ONE
Vietnam Central Highlands 1969
Their parachutes buried, the POW rescue team assembles at the edge of a clearing. Dread of landing behind enemy lines becomes reality when: The fog of war descends. The Alamo. Little Big Horn. Armageddon. A Yankee Go Home message from a Hanoi delegation. A staccato of the AK-47s, and a grenade shower. Twilight becomes noon. Who said war is hell? He's right. War IS Hell. “It’s an ambush, fall back, fall ba..., Ooh, Christ, I’m hit” Ron Ortega yells, “Captain’s down. Everyone down. Spread out, find cover.” He drops to a prone position, then elbow crawls to his left. Bullets chase him, looking for a home. Mel Stone sprints toward some bushes. A bullet hits his knapsack. The impact spins him around before he falls into dense foliage. He feels moisture. Am I hit? He’s in a small stream. Footsteps involuntarily lock every muscle in his body, discomfort a non-issue. His left side is soaked from the stream. His forehead is drenched from fear-induced perspiration. His cheeks are almost shredded from thorns. Life couldn’t be better. He hears Vietnamese words as several sets of sandals approach, stop--then move away. Lying on his side, he stays rigid. Doesn’t dare move. It gets dark. He tries to get up. Something is crawling on his neck. He brushes it away. “Ow! Oh, shit, a snake? I’m going to...” He’s dead, but still breathing.
At dawn, three Montagnard tribesmen find him. “Look, another one,” says Dit Siu. Y-B’ham asks, “Is he dead?” Y-Ben, a short man in a loincloth, bends over. He listens to the fallen man’s heart. “He’s barely alive. We have to carry him to the village.” Y-B’ham takes Mel’s legs. The others lift his shoulders. “He’s too heavy, Y-Ben.” “He is, but the Americans may help us if we save him. We can’t leave him here. Dit Siu, cut some bamboo to make a stretcher.”
Days later, a Buddhist monk examines Mel. “Y-Ben, this man is still in the long sleep. How many days has he been this way?” “Four days. Even with his eyes closed, he has tried to get up a couple of times but always falls back. Is he dying?” “I don’t know. His neck is red and swollen up to his ears. This looks like a scorpion bite. I didn’t think the venom was that strong. It will take a while to cure him. You need someone to care for him.” Y-Ben goes outside the hut and calls out, “Cara, come help.” Minutes later, a young woman enters the hut. The monk greets her and then hands her a package. “Young lady, please heat these bamboo tubes for me.” The rail thin teenage girl, with raven hair down to her waist, bows. She leaves the hut. The monk removes small glass cups from his bag. Cara returns with the bamboo tubes, and sees several heated glass cups applied to Mel’s neck and shoulders. Red circles are on the stricken man’s skin. “Cara, you will take care of this man as long as the Master believes there is a chance he will live. Do everything you are told,” Y-Ben says. “You forget, Y-Ben, I was a trained nurse in Hanoi before they killed my parents. I don’t believe these old fashioned cures will work, but I will do the best I can.” The monk frowns as he hands her a package of medicated oils and balms. “Rub these over his body, every day. You also have to use the heated cups every day, especially over the bite mark area. Do it in the morning and the evening. Do you know how to apply the bamboo tubes?” “I know that and how to run the coin on his body. I also made a broth of tangerine rind.” “Yes, very good. You do that and put his head under an herbal steam bath while you are applying the glass cups. I will return in a week.” “Thank you, Master.” “We have to restore him to health, Cara. Don’t leave his side.” “I understand.”
Cara dresses, bathes, and feeds Mel, first through a funneled leaf, then a cup made from a coconut. He's in a semi-vegetative state for months. Frustrated, she begins weeks of acupuncture in addition to applying a different monk’s herbal medicines and therapies until one morning Mel opens his eyes. For a moment he thinks he’s in heaven, looking at, what some consider the ethereal--more than that--the cryptic beauty of the Eurasian female. Sometimes a man looks at the face of an exceptionally beautiful woman and all thought processes end up in gridlock. It’s not aesthetic. It’s not erotic. The only tool of his five senses responding to commands are his eyes. He just...looks.
