I was at the airport last night seeing a family member off from Da Nang, Vietnam to Seoul, Korea.  In the San Francisco Bay Area, if you’re going on a trip of any length you’ll take a cab, Uber, or Lyft, maybe get a friend or family member to drop you at the International Terminal.  Maybe you’ll use Skypark or one of the other parking services with a shuttle, at least then your car will be clean on your return.  Under no circumstances will you leave your car in the care of Long Term Parking at SFO.  That’s just a rookie mistake.

But not so here in Vietnam.  When someone in the family is departing or arriving the entire family piles into as many cabs as needed to get everyone to the airport for the event.  After the bags and boxes going on the flight are checked, there are a couple of hours to kill in the airport coffee shop.  Last night while waiting for the flight, the conversation turned to what I do for breakfast.  This discussion apparently needed input from everybody in our group.  Nearly every other meal is taken with the family at Uncle Hung and Aunt Thu’s house, but in the morning I usually like to take my time and roll into the day with a couple of trúng gà, or fresh eggs, a few slices of Ba Roi (bacon), toasted bread, and the strongest Vietnamese coffee imaginable.  I knew it was a mistake to let the conversation go down that road as soon as a debate began about how, where, and when to buy fresh chicken eggs.  I had fooolishly noted the difference between the flavor of the eggs from the big open-air market where everything is fresh each day and the local VinMart (kind of a Vietnamese 7-Eleven without the hot dogs). I know from experience that the matter at hand is going to be proved in some way, usually by my Aunt Thu.

Got back from the airport late, wasn’t tired, so I did some reading and made some notes before bed.  Slept in this morning.

I awake confused.  Rain is falling outside my window looking out over Châu Thi Vīnh Té.  My mouth is parched, I was dreaming deeply about a crazy elephant ride in the desert.  There is an insistent knock at my apartment door.  I came to only because I have to.  Pulled on a t-shirt and opened the door to Uncle Hung.  He has fresh chicken eggs and freshly baked bread in a clear plastic bag, obviously sent by Aunt Thu from the market where she works selling a delicious bean desert .  She will always have the last word.

Guess it’s time to get up and get going.  Happy breakfast everyone!

 

(Excerpt: Letter From Lena) Lena was born into a hostile, bitter world.  The year is 1972, near the end of the “American War”.  Nearly every Vietnamese has reason to hate the U.S.  In the countryside, thousands of homes had been burned for nothing more than being in the way of the war.  Families that had worked the same land for generations were uprooted, moved to places unknown to them.  Urban Vietnamese were increasingly dependent on the U.S. War economy, many forced into the black market, prostitution, and drug dealing to survive.

Northerners hated Americans for occupying their divided country, while Southerners hated Americans for abandoning them, leaving a struggling independent nation to certain defeat at the hands of the communists.  Much of the anger, hatred of everything American, was directed at the ones left behind, the children of U.S. military personnel.  Lena was one of these.  At war’s end, the people of her village, her neighbors, outcast Lena, decisively, unconditionally.

But that was outside the house, in the village streets, at school.  Within the confines of her dark, cool, home Lena was safe.  In there, with her grandmothers Phai and Tuoi, and grandfather Dat protecting, guiding, gently showing her the ways of this strange new world, Lena would know the comfort of how it is to be loved completely.  Without sin, without judgment for crimes  she would be punished for, crimes not of her making.

Outside, in the raw, pitiless village, she would learn the sharp barb of unfocused hate – hatred not of who she is, but of what she represents.  Lena is a white face in a sea of unforgiving yellow.  School is the worst.  Here the daughter of an American is not wanted and cannot hide. 

Lena stands in the familiar classroom corner, counting cracks in the concrete wall.  Her face is six inches from the bare wall that long ago shed the last vestige of paint.  She knows every crevice, every bump, every hole that might contain a spider who, on a good day, will venture out to entertain her.  Her teacher, Mr. Phan, has ordered Lena to stand in her well-known corner at attention, ramrod straight.  Now in her second month at school, the teacher doesn’t even waste words with Lena, only gestures sternly with his head toward the corner.  With eyes defiantly glaring at each of her grinning classmates in turn, Lena retreats to her corner.

