Fatal Light by Richard Currey

she did not—speak English. She waved me off, irritated. Cursing. At the bar where Lwan worked her partner said she went back to the country, to see her family. Her father had been hurt in an American bombing raid. Where in the country? What village? Her partner did not know, shrugged, turned away.
    Lwan had never said where in-country she was from. I had never asked. I walked the streets, realizing she was gone and I had no way of finding her, of even thanking her for the simple and hard-won things she had offered. Decency, comfort, innocent refuge. The street moved around me, alive with secrets, and I remembered a dream in Lwan’s bed, an edge of memory riding in my chest, clairvoyant heart, each sound born to its resonance and Lwan’s body’s night curved to mine, openhanded as she waved me into a boat. I looked for a moment at the river fog before pulling in the rope, pushing off and out, drinking rain and oaring against the tide of my lungs, arms winging an open dark as I wheeled the light of the stream, levitating, two slow voices lit by star-filled water, sailing.

15
    Dear Mary,
    Was there a beginning to this story of the line? Standing on line, waiting in line. The line is a military invention, you know, a bureaucratic conspiracy designed to convince individuals they are anonymous and insignificant. Being anonymous and insignificant is fatiguing, and once you’re tired enough you’ll do anything. For anybody. One of the last days in the bush we came through a ville that had been wasted—razored and burned off. The bodies were piled to rot in the center of the village, rats and stench already there. At the edge of the clearing the sun was dropping in an elegant fan of muted rose that I might call lovely if I thought my feelings were intact. As though a hook can take you from behind and at the moment of impact you can’t be sure if it’s ecstasy or a pain so old and sure of your body it knows how to imitate ecstasy. And in this country there may be no difference.
    All my love.

HOME

1
    I was discharged from the United States Army in a hot room filled with other men being discharged, men exhausted by their faith in survival, their belief in the possibility of another day. A fading portrait of Richard Nixon hung between limp flags, behind a sergeant stamping forms in triplicate while I stood in front of his desk. The sergeant turned his chair to face a heavy gunmetal-gray typewriter on the desk leaf.
    â€œHome address?” The sergeant’s fingers poised over the keyboard.
    I recited my parents’ address, a memory of empty roads and uneasy tranquillity as I identified my home of record, the house I had grown up in and had given up as lost, as if I stared down a tunnel in a dream. As if my memories of a typical street in a typical town were only imagination, a legend of childhood deep in summers of rivers and old trees and trains, of distant voices.
    Watching out the plane window I saw clouds coming apart in high pink winds. Against the sun some of the clouds looked the color of blood, and I was surprised at how calmly I thought of being wounded, lying in the mud with pantleg gaping and drooling, not sure if I had a leg, waiting for help. It was as if I
were a blind animal in a canyon, alone on the landscape, following a silent river by the feel of water on my feet.
    The plane’s engines droned a steady line in my brain. Eventually I slept, dreaming briefly of a coffin. I was inside. I found I could stand up, wondering where the body was. The air was warm and fragrant, not what I expected, a lush and fluid darkness, inviting, receptive. I woke suddenly when an announcement scratched over the public address system. It was the middle of the night and I knew I would not sleep again. I patted breast pockets for cigarettes, felt the letter, took it out. The last letter I received in-country.
    Â 
    Dear Son,
    Brenda was home for a visit last weekend. Isn’t it amazing your