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  Shorty weighed up Nashville with fern eyes. He hadn’t met an American before, and hoped he might be the quiet type. Talkative people unnerved him.

  ‘Is Shorty your Christian name?’ asked Nashville. ‘Or your last name?’

  ‘It’s what everyone calls me,’ said Shorty.

  ‘Everyone calls me “you sick motherfucker”,’ said Nashville, ‘but I don’t give my hand to a stranger and say it.’

  Shorty smiled unhappily. He was uncomfortable with swearing, especially when a man dragged his mother into it.

  Shorty reminded Nashville of  Trigger, a big, loose-lipped Irish setter that Nashville used to own as a boy in Troy, Tennessee. The dog was a jowly, drooly, enthusiastic animal prone to wild misjudgements. He would try to vault a fence like a pony, or mate with a termite hole in the bark of a cottonwood tree. He’d shattered his forelegs doing one thing or the other, and Nashville had been forced to shoot him. Trigger was the only living thing Nashville had ever shot. He didn’t like guns, and would’ve preferred it if the army didn’t issue them.

  Shorty fidgeted under Nashville’s gaze.

  ‘Which part of Austria are you from?’ Nashville asked him.

  ‘Bendigo, Victoria,’ said Shorty, ‘in Australia.’

  He was wearing a stiff felt slouch hat, with one side of the brim turned up over the band.

  ‘I like your hat,’ said Nashville. ‘It could protect your head from injury by a feather, or a handful of sand.’

  Shorty smiled.

  ‘And you could keep a banana in the brim,’ said Nashville.

  Shorty looked at Nashville’s combat helmet, painted with the bold letters ‘MP’ encircled by red and white stripes. He thought it looked like a no-parking sign.

  Nashville tapped it with his fist. ‘I could eat soup out of this pot,’ he said. ‘Although I never have.’ Nashville started the jeep. ‘How long’ve you been in Vietnam?’ he asked Shorty.

  ‘We joined the Free World Forces at the request of the South Vietnamese government in 1965,’ said Shorty.

  ‘But when did you personally arrive?’ asked Nashville.

  ‘Yesterday,’ Shorty admitted.

  Another fucking new guy, thought Nashville. They were throwing them at him from every corner of the world.

  Nashville explained to Shorty they had a case to follow up, which was an uncommon event, since they were beat cops, not detectives. But Sergeant TJ Caution had vanished, the most hated bastard in the entire US Army, and the army wanted them to find him and bring him back, so he could fuck up the war some more.

  Nashville unfolded the note Hauser had passed him. It was written in a rounded, unhesitant hand, on the letterhead stationery of the Grand Hotel. It began mid-sentence, as if the last of several pages: understands nothing. There is only you. I am naked in the Frenchman’s bar. Come quickly, my body is ripe for you.

  Nashville imagined the bare and rotting cadaver of Nguyễn Van Tran, and he knew why Caution had screamed.

  TWO

  Nashville slipped the note back into his pocket.

  ‘We’ll get to Sergeant Caution in time,’ he said to Shorty. ‘First, I’ll show you the slopes.’

  Nashville steered the jeep with only one hand, which, Shorty suspected, was against army regulations. The road thronged with bullock carts and Lambretta taxis, push carts and cyclos, stove carts and bikes. Shorty was surprised to see a family of five squeezed onto the single seat of a Honda scooter. He wondered what the traffic police would make of that.

  Nashville explained there were two beaches in town, named with a flourish of cartographical imagination, ‘Front’ and ‘Back’. Front Beach, where the sampan sailors mended their nets, skirted past Le Boudin – an important landmark, whose location Shorty should commit to memory – around the hill topped with radio masts, past the Grand Hotel, where officers danced with light-skinned girls, and off towards the fishing villages to the east. Inland, said Nashville, sat a scattering of marshy hamlets such as Long Tâm Thu, which grew rice for the markets and whores for the brothels.

  Nashville drove as far as the coffin-maker’s workshop, with its unpainted caskets stacked like canoes in a boat shed, then performed a dangerous and illegal U-turn. He carried Shorty eastwards along the esplanade to Back Beach, where the grey sea methodically returned the garbage it had been fed the night before, throwing beer cans, cigarette packets and swollen rubbers at the Australian base, which stretched from the sand dunes to the shore.

