Packing
It was the summer of 1967, between my sophomore and junior years. Dave Miller, an oboist friend who played for the Air Force Academy Band, had gotten me a job working with him installing underground lawn sprinklers in Colorado Springs with a man who called his company Modern Mole, because he had this little rig that we pulled behind a small tractor that sank a bullet‑shaped piece of steel below the sod and pulled the irrigation tubing along behind it under the sod, instead of having to dig a trench and replace the sod.
One day Dave and I were having lunch in this one‑notch‑up‑from‑fast‑food place on Nevada Avenue. The dining area consisted of one big open room. Most of the tables were full. We were sitting at a table near one of the restaurant's three doors. I should say here that, although it was nearly a year after I'd left Vietnam, and those months on a bucolic private college campus that was as unlike Vietnam as I could imagine had begun to drain the habitual fear out of me, I still had my share of a combat veteran's instincts. (For that matter, even as I write this in 1992, I prefer to sit near a door in public places. Corners with a view of the whole room and all doors are best.)
A man opened the door behind Dave and stepped inside, just out of the traffic, and stood there unobtrusively. That is, he was trying to be unobtrusive. He wouldn't have startled me more had he been wearing a clown suit and leading a rhinoceros on a sequined leash.
He was tall, and had the combined thickness of limb and physical grace of a pro football running back. The picture rounded out: conservative business suit ‑ tailored, not off the rack ‑ and "high and tight" haircut. My eyes swept over him once; the slight bulge in his suit coat just above the right hip was more confirmation than surprise.
His eyes scoured the room with an utterly amoral professionality. He was looking for someone who didn't want to be found. My brain scanned that information and prompted me to look at the other two doors. Again, more confirmation than surprise: each was filled by a clone of the man who stood behind Dave, including the bulge at the waist.
"Hey, Dave, look! Those guys are all packin' guns!" I almost shouted. My voice carried across the room, splitting the hubbub of lunchtime conversation.
Dave dropped his fork and looked at me with wide eyes. I pointed with my chin over his shoulder. He spun around, his nose almost bumping into the bulge at the man's hip. He spun back around. I pointed at the other two doors. At the instant of my remark, the three had made eye contact with one another across the room. The man behind Dave gave a slight twitch of his head, and they were gone.
I looked around the room. Not a fork dropped, not a conversation was interrupted, not a head turned to notice the three armed men who had had the room sealed off, looking for someone among them.
