The Army took their sweet damn time shipping me home from Vietnam, especially considering how quickly they got me over there in the first place. They had impatiently rushed me to Vietnam in only two days. But, a year later, when my tour was complete, they seemed to be in no hurry to fly me back, first by cargo transport from Da Nang to Guam, where I sat under the fluorescent lights in the MAC terminal's plastic seats for three days waiting for a military hop; then to Hawaii, then wait again, living on stale Oreos and instant coffee from the vending machines, then bouncing in troop seats, twelve hours to Travis in California, and finally a flight, via Texas, Missouri and Ohio, to Westover Air Force Base in western Massachusetts. Then I caught a bus, to wait for another bus, to Boston. Then, at South Station, I waited for the Red Line. Nobody spit on me, which I would have welcomed. I was not reviled; I was invisible. A few people on the T stared at me, in my Class A uniform, with broad shoulders and narrow waist. Whispering to each other, they backed their curious children away from me slowly, as though I were a bag of hazardous waste.

Walking up the street from the MTA station in Quincy, with the strap of my green duffle bag biting into my right shoulder, was like going back in time.

I passed the neon lights of Nick's Cafe. I recalled that, before I left, I could get a short draft of Old Milwaukee for a quarter. I wanted to lean against the door, and slip into the cool darkness. But I just kept walking up the hill, for the last, and hardest, mile of a ten-thousand-mile journey from a fetid jungle halfway around the world.

My dad had been a big man, tall, formidable, and broad shouldered, his fist as big as one of grandma's pie plates. His breath always had smelled like cheap Scotch, stale Chesterfields, and Tums. His hands shook when he'd tie my necktie for me before church. But, as soon as he had his first drink in the morning, his tremors would resolve. I learned very young to stay an arm's length away from him, or more—eventually a lot more.

He kept his distance from me as well. It was his choice, and I can't fault him for it. After all, he went to work every day, put a roof over our heads, kept us fed, and, in the summer, threw us all in the Dodge and drove us down to the Cape every now and then. So, if he wanted to keep to himself, I had no right to squawk.

He never spoke much, at least, not to me, anyway. He talked to my sisters a lot. He seemed eager to learn about their lives. He'd help Marion with her homework and chose a good college for her to go to. He helped Lucy pick out her first car, as long as it wasn't German or Japanese. He liked their boyfriends, too, and would talk sports and politics with them.

At those times, when he was articulate, well informed, thoughtful, and even philosophical, I ached to be invited into the forbidden zone of his living room, behind the boundary of the closed French doors, unseen and unheard, in order to be closer to the conversations, and to listen to the man who, in my own home, was a complete stranger to me.

My big sisters had taught me how to cook, how to play baseball, how to drive a stick, and how to talk to girls. Marion would grill hamburgers for us outside in the summer, as we were the only family on the block whose father wouldn't barbecue. Lucy taught me how to buy a beer when I was underage. That was an irony, wasn't it, that I was old enough to get drafted and to die in the jungle, but not old enough to vote or to go into a bar and buy myself a drink.

We all had a great time going to my sisters' high school graduations. Dad was all proud and talkative. When it was my turn, he didn't come to mine, though; he told Mom to tell me that he was too busy at work. By then, it didn't matter. I didn't want him there anyway. Our relationship had gotten complicated, with long periods of silence, punctuated by criticism and sarcasm.

One Saturday afternoon, in the summer after graduation, I was eating one of my mom's great cold chicken sandwiches at the kitchen table, and rinsing it down with a cold Bud. The mailman delivered a letter to me that began, “Greetings from the President.” The letter made the point of reminding me what a great honor it was to be chosen by my community—that is, my draft board—to defend our country in its hour of need. I showed the letter to my mom.

“You should tell your father,” she said.

“Why bother?” I asked.

“He should know.”

“He'll figure it out soon enough.”

