Expiation

By Rudolph Saxon

The year is 1971. Butler is living in Hawaii, trying to recover after his two tours of duty in Viet Nam.
The knock on his door is the sister of his good friend and comrade-in-arms, who tells him that her brother has been murdered.
Local law is stalled. Can Butler help? His efforts pull him back to his time in country and the terrors and horrors of his service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rudolph Saxon
• Release date: Jun 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476379593

Rudolph Saxon

The author served six months with an infantry company & recon platoon in the Central Highlandsof Viet Nam during his tour of duty in 1967-68.Later, he lived and traveled in the Far East for several years.

Book preview

Saturday, 01 May 1971

Honolulu, Hawaii

I was nodding over some paperwork when the doorbell rang, and since it has long been an article of my faith that almost any distraction is better than almost any ink-on-paper-induced stupor, I left my desk and my cup of cold coffee and went to answer it.

When I saw her through the glass, I was glad that I had.

Her features were delicate, she was slender, and stood maybe five-six in her low, black pumps. Three corners of a black, lace-trimmed handkerchief poked out of the pocket of her short-sleeved, variegated-gray blouse. The blouse was tucked neatly into a straight, cleanly cut, about knee-length black skirt.

I slid the door open and wished her a good afternoon.

Good afternoon, she answered softly, and solemnly; and then tentatively: Mr. Butler?

Yes. What can I do for you?

My name is Jennifer Sato. I’m Jim Sato’s sister. He told me more times that I can remember what good friends you were in Viet Nam.

We were that, I smiled. But I haven’t seen him since. How is he?

He’s dead! she wailed, but still softly, as if she didn’t have the strength or will to give such terrible news her full voice; or as if whispering could make it less real.

She had staggered forward a step as she said it and slumped against the doorpost, but caught herself almost immediately and pushed away from it again and stood resolutely erect.

Come in, please. I slid the door open wide and stood aside to let her enter.

Inside the foyer she removed her shoes and pushed her feet into the pair of cheap, flat, open-toed slippers which I had grabbed from a rack and dropped before her, then stepped up from the concrete onto the two wooden steps and to the main floor of the house with me.

I showed her into the living room and waved her toward the sofa, and since she looked like she needed a few minutes to pull herself together … .

I’ll make us some coffee, I offered, I could use a cup myself.

She smiled at me through her tears, nodded twice quickly and dropped onto the sofa. I turned and headed for the kitchen.

Jennifer Sato sat limply, glancing about the room. She noticed the absence of tatamis—the woven straw mats which would usually have covered the floor from wall to wall. On the now bare, hardwood floorboards stood sparse articles of Arts and Crafts style furniture. The sofa, and the pair of easy chairs which it faced over a long, low table of darkly stained oak, held cushions which were thick and square and firm, and covered with a tan and rust and black fabric of coarse weave.

The fusuma—the sliding partitions of light wood covered with opaque paper which divided the interior of a Japanese house into rooms and hid closets and shelves—between the room in which she sat and the adjoining room were wide open, and gave an almost unobstructed view through that room into a small backyard through the open shoji in the back of the house. The yard was devoid of flowers, but lush with ferns, shrubs, trees and rocks. Among these meandered a narrow, silver-gray, gravel path nearly choked here and there by the encroaching grass and moss, which after several beckoning turns finally disappeared into the background greenery.

Jennifer dabbed at her eyes and nose with tissues from a packet in her small, black leather purse. She looked more closely at the shoji, squinting through her tears. Finally she left the sofa and went over to them. These large, floor to ceiling windows should have been wooden sashes with divided lights of rice paper. But these were not made of wood. The sashes were black-enameled steel, as was the lattice which divided the lights; and the lights themselves were not rice paper but frosted glass. She smiled weakly at the masquerade and returned to her seat.

I had deliberately taken more than enough time to get the coffee going, and when I heard the sounds of sobbing from the living room ebb, I went in again and sat across the table from her. She was dabbing at her tears with a tissue. The black-lace handkerchief in the pocket of her blouse remained untouched.

