Part 5 – The Names We Never Say Out Loud
April 1965 – Firebase Washington, American-controlled zone, Central Vietnam
James Riley was alive, but not whole.
His leg had set wrong. His spirit — even worse.
The field medics said he’d be rotated out within weeks. “You’re lucky,” they told him.
But James didn’t feel lucky. He felt haunted.
Not by the firefights.
Not by the jungle.
But by a small house in the trees… and the woman who fed him taro without asking who he voted for.
Dusty stayed with him — refused food from anyone else.
Wouldn’t sleep unless curled at the foot of James’s cot.
“He’s not Army property,” James warned a sergeant.
“I don’t care,” the sergeant said. “As long as he don’t bite the CO.”
Dusty became a quiet legend around the firebase.
They said he could sense incoming mortars before the radar.
That he barked at some soldiers and not others — like he could see things behind their eyes.
To James, Dusty wasn’t a pet.
He was the last living thing that belonged to another world — the quiet one, where a woman hummed while slicing cassava, where no one spoke names unless they had to.
One morning, James found Dusty staring at the jungle fence.
Silent. Frozen.
Then he growled.
Not loud. Not showy.
Just enough to say: Something’s coming.
That afternoon, a chopper came in fast and low.
A soldier shouted: “Ambush at checkpoint Echo! We’ve got wounded inbound!”
James stood near the helipad. He wasn’t cleared for field duty — but Dusty sat beside him, ears flat, tail stiff.
As the chopper touched down, James’s stomach turned.
They carried out three men — bloodied, groaning.
And one of them —
One of them looked like Quân.
James pushed forward. A lieutenant blocked him.
“You know that guy?”
James swallowed. “I… might.”
The Vietnamese man was unconscious. His shirt bloodied, but there was no weapon on him.
The medics didn’t ask questions. They just worked.
Dusty barked.
Then whimpered. Then barked again — tail wagging.
James knelt.
“Is it him?” he whispered.
Dusty licked his hand.
That night, James sneaked into the medical tent.
The man lay still, hooked to IV fluid, breath shallow but steady.
James looked closely.
It wasn’t Quân.
Same age. Same face shape. Different scar.
James exhaled hard — disappointment and relief crashing together.
Dusty sat beside the bed, staring.
The soldier stirred. Eyes opened halfway.
He saw James. Flinched.
James raised his hands.
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
He said it in English. Then French. Then tried a few broken Vietnamese phrases Nhàn had taught him.
“Không sao. Không chiến tranh. Tôi… không bắn.”
It wasn’t perfect, but the man understood.
He blinked. Whispered, “Tên anh?”
James smiled. “James.”
The soldier nodded, then turned his head and slept.
Outside the tent, Dusty sat staring at the trees again.
He didn’t bark this time.
But his ears stayed up.
James followed his gaze.
Out there, somewhere beyond the fences and the tripwires, was a woman who had risked everything for a stranger.
And a son who might now be either dead… or still watching from the shadows.
James didn’t know what haunted him more.
The next morning, Dusty was gone.
No one had seen him leave.
No tracks. No trail. No paw prints.
Only a small clump of fur near the outer wire.
And silence.
James searched for days.
He never found him.
Dusty had gone back across the lines — the only creature allowed to walk between enemies, unseen and unclaimed.
Back to Nhàn.
Or back to the earth.
James never knew.
He was shipped home two weeks later.
But some part of him never left.
And he never stopped calling out that name — not aloud.
Only in dreams.
Dusty.