by Peter Colt
“Were you in Vietnam in ’75 for the fall?” Nguyen asked.
“No, I was home by then.” I had watched the helicopters on the roof of what everyone assumes was the embassy, but the famous shot was really of a CIA safe house. I sat in front of the TV with a can of beer warming in my hand and tears running down my face. The Vietnam War had gone on for so long that we all assumed it would go on forever. I had thought that I could always go back if I couldn’t cut it in the world. Then it ended, and I wept. I would never be able to go back to the war; I could never go home. My true home. The only place I felt that I belonged. I would never go back to being a Recon man, the only exceptional thing I had ever done. From that point on, I would always just be some guy, some shmuck.
“It was . . . ho’o lan”—he paused searching for the English word—“chaos.” He sat across from me, looking through me to almost a decade before. The smoke from his menthol cigarette curled up in front of us. “At first, no one wanted to believe that it was happening. We thought, there is no way the Americans will let the communists have it all after spending so many of their young men’s lives here. Then it became undeniable that you had abandoned us. That is when the panic started. It finally occurred to people that the NVA were coming, with tanks, artillery. They were coming, and they were going to destroy everything we knew.
“As they got closer, you could hear the artillery, could hear it getting closer and closer. Every day, more and more refugees poured into the city. Every day, more and more of our soldiers fled into the city. Each day, more chaos. Each day, more young men with short hair and civilian clothes, their uniforms thrown away, trying to blend in.
“People trying to flee, people trying to plan. Money changed hands. No one wanted piasters. U.S. dollars weren’t even that popular. Everyone wanted gold or diamonds. The markets that sold them were raising prices per ounce and still getting cleaned out.
“I was lucky. I was a sailor. Not important, but lucky to be on a ship. I was able to get my family on board: wife, son, and Linh. Ship had important people on it. Important people who brought their important things with them. Papers, jewels, money, and gold. We had many who were fleeing, they had paid to get on ship. Paid everything they had. Bought gold and paid it all just to stand on deck. Some tried to barter their daughters, Linh’s age, to the important men on board.
“The night of April 29, 1975, we slipped away from the pier. Saigon was burning, and the smoke was thick. We were trying to sneak out of the city to the sea. We were afraid that they would shell us or bomb us from planes. But there was nothing. We slipped down the river to the sea. We were the flotilla of defeat: rich man’s yachts, navy ships that would not fight, and merchant ships like mine. Some of the ships were in such bad shape we ended up towing them to sea. We were packed with refugees and those who had been important people in government. Not the most important. They could afford to buy their way onto airplanes and helicopters. No, these were the somewhat important and the unimportant but not the poor. There was no room for the poor on the boats.
“There were stories about how we were carrying the people who were going to start the government in exile. Some thought we were going to Taiwan or the Philippines. People said we had gold on board, enough gold to start the government in exile. There were rumors that all of the gold bullion from the South Vietnamese treasury was on board. Some of the crazy fucking generals thought that we would start a counterrevolution and topple the communists. Can you believe that the same assholes who just lost a war through their greed, corruption, and bungling thought they would topple the government that had just sent them running? Assholes.” He snorted.
He barked at Linh again, and this time two more beers and two cognacs arrived. The nice thing about not having a boss, a wife, a girlfriend or even a pet that cared meant that I could stay and drink with Nguyen. No chance of getting fired or dumped. Just a hangover in the morning to remind me that I am not twenty anymore.
“I stayed with the ship, the Adams. It was a ship the Vietnamese government was loaned from the Americans. It was an old cargo ship. What you call it? A Freedom ship . . . no Liberty, a Liberty ship. We sailed on the Adams. People got off the ship in the Philippines. We stay a long time there. I stay with ship because I know about engines, fixing them. Then we told ship will go to America. San Francisco, California. We will get to stay in America. In California, I am able to find some work in garage. Working on engines. The pay is small, but it is job. My wife work in restaurant. Kids go to school. We live in small apartment, kids sleep in bed, wife on couch, and daddy Nguyen gets floor or bed if no one in it.
