’ Matt yelled across the field. Ben ran up to them, ‘What’s up?’ ‘Jeremy’s been in his head all day. If he doesn’t get his shit straigh...tened out before tomorrow’s game, it isn’t going to be pretty. I’m getting nothing from him.’ Ben smiled as he turned to Jeremy. ‘Might this have something to do with the woman you invited to the game the other day?’ Jeremy slowly looked up from where he was scuffing the dirt. ‘H-how did you-‘ ‘Claire,’ Ben interrupted, with a huge grin on his face. That. So he hadhad to look for other income.As she strolled along the couple block stretch of this not very niceneighbourhood, she said hello to her competitors who were also trying tomake a meagre living. They had resented her at first, but once they sawthat she was not chosen much more than they, they just accepted Jamie asone of them. There were all sorts trying to earn a living here from thecontinual parade of cars. Some were just young men, selling their assesfor drug money. Some were. She told me that she had heard about our, as she called it, “legendary tailgate parties” at our rental house in Athens and that I now had quite a reputation. I asked what that meant. Mandy said, “The word is out that you get around.” I just looked at her and motioned “what” with my hands and arms. “With chicks!” she exclaimed. Then Mandy told me that she knew about me having sex with the girl (my second girl ever) at the lake the summer before college and right after our high school. I hadn't realized it was Thanksgiving. One day seemed like the next.The man wounded in the ambush returned to the squad a day after he went to the aid station.I made it through the first six weeks with shrapnel wounds that required me to go to the aid station once. I was tired, dirty, and insect bitten. I had learned to deal with the attacks, ambushes and snipers, but I knew I could get killed anytime.The VC soldiers were good fighters and were ruthless.As we came into a village, a little girl.