Free Eli the Good by Silas House Page A

my mother, and in the upper left corner was a San Francisco Army Post Office Box number. In the space where the stamp should have been, my father had written
Free.
The packet felt as heavy as a big rock in my hands.
    “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Edie said. She had slid down to the floor and sat leaning against the bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. “It feels wrong to me.”
    “Don’t you want to know what it was like, though?”
    She looked troubled, her normally blue eyes turned into dots of thundercloud gray. Her face was flat and square. “Yes, but not like this. You ought to just talk to him, Eli.”
    “He won’t tell me anything.”
    “Maybe if you asked him the right way.”
    “I’ve asked every way I know how.”
    She sighed, her shoulders coming down with the long breath. “Well, maybe just a couple, all right?”
    I worked the first letter out of the stack, afraid that if I undid the knot on the black ribbon my mother would somehow detect my intrusion. It seemed that she had arranged them from the earliest to the latest date after he had finally shipped out, since the first one was postmarked October 28, 1966. I brought the crisp envelope up to my nose and drew in its scent. The paper smelled of ink, tangy and metallic.
    My mother had ripped the end off each envelope. I could see her doing this, careful and hesitant so as not to accidentally cut into the letter that stood inside. I tapped the corner against my palm, and the letter slid out. For just a moment I let the three pieces of small, folded stationery rest on my palm, testing their weight.
    “Be careful,” Edie whispered, making me feel as if I were handling a pack of firecrackers.
    I unfolded the pages in slow, measured motions, and then laid them on the floor in front of me, smoothing my hand over the creases. The paper was thin and rough, like the paper I imagined the Constitution might have been written upon. I leaned forward on my knees and read aloud.
    Hey Baby,
    Well, I’m here. Six days on that ship. The first two days I was so sick I thought I was going to die. All these men who had gone through rough-as-hell basic training leaned over the rail, puking their guts up.
    But I’m here. And I’m alive. So far. We are close to the Michelin and Firestone plants, which is a strange thing to know, being so far away from home and seeing the signs of something so familiar. I am missing you like crazy and somehow seeing those rubber factories makes me miss you all the worse.
    My sergeant says that homesickness is what kills you over here, and also what gets you through it. As I write this I have been here two days and already I know that the main reason I want to live is so I can get back to you, back to home. I miss that soft place behind your knee and the way your mouth always tastes like strawberries.
    “Eli,” Edie said at this point. “Maybe you ought to stop.”
    But I kept reading:
    I miss Josie getting my hand just before bedtime and asking me to take her out onto our little porch to see the stars. How quiet she was when I pointed out the Big Dipper to her, the way she sat up real straight and said, “I see it, Daddy,” after a long time of looking, and the way it felt when I thought that maybe she did see it. God, you’ve never known homesickness until you’re on the other side of the world. Add to this that you know you’ll eventually see some action, that people are dying over here every day. If a man thought too much about it he’d get himself killed, as he’d crack up.
    “That’s enough, Eli,” Edie said. I saw then that she had unfolded herself during my reading and was lying on the floor, one arm propping up the side of her face. “Come on, now.”
    “No,” I said, and I didn’t sound like myself at all. I never spoke with so much force to Edie. “Just a couple more.”
    But then I read three more, aloud, and after that she didn’t stop me. With each one we went deeper and deeper into Vietnam. There