I was walking down the hill from the school bus to our house down on the dead end road by the swamp he called a lake. It was a warm day for April, and sunny. It was a Monday.

Frank Bastek, my sisters boyfriend at the time, was 18 years old and he was waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. I knew something was up because he was just Linda’s boyfriend we didn’t really have anything much to do with each other. I wanted to learn to drive his Chevy Impala convertible, but he wouldn’t let me because I was only eight. I thought it was a big block 409, then I found out it was only a six-cylinder so I didn’t want to drive it anyway.

We had a basketball net nailed to a big maple tree, by the gravel and mud driveway and Frank wanted to shoot hoops with me. That’s when I had a vibe that something was very wrong.

Dougie Hulseapple came down from his house on the top of the hill, through the path we’d beaten to each other’s back yards. He walked up to me and said that my father was very sick and in the hospital, with an attitude I hope Dougie took with him to his grave of, “So what are you going to do about it?” Dougie wanted to know what everyone was going to do about everything all the time.

I got pissed and said, “This is what I’m going to do about it!” My canned response to his daily question and I took a swing and we ended up rolling around in the grass. It was around 3:30pm and about the time of day we always had our fight, unless it was a slow day in school or on the bus, and we’d have our fight there instead. School fights sucked. Teachers were always breaking us up before we got going.

I dusted the fight-dirt off my shirt and pants and was headed up to Kippy Currier’s house to play with trucks in his sandbox when I heard Ma yelling for me out the backdoor. I walked back and into the kitchen and Uncle Rick and Uncle Art and Uncle Ben and Uncle Jeff were there and Ma said he was dead. I think that was the first time I said fuck and I told her she was fucking lying.

Ma just repeated he was dead.

I ran into my room through a crowd of people in the front of the house and slammed the door.

Next thing I remember cousin Bobby’s dad, my Uncle Rick, was sitting there on the bed next to me. We didn’t say much. Looking back through the years now I realize he was just a kid himself, maybe twenty five or thirty or so. He was broken too. His big brother was dead.

Then Bobby came in and Uncle Rick left us alone.

We sat on my bed with the door shut and I am pretty sure I started to cry then. Bobby said it was ok, because the door was closed so nobody would see.

The last thing I remember was my dad’s mom’s shattered eyes and the stench of a room full of flowers and wearing a suit. Then they closed the lid on the box and that was the end of all that.

So, yeah, daughter, I remember it still. Fifty-seven years later.

Far off through some long forgotten fog; words trapped inside my skull, I hear Cronkite’s voice over a staticky tube radio. I hear the boom and recoil of very old guns. I hear Pete’s voice.

Pete spent his entire tour of duty in Vietnam tripping on acid. He turned to heroin when he came back home to Venice, Florida. Heroin kept the screams at bay. He said the acid saved him; without it he’d have blown his brains all over some enthusiastic lieutenant’s uniform.

He tells me that option is still always on the table. It’s been day to day for Pete since 1970.

We stood on the beach as the sun fell into the big water and he threw his medals into the Gulf of Mexico. As the shiny bronze and ribbons plopped into the sea he said he tries everyday to forget that moment; baffled why anyone would call him a hero for what he did. He says he can still smell that day and all the sensations that pass though a man when he’s gone killing.

As boys, Pete and me, we’d sneak into a massive stone monetary nestled deep in the woods and listen to the Gregorian chants of the monks echo off the great stone walls. The sounds used to bounce around inside those chambers for a long time after the singing stopped.

My grandma said that was the sound the angels made. Pete said that was the sound you heard as you walked into Hell. He said he heard those hollow chants every single day he was in Vietnam.

On the beach, our backs to the wind, hunkered together we lit a joint. The warm Gulf water lapped at our feet and he told me he killed a man and he had no idea why. Then he killed a pretty Vietnamese girl too and he sees her face everywhere, and heroin helps some.

She was a young and pretty girl with small tits and big smile, and he watched the noise and chaos and carnage of that moment, then he saw her smile twist into agony, then death, then silence.

Pete is a hero, ask anyone in Venice, Florida, even today. But, don’t ask Pete.

I’m thinking about him today. I bet he’s watching this new war unfold on that little TV set on the wall of his bait shop in Nokomis Beach. He sells bait and cold beer and potato chips to fat men with big boats. Pete is a friendly enough guy, he just don’t say much. The heroin phase has passed. He’ll still smoke a joint and drink some, but he says it don’t help much.

I wish every boy riding the great swell of nationalistic pride in this new war would aim at thier guns square at their generals and away from citizens with wine bottles full of gasoline and oil and linen wicks, and go the fuck home. So does Pete.

They won’t, they’ll march on the general’s word, and die in the snow, cold and wet and bleeding, thier faces turned to horror and death. But Pete says that may be better than coming home.

Don’t matter what machine wants this war, those boys will be forever dead. Even the boys who don’t ride home in a box.

Someone should tell them the heroin helps, some, but not a lot.

That’s what Pete said…

I just ate a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup for the first time in a very long time.

My big sister used to make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on Saturdays, in the winter, while she taught me about Elvis and the Beatles and rock and roll. She’s my big sister, but I’ve always called her ‘baby sister.’ She’ll always be my baby sister.

I bit into the hot, gooey cheese tonight and it was 1962. Fords and Chevys and Dodges had fins, and they looked like jets and JFK wasn’t dead, and we weren’t quite sure what to make of the noisy world and words like ‘Cuban missile crisis’ and men flying around in space.

Saturday afternoon and my sister and me eating lunch in the tiny kitchen of the stone house by the swamp they called a lake. Sky King on the little black and white TV, right after American Bandstand. The world was smaller, and the snow fell more regularly. You could trust the snow. You could trust a lot of things, and things that didn’t make sense were not quite so scary as they are now. Not so scary because we believed the best of this world was yet to come, and the soup was hot and good and she always made the buttery toast perfect.

Tonight, I slowly swallowed the hot soup and chewed the last crust of bread and thought, ‘this is the best goddamn sandwich I’ve ever had.’