Way North, A Novel by Randy Evans

Chapter Twenty-Five

Fall of Saigon

Like folding an American Flag into a proper triangle and signing out in a log book, the Vietnam War was coming to an abrupt end.  On April 29, 1975, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers tightened their circle around Saigon.  The city swarmed in disarray.

“Let’s get this show on the road while the Jarheads still hold the perimeter!”  said Salt.

“No dependents, no girlfriends, no children, no babies, no pets--just agents...no more room.  If you have complaints, put them in the CIA suggestion box,”  Pepper yelled over the gunfire.  “Anyone violating these orders will be shot.”  Salt and Pepper sounded like seamen loading the life boats on The Titanic.  They were both deadened and dull from their years in the field, physically and emotionally flatlined.

If you can’t leave someone behind, don’t get in the pod,” warned Salt.  They both sounded harsh, but neither one had an ounce of caring left.  Getting the agents out was their last assignment, and they were going through the motions.  If they all made it out, fine; if not, it was just one more botched mission along with a thousand others.

Within minutes, he could see some agents trickle away.  “Now I’ve seen everything!” said Pepper.  He looked in disbelief at a unicyclist riding by waving the red flag of Vietnam with a yellow star in the center.  The unicyclist was on his way to join others who would form a massive parade the day after the city was liberated by the Communists.

Most of the field operations agents still wore the floppy jungle hats, rubber sandals, and camo green fatigues of the Viet Cong.  Huddled together, these would-be refugees looked like a large turfed section of dried grass.  The agents in civilian dress had been part of the so-called Rural Pacification Program to “win the hearts and minds” of Vietnam’s peasant population so Vietnam could be a cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, what the planners had called a “rice roots” effort at pacification.  Some of them had been at this for twenty years, part of CIA  “black insertions” into the Vietnam heartland in the sixties.

Salt and Pepper were not deserters.  As CIA operatives, they infiltrated the North Vietnamese Army in 1967.  Their mission had been reconnaissance, and to serve as liaison to Vietnamese agents embedded by the CIA in the NVA.  Even the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence wing of the military, had them down as deserters. 

Salt and Pepper had revealed the VC position where Nick Randall spotted them so many years ago.  When Nick radioed for a rocket attack, the ridge had already been identified through military intelligence provided by Salt and Pepper.  The two men had called in an air strike and napalm attack upon themselves.  

Shortly before the fall of Saigon in 1975, Salt and Pepper received orders to lead twelve busloads of Vietnamese CIA agents to the Mekong River, then transport them downriver on a barge, load them on convoy buses, and drive them to a way station in downtown Saigon.  From Saigon, the agents would fly on fixed wing aircraft to the Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines for debriefing and preparation for entry to the States.  Salt and Pepper successfully completed their part of the mission, but once in Saigon, everything fell apart like the loose end of a string.

The CIA assessment of how long South Vietnam could hold out was dead wrong.  Salt and Pepper knew the North Vietnamese forces were attacking Saigon, and bombarding the airport, but they had no idea how rapidly time was running out.  The South Vietnamese Army was in a disorderly and costly retreat, hoping to set up a defensive position south of the 13th parallel.  Every few days, the North Vietnamese captured another city, first Hue at the end of March, then Da Nang three days later.  The CIA recommended B-52 strikes on Hanoi, but it was too late. By April 29, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops surrounded Saigon.  Half of Salt and Pepper’s agents were either injured or sick, and all of them were weak from hunger and thirst, but most were ready to leave.

It took Salt and Pepper until April 30 to establish an evacuation point, but not until  a VC rocket destroyed a C-130 while it taxied in to pick up evacuees.  Now only one runway was fit for use.  Hours later, a defecting South Vietnamese pilot dumped all his ordnance on the remaining runway.  The Pentagon had based their evacuation plans on fixed wing aircraft.  Now helicopter evacuation was the only option.  Salt and Pepper moved their 250 agents by bus from their pick-up point to the Defense Attache Office compound adjacent to the bombed out Tan Son Nhut Airport. Their particular route was code-named the Santa Fe Trail.  

