I touch it too.

At dawn we take a break on the strangely silent site of the abandoned Marine Corps Combat Base at Khe Sanh.

The scary, ghost-guarded mound of red dirt has already been plowed and the Word is that it's to become a coffee-bean plantation.

The section will rest until noon before moving on, because we know that when the day is hottest, Americans in the field break for chow.

Not much is left of my old hometown. What the Marines left behind as junk, refugees have hauled off as building materials or to sell on the black market: scraps of lumber, rusty truck parts, torn plastic sheeting, brass shell casings, scraps of rotting canvas, steel planking from the airfield. Our trash is their treasure, and the army ants have stripped the hill clean.

I sit down on some crumbling sandbags where I estimate Black John Wayne's bunker used to be. It's hard to be sure. In the year since the Woodcutter captured me, the jungle has come back like thick hair sprouting all over a bald man's head. I should feel at home here, but I don't.

Commander Be Dan squats near me, not for a neighborly visit but to keep an eye on me. Being back on my old stomping grounds might revive my bad road habits as a running dog lackey of the imperialists.

The Viet Cong soldiers laugh, eat chow, and tell tall tales, sea stories, about their many heroic exploits against the Black Rifles who held Khe Sanh. When the lies of the New Guys get too big, the older Chien Si tell the New Guys about fighting the French as Viet Minh, the Viet Cong "Old Corps," back when war was really tough.

Commander Be Dan's radioman sits next to me. I've already assumed that Commander Be Dan has ordered the radioman to stand guai-d over me and waste me if I so much as blink an eye.

The radioiman puts out his hand, touches his chest with his other hand. "Ha Ngoc," he says shyly, politely avoiding looking me directly in the eye. Then: "I have never met an American bandit.

I shake Ha Ngoc's hand. "Bao Chi," I say.

"Bao Chi Chien Si My?"

I nod. "Yes," I say in Vietnamese, "Bao Chi, the American who fights for the Front."

Ha Ngoc smiles. "American," he says, pointing at his tennis shoes. "American." Then he says, "You know, Bao Chi, America must be supernaturally rich because Americans shoot very many bullets."

Ha Ngoc digs into his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of Ruby Queen cigarettes. "Truoc La?" he says, offering me the pack. I shake mv head as he lights up the bitter black tobacco.

"Lien So," he says, showing me his wristwatch. Russian. I nod. Ha Ngoc pulls the wooden plug from a length of bamboo shoot he has fashioned into a canteen. He offers me a drink of green tea. Only after I decline does he take a drink himself.

Then Ha Ngoe fumbles around inside his muddy knapsack and produces two mangoes. He offers me one.

"Cam on." I say, "Thank you." I accept a mango. I take a bite.

Ha Ngoc smiles. He pulls a black ballpoint pen from his knapsack and shows it to me like it's a family heirloom. On the pen is Chinese writing in gold characters. I look the pen over like it's a valuable antique and nod my approval. "Good," I say, but Ha Ngoc just looks at me without expression, not satisfied with my reaction. So I say, "This is the finest specimen of a Chinese ballpoint pen I have ever seen in my entire life." And Ha Ngoc beams, a rich man whose wealth has been confirmed by the highest source.

We eat tangy mangoes. "I don't hate Americans," Ha Ngoc says. "I only kill them because they have killed so many of my friends."