“So you didn’t go to Angola. Are you about to tell me another adventure story, another sad ending?”
“No. No, I didn’t become a mercenary. But my life had been pretty tame since the army. I didn’t mind the chaos of the next couple of years.
“There’s more chaos? What you just told me sounds anything but tame. Well, I suppose your time in Saigon made you immune to that. But then, some men sought refuge in predicability — got jobs as mail carriers perhaps. I suppose that’s not what I would have predicted of you though.”
“And what would you have predicted of me?”
“When I last saw you or now? I suppose it isn’t that different, really. What you told be confirms many things I would have expected. But there is something missing.
“I’d have thought you’d have finished college in four-years time. Maybe you’d have been recruited by the CIA in the clandestine service. You’d already been mixed up with them when you left Saigon. Or maybe you’d have worked your way into Army Intelligence.”
“Where do you think I’d have gotten the money? I dropped out for lack of that.”
“Oh, there was money around; if you’d only looked, especially for people of your military history. And the agencies like to latch onto people who are smart enough to see the patterns before they do see them and make trouble. It appears that you’ve put together a picture puzzle of me and my family that I never told you.”
“You speak as though you have experience in those realms.”
“I have some, yes. And based on your last tale of Halftrack Mike, you know that even if you haven’t said so. Though I’ve more now than when last we met.”
“Tranh?”
“Umm hmm. And more.
“So there was more chaos?” she asked, changing the subject away from three-letter agencies.
“Yes, And I left out the really hair-raising stuff,” I said with a grin.
“I noticed a few gaps in the time sequence,” she answered.
“What is this, a job interview?”
“I do job interviews; so I pay attention to that sort of thing.”
“Well, gypo trucking is anything but tame, I discovered. I remember the time Kenny had to drive ‘The Goose’ a ’54 Freightliner……… Naw just kidding. Those stories go on forever. Maybe another time.”
In The Belly Of the Beast 