“I don’t know about your 803rd Liaison Detachment except its newfangled computing gadget. Didn’t work out, did it?”
“No sir, it didn’t.”
“That situation has been classified top secret.”
“Yes sir.”
“That rumor that South Vietnam’s to be our fifty-first state is dead as a doornail.” He jabbed a thumb upward. “If the wrong people hear you even mention it, you might get your tongue ripped out.”
“Not me.”
“What we’ve got is a war of attrition we’ll be living with indefinitely. Uncle Ho up in Hanoi, he’s in no hurry. He’ll wait us out and wear us down to a nub, how he did it with the Frogs.”
“Yes sir.”
“Those computers, like you had in the 803rd, they’re novelties. They’re a fad. You don’t win wars with snazzy new inventions. You win wars on foot, Joe. Rifle, bayonet, shoe leather.”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s the deal about wars. They say life’s short, but you don’t know how short till you’ve been in a war.”
“No sir.”
“I’ve been in three of them, beginning with the last good war,” Major Blue said. “I enlisted on 8 December 1941, bright and early Monday morning. At the recruiting office, I stood in a line that went around the block. I joined the Navy thinking I’d be killing Nips the soonest, doing my share to sink their fleet. I was a senior in high school and figured I’d learned all school could teach me. I figured wrong on both counts.
“They shipped me out on a heavy cruiser for Atlantic convoy duty. The seas in the North Atlantic in winter, you might as well be in a rowboat running rapids. I puked my guts out for days. I almost wished a U-boat would put me out of my misery. I wangled me a transfer to the army. Landed in Sicily as we were chasing the Krauts up the Eye-talian boot.
“I was a first looie when the war ended, but when they demobilized, I was busted back to corporal. I wised up and got my GED and a few junior college credits for good measure. When Korea came, I won back my commission and it stuck.
“I’d planned on staying in and retiring after thirty. You put in your thirty years, you retire at three-quarters of your base pay. I wouldn’t have had it made in the shade, but I could get by on less of a civilian job. I could be an usher in a movie theater or some such if my ex-wives didn’t find me. I’d make a couple of bucks and catch the films. Not the worst way to live.”
The major was perspiring from the heat and humidity and exertion of walking. He stopped to catch his breath and light a cigarette with a Zippo.
“I’m finishing up my twenty-fourth year and that might be all she wrote,” he went on. “I was passed over twice for lieutenant colonel and if I’m passed over a third time, I’m in mandatory retirement. See what I mean about life being short?”
“I think so, sir.”
“There you are, Joe. Live for the moment. The Armed Forces Television Network has arrived in-country, you know.”
“Yes sir.”
“They say if we’re here long enough, they’ll be transmitting in color, too. Same same computers. I’ll believe the newfangled when it functions on an everyday basis.”
Will he ever get to the point? “Yes sir.”
“Top-quality black-and-white TV sets are expensive and scarce even if you’re prepared to shell out,” the major said. “Big-screen, twenty-one-inchers are the scarcest.”
I watched the mountain of air conditioners drift lazily along and said, “There are always scarcities, sir.”
“Truer words were never spoken. Supply and demand, they make the world go ’round and ’round. My first Vietnam stint was in ’63, advisor to the ARVN out of the MAAG compound up in Pleiku. That’s Military Assistance Advisory Group. MAAG merged into MACV in ’64. We were advising things the little guys didn’t care to be advised about since we were starting to take over the war anyhow. I didn’t have the opportunity to make the connections you have in this burg.
“What it is, I have a sweet lady friend of the slant-eyed persuasion who’d dearly appreciate to have in her possession a Philco or RCA console. If a twenty-one-incher could be arranged, I do believe she’d worship me to death.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’ll be performing a miracle, Joe. I’m what you call financially embarrassed. Major’s pay doesn’t go far when you’re being circled overhead by embittered gals you once loved, by them and their shyster attorneys. I think I could cough up a bottle of Jim Beam, along those lines.”
“Sir, I’d prefer to spare you any out-of-pocket whatsoever.”
