The captain, a deeply tanned man in his early forties wearing four days‟ growth of beard, stroked his
jaw with a greasy hand. Two of the crew members watched the sailboat draw closer with mild
interest. The mate, a black man with a scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear, squinted through
the dim light and then urged the captain to pass up the stricken boat.
“Fuck „em, man. We ain‟t got tune to mess with no honky sailors,” he said quietly.
But the captain had been a seaman too long to pass up any vessel in distress. Besides, the shirtless
man was obviously rich; a soft, Sunday sailor, becalmed far beyond his limit and probably scared to
death.
“No guns,” the captain said softly in Spanish. “rust stand easy and see what they want. If gas is their
problem, we can help the gringos out.”
He turned on a powerful light and swept its beam along the sailboat from bow to stem. He steered the
trawler close beside the sailboat and tossed the man a line.
“Habla espanol?” the captain asked.
“No,” the sailor answered.
“What ees your problem?” the captain asked in broken English.
“Not enough wind.” The sailor, who was wearing white jeans and designer sneakers, pointed at the
limp sail. “And no gas. Can you sell me some gas?”
“I geev you enough gas to make Saint Simons Island,” the captain said, pointing toward the horizon.
“Fifteen, maybe twenty miles northwest.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. Muchas gracias, señor.” The man bowed and waved a thank-you.
The captain ordered one of his men to take a gas can aboard the sailboat. The man went below and
emerged a few minutes later with a ten-gallon can in hand. He and one of the other crewmen
scrambled aboard the sailboat.
The captain and the mate watched from aboard the trawler.
“Messin‟ with trouble,” the black mate mumbled.
“No problem,” said the captain.
The two crewmen had not quite reached the stem tanks of the sailboat when the hatch to the cabin
suddenly slid back and another man jumped on deck from below. He was holding a submachine gun.
The mate uttered an oath and reached for the pistol in his belt but he was too late. The man with the
machine gun raked the deck and bridge of the trawler.
Bdddddddddddddt...
P,dddddddddddddd...
The windshield of the captain‟s cabin exploded, showering glass across the deck. The first burst blew
away the captain‟s chest. He flew backward through the door and landed on his back on the bridge.
His foot twitched violently for a few seconds before he died.
The second burst ripped into the mate as he clawed under his coat for the .38. It lifted him high in the
air, twisted him around, and tossed him halfway across the deck. He fell like an empty sack, face
down, most of his head blown away.
The remaining two crew members, the ones who had boarded the sailboat, turned wild-eyed toward
the gunner. The shirtless man stabbed one of them in the chest with a bowie knife. He fell across the
stern, babbling incoherently. The man with the submachine gun fired a burst into the chest of the last
crewman, who dropped the gas can and flipped backward over the railing into the sea.
The shirtless man pulled his knife free, cleaned the blade on the dead man‟s pants, and tossed his
victim overboard.
The shooter sent another burst into the light and it exploded into darkness.
It was all over in thirty seconds.
They worked very quickly, searching the boat. It took less than half an hour to find their prize. They
transferred the three small, heavy bags to the sailboat, threw the captain and his mate into the sea,
doused the trawler with gasoline, and set it afire.
The shirtless man cranked up the engine of the sailboat and guided it away from the trawler; then,
setting the wheel, he joined the shooter and they checked out the prize.
“What d‟ya think?” the shirtless man said, leaning over and staring into one of the bags.
“Beautiful,” the shooter said. He moved behind his partner, took a .357 Magnum from his belt, and
stepped closer.
“Sorry,” he said. He held the gun an inch or so from the back of the shirtless man‟s head and
squeezed the trigger. The gun roared and the bullet smacked into the back of the man‟s head,
knocking him forward against the railing.
The shooter reached out for the body but it fell sideways, was caught for an instant in the line of the
foresail, and then rolled over it and plunged face forward into the sea.
“Shit!” cried the shooter and made a frantic last grab, but it was gone. The body bobbed to the
surface like a cork on a fishing line, then went under.
The shooter ran back to the tiller, shoved the throttle on full, and turned the boat sharply around. He
searched for ten minutes, hoping to get a glimpse of his victim, but he finally gave up.
He was a mile or so away when the gasoline on the trawler exploded, spewing up a broiling ball of
fire that for a moment or two rivaled the rising sun.
He watched the trailing smoke grow smaller and smaller until he could see it no longer.
1
ACE, DEUCE, TREY
Going back to Dunetown was worse than going to Vietnam. I didn‟t know what was in store for me in
Nam; I knew what was waiting in Dunetown.
As the plane veered into its final approach, memories began to ambush me, memories that pulled me
back to a place I had tried to forget for a lot of years, and to a time that was, in my mind, the last
green summer of my life. After that, everything seemed to be tinted by the colors of autumn, colors of
passage. Dying colors.
The colors of Nam.
Brown, muddy rivers. Dark green body bags. Black cinders where trees and villages had once stood.
Cray faces with white eyes, waiting to be zipped up and shipped back to the World and laid away in
the auburn earth.
Those were the hues that had painted my life since that summer. 1963, that was the year.
A long time ago.
For over twenty years I had tried to erase the scars of that year. Now, suddenly, it was thrust back at
me like a dagger, and the names and faces of another time besieged me. Chief. Titan. Wally Butts and