FanStory.com
"Concertina"


Chapter 1
#2 Pencil

By Yardier

"Lee, wake up! You're having a dream," Dawn said with alarm as she fumbled with the bedside lamp.

Lee sat up quickly in the soft light, rubbed his eyes, and tried to control his breathing. Images of the dark and unctuous Mekong night drained from his mind and slid between the headboard and mattress, where it gathered into an insidious pool that lurked beneath their bed.

"Lee, honey." Dawn sat up cautiously and scooched beside him and placed her face against his shoulder. "This has got to stop. It's getting worse…."

"I know," Lee whispered with his head hanging down. He reached up and touched Dawn's face with a thick, calloused hand, not so much to comfort her but to make sure she was real, and the dream of an overwhelming firefight was over. As the shaking from his terror receded, familiar objects in their bedroom replaced his panicked sense of helplessness with comfort and security, mostly select photographs of their wedding, their golden retriever Sam, and of her sister's children playing at the beach. There was a well-used reading chair next to a small bookshelf stocked with self-help books on gardening and how to raise a family. Ten years ago, it would have been filled with Soldier of Fortune and gun magazines and the Time-Life series on the Vietnam war. Still, his wife decided those tasteless periodicals written by bloodthirsty and ill-mannered men did not belong in her bedroom and, one day, while Lee was at work, threw them into the garbage.

Lee didn't say anything about the incident nor confront her; he figured it was a wife thing, and besides, there wasn't anything in those books  he hadn't already seen or experienced in 'Nam. With that capitulation, Lee tried to live a life much like his wife envisioned the bookshelf; clean and orderly with an underlying idea life would get better, and they would remain happy if things were clean and tidy.

Initially, it was easy for him to agree with his wife's philosophy. Because, for the most part, staying alive in Vietnam meant being prepared, something his father impressed upon him as a young boy and a value he disciplined himself to build upon and retain. However, as more and more time went by in his marriage, he began to suspect everything would be fine only if, like those tasteless periodicals, his service to his country and Vietnam experiences could be thrown out with the garbage, never to be acknowledged again.

But it wasn't that easy.

As his wife had said, things were getting worse but what she meant and what he understood to be getting worse were two different understandings.

"I can't keep going on like this, Lee… I need my sleep too."

"I know," Lee said with fatigue.

Earlier in their marriage, Dawn was eager to hear of Lee's combat experiences and often bragged to others about them as if he were some unique jungle hero and then goad him to embellish the stories even further. It was an uncomfortable encouragement causing him to avoid any conversation regarding Vietnam altogether. He became increasingly unsettled at social events as repressed graphic images merged with social smiles and mindless banter while he sipped wine he found increasingly bitter.

It was just a matter of time, but he finally quit talking about Vietnam altogether and began drinking. But unfortunately, he was good at it. He hid his alcoholism from everyone, and even with the occasional drunken rant on his back patio, no one suspected he had a problem. But he knew he did and was fully aware he would have to address the issue sooner than later to stop the dreams, the dreams that were growing with frequency and horrific clarity.

Weary and unsettled, Lee looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was 4:30. "The sun would be coming up soon," he thought, "and today is going to be another scorcher… three digits of hell."

"I mean, can't you talk to somebody? You know, down at that place where all the old soldiers are…?" Dawn asked.

Lee leaned over and kissed Dawn with dry lips that barely touched her cheek. "Ya."

Dawn lay back down and rolled over with her back to him and said to the wall, "Please don't take this the wrong way, you know I love you, but… if you keep waking me with those 'Nam dreams as you call them… well, I think it would be better for you to sleep in the guest bedroom… until, you know, you can be… I mean, sleep normal."

Lee swung his legs over the edge of the bed, stood up on the deep-cut light blue carpet that matched the bedroom curtains, and briefly enjoyed the pleasurable soft sensation beneath his bare feet. "Normal?" he thought as he approached the bedroom door. "What's normal anyway?"

"Lee, it's 4:30; where are you going?"

"To see somebody," Lee said as he quietly shut the bedroom door.
 
~~~~

Lee and Dawn Morrison were married in 1970, the year after he came home from Vietnam and, except for a few apartment rentals in Bakersfield, lived in the same factory manufactured home in Greenfield for the last fifteen years purchased with the help of a V.A. loan. Greenfield is a rural community located just south of Bakersfield in California's great San Joaquin Valley sporting a post office and liquor store conveniently located at the intersection of two county highways. If the residents needed anything else, they drove over to Pumpkin Center or Lamont. Greenfield is not the center of valley agriculture, but the dwindling remnant of Okies that make up Greenfield's demographic potpourri will tell you differently. Dawn was one such person, and she'd tell anyone within earshot that she is proud to be an Okie. She would tell them how her grandparents left the Dustbowl behind and scratched a new life out of San Joaquin's fertile soil. The listener came to painfully realize in great detail if it weren't for the produce planted and harvested by Okies, the world would have starved. This genetic enthusiasm enabled her to become a docent at the Weedpatch Migrant Farm Worker Museum just down the road. This non-paying position is also why Lee drove his father's hand-me-down1964 Ford pick-up truck fifty miles a day across the valley to a reasonable paying laborers job at the B.N. Helle Oilfield Products plant just outside Derby Acres.
 
~~~~

After shutting the bedroom door carefully, Lee padded through the darkened house more by memory than sight. It didn't take long before he felt the plush carpet beneath his feet change to cool hard linoleum and, with the help of the glow from the double oven's clock, made his way through the kitchen to the laundry room where his wife required his work clothes and boots to be stored.

After getting dressed, Lee stepped out onto the utility porch, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself on a potted gladiola at his feet. His wife thought it was struggling to survive because it was heat-stressed. It didn't matter to Lee; he found it increasingly easy not to care what his wife thought or why. And, depending on how many beers he drank the night before, the daily urine baptism on the gladiola could be vigorous. Small victories are what win the war, Lee thought as he zipped his pants up and, with manly purpose, walked down the side yard to what mattered to him.

When Lee's father, Leland, died from a sudden heart attack at the young age of fifty-eight, he left Lee a near-perfect and mechanically sound 1964 Ford pick-up truck. Lee approached the truck parked curbside beneath the glow of a streetlamp as if it were an old friend. He smiled as he unlocked the door and stepped into the cab and sat on the springy bench seat. Then, trying to shut out the memory of the 'Nam nightmare, he recalled the bittersweet moment when he first inherited his father's truck; it was pure and clean and almost brand new, as his mother would say. With the truck came a complete set of master mechanic's and carpenter's tools in their respective tool chests on rollers. Over his lifetime, Leland had gathered practically every tool available for any repair job required of him at any time except for that unexpected early morning heart attack. So Lee was not surprised when he opened his father's carpenter's toolbox to see a half dozen sharpened #2 pencils along with block planes, hammers, hand saws, chisels, and a brace with auger bits. Leland may have made his living as a mechanic but found his joy in woodworking. "Be prepared," Lee thought of his father's wise words. "You can't very well use these tools without a pencil, and without the tools, you can't build or repair anything… simple."

Lee inserted the key into the ignition, started the truck, and let the perfectly balanced engine settle into a smooth idle. At the same time, he pushed the cigarette lighter in and waited for it to pop back out glowing cherry-red to light his morning cigarette. He rolled the driver's window down, leaned over, and rolled the passenger window down using a pair of vice grips permanently squeezed onto the window crankshaft and waited for the lighter… nothing. He put a cigarette between his teeth and pushed the lighter again, still nothing. Finally, he pulled the lighter out and looked at the cold dark coils, and muttered, "Damn fuse." He started to put the lighter into the dash ashtray to remind him to check the fuse later, but it was stuffed with cigarette butts and ashes. What a bunch of crap, he thought as he reinserted the cold lighter back into the receptacle on the dash. He turned the dome light on, filling the cab with a yellow glow that brought back memories of the first time he rode in the truck as a teenager. He and his father brought the new truck home from a Ford dealer in Barstow with smiles on their faces as wide as the highway. He also remembered how his mother proudly told him it was the only thing his father had ever purchased 'brand new,' and he deserved it for all the crap he put up with as a mechanic.

Lee knew there was a book of ancient matches in the glove box somewhere because he had put them there after finding them in the still 'brand new,' never used dash-board ashtray when he inherited the truck. His father didn't smoke. If he did, he probably would not have smoked in his pride and joy. Lee, feeling with his hands more than looking for the matches, rummaged through the glove box stuffed with expired vehicle registration papers, gas receipts, and a couple of delinquent parking tickets. He felt past an old pack of gum, a small plastic container of fuses, and a well-used beer can opener and found the matches.

It's gonna be a good day after all, he thought as he struck a match and lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and, as the first hit of nicotine spun his head, noticed his father's handwriting on the matchbook cover. It read; Be Prepared. Lee smiled at the thought of his father writing his life's mantra onto a book of matches with a perpetually sharpened number two pencil, then placing the matches in an ashtray he would never use. He turned the matchbook over to see if his father had written anything else and instead found a Bible verse embossed in faded gold lettering; 'Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.' Matthew 24:44.

Lee put the matches in his shirt pocket next to his cigarettes, turned off the dome light, and considered the idea that his father might have been a religious man. He knew he was a good, hardworking man but religious…? As a family, they seldom went to church, and both his parents drank an occasional beer or two, but did that make them sinners bound for hell…? Lee couldn't answer those questions and, after this morning's disturbing nightmare, didn't want to think about it either. He had someone he needed to talk to and had more than a few miles to cover before he got there. He took another deep drag from his cigarette then exhaled a steady plume of smoke through his nose. Relaxed and comfortable with purpose, he put the truck in gear and pulled away from the front of his house with the sound of a week's worth of empty beer cans rattling on the floor.
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.

There is only one way out of the snare.


Chapter 2
Lights Out

By Yardier

Lee was born and raised in the small town of Boron in the Mojave Desert on the eastern side of the Tehachapi mountains. Considered the south end of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, the Tehachapi mountains were a formidable obstacle overlooking California's richest valley. Yet, as a young man, Lee didn't plan to live in the valley; he just wanted out of the desert. The war in Vietnam and a bouquet of wildflowers and poppies did that for him.

Initially, he embraced the separation from the desert to Vietnam's jungles until he realized deserts come in many shapes and forms. When he returned from Vietnam and got off the bus in Bakersfield, he was greeted by his parents and all six members of the Greenfield Gardening Club. The President and bearer of the bouquet, Dawn Brundage, beside herself with patriotism, embraced Lee the moment she saw him. With the flowers crushed between them, Lee accepted her kiss without protest.

Lee's parents drove back to Boron alone.

Aside from the early pioneers that crossed over the mountain ranges that bordered California's South Joaquin Valley and developed Bakersfield, no one chooses to relocate there. There are no spas, natural hot springs, or other great inspiring environmental wonders to entice residents from Los Angeles or Sacramento to make a move and call it home. But, go into any restaurant, agricultural, or petroleum business and ask employees how they came to be valley residents. You will be sure to hear about a flat tire, overheated radiator, or blown head gasket that occurred to a member of their family tree as they passed through Bakersfield on State Highway 99 some years past. Bingo; instant waitress, gas jockey, farmhand, or oilfield roughneck.

But it is not just the surrounding mountains and disabled vehicles that keep people in the valley. Sometimes, it's a lack of endurance where the weight of a person's unrealized dream becomes a useless burden. This surrender of the soul reaps some benefits in a balanced agricultural and petroleum-based economy where average paying jobs are available for those who can put up with Valley Fever, ice-cold Tule fog, and an oppressive summer inversion layer. This thick brown haze of oilfield and agricultural pollutants that drives the summer temperature into triple digits is great for cotton, corn, melons, and onions but not so great for the lungs.

Like most valley residents Lee endured the climate and except for the lack of visibility during winter months due to Tule fog, he didn't mind driving from the east end of the valley to the west. The aftermarket air conditioner his father installed on the truck crapped out years ago, so during the summer months, he drove with the windows down and savored the rich smells of alfalfa, corn, and onions as he smoked a cigarette and drank a breakfast beer or two on the way to work.

But now, as he drove toward the west side of the valley, he mused about his 'Nam nightmare wondering how such dark events could spring from the depths of his soul, bringing vivid memories and images of past terror to his mind. It reminded him why he changed his driving patterns to work this last winter. Previously he enjoyed driving and exploring the pre-dawn roads through acres of orchards, fields, and crops, finding an odd comfort as if he was back in ‘Nam patrolling the Mekong Delta's tributaries.

But, in a strange change of emotion, as the relationship between Lee and his wife cooled and his ‘Nam dreams became more frequent, he began to feel uneasy driving on the dark farm roads. It became more and more difficult for him to find respite. Sometimes for no reason at all, he worried the truck headlights would fail leaving him unable to see where he was going. He feared he might drive into an irrigation canal and drown. During those moments, he experienced a sense of guilt building with an unknown fear. Every day it seemed a growing apprehension something terrible was about to occur with impatient insistence doom was right around the corner. Lee couldn't escape the nervous sensation that a clock was ticking everywhere he went, but instead of winding down, it wound tighter. Pitifully, he attempted to counter that apprehension by drinking and smoking more and working himself to the bone.

He was beyond being unsettled; he was lost.

Last winter, during one dark foggy morning as Lee drove to work on a muddy farm road, the truck's headlights suddenly flickered off. Unable to see the road, Lee over-corrected his steering, causing the truck to slide toward a shallow irrigation ditch. Realizing his fear had come to fruition, Lee panicked and jumped on the brakes! The engine stalled, and the truck slipped sideways out of control to the edge of the irrigation ditch and stopped.

Rattled, Lee sat in darkness for a moment, trying to calm himself when he realized he had bitten hard enough on his cigarette to put it out. He rolled the window down and spat the dead cigarette into the morning fog, gulped a quick drink of beer, and tried to start the truck. The engine turned over but would not start. Lee knew the carburetor was flooded and he would have to wait a few minutes and try again. Finally, as the truck's cab became cold, Lee looked out the window and saw the truck sitting at a precarious 45-degree angle to the ditch.

It had been a close call.

Chilled and nervous, he stepped from the truck, zipped his jacket up, and started to light another cigarette when something moved behind him. He dropped the lit match in the mud, a rabbit?

Maybe a coyote, he thought. But wasn't it a little too close for those critters? They don't like being around people.

He lit another match and turned carefully around and saw it was his own shadow that had startled him as it swept across a stone obelisk about two feet wide and three feet high. Lee lit another match and stepped across the irrigation ditch and saw a bronze plaque on the obelisk that read:
 
IN MEMORY OF L.A.P.D. OFFICER IAN J. CAMPBELL
KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY 1963
MAY HE REST IN PEACE
South Valley Farmers Association
 
Lee shivered as he stood in the cold rolling Tule fog next to a plowed-down onion field miles from nowhere. As the match burnt out cold, he glanced across the valley toward Bakersfield's muted glow, then back to the obelisk, now a dark granite testament. It was quiet as Lee looked beyond the obelisk through the wafting fog toward a twinkling light about four miles away. He wondered if it was the same light Officer Hettinger ran to after Jimmy Powell shot his partner Campbell in the face, killing him. The light seemed similar to a mariner's warning beacon, but instead of warning about dangerous shoals, it appeared to be an invitation for respite, a calm cove, a haven.

Without warning, the terror that had been licking at Lee's psyche for months raised its head and prodded him into panic! He wanted to tear his jacket off and run as Officer Hettinger did across the deep plowed furrows toward the porchlight in wild desperation. He wanted to leave his wife and her dollhouse and, most of all, Vietnam far behind. He didn't want to hear or remember anything about Vietnam ever again and thought if he ran fast enough, he might be able to erase everything in his life before this moment.

But, more than that, he wanted to reach the brightly lit porch and pound on the screen door and yell for help, except, in his panicked mind, he couldn't utter the word help. And, just as quickly as his internal distorted cry, "Please elp me… elp me… please!" confused and mocked him; an overwhelming and familiar cloud of gloom settled his sense of terror into a comfortable mire of denial.

Defeated, cold and mute, Lee turned away from the distant light and walked slowly to the truck with an unlit cigarette between his lips, stepped inside, shut the door, and rolled the window up. He sat for a moment staring at the fog-shrouded road before him, lit the cigarette, took a deep drag, gulped the rest of his beer, and threw the empty can onto the other empty cans on the floor. Then, as the alcohol and nicotine wrapped around his tongue, Lee turned the headlights on, started the engine, and put the truck into gear. Sensing a dark presence lurking behind the cab of the truck, he avoided looking into the rear-view mirror as he drove slowly out of the mud toward Derby Acres.

He would not drive the back roads again.

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 3
An Orchard of love

By Yardier

Dr. Nguyen Van Archer blinked his eyes open! Awake, his mind turned on like a television with images of today's and tomorrow's tasks before him. He was excited. He loved Independence Day or the 4th of July, as most Americans called the celebration, and he had one more day to prepare for it. Not wanting to disturb his wife Kim, he sat up carefully in bed, but to no avail.

"Nguyen?" she asked sleepily.

"Yes, dear."

"Why are you getting up at 4:30?"

Nguyen hesitated a moment. "I've got a lot on my mind and a lot to get done for tomorrow's celebration." He did not tell her something else had awakened him.

"Um… right," Kim said into her pillow and closed her eyes.

Nguyen put on his slippers and shuffled into the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, and dropped two bagels in the toaster. He leaned on the kitchen sink and looked through the window at a small orchard of trees barely visible in the pre-dawn light. Tomorrow there would be children laughing and playing and families eating and sharing tales of good and bad fortune that had come their way since they had left Vietnam so many years ago. What a terrible time that had been. But oh, what a great blessing had come their way in this beautiful country called America.

Nguyen poured himself a mug of coffee and mixed a little milk and honey with it just as the bagels popped up in the toaster. The small kitchen now smelled like a grand little bakery. He was inwardly pleased and thankful for the small blessings in his life as he carried his coffee and bagels and sat at the kitchen table.  Still, he was bothered by a vague pressing issue.  Perhaps he had forgotten something necessary for Independence Day.  He did not know what it was, and he did not want to let his flock down, so he bowed his head and closed his eyes and prayed a simple prayer.  "Thank you, Lord, for this day and all that is about to occur. I know you have awakened me for a purpose, and I bow my soul before You.  Amen."

He sipped his coffee, took a small bite of the bagel, then reached across the table and retrieved a Daily Devotional Bible. He intended to read a chapter from Psalms, but the Bible seemingly opened on its own to Matthew 24:44 "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

Nguyen paused mid-chew; the scripture jumped out at him with urgency and import he had not experienced since he first read it before his conversion.

He swallowed and reread the scripture. "Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

"Whew… Lord, what am I to do with that?" Nguyen softly questioned God under his breath.

"Are you talking to yourself again?"

Nguyen jumped at the sound of his wife's soft voice and turned to see her leaning against the door jamb with a sweet sleepy smile.

He put his coffee mug down with a sheepish look as Kim walked behind him, slid her arms over his chest, and placed her cheek against his. "Are you telling me the great Mr. Nguyen Van Archer with a Doctorate in Christian Apologetics does not know what to do with a 'Word' from our Lord? If that's the case, I must have married the wrong man."

Nguyen turned, faced her, and placed his lips on hers. She pressed her lips back with a full kiss, and for a moment, they shared peace and togetherness bonded by love.

Breaking for air, Nguyen looked into her eyes and asked, "Are you sure?"

Kim, the bride of his youth, answered, "I don't know…, I might have to check again later."

"You'll know where to find me," Nguyen said mischievously.

Kim reached down and snatched the remaining bagel and said, "I know…, watering those dang fruit trees of yours."
 
~~~~
Like many towns in the South San Joaquin Valley, Derby Acres isn't a town but just a name for an area during the pioneer settlement years of the 1800s. However, the Derby Acres settlement is unique in that, unlike other oilfield boom towns of the West Side, oil was never discovered. Instead, Derby Acres grew from a two-mile oval racetrack designed for the once-a-year Oil Field Boom Days' celebration that included horse and wagon racing. Over time as automobiles and trucks became more prevalent, the 'Oil Field Boom Days' celebration was relocated further west to Moron, the official oil field 'boom town' of the west side with an actual U.S. Post Office.

A risky and futile attempt to develop the abandoned racetrack into building lots and parcels barely got off the ground when it soon withered and died like every other thing that could not prevail against the tainted alkaline soil and the relentless scorching sun. Nevertheless, it was on Lot #1 Dr. Van Archer staked his Christian homestead and watered his 'dang' fruit trees. The east property line of Lot #1 consisted of both starting and finish lines of the old racetrack, and it is there that Dr. Van Archer constructed a simple four foot by eight-foot sign that read:
 
WELCOME
To
DERBY ACRES FREE-WILL METHODIST CHURCH
Sunday Services 10:00 am
Wednesday Prayer Meeting 7:00 pm
Dr. Nguyen Van Archer, Pastor
 
Dr. Van Archer didn't particularly like the title 'Doctor' and instead preferred 'Brother,' so he made it a point to request persons to refer to him as Brother Archer.

Brother Archer loved God, loved his Vietnamese wife, and loved the little Christian congregation God had blessed him to shepherd, teach, and serve. He was grateful God removed him from war-torn Vietnam during the 'Boat People' exodus. But being an Amerasian bastard son of a Black Airman stationed at Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon brought with it not a welcome to America but another form of rejection. Nguyen Van Ki was alive and safe but had no family for support. He didn't know where his mother was or if she was alive, and his father acknowledged him only to the extent the U.S. Immigration Service was satisfied for him to become a U.S. citizen. After that, he was on his own. He took his father's last name along with a small immigration resettlement stipend. Then, with the help of a Methodist Missionary program, he accepted a job at the Westside Junior College as a janitor and yard maintenance man.

It was there at the Westside Junior College Nguyen Van Archer worked and studied and began to assimilate with his fellow Americans to include other relocated Vietnamese Boat People. It was also there he first heard the hateful words, 'Nigger Gook' spew from the mouth of a cocky Nose Tackle named Jerimiah Polanski.
~~~~

"What did you say?" Nguyen stopped pushing his janitor cart.