  ‘This is where you came from this morning,’ said Nashville. ‘You live here. I live in the police barracks in Le Loi Street, on the other side of town. But the majority of Americans stationed in Vung Tau serve at the airbase adjacent to your camp. We have a club on the beach, which you are welcome to visit should you wish to spend your time fraternising with hog-ugly farm boys from Idaho, rather than beautiful village girls in Le Boudin.’

  Nashville stopped at the Flags, where servicemen met under a billboard bearing the insignia of every nation that contributed to the free world’s efforts in South Vietnam. Above the hoarding hung the exhausted flags themselves, bleached sallow by the sun. Although only a handful of governments had sent troops, thirty countries were represented on the hoarding, including Israel and Iran. ‘And Canada,’ said Nashville, ‘which has kindly agreed to give a home to our draft dodgers. And Guatemala. Christ knows what they do. Maybe they make our beach towels.’

  The jeep cruised the seafront to the Street of Scribes, watched by laden freighters, a grounded wreck and wafers of sampans in the bay. A spirit rose from the open drains, a ghost of sea salt and fish sauce, piss and beer.

  ‘Smells like pussy,’ said Nashville, ‘don’t it?’

  Shorty didn’t know.

  Nashville liked to think he knew every place and every person in Vung Tau but, like all the foreign soldiers, he could only see what was visible. He didn’t sense the shadows that faded when the moon came up. He knew nothing of the ghosts, nor the corners where they gathered. He thought he was a mapmaker because he could find the Street of Scribes, but actually he was lost.

  The scribes sat in a short, straight line along a narrow sandy alleyway. Each had a neatly set stool and a desk, as if a tornado had struck their office and carried off the roof and walls. The men had once been junior clerical officers in the colonial civil service.

  The clerks who, when they were young, had copied requisitions for bulldozers and bridges, oil barrels and wheelbarrows, green eyeshades and ink, now wrote largely of love and dreams, and every kind of lie. The girls who grew up, like orchids for the picking, in the bars of Vung Tau were born in hamlets of straw, to families who hauled fishing nets and grazed buffalo beside the rice fields. They could neither read nor sign their names. They could only do the one thing, the GIs used to say, laughing and winking as they bumped their cans. Or maybe two. While the scribes drafted wills and deeds, contracts and receipts, they were more often used by bar girls to write letters to their GIs. So the scribes were aware of every secret of the heart in Vung Tau, but they were discreet. They had lost their livelihood before, seen it disappear on a boat to Pondicherry, with the men who’d beat them with canes.

  Their discipline was now enforced by an uncle named Mr Anh, who wore round spectacles without lenses, and sleeve garters on his pallid shirt. He was once their office overseer, and would always be the leader now les chefs had gone.

  Mr Anh acknowledged Nashville with a wary bow. Nashville gave him the note found in Caution’s room.

  ‘Who wrote this?’ Nashville asked.

  Mr Anh read it through slowly. His lips burred as he whispered the text.

  ‘No one here,’ he said, eventually.

  His voice was deep for a Vietnamese. A mole spotted his cheek, sprouting hairs like reeds in river mud.

  ‘So where else could it come from?’ asked Nashville.

  Mr Anh pointed to the letterhead. ‘It says “Grand Hotel”,’ he said. ‘Did you ask at the Grand Hotel?’

  Nas
hville tapped his own thigh.

  ‘I see their paper all over town,’ he said. ‘I figured it was what we in the trade call a red herring.’

  Mr Anh nodded. ‘Why do you call it that?’ he asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ admitted Nashville.

  Nashville and Shorty climbed back into the jeep.

  ‘I’ve got to stress,’ said Nashville to Shorty, ‘this is no ordinary morning in the life of a military police in Vung Tau. I don’t know if I’ve ever come across a fucking clue before, let alone a red herring.’

  In the jeep, Nashville talked and talked. He spoke clearly and deliberately, deeply and melodically, with the rhythms of a boxcar or a ballad. He would sometimes pause for Shorty to respond to a point and, every so often, Shorty’s lips quivered – just like Trigger’s, thought Nashville – and he seemed about to say something, but changed his mind.

  Nashville watched him cautiously from behind the arc of his sunglasses.

  ‘Do they speak English in Austria?’ he asked, eventually.

  Shorty flushed.

  ‘I only ask,’ said Nashville, ‘because I’m starting to fucking wonder if we share a common language.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Shorty.

