On my last night in Danang I met Mr. Franky. I had just finished my dinner, a bowl of pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) at a sidewalk stand,and was walking down Phan Chu Trinh street when I noticed a Vespa idling alongside me.

"Hello, where you from?" the standard Vietnamese greeting.

"America."

"American! I've waited 18 years for Americans to come back. I'm Mr. Franky." We went for a couple of blocks, me walking, him riding slowly beside me, then he said, "Hey, you wanta ride? I'll show you all of Danang."

I hopped on the back and suddenly we were zipping down the dark and crowded streets of Thursday night Danang.

"Do you think that more Americans will come back to Vietnam?" he asked me.

"Yes, I do, if they have sense enough to lift the trade embargo. It's time that America and Vietnam were friends, no more war."

"I love war! I was with the 101st Airborne at Phu Bai."

As I considered this statement I suddenly realized I was completely lost, on the back of a motorscooter with a guy called Mr. Franky who I'd known for a good five minutes, in Danang, Vietnam. What the hell, I thought, that's why I came here. Virtual reality may be all the rage these days, but for a real kick in the psyche, there's nothing that even comes close to actual reality, and getting nervous only wrecks the rush.

"This is Ong Ich Khiem Street," said Mr. Franky as we pulled up to a large intersection. He drew up alongside some young Vietnamese women on bicycles and leered, then pulled away fast and we headed down the street into darkness. There was a lot of activity that night. The pho stalls were crowded, and the various business concerns lining the street were bustling. "This is the police station -jail," Mr. Franky continued with his tour. "I want you to see everything - all Danang. This will be the new hotel…And here is the beach," he said, as we drove a little way out onto the sand. "Go on, walk around a little. I'll wait here."

It was then that I noticed he was crippled somehow; something wrong with his leg. I left Mr. Franky and walked out into the darkness. We were at Thanh Binh Beach, on the Bay of Danang. Just across the bay I could see Red Beach, where the marines came ashore in March 1965. That night I was the only one on the beach, but I didn't stay long; just a quick look around, then I returned to the Vespa.

"You like beer? Let's get some beers."

"Sounds good to me. Let's go."

In no time at all, I was completely lost again, as we zig-zagged through the streets and alleys. Then we turned onto a block with a strip of beer gardens decorated with flashing white and yellow lights and strings of small, colored Christmas-type bulbs. In each one, lots of young Vietnamese danced to loud music. Some of the songs were in English, and I caught snatches of lyrics as we whizzed past.

"This used to be the big night spot for Americans, all along here," Mr. Franky told me. "But we'll go to another place. They know me there."

We pulled into a beer garden down a different street, only this one was empty. A young girl showed us to a table and brought us each a big bottle of Danang brand beer and a glass with a big chunk of roughly cut ice.

"I used to know lots of Americans. I was at Phu Bai. I'm from there. I was with the 101st Airborne," he said with pride for the second of many times that evening.

"I wasn't here during the war," I said, "but I know a lot of people who were."

"After the war things got bad for me," said Mr. Franky.

I'll bet they did. The offensive of 1975 that ended the war was so successful that it surprised even the North Vietnamese generals who planned it. As town after town fell to the advancing North Vietnamese Army, the remaining Americans fled. While Danang collapsed, fear-crazed South Vietnamese soldiers sacked the town and shot civilians and each other in the mad scramble for the final planes out. As the American public watched these last sad and terrible scenes of that shameful drama play out on television, and the pitiful stowaways fell from the wheel-wells of the last two World Airways 727s (sent by company president Ed Daly against government orders) into the South China Sea, Mr. Franky and a lot of guys just like him were left holding the bag.

"I was in a camp in Laos for four years," he told me. "They kept me in a tunnel. There were Chinese there too, and they broke my leg off with a tree branch." As he spoke he made a motion with his arms that suggested some kind of leverage operation using his leg as a kind of weak link. He shuddered and took a long drink of beer. I ordered another round. "I have to be careful about what I say or I might have to go back to the camp. But it's hard, because I'm a loudmouth.What I really need is a new leg," he continued.

