Motorcycle - a short story

Written after a failed marriage, and while I was still suffering from deep depression caused most likely by my time in Vietnam as an infantry foot soldier, much of this story is autobiographical. Like the lead character in the story, my life was in a mess. I somehow managed to keep my day job and most of my relationships, probably because it was during the "wild and crazy" days of the Oklahoma Oil Boom of the 80s, and almost everyone at the time was drunk, stoned, or both. Every fiction has a grain of truth, and there was a real person I met one night who called himself Blue Angel. And yes, I owned a 750 Triumph Bonneville, just like James Dean.

Motorcycle

Dying twilight and flashing neon beckoned me into one of the many stripper bars skirting the edge of town. I parked my bike beside a row of Harleys and opened the black enamel door, blaring rock and roll flooding over me as I made my way through the crowded barroom. A tipsy dancer had just begun her gyrations on center stage, and I grabbed the first empty chair I came to.

When my eyes finally adjusted to the subdued light, I noticed the man sitting beside me had a big pear-shaped head and a screwy grin on his pug-ugly face that indicated he was already drunk. He was also obese; his double chin dove into hairy flab wedged beneath the gaudy western shirt he wore.

Unmindful of my sudden critical stare or foaming brew dribbling down his neck, the fat man slugged beer straight from the pitcher without an offer of apology. Despite his repugnancy, I couldn't turn away, his ugliness mesmerizing me.

The man's blackened teeth looked like California asphalt on a hot August day, and a motorized wheelchair supported his bulky frame. He grinned when he finally noticed me staring at him. Had I been sober myself, I'd have searched for another chair. I wasn't.

I wished I had minded my own business when he said, "Kinda motorcycle you ride?"

Dancing strobes flooded center stage with silver light, further accenting his drunken grin. I straightened in my chair and said, "Triumph Bonneville 750. Like James Dean."

"Most people 'round here ride Harleys," he said.

Glancing around the crowded barroom, I saw what he meant. Leather-clad, bandanna-headed bikers of both sexes crowded the stripper bar, rotating strobe lights magnifying their greasy hair, deadhead tattoos, and silver earrings. The fat man's raspy voice shattered my flight of fancy.

"What's your name, bub?"

"Denzil. You?"

"You can call me Blue Angel."

I needn't have worried about my inability to suppress a drunken snicker. Blue Angel didn't seem to mind. He was apparently either used to the look, or else he just didn't give a damn. I forgot about my musings when the girl on stage winked at me and brazenly jutted her breasts. Blue Angel whistled, using his index fingers to tightly stretch his thin lips, producing a piercing shrill.

"Pleased to meet you, Blue Angel."

"Nam," he said, seeing my inquisitive glance at his withered legs. "Landmine."

After comparing tiny legs with his bloated body, I had trouble believing his deformity was anything other than congenital. I kept my opinion to myself, not wishing to insult him even further.

"I was there," I said. "Infantry."

Blue Angel grabbed the elbow of a passing waitress, ignoring my assertion, and ordered another pitcher. His broken-tooth grin had all but vanished from his inflated cheeks.

"I ride a Harley," he said.

Advanced inebriation and a pinch of embedded meanness marked my blurted reply, regretted the moment I spoke the words. "The hell you say. Cripples can't ride bikes."

My drunken grin failed miserably to indicate that I meant the vicious remark in the best possible way. Blue Angel's own smile revealed he had taken no apparent offense. He just kept describing his cycle.

"Three-wheeler. Hand controls. Custom made."

On stage, the nude girl with broken hearts tattooed on her breasts gyrated to the caustic strains of a Bob Seeger psycho-melody. Multi-colored strobe lights flared in my face. From a shadow-cloaked corner, the waitress returned with Blue Angel's pitcher of beer and he tipped it to his lips, swilling beer until it gushed from his mouth, wetting his shirt. He shoved it toward me when he finished.

"You work, Denzil?"

"Longshoreman."

"Married?"

"Not now," I said, shaking my head.

"Marrying soon, myself," he said. "Luanna's crippled too. Met her at a paraplegic convention. Gonna marry her right here on center stage.

"Terrific," I said.

"Hell's Angels comin' from all over the country. Big event. Be here or be square."

Ignoring his off-handed invitation, I returned my attention to center stage where two blonds were dancing in an odd pseudo-sexual parody. Blue Angel whistled to the waitress, hastily ordering another pitcher.