 As they arrived, they were surrounded by snipers, ground, rocket, and artillery fire.  Waves of 7th Fleet marines had landed the day before to secure the perimeter defenses with rifle companies and mortar platoons.  Other platoons were deployed to support the evacuation at the Embassy.  The soldiers had a fight both in front of them and behind them.  The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong wanted in, and South Vietnamese citizens wanted out.  Both targeted the marines.  Now even the marines were pulling out, as North Vietnamese tanks started to roll into the city unopposed.  Salt and Pepper cut down all the trees in the vicinity of the compound parking lot to make sure the one available helicopter had room to land.

At first light on April 30, Salt and Pepper finally began loading the war weary agents into a troop deployment pod underneath the fuselage of  a Sikorsky CH-53 heavy lift helicopter.    The big choppers with two rotors were the same ones the Marines had used when they arrived to protect the evacuation.  With no equipment, they could load one pod with about 85 agents, way above the load maximum for fully-equipped soldiers.  Salt counted heads as the distraught agents clambered into the pod.  It started to rain.  The air smelled of tear gas.

One agent wanted out so bad he panicked, and refused to wait his turn on the second trip.  He tried to claw his way into the first fully-loaded pod as the giant crane-like chopper groaned to lift off with its super heavy load.  Pepper shot him dead between his shoulder blades with his sidearm, then dragged his body through the door of the office building. While Salt and Pepper were preoccupied disposing the body, an old Vietnamese woman hurled a swaddled baby in the air.  The baby landed in the middle of the pod, and disappeared under cover, its cries muffled by the noise.

The single chopper made three two-hour round trips to complete the evacuation, hot refueling on a helipad at the stern of the USS Blue Ridge before the return trips.   The final bird lifted off from the DAO parking lot as the Marines detonated thermite grenades they had placed in the compound buildings to dispose of everything inside.  The body was incinerated along with all the records.  Tear gas billowed in the air, and blinded the chopper pilot’s eyes.  They almost crashed.  Salt and Pepper were on the last flight out.  

In the air, Salt and Pepper could see  F-14 Tomcats protecting the air evacuation routes over the South China Sea.  In the noisy human cargo of the pod, Salt noticed all faces were turned towards the limitless sea.  Not a single man looked back on the land.  There sight limited by the darkness of the jungle and the edges of rice paddies, they gazed at the boundless sea.  Even with all the danger and strife the agents had faced in Vietnam, suspension from a helicopter over water offered a novel way to experience fear and death. They all looked like they were about to take their last gasp.  The wind was picking up, and the pod swayed like the stone end of a slingshot.

“We look like a railcar of cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse.” Salt hollered in Pepper’s ear.

“We’ve been in guerilla war, regular war, and night reconnaissance... we’ve had to stand by and watch the VC beat and kill prisoners...you’d think this little hop would be easy,” said Pepper.

“It would be a damned shame to survive all these years to die now,” Salt said.  “We’ve been in the perishable section of the supermarket for a long time.”

“Human leftovers with no expiration date,” Salt said.

As they approached the Navy ships, the long-distance warrior eyes scanned a surreal disarray on the over-crowded decks.  Sailors were frantically pushing unloaded helicopters overboard; some were ditching in the sea. On its approach to the ship, their Sikorsky Pratt & Whitney engines flamed out from fuel starvation, and pitched into the Gulf of Tonkin.  The cumbersome pod tipped over forty feet above the water.  There were a few agents with life vests on.  They were the most unlucky.  Their necks broke when they hit the water.  Twenty of the eight-five men in the pod drowned or died of other causes in the water.   The rest were recovered by boat, including Salt and Pepper.  Taken out of the first pod by her father, and her mother who had disguised herself as a man, the baby survived.

Of the original 250, about two hundred agents made it to the Seventh Fleet, and eventually were expedited through Clark Air Force Base and back to the States.  Other than the twenty lost at sea, most of the remainder stayed behind because of dependents.  Many of these were later captured, beaten, jailed, sentenced to hard labor, or killed.  A few were re-assigned by the CIA to in-country missions in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Some disappeared in the jungle or faded into the enemy.  The only equipment to make it out that day was Salt’s Remington Pump and the World War ! bayonet; even the magnificent Sikorsky CH-53 was lost at sea along with one hundred other choppers involved in the evacuation. 