Can you tell me about it now? I asked gently.

She nodded several times and pulled the tissue away from her dark eyes and placed her hands carefully in her lap. Her eyes found and held mine.

First, I offer our apologies for not calling before I showed up on your doorstep.

Her voice was faint, as was her smile.

But we, as a family, decided that we didn’t want to talk about this on the phone … and we wanted you to understand how serious we are about this, … about asking for your help I mean … . We thought too, that because of the way that Jim always spoke of you, that you should hear about him from one of us personally, and finally … well, we assumed that it would be harder for you to refuse us if one of us came in person.

Her smile broadened slightly at the confession. I returned the smile. It was easy to do.

She wore her glossy, raven hair loose and straight and very long. Her eyes were friendly and her perfect, pure gold complexion appeared to be unsmudged by cosmetics.

"Our grandparents immigrated to Seattle from a small village near Tokyo. Jim and I are sansei, you know, third generation Japanese-American. So Jim and I learned much less than our parents of that social reticence and hierarchical deference for which the Japanese are famous … . But I guess you know that already from knowing my brother."

I nodded and smiled as I recalled Jim Sato’s easy, friendly manner. But I couldn’t suppress my curiosity any longer: What happened to him, Jennifer?

I had used her given name, a form of address too familiar after short acquaintance in the Orient. I shouldn’t have considered it a mistake after what she had just told me about her family history, but I suppose because I had spent some time in the Far East and absorbed some of its customs, I did.

Besides, a good-looking woman always makes me nervous.

She reassured me with a friendly smile: It’s okay. I’m American; and you’re not in Tokyo or Hong Kong … or Viet Nam now.

Right, I said too quickly, I’ll see about the coffee, finding an excuse—before I knew that I had been searching for one—to escape this suddenly, unaccountably intimate situation.

In the kitchen I sucked in several large breaths while I collected the cups and cream and sugar and placed them on a tray together with the coffeepot. I carried it all into the living room, hoping that she couldn’t see the heat which I felt on my face. I set the tray on the low table and sat across from her again and poured the hot, thick, black liquid. She refused cream and sugar. We both sipped carefully.

Very good, she said. Thank you.

I smiled again and looked at her expectantly. She sighed and straightened her back, pushing herself against the cushion at the back of the sofa, as if to brace herself for the ordeal.

"When Jim came back from Viet Nam he had a terrible time adjusting to life in the States. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the way America is changing, or the … disgraceful way the veterans are treated, or maybe it was just the shock of civilian life after the war. Whatever it was—and Jim never told us what it was; maybe he wasn’t sure himself—he couldn’t seem to become part of life again. He watched life pass, but he didn’t live it.

"Before Viet Nam he had been very determined, almost driven, to succeed. But afterward, after a year or so of dead-end jobs, he took what money he had saved and what he had left from his Army pay, bought some camping and hunting gear and went to live in the mountains … the Cascades. Maybe that was just the sort of transition that he needed, or … I don’t know, maybe his estrangement from everyday life had only gone underground. But he seemed to be more at peace with himself than he had been in the workaday world. He worked at odd jobs, he hunted and fished, and he built himself a small cabin, mostly from scratch.

He told us all of this once when he came home to visit. None of us ever went down there to see him. We never saw where he lived. He wanted it that way. He was very serious about it.

She took a deep breath, and a long pull on the coffee, and worked at drying her eyes again.

Then one day, a deputy from the county sheriff’s office down there came to Seattle and told us that some hikers had found Jim … I mean Jim’s body … . He … he … had been shot … several times. They found twel … twelve bullet … wounds in … him … . No! … in … his … body.

The sobs heaved out of her uncontrollably. She buried her face in her hands and bent forward and surrendered herself to her grief.

And I sat facing her, unable to comfort her, silent tears sliding down my cheeks as I mourned the loss of my friend.

Quiet slowly filled the room again. She reached for her cup, lifted it deliberately to her lips and drained it. As I tipped the pot over our cups to refill them, I asked carefully: Does the sheriff in … where did you say it happened?