By now, I was totally anesthetized by cold beer, blatant sex, and loud music. When we finished the second pitcher, I ordered yet another. Awash in noise, beer, and gyrating naked dancers, Blue Angel wheeled himself to the bathroom. When he returned, he slid out of his wheelchair and onto his back on the filthy floor. Without success, he struggled to get up.

I tried lifting Blue Angel's dead weight back into his unwieldy vehicle but found he was heavier than he looked. Two bikers wandering over from the pool table helped, grinning as if they'd performed the same task many times before. After we'd killed another pitcher of beer, Blue Angel asked me to show him my bike.

"Why not?" I said.

Through the crowded barroom, I wheeled him, past milling bikers, out the side door to the parking lot flooded with interfering rays of moon and neon. Parked between a black Harley and candy apple pickup, we found my metallic blue Triumph.

"No Limey bike's good as a hog," Blue Angel said. "Least it ain't a rice burner."

"Faster than any hog," I said. "And lots of rice burners."

"Maybe. Take me for a ride?"

"You crazy?" I said. "I couldn't even lift you off the floor in there. How do you expect me to get you on back of the bike?"

"Jack and Banjo will help."

"But you wouldn't stay put, even if we managed to get you on back."

"Then strap my ankles to the bike frame with bar rags. I'll hang on."

Shaking my head, I said, "I might not make it home myself, drunk as I am. If you want to go for a ride on the back of my bike, Blue Angel, then you must be drunker than me."

Blue Angel's lips curled into a pleading pout. "I ain't that drunk. Please take me. I've never been on a Limey bike before."

"Maybe next time," I said, wheeling him back toward the strip bar.

*  *  *

I don't remember when I began stopping after work for drinks at the Blue Note Lounge. Sometimes, I stayed until Jimmy Turner, the owner, kicked me out and closed the place. Sheila didn't mind much. She was busy with her life, new job, summer softball league, etc. That summer, she met Big Zina, playing ball on the same team. Before long, Big Zina began going everywhere with us. Out to eat, to the movies. I didn't mind. When Big Zina was around, Sheila was always in a good mood. When she wasn't. . .

Sheila had never smoked during our seven-year marriage. That summer I began finding ashtrays filled with butts, hers and Big Zina's. I also found a half-smoked roach in an ashtray. Sheila and Big Zina confessed to buying a lid to smoke at a Peter Frampton concert. They spent the weekend out of town, seeing Peter Frampton and doing other things with some of the girls from the team.

I bought a metallic blue Triumph Bonneville 750 motorcycle shortly after our divorce. I knew nothing about motorcycles and had never ridden one, but I immediately needed to wrap my legs around a powerful engine and drive it very fast down the highway.

After selling my old Mustang, I began riding my bike everywhere, even in the rain. Most of my free time I spent swilling beer at the Blue Note. Sometimes, I made it home without remembering where I had been or what I had done. Once, two teenage boys lifted the cycle off the pavement when I tumped it over, leaving the bar. I remember the shock in their eyes when I charged out of the parking lot, barely missing the front fender of a passing car.

About that time, Jimmy kicked me out for good. In a drunken fit, I threw a pitcher of beer at his frosted-glass mirror behind the bar. Unsatisfied with the ensuing explosion, I capped it off by smashing a couple of chairs and tables with my fists and feet. Jimmy and two regulars tossed me out on my face.

"Don't ever come back," he said as I powered away on my cycle.

After Jimmy banned me from the Blue Note, I began frequenting sleaze joints and biker bars populating the back roads leading to the ocean. It was there I met Rhonda.

Rhonda had red curly hair, a tattoo on her left shoulder, and ultra-red lips the same intense color as her skin art. Her personality also matched her hair. She smoked pot, used various drugs, slept around, and had no visible means of support. Between jobs, she had explained, Rhonda lived in a three-room wood-framed cracker box on the wrong side of town.

Shortly after we met, we made love - spontaneously in the front room on her shabby couch. We were both drunk, Rhonda's libido further stoked by pot and coke. I made do with beer and a couple of shooters. As we made love, I noticed her faded green curtains gaping wide open for the world to see. The front door was also open.

"Think I better close the door and window?"

"Why?"

"Because someone might see us."

"Fuck 'em," she said.

Rhonda had long since sorted out her life, going through men faster than some women go through nail polish. As I became attached to her, she had already finished with me, tossing me away like an empty bottle. Leaving a bar one night, drunk and alone, I motored past her place, maybe to satiate my morbid curiosity. See who she was with. Perhaps, deep down, I thought she might be alone and be happy to see me.