April Snow

Snow Plows at Dawn by Randy Evans


Tree trunks whiskered with wind-whipped snow shiver
half-frozen or half-thawed from the Spring storm,
caught like fish through the ice, the branches quiver
with surprise, awakened as they were in such altered form.

Between dusk and dawn fifteen inches of new snow fell,
fell on our talk of golf and gardens and Spring garb,
clearing the air of new desire, re-freezing what we tell
others we know of life, the old cliche, familiar barb.

Thrown back on ourselves, we delay the mindless ascent
into the season of forgetting.  The roller coaster stops
at the summit before the arm-raising, screaming descent,
and we once more seek out our true selves as God eavesdrops.

Chapters 24 and 25, Way North, A Novel by Randy Evans (comments welcome!)

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Chapter Twenty-Four

Breakfast with Stretch

Saturday morning, Zizi woke refreshed, showered, and slowly walked over to the cottage from the boathouse.  She found one of Nick’s navy and green plaid scarfs hanging on a hook as she entered the door, unfolded it, and placed it over her damp dark hair like a small prayer shawl.  She walked out onto the deck.  She removed a flat cushion from an old sofa on the deck,  and sat on the cushion with her pelvis tilted slightly forward.  She kneeled there motionless, silent, elbows at her side, hands upraised to open the new day.  She felt her knees still burning from the accident the night before.  

Veiled beneath Nick’s scarf, she meditated to prepare for her morning prayers.   She breathed in deeply, filling her lungs from bottom to top.  She noticed her lungs and eyes didn’t burn from pollution.  As she relaxed, her thoughts strayed towards Nick.  What if he was a cad, a sleazeball, a villain, a thug, a drunk, a criminal of some kind?  She threw the negative thoughts like a stone into the river, and resumed her meditation.  

Night rain had picked up the current on the river, but you could still count pebbles on the bottom.  Even though there were no mountains in Northern Michigan, the rivers flowed like mountain streams.  She feasted on the misty air.  The light fog dimmed the sun, but she still felt warmth and nurturing on her face, unlike the harsh, scorching sun of Cairo. Again, thoughts interrupted her meditation.  What a different world than Egypt!  What a different river than the Nile!--the Crooked River with miles of green, the Nile with thousands of miles brown. 

She was taking in all the various shades of green before her when Nick emerged from the river dripping sun-filled water drops.  Covered in a full wetsuit, neoprene swim hood and goggles, he looked like a black sea monster.  He gave her a wide, unsettling smile.  He had just completed his morning swim.  

As he climbed up the broken swim ladder onto the deck, he said, “How’s your toe?” 

Zizi replied, “Much better, thank you.  How’s your arm?”

“I took the wrap off...seems okay...no trouble swimming.”

“Good, I’ll keep an eye on it.  You need to tell me if you feel numb anywhere.”

“I will...by the way, Zizi, I wanted to ask you something I thought about when I woke up this morning...I know why I reacted the way I did when the boat hit the deck...but I don’t know why you reacted the way you did.”

Zizi felt herself coloring.  “I may tell you someday, but not now.”

Nick could see her color and her eyes widen, so he changed the subject.  “Stretch, my neighbor, comes over for breakfast on Saturday mornings.”

“ I’m hungry.  You must be too.  We didn’t eat last night,” Zizi said.

“There was a lot going on.  I should have offered you something...but I don’t keep much worth eating around the place.  I shopped for breakfast and lunch this morning.”

“I forget to eat, sometimes.  Last night, I enjoyed hearing you talk about yourself, and Victoria, too.”

“I’m afraid I glossed things over a bit.  Even though I don’t know you, I felt the need to impress you.”

“I heard a few things about you before last night.  People tell me you’re a hermit...living out here on the water alone, seldom coming to town.”

“I come to town twice a week.  I stood in line behind you last week at the hospital coffee bar...thought your hair was beautiful...I wanted to say “hello,” but you were all business.”