  ‘In America,’ said Nashville, ‘we speak before we think.’

  Nashville pulled up the jeep beside a bicycle wreck, which was leaned against a brazier outside a bar. Shorty watched a monkey on a chain blow shivering smoke rings. He’d never imagined he would visit a place where even the animals smoked cigarettes.

  Bucky loped out of the bar, carrying a shoulder pole with a bread basket on either end. Nashville beckoned him over by rocking his hand, as if he were waving goodbye. Bucky smiled foolishly, and dribbled from the corner of his mouth.

  The boy rushed over to the jeep. Nashville caught his pole and helped him scramble in. He sat between Nashville and Shorty, with Nashville’s arm around his shoulders, making engine noises and pretending to drive.

  ‘This,’ said Nashville to Shorty, ‘is the most important guy in Vung Tau.’

  ‘Americans nambawan,’ said Bucky, raising his thin, brown thumb.

  ‘He knows every girl in Phuoc Tuy province,’ said Nashville, ‘and what she likes to put in her mouth. He sees and hears everything that goes on, but he don’t understand a word of it.’

  Bucky scooped a baguette out of his basket, and passed it to Nashville.

  ‘Because Bucky,’ said Nashville, ‘is a fucking retard.’

  Bucky grinned.

  ‘But that don’t mean Bucky is stupid,’ said Nashville. ‘Listen to this . . .’

  He turned to Bucky. ‘What is the square of one?’ he asked.

  ‘Nambawan,’ said Bucky, happily.

  Nashville licked his fingertip, and drew a vertical line through the dust on his dashboard. ‘What is the cube of one?’

  ‘Nambawan,’ said Bucky.

  Nashville awarded him another stripe. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Those were dumb-ass. But how about this . . .’

  Bucky beamed in anticipation.

  ‘Bobby Doerr,’ said Nashville, ‘was the last man to wear which jersey for the Boston Red Sox?’

  ‘Nambawan,’ said Bucky.

  Nashville punched the air. He paused before the next question, to allow tension to build among the audience of Shorty.

  ‘And finally,’ said Nashville, ‘in the Dedekind-Peano axioms, which number is the successor to zero?’

  ‘Nambawan!’ yelled Bucky.

  ‘Yes! ’ cried Nashville. ‘One hundred per cent right! Bucky wins again!’

  Nashville hugged the boy, and kissed him on the back of the neck.

  ‘How many of those did you know, eh, Shorty?’ Nashville asked.

  Shorty shook his head. Bucky gave him a chocolate éclair.

  ‘That’s your prize for coming second in a quiz to a man with no brain,’ said Nashville. Bucky grinned. Nashville ruffled his hair. ‘And Bucky wins . . . a lift back to the boulangerie.’

  ‘Americans nambawan!’ cried Bucky, as if he had understood.

  Nashville picked up Bucky’s bike and loaded it into the back of the jeep. As he drove, he let the boy work the horn. Bucky smiled wildly as he startled a buffalo. Market gamblers and shophouse smokers, who generally ignored the soldiers, stared at the sight of the Vietnamese boy squeezed between two white MPs.

  An idea could spread through the streets of Vung Tau before anybody put it into words. It was as if a note were passed between men who brushed shoulders by chance in the street.

  The jeep caught the flat gaze of boys who were busy when they seemed idle, and watching when they appeared distracted. A notion rocked scooters from their stands and scrambled them into the street. A ghost note broke the rhythm of the traffic, and Nashville saw motor scooters glide out of laneways and alleys, and swoop towards the jeep.

  A red Honda drew close to Nashville’s side panel, and two boys in white shirts craned to get a better view of Bucky. Nashville laughed and waved.

  Three boys on one scooter buzzed behind the jeep, riding close, smoking exhaust fumes, shouting in Vietnamese.

  ‘What do they want?’ asked Shorty.

  ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ said Nashville.

  Another pair of Honda cowboys tagged onto the end of the convoy, grinning, catcalling and leaning out to grab hold of the jeep. Soon all the riders were clinging to some section of the chassis. Nashville felt like he was driving a float on a Mardi Gras parade. He braked tersely, to try to shake them off, but they hung on and cheered, as if it were a part of the ride.

