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A MOST PERSONAL EPILOGUE
And that same wind has blown where it might, Africa, Southeast Asia, and around for three years since and Morning has been with me all the days, but the manuscript has been gathering dust through that time till now. After he came back to life, I couldn't go on. I'm back home now, recovering from wounds again, just back, from Laos and the CIA, and this letter came last week.
Well, old war horse, I've written pretty often in the past year or so, but haven't had much chance to mail a letter. The postal service out here isn't so great.
It's been tough. I know you told me it would be, and I believed you, but you were right, I didn't know.
It's not the fighting, not at all, in fact I look forward to a fire-fight now days, and I see them often now days too. The army is right behind us all the time now and it is only a matter of time. That phrase works in lots of ways – time weighs more than the base plate of a mortar or five hundred rounds of belted thirty caliber ammo. You didn't tell me about all the time I would spend sitting on my ass under a banana tree, you didn't tell me lots of things…
I'm hard now, man, hard. In spite of the food, I've filled out; got my growth, as you'd say. I steal vitamins whenever I can and, though I can't laugh about it, I know that you do, laugh at the picture of the great revolutionary dashing through the jungles with a bottle of One-a-Day brand vitamins in his pocket. I'm as brown as a gook now, but I'm not one, and they remind me every day. They kept all the shit for me, cooking, washing dishes, until I busted one up who asked me to wipe his ass. God, they're nearly all as dumb as old Dottlinger. They'd rather collect taxes from poor gooks like themselves than rob American bases. They're shit. I guess I'm shit too now. Three days ago I gut-shot an old man who spit on me. He sat in the sun for a long time with his guts in his arms, till I shot him, not out of compassion but out of disgust. Hard.
But somehow easier too. I wish you'd go see my parents, man, tell them that I'm sorry, that I love them (at least the memory of them), and that if I could find a way, I would come home. Don't tell them I'm dead.
But then the hardness is back. I guess you'll get this while teaching at some fat-ass girls' college in the North. The army has been on our tails for four months and I haven't slept much and haven't eaten much and I think maybe I've killed a thousand men and I don't even know why. I haven't eaten beef since I saw you last, haven't had many beers, and don't even know why. I'm not crying, man, because I did what I thought was right, I did it, while most men sit on their fat asses not even caring about right, and though I'm hungry and I've got sores all over my legs and my left arm doesn't work too well since I caught a bullet last May, I know I'm a man now. I don't worry about that. I'm only sorry that there wasn't an easier way.
There isn't much else to say. I just wanted you to know that I loved you, old horse, and that I was a fool. I'm not crying, man, but it's been tough, and I won't be sorry when it is over.
Your friend,
Joe Morning
A note came with the letter, saying that this American had said that I might send one hundred American dollars to the person who sent this letter to me. I didn't do it.
I'm glad I was in bed when the letter came, though I'm not glad to be in bed again. God, the images rush back. Morning ru
It has been tough all over, though. After I drank my way back to Texas after my discharge, after I dried out for a few weeks, after I lost Ell again, I did go to Africa, silly as it may sound, but I met a CIA man in Joha
But that's Morning's line, isn't it, not mine, but then his letter, sadly, sounded more like me than him…
The mortar round would have killed me this time but for an old Meo woman who stumbled as I ran past, faltered and took the steel meant for me. Pieces of her flesh stuck to the back of my shirt and when I found them on the U-10 flying out, I threw up. The pilot bitched and I told what had happened and he said, "No sweat. Just a fucking old gook broad." When we landed at the base camp back in Thailand, I broke his jaw with my rifle butt before he could get out and lost another government job.
But Joe Morning is dead now, probably, unless the letter fell out of his pocket. Even if he isn't dead, he is surely lost, and that makes me sad. I don't know who to blame, I just don't know who to blame.
When I left Oakland the day after Ke
We've come a long way and the sadness is heavy. Gallard and Abigail finally married and are working for AID in South Vietnam. I saw them in Saigon last year, and though they both still loved me, I had been with the killing too long and made them nervous. Cagle and Novotny have both married, fathered children and prospered, but they both drink too much and talk about war when I see them. Saunders stepped on a mine in the Ia Drang Valley this last summer and died six weeks later at Walter Reed. Tetrick retired two years ago, early, and is drinking himself to death in Grand Island, Nebraska. He told me, when I last saw him, that Dottlinger was doing six to ten in Leavenworth for hot checks. I'm thirty-one years old and sleeping in my father's house again, for now, and don't know what to do, except echo Morning: It's been tough, man, but I'm not crying, and it's not, it's for damn sure not, over yet.