When he tried to decipher his vicinity, the closest he could come finally was that he was in the South, somewhere on a river that ran into the Delta of the halved country. Much of it had been occupied by troops, infiltrated, destroyed, and deserted. When his major had looked at the maps and charts and said they weren’t that far south, Thomas finally went by feeling, like you could when the enemy was near. After a while, you could feel their presence, the silence of them. Something spooky, and it was nearby and you didn’t want to breathe.

He had been afraid. Some soldier, he thought. On the ground, using a flashlight allowed him to see, but it also allowed him to be seen so he became still and waited, trying not to move, to breathe, to itch. He wanted to die at first and get it over with. To just be gone, to shoot himself. But then why not wait and take someone with him? Maybe someone evil or trying to kill a child or a friend. The smell of this war was not right. He remembers it still, of human flesh, chemical, smoke, cordite, napalm, fear. Cordite and rich, oily orange. It remained in his nostrils for years in San Francisco.

At first they never saw the consequences of their actions except fire, streaks of light, holes in the ground like craters of the moon. Then they were on the ground and after a while they even stopped complaining about it because there was so much fatigue Thomas could barely drag himself until he heard a sound in the leaves. Then the energy came, adrenaline. His heart beat faster. Over time he’d seen the advantages the enemy had over them: They didn’t need gear, they didn’t need anything but what they could glean from the dead and fallen, the trees, the strips of bamboo, even a tossed-away can. With those things they devised weapons and traps and they fought the war. They, who had won every war with almost nothing but cunning and the knowledge of their own land, the Chinese boats they tempted up a river at high tide only to leave them stuck on posts in the water, to sink when the tide went out. They had beat the French, also, with patience and fortitude, pulling and pushing their weapons up hills that the French believed impossible to climb. Thomas tried to think like Them. Finally Thomas needed, like Them, to be light in order to survive. He put a knife in his pocket, one in another pocket, his rifle ready. Two grenades. He kept a tin of food and other items in his pockets. By leaving other things behind he walked easily, he could have hidden away in the forest or jungle, soundless, from where they walked. But the Sergeant above him said, “Carry it or we’ll shoot you now before you die later on your own.” They were wrong. On the ground, in the sky, anything would kill you. It didn’t matter what you wore. The water was the enemy. The trees were Cong. The earth was a bomb. The rain was dangerous. And you had to be prepared to kill anything faster than it killed you. So he picked it all up and then left a little along the way when no one watched him. It was a trail here and there that could have led straight to them, but he’d already thought of that and tossed items to the sides. He knew the enemy always watched. They were there when his men walked by. He saw a face appear now and then from the leaves, then disappear. It was eerie. It was crazy as hell, he thought. Really, it was hell. Then he’d heard an owl in a tree and it reminded him that somewhere there was a normal world. If anyone shot it he would kill them. He also thought maybe later people would fish from the bomb craters. Or swim in them. In places that now looked like the moon. Maybe things would become almost normal again one day, except for the bodies, the graves, the grief, the calculations and manipulations that had to be made for survival.