"I said, look, there's another Nigger Gook, and it's obvious his mother was a whore," Jerimiah said with a grin.

A small crowd gathered around Jerimiah and Nguyen in the middle of the quad like jackals waiting for the kill. None of them saw Nguyen carefully remove a horsehair broom from the cart and unscrew the wood handle.  Jerimiah saw it, though, just as Nguyen flipped it with a quick snap into Jerimiah's groin, causing him to double over. Nguyen quickly flipped the broom handle over like a propeller and smacked Jerimiah on the top of the head, much like a nun would smack a student with a ruler.

"Eww," the crowd responded, and a young woman giggled.

"Do you know my mother?" Nguyen asked Jerimiah.

"No…" Jerimiah sputtered while rubbing the top of his head with one hand and holding his groin with the other.

"Well, I know yours. She's the woman who sits in the same seat in the booster section at all the home games drinking vodka out of a Seven-Up bottle."

Jerimiah squinted his eyes and looked sideways at Nguyen.

"That's right, she's a drunk, and you're embarrassed by her screeching your name during the home games. Jerry, right?  Go Jer-reee, Go Jer-reee Stomp his guts Jer-reee!"

Like a volcano ready to erupt, Jerimiah slowly stood upright with hot anger flushing up his thick neck to his determined and set jaw.

Nguyen circled Jerimiah while leisurely spinning the broom handle and continued, "She sounds like a cat with its tail caught in a door except no one ever tells her to shut up because of you… the mighty Polanski."

The hushed crowd stepped back.

Nguyen stopped short of Jerimiah's reach then leaned on the broom handle as if it was the staff of Moses. "I can't help what my mother did or didn't do, was or wasn't. I don't even know if she is alive, but she did give birth to me. She didn't have to, and she probably would have had a better life had she left me in a rice paddy, but she didn't. So, here I stand in front of one mighty nose tackle that outweighs me by over a hundred pounds."

Jerimiah balled his fists and stepped closer to Nguyen.

Nguyen didn't back down and instead took a half step closer to Jerimiah, causing a sudden and perplexed look from the mighty nose tackle. Then, Nguyen spoke with authority, "Look, Jerry, Jerimiah… you can call me Nigger Gook all you want… it doesn't affect me one way or the other. It just reveals how ignorant you are but, you talk about my mother as if you know her, well; we're going to have problems." Nguyen struck the broom handle on the cement walkway with emphasis. At the same time, he looked closer into Jerimiah's eyes to see a dwindling fire and a welcome retreat from his bullying into a cleverly hidden sadness.

Relieved but cautious, Nguyen put his free hand forward and said, "I can help you help your mother."

Unsure what had just happened, Jerimiah hesitated, then shook Nguyen's hand and said, "Ahright, Kwai Chang Caine, just leave the broom handle out of it."
~~~~
Years later, after Brother Archer graduated from Westside College with an Associate in Science degree in Horticulture and finished his Doctorate in Christian Apologetics, the pay-as-you-go correspondence course from the non-credentialed Mt. Nebo Bible College located in an Omaha Nebraska mail drop provided Brother Archer with the certification needed to start his little Derby Acres church. The first tree he planted was a walnut tree in honor of hardheaded Jerry Polanski and his struggling mother. Brother Archer didn't tell anyone, but every conversion to Christianity resulting from his evangelism ended with a tree planted on the church property. Some were walnuts, apricots, and oranges, limes, and grapefruit. Each tree was named in Brothers Archer's heart with a unique label to water and fertilize the tree and pray for specific issues affecting each person or family.
~~~~
With some twenty hodgepodge fruit and nut trees in various sizes scattered about the church property, Brother Archer rolled out the long garden hose to begin his daily devotion of watering and prayer. Starting with a new peachtree, planted for the Sorenson family, who recently lost their four-year-old little girl to cancer, Brother Archer petitioned the Lord to comfort the grieving parents.

Earlier, the weatherman on the morning radio said it would be 110 degrees in Bakersfield by noon.

This warning meant the Westside Oilfields were going to broil anywhere between 110 and 115 degrees, and, as Brother Archer began watering his trees, he could tell even at this predawn hour, it was already pushing 90, maybe even 95 degrees.

As he stood with his thumb over the end of the hose watering the Sorenson tree, Brother Archer could see seventy-five miles across the San Joaquin Valley to the rising sun. The dark Tehachapi Mountains backlit with an ominous red, and yellow glowing sky promised a day of relentless heat. He could also see a straight line of headlights coming out of Bakersfield on the state highway heading toward the oil fields as welders, roughnecks, crane operators, and laborers inched their way to the richest oil patch in California. Rain or shine, freezing Tule fog or broiling heat, there was oil to be pumped, mortgages to be paid, and babies fed. Most of those vehicles would pass by Derby Acres in about an hour, but a few would turn off the state highway onto Furlong Road and drive-by Brother Archer's 'Welcome' sign on their way to the B.N. Helle Oil Field Pipe Products Company located at the end of the road.

Whatever is going to happen today, Brother Archer thought, it is going to be hot.

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 4
Stones, Rocks and Boulders.

By Yardier

Lee turned off the state highway onto Furlong Road and took a long last swig of another breakfast beer. He belched as he passed the Derby Acres Free Will Methodist welcome sign and wondered if he was doing the right thing; Brother Archer might not even be awake at this hour.

But he was.

As Lee slowed down and turned off Furlong Road onto the church's gravel parkway, the truck headlights swept across Brother Archer with a hose in hand standing amid an assorted nut and fruit tree orchard. Brother Archer waved and placed the hose down at the base of Sorenson's Peachtree and walked over to greet Lee.

Lee tossed the empty beer can to the floor, turned the ignition off, stepped from the truck, and quickly shut the squeaky door.

Despite Lee's awkward attempt, Brother Archer's keen senses saw and smelled the clutter of empty beer cans on the floor.

"How about that, the sun comes up and brings with it, Lee Morason." Brother Archer gave Lee a warm look and shook his hand eagerly.

Lee let his hand be wagged and gave a sheepish smile back at Brother Archer. He felt awkward and foolishly transparent because of all the times he had driven past the little church to and from work; he might have slowed down only once or twice to wave back at the perpetual smiling Amerasian.

"You remembered my name." Lee was surprised and wondered if the Pastor could smell beer on his breath.

He did.

"Of course, I remembered your truck then your name."

"My truck?"

"Yes, remember last year when I ran out of gas on the way to Bakersfield?  You stopped and asked if I needed any help."

"Oh ya, I took you down to Raj's gas station."

And you had beer on your breath then too, Brother Archer thought to himself. "That's right, he gave me a five-gallon gas can and filled it with gas and never charged me," Brother Archer said with a grin of victory.

"You're right. Raj didn't charge you. How'd you manage that?"

"He attends church here."

"I thought he was Indian or Hindu or something."

"Well, now he's a Christian from India who loves the Lord," Brother Archer said with a smile.

"He wears a turban."

"Well, and you wear a ball cap, and… sometimes I wear a cowboy hat."

Lee tried to picture Brother Archer's Afro stuffed in a cowboy hat.

"You know…, in honor of the Duke."

Lee took his ball cap off and scratched his head with wonderment.

Brother Archer chided Lee, "You do know who the Duke is, right?"

"Of course, John Wayne, everyone knows who the Duke is." Lee put his cap on with a smug grin.

"Did you see the movie 'Green Berets'?" Brother Archer asked as he motioned for Lee to walk with him to the side of the church.

"Ya, it's a little hokey," Lee stepped over the garden hose.

"Hokey...? Interesting word… but the Duke loved the Vietnamese people, and we love him back. He did a lot to expose the Communist oppression against the Vietnamese people."

"And after seeing the film, a lot of young guys enlisted in the Army hoping to become Green Berets only to become 'Grunts' that died horrible deaths in forgotten valleys, mountain tops, and rice paddies," Lee said with an edge to his voice.

Brother Archer hesitated at the side door, leaned over, and adjusted the faucet to a trickle. He looked back at Sorenson's Peachtree to make sure water was still flowing.

Lee immediately felt awkward that his voice sounded angry and worried he might have offended the kind Pastor.

Brother Archer stood and opened the door for Lee and invited him in. "Yes, there were a lot of lives lost in that war, but many were saved too. Have you got time for a cup of coffee?"

"Sure, that would be great. I'd like to talk to you about something." Lee paused. "I know I didn't make an appointment or anything, and I can come back later if this is not a good time."

"Come on, come inside. Do you like bagels?" Brother Archer smiled and gently patted Lee on the back as they stepped into the kitchen.
~~~~
Brother Archer switched the light on and walked over to the coffee pot and gathered a couple of mugs from the cabinet. "Care for some milk and honey with your coffee?"

"No thanks… blacks fine," Lee said, blinking his eyes from the bright light. He looked around the room and saw a working kitchen; two stoves, two refrigerators, and one large deep freezer, all white and various brands. Where there wasn't an appliance, white cabinets lined the walls with butcher block countertops. A long worktable with a couple of chairs cozied to it stood in the middle of the room. The kitchen was not a place to eat but to prepare food; lots of it. He saw boxes of hot dog and hamburger buns, watermelons, fresh corn, soda cases, red, white, and blue patriotic streamers, and dozens of small American flags.

He had forgotten tomorrow was the Fourth of July.

Brother Archer pulled a chair out for Lee and handed him a cup of coffee. "I know it looks a little cluttered, but believe me, tomorrow is going to be a whirlwind of activity. We love to celebrate Independence Day and usually have a big barbeque and little fireworks show later in the evening."

Brother Archer sat across from Lee and glanced at Lee's wedding ring. "I know it's a long drive, but you and your wife are welcome to join us."

"Thanks, but I think my wife has plans for us to visit her sister," Lee lied.  He did not know what or if his wife had any plans, and he didn't care. The 4th of July was not the same anymore, and if he didn't have to go to work to clean oil field pipe and there was a cold beer nearby, he'd be satisfied to sit on the back porch and stare at the fence.

"We're going to make homemade ice cream," Brother Archer teased.

Lee raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Another time, maybe."

Both men sat for a moment sipping coffee in silence, and before it became too awkward, Brother Archer said, "Lee, I know you stopped here for a reason, and I'm all ears if you want to talk about it."

Lee looked hard into his cup of coffee. "I'm not sure how to ask this, but…" Lee cleared his throat. "Is there such a thing as evil? I don't mean like a murderer on the loose or a tornado destroying a town but a thing, a dark, powerful entity that can kill you or drive you insane?"

Brother Archer put his cup down.

Lee looked up at Brother Archer. "I've had dreams… nightmares… and they're scaring me… and it's not like boogeyman scary but alternate reality or another dimension kind of scary. It's as if I am somewhere outside my sleeping body where this evil power torments me."

"My wife thinks I need help," Lee said sadly and looked back into his cup.

Suddenly, a chill passed through the kitchen, causing the hair on Brother Archer's arms to stand up. He cocked his head as if he heard something when the scripture he read earlier echoed in his mind; Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

"Lee, may I see your hands?"

"What…?"

"Your hands Lee, may I see your hands palm up?" Brother Archer asked with urgency.

Lee slid his hands forward with concern. "Sure, but what has this to do with anything?"

Brother Archer grasped Lee's hands firmly and saw the palms of Lee's hands were thick with calluses and scars highlighted with dirt and grime embedded into the folds of skin.

Startled, Lee tried to pull his hands back, but Brother Archer's grip was solid. "What…what are you doing?" Lee stammered.

"Close your eyes." Brother Archer commanded as he closed his eyes and bowed his head.

Brother Archer began praying, "Our Father which art in heaven…."

Lee's hands felt as cold as ice.

"Hallowed be thy name…."

Comfortable energy slowly vibrated from Lee's palms up his arms into his chest.

"…Thy kingdom come…."

Brother Archer's words morphed into a heavenly harmony prodded by an exquisite power, bringing clarity and rest to Lee.

"…Thy will be done in earth."

Lee drifted into a sublime state where he found himself standing on the edge of a perfect sea.

"…as it is in heaven."

The body of water lying perfectly still before Lee glowed with soft blue luminescence as if it was an eternal mirror.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

Lee gazed across to where he thought the other side of the sea would be but could not see it. The sea was limitless with shores that went beyond eternity, and yet he stood on its edge where mud and perfection met.

"And forgive us our debts…."

A slight breeze from across the sea brushed Lee's face with a coolness that awakened a desire to step onto the surface of the sea and walk to the other side, wherever it may be.

"…as we forgive our debtors."

Lee started to take a step but became aware of stones in his pockets that weighed him down. Trying to remove those stones, he discovered heavier rocks deeper in those same pockets.

"And lead us not into temptation…."

Lee realized there was no way to walk across the sea with the rocks' weight, yet the more he tried to remove them, the more he found. He also realized the more he wanted to remove them, the deeper he sank into the muddy shore, and, just as he began to worry that he stood in quicksand, a sharp voice behind him barked, "Hey, what are you doing over there…? Lee, get over here. Do you want to drown?"

"…but deliver us from evil…."

Lee turned around and saw giant boulders and ancient lava walls that had cooled and stopped short of the edge of the perfect sea. He saw a man dressed in Vietnam Jungle fatigues peeking from around one of the boulders. "Come on, Lee, get away from there… how many times have I got to tell you not to wander away?"

Lee stepped toward the man and realized the rocks in his pockets seemed lighter as the muddy shore became firm beneath his feet. Then, relieved, he began to stride toward the man in uniform.

"That's right… get over here. Lee, you can be such trouble at times. What were you thinking?" The man behind the lava boulder looked nervously to the right and left and avoided looking directly across the perfect sea.

As Lee got closer to the man, he saw something peculiar about his face.

The man turned his face away from Lee and said, "Come on, let's go, we've got work to do."

Lee approached the lava wall cautiously. "Wait a minute, who are you?"

"We don't have time for that; S1 has an important mission for you. Hurry up, we’ve got to go." The man turned his back to Lee and tried to dart into a gap of the lava wall, but Lee reached out quickly and grabbed the man by his uniform and spun him around. He was shocked to see his own distorted face mirrored in anguish as if virulent cancer had eaten his flesh! Panicked, he turned away to block the terror and found himself standing in total darkness. Silence surrounded him as if all creation had been removed, leaving a vacuum. Unable to speak, he trembled at the enormity of the void wherein he stood when Brother Archer's voice whispered, "For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."

Brother Archer lifted his head and released Lee's hands gently.

As if waking from a dream, Lee too lifted his head and opened his eyes as he gradually became aware of the aroma of coffee and bagels.

Brother Archer smiled at Lee, took a sip of coffee, and said, "Yes, there is such a thing as evil but not as you have described it."
~~~~

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 5
A Word Ignored.

By Yardier

Relieved his thought or dream or vision was now gone from his mind, Lee felt comfortable for the first time in a long time to sit and listen.

Brother Archer spoke carefully, "Evil is synonymous with sin. However, this is difficult to understand; evil is not a thing or entity as we commonly define it. While evil is a non-thing, it is also evidence of rebellion against God's will."

Lee scrunched his face trying to understand. "God's will?"

"Yes, God has placed a standard before humanity that guides us toward Him. It is His will for humanity to become liberated from spiritual death."

Brother Archer noticed the confusion on Lee's face and spoke more clearly, "Plainly put, anything, act or thought, against God's will is rebellion and that act of rebellion is called sin and, the product of sin is… no-thing… or, as in Biblical terms, death. When humanity observes the 'non-thing' or 'death,' they deny it is the evidence of sin and instead redefine it as evil. However, regardless of the name humanity has given sin, they still cannot avoid being shocked and horrified by evidence of the non-thing."

Lee leaned forward with memories of his nightmares swirling in his head and asked, "If evil is nothing, why is it so threatening… so terrifying?"

"Because humans want to be something… be somebody and, when they encounter the non-thing behind their desires, they become aware they are mortal. They come to understand that the non-thing is lulling them into the illusion that it doesn't exist when, in fact, it does.


"A thing that doesn't exist but does?" Lee scratched his head.

"Yes, humans are terrified of becoming inconsequential, a non-thing." Brother Archer paused. "And it's their worst fear."

Lee wondered if death was the end of life and an empty darkness where a person no longer existed in any form, why was everybody afraid to die? They'd have no thoughts, feelings, or memories. It would be over just like a burnt-out light bulb.

"Consider this comparison, Lee; A father gave his daughter, a bride to be, a hand-sewn wedding gown made with the finest silk and satin, stitched together with silver and gold threads, and highlighted with rare pearls. There is no other like it. Then, one day before her wedding, she opens her closet to admire the wedding gown and discovers a six-inch hole had been cut from the middle of the gown  where her heart would be."

Lee took a breath as he considered the bride's shock.

"It is gone," Brother Archer said. "The beauty, time, effort, and evidence of a father's love have been destroyed. A hole in the middle has mutated a gown as beautiful as a stary night. Yet, that hole consists of absolutely nothing."

"Something caused that hole," Lee said while struggling to smother a reemerging thought and image of the first Viet Cong he killed.

"You're right. That hole is the evidence of a determined act performed by an entity that can make that choice."

"Something that can destroy beauty." Lee paused as the image of the dying Viet Cong slipped back into a dark cloud in his mind. But then, he quickly added, "and innocence."

"Well, not true innocence but what appears to be innocent." Brother Archer carefully corrected while considering Lee may have just revealed a split personality or that another Lee existed and struggled to dominate the other.

"Babies are innocent. They haven't done anything wrong." Lee rationalized.

"Yet." Brother Archer once again corrected Lee.

"What… what could a baby purposefully do wrong?"

"It's not what a baby can do. It's what a baby is."

Lee protested, "Come on, Brother Archer, babies are born innocent. Surely you know that."

"Yes and no. They are born innocent of willful disobedience to God but are also born fallen."

"What do you mean, fallen?" Lee asked.

"Only one person has been born innocent in this world; His name is Jesus Christ. And, except for Adam and Eve's initial perfect creation, the rest of humanity has been born fallen.

"Fallen from what?" Lee looked up at the ceiling.

Brother Archer also looked up at the ceiling but with a quick prayer in his head, then said, "Stripped of our original glory and God's Spirit. Because of Adam's sin, we now stand naked before God, seeking not Him but ourselves. At a point known only to God, a baby developing into a child will exert its  will against God's will. The baby will grow, desiring to be its own god. It is inevitable."

"Here we go, Original Sin, right?" Lee shook his head with skepticism while remembering his sister-in-law's attempts to get him saved. 

"Correct but considering your initial question regarding evil being an entity, perhaps you should look at 'Original Sin' as 'Original Absence.'"

"Absence of what?" Lee asked.

Brother Archer looked at Lee with compassion. "Original Perfection of man and earthly creation."

"If God is perfect and everything He does is perfect, then when He created man and all of creation perfect, it stands to reason all of that should still be perfect, right?" Lee asked as he sat back in his chair. Smug, he remembered how he had diffused his sister-in-law's preaching attempts so many years earlier.

"Yep, if God created robots, but He didn't," Brother Archer retorted. "He created man with Free Will, Perfect Free Will, to love Him or not, to obey Him or not, to live with Him for all of eternity or not."

"So, I'm forced to love Him."

"No, you are not forced to do anything. You have the Free Will to choose or not to choose," Brother Archer said.

"Some choice," Lee said while vaguely remembering something he once believed as he patrolled the rivers of Vietnam about being unable to not choose. "In other words, I can choose with the option not to choose."

"Right."

"Isn't not choosing a choice?" Lee asked with reborn jungle wisdom.

Brother Archer smiled at Lee's confidence and basic logic. "Well, He did create you and has given you this option. Don't you think the Creator should have some say in His creation?"

"Ya, I guess… if you believe God created us, but what about evolution?"

Brother Archer became impatient. "Come on, Lee, you're the one having nightmares and wondering if evil is an entity. Do you really think the force of evil in your dreams evolved from swamp gas?"

Chagrined, Lee sat back in his chair. "Your right. It doesn't make much sense but, that evil force in my dreams is so terrible and threatening, sometimes I feel like I'm going to die."

"Are you afraid to die?"

"I don't think about it much when I'm awake, but when I dream… yes, I'm terrified that I'm going to fall into an endless pit of darkness and death."

"Would you like to be assured that would never take place?"

"You mean become religious?" Lee cocked his head.

"No… accept the gift of eternal life with Jesus Christ," Brother Archer said.

"What are you talking about… become a holy roller… a Jesus freak?" Lee pushed his cold mug of coffee away.

Brother Archer stood and picked up Lee's mug. "No. Remember what I told you about fallen humanity?"