Lena thinks of this as her corner, as other students rarely occupy it.  She is dressed like all the other girls, white blouse, pleated blue skirt, red neckerchief, but knows that she is different. Her skin is lighter and she is noticeably taller than her fellow students.  Today, like everyday, she is taunted by the other students while outside at exercise.  She has been called a “half-breed dog” before, but today Lena heard a word spit at her by a girl named Cuc that surprised and confused her.

As the bell was struck for the lineup to return to class, “Go home, you American bastard!”, rang in Lena’s ears.  Not sure about the true meaning of the insult, it is an insult nonetheless and has to be answered.  Lena lunged for Cuc, catching the retreating girl by her red neckerchief and dragged her to the hard dusty ground.  As the two girls struggled, Cuc screaming, the Headmaster lifted Lena to her feet and tossed her toward the line of children, many of them laughing openly.  Cuc was lifted gently to her feet and escorted, crying, into the building by the Headmaster.  As the line of boys and girls entered the classroom, Mr. Phan caught Lena’s eye, ordering her to the corner once more.

Lena knew the word “bastard” and roughly knew what it meant, but she wasn’t sure why her aggressor had called her an “American”.  She isn’t American, she is Vietnamese.  She has lived in An Cu village all of her life.  Her mother, her grandfather, her grandmothers, all are Vietnamese.  Lena speaks Vietnamese and thinks only in Vietnamese.  Lena’s father is an American soldier, but he is long gone. She knows not a word of English.  Lena is Vietnamese in her mind and soul.

Lena learned early in her school career that in her corner, imagination, letting her mind wander, is her only relief.  She would often try to picture her father, a man she had never known.  Though she was born 8 months after he had left Vietnam, she was sure he was out there somewhere, desperately trying to get back to her and her family village just outside Da Nang.  She would shut her eyes, grimacing, willing her brain to conjure up an image, any image of the man she most wanted in the world.  Try as she might his face would not come to her.  She relied on the recollections, the imprecise memories of her grandfather and grandmothers for clues to this man she knew it was her mission in life to find.

Lena’s grandfather Dat would tell her not to worry, “when life is back to normal your dad will come to get you and take you to America.  In America, it is like Heaven.  To stay in Vietnam is like Hell.”

Excerpt, “Letter from Lena”:  On my early evening return to base camp in Da Nang, I stopped by the Headquarters Hooch to turn in my  paperwork and get a look at the duty roster.  My name wasn’t listed for guard or gate security duty for the next few days since I had been on the road and the First Sergeant obviously didn’t know when I would get back.  That meant I had a couple of days off before work would begin again with a new class of Vietnamese tank crewmen.

I walked down the dirt path to Hooch 12 in the slowly receding heat of the day.  Inside the hooch it was slightly cooler but not by much.  The dark interior reminded me of the opium dens in Saigon, quiet, smoky, a soft cough here and there, the smell of dope in the air.  Henderson and Chicken Man were dead asleep on their cots just inside the hooch door.  The bunks of Justice, Gibson, and Gomez were empty.  Each of the men had built up a protective barrier around his cot, using empty ammunition crates, cardboard beer cases, and odd-sized plywood pieces scrounged from the trash pile.  Camouflage poncho liners and mosquito netting were rigged to give a man some precious space he could call his own.

My closest friend Schaefer was seated on the floor, head thrown back on the bunk next to mine, drifting on a heroin dream.  Drool rolled freely from his open mouth down his chin onto his green undershirt.

Schaefer grew up in the Highland Park neighborhood in Detroit, just off Woodward Avenue.  His dad had been an alcoholic Chrysler assembly plant employee who disappeared from Schaefer’s life in the early sixties.  His mother was too poor or dispirited to leave HP when all the other white people did.  So she and her only son just stayed.  Two white faces in a crumbling slum floating in a sea of black.

  After his eighteenth birthday in 1969 Schaefer walked into the Army Recruitment Office on 12^th Street and asked if he could go to Vietnam.  The recruiter assured him that he could.

