Fiction

Norwegian Wood

            On the flight from Khe Sanh to Phu Bai no rockets hit the big chopper, no sniper rounds from an AK-47, no machine gun bullets through the thin metal bottom to mangle my legs—just misty morning with thick forests and April-green rice paddies floating beneath as we sped southeast. Large white birds flew below us. 
 

            I tried to think about Leanna. I hadn’t received a letter from her in months. But I wasn’t alone. Mail up on the plateau was sparse. Maybe the mail burned up with one of the choppers that got hit in the Tet Offensive or maybe the pogues in the battalion mail room were running behind. Maybe a letter from Leanna awaited me in Phu Bai right then.

            After we landed, I located First Battalion Rear and checked in at the transient barracks. The doofus lieutenant in charge sported utilities like the kind we wore stateside, new and starched. I started to laugh but he cut me a severe glance through thick black-rimmed glasses and ordered, “Get your butt down to the chow hall and eat, then go turn your weapon in.”

            I liked the idea of some hot chow after months of short rations and C-rats.

            I said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

           
He sneered, “If you need directions, report to the corporal at the desk in the next office.”

            I stopped at the corporal’s desk. He glanced at me like I was dirt. Must have been the ripped and dust-imbedded utilities I’d worn since January. I glowered back. He gave me directions to the chow hall and the battalion supply depot.

            I started to walk out of his office but turned back. “I didn’t get a lot of mail up on the plateau.”

            He said, “Maybe nobody loves you.”

            “I don’t think you pogues sent it up there.”

            He didn’t answer, just stared. He finally said, “What makes you think so?”

            I shrugged. “Like I said, Corporal, I haven’t had much since January.”

            He shook his head. My stomach erupted into a burn and I had to ball my fists to keep from grabbing him by the front of his fancy clean utility jacket and shaking him. I thought about Leanna instead, her shoulder-length blonde hair with the flip, her muscled calves, her cheerleader’s leap with full splits.

            I said, “Is there some way I can get my mail?”

            “You best forget it.”

            I didn’t want to forget it. Or Leanna’s face, or my mother’s chocolate chip cookies which were probably spoiled by now. And Leanna’s thin nose with the little knot about halfway down.

            Up there on the plateau, I’d imagine her tongue tangled inside my mouth. That helped keep all those rocket and artillery attacks jammed into a separate mental compartment; that and what I’d do with her when I got her away from her severe mother, her drunk dad. That’s what kept me from going nuts up there.

            I said, “I don’t want to forget about it.”

            He turned and looked out the window to his rear. There wasn’t anything out that window but another hut like the one I was standing in. He drummed his clean fingers on his desk and grunted. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth. He sighed, “Okay, Marine. I’ll see what I can do.”

            I said, “How soon, Corporal? I’m anxious.”

           
He squinted at me. “Check in after chow.”

           
I nodded.

            On the way to chow I thought about having to turn my weapon in. I didn’t like being stripped of my means of self-defense. What would I do if the gooks burst through the wire?

            As I entered the chow hall, the other marines stared at my old utility jacket. The smell of fresh-cooked food made my stomach grumble. Somebody laughed and I wondered if it was at me. I looked pretty damned ragged. My jungle boots were coming apart, my helmet cover stained with red mud.

            Gooks served the food, a couple of short, old men and some young girls all wearing black uniforms with white aprons. Take those aprons off, I thought, and they could be Charlie, waiting to ambush us.

            The last time I’d been down here, in the fall of ’67, I ate at a PX. Maybe I should go find it and get a cheeseburger, but then I figured gooks probably worked there, too.
 
            I looked around the chow hall and noticed a lot of marines chowing-down on roast beef and mashed potatoes with what smelled like real meat gravy and white bread and vegetables and milk and coffee and desserts of all kinds. My stomach growled and hurt, so I stuffed my reluctance and got a tray.

            The gooks in the chow line smiled at me but I kept my eyes down as they shoveled me food. I wonder why they wasted the effort of faking how they really felt. I found a place to sit among a bunch of office pogues. I had to glare to force one of them to move over and make a place for me at the end of the long trestle-table. As I sat down I noticed all their clean fingernails and scrubbed faces.

            One of them, a sergeant, said, “Who you with up there on the plateau?”

            “Bravo, Second Platoon.”

            “Saw a lot of shit, huh?”
           
My mouth full of mashed potatoes and gravy, I nodded.