I didn’t, but it was in Medicine Trail County. That’s about a hundred miles … ummh … south, ahhh … south southeast, I guess it would be, from Seattle.

Does the sheriff have any leads? I asked, trying to provide her with a factual distraction from her emotional turmoil, … and me with a place to begin.

The sheriff—his name is Hackett—has only a small department … and he told us that he doesn’t run into many murders; so I don’t know what kind of job he can do on a case like this. We—our family—we think … that that’s the reason he hasn’t gotten very far. He said something too about … evidence deteriorating before Jim’s … body was found; … something like that.

She was swallowing her sobs and the coffee and bracing herself for the bursts of speech.

Jim was … Jim’s body was found about three weeks ago. We’ve been watching … and waiting to see if this … if the sheriff would come up with anything. We have talked to him several times on the phone. He is always polite and understanding … . But he hasn’t given us much hope. So we decided to come to you. We were sure that you would want to know about Jim anyway, … and we hoped that you could do something … anything to help. I remembered that Jim had said that you had done some sort of investigating on some assignments in the Army, and we thought that maybe you could think of some way to help … find out what happened.

Jim and I were brothers in Nam, I said quietly. I’ll do everything I can.

Her eyes found mine again and showed me grief and gratitude. Thank you, she said in a voice made weak by the fatigue of bearing her family tragedy and the telling of it.

How do we begin? It was hardly more than a whisper.

We?

I might be helpful, she offered. You never know.

I nodded thoughtfully. We’ll see.

She told me as she left that she was staying with relatives in Honolulu, and she accepted my invitation to brunch the next day so we could discuss what we could do and how.

As I stood alone in the quiet of my living room staring at the bronze copy of Frederick Remington’s dynamic Bronco Buster which stood atop a four foot high, white enameled, Doric column in the tokonoma (art alcove), I realized that thinking of Jim Sato as my brother in Viet Nam had been only one part of that experience. We had been comrades–in–arms too, and what he had taught me and what we had learned together during our two tours in Nam had kept both of us alive more times than I wanted to remember. Together we had faced the unimaginable, we had done our duty and we had survived. I owed Jim more than I could ever repay, and I vowed that I would honor what I could of that debt now by helping his family find his murderer.

Monday, 03 May

Verus City,

Medicine Trail County, Washington

The Medicine Trail County Sheriff’s Office was a large, oblong, story and a half cabin of twelve to fifteen-inch diameter, recently revarnished, pine logs that looked like it had been resting atop its fieldstone foundation long enough to grow its own roots. A steeply pitched, shake covered roof over four, large, identical gables—those on the east and west as wide as the walls which they sheltered—protected it from the weather. The pitch of the roof broke just above the point where it met the sidewalls, and the eaves reached out about four feet from there—and from the gable ends—on a flatter line, to shelter a flagged walk. At the point in the center of the roof where the four ridgepoles would have met, a large, rectangular chimney—its axis perpendicular to that of the building—also of fieldstone, poked skyward. Bars before the basement windows, set back nearly two feet from the face of the foundation, showed the location of the lockup.

The spring sun warmed my back as I climbed the wide, flagstone steps to the double front doors. I heaved one of the thick, oaken slabs open and closed the distance between the front doors and a long, wainscoted counter. It divided the one large room into a small public area and a combination squad/communication/records area centered around a huge fieldstone fireplace which bore the chimney I had seen from the outside.

There I faced a large man clad in a khaki uniform which had been washed almost white over the years. Sharp creases had been pressed into the sleeves and trousers, and the bottom two ball-capped points of the five-pointed star above his left shirt-pocket flap had pressed deep divots into its fabric.

Morning, I told him.

Morning, he agreed.

Beautiful building you have here. I said honestly; but I had also smeared a less than sincere but what I hoped he would see as a friendly smile on my face, because I was sure that I was butting in where I wasn’t wanted and where he would figure I didn’t belong. My 10W-30 smile was my best effort to reduce the inevitable friction.

