The Soldier And The Monk

By BJ Deming

In South Vietnam’s Central Highlands, a traditional Buddhist monk finds a wounded American soldier.

Should the monk risk helping the badly wounded GI or should he save himself by turning the soldier over to the local Communists? Complicating the picture is the presence of nine-year-old Vo, a Down syndrome child who is the monk’s ward.

When the monk decides to help the injured man, he must then lead the child and the soldier through the jungle, knowing that his choice may get him executed and his monastery and village ruined. Even if they get away, he and his ward must leave their homeland forever.

During the escape, with the North Vietnamese officer in close pursuit, the GI collapses and can go no further. As night falls, the monk finally realizes how to save them all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BJ Deming
• Release date: Mar 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310411076

BJ Deming

B. J. Deming was born in New England, but her favorite places in the US are the Alabama and Oregon. Besides fiction, she enjoys blogging about Earth Science and the American Civil War. Right now she is working on a nonfiction book about the first cat (due in the summer of 2015), as well as her next Jack Murphy book, "The Birchfield Murders" (due in the fall of 2016).

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The Soldier And The Monk

Published by B. J. Deming

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2014, 2015 B. J. Deming

Cover art copyright © 2015 B. J. Deming

Table of Contents

Forward

Chapter 1: The Soldier's Story

Chapter 2: The Monk's Story

Chapter 3: The Monk and Two Soldiers

Chapter 4: Another Path

Chapter 5: Into the Jungle

Chapter 6: The Old Road

Chapter 7: The Storm

Chapter 8: Night Refuge

Chapter 9: The Light

Chapter 10: The End

Notes

Forward

I started this story back in 1970 in response to an assignment in a freshman Oriental Religions class to describe the important concepts of Buddhism. It was too difficult for me to follow through on this concept at that time, thanks to youth, inexperience, and other factors. I have returned to it now and then over the intervening years and really began to apply myself to it around the turn of the 21st century, when my father died, troubles arose, and I found solace in Theravada Buddhism. What follows is the result of multiple drafts and editing. I hope you like it.

Of course, the characters and settings are fictional. Any resemblance to real people and places is coincidental.

Also, I am not a Buddhist nun, just a householder, so the monk was a real challenge. He is described as appearing Cambodian (although he grew up in the Highland region where this takes place) because Cambodians are associated with the Southern-style Theravada flavor of Buddhism that I follow, not the Northern-style Zen-like Thien of many Vietnamese Buddhists. This monk is definitely not typically Vietnamese, and he is not meant to represent any particular Buddhist sect. He is a generality. He is also a holy man, so I left him to his work when he started meditating at the temple.

Jack Murphy is a generality, too, although I tried to be as accurate as possible with the military descriptions. Please note that he uses an offensive word, over and over again, for a child with Down syndrome. That’s because it’s 1967. The word Jack uses was common for the condition at that time, just as Oriental rather than Asian was acceptable in a college course title in 1970. People are human, and we’ve all moved on. Just roll with it, if you can.

Thank you for reading this novella, the completion of which has been so important and helpful to me over the decades.

B. J. Deming

Sladden Park, Eugene, Oregon

March 2015

Chapter 1: The Soldier’s Story

Life was cheap in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands in late November 1967. Exhausted Allied soldiers at Dak To were wondering to themselves what defeat feels like, so hard-won had been the victory there. Sure, the enemy had jumped the fence back into Laos and Cambodia, where B-52s were pounding them to smithereens. Didn’t matter— plenty more Charlie and NVA forces were active elsewhere. Something big was up, but the Allies didn’t know what.

Special Forces A-teams were busy. Westmoreland was moving even more US Army battalions up into the highlands, and several LRRPs went out each day to recon hot spots. Still, commies were still slipping through, ambushing patrols and terrorizing local villages.

The mountain people were caught in the middle. Some of the young men slipped off to join one side or the other, but generally villagers throughout the highlands were keeping very low profiles whenever possible. They looked away when the Communists came and looked the other way when Allies passed through. Of course, they did show preference to locals whenever they could do so without trouble from the round-eyed foreigners who were trying to save them from Communism and the Vietnamese lowlanders who were trying, once again, to occupy and control their land.

