We whiskey-and-gin campfire boys were all bit players. No leading actors in this group. But each of these characters — and they were all characters — was surreal, absurd and fully aware of a serious kind, and was possessed with such detail and warmth.

They found amusement and enlightenment poking fun at certain characters and situations in each other’s lives, but no one took offense as long as the ribbing was gentle. I guess that’s because their stories and characters were part real, part legend if of long-lost relatives, and almost always part invention for the betterment of the story’s telling, so who cared?

Sometimes, I felt as if I was riding with them up on the edge of a speeding 1950s American car’s chrome front bumper in the rain as it careened over a beautiful landscape, occasionally surprised by debris on the road that would reach up and smash us real hard. It was a spectrum where you had very thrilling things you were seeing and hearing on one end and very bad things thumping you on the other.

When they were nighttime target shooting, something got under their skin, things changed, and everything was washed away. There we were — out back of undiscovered two pump filling stations and illegal bootleg liquor stores way off in swamp or pine forest country. Sometimes the shooting had a rhythmic movement to it that swept us onlookers into a vortex. Those were special, rare experiences that even the shooters were caught up in — to the point of being overwhelmed and happy.

Times like these were likely gonna evaporate sometime soon as they got steady girls, married, drifted apart, got promoted or changed job fields. Back then that’s why I thought they had these drink-and-shoots so often.

Vietnam introduced all of them to the wild, wooly and weird in life. Before they left home they had happy stories, sad stories, and dark stories but always with some satisfying end. War stories now sometimes ended with someone getting shot dead.

Despite their relaxed euphoria, to a man they had their ears cocked to the sounds of the night, watching out and being ready, as the noises of the night creaked and cried with trees sighing in the breeze– all indecipherable to this Yankee college boy’s ears.

The meaning of these memories’ mortal remains was elusive to me. Only years later did I start to see what their motionlessness and coiled readiness might have meant.

They were more than just chatty strangers sharing living quarters and building stuff across the distinct landscapes of the American South, lit by a fading evening sun, engaging in arguments, drinking and endless story telling about whether humans are like snakes, God’s Children, or ultimately unknowable creatures.

They all were beset by the simple lesson that life was a hard and violent story at times, and, if not careful, almost all ended with the death via bullet to the head, hand grenade or some nonviolent end like drowning or jungle rot infection.

They weren’t madmen; and, these weren’t games. They knew life’s backwoods and its dangers not by learning them but by feeling them and surviving them for 13 months. Their competitive target shooting was keeping their skills tuned up and their ersatz team edge finely sharpened. They’d rather be outdoors in the cool misty temps of winter rather than in some warm comfy bed in town with the doors locked up tight.

At first, some of this and them appeared like downright caricatures. They all became real life flesh and blood as time and stories quickly sped by.

But, damn, it was freaking amazing when you added to the target shooting the endless series of self-mocking or ironic monologues on family and life and war and romance. When someone would have a breakdown from anger or sadness, and someone else would shout at him to stop or to hush, things changed. Suddenly the grey and dim mood would shift to either one more humorous or something altogether more sinister with a tale of culling, reaping or harvesting bad guys like bounty-hunting farmers.

Some told people stories, while others told of killing like some midnight caller. The listeners could feel the story tellers’ knowing smiles that they couldn’t get enough of them. They’d cement audience attention with their stories’ connection to themselves and gotta-be-true detail. For us but not us, as we struggled, uncertain, but watching and hearing how others died over and over, okay with enjoying it along with some whiskey and local shine.

Regardless of story type, there was an undertone of thanksgiving in them.

Never made much sense of what it meant to die which I now think was their mission back then, since they tried avoiding the deeper meaning of these weekly tale swapping fests, while paying homage to those who were missed. They were talkin’ about friendship, about character, hell, I’m no longer embarrassed to use the word — they were talkin’ about love.

The civilian world back then was full o’ complainers. And the civilians didn’t like the fact that nothin’ came with a guarantee. But these uncomplaining men, though their stories were likely seldom told before or since, sounded like wise old American folk singers and novel writers.

There was a special bond among them. They had all been in-the-sh*t in-country separate from one another and were now in-the-sh*t in these domesticated, woodsy, pleasant, live oak places of ass pocket whiskey and front pocket gin. Yeah, they had worked the war trades of death and destruction, but they never considered themselves warriors. They had become builders.

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