Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,44

a long mission last year. I told you about him. How he used to come every day and I taught him how to use the radio. Just some local kid from the village, barely spoke any English. I don’t think he’d hardly ever been to school, but sharpest mind you ever saw. It’s like he had a natural intelligence for working with things. I’d take the radio apart while he was watching and he’d put it back together fast as you please. Wouldn’t let me help him. We tried to get him to drink beer but he wouldn’t. Most decent kid you ever met. We got to be real good friends, and that didn’t have nothing to do with him being Vietnamese or me being American or this damn war that put me here.

“And meeting someone like Binh, you have to assume that there’s more like him, and then from that you have to assume that even north of the DMZ they got their Binhs. And then pretty soon you’re wondering what makes the enemy so different from me? Probably just like with me, somebody got him all riled up with a bunch of noise, put a gun in his hand and said, Go kill. And you can bet they’ve got their heroes, their honor, and their medals just like we do. Only what they call bravery we call treachery, and what we call bravery no doubt they call treachery. Only difference is which side of the line you’re on. That’s something I guarantee Uncle Sam would rather not have you think about.

“Then you get to wondering, Laura, if they can lie to me about that, and do it so damn well and convincing, then what else is a lie? What if everything we’ve ever been taught as true is a lie? A made-up story? Because we make them up all the time here, believe me.

“The government surely never intended this, but they’re schooling some mighty skeptical boys over here, guys who from now on will look sideways at everything you present them with because they’ve been handed nothing but shit for so long that they won’t take nothing for granted anymore. That could actually be the best thing the army has done, taken people like me and turned them into doubters. After two years here, I finally know there’s nothing in this world worth dying for except maybe love.”

I was shivering as I read, hunched over the pages and sniffling against the cold. The bus rocked as it veered into downtown Baton Rouge. I turned to the last page.

“Laura, you haven’t written me for a while. I hardly can blame you, my letters haven’t been very cheery lately. And then all I’ve talked about is how when I get home we’re gonna do this and that and I paint this dream of how it’s going to be when we’re together, but it occurs to me that maybe I should’ve asked you first before I put you in the middle of that dream. The truth is I don’t hardly know you except through your letters. But I guess that’s all right. They kept me going. I needed someone to write to, and I always looked forward to getting your reply.

“Course if you’re reading this now, hell, none of that hardly makes any difference anymore. But if it helps you to know, I can tell you that if ever I was a little bit kinder or a little bit braver, it was because I had a picture of you in my mind and I wanted to please you. That’s what the medals mean. Don’t have shit to do with the war.

“So if you ever need any strength in the future, if you ever get to feeling so low you think you aren’t worth anything, I hope you take out one of these medals and hold it in your hand and remember that once a boy loved you with all his heart.

“Look in on my dad from time to time if you could. He always liked you.

“I don’t want to end this letter—

“Love always,

“Tim.”

I stood on the steps in front of the downtown bus station, my suitcase leaning against my leg. This was where I usually caught a taxi to take me to school, but at the moment I couldn’t move. I was stunned with loss. It seemed pointless to go forward or back. A door opened behind me and a man in an overcoat passed purposefully down to the sidewalk. The