“I find second job, washing dishes. I am always hungry, never enough. And kids, kids get most, then wife . . . then daddy Nguyen. That is why I like good food now. So long, I eat nothing or what I can get from dishes I wash in restaurant. Americans . . . you throw away good food. Waste so much.”
I had been hungry before, but he was describing a type of hunger that I would never know. I lit another Lucky and looked at him. “How did you come here, to Quincy? Seems like California would be nicer, warmer?”
“In Vietnam, in navy, I make friend. American sailor. He from here. He told me about snow. We don’t have snow in Vietnam, but snow sound beautiful. Clean and nice, not like Saigon, not like panic. Snow sound . . . bing yen . . . peaceful. I wanted to see snow. To touch it. I wanted everything to be peaceful.”
It was hard for me to picture Quincy, Massachusetts, as a mecca of peace and quiet, but compared to war-torn Saigon, it would do. Who am I to judge? He seemed happy enough. More beer and cognac arrived, and the neon light was turned off, and the door was locked.
“We come here, kids go in school, and I work. Again, two jobs. We save money and save, and I still eat last. I work down on docks for Domino sugar, unloading sacks of sugar. I work in restaurant. Wife work in factory making clothes. Kids go to school. Then finally have enough money to buy house, not big house, but ours. Then end up buying restaurant. Now, Nguyen never hungry, never have to eat last, never have to eat other people’s throwaway food.” He smiled and patted his belly, or where a fat man would have had a belly, but he was rail thin.
His story was like a lot of those of immigrants who came here fleeing their wars, their persecution. Not unlike my mother, the teenaged German war bride who married my father, the paratrooper, who had stayed behind after the war to be part of the occupation. Married him so she wouldn’t starve or be raped by Ivan. My mother who looked at me one day when I was six and said, “I love you, Liebchen, but Mama must go.” I heard the kitchen door swing shut on its hinges and I never saw her again.
“What did you do in war? You no sailor.”
“No, I was in the army. I would try to find the NVA on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, then call in planes and artillery to kill them.” We had gathered intelligence, taken photographs, and made reports. It was dangerous, so fucking dangerous, and often ended with us running and fighting for our lives. The NVA were always hunting us, and even though we were supposed to gather intelligence, it seemed like we did an awful lot of fighting.
“That sounds dangerous.” He smiled. His teeth were crooked and nicotine stained, but, nonetheless, his smile was charming.
“Yes, many of my friends died. I lived.” Recon, in MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group) had the highest per capita casualty rate of any unit or activity in the war.
“That is how you know your fortune?”
“Yes.” Fighting, killing, and not dying when my brothers did, or even worse, they simply disappeared. I knew my fortune. I had lived. Survived it somehow. I had been cursed.
“Trung Si Roark.” He used the Vietnamese for sergeant, more or less my old rank. “We don’t choose who lives or dies. We simply act our part; some men live, some die. Men like us, Round Eye, we are like those cats outside behind the restaurant. They don’t live in house. No one feeds them or is nice to them. They just scratch around. What you call them?”
“Strays. Stray cats.”
“Yes. That is us. I have no more home in Vietnam. Only home here. Only family here. You, you have no home since war over. We stray cats.”
Nguyen and I talked about Vietnam, the Vietnam that had been before the communists. He had been from Saigon and spent much of the war there. I had been in the northern part of South Vietnam but got to the city for R&R enough to know some of its geography beyond Tu Do Street. It was hard for most people to fathom but I had fallen in love with Vietnam. The place was exotic and had history. The women were slim and beautiful, with gentle mannerisms. It was about as far from Southie as could be.
We talked about the war and how fucked up it had been. We got angry about the politicians and the generals and we drank good cognac until it ran out; then we drank mediocre cognac. When he started to pass out with a lit cigarette in his hand, I packed him into my car and drove him home to his modest house in Weymouth.
