6
“We finished the last part of the war. It was like no Vietnam. There was no surge. We were there for nine months. I can't imagine six years. No one gives a shit about us.” a voice on the radio explained in an interview to the usual nightly NPR disc jockey. I drove slowly between the thick lines of yellow paint attempting to time the acceleration and the force of my foot on the peddle with the changing of the traffic lights venturing to stay moving with only green lights and war on my mind. It was only after passing through two lights that I was forced to press the brake pedal and slow to a bumpy stop behind a grey Volvo with an anti war anti president sticker on the back wind shield, it was hard to tell between the two. I didn't know what it was about sticker slogans and the people who put them on the back of their cars but they both bothered me. I hadn't put a sticker on anything since grade school.
I had missed the beginning of the interview but it seemed like the interviewer was really trying to get a rise out of this guy. “So do you agree with the war in Iraq, most American's say they don't.” I took a survey class one time and that right there was a leading question. This interviewer should be fired immediately.
“i believe in America, everything else doesn't matter,” the soldier said. A cheesy answer but impossible not to respect.
“How many people have you killed for something that doesn't matter,” the interviewer brought out.
The soldier sat quietly for a moment. Time seemed to stand still. The light turned green, the medal lowered and the tin can kept moving. “thirteen,” the soldier said. I didn't want to listen to the interviewer's response. I liked the answer and turned off the radio before anything was said that became a disappointment.
The dark air began to drizzle a mood altering mist that felt like it seeped deep into my pours and stayed there, building up a layer of melancholy joy that I could pull off as boredom if I had to. I passed a row of dim lit bars where I imagined clouds of disenchanted individuals peering into the night and at me through hollow eyes and forgotten neon dreams. I slid my hand along the flaking leather of the steering wheel happy to be under the cover of a moving tin can that drifted uneasily over the smooth pavement. The bars were full as they where most nights even when work started early in the morning for some. Men and woman outside the car had followed hope or something like it disguised as hope to the southern city but instead they fill the bars and liquor stores that tighten around the city like transitional nooses that spring up anytime a discouraging motive comes along, and even those who notice are under the table before they realize it. Even on a Tuesday the places which kept business steadily sold the cheapest drinks and stocked the dirtiest cigarettes. I didn't understand what promises must have been made and later unrealized to create reason's to stay in the bars all night. It was as if hope might have sprung up out of the next drink. I worried that many of the men who occupied wobbling bar stools late into the early morning on any given night had come from the war and hadn't seen the light of a sober day or night since being home. I just knew I was glad to not be on the other side of the glass and happy not to be following leading questions that might bring me there.
“We finished the last part of the war. It was like no Vietnam. There was no surge. We were there for nine months. I can't imagine six years. No one gives a shit about us.” a voice on the radio explained in an interview to the usual nightly NPR disc jockey. I drove slowly between the thick lines of yellow paint attempting to time the acceleration and the force of my foot on the peddle with the changing of the traffic lights venturing to stay moving with only green lights and war on my mind. It was only after passing through two lights that I was forced to press the brake pedal and slow to a bumpy stop behind a grey Volvo with an anti war anti president sticker on the back wind shield, it was hard to tell between the two. I didn't know what it was about sticker slogans and the people who put them on the back of their cars but they both bothered me. I hadn't put a sticker on anything since grade school.
I had missed the beginning of the interview but it seemed like the interviewer was really trying to get a rise out of this guy. “So do you agree with the war in Iraq, most American's say they don't.” I took a survey class one time and that right there was a leading question. This interviewer should be fired immediately.
“i believe in America, everything else doesn't matter,” the soldier said. A cheesy answer but impossible not to respect.
“How many people have you killed for something that doesn't matter,” the interviewer brought out.
The soldier sat quietly for a moment. Time seemed to stand still. The light turned green, the medal lowered and the tin can kept moving. “thirteen,” the soldier said. I didn't want to listen to the interviewer's response. I liked the answer and turned off the radio before anything was said that became a disappointment.
The dark air began to drizzle a mood altering mist that felt like it seeped deep into my pours and stayed there, building up a layer of melancholy joy that I could pull off as boredom if I had to. I passed a row of dim lit bars where I imagined clouds of disenchanted individuals peering into the night and at me through hollow eyes and forgotten neon dreams. I slid my hand along the flaking leather of the steering wheel happy to be under the cover of a moving tin can that drifted uneasily over the smooth pavement. The bars were full as they where most nights even when work started early in the morning for some. Men and woman outside the car had followed hope or something like it disguised as hope to the southern city but instead they fill the bars and liquor stores that tighten around the city like transitional nooses that spring up anytime a discouraging motive comes along, and even those who notice are under the table before they realize it. Even on a Tuesday the places which kept business steadily sold the cheapest drinks and stocked the dirtiest cigarettes. I didn't understand what promises must have been made and later unrealized to create reason's to stay in the bars all night. It was as if hope might have sprung up out of the next drink. I worried that many of the men who occupied wobbling bar stools late into the early morning on any given night had come from the war and hadn't seen the light of a sober day or night since being home. I just knew I was glad to not be on the other side of the glass and happy not to be following leading questions that might bring me there.
