Free Digger 1.0 by Michael Bunker Page B

when the South
fell, you got yourself on a raft to China and then got here because
one of Ho Chi Minh ’s boys might one day go through all the
captured documents back in Saigon and anyone with your name was
going to get dragged in for some talk. Whatever it was, the boys
back in the card room at The Happy Hour, they tolerate you but they
know you weren’t a colonel or a general like they were, because no
one knows you, knows what you did during the war, which is probably
the worst thing for a Vietnamese living in America right now. They
don’t know anything about you, so you might be that other word they
hate so much. You might be a...”
    “Stop it!” whispered Mr. Vo. “Stop it this
very instant. Do not say that word, not ever, in my presence. Do
you understand? In this country, among my people, that word is a
death sentence. Don’t say it.”
    Jim leaned forward and tucked Communist away.
    “All right, then I’ll ask you again, Mr. Vo.
Did you smoke the entire time you were in Vietnam? ‘Cause if you
did, then maybe you were VC and maybe you weren’t. But if there was
a time when you didn’t… a time of about, say, two years, then that
means something. Says a lot about you. See, the VC didn’t smoke
down in the tunnels. One, it was too dangerous. And two, they
needed to smell us coming for them. In the dark, in the black, you
can’t see nothin’ down there. But you sure can smell. You can smell
a frightened to death G.I. who had a cigarette on guard duty the
night before. That was probably real helpful down there in the
dark. So, one more time, did you smoke the whole time you were in
Vietnam? ‘Cause if you didn’t, if there was that two year break I’m
looking for, well, you might just be a very rich man one day, Mr.
Vo. Very rich.”
    Mr. Vo lit another cigarette, never taking
his eyes off the strange man from Texas. The man who had beaten him
at cards and then insisted on buying him a nice dinner. The man who
had been apparently following him all week.
    “Yes,” said Mr. Vo quietly. “There was a
time in Vietnam when I was not… able to smoke.”
    After a moment of silence Jim took up his
wine goblet again. “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it, down in
the tunnels?”
    Mr. Vo said nothing.
    “I was just visiting,” said Jim swirling and
considering the wine. “But it felt like a prison sentence in hell.
You on the other hand, you lived down there. Knew everything about
the tunnels and how to live underground. How to make ‘em and fill
‘em with traps so that anyone who came looking for you was gonna
die. You knew all about that, Mr. Vo.”
    Still nothing from the tiny Asian
dragon-man.
    “I’m not with the government, Mr. Vo,” said
Jim, leaning forward and whispering. “I’m just an ex-soldier, like
you, who got the short end of the stick for his efforts. Maybe if
I’d dodged the draft and gone off to Russia or college I coulda
been makin’ money, enough money to have kept my ranch. Maybe if
you’da played your cards right you’d be back in ‘Nam, head of the
party, or some high government job. Whatever, but I’m guessing
you’re a lot like me, Mr. Vo. I’m guessing the American Dream ain’t
workin’ out too well for you right about now.”
    There was a long silence in which Mr. Vo
took three drags of his cigarette, spilling clouds of white smoke
out across the table and into the candlelit gloom of the fine
room.
    Jim knew that Vo smoked the cigarettes the
way he did because the man had gone two, maybe three years, down in
the dark without a cigarette. The VC didn’t smoke down there. Now
he smoked with relish and fear, savoring the forbidden as he
incessantly chain smoked. Free of the tunnels.
    “No,” whispered Mr. Vo almost to himself.
“It isn’t working out like I thought it might. Suffice it to
say.”
    The duck arrived and the waiter began to
carve tableside, on a silver platter, selecting tender cuts and
rewarding them with deft, almost beautiful