"Yes."

Brother Archer walked over to the sink and emptied Lee's mug. "Well, Jesus Christ has provided redemption for all of fallen humanity and offers eternal life with Him in Heaven. It's a gift, and all you must do is understand you are a sinner and believe Jesus Christ died on the Cross on your, and all of humanity's, behalf to pay for those sins.

"Believe Jesus died for me…?"

"Yes, and believe He rose from the dead three days later to offer you a new life and eternal glory in Heaven."

"Believe?"

"Yes, and you will be saved."

Lee sat there deep in thought, staring a hole into the refrigerator across the room. At first, it was a small hole about the size of the NATO 5.56 round he sprayed across riverbanks and rice paddies with reckless and sometimes gleeful abandon. He had killed many Vietnamese, some were legitimate Viet Cong, but others were poor rice farmers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now, the 'Xin Loi' rationale from back in the day was losing its healing justification just as fast as Lee could slug down another beer.

Brother Archer picked up the coffee pot and waved it back and forth to get Lee's attention.

"Ya… Ya, I'll have another cup."

Suddenly, a melodic chorus of Vietnamese voices startled Lee. Xin Loi, the jokes on you, G.I.

Lee glanced around the room, but he knew the voices came from within his head. He tried to drown the voices out and nervously asked Brother Archer, "Saved from what?"

Brother Archer walked over, placed the hot mug in front of Lee, then sat across from him and said, "Hell."

Lee stared at the coffee for a moment listening, and when he didn't hear the voices, asked, "Saved from Hell… you mean going to Church will save me from going to Hell?"

"No, it's not necessary to go to church to receive Christ's gift of salvation or to become saved. Receiving Christ's gift of salvation is personal. Speak to Him, ask Him to come into your heart and soul, and rid your mind of your night terrors."

"Speak to Him?" Lee asked.

"Yes, and believe. The Bible tells us that whosoever calls upon His name will be saved. It really is that simple."

"You believe all of this?" Lee took a sip of coffee and wondered if he would have to start wearing a tie to be saved. He sat still for a moment, and when he didn't hear any more Vietnamese voices, considered wearing a tie to make sure he never heard them again.

Brother Archer chuckled. "Of course, that's why I'm a Pastor. I'm sharing the Good News from the King of kings and Lord of lords, and you, my friend, have just been served!"

Lee smiled. "So, you just served me to save me."

"Yep, pretty much." Brother Archer smiled back.

"I'll give it some thought."

"I'll be praying for you," Brother Archer said warmly.

Suddenly Lee looked solemn. "I'd like you to pray about something else too."

"Of course."

"I think I have a child." Lee took a breath.

"A child… not from your wife?" Brother Archer asked cautiously.

"Right… before I was married… when I was in Vietnam."

Surprised, Brother Archer asked, "Vietnam… you were a soldier?"

"Yes, I operated a gunboat in the Mekong… the Rung Sat."

"That was a dangerous area, Lee. You are fortunate to be alive."

"I'm grateful…" Lee paused and closed his eyes for a moment. "But bothered about some things."

"How so?"

"The dreams… nightmares, and the growing thought I left a child behind."

What does it matter, G.I., that you gave life to one after taking so many? A singular Vietnamese voice whispered in Lee's head.

"What does your wife think about this?" Brother Archer asked.

Damn voices. Lee rubbed growing sweat off his hands onto his work pants. "I haven't told her… we have enough problems as it is. I don't think she would understand."

"True, it might be best to verify you have a child first." Brother Archer thought of his father in Detroit, who did not want anything to do with him. "You say you think you have a child…."

"I don't know for sure if I do or I don't, but I had a girlfriend… Anh Li; she called herself Annie. When she told me she was pregnant, I thought it was great. I brought her money, C-rats and soap, stuff like that every chance I got. I was in the process of trying to get us registered with the Embassy when one bad day, my boat was shot out from beneath me. The next thing I knew, I was shipped back to the states. I never saw her again. I wrote to her and sent more money but never heard anything back."

"How did you meet her?" Brother Archer asked.

"She lived in a small village just outside the Navy base at Nha Be on the Saigon River."

"Outside a U.S. Navy base…?" Brother Archer raised his eyebrows.

"I know what you're thinking, but she wasn't like that…she was special… she loved me. I was going to take care of her and bring her back to the states," Lee said.

"You wanted to marry her?"

"Yes, I loved her. I didn't care she was Vietnamese. I wanted to live the rest of my life with her." Lee's eyes moistened.

"Didn't care she was Vietnamese?" Brother Archer shook his head. "How gracious of you."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." Lee winced.

"Instead, you married a local gal, and now your marriage has grown cold, and you reminisce about your first love, which occurred in a war zone when you were what... nineteen?" Brother Archer said with a slight edge to his voice.

"The whole thing haunts me, Brother Archer, Vietnam, Annie, a child left behind. I think I should go back and try to find them. I need to stop these dreams, Brother Archer." Lee did not mention the haunting Vietnamese voices in his head. Instead, he managed to repress his emotions and bit his lip as he clutched the coffee mug tighter and asked, "Why are these images and dreams coming back now? They're so vivid."

Quit lying, The Vietnamese voices whispered. You know why we are coming back now. Images and dreams! We are as real as God almighty, and we are here to break your denial for one purpose and one purpose only: to steal your pitiful soul.

Lee wanted to mention the voices, but fear gripped his tongue.

Brother Archer became alarmed when he saw the color drain from Lee's face leaving an ashy blank stare. "Haunts you… is this haunting part of the evil force in your dreams?"

Lee suddenly jerked his head from one side to the other. "Elp. elp," he pled as he scanned the kitchen, looking for the source of the Vietnamese voices. He wondered if he had said 'Elp.' Embarrassed, his nervous gaze settled briefly on the overhead light then back to Brother Archer's concerned face.

"I don't know… maybe we should just drop it… okay?" Lee was afraid he would hear more voices and completely 'Nam-out' and collapse right in the middle of Brother Archer's Free Will kitchen. He brought the coffee mug to his face and hid behind it and thought, I didn't say elp, I didn't.

The Vietnamese voices again whispered, Nam-out? You're not going to blame your fence riding on that old trope, are you?

Brother Archer looked at Lee with concern and alarm. He saw that something dark and deep tormented Lee. Maybe Lee said 'Elp' but meant 'Help.'  "Your call, my friend, but I ask you to look at the practicality of your situation. The effort required of you to find a child that, may or may not exist, might best be directed to rekindling your marriage."

Suddenly, Lee and Brother Archer were startled out of the moment's awkwardness by the sound of a pick-up truck roaring by the church. The driver honked the horn obnoxiously and yelled, "Get to work, boozer!"

Embarrassed but relieved with the interruption, Lee smiled sheepishly, put the coffee mug down, and stood cautiously with the word 'Elp' fading from his mind. "I'm sorry… one of the guys I work with. I need to get going. Thanks for the coffee and advice."

Brother Archer sensing a spiritual interruption but not quite discerning if it was good or bad, said, "No problem, Lee, anytime… that's why I’m here."

As both men stepped into the bright morning sun and experienced the abnormal blast of heat, Lee said, "Damn, this is going to be one for the record."

Troubled, Brother Archer shaded his eyes with his hand and looked beyond his orchard at a tall dead eucalyptus tree at the end of Furlong Road. "Yep, I think you're right, Lee."

Brother Archer was not thinking about the heat.

Brother Archer walked with Lee to his truck and opened the squeaky driver's door for him. Lee sat behind the steering wheel and looked past Brother Archer's concerned face to the orchard behind him. "That's quite a collection of trees you got there."

Ignoring the smell of stale beer coming from the cab, Brother Archer smiled politely as he placed his hands on the window opening. "Lee, I'm glad you stopped by today and, I want to share with you something that the Lord put on my heart this morning just before you arrived…. I believe it is intended for you."

Lee put the key into the ignition then reached over to close the door, "Okay…."

Brother Archer gently resisted Lee's effort to close the door and spoke carefully, "The Bible says, "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

Don't listen to him. The Vietnamese voice in Lee's head demanded. He's got nothing to say to you. Put it in gear and get going. You'll be late for work, boozer.

Lee started the engine and stared through the cracked windshield with the words 'at an hour you do not expect' settling heavily in his heart. Then, flustered with mixed emotions, he pulled the door respectfully from Brother Archer's grasp, put the truck in gear, looked at Brother Archer, and simply said, "Goodbye, Pastor."

The Vietnamese voices in his head encouraged Lee, That's the ticket, Lee boy. Now you're on your way. Leave this religious freak in the dust.

Brother Archer stood a moment longer in the blazing morning sun and watched Lee pull onto Furlong Road and drive slowly toward the dead eucalyptus tree with the sounds of empty beer cans rattling from the truck bed.

Quietly, he thanked the Lord for Lee's unexpected visit and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Then, feeling blessed to be used by God, he walked over to the Sorenson's peach tree, gathered the hose and shovel, and looked around for a new spot to dig. He noticed a tough, challenging section of alkaline earth near the East property line behind the 'Welcome' sign. He walked over and began chipping at the hard-baked surface as water dribbled from the hose at his feet.
~~~~
 
 

Author Notes Xin Loi: Vietnamese idiom meaning "Sorry about that."


Chapter 6
Rust Never Sleeps.

By Yardier

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

Baisey Nebenkern Helle was a traveling nut-and-bolt salesman from Hoboken, New Jersey, who migrated west, ripping off ranchers, farmers, and hardware store owners during WWII when steel and iron were scarce. During the early 1950s, his travels ended when he opened his Oilfield Pipe Products Company in Derby Acres, located between the Midway-Sunset oilfield, the largest oilfield in California, and the U.S. Navy Petroleum Reserve #1 in Elk Hills just down the road. He finally found his gold mine by buying used sucker rods and well-casings pulled from commercial oil fields then selling them to the U.S. Navy Petroleum Reserve as new. The money was easy, and his patriotic conscience non-existent.

However, one day after ten years of false billings, he sold one too many loads of sucker rods and casings to a Texas oilman whose eyesight was keener than the U.S. Navy's and discovered the fraud.

After a two-year trial, Mr. Baisey N. Helle was sentenced to ten years at the Federal Penitentiary in Lompoc, leaving the management of the renamed B.N. Helle Oil Field Products Company to his nephew, Claude Aikens, a meth-head wonder boy.

Claude was as devious as his uncle but with more energy to fulfill his desires. He devised a method of steam cleaning used sucker rods and casings. Then common laborers, using powerful grinders equipped with eight-inch wire wheels, scrubbed and burnished the pipe to look new.

His proudest moment came when he developed a mechanical method to stamp each rod and casing with a fake serial number and an official-looking statement that boldly claimed: 'CERTIFIED INSPECTED BY US.' He gloated inwardly with the thought that if authorities ever questioned him, he'd claim with Christian sincerity there was no intent to defraud anybody because the 'US' meant the B.N. Helle employees and not the U.S. Government. And, while he benefited financially from people's ignorance, he truly believed he was under no obligation to determine if buyers could comprehend what they read. 

Feeling emboldened, Claude asked exorbitant prices for the rods and casing as if they had been newly manufactured. He figured if they looked new and buyers thought they were new or as good as new, then so be it. He was making a ton of money. Besides modernizing his own office with air conditioning, the so-called manufacturing building remained as constructed in 1946. The creosoted beams, salvaged from old wood derricks and skinned and roofed with surplus corrugated tin sheets, leaned a bit to the west, always hinting of collapse. Not many people wandered down to the end of Furlong Road to visit Claude, but those that did agreed the building looked like a giant rusted metal lunch box abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Some said working for Claude was like working in hell's kitchen.

And that's what Lee saw looming before him as he drove away from Brother Archer's Free Will Methodist Church.

He wasn't happy with how his meeting with Brother Archer turned out. He hadn't expected Vietnamese voices, and he shuddered at the thought that he had heard them audibly, as if someone whispered into his ear. Adding to his unsettledness was the temperature. Frustrated with the temperature rising as fast as the sun, he wished he hadn't drunk his last breakfast beer before arriving at Brother Archer's church, and he considered turning around to head to the nearest Quickie Mart. This meant quitting without giving notice just for a beer. He had done that before on other jobs, and it just caused more unpleasant friction with his wife, and besides, he'd soon run out of beer money. Plus, the voices in his head had become silent. All he had to do was make it through the day, knowing tomorrow was a holiday, a holiday without pay but one less day in the grinders pit. It was just a matter of hours, and then he could go home, vege-out with an ice-cold beer, and hopefully leave 'Nam and the voices behind.

We'll see about that, soldier boy.

Lee winced at the mocking voice in his head as he turned off Furlong Road onto the B.N. Helle dirt parking area designated by the dead seventy-foot tall eucalyptus tree. The tree trunk, silvered by time, looked as if it had been dead a hundred years and was now a roost for turkey vultures scanning the landscape for dead cats, dogs, and the occasional careless jackrabbit. New laborers found out the hard way not to park their hoopty beneath the tree; their paint job might have been faded and peeling, but nobody, not even an O-eighter, wanted to drive back into Bayko with vulture dung splattered all over it.

Lee parked next to an old beat-up truck owned by Jesse Recks, the shop foreman who, moments before, had raced by Brother Archer's church honking the horn. Surrounded by other laborers, Jesse snorted a line of crank off the tailgate of his truck.

He looked up at Lee with a supercharged smile and fire in his eyes and asked, "Hey man, want some breakfast?"

Lee stepped from his truck. "Na, don't think so, Jesse."

Chris Lotts, the wash rack laborer, had just finished taking a hit off a fatty and offered it to Lee. "It'll take the edge off."

"I'll stick with my beer." Lee turned and began to walk to the shop along with Fritz, a grizzled old German immigrant and tool boss.
 
"What… you won't smoke dope with us?" Jesse raised his voice. "Tomorrow's the Fourth of July, man. I thought all you soldier dudes were patriotic."

Lee slowed down as Fritz muttered, "Argerlich Esel".

"Come on, Bro-ham, I know you Nam vets smoked dope…lots of it." Jesse chuckled.

Lee turned halfway to Jesse. "Not anymore, Jess… that was then."

Jesse feeling the full effects of his 'breakfast,' said to the group of laborers at the back of his truck, "Ya, that was then alright. They had to smoke all that dope to drown out images of all the babies they killed. Isn't that right, Lee, soldier man, Vee-et Nom vet-tran?"

Fritz stopped and put his lunch box down on the ground when Lee turned around and walked toward Jesse.

Chris took another hit from his fatty, held it deep in his lungs while eyeing Lee's determined stride toward Jesse.

Sensing big trouble, he exhaled the smoke skyward to the turkey vultures and said to Jesse, "Come on, man, leave it alone. Let's go to work. It's too damn hot out here."

Jesse smirked dismissively at Chris as he stepped decisively toward Lee, looking for an early morning dust-up to go with his breakfast. "Havin' nightmares 'bout all the babies you killed… can't get 'em out of your mind without stayin' drunk all the time?"

Lee stood toe to toe with Jesse. "You have your poison… I have mine. What are you running from, boyee? Need a boost just to get your mind right for the day?"

Jesse grinned and leaned forward. "How many babies did you kill… ten…twenty? How'd you kill 'em boo-zer, run 'em over with a jeep chasing a gook whore?"

A nuclear bomb went off in Lee's head and, for a brief photo-flash moment, saw his hand raised against a cloudy Vietnam sky clutching a blood-smeared K-bar. He, too, leaned forward with his nose barely a gnat's distance from Jesse's. He looked deep into Jesse's eyes and saw the empty cellar of a meth-head hardly worth the trouble of an early morning dust-up. He spoke firmly with a real-deal meat eater's voice that came from deep within and eight thousand miles away, "I've never killed a baby… but I have killed better men than you."

Lee's nuclear expression forced Jesse to take a half step back in a weak attempt to hide his fear. 

"That's what I thought," Lee said with finality.

Suddenly, a shiny black four-wheel-drive truck brodied into the parking area, kicking up a cloud of alkaline dust spooking the turkey vultures from their roost. Chris called out, "Heads up… Boss's here."

Claude Aikens hopped out of his truck with an electric smile and an energetic spring in his step. He walked quickly over to Jesse and Lee as the laborers except, Fritz, begrudgingly headed into the shop. Failing to see the dwindling conflict between the two men, he tossed Jesse an eight-ball of crank and said, "Merry Christmas, Jess! Push these worms to kick out another fifty lengths of casing today, and I'll give them tomorrow off with pay."

Lee's face relaxed as he watched Jesse's trembling hand put the dope into his pocket.

Claude finally caught onto the standoff. "What… did I miss something here? He glanced at Lee, then Jesse. "You alright?"

"Ya… we're good," Jesse said while eyeing Lee.

Lee nodded his head, then turned and walked a few steps and picked up Fritz's lunch box, handed it to him, and said, "Danke."

Fritz smiled mischievously. "No problem."

Fidgety, Claude watched Lee and Fritz walk to the shop and asked, "What's with that dude?"

"I smelled alcohol on his breath."

"Is he drunk?" Claude watched Lee walk into the shop.

"Na, just had a beer or two for breakfast."

"Well, go ahead and fire him if you want. I never liked that dude anyway. There's something not right about him."

"I'll keep a close eye on him and let you know. Thanks for the Christmas gift," Jesse said with a wicked smile.

Claude wiped the sweat off his chin. "No problemo Jess, kick those guys in the butt and get that extra casing pushed out."
~~~~

It was going on noon and was already 115 degrees in the sun and 120 degrees in the shop. At that temperature, creosote oozed and sweated out of the ancient derrick timbers holding the massive, corrugated tin structure together. Silhouetted by a bright fan of orange and yellow sparks, Lee leaned forward, pressing a high powdered wire grinder against a rust-covered well-casing. He took a breath, adjusted his grip, and pressed the grinder hard against the well-casing until he could see the glint of high carbon steel reveal its shining self. Inwardly, Lee felt satisfied when the reflection of his goggled face came into view on the freshly burnished steel. That mirror image was a measure of quality he held himself to; if he couldn't see himself in the steel, then he hadn't done a good enough job. But more than that, the burnished steel was fast becoming the last small island of respite in a world that seemed to be closing in on him.

He liked it there. He wanted to be the reflection, but he wanted to see the world from a clear and firm foundation without goggles. Yet, as hard as he pushed the grinder against the rust to reveal the sweet, shiny steel, the more he realized there was always going to be more rust. There was no possible way to remove enough rust to reveal the man he wanted to be. Instead, he was fearful and in denial that he was becoming the very rust that threatened a vague sense of purpose. A purpose worth seeking, seemingly close at hand, but far enough away that his effort alone would be insufficient to realize.

Lee not only worried he was on the verge of losing himself, but he also feared he would not have a job in the future. He began to understand that even though there would always be rusty well-casing and sucker rods, Claude Aikens' charade would soon be discovered. It became evident that no matter what Claude did to present old steel as new, rust would prevail as a dirty type of justice.

Like the Tin Man, Lee and his world were rusting away.

Above and to the rear of the grinder pit, Claude stood elbow to elbow with Jesse in his over-watch air-conditioned office. It provided Claude with an emperor's view of the little men he lorded over. He gave them so little regard he didn't think they merited the title 'Laborer' and instead referred to them as grinders or worms. He asked Jesse, "What's that dude doing bent over like that?"

"I don't know, but he puts out some pretty clean casing."

"I don't care about pretty, Jesse. I want fifty more lengths out today, got it?" Claude leaned forward and looked more closely at Lee. "Is that the same dude from this morning?"

"Ya."

"Put some heat on him and see if you can bust his balls." Claude turned away from the window, stared at the calendar and production schedule on the wall. "Crap."

"What?" Jesse turned and walked to the door.

"I keep forgetting tomorrow is the 4th."

"Yep, Independence Day." Jesse hesitated. "You gave everyone the day off… with pay."

"What a stupid thing to do. I must have been stoned." Claude laughed, then quickly became serious. "It's your butt, Jesse. I said IF they push out another fifty lengths, they'll get tomorrow off with pay. I need that extra casing pushed out today, got it? Now, I gotta get going and catch a flight to Vegas. I've got a man to meet. Are you listening to me? Quit standing around here and grab a grinder if you have to. Go on, git."

Jesse didn't like being dismissed, but he wasn't too keen on the idea of standing in the sweltering heat with a grinder in his hands, eating rust for the rest of the day either. Besides, he liked his free crank, so he stepped quickly down the stairs to the hydraulic controls near the wash rack at the rear of the shop.

"What's up?" Chris called out from his forklift when Jesse approached the hydraulic valves that regulated the well casings  release from the wash rack onto the grinder's table.

"We're gonna pick up the pace," Jesse said with finality.

Chris hopped down from the forklift. "What…?"

"I said…" Jesse reached for the main control valve. "We're gonna pick up the pace."

Chris stepped to Jesse's side. "We're already at eighty percent pressure Jess."

"Well, we're going to eighty-five."

Jesse cautiously opened the main control valve and watched the regulator needle quiver up to eighty-five percent as the diesel engine powering the hydraulic system stumbled under the new demand then steadied.

Chris stepped back and warned, "These old hoses and pipes can't take this kind of pressure, Jess."