Thank you, he said. We think so too. Built not too long after we became a state in 1889.

He spoke softly, and he was civil—almost polite—but he didn’t sound friendly.

Sheriff Hackett, is it?

That’s right; and I’d guess that you would be the Mr. Butler my deputy talked to yesterday.

Right. When I phoned, he said that you’d most likely be able to see me today, but he wasn’t sure when. I drove down prepared to wait until you could spare me some time.

Well, I don’t see why we can’t do it right now. What is it that you want to talk to me about?

I gave the room another quick once-over. He and I were the only two people within earshot, but I hesitated. Can we have a little privacy, Sheriff?

He acceded grudgingly: All right. Step around here and we’ll see what we can do.

I pushed through a swinging gate and followed him into a small, well-used office. Glass enclosed it above blond, wood-paneled wainscoting on three sides. The fourth wall—windowless—was the outside wall of the cabin.

He took his time taking his stance—his back to the log wall—behind an ancient, wooden desk while he assessed me through clean-cut, clean-shaven features that looked about half a century old.

Finally, extending a calloused hand and thawing slightly, he said: John Hackett.

I grabbed the proffered, thewy slab and introduced myself. He then pointed vaguely at a pair of captain’s chairs on my side of the desk and dropped his six-foot-three frame into the wooden swivel chair behind it.

I accepted the invitation.

Now, … what’s our business, Mr. Butler?

I handed my driver’s license and passport across the desk.

All right. It looks like you’re who you say you are, he told me as he returned them.

His eyes rested heavily on my face.

I want to talk to you about the murder of Jim Sato.

What about it?

It was a challenge, and it told me what I had suspected: Whatever our business was, he was already pretty sure that he wasn’t going to like it.

He was a friend of mine. We served in Viet Nam together. I’d like to know what the status of the case is. Jim’s family and I are all anxious to know how things stand.

So you don’t have any information for me on the case?

No.

Are you in law enforcement, Mr. Butler?

No.

A private investigator?

No. This is a private matter. I brought this letter of introduction from Jim’s father. As you can see, it’s written under his company’s letterhead.

He looked at the letter briefly, lifted his two-hundred and twenty-five or so mostly hard pounds out of his chair, nodded an Excuse me and went into the outer office to a long row of black matte filing cabinets along the wall farthest from the front doors. In a few minutes he returned with a beige folder, slowly nodding silently over it several times as he absently eased himself into his chair again.

But you don’t have a detective’s shield or an investigator’s license of any kind? the big lawman asked again slowly. This time, it was through a wide, friendly smile.

No. I don’t. As I said, Sheriff, I’m acting on behalf of Jim’s family, and for myself.

You say that you served together in Viet Nam, he drawled, the smile lingering.

I nodded slowly, … remembering.

What outfit? he fired suddenly; the smile gone, his voice sharp.

Second Battalion, Twenty-second Infantry, Twenty-fifth Infantry Division, I recited automatically, nearly spitting out my name, rank and service number too.

When? Hackett snapped.

July of sixty-seven to July of sixty-eight.

He stared at me expectantly so I gave him some more: Jim had been with them about three months when I joined them.

His eyes dropped to the file lying open before him. I thought that the Twenty-second Infantry was a Fourth Infantry Division regiment, he reflected quietly. His eyes—watchful—rose to meet mine.

I had to wonder how he would have known that.

That was true; but the Fourth and the Twenty-fifth Divisions swapped the battalions in their third brigades in August of sixty-seven.

He nodded slowly. Mmm-huh. Okay, Mr. Butler. Ask me some questions.

Jim’s sister told me that you found several bullet wounds in Jim’s body. What can you tell me about them? First off, your friend wasn’t killed here in town. It happened up on Cut Tooth Ridge … where he lived. I’ll show you exactly where that is on a map later. Now … yes, there were wounds from twelve rounds, and they were messy. Ballistics told us that the weapon was one of those AK-47s that the communists are using in Viet Nam. We found a few shell casings but there were no fingerprints on them. I’m told that we can match some of the rounds to the weapon that fired them if we can find it.