“Had to scrub for an operation.”  Cued by Nick’s compliment about her hair, Zizi casually let the scarf drop from her head to her neck.

“I was surprised you greeted me the way you did at the benefit dinner.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked being called ‘handsome’...just not used to...”

“I don’t know how to greet men.”

“Well, do you think I’m handsome?”

“Yes,” Zizi murmured.  I like a lot about you...how you live free...your anatomy...”  By the look on Nick’s face, she knew she had misspoke.  “I, I mean your autonomy.”  Even though Zizi’s English was excellent, it was still a second language, and she had trouble pronouncing consonants.

“That’s good,” Nick said looking directly into Zizi’s eyes, ignoring her mistake with his lifeline response.

 She responded in a quiet voice, peering out from her head covering, “I’ve waited a long time... to”

“What?”

“To call a man ‘handsome.’” she gave an embarrassed smile.

“I’m glad I was the one,” Nick replied.  “I like you...a lot.”

Zizi  turned her head away, and redirected the conversation, “Unlike a hermit, you seem to want to help people...like at the hospital, and, and, you helped me last night.”

“Then I fell on you...the volunteer work at the hospital gives me a way to organize my week, and I do miss seeing normal, everyday people.  After you meet Stretch, you’ll know why.”

“What do you like to do more than volunteering?”

“I like to solve problems.  My business career was mostly solving problems.”

“What do you do that makes you happy right now?”

“I’m not that happy right now, but I like to write...”  Nick outed himself as a novice writer.

“May I read...?”

Victoria poked her head out the screen door.  She had grabbed a shirt from her father’s closet, and stood barefoot in the doorway.  “What’s for breakfast, Dad?”

“Mushroom and cheese omelets, fresh strawberries and toast,”  Nick replied, glad to change the subject. “Coffee’s ready, too.”

As Nick, Victoria, and Zizi were finishing their first cup of steaming black coffee, Stretch barreled out of the woods with his Kubota tractor hauling a loaded of split hardwood.  He carried a mesh bag of freshly-picked morels from his secret location.  He wouldn’t even tell Nick where he found them.  Stretch was seventy-two, six feet four and 185 pounds. He wore black Bibb overalls, a cowboy hat and boots, and from his perch on top of the tractor, he looked formidable, stern, like a cross between Clint Eastwood and a Cormorant playing a homeless person.  His torso was shaped like an equilateral triangle pointing downwards with his broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist.  He sat in the tractor seat like he was on the saddle of a horse parading around before the National Anthem at a rodeo.

Flash, his old Black Lab, walked slowly alongside him like a long funeral procession of cars, all proceeding slowly at slightly different speeds and in slightly different directions.  The dog slouched into the kitchen, and took her favorite place in the middle of the sitting room floor, all 80 pounds groaning to settle.  She remained in the same place dragging breaths like a heavy smoker.  Every once in a while, she would give out a low grumble that sounded like “arugula.”  After she fell asleep, her legs twitched.  “Likes to chase rabbits in her dreams,” Stretch said.

 By mid-summer, Stretch had already cut and split his wood for the winter, and he kept Nick well-supplied, a fringe benefit of their friendship.  He had a propane tank he used as little as possible, heating his two-bedroom cabin with a wood stove when ever the temperature dropped below forty degrees.  Financially independent, he could have lived in a better place, but he preferred simple.  He had moved Up North five years earlier after his third divorce.  He referred to his ex-wives as “the plaintiffs,” otherwise, it was too confusing, since two of the three women were named “Wanda.” 

After Nick and Zizi left the township hall the night before, Stretch followed Charlene over to the Moose Jaw, and took a bar stool beside her.  He thought he would buy her a beer.    He thought she was pretty, and still thought he might attract a younger woman.  He had observed that Charlene was a friend of this foreign-looking woman who had fallen on the floor in front of his friend, Nick, so he also wanted to talk.  Charlene was happy to oblige him, but when she noticed Stretch was looking down her blouse, she kindly informed him that she was married.   Once that was settled, she gave Stretch  a little background on Zizi, so he knew something about her when he arrived at Nick’s. 