“That’s kind of you, Joe. It is. I’d be grateful.”
“There is a favor you could do for me instead.”
“Name it.”
“You’re an admin honcho, sir. You know plenty of people in the army and in Vietnam. You could probably trace someone.”
“An individual on active duty?”
“No sir. A Vietnamese civilian.” I told him about Mai, playing it cool, confining information to what I thought would be helpful in locating her.
He saw right through me. “Son, you got it bad. Her too?”
So much for cool. “I think she does. I hope so. Yes sir.”
“You are aware of the problems in permanently fraternizing with these indigenous gals, aren’t you, Joe? I mean desiring companionship and nooky with one following your standard twelve-month tour.”
“Yes sir, I am.”
“One of life’s dilemmas, Joe, is how us menfolk get romance and lust all tangled up. Like a spastic retard and his feet. As often as not, you hit the deck in a heap. I’m not criticizing you, Joe. It’s just how it is.”
Romance. “No argument there, sir.”
“Lord knows I’m no authority on love, Joe,” Major Blue sighed and flicked his cigarette into the Saigon River. “You do what you can do, I’ll do what I can do.”
For my end of the bargain, I requested that the major turn a blind eye to SHUFO’s surplus equipment that wasn’t shortening the war in any case and to give me access to the unit’s Jeep. I cleared space in a storage closet by surplussing seven still-in-the-box IBM electric typewriters. I swapped them to a helicopter mechanic at Tan Son Nhat who was rotating soon and didn’t need his twenty-one-inch console. He didn’t tell me his plans for the typewriters, and I didn’t ask.
Major Blue was so happy he glowed. He said that if there were any more television sets where that came from, him and I, we could work something out. His lady friend’s lady friends would be envious and who could say where that’d lead.
“Ladies and their catfights,” he said, winking. “There’s nothing like competition for a male of the species to inspire bedroom creativity.”
“Yes sir. Uh, my Mai?”
“I’m working on it, PFC Joe. I promise I am. It is a challenge, a real bearcat, a bitch and a half, complicated by no last name. Mai’s as common here as Mary or Jane.”
I accepted his word and paid Bombay Tailors a call.
“I trust you’re as prosperous as usual, Mr. Singh.”
“A businessman must adapt to volatile circumstances, Mr. Joseph. I am charmed and honored. Please allow me to offer my condolences for Mr. Zbitgysz.”
Wondering how he knew about Ziggy, I thanked him and initiated a conversation regarding TV sets.
Mr. Singh said, “Excellent-quality giant-screen televisions are available. Please be advised, however, that premium models involve additional logistical impediments.”
I braced.
“Accordingly, Mr. Joseph, do you know where I might obtain New York strip steaks, 35-millimeter cameras with integrated light meters, Vat 69 Scotch, lubricated prophylactics of U.S. manufacture, transistor radios, Christian Brothers brandy, rum crook cigars, phonograph player needles, truck tires, fingernail clippers, Brylcreem hair lotion, and Worcestershire sauce?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
***
A dreamy “Unchained Melody” wafts as I wat
ch Dien Bien Phu and the ants on Channel 668, sound muted. Smitty and his fifth helping of mac and cheese are upstairs. He’s increasingly withdrawn, which is fine and dandy with me.
I am enjoying the richest, tastiest brownies I’ve ever eaten. Sister Mary Jean could work for me as a baker in any kitchen I ever ran in The Land of the Living.
I am recollecting word for word this post-noon chow conversation with Major Blue. The memory intrudes and meshes as I continue to ponder my cul-de-sac anomalies when a light bulb goes on.
I have found a pattern and a solution to the enigma.
There is no pattern and there is no solution.
25.
A WEEK passed without a hint of progress in tracking down my Dragon Lady. I thought Major Blue stiffed me, so I had an excuse to put Singh’s shopping list on hold. Also, if additional television sets meant additional nooky for the major with television-crazed ladies, I did not want to be responsible for him, at his advanced age, suffering a coronary while in the saddle.
