My wife says put it where I can't take it back. So I put it here. Newest on top.

Sept. 26 -- Sunday night

Went fishing yesterday with my son Gil. Braunig Lake, south of town. First time just the two of us since he was a kid.

We got there at six. Coffee in the thermos. Didn't talk much. That was all right. We never were good at talking, him and me. I left when he was four. That's on me.

Caught four channel cats on stink bait. Gil hooked a redfish. A redfish, in a lake, in Bexar County. They stock them there. Still sounds made up to me.

Around ten he said, "Dad. Yolanda says you're going to a group." I said yes. He said, "Is it helping?" I said I think so. He said, "Good." Then he said, "I always figured it was me. When you'd get like that."

I told him no, mijo. It was never you. Not one day of it was you.

He looked at the water a long time. Then he said the redfish was bigger than anything I caught. Which was true.

Stayed out till almost dark. Drove home with the full moon coming up orange over the brush. Best day I've had in a long time. I'm writing it down so I can prove it later.

Sept. 21 -- Tuesday

Group tonight. I read out loud for the first time.

Not much. Half a page. About coming home in '69. How I processed out at Oakland and flew to San Antonio in my uniform and my father picked me up at the airport and shook my hand. And we drove home and my mother had made enchiladas and the whole family came over. And nobody asked. Not one person. Where I'd been, what it was like. And I was glad. And I've been mad about it for thirty years.

My hands shook the paper. Eight men sitting there. When I finished nobody said anything for a while. Then Walt, the Marine, said, "Yeah." Just yeah.

That was enough. That was more than enough.

Sept. 16 -- Thursday

Bad one last night. The rain one. Woke up at 3:10 and couldn't tell where I was.

Yolanda didn't turn the light on. She knows now not to. She put her hand flat on my back and left it there and said, "You're in Texas, Ray. You're home. It's 1999." Till I believed her.

Sat in the kitchen till it got light. Watched the hurricane coming in on North Carolina on the early news. Went to work.

Sept. 6 -- Labor Day

Gil and his wife and my grandson Mateo came for barbecue. Fajitas, rice, beans, Big Red for the boy. Yolanda made her potato salad.

Mateo is five. He found my old field jacket in the hall closet and put it on. Sleeves down past his knees. He came out in the yard saluting everybody. Everybody laughed. Then he asked me, "Grandpa, were you a soldier?"

I felt everybody get quiet.

I said yes, I was. A long time ago, far away. He said, "Were you brave?" I said I don't know. I said I was scared most of the time. He thought about that and said, "Me too, of the dark," and went off to chase the dog.

Gil was looking at me. I think it's the first time he ever heard me say I was scared. It might be the first time I ever said it.

Sept. 2 -- Thursday

Tuesday at group the young guy from the Gulf talked for the first time. Thirty-something. Tired all the time, he said, hurts all over, the VA keeps telling him it's in his head. He looked around at all us old men like he expected us to laugh.

Nobody laughed. Walt told him, "They told us that too, son. For about fifteen years."

After, in the parking lot, his truck wouldn't start. I had cables. We stood there in the dark with the hoods up and didn't say much. He said thanks. I said see you Tuesday. I hope I do.

Thirty years from now I hope somebody's standing in a parking lot for him.

Aug. 30 -- Monday

Counselor asked us to write about someone.

Tommy. I'm not putting his last name. His mother is still alive, in Laredo.

We went over together, same plane. Both from South Texas, him nineteen and me twenty, both with mothers who lit candles for us every Sunday. He talked all the time. Baseball, girls, his uncle's car, the tamales at Christmas. He could make me laugh when nothing was funny.

I was forty yards away the day he died. That's all I'm going to say about it. That's more than I've said in thirty years.

In 1995 Yolanda and I went to Washington. I told her I wanted to see the monuments. I wanted to see the Wall. You look up the name in the big books at the end, and they give you the panel and the line. I stood in front of it a long time. You can see yourself in the black stone, behind the names. That's the part nobody tells you. You see yourself standing there, forty-eight years old, with his name across your chest.

I made a rubbing with a pencil on a piece of paper. I left a can of Big Red under the panel, because that's what he drank. A ranger told me the Park Service keeps everything people leave there. So it's somewhere. That's good.

The rubbing's been in my sock drawer four years. Tonight I took it out and put it in a frame. Yolanda hung it in the hall.

Aug. 19 -- Thursday

Yelled at Yolanda over the light bill. Wasn't about the light bill. Went out and sat in the truck.

Twenty minutes later she came out with two coffees and sat in the passenger side and didn't say anything. After a while I said sorry. She said, "I know, Ray. Drink your coffee."

Two wives before her didn't come out to the truck. I don't blame them. I didn't give them a reason to.

Aug. 10 -- Tuesday

Homework from group. "Write about a day you hid."

Easy. This Fourth of July.

Every year the whole neighborhood shoots off firecrackers and bottle rockets, even though it's not legal in the city. Every year I tell myself this year I'll be fine. This year I made it till about eight-thirty.

I went in the garage and pulled the door down. Turned on the conjunto station loud and the box fan. Sat on the cooler in the dark. Yolanda's family was over. Her nephews were out front with sparklers. Every pop went right up my back.

Stayed out there till after midnight. Yolanda brought me a plate and set it on the workbench. Her sister asked where Ray was. Yolanda said, "Fixing something." Covered for me. Like she's done eight years.

Thirty years I've been fixing something in the garage on the Fourth of July. Now I wrote it down.

Aug. 3 -- Tuesday

Starting this because the counselor said to write things down, and my nephew showed me how to make a page on the computer, and I figure if I type it I can't take it back.

I'm 52. Two marriages that didn't make it. One son. Third wife, Yolanda, since 1991. Machinist for 26 years. Army infantry, 1968 to 1969.

In May I went four nights without sleeping. The fourth night Yolanda found me at three in the morning sitting in my truck in the driveway with the engine off. Just sitting. She didn't yell. She said, "Ray, you're going to the Vet Center, or I'm going to my sister's." She meant it. So in June I went.

Tuesday nights at seven. Eight or nine of us. Folding chairs, bad coffee, a box of tissues on the table nobody touches. The counselor was a Navy corpsman in '70. Most of us are Vietnam. One Korea. One young guy from the Gulf who sits by the door.

For the first month I didn't say a word. I just listened to grown men say out loud the things I've kept in my chest since I was twenty. The dreams. The anger. Jumping at noises. Sitting with your back to the wall in every restaurant. I thought it was only me.

They gave it a name in 1980. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I heard it on the TV that year and changed the channel. I was on my second marriage by then.

Ya. Enough for tonight.

If you're a vet, or married to one, and want to write me, go ahead. I'm slow but I answer. If you've been putting off the Vet Center, go. It took me thirty years. You don't have to wait that long.