Stretch picked up most of his local knowledge at the Moose Jaw.  In fact, a good dinner there had been the reason Stretch decided to settle in the area.  The food and menu and people reminded him of his favorite restaurant in Brownwood, Texas.  Moose Jaw Junction sat on the edge of Larks Lake, and the establishment had a long, raucous history from logging days to the present as a gathering place for bikers, snowmobilers, and locals.  The fixture to hold the strippers’ pole still protruded from the ceiling near the fireplace.  Locals would point to the ceiling, and say knowingly, “That’s where the stripper pole used to be, right by the fireplace...kept them warm when they were naked.” 

“Wow!  Did you ever see strippers here?”

“No, before my time,” they winked.

Stretch’s weekly routine included three meals a week at the Moose Jaw--sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner.  He liked the paneled walls, the L-shaped bar, the game mounts on the walls, and his favorite menu items--chili, chicken tacos, hamburgers, or fried perch with onion rings.  In spite of these occasional indulgences, he was lean.  Food was a necessity, like the cordwood he used in his wood stove and the propane for his furnace.  His athletic posture belied his age--he walked a little bow-legged from riding horses his whole life, but he held his shoulders back and his head erect.  He spent most of his days doing something physical--walking, digging, splitting wood, working in his shop at the back of the pole barn.  His pale-green eyes sparkled with vitality, but like Flash, at his age, he wasn’t running in any races.   

Even with his advance insight from Charlene, seeing Nick, Victoria, and Zizi together when he just expected to see Nick took Stretch by surprise.  He and Nick had a ritualized friendship that was reliable and predictable. Stretch didn’t have many male friends in his life.  He was too competitive.  He hoped these intruders wouldn’t get in the way of their weekly breakfasts, fishing trips, and drawn-out arguments.  He felt that if he couldn’t have at least one good argument a week with Nick, his brain would go dead.  When he greeted this crowd, Stretch wasn’t smiling; in fact, he seldom smiled.  He regarded smiling as a sign of weakness, especially in a man.  Nick knew Stretch well enough to know what was going through his head, so he decided to avoid some awkward exchanges.

“Did you pick up anyone at the Moose Jaw last night,” Nick said to put him on the defensive.

“No, I don’t need to be picking anyone up at my age...it’s like the lady bartender at the Jaw said the other night, ‘Stretch, honey, you can have any woman you want, when you want, but why get tied down?’  That’s my policy these days, and I’m stickin’ to it.”

“Well, good for you,” Victoria said.  “That’s sort of my policy, too.”  Scratchy jumped up on her lap and purred.

Stretch looked at Zizi, then looked at Nick, “By the way, if I’d known this was a social breakfast, I would’ve shaved and put on a clean shirt.”

“While I was taking care of Zizi’s injuries from last night, Victoria arrived on that house boat out there, and...”

Stretch looked out the window and interrupted, “Holy Crap, that’s the sorriest excuse for a floating vehicle I’ve ever seen.  It’s so top heavy, I have no idea why it doesn’t just turn upside down.”

“She torpedoed the deck with the boat, and almost knocked us down the river.”

“Well, it’s not her fault.  How could anyone steer a wreck like that?”  Stretch was ready to defend Victoria, because he knew she cared for Nick as much as he did.  Stretch enjoyed Victoria’s occasional visits.

“And as for Zizi...,”  NIck started to explain.

“How y’all got here is none of my business...and even if it were, I wouldn’t ask any questions until after I ate.  I’ve been cutting wood since first light.  Now I know Victoria, but I didn’t meet you last night, what’s your name, Sugar?”

“Zizi,” she said.  No one had ever called Zizi, “Sugar,”  and she didn’t know what the term meant, but it didn’t sound good, so she pinched him with her eyes for good measure.

Stretch ignored the defensive look, as he poured some coffee. “That’s a fine double-barreled name...Zee--Zee!  My name’s Stretch.”  A name says a lot.  Well now, that’s all we all need to know right now. Let’s eat!  It takes a lot a food to maintain a body this size.”

