The night we heard that our good friend Jesse Peña was missing, we decided to get a search party together and check the bars in Duc Pho, an old city in Vietnam's central highlands. We were in the rear area for a short rest before beginning the next operation, and we knew that under stress, sometimes guys who reached the limit and could not go on another day ended up AWOL, lost in the delirium of booze and chaos. But our orders came through and we were restricted to base camp, forced to disband our posse.

Two days later a long line of double-propped Chinook helicopters with 105 howitzers and nets full of ammunition dangling beneath them choppered us into the mountains, about a half hour outside our base camp. They lifted us to the top of a mountain that was scattered with light vegetation. Below and all around us, the jungle landscape was immense. Mountain ranges stretched in every direction.

We began knocking down trees, clearing away bush, unloading tools, equipment, packs, and ammunition. On our bare shoulders we lugged 55-pound projectiles into the ammo dump . . . . long lines of shirtless men, bodies shining with sweat. The sledgehammers clanged against metal stakes and echoed as the gun crews dug in their howitzers. We filled and stacked hundreds of sandbags, which formed long crooked walls, some semicircular, others round or rectangular--all protecting the battery just like the walls of a castle. And above the shouting voices, the striking metal, and the popping smoke grenades roared the engines of the helicopters as they landed, dropped their cargo, and quickly lifted away.

Once the battery was settled in, I took up my position on the outpost. There were three of us. We dug a four-foot deep bunker for ourselves and stacked three rows of sandbags around the front and sides, protection from incoming rounds and something we didn't like to think about: human assaults on our position.

One night, after a week of wind and cold, a trip flare erupted, lighting up the jungle in front of us. We waited, then saw a shadow move across the perimeter. Instinctively we threw hand grenades and set off the claymores. Later, from another outpost, a machine gun burst into a steady stream of fire. The howitzers exploded, sending bright lights into the sky. I gripped my rifle tightly and watched the shadowy treeline as the flares descended and a cold silence filled the air. As always the flares burned out. Once the darkness hit, again the world rumbled around us.

An explosion sent a blast of light across our field of vision, the ground vibrated, my ears buzzed . . . and moments later, my left arm felt warm. I slid my fingers over the wet skin and touched a hole of punctured flesh, just below the shoulder. I told the others that I was wounded, and they got on the field telephone and called for a medic. The firing stopped. The jungle reverted back to an eerie blackness. Doc Langley, the battery medic, walked me back to our small infirmary and gave me some antibiotics, bandaged my left arm, and told me to get some sleep.

The next morning I was choppered to the field hospital at Pleiku. Doc Langley, who was also a good friend, went with me to take care of the paperwork and refill his supply of Darvon. The doctors sewed me up and I slept the whole day.

When I woke up, Doc Langley left, I sat up in my bunk. There was no way I could believe that Peña was in the jungle with the VC. It was just too ridiculous, and I knew that none of our friends would believe it either. I started to think about Peña and the last time any of the guys or I had seen him.

Peña was part of a small group of friends. There were about ten of us when everybody showed up, but usually five or six regulars. Since most of us were assigned to different units of the 101st Airborne Division, we'd split up during the operations, but always get back together when we were in the rear area. Each night, we would meet at an isolated spot somewhere in the brigade area--behind a sandbag wall or trash dump--for what we called our sessions. We would drink beer, joke, and talk about hometowns and friends.

Peña, who could hold our attention for what seemed like hours, hadn't said much that last night he was with us. He'd been a bit removed, sitting slightly in the shadows, and he refused to drink any beer. Still, he had smiled a lot, as if nothing was wrong, and had eaten a couple of cans of peaches and just watched and listened. Someone had asked if he was all right, and he'd just answered, "Yeah, I'm o.k." While it was still early in the evening, he got up and said that he was tired--carrying his fingers into a mock salute, touched the tip of his cap, and said, "Time to go."

"So early? How come?" Little Rod had asked.

"I'm getting short . . . only three months. Gotta save all my energy so when I get back home, I'll have everything ready for you guys. Sabes?" said Jesse, his words confusing us.

"Come on, have a beer," Little Rod persisted.

"Can't, gotta keep my mind clear. Me voy."

Jesse turned, walked into the darkness of the brigade area, and that was the last we saw of him.