As I drove to Weymouth the Doors were on the radio, and the Ghia bumped along the pothole-pocked roads. The jostling and rocking reminded me of the beat of the rotor blades of the Huey taking me on my first mission in-country. It was the mission that showed me that war was random.
Recon work was dangerous, very dangerous, and we all had known it. We were playing the biggest game of hide-and-seek in the world while being hunted by the best the enemy had. We were being hunted in their terrain and vastly outnumbered.
Our casualties were staggering. Sometimes, the best, most experienced trained and equipped men died. Anyone could be unlucky. Many men better than me had been killed. There was no rhyme or reason for it. It was hard to accept that you could be well armed, equipped, have the best training, and work with the best men in the business and still get killed.
I was still green, but Tony’s team had been short one American. The mission was supposed to be a milk run to check sensors that the air force had dropped on the trail from the Wild Blue Yonder. A milk run . . . I wasn’t old enough to realize what a lie that was.
By rights they shouldn’t have taken me. I was so green I should be in comic books. Tony convinced his One-Zero to take me on the milk run to get me some training. I sat in and watched as they meticulously planned the mission. Tony and his team leader, Jim, taught me the team drills for breaking contact if we met the enemy. We practiced the Australian Peel, where a line of men meet the enemy and hit the ground. The point man fires a whole magazine and gets up and runs to the back of the line. The next man does the same but gets up and pivots to the opposite side of the man before him. Then each team member does the same, alternating which side they run down. When done fast it looks like someone is unpeeling a green, heavily armed banana. The team moved back like that, breaking contact and giving the enemy something to think about. We practiced other drills and we practiced and then practiced some more. When Tony and Jim were satisfied, we were ready, we went.
We rode in the Slicks, beating the sky, with the WHUP-WHUP-WHUP of the rotor. We approached the LZ and we got out and stood on the skids. The rotor was blowing humid air tinged with the smell of aviation gas in my face. I was tense, my stomach trying to fold over on itself from the inside. It was a miracle I didn’t puke from the stress.
We looked at the One-Zero, he stepped off the skid into the elephant grass, and we followed. We moved away and formed a loose circle, weapons at the ready. The Slicks flew away, heading back to the launch site. We waited listening to the jungle, trying to hear any sound that might be the enemy.
Jim radioed, “Team OK.” We stood up and formed up to move out . . . and it seemed like the very jungle itself opened up on us. AK rounds started pouring in on us. Whipping by my head, giving me every chance to end up on some war memorial. Grenades and RPGs began to explode. Jim died radioing the choppers to come back. He never felt the blast from the RPG or the pieces of hot metal that ripped through his head.
Rounds whipped by and hot pieces of metal cut into flesh. There were screams and I almost forgot about the god-awful heat and humidity when the coppery smell of blood overwhelmed me. Tony rallied us, organized us to start shooting back. We didn’t do the Australian Peel that we had practiced to the point of boredom.
We took turns firing and moving back. The Slicks came in to pick us up when the heavy machine-guns opened up on them. The slow, heavy beat of Russian-made 12.7mm machine guns gave cadence to our flight. The 12.7mm rounds pissed through aluminum skin and plexiglass windows. Everything was moving in slow motion for me as I was firing my M-16, trying to find targets. Tony seemed to be everywhere at once. He threw grenades and rallied men. Tony got the wounded on board. I covered him when he went back to get Jim. Then he pushed me on board the Slick and we lifted off.
The bird limped back to the launch site like a prizefighter who is still standing at the end of the fight with a much bigger, better opponent. When we touched down someone pushed a cold beer into my hand and people clapped me on the back. I looked at Tony and he looked at me. “You did good out there, Red.”
“Thanks, man. Jesus. You saved my life.”
“No worries, man. You’ll get the chance to return the favor someday.” He was right—I would. It was another memory I kept packed away in my mind full of unhappy memories.
