Part 5 – What the Jungle Kept
The jungle west of Tan Chau was no longer a war zone.
But it hadn’t forgotten.
Lisa Tran followed the guide — a lean, silent man named Bao — through trails that had once echoed with gunfire. Now they pulsed with the rhythm of cicadas and rustling leaves. Vines curled over rusted shell casings. Bamboo grew through broken helmets. The forest was swallowing the past, inch by inch.
Bao didn’t speak much. He just walked. Steady. Precise. Like someone who had once done this in darkness with a rifle in hand.
They reached a clearing just before noon. Bao raised a hand. “Here.”
Lisa looked around.
At first, she saw nothing. Just soil, trees, vines. But then shapes emerged — the remains of bunkers, collapsed into the earth. A concrete post, blackened with age. A rusted chain. The shadows of a forgotten POW camp.
Her heart pounded.
Jimmy had been here.
🪦 The Silent Clues
She crouched near a broken post. Something silver glinted beneath the dirt. She brushed away the soil — her breath caught.
A Zippo lighter.
Engraved on it:
“Keep your boots dry.
— Jimmy M.”
Lisa sat back, hands shaking.
It was his.
She wasn’t chasing a myth anymore. This was real.
She moved deeper, brushing aside leaves and vines. Bao pointed toward a tree marked with strange carvings — old, deep, weathered by time. Names. Dates. Scratched into bark by desperate hands.
She found one set that hadn’t faded:
J.S.M.
APR 1970
Lisa pressed her palm against it.
He had been here. Alive. Waiting.
She whispered, “What happened to you, Jimmy?”
A breeze stirred the leaves — or maybe it was just her breath — but for a moment, she felt the weight of presence. Like someone unseen still lingered, just beyond reach.
🐾 A Trace in the Dirt
Bao called softly. “Come.”
He stood by what looked like a shallow trench, half collapsed.
“This was the escape hole,” he said. “Three men tried to run. Two were shot. One… maybe not.”
Lisa’s eyes widened. “You think Jimmy tried to escape?”
“Could be. No one ever found the body.”
She stared into the trench. Roots coiled like veins. The earth smelled like iron and ash.
And there — tucked in a corner, half-buried — was a torn strip of fabric.
American camouflage.
Lisa held it up. On it, in faded ink, were the letters:
M I T
Mitchell.
She dropped to her knees.
He made it this far.
He might have made it farther.
Part 6 – The Man With No Name
Lisa Tran didn’t want to leave the jungle.
It felt wrong — to walk away from the earth that had swallowed so much silence. But Bao said the monsoon was coming, and once the rains started, the paths would vanish. So she left the camp behind, cradling the dog tag, the lighter, and the torn cloth as if they were relics from a temple.
That night, back in Tan Chau, she sat in her hotel room staring at a map.
If Jimmy had escaped… where would he have gone?
There were no roads. Only river.
And one village — just beyond the border, in Cambodia — had a story that wouldn’t go away. Bao had told her, almost as an afterthought: “Some say there was an American. Lived with monks. Never spoke. Burn scars on his arms.”
Lisa’s heart pounded.
She didn’t wait.
She crossed the border at dawn.
🛶 A River Without Answers
It took two boat rides, three hours of hiking, and one bribe to reach the village. A small cluster of wooden houses clung to the hillside. Chickens ran between stilted homes. Smoke curled from cooking fires. And in the distance, perched above the mist — a Buddhist monastery.
Lisa approached slowly. She showed the photo to a woman stirring soup.
The woman blinked. Then pointed uphill.
“The foreign monk,” she said. “He lived there. For many years. But he is gone now.”
Lisa’s breath caught. “Gone where?”
The woman shrugged. “He died. Maybe three rains ago.”
Something inside Lisa collapsed.
She had been too late.
🧘♂️ The Quiet Room
The monastery was simple — polished wood, open windows, wind chimes made of bones and shells. A young monk greeted her with kindness, led her to a back room where the foreigner had lived.
It was bare. A straw mat. A carved bowl. A single faded journal, bound in cloth.
The monk handed it to her. “He never told us his name. But he wrote things.”
Lisa opened it carefully.
The handwriting was slow, uncertain — as if relearning.
Most of it was in broken Vietnamese. But near the center, she found a page in English.
April 12, 1970. I still see the sky burning.
I remember his voice — “Run.”
I ran. And then I stopped. Because I wasn’t supposed to live.
But I did.
I don’t know who I am anymore. Only that I won’t wear a gun again.
If anyone finds this… I’m sorry.
No signature. Just a name carved faintly in the corner of the page, as if the writer had struggled to remember it:
Jimmy
Lisa’s tears fell onto the page.
He had survived.
Not as a soldier. Not as a prisoner.
But as a man who gave up everything — even his name — to start again.
