19 July 2019, Northern California, U.S.A.<
With Bolero by Berlioz setting the tempo in the kitchen and great room, Nick and his wife, Mare, were prepping for the evening’s meal for their guests, ten of them this time. Nick had finished the marinade of garlic, rosemary, sage, salt, pepper, and his favorite imported extra virgin olive oil for the standing pork loin roast.
Waving his hand toward his nose over the large measuring cup filled with the marinade, he breathed in the aroma, considered what his nose revealed to him and paused. Observing the liquid’s color, he stuck his pinky finger onto the surface and sampled a tiny drop, moved it around his palate, and paused again.
“What?” asked Mare, observing Nick’s hesitation.
“Not sure,” he replied.
Sampling the marinade herself, Mare shrugged:
“Oh, c’mon, this always works well. Leave it,” as she moved from his side to retrieve some of the ingredients she needed to make one of her special desserts that always generated praise among their guests.
“Hmmmm . . .
“Really, leave it; its fine.”
“Right,” he added with little conviction.
Leaving the kitchen, she stopped in the hall to look back at her husband.
“I’m watching you, mister,” she warned, right hand on her hip.
“No, you’re right, its fine,” he agreed, moving away from the marinade and over to the kitchen counter to retrieve a bowl he would not need for several hours.
She narrowed her eyes, shook her head slightly, smiled in resignation, and moved on.
When he heard her enter her office and close the door, he grabbed the chef’s knife and moved to the fridge, retrieved the fresh mint, chopped it coarsely, added it to the marinade and stirred as quietly as he could.
Satisfied now, he nodded as though conversing with himself.
His head bobbing in a cadence that almost mimicked the Bolero flute introduction, he scored the surface of the roast, placed it in a large pyrex dish, and poured the marinade over the roast before covering the works with saran wrap and then placing everything on the counter to cure briefly before putting it all in the fridge.
As the full orchestra joined the flute and drums of the piece via the Alexa speaker, Nick measured out four cups of the 00 imported Italian flour into a large bowl. He added about a quarter cup of semolina flour, a pinch of salt, and a little pepper. He then added a bit of chopped fresh basil and lemon zest. He would add the lemon juice and the remaining basil later into the sauce as it cooked. His sauces were not the exquisite, day-long preparations of his mother; rather, he prepared them as a saute that began about 30 minutes before he dropped the freshly cut pasta into the boiling salted water.
In a small glass bowl, he cracked four fresh eggs and added just the yolk of a fifth egg along with a tablespoon or so of imported Italian olive oil. Like his mother, Nick seldom measured condiments precisely. Instead, he relied on his eyes, nose, and fingers to manage the proportions. He poured the mixture into the flour and worked the dough with his hands, pushing it forward, doubling it over itself, and pushing it forward again.
As he continued working the dough gently and nearly lovingly into the familiar shape and size, he breathed in its egg and flour aroma. He felt its texture and pliant body, and viewed its deepening yellow color.
“Oh, yeah,” he said aloud with a slight fist pump and placed the cloth back over the dough.
He began prepping the veggies: fennel, carrots, green beans, peppers. It was always a medley of vegetables, never just one. Because each came to completion on the stove top at different times, he placed each in its own small plate near the stove top to add to the saute in sequence.
It was usually at this point, alone in the kitchen, half-full wine glass in hand, nearly in a meditative state that his respiration and heart rate moderated as he allowed the aromas and the music to wash over him. It was the time for his senses to savor what he had done so far before guests arrived, as they would soon in twos and fours.
He took the dish towel wedged in the pocket of his apron, placed it over his left shoulder and fired up the burner to just above the simmer level that he would use to saute the sauce of olive oil, garlic, red and yellow peppers, and sun dried tomatoes. Soon, stimulated by the aromas filling the house, guests began their usual expressions of pleasure at the aroma filling the house.
Nick quieted Alexa.
“Va bene, amici, tutti al tavola per mangiare”, he announced, which by experience guests knew meant, “OK, friends, everyone to the table to eat”.