Parking the Triumph in the drive, I strolled up to her front door, peeking through the window before I knocked - a good thing because she wouldn't have answered anyway. She was on her back, and she wasn't alone. Rhonda and a long-haired, nearly nude man were in motion on the shabby couch, feeling the apparent throes of full-blown, drug-assisted sexual nirvana. I had to kick-start my heart and then my bike.

Gunning its engine, I trenched Rhonda's front yard as I sped away, nearing sixty by the time I reached the approaching intersection. It didn't matter that the light was red because I didn't have time to stop anyway. An old woman wheeled her Chevy directly in front of my fleeting path, and I still remember her startled look when she saw me sliding toward her. I was very much out of control.

Concerned motorists pulled the cycle off my chest, the accident sparing me, and mostly the motorcycle, but leaving me cut, scratched, and black and blue. When the cops finally released me, I watched headlights trailing away into the night, feeling the fool. I walked home alone after the tow truck had hauled away the bike.

*  *  *

"You awake?" Blue Angel said, tapping my shoulder.

"Sorry," I said, glancing up into his big cow eyes.

A nude dancer was weaving a sexual burlesque on the grimy wooden stage in front of us, and lightning flashed through the open front door. I could smell rain blowing in from the north.

"Gotta go," he said, tapping the counter. "Don't forget my wedding next Saturday. Right here, same time."

Jack and Banjo suddenly appeared, pushing through smoke, shadows, and frenzied customers, wheeling Blue Angel out the front door. They lifted him into the bed of an awaiting pickup and drove away as rain began to fall. I watched them disappear into the neon-illuminated gloom and rested my head on the counter.

By now, my brain pulsated with a deep-seated ache, threatening to burst straight through the skull. Resting my head on the bar, I closed my eyes, letting loud music and bar noises resonate through flesh, bone, and the distressed wood of the stage. The moment provided scant solace. Instead, I screamed through space, straight to the back of the truck with Blue Angel, my suddenly blurred thoughts a vision of street noise, glimmering neon, and passing humanity. Blue Angel flashed his blackened grin when he saw me.

"Welcome home, Bub," he said.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You can also check out his Facebook page.

DANCING AT THE SCORPIO

While rummaging through my closet, I found a tee shirt that evoked a treasure of old memories. The tee sported a poorly drawn picture of a scorpion and bore the name of the establishment from where I purchased it: Scorpio. Under the name were the words: dancers, pool, and cold beer, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

The original Scorpio was an old two-storied building located at Villa and N.W. 23rd, across the street from the Shepherd Mall. The bottom floor had a bar, several pool tables, and a dance floor—a wooden structure raised about three feet off the floor. Music played while the mostly male customers shot pool, drank beer and watched the dancers perform on the raised structure.

The female dancers all wore the equivalent of a bikini with no exposed nipples, buttocks or pubic hair. That was downstairs, the action upstairs quite different—at least I had heard. Not everyone was allowed to go there. Nudity in Oklahoma City, at the time, was banned and rule breakers treated harshly by the authorities.

Most of the young men frequenting the bar were baby-boomers. Many, myself included, had survived the dirty war in Southeast Asia, partaken of the many illegal drugs so readily available there, and had visited the nightlife of Saigon and the brothels of Bangkok. Oil exploration was turning the City into a boom town, the young men of Oklahoma, and those pouring into the State because of the boomtown prosperity, an adventurous bunch and ready for a change from the ways their fathers did things. The Scorpio was there to provide that change.

I remember the first time the stairway guard allowed me and my friend Mick to go upstairs. I tingled with excitement and to say that electricity filled the darkened room would be stating a stale cliche that didn’t come close to expressing the pure sexual exhilaration constricting my chest and shortening my breath. A Bob Seger ballad wailed through the darkness as a pretty blonde girl gyrated, totally naked on the stage, both exposed and swathed by the reds, blues, and greens of a dancing strobe.

Upstairs was a clone to the downstairs with one essential difference—the dancers performed totally nude. Each young woman danced to the music of three songs. They performed their first song, like the downstairs dancers, in bikini-like costume. They would remove their top toward the beginning of the second song, and their bottoms during the beginning of the third song to the captivated attention of every young man in the place.