Schaefer had used junk on the streets in Detroit before his enlistment.  The nearly pure heroin he quickly found in Vietnam was not like anything he had experienced on the streets of Highland Park.  Schaefer told me once while he was nodding in and out that he was never leaving Vietnam.  He was home. Schaefer kept his promise.  Six months later, when his tour was up and it was time to board the Freedom Bird back to Detroit, he simply disappeared.  Walked away into the hustle of central Da Nang and vanished.

Collins and Blackjack sat on a far cot facing the door sharing a Thai stick, passing it back and forth without effort.  Mechanical, a well-rehearsed routine, economy of effort.  Take a long draw, hold it, pass the stick, exhale, repeat.  The two men were bare chested in the heat, wearing only green boxer shorts and jungle boots.  Blackjack had a necklace of oversized shark’s teeth around his neck.  His sweaty skin glistened like oiled ebony in the stifling heat.

“Hey, R.C., what’s up man?  Looks like you didn’t get killed or nothin’. Want a hit?”, asked Blackjack, using the voice all stoners use when holding it in, reluctant to give up the hit.

“No, man.  I gotta get my shit together.  I gotta go see a man about a girl,” I answered as Jack passed the joint back to Collins, a skinny pimpled blonde tank mechanic from Tennessee.

“No shit?  That’s cool.  Can you get me one while you’re goin’ to all that trouble?”

“Not that kind of girl, Jack.  This lady might be the real deal.  I gotta go ask her daddy if it’s cool to take her out.”

My daughter Lena and I share a fondness for hot coffee with milk.  This morning we met at a local cafe in our Da Nang neighborhood to have a cup before she, her sisters, and two nieces took off for a five day holiday in Thailand.  None of them have been to Thailand, only Lena and Ha have been out of Vietnam.  I wasn’t invited.  Girls only vacation I was told.  Oh well, I’ve been anyway, but that was 45 years ago and a whole other story…  After the girls’ departure, I spent a couple hours working.  Then it started to rain, so I decided to take a walk across town to Dông Tiên bakery where  I was certain I would find fresh sliced bread for my new toaster.  Da Nang is a wonderful walking city, especially in a light rain.  The rain drops are fat and warm, like being wrapped in a blanket on a windy day.  The sidewalks are beautifully crafted out of stone, but mostly unusable since there’s so much stuff in the way.  Sandwich, noodle, and mango smoothie carts, motorbikes, and just stuff.  I spend a lot of time walking in the street, particularly since the trees are manicured for a five foot tall population.  I’m six feet and keep hitting my head.  Easier going in the street.

My favorite time to walk is just after lunch when the city is taking a nap. It’s a weird kind of quiet for an urban area.  High energy from the early morning until 1:00 and then everything just stops.

Dropped in at a cafe for a sugary lemon drink and to use the men’s room.  My Vietnamese is steadily improving, one word at a time, but I’m still pretty much limited to getting my self fed, finding a bathroom, and getting sketchy directions that may or may not be accurate. The sign in the men’s room fascinated me, reminding me that even though Da Nang has all the trappings of a vibrant modern city, it still has one foot in the rice paddies.  Clear directions though.  I think I got everything right.

When I returned to my apartment, the manager, a lovely Vietnamese woman named Trinh knocked on my door.  Trinh doesn’t speak English, so our conversations are usually carried on in pantomime, like this morning when I acted out someone replacing a light bulb.  Happy to report that my charade worked, the light is working fine as of now.  Anyway, Trinh had two ripe bananas on an ornate china plate that she offered me when I answered the door.  I accepted the plate with enthusiasm and said my thank you’s in both english and vietnamese.  That wasn’t enough, however.  She was pointing at the bananas and trying to explain something about them well beyond my vietnamese language capability.  She kept talking and pointing and I kept smiling, trying to get some sort of clue about what she was saying.  I continued to nod and smile until I realized that she wanted her plate back.  She got the plate, I got the bananas, and I think we’re both reasonably happy with the outcome.  One word at a time.