“Bobby, tell your father!” she ordered. “It's not a question.” I walked to the living room and looked through the French doors. He was sitting in his overstuffed chair that had borne his ever-increasing girth every day for the previous twenty years. A half-full glass, scotch and water on the rocks, sweated its condensation into white circles on grandma's mahogany end table. His face was hidden in his Boston Globe. Smoke from the cigarette in the fingers of his right hand, resting on the chair's worn upholstered arm, at first rose smoothly in the still, humid air, and then broke into swirls of turbulence and chaos.

I rapped my knuckles on the glass. He looked up from the newspaper, raised one eyebrow and, without expression, gestured me in.

“Dad?” I said, standing almost at attention, my hands on the back of the couch.

“Yeah.”

“I've been drafted,” I said. He glanced up, over the top of his tortoiseshell bifocals.

“Yeah, I knew that would be coming soon,” he said, his Chesterfield between his lips. He folded his paper and looked back up at me. The cigarette tip glowed as he took a deep drag. With trembling fingers, he took the cigarette from his mouth, and rolled its gray tip on the edge of the same clear glass ashtray that he had used for the last twenty years. His exhaled smoke traveled halfway across the room.

“Are you going to go?” he asked.

“I don't really have an option.”

“I know a lot of kids are headin' to Canada,” he said.

I knew that, but I was too scared to go to Canada. I was also too scared to go to Vietnam; I pictured myself tied to a tree with my balls stuffed in my mouth. I wondered how loud I'd scream, or if I would just pass out, when the V.C. dragged a rusty knife across my genitals. I'd already had a nightmare about being ordered to bayonet my sisters in their sleep.

“No, Dad,” I answered. “I'm not going to Canada.”

He stared at me as though he had more that he wanted to say. I wished that I did also, but nothing came to mind except for my extreme discomfort at being in his presence. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. He looked up at me, thoughtfully, and said nothing.

“Okay, then, well, good luck,” he finally noted, and went back to the newspaper. In afterthought, he added, “And don't volunteer for anything. Got that?”

“Yeah, got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

On the day I left, Lucy drove me downtown to the bus station. She'd had a close friend who hadn't made it home from Vietnam. She also had some friends who had. They weren't doing so well. She hugged me and cried. At the moment when I watched her drive off, while I was getting on the bus, I realized that I had never before felt so alone.

A year later, with my duffel strap digging into my shoulder after the long walk uphill from the MTA station, I crossed the vacant lot behind our house. With its gravel and long weeds, it had not changed since I left. I climbed the creaky wooden back steps to our kitchen door. I saw Mom and Lucy, standing at the table, folding towels and setting them into a wicker basket. I set my duffle down on the porch, leaned forward, opened the screen door, and rapped my knuckles on the window. When they looked over, I pressed my face to the glass. As I opened the door and walked in, Mom screamed, “Bobby!” and did that little dance that all moms do, shuffling toward me in her bedroom slippers with her arms wavin' in the air. Lucy just came up slowly, one hand over her mouth, her eyes welling up. Twice she tried to speak my name, but she just choked up and no words came out. She just looked in my face, and inhaled deeply, as though she had been holding her breath for the entire year that I had been gone. She put her arms around my rock-hard shoulders, slowly, carefully, like I was a piece of my grandmother's stem crystal. She finally whispered my name—“oh, Bobby”—just once, and sobbed, burying her wet eyes into my shirt. She kept squeezing my arm to make sure it was really me.

“Go say ‘hi' to your father,” Mom said. “He'll be glad to see you.”

“In a minute,” I answered. “I'm really beat.” The kitchen chair scraped loudly on the linoleum as I pulled it out and sat down at the table.

Lucy stood at the wall with the black phone receiver up to her ear, coiling the telephone wire in her other hand. “Marion,” she said into the phone, barely able to speak, “Bobby's home! Yeah, he's fine. He looks great. Okay… tonight. See you then.”