The girl returned with more beer and new chunks of ice. Mr. Franky poured them with great flourish and then held his up, saying "Chup! In America -Cheers; Vietnam -Chup."

"Chup!" I replied.

"Here, feel this." He took my hand and placed it where his knee should have been and I could feel a huge gap around the connection between his own leg and the prostetic. It seemed to be about 5-8 sizes too large. "I can get one that fits, but I don't have the money. I know a doctor that can help. Maybe you could give me 20 dollars?"

"Well, Franky, believe it or not, this is all I've got, about 75,000 dong." I said, taking the bills out of my pocket and spreading them on the table.

It's true: Even though I was scheduled to remain in Vietnam for another week and then spend 10 days in Cambodia, I was down to less than $10 dollars U.S. This was a result of my being seized upon my arrival in Hanoi due to a bureaucratic snafu and presented with an unexpected bill at the end of my stay as a guest of the government; a bill I would have been foolhardy to ignore. The money was due to be reimbursed to me when I reached Ho Chi Mihn City, but I had little faith in this. (I ended up receiving a third of the total when I arrived at Tan Son Naht Airport, then kept at bay with assurances until my departure, but that's another saga.)

"How about this? I'll buy these beers and then I'll split what's left with you." He seemed impressed by this and, pocketing the money, commended me on my honesty.

"Now come on, let's see more of Danang," he said, starting the Vespa.

Once again I found myself rocketing around the dark streets with Mr. Franky calling out the names of various landmarks. "This is the GPO [general post office]…Here is the hospital…Over here is the bank. This is the place I'd like to work if they would let me," he said wistfully.

After a while we pulled into the entryway of a small noodle shop. "They know me here, we can eat&emdash;no charge," Franky said. In the back of the shop a group of children sat around a large round table, eating.They obviously knew Franky and they smiled and waved at us as we walked in. The oldest one, a girl about 12 years old, got up and came to the front of the shop.

"You want pho?" she asked. "Bo? Ga?"

"Ga," I replied. Ga is the Vietnamese word for chicken, and, with slight tonal changes, the word for railroad. My attempt to learn the language prior to my arrival were limited to English/Vietnamese dictionaries, the few guide books on the market, and a set of two cassette tapes and a phrase book which contained examples of Vietnamese as spoken by the scholars of North Vietnam, making them nearly as useful as studying Shakespearian English in preparation for a trip to London. Vietnamese is a tonal language and the same word can mean many different things depending on pronounciation, making it difficult to grasp. The word "ma," for instance, can mean mother, horse, tomb, or a number of other things. Fear of saying the wrong thing caused me to adopt a monotonic speaking style along the lines of Gregory Peck, to the amusement and/or consternation of anyone I attempted to communicate with. This didn't stop me from trying though, and after a while, most people I spoke to could tell it was their own language I was attempting and not some bizzare type of voutie scat rap.

Franky ordered the same and two beers ("bia" in Vietnamese -the same as the Chicago word for beer). After we have finished our pho -huge bowls with raw eggs on top -Franky played a game with the children in the shop, pretending to shoot at them as they dove for cover behind the small tables and the cash register counter. "You VC! You VC!" he shouted as they scrambled around laughing. "They're my friends," he said, grinning widely. I began to understand that although Mr. Franky had been waiting 18 years for the Americans who were finally returning, they would never be back to play the horrible games that he learned growing up.

We said our good-byes to the kids and boarded the Vespa for a final ride, this time down along the Han River and Danang's usually bustling waterfront, nearly deserted at that hour. Soon I began to recognize the area and Mr. Franky dropped me off near the place where we met.

Before leaving, Mr. Franky gave me a handmade card with his mailing address in Phu Bai and his home address in Danang. You can find him around the side of the Cafe Chau on Le Duan Street if you're in Danang, but the odds are that he'll find you first.

Jeff Huch, Danang 1993