He was seated at the head of the table attentive to the distribution of the food and the reactions of his guests. Wine and water glasses full, the sounds of utensils on plates, Nick, savoring the sight and aroma and the taste of the food he had sampled so far, smiled his pleasure at the way in which the evening was progressing. Respiration and heart rate were at the level of man satisfied and relaxed.
“Hey, you all realize tonight marks an important anniversary, right?”
“Fifty years ago,” he continued. “Man on the moon. Neil Armstrong. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Nick stiffened, respiration tightened, heart rate increased. He sought a distraction by trying to engage a guest seated next to him with a question completely unrelated to what he feared would occur.
“Can you all remember what you were doing on that day, where you were and so forth? Mare, how ‘bout you?” the guest asked.
Nick rose slowly and deliberately from the table while guests began answering in succession. He knew that as host and cook, guests would take little notice and perhaps lose awareness of his movements. With some sense of urgency, he sought some credible activity around the sink and the stove, hoping to extract himself from the requirement to respond to the inquiry, to delay long enough for the subject to change.
He worked to force his focus on his immediate surroundings and the need for taking that slow, cautious step. And again a deliberate, careful step. And another. Such movement for any distance was more tiring than a brisk walk or march.
No part of his body was without irritation or sweat or stink. The air hummed and throbbed with heat shimmer. The grit and the constant sweat formed what felt like a layer of sandpaper under his jungle fatigues that chafed parts of his body.
No amount of water from his canteen could slack the thirst. And anyway, he could not have managed to walk and drink at the same time without falling over. His need to scan, observe, react, or signal prevented any opportunity to drink without hunkering down behind cover. However, either the entire patrol stops and drinks, or no one does. So, he tried not to think of his thirst. He worked to keep the unique, and to him, somewhat nauseating odor of the vegetation growing outside the perimeter of Camp Holloway out of his mind, an odor somewhat suggestive of fermentation.
A patrol moving at normal pace, much like walking in cadence, tolerates the burden of the weight of heavy packs and weapons and other fatiguing conditions better than when the threat of enemy presence requires a slow, cautious, on-alert movement. At such times, the team has to scan, analyze, interpret, and be ready to signal or drop or fire weapons or all of it at once. It is the kind of forced mental concentration that drains energy the way a battery drains when it is discharging. This patrol had been forced into that fatiguing mode more than once.
He had been on point earlier while crossing a large clearing, that is, he was the lead soldier in the line at that time. On those occasions, the stress from having no one in front of him or to the side of him and the hours of moving slowly with the heavy load in the heat and humidity would wear him down, as it would the other squad members who walked point.
Somehow, Specialist 5 Molinaro was born without that gene that gives normal beings a sense of direction. He seemed to lack the brain compass most others had. Everyone knew him as a bright guy, well read, a deep thinker, highly educated; but incapable of finding his way down a narrow hallway, even with a map. In fact, he was inept at map reading, mostly owing to his being directionally challenged and handicapped with a slight color deficiency, making the deciphering of a topographic map difficult.
Inside the base perimeter, he had spent his first couple of weeks having to find his assigned hooch by trial and error each day because he just could not remember what should have been familiar markers, and all the hooches and all the rows looked the same to him.
He considered himself as lacking some of the essential, natural qualities of a good infantryman, and therefore, hopelessly ill-equipped for such a role. And yet, most considered him an adequate, if not outstanding soldier. Although he had demonstrated that he could not lead a unit across terrain with heavy cover or even in some clearings, he was not considered a burden on patrol, as some were.
His fellow soldiers knew they could rely on him to be an asset when needed. He never shirked or dodged. He also never volunteered. This made him prized as “not a fuckup”, not one who would get you killed by total ineptness or carelessness or bravado. He followed orders and did his job. Non-commissioned officers knew he would comply with commands without hesitation. They also knew not to give him a leadership role out in the field, nor to let him get separated from the rest of the patrol; he would never find his way back.
His low tolerance for heat and humidity and his inability to navigate with certainty, or at all, added to his stress on long patrols that crossed into hot spots where the Viet Cong (local, southern forces) or North Vietnamese Army regulars were known to have been active. He had at times considered the paradox of his circumstances in this army unit in Vietnam, the Fourth Infantry Division. Trained as a clerk and filling that role for his first two years of a three-year enlistment, he had little experience in field operations, other than some winter maneuvers in Germany before his arrival “in country.”
