There were still things that had to be done around the school in the summer months – not a lot, necessarily; some days they added up to three or four hours work for Harold; other days he didn’t even hang around waiting for the mail to get in. It was a hot summer, hotter than most, and they still didn’t have air conditioning in the school offices. Usually he went in at the crack of dawn, earlier than he would on school days, so he could get done with what had to be done and get home to the air conditioner before the place turned into an oven.

It had been an average morning, and his desk was pretty well clean when he left. He drove home, wondering what he was going to spend the rest of the day doing, but reflected that at least he would be doing it where it was cool. He pulled his car into the garage and got out, noticing the mailman just walking away. It was the day US News and World Report usually showed up, and the magazine might eat up an hour or so, he thought. He went through the house and out to the mailbox on the front porch. No US News, he thought leafing through the mail. Darn. Lots of junk mail, though . . . and a letter from the Vietnamese embassy in Ottawa.

Probably another turndown, he thought, although this letter seemed a bit thicker than the other turndowns that had arrived in his box from time to time over the last nine years.

Could it be?

Shaking a little, he opened the letter, glanced through it, and at the accompanying paperwork, scarcely able to believe his eyes. He dropped the other mail, hustled to the phone and dialed Spearfish Lake Appliance. “Gil,” he cried, “I got a visa!”

“What?”

“I got a fucking visa to go to Vietnam! An open return visa, good till the end of next June!”

“No shit?”

“Go home and check your box. I’ll start calling around and see if anyone else did.”

“Let’s get together as soon as you get the word out,” Gil suggested. “Down here, I guess.”

“See you in a bit,” Harold agreed, setting the phone down long enough to find the number for the switchboard at Clark Plywood.

Within 45 minutes there was an excited crowd in Spearfish Lake Appliance. Some of the people didn’t know if they’d gotten visas yet; the mailman hadn’t made it to their house. But everyone who could check their mail had gotten one, even Binky.

“How’d this happen?” Ryan asked, amazed at the huge response after nearly a decade of turndowns.

“Don’t know,” Gil told him. “It must have been from one of Mike and Kirsten’s applications. I called Heikki, and he didn’t get one.”

“Gil, do you know about Rod?” Harold asked into the excited hubbub.

“Don’t know,” he said with a frown. “I haven’t tried to get hold of him, but it might take a day or two for the mail to get to him, anyway. Besides, I know he’s not going to be able to go.”

“I thought he said he’d be able to get away from that dig in Wyoming this year,” Harold said.

“He’s not at the dig in Wyoming,” Gil said, a little glumly. “There was a grass fire at the Custer battlefield, at the Little Big Horn, so a lot of stuff that’s been hidden in the grass ever since is visible. He’s with a gang from the National Park Service going through it with a fine-tooth comb. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I don’t mind him taking it. We knew there was a good chance he might not be able to go.”

“Well, I’m not going to be able to go if we go right away,” Bud said. “I’m short two engineers. It’s so tight I put Josh Archer to running the SD-38s on the daytime rock turn. He’s a good kid, careful, and that’s the simplest run, but Christ, he’s only a year out of high school and I don’t dare turn my back on him for that long. Besides, I scheduled myself on the Lordston run, and there’s no one to back me up on that.”

“We knew something like that could happen, and all of us might not get to go,” Harold replied.

“Yeah,” Bud drummed his fingers on a stove top. “But, well, shit. I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could hold this off until, say, after the first of October, maybe a little after that? The rock traffic ought to be pretty well done by then.”

“If we did, then I probably couldn’t go,” Harold said. “Unless maybe we went over the holidays. For that matter, I really need to be back by the end of this month, or so, assuming we go right now.”

“There’s no way both Steve and I can go, at least right now.” Ryan chimed in. “We’ve got union negotiations starting the week after next. We really should both be there, and I definitely have to, but I can get along without Steve for a few days while we beat around the bush on wages.”