Why so many wounds? I heard myself ask. I was concise, efficient, calm, coldly analytical. I had seen many men die in Viet Nam. Some of them had been my friends, too. There was nothing new here. Besides, I was sure that I already knew the answer. I felt my jaw clench.

Are you all right?

Traces of real concern seemed to color his question. He must have seen what I felt: All vestige of expression had disappeared from my face. I nodded an answer, and he carefully explained what he certainly knew I already knew.

Most of the rounds were in the joints and other locations where they would cause a lot of damage and a lot of pain but where they wouldn’t kill quickly. They were all well placed. There were powder burns on a few of the wounds. There were a couple in his guts. Those were the ones that the ballistics people had the best luck with. And the coroner says that … the victim was hit in the legs first. I suppose because that way he was easy for the rest of the shots.

He paused—watched my face—then continued quickly (and what he thought was mercifully, I guess):

He probably suffered for several hours before he died. There was one wound to the heart; the one that finally killed him.

He watched me struggle to prevent any emotion from disrupting the calm which I had chiseled into my face. It seemed to trouble him a bit.

Finally, in a voice which sounded almost normal to me, I asked: Any ideas, sheriff?

He regarded me for some time, then sighed, and finally spoke almost gently to me: "Mr. Butler, this man was your friend, and because of that I don’t want to cause you any undue grief. But you came here wanting to know the truth and I guess you have a right to know it. You have to understand that Mr. Sato was … well, a little strange. He lived out there in those mountains almost all the time. He lived alone. He hardly ever came to town, and when he did it was only to work at some odd job or to buy supplies; mostly groceries. He didn’t do any socializing that I could find out about. He didn’t frequent any bars or go to the movies; nothing of that sort. I said a few words to him once or twice when I saw him around town, and he was polite enough in his answers, but he didn’t seem friendly.

A couple of times I saw him waiting to catch a bus here in town. I didn’t know where he was going, and since it wasn’t any of my business … then, I didn’t ask. After he was killed, of course, I asked at the drug store—that’s where they sell the bus tickets—and they told me that he bought tickets to only one destination, and that was Seattle.

Hackett paused, and his sharp, grey eyes rested on my blank face. I guessed that he was wondering whether to proceed, or how to; maybe trying to figure out how to do the least damage to Jim’s memory while still telling me the truth.

In my opinion, Mr. Butler, he finally said, I don’t think that your friend ever returned from Viet Nam.

I nodded slowly, trying to encourage him to tell me all he could, while I tried to understand the Jim Sato who had been so different from the friend I had known.

"When we made our search at the crime scene, we found that he didn’t have many extras in that little cabin of his; it was bare bones. But he had some topographical maps tacked up on one wall. Some of them were maps of the area around here. And he had some topo maps of Viet Nam too. It looked like he was remembering … .

Another thing: We didn’t find his body in the cabin. The shooting took place outside. There was enough physical evidence around to tell us that. And when we rolled the body over, we saw that he had scratched the letters ‘V C’—for Viet Cong we assume—into the dirt under his body.

The weather and the … scavengers hadn’t obliterated them?

The letters were protected from the weather by the body, he told me quietly, keeping his eyes intently on the file atop his desk. His right thumb methodically raised the lower left-hand corners of a few of the top pages.

As to the scavengers, … it appears that none of any size discovered the body, and the smaller ones that did were unable to disturb its position to any … ummh … appreciable extent.

I see. Thank you. I was still calm, and my voice still steady. Anything else?

No. But I have to say again that I think that your friend was obsessed with the war in Viet Nam. I think that he was reliving it. He was still fighting in the paddies and jungles of Southeast Asia in his mind while he was living in our Cascade Mountains right here in Washington.

Then he raised his eyes to mine and I took a good, long look at him and I saw that he looked very tired.

I’m sorry, he said gently.

