Red Flags (42 page)

"You stayed in contact."

"After a fashion. She's director of public health at a teaching hospital. In San Francisco."

I went to the trove of framed pictures, took down an old photo, and brought it back to the table.

"Her daughter, Denise. At six."

I took a tiny notepad from my shirt pocket, and the small Swiss ballpoint I habitually kept with it. When I finished writing, I tore the page out for her.

"What's this?"

"Denise's address. She lives not far from her mom, in Novato. Just north of Frisco."

Celeste looked puzzled. "Why are you giving me—?"

"I thought you might look her up, since you're heading south anyway."

"Why?"

"You've never met your sister. Maybe it's time."

I hadn't ever made anyone cry so fast.

"Sister?" Her voice wavered.

"Yeah. She has a child herself now. I guess that makes you an aunt."

She clutched the paper, staring at the address, the name, the fact of it sinking in.

"That's why Roberta left," she said. "She was pregnant."

Celeste sat crying quietly. When she'd recovered herself, she said, "Thank you, Erik Rider."

I drove her back down to her car. The day was starting out pasty, but I knew the weather in the mountains. It would be crisp and sparkling by noon. I gave her a badly folded map of northern California and reminded her to go slow on twisty 36. Once she reached the ocean, the Pacific Coast Highway would take her the rest of the way. She hugged me with that thin body and drove off.

It was a long haul to Novato. The road along the coast was only two lanes and full of dips and curves. But I had a feeling she'd drive straight through.

That there is so little fiction in
Red Flags
is owed to the generosity of many. I am indebted to the veterans who helped me remember and who offered their own memories of what they experienced and witnessed during their time in country. Most especially Harry Pewterbaugh, George Ruckman (who loved Vietnam and stayed seven years), Jeff Barber (who left his leg there), supermarksman Rick Stolz, Jerry Rowland (who just missed boarding the fateful chopper), and Ellsworth "Little Smitty" Smith. Our local missionary Robert Reed, who devoted thirteen years of his life to the Montagnards, also graciously shared his memories of difficult days and corrected some key details.

It is Harry's theory that we all started looking for one another once we hit sixty, and I think he's right. The vets' online forums surge with floods of searchers. Three of us met up in California. Soon afterward, we located two more of our brethren and visited by phone. Rick I visited in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, one Fourth of July as his son deployed to the new counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East. The Internet made the reunions possible and also allowed me to connect with Vietnam veterans who served before and after we did. My thanks to them all.

Augmenting these memories is a cache of more than a thousand volumes of nonfiction and fiction, many declassified documents, maps, downloads from a wide array of archives and websites, learned monographs, and a host of memoirs. Most memorable among them: Hilary Smith's self-published
Lighting Candles
and Lady Borton's wonderful translation of Dr. Le Cao Dai's
The Central Highlands: A North Vietnamese Journal
, issued by the Gioi Publishers, Hanoi (2004).

Thanks too to editor Thomas Bouman of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for his sensitivity to the subject of the Vietnam Conflict; to Beth Burleigh Fuller for coordinating so ably the many steps required to actually produce the book; to Tracy Roe for saving me endless embarrassment with her brilliant copyediting; to publicists Christina Mamangakis and Hannah Harlow for their thoughtful promotional efforts on its behalf; and to Laurie Brown for so capably leading her sales and marketing troops to victory.

For those still suffering guilt incurred during the Vietnam era, I offer this salve: Donate online to the Vinh Son Montagnard Orphanage in Kontum at friendsofvso.org. Or send a check to Friends of Vinh Son, P.O. Box 9322, Auburn, California 95604.

Lastly, the civilian called John Ruchevsky in these pages seems to have come in from the cold and resettled in the States. I hope to thank him personally when I drop by with a copy of this story, which he in great part inspired. I would call ahead, but of course his number is unlisted.