Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam Read Free Page B

EVie. Like the RV. Once I decided to buy it, I spent innumerable hours researching it. I had thought about buying one to live in as a medical student, almost did. Fought off the compulsion. But when I was working as a doc, the fixation hit me again. Couldn’t resist.”
    “So it found you?”
    “Yep,” Wolfe nodded.
    “Going to sell it?”
    “Never,” Wolfe said. “My neighbors here in the Cascades tried to get me to do that. It fits within their rules, much to their chagrin. They tried to fine me $100 a day, until they read their own rules. That was a fun fight.” Wolfe smiled for the first time since she had come home.
    “Anyone else driving you crazy?” she asked, going with what seemed to make him happy.
    “Yeah,” he said. “One of my neighbors knocked on the door the other day. As you know I help keep the borrowing library in the clubhouse alphabetically arranged. When I get out of the house.” She nodded. “When I first started, I carried a clipboard back and forth when I walked to the clubhouse.  To remind myself to do things, like print the dividers.”
    “And?”
    “Well, a month ago, a little old lady with a heavy cane knocks on my door. She shakes the brass head of the cane at me and says, ‘Are you the guy who walks around the neighborhood with a clipboard?’ ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Why?’ ‘Well my husband saw you in our backyard taking pictures the other day and I want to know what you were doing, sonny?’ She also claimed to be a retired BAM drill sergeant.”
    “A retired what?”
    “B-A-M, broad-assed marine. That’s swabbie talk. Don’t repeat it, especially around her. I believe her. She was muscular and mean. although she was 50-plus pounds overweight. Probably from all the medication she might be taking for PTSD.”
    “Geez. What did you do?” Kayla asked.
    “Well I explained that I thought I was on common property, taking a picture of a huge red-shouldered hawk that had landed on her roof. I took it for your mom. She’s gone overboard with this birding stuff. Kind of reminds me of dogs and squirrels. She can’t complete a sentence, or drive safely if a bird flies by. I started yelling, ‘Squirrel!’ whenever she gets distracted by a bird.”
    “And I wondered if you did something to drive her away,” Kayla said.
    “It’s a joke,” Wolfe said.
    “Which part?” Kayla asked. “Do you really yell squirrel, and that’s the joke? Or, are you joking about yelling squirrel?”
    Wolfe smiled. “Both are jokes,” he said. “I don’t do it much.”
    “Because she’s not here much,” Kayla said.
    “True,” Wolfe said. He started to laugh. “Anyway, I showed this old biddy the pictures of the bird on her roof that I have on my cell phone. That appeased her. She went away happy. As she left, I asked her why she cared about me walking to the clubhouse with the clipboard. ‘Listen, sonny, we old folks here have nothing to do but keep track of our neighbors,’ she said. ‘Get used to it.’ That explains the neighbor who didn’t like the fact that I covered the garage door windows. ‘Ugly,’ she said. I gave her the choice of leaving the windows covered or watching my jock straps dry after I jogged. I put them on the clothesline I hung in front of the windows. She agreed the covered windows weren’t as ugly as my jockstraps. She’s since become a friend.”
    The walk on Inverness led back to Copperhead and then to his house. The morning paper lay in the driveway behind the van conversion. Four more morning papers lay on the bricked front porch where a neighbor had thrown them. Having not seen Wolfe for several days, the neighbor assumed Wolfe was out of town and had worried about rain ruining the papers. Wolfe gathered the newspapers, two already yellowing, as Kayla unlocked the front door.
    “More articles to clip,” she said. “Don’t become a hoarder, Dad. This place is only 1600 square feet.”
    “Might find my next hobby in one of these,” Wolfe