There’s Gold In Those Hills (This story is quite long)

I came back from Vietnam in the summer of 1970. My return wasn’t met with war protesters spitting on me, cursing my name, or calling me a baby killer. It was met with silence. The silence of a small town that continued operating as though the war in Southeast Asia never happened, and still wasn’t happening.

The men continued working their factory jobs, and selling insurance, and real estate. The women walked down the street, locking arms with their lovers or friends in tow. They laughed, smiled, flirted, and behaved the way I suppose I would have, had I not surrendered any chance of a normal life to the Army.

After a week at Motel 8 on the outskirts of town, I rented a small apartment from Reggie Anderson. The dingy old place was just above his old antique shop on Main, and right across the street from The Dollar, a dirty little hole in the wall bar, which I frequented often.

The booth in the far left corner of the bar quickly became my home. I’d sit there, jumpy and disoriented, struggling to decipher the Dollar from the Boom Boom joints in Saigon. Fear washed over me like a baptism at the sound of cars revving their engines outside or backfiring. The loud shrieks of laughter from the drunken patron saints of Annandale, and the sound of broken bottles hitting the dirty, cracked linoleum tiles, made my heart jump into my throat.

The guys laughed when they saw me, even the ones that I considered friends during my previous life. If no one was looking, a few of them nodded their heads, but afterwards they’d return to pretending that I was just a drunken fool, or that I didn’t exist at all.

Even Jenny Fitzgerald, who had loved me once, had turned into a sympathizer, and was somewhere in DC protesting the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the military. My Dear John letter had arrived six months prior, detailing her position, and how she’d be a hypocrite and a contrarian if she were to share a bed with the monsters she was speaking out against.

Most nights, I’d stumble home around 3 or 4 in the morning, whenever Al Geary, the grizzled old owner of the Dollar, threw me out, and I’d sit on the old sofa that Randy had given me from the shop. Staring at the paint peeling off the wall, the voices of my dear departed brothers often paid me visits.

Whenever the dead cries of the 103rd echoed in my brain, an episode followed closely behind like a sadistic shadow, and transported me back to Nam. I’d crawl through the tiny apartment like it was the jungle floors of Quang Tri, or lean up against the side of my window with a commie rifle that I had stolen from a dying old man in a fishermen’s village. Fearing that the deserted Annandale streets were filled with Viet Cong gearing up for an ambush.

Eventually the voices faded and were replaced by graveyard silence. Then I’d sit on the floor, holding my head, cradling back and forth, and I’d cry. Scared to death of the inevitable follow-up visit.

Much of my time was spent cursing my life, my loneliness, and the rewiring of my brain that was so fundamental to being a soldier. You need to become a machine, soldier; they told us, a gook killing machine. Only they didn’t provide an instruction manual detailing the step by step on how to program the goddamn organ back to its human setting when we walked off the plane. I just thanked the pretty flight attendant, exited, and walked across the tarmac, feeling like a stranger. Not feeling like this was home, but that THIS was the foreign land thousands of miles away from what I knew, and what I understood.

After a couple of months, I realized the evenings drinking alone at the bar, with a follow-up session in my apartment, were further poisoning my already sick mind. So, I traded the black nights in the corner booth for walks around town. There was no destination, except, hopefully, some place outside my head.

I’d cross through town, passing the old gothic churches and the working-class homes of mill workers and railroaders. The chilly breeze on my face kept me in the now and away from the jungle heat, and the monsoon rains of Southeast Asia.

Something eventually guided me to an embankment above the Annandale switching yard, and that was the destination I chose. I watched the graveyard crew kicking cars and building freight that was headed westward with the rise of the early morning sun, as the smokestacks from the paper mill billowed through the evening sky.

I suppose the embankment was chosen because it reminded me of the person I was before the war. Just a kid watching his old man do what men did. Telling himself when he grew up, he wanted to be just like him. But then the damn war started.

My father and grandfather built freight trains their entire lives, and before Nam, had urged me to do the same. “Come work with me. Don’t enlist. You got nothing to prove, son. It ain’t your war, it ain’t your goddamn war. You're a fool, son. A goddamn fool.” My father had yelled the evening before I hopped the border to New York and went against his wishes.