In his defense, the major did ask me into his office, said he was sorry, and made excuses for how hard it was to locate Mai.
“These mysterious little Oriental ladies, Joe, they’re here, there and everywhere in this pretty pussy paradise of a town. None of them have last names of colleagues they willingly share, let alone their own.”
“Nice alliteration on the Ps, sir.”
He looked at me. “Private Joe, how you talk, there are times when you can be as inscrutable as any Chinaman. These gals aren’t listed in the phone book, if there even is a phone book. They don’t have Social Security numbers. If they own motor vehicles, they’re likely not registered with the DMV, if there is a DMV. It’s like that series, Naked City, where the background voice says, ‘There are eight million stories in the naked city.’ We got a bundle of them in Saigon, too. See what I’m driving at?”
“Inscrutable as any Chinaman” was the Zigster’s reference to Chairman Mao and his Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Should I take it as a compliment or insult?
“I guess so, sir.”
He had framed pictures all over his desk, exclusively of women. Some old, some young. Each was slim and appealing. They could’ve been any Caucasian females in the universe but his four exes. I didn’t ask who they were. If he cared to tell me about his photographic harem, he’d tell me.
When I think of Major Blue and those photographs now, I’m reminded of the train ride Sally and I took in conjunction with our Lowell Observatory visit. A touristy affair, the train traveled on trestles and wound through Arizona mountain passes. The scenery was spectacular, the wildlife abundant.
There were two fortyish couples in the seats ahead of us. The men were florid and sported pot guts. They frequently slipped out to the deck to have a puff. The women were fit and vivacious. They chatted nonstop, obviously bored with the train trip and their hubbies. They’d be attractive widows in their fifties, hot to trot after a suitable period of mourning.
***
Thereafter, Major Blue reported to me daily, “No luck, Joe. None. I have feelers out. I’ve called in beaucoup markers. Your sweetie vanished into thin air. But I’ll keep working on it. My middle name is tenacity.”
Frustrating as it was, I attempted to remain patient.
The Tan Son Nhat library had expanded, spilling into converted hootches. On the off chance my Dragon Lady miraculously turned up, I browsed their poetry section. I’d write Mai a poem if I could script one as perfect as her.
Yeah, correction. I know she isn’t perfect, likely being a Commie spy and guerrilla and so forth. But you know what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder and the memory grow weaker.
I was going to give it a whirl, even if I didn’t see her again. I’d use the books as inspiration, not to copy verbatim. Well, okay, semi-plagiarism. I’d be a poet of sorts, a half-assed bard, and she’d swoon. It was probably as close as I’d ever gotten (or ever would get) to a non-sexual fantasy inspired by a woman.
The handful of poetry books did not circulate. My Paradise Lost was there. The other volumes were dusty and moldy. The problem was how to obtain them. I couldn’t check them out. I’d tried earlier with a recent best-seller, a biography of Queen Victoria. Request denied. Thanks to CWO R. Tracy, crackerjack library shamus, and my prior history of overdue books, I was at the very top of their shit list, capitalized and underlined in red.
The poems I wanted were written by sensitive and romantic chicks. Their names were Bronte, Dickinson, and my gal, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I knew the names, but with the exception of Browning, very little of their work. My myriad college majors did not include flowery literature. In retrospect, I should’ve majored in verse that disastrous quarter I plunged into pre-veterinary medicine.
I decided to try an old reliable method, a bribe. I asked the clerk at the counter, a listless specialist-4. “How much to buy these?”
He sniffed the fungus and examined the yellowed, curled edges. “They’re ours?”
“Yep.”
“You wanna buy these?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Where’d you find ’em?”
“On the shelf next to astrology.”
“You like poetry?”
“Sure do.”
“They’re yours. Merry Xmas.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he repeated, eyeing me tentatively, suspecting that any GI keen on poetry was light in his loafers.
“Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it. Gotta make space for the Mickey Spillanes arriving soon.”
I left with my poetry, legal as could be. I felt upright, virtually civic-minded.
