"THE LAST STRAW"

It was after eleven a.m. when Kim Li Yung returned from her brief shopping trip to find him in his present condition, with apparently no intention of getting himself together to face the day. He had completely lost faith in everything and it was now getting to her as she looked down at him, the despair now obvious on her face.

He was lying on his back on top of the bed in a drunken stupor, the sweat standing out in globules on his face in the humidity of the early Vietnamese summer, and on the parts of his torso not covered by the soiled and sweat-soaked khaki singlet. Partially covered by a dirty sheet, one foot rested on the floor alongside the low bed, one hand lay across his eyes, and his face exhibited a five day growth of dark stubble.

Beside him, on a tea chest which served them as a bedside table, stood a half-consumed bottle of now warm local beer, and beside it a tin lid full of home-rolled cigarette butts and a candle-holder. A couple of unsmoked reefers also lay on the tea chest. She hated it when he smoked them.

What Kim now saw in him she couldn't fully understand. But she had been with him for over a year and in her eyes she still remembered him as he was, the hero who had rescued her from her life on the streets of the city and from a pimp who regularly beat her up for not earning him enough money. She remembered the day Ritchie had severely turned on her pimp and beaten him up severely when he interrupted their innocent bar-top conversation, ordering her back to work and manhandling her roughly as he did so. It was the day she stopped hooking and Ritchie came to live with her. At least she was grateful for the fact that, despite his situation, he was still usually a good-natured person and the beatings had stopped.

As an American soldier who had survived the war, he had gradually sunk into the ennui which seemed to be common amongst many ex-combatant GI's. He realised he had nothing to return to America for and was now just content to survive, eating when he could, sleeping throughout most days, and going out at night to visit the cheap bars and girlie establishments which now abounded in the capital, Da Nang. Drugs were also easy to obtain here although he hadn't yet sunk to using heroin or cocaine.

He knew he couldn't sink much lower in society but didn't give a shit. Life had become one big cesspit for him. The world didn't even know he existed any more and America didn't care about him either, despite the fact that he, and many like him, had sacrificed their youth, and often their physical and mental health, just to satisfy the whims of the politicians and do-gooders back home. Well - to hell with them. He'd survived this long where many of those who had returned to the States expecting to be treated as heroes hadn't.

Ritchie Mason was only one of many such rejected dropouts who now relied on the charity of a disenchanted Vietnamese society. A society, he often thought, which also showed extreme disregard for the sacrifices made by American soldiers on their behalf in trying to free this beautiful country from the tyrannical rule of the warlords, communist and otherwise. The American government had claimed these factions were quickly draining it of its ancient assets and had to be overthrown. It was a political decision which had brought America into a war it could never have hoped to win and hadn't.

He was now living solely on his small, redirected, war pension, which, in these conditions and in this country, was sufficient to keep him in cigarettes, drink, and the occasional reefer, and little else. It certainly wouldn't have done so if he had gone back home to America.

The two-roomed apartment in the wood and corrugated iron shanty town where they were now living was in the poorest part of the city and adjoined other identical two-roomed apartments on three sides. Although there was running cold water, this was limited to a single, cracked, porcelain sink and the loo, which was behind a curtain in a corner of the bedroom and which he only used when he didn't feel like walking, or was unable to walk, the fifty yards or so to the communal ablutions centre.

The uncarpeted and otherwise undecorated room stank of stale tobacco smoke, mostly marijuana, and beer, some of which still lay in a puddle on the wooden floor onto which, in a drunken stupor, he had knocked a partly-consumed bottle off the bedside tea chest the previous day.

Kim looked around the room and its piecemeal, shabby, and oft-repaired contents, in utter desolation. As she often did now, she went into the kitchen area, sat at the table and, dropping her face onto her arms, began sobbing quietly at the utter hopelessness of her situation. At the age of only twenty-two her health had recently started to deteriorate, both physically and mentally, as the desperation of her life ate its way into her very soul. But this situation with Ritchie was the last straw.

Fifteen minutes later, now with an air of determination about her which had been missing for many months, she stood up and dried her tears with the hem of her cheap dress. A further quick wipe with a cold facecloth at the sink completed her change of attitude and she turned round to survey the shadowed interior of what had been her home and place of business for some years. Hands on hips, and her brow furrowed with a mixture of anger and resolve, she found a new determination. Striding resolutely through into the bedroom once more she approached the bed.

"Ritchie. Ritchie, come on - get up. It's after eleven o'clock." There was no response apart from a muted grunt.