Jesse Peña was short, rotund, and always smiling, like one of those happy little Buddha statues. Although overweight, he was handsome. There was a childlike quality about him, a certain innocence and purity that made him immediately likeable. Two large dimples, one on each chubby cheek, brought a glow to his face.

After each operation, we'd look forward to our sessions, so we could hear more of his jokes and stories. His humor wasn't slapstick or silly, but intelligent, and always with a point or moral. Sometimes he'd reminisce about family and friends back home in Texas, like his cousin Bernie who was so much against the war that he traveled down to Eagle's Pass, Texas, pretended to be a bracero, and was picked up by the U.S. immigration. According to Jesse, Bernie, who was American and fluent in English, spoke only Spanish to the INS agents. He was deported and went to live with relatives in Piedras Negras. All this, Peña said, just to beat the draft; it was the U.S. that rejected him.

His stories led to questions and analyses, and all of us participated, pulling out every piece of information and insight that we could. Peña always seemed to have the right answers, but he was never overly egotistical. Always he came across as sincere and gracious.

I envied his ability to switch from English to Spanish in mid-sentence. His words moved with a natural musical rhythm, a blend of talk-laugh, where even tragic stories took on an element of lightness. He didn't present himself as an intellectual. His speech had a sophistication that didn't come with schooling but with breeding. Someplace is his family's background of poverty, there must have been an honest appreciation of language.

And he loved his Texas. To hear him talk, one would think that San Antonio was San Francisco, New York, or Paris. In his mind, San Anto', as he called it, had culture and personality. When it came to music, no one could come close to the talents of Willie Nelson or Little Joe Y La Familia. Those of us from California didn't even know who they were. He'd play their music on his little tape recorder and we'd laugh and call him a goddamn cowboy, a redneck Mexican out of step with the times, and then we'd slip into arguing about our states and which was best, and how the city was better than the country . . .and on and on until we'd drained ourselves.

I placed my hands behind my head and looked at the wounded men around me. I didn't really see them, though, because I was thinking too much about Jesse Peña. It didn't make sense that he had suddenly shown up on his unit's duty roster as missing. Why would he go AWOL?

Three weeks later, the operation ended, the scab on my arm had hardened, and we were all back at our front area base camp. I wasn't the only one who'd heard the rumor. All of the guy's knew about it. Big Rod, who was about six inches taller than Little Rod, knew some guys in the Tiger Force who confirmed the sighting.

Feeling superstitious about the whole thing, we decided to move the location of our next session. Two of the guys found an isolated spot near the edge of the brigade area. On one side it was separated from the rest of the brigade by a decaying sandbag wall about four feet high. Many of the bags were torn, but the heat and moisture of the tropical valley air had hardened the sand as if it were cement. Empty wooden ammo boxes, some broken and black with mildew, were scattered around the area. Twenty-five yards to our front was the jungle--not as thick as the field, but dense enough to hide someone or something. As the night moved in, the foliage darkened and the only protection from the wilderness beyond was a gun tower manned by two fellow paratroopers.

It didn't take long before the guys, and some interested new ones, started arriving. We discussed the possibilities that Jesse was either kidnapped or had deserted. Kidnap seemed impossible because our base camp was a fortress: guards securing the perimeter in gun towers, M.P.'s patrolling in gun Jeeps, units posting watches throughout the night, it just didn't seem possible. Besides, I argued, what interest would the VC have in a PFC radio operator from San Antonio, who only cared about getting home to his wife and child?

Alex Martinez, a surly Californian from the San Fernando Valley, stuck to the argument that Peña had just gone AWOL. "Old Peña split, man--just got tired of the shit. He's probably shacked up with some old lady downtown. Tiger Force probably saw some fat gook dressed in fatigues and thought it was him, man. He'll be back. Give him a few days."

We kicked the idea around. It wasn't absurd. We were reminded of Michael Oberson, a cook who had gone AWOL, changed his name, and lived with a Vietnamese waitress in Saigon for fourteen months. He'd a gotten himself a job with an American insurance company and a nice apartment in the Chalon district. He finally turned himself in, and while he waited for court martial, he was assigned to our unit. We remembered how he had laughed when he told us that the U.S. government subsidized a portion of the salaries of all the employees who worked for the insurance company. "So," he would say, "Uncle Sam was paying me to stay AWOL. How could I give it up?"

