Fighting a War

Fighting a War

I have never been to war.

I hope I'll never go. There is nothing that I believe in enough to sacrifice my life. These are supposed to be days of idealism and youth, and I am blessed. I cannot care. I cannot fight. The only appealing little thing about violence is the potential for heroism, and I doubt I'll ever be a hero or save an innocent life from a burning building, stop a runaway train like so many bad movies. I can't see myself triumphing over this world.

I can see myself climb out of the trench and nobly get mowed down by the bullets of a gattling gun. I let fly an arrow from my longbow. In the cockpit of a fighter plane, props twirling, I strafe Japanese ships and dodge innumerable Zeros. On a dusty hill I calculate the trajectory of an artillery shell and re-check my math. I slink through a dark jungle and blend in with the foliage, camouflaging my thoughts, a shadow amidst all the life.

I can only see myself in war movies, not in actual wars.

I have never been in an honest-to-god kill or be killed full on violent fight, much less a nationally sponsored war. Never defended my life or my honor, or someone else's; but I have taken and sadly given a beating. The closest I have ever been to war is a controlled skirmish with a friend, a fistfight for fun. No anger.

One time, at his twenty-first birthday party, Frank and I gave up on docile lives and began to fight.

Neither of us was born in Idaho. We never grew up together but we've both spent some time there. Our families moved, his east mine west, Hong Kong and Connecticut, so we're there for the summer and the winter. We know some of the same people, like the Peruvians and Adam Pracna and Jason Spicer, but we're three years too far apart.

I'm younger, and we never hung out. We've got mutual friends and we've eaten at all the same places. Small town, not many places. We've both driven out the same canyons in a pickup with mud and girls, same girls? Who knows? There's a keg or two in the back kicking up dust up into it all and clouding up the sky, and we're throwing empty glass bottles shattering at trees and shadows and animals as we drive and sing.