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to ownership of a short-timer’s calendar. Everyone counted the days before boarding a Boeing 707. Ziggy, as of now, had eighty-five and a wake-up, but he couldn’t care less. I’d had to buy his calendar andmaintain it for him, for Chrissake.
    We got back to the 803rd, gone a mere three hours. When the captain saw what we’d parked at the curb, he looked at us as if we walked on water. “Men, I’m putting in papers to immediately elevate you to private first class.”
    I thanked him as humbly as I could manage. As happy as I would’ve been to be promoted, the clerk-typist slot was foremost on my mind. As PFCs, we’d be booted out of the 803rd sooner or later. It was inevitable. I did not wish to be helicoptered into the godforsaken to hunt Victor Charles and for Victor Charles to surely reciprocate.
    I wanted a clerk-typist MOS on my résumé. I wanted to be where Charlie would have to barge into my clean, dry office and fire a round through my Underwood to get me.
    “Thank you, sir. I request that you send Private Zbitgysz and me to typing school so we can improve our skills on the job and become improved soldiers and lighten PFC Bierce’s burden.”
    Bierce didn’t look up, but his clickety-clack-clack ceased.
    “Out of the question, Joe. Haven’t you been listening? We’re mobilizing on a comprehensive wartime footing. We have to sacrifice and do the job that best serves our country. You’re on permanent special assignment.”  
    “What kind of special assignment, sir.”
    “Whatever kind I see fit to assign you,” he said. “In appreciation of your efforts to date, take the rest of the day off.”
    I had a brainstorm. “Sir, the Jeep.”
    “What about it?”
    “Sir, it is the colonel’s Jeep, is it not?”
    “So?”
    “Well, sir, I thought that if before turning it over to him, you might care to avail yourself of it for any mission you so desired. It was your foresight that began the process.”
    “True,” he said thoughtfully.
    “If there is any special assignment in which you are taking a field leadership role and it’s convenient to have transportation and a driver and an assistant, Private Zbitgysz and I hereby volunteer. Discretion is guaranteed.”
    Ziggy grunted in confusion.
    Colonel Lanyard yelled from his office, “Papersmith!”
    Up the captain popped like a jack-in-the-box. As he scurried down the hallway, I pocketed his Dragon Lady Polaroid. If Papersmith swallowed the bait, I’d be seeing her in person soon.
    We heard heavy trucks brake at the Annex. We went out and saw that they were escorted by Jeeps. MPs piled out of Jeeps. They formed a perimeter around the trucks. I thought that they were dropping in to grill Ziggy and me about our day’s activities, but they paid us no attention whatsoever.
    They were babysitting as oddballs unloaded boxed air conditioners from the trucks and rolled them into the Annex on handcarts.
    One after another after another.
     

 
     
    5.
     
    THE FOLLOWING morning, Ziggy and I went in early. I finished writing a letter home and left it in the mail room, which was in a corner of the supply room. The versatile PFC A. Bierce would pick up the mail later on.
    My feeble, prosaic correspondence:
     
    Dear Mother and family,
    Having semi-wonderful time, am glad you don’t have to be here. As a member of an elite alternative matériel resource team, I’m doing special assignments, but can’t discuss them as they are classified, as is the military organization to which I am assigned. I have enhanced my personal security, so I’m as safe as anybody over here can be.
    Cordially,
    Joseph J. Joe IV
     
    The distance between Mother and me was greater than the seventy-four-hundred statute miles between Seattle and Saigon. Our formality was a long story, which I’ll explain as we go. It was in retaliation to Mother’s coolness, or perhaps she’d retaliated against me; it’s unclear how and when it escalated in earnest. We’d been remote since my