Then I made my way back to my empty apartment. Leslie had been gone for over a year now. The hole she left in my life was more than just missing things from an apartment.
We had met at the Brattle Book Shop. The Brattle was the closest thing that I had to a church. Rows and rows of used books just waiting to be picked up and read. I had been in Detective fiction—where else would a private eye be? Leslie was a grad student, English lit, who was working on a theory that in fiction private eyes were the twentieth century’s version of cowboys, who were the nineteenth-century version of the knights of old. Imagine her surprise when she met one in the flesh. She was trying to reach a book on a high shelf, and I happened to be there.
Which led to coffee and we started dating shortly after. We went to dinner and she took me to movies at the Coolidge Theater. We saw Casablanca there, and when Bogie punched the bad guy, everyone in the place called out, “Hit ’em, Bogie!” Popcorn flew everywhere.
Sitting in the dark, holding hands, and whispering, I felt that some part of me was being restored. I was getting something back that had been missing for a long time. Later there were nights under the covers, watching the Movie Loft on channel 38. Laughing at Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn as an unlikely police detective and his imperiled love interest. For a time, it was good.
Then we were living together, and things had soured. She had been able to live with the nightmares and my being irritable. She had been able to put up with my coming home bruised and occasionally battered from work. She had put up with a lot of crap.
But in the end it was the long silences, my unwillingness to talk to her about it. She suspected that it was another woman. In truth it was Vietnam, the place, the war. Almost every night I was transported there in my dreams. It wasn’t just the war but the parts of me that were trapped there, never able to leave, the ghosts of my friends or the memories of war. I was afraid of what she would see, looking at me, if I told her about it. I was afraid of the look on her face when she realized that I missed the war. In the end silence was safer. Then one day, there were tears and the next she was gone. I had a chance to be normal, to be happy, and I had blown it.
I wasn’t so out of touch with myself to realize that I didn’t want to be six years old saying good-bye to my mother all over again. Women had come and gone in my life, and I was grateful for their attention. No relationship ever seemed to turn into anything more serious than shacking up together for a while. I had never met anyone whom I wanted to worry about their leaving me. Until Leslie I had never met anyone whom I wanted to be close to, could see staying with.
I had slowly replaced most of the things she had taken with her: furniture, books, records, and things for the kitchen. There was no replacing her warmth, the gentle way sh
e would take my face in her hands after making love. But by the end, the warmth had ebbed, slipping away from us. Then I dreaded walking up the stairs to the silence and tension that had become our relationship. Then it was over, and she had left. Another casualty of my shabby little war that no one wanted to talk about.
Chapter 3
Over the next two years, cases came and went. One girlfriend came and went, and one cat, named Sir Leominster, came to stay. I picked up a couple more scars and bruises. I would make a point of stopping by The Blue Lotus every other week if I could. Every few months, Nguyen and I would get rip-roaring drunk talking about the war and the communists. He understandably hated them, and I wasn’t a particular fan of them. I was invited over for Christmas, which they celebrated as a nod to their adopted home, even though they were Buddhists. Then the Christmas after that, I was sitting in the living room with Nguyen after everyone had gone their separate ways. We were drinking cognac, admiring the small silver Christmas tree and its twinkling lights. We were talking about what we hoped 1985 was going to bring. Nguyen got up suddenly, leaving me to look at the snow outside and the lights on the neighboring houses. He came back in and handed me a small wrapped package. “Happy Christmas, Round Eye.” This was a slight breach of our protocol because we got each other bottles of booze, and I had already given my gifts to the family.
“What is this?” I asked as I looked at the wrapped package in his hand.
“A gift for you.” It was obviously a paperback book.
“Thank you.” I took it and unwrapped it. It was a paperback copy of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. He had written something on the inside cover in Vietnamese, which he knew I didn’t read.
“I read this book on ship from Vietnam. Now I know real Round Eye Private Eye.” It was amazing that English was not his first language, but he effortlessly made a pun out of a racial slur.