“I’m supposed to be a fucking clerk, y’ know?” he would ponder. “Why do I get picked for these patrols when there are well trained infantryman here?”
It was as unanswerable as it was irrelevant. He was in the Army and in Vietnam. Going out on patrol was not an optional activity, and no one was likely to consider his preferences regarding this issue.
It would be a few more miles before this patrol would reach the area just outside the perimeter of the base where everyone would feel a measure of relief. It was a clearing free of dense brush or trees, and the best route back to the perimeter would be easy to find.
Beyond the edge of this area, closer to the perimeter, young Montagnard women would be waiting with pineapples on stalks to sell to thirsty, sweating G.I.s for one dollar each in G.I. script. They peeled the pineapples with machetes, leaving the stalk so that the G.I.s could eat them like drumsticks, which they did ravenously for the juice and sugar. Montagnard men were close at hand and prominently in view to guard against any ugly behavior.
The Montagnards are indigenous nomadic tribes generally found in the mountainous regions of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. During our presence there, they sometimes were forced into agreements with both U.S. forces and their opposing NVA or Viet Cong forces. This made for shifting loyalties and mistrust among GIs relying on their occasional help as scouts and for other mercenary functions. However, with regard to freshly peeled pineapples, GIs were generally disposed toward trust over caution.
Somehow, again, he had managed to remain vertical and self-propelled throughout another patrol, except for those times when the guy on point or someone else signaled to drop. At that point, everyone’s sphincter muscles slammed shut, respiration tightened, and blood vessels opened up while everyone scanned and listened as they got into the lowest profile they could manage.
As they approached familiar terrain, Dragon Mountain appeared, the highest point around Camp Holloway. Like a pack of barn-sour horses anxious for the stable, the group’s pace picked up, respiration became easier, muscles that had been tense for prolonged periods relaxed a bit. Glances among the men became less strained and some exchanged knowing nods.
Specialist 5 Molinaro began to believe that he would not collapse, that he had once again made it through the wall, and that he was nearing the end of one more patrol while still under his own power. He maintained the hope that he could avoid other patrols. After all, he was supposed to be a fucking clerk, y’ know?
What he and the other members of the patrol wanted more than anything upon returning to the staging area from which they had departed so many hours earlier was to simply drop everything and plunge into icy water and remain immobile for hours. That was a primal fantasy, of course. Allowing only a brief pause to finish the water remaining in the canteens and gulp down as much as they could from spigots around the area, the men had to disassemble, clean and store gear, check weapons back in, and debrief before dismissal.
This time, while thus engaged, they were hearing the buzz about the moon landing; it had occurred while they were out on patrol, and of course, it had been completely out of mind during it.
“Neil Armstrong, Man. Gonna walk on that fuckin’ moon, Man. Tomorrow ‘sposed to be,” said one of the G.I.s.
“Yeah, Buzz Aldrin, Man, What a trip, huh? Un-fuckin’ believable. We gonna do it,” offered another.
Specialist 5 Molinaro managed to perform all the post patrol duties for which he was responsible and now he sat slumped against the corrugated tin of a hooch, minus the M-16, the 80-pound pack, and the steel pot. Knees raised toward his chest, elbows on his knees, forehead in his hands, sweat dripping off of him, irritated skin under his jungle fatigues, he started to feel the relief that normally followed the return from patrol.
His breathing had steadied now. In addition to the relief, he felt some vague sense almost of accomplishment. He had performed well enough again, done his job, fulfilled the role he had been assigned without hindering the mission and he was off the hook for the time being. Because he was not an infantryman, just a fucking clerk, y’know, it was unlikely that he would be selected for another patrol for a couple of weeks or more, if he were lucky.
Respiration and heart rate continued nearing normal levels. He reflected a bit on the moon landing and felt some pride in it. In a dozen hours or so, we would have one of our own walking on its surface, he thought.
“Somethin’ ain’t it?” a buddy said to him.
“Yeah, really something,” he responded.