Mom slid a cup of real coffee under my nose, and, without asking, started making me a cold chicken sandwich on spongy Wonder Bread—real mayo, a pinch of fresh ground pepper, lettuce, and a thick slice of a juicy fresh tomato from her garden. I sipped the real coffee with real cream in it. The sandwich tasted like Thanksgiving. Lucy sat down next to the folded towels and stared at me with her chin in her hands. Finally, she asked what it had been like over there.

I had started to tell them about Vietnam when Dad's shadow fell across the kitchen door. He had a glass in his hand, empty except for a few half-melted ice cubes. His loose pants were cinched in tight; you could see that he had cut a new hole in his belt. He had lost forty pounds at least, and his bone-white skin hung off him in wrinkles. Looking like an old tomcat that had stopped grooming himself, his hair, now gray, was matted, and his once fiery amber eyes had become complacent and pale.

“Hey, what's with the racket in here?” he growled. Then he saw me. “Well, will you lookit what the cat dragged in.” He pulled out a chair and, with a heavy grunt, lowered himself to the kitchen table, leaning forward on his elbows. Mom and Lucy looked at me, stunned. He'd never sat down there before. There were no ashtrays in the kitchen.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, looking over at him. He listened quietly as I continued with a funny story about how, on my way home, in Guam, I'd been detailed to march in a parade for Vice President Agnew, and got the American flag caught in a tree.

“You were the tallest guy in your company,” he interrupted.

“Yeah,” I answered, astonished that he was actually talking to me. “How did you know?”

“Because,” he said, “they always make the tallest guy carry the flag. The same thing happened to me in England in ‘44, except that I got it caught in a telephone wire.” He laughed, and then started coughing.

“Damn bronchitis,” he said. He stood, and walked over to the counter for a paper towel. Mom and Lucy glanced at each other with a cold finality. He coughed twice into the paper, wiped his lips, and threw the bloodstained towel into the trash.

“Grab yourself a beer,” he ordered, as he poured another scotch, “and come with me. We need to talk.” He disappeared into the living room.

Talk? We never talked. I couldn't remember the last time we “talked.” I opened the fridge and grabbed a cold Bud; I popped it open, with a click, then a rush of air. I slurped at the cool foam that bubbled from the top.

I followed him to the living room. He was standing by the French doors that separated it from the front hall. I walked in, and he closed the door behind me. Through the glass panels in the doors, I could see Mom and Lucy back in the dining room, shoulder to shoulder, quietly staring at us. Mom wrung her hands in her apron.

“Take a seat,” he said, easing himself with two hands down into the depths of his upholstered chair. He pulled a Chesterfield from the soft pack on the end table. His hands shook as he struck the match, holding it in the cup of his hands to shield it from sight, the same as he always did, even when he was the only guy in the room. He took a deep drag, blew the match out, leaned forward on his elbows with the cigarette between the tips of his nutmeg-stained fingers, and looked straight at me.

“Now that you're back,” he began, slowly, with hesitation, rolling his ash on the edge of the ashtray, “a lot of people are going to ask you what you saw. No matter how hard you try, you'll never be able to tell them; you'll never be able to make them see. In order to understand, they'll ask you more and more questions; with each question, you'll be less inclined to tell them the truth.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you'll discover very quickly that they really don't want to know. Those who suppose that they love you really don't want to know what you had to do to survive. They want to hear the funny stories, like getting the flag caught in a tree in front of the Vice President. But as to what really happened, don't go there.”

“Yessir,” I nodded, lowering my gaze.

“It's all the same, son. I don't need to ask you what happened over there, because I already know. I was in the infantry myself. You cannot give back those moments that will echo in your memory forever. You're going to have to live with that, every day.”

As I sat listening, I wondered if I was having an “out of body” experience, sitting with a stranger who looked like my dad, but was ten years older and much more frail than I remembered. He even sounded like my dad, but he was pensive and uncharacteristically introspective.

“We are a long long trail of soldiers,” he went on, “all of us, walking quietly, wishing to forget the memories and events that, like it or not, have made us who we are. And now you're part of the line, too.”

