Y.S.T.

I don't understand war. Why we go to it, how we wage it, and most importantly, how we can ever truly win it. Some rather stone-faced men and women who grate their teeth like they would their nails on an emery board have told me that all life is war in one way or another, yet it has always seemed to me that a battle is only "winnable" so much as it is possible for a field mouse to sprout wings and fly away from the clawed clutch of a feral cat. It just doesn't happen, and thinking otherwise is plain naive.

When my grandfather was alive, I was far too young to ask him questions about his experiences in Vietnam. My knowledge of that country started and stopped when I played "Where Will Savannah Live Next?" on his globe in the playroom. In that particular afternoon, I scampered back there and gave the globe a whirl, watching as my sparkly turquoise nails touched the country's grooved and raised spot when the miniature world finally stopped spinning. I always wanted to land on France or Monaco, or maybe even the peaceful beaches of Wellington, New Zealand. But Vietnam? No, thanks. Not prime real estate. I was never too curious about what all he had experienced while he was over there until it was too late, and all of his memories were sealed in a silk-lined casket six feet under. And even when I was, the only help I really had was framed pictures, flags, and medals in velvet shadowboxes. And those didn't help me understand anything at all.

Recently, my mother and I were out to lunch and began to discuss the war in Afghanistan over Caesar salads. The fact that we talked about war as we would the latest George Clooney flick is mildly disgusting, but it is what it is. Curious about my grandfather's story, I asked her what she thought about her dad's account of war. Mom said that when she was younger and her dad had just gotten back from Vietnam, he would get in fights with his brother-in-law, Don, at the dinner table. Don was a commercial pilot during Vietnam, and therefore would always fly at altitudes of more than 30,000 feet. To Don, the Viet Kong and guerrilla warriors may as well have been grains of sand on a beach, and the omnipresent explosions were little more than a few small seashells. Everything looks pristine from far away, I suppose.

And that's exactly what my grandfather would argue. "No, Don," he would say with his burly hands, his elbows occasionally making the gravy boat tremble when his arm hit the table, "it's not like that. Once you get your head out of the goddamn clouds, it's a completely different story. Once you see with your own two eyes what you're doing, things change. You don't want to do it anymore. You don't want to do anything anymore. We lost, Don. We lost so much and you can't even see that."

Mom said that whenever her dad would mutter that word to Don a fire would light up in his brother-in-law's eyes and make you wonder how much his fangs would sting when they entered your skin. Apparently he was like one of Pavlov’s dogs when the word loss would leave someone's tongue: steaming, white saliva would collect in the corners of his downward curled lips, and he would spew his conservative-spun propaganda onto whoever was closest to him, hiss like a tea kettle, and ball his fist so tightly it looked whiter than a ghost. Don would stare at her dad harder than a statue, and the two would eat the rest of their cold mashed potatoes in silence as their own truths mixed like oil and water.

The other night, I went over to a friend's to drink and play music. While there, I met her cousin, Dean, and her brother, Tom. The latter was rather bloated and belligerent, and left me wondering what inner battle he was trying to suppress with his thirteenth Budweiser. Though in his more coherent moments, he would complain of American ignorance and intolerance, to which I would have agreed had there been a small, saving breath in which I could have responded. However, there wasn't, and I soon felt as if I were a POW to the drunk whose harsh generalizations quickly transformed him into the ass he was so hell-bent against becoming.

After he passed out for the first time, his cousin was finally able to speak. Quiet and reserved, Dean said that he had recently returned from Afghanistan and that he was sorry for his cousin's behavior. He also said that he went into the military for a few years to help pay for his ultimate goal: a college degree. What he would learn in books, I responded, was most likely far different (and perhaps less important) than what he would learn while on the field, to which he meekly laughed. I asked him the standard questions, and soon found myself feeling like a child sitting transfixed at the feet of her grandfather while he told stories of The Way Things Used To Be. How different is it Over There, I asked. What are They like? How does it feel knowing you can take away someone's life with something that's no bigger than a baby carrot? What did you learn? Are you glad to be Home?

I'm sure my arsenal of seemingly unceasing questions was just another reminder of the place he was so happy to have left, however he quietly and courteously answered each one of them with a pleasantly surprising amount of grace, as opposed to his now-comatose cousin, the freelance porch prophet extraordinaire. "No," Dean said, "it wasn't that different over there, there just seemed to be boundaries and borders even if there weren't any fences in sight." He called them limits. You could really feel the limits. Those who were brave enough to be around the armed "peace bringers" were warm and hospitable, he said. It was us who weren't. "When the guys got bored," Dean continued, "they liked to go into town and fuck with people. Just because they could. Just so they'd know they were alive."

