Finding Moon

That had ended it. Except the man had embraced Osa, and she had embraced him hard and for quite a while. The man told her something, speaking too low for Moon to overhear even if he had wanted to.

It was a hard climb up the final ridge before Vin Ba’s valley. Moon stopped where the trees were thin at the top to let the engine cool and to give everyone what he had been calling a “comfort break.” Nguyen stayed inside, fiddling with the radio, telling them something about the U.S. Embassy. About helicopters. “Americans gone home now,” he said sadly. “Congs coming in Saigon now.” Osa listened a moment, then came down the ramp, wandered into the trees, and sat on a fallen tree trunk. Moon stood beside the APC looking through the binoculars.

From here, too, you could see the Mekong- barely visible through the gap where the valley opened into its narrower Cambodian flood plain. There was just a flash of reflected sunlight through the haze, but it could only be the river. It was a dramatic view and Moon stared at it a long time-though he hated the humid haze and the heat and everything that dirty river represented to him. if he didn’t look at it, he would have to look at Osa, sitting on a fallen tree behind the APC. He’d have to try to think of something to say to her. Something sympathetic and consoling but not stupid. Not something that would make her cry. Or maybe that would be better. They said one shouldn’t hold grief in.

He turned away from the river and stood beside her, looking down. She looked up, the question in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Moon said.

She looked down, shook her head. “It’s okay.”

“Sorry I was too late.”

“It has nothing to do with late,” she said. “Or early.”

What do you say to that? He didn’t think of anything.

“I just didn’t believe him,” she said, looking up at Moon to see if he understood. “My brother, you know. He was always talking big. He was always full of his dreams.” She looked down again, studying her hands. “He told me when he went off to the seminary. I thought he was just being silly. Being romantic. We went on a kind of picnic, the day before he caught the plane. I said, ‘Damie, you’re being silly going off to be a minister. They’ll find out about you in a minute and toss you out. You’ll be right back here again and all of those girls who’ve been chasing after you, they’ll all be married and gone.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no. Not Damie. That was the Damie you used to know. Now-’” She stopped, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “He’d been reading a biography of Francis of Assisi, I think it was. One of the great medieval saints. He said he was done with chasing after girls. From now on, he would chase after God.”

She glanced up at Moon.

“Well,” Moon said.

She smiled. “I remember it so well. I punched him on the shoulder. I said, ‘Come on, Damie. Snap out of it. You’re dreaming.’ And he said-all excited-‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m dreaming, Osa. I’m going to be one of God’s saints. If I am man enough.’”

She looked up at him, waiting.

“Well,” Moon said, “he was man enough. And the way I remember what they tried to teach us in our religion class, he made it in as a saint.”

“I loved him,” Osa said. “He was a crazy little brother, but I loved him.”

Just as he had feared, he had started her really crying. He sat on the tree trunk beside her and hugged her against him and let her weep.

On the long roll down the final hillside into Via Ba, Nguyen Nung’s fear of ambush kicked in again. High in the hills he had become relatively relaxed.

Osa had stood in the hatch, watching, while Nguyen sat on the bench fiddling with the radio. The news he was hearing seemed overwhelmingly bad-serious enough for Nguyen to tap Moon on the shoulder and try to explain things. First it was more about the Americans being “all gone home.” They’d been hearing that the previous evening, that helicopters were flying in and flying out loaded with refugees from the U.S. Embassy. Not much new there. Nguyen’s next burst of excitement brought Osa down from the hatch to join him in listening.

“What’s happening now?” Moon shouted.

“I guess it’s all over,” Osa said. “The war. I think Nguyen is saying that North Vietnamese tanks broke into the presidential palace and captured everybody. He thinks the man talking now is the new president, a

Moon digested that. The Communists had won, then. No more South Vietnam. But from their point of view, maybe the best possible news. He tried to imagine what would be happening. Wild celebrations by the wi

The trail they were following leveled. The trees thi

“Ho!” he shouted suddenly. “People!”

Moon reached up for the binoculars, but Nguyen had already handed them to Osa, standing in the other hatch. Moon waited, nervous. What now? What would they do about Mr. Lee?

“I see Mr. Lee,” Osa said. “And a woman is with him.” She ducked out of the hatch and handed Moon the glasses.

The woman looked to Moon more like a girl. A teenager, perhaps. She sat in the shade of a hut beside one of the houses with Lee sitting across from her. No one else was in sight. A peaceful scene. Moon remembered the pigs. Of course, someone would still be there. The owner of the tethered pigs would have heard their APC approaching this morning. Time enough to hide, but not to hide the pigs.

“Let’s go,” Moon said. He didn’t want to allow hope to revive. It was still impossible. But hope revived without permission.

Through the driver’s slit he could see Mr. Lee waiting beside the irrigation ditch, the girl standing at his side. Lee shouted something. Nguyen shouted an answer. They exchanged more shouts. Moon cut the ignition, stretched, forced himself to be patient for a dignified moment. Then he followed Osa and Nguyen out the rear ramp. Mr. Lee was expressing condolences and ‘Osa was accepting them with her usual grace.

“And you,” she said. “Did you find your kam taap?”

Mr. Lee’s tired old face developed a smile of such luminous joy that no other answer was necessary. But he said, “Yes! Yes!” And pressed his hands in front of his chest, and said “Yes!” again.

“And even more wonderful,” he said, turning toward Moon, “we have good news for Mr. Mathias too. I think we have found the child.”

But not quite yet.

The girl with Mr. Lee was Ta Le Vinh, who was twelve and a second cousin of Eleth Vinh. As Mr. Lee described her presence, a villager cleaning the ditch had seen the Khmer Rouge coming and had come ru

Mr. Lee was explaining this, with Ta Le listening intently. “After you drove away this morning, I went out there.” And Mr. Lee indicated a high meadow across the irrigation ditch. “I noticed how the arms of the hill enclosed it, giving it the proper slope. An excellent feng shui site. So I walked up there and found several shrines and several kam taap. Many of these, too, had been desecrated by the Khmers. They had shot them with their automatic rifles, breaking them to pieces. And one of them was the kam taap we have been seeking.”