One Black Soldier (the day the Vietnam War came home to me)

Summer, 1966.

I am trying to take

a Polaroid picture

of one black soldier

doing the Ali shuffle

outside the barracks

at Fort Sam Houston

in San Antonio, Texas.

He will not hold still.

“Viet Nam, here I come!”

He is 19 years old,

bobbing and weaving

up and down

the barracks’ steps,

smile wide as Texas.

Hey! Hold still a minute wouldya?

Okay… Now!

The print slides from the camera.

A minute later he is grinning at me,

fists frozen in air,

the world’s greatest.

“Yeaaahhh! We gonna whip old Charlie’s tail!”

Pop! Pop!! Pop!!!

His fists smack the air as he

ducks and dodges

through the jungles of Viet Nam.

He is 82nd Airborne.

He is my friend.

One year later —

I’m stationed at Valley Forge General Hospital at

Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

I work nights on orthopedic ward 5.

There are strange, sucking noises

coming from the ward as I

sterilize the medicine carts.

Broken femurs.

Maggot-eaten men.

I keep my distance.

One morning,

one black soldier

wheels himself along the

polished wooden hallway.

His stumps end

high on boxer’s legs,

six inches above the knee.

Our eyes touch.

I want to disappear.

We shake hands.

Smile still as wide as Texas,

yet,

not the same smile.

He tells his story.

As he speaks my mind begins to wander…

those two white-bandaged phantoms are

waving the air, waving at me,

telling a different story,

speaking the body’s agony of being

blown

apart

while on night patrol in the

jungles of Nam.

Ascuncian,

the Hawaiian GI

who bunked

under me

at Fort Sam,

was ripped into

two pieces,

machine gun fire

raking across his back

from an unseen enemy

embedded in the jungle treetops.

A year never seemed so far away.

My friend

has brought the war

home.

I grudgingly accept it.

I take it to

my barracks’ room

and sleep with it.

I wake up with it

that afternoon.

I strap it to the back

of my motorcycle.

I ride the back roads of the

Amish countryside.

I bury it beneath a

dying

red sun.

Summer’s greens turn gray,

as a Polaroid picture

of one black soldier

burns a hole in my heart.