  At a junction by a roadside shrine, where the spirits of dead soldiers gathered after dark, an old man drove his horse-cart directly in front of the jeep. Nashville stamped again on the brake, barely stopping in time. Bucky pumped the horn, but the driver remained still, as if his horse had broken down. Nashville yelled at the old man, but he didn’t turn his head. Beneath his leaf hat, his eyes were closed.

  Three empty bars pumped music into the road: Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, ‘I Fought the Law’ by the Bobby Fuller Four, and Ritchie Valens’ ‘La Bamba’.

  All dead, thought Nashville. All dead.

  With the traffic at a hooting, blaring, roaring standstill, the men and boys who had been surfing off the back of the jeep climbed into the truck bed, still laughing. The tune they chose to hear was ‘La Bamba’ and they started to dance, each shake and stomp carrying them closer to the driver. No Vietnamese had ever before violated the sovereignty of Nashville’s vehicle.

  ‘Di di mau! ’ shouted Nashville. ‘Get out of my fucking jeep!’

  The men had sharks’ teeth, tigers’ eyes. Their dance was an advance, hidden behind smiles.

  ‘Get ready to draw your weapon, Shorty,’ Nashville hissed.

  Shorty had barely fired his pistol, even at the range. In recruit training, he had learned to use an SLR. He had grown up with rifles and shotguns, but had never handled a Browning until he’d joined the provosts. It seemed like a toy to him, a cap gun. He hadn’t imagined pointing it at somebody – some body, someone’s body. He knew the damage bullets did to animals.

  ‘Americans nambawan!’ shouted the cowboys, jiving in the tray.

  A Vietnamese, with a watermelon belly and a moustache borrowed from a temple mural, held his hands open to Bucky, who squealed and jumped into his arms. He tossed Bucky into the air and back between his legs, as if they were partners in the Lindy Hop. Another boy passed the fat man an open can of Ba Moui Ba. As he raised the drink to his lips, Nashville glimpsed the Smith & Wesson tucked into the belt of his pants.

  ‘Di di fucking mau!’ shouted Nashville. ‘You’re on US Army prop­erty!

  On the street, peasants stripped banana leaves and husked coco­nuts, smoking menthol cigarettes, waiting for something to happen.

  ‘Shouldn’t we call for help?’ Shorty asked Nashville.

  ‘Radio’s busted,’ said Nashville. ‘I hate that fucking thing.’


  When Shorty had joined the army, his dream of battle saw him lying flat on his belly, sniping at a distant enemy, not looking a fat man in the eyes and shooting him in the guts. Nashville, who hadn’t shot anything since his dog, imagined the two Vietnamese men with bullet holes in their chests. He made ready to forgive himself. Trigger, he remembered, had yelped then sighed then evacuated his bowels. Nashville took a breath. Both he and Shorty had their pistols in their hands.

  The fat man chuckled and clapped, as if he were watching a show rather than part of it, as if the guns were props in a Chinese opera, wooden revolvers waved by comic cops. He showed a gold molar in his betel-stained mouth.

  As Nashville aimed his Colt, the horse shied and the cart pulled off. The dancers leaped out of the jeep, landing on harlequin toes. The scooters dispersed, scavenging seagulls startled by a stone, and left Shorty and Nashville alone with Bucky.

  ‘What just happened?’ asked Shorty.

  Nashville pursed his lips.

  ‘The Mamasan’s showing us what she can do,’ he said. ‘Although why she thinks I give a slither of a shit, I've got no fucking idea.’

  Bucky pulled at the hairs on Nashville’s arm.

  ‘Americans nambawan,’ he said.

  They returned Bucky to the boulangerie, where the smell of rising yeast overpowered the scent of garbage broiling in the sun. A man with bow legs crossed the street in front of the jeep, wearing a fat python like an ammunition belt around his neck. The snakeman turned, fixed Shorty with reptile eyes and slipped out his thin tongue.

  It was long and pink and sliced in two, like a barbecue fork made from raw meat.

  THREE

  Nashville drove to Le Boudin, where Nguyễn Van Tran had recently been shot by Sergeant TJ Caution, and fresh bullet holes punctured the furniture. A heavy ceiling fan turned ponderously to the sound of Edith Piaf on the gramophone. Shorty looked around the bar, at elegant women with sleepy eyes, silently eating noodles.

  Quyn was the oldest of Moreau’s girls, so she had to start early on any new man. She walked slowly to the MPs, made as if to sit on an empty chair, but dropped into Shorty’s lap.