About this time, the Supreme Court ruled that nude dancing is not pornographic. After having their hands rapped by several adverse court decisions, the City removed its ban on nudity. Nude dancing soon became common in clubs around Oklahoma City, the Scorpio moving to a new location on North May.

Totally nude dancing continued in Oklahoma City until the Supreme Court ruled that cities could regulate activities that the majority of the people did not approve of. I don’t think a vote to regulate nudity ever occurred but the local police began operating as if it had. Oil prices had begun to collapse, ending the oil boom and Oklahoma City’s boom town mentality. Baby boomers were older and most, by this time had their own children. No one much protested the end of an era.

The Scorpio no longer exists, but the building that housed it remains. Ironically, it's now the home of a Vietnamese pool hall and domino parlor. I smiled as I pulled on the old tee shirt, a little too small for me now, but still in good shape. Yes, an era has ended but I still have my memory of the first time I climbed the stairs at the old Scorpio, not knowing what to expect, but spellbound with youthful anticipation.

####

Born a mile or so from Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma and continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. If you liked Dancing at the Scorpio, please check out his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages.

Good Night Sweet Prince

I just saw the news on the Internet today that the great Richie Havens has died. Havens was the opening act at Woodstock and performed the song Freedom. I didn’t make it to Woodstock in August of 1969. As a very young geologist, I was busy drilling a dry hole in east Texas, not far from where my great-grandfather had died. A month later, I married my first wife Gail. Six months later, I was training at Fort Polk’s Tiger land. Nine months later, I was a line company grunt, infantry machine gunner, with the 1^st Cav in Vietnam.

My first marriage didn’t work out. Neither did the results of the Vietnam War. Richie Havens didn’t change the world, but his songs brought hope to all the twenty-somethings like me back then. Now, Richie’s dead, and I just keep pushing on, listening to Freedom in my head, wishing war would soon be gone, but knowing freedom’s just a word, an empty word in an unfinished song.

Richie Havens

January 21, 1941 to April 22, 2013

Good night sweet prince

Eric'sWeb

Psychodelic Nights - a writer's tale

They say writers draw their stories from memorable personal experiences. If this is true, then I have lots more books I need to write. Here is a vignette from an episode in my life.

PSYCHODELIC NIGHTS

A storm is brewing outside my window as I pen this story, all my dogs seeking shelter, warned of the impending squall by rolling thunder and lightning flashes.

As a Vietnam vet, I had all manner of drugs available to me during my tour. I mostly passed, fearing being stoned during an attack. Some of my fellow troopers saw things differently, wanting to feel stoned rather than face a possible unpleasant situation without some sort of anesthetic. Years later, no longer worrying about physical death, I learned to anesthetize myself against the mental pain that had begun attacking the fortress of my soul because of a rapidly failing marriage.

Carol, my girlfriend at the time, became my drug guru, guiding me carefully down a path of knowledge and abuse. She was a gorgeous blond-haired woman with smoky blue eyes, heaving breasts and a sardonic smile. She chain-smoked and always had a cigarette in her hand, except when she was burning a joint.

On a night such as this, we attended a concert and laser light show at the fairgrounds of Oklahoma City. As a noisy thunderstorm raged outside, hundreds of drugged-out latter-day hippies raged inside, listening to psychedelic music while watching a colorful light show projected on the ceilings and walls. Like everyone else in the house, marijuana zonked Carol and I, the promoters of the event expecting as much. They didn't care, nor did the off-duty Oklahoma City cops acting as security guards.

The time was the late seventies, long past the sixties hippie era. Radio stations were playing disco, as the English musical invasion had mostly waned. You would not have known it that night as hundreds of stoners watched a light show performed to the songs of perhaps the greatest psychedelic band ever: Pink Floyd. The music and drugs caused me to recall a time from my not so distant past.

The last movie I saw as a civilian before becoming one with the military was Easy Rider. To say the movie affected me is an understatement. I rarely remember a movie for a week after seeing it, but almost forty years have passed since viewing Easy Rider and many of the scenes remain lodged in my mind.

What I remember most is the noir scene in the St. Louis #1 Cemetery where Wyatt and Billy take two whores they recently met and do drugs in perhaps the most surreal vista ever filmed in an American movie. Maybe I remembered this scene when penning Big Easy because hero Wyatt Thomas has a tryst with his own girlfriend at the St. Louis #1 Cemetery, the burial spot for famous New Orleans voodoo mambo Marie Laveau.