Setting aside further introductions to have a good meal,  Zizi cleaned and sliced the mushrooms, Victoria cut the strawberries, Nick fixed the omelettes, and Stretch and Flash watched it all, Stretch with more enthusiasm than Flash.  Flash only liked her eggs hard-boiled.  Scratchy bumped open the screen door to nap on the deck.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Inland Waterway

After breakfast, everyone was feeling fine and the day was fine, so they decided to take Victoria’s boat to Cheboygan and back on a leisurely overnight trip.  Victoria brought Scratchy along, but Stretch decided there wasn’t enough room on board for Flash, so she stayed behind.  Stretch took her back to his cabin. By the time he returned, the delicate lace of fog lifted from the river.  Nick filled a cooler with ice, sandwiches, raw vegetables and cold drinks.

Pushing off from the deck, the outboard hummed into the fresh stillness of the morning. Wind rippled the water and tufts of marsh grass along the shore. The comical-looking boat motored towards the entrance to Burt Lake like a slow-moving, floating refrigerator.    The motor sounded like a bumble bee.  Off to the side of the boat, two kayakers plied the edges of the river with their bright orange and blue vessels.  The kayaks seemed to belong in the river, more so than the houseboat.  Nick piloted the boat, and Victoria sat next to him with a map and Nick’s handheld GPS.  Stretch and Zizi sat inside at the small table, and shared more coffee from a thermos.  Zizi decided Stretch was okay, and he thought Zizi was fascinating, unlike the women he knew.

From Burt Lake, they progressed through the Indian River to Mullett Lake, and finally into the Cheboygan River.  The entire waterway runs through about 48 miles of woods and marshes across the top of North Michigan.  A major trade route from before the seventeenth century, early people traveled the waterway by canoe to avoid the harsh wind and currents of the Straits of Mackinac that wedded Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.  Along the way, Victoria loved seeing where springs and creeks broke out on the river.  Zizi noticed wood ducks with their painted feathers nesting in an oak stump, the mother carrying the fluffy young ones on her back to the water. 

 As the little boat progressed, Zizi kept asking about the names of birds.  Victoria pulled a paperback guide out of her duffle,  and gave Zizi a pen so she could record a their sightings.  Over the trip, Zizi dated their observations next to the picture of each bird in the book:  Sandhill Cranes, Fox Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Pine Siskins, a Crow gathering sticks for a nest, Tufted Titmouse, Radpolls, dozens of Cedar Waxwings, more unnamed sparrows flushed from the brushy edge of the river, singing Cardinals, low flyovers by Meadowlarks, Mallards, Red-Breasted Mergansers, Herring Gulls, Rock Pigeons, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, and Downy Woodpeckers.  Her last entry--an American Goldfinch.  

Most of the time, Nick and Zizi spotted the birds first with their sharp eyes, and Victoria named them.  Stretch didn’t have much interest. He had only two names for creatures in the wild:  “critter” and “varmint.”  “Critters” were harmless and entertaining; “varmints” could do damage, and sometimes had to be shot.”  After a bit, he sat down on the back deck and lit his pipe.  Later, Nick turned the boat over to Victoria, and joined him with a cigar.   They had their “cigar vs. pipe” fight argument all over again, but with slightly different affirmations and rebuttals than before.

By noon, the boat had crossed Burt Lake and traversed through the Indian River to the edge of Mullett Lake.   They tied up along an abandoned dock, and lunched.  Within a half hour, they entered Mullet.  The wind increased on the wide lake out of the northwest, and the little boat struggled to keep a heading to the mouth of the Cheboygan River.  Everyone was happy to enter the quiet river waters when they entered the last river channel in the waterway.   They enjoyed watching the cottagers doing their annual clean-up on both sides. 

 Woodsmoke and the smell of burning leaves filled the air.  They waved to three young boys sitting on a park bench with their bicycles laying behind them at different angles in the grass.  Stretch passed a man sitting in an Adirondack chair on his dock smoking a pipe.  The man noticed Stretch smoking his pipe.  They waved at each other enthusiastically, as if they were the last two pipe smokers on the earth.  Shortly, the Hack-Ma-Tack Restaurant dock came into view on the right.  The Hack-Ma-Tack first opened as a hunting and fishing lodge in 1894.  It was five o’clock on the restaurant’s opening day of the new season.  

