The Veteran
Beside the barn a huge stackof logs cut and split with imperfect symmetry and Howard hisbald head like a bullet isin his undershirt
Marine tattoos on his bulging biceps and I remember things he’s told me about the Nam and the drugs and living on the street and finally
Meeting Suzanne who loved him whole again. They moved hereto raise horses which healed him until Suzanne passed from cancerand he wept in my arms like a babyand started drinking again
Invasive Species
Howard says Back up your truck we’ll load er up Ash? I ask having seen the stumpsbeside the road Yeah he says You know it’s against the lawto haul firewood cross county lines don’t you butit don’t matter no more with ash woodThey’re all dead now anyways
Emerald ash borers Howard saysthey come from Asia about thirty years ago and nowthey pretty much killed every ashin the east a shame he says
I offer to pay him for the firewoodbut he ignores me and we loadhalf a ton in the back of my truckand stand there a minute or tworesting and I think
They must have looked like old men, the ash treesdry and gray and brittle death spreading from one tree to another down the road
Abandoned Tractor
Howard is looking at his fortyacre spread where he grewcorn and soy and horses It’s mostly scrub now
He kept the mulethat reminds him of himAnd a few of the horses too old to sell
He hasn’t the heart to kill them
The soil he and Suzanne workedis fallow, chokedwith weeds and the smellof failure
Gasoline
Old warriors rarely say anything about people they killed orhorrors they saw insteadthey talk about the fun stuffof war the killer weed and the mama-san they spent a weekend with
Or maybethe strange feeling of steppingoff the plane in Dulleshaving misplaced their lives and now living someone else’s
Once when he was drinkingHoward told me how he watched seventeen Vietnamese childrenmistakenly machine gunned
By our own choppers and Howardand his buddies were orderedto pile the bodiespour gasoline over them and light them on fire
And I thought Holy Jesusthese men we send to do unspeakable crimes in our name
Bury that shit real deep where no one can ever find it
