Another Man's Moccasins

I was startled by Cady’s voice and looked back up. I thought about all the wayward memories that had been harassing me lately, the recrimination, doubt, injured pride, guilt, and all the bitterness of the moral debate over a long-dead war. I sat there with the same feeling I’d had in the tunnel when the big Indian had tried to choke me. I was choking now on a returning past that left me uneasy, restless, and unmoored.

I chewed at the skin in the inside of my mouth and stared at the floor. “She was a bar girl at an air force base where I was sent on an investigation.” I glanced up at Henry. “You met her, when you came down.”

He nodded. “Before Tet.”

“Yep.” My eyes went back to the sun-scoured pattern at our feet, and I watched the dust that floated in and out of a sunshine that seemed far away.

Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam: 1967

Gusts of dust, pebbles, and dirt scoured the airfield as the two rotors of the big Chinook forced everyone to crouch and look away. The wind from the blades was enough to knock me down and lift tarmac sections of over a hundred pounds. I kept my eyes closed and waited for the stinging to stop. The big helicopter landed, the gun crew relaxed, and the .50 caliber machine guns went limp as if the will to fight had left the aircraft.

It had.

I felt a hand on my shoulder as someone gripped me and shoved me away from the swirling, filthy air. “Ya-tah-hey, white boy!”

I had gotten a message from battalion headquarters indicating priority one from Special Operations Group, Military Assistance Command. Everyone in the communications shack wanted to know what it was about, but I’d quietly taken the closed paper into the street outside to open and read the short note. “Hue and Dong Ha in last twenty-four. Stopping in for R & R tomorrow night, eighteen hundred. Nah-kohe.”

When I could see again, we were standing at the edge of the airstrip, and I noticed that the Bear was loaded for bear—unsecured weapons hung around him like casually prepared death. The Cheyenne Nation, RT One-Zero, Recon Team Wyoming, wore a claymore mine in a canvas satchel, with a homemade detonation device in his chest pocket, a string of the golf-ball-sized V-40 minigrenades, a CAR-15, and a sawed-off M79. He was weighed down with every ammunition pouch I knew of, along with a Special Forces tomahawk at his back. I tapped a finger on the explosive device at his chest. “You better disconnect the blooper on that thing; we’ve got a lot of loose radio frequency around here, and you’re liable to go off to the happy hunting ground.”

He didn’t move.

I shook my head and looked at him. “Did you think you were going to have to fight your way in?”

It was a tight, flat smile. “In or out; it makes little difference.”

He wasn’t traveling alone; beside him stood a recon Montagnard, as the French had named them. About half my height, the little guy was a fierce-looking individual issuing sullen looks from under his pith helmet. He also carried the cut-down version of the M16, as well as a suppressed .22 caliber High Standard, a 60 mm minimortar with ammo, and a Special Forces Randall Model 14 Bowie knife.

“Walt, this is Babysan Quang Sang.”

I stuck out my hand. “Glad to meet you.” He looked at my hand as if he’d never seen one. I waited a moment and then dropped it. "C’mon, I’ll buy you guys a beer.”

As we turned to go, Henry stepped into a lieutenant colonel who was headed the other way. The Bear’s movements slowed until he was absolutely still. “Watch where you are going.”

The light colonel stood there for a moment looking at the collective armament and at the tall Indian with the carved bone amulet in the image of a horse at his throat, the recon patch, and the ID bar that read STANDING BEAR. The half-bird then looked at the indig who in turn looked ready to pull his knife and leap for the officer’s throat. It took a moment for the colonel to respond, but when he did, he smiled. “That’s watch where you’re going, sir.”

It promised to be a stimulating forty-eight hours.

Action at the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge was well under way when we arrived, and there were no tables available, so we sidled up to the bar like a threesome of fur trappers from the great northwest. I ordered three Tiger beers, turned to toast my best friend in the world, and yelled to be heard over the crowd. “Good to see you alive!”

“Good to be alive!” He looked behind him and saw that the tiny Montagnard was being ingested by the crowd. Henry set his beer down, turned to pick Babysan up, and placed him on the bar between us. Quang Sang smiled as if this were an everyday occurrence and drank his beer in one breath. Le Khang gave me a warning look from the other side of the bar but quickly went back to polishing the glassware when Henry took off his cap and rested it between them. “So, this is where you have been spending the war?”

“I sometimes reconnoiter to the piano.” He nodded his head, knowing full well I was lying. “Henry, they cut your hair.”