            He said, “You know McCarthy?”

           
“No.”

           
He smiled at me, but I kept shoveling it in as fast as I could. All the marines chowing down plus the gooks in the serving line made tasty targets. Incoming would blast a hole in the wall and maim all of us. Could happen any minute. Would be a good time for it. Nobody paying attention.

            The sergeant said, “McCarthy and I were in supply school together. But after we got here, he volunteered to be a grunt.”

            “That so?”
           
“Yeah, crazy, huh?”

            I flicked my eyes up at him. He smiled again and looked at the men sitting around. They all laughed.

            Then somebody let out a goofy high-pitched giggle. Reminded me of Leanna’s laugh.

            I said, “Yeah, crazy.”

            The sergeant asked me about some other marines up there, but I hadn’t heard of them, so I didn’t respond. That laugh made me think about Leanna and my stereo and my records hidden under her bed. My Beatles collection, all my Stones albums. I wanted her to get a lot of enjoyment out of them while I was over here nearly dying for my don’t-give-a-shit fellow Americans. Before I left the States to come over to Nam, I told her she could listen to them if she took good care. Her and nobody else.

            I stuffed my gullet until I thought I’d pop—slabs of roast beef and gravy, green beans, apple crisp, hot rolls crammed with pats of butter. I drank a lot of water to help get the chow down my throat as fast as possible before an incoming artillery round crashed through the roof and killed us all.

            After I finished I belched real loud and again that high-pitched, goofy giggle caught me by surprise—just like Leanna’s. I wondered what she was doing for fun. Some lifer major glared at me from the officer’s mess. We had a little staring contest and when he turned and resumed eating, I went back to thoughts of Leanna and her having fun and with whom. I hadn’t had a letter in a long time.

            Later, back at the battalion transient barracks the corporal had a pile of mail bundled inside a thick rubber band. He said, “There might be more. This was all I could locate.”

            I said, “Much thanks.”

           
He nodded.

            Outside I thumbed through the envelopes. All but one was from my mother. I tossed those unread into the shit can beside the door of the hut.

The letter I kept was from one of Leanna’s friends. A friend of mine, too. Jinny. Sometimes I dated Jinny when Leanna and I were on the fritz. When I wanted to piss Leanna off. Jinny was horny for me but every time we tried to get intimate it was like I had one too many tongues and not enough hands. I guessed that meant I was for Leanna.

            I sniffed the letter to see if there was any perfume on it. It smelled like paper and red dust. Noticing the postmark, I thought, not that long ago, ten days, pretty fresh news.

            I folded the letter in half and slipped it in the front pocket of my utility jacket and walked down to the armory to turn in my weapon. The red land was scuffed where slit-trenches and fighting holes gouged the ground and a bright sun lit up the faded green sandbags that buttressed every bunker and wall. Mighty-Mites and six-bys ran up and down the dusty roads. Red grit hung in the afternoon. A lot of marines in fresh green utilities walked the streets, their faces flush like happy children. They looked well fed and a lot of them carried on with a saltier-than-you attitude. Some carried clean, black weapons, mostly .45 caliber side-arms, while others wandered around unarmed, grab-assing like there wasn’t a war going on outside.

            I found Battalion Supply. A lot of busy supply clerks milled between shelves stacked high with all kinds of gear and I wondered where clean web cartridge belts had been when we needed them, and the jungle boots, the cases of C-rations, camouflage utilities and helmet covers. I thought, I bet those have been here all along. Wonder why they weren’t sent up to the plateau where the fighting was going on. Maybe all the scuttlebutt was true, gear being traded to the Vietnamese for pot and cheap booze.

            I stopped at a counter and whistled at a corporal studying a mess of papers. He glanced at me. I nodded for him to come but he just sneered and went back to studying his papers. I stuck the thumb and forefinger of my right hand in between my lips and whistled again, this time creating a high-pitched shriek that I’m confident made everybody’s ears sting. A bunch of other supply pogues gave me an alarmed glance. I took half a step back. I didn’t like all those eyes watching me.

            The focus of my whistle stalked over and demanded. “What d’ya need, Marine?”

            He had green eyes. The same as Leanna.

           
I said, “The armory.”

            He glared towards a long hall and then pointed his index finger like a pistol. I nodded.

            He yelled, “You’re welcome,” as I walked away. I shot him the bird but not so he could see me.

