I decided with some finality this time, to pull up stakes and head back east to the single life, living the dream in Saigon. But this tour wasn’t with the night hawks on Long Range Reconnaissance patrol. No uppers and no war paint this time around. My screwball uncle, a morbid genius in warfare (which he attributed to being a linebacker at Michigan State University,)  and a retired colonel, (who you couldn’t tell half the time if he was joking or not when he talked about shooting himself,) got me a detail with Psy Ops and the CIA. I was reclaiming my independence, liberating myself, from the redux quiet of a suburban life of shopping for tampons and fixing dead lawn mowers. This would have been our seventh anniversary and a yearly trip back to Lake Tahoe.

            Terry would fly ahead with the kids while I stayed behind a few days and wrapped up the cottage in northern Michigan for the season. But we split after I discovered what she left town early for and how she spent her time while I was away on business. I surrendered everything in the divorce for the sake of the kids. And I went back to Nam for their sake too-for the alleged American Way

            The transport plane landed in the sweltering heat and I hustled across the steaming tarmac with my duffel bag to catch a UH-1 Huey for Hanoi when a couple of

E-3’s pulled up in a jeep and let me know on no uncertain terms that the Old Man sent them after me. No one else could know who That was. We headed up a dirt road swathed in palms and swarms of bugs that left a rash on contact and I asked to stop in a village where I picked up some madras shirts, sandals, khaki trousers and a little refinement on my flat top. I made sure they left the rolling handlebar moustache alone.

            The E-3’s left town without me, so I was stranded an extra day among small chattering villagers, most with thick lips and flat noses, and a sea of conical hats swaying through the streets. The children never shut up and cooking grease and diesel fuel in the air stunk like hell. Off in the distance I heard barking dogs and the rattling blurts of an occasional MP5K, a small WW II Russian submachine gun that put out rounds much faster than our M-16’s, and were now sold to the Cong in exchange for their communist alliance.