Danny Rios argued that Jesse was too short. Nobody went AWOL with only three months left. It didn't make sense, any of it. Besides, he reminded us, Peña was so committed to his wife that he wouldn't even look at other women. Although he admitted he'd seen a change in Peña's personality over the past couple of months. Like everyone else, Danny took it as a mood swing. He shook his head, more confused than anything else.

Big Rod said that he suspected more. "I've been thinking, you know," Big Rod began. "Not too long ago Peña told me something was wrong . . . inside. I asked him like if it was his old lady or kid, but he said no, it wasn't like that. He said it was more of a feeling, like something that grabs at your stomach and twists and twists and doesn't let go. Not too much a pain, you know, more like a chunk of metal glued to your stomach, something that hangs and pulls until it feels like your insides are falling, and he said it wouldn't go away. Every day he woke up feeling like that."

After a few hours, many of the newer guys went back to their units. The night thickened and the five of us who were Peña's closest friends remained.

We sat in a circle. In the middle was a used C-ration can filled with lighted heat tablets that gave some relief from the darkness of the jungle-a darkness that loomed silently around us. Every once in a while, we heard the whispers of the perimeter guards who were positioned in the jungle . . . human alarms against a possible attack.

Little Rod, who was from Brownsville, Texas--"Right down in the corner of the goddamn country," he once told us--pulled out his Camels, slowly tapped the bottom of the pack, and placed a cigarette to his lips. He sat on an empty wood ammo crate and leaned back against the sandbag wall. After a long silence, Little Rod leaned over, stuck his cigarette into the heat tablet, and sucked on the tobacco until the tip swelled in an orange glow.

"I seen him start to change," said Little Rod, who's English was heavily accented. He wore his cap down low on his forehead so that the shadow from the brim buried his eyes.

"When Peña volunteered to carry the radio, I told him not to do it. He never saw much action--not until he started humping that radio. I saw how he kept laughing, real nervous, when he came to the session, but I saw that he was trying to hide it. I could tell, man, that he was scared, too, something in his eyes. He tried to not show it . . . but I seen it. I seen it."

"Sure he was scared, man, " responded level-headed Danny Rios, a Northern Californian who always tried to find a balance in every situation . . .a cause for every effect . . . a good reason for every tragedy. He wore his cap high on his head, like a star baseball player, so that his whole face was visible. He continued: "Peña didn't know what he was getting himself into. He said he wanted to see some action, said he was tired of filling sandbags and carrying ammo. Yep, he got his transfer all right, and I think he hated it out in the bush. That's Charlie's country. That's his backyard. You go messing around out there and you best be scared. Common sense, man . . . common sense."

Little Rod didn't turn to face Danny. He spoke, his back against the dirty sandbags and his voice came out of the darkness: a somber tone exploring, probing, "It ain't what I mean. Peña's a nice kinda guy, you know? He got his vieja and kid. Every time the priest comes out the bush, Peña goes to communion. Something bad had to of happen to him. Maybe he learned that God ain't out there. Maybe he learned that God ain't here either. The first time he carried that radio was when his platoon went in to help out C Company. You remember, C Company got ambushed . . . bodies tore up into thousands of pieces. Peña smelt the burnt meat, bodies that belonged to his friends. He saw those dead eyes, nasty eyes."

"So what are you saying?" argued Alex. "You believe it was Peña the Tiger Force saw out there, that Peña is out there fighting with the Cong, that death is going to make him run off with the gooks? It don't make sense, man, no sense at all."

Little Rod continued, "I remember one time his squad come in from the bush, must a been right after his transfer; he's carrying that radio. Remember, Rios? You was there. We was set up someplace outside of Tuy Hoa.

"Rain come down in chorros Everything was like a sponge. Peña come out of that jungle into our battery area . . . his eyes big . . . like two big ol' hard boiled eggs. That ain't a regular scared. He's soaked, dirty, smelly, and he's talkin' a hundred miles an hour. You had to slow him down. Hundred miles an hour, ese. That ain't regular scared. Something happen to Peña, man. I seen it. That ain't no shit; I seen it."