The Last Toaster in Da Nang

My nieces, Xuân and Ha, took me last evening to The Big C Supermarket in downtown Da Nang.  The Big C is in the middle of a trendy shopping center featuring products from Coach, Gucci, and Cartier.  The supermarket is three floors connected by escalator, filled with a wide assortment of groceries, health care products, and appliances – and on a busy Wednesday evening, Vietnamese shoppers.  The place was jammed.  My nieces are excited to shop for their upcoming trip to Thailand.  They are shopping for rice noodles, snacks, and chili sauce, just in case Thailand has suddenly run out of food.

I’ve been here a week, so my apartment is well-stocked by now, but I have a shopping list of my own, you know, just fine-tuning for my two-month stay in Vietnam.  One of the items on my list is a toaster.  The food here in Da Nang is marvelous, but a sudden toast craving has come over me.  I don’t know exactly why, because I’m not a big eater of toast.  When ordering in my favorite Coastside breakfast restaurant, the 3-Zero Cafe at the Half Moon Bay Airport, I invariably ask Mark to hold the toast, give me a bowl of fruit instead.  But now, with the best Vietnamese food available in thousands of restaurants and around the corner at my Aunt Thu’s house,  I am driven by a vicious desire for toast.  Perhaps a touch of home-sickness, maybe just my incipient desire to have things my own way in a land 10,000 miles from home.

Xuân, Ha and I shopped together, they with a red plastic shopping basket, me with my own.  Xuân, helpful as always, kept asking me what I was looking for as my basket filled with hand towels, trash can liners, a small wastebasket for my office, fruit yogurt (buy 8, get 1 free!).  I wasn’t even sure exactly how to describe what I wanted, “you know Xuân, an electric device that cooks bread.” Toasters in Vietnam just aren’t a Thing.  The Big C has an appliance section, I’ve seen it before.  I led the girls into the midst of it without explanation.

On a back shelf, I found a very nice, simple model, the only one in the vast appliance section filled with rice cookers, hotplates, and oddly, pink blenders.  A fine looking chrome and black Philips machine, although the toast slots were small.  I don’t think there is a Texas Toast version. The toaster carton was dust-covered. It’s possible I have cornered the market on toasters in Da Nang.

The teenaged Vietnamese girl who worked in that department insisted on demonstrating the toaster to me, even though I am sure she had never operated one or even thought about a toaster before.  She repeated several times that there was no service agreement available with the toaster.  I told her I thought that would be OK.  To demonstrate, she plugged the toaster in to the 220 volt outlet, stuck her hand down in the toast slot, and reached with her other hand to operate the toasting lever.  I quickly stopped her, unplugged the toaster and told her it was just fine, It’s exactly what I wanted.  She repackaged the toaster with some difficulty, re-taped the box, and handed it to me uncertainly.  I’m not sure she knew what I was going to do with such a thing.

With a new appliance in the household, I was inspired to walk to the market this morning in search of trúng gá, or chicken eggs.  The gá part is really crucial since it means “chicken”.  There are a variety of eggs for sale of all sizes in the market, but I have a Western squeamishness for any egg other than from a chicken.  I got there too late (9:15), all sold out.  Maybe buôi chiêu, this afternoon.   Those eggs, when found, will go nicely with toast.  Now all I have to do is find sliced bread.

I was walking down a quiet shady street through my neighbourhood in Da Nang, Vietnam today at noon.  It was hot, but the cool breeze of the South China Sea made for a comfortable walk.  Two teenaged Vietnamese boys gestured wildly toward the sky, beconing me over to them.  “Grandfather, come quickly!”, one of them shouted.  Feeling a minor bristling at being called grandfather by these long-haired, urban-hip kids, I stood my ground. One of the boys came across the road and pulled me by the arm out from under the shade of the trees to see this marvellous sight.  He took off his sunglasses, passed them to me so I could get a clear polaroid view.  The boys asked me what it was, but I had never actually seen a sun halo, also known as a 22 degree halo caused by sunlight passing through ice crystals in cirrus clouds.  I was tempted to say something about luck, but the Vietnamese take luck very seriously.  Not a subject to mess with.  I just shrugged, thanked them and moved on.  The halo was still in place when I got to my apartment so I took this photo.  In framing the shot I thought the electrical wiring through the center of the shot evoked something clever about the source of power on earth, but on reflection I think I was just too lazy to move out from under the wires.

