The World Played Chess (47)

I didn’t.

He had to be on the exit. He wasn’t.

I thought it unlikely he could still be on the freeway, but at a loss as to where else he could have gone, I drove onto the on-ramp heading south, the wrong direction, took the first exit and made my way north again. As I approached the spot where I’d left Mif, I slowed and looked along the side of the road. I didn’t see him. With each passing moment I got more and more concerned.

I thought of William telling me that he didn’t make friends in Vietnam, that it was easier if you didn’t really know the guys who died.

“Shit.”

I took the exit, scouring every shadow. I backtracked to my street. No Mif. I turned around and drove back, compulsively swearing. My mind thought of the worst-case scenarios.

What if he got hit by a car on the freeway?

What if the police picked him up wandering along the freeway?

What if somebody killed him?

I kept driving, kept looking. All the while, William Goodman’s words kept flowing through my mind.

You don’t make friends.

Guys can be gone in an instant.

It’s just bad luck.

I had visions of driving the Pinto, Mif’s battered, bleeding, and lifeless body strapped across the hood, like those soldiers on the armored personnel carrier that had carried their bodies from the jungle. I drove backstreets. I drove in circles. When I finally looked at my watch, it was one in the morning. I’d been looking for Mif for an hour. I drove home and contemplated calling Mif’s house, but what would I say?

Uncertain what to do, I did the next stupid thing. I went to bed. It seemed like just minutes before my mother’s voice woke me.

“Vincent?” She stood in my bedroom. “Mrs. Mifton is on the phone. She said Lenny didn’t come home last night. Is that his car parked in front of the house?”

Fear gripped me. I got up and went to the phone and explained what had happened. “I got my car and went back to get him, but I couldn’t find him.”

I don’t know what possessed me to keep talking. If Mif’s mother wasn’t upset before, she certainly was now. I’d just painted the worst possible scenario for her. She no doubt thought her son was dead and that I had abandoned him.

I was no marine.

I hung up the phone and tried to explain to my mom. She wasn’t pleased, but she didn’t have time to deal with it. She had to get to work. I showered and was getting ready for work when the phone rang.

Mif.

I swore a blue streak. “Where the hell did you go?”

Mif laughed that nervous chuckle. “You took off. You left me.”

“I yelled that I was coming back.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Where’d you go?”

“I ran to Ed’s house and woke him.”

Ed’s house was a couple miles from the exit, but so was mine. I know Mif chose Ed’s house because he could get into the room in the back without waking Ed’s parents. Smart thinking, I suppose, except it screwed me when Mif didn’t call home.

Then again, I’d screwed myself.

I picked up Mif and we got gas for the bug. He’d reached his sister. The key to the tank was on a ring on the emergency brake between the seats. We were such idiots.

I was late getting to work and decided to just come clean. Todd and William laughed their collective asses off.

“Why didn’t you just hit the brakes?” William asked.

I told him my rationale. Then I said, “Shit, I thought the guy got killed.”

William’s grin vanished. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t have to. He gave me that thousand-mile stare, like the one he gave me at Behan’s. I had no business mentioning the possibility of Mif dying, not to two guys who truly understood that possibility every day for a year. I had no clue what I was talking about. If I or one of my friends died at eighteen, it wouldn’t be from a Viet Cong bullet, or from stepping on a land mine while I humped through a jungle. It wouldn’t be bad luck.

It would be from utter and complete stupidity.





May 5, 1968

The moratorium has officially ended and so have the peace talks. The Viet Cong launched Mini-Tet, firing rockets and mortars at Saigon and more than a hundred other cities and military installations. We can hear the bombs going off and see the flashes of the explosions at night.

We’ve been told to expect to saddle up and go outside the wire on long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs or “lurps”) for weeks at a time. “Vietnam is a war of nerves, each side waiting for the other to blink first,” Cruz said one night in our bunker. “The difference is, we’re all waiting to blink and go home. For Charlie, this is home. He can wait forever.”

I was in my bunker, throwing a blade at the wood post—I’ve become proficient; I can stick the blade just about every throw. In between, I was talking with Longhorn, whose DEROS had come up. He was preparing to ship out on the next Huey bringing supplies to our firebase. Longhorn’s real name is Jimmy Edelson. He’s from El Paso, Texas, and performs in the rodeo circuit—rides bulls, horses, the whole thing. Jimmy isn’t big, but he looks like a tough little shit.

“Got something for you, Shutter.” He handed me a Tiger Chewing Tobacco tin. “I kept my personal stuff in here—a picture of my girlfriend and my parents, and a medal.”