"Little Rod's right. Peña was panicked. His face was stretched, his skin white . . . cold, like a ghost." Danny Rios confirmed Rod's words. "He talked like a machine gun and moved with quick jerks. I felt sorry for him. His lieutenant let him stay with us a couple of hours. We made him some hot chocolate and warmed him up. He just kept talking, man. He couldn't stop. Two hours later, when his squad moved out, Peña went. No questions asked, didn't complain, didn't fight it; just like the other guys in the squad. He walked back into the bush like a zombie, and that jungle, with rain still coming down, swallowed him right up. They said they had to find cover before dark. Little Rod's right. That wasn't no regular scared. Hell, made me thank God I was in the artillery. But it's just common sense, man. Put a dude in a situation like that and . . . hey."

"Then it's still not logical. If he's scared," I asked, "why's he going to take off with the Cong? He wouldn't even know how to find them. And if he did, they'd probably shoot him first. Alex is right, man. It doesn't make sense.

"Yup. Don't fucking sound like Peña to me," Alex said, the light shining against his square jaw and pitted skin. "He's probably in town right now, hung over and wanting to come back."

Finally, Big Rod, who was like a brother to Peña, went through jump school with him, and had met his family while they were both on leave in San Antonio, spoke up, his voice more serious than I'd ever heard: "I think he went. I think he took off into that jungle and went with them. I don't know how he did it, why, or where he went, but he's out there looking for something . . . maybe looking for us . . . maybe looking for himself. Remember his last words, 'I'll have everything ready for you guys.' He was trying to tell us something."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The battery commanders from A and B batteries called each of us in to find out what they could. It was clear that they thought Jesse was AWOL and somewhere in Duc Pho. That's what most of the guys in the brigade thought, too. Jesse would come back, get court martialed, and that would be the end of it. But Jesse had never been in trouble before. He was the only one who kept us out of trouble, making sure we'd get back to camp after a crazy day in town or calming us down after a run-in with an NCO or officer.

A month passed before a new rumor started. We were still operating somewhere outside of Duc Pho. A squad of grunts had made contact with a group of VC. They swore that a guy who looked like a Mexican, wearing GI camouflaged fatigues, had been walking point for the communists. It was no mistaken identity. One of the guys said he stared right into the pointman's eyes and that the Mexican just looked at him and smiled. Guns and grenades going off, but Peña and his squad slipped back into the jungle.

Everybody in the brigade was talking about it. The guys who saw Jesse swore that it was "a Mexican-American" they'd seen out there. "The guy looked me right in the eyes. He coulda' shot me if he wanted. I was froze shitless" were the words of one grunt. It was strange how the words flew and the story built, but then, after a short time, the story transformed itself into a legend.

The story of an American leading a Vietcong squad was not uncommon. Everyone had heard it one time or another during his tour. Usually, the American was blond, tall, and thin. No one who told the story bad ever seen the guy. The story was always distanced by two or three narrators, and it was more of a fable or myth, our own type of antiwar protest, I guess. What made this thing about Jesse so different was that the guys reporting it claimed personally to have seen him. Still, not many guys really believed it, except Big Rod, Little Rod, and the grunts who said they'd seen Jesse.

"Things are so crazy 'round this place guys'll make up anything fer 'musement," said Josh Spenser, an Oklahoman, who added, "I just don't know, man. I just don't know."

Two weeks passed before the next sighting. "Saw Peña, man." The guys who were now reporting the sightings started using his name, as if they personally knew him. One evening, when we were in the front area base camp, Big Rod, Little Rod, Alex, and I walked across the brigade area to talk to one of the soldiers who said he'd seen Jesse.

At first he didn't believe we were Jesse's friends. The guy didn't trust anybody because, as he put it, guys were saying that he was making the whole thing up, but after we explained our relationship to Jesse, he began to talk.

"It's the shits, man. Captain tol' me he didn't want me spreadin' no rumors," his voice lowered, "but I saw 'em. Big as shit, I saw."

The guy's name was Conklin. He seemed wired, like he was high on speed, sincere . . . yet nervous. He told us his story like someone who had been trying to convince people that he'd seen a UFO. Conklin said that he and his squad were on an ambush. They had the whole thing set up by nightfall: claymores out, good cover, M-16's, grenades, and an M-60 at the ready. He said that it was quiet out there, no noise, no animal sounds, nothing. But, as he told it, the VC never showed.

