The Ten Vets Who Went Back

Someday, I’ll go back to Cat Lai to see the houses. I’ll arrive at dusk when the sky over Saigon is amber and people are coming home from the rice fields. There will be children then, laughing and running and playing in the mud by the road. Their clothes will be white, not olive drab, and the watchtower on the edge of the village will be empty.

I’ll turn at the tower and walk along the paddies to a long, tin-roofed shelter with a crooked back wall and fading blue shutters. The people who live there will be smiling, not because they remember me, but because they are happy. And I’ll be smiling too, because a part of me, long-neglected, will have found its way home at last.

AM

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Armistead Maupin Jr.

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Someday, I’ll go back to Cat Lai to see the houses. I’ll arrive at dusk when the sky over Saigon is amber and people are coming home from the rice fields. There will be children then, laughing and running and playing in the mud by the road. Their clothes will be white, not olive drab, and the watchtower on the edge of the village will be empty.

I’ll turn at the tower and walk along the paddies to a long, tin-roofed shelter with a crooked back wall and fading blue shutters. The people who live there will be smiling, not because they remember me, but because they are happy. And I’ll be smiling too, because a part of me, long-neglected, will have found its way home at last.