My plan adjusted to having that Browning one translated into Vietnamese and elegantly bound. Me and my horny, rose-colored memory, I’d just whip it on Mai and enjoy her reaction. It was the thought that counted.
I didn’t follow through. Browning’s antique style represented a challenge, regardless of one’s English-Vietnamese proficiency. I worried that something would be lost and/or gained in the translation. I worried I’d come across as a dope. Like the dope I was wasting all this time on poetry.
In addition to my Dragon Lady anxiety, I was developing a case of short-timer’s paranoia. I had what I thought of as The Triple S: Scared Shitless Superstitious. A real soldier, a grunt in a paddy, knew he was slated to catch a bullet the day before he was due to rotate. That was understandable.
In my duties as a desk jockey at USMACV-SHUFO, it’d be my luck to croak from an infected paper cut. They had all manner of bacteria in tropical Asia. Or I’d succumb to melancholia and ennui and the vapors, pining for my Dragon Lady.
Thanks to the TV I’d acquired for him and his companion, Major Blue was living in a state of unmarital bliss. His lady friend treated him like a maharaja.
“It’s enough to make a man go engagé,” he told me.
“Awn-gaw-jhay?”
“Engagé. That’s a Frog word for going native.” He held thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart. “I’m that close to engagé, Joe. That close.”
Major Blue appreciated my efforts and empathized with my short-timer jitters. He did not push me to stretch my neck any farther onto the chopping block by dabbling in the black market. Sorry, Mr. Singh.
The morning I had thirty-nine days and a wakeup, per that calendar in my head, Major Blue came to my desk, winked, and casually tucked a folded piece of paper into my shirt pocket. It was a note in Mai’s handwriting saying to please be at the Continental Palace terrasse at high noon.
I came out of my chair as if shot from a cannon. My unintelligible shout startled everyone at USMACV-SHUFO within a one-hundred-decibel radius. Needless to say, I complied to her request, stopping en route at a flower vendor for a single white lily.
***
It took a moment to recognize Mai. She sat by herself at an interior table. She wore an áo-dài and big dark glasses that nearly covered her stratospheric cheekbone
s. Compared to her, Mata Hari and the Mona Lisa and the entire Hollywood stable of starlets were a kennel’s worth of bowwows.
She stood and held up a single white lily. I reciprocated. Without preamble, my Dragon Lady and I kissed lightly and exchanged lilies cross-handed. If anybody on the terrasse snickered because we were as saccharine and maudlin as any scene in any Rock Hudson-Doris Day flick, it’d be pure envy.
I could barely breathe, let alone talk. I stared. I wanted info. I wanted something. I wanted her. I was at the seventh grade sock hop.
She said, “Your people clumsily searched for me. They made my neighbors and friends uneasy. To put a stop to it, I left a note under your office door. I wanted to contact you, Joe. I wanted to so much, but I had not generated sufficient nerve.”
So much for Major Blue’s ace detective squad.
We sat and I said, “I’ve had sleepless nights over you, Mai. I can’t stop thinking of you.”
“I came to say farewell.”
Something was wrong with her English because nothing was wrong with her English.
“Farewell. As in for good?”
“Regrettably, yes.”
“No.”
She lifted a delicate palm. “Yes. Fini. It is unavoidable.”
“Fini to where? And why are speaking like a Stanford grad in English lit?”
“I cannot divulge where. I shall explain later.”
“You’re American, not Vietnamese, aren’t you?”
“No, Joe, I am Vietnamese.”
“North Vietnamese, huh?”
“Vietnamese.”
“Level with me, Mai. C’mon, who are you? Why and where do you come and go? The night I couldn’t find you at either of your places and you evaded me on the subject, which was and is fishy.”
She bent forward and squeezed my wrist. “Joe, please, no.”
“Why not, Mai? Talk to me, love of my life.”
This was as close as I could come to asking her if she’d known about the satchel, asking her why she wanted to kill me and the best friend I’d ever have. I was a chickenshit, not wanting to know, because if I heard the truth and it was the wrong truth, I’d have to get up and walk out before I wrung her neck.
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