Since there had been no contact, the choppers came out to pick them up the next morning. He described how he bent down low and made his way out to retrieve the claymores. He disconnected the cap, and squatting down low, started to wrap the wire around the curved, green device. As he wrapped, he kept his eyes of the trail, looking both ways and also checking the jungle to his front. And then he saw Peña. Just like that, Conklin said, using Jesse's last name.

"Peña," pronouncing it Peenya, " was down in the bush, a Thompson submachine gun pointed right at me. I was gonna reach for my rifle but he just nods, cool-like, slow . . . and I know he means for me to not go for it so's I jes'set there and stare at him, and all he does is stare back. I couldn't talk, man. I couldn't yell. It was like . . . like one of them nightmares where you feel suffocated and can't nobody help you. Then he moves back, real slowlike, still squatting, like gooks do, an' then I see two other gooks, one of each side of him. He stands up and the gooks stand up and they move backward into the brush, just like that, fuckin'-A, man, and he's gone."

"What's he look like?" asked Alex.

"Got on gook clothes, man. Pajamas--a black top and black bottoms, cut off just above the knees . . . light complexion, 'bout like you," he says pointing to Big Rod. "I guess he's close to 5'7" or 8", not too tall . . . probably 145 or 150 pounds."

"Peña's closer to 175, maybe 180," Alex tells Conklin.

"Not no more he ain't. Guy I saw wasn't no 180. And when he smiled, he made me feel O.K., you know. Even though I was scared and he could'a blown a hole through me, still . . . made me feel like . . . O.K. Maybe had something to do with those dimples. Big mothers . . . one on each cheek."

Big Rod and I looked at each other.

"Kinda made him look like a kid. But he wasn't bullshitting, man. It wasn't no joke. If I'd a gone for my weapon, he'd a blowed my ass clean away. I can't figure it out, man. Gone, just like that . . . disappeared with those gooks right into the jungle. And nobody else seen it, only me."

Three months had passed since Jesse disappeared. His ETS date came and went. Maybe we expected a miracle, as if Jesse was going to walk into the base camp, say "hi," and tell us about his days with the VC as he packed his bags and prepared to catch a hop to Cam Ranh Bay where he'd DEROS home. But nothing. It was just another day; besides, by this time we were in Phan Rhang, our rear area base camp, and a long way from where Peña had last been seen.

That night, the night of Peña's ETS, we held a "session", more of a funeral, over by the training course, which was at the perimeter of the brigade area. Even some of the nonbelievers showed up.

We met in front of the mess hall, one of many in the brigade area. It was located on a hill at the east end of the base camp, where we could look out over the entire airborne complex.

The sun had descended and the work day completed. We could see GI's slowly walking the dirt roads, some going to the Enlisted Men's or Officer's Clubs, others to the USO, and still others strolling as if they were out for an evening in some country town. In an hour or so it would be dark and carefully rationed lights would bring a different life to the area. There would be drinking and card games, laughter and yells, tales about families and girlfriends, stories of heroics in the field with a few guys displaying the macabre trophies. Some guys would listen to records in their tents and wonder what their buddies back home were doing. At the USO, they'd be talking to the donut dollies, playing Monopoly, Scrabble, dominoes, and other games, while in their minds they'd be making love to the American women who sat at the opposite side of the gameboards.

We turned away and headed toward the obstacle course. A range of jungle-covered mountains formed the camp's eastern perimeter. We followed a dirt trail down a hill and gathered in a clearing that was used for a map reading course. It was off-limits at night so we had to be quiet.

As the two Rods and I approached, we saw that Alex and Danny, with C-ration cans and heat tablets, had designed a church-like atmosphere. The small blue flames, much like candles, were spread out in a circle to our front, lifting the darkness so that our faces were barely recognizable. The jungle surrounded us with a heaviness that leaned more toward enigma than fear. After a short while, the shuffling of feet along the trail stopped, the whispering voices were silent, and about twenty of us sat on logs formed into a semi-circle.

Big Rod said that there would be no drinking, not yet, anyway. Doc Langley handed him a stack of joints. Big Rod passed them around and said to light up. Not everyone liked to smoke, but this night they all breathed in the stinging herb. It didn't take long for the weed to take effect. The jungle moved in closer. The trees came down over our heads like thick spider webs and the plants weighed against our backs. The joints moved around the circle until the air and smoke mingled into a kind of anesthetized gas.