"Bullshit!" Jesse barked at Chris loud enough for Claude to hear over the sound of the diesel engine as he strode by with briefcase in hand on his way to Vegas. Annoyed he had to put up with idiots, Claude turned and scowled at both Jesse and Chris as he got into his truck and drove off in a cloud of alkaline dust, kicking up a mini-dust devil.
~~~~

Author Notes Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 7
Too much pressure.

By Yardier

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

The sudden sharp sound of hundreds of pounds of steel casing released prematurely from the grinder's table caused Chris to look at the grinders with alarm. Lee and other grinders knew the casings had been released too soon and stepped back before losing a finger or having a hand crushed. Each grinder knew something unexpected happened and looked toward Chris for an explanation. Chris shrugged his shoulders and pointed his thumb at Jesse standing with his hand on the control valve.

Lee leaned forward to grind the next casing and muttered, "Asshole."

"Jesse, don't… I'm telling you…." Chris tried to step between Jesse and the hydraulic controls.

Jesse turned on Chris with fire in his eyes. "NO, I'm telling YOU… get in the hole and pick up a grinder. I'll handle the controls!"

Chris stepped back, knowing that this would be his last day on the job one way or the other. He knew if a hydraulic line burst in the grinder pit with all the sparks flying in the air and smoldering on the floor, the shop would go up in flames and probably kill some of the grinders in the process. So instead of heading to the grinders pit, Chris backed carefully away from Jesse to the diesel engine already straining under Jesse's dangerous new demand.

Before Lee could grind rust and grime from the casing in front of him, Jesse increased hydraulic pressure, causing another well-casing to shoot into place. Lee looked up at Jesse and saw a sneer on his face as he made a circular motion with his finger for Lee to pick up the pace. More disturbingly, though, was what he couldn't see, Chris. He knew Chris was a pothead but a conscientious pothead who never failed to do his work and wouldn't disappear to smoke a fatty.

Concerned, Lee tried to put the thought out of his head. Chris had gone AWOL, and Jesse's sneer had something to do with it. He tried to keep up with the increased flow of well-casings but could not burnish them to his satisfaction. Lee knew Jesse was trying to bust his balls, but he would not let that happen. He was going to beat Jesse at his own game, even if it meant sloppy work. But with each additional well-casing loading faster and faster, Lee's head began to swim as his forearm muscles tightened and knotted. His mouth became dry, and he was no longer sweating. His legs felt weak, and it became hard for him to think and control the grinder.

Before he knew it, two well-casings stacked up in front of him, but he was unable to comprehend the danger.

Jesse saw it, though, and took advantage of Lee's confusion and opened the main valve to ninety percent with the intent to release a third well-casing down on Lee's log jam and force Lee into permanent unemployment.
 
Once out of Jesse's sight, Chris hurried his pace to the diesel engine. Approaching the struggling engine, he saw hydraulic lines sweating and bulging at the unions and couplings. He knew it was a matter of seconds before they would fail.

Dehydrated and unsteady on his feet, Lee, in a mental fog, let the grinder slip from his grip to the floor. Then, as it spun off like a whirling dervish, he reached over in a semi-conscious trance and tried to adjust the two well-casings with his hands.

Just as Chris sprinted to the diesel engine and pulled the emergency shut-off lever, he heard the unmistakable sharp report of a hydraulic line failure, and a man scream in harmony with the high-pitched shrieking of the hydraulic line losing pressure. Fearful one of the grinders had been injured, Chris ran toward the grinder pit but stopped in his tracks to see Jesse writhing on the ground in a pool of hot hydraulic oil. Stunned at the sight of pressure-gauge glass embedded in Jesse's face, Chris hesitated as the whole grinder operation came to an abrupt stop. Jesse's screams caused some of the men to bolt outside into the brightness of the storage yard. Others dropped their grinders and looked at each other, wondering what to do.

Chris knelt beside Jesse and yelled at the gaggle of confused grinders, "Someone get on the boss's phone; Jesse's hurt bad!"

The youngest of the grinders, Trevor, dashed past Lee up the stairs to Claude's office, kicked the door in, and was met with a cold blast from the air conditioner. Overwhelmed with the temperature difference, he hesitated before grabbing the phone and dialing the operator. He sputtered, "There's a man… our foreman… he's hurt… he needs help."

As shock set in, Jesse's screams became less shrill and panicked but still came across as an unnatural wailing sounding like an injured cat. But to Lee, it sounded more like an infant, a baby's cry. Confused, Lee turned slowly from the grinding table and walked stiff legged toward the storage yard where other grinders had gathered nervously in the sun. As he approached them, a large shadow passed over his head and then another shadow and another. He stopped and looked up without shielding his eyes. His arms limp at his side, Lee swayed in the breezeless sun and saw a menacing group of turkey vultures circling overhead as the baby's cry in his head became clear. He turned and looked toward the rusty chain-link fence surrounding the storage yard and saw a tall dust devil swirling slowly toward the yard. He cocked his head and tried to focus on the location of the baby's cry. He was sure it wasn't coming from his head as the other voices had earlier. Instead, it seemed as if it came from the vicinity of the dust devil but, adding to his confusion was how the dust devil had effortlessly separated into two dust devils dancing around each other as they approached the chain-link fence.
 
Lee watched with detached interest as empty beer cans, paper, and tumbleweeds skittering at the base of the swirling dust devils came to a rest against the chain-link fence. As the dust devils passed through the rusty fence into the storage yard, the baby's cries became more distressed. Like a drunk man, Lee half walked, half stumbled past the group of grinders toward the two dust devils as the faint sound of an ambulance siren could be heard growing louder in the distance.

"Lee… what are you doing?" Fritz asked.

Lee thought he heard the baby call his name.

Fritz stepped toward Lee. "LEE… what are you doing… are you alright?"

Ignoring Fritz, Lee continued past old rusted and twisted pipe casings toward the dust devils and the sound of his name. He stumbled over massive, rusted truck axle housings with exposed chipped and broken gears and struggled through ancient derrick cables that snagged and pulled at his feet.

He stopped for a moment when the sound of the approaching ambulance siren comingled with the weakening cry of the baby. He stepped toward the dust devils cautiously when he heard the voice of a woman. "Lee, we need you."

The voice had a strong Vietnamese accent.

As if in a dream, Lee watched with drowsy curiosity as the two dust devils once more became one, then slowly dissipated into the bright blue sky, leaving an aged Vietnamese woman behind. Dressed in ragged black pajamas and wearing a weathered straw hat, she struggled to walk upright as she clutched the arm of an emaciated and whimpering infant hanging at her side.

Alarmed and alert, Lee bolted toward her and cried out, "Annie!"

He was shocked when he wrapped his arms around her, and she pressed her flat breasts against him and let the child drop at his feet.

"Oh, God… Annie, let me help you!"

Lee tried to look down at the infant, but the woman forced her dry, cracked lips over his mouth with passionate kisses.

Startled, he felt the infant's small hand tug at the cuff of his work pants, then reach up with its tiny fingers and pull on his sock.

Terrified he would step on the child, he glanced down at his feet to see the baby convulsing and covered with dozens of scorpions making their way along the baby's arm and up his pant leg.

The woman grabbed Lee's head with both hands and forced him to look into her liquid black eyes as she slipped her tongue down his throat. Gagging at the stench coming from the slime of her mouth, he tried to push her away, but her black serpentine tongue slid down his throat toward his heart where it began to squeeze his racing heartbeat into a faint murmur. Unable to breathe, Lee grabbed his chest and tried to cry out but couldn't. Slowly, his mind faded to black as he staggered, then fell unconscious on his back, staring open-eyed at the broiling sun as if dead.

"Help me get him in the shade!" Fritz ran past the stunned grinders and grabbed Lee by the ankles and dragged him unceremoniously to the shade of a nearby rusting tanker truck before anyone could move. "Get some water," Fritz barked at the laborers.
~~~~
 
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 8
Ruined Embroidery

By Yardier

Brother Archer had finished stretching out the garden hose when he heard the wailing of an ambulance in the distance. By the time he had the hose neatly coiled at the base of the faucet, the bold white ambulance with a brilliant crimson cross had come to a dusty skidding stop in front of his church.

"Did you call?" the driver asked urgently.

"No, it might be from the pipe plant down at the end of the road." Brother Archer pointed to the corrugated tin building near the dead eucalyptus tree.

As the ambulance sped off spitting gravel from the rear wheels, Brother Archer turned his face from the dust and said a quick prayer for those who might be injured. He hoped it was not Lee.
~~~~
 
"Wha… what happened?" Lee blinked at the brightness of the day.

Kneeling beside Lee, Fritz looked up at the bewildered laborers and knew they thought something strange had occurred. Then, tipping a water bottle to Lee's lips, Fritz said, "You… passed out, Lee."

Lee coughed and sputtered. "What am I doing out here…?"

"We thought you were looking for a part or something." Fritz gave a warning look to the laborers. "It's been a sweltering day Lee… for all of us. I think we should just call it, and everybody head home."

Lee took another sip of water and tried to sit up.

"Easy," Fritz said while pouring water on Lee's head and chest.

Lee noticed the ambulance parked at the rear of the grinders shop. "Is that for me?"

"Only if you think you need it," Fritz said.

Lee sat up and took the bottle of water with shaky hands and drank it half empty while gazing at the chain-link fence. He thought it odd he had not noticed how much trash had gathered at its base before today.

Fritz helped Lee to his feet and said, "I'll drive you home in your truck, Lee. Trevor, you rode out here today with Chris, right? Tell him you're going to follow us to Lee's house in my car."

Lee took another drink of water and wondered why it felt like ants had bitten his ankle. "What's Jesse gonna think about you calling the shots?"

Fritz nodded in the direction of the ambulance. "He's got other things on his mind right now."
~~~~
 
"Yes, I understand. Thank you," Dawn Morason said as she placed the telephone handset quietly onto its cradle as if by doing so, the message she heard would not worsen. She sat at her desk for a moment, trying to understand how this surprising change might both be good and bad at the same time.

The Weedpatch Farm Workers Museum was warm, warmer than most days, but not surprising given the period-correct, single-pane windows of the small, historic building and the broiling outside temperature. Dawn stood and strolled around the white-washed room and gazed at the black and white photographs of the massive immigration of Okies, Arkies, and other displaced persons trying to scratch out a living in the South San Joaquin Valley during the Great Depression. She adjusted museum pamphlets in their wall boxes gently as if they were small birds in their nests, then stood for a moment staring across the empty gravel parking lot where her gaze drifted across the highway to a single palm tree. Over the years, she watched it bend in the wind. She also watched it reach seventy-some feet upward without anyone watering it. Today though, she mused how a seed took root in the dry, hardpan dirt. How did that seed get here? Wherever it came from, it arrived with resilience, something she wished she had.

Her eyes began to water.

No tears, yes tears.

Bawl your heart out.

No!

She gritted her teeth and wiped her eyes.

She took a breath.

She was not particularly surprised by the phone call. She admitted misplaced hope had clouded her horizon. It had been apparent for some time, that, except for the occasional high school field trip or a friend of an illegal immigrant seeking housing information, not many people came to the museum anymore. She was not naïve. She knew Kern County Politics were more powerful than her loyalty to historical truth and accuracy. Rumors had been circling about a Federal Grant having been awarded to rebuild the Weedpatch labor camp to reflect better the 'overall' balanced picture of the farmworker's struggle.

The Grant did not provide for the position of Volunteer Docent.

Even so, she hoped the powers that be, might keep her on with a small salary. That would not occur. However, the Grant did provide for a Manager, Assistant Manager, four staff members, and two groundskeepers. It also provided a new pickup truck, tractor, and drive home vehicles for the Manager and Assistant Manager.

Reluctantly, she realized the phone call not only offered her a new career option but also brought the hard truth of the power of politics into the open. She and the Okies and Arkies were out, and in a strange turn of county politics, John Steinbeck and Cesar Chavez were in.

She walked to her desk and retrieved a single framed photograph of herself and Lee as newlyweds sitting nervously on a large granite boulder with the mighty Kern River rushing behind them. She sighed, placed the photograph in her purse, turned the lights and swamp cooler off, then locked the door behind her as she stepped into the relentless heat to her car.

As she pulled away from the weathered building, Dawn realized the small carrot offered to her insulted her but also gave her a little relief. She knew the position as a Librarian Attendant in Bakersfield did not pay much, but the extra money would help relieve some of her and Lee's financial pressure if he didn't drink it away.

She came to a stop at the edge of the county highway and bit her lip. Fighting the urge to floor the accelerator and blast across the highway without looking, she sat in silence with the engine idling. She wondered how life could turn out so different from what she had planned. Finally, tired beyond tired, she admitted there was only so much a person could do, and then it seemed as if another force took over to limit options and directions.

Annoyed and nervous, she looked both ways up and down the highway and did not see a single vehicle or person for miles. But she did see the palm tree, the big stoic, solid palm tree reaching up into a hazy sky. She closed her eyes and gripped the steering wheel with determination and took her foot off the brake to slam the throttle to the floor when a blast of wind buffeted the car. Startled, she placed her foot back on the brake and watched waves of hot sand race across the highway obscuring the base of the palm tree. Finally, she took the car out of gear and looked up through the pitted windshield and saw the upper third of the palm tree.

It was bending with the wind.

She spoke aloud, "Not today, buddy, not today."

She put the car back into gear and drove onto the sand-covered highway with caution. Driving slowly through the thinning sandstorm toward home, the rippling heat waves distorted Dawn's view of the distant horizon as if the highway offered a cool ribbon of relief some distance ahead.
~~~~
 
"Lee!" Dawn shouted.

Startled, Lee spun around.

Dawn slammed the front door closed and marched into the kitchen, "Why is your truck parked in the driveway? You know it leaks oil, and, and…." Suddenly, Dawn saw Lee standing at the breakfast nook with a pistol in his hand and an M-16 rifle on the countertop next to a beer. "What are you doing home so early?" She could not take her eyes off the pistol.

Lee, placed the pistol onto a cleaning mat next to an old green ammo can, picked up the beer, and took a long swig.

"Did you get fired?"

"Nope." Lee stifled a small belch with a closed fist. "At least I don't think so…."

Dawn put her purse on the kitchen table and walked slowly to the wall-phone by the refrigerator. "Are you drunk?"

"Not yet," Lee said as he picked up the M-16 by the pistol grip and aimed it through the kitchen window at an unknown target in the backyard.

Dawn sidestepped to the phone. "That's not loaded, is it?"

Lee grinned and pulled the trigger.

Dawn jumped at the sound of the firing pin snapping forward into the empty chamber. "Oh God, Lee, what's wrong with you. You don't look well."

Lee placed the M-16 carefully into a padded rifle case on the counter and zipped it closed reverently. "There was an accident at the shop… they think I had a heat stroke or something." Lee began to ramble. "Fritz drove me home… I didn't park the truck on the driveway... I'm gonna sell the guns."

Her fear of personal harm somewhat diminished, Dawn stepped toward Lee to get a better look at his wellbeing or lack of it. "I had to walk from the curb to the house in this heat, Lee. You know how I dislike the heat. Is it too much to ask you to be considerate?"

Ignoring her question, Lee cocked his head and closed his eyes in thought and struggled with the concept of time. "What… what are you doing home so early?"

"They're closing the museum, and I didn't think there was any reason to stick around. It's not like anybody is going to visit in this heat the day before the 4th." Dawn stole a glance at Lee's red-rimmed eyelids.

"Well, it's not like they're going to dock your pay or anything," Lee said as he wiped the excess oil off the pistol with one of Dawn's fine embroidered kitchen towels. "I mean, how many years have you worked out there without pay?" Lee pulled the slide back on the pistol and inspected the empty chamber and magazine well.

Dawn looked at the loaded magazine lying next to the oil-stained towel with its delicate embroidery now ruined. "They gave me gas money… once in a while… and lunch too… on occasion."

"Wonderful," Lee said with a distance in his voice. "Just wonderful." Lee picked up the loaded magazine with his empty hand. "Tires…?"

"Tires?" Dawn repeated.

"Ya, tires and oil changes and insurance and registration and all the other things that keep a car running." Suddenly, Lee disengaged the pistol slide-lock, freeing the slide to slam closed on the empty chamber. Then, like an angry madman, he wadded the ruined kitchen towel furiously around the pistol and loaded magazine, then stuffed it all into the ammo can and slammed the lid shut with force. "Ya, tires."

Relieved Lee had put the weapons away, Dawn became concerned Lee's appearance reflected an illness; his eyes were yellow and dull, and his skin pale and chalky. The pungent odor of beer and metallic sweat and oilfield grease surrounding him stung her nose. Cautious, she asked, “Why are you wearing your work clothes in the kitchen, and… why are you selling your guns?" She surprised herself with her concern. Lee had acted oddly before, but now he seemed to be changing into someone else and going somewhere else. She was not sure who he was and was beginning to think he did not know either.

Lee reached over and picked up his beer carefully and finished it with exaggerated good manners, then crunched the can with one hand and walked over and dropped it into the trash receptacle with a delicate motion. "I need money to buy a plane ticket."

"Where do you think you're going?" A different kind of fear began to alarm Dawn.

Lee stepped to the opposite side of the breakfast nook that separated him from Dawn. He looked at the ammo can and rifle case. "Ya know… these weapons kept me alive a long time ago…. I never thought I would get rid of them." Then with profound sadness in his eyes that begged a question he could not ask, he looked at Dawn. His shoulders slumped with fatigue as he took a slow, tired breath and then, with a grand sweeping gesture of his arms and hands, made a mocking introduction to a perfectly painted kitchen with matching appliances and flooring. "Let's face it; there's not going to be any gooks in the wire around here anytime soon..."

Dawn cringed at the word, gooks. "Lee, you're not making any sense. Put those guns away. I'm taking you to the doctor."

"I'm going back to Vietnam," Lee said with finality.

"You're not going anywhere until you see the doctor."

"I might have fathered a child."

"You stop this nonsense right now, Lee. You haven't fathered anybody in Vietnam." Dawn pointed to the floor with growing anger. "Or even here! You need to forget about Vietnam and think about US!"

Lee shook his head and chuckled. "It's funny, Dawn, how when we were first married, you blabbed to your friends all the time about me being in Vietnam."

"I was proud of you. You said you were in Special Forces."

"I said I was a Specialist in a special unit that was not well known." Lee found it odd to be defending the truth in his own home.

"You made it sound like you were some kind of commando with your Black Beret," Dawn said sarcastically like a suburban assassin twisting the knife in a little deeper for good measure.

"No, you did. That's what you told everyone." Lee's words shot out like hot rivets. "You couldn't accept I was a Specialist 4th class that operated a gunboat. It wasn't sexy enough for you. You were embarrassed that I held the same rank as a Corporal, a lowly E-4. You needed something to hang your hat on besides being an Okie expert."

Dawn's face flushed red. "You're a specialist, alright – a specialist at being drunk and losing jobs." Dawn cringed at her own words and immediately regretted saying them.

Lee stiffened. "Ya, you're right… you're always right… but I'm not going to sit here in your gilded cage without knowing whether or not I'm a father."

"SHUT UP!" Dawn shouted as she grabbed her purse and keys. "Just shut up and get in the car. I'm taking you to the doctor."
~~~~
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 9
Moonlight Sonata

By Yardier

When Lee awoke in a dark room, he could not remember where he was. The back of his throat was dry, and his mouth tasted like stale cigarette smoke. Then, as his night vision balanced, he saw familiar shadows illuminated by the green light of a clock radio; chair, dresser, television, and a lump on the bed next to him.

Who is that? Lee patted nervously at the lump.

Oh, my duffel bag, hmm, Saigon. He could not help but smile at the irony of his realization. The only thing missing was an overhead ceiling fan revolving to the beat of Huey rotors.

A vague and disturbing memory of his rude impatience while checking in at the front desk urged him to sit on the side of the bed and rub his head. That was a long flight. Was I drunk when I checked in?

The flight was longer than he remembered when he first flew to Vietnam in '68. He rubbed his temples and grimaced when he realized the flight back to Saigon had been worse than uncomfortable. It had been painful. The man next to him introduced himself as a medical advisor with an investigative group searching for MIAs. He had never been to Vietnam and badgered Lee with questions about Agent Orange, POWs and deserters, and MIAs. Lee tried to be polite, but the questions just kept coming. Lee finally shut down and upped his drink from beer to scotch. Twenty-two hours over the Pacific is a long time to listen to an FNG.

Before passing out, the last thing Lee remembered was the medical advisor eagerly sharing the good news he and the group were carrying. "We've got rock-solid information an MIA is alive in Saigon."

Who cares about that? Lee thought with his head spinning and his stomach ready to heave.

