Another Man's Moccasins

Mendoza stood and stepped in close to me and looked up from the second button of my uniform. “More to the point, man, what are you doing out here?”

I didn’t like his tone, so I pushed him. I guess I misjudged my own strength, because he fell backward and bounced off the jeep before falling to the ground. I felt one of the security detail grab my arm, but I threw an elbow at him and he went away. Another guy grabbed my other arm, but I pushed his helmet down and slammed him away, too. I stood there for a second and looked down at the woman who was lying on a collection of sandbags in the crumbled remains of the old bunker.

I recognized her and reached down through the pain in my head. She looked as if she’d fallen, so I thought the only thing to do was help her up.

There was a jarring at the back of my head, and suddenly my eyes wouldn’t focus. I could hear loud voices coming through in waves—and the world pitched to the left. I slowly started shifting in the same direction so I tried to correct the problem by transferring my weight, but then my legs collapsed from under me like a weak chair.

I hit the ground and could feel people piling on top of me. I lay there and could see the familiar face now, the stillness of the hand stretching to the arm, and finally Mai Kim’s eyes, which did not move.

“It’s your move, and it’s been your damn move for about three minutes now.” Lucian had decided to bring the game to the jail.

I looked at the chessboard again and couldn’t remember a single tactic. “Sorry.”

I was black and, from all appearances, black was in deep trouble. I reached across and hooked a knight in to take one of his pawns, a move he immediately countered by taking my knight with a rook that had been loitering with intent.

“Damn. . . .”

He shook his head, tipped back his hat, and clutched his chin like a fastball he was preparing to deliver high and inside. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You havin’ flashbacks or what?”

I half smiled. “I guess I am—daydreams at least....”

“This all about that Viet-nam-ese girl from out on the highway? ”

“Yep.” I started to bring out my queen but thought better of it. “Her grandfather, the fellow I told you about?”

Lucian peered into the holding cell where Virgil sat slumped on the bunk with his back against the wall. He was staring at the space between us. Lucian nodded. “That Van Heflin character.”

Jesus.

Lucian’s malapropisms were usually reserved for the Indians, but the Vietnamese had given him a whole new venue.

“Tran Van Tuyen.” I explained the situation, along with the ambivalence of my feelings toward the man.

Lucian didn’t say anything but studied the board. “They ought’a burn down that ol’ ghost town, that or ship it off to Laramie, put in a slicky-slide and a carousel up and charge admission.”

I opted for a pawn, and he immediately stymied the move with the same rook. I thought about the old Doolittle Raider and his experience in that Japanese prison camp. “You ever think about the war? ”

"Mine?” I nodded, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Not so much as I used to.”

We sat there for a while, sitting on the folding chairs and looking at the chessboard balanced on the wastepaper basket between us. Every once in a while a question hangs in your throat waiting to be asked of the exact wrong person, but I asked it anyway. He laughed hard, fighting to catch his breath. “You?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “You could do with a dose of prejudice.”

It was, after all, the response I expected. I brought my queen out.

He sat there looking at the board as I watched him, the smile slowly fading from his face as his ears plugged with the racket of two radial-cylinder Pratt and Whitney engines roaring him into his past. I listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall and waited.

“We ditched just off the Chinese coast, and the impact pushed my copilot, Frank, through the windshield. We had two men that were wounded so bad that they drowned before we could get to shore. A civil patrol pulled Frank and me out and pretty well beat the shit out of us right there on the boat. I guess that was one of the scary parts; there were so many of ’em that I figured they’d just tear us apart. Near as I could make out, an officer in the Kempeitai pulled ’em off us and claimed us as prisoners of Tojo, and they shipped us off to Shanghai in occupied China.”

“They got ten of you, right?”

He worked his jaw, moved his other bishop, and then leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. It was like he’d been compacted there by the memories of his war. His sleeves were rolled up on his thin snap-front shirt, and I watched his Adam’s apple as it bobbed the top button a few times before he said anything. “They beat the shit out of us on a regular basis with them little bamboo, kendo swords, shinai. . . . Then they finally got around to shipping us off to Tokyo where they interrogated us for a couple more weeks.”