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the news film of the last helicopters yanking the final evacuees from the U.S. embassy before the Viet Cong overran the city. The mysterious purpose of the letter became a distraction, its contents haunting my thoughts far more than the most valuable registered letter I had ever carried. Also nagging at me was the diligence of all those carriers, through all the years, working to get this letter delivered. Now that responsibility had somehow fallen to me.
    I pictured a gray-haired letter carrier, hunched over the envelope, black-rimmed reading glasses slipping down his nose as he carefully penciled in another address. Or maybe a young carrier new to her route had played at detective and passed on her hunch about a destination. Perhaps a Vietnam vet had handled it.
    The sun was bright and warm on that Saturday morning. We got our customary safety talk from the supervisor advising us to be vigilant for loose dogs, more common on Saturdays. But dogs were the last things on my mind. I loaded out my mail, started up the jeep, and tried to focus on the job at hand. I walked off the first couple of blocks, but couldn’t find my stride. That letter was eating at me. It seemed I had been given a test, and I felt unworthy. All those other carriers had found ways to keep this letter alive. I feared their efforts would be wasted. Would it all end here today, with me?
    I became convinced that it was a love letter, perhaps from a boyfriend or husband. The person the envelope was addressed to must have escaped from Saigon before the end of the war. My only hope was that somehow the young couple on my route would have knowledge of this person. It was a long shot, but then why had this particular address been so clearly penciled in? After all these years, and all those miles, it seemed heartless to just bring the letter back to be killed, even if these patrons couldn’t solve the puzzle.
    The distraction, the mystery, finally got the best of me. The house was near the end of the route, but I couldn’t wait any longer. My heart racing with anticipation, I ripped off my mail satchel, dug out the letter that by now seemed to weigh a ton, and took off in the jeep.
    As I pulled up to the house I was struck by the absurdity
of it all. This young couple had been mere children when the letter was mailed. What could they possibly know? Braced
for disappointment, I pushed the doorbell, then again studied the foreign stamps and the word “SAIGON” clearly stamped across them.
    The door opened and I looked up to see the young man of the house, smiling pleasantly and holding a baby in his arms. I stepped forward, showing him the envelope, unsure how to begin.
    “Do you know anyone with a name like this?” I blurted. Because the writing was so faded and lost among all the addresses, I held my index finger below the name. “I have to ask,” I continued, choking off a self-conscious chuckle, “because it’s a registered letter, and someone put your address on it.”
    The man leaned forward to squint at the name. I found myself squeezing the paper as if he might try to steal it away from me. He stepped back. “Just a minute,” he said, and turned to call to his wife.
    “Well, this is just ridiculous,” I thought. “You can’t decide for yourself whether you’ve seen a foreign name like this before?”
    When his wife came to the door, he nodded at the envelope still clutched firmly in my fingers. “You better take a look at this,” he said.
    I held it up for her, and watched her eyes slide from the name to the stamps in the corner. “Oh, my God,” she muttered. As she stepped back, the envelope slid from my fingers into her hand. An elderly Asian woman stood behind her. Dressed in a floor-length skirt, with a colorful scarf around her head, she moved forward as the younger woman made room for her.
    With exaggerated jabs of her finger, the wife pointed at the name on the envelope. A wail exploded from the old woman. She grabbed the letter