The next day, I went into the bar and found that word had gotten out. People young and old came with slips of paper and letters with names of units or military postal addresses they had for their sons or brothers or cousins serving over there. When you wrote letters to soldiers in Vietnam, you would write their unit care of San Francisco, and the army, navy, air force, or marines would find them. You didn’t want to give the enemy crib notes should the mailbag tumble out of the chopper. But the patrons told me the strange names of the places their boys had been: Phuoc Long, Binh Dinh, Pleiku, Lam Dong. I was a bit overwhelmed and jotted it all down, stuffing the precious pages into my pockets.
Amidst all the noise, I saw Mrs. Collins, hovering inside the front door. She was with her son Billy, or should I say, Chuckles. (Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop, no matter what nun or cop was giving him the stink eye, hence the nickname. The only people who called him William or Billy were his parents and substitute teachers.) Chuckles had been one of my best friends since grade school, so I knew Mrs. Collins, and she was never one to set foot in a pub.
However, her younger son, Thomas Collins, was stationed in Vietnam. As soon as she spotted me, she approached me and said in her lilting brogue, “Billy tells me you’re going over to see my Tommy! Oh, thank God for you, Chickie! Tell my Tommy how much I miss him! And tell him that I pray for him every single day!”
She gave me a hug and then tried to hand me $100 in small bills—to give to her son, or to buy him a drink, or to use myself for whatever I needed to make the trip, she said. But I knew that the second I took that money, I would be in for it. In the cold, sober light of day, I was having second thoughts. What the hell had I agreed to the night before? I declined, as much as I could have used that $100, because I didn’t want to be obligated and then get killed trying to find Tommy Collins in Vietnam.
“Mrs. Collins,” I said, “let me know Tommy’s unit. I’ll find him. And if I do, I’ll tell him how much you love him.”
The Colonel yelled, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Collins! Chickie’ll take care of it! He’s gonna do this! Let’s raise a glass to Chickie!”
“To Chickie!” the crowd cheered, though I could see some skeptical faces.
The Colonel poured me another beer, and I drank as I compiled a list, with Tommy Collins at the top. Some sidled up and told me what they knew of soldiers’ whereabouts. Pally McFadden gave me his brother Joey’s coordinates with the army. A brother of Rich Reynolds, a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, gave me his last known location. Ed O’Halloran knew where Kevin McLoone was. Kevin and I used to rent Winnebagos with a couple of other guys and go from Chambers Bar in Inwood to New York Giants football games—at home then in Yankee Stadium and sometimes hundreds of miles away. Kevin had already served in the marines in Vietnam; now he had gone back as a civilian to help outfit helicopters with new radio technology that would help prevent so many of them from getting shot down.
“Rick Duggan! You gotta find Rick!” someone shouted. “He’s been all over the front lines!” Nobody knew what front line Rick was on at the moment, so I determined to go ask his parents. Rick had grown up in the same building as I had on the dead end of Seaman Avenue. His father was the only Republican in the neighborhood—and my aunt ran the Democratic club—but they joked about it. Rick and I were close; like Tommy, he was one of the younger, more fearless kids we let tag along with us when we dove off tall cliffs into the murky waters of the Spuyten Duyvil or generally caroused. Rick was with the First Air Cavalry Division and had joined at the age of nineteen. I planned to visit his parents the next day and ask for his location. I knew his grandmother had sent him a bottle of whiskey hidden—and cushioned—in a loaf of Wonder bread.
Of course, I would try to find my good buddy Bobby Pappas, with whom I had gotten into a shenanigan or two. His father tended bar down the block, so I’d ask him if he had any information. Bobby was in his midtwenties, married with a baby, and he had already served in the US Army Corps of Engineers, but he got drafted anyway, because LBJ had ended President Kennedy’s mandate not to draft married fathers. I didn’t think that was fair.
I took one last sip and headed out the door. The Colonel refused my money and shouted, “God bless Chickie, and God bless America!” and some guys yelled, “Yeah!” and “Go, Chick!” It was as if the Colonel had given me my orders, and off I was to go on my mission. There was only one problem:
I still had my doubts that I could pull it off.