Like the River, All Are One

                                                                                         

Like the river, we are all one

     Sometimes, past memories pop into my head, probably like they pop into yours, when you least expect them, memories we thought were lost to time.

     Recently, I walked into the Camaguey Market, which started off a Cuban store in east Mar Vista, on Venice Boulevard, but, for the past twenty-years, has catered to a diverse group of shoppers, Latinos, Anglos, Hindus, and Muslims, because of its broad range of products, from all types of tropical fruits and vegetables, to different meats, and wall filled with colorful spices from around the world. If an Argentino needs a "mate" cup, Camaguey has a variety of choices.

     I hear different dialects of Spanish, from South to Central and North America, the Caribbean, as well as languages from the Middle East and Asia, mixed in with a lot of chatter from USC and UCLA students, who shop on the cheap. Funny how an image or a smell can evoke something we haven’t thought about in years, like after leaving Camaguey, loaded down with fresh bolillos, bananas, avocadoes, eggs, and milk, I was right back in Bangkok, Thailand, a 19-year-old Chicano soldier on a week-long R&R from Vietnam.

     We’d been on an operation in the Central Highlands, a mountainous region of the country, lush, beautiful, and deadly. Many villagers in the valleys and mountains had been isolated for generations, each village with its own culture and rules, where words like "Democracy," "Communism," and "Dominoe Theory" meant nothing, so far were they from Saigon and Hanoi. Many of the villagers had never laid eyes on a “White” man. By 1967, to protect themselves from invaders, the village sons had joined the V.C. The other outsiders, the North Vietnamese Army, had flooded into the mountains and valleys.

     I was glad to be out, even if only for a week. I had made a bold move, if I say so myself. I had decided to wait eleven months before taking my R&R, figuring when I returned from Bangkok, I’d only have a couple of weeks left on my tour and be on my way home. When I’d told a friend my plan, he’d said, not mincing his words, “That ain’t smart. What if you get zapped? You'll miss out on R&R.”

     Me? I had no doubt I’d still be alive, a childish thought, now that I look back on it.

     When I arrived at our hotel in Bangkok, the elegant, four-star Inter-Continental, I checked into my room, pure luxury. I’d never stayed in a hotel. In fact, I’d never been on a plane before I joined the army. The only time I'd been away from home for an extended stay was camping out with the Boy Scouts and sleeping in pup tents.

     No more than a few minutes after entering my room, I heard a knock at the door. A short man, probably in his early thirties, stood there. He introduced himself as Mr. Dom and handed me his card, offering me a 24-hour chauffeur. Long story short, I “caved in” and hired him, $100 for the week. A few guys I’d met told me I was nuts, until, each night, sloshed from hitting all the clubs in Downtown Bangkok, Mr. Dom was there to drive us back to our hotel.

     He’d pick me up each day at noon and take me on a tour of the city. He hinted, one day, that the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, was playing downtown. I didn’t want to spend an afternoon in a movie theater, but I could tell he was dying to go, so I went. Hundreds of people waited in long lines to buy tickets, like the opening of the Ten Commandments. Mr. Dom said he had a connection. I handed him some bills, and in a few minutes, a guy was ushering us in through a side door.

     That’s kind of how the week went, Mr. Dom there whenever I needed him, like the time I had a crazy hangover, from a night out, a throbbing headache, messed up stomach, so I told him to take the day off. I needed sleep. Instead, he forced me to shower, dress, and get into his car. He drove me into the jungle. We stopped at an outdoor café. I was dying. He ordered me a bowl of hot broth, steaming, red chiles floating around the top. I drank it up, sweated, but began feeling better. He said I had to see the golden Buddha. He drove me to a religious site where the statue of a fifty-foot golden Buddha stood in the middle of a garden, pilgrims carrying candles in honor of the great teacher.

     Before I knew it, I was in line, a lighted candle, Mr. Dom at my side, and I was joining the pilgrims, on my knees bowing. When we finished, my headache was gone, and I was cured. A miracle, who knows, maybe better than Lourdes. On the way back to the hotel, Mr. Dom called out to a woman walking on one of the busy city streets, the river on the other side. He said, “My friend. Okay I give her ride home.”

     I was game for any new experience. She was probably older than I, in her twenties, young and pretty. She spoke broken English, well enough to have a conversation. Mr. Dom drove her home, to a bamboo house built on stilts above the Chao Phraya River. She invited us inside. Dom parked his car, and made a gesture to me indicating she worked as a prostitute. Once inside the house, the young woman’s mother welcomed us. She prepared the afternoon meal, on something that looked like a hotplate.

     I was following Mr. Dom’s lead, making our way through the crowded house, barely enough room for beds and bits of furniture. The young woman wanted to show me around. She took me into her bedroom, separated from the main room with a curtain, which remained open. She showed me her wardrobe, a closet filled with a large assortment of dresses and shoes. She asked, “You Mexican boy?”

     I said he was. When I told her I was 19, she called me, a "Baby." Her mother invited us to a small table outside on the porch, water and a canoe beneath us. She brought a pot of tea. We ate, talked, and watched the sampans and boats shuttle up and down the river. It was as if we’d known each other all our lives. I could’ve sat there for days it was so peaceful. After our meal, I listened as Mr. Dom and the young woman talked in Thai. Mr. Dom turned to me and asked if I would consider going to the PX and buying food and other supplies for the family. I was confused. I didn’t’ know anything about a PX in Bangkok. Dom assured me he knew where it was, and with my military I.D. I could shop there.

     A half-hour later, he and I were walking through the aisles of a large military department store, the shelves filled with everything American, from televisions to toasters and food. I told Mr. Dom to pick whatever he thought the family needed. When we returned, the old woman was delighted with the bags of groceries and household items we carried inside. For a while, I forgot I was American and they were Thai. We were people, sharing a home-cooked meal, and friendship. Then, I remembered, why I was even here, and my heart sank.

     When I returned to my artillery battery on a mountaintop a half-hour helicopter’s ride outside the town of Tam Ky, my head was still in that simple bamboo home along the Chao Phraya River, and two weeks later, I was back home in Los Angeles, the memory buried deep, only to be mined one day, years later, after a trip to a neighborhood store with the strange name, Camaguey.