The guest tried again: “Nick, so, do you remember where you were when they landed?”
He managed to find a couple of plates at the sink to rearrange as a distraction, but now reconciled to the requirement to respond, he said:
“Central Highlands of Vietnam,” and looked down at the plates he was pretending to sort.
There was a pause after he responded, just an instant when it seemed as though something else was expected of him, some elaboration. He offered none. Guests glanced around and said nothing for a moment. Then, idle chatter of a different nature began among them. Nick remained seemingly focused on dinner plates without moving them much.
The meal concluded, and dishes were somewhat sorted. Guests offered the usual compliments on the meal, commenting on what a special evening it was and exchanged the hugs and “good nights” that normally followed these events.
With the last guests departed and Nick’s respiration and heart rate back to normal levels, he savored the lingering aroma of the just concluded meal, munched on a remnant of prosciutto from the pork roast and selected Pachelbel’s Canon from Alexa as he and his wife loaded the dishwasher.
Leaning into her husband, arm around his waist, Mare asked, “You OK, Honey?”
Leaning back into her, he responded with practiced enthusiasm, “Heck yeah. I really enjoyed this evening. Everyone seemed to have a good time. You?”
“It was a great meal. I thought it all went great,” she added looking into his eyes for more conviction.
“I loved it all,” he affirmed as they entered an embrace of longer than normal duration.
Bolero
Waving his hand toward his nose over the large measuring cup filled with the marinade, he breathed in the aroma, considered what his nose revealed to him and paused. Observing the liquid’s color, he stuck his pinky finger onto the surface and sampled a tiny drop, moved it around his palate, and paused again.
“What?” asked Mare, observing Nick’s hesitation.
“Not sure,” he replied.
Sampling the marinade herself, Mare shrugged:
“Oh, c’mon, this always works well. Leave it,” as she moved from his side to retrieve some of the ingredients she needed to make one of her special desserts that always generated praise among their guests.
“Hmmmm . . .
“Really, leave it; its fine.”
“Right,” he added with little conviction.
Leaving the kitchen, she stopped in the hall to look back at her husband.
“I’m watching you, mister,” she warned, right hand on her hip.
“No, you’re right, its fine,” he agreed, moving away from the marinade and over to the kitchen counter to retrieve a bowl he would not need for several hours.
She narrowed her eyes, shook her head slightly, smiled in resignation, and moved on.
When he heard her enter her office and close the door, he grabbed the chef’s knife and moved to the fridge, retrieved the fresh mint, chopped it coarsely, added it to the marinade and stirred as quietly as he could.
Satisfied now, he nodded as though conversing with himself.
His head bobbing in a cadence that almost mimicked the Bolero flute introduction, he scored the surface of the roast, placed it in a large pyrex dish, and poured the marinade over the roast before covering the works with saran wrap and then placing everything on the counter to cure briefly before putting it all in the fridge.
As the full orchestra joined the flute and drums of the piece via the Alexa speaker, Nick measured out four cups of the 00 imported Italian flour into a large bowl. He added about a quarter cup of semolina flour, a pinch of salt, and a little pepper. He then added a bit of chopped fresh basil and lemon zest. He would add the lemon juice and the remaining basil later into the sauce as it cooked. His sauces were not the exquisite, day-long preparations of his mother; rather, he prepared them as a saute that began about 30 minutes before he dropped the freshly cut pasta into the boiling salted water.
In a small glass bowl, he cracked four fresh eggs and added just the yolk of a fifth egg along with a tablespoon or so of imported Italian olive oil. Like his mother, Nick seldom measured condiments precisely. Instead, he relied on his eyes, nose, and fingers to manage the proportions. He poured the mixture into the flour and worked the dough with his hands, pushing it forward, doubling it over itself, and pushing it forward again.
As he continued working the dough gently and nearly lovingly into the familiar shape and size, he breathed in its egg and flour aroma. He felt its texture and pliant body, and viewed its deepening yellow color.