Feeling the full effects of the distance and alcohol, he looked at the clock radio; nine o'clock at night? How could that be? He arrived in Saigon sometime around noon, or so he thought. Perplexed, he couldn't remember when he arrived. He couldn't even remember the shuttle ride from the airport. He stood on stiff legs, hobbled to the window, and pulled the curtain back, and peeked at the Saigon Harbor. It was still there, and the river was still flowing.
~~~~
 
Lee found it pleasantly odd, almost dreamlike, to stand in a tile shower in a modern hotel in Saigon with hot water massaging a gentle pulse onto his stiff neck and shoulders. As a young soldier, he recalled how he had spent more than a year in Vietnam, but this was the first time he had a hot shower, and he'd barely been in Saigon a day. He remembered how fuel drums painted black and set up on timbers and filled with river water  provided tepid showers when the sun was out and cold showers when it wasn't.

After his long-needed shower and quick shave, Lee changed into fresh clothes. Now somewhat relaxed, he gave himself a final check in the dresser mirror and admitted that while he looked and felt a little better, he still had a nagging headache and was hardly confident he knew what to do to find Annie. Lee never thought to telephone his wife to let her know he arrived in Vietnam safely. However, he did know he needed a tall, ice-cold beer to get over the jet lag and annoying doctor or medical advisor or whatever he was.

As he closed the door behind him and walked to the elevator, his mind percolated with possibilities; Saigon Hall of Records, US Embassy, MACV… wait, no, this is Ho Chi Minh City now. That's right; there is no MACV anymore.

The elevator dinged, and when the door opened, Lee stepped into the car, preoccupied with trying to figure which government agency he needed to contact. He pushed the lobby button, and as the elevator swooshed to the ground floor, Lee realized the man standing next to him was his reflection from the car's mirrored walls multiplied into infinite and smaller images.

Startled by the distortion, he began to panic on the edge of vertigo as the elevator touched down and the door opened into a grand French Colonial-themed lobby. Relieved to step away from the mirrors, Lee walked past the check-in counter on wobbly legs avoiding eye contact with the receptionist. Trying to shake a vague sense of paranoia, Lee paused between the faux marble columns to get his bearings then headed to the bar. While light and lilting piano music greeted Lee and soothed his mind, he admitted he did not know what to do but knew he had to have a beer to figure it out.

Approaching the bar, he saw a small group of men and women at a table drinking cocktails and speaking French. He figured they were a commercial flight crew because of their matching suits with silver aviation lapel pins. One of the men glanced at Lee then turned away and spoke to the others.  Lee did not speak French but understood one word: American.  He also understood the laughter that followed it.

At the bar, he asked for a bottle of Vietnamese 33 beer to start the night off right. The Vietnamese bartender quickly retrieved a cold one, placed it on a Budweiser coaster, and said, "There you go, GI." Lee was surprised. He didn't think it was obvious, and even though he had been startled by the bartender's quip, Lee tipped him a green-back, resulting in a genuine smile even though they both knew it was illegal. He was relieved to see some things had not changed in sixteen years after all.

Leaning against the bar, Lee watched and listened as the French crew gabbed and laughed over the background piano music. Frogs, what would they know? What was that tune? It seemed familiar, American. He walked toward the sound of the piano near the patio doors overlooking the Saigon River and saw a beautiful black lacquered baby grand piano. Nestled in the corner, surrounded by lush green palm fronds the piano presented an image of eloquence Lee had not before experienced in Vietnam.  The depth of black lacquer contrasted with the deep bold green of the palm fronds filled Lee’s interest short of awe as the melody trickled lightly into his mind.

The lyrics then came to him softly like a feather, "Do that something, something one more time."

He could almost visualize the female singer performing the song as he passed by the flight crew's table.

One of the women at the table tapped a light beat with her foot and sang the lyrics softly in French. The song bloomed gently in his head, "Do that to me one more time." Pleased, he smiled at the woman, who smiled back over the rim of her cocktail. The next verse fell into place, "I can never get enough of a man like you." He walked around the column nearest the piano and was perplexed to see a vacant piano bench.

The modern player piano continued to play Toni Tennille's torch song as an elderly Vietnamese woman in a maroon smock cleaned the ashtray near the piano. She smiled a friendly smile revealing her beetle-nut-stained teeth as the lyrics continued in his head, "Oh, Bayybee, do that to me once again..."

"Beautiful, isn't she?"

Lee turned and saw a tall, smiling Vietnamese man wearing a maroon blazer with a brass name tag: Mr. Tran, Assistant Manager. He walked past Lee, sat at the piano, and lightly buffed a small smudge above the keyboard with his handkerchief. His gaze swept over the top of the piano and beamed satisfaction. The glossy finish shined as deep and clear as if it had just been dipped in the purest lacquer. "Made in Korea, not Japan. They're much better craftsmen, you know. They take their time."

"Nice piano." Lee gulped his beer and looked over the top of the bottle toward the lobby door. "Can anyone play it?"

"Of course," the manager said while ignoring Lee's arrogance. He turned the auto-play off then looked deep into Lee's eyes.

Ya, right... chopsticks? Lee glanced away.

There was a pause in the air, and except for the faint sound of a vacuum cleaner coming from the hallway, an awkward moment passed when Mr. Tran turned and stretched his fingers and placed them lightly on the keyboard. Then, he leaned forward and closed his eyes as he began to play.

Lee knew the piece was classical but did not know it was Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata first movement. He thought Mr. Tran would stop playing as soon as he had proved he could play. But Lee saw Mr. Tran's posture had changed and he had become focused on performing the piece with perfection. Lee became uneasy as the soothing melody graced the lobby and the distant memory of a moonlit night appeared in his mind. An all-seeing moon revealed a circle of soldiers pointing their M-16s at a figure lying at their feet. A small ember glowed as one GI passed a joint to another while the lingering sensation of Lee's pistol having been fired, buzzed in the palm of his hand. He remembered with sudden clarity how raucous jeering had become stunningly silent after a loud report split the night, causing his ears to ring as he holstered his pistol.

Even now, he could recall the smell of gunpowder and pot lingering in the air like deadly incense, incense that could not camouflage the scent of death that rose from Mr. Charles, Mr. VC, Mr. Rice Farmer... Mr. Nobody. Stubbornly and with eternal insistence, the smell of death and pot and gunpowder comingled, curled, and snaked its way through the hot, humid night, tainting each soldier's soul with the memory of Mr. Nobody's spilled blood forever.

Shaken by the long-ago buried memory, Lee looked around the lobby for an exit as if he could simply walk away from the past and bury it once more. But it was too late; the rising melody of Beethoven's composition had snuck into his chest and wrapped its embrace of melancholy joy around his heart. Alarmed and vulnerable, Lee felt a great weight shift within himself then settle into a pool of profound sadness. Troubled, he began to struggle with a repressed emotion that was determined to surface from deep within his being.

Angry and confused, Lee blamed jet lag and the rude doctor for feeling out of sorts while dodging the persistent question; what was he doing in Saigon? Denying the obvious, he quickly brushed aside the emerging black and blue evidence of a hole in his soul and the thought his wife had fallen into it. Yet, mysteriously, Lee sensed a translucent outline of Anh Li floating and weaving in and out of distant memories desiring to become more than an apparition but a replacement. Enticed and troubled he wanted her, the aura of humidity, jungle, and mildew surrounding her with a hint of deadly seduction gave him pause.

He shuddered to remove the image and blinked away the gathering moisture in his eyes. He struggled to focus on Mr. Tran's delicate fingers as they danced lightly from one end of the keyboard to the other. A woman from the flight crew slipped beside Lee, closed her eyes, and tilted her face toward the ceiling, then with a smiling whisper asked, "Lovely, no?"

Lee turned from her and looked past Mr. Tran to the busy Saigon Harbor where lights from massive freighters and Vietnamese Junks danced and sparkled on the surface of a black and determined Saigon River. He watched through eyes scarred with combat cataracts and sadly realized, he did not know.

Instead, as the woman's perfume merged with the piano's rising melody, the sudden vision of a blooming and delicate orchid appeared in Lee's mind then quickly slipped into darkness. The image alarmed him with the pressing thought the river current possessed fingers that could reach through the open patio doors and pull on a frayed thread he hid within his heart; A thread connected to a soulful spool deep within the shadows of buried memories. Memories he feared would soon be exposed as empty, bare, and useless. And, in that tomb of emptiness, he worried the once buried and scattered bones of guilt would begin to vibrate and rattle into the formation of the man he had become.

Suddenly alert and frozen in a place between two periods of time, Lee saw how the past had become woven into a tapestry of his present life, and yet he denied it existed all along. Now, he felt as if a younger Lee had passed away, never to be seen again. Not only did he feel grief and remorse for not acknowledging that passing, but he also feared a darker part of him had taken an active role over the years, in the denial, that he and he alone had been complicit with his own slow and clever destruction.

Lee turned from the open patio doors just as Mr. Tran finished playing. Mr. Tran stood and bowed gracefully, evoking polite applause from the flight crew. Mr. Tran then looked directly at Lee with a sparkle in his eyes and a warm smile on his face and asked, "You were expecting chopsticks, maybe?" He paused for a moment when he saw Lee appeared uncomfortable. Then, concerned, he added kindly in perfect English, "Look, I think you might enjoy this bar on Dong Khoi St. called "The Bunker." A lot of returning vets go there to drink and meet old buddies. I think you'll like it. I'll have my driver take you there in the shuttle van."
~~~~
 Glossary
MIA - Missing in action.
KIA - Killed in action.
MACV - Military Assistance Command Vietnam.
VC - Viet Cong.
FNG - F****n New Guy.
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 10
Lee ventures inside the bunker.

By Yardier

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

The rain fell lightly on the windshield as the shuttle driver expertly wove his way in and out of Cyclo and Pedi-Cab traffic on Tan Duc Thang, the main street that paralleled the Saigon River. The new Toyota van's spotless interior smelled rich with new fabric and a hint of a sweet air freshener hanging lightly in the air. The tinted windows offered Lee a secure view of the changed and still changing Ho Chi Minh City as the van stereo softly played Vietnamese music. He sat back while a collage of eclectic architecture from one-hundred-year-old Pagodas, Colonial French Villas, plywood, and plastic-covered lean-tos and small bland stucco storefronts with bright neon lights passed his view. He squinted his eyes at the brightly lit billboards towering above the busy street, hawking everything from Tide soap to a new riverfront condominium project.

Lee felt that the city's disjointed image was vaguely familiar and associated it with a long weekend getaway to San Diego and neighboring Tijuana with his wife. While the visual images were similar, the underlying sense of foreboding and confusion was not. What...what is it? Lee thought as the driver quickly pulled off the busy street and parked next to other shuttle vans from the Saigon Marriott, Hotel Majestic, and Hotel Continental. The driver got out and darted around to the side of the van and opened the sliding door for Lee. Immediately the loud, deep sounds of a rock band's bass guitar thumping from inside the Bunker overwhelmed the van's pleasing Vietnamese music. The driver, distant but professionally friendly, handed Lee a business card with the hotel's desk number and said, "Call when you're ready."

He sprinted around the van and hopped in out of the rain. He beeped the horn a few times as he pulled into traffic, then blended seamlessly into the steady stream of fading taillights.

Lee, too, sprinted out of the rain toward the front of the Bunker and joined other middle-aged veterans struggling to make it through the heavy steel security gate. The rusty gate had been constructed from three 105 Howitzer artillery barrels, two vertical and one horizontal. The horizontal barrel stabilized two opposing vertical barrels, which provided the hinge points for the double-hung security gates. Trying to avoid becoming stained from the wet rust, the veterans crowded to the center of the opening, chanting various cadence calls. Lee was pushed from one side to the other by bulldozing veterans as they made their way through the gate. Jostled, he slipped to the ground stained with rust as veterans stepped around him. Some laughed, some cheered, and some taunted, "Give me fifty, private."

A Vietnamese security guard intervened and helped Lee to his feet, and pulled him to one side. The security guard apologized for the veterans' unruly behavior and turned Lee around to brush the mud and rust off his clothes with a small hand broom. Lee was a little more than pissed at being pushed to the ground, but the Security guard did everything he could to make things right.

It was hard for Lee to be angry with him, especially when he smiled. His eyes sparkled with life. Who was he?

Perhaps he had been a small boy back in the war. Maybe they had met. As soon as the security guard was satisfied he had brushed as much rust off Lee as he could, he stepped through the gate into the parking lot to calm a group of aggravated veterans. Concerned, Lee watched as the security guard disappeared into the crowd. He was unarmed, unafraid, yet a servant who cleaned and calmed others.

Lee stood for a moment staring at the backside of the gate, wondering from where the security Guard learned such duty and kindness? Then, slowly, his vision focused on faded wording that resisted the onslaught of rust homesteading the neglected gate. It read, BRAIN HOUSING GROUP.

"What, a leftover MACV security gate repurposed?" Lee turned to the entrance of the Bunker and, with other thirsty veterans, forced his way into the crowded bar.
~~~~
The Vietnamese band at the rear of the long smoky bar was deafening. However, what they lacked with lyrical accuracy, they made up with amplification. They played American and British Rock beyond loud, and it was just fine with everybody.

As Lee pushed his way to the bar through a forest of old faded camouflaged uniform shirts, Boonie hats, and newer pastel polo shirts with military unit logos neatly embroidered above the breast pocket, someone shouted, "AIRBORNE!"

Another yelled back, "STAND UP AND HOOK UP!" And then, in one loud, raucous voice that drowned out the band, the crowd shouted, "SHUFFLE TO THE DOOR MAGGOTS!"

Lee elbowed his way to the bar, ordered a bottle of Tiger beer from the American bartender, and noticed, along with the obvious returning vets, there were quite a few young persons that were just as loud and rowdy as the vets.

"Surfers," a leathered face next to Lee exclaimed with a tired stream of cigarette smoke curling out of his varicose vein-covered nose. "There's a contest up at Da Nang. They hang out here before and after the meet." He paused for a moment. "Djew remember what you were doing when you were that age?"

Lee looked at a couple of sediment grains at the bottom of his beer bottle and admitted to himself he had not really forgotten all that much. He clearly remembered what he had been doing at their age, and it wasn't carrying a surfboard. He gave the surfers the once over; some wore earrings, some had bleached spiked hair, and some had shaved heads, and some wore odd-looking goatees.They weren't much different from the mall rats or MTV video pukes back home, but now he was unsure if he resented or envied them.

"First time back?"

Lee took a swig of beer. "Yep."

"Well, welcome home, brother." The man offered his hand to Lee and said, "I'm Joe, Joe Zepar. Back in the day, they called me Zip, short for Zippo, not Zep, Zip, got it?"

"Eh, sure." Lee shook his hand and said, "Lee Morason, they just called me Lee. Why not Zep?"

"M-2 flamethrower, that's why. Burn the Ville down and fry those slopes like bacon, great job if you can stand the heat."

"PBR coxswain," Lee said.

"Oh, a Navy River Rat. That's some crazy stuff you guys did. Not me, brother. I like to keep my boots on the ground. Not on some plastic boat on some river in the middle of the jungle gonna take you to who knows where."

"No, Army," Lee said.

"Army River Rat, that's even worse. MACV probably didn't even know the Army had boats."

"We didn't care. That's the way we liked it. Out of sight, out of mind. We pretty much existed on what we stole from the Navy anyway."

"Pirates, huh?"

"Pretty much, this your first time back?" Lee asked.

Zip stubbed out his cigarette. "Never left." Zip leaned forward and held up his empty glass and called out to the bartender over the din of the crowd, "Rudy, another double Red Label and Tiger Piss for a returning war hero."

"War hero?" a couple of voices chimed together. "WAR HERO?" More voices joined in mock credulity. Then someone yelled, "Here's to the WARRR." More of the crowd joined in. "HEE-ROES!"

Lee thought he distinctly heard a sullen whispered voice from the surfers. "More like zero's..."

Zip continued. "Believe it or not, in '74, I was assigned to the embassy and could come and go as I pleased. Met a Vietnamese gal and, well, I'm sure you know the rest of the story. I extended my tour and was trying to figure out a way to get her home to have the baby when the shit hit the fan."

Lee's head filled with images of Saigon under siege. "I thought you humped an M-2?"

"Burned one too many huts, I guess. The Green Machine pulled in all the equipment, and by the stroke of Colonel Culverin's pen, we became newly minted 11B's. But you know how it goes. I had a friend back at Long Binh who waved his magic wand, and as quick as you could Flic-a-Bic, I was an instant Clerk Typist."

"You can type?" Lee asked.

"Not very good," Zip smirked. "But good enough to ride a desk behind embassy walls.

When the NVA tanks rolled into the city, I lost track of her in the confusion. I think I could have gotten her aboard one of the helicopters, but I couldn't find her. So I had to make a decision, I knew she couldn't get a ride out on one of those birds without me, but at the same time, I knew what it meant if I stayed behind."

Rudy slid the drinks in front of Zip and looked at Lee. "This one's on the house."

Lee watched Zip's reflection in the smoke-stained bar mirror. "And so..."

"Yep, ten years...right here. Snuck into Bangkok once, but, other than that, I've been livin' in this rat hole."

Zip tilted his head back and gulped his drink down.

"Did you...she...?" Lee hesitated in digging up too much of Zip's past, but if Zip knew which government agency could help him find Annie, it was worth the inquiry.

"Nope, not yet anyway," Zip said. "My hope is she made it out with one of the groups of boat people. If she didn't, she's probably not alive because we would have found each other. I don't go as often as I used to, but I'd wander around these streets and back alleys looking for her for years. For a while, there wasn't a day that I didn't walk through the Zoo and Botanical Gardens, hoping to see her in her white Ao Dai tossing green bananas to the Sun Bears.

We had some unfinished business before us. I mean, we were a team, a force of love to be reckoned with. And there's something else I can tell ya 'bout her; she was so beautiful she could charm the pants off a hundred men." Zip chuckled and smiled. "I'll bet you if she's alive, she probably owns a chain of jewelry stores in Southern California."

Zip paused as his smile slowly turned upside down into a frown of fatigue. He sighed as he looked into his empty glass. "Damn war."

"Why don't you go home?" Lee asked carefully.

Zip snapped at Lee through clenched teeth as he lit a cigarette, "Why don't you go home? He took a deep drag, "Sorry...got a big U.S. Court Martial waiting for me back CONUS. They don't take too kindly to deserters. Besides, even though I'm persona-non-grata here, this kinda feels like home, now." his voice trailed off. "The commies leave me alone, mostly. I help Rudy with the bar and mingle with brothers like you from all over the states. What more could a guy want, eh?"

Concerned, Lee asked, "What do you mean, mostly?"

Zip looked down the length of the bar past Rudy, who was busy slinging drinks to a group of well-lubricated vets singing old cadence songs. "See him?"

"Rudy?"

"No, through the window; pink shirt, across the street, eating a bowl of Pho."

Lee peered down the bar through the smoky window and tried to see the pink shirt between passing taxis and cyclos. "Him... by the woman with the pole across her shoulders and buckets on the ends?" he asked.

"Ya, that's Agent Chien; he's a member of the Communist Cadre that orchestrates campaigns against corrupting foreign influences. He's the big dog, numba one boss man here. That's why his nickname is Le Chien. He relishes keeping social evils under his control," Zip said with a hint of envy kept in check by an appropriate amount of fear… real fear.

Lee looked around the bar and saw what he remembered as 'Tea Girls' sitting on the laps of sweaty-faced vets and other mini-skirted women gyrating wildly with surfers on the dance floor.

Apparently, the Cadre hadn't come in for a while, Lee thought.

"There's usually a half dozen or so of those commies working Dong Khoi at any one time. You can usually tell them by the long-tailed pastel shirts they wear to conceal their pistols, usually pink, light blue, and yellow, that sort of thing. They all know Kung Fu too." Zip rubbed the back of his neck. "They're mean as pit bulls and are deadly serious about National Reunification. Zip saw Lee looking at the working girls and said, "They don't care about that...they raid all of these joints about every nine months or so to make it look good.

Rudy turns the music down, kicks the whores out for a while, and then in a couple of weeks, it slowly starts up again. What the Cadre is looking for are returning Vets. They're paranoid as hell about spooks: CIA plants." Zip turned and faced Lee. "And solo flying vets."

"What...?"

"Ya, anytime a guy shows up, and he's not with a guided tour group, you know, old unit reunion kind of thing, they take a hard look."

"They'd be wasting their time with me." Lee looked around for the pesky doctor and his MIA investigative group and was relieved when he didn't see him. He didn't want to answer any more stupid questions about the 'Nam.

"Maybe, maybe not, but they'll look you over anyway. By the time you get back to the states, your visa info will be in a different file and, they'll have their agents CONUS checkin' on you too." Zip saw that Lee had become tense as he picked at a piece of the gouged-out bar top.

He tried to redirect Lee's anxiety, "They mostly want to know if you've got your hand in any subversive activities...like passing or receiving information from U.S. gooks and the home crew.

They'll keep an eye on any Viet you spend more than one minute with; I guarantee you that."

Lee looked down at the bar top and saw where someone had taken a knife and gouged out an old grunt saying, 'The only good gook is a dead gook.' "What a hassle, he thought as he burned an image into his mind of Agent Chien slurping noodles. "Better not get too close to me, Victor Charles..."
~~~~
Glossary
11 B – Army code for infantry solider.
Brain Housing Group – Military slang for everything inside the skull.
CONUS – Continental United States
Coxswain - Operator of PBR.
Gook – Pejorative for Vietnamese, intended for Viet Cong.
M-2 – Flame thrower.
NVA – North Vietnamese Army
PBR - Fast attack patrol boat.
Pho – Soup consisting of broth, rice noodles, herbs, and meat.

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 11
Not a place to be.

By Yardier

Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of language.

"Check this out, Lee." Zip snapped his thumb and forefinger, igniting a small yellow flame atop his finger like a birthday candle. He held his empty bourbon glass up to the ceiling with the tip of his finger flickering softly and toasted. "To those I missed… may their lips never be kissed."
 
