Page 7 - Indies Roundtable Spring 2021
P. 7
who move down by the river length hair, and wardrobes that
during the daytime to make way would benefit much more from
for the tourists and locals because being replaced than laundered.
the city doesn’t want them within
sight of the “good people” there to Neither of them will discuss
spend money. having served as Marines in
Vietnam during the late Sixties
I owe my life to a couple of the and early Seventies, and neither
Vietnam-era vets that have been
living here since my father was of them ever asks about my own
still on the force. They had tipped service in Special Operations and
me off to a surveillance team the classified intelligence work I
being run by some people I was did in Afghanistan and Iraq. We
actively trying to force out of simply recognize and respect one
town. I don’t know that there was
intent to harm me or my family, another’s personal hells.
but I do know that the way Tony “Does this guy look at all
and I dismantled the team
disrupted whatever was being familiar?” I asked the pair and the
planned. Darnell and Boomer handful of others they were
would have been retired and
nearly through with paying off standing with. One of the
their mortgages if they had teenaged girls, I figured her to be
chosen to get a steady job and put about fifteen, busied herself with
a roof over their heads instead of petting Roux. She tried to keep
using the city’s slim pickings of
shelters and food banks to me from getting a good look at
survive. They both have beards her face.
that show their age, ponytail
“He’s been around a couple of
nights. He had a different woman
with him each time. I saw him
over by Muriel’s once and a
couple of times at Café du Monde,
late,” Boomer spoke up. He
handed the picture back to me as
he spoke. Boomer was an
artilleryman at Khe Sanh, which I
learned from an NOPD
patrolman who had run his name
through the VA database after
detaining him on a vagrancy
charge that was immediately
dropped. He lives in the open
because two separate hooches he
had at Khe Sanh received direct
hits from Viet Cong artillery,
during the daytime to make way would benefit much more from
for the tourists and locals because being replaced than laundered.
the city doesn’t want them within
sight of the “good people” there to Neither of them will discuss
spend money. having served as Marines in
Vietnam during the late Sixties
I owe my life to a couple of the and early Seventies, and neither
Vietnam-era vets that have been
living here since my father was of them ever asks about my own
still on the force. They had tipped service in Special Operations and
me off to a surveillance team the classified intelligence work I
being run by some people I was did in Afghanistan and Iraq. We
actively trying to force out of simply recognize and respect one
town. I don’t know that there was
intent to harm me or my family, another’s personal hells.
but I do know that the way Tony “Does this guy look at all
and I dismantled the team
disrupted whatever was being familiar?” I asked the pair and the
planned. Darnell and Boomer handful of others they were
would have been retired and
nearly through with paying off standing with. One of the
their mortgages if they had teenaged girls, I figured her to be
chosen to get a steady job and put about fifteen, busied herself with
a roof over their heads instead of petting Roux. She tried to keep
using the city’s slim pickings of
shelters and food banks to me from getting a good look at
survive. They both have beards her face.
that show their age, ponytail
“He’s been around a couple of
nights. He had a different woman
with him each time. I saw him
over by Muriel’s once and a
couple of times at Café du Monde,
late,” Boomer spoke up. He
handed the picture back to me as
he spoke. Boomer was an
artilleryman at Khe Sanh, which I
learned from an NOPD
patrolman who had run his name
through the VA database after
detaining him on a vagrancy
charge that was immediately
dropped. He lives in the open
because two separate hooches he
had at Khe Sanh received direct
hits from Viet Cong artillery,