“Before the end of the month, for sure,” Steve agreed. “In fact, I’d have to say there’s a definite deadline of the twenty-ninth to be back. Well, not that definite, it could slide a day or two if we missed plane connections or something, but it really better not. We’ve got work rules and safety issues that I’ll have to be the one to deal with.”

“Look, I know I filed for a visa and got one,” Binky said. “But would you hold it against me if I didn’t go? I mean, I really, really don’t want to go, and you know why. Besides, if Steve goes, someone has to stay with the kids.”

“No, Binky,” Gil said. “We won’t hold it against you in the slightest. We all know you’ve got a better reason not to go than the rest of us combined.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can on this end.”

“Mark, how about you?” Gil asked. “I know you’re sort of in a spot right now, what with your new store just open.”

Mark leaned back up against a dryer. He wanted to go, badly. He’d been looking forward to it for years, like everything else, but the meeting with Comsector was a week off. So far, it didn’t look like the Metro people had picked up any wind of the deal, and the price they were talking about was very good. In fact, very, very good. A lot of the future hung on that meeting, he thought, including whether Marlin Computer would ultimately be a success.

“I better not,” he said quietly. “I’d go if I absolutely had to, but there’s a meeting I have to be here for, the end of next week. It’s probably the key meeting of the whole process, and if I let it slide the whole deal could go down the tubes.”

“What’s it about?” Gil asked curiously. More of the guys were bombing out than he’d hoped; it seemed like everything was coming at once.

“Can’t say,” Mark told him. “If one word of it gets out to the wrong person the deal is screwed. I’m not going to take the risk.”

Gil nodded. “First things first, and like I said, we all know you’re in a tough spot right now. Let’s see, I guess that leaves you, Mike.”

Mike shook his head. “I said right from the beginning I couldn’t go if I was missing a reporter, and now I’m missing two. I’ve got to get someone in those slots and get them up to speed by the middle of next month at the latest. I guess it must have been my application, but from what I can see it doesn’t say anything about it on the visas. If it came down to my having to be there to make it work, of course I’d go, but I don’t see anything that indicates it.”

“How about Kirsten? I know she’s not here, but would she go?”

Mike shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt it like hell. I mean, if it came down to her having to go so you guys could go, she’d probably go. But, like Binky, she really, really doesn’t want to go. I’d be just as happy if she didn’t. She really doesn’t want to risk the trauma and the depression, and I don’t want her to, either.”

“Well, then,” Gil said. “I guess it comes down to Harold, Steve, and me. Could be a worse mix. We’ll still have Steve for the language, and Harold to fill in for Rod. It won’t be as good as if we had everybody and a couple of months, but we’ll have to make do the best we can.”

“Do we have to go now?” Steve asked. “I mean, look, think about it. As I see the calendar, we’ve got a maximum hole of maybe seventeen days if we leave this afternoon. We ought to maybe leave a day at the end, just for padding. That’s sixteen days. Figure it’s going to take two days minimum flying either way, and that’s if we get the connections right, so it could be worse. Let’s say three days, just to be safe, since we don’t have reservations. That gets us down to ten days. Then, a day of farting around trying to get transportation, and then a day up to Phuoc Lot and a day back. That’s seven days on site, and at the absolute worst of the monsoon. Frankly, we might get rained out the whole trip, and the chances of actually discovering anything are pretty slim.”

“We always knew they’d be slim,” Gil told him. “And, you’re right, I’d like to have more time. But, damn it, I went through ’81, when I thought I had all the time in the world, and I farted around until I lost the chance. I don’t want that to happen again. I say, let’s the three of us grab our shit and head for the airport.”

“That’s a pretty strong argument,” Ryan said. “I’ll give you that. But, there’s an argument for waiting, too, and the holidays are a good target. First, there’s the weather. It’ll be in the dry season and cooler, so we won’t be up to our asses in mud while we’re swatting all the mosquitoes. Second, just looking around, I suspect most of us could get away around that time of the year, and for longer. We’ve got a three week break at the plant there, and I could maybe stretch out a week on either end, and both Steve and I could get away. How’s that work for anyone else?”