            When I found the armory I recognized one of the marines working there. He’d been in our platoon before the shit hit the fan on the plateau. He looked well fed, too. So did the other marine working with him. I assumed the one I didn’t know was the assistant because he was cleaning an M-60 machine gun while my acquaintance was reading a fuck book. I couldn’t remember my acquaintance’s name, but I recalled his face, his short blond hair, brown eyes spaced too far apart, a square face and a regular-Joe nose. He looked at me and smiled. “Adams.”

            His hair was the color of Leanna’s.

            I wondered how he remembered my name. “Yeah, it’s me.”

            “Rotating home?”

           
“I’m gone.”

            He nodded and pointed a thumb behind without looking, “This is Jake.”

            Jake sported short dark hair highlighting a delicate white face. No circles ringed his eyes like the faces I’d stared at for months. His fingers were long and delicate, like a woman’s. Seemed to me like they should have been playing a cello instead of cleaning an M-60.

           
“Nice to meet you, Jake.” I didn’t really feel that. I didn’t feel anything as he smiled at me. 

            I switched my gaze to the marine who I vaguely knew and tried to cipher his name stamped on the front of his utility jacket. I raised my eyebrows. “When did you get this plush duty, Sims?”

            “October. I heard they were looking for an armorer. I applied and got a transfer. Lucky for me, huh?”

            I thought about that word, lucky. I nodded. “Yeah.”

            I stacked my weapon and magazines on the counter as I said, “I know a guy that got transferred to Division and now he’s a courier and another guy who drives the division chaplain around. I wonder why I didn’t luck out and get one of those billets.”

            Jake looked up from the M-60. “Maybe you’re too valuable in the bush.”

           
I laughed as I imagined myself crawling around in a trench, scared shitless, head down, trying to make it until my time in-country wound down. I smiled. “Yeah, maybe.”

            Sims pulled a five-by-eight file card out of a Marine Corps-green metal box. He said, “Let’s see what you’re supposed to turn in. The usual I suppose. Standard issue.”

            He stood up and walked over to the counter. I noticed his brand new jungle boots. I looked down at mine and he picked up my M-16 and read the serial number silently as he made sure it was the correct one. His thin lips mouthed the digits. He handed it to Jake. “Needs cleaning.”
 

            He counted my magazines. “You’re short seven.”

            “I know. I left them with the people who need them.”

            He nodded and then glared at me. “Got any other weapons?”
           
I pursed my lips and stared at him. He squinted back.

            I reached into the utility pocket on the right side of my trousers and pulled out a black K-bar knife. I smiled at him as I hefted it several times and then handed it to him.

            He looked at my record and said, “Never issued to you.”
           
I rolled my eyes and bit the end of my tongue. “I know that. Lots of weapons get passed around up there on the plateau. Some never been recorded to anybody. We took what we needed, especially after somebody bought the fucking farm.”

            He glared. “Why didn’t you leave the damned thing up there? Now I have to fuck with all this gungy-green Marine Corps bullshit documentation.”
           
“It makes me feel safe.”

            “What, Corporal Adams?”

           
“I might have to stab a gook.”

            They both laughed. Jake said. “You don’t need to worry about that back here. We’ve got more protection around here than we need.”

            I thought about all those gooks out there in the rice paddies, the jungles, and how many they had massacred outside the American Embassy in Saigon, at the old imperial capital at Hue, places that had more protection than they needed. I mumbled under my breath, “You should be so lucky.”

            Sims looked at his wrist watch. “Almost time to knock off. We need to finish up.”

            He shook his head in sort quick arcs and checked over my gear then looked at my file. “Hmm, short a lot of gear, Adams. And you have gear not issued to you. I don’t know if I can overlook this. We may have to write you . . .”

            I yelled, “What the fuck, we’re fighting a war.”

            Sims looked at me with his mouth open and Jake stifled a laugh. I felt my fists ball up, but Sims was in charge so I had to take my medicine.

            He grinned. “Just fucking with you, man.”

             My gut burned and I wondered if I’d eaten too much gravy at chow. As I sneered at the two and turned to leave, Sims slapped the countertop and said, “Hold on, Adams, we were just kidding you. You need to sign some forms anyway.”

            I stopped and glared. The two men smiled. I signed the first form and said, “What’s today’s date?”
           
Sims smiled again, started to say something but then changed his mind. “Four April, Nineteen-sixty-eight.”

            I wrote the date on the form and noticed my handwriting. I hadn’t seen that for months. It looked strange to me like I was reading someone else’s name—a date that had no meaning to me.
 

