There was a letter in a plain ivory envelope addressed to his father. He looked on the back flap and read his grandmothers address, but it had his grandfather’s name printed in black ink across the top. He had never known his grandfather. He died when the boy was only two, and his father and mother had never mentioned him very much. Even his grandmother rarely spoke about her husband. He had seen a few pictures—a wrinkled man with a greying crew cut—but he had never before seen a letter from him and he pulled the piece of stationery from the envelope.
The script was cramped and scribbled, almost pained, and he could hardly decipher the words of the first sentence, much less the rest of the letter. He let his eyes wander across each line, taking in what little he could glean from the page. D e a r F r a n k i e. . .n o t h i n g b u t a coward. . . university . . . communism . . . America and the rest . . . world. . . your honor and duty. . . we . . . family . . . I fought in WWII . . . responsibility to your country. . . freedom of the Vietnam . . . Don’t let them tell . . . We love you and know . . . There’s nothing in . . . world. . . but sometimes . . . man and men . . . on you and the other . . . on young men . . . defend . . . Vietnam . . . what is right . . . Love, Dad
Vietnam and what is right.
His father fought in the war. He lost part of a finger and he probably lost a lot more in the years since, but he never talked about it, really. There were nights when he would hear his father yell. Yell out from behind the door and it would tear down the hall and he would hear it, muffled behind his own bedroom door. And there were the nights when his father would sit up all night and drink. Drink until he was dead drunk and passed out in a chair and he would hear his mother try to wake him up and get him to go to bed, but he would yell then, too. Yell at her to leave him alone. He didn’t want to go to bed so why the hell couldn’t she just leave him the hell alone, goddamn her.
Once his father came into his room and sat on the end of the boy’s bed, reeking of gin and whiskey, and he put his hands, those hard hands, between his knees and let his head drop down until his chin touched his chest. He mumbled about killing, killing and death and love, mostly there was love, but the boy didn’t care what he was saying because he was afraid. Afraid and he didn’t care about killing and he didn’t care about love, he only wanted to be left alone. He pretended to be asleep so that his father wouldn’t know he heard. He did hear and he knew. They both knew.
The boy folded the letter back up and picked up the medal with the bronze star hanging from a worn and frayed piece of ribbon. He put the envelope back in the box and was going to lay the medal carefully on top of it but he stopped. Medals were for honor, he thought.
Honor.
He put the bronze star in his palm and closed his hand around it, feeling the chill of the metal and the sharpness of its points pressing into his flesh. He squeezed it hard until he thought the pain was enough. Enough pain to understand, he thought, opening his hand and looking at the five red and burning indentations in his palm. He turned the medal over and undid the pin on the top of the ribbon and fastened the medal to his shirt pocket. It just hung there, a little lopsided, feeling a great deal heavier tugging on his shirt than it had felt in the palm of his hand.
There was a piece of paper, folded in half twice, and looking ragged on the edges and very old. One corner was torn, and the boy unfolded it carefully, fearing he might tear it along one of its deep creases. It was another letter and he recognized the handwriting at once. He ran his fingers along the back of the stationery and felt the curves and crosses, the dotted I’s and the periods at the ends of the sentences. They were the artistic, flaring letters of his father’s own hand, the pen pressed so hard to the paper when it was written that the boy could almost read the back of the letter like braille.
Girl.
The letter was addressed to Girl. It was a letter, a letter about a dream. Dreams of flesh and loneliness. Dreams of soft curving breasts and a swatch of her between her legs and his caresses and her tongue in his mouth. He ran his hands across her back and felt the mounds of creamy flesh of her buttocks and his hand slipped between her legs. He kissed her behind her ears and along the nape of her neck. In the dream she opened up for him and took him in and now he looks at himself and remembers what it was like to be inside her. He was lonely. Lonely and far away and afraid to die. Afraid to die without her.
Mother.
The door was open and he had missed the click and the turning of the catch and now she stood in the doorway, her hand squeezing the white doorknob. Some of the sickly light from the bulb in the hall glanced off the walls of the room.
“I thought you were at work,” he blurted, turning his head away from her. He was ashamed. Ashamed because he could feel the hardness in his pants.
“I was, but I forgot to bring some lunch and I didn’t have any money so I came home to make something. Where’s your brother?”
“Outside. Playing in the street.”
“What are you doing in here anyway?” She walked across the room and stopped at the end of the bed. She stared at the box and its contents lying on the quilt.
“Jesus,” she said. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”
“I just wanted to know. . . “
“They’re not your things!” his mother screamed, throwing her hand over her mouth as if she was trying to stifle anything else she might say. She steadied herself on the brass post on the corner of the bed.
“Well, they’re not yours either!” he yelled back at her. “They’re not yours and they’re not mine, but they aren’t anyone else’s, I know that much. I know. I know he’s not coming back. They aren’t his and he’s not coming back to get them so what do you care about it anyway!”
She walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down with her back to him. She buried her face in her hands and he turned away and stared at the blinds. Stared at the blinds that shut out the world that his father had walked out into. He just left one day and was gone and he knew that he was never coming back. He could feel the mattress shake with his mother’s sobbing and he could feel the weight of the medal tugging on his shirt and pulling him down. He looked at the lines of light in the blinds, the blinding light behind them and felt the weight of the medal that shook with his mother’s crying.
“Momma, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, unpinning the medal and placing it back in the box. His hands trembled and a bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose like a tear. He gathered up the other things and put them back and shut the lid. He closed the clasp and looked at the terrified face of George Washington’s horse.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for. Sometimes I look at you and I see your father in you and I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to think because it scares me and I know that you’re a good boy. You are.”
The boy stood up from the bed and placed the box back on its polished silhouette with the smudge in the middle. He remembered the silver dollar and he pulled it out of his pocket and placed it on its edge. He spun the coin, watching it turn and lose momentum and begin to flatten out against the top of the dresser. Heads, he thought, walking around the bed and to the door, not wanting to see how the coin landed.
He stopped at the door and looked at his mother. She sat there barely on the edge of the bed, sitting on her hands now, her shoulders hunched and her eyes red and swollen with tears.
“I’m not him, you know,” he said. He felt guilty for saying it, but he was gone, and he knew he was never coming back, so what did it matter what he said.
He closed the door behind him and stopped to listen if he could hear his mother, but there was nothing but silence. Nothing but silence and the bright yellow glare of the bare bulb in the hall. His hands felt sweaty and he rubbed his palms on the front of his pants. He held up a hand to his face. It was his hand and he put his thumb in his mouth and tasted the salty tang of himself, buried there between the ridges and furrows.