Big Rod pulled a paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and began to read. It was from Margaret, Peña's wife. They army had told her that Jesse was listed as AWOL because it couldn't be determined when he officially had been lost. In her letter, which made Big Rod pause many times as he read, she wanted to know what happened to her husband. She trusted that Rod would tell her the truth since it seemed nobody else would. Was Jesse dead? That's what she really wanted to know.

"Please answer soon," were her last words. Rod wanted to know how he should respond, then, frustrated, he gave me the letter. He said that since I was the one with some college, I should answer.

Johnny Sabia, an infantryman from Sevilla, New Mexico, and a guy who didn't come around much, said that we shouldn't be moping but that we should be celebrating. "Write her," he said to me. "Tell her the truth. Her old man split. The dude's the only one with any balls. I don't know how, but this guy Peña understands that everything here means nothing. I've never met the guy , but I've been thinking about him and I've heard the stories. Everybody's talking about him. I heard that Peña lives in San Antonio, in some rat hole that he can't afford to buy because the bank won't lend him the money. I heard that in the summer when it hits a hundred, him and his neighbors fry like goddamn chickens because they can't afford air conditioning. So now they send him here to fight for his country! What a joke, man."

None of us ever talked about it. Peña never talked about it. Sabia was the first one who raised the issue. All we wanted to do was fight the war, get to the rear area, drink, joke, and never think about why we were here or what the truth was about our lives back home.

An argument started. Someone said that whatever we have it's better than what other people have. Even if we work in the fields in the states, it's better than working the fields in Mexico. An angry voice said, "Bullshit! We don't live in Mexico. We live in the U.S. Our parents worked to make the U.S. what it is; our fathers fought and died in WWII. We got rights just like anybody else."

Someone else wanted to know how come we got the worst duties. Whether it's pulling the shittiest hours on guard duty or going into dangerous situations, if there's a Chicano around, he's the one who gets it.

"Because we don't say shit, man. Whatever they want to push on us, we just take it. Like pendejos . . . we do whatever nobody else wants to do. We don't want to be crybabies. Well, maybe we should start crying."

"That's right," someone else said. "Gonzales got himself shot up because nobody else wanted to take their turn at the point. He walked the point for his squad almost every operation. What good did it do? He's dead now. Pobre Gonzales, man; talk about poor, he showed me a picture of his family who lived in someplace called Livingston, in Califas. His house looked like a damn chicken coop."

Then Alex stood up. He told how he was raised in the middle-class San Fernando Valley and remembered teachers who insulted him in front of his Anglo classmates, but only now, tonight, did he understand that it was because he was Mexican. Lamely, he said, "It never hit me. I just thought I was the only fuck-up in that school. There were a lot of white dudes who screwed up, but I don't ever remember the teachers jumping on them like they jumped on me."

Johnny Sabia talked some more, about tennis clubs built over fields where the townspeople of Sevilla had once grown corn and vegetables, about schoolhouses with holes in the roof, streets still unpaved in 1967, primitive electrical systems for lighting. And he and others went on and on until they worked themselves into a fury.

Someone pulled out the beer. As the alcohol hit, the voices got louder and belligerent. Before long, the whiskey bottles started to make the rounds and nobody was talking about Peña any longer. Everyone talked about their friends back home, their girlfriends, or good places to find prostitutes in Phan Rhang. The session was over. Somebody kicked out the heat tabs, and the jungle, once again, distanced itself from us.

We marched over to the Enlisted Men's Club, toasted Jesse Peña several times, honoring him and wishing him well, and drank until they threw us out. Then we staggered along the roads, falling into ditches, staring at the stars splattered against the sky, and vomiting as we worked our way back to our units. We finally found our bunks and sank into a dizzying sleep.

The next morning when we woke up, most of us were hungover. We went through our usual routines, cleaning weapons and resupplying our units. A few days later, we flew out in C-130 transport planes to the next operation, somewhere outside of Chu Lai. There were a few rumors that Peña was still traveling with the VC, but no one would swear to the sightings. His memory became painful for those of us who knew him. When I left Vietnam, the new guys joining the Division heard about the Mexican who ran off to join the VC, and they kept the story alive, building on Peña's adventures. One squad reported that they saw his dead body after the ambush of a VC unit, but nobody believed that story either.

written by Daniel Cano

from "Pieces of the Heart"
--New Chicano Fiction
edited by Gary Soto
© 1992