He laid his field jacket across my lap, its green
arms hugging my knees. Soft with age, perfumed
with time, it was my introduction to Vietnam. How
had it felt? What medals, ribbons, metal letters
once pierced this cloth? Here was a history that couldn’t be read.
I listened as his memories turned to wind and rainfall.
A black and white print, dated 1969, fall,
when the Pennsylvania leaves lost their green
and the elephant grass in Vietnam turned napalm red.
A shot of my father hitchhiking to Hue, the Perfume
River behind him. Army magazines, short timer letters,
medals he refused to wear after Kent State. A boy’s face. Who?
That was awkward Elmer, so short he needed a ladder. What?
He only had a month to go. Private Salmon from Frostbite Falls,
Minnesota. He chewed his nails, mailed dead letters
to imaginary addresses, his favorite gum was wintergreen.
Had a white-out one night on a Thailand roof, nostalgic fumes
pushed him to jump. We held him down, silently scared.
Dad was in military intelligence then, interpreting infrared
film, meticulously marking the spots each night where
planes would bomb the next day. He carried perfumed
letters from home, flew Mohawks over areas thick with fall-out,
dense with death: a landscape interred, forests nevergreen.
One day alone, 500 kills by air, 500 KBA. Killing by letters,
living by numbers, obeying every order to the letter.
Here’s Bill, a freckle-faced boy whose hair bled red
even in black and white. He was pretty green,
a real youngster. On sweaty, trembling nights, when
it was too loud to sleep or think, the rockets would fall
so close you could smell their sick perfume,
that’s when you’d see Bill smoking, pacing, fuming,
trying to look calm, counting to a hundred, reciting letters
of the alphabet like a kid. We were all kids. Did you fall
in love in Vietnam? My mother passed in the hallway. I read
the answer in his pause. Love just happens. Some day, when
it happens to you, you’ll see. He smoothed his fatigues, army green.
Greenbacks and Cokes, love notes whispering perfume,
letters and Polaroids, medals and ribbons. Why?
Tired from holding, he let everything fall.