This letter was left at the Vietnam memorial along with a bouquet of red
roses, the letter and was stolen by myself and got rescued from being soaked
in the rains that fell minutes later:
Dear Spider,
Much has happened since I last wrote. Rose had here third baby, a beautiful
baby boy whom they decided to call Edward Lee, after his two grandfathers,
I know we all called you by your nickname but Edward you will always be
in front of the lord. Johnboy is still at the mechanics shop, attending his AA
meetings regularly, and Jane is coping with the situation after she returned
home with the kids.
Everyone’s fine, I fill my days praying, knitting (I did a beautiful baby set
for little Eddie), and the ladies at church have a weekly brunch that I go to.
Norma, Sweenie and Lettie also go there. You remember big Lettie from the
neighborhood.
I love you and miss you a lot,
Kathie.

Another letter was placed the following day:
Dear Spider,
Sorry I stole Kathie’s letter. I am sure you know of all the events she de-
scribed. I am sorry I intruded on your privacy. I wonder how you died in
Vietnam, I wonder if it wasn’t a better option than to come back home to be
spitted at because you were a Veteran. You’d be waking up in the middle of
the night, frightening Kathie with your post-traumatic stress disorder night-
mares of choppers, explosions, booby trap, trip wires, humid jungles and na-
ked girls in the jungled brothels. I took this statistic from a song called “19”
by someone called Paul Hardcastle: “Hundreds of Thousands of men who
saw heavy combat in Vietnam were arrested since discharge Their arrest rate
is almost twice that of non-veterans of the same age. There are no accurate
figures of how many of these men have been incarcerated. But, a Veterans
Administration study concludes that the greater of Vets exposure to combat
could more likely affect his chances of being arrested or convicted.” See, you
were better off dying there than coming back and getting arrested. “People
wanted us to be ashamed of what is made us,” that’s one sampled testimony
from that song goes. But you know Spider, I sympathize. I really do.

I have talked to so many soldiers who told me that sometimes “you’d find
yourself in a dark alley, with you and a stray cat and an enemy somewhere in
front of you. Even the cat could be an enemy. And by God, you’d shoot. It’s
either you or the enemy. But it’s also the cat.” I understand. I always thought
I was a pacifist, but it takes nothing for the rage to come through. The real
rage, the one that comes from underneath, the one that makes you strangle
the air for practice on the next hostile neck that will come your way. There
was this documentary called “Massaker” by Monica Borgmann, Lockman
Slim, and Herman Theissen, and they got some of the people who killed at
the massacre of Sabra and Chatila in front of the cam, and one was describ-
ing how he slit the back of a Palestinian elderly man after sticking him to
the wall. “With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double,” and
then he added, ““You die twice since you also die from the fear,” that man
could have been me. No, that man is me. It was me. Tell me spider, did you
have to do anything like that over there? “This is double,” like if was a word
in scrabble that got lucky to stumble on the right square. You get additional
points for the effort. I got such points. Did you, Spider? Normal people are
those who can bring themselves to kill. The animal is there, it is tamed and
caged. But Spider, you and I both know that we can kill. Even if just for the
additional points. For the “count as double” Scrabble victory. Your brother in
arms, TJC