Carol and I watched the laser light show. Sated and satisfied we returned to her tiny house. Too stoned for lovemaking, we simply tried to sleep before Monday morning returned us to stark reality. Lying in the darkness of Carol’s bedroom, I stared at ceiling shadows, recalling the many bizarre events that had occurred in my life, and pondering what the next day might bring.

###

All of Eric's books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on his iBook author pages, and his Website.

And When I Die

War is a game I played when I was young. I didn’t know at the time, it was a reality that would steal my youth.

I was twenty three when I went to war. I didn’t get much time off during my stay at Fort Polk, learning how to kill, maybe two weekends. One of them I spent in Chalmette, visiting then wife Gail and her parents. I traveled there on the bus and the trip was memorable, not in what I saw, but in what I felt.

Leesville is the Louisiana town just outside of Fort Polk and one word describes it—seedy. The Leesville bus station fit the bill. I can’t remember how I got there, though I probably hitchhiked from the base. The lobby reeked with the vague odor of despair, the station empty except for the lady that issued my ticket without seeming to see me, and about a half dozen GI’s; like me, they were all privates.

I sat alone in the back of the bus, reveling in the legroom but saddened by the darkened loneliness. We were fifty miles out of town when one of the GI’s began to sing. I wasn’t very old. This kid was younger, probably no more than eighteen. There was a song out at the time called And When I Die. Laura Nyro wrote it and Blood, Sweat and Tears had a hit with the song. The young man had no accompaniment and sang it much slower even than Nyro’s version. His words tore the heart right out of my chest. The young man was an Eleven Bravo, same as me. We were both infantry bullet-stoppers bound for the human gristmill that was Vietnam.

Like me, he was probably afraid of death. I was afraid of something much worse—the decisive act of taking another human life. I didn’t know if I was up to the task, even though I’d had the act of ultimate enactment drummed into the very essence of my soul for the past four months.

The song’s lyrics ripped at my heart, though didn’t make me cry. I was drenched in the steel resolve of personal survival at the time. I would do what I had to do. I only hoped that any act of violence I might ultimately have to perform wouldn’t corrupt my soul—at least not forever.

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Earthly Complexities

Fresh from the war, I started graduate school at the University of Arkansas. Separated from polite society for almost two years, I was trying desperately to regain some of its social graces. My new thesis advisor, Dr. K, reminded me as much every day.

Dr. K had an idea for a thesis project in the Ouachita Mountains. Arkansas is one of the most geologically diverse areas on earth. Almost every mineral occurs there naturally, and many other minerals are found nowhere else. Dr. K, a brilliant man, was a graduate of Cornell University and to say that I was a bit intimidated by him would be an understatement.

I wasn't the only person returning from Vietnam. There were half a dozen of us, including an ex-Green Beret. Dr. K and I were walking down the hall one day when we came upon Mr. GB, his back to us and obviously in deep thought. When Dr. K tapped him on the shoulder, he wheeled around, coming up with a vicious blow to the good Dr's groin and laying him out on the hallway floor. When Dr. K regained his senses, and his breath, he dragged himself off the floor.

I understood GB's motivation. It took me months to keep from hitting the ground whenever a car backfired near me. Still, I fully expected Dr. K, the chairman of the department of geology, to lower the proverbial boom on the ex-green beret. Instead, he began speaking in a soft, friendly tone.

"I realize where you just came from and how horrible it must have been, but you're back in the States now. I'm going to let what you just did pass this time, but sometime in the future I'm going to tap you on the shoulder. If you ever lay a hand on anyone ever again, for any reason, you will be dismissed from the Arkansas geology department and you won't be welcomed back.

I was with Dr. K the next time he came up on Mr. GB from behind. Believe me when I say, I wouldn't have done what he did. He tapped Mr. GB's shoulder and stood there, waiting for the inevitable reaction. As if in slow motion, Mr. GB bent forward, almost touching the floor, and then began his karate twirl. This time he stopped abruptly before he ever made his turn, his deadly blow pulled before ever making contact. When he saw Dr. K, he began to shake uncontrollably.

Dr. K nodded, smiled slightly and said, "Welcome back to the world."

In southwest Arkansas, just south of the Ouachita Overthrust, is a geologically complex area known only to a few lucky people. Before I ever set foot on the terrain, I got a lesson in life from an amazingly complex person that understood the human heart as well as he knew the heart of the earth.