Injun Country was no place for a wounded American soldier to be lost in during the fall of 1967. But one was.

The day before the American holiday of Thanksgiving, about an hour after daylight had become full, a vulture began circling over a spot on the grassy clearing on an unplanted hill that separated two small villages that sat just east of the Cambodian border.

No one except a thick-set, clumsy boy, who was accompanying a Buddhist monk out of the northernmost village, paid the vulture much attention. The village they were leaving sat amid some trees near the river at the bottom of a winding valley. The monk and child were moving along the path that went up over the hill, returning to the southern village where the monk’s little monastery was.

The child now excitedly gestured at the big, dark bird. The monk just walked along, keeping his eyes on the red dirt path ahead. Soon the child quieted down and followed his guardian.

About half an hour later, the vulture suddenly flapped its wings and went away. Down below, hidden in the tall grass, the human being inside that battered body had opened his blue eyes. No carrion here yet.

Jack Murphy lay still, waiting for the meds to work, not wanting to puke them up like he had the other two times. His six-foot, muscular body was sprawled any which way on the hillside as if it had been tossed there like an abandoned doll.

He was looking up. A white deck of clouds, up there somewhere beyond the green grassy spears above his head, hid the Sun. It was daytime. That’s all he could tell.

Murphy’s jungle fatigues were dirty and torn in places, but almost all of the blood (his own and that of other men) had washed away while he had struggled through the river that flowed through the valley, down at the foot of the hill. He didn’t remember that struggle now. He didn’t remember much at all except his name.

His face hadn’t gotten wet, though. A mix of sooty camouflage, scrapes, and dried blood covered the man’s rather plain features. There was a big open wound on his right temple, with a little bone and gristle showing. The short dark hair around it was soaked with clotted blood, and so was his eyebrow.

Jack hadn’t seen the vulture. He didn’t know he’d been unconscious. He was waiting for the meds to kick in, just closing his eyes and opening them every now and then. The last time he’d had them open it had been dark. Now it was light.

He was coasting, because he couldn’t come to grips with what had just happened. It was quiet here. He just lay there, letting life go by because life was pretty quiet at the moment. Not like earlier. He couldn’t remember exactly what had gone on, but he knew it had been unpleasant.

Somehow he just couldn’t get his conditioning going…his training. He wasn’t afraid to move. Murphy knew he could do that. He was just resting because didn’t want to puke again, or to feel that pain in his head and his left shoulder.

Well, maybe he was a little afraid. Maybe it was true that he wasn’t going to live forever after all. His buddies…a strangely powerful feeling of detachment came over Jack Murphy, and he thought of Nancy, back home, waiting for him. He wasn’t afraid any more.

Then comfort changed to anguish inside. To push it away, he muttered, Screw this, and struggled into a sitting position, knowing the pain and nausea would make the hurt inside go away. He’d conquer that inner pain eventually. There was no time for it now. He just concentrated on throwing up as he moved.

This time—how many times had he tried doing this?—he sat up all the way and he didn’t puke. Explosions went off inside his head, though, and his left shoulder was on fire. To keep his mind off the terrible dizziness, he slowly opened and closed his left hand. Good! He could use that arm some. His right hand and arm were okay.

Chavez, the radioman, had been on his right when the grenade went off. Chavez had absorbed most of the blast effects while Murphy had just got knocked off a small bluff by the shock wave, landing on his left side. Then he had jumped up and started running because that NVA bastard…the one who had shot Ed…

How were his legs now? Yeah, he could still use them, and they didn’t feel so weak.

He had to depend on himself now. His whole world, everything he took for granted, was shot to hell. He’d shot back, but he was all alone and had to run. He hated himself for that. God…Pops hadn’t said they’d feel so guilty!

He had gotten this far before collapsing. He remembered seeing longhouses, avoiding them. He’d even gone by without rousing the ever-present Yard village dogs. Rangers knew how to do that. OK, so some of his