Nocturne
After directing Alexa to start the Borodin Nocturne, he gently picked up the dough, brought it near his nose again and inhaled deeply. Almost reluctantly, he put it to rest under a slightly damp cloth on the counter top where it would stay for about one hour. Pausing briefly he lifted the cover for one last look and again took in the aroma.“Oh, yeah,” he said aloud with a slight fist pump and placed the cloth back over the dough.
He began prepping the veggies: fennel, carrots, green beans, peppers. It was always a medley of vegetables, never just one. Because each came to completion on the stove top at different times, he placed each in its own small plate near the stove top to add to the saute in sequence.
Scheherezade
Nick directed Alexa to switch to Rimsky-Korsokov’s Scheherezade as he rolled the pasta dough into sheets forming into the width of the rollers in the hand-crank pasta machine. Placing the back of his hand behind each pasta sheet as it came through the rollers, he checked to see how clearly he could see the outline of his hand, generally this was the sixth setting. He placed the sheets, about seven of them, on the drying rack in sequence. After affixing the fettuccine cutter to the base, he returned to the first sheet to come off the rollers and began the process of cutting the pasta into soft, silky, long ribbons, which he then put onto a wire drying tray.It was usually at this point, alone in the kitchen, half-full wine glass in hand, nearly in a meditative state that his respiration and heart rate moderated as he allowed the aromas and the music to wash over him. It was the time for his senses to savor what he had done so far before guests arrived, as they would soon in twos and fours.
Hayden
With guests assembled, hugs and greetings exchanged, and wine glasses filled, random conversations began occupying some portion of his consciousness, slightly displacing the Hayden Cello Concerto in C minor in the background.He took the dish towel wedged in the pocket of his apron, placed it over his left shoulder and fired up the burner to just above the simmer level that he would use to saute the sauce of olive oil, garlic, red and yellow peppers, and sun dried tomatoes. Soon, stimulated by the aromas filling the house, guests began their usual expressions of pleasure at the aroma filling the house.
Nick quieted Alexa.
“Va bene, amici, tutti al tavola per mangiare”, he announced, which by experience guests knew meant, “OK, friends, everyone to the table to eat”.
He was seated at the head of the table attentive to the distribution of the food and the reactions of his guests. Wine and water glasses full, the sounds of utensils on plates, Nick, savoring the sight and aroma and the taste of the food he had sampled so far, smiled his pleasure at the way in which the evening was progressing. Respiration and heart rate were at the level of man satisfied and relaxed.
The Moon Shot
At the end of the main courses and while finishing the last bites of Mare’s chocolate mousse, with individual light conversations occurring, a guest a few chairs away announced:“Hey, you all realize tonight marks an important anniversary, right?”
“Fifty years ago,” he continued. “Man on the moon. Neil Armstrong. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Nick stiffened, respiration tightened, heart rate increased. He sought a distraction by trying to engage a guest seated next to him with a question completely unrelated to what he feared would occur.
“Can you all remember what you were doing on that day, where you were and so forth? Mare, how ‘bout you?” the guest asked.
Nick rose slowly and deliberately from the table while guests began answering in succession. He knew that as host and cook, guests would take little notice and perhaps lose awareness of his movements. With some sense of urgency, he sought some credible activity around the sink and the stove, hoping to extract himself from the requirement to respond to the inquiry, to delay long enough for the subject to change.
19 July 1969, Camp Holloway, Central Highlands, South Vietnam
Specialist 5 Nick Molinaro adjusted his pack again to move it off the raw spots on his shoulders and back. Each heavy breath felt as though he were inhaling razor blades along with wet, pungent, gritty air. He had reached that point of exhaustion and fear at which collapse could result. He thought he was close to that more than once on previous patrols, somewhat like runners or tri-athletes that “hit the wall” and could not go farther.He worked to force his focus on his immediate surroundings and the need for taking that slow, cautious step. And again a deliberate, careful step. And another. Such movement for any distance was more tiring than a brisk walk or march.
No part of his body was without irritation or sweat or stink. The air hummed and throbbed with heat shimmer. The grit and the constant sweat formed what felt like a layer of sandpaper under his jungle fatigues that chafed parts of his body.