He smiled a wicked smile and winked at Lee and, with a slight puff, blew the flame out and said, "You should have seen those slopes Di-Di-Mau out of the tunnels at Cu Chi when they saw my finger coming. It was like they thought I was some kind of timeless fire demon or god or some such paranoid bullshit."
 
"I thought you said you were an M-2 humper buster?" Lee asked.
 
"Ya true, wouldn't want ta lie 'bout that. It's not good, ya know, to lie about one's military service. But, I did do my soldiery part, so to speak, to light the way soz the tunnel rats could flush those commie bastards out and leave them smoldering in a rice paddy. I mean, as frustrating as it was, life was simple back then." Zip looked wistfully into the clouded mirror. "And hotter too. I like the heat. I like it so hot sweat evaporates before becoming sheen, but that isn't the case now. Something's changed, affecting the environment and all. It's just a little too cool for me these days. I'd like to raise the temperature a few more degrees just to keep things honest, if you know what I mean."
 
Lee caught Zip looking at him out of the corner of his eye. "Ya, sure." Lee gulped down another beer wondering why he found himself agreeing with Zip, lying really. It disturbed him.
 
Zip continued to push the conversation while reminiscing about Monks who burned their selves to death in Saigon.  "Immolation, who does that shit but a crazy Buddist gook.  They didn't even get to enjoy it.  Hell, I'd ah done it for nothing.  I bet they regret wasting the gas on their shaved head, right?"
 
"Don't have a clue," Lee said as he glanced around the crowded bar and wondered why 'Fire Exit' signs weren't posted.
 
Zip continued, "Wouldn't that just be dandy, if one could remain clueless, no harm, no foul, right? Be a fence rider forever, but someone's got to pay the devil, and as much as I've tried, I'm still coming up a little short." Zip leaned in close to Lee with a tortured face and clutched Lee's forearm and, with feigned sincerity, asked, "Say, brother, can you spare a dime?"
 
Lee chuckled nervously, motioned for another beer, and tried to avoid the odor of Zip's terrible breath. "Sure, as long as you don't mind MPC, but right now I've got to take a piss."
 
"MPC, now that's funny. I haven't heard that in a while." Zip let go of Lee's forearm and laughed while pointing at what looked to be a side exit out of the bar and said, "The head's right over there, troop."
 
Lee swigged half the beer down, slid off the barstool, readjusted his balance compass, and took what he thought was going to be the first step toward relief.
 
He pushed his way through the crowd of veterans toward a greasy plywood door autographed with hundreds of military unit names scrawled haphazardly over the years with drunken hands that obscured the word, 'HEAD'. He stepped inside the small water closet, which barely provided enough room to squeeze by the flimsy plywood door. The back of the door revealed a felt pen drawing of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse jumping their steeds over a stone wall toward the viewer. Someone with less skill had defaced the drawing with crude letters of unsolicited advice; YOU DON'T WANT TO BE HERE!
 
The advice was an understatement.
 
A small dim light revealed the water closet had been built as an extension of the main building with rough concrete blocks stacked and grouted unevenly. The uneven concrete floor, wet with urine and water, revealed a simple 'pisser' and nothing more. Lee avoided leaning against the rusty urinal as the sound of his piss dribbling into the filthy trough joined with the sound of rain dripping off the corrugated tin roof onto the greasy alley. This discordant liquid composition seemed familiar, inviting, almost comfortable.  Maybe things are going to calm down, he thought.
 
After relieving himself, the slight movement of a Gecko near the small two-foot by two-foot ventilation opening drew his attention to a faint cry rising from the alley. Lee reached up, gripped the rusty security bars, and pulled himself up on his tiptoes for a better look as a wet cat darted across the alley into a pile of trash. He listened intently for the cry but could only hear soft melodic sounds of Vietnamese music coming from an open door or window in the distance. The Gecko skootched to the edge of the opening and looked down the alley, then back at Lee. It cocked its head as if waiting for Lee to say something, but Lee could not see anybody, much less hear a baby cry; maybe it was the cat.
 
"Did you hear something, Lee?" The Vietnamese voices whispered in his head.
 
Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door! "Hey, man, you gonna take all night? I'm about to blow a kidney here!"
 
The Gecko darted into the shadows of the urinal.
 
Startled, Lee turned quickly and fumbled the latch open and faced a fat, red-faced veteran with purple lipstick smeared on his neck and collar. Both men sucked in their guts and avoided looking at one another as they struggled to squeeze through the doorway with urgency.
 
As Lee struggled past the huffing vet and cleared the door, he could have sworn he heard the man say, "You're not going anywhere."
 
Lee hesitated and looked over his shoulder to see the plywood door close slow enough for him to see a Viet Cong peeing in the urinal. He blinked and shook his head to see the image of the Viet Cong had morphed into the fat veteran standing at the urinal just as the door shut with spring-loaded purpose. He backed away from the door on unsteady feet and found himself on the backside of the stage as the Vietnamese band, in hot rock and roll mode, played and sang, "We Gotta Get Out of This Place." Loud drunk veterans cheered and sang the chorus over and over as they pressed to the front of the band dancing and toasting their memories with long swigs of beer. Some surfers joined in upping the tempo with their dance moves as the temperature rose with the chorus mingling with the thick smell of sweat, beer, and cheap perfume.
 
Lee's head began to pound from the loud music.  He needed quick relief and desperately wanted to get back to his beer. He wondered, Was that Viet Cong part of an act?
 
He looked around and was surprised to see private restaurant-style booths made of sandbags behind the band's simple stage. The first booth caught his eye as he stepped over the band's sound and power cables. A low hanging table lamp light revealed a U.S. Marine arm-wrestling with a North Vietnamese soldier. Even though they grunted with anguished faces and their forearms bulged with effort, neither man prevailed over the other.
 
"No act, soldier boy, this is the real deal," the Vietnamese voices taunted. "You better hang on and find a tunnel because there's an ARC Light heading your way."
 
Lee's head began to spin; nothing seemed real, and yet everything seemed more than real as if he had been transported into one of his 'Nam dreams. Lee passed the booth quickly, not knowing if the two soldiers were participating in some weird bar theater or part of a dream. A thick, sweet fragrence from the next booth invited Lee to peer through a wafting cloud of incense partially obscuring an old Mamasan. Wearing a tattered red silk dress that revealed too much of her bony chest, she leaned forward out of the shadows and offered her aged hand to Lee and asked, "You buy me tea, GI?" She smiled at him with beetle-nut-stained teeth, patted the seat beside her, and said with a chorus of all too familiar  Vietnamese voices, "We'll love you long time GI, you numba one." Lee recoiled, tripped, and fell against the band's backdrop onto the drummer causing him to miss a beat and struggle with the tempo.
 
Lee stumbled from the rear of the stage to the next booth, where a veteran with a grungy beard and long oily hair held his index finger to his temple as if it were a gun. His jaundiced eyes glassed over with years of substance abuse matched his tired, smoked-out voice as he threatened, "I'll do it, I swear I'll do it. I mean it. This time I'll really do it."
 
Lee wanted to get back to his beer but hesitated with concern for the veteran. Finally, he stepped forward carefully with an outstretched hand and said, "Hey, brother, no. Don't."
 
The veteran cocked his thumb and commanded, "Stay back, REMF. You don't know. You don't know what they made me do."
 
Lee put his hand up. "Stop."
 
The veteran pressed his finger tighter against his temple. "NO, you stop, you lifer maggot."
 
Lee took a breath and held it.
 
The veteran pointed his finger gun at Lee and then waved it around to include the whole bar. "I'll kill you and every one of your lifer maggot buddies. Don't think I won't, I will." The vet placed his finger gun back to his temple and slid back into the shadows of the booth, and said, "And I'm not your brother, maggot."
 
The Vietnamese voices laughed. "Go ahead, pull the trigger Lee; it's your turn now."
 
Lee exhaled slowly and carefully backed away from the booth. He turned and approached the back of the stage where he could see Zip sitting at the bar. Even though the bar surged with thirsty drunk veterans, Lee's stool stood empty as if it had been reserved just for him. His beer stood tall and proud in plain view, waiting for his return and worship. But first, he had to walk past another booth before he could sit at the altar of fantasy and denial. And, even though he was thirsty for that buzz, he was determined not to peer into any more shadows. He just wanted another cold beer, and he didn't want any madness to come with it. However, as he approached the center of the next booth, his foot slipped on a greasy substance on the floor. He fumbled for the edge of the table and jostled a low-hanging table lamp. As the lamp swung back and forth, its harsh light revealed U.S. government documents scattered on the tabletop stamped "TOP SECRET." Rivulets of blood stained the documents and trickled to the table's edge, landing onto Lee's hands, and the floor. As he strained to regain his footing and avoid getting more blood on his hands, he was shocked to see what appeared to be an accountant sitting across from him, struggling to saw his nose off with a dull K-Bar. Panicked, Lee bolted from the table, slipped on the bloody floor and became entangled with the band's instrument cables. Frantic, he stumbled forward into the dancing crowd dragging the lead guitarist off the stage causing the music to come to a discordant end.
 
"There's nowhere to go, Lee." The Vietnamese voices mocked.
 
The veterans sang on and on and danced without music as Lee spun around and kicked the cables free from his feet. Desperate, he tried to wipe the blood off his hands onto his slacks rubbing furiously until his hands felt hot from the friction.
 
Suddenly, the blood was gone.
 
Not even a stain.
 
Perplexed and confused, he staggered through the crowd like a blind man. Someone pushed him, and another elbowed him sharply in the ribs. Someone else muttered with disgust, "FNG."
 
Unexpectedly, out of the crowd, Zip's leathered face appeared. "Hey man, you all right…?"
 
Relieved, Lee reached for his shoulder for support. "Ya, I think…."
 
"Come on, man, what were you doing back there," Zip asked as he looked over his shoulder to the dim-lit booths. He turned and pushed his way through the crowd opening a path for Lee back to the bar. "Your beer's probably warm. I'll get you another one."
 
Exhausted and alarmed, Lee followed Zip to the bar, grabbed the warm beer, and chugged it down. Zip ordered him another one and said, "You sure were putting on some crazy moves out there."
 
"Ya, crazy alright," Lee said as he tried to peer through the crowd at the now black wall behind the band. "Did you see what's going on back there?"
 
"Shush… don't let anybody know… they'll think you're another crazy Nam vet."
 
Rudy slid a cold beer in front of Lee and said, "Ya, they follow the band around. You know, like a bunch of 'Nam Roadies. So relax; they're just a bunch of goofs messin' with your mind."
~~~~
 
Glossary.
ARC Light – B-52 bombing run.
Di-Di-Mau – Vietnamese for: 'Go Quickly.'
FNG – F***n new guy.
K-Bar – Military fighting knife.
MPC – Military Payment Certificate. Replaces cash dollars in combat zone.
REMF – Rear echelon mother f****er. Pejorative for soldiers who avoid combat.
 
 
 
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 12
666 or 777?

By Yardier

"Gooks… did you say gooks?" Lee slugged down his cold beer.

"No, goofs," Zip answered.

Lee caught a glimpse of Zip and Rudy, sharing a concerned look.

"Goofs with voices?" Lee asked.

"What…?" Zip asked.

"Nothing… never mind."

"No, you said something about voices." Zip pressed.

Lee tried to ignore him but was pretty sure he saw little flames in the back of Zip's eyes.

"Don't look too close, Lee… wouldn't want you to get burned… not just yet anyway." The voices cautioned.

Troubled and desperate for normalcy, Lee turned from Zip to a television mounted on the wall looping black and white footage of U.S. Military combat operations from the '60s. It featured a well-known war correspondent, Stan Blather, replete with a new helmet and flak jacket, interviewing a young soldier. He stuck a shiny new microphone into the scared young soldier's face and asked, "What do you think, soldier? Think you'll get out of this place alive?"

The young soldier peering from beneath a helmet too large for his head barely looked eighteen. He glanced over his shoulder at the Hueys lifting off behind him. Explosions, just off-camera caused Blather and the young soldier to wince simultaneously. "I, I don't know. I hope so," the young soldier said with wide eyes darting side to side. "I just got here. A year's a long time. Do you know where my Sergeant is?"

Lee's mind began to spin.

"Do you know where my sergeant is?" A surfer mocked with an embellished boy's voice. "I want to go home."

The crowd of Veterans laughed as the band started up again with the Rolling Stone's, 'Paint it Black.'

Lee felt the floor heave.

Lee wasn't entirely unnerved by what he saw. Still, he was beginning to consider what was happening around him was confirmation that something familiar and dark was revealing itself.

Lee turned from the bar. "I gotta go," he said with a tired voice.

"Oh no you don't." The voices sounded darker.

Like a dear friend, Zip asked, "Where you gonna go… Lee?"

"Ya, where you gonna go?" Rudy asked.

"Told you," The Vietnamese voices taunted.

Lee fumbled with the hotel business card in his breast pocket and handed it to Rudy. "Here, call the hotel, they'll send a driver."

Rudy looked at the sweaty card. "Hotel? What are you going to do in a hotel that you can't do here? I got some extra rooms upstairs. The sheets are even clean; the girls washed 'em two days ago."

"I think I need to take a break, rest a bit. I'm feeling a little messed up," Lee said as he looked for the door.

"I'll give you a discount." Rudy smiled.

"Ya, what good is it going back to your hotel? You're still in Saigon." Zip laughed devilishly.

"Still in Saigon, still in Saigon, still in Saigon," Vietnamese voices harmonized terror.

"Just call." Lee almost begged Rudy as he looked past Zip at the entrance door.

"Well, what is it?" Rudy asked. "666 or 777?"

"What?"

"The prefix is smudged. Is it 666 or 777?" Rudy held the smudged card up to the bar light.

"I don't know," Lee said while wondering how far he'd have to walk to get to his hotel.

"Run, walk, or fly. We'll still be with you," Vietnamese voices whispered.

"If you don't know the difference between 666 and 777, I can't help you," Rudy said.

“Just look it up in the phone book or something," Lee pled. He thought the hotel was probably two, maybe three miles away, but in what direction? His mind and feet were itching to get out of the Bunker, and if Rudy wasn’t going to call, he was ready to find his own way. 

Rudy tossed the card onto the bar. "I don't have time for this. You'll have to find your own way back."

"Good luck with that," The Vietnamese voices chorused.

Zip picked up the card and considered the two prefixes. "Well, it's one or the other, that's for damn sure, can't get any simpler than that."

Determined to leave, Lee picked the card out of Zip's hand and stepped from the bar. He knew it was time to leave in whatever direction, and whatever distance it took to reach the sanity of his hotel room.

"You think that's going to help?" The Vietnamese voices laughed.

"Wait," Zip commanded as he grabbed Lee's arm.

"Get off me." Lee yanked his arm back and stepped quickly to the door.

Zip stood to grab Lee again but suddenly stopped when Lee reached the door.

Expecting fresh air as he opened the door, Lee stiffened as he stood face to face with Agent Chien.

"Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City," Agent Chien said with a polished smile. "Or would you prefer to call it Saigon?"

"Yes, indeed, welcome. Welcome to… where was it you served your time?" The Vietnamese voices asked.

Lee turned and gave Zip and Rudy a pleading look. They looked away with indifference.

"Would you mind stepping over here for a moment?" Agent Chien pointed to the side of the door. Lee hesitated then took a couple of cautious half steps as Agent Chien placed himself between the door and Lee. "Did you know that some time ago Saigon was known as the Pearl of the Orient? Can you imagine that? How beautiful it must have been, but now, well, as you can see, things are different."

"Just the way we like it," The Vietnamese voices said with dark approval.

Agent Chien's all-observant eyes watched as some of the prostitutes who had not paid him his required 'monthly permit' slowly made their way to the side exit. Simultaneously, he saw out of the corner of his eye, Zip's cautious movement to the back of the bar. He watched as Zip knelt and opened the hatch to the storage cellar and dropped out of sight into the darkness below.

Avoiding eye contact with Agent Chien, Rudy closed the hatch, stacked beer cases on top of it, then returned to diligently wiping the bar.

Agent Chien leaned forward with his ear cocked to Lee's face. "Did you say something?

"No…"

"Hmm, I thought you said something about liking the change."

"No, I… I didn't say anything."

"Odd, I could swear I heard you say something." Agent Chien chuckled with a mocking smile. "I must be hearing voices."

Lee smiled weakly.

Impatient, the Vietnamese voices asked, "That's us, O Great River One. He can hear us. You can hear us. We can all hear each other, but you are still missing the point. How long is it going to take?"

Lee felt nausiated and began to sweat as Agent Chien asked him, "Are you feeling well? You don't look so good."

"I don't, really. I think it was the flight over and too much to drink." Lee tried to smile, but his mouth was dry and his tongue thick.

Agent Chien toyed with Lee. "Yes, that flight can take a lot out of a man. It can produce changes a returning veteran had not considered. They weren't prepared for... how should I say this? Ah yes, clarity... the clarity of combat. That clarity can make demands on their memory, and sometimes what they remember can be too much for the ordinary veteran. But you are not just any ordinary veteran, are you?"

"Yes... I mean no, I was just a soldier really."

"Yes, I can see that now, ordinary but special, right? A real American Viet Nam veteran, wow, that's really something. It's almost a title, isn't it? A cultural classification similar to a Knight or an elevated position of sorts; one that requires you to be strong and humble, almost stoic.” Agent Chien studied Lee. "Our worlds are so far apart and our values so different, and yet, you veterans brag about having served your time in hell here, but still, you manage to return. The least I can do is make sure each man's return is as close to their initial experience of having served their time in hell here, don't you think?"

"Hell? Hmm, has a certain ring to it," The Vietnamese voices mused.

A bead of sweat trickled down Lee's back. "I just want… am trying to get back to my hotel."

"He's a deserter!" The lead guitar player barked into the microphone.

A tortured voice from behind the stage cried out, "He's a maggot lifer!"

Even with the interruption, Agent Chien didn't take his eyes off Lee. "You have some friends here, I see. Is it true?"

"We're his friends," The Vietnamese voices said with affection.

Lee tried to ignore the voices and looked nervously over his shoulder at the crowd. "No, they're not my friends."

"Yes, we are, Lee. We will never leave you," The Vietnamese voices pouted.

"You fly seven thousand miles to be with your brothers, but they're not your friends? Interesting, but is it true?"

"Is what true?" Lee asked.

"That you are a deserter." 

"No way." Lee tried to make some sense. "I'm hoping to find a woman."

"Mail order or one night stand?" Agent Chien leaned forward and whispered with a look of mock disapproval that suggested he could arrange such an encounter for the correct fee.

"No, from a long time ago… the war." Lee tried not to offend Agent Chien but struggled with clarity. Finally, he handed the hotel business card to Agent Chien and said, "Look, I just want to go back to my hotel room and get some rest."

"It's that flight. You know." The Vietnamese voices yawned.

Agent Chien studied the business card and noted the address and the smudged telephone prefix. "Well, you could call, couldn't you? I mean, the choices couldn't be any clearer; 666 or 777. At the most you'd have to make is two calls, unless one of them required a payment you could not afford."

"I, I have an American Express card," Lee stuttered.

"I'm sure you do. No sense leaving home without it." Agent Chien smiled.

Lee tried to make a short shuffle step past Agent Chien to the door. "I'll make my way back to the hotel on my own, thank you. I think I'll be able to find my way."

"Yes, you are a capable man, I can see that, but we're going to have to take care of a little business first. You know how governments are these days, so intrusive and all, still; I will need to see your passport and visa. I'm sure you understand."

"Yes, absolutely." Lee reached for his passport and visa, then stopped. "I left them in my hotel room." 

"You know you are supposed to carry them with you at all times, right?"

Lee sensed Agent Chien was playing a little game with him, that somehow, he already knew Lee's identity.

"Yes, sir, if you could take me to my room, I can show them to you." Lee hoped Agent Chien was a reasonable member of the Communist Cadre.

Agent Chien stepped closer. "I'm not your taxi driver, Mr. No Name, without any friends. But I'm going to tell you what I am going to do." He reached beneath his shirt.

Lee took a sharp breath and was relieved when instead of handcuffs or a gun, Agent Chien produced a radio.

Fearful, Lee sensed he was about to experience Agent Chien's version of hell in Saigon.

"Now we're getting somewhere," The Vietnamese voices cheered.

"We're going to take a little walk down the street to my substation and check in with immigration," Agent Chien said and then began to speak Vietnamese into the radio.

Lee understood one phrase as Agent Chien looked him over and said into the radio, "Beaucoup Dien-Cai-Dau."

Suddenly, Lee pushed Agent Chien with force, lifting him off his feet onto a table where two veterans reminisced about Madam Wong's Steam and Massage services. The table collapsed onto the knees of the veterans as Agent Chien slid to the floor baptized with rum and coke. Furious, he thrashed and struggled to get to his feet like a demonic dervish, pushing and hissing at the shocked veterans. Lee took advantage of the confusion and bolted through the front door into a crowd of arriving veterans. He pushed past them and forced the security gate open and focused on an alley across the street. Indignant voices from inside the bar shouted, "Deserter!" Others laughed and teased with, "Come back, GI, we'll love you long time!"
~~~~

Glossary:

666:  Symbol for the Antichrist or, the devil. 

777:  According to many religions 777 is the number of God.  It can also represent faith and belief.

