in Korea. I saw it and lived it. It's still going on and will never end until the country is one again.

Yeah, well. By the time I graduate, it’ll all be over. If not, I can go in as an officer and a gentleman.

But a pilot? What do you know about that?

Nothing really, except the thought of it scares the shit out of me... but, you know, it’s no sure thing, but look at the alternative. I give up my scholarship, leave school, and get drafted. Drafted! As in private no class.

Maybe it would be safer in the infantry.

Have you seen the news? Watch television and see who is dying. Goddamn, Bo Chee, I’m not walking around in the jungle under orders from one of my fraternity brothers.

Flying a plane is somehow better?

"Well, at least I’ll be able to vary the flight path a little