Bare-breasted, like most Montagnard women, the girl beams. She speaks to Mel in French, “What is your name?” He shakes his head but remembers a little French from high school. “I don’t know.” It hits him. He asks himself, I understand French, but I don’t know my own name? Mel looks around and realizes he’s in a hut. He tries to get up but instantly keels over onto the makeshift bed he was lying on. The girl wets a rag and bathes his whole body with it. She twice raises her hands, palms up before turning away to leave him. He understands she wants him to stay where he is. He watches a sequence of slow, tiny steps as she sinuously walks out of the hut. She returns and begins to feed him a bowl of soup. When he tries to feed himself, Cara pushes his hand away. She continues to feed him a spoonful at a time. Mel smirks. Time to enjoy the TLC. His memory is a problem, but his libido has convalesced. He pulls her down next to him and holds her. She smiles seductively and removes her loincloth. Still not strong enough to respond to her needs, Mel holds her off. She’s touched. The daily ritual of Cara applying the therapies the monks ordered and some of her own continues for weeks.
One day he is able to stand without support. He sees the joy in her face at his improved condition. Early that morning, she takes his hand, and leads him to a communal spa near the village. She wants me to go in that steam bath? No way, he thinks. Cara begins to remove his clothing. He thinks others may be watching. “Hell no.” He pushes her away. His anxiety leaves when he realizes they are alone and she shows him the makeshift washcloth she uses to bathe him each morning. Goodbye modesty. He lets her remove his pants. Stay down, dammit. He silently prays he won’t be embarrassed if he reacts to her touch in public. Fat chance. He’s down to his Adam and Eve costume. Cara smirks at his arousal, as she walks him into the spa. She then removes what little clothing she wears and joins him in the steaming water. He starts to reach for her but stops when she begins to massage his neck, still swollen after many months of her care. Don’t push it, guy. It is the first of many sessions in the spa.
One morning she leaves him relaxing in the spa to get him something to drink. He’s barely awake when he feels Cara pulling at him and pointing up at storm clouds. She struggles to get him out of the spa before a lightning bolt hits him. He screams and falls headfirst into the spa at the instant the conducted voltage knocks Cara to the floor. Panic paints her. With an adrenalin rush, the 98-pound girl pulls more than 200 pounds of dead weight out of the spa before yet another lighting bolt becomes affectionate. Mel has burns on his neck and shoulders. He leaves consciousness in the spa. He’s prostrate, next to the exhausted girl. Cara sits up, her eyes a fountain. She bends over him and listens for a heart rate. None. She pounds his chest nonstop in frustration. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” Mel’s eyes stay closed. Cara collapses on top of him, her eyes flushing him. No movement. No sound. Wait, a heartbeat. She jumps up and goes for help. No help. It's up to her. Every day September October
Y-Ben summons her to his hut. “Cara, accept that the man is going to die. The Master says the man’s heart rate is too low for him to ever recover. One day he will not wake from the deep sleep like he does every once in a while. You must let him go. We need you in the fields.” The girl rises, her eyes afire, but watering, “I will not. I cannot.” She bristles. “An old man. Because his ancient ideas don’t work he thinks...” Y-Ben gets up, angry. “You will show respect for him and for me. Just because you have training in the north does not mean…” Cara interrupts, “Respect for his position, yes but not for his old ideas.” Annoyed at her belligerence, Y-Ben replies. “All right then. How much longer?” “It’s my life.” She stomps out, muttering. November December. After months of her fighting off everyone’s objections to her nursing vigil, Cara sees Mel suddenly sit up, weak but wide awake. He feels her lips. Nectar. Every day. Better than an antibiotic. Word spreads around the camp. Who cares, he’s on his feet. Soon, they both are on the ground. Women enter the hut. They watch them and start giggling. Love conquers all? Stone has a very big problem, but he doesn’t know it. Four months after his 22nd birthday, he’s a changed man. His memory is gone. Scorpion venom, months of drowning in Asian herb therapy and a voltage tsunami have mutated his metabolism and genetic structure.
|