When I shook my head, he said, “Don’t you have a little something in your pocket? A little package?”
A secret world—inside this world, another, secret world.
You understand, I don t care what he did any more than I care about what you do. I think Langley can go fuck itself. Bachelor wrote the book. In spite of his sidelines. In spite of whatever trouble he got into. The man was effective. He stepped over a boundary, maybe a lot of boundaries—but tell me that you can do what we’re supposed to do without stepping over boundaries.”
I wondered why he seemed to be defending himself, and asked if he would have to testify at Langley.
“It's not a trial.”
“A debriefing.”
“Sure, a debriefing. They can ask me anything they want. All I can tell them is what I saw. That’s my evidence, right? What I saw? They don’t have any evidence, except maybe this, uh, these human remains the Major insisted on bringing out.” For a second, I wished that I could see the sober shadowy gentlemen of Langley, Virginia, the gentlemen with slicked-back hair and pinstriped suits, question Major Bachelor. They thought they were serious men.
“It was like Bong To, in a funny way.” Ransom waited for me to ask. When I did not, he said, “A ghost town, I mean. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Bong To.”
“My unit was just there.” His head jerked up. “A mortar round scared us into the village.”
“You saw the place?”
I nodded.
“Funny story.” Now he was sorry he had ever mentioned it. “Well, think about Bachelor, now. I think he must have been in Cambodia or someplace, doing what he does, when his village was overrun. He comes back and finds everybody dead, his wife included. I mean, I don’t think Bachelor killed those people—they weren’t just dead, they’d been made to beg for it. So Bachelor wasn’t there, and his assistant, a Captain Bennington, must have just run off—we never did find him. Officially, Bennington’s MIA. It’s simple. You can’t find the main guy, so you make sure he can see how mad you are when he gets back. You do a little grievous bodily harm on his people. They were not nice to his wife, Tim, to her they were especially not nice. What does he do? He buries all the bodies in the village graveyard, because that’s a sacred responsibility. Don’t ask me what else he does, because you don’t have to know this, okay? But the bodies are buried. Generally speaking. Captain Bennington never does show up. We arrive and take Bachelor away. But sooner or later, some of the people who escaped are going to come back to that village. They’re going to go on living there. The worst thing in the world happened to them in that place, but they won’t leave. Eventually, other people in their family will join them, if they’re still alive, and the terrible thing will be a part of their lives. Because it is not thinkable to leave your dead.”
“But they did in Bong To,” I said.
“In Bong To, they did.”
I saw the look of regret on his face again, and said that I wasn’t asking him to tell me any secrets.
“It’s not a secret. It’s not even military. ”
“It’s just a ghost town.”
Ransom was still uncomfortable. He turned his glass around and around in his hands before he drank. “I have to get the Major into camp.”
“It’s a real ghost town,” I said. “Complete with ghosts.”
“I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.” He drank what was left in his glass and stood up. He had decided not to say any more about it. “Let’s take care of Major Bachelor, Bob,” he said.
“Right.”
Ransom carried our bottle to the bar and paid Mike. I stepped toward him to do the same, and Ransom said, “Taken care of.”
There was that phrase again—it seemed I had been hearing it all day, and that its meaning would not stay still.
Ransom and Bob picked up the Major between them. They were strong enough to lift him easily. Bachelor’s greasy head rolled forward. Bob put the .45 into his pocket, and Ransom put the bottle into his own pocket. Together they carried the Major to the door.
I followed them outside. Artillery pounded hills a long way off. It was dark now, and light from the lanterns spilled out through the gaps in the windows.
All of us went down the rotting steps, the Major bobbing between the other two.
Ransom opened the jeep, and they took a while to maneuver the Major into the back seat. Bob squeezed in beside him and pulled him upright.
John Ransom got in behind the wheel and sighed. He had no taste for the next part of his job.
“I’ll give you a ride back to camp,” he said. “We don’t want an MP to get a close look at you.”
I took the seat beside him. Ransom started the engine and turned on the lights. He jerked the gearshift into reverse and rolled backwards. “You know why that mortar round came in, don’t you?” he asked me. He grinned at me, and we bounced onto the road back to the main part of camp. “He was trying to chase you away from Bong To, and your fool of a Lieutenant went straight for the place instead.” He was still grinning. “It must have steamed him, seeing a bunch of round-eyes going in there. ”
“He didn’t send in any more fire.”
“No. He didn’t want to damage the place. It’s supposed to stay the way it is. I don't think they’d use the word, but that village is supposed to be like a kind of monument.” He glanced at me again. “To shame.’
For some reason, all I could think of was the drunken Major in the seat behind me, who had said that you were responsible for the people you wanted to protect. Ransom said, “Did you go into any of the huts? Did you see anything unusual there?”
“I went into a hut. I saw something unusual.”
“A list of names?”
“I thought that’s what they were.”
“Okay,” Ransom said. “You know a little Vietnamese?”
“A little.”
“You notice anything about those names?”
I could not remember. My Vietnamese had been picked up in bars and markets, and was almost completely oral.
“Four of them were from a family named Trang. Trang was the village chief, like his father before him, and his grandfather before him. Trang had four daughters. As each one got to the age of six or seven, he took them down into that underground room and chained them to the posts and raped them. A lot of those huts have hidden storage areas, but Trang must have modified his after his first daughter was born. The funny thing is, I think everybody in the village knew what he was doing. I’m not saying they thought it was okay, but they let it happen. They could pretend they didn’t know: the girls never complained, and nobody every heard any screams. I guess Trang was a good-enough chief. When the daughters got to sixteen, they left for the cities. Sent back money, too. So maybe they thought it was okay, but I don’t think they did, myself, do you?”
“How would I know? But there’s a man in my platoon, a guy from—”
“I think there’s a difference between private and public shame. Between what’s acknowledged and what is not acknowledged. That’s what Bachelor has to cope with, when he gets to Langley. Some things are acceptable, as long as you don’t talk about them.” He looked sideways at me as we began to approach the northern end of the camp proper. He wiped his face, and flakes of dried mud fell off his cheek. The exposed skin looked red, and so did his eyes. “Because the way I see it, this is a whole general issue. The issue is: what is expressible? This goes way beyond the tendency of people to tolerate thoughts, actions, or behavior they would otherwise find unacceptable.”