I didn’t say a word as a barrage of insults were hurled at me like stones on that summer’s day. Letting him unleash all of those pent-up emotions that men from his generation rarely did, felt cathartic and therapeutic for me, despite how strange that sounds. I’m sure it hurt him, like it did myself, but I hoped it allowed him to breathe, at least. And I prayed that when I left, he sat with some of the weight off of his heart, and realized I was just doing what I did, because I loved him, and wanted to be like him.

Beginning in late October, when the cool fall weather was beginning to lose the battle against the northern winds, a young Vietnamese woman, who I’d later find out was named Giang, began accompanying me on the embankment. Another lost soul, I presumed, unable to sleep away the darkness, so deciding to embrace it instead.

She was always dressed in white, which contrasted beautifully with her long black hair that flowed like a flag at full mast behind her head. We didn’t speak in the beginning. Not a single word was passed between us. We smiled and waved. That was it. But it was perfect. I thought about her all day, anxiously hoping that she would be there every evening.

I know it sounds crazy, but I truly believed that I could love her, or maybe I already did. And a small part of me thought she felt the same, though I could come to no reasonable conclusion for feeling that way. Just something in my heart and my bones. An intuition, you could call it.

With time, further comfort was reached, leading to evenings of small talk occasionally breaking up the silence. It was nothing earth moving, in depth or articulate, but any fool who’s been trapped under love’s spell will tell you it doesn’t have to be.

There was love in my heart for this silent beauty, and its power had finally pushed the war to the dark corner booth of my mind. I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. A reason for being.

The first time Giang spoke to me and offered a small window from which I could see into her soul, she said, “My grandfather helped build the continental railroad.” Then turned to me, smiling, with teeth as white as the soft snow that coloured her black hair.

“Really? Is that why you come here?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “He came to California in 1888. He laid down ties in the desert sun all day and put dynamite in the canyons. I remember a letter he wrote to my grandmother that my mother read to me and my sisters as a child. It said that there is gold in the hills, and the water sparkles like diamonds reflected in the sun. When she read those, I’d picture a paradise on earth where we would be safe.”

“Like diamonds reflected in the sun,” I answered. “That’s beautiful. Really beautiful.” And that was all that was said that evening.

As the days and weeks went on, we built upon that first small conversation, and the love I had felt as soon as she sat next to me on that first chance meeting blossomed into infatuation. I loved Giang, and soon I would tell her. There was just the problem of the war. And what I had done.

“I came here on a boat. I fled from Saigon with my two children.” Giang confessed in December. I remember because there were Christmas lights all around Hillside Road, just below the embankment.

She paused after ‘children’, and I felt a deep heartbreak for her, and a fear of asking what had happened, though I felt I should.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to them?”

“They got sick. They died on a tiny island off the coast of the South China Sea, waiting for a boat that never came.”

“I’m so sorry.” I said, and I reached for her hand, that was resting gently on the snow. She pulled it away..

“You’re a soldier, no?” she asked, and I just looked at her, nodding my head. I didn’t want to lie. She always looked me in the eye when we spoke, which led me to believe that she already knew. I think Giang had been around war long enough to tell a soldier from their eyes. “You came to help, no?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“Did you help?” This time, when she looked at me, I saw something familiar. Something haunted, like the world’s worst case of Déjà vu.

“No.” I said honestly. I wished I had a better answer. But this was the truth, and something about her demanded honesty, like I had just drunk a gallon of truth serum.

“Why did you serve?”

“I don’t know that either. I guess I felt I had to. My father, uncle, grandfather, cousins, hell, everyone I knew served. I figured it was my time. I guess I thought freedom had a price.”

“And what about our freedom?” She asked. “Did we deserve freedom?” She was still staring at me. And I felt a chill run down my spine and continue to race into my bloodstream. The voices of my brothers were building inside my mind like the crescendo of a symphony. The heat was returning.

I shifted my eyes back to the rail yard, no longer able to hold her gaze “Yes. Yes, you did.”

“Then why did you slaughter us like pigs?” I was terrified at what I’d see, now that I was putting the pieces together, but she was controlling my eyes. Giang brushed her hair away from her forehead, revealing a small dark circle crusted with dry blood like a bullseye. Oh, no. Jesus, no. I thought. This can’t be real. Not now. Please, not now.

