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Amy was ten, doing a report for school.
She had her questions on notebook paper
in her Trapper Keeper.
What did you eat. What was the weather.
Were you scared.

I told her about the red dirt
that got into everything,
that I found in the seams of my boots
two years after, in the closet,
and stood there holding it
like it was gold.

I told her about the kids by the road
who sold us Cokes, warm,
for more than they were worth,
and how we paid it every time.

I told her about the rain.

I did not answer the last question.
She wrote down Yes anyway,
in pencil, in her careful hand,
and she was right,
and she got a B-plus,
and I have that report still
in the drawer with my discharge papers.

Luke is four and has a bag of them,
green, the same kind I had,
the one on his belly with the rifle,
the one with the radio,
the one who's been throwing something
for fifty years and never let go.

He sets up a war on the kitchen floor.
I get down there, knees popping,
and he gives me the ones with the bent bases
that won't stand up.
We fight a while.

Then I say, It's getting late,
their moms want them home for supper,
and Luke thinks about this
and nods,
and we march them all, both sides,
into the Cool Whip tub
and put the lid on,
and he says, Night, guys.

Night, guys.

There are nine of us, most weeks.
A Marine who was at Hue.
A Navy man off the river boats.
A door gunner who still
can't sit with his back to a window.
A cook from Long Binh who says
he's got nothing to say,
then says the best things of anybody.

We drink bad coffee from a steel urn.
Nobody fixes anybody.
That's the rule, I think,
though nobody ever said it out loud.
You say your piece and they nod,
and it's like setting down a pack
you forgot you had on.

Driving home I roll the window down,
even in January,
and let the cold in,
and breathe.