I wondered if he was actually talking to me, or if he saw somebody else walking in front of him.

“In thirty years,” he went on, “you'll probably be able to fly Pan Am to Saigon, buy a Pepsi and a Big Mac, and walk down their main street like it was any city in the world. But, to you, it will always smell like something is burning—burning grass, burning oil, burning hair, burning excrement, and burning flesh. It will always be noisy, but you won't mind the noise so much. No, it will be the quiet little sounds in the hush of the quiet night that will drive you crazy, that will make you bolt upright from a sound sleep. You'll hear the metal-on-metal rasp of a bayonet sliding out of its sheath, or the rustle of a guy sneaking up on you hoping to slit your throat. You'll always be looking over your shoulder for the guys in the black pajamas, and you'll always be jerking around when you hear those flip-flop sandals made of old tires that snap when they run.”

I sat quietly, looking at the scarecrow that had taken my father's place. He had just spoken more to me now than he had since I was in the fifth grade.

“But, you can tell me anything,” he said, “because I've been there, and now, you've been there, too. I'll listen to it all, and I'll nod my head, because I get it.”

The blue smoke from his cigarette curled upwards into the thickness of our uncomfortable silence. Having never before sat so long in his presence, I had never noticed the brown nicotine ring on the ceiling over his chair. I startled at the single staccato of a car backfiring up the street. From the darkness in the western sky came a long, low, distant rumble that signaled the approach of a summer thunderstorm. The ice cubes clicked loudly as they melted and shifted in his glass. Looking down at my own hands, I could make out the hint of a slight resting tremor.

I realized that he was waiting, giving me the opportunity to speak.

“Dad?” I finally asked. “What happened to you?”

“Same as you, boy,” he answered slowly, sipping his scotch. “Same as you. Sure, I saw my friends get killed, but that was the easy part of it. I watched guys, that I thought I knew, take a knife and cut the gold teeth out of an enemy soldier who was still alive. I saw my guys so psychotic with rage that they held a man down, a German, and forced him to watch as they gang-raped his teenage daughter, who, in another place and time, could have been my prom date. Then they cut… oh, hell… what's the fuckin' difference? She was just another dead German.”

His cigarette hissed as he took another drag in the silence.

“Did you win any medals over there?” he finally asked.

“No,” I croaked, with a dry mouth.

“Good for you,” he answered. “I did, but I wish I hadn't. Bronze Star. We were in Normandy. I killed twelve krauts in five minutes. Did you fuck anybody while you were over there?”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head slowly. I hadn't even fucked anybody here yet.

“I did,” he said. “We all did.”

“‘What happened to me,' you ask?” he went on. “I'll tell you what happened. In a single long year, I followed Patton across France, Belgium, and half of Germany. I walked most of the way. I had a front row seat to the biggest fuck-ups in the history of the world, Normandy, Market Garden, Hurtgen forest, the Bulge. I watched a brand-new replacement, just a kid from Jersey, get run over by one of our own tanks. Squashed him like one of your mom's ripe tomatoes. It was the loudest, highest scream I've ever heard in my life. Not from the pain, just the fear of oblivion. That tank caught him by the leg and slowly walked up his body, crunching into his pelvis like it was a saltine. His guts came oozing up through the treads. There was nothing left of him but a dark, wet stain on the floor of the Hurtgen forest and his last cry to his mom echoing through the trees.”

Dad picked up his Chesterfields from the end table. He held them out to me.

“Smoke?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Thanks.” Taking the pack, I tapped it lightly, and held them out to him. He took one. I held the pack up to my mouth, pulled a Chesterfield out with my teeth, and threw the pack down onto the coffee table. Picking up the matches, I struck one against the carbon strip, and, out of habit, shielding the lit match in the cup of my palm, I held it out with steady hands. Dad leaned forward. In the silence of the living room, his tobacco crackled as it ignited. I lit my own cigarette, and blew out the match as I exhaled.