Outside, an Odawa wedding ceremony circled the lawn.  A small fire burned to carry prayers skyward. There were about thirty people of all ages present.  Victoria stopped in her tracks while the others entered the restaurant. Even though she was not easily moved by ceremony, the richness and beauty of the drumming and singing of the beautifully-adorned native women struck her deeply.  When the speaking began, the ancient language continued a musical syncopation.   The soft, vowel interior of the words were empty of sound, leaving a rhythmic flow of meaning that felt to Victoria something like love would sound if love spoke.  

Near the end of the ceremony, an injured eagle restored to health, stepped out of a crate.  It flapped its wings, then took off.  The eagle circled and swooped low over the celebrants before soaring off toward the north.  High above, another eagle waited, slowly circling the evening sky.  Beauty returned to beauty.  Victoria stood in wonder.   The connectedness of the ceremony, the harmony with nature, everyone coming together, all impressed her.  She thought, “These people must know what ‘home’ is.”

Once inside, the “houseboaters” were in a festive mood.  A third-generation waitress welcomed them, and pointed to the photos in the entrance. Framed pictures of her mother and grandmother were displayed on the paneled walls.  Together, they had waitressed at the restaurant over three generations.  She stood smiling against the large picture windows looking out on the yard that surrounded the restaurant and the river.  She seemed pleased to start a new season with her first guests, as if she were inviting them to her favorite spot for a picnic.  She took the orders, and Nick ordered local wine for the table.  

Stretch opened the dinner conversation by asking Zizi where she was from.

“Cairo,” she replied.

“Cairo...the camels and pyramids Cairo?”

“Yes, North Africa,”  Zizi said in a deadpan voice.

“We have lots of animals from North Africa in Texas,” Stretch said.  “Axis Deer, Ibex, Kudu, Aoudad Sheep.”

“So the climate is similar to Africa?”

“Some parts.” said Stretch.

“Do you shoot them?”

“It’s open season on exotics, but except for game ranches with high fence, they mostly run wild...I like that about Texas...any time of day or night, you have no idea what’s goin’ to be crossin’ your property.”

“I like here,” said Zizi.  “It is very different from Egypt...so much water!”  Zizi’s eyes danced.

“You have great dark eyes,” Stretch replied, taking a sip of Nick’s wine.

“Very fine eyes,” Nick added quickly, wanting to get in on the compliments.  He didn’t want Stretch to take over in the Charm Department.

“You both have very fine eyes,” Zizi said to Nick and  Stretch.   Light blue and pale green...the colors of the river.”

 “Here’s a toast to the color of eyes!”  Sretch said as he raised his glass. Everyone laughed and clicked their goblets together.

“Zizi’s a resident in general surgery at the regional hospital.  She wants to do cardiac surgery,” Victoria said.  Victoria wanted to elevate Zizi in Stretch’s eyes, perhaps in hopes that he would refrain from calling her “Sugar.”

“Unbelievable,” Stretch said.  “I met few doctors in my life, mostly veterinarians, but they’ve all been men.  Lord, I’ve never met a surgeon.  I’m truly in awe, Sugar Lump.”  Zizi was beginning to like all these little epithets...they seemed harmless enough when he said them. 

“Why do people call you ‘Stretch’?”  Zizi said.  She had picked up this up from Nick-- you had to keep shifting the conversation with Stretch to keep him diverted from unwanted lines of conversation.

“Why do you think, Sweet Thing?” Stretch replied.

“I have no idea.”

“People think it’s because I’m a lanky critter, but there’s a different reason.  My real name is William Rice.  I grew up in Jordan Springs, Texas on a family ranch in Brown County, a few miles outside of Brownwood...about in the geographic center of the state, the center bein’ down yon’er from Brownwood about eight mile in a little town called Brady.  Now don’t ask me how you find the geographic center of a state shaped liked Texas.  

