Vietnam War Story

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He wasn’t like that before Vietnam.
He didn’t want to fight.  He didn’t want 
to kill anyone.  He was drafted.  Poor
small town boys had no way to escape
the draft.  They sent him into the jungle
where women were fighting for the 
Vietcong.  Women captured by his unit.
His sergeant shoved one of them 
towards him and yelled, “Shoot her!”
He said he wouldn’t do it, he didn’t
believe in killing.  “Oh, yeah?”
The sergeant raised his pistol, 
pressed it to his skull.  “Believe
or I’ll shoot you.”  He wasn’t  
like that before he shot the woman 
with eyes whose silence was louder than 
the sergeant’s yelling and never stopped
screaming after she dropped in a heap
to the jungle floor.  She wasn’t the only
female Vietcong they caught that day.
There were daughters, too.  Brains, 
blood, everywhere.  So if you
wonder how he robbed and killed
an eighty year old woman when he 
returned to the States, went to prison
then after his release helped murder
another woman because she wouldn’t
give him and his buddies money
and her car, that’s how.  That’s why
he could run that “fat white trash” over 
with her beat up Ford nine times.  
“I remember him when they first 
let him out,” I released my pent 
breath.  “Swaggering down Main Street,
smack in the middle as if he were
going to whip out two pistols
and have a shootout at high noon.
My mother started laughing, said
he looked like he had a load in his pants.
How could they set him free again
after he killed another country woman?”
No clue.  I see him wandering 
by the rivers.  He’s mellow 
and we always say “Hello.”