            Pissed off, but relieved, too, I signed and dated the other forms then slid them over to Sims and said, “Thanks.”

            I turned to leave as Sims said, “Where you headed now?”

            “Back to the transient barracks.”

            He said, “Why don’t we go get a beer?”
           
I stopped. “The club open?”
           
He looked at Jake and they both smiled. Jake said, “Club’s not open till sixteen-hundred hours.”

            “I don’t feel like waiting.”

            I wanted to read Jinny’s letter.

            Sims said, “We can go right now—a different club.”
           
I hesitated and he continued, “Come on man, I want to talk to you about some of the guys up there.”

            “I don’t want to talk about ‘up there.’”

            He frowned and I said, “I need to go to Disbursing and get paid. I don’t have any money.”

            He reached back like he was grabbing his wallet. “I’ll buy.”
           
I didn’t want to go with them. I said, “Okay.”

            Sims clapped his hands and said, “Lance Corporal Jacobs, secure the area. It’s o-beer-thirty.”

            Jake stacked paperwork in neat little piles and I thought about all my Beatles albums stacked in a neat pile in Leanna’s bedroom. Her frilly white bed cover with her frilly pillows and her white teddy bears. John Lennon’s nasal voice came to mind. That’s who I liked. I didn’t like Paul and the rest of them very much. Only as much as they could help John sound good. I thought about Jinny and Leanna dancing around to the sound of “Norwegian Wood.”

            I tried to remember the lyrics. I once had a . . . or was it, I once loved a girl, or should I say, she once loved me. That seemed wrong.

            The thought of them dancing around with each other made me remember silly things the Beatles did in the movie “Hard Day’s Night,” like running around wearing stupid clothes and acting like they didn’t have a lick of sense. Jinny and Leanna would do something like that. Just for fun.

            Sims waved at me to follow and we walked out of the back of the metal building. The red ground looked harsh. The sun had heated the surface and its reflection burned my face.

            Sims and Jake walked over to a Mighty-Mite and got in and started the engine. I thought, how the hell you rate a Mighty-Mite?

            Sims said, “Come on. Get in. It’s beer time.”

            I got in and sat in the back and we pulled around a bunch of green metal buildings and down a street, up to a sandbagged gate with marines manning fighting positions and machine gun pits. Behind that, on the side of the road, a Patton tank was dug in behind a red-earth berm with its 120 millimeter cannon pointed at the gate. Camouflage netting hung over the tank position and reminded me of lace doilies on Leanna’s mother’s coffee table. Marines lounged around in green T-shirts playing cards. One sunned himself on a sandbag wall, his skinny chest exposed, and another took a nap. Pretty loose, I thought. Luke-the-gook comes down that road, these turds will be in for a very unpleasant surprise. You pogues best tighten your asses up or you’ll need more than luck to stay alive.

            We drove through the gate and nobody even halted us. Sims nodded and yelled somebody’s name, but I didn’t catch it. Little black birds sat on top of a sign that said, “Twenty-Sixth Marine Regiment.”
 

            Red dust flowed from behind the Mighty-Mite. The breeze in my hair felt weird and I missed my helmet. I started to reach for my rifle, but then I remembered. I put on my soft cover and pulled the bill down tight, but I still felt naked.

            I glanced around the inside of the vehicle but only noticed one weapon, a dull black .45 caliber pistol. I yelled into Jake’s ear, “That the only weapon we got?”
           
He looked at me and frowned. “What?”
           
I pointed at the .45 and said, “That all we got?”

           
He smiled and said, “Relax. You aren’t up on that damned plateau now.”

            I sat back in my seat and sucked in a deep breath and held it for seven or eight seconds. I closed my eyes and stretched my neck back and tried to relax but all I could think about was gooks popping up on the red-tiled roofs of the buildings we passed.  I folded my arms and opened my eyes and looked at all the black metal gates and the Vietnamese words written in bright red on the sides of white-washed buildings. I noted the people as they stared at us.

            Sims honked the Mighty-Mite’s horn and waved at everybody he saw—Marines and gooks—like they were all his best friends and there wasn’t a war going on. I kept turning around in my seat, watching the men and women as we sped by. I didn’t want one of them to shoot me in the back.

            I put one leg underneath me on the seat so I could move around better and look in all directions.

            Sims turned to me and smiled. “Relax, goddamnit. We’re safe.”

