Part 10 – The Dog Between Worlds
March 2025 – Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam
James Riley stayed three more days.
Not to sightsee. Not to preach.
Just to sit.
By two unmarked graves.
And remember what most men spend their lives trying to forget.
On the second morning, he brought a small wooden sign he had carved himself — carefully, with trembling hands.
It read only:
“ĐẤT – He chose people, not sides.”
He placed it between the two resting places.
Then stepped back and exhaled — not in grief, but in quiet release.
Later that day, a group of local schoolchildren passed by on bicycles.
One girl stopped. Looked at the sign.
“Chó à?” she asked.
James smiled. “Yes. A dog. But not just any dog.”
She pointed at the pawprint on the stone. “Tên nó là Đất hả?”
He nodded. “In my country, we called him Dusty.
But your name for him… it’s better.”
The girl squatted, touched the dirt, then stood and said, “Con chó này… có linh hồn.”
James nodded again, slowly.
“Yes,” he whispered. “He does.”
That evening, James received a visitor.
A thin man in his late seventies. Sharp cheekbones. Narrow eyes.
He introduced himself with a gentle bow.
“My name is Quân.”
James stood slowly. Didn’t speak.
They stared at each other — not like enemies, not like strangers.
Like two men who survived the same wound.
“I never thanked you,” Quân said.
“I never blamed you,” James replied.
They sat beside the graves, saying little.
Finally, James broke the silence.
“She knew who you were. All along.”
Quân blinked.
“I think she knew who I was, too,” James added. “But she never asked for anything… except that I leave alive.”
Quân stared at the pawprint.
“He came back to her. I never did.”
“You both came back,” James said.
They didn’t hug.
Didn’t exchange addresses.
But when they parted, Quân placed something in James’s hand — an old rusted dog tag with “RILEY, J.E.” barely legible.
“I kept it,” he said. “She buried it. I dug it up after she died. Thought maybe… someday.”
James closed his fist around it. His eyes stung.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
At sunrise, James prepared to leave Vietnam.
Before boarding the van, he returned one last time to the tree.
He bent slowly, placed the dog tag between the graves.
Then whispered:
“I brought it home.”
On the flight back to Reno, he stared out the window for a long time.
At the clouds, the rivers, the invisible borderlines drawn by men who never bled on them.
Then he closed his eyes.
And in that quiet space between memory and dream —
he felt it.
Dusty.
Running. Free. Unburdened.
Chasing wind through grass no war had ever burned.
Back in Nevada, James hung a frame in his hallway.
No medals. No certificates.
Just one faded photo.
A woman. A soldier.
And between them — a dog, tail curled, staring straight into the camera.
As if he knew.
He would be the one to carry the story home.