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It was a land of wood, hay, and stubble, a land as if he’d dreamt it, and he could not yet tell that these were the witnessings a man never forgets. He would remember it all in random unbidden moments and they would spring on him, and these would be among his occupying memories for the rest of his natural life.
The line of march was already too long and too thin to be supplied and supported by reinforcements, and they all knew this, even the fools among them. Each man knew they were the lethal plaything of the old men who directed them, the old men who were always fighting the last war.
He wondered if he’d ever live to be a remembering man like his grandfather and his uncles, the kind of man who when old and tired sat in the dim light of fire and let his mind span the years and well up with the water of memory.
On the twisting road behind them was the division and on the other side of the pass was a descent into the five-fingered valley of Yudam-ni, a little village tucked in the foothills of the high peaks of the Taebeks, the frozen Yalu River, Manchuria. “This is about the last place I can think of I’d like to get hurt bad,” Lew said. “Which way?” Henry said. “It don’t matter,” Lew said. “There’s no right way to do a wrong thing.” He paused. “That way,” he finally said with a chop of his hand.
He blew on his curled red fingers and wiped snot from his nose. The cold and fatigue made him gloomy and simpleminded. This night is awful, he thought, but it is still a night in my life. He felt pain and bitterness but also a strange sweetness so complete as his worlds began to merge. He just wanted to lie down and be still.
He’d been shot through the armpit. The bullet’s violent dig had found a heart line and blood swelled from the pumping wound. “I will die soon,” the man said, his voice drowning. “Hush,” Henry said, holding him to his chest. “I’m all fucked up inside,” the man managed to say. His chest was like a bloody sponge. The ground was frozen and so the pumping blood that slugged from the severed artery pooled bright red. For all Henry had seen it was still hard to believe there was so much blood in a man. “You got any bombs on you?” the man said, his breath rapid and shallow. Between gasps he purred in
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That land was a world away and yet it came to him nightly and only in his dreams could he not ward off the visitations of memory and experience.
He climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Inside its raftered walls he found a quiet and steady peacefulness. He determined that it would be in this room, breathing its steam-heated air where he would learn to live again. He knew it could take months, even years, but hoped it would happen sooner rather than later. He was at the place of consciousness and memory. On this night he would not struggle against the storm inside him. He would be patient.
We gather around books and the stories they tell so we might discuss life that is real,
For the longest time I have thought about war and violence and the remedies of love, birth, beauty, and art. I have wondered about what we choose to look at and when we decide to avert our eyes. Surely we cannot blame ourselves for not wanting to look at that which is horrible. It’s only natural.
Life can be that way. We plunge ahead, making decisions, doing the best we can, and most of the time this works, but then there are times when we have risked too much, when we have made a bad decision, and it was a long time ago and only now do we realize it.
