PLAYING CYRANO, FORT DIX, ‘69

He begged me to write his girlfriend

a letter for him. Owen was from the West

Virginia “hollers,” and illiterate. How he got

into the Army was anyone’s guess, but there

he was, a bunk away in basic training. Could

be the military had been getting less fussy,

so as to feed more to the war. Owen couldn’t stay

out of his own way, flubbed most training

exercises, marksmanship being his only skill,

not with guns, mind you, but spitting chawin’

tobacco for accuracy and distance. The drill

sergeants rode this poor hillbilly pretty hard.

I sat on Owen’s bunk and asked what he wanted

me to write. First, I had to tell Lavinia about what

it was like at Fort Dix: marching drills, crawling

under barb-wire, hurling grenades, all of that. Then

he paused for some time, dewy-eyed, and started

to blush, before stammering something about his

feelings for her, that he didn’t have the words. I said

don’t worry, I’d write he missed her, hoped she missed

him, and please wait as he’d be home soon. I asked if

I should also say I love you, but he backed off on that.

Truth be told, I added a line or two of my own, about

the October hunter’s moon peeking through the shelter-

half over his foxhole on maneuvers, and how he swore

he caught the image of her face in it, veiled purest white,

radiant, and heard a voice soft and gentle murmuring,

Stay strong, my love, I’m waiting. Yours truly, Owen.

Too late to retrieve it. The letter went out next morning.

Owen and I soon parted ways—different assignments.

Word was, from a former fellow Dix trainee, Owen had

passed basic, and days after getting home, tied the knot.