This past week the family had dinner at Tokyo BBQ, a loud, chaotic place with an amazing menu.  Much of the food is delivered to the table uncooked to be barbecued or stirred into a hotpot.  I just kind of watched since there were a number of cooks at the table far more capable than I.

Some of the dishes served obviously needed to be recorded.  This is one of the most fascinating characteristics of dining out in Vietnam.  This country’s food history will be well documented.  The food is brilliantly presented and certainly worthy of note.  I often wonder if when this generation ages, people will sit around in living rooms passing digital devices around and musing on the amazing plate of cod back in ’17.  Maybe I’ll be one of them.

 

Just got back from a swim in the South China Sea.  The beach is about a 15 minute walk from my apartment in Da Nang, Vietnam.  Took a shower and sat down at my desk to write.  I’m in the middle of a chapter about my first date with Lena’s mother, Huong, forty-six years ago in war-torn Da Nang, not two miles from where I sit.  And nothing.  Writer’s block like they haven’t invented yet.  No reason, just no words.  Sometimes it happens.  So I broke one of my rules.

I’ve got this rule, self-imposed, about FaceBook.  I came up with the FB rule one morning a couple years ago when I looked up from a FaceBook session on my phone and it was noon.  It had been long before noon when I started down that Like, Share, Comment path.  The rule that came out of that wasted morning:  I look at FaceBook once in the morning for 10 minutes, and once in the evening for 10 minutes.  I Like stuff I like, Share very little, and Comment rarely.  And I never get to the end of my news feed.  Whatever I get to in 20 minutes a day is what I get to.  I’m certain that there is a gob of life-changing stuff that I’m missing, but that’s the rule.

Today I broke that rule.  Sitting at my desk, looking out my window over Châu Thi Vīnh Té, locked deep in writer’s block, I regretfully reached for the phone.  Guiltily pushed the FaceBook button, and there was a post, right on top, from my friend Jim Howard, “This is good shit”.  Of course I had to read it with a recommendation like that from someone who’s judgement I admire.  And Jim was right.  A Blog titled “Three Lies That Kept Me From Simplifying My Life” is one of the best pieces I’ve read of late.  Don’t know why, maybe it just hit me right.  Maybe it’s just that good. The author is Allison Fallon.  This woman knows a bunch of stuff I want to know, so I bought her book, “Packing Light”.  Downloaded it from Amazon right onto my iPad and now I know what I’ll be reading in bed tonight.  And, oh yeah.  Writers block seems to have faded with the afternoon sun.  Just never know where packing light and breaking some of your own rules might take you.

 

There was a rooster outside my Aunt Thu’s house.  I eat at the house twice a day with Thu, her husband Hung, niece Xuân, and cousin Nga.  Today niece Ha came on a business visit, but that’s a whole other story.  Thu is easily the best cook on the planet.  Hands down. Every item she serves is fresh from the market that day.  The vegetables were in the ground yesterday.  The seafood, clams, fish, scallops, shrimp were in the ocean this morning, less than a mile from her house.  The beef and pork is so fresh it has never been refrigerated.  And the chicken…  Oh yeah, back to the story.

 This rooster lived on the side yard of Thu’s Da Nang house. For a reason known only to him, he went to crowing loud and long each midday meal.  Crowing so loud normal conversation inside the house was impossible.  I was greatly amused watching the faces of the family, each reacting to the riotous bird in a different way.  My uncle Hung laughed, exchanging amused looks with me.  My niece Xuân was embarrassed, but it doesn’t take much to embarrass her.  My Aunt Thu, however, was highly annoyed and hailed invective whenever the rooster started up, gesturing and giving Hung an earful.  Hung just smiled.