While I was aware of the destructive potential of idle hands, I was wholly unaware of the fact that there was any time to be spared. "It's not always combat?" I asked rather dumbly.

"No," Dean responded, "it's not. Lot's of times it's just waiting, which in some ways is worse. It's easy to pull a trigger, you know? It's harder to think about it."

"...did you ever kill anyone?"

All of a sudden, I sensed a small, blurry stir in my peripheral vision. It appeared that Tom was showing signs of life, his body twitching like a grizzly bear at the end of hibernation. His eyes flickered open, and I backed away from him, fearing a vomit-filled eruption as he raised his sweaty head from the porch swing. With a fat finger, he pointed to his cousin. "This guy here," Tom slurred, "this guy here has cried about things you and me have never even dreamed of." Tom smiled at me and proceeded to blink erratically like a light bulb that's just about to burn out. And then, just like that, his eyes closed and he fell back onto his side and into his slumbers once more.

After it was determined that the fleshy volcano was dormant again, Dean continued. "Yeah," he said, "I did." He looked down into his beer can, swilled the remainder for a second, and took a swig. I bet he wished there were more. "Yeah, I did. I did. And you know what, I'm still in therapy for it. Don't know if I'll ever be out."

A wave of hyper self-awareness hit, and I soon felt as if I had shown up to a funeral wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt and Bermuda shorts. "I'm sorry if I asked something I shouldn't have," I said.

There was more silence. I began to wonder if the flowers on my imagined shirt were growing larger and more saturated. Perhaps I had brought a ukulele, too. "Naw, it's OK," he finally replied. "It helps to talk about these things sometimes, I think."

"Did you know their names?"

"Whose?"

"The people you, you know, killed."

He shook his head. "No, not at all."

"Oh, wow."

"The worst part," he began, "was not feeling anything. That's what made me lose it. When I felt like my finger was a fuckin' accessory to a machine gun. Those fuckers blind you over there, you know. They make you numb. There's already sand in your eyes and you're already lonely as shit and they just suck up what's left of your heart 'til all you've got is muscles and a helmet.  Guy with lots of badges says shoot and you do it and you say 'sir'. There's nothing human about it. They tell you to be a fuckin' man and defend your country and all of that other bullshit, but what's worth saving if you don’t even got yourself?" He threw his now empty can to the floor, watching as the spitty residuals pooled into a small half moon shape by his feet. "Courage, my ass," he said. "If I had any real courage I wouldn't be sitting here and talking to you about this shit, now would I? People dead, and for no reason. Not one, good goddamn reason. And what do I have to show for it? A fuckin' medal that haunts me every night as I sleep." Dean paused and stared at his hands, now trembling. "And I swear to God, Savannah, if you cut me up right now my blood wouldn't even fill that damned beer can."

To that, I was left completely and utterly speechless. As he spoke, I watched his 22-year-old forehead arch and furrow with wave-like wrinkles that he had most likely accrued while on tour. For whatever reason, I thought of how the young Marie Antoinette's hair turned white as a dove the night before she faced the guillotine. There was no doubt in my mind that Dean had cried about things I'd never dreamed of. After all, time and stress had carved veritable fjords into his barely legal face, and I knew that what I was witnessing was just the tip of the iceberg. All I could muster in response was a paltry
"I'm so sorry," but really, what more could I say? I wasn't there, and God permitting, I never would be.
Like my Uncle Don, I was flying above the clouds, in a place where tanks and landmines didn't exist. I would never know what he saw, just like my mom would never really know why sometimes her father made the gravy boat quiver at dinner. I wished I could have said something more comforting, something more powerful, maybe, but I just couldn't find the words within me. I was at a loss.

So instead of searching for words, I searched for flesh, instinctively placing Dean's prematurely wrinkled hands in mine. They were dry, tan, and calloused, and for a moment I wondered if I was feeling the cracked and compacted earth of Afghanistan that was currently being tread by soldiers' boots so many miles away.

"Wow," I muttered quietly.

"What?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," I replied, "your hands just feel real warm to me." I smiled, and in silence we listened to the soft song of cicadas and Tom's snores as he rocked slowly back and forth on the rusty porch swing.
He shook his head, and from the corner of my eye I watched as a tear fell from his eyes and disappeared into the tiny tributaries that lined his face. "Damn," he said finally, "it's been too long since I've held one of these."

I looked at Dean and into the depths of those dark blue eyes whose stories I would never fully understand, then up to the starry night sky, squinting slightly as I watched the firefly red lights of a passing plane dance among them. "I know," I said. "I know."