Eric'sWeb

Still Dancing

No doubt music has the power to evoke memories and emotions. Fiddling with my computer tonight, I began searching for a lost file. I didn’t find it. I did find several music files I haven’t heard in a while. One of them was the long version (21 + minutes) of Get Ready by Rare Earth. Every time I listen to this song, it returns me to a specific point in time.

The time is 1971, the place, Vietnam. More specifically, I was working as a clerk typist/Jeep driver at the First Team Combat Training Center in Bien Hoa. I hadn’t arrived in Nam as a clerk. Trained as an infantry mortar man, I carried the base plate of an 81 mm mortar with a 1st Cav line company, patrolling the Jolly Trail System, near the Cambodian border.

I don’t know if I’ve told this story—I probably have—of running into a person I’d gone to college with in Monroe, Louisiana. I was on Firebase Buttons, getting supplied to go out to a forward firebase. The supply sergeant, his name slips my mind, a person I’d bowled with in college, asked me to come to his hooch and drink a beer. We sat on his hammock and popped the tops of two Black Labels.

“Wildman,” he said. “This is the hottest AO in Vietnam. You’re replacing a platoon wiped out by friendly fire, a Cobra gunship that came in hot. I wish I had better news for you. I don’t. You’re going to die, or at least be seriously wounded.”

Goddamn it was hot!

Flash forward seven months.

Luck, karma, prayers, whatever, was with me. I survived without a scratch (well, nothing serious) and finally (I was a college graduate) got offered a job as a clerk, back on Firebase Buttons. The gig lasted until the 1st Cav stood down. Many were sent home (if you had ten months in country). I was sent to Bien Hoa.

This brings me to the song. There were no women (at least American women) around. I lived with a bunch of privates and non-coms in a communal barracks. Some of us were white, some black. None of us had much in common except our stay in Nam.

I was a Spec 4 (corporal), the highest I ever advanced. One night, the sergeants called a party. Before it ended, we were all drunk. There wasn’t a single female present at the party. It didn’t matter. We drank, high-fived, and danced like there was no tomorrow.

Tonight, as I listen to Rare Earth, I remember that party.

I danced like there was no tomorrow.

Hey, tonight, forty years later, as I listened to the song again, I’m still dancing.

Eric'sWeb

Arkansas Novel Free on Smashwords

An uncut diamond, a missing brother, and a mysterious village hidden deep in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. Add in some unexplained murders, a little voodoo, and then get ready for a wild ride. A Gathering of Diamonds, free in all ebook formats on Smashwords.com.
A Gathering of Diamonds

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Digging for Treasure

I may have already told this tale but that’s okay. A story is never really complete until it’s been embellished and retold at least twice.

This story happened during the time I spent in the boonies with the First Cav. We were patrolling the Jolly Trail System near the Cambodian border when we happened upon a freshly deserted North Vietnamese bunker complex. After a nervous couple of hours deciding if the NVA were truly gone, or set up to ambush us, we decided on the former and established a base camp, sending out several patrols to see if we could find out which direction the enemy had gone. I was one of the lucky ones that remained at the base camp.

I have always been enamored by buried treasure and soon I had myself and everyone else convinced that there was probably a fortune in gold buried somewhere within the perimeter of the bunker complex. This was not such a far-fetched idea as the NVA were known to carry large amounts of money and gold to trade with the locals.

Since they had abandoned the complex in such a hurry, perhaps they had forgotten to take the treasure. Before long, practically everyone left at the base camp was poking around with trenching devices (military shovels). As luck would have it, I was the first one to find something.

“It’s here,” I said, beginning to dig feverishly over a spot of loose earth.

I was quickly joined by others and we soon had a large hole in the ground. I soon became apparent that what we had found was not a treasure trove – well, unless you were a maggot. The bunker complex, it seemed, was a well-established stop along the trail from North Vietnam, our covered treasure no more than a buried latrine. The other soldiers were soon shaking their heads and looking at me as if I were freshly escaped from a loony bin.

“Hey, I’ll bet the treasure’s in the latrine. No one would think to look there.”

The other men didn’t buy my argument and, since I couldn’t convince anyone else to poke around in the smelly remains of an NVA latrine, I decided that even if there were treasure a few feet from where I stood that it wasn’t worth digging through the sh-t for.

No, I didn’t find any buried treasure during my tour of Vietnam. Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing a single rock during the entire time I was there. As a geologist, you’d think I would have noticed.

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