“I could get away that long,” Harold said, “Given the time to set it up.”

“Best time of the year for me,” Bud nodded. “I could get free a couple months, easy, if I had to.”

“I could do it then, probably, given the time to set it up,” Mark said. “If this deal comes off, there’s going to be some busy times, but if I know it’s coming I think maybe I can open a hole for a month or so.”

“Assuming I have reporters, I could be gone a month around that time of the year,” Mike added. “That’s our deadest time of the year, but it perks up about mid-January. Kirsten pretty well would have to stay till the Christmas issue is out, but she doesn’t really figure into it, anyway.”

“Thought so,” Ryan summarized. “To top it off, I’ll bet Rod could go for that long at that time of the year if he knows about it ahead of time. And, you guys are going to be catch as catch can on getting planes, while if we go at Christmas, we can tack down reservations tight.”

“I don’t think we should wait,” Gil said, starting to get a little hot. He was starting to see the chance slip away, like it did back in ’81.

“Then, don’t,” Clark said, putting the fire out right there. “In fact, I think you should go. You might get lucky, and that’s the biggest reason. But, if you don’t, well, you can still accomplish a lot. You can find out how helpful or obstructive the Viets are going to be on the ground, and that’s something we don’t have any idea about. We don’t have much idea of what the conditions are like, how bad it’s going to be to get transportation, what kind of supplies you can get in-country, stuff like that. Even if you run into problems, you can still get out to the target area and look around, and get a feel for the place, even if you don’t find much. These are all multiple entry visas, so there’s no reason we can’t go back with the full crew at the holidays. Then, we’d have a much better chance of finding something. If the Viets blow us off once you’ve been there, then at least you’ve made the attempt.”

Gil scratched his head. “You’re saying do a recon, and if we get lucky, we get lucky. You might have something there. It’s gonna cost a lot, though.”

“That’s something else we don’t know about, like what it’s going to cost in-country,” Ryan said. “I say go, spend what you need to spend, and then when you get back we’ll know how much more we’re going to have to come up with.

“There’s about 25 grand in the account, now, isn’t there?” Gil said.

“Not quite that much, but close,” Ryan said; he was the treasurer.

“I’ll bet the three of us can blow through ten, maybe twelve grand, easy,” Harold said. “That’s going to give the account a hell of a hit.”

“That’s what it’s for,” Ryan smiled. “Besides, now that we’ve got visas, there’s a couple of fund sources we can tap, given the time. Right, Bud?”

“You’re talking the Donna Clark Foundation, right?” Bud grinned back. “Yeah, we might be able to do something with that.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “And, we’ve never hit the union up for b-fund money, either. I don’t want to try it before the negotiations, but if we can come up with a decent contract, maybe we can get something out of them this fall.”

“Look, it sounds like it might work,” Mark said. “Let me run over to the shop and get on CompuServe for a bit, and maybe I can see what I can do on airline tickets. Whatever the rest of you decide is fine with me.”

“Don’t bother,” Gil said. “I already called the travel agency. They should be calling back any time now. And yeah, Ryan, I think this is probably the best of both worlds, given everything. You guys that are staying back, work out the details on the trip over the holidays. We’ll just have to hope they let us all come at Christmas.”

“It gives us the best chance of finding something,” Harold agreed. “Really, I’m with Steve. Unless we get real lucky, we don’t stand a lot of chance on this trip. We don’t have the time. But we should make the attempt, since it may be the only chance we’ll ever get.”

At twenty minutes after seven the next morning, Gil, Harold, and Steve were on a Northwest flight to Minneapolis, where they’d change planes, enroute to Anchorage, Tokyo, and Manila – and ultimately, their long-sought destination of Vietnam, a place that most of them had begun to doubt they’d ever see again.