Beaucoup Dien-Cai-Dau:  Much crazy in the head.  French, Vietnamese perjoritive directed to soldiers in Vietnam.

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 13
Dead Man Walking

By Yardier

Lee ran into the street dodging oncoming cars, pedicabs, and cyclos.  He almost made it to the alley entrance when he ran into the front fender of a slow-moving taxicab. Briefly stunned, he staggered to the sidewalk, looking for a landmark to get his bearing. But all he could see were Vietnamese vendors, pedestrians, and vehicle lights shimmering off the wet street.

Agent Chien hobbled through the front door and quickly scanned the street. At first, he did not see Lee bent over but, just as traffic slowed, Lee stood fully exposed by the harsh neon light of a soup café next to the alley entrance.

Agent Chien smiled, gathered himself, and raised his hands to the traffic before him.

He took a deep breath, and with a voice from another dimension, commanded, "Stop!" Suddenly, pedestrians and motorists came to a complete standstill, unknowingly stuck in time.

Startled by Agent Chien's power, Lee glanced over his shoulder at the dark entrance of the alley behind him.

"Run, run into the alley Lee. We'll help you." The Vietnamese voices offered.

Lee sensed that the alley entrance was more than just an alternative pedestrian walkway; it was a gateway to--- "Hell," An ominous voice from across the street confirmed.

Lee turned to the sound of the voice and gazed upon the crowd of stationary people and vehicles frozen in a curse. Beyond them, Agent Chien stood at the edge of the sidewalk with outstretched hands like a friend. His cold words were as clear as a bell dripping with threatening mockery. "Yes, my companion in denial, the gateway to hell has been in good 'ol Saigon all this time. Believe it or not, it is one of many such gateways in this world. Call them franchises, if you will, but I like this one the best. Oh Lee, Lee, you were so close to many of them. Surprisingly, there were more than a few times in your life when you sought them with lustful passion. What an energetic young man you were back in the day."

"Very impressive. You certainly got our attention." The Vietnamese voices feigned fatigue.

"What happened to you, Lee? You could have been a Rock Star or a mass murderer shooting people on the interstate just to watch them die. Oh, sorry, you've already experienced that, haven't you? Freeways, waterways, rivers, rice paddies, what the difference, eh?"

Agent Chien sighed. "So much potential, but somehow your life became dull and predictable. You downshifted and slowly rolled your ass off the grid like a slimy slug slinking toward a gladiola. We almost lost you. Was it the beer? You know we don't always get it right, but we do try. Catching you has been like, how would you say, oh yes, like catching a catfish, just another slow bottom feeder. Stubborn and slow Lee Morason, the black beret-wearing Mekong madman, right? I think your wife would agree with that sad assessment, but I would add further; As dull as you have become, it has been a real challenge to get you to this point in time. In fact, it has been a real extraordinary surreal effort."

"Tell us about it." The Vietnamese voices sighed.

Agent Chien smiled a devilish grin then slowly slicked his hair back with fingers that released small electric blue sparks. "You might as well give up; no one is going to help you. Just a few more backward steps, and it will all be over."

Lee watched in dismay as Agent Chien stepped smoothly from the curb with glowing red eyes releasing a dark force that rippled through the rain like the bow of an invisible boat. He watched Agent Chien glide effortlessly between stationary cars, pedicabs, motorcyclists, and blank-faced pedestrians suspended in time like mannequins.

As Agent Chien loomed closer, Lee shuddered at the sudden recall when he first arrived in Vietnam as a young soldier.  He had experienced a similar force he had not understood nor recognized until this moment. Now, with disturbing clarity, he remembered when the jet landed at Ben Hoa in the middle of the night, a dark force entered the aircraft when the flight attendant opened the cabin door. It crowded around him quickly like a rude sniffing dog, bringing with it the unforgettable smell of humidity, jungle rot, and death.

Lee winced at the sudden lifting of a mental fog that revealed his initial thoughts and expectations of what it would be like when he first arrived in Vietnam back in '68. He had smothered them throughout the years and placed them carefully, just out of reach somewhere in his mind. He realized he had not only passed through a time zone for him to stand in the middle of Saigon but also entered another reality where Basic Training was of no use. Marksmanship, bayonet fighting, hand-to-hand combat, and cover and concealment meant nothing.

He was a dead man walking.

Lee wanted to brush the rain from his eyes and remove that troubling memory from his mind. But he dared not move as he recognized the dark force emanating from Agent Chien as one that could take him captive into a Saigon asylum from which he would never recover. Just like that night in 1968, Lee was caught in the moment; there was no way back. He had to go forward just as he had to step from the jet onto the boarding ramp to enter three hundred and sixty-five days of hell. And, in his mind's eye, he saw back through the years into the greasy jungle where something unnerving disrupted his mental balance as if a foreign hand had reached into his gut to steal his soul.

And that hand, Lee admitted, had belonged to Agent Chien all this time.

Shaken to the center of his soul, Lee closed his eyes with fearful acknowledgment that he had known all along who Agent Chien was and is and had done nothing about it.

Dear God, Lee thought, I have become my own destructor.

Agent Chien paused for a moment in the middle of the street when he saw Lee finally recognized him as the source of his torment. "Yes, subterfuge is a skill that works quite well with egomaniacs. We are pleased when one agrees to collaborate with us that the illusion, all is well, is well."

"Delusion also comes to mind, so don't blame us for your choice to surrender your soul. After all, in a hushed way, everyone knows you can't choose to not choose, but they don't want to admit they choose by not choosing. It bothers them. So, we wait patiently as they live life keeping that denial religiously secret in their mind, soul, or wherever it is you mortals hide the most important question of your wandering lives. Do you not know how ridiculous you appear by denying the obvious? Denial means death. Not just in the ground death, but into MY hand's death. Still, we didn't make up that rule; only God could produce such logic and consequence, but we're sure as hell gonna use it."

"Wow, talk about fire and brimstone," The Vietnamese voices said with awe.

"And now, Lee, the time has come. You know who I am. I am Le Chien; the midnight hound; the little stone in your shoe; the kiss of fear on the nape of your neck and the well from which your nightmares come. I stir your heart to boil up hatred that births words of destruction that shoot from your tongue like fiery darts intending to destroy that which is innocent and good. I stimulate your loins with the salve of lust to debase yourself with others. It is I, who has been the shadow behind your cowardice, guilt, and the energy that blinds you with pride!"

As raindrops gathered on Lee's eyelashes and dripped from his nose, Lee opened his eyes and faced his tormentor. Lee's arms hung limp at his side as he sighed with fatigue, knowing it was useless to ask Le Chien what he wanted or why.

They both knew why.

Le Chien slid around a motionless young man and woman sitting on a stationary cyclo and said, "More importantly, it is I, and only I, who can offer you a life unencumbered with those wretched boundaries of guilt. Imagine life without condemnation or rules. It's easy if you try." Le Chien winked at Lee, then closed the distance between them to within ten feet and said, "You will be able to do whatever you want, Lee, anything."

Lee grimaced and turned his head away.

Le Chien whispered, "Just imagine the pleasures…."
 
Lee looked back at Le Chien and asked weakly, "What about joy and love?"

"Love?" Le Chien's eyes burned fierce red as he stepped in front of a mini-van filled with blank-eyed tourists. "You creatures are pathetic."

Weary, Lee hung his head as a deep cavernous voice echoed from within the alley behind him. "Surrender your soul."
~~~~

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 14
Time to Pray.

By Yardier

A knock on the door stirred Dawn from her sleep.

An unfamiliar voice inquired, "Mrs. Morason?" "Mrs. Morason, I have coffee and bagels."

Dawn looked at the door, trying to recognize the muffled voice, but her sleepy brain came up with nothing. Intending to take her mind off Lee by reading this month's issue of 'Gardening Life,' she had fallen into a deep sleep after curling up in a plush recliner.

"Just a minute," she said with a sleepy voice, barely hiding her annoyance at being awakened.

She stood slowly on stiff legs as the magazine slipped from her lap onto the floor bending several pages backward.

It annoyed her—what a way to start the day. She shuffled to the door while straightening her casual sweats and peered through the security eyepiece.

"KNOCK, KNOCK!

Startled, Dawn stepped back. "What?"

"Mrs. Morason, I…"

Dawn leaned forward and tried to peer through the lens. "Who are you. What do you want?"

"I'm Brother Archer, a friend of Lee."

Dawn closed one eye and opened the other eye larger to see more clearly through the hazy lens. Still, she could barely make out a distorted cowboy hat with what looked like steel wool protruding from beneath it. "I don't know you," she said as she stepped a little closer to the door.

"I'm Pastor of the Derby Acres Free Will Methodist Church." Brother Archer smiled and held the cardboard carry box up to the lens so Dawn could see the coffee and bagels. "I thought you might like some company."

Dawn pinched her cheeks, fluffed her hair, and opened the door cautiously. She planted her foot firmly behind the door just in case Brother Archer, or whoever he was, tried some kind of funny business.

"Hungry?" Brother Archer asked.

"A little," Dawn said as she gave Brother Archer the once over. She had never seen a half-black, half-Japanese, or Chinese cowboy before.

"Lee stopped by the church and wanted to talk." Brother Archer gave his sincerest warm smile. "I thought you might want to talk too."

Dawn kept her foot firmly planted. "Why should I want to talk to you?"

"Because he told me he wanted to go back to Vietnam."

"He told you that?" Dawn relaxed her foot.

"Yes," Brother Archer answered. "Listen, I probably should have called first. But, if this is the wrong time, please take the coffee and bagels, and we can talk later when you feel up to it."

"Did he tell you why?"

Brother Archer cleared his throat. "He said he thought he might have fathered a child."

Dawn's knees buckled, and her hand slipped from the doorknob as she clutched the edge of the door for support.

"Mrs. Morason?" Brother Archer asked with concern.

Dawn regained her composure and stepped back while opening the door. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm a little out of sorts right now."

"I understand," Brother Archer said while stepping carefully through the doorway.

Dawn shut the door quietly while eyeing Brother Archer. "You're not Chinese, are you?"

"No, Amerasian." Brother Archer handed the coffee carrier to Dawn, took his cowboy hat off, and hung it on the doorknob. "Half Vietnamese, half American and fully washed by the Blood of the Lamb."

Dawn sipped her coffee. "You're a real pastor?"

"Yes, mam, a servant of God eager to do His will."

"And His will for today is to bring me coffee and bagels at seven in the morning?" Dawn asked.

"That, and comfort and hopefully clarity. It's not every day a man says he wants to leave his wife to go to Vietnam to look for a child that may or may not exist."

"You get right to the point, don't you?"

"I think we're all better off when everything is out in the open, don't you?" Brother Archer looked past Dawn at a painting on the wall.

Dawn handed Brother Archer his coffee and tried to see what he found curious about a typical furniture store painting. "I don't know. Sometimes I think its best certain things go unsaid or, at least, left behind."

"Even the truth?" Brother Archer leaned forward and examined the painting with interest.

"The truth can be hurtful and damaging." Dawn looked into her coffee and wished it had more cream and sugar.

Brother Archer stepped around Dawn. "See this black stripe, this long dark shadow at the bottom? I don't mean to ignore you, but it caught my eye right away. It looks like it doesn't make any sense. Here's a blue sky with bold mountain peaks white-capped with snow and a waterfall cascading through a lush green forest into a lake as still as a mirror nestled in a meadow filled with colorful springtime blossoms. This painter is very talented and clever too."

"Clever?"

"Yes, see how the painter blended a dark shadow along the bottom to match the matting?" Brother Archer stepped aside.

Dawn stepped closer and examined the painting. "It's a tree. It's a big dead tree or log! Yes, I see it. I hadn't noticed it before now. You're right, very clever, but why?"

"It's an event. I think the painter never intended the image to be a moment captured in time. Instead, he illustrated a process, a continuous process of growth. Look closely; see those little shadows within the larger shadow?" Brother Archer pointed at the dead log.

Dawn leaned forward.

Brother Archer continued. "Decaying bark, peat, mushrooms, and look there at that knarled rotting branch. It looks like a troll's bony hand reaching from a darker shadow."

Dawn was troubled by the image of the hand.

Brother Archer scratched his afro. "The painter could be illustrating that both landscapes exist simultaneously with equal importance. Most people would admire the valley's beauty and avoid acknowledging the darkness below. However, I think the painter knows human nature quite well and painted what appears to be a troll's bony hand reaching up to the valley."

"That changes the whole painting. It's as if in that beauty, a beast is lurking to pull the viewer into a darker world." Dawn was alarmed and began to wish she'd never seen the hand.

"Or someone wants help with being pulled out of the muck and mire." Brother Archer turned to Dawn. "It could go one way or the other."

"How so?" Dawn finished her coffee and crumpled the cup in her hand.

"The hand could pull someone out of the valley into darkness, or someone already in darkness wants to be pulled into the valley. I think the painter is challenging the viewer to examine the contrast of both landscapes to better understand where they stand amid God's creation."

Dawn turned from the painting and walked across the room thoughtfully. She threw the crumpled cup into a wastebasket and picked up the copy of 'Gardening Life.' She smoothed the creased pages and placed the magazine carefully beside her purse on the floor. She spoke to the wall in front of her, "I've looked at that painting many, many times and wished I lived in that meadow. I deserved to live in that meadow, you know, happy and free, surrounded by beauty. That’s what I thought. I never considered someone needed help or even that a bog existed."

Brother Archer watched an exhausted woman organize items around a well-used, comfortable, easy chair. He listened with compassion.

"I've been selfish for a very long time." Dawn turned and faced Brother Archer. "I feel guilty and responsible for his silence. I should have helped him."

"How's he doing?" Brother Archer asked.

"That's the question, isn't it? Unfortunately, I don't have a clue."

"He hasn't spoken to you?"

"Nope, not a word. He barely talked to the doctor. Lee just stared at him. I told the doctor what Lee said about Vietnam, how he thought he'd fathered a child.

"The doctor asked him about the woman, her name, and if he knew whether she still lived in Saigon. I guess they call it Ho Chi Minh city now. Lee told him he saw her at the shop. The doctor asked him if, he was positive. I could tell by Lee's face he was angry. The next thing I know, he really did shut up. The doctor asked him many questions about Vietnam, Agent Orange, and whether he killed the enemy. Lee just stared at the doctor as if he wasn't even there."

"Did Lee try to leave?" Brother Archer asked.

"No, the doctor called for a nurse, and a short while later, she arrived with a wheelchair, syringe, and medicine. Lee didn't acknowledge her and didn't protest when the doctor and nurse helped him into the wheelchair. He didn't even bat an eye when the nurse swabbed his arm and injected him with the medicine. An orderly came in with one of those bags of water, and while he was hooking Lee up, the doctor stepped to my side. He whispered Lee was seriously dehydrated, needed rest, and needed time to recover and sort things out. He also said it was likely Lee was beginning to experience something called Delirium Tremens combined with Hypnopompic hallucinations caused by PTSD and alcoholism. I had no idea what he was talking about, and before I could ask him, the nurse and orderly wheeled Lee out of the office."

"I caught up with them and followed them to his room. I was surprised, it was a nice single room. The nurse asked me to step out and give them a little time; they were going to give him a sponge bath and gown and get him into bed."

Dawn paused then said, "I was exhausted, so I went down to the cafeteria to eat and rest. And rest I did. I dozed off in the corner, well, fell asleep really, for about thirty minutes or so. It had been a long terrible day."

Brother Archer set his coffee down. "What's his status now?"

"I don't have a clue. When I came back to the room, it was obvious he was somewhere else. I called for the nurse for an explanation. It took forever for her to arrive. As you can imagine, I was a little upset. The nurse looked at the bed, then Lee's chart, and said she'd check with the ward desk. She tried to calm me and said, this is a big hospital, and Lee will resurface at some point."

"When she came back from the desk, she said the doctor had gone home for the day and knew nothing other than Lee should be resting."

Dawn raised her voice. "Resurface? Show up? What the hell does that mean? I want to talk to Lee, hear his voice."

Dawn looked at Brother Archer with pain swelling her face. "This is too much, Brother Archer. No one knows his status. I wish he could just tell me he's OK. This situation seems so futile, and I have no idea how to reach him." Her eyes watered, and her voice quivered with emotion as her chin dropped to her chest. "I'm afraid he's left me forever."

Brother Archer stepped toward Dawn with his hands open. "Would you mind if I prayed for you and Lee?"

Dawn placed her hands reverently in Brother Archer's hands and closed her eyes.

Brother Archer began, "Heavenly Father, I pray you touch Lee with your Holy Spirit and awaken him from his silence and You, Lord, stir his soul that he might see You and desire You. I also pray You comfort Mrs. Morason, lift her burden of grief and worry, and instill within her troubled heart the relief and assurance You and You alone are the Bond-Maker that guarantees an unshakable foundation for marriage."

Brother Archer paused, then asked, "I humbly call upon You, Lord God Almighty, to produce a mighty work to glorify Your name and bring the Morasons back together in their life walk."

Dawn opened her eyes and gazed at the painting on the wall behind Brother Archer. She continued to hold his hands warmly, then looked upward to the ceiling and asked softly, "Dear Lord, please deliver my husband from the darkness that binds him."

Brother Archer gave Dawn's hands a reassuring squeeze and said, "He will."

Brother Archer stepped aside as Dawn walked gently to the painting.  She stood for a moment taking in the whole picture; the clarity of the blue sky, the crispness of the snowcapped mountains, and the power of the waterfall.  She took a deep breath as if she could smell the wildflowers reaching to the sun, then exhaled with relief at the sensation of pure mountain water quenching her thirst.  Then, she kissed the tips of her forefingers and placed them gently on the gnarled  branch and whispered, “Lee, please, I’m waiting for you.”
~~~~
 
 

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 15
The Beginning of the End.

By Yardier

A sharp, loud blast from a ship's horn signaling its arrival in the Saigon port raced across the dock and rolled down the wet streets, echoing like bowling balls of thunder. Windows shuddered, and doors rattled in their openings as the incredible sound pressed against all in its way. The authoritative concussive force hit Lee square on the chest, causing him to bolt as if shot from a sprinter's starting block and run blindly away from Le Chien. Suddenly, everyone and everything continued their forward movement, unaware they had been placed motionless in time by Le Chien's curse. Lee stumbled wildly over a street vendor's stack of produce, spilling fish and shrimp and black eels into the gutter. The dead fish and shrimp slid into a curb drain while the voracious eels wriggled toward Le Chien who was pinned beneath the minivan occupied with shocked wide-eyed tourists.

Lee did not look back as the Vietnamese fish vendor shouted protests and curses at him. He felt his internal compass come into balance with each stride as he darted quickly down a residential street toward the Saigon River. The nausea and confusion he felt earlier had diminished in direct contrast to his newfound energy and determined sprint. He didn't want to call attention to himself, but he didn't want to stop either; he had to keep going.

Drawn to the harbor lights glowing softly against the low-hanging clouds he knew he couldn't go back to his hotel.  Le Chien would be waiting for him. He hoped he could present himself to the Harbor Master as a derelict merchant marine or stevedore who had jumped ship without papers. He thought the worst that could happen is his being detained until he could be handed over to one of the embassies or consulates.

He slowed his pace as he approached Tan Duc Thang Street and stopped in the shadow of a residential brick wall. The rain had turned into a light mist as the moon peeked through broken clouds slowly passing overhead. Lee took a quick look around the corner and saw his hotel standing about a mile away. He knew he couldn't go there; he'd be arrested for sure. He had to find a way to reach the Harbor Master, but it would be foolish to try and go through the front gate; security would detain him and turn him over to the Communist Cadre.

There was only one way, and that was by way of the Saigon River.

