Another Man's Moccasins

He studied me a good long time with the dead eyes. “Your official investigation was to be four weeks in length, but I’m going to see about getting that rescinded to three and get you out of here early.”

“Sir, but my orders from HQ...”

“You mean those orders about an investigation that you ignored because you were out joyriding in Khe Sanh?” I didn’t say anything, so he stood up and walked around his desk. He looked at my arm, still in the sling, and the sutured split on my eyebrow where I’d run into Henry. “How’s that investigation going, Lieutenant?” I started to speak, but he cut me off. “The job you were sent here to do? How’s that going?”

My head hurt, and I figured informing him that drugs were rampant in every part of the country and that I’d been warned off by his own personnel wasn’t going to make my situation any better. “Not so good, sir.”

He folded his arms and sat on the edge of his desk. “In the remaining time period in which we are to be blessed with your presence, you will confine yourself to this investigation and to this air base.” He shook his head at my incompetence. “Do you read me?”

I thought about those comic book manuals for the M16s. “Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

It was late in the afternoon—that point in the Asian day when the sun seemed like it just wouldn’t die. I walked out to Gate 055 and to the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge with the explicit idea of getting epically hammered. There weren’t too many people in the place, so I got four beers from the bar and retreated to my weapon of choice. I took off my sling and tossed it on top of the piano, doodled a little in the key of F and then attempted to slide into some Fats Waller.

Mai Kim came over and pulled up a bar stool to watch me play. The Stars and Stripes was folded up under her arm, but she didn’t ask for a lesson. I guess my mood was evident. She hovered there, though, looking at me. “Hey, Mai Kim.”

She smiled and crossed her legs. “Hi, you back?”

“For a little while.”

She looked concerned. “You go to America?”

I sipped the first of the second brace of beers. “Eventually, but for now it will just be BHQ in Chu Lai.”

She leaned forward to look at my face and the bandages on my forearm. “You hurt?”

I looked up and was struck by the symmetry of her China-doll face, framed by the black silk hair. “Not so bad.”

“You sad?”

“A little.” I continued to look at her and noticed she seemed down, too. “How ’bout you?”

She smiled a flicker of a smile that died before it could catch. “Tennessee boyfriend, he no write.”

“He rotate home?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “What you think about?”

“A girl.” I thought about the blonde back in Durant and wondered if she was still around.

She seemed even sadder. “American girl?”

“Yep.” I continued to vamp the stride piece “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” my left hand alternating between single notes at the lower portion of the keyboard and chords toward middle C.

She made an attempt at brightening, the smile catching a little at the corner of her mouth. “This my favorite song, you play.” I kept the title to myself, even though I think she knew it, and continued playing. “You tell me about America?”

“Big subject...”

She reached out and stroked the side of my brow, careful to avoid the stitches. “Tell me favorite place again.”

“Back home?”

Her fingers brushed through my hair and then settled on my shoulder. “Yes.”

The words flowed like the stream I was thinking of, and I smiled back at her. “There’s a spot in the southern part of my county in Wyoming, by the Hole in the Wall down near a place called Powder Junction.”

“Hole in the Wall?”

“Yep. I told you, remember? It’s a famous spot where the outlaws used to hide out.”

“Outlaws.”

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” She nodded her head in recognition. I thought about how, after serving three-quarters of his sentence, George LeRoy Parker had been brought before Governor William H. Richards and declared that he would never rob another bank in Wyoming. He was released and, true to his word, never robbed another Wyoming bank—nobody said anything about Colorado. “They took cover near where Buffalo Creek spills out of the canyon just as you get to these gigantic red walls that run fifty miles.” I thought about the big, wary trout that swam in the sun-sparked cold waters below the narrow-leaved willows. “There’s an old ghost town called Bailey, and near there, it’s the best fishing in all the Bighorn Mountains.”

“Bailey, Bighorn Mountains.”

“Yep.”

“Mai Kim!” Le Khang’s voice called from the other side of the room. She turned and looked at him and at the ready airman with the mustache who stood by the counter.

She looked at me, smiled, and got off her stool. “You go back there?”

I set my bottle back on the piano and stared at the keys. “I don’t know . . .”

She slipped her hand from my shoulder onto my wounded arm and carefully stroked the gauze and bandages that were wrapped there. “This girl, she there?”

I laughed a short exhale. “Yep.”