Free If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go by Judy Chicurel Page A

thinking about it. I had enough trouble shaving my legs, trying not to cut my shinbone to ribbons with the razor. “But how does that even work?”
    “No fucking idea, but the damage is done,” Mitch said. He licked the dregs of his glass and signaled to Len for another.
    “And then you come back,” he said. “To this fucking sinkhole. All that Stars and Stripes forever crap. And instead of a ticker-tape parade—though you ask me, who needs that bullshit—you get some sixteen-year-old twat—sorry, sweetheart, but that’s what she was—whose dressdoesn’t even cover her ass, asking are you proud of yourself, killing all those babies. And nobody wants to hire you because all they remember out of the whole fucking war is the My Lai massacre and they think you’re some kind of monster. But no one ever talks about the four-year-olds with dynamite strapped all over ’em, walking at you, waving, ‘Hey, GI! Okay, GI!’ Putting their arms out for you to pick ’em up and hug ’em so you could blow the fuck up.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask what Luke had told him, but I knew that even if Mitch remembered the conversation, he wouldn’t tell me.
    “And then, when you can’t take it anymore, you turn to Uncle Sam for help, and look at what happens.” Mitch shook his head and made the sign of the cross with his middle finger. “Those poor bastards.” He was talking about the Veteran’s Hospital in St. Cecily’s Parish, over in Suffolk County. It had been in all the papers, the news stations, everywhere. They had a weekly support group for Vietnam veterans having a hard time adjusting to life back in the States. The group had nine men in it, plus the psychologist who ran it. On a rainy Thursday, while they were all sitting around talking about whatever people in support groups talk about, one of the veterans took out a .22 pistol and shot up the men in the group. He killed five of them, including the psychologist, and most of the others were critically injured. Afterward, he just sat there until the cops came and arrested him. When they asked him why, he just kept saying,
“Dung lye, dung lye,”
over and over again.
Newsday
said
dung lye
means “no more” in Vietnamese.
    “Excuse me, pal.” A voice came down from the end of the bar, hidden by the dust motes dancing through the streaming sunlight. It came from the group of construction workers sitting at the other end of the bar. “Some of us don’t appreciate hearing this country being referred to as ‘a fucking sinkhole.’”
    “Is that so?” Mitch asked, like he was really interested.
    “Yeah, it’s so,” another voice said.
    “What company you fight in?” Mitch asked quietly. “Where were you, ’68, ’69? Da Nang? Saigon? Mekong Delta?”
    “I was in Korea,” the voice said. It was a fat man’s voice. I couldn’t make out faces or features in their sunlit silhouettes, but their asses were crowding their barstools, hanging over the sides.
    “Korea? You mean that pussy war, lasted about two minutes?” Mitch asked, like he was making polite conversation.
    I heard the stools swivel and shift, heard the creaking as someone stood up, his work boots hitting the floor.
    “I’d watch my mouth, I was you, pal,” the voice said.
    “There’s some of us here still believe that America is the greatest country on earth,” someone else said.
    “Then some of us must be real fucking assholes,” Mitch said, blowing smoke rings. They rose up to the ceiling.
    Len was looking back and forth between Mitch and the construction workers. “Let’s take it easy,” he said, his fingers curling around the brass rungs behind the bar.
    “You don’t like it here, why don’t you move to Russia?” one of the construction workers asked.
    “Too fucking cold,” Mitch said, shaking his head. “Listen though, let me ask you something: You love your kids?”
    “Leave my kids out of this,” the fat voice said.
    “You love ’em?” Mitch