            A sudden urge to grab his shoulders came over me. I wanted to scream as I shook him, “This is piss-poor, raggedy-ass security, Sims. You want to die young?”

            Instead, I crossed my arms and watched the road ahead as the sudden green of jungle closed in on us. Limbs of tall trees hung over the road and the underbrush was a thick dark jade-colored screen. My heart pounded as my chest started to burn. Sims and Jake were talking but I couldn’t understand their words.

            We passed rice paddies where old men stood knee-deep in water, hands full of long, thin, green plants. They wore big, flat, yellowed conical hats. They reminded me of long-legged water birds, pond herons or cattle egrets.

            On dikes separating the rice paddies, lime-colored plants with big fronds offered great cover for gooks wanting to snipe at the road. I imagined myself lying in the red mud on the other side of one of those dikes, a scope on my rifle. I’d love to take a crack at blowing the top of Sims’ head off, or Jake’s. If I was a gook. I pulled my arms tighter around my chest as I thought, dumb fuckers, nobody wearing helmets or flak jackets.

            I closed my eyes again and tried to dream about home. Who was I going to see first when I got there? Leanna? I’d call as soon as I got to LA. I thought about her and me dancing real close to “Norwegian Wood.”

            Again I tried to remember. She told me she worked da-da-da-da and started to laugh. I told her I didn’t da-da-da to sleep in the bath.

            I tried imagining me and my other friends, too, listening to Beatles albums—the new ones I knew must have come out—but images of Luke-the-gook popping out from behind the trunk of an ancient tree kept invading my head, jumbling with my friends. My neck felt like huge fingers pinched into the flesh around my spine, constricting the movement of my head and shoulders.

            Suddenly the Mighty-Mite slowed. I opened my eyes as we approached a small ville located on the left side of the road. Tall trees shaded what looked like a whole series of white-washed old French style buildings with red tiles on the roofs. On the right sat rice paddies that looked like they reached all the way to the mountains along the Laotian border. Between the rice paddies and the ville was a three-roll concertina wire barrier backed by sandbagged fighting positions with slit trenches behind that. I shuddered as I thought about Luke coming across those flats in the misty night, in a steady monsoon drizzle.

            Sims turned the vehicle down a shaded dirt street. White-washed houses with outbuildings stood on both sides of the road. We passed a small Catholic church with a small white cross on top. About three buildings down and across the street we stopped in front of an old building with rusty bars over the windows. A healthy grove of tall thin trees surrounded a reed-covered veranda.

            I recognized the ville as one of those places where marines lived right beside the locals and tried to keep Luke from coming in and taking over. A Civic Action Platoon or something like that. I didn’t like the look of it, the way it sat isolated, surrounded by rice paddies, miles from Phu Bai and no towers or a strong defense system.

            Out in the paddies people worked. I relaxed and thought, hell, they aren’t going to attack this place while it’s still light. I thought this even as I realized that all those men and women out there were probably Luke-the-gook as soon as the sun went down.

            I grabbed Jake’s shoulder and said, “What’s the name of this place?”
           
Sims told me but it was all gook to me and besides I was already wondering what it would be like serving with a Civic Action Platoon in this place.

            Ten or twelve marines weren’t going to stop Luke if he wanted to come inside.
 

            Sims and Jake got out of the Mighty-Mite and Sims ordered, “Let’s get our beer.”

            They walked over to an outdoor seating area under the reed-covered veranda. Cheap wooden chairs and tables were scattered randomly on a raised wooden deck. I followed them as I kept swiveling my head around, checking the perimeter. I searched for a place to hide, maybe a shed or a house. I sat in a chair with my back against a low white-washed wall.

            A middle-aged gook broad came out of the building and smiled, “Hey, Sims. Hey, Jake. Wanna beer?”
           
Sims smiled and said, “You bet, Thuy.”

            She smiled at me. Her teeth were stained. She nodded. “How about your buddy?”
           
I said, “No.”

           
Sims chuckled. “Yeah, three beers. Very cold, mama-san, very cold.”
           
She giggled and went inside a small, thatch-covered hooch and pulled up the top of one of those antique beer coolers that open like a chest.

            Sims put his hand on my shoulder. “Relax, man. These are good people. There isn’t any ground-up glass in the drinks they serve.”

            I stared at the table top.