The next day I arrived at the house after my usual walk through the beautiful quiet neighbourhood street my family lives on, not far from my apartment.  I always enjoy walking the neighbourhood streets, everyone sitting in the doorways greeting me as I pass.  “Hello!”, they shout.  If a group of men are sitting together, they gesture me over and offer me a beer, laughing as I tell them I am late for lunch.  Maybe next time, but every day they are there, every day they offer me a beer, and every day I am apparently late for lunch.  After school and on the weekends there are a gang of twenty kids who stop me and demand to know my name, each in turn supplying his or her name and saying the one English phrase they all have obviously been taught in school, “Hello, my name is Tuan. How are you today?”  As I kick off my sandals in the doorway I am welcomed as usual by Hung.  I can hear Xuân in the back taking a shower. Aunt Thu shouts a greeting through the open window to the kitchen.  The table is beautifully set as it is every day.  We sit down, Xuân joins us, her hair still wet.

As we share the meal and make small talk about the day, our plans, how my work on the book is coming along, I am aware suddenly how deliciously quiet it is.  Enjoying the moment, thinking nothing of the unusual quiet, I continue to work quickly with my chopsticks, my rice bowl constantly filled and refilled by the relentless Aunt Thu.  Then it occurs to me.  No Rooster.  Our family is able to talk and laugh in normal tones without interruption.  Dipping a fresh cucumber in nuóc châm (ubiquitous fish sauce found on every Vietnamese table), I innocently ask, “So where’s the rooster today?”

Aunt Thu is already reaching across the table with her chopsticks to deliver yet another delicious morsel to my rice bowl.  “Here, have some more chicken.  We have plenty.”

 

 

Over lunch this afternoon the subject of Da Nang’s world famous China Beach came up.  Two daughters and a niece were adamant that it was called and always had been called My Khe beach.  Took me a lot of convincing that during the American war, the US Army had taken over the entire beach line running from Son Tra down to My Khe as an R&R Center and named the entire thing “China Beach”.  No Vietnamese allowed.

In Retrospect it seems rather arrogant that we took one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and made it our own.  My good friend Dat had a souvenir shop just outside the gates of China Beach.  He sold scrapbooks, lighters with unit emblems, and a lot of rolling papers.

There was also a stroll of very friendly Vietnamese girls near the entrance to China Beach R&R Centre.  

In the late 1980s there was a TV show called “China Beach” that made being in Vietnam

look a whole lot cooler than it really was.

Letter from Lena (excerpt): I walked down the dirt path to Hooch 12 in the slowly receding heat of the day.  Inside the hooch it was slightly cooler but not by much.  The dark interior reminded me of the opium dens in Saigon, quiet, smoky, a soft cough here and there, the smell of dope in the air.  Henderson and Chicken Man were dead asleep on their cots just inside the hooch door.  The bunks of Justice, Gibson, and Gomez were empty.  Each of the men had built up a protective barrier around his cot, using empty ammunition crates, cardboard beer cases, odd-sized plywood pieces scrounged from the trash pile, anything that could be used to give a man some precious space he could call his own.

My closest friend Schaefer was seated on the floor, head thrown back on the bunk next to mine, drifting on a heroin dream.  Drool rolled freely from his open mouth down his chin onto his green undershirt.  Schaefer had used junk in his home town of Detroit before his enlistment.  The nearly pure heroin he quickly found in Vietnam was not like anything he had experienced before.  Schaefer told me once while he was nodding in and out that he was never leaving Vietnam.  He was home. Schaefer kept his promise.  Six months later, when his tour was up and it was time to board the Freedom Bird back to Detroit, he simply disappeared.  Walked away into the hustle of central Da Nang and vanished.

Collins and Blackjack sat on a far cot facing the door sharing a Thai stick, passing it back and forth without effort.  Mechanical, a well-rehearsed routine, economy of effort.  Take a long draw, hold it, pass the stick, exhale, repeat.  The two men were bare chested in the heat, wearing only green boxer shorts and jungle boots.  Blackjack had a necklace of oversized shark’s teeth around his neck.  His sweaty skin glistened like oiled ebony.

“Hey, R.C., what’s up man?  Looks like you didn’t get killed or nothin’. Want a hit?”, asked Blackjack, using the voice all stoners use when holding it in, reluctant to give up the hit.

“Yeah, man, but just ti ti.  I gotta get my shit together.  I gotta go see a man about a girl,” I answered as I accepted the joint from Collins, a skinny pimpled blonde tank mechanic from Tennessee.