“We, we had orders. I was just following orders, Giang,” I screamed as snot ran down my nose and on to my lips. I knew her name, though she had never told me. At least, not on this steep embankment rising above the rail yard. My hand again reached for hers, and this time she didn’t move it. It was freezing. I rubbed the back, fingering the bones, trying to warm it up, but she was so cold. Not shivering, just so goddamn cold.

“So, there was no freedom, then?” Her eyes were now like stone. I’d known this woman.

“N-n-no.” I stuttered through stifled sobs, reliving the moments of burning hooches. Screaming families, rifle fire, and blood-soaked mud. I didn’t want to go back. “Don’t take me back”, I begged. “DON’T TAKE ME BACK”

I placed my hands over my eyes and despite my pleas and efforts; I was back in Quang Tri. In the village, marching through mud and straw. Scared children and women begging for mercy in a foreign language. We were supposed to be protecting them. They weren’t supposed to scream when we arrived. I asked Reynolds, “Why are they screaming? We’re helping them, aren’t we?” He laughed and patted me on the back. “Any one of these gooks could be VC, so do the math, my brother. If we leave them, and they are VC, we’re rat fucked. If we leave them and they’re not, well, then they’re just going to sell us out when they come along. Right? So, yeah, in a way, we are helping them. We’re letting them rest.”

A young boy walked up to him moments after. He was limping, and crying, and screaming in a primal rage that I’d never seen or heard before. Reynolds just laughed and shot him in the head. The boy dropped like he’d never existed. They began burning hooches with zippo lighters, as women and elders ran out. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to leave. But I had orders. Orders, not freedom.

I held out as long as I could, praying to a God that I hadn’t believed in until that moment. But Reynolds, and Schwarmy, had a woman and her two children, on their knees as their home rose up in flames like an apocalyptic omen behind them. “You ain’t moving on without blood on your hands.” Reynolds said, as Schwarmy laughed.

The entire village was burning like Pompei. I could remember feeling my skin blistering but barely noticing the pain rising through my body because of the shock of what was happening.

This young woman. She was beautiful. There was fear in her eyes, but it was deeply hidden. I remember thinking how brave she was, and how in another time, in another life, far from the ravages of war, I could have loved her. I could have loved her children.

My pistol was unsteadily aimed at her as my hands shook from the fear and adrenaline. The heat was unbearable. Reynolds and Schwarmy were screaming at me about getting the hell out. “We need to Didi Mau, let’s go. Let’s go. Didi Mau, Didi Mau.”

For some twisted reason, a picture of this mother naked was still framed in my mind. I knew it was sick and perverted under the circumstances, but there was no replacing the image of me rubbing her soft skin, kissing her, and laughing about the war, and its foolishness. We were happy to be together. In another world. In another time. Another place.

“tên tôi là Giang,” she said. My name is Giang. A last-minute humanization of a people we were slaughtering like animals. I cried as I pulled the trigger. Dropping to my knees. The guys laughed and shot the children next. “I could have loved you.” I kept repeating, “I could have loved you.”

“I could have loved you, too.” Giang said, returning me to the embankment. I took my hands away from my eyes slowly. She was still there. Staring at me. But her eyes were soft and forgiving once again. The coldness had abandoned them.

“I-I-I’m sorry, Giang. I’m so sorry.” Tears blurred my vision. I looked at her through a gaze like she was standing behind a stained glass window. She was beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“I wish I could go back.”

“Nothing would have changed.” She said, but this time she put her other hand on top of mine. “I’ll never leave your mind. But In time it will become less painful. You’ll need help, and you’ll need genuine souls to speak with and spill your heart like you’ve done for me, but you will survive. I forgive you”

Then, out of a small rosary bush next to Giang, her children appeared, bringing with them the sweet sound of children’s laughter. They sat on her lap, staring at the trains in the freight yard. Giang told them about their grandfather.

In Vietnamese she said, “Có vàng trên những ngọn đồi đó và nước lấp lánh như kim cương dưới ánh mặt trời”

There’s gold in those hills and the water sparkles like diamonds in the sun.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the letter that I had taken from her hands as she lay breathless in Quang Tri.