so openly, that she approaches in a way that I could not, placing her hand
on his shoulder as a mother might.
“Why are you crying, Les?”
“I watched ‘em die,” he says.
“Watched who die?”
“The people I killed.”
It’s never easy to hear the first time: a cycle that repeats itself
within him as regularly as the phases of the moon.
He points out the window with tears rolling from his eyes, mouth
turned into a devastated snarl. “Right there they came,” he says. “Right
there through them trees. They fell.”
Out the window one sees the fence, the few trees, the ground
giving way. Beyond are the tall lights of our town. “I sat right here with
my gun and saw them come.” The recliner rocks in anticipation of what
he is about to witness all over again.
The new aide tries to redirect Les from his memories, desperate to
have his crying stopped. She asks about his family. Wiping the fluid from
his eyes and nose, he considers and replies, “My brother, did you know
him? He’s a hell of a basketball player. My parents don’t appreciate him
but I watch him play and he’s damn good. He was a great man, he could
lick you whoever you were.” She doesn’t know how long it’s been since his
brother was still living. Is it this fact, lost somewhere in his mind, that
causes him to cry even while talking about his brother?
She tries to change the subject once again, asking about his
former profession. He replies: “I worked at the wire mill before I went.
Those bunch of bastards. You were there. I told ‘em and I told you, said
you better get out of there while you still got your hands.”
But these conversations, however long they may stall him,
eventually fade. He gets emotional over the things he has done, things
he can never quite express through words, and there’s no taking it away
from him. “Korea isn’t like M.A.S.H.,” I once heard him say, turned to
the window with his face purging remorse. “You don’t laugh when those
people are dying.”
At the time I wondered if this was just a newspaper-inspired
fantasy.
It brings up questions about the nature of the disease, for instance
what would the mind choose to remember if it had an option? I imagine
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