Anyhow, my family was poor, and our one car was just pitiful.  I owned a horse and a bulldozer.  Senior Prom was coming up, and I wanted transportation.  I told my Daddy I didn’t want to drive our old jalopy to the dance, and I didn’t think my date would like to ride to the prom on the back of my horse.  I thought about taking her on top the bulldozer, but thought it might draw too much attention, and raise too much dust.  I was afraid the boys would make fun, and then I’d have to rearrange their cars in the parking lot with the dozer and get in even more trouble than I was already in at the time.   

“My Daddy said nothin’, but I could tell he was hurt, ‘cause we didn’t have a good car. The next week he drove to dealers all over Central Texas, and he come home with a used stretch limo he bought for a good price in Lampasas--long and white with a hood ornament on the grill--Texas Long Horns almost as wide as the limo.  My daddy drove me in the limo to the prom with Wanda.  Then after high school and before I joined the Army, I bulldozed all over the county building tanks, rode bulls in the rodeo, and, when I had time, drove the limo for hire on the weekends.  I had a uniform with the pants tailored for my boots, and I wore a black felt cowboy hat with a bolo tie.  That’s when people started to call me ‘Stretch.’”

“What is a “stretch” limousine?” Zizi asked.

“It a long car for goin’ to parties.  Mine was twenty-eight foot with a bar, stereo, TV and bone chillin’ air conditioning that I turned on when it got over ninety.”

“You never told me that story,” said Nick.

“You never asked.”

“Probably not a good first car for me,” Zizi concluded.  “How did you come to North Michigan.”

“My ex-wife and I were through with each other a long time before our divorce, but when we finally did break up, it was downright humiliating to stay in Brownwood, especially after divorcing twice before. I might have stayed and married some old widow, but I felt like a door off its hinges, and began to think I was wearing out the female population in Brownwood.  I was starting to feel sort of gated in and fenced off, like when the bank puts a lock on your own land, and you’re just standing out by the road looking in on your cattle.

“There’s a lot of hate in a small town, and when two or three women hate you, it just seems to multiply--a little loose barbed wire can ruin a whole line of fence...worse than a drunk on a Saturday night.  I wanted to take leave of the place to find some peace...excuse myself from love and marriage for a while or maybe forever. The limo was broke down on blocks or I would’ve taken it with me, but I just headed north in my pick-up.  After a few days, I started to see on the map that I’d shortly start running out of the country if I didn’t stop somewhere.  I might’ve kept going across the Bridge to the Upper Peninsula, but I had a good meal at the Moose Jaw, and decided a poor cowboy like me could build a new life around a restaurant with good home-cooked food.”

After dinner, they cruised to downtown Cheboygan and tied up on the river side of the lock. They checked in at the nearly-empty Best Western, and the two men slept in one room; the two women in another.  Stretch was mortified to sleep in a room with another man, but he didn’t have much choice.  Scratchy stayed on the boat. Since Victoria and Zizi were almost the same size, Victoria shared some of the clothes she brought along for the trip.  

There was a Big Boy Restaurant on the other side of the parking lot from the motel, so they all walked over for breakfast at seven the next morning.  The two young women ordered oatmeal.  Nick and Stretch chose blueberry pancakes and pan sausage with two easy over eggs on top.  After refilling the coffee thermos, they were back on the river heading home, stopping only once at a marina on Mullet to gas up while Nick slid into the water on the boat’s sliding board for a short icy swim.  Stretch wanted to get back to check on Flash.

The boat continued steadily on retracing its route while the outboard hummed its little tune.  As they re-entered the Crooked River, Nick noticed that overnight rain had swollen the river.  Debris was still in the water from the Spring run-off, and he thought he saw some remnants from his damaged dock float by.  Eventually the transitory natural mysteries of the river gave way to the framed triangles of cottages, assertions of human purpose.  Water was still dripping from the cottage eaves as they passed by.  Victoria called Zizi’s attention to the sweet and sad call of a mourning dove.  

Victoria observed that Scratchy had already made the house boat home.  The cat had found all the highest and most comfortable spots, appearing and disappearing from one to the next like a grinning Cheshire cat.  The little black and brown tabby always treated herself to the milk and cream of everything, always open to new and different ways of indulging herself, naked and ready, seemingly unattached to anyone or anything... even her own skin.  “I’d like to be more like a cat?” Victoria thought.