            Mama-san brought out three beers. I watched Sims and Jake take big swallows. Their Adam’s apples moved up and down. I grabbed the long, dark brown glass neck of my beer bottle. The label was orange with black gook writing on it. Lots of As with upside-down scimitars over them, and chevrons too, and chevrons over the Es and Os. Nothing I could cipher.

            Sims smirked at me and shook his head.

            Jake and he started talking to each other about working in the armory and about how much more time each one had left in-country and where Jake wanted to go on R & R.

            Sims swallowed a mouthful of beer and said, “Bangkok.”

            I took a sip of my beer. I didn’t like the taste of it. Too thick and bitter.

            Jake said, “Why not Sidney or Hawaii?”

            I thought about cans of cold Coors in a five-gallon bucket, on ice. The lighter taste, the lighter color.

            Sims said, “Cheaper pieces of ass. Besides, do you want to spend your whole life just fucking white girls?”

            Jake face turned red as he laughed. “I haven’t ever fucked anybody.”

            Sims slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Congratulations for being man enough to admit that.”

            I imagined the bucket of beer on top of the trunk to my old man’s car. Parked beside a cotton field in the steamy night. Leanna and me in the back seat. Her flat. Me on top.

            I tried to recall the words to the song. We da . . my inability to remember the lyrics pissed me off  . .  until two, and then she said, da-da-da-da.

            A transistor radio on top of the car. The sound of crickets and frogs peeping in the moonlit light. I reached in my pocket and got the letter from Jinny.

            As I started to open the letter two young marines walked down the road. They wore combat gear and had rifles slung over their shoulders in reverse, the muzzles pointed at the ground. I could tell by the cut of their jaws and cheeks they hadn’t seen much combat. Too fat. I wondered if they were former pogues. Re-upped for the cash bonus.

            Sims yelled, “Tom, what’s to it? You too, Jim?”
           
 Tom said, “Nothing to it.”

            Mama-san brought beers for them as they sat chatting with Jake and Sims.

           
Across the red dirt street in somebody’s garden two very tall birds with red and green heads sat watching us. They had long, elegant necks. I turned Jinny’s letter over once or twice.

            Again, the search for the correct words. She told me she worked in da-da-da and hmm-hmm-hmm-hmmmm. I da-da I didn’t and da-da-da-da-da the bath.
 

            I looked at the birds again and watched as they slowly hunted on long stilt-like legs. I wondered when Luke would decide to hit this place. Some rainy night when our air power wasn’t effective. They’d Bangalore the wire and come through, their brassy horns blaring, the shriek of their metal whistles and their screams raising the hair on the back of these two marines’ necks. They’d come in with mortar fire and RPGs and AKs chattering up the night, needle-bayonets out, looking for a torso to stab. And the mama-san serving us beers would shoot Tom and Jim in the back. That is if they were lucky. And if they didn’t get killed in the initial assault? Who knows? Hung up and skinned like pigs in a slaughterhouse—a long slow death. Their balls sliced off and sewed up in their mouths.

            My inability to get the song right irritated me. And when I awoke, da-da-da-da, this bird had flown.

            I closed my eyes and heard flies buzzing. One of those large red and green-headed birds let out a sound like, “skrake, skrake.” One of the marines was talking about the Phillies and the Cubs and somebody said something about his girl. I opened my eyes and opened the letter.

            Jinny’s neat little scrawl was etched on the pages. “I think I’m going to get straight As for the third straight semester, so that I should graduate in the top five percent of my class.”

            “Alois Murphy was killed in Saigon in the Tet Offensive. My dad read it in the paper last week. He wondered why it took ‘so damned long’ (as he put it) for us to find out.”

            “Lanny Jones and Trisha Stevens got married on the QT. No guests at the wedding, just the justice-of-the-peace, the parents and Trisha’s little brother. I wonder what happened. Ha-ha.”
           
Not a word about Leanna. I finished reading the letter and shut my eyes as I thought about her closing sentence.

            I heard the very tall birds with the red and green heads flap their long wings and “skrake” in harsh tones. In the fields the sound of the gooks talking their outer-space lingo floated towards me and mixed with the mama-san’s jabbering around the ville. Somewhere a baby squalled and children clapped their hands and sang songs in Vietnamese, or was it French? The tension would not retreat from my neck. I heard a water buffalo bellow over the grab-assing of Jake and Sims and the other two. The wind whistled over the top of the veranda as my beer got warm.

            “You’re not going to like what’s happened to your Beatles albums. Love, Jinny.”