No amount of water from his canteen could slack the thirst. And anyway, he could not have managed to walk and drink at the same time without falling over. His need to scan, observe, react, or signal prevented any opportunity to drink without hunkering down behind cover. However, either the entire patrol stops and drinks, or no one does. So, he tried not to think of his thirst. He worked to keep the unique, and to him, somewhat nauseating odor of the vegetation growing outside the perimeter of Camp Holloway out of his mind, an odor somewhat suggestive of fermentation.
A patrol moving at normal pace, much like walking in cadence, tolerates the burden of the weight of heavy packs and weapons and other fatiguing conditions better than when the threat of enemy presence requires a slow, cautious, on-alert movement. At such times, the team has to scan, analyze, interpret, and be ready to signal or drop or fire weapons or all of it at once. It is the kind of forced mental concentration that drains energy the way a battery drains when it is discharging. This patrol had been forced into that fatiguing mode more than once.
He had been on point earlier while crossing a large clearing, that is, he was the lead soldier in the line at that time. On those occasions, the stress from having no one in front of him or to the side of him and the hours of moving slowly with the heavy load in the heat and humidity would wear him down, as it would the other squad members who walked point.
Somehow, Specialist 5 Molinaro was born without that gene that gives normal beings a sense of direction. He seemed to lack the brain compass most others had. Everyone knew him as a bright guy, well read, a deep thinker, highly educated; but incapable of finding his way down a narrow hallway, even with a map. In fact, he was inept at map reading, mostly owing to his being directionally challenged and handicapped with a slight color deficiency, making the deciphering of a topographic map difficult.
Inside the base perimeter, he had spent his first couple of weeks having to find his assigned hooch by trial and error each day because he just could not remember what should have been familiar markers, and all the hooches and all the rows looked the same to him.
He considered himself as lacking some of the essential, natural qualities of a good infantryman, and therefore, hopelessly ill-equipped for such a role. And yet, most considered him an adequate, if not outstanding soldier. Although he had demonstrated that he could not lead a unit across terrain with heavy cover or even in some clearings, he was not considered a burden on patrol, as some were.
His fellow soldiers knew they could rely on him to be an asset when needed. He never shirked or dodged. He also never volunteered. This made him prized as “not a fuckup”, not one who would get you killed by total ineptness or carelessness or bravado. He followed orders and did his job. Non-commissioned officers knew he would comply with commands without hesitation. They also knew not to give him a leadership role out in the field, nor to let him get separated from the rest of the patrol; he would never find his way back.
His low tolerance for heat and humidity and his inability to navigate with certainty, or at all, added to his stress on long patrols that crossed into hot spots where the Viet Cong (local, southern forces) or North Vietnamese Army regulars were known to have been active. He had at times considered the paradox of his circumstances in this army unit in Vietnam, the Fourth Infantry Division. Trained as a clerk and filling that role for his first two years of a three-year enlistment, he had little experience in field operations, other than some winter maneuvers in Germany before his arrival “in country.”
“I’m supposed to be a fucking clerk, y’ know?” he would ponder. “Why do I get picked for these patrols when there are well trained infantryman here?”
It was as unanswerable as it was irrelevant. He was in the Army and in Vietnam. Going out on patrol was not an optional activity, and no one was likely to consider his preferences regarding this issue.
It would be a few more miles before this patrol would reach the area just outside the perimeter of the base where everyone would feel a measure of relief. It was a clearing free of dense brush or trees, and the best route back to the perimeter would be easy to find.
Beyond the edge of this area, closer to the perimeter, young Montagnard women would be waiting with pineapples on stalks to sell to thirsty, sweating G.I.s for one dollar each in G.I. script. They peeled the pineapples with machetes, leaving the stalk so that the G.I.s could eat them like drumsticks, which they did ravenously for the juice and sugar. Montagnard men were close at hand and prominently in view to guard against any ugly behavior.
The Montagnards are indigenous nomadic tribes generally found in the mountainous regions of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. During our presence there, they sometimes were forced into agreements with both U.S. forces and their opposing NVA or Viet Cong forces. This made for shifting loyalties and mistrust among GIs relying on their occasional help as scouts and for other mercenary functions. However, with regard to freshly peeled pineapples, GIs were generally disposed toward trust over caution.
