Ngo Phuc Dong, an ex-NVA sapper turned intelligence agent for the US Forces, fished quietly in his new little abode in the bayou of Twinbrook. The swampy area reminded him of his former hometown of Ca Mau in the Mekong Delta. The humidity was the same, the smell of the swamp and the vegetation all bore a similarity to home, but Ca Mau was no longer his home...he was now in Twinbrook...a strange place...away from the people he knew...amongst the people whom he fought against...and beside...after he turned on his own people. That home, like his previous life, was lost to him. And he had to make a new life for himself. But longings for home, for the memory of the smells and tastes of Gỏi cuốn and Ca Kho To wafting in the air around him, brought him to a state of melancholy. But he shook it off, Ngo was not about to let depression make his lot in life more difficult. He would find someone in Twinbrook and start his life over again.
His new home reminded him of the house in which he grew up in, a home near the water on stilts. Watching the water for snakes (the Asian banded krait and other venomous species. According to Major Whiley, United States Army, the only venomous snake in the bayou he had to worry about was the cottonmouth or the water moccasin and they would give him fair warning with the display of their wide open mouth which was stark-white telling him to not come any closer. The asian venomous snakes would give him no such warning.
Could he make a life here and be able to die in this new country having fathered a family that he could be proud of? At least he hoped so.
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