Free Alive and Dead in Indiana by Michael Martone

say they know by touch the denomination of the bill. They make change easily. They sit, their creamy eyes floating in their heads, surrounded by candy. No matter how quiet I am. “Yes, may I help you?”
    I buy some gum and return to my place. I write letters to the floorwalker. I tell him I did steal some stamps. “I’ll never be able to see you again.” Also a letter to Mr. Lee, breaking it to him gently.
    One night Robert took me to his room at the Fox Hotel. French windows led out to the balcony where he had set up a white telescope. Ten stories up you could see down to the spokes of the lighted streets as they radiated from their circles. The circles were phosphorescent craters. All along the mall, the government buildings were flooded with lights. Car lots on the south side were having sales. Surplus spotlight beams waved back and forth. I looked at the city and saw it for the first time. Robert, through his telescope, searched for Sputnik.
    “There, there! That’s it!” He was so happy. “Look at it as it goes by.”
    The stars are different in Indianapolis. I can see no dragons, no bears, no crabs. My eyes came back down to the red neon of the insurance companies on Meridian.
    I am sitting here now in my usual place writing you another letter. I can’t say things right. I cannot wait any longer. And, now, I am here at the signature, the farewell. Who is the John of this Dear John letter? I imagine you somewhere at mail call. The names of the dead shouted out, packages passed along on fingertips. Envelopes thrown, arms reaching out. “Yo! Here! That’s me!”
    What should I do? Robert will soon ask me to marry him. We will honeymoon in England, the better to study the evils of Socialism. He will read to me from newspapers over breakfast. We will talk about you as would a father and a sister. He will ask me to marry him as I walk out of this building for the last time having left a box of chocolates for the kind woman at the desk. I will wear white gloves and inspect the equipment on the lawn in front of the building. The gun barrels crisscross above our heads. The grass has grown up around the tires of the caissons and the tracks of the tanks.
    Robert has shown me a picture of your funeral in Hsuchow. I have it here. I will send it to you. The Japanese probably wonder how they got into this. They want to go home now that the war is over. They look over Drummond’s shoulder at the casket. The Chinese, in their German-looking helmets, are drawn up in a row, bayonets fixed but sheathed. They go out of focus as they approach the camera. There are too many stripes on the flag. Is this hope? Is it just me? The one flaw that gives the deception away. The foliage looks flat, a painted flat. The whole thing staged, a postcard from a wax museum. Why was the picture taken? Can no one believe you are dead?
    Why did you leave me, John? That is the heart of the matter. Robert showed me how to read the cowlick on the chocolate shells. All the assorted pieces before him, semisweet and milk, in the pleated paper cups. Each had its own dripping crest that told its center. A crown of thorns for coconut, a halo for cherries. That is what we all need. Our own braille, like phrenology, to tell us the difference between cordials and hard centers.
    I am in Indianapolis. Robert is inviting some friends to come and talk about the world, about its future, about you. I will meet them. I will be as close as they come to you.
    I am going through my file of letters to a dead man. One of the first things I learned were your last words, reported by Lt. Tung:

     
    Wo pu neng tsou le . I cannot go on. I cannot go on. Yet I fear we cannot live without you.

THE GREEK LETTER IN THE RED
     
    The skull over the door is stolen from the biology lab. There are red Christmas tree lights in the eye sockets. The triangle has something to do with champagne. They don’t tell me what. The TKE sign stays on all night. Sometimes, the boys from the other