“No shit?  That’s cool.  Can you get me one while you’re goin’ to all that trouble?”

“Not that kind of girl, Jack.  This lady might be the real deal.  I gotta go ask her daddy if it’s cool to take her out.”

The next morning came quickly.  My sleep had been deep and dreamless.  This morning was a Saturday, there would be no Vietnamese on the base, the camp was quieter than usual.  Soldiers went automatically about the morning ritual when in camp, cold shower and a shave, a stop at the plywood latrine box, a trip to the mess tent.  Breakfast in camp was always the same.  Runny scrambled egg substitute, something that looked vaguely like bacon or ham, coffee.  Maybe a bowl of oatmeal if you wanted a rock to sit in your stomach all day.  I passed on the oatmeal and returned to Hooch 12 to get ready for my meeting with Mr. Huynh Dat.

My best set of fatigues were hanging on a nail on the wall next to my cot, neatly pressed and spray starched by Gung.  Still green, unfaded from the unrelenting Vietnam sun, I saved this uniform for special occasions, like the infrequent company formations for the benefit of some visiting dignitary.  I pulled on the fatigue pants, blousing them neatly above my glossy black shined boots, also compliments of Gung.  I thought of Gung as I dressed, remembering her anger from our last conversation.  I hoped that when I saw her next her disappointment over my pursuit of Huong would be gone.

My green laundry bag was tied to the foot of my bed.  I shook all the dirty clothes, the socks, underwear, fatigues onto my bed, reached into my footlocker and dug out an unopened bottle of Martell Brandy.  The brandy, now wrapped safely in my laundry bag, would be the gift I would bring to Mr. Huynh Dat.

The half mile walk to the main camp gate took me up the hill through the middle of camp.  Past the mess tent, the showers, the latrine.  Privates new in country or out of favor with their Sergeant were busy pulling the cut-down 55 gallon drums out from under the latrine.  After adding diesel fuel to the filthy mess inside, they would light it and watch it burn for the next couple hours before replacing the drums in the latrine box.  The always present smell of burning excrement is one any Vietnam Vet can recall in an instant.  Once down the hill I was walking the red dirt road past the fence line bunkers, duty soldiers lying on sandbags, some dozing, some writing letters, some staring into the distance, others in quiet conversation.  The slight scent of burning dope wafted in the breeze like at an outdoor rock festival.

As I walked, I was greeted by men I knew, “Hey R.C., how much time you got?  Ten more days and I’m gonna break 100!”  Each and every one of us knew to the day how long we had to stay in Vietnam.  The 365 day tour policy in Vietnam created a surreal outlook on life.  Guys didn’t know or care about whether we were winning or losing, only about how many more days he had to endure. Every conversation included this vital statistic.  By the time I got to the gate my carefully shined boots were red with dust.

The main gate separated the orderly American military camp from the swirling chaos of Da Nang.  Inside, men moved about with quiet purpose while outside the gate prostitutes, beggars, hustlers, dealers, soda-sellers, and cowboys on smoking motorbikes churned in a maelstrom of color, noise and red dust.

I looked over the scene in the guard shack and was relieved to see that my hooch mate Gibs was on duty with another couple of guys I didn’t recognize.  He was wearing starched fatigues, a .45 automatic on his gunbelt, and a white SP (special police) helmet, his afro carefully compressed and hidden with the use of a woman’s stocking.  Gibs on duty was going to make my leaving camp an easy matter.  Normally I would be required to show a pass to leave the compound or wait until a vehicle appeared driven by someone I knew.  Since I didn’t have the necessary pass, Gibs was my ticket.  As I walked up he said, “Hey, my brother!”, and started in on the “dap” that he had taught me, an elaborate fist and open palm slap handshake that was the common greeting between closely bonded soldiers in Vietnam.

“Hey man, where you headed all dressed up and everythang?” Gibson spoke in a manner common to many enlisted blacks all over Vietnam, kind of a southern, hip jazz kind of riff that I’m pretty sure didn’t exist in his home town of Oxnard, California.