I nodded slowly, and as I tipped my head back to stare up at the lunging, four-foot musky mounted high on the wall behind Hackett’s desk, I wondered why Jim hadn’t written or called. If he had been suffering from some kind of battle fatigue, of course, there was no telling what reasons he might have thought he had for not contacting me. But if he had been mentally sound, the answer was obvious: He’d have figured that I would have had my own demons to hold at bay, and he wouldn’t have asked me to add his problems to mine by asking me to help him fight his too.

You said that Jim had some maps of Viet Nam in his cabin. Do you remember which areas?

Nothing special so far as we could tell; … anywhere from Saigon to Pleiku to Kontum to Da Nang to Hue. You can take a look at them if you want to.

The offer sounded genuine. Maybe I could tell whether Jim was just remembering his tours in Nam or whether there was something in them to tell me who had murdered him.

What about his maps of Medicine Trail County? Anything unusual about them?

"They were maps of the area immediately around the cabin, out to a ten- or twelve-mile radius, as I recall. He had made some notes on them too, but they didn’t give us anywhere to start from. You can look at them, too, if you want to.

You know this country, sheriff. What’s unusual in that area? Anything that might be considered suspicious?

Hackett shook his head slowly, as if he was reconsidering the possibilities even as he denied them. "My deputies and I talked it over pr’tty well right here in this office after we found the body. We looked over maps and phone books and business directories, and we searched our memories for anything that had happened recently that we thought was strange. But nothing—not one thing—smelled bad to us.

"Verus City is the only town within that circle and I like to think that I know what’s going on here. Besides that—in the area roundabout—there are some homesteaders, ranchers, a few sawmills and lumberjack camps, some abandoned mines.

"But everything looked okay; still does.

’Course, we couldn’t visit each and every one of them. Medicine Trail is a good-sized county and I don’t have many deputies. But nothing seemed to be worth a second look.

I nodded. I had no reason to doubt what he said. In fact, I thought that he was telling me a lot more than I would have told someone like me if I had been sheriff. It occurred to me to wonder why.

There was no more physical evidence, sheriff?

I was still calm, still trying to move deliberately.

Nothing besides what I’ve described to you.

You said that Jim lived alone. Haven’t you found any friends at all?

"No, but not for want of trying. The only people he seems to have had any contact with around here were the people he worked for, … and their experience with him was pretty much like mine: He was polite enough, and friendly, but only up to a point that wasn’t too far beyond small talk.

That wasn’t the Jim I knew. What about a girlfriend?

Nope. No one.

That wasn’t Jim, either. Okay. No friends at all. What about enemies?

No again. And again, not for want of trying. Nobody seems to have had anything against him either.

Do you mind if I hike up to his cabin and have a look around?

I figured that this would be the point in the conversation where Hackett would tell me politely but firmly to butt out of his investigation, but he surprised me again.

Naw. I don’t care. We went over it all pr’tty well, and it’s been almost a month since we were up there, so there probably isn’t much left to see. But go ahead. I’ll have one of my deputies show you the location on the map in the squad-room and describe a few of the landmarks on the trail in.

Thanks, sheriff. That would be a big help, I told him, still wondering why he was giving me so much.

But then he leaned his impressive bulk forward and I was surprised no more.

And if you do happen to come across anything that could help us in our investigation, I’m sure that you’ll let us know about it, he told me quietly.

I estimated that the strength of personality in the humorless smile on the big lawman’s well-worn face—if transformed into physical force—would have been enough to squeeze a cry of pain from an Olympic wrestler, and I was sure that he was willing to use it and the power of his office to twist either of my arms off at the shoulder if he thought that it would get him what he wanted.

I’ll do that, sheriff, I promised; and I returned the smile; but mine didn’t have nearly as much muscle.

Thursday, 06 May

The Cascade Mountain Range

The hike into Jim’s cabin had taken me the better part of two days. It had been difficult in places but uneventful. I had rented gear and bought supplies in Verus City, and I had brought along a 30/30 lever-action carbine which I had borrowed and signed for at Hackett’s office. Jennifer had made me promise to be careful when I had called her to tell her what I was planning, and bringing the weapon along had seemed like the best way to keep it. After Viet Nam I didn’t regard a promise to care for my life and limb to be empty reassurance.