"Ritchie." Louder. Still no response. She gave him a less-than-gentle shake but was rewarded only with a muttered curse as he pulled his errant foot back under the bedclothes and turned over onto his side away from her. Impatient, she became more insistent now and slapped him hard on his bare shoulder. This time he took notice and turned back to look up at her with eyes whose whites looked like red-lined satellite photographs of the Mekong River delta.

"What is it? What d'you want? Piss off, girl, and leave me be."

She wasn't to be put off this time, however, and hauled the sheet off him, much to his annoyance. Realising she was in earnest this time he sat up, swung his feet onto the floor, rubbed his eyes, and stretched for the pack of normal cigarettes and the cheap lighter on the tea chest. He lit one, inhaled deeply, and immediately went into a paroxysm of coughing.

"What's happ'nin' girl? Is there a fire? Why d'you want me to get up?"

"Ritchie, I was out shopping and ran out of money. I need some more. You know I won't take any from your billfold without asking you. You're going to want some food, aren't you?"

Ritchie took a few seconds to take this in then reached for his service jacket which was hanging on a hook on the wall adjacent to the bed. He withdrew a handful of Dng notes and handed them to her without counting them. He then stubbed his cigarette out among those butts already in the tin lid, retrieved the sheet, lay down once more, turned over, and in a few seconds was snoring gently in dismissal.

Sustained by her new-found resolution she returned to the kitchen and smoothed the notes he had given her out on the table top. There was enough for what she had in mind. There had been a few heavy showers earlier, precursors of the coming monsoon, so she lifted her umbrella from the hook near the door and quietly left.

When she returned an hour later with the few items of food she had bought, he was gone. The bed was unmade, the part-consumed bottle of beer was now empty, and the tin lid of cigarette ends was still overflowing.

She knew where he would be, of course. He was well-known as 'the big man' at the local drinking den where he now spent much of each day, drinking and playing card games with the locals. Fortunately the establishment he visited, although basic, had a refrigerator, so the beer he drank there was reasonably cool.

She had already made up her mind what she had to do and started to put her plan into action. From the battered wardrobe she retrieved two large plastic bags and began stuffing all the clothes she could find into them. Both his clothes and hers. It took her only fifteen minutes to strip the house of everything wearable and the curtains and bed-sheets followed. While she worked she kept a listening watch on the wooden stairs up to the front of the house from the open sewer below which claimed to be a street, in case he returned before she had finished what she was doing. He didn't.

With a last look round both rooms, and in all the drawers and cupboards, she left quietly with the two huge bags, pleased that she had at last found the courage to take the action she had done. She'd had enough of his slovenly way of life and his filthy habits. She knew he would be angry but she was equally sure he would soon get over the shock.

When she left she took a route through the shanty town which would ensure he wouldn't see her and soon she had disappeared into the back streets of the capital city of Da Nang.

He returned to the apartment an hour later, not quite drunk but certainly not sober. Having lost a considerable amount of money gambling at cards he was in a bad mood and would now be unable to buy any drink for tonight.

He had only been in the apartment a few seconds when he realised there was something different about the place. For one, the bedclothes had been stripped off the bed. He looked around. There were no towels to be found. Anxiously he opened the wardrobe doors and was confronted by racks of empty clothes hangers. All his clothes were gone. And so were hers. It was then the reality of the situation struck him.

"The bitch. She's left me and taken the lot with her. Shit, everything's gone. Not even a pair of goddamned socks left." This would be no problem as socks were something he seldom wore now anyway.

A black rage descended upon him as the implications of her departure began to dawn on him. In his temper he kicked one of the frail chairs against the wall where it disintegrated into several pieces. It felt good. Then the other chair. The table itself followed into oblivion. One by one, in his anger, he destroyed all the items of furniture in the house.

Half an hour later, his rage partially dissipated and the sweat pouring off him with his efforts, he sat on the edge of the stripped bed and opened one of his last two bottles of beer from the sink, the only place in the apartment where he could keep the contents reasonably cool.

He looked round and contemplated the satisfying results of his rage. Everything was smashed to pieces and the remaining contents of drawers and cupboards were strewn about the floor. The little food they'd had in the cupboards, including that which she had just bought, was lying on the floor, milk, eggs, flour, all now useless. Even the crockery lay in a thousand irreparable pieces along with odd items of cutlery and cooking utensils.

He sat the bottle of beer on the tea chest and, head in his hands, he began to sob gently in self pity. He stayed in this position for some time before he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked up in amazement as she shouldered her way in through the outside door and stopped, wide - eyed, as she surveyed the horrific scene before her.

"What - what's happened? What the hell have you done?"

He didn't answer but his gaze was drawn to the two large plastic bags which she had dropped in horror as she took in the carnage. His eyes gradually focused and read the printing on one of the bags.

It read, "HO WONG'S CHINESE LAUNDRY".