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withdrew an absolutely ridiculous amount of money through the first bank I could find, and took a train out of Paris. I regretted not spending more time seeing the city, but it was dead to me now, and I needed to get out as soon as I could. I traveled instead to Calais, found myself a small coastal inn that had a room for rent, and settled in for the time being.
    The first thing that surprised me was that I didn't drown myself in wine or brandy or something even harder. I spent most of my time walking the city, soaking up its architecture and history, eating in tiny cafés and watching the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. I feasted on steamed mussels in garlic and butter, coc au fin, pot au feu, and many other French dishes with names I can’t remember. I sampled a variety of amazing wines with my meals, but never more than a glass or two. I even tried to pick up a few words of French, although I utterly failed as I had no ear for that tongue and still don't today. It was actually the vacation I should have had, and even to this day I am still bitter at the fact that Beth and I wasted our time in Paris on something as transient as sex. While the coupling might have been incredible, we missed out on so many other memories, so many other moments that we could have carried with us as we moved on to our separate lives.
    I stayed in Calais for two weeks before Jamie came to visit. He flew in to Paris and took the train like I did, and met me for lunch at a seaside bistro where I had picked an outdoor table with a great view of the English Channel. It was a beautiful day, warm but with a light breeze and not a cloud in the sky. Seagulls floated lazily in the air along the water's edge, and old French couples and young American tourists were scattered along the beach. I was having a lunch of steamed mussels in a garlic and wine sauce, a fresh baguette and butter, and a nice bottle of Semillon, decanted and breathing when I saw Jamie arrive, walking through the restaurant and emerging into the sunlight.
    At least two years had passed since I’d seen Jamie last, and he didn't look much different. His hair, jet black laced liberally with grey, was cut short and neat, and I imagined he had it trimmed before the funeral. Clean shaven, his face was lean and handsome, and I knew that back when he was home from Vietnam, he had been something of a playboy during his years of wandering around the country. Jamie was still strong and very fit, wearing a white linen shirt and khaki slacks with light brown topsiders. He looked positively upper class, perhaps an ad exec on vacation, not at all the backwoods recluse in the jeans and leather jacket I usually saw him wearing.
    Uncle Jamie was my father's brother. He was a Vietnam vet, five years older than my dad. Jamie had volunteered to "go over" in 1968, dropping out of college after his first year, joining the Army and immediately pushing to get into the Airborne Infantry. From there he made corporal, slugging it out through almost a full tour before being clipped by an NVA machine gun during the battle for Hamburger Hill, and going back to the States to recover. After his recuperation Jamie pushed for, and was eventually accepted into, the Green Berets.
    Jamie went back into Vietnam in early 1970 as a buck sergeant, part of a four-man Studies and Observations Group “recon team”. He spent the next year living and breathing jungle warfare, special operations, clandestine maneuvers, and who knows what other kinds of insane shit. He was one of those rare few men, that small percentage of a small percentage, who not only survive in a world of constant peril and violence, but blossom in it, thriving and growing like some kind of deadly jungle flower.
    During one of the few occasions Jamie and I ever spoke of the war, when I was a senior in high school, he’d asked if the recruiters had been after me yet. He told me how, as he flew away from his last mission in the belly of a Huey transport