I made camp in a grove of evergreens near the cabin. A quick reconnaissance soon after I arrived showed no sign of recent human intrusion nearby, and nothing but traces of squirrels and ‘coons and mice inside. The cabin had been stripped of Jim’s presence and personality, and its desolation constantly forced me to shrug away an almost overwhelming grief over the loss of my good friend.

I checked my maps and compass and planned the next day’s search in the remaining daylight; and finally—dodging the eye-burning fumes from the Sterno tabs (I had decided against a fire in the interest of security even though it had been some two months since Jim had been murdered)—I heated water for some black coffee and freeze-dried beef stroganoff.

After supper, nursing the coffee, I tried to reconcile the Jim Sato whom Jennifer and Hackett had described with the young man I had known in the Army.

He lived alone, without real work, without any friends. When I had known Jim, he had been friendly and fun-loving and hard-working. And he had been a good soldier; cool and brave and smart in a fight.

Maybe that was the trouble: Jim had forged a new personality during his two tours of duty in Nam—a personality adapted to the intensity of battle—and that personality had exploded amid the tamer demands of civilian life. The internal, centrifugal forces of his warrior-psyche had not been counteracted by equivalent, external, centripetal pressures here, at home. Maybe the war had forced Jim to become a finely tuned racing engine running at high speed, and later, without the resistance which the war had supplied, he had torn himself apart from too many rpms and too little load.

And maybe Jim had tried to supply that resistance artificially by making survival so difficult that he would lose speed gradually, and then maybe he wouldn’t need that resistance anymore, or could find a natural, minimal resistance in civilian life. And maybe that had been his method of gradual withdrawal: First the war-combat in the jungles of Viet Nam, then the struggle for survival in this American forest without the combat, and finally a return to a peaceful, civilian life; without the struggle for survival in the natural world and without the war.

Maybe. But I couldn’t be sure. I crawled into my bag and fell into sleep.

Friday, 07 May

First grey light slipping under a dark sky brought a shimmer to the dew lying heavy on the grass and the tautly-tied, waterproofed, green plastic tarp under which I had slept.

Breakfast was big. There would be little time for anything but jerky and water at noon. I planned to carry only what was necessary for a one- or two-night light camp and to return to my main camp at the cabin every second or third night for resupply.

I checked my gear: Maps and meals and iodine tablets for water purification in the pockets of my Army field trousers, a compass—secured on a line around my neck—in the left, chest pocket of my fatigue blouse, two full canteens on my web belt, my bedroll on my back, and the carbine in hand.

I had drawn perpendicular lines North-South and East-West intersecting at the cabin as the center of my search area and extending to three-kilometer radii. I would search the circle which I drew around these, one quadrant at a time. If I found nothing, I intended to extend each radius two more kilometers.

I headed into the northeast quadrant to begin the search for some clue to the torture and murder of my friend.

On the first day I found nothing.

Saturday, 08 May

On the second day in the same area I again found nothing. I returned to camp near the cabin that night bone tired and sore, wondering at how subtly the enervating nature of modern sedentary life had sapped my vitality.

Sunday, 09 May

On the third day I began the northwest quadrant, trying as before, to follow the Red Man’s maxim: Walk little, see much.

I began my search along its southern boundary, moving directly away from Jim’s cabin. Early in the afternoon, as I slowly worked my way down a shallow draw so thick with evergreens and hardwoods that my eyes sought their quarry in perpetual twilight, a waxing breeze unexpectedly brought the sweet stench of rotting flesh to my nostrils.

The sensation resurrected my tours in Viet Nam: We encounter the sickening odor often while patrolling areas where our unit or others have fought days or weeks before. It hangs heavy around unretrieved and unburied enemy bodies, and always shifts my mind and reflexes into the heightened tension of flight or fight which so often means life over death on a jungle patrol.

The memory urged me into a slight crouch and I