Somehow, again, he had managed to remain vertical and self-propelled throughout another patrol, except for those times when the guy on point or someone else signaled to drop. At that point, everyone’s sphincter muscles slammed shut, respiration tightened, and blood vessels opened up while everyone scanned and listened as they got into the lowest profile they could manage.
As they approached familiar terrain, Dragon Mountain appeared, the highest point around Camp Holloway. Like a pack of barn-sour horses anxious for the stable, the group’s pace picked up, respiration became easier, muscles that had been tense for prolonged periods relaxed a bit. Glances among the men became less strained and some exchanged knowing nods.
Specialist 5 Molinaro began to believe that he would not collapse, that he had once again made it through the wall, and that he was nearing the end of one more patrol while still under his own power. He maintained the hope that he could avoid other patrols. After all, he was supposed to be a fucking clerk, y’ know?
What he and the other members of the patrol wanted more than anything upon returning to the staging area from which they had departed so many hours earlier was to simply drop everything and plunge into icy water and remain immobile for hours. That was a primal fantasy, of course. Allowing only a brief pause to finish the water remaining in the canteens and gulp down as much as they could from spigots around the area, the men had to disassemble, clean and store gear, check weapons back in, and debrief before dismissal.
This time, while thus engaged, they were hearing the buzz about the moon landing; it had occurred while they were out on patrol, and of course, it had been completely out of mind during it.
“Neil Armstrong, Man. Gonna walk on that fuckin’ moon, Man. Tomorrow ‘sposed to be,” said one of the G.I.s.
“Yeah, Buzz Aldrin, Man, What a trip, huh? Un-fuckin’ believable. We gonna do it,” offered another.
Specialist 5 Molinaro managed to perform all the post patrol duties for which he was responsible and now he sat slumped against the corrugated tin of a hooch, minus the M-16, the 80-pound pack, and the steel pot. Knees raised toward his chest, elbows on his knees, forehead in his hands, sweat dripping off of him, irritated skin under his jungle fatigues, he started to feel the relief that normally followed the return from patrol.
His breathing had steadied now. In addition to the relief, he felt some vague sense almost of accomplishment. He had performed well enough again, done his job, fulfilled the role he had been assigned without hindering the mission and he was off the hook for the time being. Because he was not an infantryman, just a fucking clerk, y’know, it was unlikely that he would be selected for another patrol for a couple of weeks or more, if he were lucky.
Respiration and heart rate continued nearing normal levels. He reflected a bit on the moon landing and felt some pride in it. In a dozen hours or so, we would have one of our own walking on its surface, he thought.
“Somethin’ ain’t it?” a buddy said to him.
“Yeah, really something,” he responded.
19 July 2019, Northern California, U.S.A.
Where Were You, Nick?
The guest tried again: “Nick, so, do you remember where you were when they landed?”
He managed to find a couple of plates at the sink to rearrange as a distraction, but now reconciled to the requirement to respond, he said:
“Central Highlands of Vietnam,” and looked down at the plates he was pretending to sort.
There was a pause after he responded, just an instant when it seemed as though something else was expected of him, some elaboration. He offered none. Guests glanced around and said nothing for a moment. Then, idle chatter of a different nature began among them. Nick remained seemingly focused on dinner plates without moving them much.
The meal concluded, and dishes were somewhat sorted. Guests offered the usual compliments on the meal, commenting on what a special evening it was and exchanged the hugs and “good nights” that normally followed these events.
With the last guests departed and Nick’s respiration and heart rate back to normal levels, he savored the lingering aroma of the just concluded meal, munched on a remnant of prosciutto from the pork roast and selected Pachelbel’s Canon from Alexa as he and his wife loaded the dishwasher.
Leaning into her husband, arm around his waist, Mare asked, “You OK, Honey?”
Leaning back into her, he responded with practiced enthusiasm, “Heck yeah. I really enjoyed this evening. Everyone seemed to have a good time. You?”
“It was a great meal. I thought it all went great,” she added looking into his eyes for more conviction.
“I loved it all,” he affirmed as they entered an embrace of longer than normal duration.