“How long before you started smoking over there?” he asked, sitting back, and crossing one leg over his knee.

“About a week,” I said. He nodded.

“Yeah, me too,” he said.

“I got home in late ‘45,” he continued. “We couldn't wait to get home. We were so excited that it was over, and that we had made it. But, by the time the ships got us home, the country had moved on. No more parades, no more kisses in Times Square, and no more jobs. I rode home on the MTA and walked up the street in my uniform, just like you did. And nobody noticed, just like today. Finally, I found work, on an assembly line making toothpaste for Colgate-Palmolive. The world said that we'd saved Western civilization from the dark abyss of Nazism, and next thing I know, I'm married, raising kids, paying down a mortgage, and making toothpaste for a living. Toothpaste!”

“Dad,” I said. “You worked your way up to manager.”

“You're fucking kidding me. It was toothpaste, kid,” he answered. “Toothpaste! Big fucking deal!”

We sat quietly. I could hear Mom and Lucy moving about in the dining room.

“Son,” he said finally. “You don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that it's all been for nothin'. You don't want to go to your grave thinking that, on the very best day of your life, you ran up a sand dune and shot twelve guys in the face who were just like you, and who wanted to go home to their moms and sisters, just like you.”

“Dad,” I paused, taking a drag off my cigarette. “Why did you hate me so much?”

“I didn't hate you, at all,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “You were the son I had always dreamed I'd have. You were going to write your own ticket. Then, as you grew up, I got scared. I got scared that some politician in an empty suit was going to send you far away from me, so that a stranger in a foreign uniform could run up a hill and shoot you in the face, just because some other politician in another empty suit told him to do it, all in the name of ‘national security'.”

With that, he took a long last drag. His chest rattled as he exhaled into the still air. As he crushed his out cigarette, his trembling fingers spilled gray ash on the worn and faded upholstery. He leaned back in his chair, with his hands in his lap. He looked out the window at the dark clouds in the west. I sat staring, heartbroken in my shame, at the emaciated shell of the father whom I had never bothered to know until this moment.

I heard the thunder again in the distance. We didn't speak for a long time. I could see in his vacant eyes that he was somewhere else, France, maybe Belgium. With Dad sitting silently in his chair, I got up to leave the room. As I walked behind him to the door, I hesitated, turned back, and put my hands down on his shoulders, which at one time had been firm and sinewy, but now were only thin skin stretched tightly over tired bone. I hadn't actually touched him in over ten years. I left the room, closing the French door behind me with a faint click. Mom and Lucy were setting the table.

“Do you want to take a shower?” Mom asked, cheerfully. “Your room's all made up and Lucy left fresh towels on the bed. Marion knows you're home. She'll be here for supper. Maybe you'll want to change out of your uniform before supper?”

Mom wanted so badly for everything to go back to the way it was.

“Welcome home,” I thought. “Chicken sandwich, clean towels, and clean sheets. Oh, yeah, and fresh toothpaste.”

“No thanks, Mom, I'm good for now,” I said. I grabbed another Bud from the fridge and, with my free hand loosening first my tie, and then the button on my uniform collar. I went out the front door, sat down on the hard brick steps, and leaned against the black, wrought iron railing. The humid air was so thick that you could slice it with a bread knife. After a few minutes, the screen door creaked open. Lucy smoothed her blue jean skirt and sat down next to me. She held a bottle of Coke. The condensation dripped down the glass.

“He looks like hell,” I said finally.

“It's been a rough year for us,” she answered, staring off into the past. “For you, too, I guess.”

I watched two young girls go by on their bikes, talking and laughing. A few doors up, a mutt barked while some boys played baseball in the street, undeterred by the threat of rain. A week before, halfway around the world, I had seen children that age, but they were all dead.

“You were in there quite a while,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Thunder, louder now, echoed through the vague blackness of the western sky.

“No, sis,” I shook my head, and put my arm around her. She put her head against mine. “I'm not sure I ever can.”