Lee tried to slow his heart rate as he waited for traffic to thin. Then, finally, he took a deep breath and casually jay-walked across the street. He took a few steps toward his hotel and looked over his shoulder. When he didn't see anyone, he stepped off the sidewalk and slid down the muddy embankment to the river's edge.
~~~~

The Saigon River picked up speed as it flowed south along the edges of the 'The Pearl of the Orient' toward the Mekong Delta. Freighters and junks strained on their mid-channel moorings with their bows facing into the relentless current as Lee stepped carefully into knee-high water. He struggled with his balance and mud sucked one of his shoes off. He fell sideways and tried to brace himself but found his arm stuck in the mud up to his elbow. The wake from a passing junk rolled onto Lee threatening to suck him out into the fast-moving tide but it also freed him from the muddy quagmire. He half-dog-paddled, half-crawled through the receding muddy water to a row of rotting dock pilings standing like a dark denuded forest. He wrapped his arms around the nearest pilling illuminated by a fickle moon and looked for the harbor master tower. As the waist-high tide pulled on him he realized he was on the edge of the old Saigon waterfront bombed during Saigon's fall.

Abandoned and left to collapse upon itself, the remnants of the old wharf provided a helpful obstacle. Lee could use the pilings as cover and support as he made his way to the lights of the modern Port of Saigon about half a mile away.

Surprised at the strength of the undercurrent threatening to pull his feet from beneath him, Lee took a deep breath and carefully adjusted his grip on the piling to move to the next one. He let go of the piling and tried to swim using the current to pull him along to the next piling twenty feet away. He was almost there when something wrapped around his ankle with sharp biting teeth.

"Got you now," The Vietnamese voices said with glee.

Lee grimaced in pain and tried to kick his foot free. Why didn't I listen to Brother Archer? He was right, Annie had probably been a base whore and lied to me about being pregnant. She might have been a commie spy for all I know. I was stupid young and took her at her word. What an idiot.

As the current pulled Lee along the rotting pilings, the sharp, biting teeth dug deeper into his ankle. Desperate, he swam hard to keep his head above water and tried to grasp another piling when he saw an old, weathered rope ladder hanging just out of reach.

Ignoring the excruciating pain biting into his ankle, he kicked hard and reached for the rope ladder.

His fingers touched the rope, but he failed to grip it and fell back into the river.

The muddy water washed over him, and again, Lee kicked hard and jumped for the rope ladder and grabbed it with his fingertips. He hung there for a moment with one hand, then adjusted his grip and began to pull himself out of the river, hoping whatever giant Mekong catfish or beast clamped onto his ankle would let go.

But it didn't.

"And we won't," The determined Vietnamese voices said.

Lee's shoulders burned with pain as he reached up and grabbed the next rung and the next. What were Brother Archer's words? Something about the effort required to find a child might best be directed to rekindling my marriage?

He paused, took a deep breath, and willed himself up one more rung freeing himself from the river, but whatever had clamped onto his ankle would not let go.

Lee looked down through the rippling shadows pierced by the capricious moonlight and saw the dull glimmer of rusty concertina wire wrapped around his ankle.

How long is that damn thing…? He grunted up one more rung and felt the concertina wire stretch a little, but the weight still pulled down on him.

"We are not measured by distance but by time, and we have all the time in the world; you don't," The Vietnamese voices taunted.

Lee did not know how much longer he could hang on, and now his foot had become numb. Maybe it would be better if it just fell off. He looked past his trembling hands and saw the rope ladder entangled with an old canvas duffle bag wedged between the piling and wood cross member. He hoped it would hold.

It didn't.

One of the side ropes unraveled then snapped, causing Lee to swing in the air like a pendulum. He wrapped his arms around the remaining rope as the duffle bag broke free from the cross member.

Lee hit the water with the duffle bag landing on his head. The violent impact compressed his neck and spine, unleashing brilliant lightning bolts in his brain. Stunned to the edge of unconsciousness, searing pain flashed throughout his body resulting in numb tingling hands.

"No need for thanks; it's a gift," The Vietnamese voices echoed.
 
The weight of the duffle bag drove him beneath the surface with the force of a cannonball, causing him to become entangled with the remnants of the rope ladder and concertina wire. Angry and panicked, he kicked and thrashed to the surface, gasping for air. Then, with  limited feeling in his hands, he wrapped his arms around the duffle bag and locked his hands together as the current pulled him further away from the old harbor out into the middle of the Saigon River.

Relieved he was floating, Lee coughed and sputtered muddy water as he pulled himself onto the duffle bag. His weight caused a stream of bubbles to release from inside the duffle bag and percolate a hideous stench.

He gagged at the stench of death that surrounded him as sudden dark images of dead soldiers, Viet Cong, bloated cats, and babies decomposing inside the duffle bag filled his mind with terror. What kind of hell have I found myself in?

"There's only one," The Vietnamese voices said with pride.

Startled and repulsed by the image, he knew he had to let go of the duffle bag.

Relieved he was no longer stuck against the old wharf pilings, the power of indecision crippled him as thoughts of compromise raced through his mind. Hang on, let go, let go, hang on. He knew if he hung on to the duffle bag, the current would take him past the Port of Saigon into the darkness of the Mekong and Rung Sat. I can't do that. It's too dark.

His fear of the unknown overwhelmed him, and he began to smother any rational thought. I'll drown if I let go.

Overcome with fear and weakening by the second, he tried to let go and push the duffle bag away with hands that tingled and buzzed. His hope of treading water drifted away into the Vietnam night as he became increasingly entangled with the rope and concertina wire.

The duffle bag began to fill with water.

Lee relaxed his grip and let the duffle bag sink into the darkness.

Helpless and unable to free himself from the weight of the concertina wire and rope ladder, Lee tread water slower and slower. Finally, with his energy and will gone, he turned his head upward and watched a cloud drift in front of the moon.

He closed his eyes as the moon and the Harbor Master's tower lights faded away. Then, drifting toward the Rung Sat, he slipped beneath the surface where the cold undercurrent of the Saigon River gripped him like a ruthless python squeezing the life out of its prey.

"Finally." The Vietnamese voices smirked.
~~~~

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 16
The Presence of Perfection.

By Yardier

Lee opened his eyes to the murky darkness surrounding him then quickly shut them as he grimaced from the growing pressure in his lungs and high-pitched ringing in his ears.

Black as black.

He struggled one last time against the rope and concertina wire as the current pulled him along.

Deeper and darker.

It was futile to go against the ties that bound him.

He pressed his lips tight with the irrational thought he could squeeze oxygen out of the water.

Just a trickle.

A drop of moisture crossed his lips.

Moistened his tongue and tickled his throat.

He smothered a cough.

Yes, no?

No, yes?

Hang on?

Let go?

The cough was insistent; he tried to overpower it.

He pressed his lips tighter and pushed his will to the edge of endurance.

His effort was in vain.

"NO!" he exhaled a panicked rejection.

Then, with the remainder of his breath, he cried into the muddy void, "God, help me!"

Bubbles from his panicked petition rose gently to the surface as water raced into Lee's throat and lungs, relieving him of any further effort to save himself.

He convulsed one more time, shuddered, and then was still.
~~~~

The Saigon River continued to flow with determination to the South China Sea, carrying Lee within its cold and dark secret currents. No watchman on the anchored ships and tethered junks above could know what had just passed beneath their hulls. No fisherman on the riverbanks waiting for the sun to rise and for the tide to return could know the muddy river had taken another man from Saigon never to return.

Surrendering, Lee exhaled a lungful of water then relaxed. Panic gone from his mind, he felt at peace and then a sense of buoyancy as the rope and concertina wire began to unwind from his body, releasing the duffle bag.

Cautious, he took another breath of water.

No convulsing.

Almost eager, he took another breath as the duffle bag fell into the dark void. The rope and concertina wire continued to unravel and pull Lee's clothes off shred by shred. This denuding process stopped when the concertina wire dug its razor barbs deep into his ankle. He reached down with his left hand, gripped the wire between the razor-sharp barbs, and began to remove the fetter.

He took another breath of water and easily removed the wire from his ankle, but as he let it go, one of the barbs hooked onto his wedding ring. Reaching  with his right hand he tried to remove the barb from the ring, but the weight of the rope, concertina wire, and duffle bag began to pull him headfirst deeper into darkness.

He took another breath of water, yanked his left hand free, and felt relief and remorse as his wedding ring slipped from the tip of his finger and disappeared into the depths below.

Released from his bondage, Lee rose to the surface without hindrance.

"There are still so many others." Dejected, the Vietnamese voices became silent.

The current became still.

Rising to the surface effortlessly, Lee opened his eyes to see glorious ribbons of multi-colored rays of light, reaching from above like heavenly Aurora Borealis. He ascended quickly through the ribbons of light that became more brilliant and intense as he approached the surface. And just when he thought the grandeur was beyond his ability to endure, he broke the surface to find himself floating perfectly balanced shoulder-deep in a magnificent pool of crystal-clear water.

He looked past his naked body and saw the purity and depth of the pool were endless. He took a deep breath of fresh air that stung his lungs with vibrant energy and began swimming to the far end of the pool. With each stroke, he glided effortlessly through the water. He felt energized and believed he could swim for miles without fatigue, and yet, he sensed he was in a special place that beckoned him to explore beyond the pool. He rolled over and began an easy backstroke as he looked upward to see magnificent clusters of galaxies that pierced the darkness of the Universe with brilliant and dazzling light.

In awe and unable to comprehend the beauty and complexity of the majesty above him, Lee ceased swimming and simply floated on his back and relaxed in the presence of perfection.
~~~~
"Spectacular, isn't it?"

Lee turned and saw a person wearing a brilliant white tunic standing at the pool's edge with an outstretched hand.

"One person called it the Great Dome Room."

Lee took his hand and stepped from the pool onto a marble walkway. The person offered him a white robe made from the finest wool. "This is for you."

Lee slipped into the robe and found it was a perfect fit. It smelled sweet with luxurious lanolin and felt softer than anything he had known.

"Perfect," The person said.

"Who are you?" Lee asked.

"Some have called me the gardener because I care for the garden and provide people with fruit. Please walk with me."

They walked to a small table at the end of the pool, where the person offered Lee a tray of fruit and said, "These also are for you."

Without knowing how, Lee immediately recognized the fruits on the tray were: Loquat, Jujube, Papaya and Lime, Grape, Guava and Fig, Mango, and Tangerine. As he began to sample the fruits, he noticed an orchard of fruit trees surrounded the pool, and the entire area was bathed in light, yet there were no shadows. It was as if a great and perfect light illuminated everything with each object reflecting its unique characteristic back to the original light in all directions simultaneously.

"Where's the sun?" Lee asked while looking around and nibbling a tangerine.

"Over there." the person pointed upward. "See that small star in the nearest galaxy?"

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"Really? Lee asked as his lips tingled with delight from the tangerine. "It seems so small yet intense. Are you pulling my leg?"

The person smiled and shook his head. "No, it wasn't me pulling on your leg."

Lee stopped mid-chew, looked at his foot, and saw where concertina wire had sliced his ankle to the bone. Now, healthy scar tissue revealed miraculous healing.

Lee swallowed and said with amazement, "Did you have something to do with that?"

"In a way." Light shimmered from within the person as he briefly became translucent, then back to a physical appearance.

Lee hesitated. "Your face, it's so perfect and beautiful."

"You should see yours."

Transfixed at the phenomenon before him, Lee said with wonder, "I don't know about this."

"You will. I am here to help you understand." The person explained.

"Understand what?"

"The Truth."

"And you would know about the truth because?"

"Because I am the Advocate."

"I thought you said you were the gardener?" Lee challenged.

"I said some people call me the gardener because of the fruit I provide, but I am the Advocate.

"The Advocate?"

"Yes, the Advocate of Truth."

"What truth?" Lee questioned.

"Truth period, The Truth."

"What do you mean, the truth?" Lee cautiously took a bite of Papaya.

"I'm sure you've heard the saying The Whole Truth and nothing but The Truth?"

"Yes."

"Well, there's only one Truth, and it's nothing but The Truth." The Advocate's eyes sparkled.

"How can there be only one truth?"

"Think about it. All things are truthful, even lies."

"This is getting a little heavy."

"That's why I'm here. I will help to lighten your load and lead you unto The Truth."

"Believe me, I've just had my load lightened." Lee finished sampling the fruit and felt a subtle wave of goodness flush through him. Energized with a sense of purity, he looked around the garden and wondered from where the water came to fill the bottomless pool.

"We know. How do you think you got here?" The Advocate asked.

"We?"

"Well, you did cry out for God's help, and others have been praying for you too."

"Look, I know a miraculous and wonderful thing has occurred. I mean, there's no doubt you have some kind of power, and it appears to be a good power." Lee paused.

"Yes?"

"Are you an angel?" Lee asked.

"No, not an angel, but right now, I need you to focus on The Truth."

"Ok, how can a lie be the truth?" Lee asked with a hint of smugness.

The Advocate's voice was clear and fresh, "Truth reveals the simplicity of its powerful nature in a lie."

"That doesn't make any sense." Lee wondered if this is what it was like to be dead, yet he acknowledged that a lot of what happened recently did not make much sense. And he couldn't deny there seemed to be an order about the confusing events that promised a solution, maybe even absolution.

The Advocate continued. "The underlying foundation of The Truth is that it will always expose a lie and invite one to pursue the nature of The Truth."

"That doesn't make any sense," Lee said.

"Quite the opposite, Lee, a lie represents a falsehood as something it is not, while The Truth reveals a lie as that which it is; a falsehood. Simultaneously, as a lie masquerades as The Truth, it cannot reveal that The Truth is not The Truth. The Truth has always been and will always be The Truth."

"Hmm," Lee cocked his head.

The Advocate continued. "The underlying foundation of The Truth is that it will always expose a lie and invite one to pursue the nature of The Truth. While a lie will always attempt to conceal its nature and represent itself as something it is not with the singular intention to misdirect one away from The Truth."

Patient, the Advocate said, "Try to look at it this way, Lee; The Truth will always lead you to life and, a lie will always lead you to despair. Ironically, the power of The Truth is most evident when one is entangled in lies and despair. It stands alone as the only path out of the belittling snare to hope and life."

"A life ring," Lee said.

"Yes, always within reach." The Advocate added, "The choice for Truth is always apparent, but the courage to choose The Truth requires self-examination and faith to accept the result.

"In other words," Lee said, "When a person lacks the faith to choose The Truth, they inadvertently choose in error and support the lie because one cannot choose not to choose."

The Advocate smiled.

Lee looked around at the goodness surrounding him and asked, "What is this place? Is this somewhere in Heaven?

"Close, but this is you, a place that is unique for you in your purest form."

"I'm not in Heaven?

"No."

"Will I always be here?"

"Not exactly, but this place will always be with you as the starting point of your new life, a birthplace."

"So, I'm not dead." Lee asked.

"Quite the opposite."

Lee was relieved. "What about others?"

"Others?"

Lee was concerned. "Yes, the people I care about, my wife and friends."

"No, they’re not dead.  But there was a time they might as well have been dead.  You never had many friends, and you haven't cared all that much for your wife, have you?" The Advocate pressed.

With thoughtful remorse, Lee said, "True, after Vietnam, I didn't feel like having friends all that much. Everybody seemed distant anyway, so it just seemed kinda normal for my wife and me to grow distant too, but right now, I have a sudden desire to be with her and to love her.  I didn’t realize how much she meant to me before now.  I miss her."

"Congratulations, Lee. Your wife is waiting for you."

"Where?" Lee quickly looked around the garden and pool.

"There, right behind you," the Advocate said.

Lee turned to see his gold wedding ring suspended about five feet off the marble walkway. Stunned, he took a cautious step toward the ring in awe of the radiant perfection of glimmering gold. He paused, then looked over his shoulder and saw the Advocate was no longer visible, yet Lee felt His comforting presence. When he turned back around, he sensed a brilliant but clear border between him and the ring as if a sheet of glass possessing infinite dimensions stood as a partition. He stepped closer, touched the surface with his fingertips, and realized it was not glass but solid diamond, flawless and eternal.

Lee stood before pristine clarity as the diamond partition gathered surrounding light and bathed him with its purity and warmth, revealing it was not a partition at all but an invitation to experience divinity.

Lee carefully placed his hand on the sublime surface and felt refreshing coolness move up his arm toward his chest. As the sensation surrounded his heart, he sensed the diamond surface had become malleable. Leaning forward cautiously, he pressed his hand through the surface into shimmering luminescence of heavenly light. His heart skipped a nervous beat then resumed with a powerful rhythm as he slipped his ring finger into the perfect circle of gold.

Lee's eyes sparkled with newborn joy.

Suddenly, the sound of automatic weapons fire startled Lee into alert! Like a curtain loosed from its rod, the diamond environment cascaded around him, revealing Brother Archer standing at the foot of his bed looking out a window. "It's just some boys across the street lighting firecrackers, Lee." Brother Archer turned around and smiled at Lee's sleepy but concerned face and said, "It's Independence Day, remember?"

Gradually, Lee began to recognize items in the hospital room; a television mounted in the corner near the ceiling; the recliner where his wife slept the night before, a stack of gardening magazines, and a painting of majestic snowcapped mountains on the wall. He felt his hand cradled in warmth as he became aware of his wife's comforting hands. She smiled, leaned forward, and gazed into his eyes with relief. Tears dropped from her eyes onto his cheeks as she tenderly placed her lips upon his, and Lee saw, for the first time, the beauty of Dawn.
~~~~
Luctor Et Emergo
I am grateful for those who walked/swam with Lee unto the end. It was my intention to present the story as confusing and muddled. It is a complex story to grasp and bridges many aspects of the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of a combat veteran struggling with PTSD.

My hope, in the end, is the reader is impatient, wanting a solution RIGHT NOW, as do those veterans grappling with ending their life. It is a tragic statistic but, twenty-plus veterans commit suicide every day.

Shortly, I will present an epilogue of sorts that is more like a road map to understanding Concertina. The foundation of which consists of these realities:

There is good and evil.
There is a God and Satan.
There are angels and saints, demons, and devils.
And yes, there is a war.

Much thanks, Yardier.

Author Notes The title Concertina refers to razor wire used to secure a combat perimeter. It is also used on prison walls. It is designed with barbs and razor type hooks intended to snag a person from entering or attempting to escape a secure area.

Concertina, in the context of this novella refers to psychological and spiritual entanglement. Specifically, it refers to a Vietnam combat veteran who is ensnared by the deepest and darkest fetters of torment and denial. Those fetters consist of alcohol abuse, guilt, and resentment.


Chapter 17
Concertina Epilogue

By Yardier

To those who have not read Concertina, this is a spoiler.

To those who have read Concertina, what follows are basic clues within the story.

The story takes place in Bakersfield, California. Why? Because I live there. No, the story is not about me. It is about my observations of troubled veterans. I am a Vietnam veteran and have had my bout with the devil. No, do not try and arm wrestle him or try to outthink him. He is more than a millennia ahead of us. Accept the gift the Divine has placed in your lap. Write ugly but write the truth.

Here we go.

Who is the protagonist? Like many veterans, Lee Morason is a troubled Vietnam veteran who has aged much beyond his draft age. In returning home without physical wounding, he denies he is mentally and spiritually wounded. He has become an alcoholic.

Lee's wife, Dawn, possess a similar mindset. She needs a hero, wants a hero and she got one. (Apologies to Bonnie Tyler)

Even with the GI bill assisting the couple to play house with new appliances included in their no down loan, their manufactured home soon became an entrapment.

They tried to stake their claim but soon drifted apart with subdued hostility. Neither one considered the Divine is working within each to guide them to true blessed companionship.

Are they evil? No, they are agnostic, heading to separate crossroads. Still, both are tormented, not understanding how or why.

The story takes place in approximately twenty-four hours. It begins with Lee and Dawn waking after Lee has a terrible nightmare where he is overcome by the Viet Cong and two American soldiers are killed. Dismissive, Dawn is annoyed with Lee's increasing nightmares and suggests he sleep in the guest room.

Lee realizes he must speak with someone and leaves for work early to meet with Brother Archer, a Free Will Methodist pastor. Lee works as a common laborer at the B.N. Hell oil field products company. B.N. Hell is a play on words.

Seventy miles away Brother Archer and his wife have also been awakened. They do not know why. They are Saints.

As Lee drives to meet Brother Archer he senses an evil force around him. It is a demonic force.

The meeting with Brother Archer is self-explanatory. As Lee leaves the meeting, he begins to hear demonic voices taunting him. Those voices taunt him throughout the rest of the story until he cries for help.

While at work he collapses from heat exhaustion and an overpowering demonic apparition. He is taken home where Dawn and he have a heated argument. Lee reveals he has a child and is going to Vietnam to locate her. Dawn takes Lee to the hospital.

For the rest of the story, it appears Lee left the hospital and flew to Vietnam. He did not. He is heavily sedated in a hospital bed. The reader now experiences Lee's psychological and spiritual internal battle.

The first angel appears as a French stewardess. On her chest is a silver brooch with wings. The second angel is Mr. Tran who plays Beethoven's Moonlight sonata on a piano. The first angel comments on the beauty of the composition. The second angel observes Lee's uneasiness and suggests he go to the Bunker. The Bunker is a place deeper in Lee's unconscious mind and soul.

The third angel appears as a security guard at the entrance to the Bunker. As Lee attempts to enter the Bunker he is jostled to the ground by an apparition of drunk veterans. The angel helps Lee to his feet and brushes rust and mud off him then vanishes.

Everyone in the Bunker is an apparition except for Zip who is a demon and La Chien who is a devil. Everything that takes place within the Bunker are apparitions and comments deep within Lee's psyche he must address.

When Lee escapes the evil power of La Chien he ends up drowning in the Saigon River. Ultimately Lee is saved when he dies unto himself. He surfaces from the dark depths of the river into a bright environment called the Great Dome Room. No, it is not heaven.

There in the Great Dome Room he is greeted by a person called the Advocate. The Advocate provides Lee with a tray of fruit consisting of nine fruits. The first letter of each fruit coincides with the first letter of each fruit of the Holy Spirit as indicated in the Bible. [Galatians 5:22-23] [KJV]

Example: Temperance/Tangerine, Meekness/Mango, etc.

There is more regarding the Great Dome Room, which reveals Lee's healing. And, just like the beginning of the story, he wakes. Except this time, he finds himself in a hospital bed with Dawn holding his hand.

Now that you can see beyond the surface of Concertina's tapestry, give it another read. You might find something of value in the prose.

Thank you for exploring the epilogue.
The End.

Author Notes To those who have not read Concertina, this is a spoiler.

To those who have read Concertina, what follows are basic clues within the story.

The story takes place in Bakersfield, California. Why? Because I live there. No, the story is not about me. It is about my observations of troubled veterans. I am a Vietnam veteran and have had my bout with the devil. No, do not try and arm wrestle him or try to outthink him. He is more than a millennia ahead of us. Accept the gift the Divine has placed in your lap. Write ugly but write the truth.

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